News: Civil War in Syria

Pro-Freedom · Apr 7, 2017

SYRIA, THE LEFT, AND THE WORLD

06-04-2017: ...Assad’s regime is in no way secular, it is sectarian and securitarian. When it comes to the Islamic World, many in the west tend to adopt what I call Huntingtonian secularism, defining secularism in an oversimplifying culturalist way as something against Islam, completely detached from politics, social and economic affairs, and from individual and collective dignity. Most people in the west simply know nothing about Syria. Most of the press coverage of Syria is made of simplifications that show Bashar Assad in expensive suits and neckties, maybe his rich and elegant wife, usually with insinuations to his Alawi minority, meaning he is not from the Sunni Muslim majority, from whom minorities should be protected. Many of these coverages are imbued with Islamophobic sentiments. These factors made it easier for many to identify with the thuggish regime far more than with those who were invisible for years and decades, and are now rising up against it.

Deep in the genealogy of the protection of minorities or minority rights lies the colonial powers, discourses and practices in the time of rising Western imperialism which was also the time of the “Eastern Question” in the second half of the 19th century. What do the colonial discourses say? That the minorities in the ‘East’ are threatened by the Muslim Majority, and that the “civilized” Western powers are their protectors from those despotic rulers that seemed to represent the Muslim majority (and are the saviors of Muslim and Eastern women from the Muslim and Eastern men). In this way France ‘protected’ the Maronites of Lebanon, Cesarean Russia protected the orthodox Christians, England the Druze, etc. This has rarely been acknowledged and criticized in the West. The implied hatred of Islam and Muslims as was shown in the Executive Orders of D. Trump in his first week of his presidency is overlooked, and its role in creating and nurturing sectarianism was always denied.

The presupposition behind this discourse is that the cultural or religious majority is at the same time the political majority. Well, this was always wrong, and it is doubly wrong in Syria in the last half century. Those who occupy the posts that control the reproduction of the regime are mostly from one sect, with a publicly known discrimination on their behalf in the security agencies and military formation with security functions. Most of those arrested, tortured, killed, displaced, their towns and neighborhoods destroyed besieged and destroyed, are from the Sunni majority in the last six years. Nevertheless the dogma of minorities’ protection sticks there in the West like a fixed prejudice. The only innovation in the recent years is that the evil majority now is not Muslims, but Arab Sunni Muslims, which extends the blessings of minority protection to the Kurds and the Alawites, with Russia now is the champion of protecting all minorities, with implicit or explicit consent of many in the West.
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http://aljumhuriya.net/en/the-role-of-the-intellectual/syria_the_left_and_the_world

Pro-Freedom · Apr 8, 2017

Is Trump’s missile attack genuine?

07-04-17:...The facts show that in nearly seven years the international community have turned a blind eye to the some of the worst levels of crimes against humanity ever known or documented. Who will ever forget the suffering of those trapped in Eastern Aleppo? The international community were not even able to drop a single loaf of bread despite being under siege and constant illegal bombardment. Who will forget the chemical weapons attack in Ghouta which killed over a thousand innocent civilians and injured nearly 4,000? If this was truly an act of humanity, does this mean the Americans will stop knowingly dropping bombs on innocent civilians (or what they call “collateral damage”) such as the worshippers trying to run away from their mosque being bombed in Al-Jena weeks ago?[2]

It does not take a cynic to view this act of so-called “retaliation” is little more than a political ploy. President Trump, inaugurated only a few months ago, is one of the most unpopular presidents in history. His administration’s association with the Russians, is not only an embarrassment, but could ultimately result in his impeachment on the grounds of their undue influence in his country’s democracy.

This attack on the Syrian airbase, portrays Trump as the moral and just president, who stands for international law and justice, unlike his predecessor Obama. Additionally, an attack on Syria, is in essence an attack on Russia. Hence, this action distances him from his Russian ‘buddies’. Who, incidentally were given prior notice of the attack so that any Russian presence can take evasive action.[3]

All in all, this cruise missile attack on the Syrian airbase, helps President Trump far more than it helps the Syrian people. But one thing is clear: Trump has taken a step that almost all Muslim countries have failed to take to protect those suffering in Syria. It is truly a shame that Trump’s ego is more potent a motivation than Allah’s promise is to many Muslim states around the globe.

