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Yabroud Battle Ignites, Eye on Daraa

February 21, 2014, 9:04 pm
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Daraa in Syria




Hussein Mallah

The process of tightening the grip around the armed groups' last strongholds in Yabroud in Qalamoun Mountains is taking place, in concurrence with an appeal by the leaders of these groups for their certainty of losing the battle against the Syrian Army, in the middle of calls for opening a new front in order to occupy the Army in Qalamoun.


Yabroud is the last stronghold for militants in Qalamoun

The ongoing battles in Yabroud reveal the Army's determination to finish what it had initiated a couple of months ago which is to put an end to the threat the militants taking Qalamoun Mountains as shelters imposes. The Army is seeking to either regain control over some regions in specific (Qara, Deir Atieh, Nabak, and lately Jarajeer and Rima heights), or to impose a siege and block the way on supplies reaching armed groups in Yabroud, Assal Al-Ward, and later Rankus...

The strategy of "taking control with fire" and "gradual gnawing" which the military units in Yabroud and its surrounding are following left great geographic, material, and life losses among the armed groups, according to the opposition itself which assured Monday night the killing of a significant leader, while the official media reported that several leaders were killed including leader of the so-called "Islamic Front" Abu Malek, leader of the "Internal Security" militia, Samir Nasrallah, Financier and operations leader in the region Mahmoud Arouq, known by Abu Ali Al-Yabroudi, and leaders of the "Free Ones of the Levant" brigades, Anas Abboud and Methqal Hamamah.

The Army's strategy has proved its success until today and the evidence to that are the warnings of the "Free Army" and the Arab media supporting them regarding the definite loss of Qalamoun battle if the situation remained the same, and their call for opening a new front to reduce pressure on Yabroud militants.

Daraa once again...
Syian Army tanksIn a previously published report about Daraa, there were information about a Western-Saudi effort to ignite the southern front, that is Daraa, for several reasons, including its close distance from Damascus and the easiness of supplying militants there with military and logistics support. In this context, western information had revealed that training camps were established in Jordan under Western supervision and Gulf funding, not to mention the intelligence information that Israeli observatories in Golan heights could supply.

To assure that, observers had talked about the involvement of all those parts in the armed groups' attack on Army locations in eastern Ghouta late November. Back then, information stated that the attack, which thousands of militants took part in, aimed at breaking the siege imposed on militants' strongholds in eastern Ghouta, cutting Damascus airport road, and restoring the threat which was imposed on the capital through its southern gate.

جولة عسكرية جديدة في سوريا ستستخدم فيها كل المحظوراتMilitants who came from the southern region took part in this attack under Western intelligence support and Arab funding (reports about Saudi Intelligence Chief, Bandar bin Sultan's personal involvement were spread). Information revealed then that the Syrian Army frustrated an attempt to transport a convoy of 100 trucks carrying arms and munitions to the militants in eastern Ghouta.

The significance here is that the attack on Ghouta was in concurrence with the beginning of the Qalamoun battle and the control of the Syrian Army over Qara city. In other words, Ghouta front was opened in attempt to occupy the Army from targeting militants' strongholds in Qalamoun.

Based on that, sources following up the track of field operations do not exclude the possibility that armed groups try, with foreign direction and support, to occupy the Army from the southern region.

In fact, militants on Monday tried to advance to the strategic town of Kherbet Ghazaleh in order to control it and cut the supply road between Army units, but it was a failed attempt frustrated by the Syrian Army.

A couple of days earlier, armed groups also tried to create confusion inside the Army in Qunaitra by taking control over several towns, but this did not last long as the Army instantly regained them.

All these developments on ground were followed by changes in the leadership of the so-called "Free Syrian Army" along with the removal of Brigadier General Salim Idriss from his position as Chief of Staff and his replacement with escaped general Abdel Ilah Al-Bashir.

Even if these changes were mostly related to the clash of axes and local and regional power inside the opposition council and the armed groups related to it, what mattered was that General Bashir headed the military council in Qunaitra, South of Syria, and seceded from the Army in 2012. Hence, his appointment was an attempt by the council to give a push to the militants in the southern region to prepare them for what could take place in the near future.



تحصينات دمشق تبدأ من درعا.. ما هي المفاجأت التي حضرها الجيش السوري للغزاة ؟

تحصينات دمشق تبدأ من درعا.. ما هي المفاجأت التي حضرها الجيش السوري للغزاة ؟


What is certain is that the Syrian military leadership is cautious about any developments or unexpected surprises in the southern front, and it is taking seriously the threats of the armed groups and the Western and Arab parts supporting them, who seek for making Daraa Damascus's soft side...