And what is [the matter] with you that you fight not in the cause of Allāh and [for] the oppressed among men, women, and children who say, “Our Lord, take us out of this city of oppressive people and appoint for us from Yourself a protector and appoint for us from Yourself a helper?”[4]

Perhaps at least in Trump’s bold step some Muslim nations will receive the courage to finally act to protect those oppressed who have been waiting patiently.
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https://www.islam21c.com/politics/is-trumps-missile-attack-genuine/#_ftn4

Pro-Freedom · Apr 8, 2017

Precisely

'Do you only care how we die?' Syrians ask why gas attacks are the only red line

09-04-2017:..Um Ahmad, a mother from Khan Sheikhun whose three-year-old nephew was gassed to death, told MEE: "The world is shocked by the chemical attack and yet they do not understand.

"To us who have lived through six years of siege, forced starvation and incessant attacks by both Russia and the Syrian regime, this is simply another other way to die, no more and no less," she said.

"It does not matter that it is forbidden internationally or how it kills, in the end, the result is the same. We die. And we continue to die. Do you only care how we die or that we are dying?

And in a chilling reflection on the reality of war, Ahmad said: "We prefer death this way. We can bury our children in one piece and not have to search for their parts among the rubble and shrapnel.
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http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/syria-sarin-barrle-bombs-idlib-559365502

Pro-Freedom · Apr 8, 2017

The US has been bombing Syria since 2014. According to Airwars, there have been 7,919 US strikes on Syria. In March, more then 40 civilians were killed when a US airstrike hit a mosque in Al Jina, Aleppo. A couple days later a US airstrike killed over 150 people, covering in a school in Mansoura, Raqqa. There was little resentment, and no urgent anti-war protest. Just as no anti-war protest were arranged when Assad gassed civilians to death in Khan Sheikhun,Idlib. But now, for the first time when the US target's Assad regime, the hypocrites on the left are crying out for protest to "Stop the War". These people do not give a crap about the lives of Syrian civilians. All they are concerned about is to preserve a murderous, grotesque dictatorship

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Anthony · Apr 9, 2017

Pro-Freedom said: ↑

Is Trump’s missile attack genuine?

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No. They were fake missiles and the whole thing was filmed in a secret studio in Area 51

Anthony · Apr 9, 2017

World Begs U.S. To Use Military Force In Syria So They Can Bitch About It Later

Pro-Freedom · Apr 9, 2017

So much for the "legitimacy" of Assad

Mani · Apr 10, 2017

Pro-Freedom said: ↑

So much for the "legitimacy" of Assad

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Please do enlighten us as to how many elections the Wahhabi King Kong of Arabia has taken part in, let alone won? The answer is 0 . Not to mention that unlike Assad who is a doctor, Salman is an illiterate imbecile who can't even write his own name and whose only qualification is dancing like a monkey in the desert. The moral of the story being, that the mercenaries and puppets of an absolute 7th century-style monarchy where women can't even drive a car and being a Christian is a crime, shouldn't be talking about "legitimacy" of a sovereign secular state where women and minorities hold some of the highest ranks of the government.

ceezmad · Apr 14, 2017

Anyone that wants to know about how Sunnis and Shias don't get along should read this thread.

Pro-Freedom · Apr 16, 2017

Assad would rather destroy Syria and its people than voluntarily give up power, and is doing so. Still, it's a nice sentiment from Trudeau.

Trudeau: Assad must step down for Syria to have peace

Canada has slapped sanctions on 27 high-ranking Syrian regime officials in an effort to force Bashar al-Assad to stop using violence against his people and remove him from power, according to Canadian media.

The individuals will have their assets in Canada frozen and they are prohibited from doing business with Canada, CTV News reported.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said earlier this week that the path to peace in Syria does not include Assad, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported.
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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170415-trudeau-assad-must-step-down-for-syria-to-have-peace/

Pro-Freedom · Apr 16, 2017

As Syrians and the 'international community' are very well aware...

Assad still has ‘hundreds of tonnes’ of chemical weapons in stockpile, former Syrian weapons chief claims

Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad deceived United Nations inspectors and still has “hundreds of tonnes” of lethal chemicals stockpiled, the country’s former weapons research chief has said.

In 2014, Syria said it had handed over all of its chemical weapons to the UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). At the time, Barack Obama said the stockpile had been “100 per cent eliminated”.

But Brigadier-General Zaher al-Sakat has told The Telegraph that Assad’s regime did not declare large amounts of sarin and other toxic weapons.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ckpile-syria-obama-trump-moscow-a7684706.html

Pro-Freedom · Apr 21, 2017

Nice to see another Western politician with a conscience (one of maybe four or five in total) exposing the genocidal Iranian regime.

Iran-allied militias to overrun Khan Sheikhoun to hide evidence of Sarin attack

20-04-2017:..'A senior member of the British Labor Party said Iran ordered the allied Shiite militias in Syria to launch offensive on Khan Sheikhoun, almost three weeks since the deadly Sarin gas attack killed 90 people in the northern town.

Speaking to Zaman al-Wasl, the source presented information that he said refers to what is more dangerous than the chemical attack as “the Iranian orders stressed the need to burn everything in the city, and do everything possible to gain control of the city where the massacre took place.”

He explained that the purpose of taking control of Khan Sheikhoun is to hide the any proofs of using chemical weapons in the town. He pointed out that Iranian insistence on the urgency of taking control of the city “perhaps indicates Iran's involvement in it [the attack] as well.”

Western media reported that Russia was involved in bombing the Khan Sheikhoun Hospital to conceal the traces of the chemical attack. Western media also indicated that Russian officers may have been present at Shayrat airbase at the time the warplane carrying the sarin gas took off. Russian military involvement may have prompted Russia to veto a resolution imposing an international investigation into the massacre and its perpetrators

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https://en.zamanalwsl.net/news/25458.html

Pro-Freedom · Apr 21, 2017

No one yet knows precisely how many Syrians have died under torture in Assad's slaughterhouses. The best guesses range from 17,000 to 60,000.

Torture Methods Used In Assad's Human Slaughterhouses

20-04-2017: ...In 2014, tens of thousands of photographs of prisoners that had died in Assad’s prisons, were placed into the hands of the Office of Global Criminal Justice, numerous numbers of these images depicting grossly twisted and emaciated bodies, many in the same state as bodies photographed inside NAZI concentration camps at the end of World War II, their bodies showing the sort of wounds received through severe torture.

Thousands of these photographs depicted child victims younger than eighteen, as it is routine practice in Assad’s Syria for both his troops, and the militias under their command, to routinely torture children or target them with sniper fire, and it has also been recorded that a group of children were jailed in late 2011, after being arrested for writing anti-Assad graffiti on walls, and all were tortured in one of his prisons.'
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https://inp.plus/17042017-1/

Anthony · Apr 21, 2017

Pro-Freedom said: ↑

Assad would rather destroy Syria and its people than voluntarily give up power, and is doing so. Still, it's a nice sentiment from Trudeau.

Trudeau: Assad must step down for Syria to have peace

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170415-trudeau-assad-must-step-down-for-syria-to-have-peace/
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Trudeau can say what he wants, but the Canadians have no troops in the area to make Assad step down.

Ultimately whenever a foreign leader says "somethings must be done" it means "America do something". I say we stay out of this rat hole. It really has nothing to do with us. Assad is a tyrannical bastard, ISIS are murderous fanatics, and the rest are not much better. I just feel sorry for the average Syrian, stuck in the middle of all this.

And with respect to the sarin gas attack, most likely it was the Assad forces -- Assad may be "winning" but he has not won. And given the realities of the demographics, Assad cannot "win" what ever that means in this context. Two years ago it was estimated that about 1/3 of military age Alawites had been killed. That does not bode well for Assad's power.