Translated by Sara Taha Moughnieh

Source: Al-Manar Website
21-02-2014  Last updated 21-02-2014 - 11:49

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العميد د تركي الحسن _ بث مباشر / الفضاية 21 02 2014

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Israeli forces attack Palestinian protesters in Hebron, at least 16 injured

February 22, 2014, 12:50 am
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A Palestinian is arrested by an Israeli policeman in the center of the West Bank city of Hebron, on February 21, 2014 during a demonstration against the closure of the main downtown street "Al-Shuhada" and also to mark the 20th anniversary of the massacre of 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers by a Jewish extremist. (Photo: AFP - Thomas Coex)
Published Friday, February 21, 2014
Updated 5:05 pm: Israeli occupation forces unleashed a barrage of tear gas, rubber-coated bullets, and live fire against hundreds of Palestinians in Hebron during demonstrations marking the fourth anniversary of the Open Shuhada Street Campaign, injuring at least 30, Palestinian and other news agencies reported.
The injured included a cameraman for the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, who was shot in the head by a rubber-coated bulle, and a cameraman for the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen news agency.
At least five Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces as confrontations between unarmed protesters and Israeli forces continued throughout the day.
Munther Ameera, speaking to the Palestinian News Network, said that the demonstrations demanded the reopening of the Shuhada Street, adding that it was launched to mark the anniversary of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre.
An AFP correspondent said about 1,000 Palestinians joined by Israeli and international activists marched from the Ali mosque to a flashpoint Israeli military post on Shuhada Street, chanting "Stop occupation" and "No occupation, no settlements."
The Ibrahimi Mosque massacre occurred in 1994 in which a fundamentalist Jewish settler opened fire on unarmed Palestinians praying inside the mosque, killing 29 and wounding 129. The Israeli military immediately closed off Shuhada Street and imposed curfews and restrictions on Palestinian residents of Hebron after the massacre.

In 2000, Palestinians were further restricted from entering the center of Hebron on foot by the Israeli occupational forces under the pretext of providing security for more than 600 illegal Israeli settlers occupying the area.
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What awaits our Palestinian camps in Lebanon؟ Save our Palestinian camps in Lebanon,

February 22, 2014, 1:03 am
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قالت وسائل الاعلام ان احد الانتحاريين اللذين نفذا تفجير الامس في بيروت فلسطيني ويدعىنضال المغير وهو المشتبه به الرئيسي. وانه من انصار الشيخ احمد الاسير، يسكن في بلدة البيسارية قضاء الزهراني في الجنوب اللبناني.وانه منذ عدة شهور يقاتل الى جانب التكفيريين في القلمون بسورية. وان اشخاصا في البلدة قاموا بحرق منزله في البلدة بعد الاعلان عن اسمه. بطبيعة الحال ليس مهما إن كان
الانتحاري المذكور من انصار الاسير او غيره من الشيوخ التكفيريين.

فالأهم هو تغلغل النهج التكفيري في الشباب الفلسطيني في لبنان. حيث ان هذا الأمر يشكل خطورة كبيرة على مستقبل الفلسطينيين في لبنان وعلى الوعي الوطني والنضال لاجل تحرير فلسطين. لان هؤلاء الشباب لم تعد بوصلتهم فلسطين ولا مقاومة الصهاينة والعمل لاجل تحرير وطنهم المحتل بل العمل لاجل مشروع جهادي عالمي مشبوه في نهاية الأمر.فمن يضع يده بيد اعداء الأمة ومقاومتها ويمارس الارهاب ضد الشعوب العربية لا يمكن ان يكون فلسطينيا وطنيا همه تحرير فلسطين من الاحتلال الصهيوني.

صحيح ان السيد حسن نصرالله في خطابه الاخير وجه كلامه بالدرجة الأولى لجمهور المقاومة حين دعاهم لعدم تحميل الفلسطينيين والمخيمات وزر هذه الاعمال الارهابية لانها اعمال فردية ترتبط بنهج عام للجماعات التكفيرية في المنطقة والعالم. لكن وبالرغم من هذا الكلام للسيد حسن نصراللهإلا ان بعض الاشخاص قاموا بحرق منزل الانتحاري الفلسطيني المذكور في البيسارية.وهذا يدل على انه من الصعب التحكم بمشاعر الناس وردة فعلها بعد كل عملية انتحارية قد تحصل.

وهذا ايضا يدل على ان الناس لم تعد تحتمل مثل هذه الأعمال الهمجية، مما يقودنا الى تخوف مشروع من وصول مشروع الفتنة الى بعض جمهور المقاومة. بالرغم من موقف المقاومة وسيدها وقائدها الرافض لمثل هذه الاعمال وردود الافعال المرفوضة. فحزب الله يعي ويعرف الى اين ستؤدي مثل هذه الفتنة خاصة ان مأساة نهر البارد مازالت ماثلة وحاضرة في الذاكرة الجماعية.

وهنا يجب قرع جدران الخزان في المخيمات الفلسطينية في لبنان، وقرع جدران الفصائل الفلسطينية هناك، التي يجب عليها تحمل مسؤولياتها الوطنية في الدفاع عن الشعب الفلسطيني في لبنان وذلك من خلال الوقوف بوجه التطرف والجماعات التكفيرية والمتطرفة التي عاثت وتعيث خرابا في العقل الوطني الفلسطيني وتحرف الشباب عن البوصلة الحقيقية للجهاد الحقيقي.

نعي ونعلم ان وضع الفصائل لا يؤهلها بالشكل المطلوب لمواجهة هؤلاء لكن على هذه الفصائل ان تحث الناس في المخيمات على الوقوف ضد هذه الظاهرة التي قد تؤدي الى حرب بين المخيمات وجوارها ومع الجيش اللبناني المسؤول عن حفظ أمن لبنان.

فماذا لو ان الجيش اللبناني تأكد من وجود قائد او عنصر من التكفيريين في احد المخيمات الفلسطينية في لبنان مثلا عين الحلوة الذي تتهمه وسائل الاعلام اللبنانية وحتى السلطات بايواء بعض عناصر وقادة هذه المجموعات. والمصيبة ستكون اكبر لو ان هذا العنصر مطلوب بتهمة المشاركة في اعمال ارهابية ضد الدولة اللبنانية وعلى الارض اللبنانية.

وماذا لو أصرت السلطات على تسليم هذا العنصر وعجزت الفصائل الفلسطينية عن تسليمه للسلطات؟ ..

العجز طبعا سيكون نتيجة لصراع الفصائل ولقيام بعضها بحماية هذا العنصر ومنحه غطاءا ما. عندها سيضطر الجيش اللبناني الى استخدام القوة وفرض هيبته من خلال التدخل العسكري لاعتقال هذا العنصر، مما سيستدعي مواجهة مع المخيم. هنا سيكون حزب الله ومعه حلفاء الشعب الفلسطيني في وضع لا يحسدون عليه ابدا وسوف يضطرون للوقوف الى جانب الدولة في هذه المواجهة، التي لن يستفيد منها سوى الكيان الصهيوني واعداء الامة العربية.

فهل علينا الانتظار حتى تحصل مثل هذه المواجهة؟

بالطبع لا، لانه علينا كفلسطينيين واجب لجم كل عنصر او مجموعة تخرج عن الاجماع الوطني في المخيمات الذي ينص على عدم التدخل فيما يدور من صراع في لبنان. وعلينا واجب تسليم اي عنصر تثبت عليه تهمة المشاركة في اعمال ارهابية ضد لبنان او التخطيط لعمليات انتحارية هناك او المشاركة فيها باي شكل من الأشكال.

يجب رفع الغطاء والحماية عن اي مشتبه به او متهم بالمشاركة في التفجيرات الانتحارية التي تستهدف المقاومة ولبنان. لان في هذا صيانة للمخيمات وحماية لأهلها وسكانها وديمومتها حتى التحرير والعودة الى فلسطين المحررة. وهذه بطبيعة الحال مسألة وطنية صميمية ولا تقبل القسمة والحسابات الخاطئة والقراءات المغلوطة. وهي مسؤولية جماعية فلسطينية.

صرخة نطلقها في زمن معقد وصعب نبتغي منها تصحيح المسار و اعادة الامور الى نصابها وحماية شعبنا وصيانة مخيماتنا وديمومة نضالنا حتى عودتنا الى فلسطين الحرة.

( نضال حمد - موقع الصفصاف)

20-02-2014
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It's clear that if the USA/Obama was opposed to terrorism he would be helping Assad and not arming terrorists

February 22, 2014, 2:59 am
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Israel’s divide-and-conquer tactic: Palestinian Christians as ‘non-Arabs’

February 22, 2014, 3:30 am
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Father Ibrahim Shomali (C), Beit Jala’s Roman Catholic parish priest, leads an open-air mass to protest against Israeli decision to build a new section of the separation wall through the Cremisan valley on a route they say would cut off their community on January 24, 2014 in the Cremisan Valley in Beit Jala near the West Bank city of Bethlehem. (Photo: AFP-Musa al-Shaer)
By: Yazan al-Saadi, Chloé Benoist
Published Friday, February 21, 2014
Israel’s Knesset is set to vote on a bill which would identify Palestinian Christians with Israeli citizenship as non-Arabs, sparking outcry both within and outside of 1948 Palestine.
The bill was proposed by Yariv Levin, coalition chairman for the governing conservative Likud-Yisrael Beitenu faction, in January.
“My legislation will award separate representation and a separate frame of reference to the Christian public, distinguishing them from Muslim Arabs,” Levin had said at the time.

“This is an important, historic step that could introduce balance to the State of Israel, and connect us [Jews] with the Christians,” he added.
“I make sure not to refer to them as Arabs, because they are not Arabs.”
On February 19, the bill passed its second and third readings in the Israeli Knesset’s Labor, Health, and Welfare Committee and is expected to be discussed by MKs in an as-of-yet undetermined date in the near future.
If passed, it would be the first time under Israeli legislation that Christian and Muslim Arabs would be separated into two different communities.
Levin’s opinion in regards to the non-Arab status of Palestinian Christians was strongly condemned by Palestinians and Christian organizations that Al-Akhbar was able to contact in regards to the topic.
“First of all, Palestinian Christians and Muslims are the same,” Mustafa Barghouti, founder and Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al-Akhbar.
Barghouti noted that some of the most prominent champions of Arab nationalism and the Palestinian liberation movement were Christians, such as George Habash and Edward Said.
“We are all proud of people like Edward Said who was at the forefront in the fight against occupation, colonialism, and occupation,” Barghouti said.
“This is an act of arrogance and a violation of basic rights. Israel is conducting the usual colonial practice of divide and rule,” he said, adding that Israel conducts “provocative actions” in order “to distract from the main issues.”
“What Israel is doing is the worst form of racism and orientalism. They have no right to speak on behalf of Christian Palestinians, and Christian Palestinians will no doubt respond to this,” Barghouti added.
Divide and Conquer
One justification that Levin relies on in pushing the bill forward was that it represented a form of protection for Christians against “extremist Muslims,” as well as pointing to Lebanon’s confessional system as a positive example of religious harmony and state stability.
“[Christians] do not see themselves as Arabs. They say, ‘We are not Arabs - we are separate.’ For 60 years the state treated all minorities as one homogeneous group, and it was a mistake.”
“Look at Lebanon, there is no Levin there, and their law stipulates that the president must be a Maronite Christian, the speaker of parliament a Shia, and the prime minister a Sunni,” the Israeli political argued.
But Levin’s reasoning were bluntly rejected by many 1948 Palestinian Christians, which the bill allegedly “protects.”
“I, and my family, refuse this distinction. There are only a few, few Christians who accept this. Most Arabs living in Israel are tied with Palestine,” Julius, a 19-year-old Palestinian living in Haifa, said to Al-Akhbar.

“The Israelis are trying to separate us from the rest of the Palestinian community, especially as the Arab mobilization against the Israeli state is growing, and it is worrying them,” he said, referring to the growing protest movement by 1948 Arabs against the current ethnic cleansing by Israeli authorities of Bedouin communities along the Negev desert.
“We are aware of this plan of theirs. It aims to make us forget our identity and make Christians and Muslims turn against each other,” Julius said.
Across the divide into the occupied and shattered enclaves of the West Bank, members of the Palestinian Christian community echoed Julius’ sentiment.
“[Israel] is actively trying to divide solidarity. We all lived and live under the occupation, the colonization, the bombings, and more. They are attempting to manufacture a new idea to discriminate between our community,” Osama Awwad, a Palestinian Christian living in Bethlehem, journalist and working with the Holy Land Trust.
Ultimately, Awwad said, the bill is illusory because “Israel wants to be recognized as a Jewish state and it means that anyone who is not Jewish will not have any tangible rights.”
“Through such laws, it is clear that Israel is trying to push forward its apartheid policies in all levels, from the division of land to ethnicity and religion,” he added.
According to CIA statistics, 123,000 Arab Christians live in Occupied Palestine, and another 226,000 reside in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Despite Levin’s contention that Israel is the only place that “protects” Christians, churches in the West Bank are regularly targeted in “price tag” attacks by fanatical Israeli settlers.
Additionally, Palestinians, whether within the 1948 borders and beyond, are frequently victims of racist incidents by Israelis, and their perpetrators are rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.
“While it’s true we are vulnerable elsewhere in the region, we are the same in blood, language, culture, and social traditions with others. The only difference is religion,” Julius said of his personal experience.
And in Israel, Julius added, “We are living with barely any rights. We are denied opportunities like jobs because employers want Jews rather than Arabs. There are a lot of these forms of discrimination going on.”
Apartheid Practices
“If you ask someone living in the Holy Land where they are from, they will say they are Palestinians first. Then they mention their religion. There is a distinction between being a citizen and then faith. They say, ‘We are one people as Palestinians, and there is diversity within the Palestinian community,’” Father Paul Lansu, a Roman Catholic priest and senior policy advisor for Pax Christi International, said in a brief phone conversation with Al-Akhbar.
Father Lansu has been visiting Palestine numerous times each year ever since he set foot there more than thirty years ago in 1981.
“I can imagine that some Israeli politicians and groups are pushing this type of thinking because they want to split Palestinians into different groups. For example, with the Christians, the Israelis are trying to bring them into the army for example,” he opined.
“We really regret putting people against one another. We are against fragmentation and division. It favors nobody.”
Levin justifies the bill based on his personal belief that Christians and Muslim Arabs are inherently different. He had attempted previously to similarly separate the Druze community living in 1948 Palestine from the larger Arab community in a legislative standpoint, to varying degrees of success.
Levin’s current attempt is part of a wider historical context of Israeli attempts to sow division amongst different Palestinian groups within 1948 Palestine, the most notable instance involving the Palestinian Druze.
Since the early years of the Israeli state, Druze with Israeli citizenship were given rights and duties distinct from other Palestinians, as Israel highlighted the “shared destiny” and the “covenant of blood” between Druze and Jews, much like Levin’s modern-day efforts to “strengthen our [Jews’] connections with the Christians.”

Druze have been subjected to compulsory service in the Israeli army since 1956, and were given a separate legal status from other Palestinian citizens of Israel a year later, which established their status in Israeli law as “non-Arabs.”
The decades-long discrimination between Druze and other Palestinian citizens of Israel has led to broader support of the Zionist state among 1948 Druze.
But despite Israel’s attempts at assimilation, not all Druze have forgone their Palestinian and Arab identities. In 1958 the Free Druze Young People Organization, later joined by the Druze Initiative Committee in 1972, rose as organizations for conscientious objectors whorefused to participate in the “exploit[ation of] Druze soldiers for oppressive military actions against the sons of the Palestinian people.”
Cases of Druze defectors made it in the headlines in the past several years, showing that Israel’s policies have not succeeded in fully turning 1948 Palestinians against one another.
Ever since its brutal creation, Israel, as a Zionist state, has had a convoluted relationship with identity. In order for the Zionist project to sustain itself, it aggressively attempted to deny any alternative narrative.
From attempting to wipe away the indigenous Palestinian identity that existed prior to the 1948 ethnic cleansing to even distorting various Jewish contemporary and historic identities in order to assure the dominance of the European Zionist narrative.
The nature of the system can result in absurd situations, even clashing with the desires of Israeli citizens themselves.
One recent example illustrates this desperate drive by Israeli authorities to enforce a particular overarching identity that conforms with European Zionism.
In October 2013, 21 Israeli citizens went to court to demand that the state recognize their wish to be classified as “Israeli nationals” instead of classifying them according to an ethnic group. It was outrightly rejected.
This current attempt to re-classify Christian Palestinians is rooted in a historical, never-ending, and vain bid by Israeli authorities to sustain an artificial state, especially at a time when Zionism is being viewed by more and more people as an obsolete and discriminatory ideology.
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On the "colored revolutions", Ukraine, bloody gas and the Arab "spring" and the war on Syria

February 22, 2014, 3:48 am
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بين سوريا وأوكرانيا… هل ستهزم روسيا ؟ ‎

بين سوريا وأوكرانيا… هل ستهزم روسيا ؟ ‎

وكالة أوقات الشام الإخبارية -


لن يكون مسار أزمة سوريا مرتبطاً بحوارٍ سوري-سوري في جنيف، أو بوقائع الميدان، وما يُحكى عن تحشيد المسلحين جنوب سوريا، ولا بموقف خليجي ودعم مالي مفتوح للمعارضة السورية.
المعادلة باتت أوضح: إذا أردت أن تعرف ماذا يجري في سوريا عليك أن تعرف ماذا يجري في أوكرانيا. القاسم المشترك بين القضيتين هو صراع روسيا والغرب.
تحركات داخلية تحت عناوين متشابهة في كلا البلدين مع فوارق الديمغرافيا. الجغرافيا بالنسبة الى موسكو استراتيجية بين دمشق وكييف. كيف ذلك؟

يجاور شرق أوكرانيا الاتحاد الروسي ويعتبر امتداداً طبيعيا له، ويتطلع هذا الشرق الناطق في الأغلب بالروسية نحو روسيا المجاورة. فالأوكرانيون الشرقيون يتطلعون تقليدياً نحو روسيا باعتبارها منشأ ثقافتهم، وفي الوقت ذاته، ينظر معظم الروس إلى أوكرانيا باعتبارها مهد الحضارة الروسية.
تتمركز قواعد الدرع الصاروخية لحلف شمال الاطلسي في الدول القريبة من اوكرانيا (قواعد للصواريخ غرباً في بولندا ورومانيا-وقواعد رادارات في تركيا)، مما يجعلها مجالا حيوياً لروسيا لمواجهة هذا الدرع.

سورياً تعتبر الشام بالنسبة للروس شاطئاً أميناً على البحر الابيض المتوسط، وتواجداً في المياه الدافئة وانتشارًا لقواتها في هذا البحر، اضافة الى وجودها على حدود تركيا.
من هنا تحتل الجغرافيا في قضية البلدين اهمية استراتيجة لروسيا، الى حد اعتبار تلك المساحات في جانب منها خرقا مهماً لمسألة الدرع الصاروخي وتطويقه.

وعلى قدر المصلحة الروسية بالبلدين، يبدو اهتمام الولايات المتحدة الاميركية. وواشنطن لن تسلم لموسكو بالموقعين. على الاقل يطمح الأميركيون بتقسيم كل قوة: تشتيت الجمع الأوكراني وإضعاف سوريا. لكن قرار موسكو اتخذ ولا رجعة عنه كما يتحدث دبلوماسيون روس: لن نتراجع حول سوريا وأوكرانيا ولا مقايضة بينهما، كلاهما يعتبران امنا قومياً لنا. ويذهب باحثون دوليون للتأكيد على أن سوريا تحتل الاولوية بالنسبة للاتحاد الروسي، خصوصا لجهة مجابهة التطرف الاسلامي ومنعه من اتخاذ قواعد ثابتة تجعله يتحضر براحة تامة لتهديد الامن والمصالح الروسية على مساحة العالم. لذلك لا يبدو الروس في وارد اي تنازل لا سيما حول سوريا. وهم يؤمنون الآن ان حليفهم -الرئيس بشار الاسد- يحقق انجازات ميدانية وسياسية ومصالحات نوعية. ومن هنا يبدو الدعم لدمشق مفتوحا عسكريا واذا اقتضى الامر اقتصاديا كما فعلت موسكو مع الأوكرانيين، علما ان دمشق لزّمت التنقيب عن الغاز للشركات الروسية ما يعتبر رداً مسيلا للجميل.

لكن هل يكون السعي الاميركي للتقسيم كبديل عن هزيمة روسيا في سوريا وأوكرانيا؟
يبدو غرب أوكرانيا مهيئاً للانفصال مدعوماً من اوروبا في كل المجالات، فيما الشمال السوري خارج منذ سنتين عن سلطة الدولة السورية. من هنا يستحضر المقربون من واشنطن امكانية التوجه لتعزيز نظريات التقسيم تحت حجة الواقع. لكن ما يعطل الفكرة في سوريا امتداد التطرف الذي يخيف العالم اليوم، وحذر تركيا من تنظيم القاعدة من جهة والأكراد من جهة ثانية.

ولو كان التقسيم قابلا حتى الساعة للتنفيذ في سوريا، لم يتم البحث عن تحشيد المسلحين في الجنوب. ويخطئ من يظن ان تسخين جبهة درعا-القنيطرة هو استعداد للدخول نحو العاصمة السورية. لقد تمت المحاولة في عز الازمة وأثناء التقدم الميداني “للجيش الحر”، ولم تتحقق الرغبة المطلوبة. ومن هنا يجزم مطلعون ان ما يجري جنوباً هو لايجاد قواعد اشتباك تتحكم بالحدود في هذه المنطقة والمساهمة في اقامة اسرائيل “للجدار الطيب” كما حصل في جنوب لبنان يوماً. لكن اقامة تلك المنطقة سيولد مقاومة سوريّة عملية ضد اسرائيل تكراراً للمشهد اللبناني ولو بعد حين.

النشرة

Salim zahran: On "colored revolutions", Ukraine, bloody gas and the Arab "spring" and the war on Syria  
سالم زهران _ حوار اليوم / nbn 21 02 2014

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Army Arrests Syrian Woman Recruiting Females for Nusra Front

February 22, 2014, 4:34 am
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الانتحاريات وصلن الى لبنان !


Army Arrests Syrian Woman Recruiting Females for Nusra Front
Local Editor

Army checlpoint in Bekaa
Lebanese Army Forces arrested a Syrian woman in Bekaa trying to recruit females for terrorist al-Qaeda-affiliated group, Nusra Front.


National News Agency reported the event, saying the woman was arrested in Nabi Sheet Town.

The agency added that the woman, known as Um Jamal, “confessed to enlisting other females to work for the terrorist organization to carry out subversive acts.”

She used to work in the town in the past and she raised suspicions after her return to the same job, the agency noted.

Related Articles
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'Netanyahu, loses the only other Middle East leader ready to publicly sabotage Iran & Syria'

February 22, 2014, 7:51 am
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Via FLC

debka.

"... The live wire of the Saudi royal house’s drive against President Barack Obama’s détente with Tehran has been dropped....Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s National Security Adviser and Intelligence Director, has not been seen for more than a month....He was reported by debkafile’s US and Saudi sources Wednesday, Feb. 19, to have been removed from the tight policy-making circle in Riyadh.For Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, this counts significantly as the loss of the only other Middle East leader ready to publicly decry Obama’s policies on Iran and Syria as promoting the negative forces in the region and damaging to America’s own interests. 


Bandar was widely reported in the Middle East to be in secret ties with Israeli intelligence on Saudi and Israeli moves against Iran... 

There has been no official word from Riyadh disclosing any change in Bandar’s status....Our sources report that the prince, a long-serving ambassador to the United States, vanished off Saudi and Middle East radar screens in mid-January, shortly before he was scheduled to visit Washington to arrange Obama’s forthcoming trip to Riyadh in the last week of March.Bandar never arrived in Washington and no one in Riyadh was ready to answer questions about his whereabouts.... 
US sources were more forthcoming - although less complimentary.... In some reports he was dismissed as “hotheaded” or “erratic.”

The Saudi intelligence chief crossed the Americans by supplying weapons and money to Syrian rebels belonging to Islamist militias – though not al Qaeda....He was the driving force behind the formation of the Islamic Front coalition, which last month beat the Free Syrian Army backed by Washington into the ground.

Some Gulf sources say he is paying the price for the kingdom’s failure in Syria....Bandar promised King Abdullah that he would take care of getting rid of Bashar Assad....He not only fell down on this task, but he generated a clash between the Obama administration and the Saudi throne on the Syrian issue, say those sources.The most striking evidence of his comedown came from his absence from the secret conclave held recently by Middle East intelligence chiefs to coordinate their positions on Syrian with Washington....

Instead of Bandar, his seat was taken by his leading adversary on Syria, the Saudi Interior Minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.Prince Mohammed is a favorite at the White House and a close friend of Secretary of State John Kerry and CIA Director John Brennan.The Saudi interior minister, by taking Bandar’s place at this important forum, may also be stepping into his shoes as intelligence chief – albeit without the formality of an official notice from Riyadh."
Posted by G, M, Z, or B at  
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Beirut, Baghdad, Sinai, Libya ... Same perpetrator

February 22, 2014, 8:19 am
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Terrorists Assassinate Two Prominent Voices for Syrian National Dialog

February 22, 2014, 8:56 am
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One of the first National Dialog Sub-Committee Meetings in Homs, 2012.. Photo:SANA
One of the first National Dialog Sub-Committee Meetings in Homs, 2012.. Photo:SANA
Feb 21, 2014, nsnbc
The head of the Syrian National Dialog Committee for the Qalamoun region, Ahmad Amin Saad Eddin, and the Muezzin of the Great Umayyad Mosque, Sheikh Fahd al-Maghribi have been assassinated by terrorists. Both were prominent voices for peace, reconciliation and the rejection of violence and terrorism.
Saad Eddin has been a uniting force and active participant in creating dialog and reconciliation in the Qalamoun region. Police informed the Syrian news agency SANA, that the body of Saad Eddin was found on Friday, near the town’s eastern cemetery.
Terrorists also assassinated Sheikh Fahd Ahmad al- Maghribi, the Muezzin of the Great Umayyad Mosque, located in the same area. Al Maghribi was on his way to meet an acquaintance when terrorists shot him dead.
Although it is not almost completely ignored by Western and Gulf-Arab media, the national dialog in Syria has been a strong uniting force in Syria since the establishment of the national dialog committee on a nationwide level first and the successful establishment of regional committees in early 2013.
The establishment of committees, on a regional and community level, began after months of initial, all-inclusive meetings and successful talks between Prime Minister Al-Halaqi and delegations from political parties and ethnic communities.
Thousands of people in major cities of Syria continue marching in support of the Syrian army, defying terrorism and foreign-imposed violence and “solutions”.
In early February 2014, after the foreign-backed coalition’s unwillingness to agree on a Syria based on democratic and pluralistic principles at the Geneva II conference, the reconciliation process and preparations for political reform continued, with focus on Syria, rather than on a foreign-imposed solution.
The assassination the two prominent voices for dialog, reconciliation and reform, Saad Eddin and al-Maghribi, are a tragic loss for their families and for the people of Syria. As a growing number of Syrians are mounting protests against terrorism and violence are turning out in their thousands to support the Syrian military and to defy and reject the foreign-imposed violence, however, the assassinations are likely to strengthen the will and determination for peace of the vast majority of Syrians rather than weakening them.
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Wahhabism .. the blood's godfather

February 22, 2014, 8:57 am
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حوار اليوم _ د طالب ابراهيم _ الوهابية .. عراب الدم / الفضائية 21 02 2014

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Syrians across the Country Say No to Terrorism and Foreign Interference

February 22, 2014, 10:22 am
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"the war in Syria has taken now another name , it is a war against terrorism but the terrorist here is not Israel nor Israel’s allies, the enemy is the Saudi sponsored Arab and Muslim thugs , and Syria’s defensive – war under this vague label of a war against Terror- has become purposeless or emptied of its true meaning because it is Palestine that gives meaning and purpose to all and it is for Palestine and for the Arab Cause that this defensive war against the enemy was launched . Where is Palestine now and where is the Arab Cause? And how can Syria win such a war?" THE FATEST MAZBOUT'S FART - he eats too much and should discharge. 

THE TERRORIST IS NOT ISRAEL NOR ISRAEL'S ALLIES, THE ENEMY IS THE SAUDI SPONSORED ARAB AND MUSLIM THUGS. 
Whabbism is not Terrorism, it is not the other face of the Zionist coin!!!!



HIS ENEMY IS THE THE SO-CALLED NORMALIZING ARMY OF AL-SISI

"Many people are feeling alienated as a result, and Syria seems to have forsaken Palestine for the sake of Egypt and identifying with the normalizing army of al Sisi under the pretext that both armies- the Syrian and the Egyptian are

fighting the same war against terror" .

The question is : how can this parallel between the National Syrian army and the normalizing Egyptian army be drawn?"

SO, THE SYRIAN ARMY IS NO MORE A NATIONAL ARMY. 


Let us see the people of SYRIA saying NO to Saudi-USRAEL Terrorism 

Syrians across the Country Say No to Terrorism and Foreign Interference

 / 47 mins ago

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Feb 21, 2014, Global Research
We invite GR readers to review the video and images below and make up their own mind as to what is happening in Syria. 
There is a mass movement across the country against foreign interference.  This mass movement is not being reported by the Western media.
The Syrian population does not support the “freedom fighters” recruited and trained in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.  
What is at stake is the sovereignty and survival of a country with a longstanding history. This movement also includes people who are opposed to the Syrian government.
The Syrian people are fully aware that Washington is supporting Al Qaeda. They know that this is a US sponsored insurgency and that the rebels who are killing civilians are mercenaries.
They are fully aware that this is a war of aggression which is intent upon destroying their country. 
Let us spread this message far and wide.
Michel Chossudovsky, GR, February 21, 2014
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Report by Syria 360
Thousands of Syrians went out in massive rallies in various areas and cities on Thursday in support of Syrian national principles and staunch support to the Syrian Arab Army.
Thousands in Qudsayya show support to Syrian army, national principles
 Thousands from Qudsayya, al-Dimas and al-Sabboura areas in Damascus countryside gathered in a massive popular rally in Qudsayya area to show support to the Syrian army operations against the armed terrorist groups and national principles.
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 The participants, who waved Syrian flags and held posters for President Bashar al-Assad, affirmed that ”those endowed with the spirit of Correctionism and Liberation must have a spirit of victory,” expressing confidence that Syria’s victory is imminent.
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 Chairman of Damascus Countryside Council, Saleh Bakro told SANA that the rally ”is a popular referendum on the basic choices and firm principles that hold the Syrians together no matter their different affiliations.”
Najha residents voice support to national principles
 A massive rally took place in Najha area in Damascus Countryside, with the participants expressing their rejection of any foreign interference in Syria’s affairs.
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 Waving the Syrian flags and posters of President Bashar al-Assad, the participants stressed that the national principles proclaimed by the delegation of the Syrian Arab Republic in Geneva express the aspirations of the Syrian people.
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They chanted slogans reflecting firm national unity and voiced strong support to the Syrian army while it is performing its national duty of confronting terrorism to restore security and stability to the homeland.
 Massive rally in Misyaf to glorify martyrdom
Residents of Misyaf city and its countryside in Hama province also went out in thousands in a rally during which they held up banners that glorify martyrdom and the martyrs and the heroic achievements of the Armed Forces.
The participants affirmed that the aggression waged against Syria makes the Syrians more determined to adhere to the sovereignty, just rights and independent decision of their country.
 They strongly condemned the brutal terrorist massacres committed against the Syrian people, expressing their readiness to make more sacrifices so that Syria can get out of the crisis stronger and restore its regional role.
“People of Misyaf stress through this massive gathering that they stand by the Syrian Arab Army in the face of the terrorist takfiri groups and their backers,” said Governor of Hama Ghassan Khalaf in a statement to SANA.
 For his part, Misyaf Mayor Ibrahim al-Sheikh Ali said the rally reflects the Syrians’ determination and will to go on with their lives and overcome the harsh circumstances they are going through.
 He added that the rally also indicates the failure of all the attempts seeking to weaken the Syrians and break up the Syrian social fabric.
Million man march in Tartous to support the army
In Tartous province, a million man march  was organized on the Cornish where the masses expressed support to the firm national principles and Syrian Army.
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The participants waved national flags and banners glorifying national unity and the Syrian people’s commitment to the path of resistance, expressing pride in the feats of the Syrian army in the war against terrorists.
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Tartous governor, Nizar Ismail Moussa said that the locals in Tartous wanted to echo a strident massage of support to the Syrian army and the ”honorable people who have declined to compromise their homeland.”
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”The march is a manifestation of commitment to national principles and the blood of martyrs who offered their lives for Syria to remain steadfast and for the whole world to know that the Syrian people are forever united,” he added.
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 Residents of Haffeh city in Lattakia express rejection of terrorism and support to Syrian Arab Army
Residents of al-Haffeh city in Lattakia province staged a huge march in support of the national principles and the Syrian Arab Army.
 The participants  raised the national flags and photos of President Bashar al-Assad and placards expressing support to the Syrian army and appreciation of its sacrifices to defend the homeland.
 They expressed rejection of the sedition projects planned by some enemies of the nation, pledging to continue the march of confrontation until victory and rebuilding Syria.
 They called on President Bashar al-Assad to run for a new constitutional term as he is a genuine guarantee for Syria’s unity, strength and pride.
Photos from Tartous
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 Photos from Qudssaia
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further images at the following links
Earlier on Sunday, residents of al-Nabek city in Damascus Countryside and al-Liwan neighborhood in Kafar Souseh district in Damascus took to the streets to express support to the Syrian Arab Army.
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20140212-171934.jpg       
Massive rally in Deir Ezzor in support of Syria’s army
Hundreds of citizens took to the streets in al-Joura neighborhood in Deir Ezzor city in support of the Syrian national stances and army’s operations against the armed terrorist groups.
The participants raised placards that expressed the unity of the Syrian citizens and rejection of any foreign intervention in their internal affairs.
They hailed the role of the Syrian army in fighting terrorists and working on stemming their sources in the area.

20140212-171956.jpg20140212-172010.jpg


Mass rally in Daraa in support of the leadership and army
A huge rally also staged in Daraa al-Mahata in support of the firm national principles and the Syrian Arab Army in confronting the armed terrorist groups.
The participants voiced their support to the Syrian official delegation in Geneva, asking President Bashar al-Assad to run for presidency as he is the genuine insurance for the return of stability to Syria.
They highlighted the need to unmask the takfiri Wahabi reality along with the sides which are supporting them, adding that Syria will be victorious over its enemies as it is today far more stronger than it was.
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Citizens of al Midan neighborhood in Damascus staged huge mass rally in support of national principles and Syrian army
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Massive Canadian-Saudi export deal exposes Conservative hypocrisy

February 22, 2014, 10:44 am
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Canada’s $10 billion military trade deal with Saudi Arabia exposes blatant hypocracy from the Conservatives, argues Derrick O’Keefe. Photo by flickr-user, lafrancevi.
Canada’s $10 billion military trade deal with Saudi Arabia exposes blatant hypocracy from the Conservatives, argues Derrick O’Keefe. Photo by flickr-user, lafrancevi.
Feb 21, 2014, Canadian Dimension
The biggest manufacturing export deal in Canadian history, announced last week, will supply military hardware to one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
It’s been dismaying, although not too surprising, to see the lack of debate about the $10 billion agreement which will see London, Ontario based General Dynamics produce a fleet of armoured vehicles for Saudi Arabia. Actually, to say there’s been a lack of debate is an understatement. One week after the agreement was announced, there has not yet been a single editorial critical of this deal in a major media outlet in Canada. This silence