Pro-Freedom · Apr 22, 2017

Syria Changed the World

21-04-2017:...The world seems awash in chaos and uncertainty, perhaps more so than at any point since the end of the Cold War. Authoritarian-leaning leaders are on the rise, and liberal democracy itself seems under siege. The post-World War II order is fraying as fighting spills across borders and international institutions — built, at least in theory, to act as brakes on wanton slaughter — fail to provide solutions.

Populist movements on both sides of the Atlantic are not just riding anti-establishment anger, but stoking fears of a religious “other,” this time Muslims.These challenges have been crystallized, propelled and intensified by a conflagration once dismissed in the West as peripheral, to be filed, perhaps, under “Muslims killing Muslims”: the war in Syria. Now in its seventh year, this war allowed to rage for so long, killing 400,000 Syrians and plunging millions more into misery, has sent shock waves around the world. Millions have fled to neighboring countries, some pushing on to Europe.

The notion that the postwar world would no longer let leaders indiscriminately kill their own citizens now seems in full retreat. The Syrian government’s response to rebellion, continuing year after year, threatens to normalize levels of state brutality not seen in decades. All the while President Bashar al-Assad invokes an excuse increasingly popular among the world’s governments since Sept. 11: He is “fighting terror.”

“Syria did not cause everything,” said the Syrian dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a secular leftist who spent nearly two decades as a political prisoner under Mr. Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez. “But yes, Syria changed the world.” The United Nations Security Council is paralyzed. Aid agencies are overwhelmed. Even a United States missile strike on a Syrian military air base, ordered by President Trump in retaliation for a chemical attack on a rebel-held town, seems little more than a blip in the turmoil, the latest unilateral intervention in the war. Two weeks later, the Syrian government, backed by Russia, continues its scorched-earth bombings.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/sunday-review/one-countrys-war-changed-the-world.html

Pro-Freedom · Apr 22, 2017

The great Malak Chabkoun nails it.

Absurdity is questioning a dictator's motives

21-04-2017:..News flash: Bashar al-Assad is bad. He has been murdering his own people for more than six years now. Before that, his father did the same. And not once in the decades the Assad family has held power in Syria did it need "justification" for its crimes against humanity.

Thus, a confirmed nerve agent attack on Khan Sheikhoun, one of many chemical weapons attacks committed by the regime, is not out of the ordinary! Pro-Syrian revolution individuals or organisations who say that Assad committed chemical attacks on Khan Sheikhoun are not calling for World War III - they are simply naming the aggressor, as they have been doing for more than six years.

Assad knows, six years in, that the entire international community isn't willing to take concrete steps resulting in his removal. And that is why it is completely ridiculous to even entertain questions like: "Why would the regime do this?"; "Why would the regime use chemical weapons?"; "Why would the regime use chemical weapons on Khan Sheikhoun?"

Dictators kill because they can. They use chemical weapons because they are simply another tool at their disposal. It is not surprising that a regime which has dropped countless barrel bombs on its own people and invited occupiers into its country would use chemical weapons, and it is quite absurd that Syrians who have had to physically and ideologically fight Assad, Russia, Iran, ISIL and al-Qaeda all at once are constantly called upon to combat the narratives of these "woke naysayers" when their bigger concern is surviving whatever the regime and its allies throw at them next.
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/04/assad-chemical-attack-rebels-170420094244949.html

Mani · Apr 23, 2017

Persian Lions, the Defenders of Damascus, protectors of Christians and other oppressed people of Syria against the genocidal Wahhabi savages and the neo-Ottoman "moderate" beheaders whose "revolution"s main slogan has been "Christians to Beirut; Alawites to the grave".

Pro-Freedom · Apr 23, 2017

Genocide denial is a lucrative business, as all Assad's propagandists know... another proud moment for England just in time for St. George's Day...

Revealed: How Britain’s former Syria ambassador appeared on BBC to defend Assad... after quietly taking a job with dictator’s father-in-law

23-04-2017:..A former British ambassador to Syria who appeared on the BBC to defend the Assad regime had already become a director of a lobby group run by the dictator’s father in law.

Peter Ford, 59, courted controversy this month by claiming that President Bashar al-Assad would not have carried out the chemical gas attack on his own people.

Now the Telegraph can reveal that just weeks before the April 4 attack Mr Ford had become a director of the controversial British Syrian Society.

This was founded by Fawaz Akhras, a London-based cardiologist whose daughter Asma is married to President Assad, and is closely linked to the regime, frequently accused of acting as its mouthpiece in the west.

According to documents filed at Companies House, Mr Ford - who has been accused of supporting the Syrian regime in the past - was appointed a director of the society on February 28 this year.

Following the chemical attack in Idlib province, which killed more than 70 people and subsequently led to retaliatory US air strikes on a regime air base, Mr Ford appeared on the BBC casting doubt on whether Assad was responsible.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...-former-syria-ambassador-appeared-bbc-defend/

Mani · Apr 24, 2017

Mani · Apr 24, 2017

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Future of Syria: Ethnic cleansing turns into genocide as over 108 shiites (including 68 children) are massacred https://t.co/Pt798ZPgSG pic.twitter.com/kGmpJBBBQo
— Defend Assange Campaign (@DefendAssange) April 16, 2017

Mani · Apr 24, 2017

102 years ago, the forefathers of the "moderate" neo-Ottoman head-chopers carried out one of the biggest genocides in human history, murdering millions of Armenians to establish a "Free Turkey". Today, they're trying to carry out yet another genocide against Armenians, other Christians and minorities in Syria. But this time, these Neo-Ottoman dogs, and their Wahhabi allies will not succeed. Syria and Syrians will prevail against this evil.

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Pro-Freedom · Apr 24, 2017

Iranian student standing up to the terrorist regime of Iran, showing courage, integrity and support for Syrian freedom and human rights.

"You're defending the shrines,which have never existed in Idlib and Homs".Student challenges IRGC's Abbasi for Iran's role in Syria(Eng sub) pic.twitter.com/2p3zXcZxAA
— Iran in Syrian war (@warreports) April 23, 2017

Mani · Apr 24, 2017

Pro-Freedom said: ↑

Iranian student standing up to the terrorist regime of Iran, showing courage, integrity and support for Syrian freedom and human rights.

"You're defending the shrines,which have never existed in Idlib and Homs".Student challenges IRGC's Abbasi for Iran's role in Syria(Eng sub) pic.twitter.com/2p3zXcZxAA
— Iran in Syrian war (@warreports) April 23, 2017

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It's actually a Q&A and debate at Tehran university. And that's called difference of opinion and freedom of expression which might have its limits in Iran, but still does exist in a relatively pluralistic country like Iran with an active civil society. A notion that's clearly alien to you and your masters in Saudi Wahhabia, where a dissident speaking out like that, would have been sent to chop chop square within the hour.

Anthony · Apr 24, 2017

"A pox on both your houses."

Mani · Apr 24, 2017

Anthony said: ↑

"A pox on both your houses."
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Instead of being politically correct and repeating the same old manufactured lies and cliches that the MSM feeds you that this is somehow a Shia-Sunni fued or something. Ask yourself that why is that all the Shias, Christians, Druze , Yazidis, Alawites, Sunni Kurds and vast majority of secular Sunni Arabs are on one side and these Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi cockroaches on the other side. How can it be that almost every single group of people in the region, with competing interests, is united against these animals. Why is it that that the people on the ground who live and know these thugs, just don't see them as "moderate rebels" that they're advertised as in the West.

Wake up and smell the coffee. This is not an Iran-Saudi Arabia feud. This is an EVERYONE Vs Wahhabi thugs conflict. And what a short memory people like you have, to forget what these animals are capable of doing and how they will just keep spreading their hateful genecodial ideology everywhere, if not stopped today in Syria and Iraq. If you weren't brainwashed by MSM, you would be thankful to Russia and Iran for keeping these animals at bay.

Iraqi Christian Leader: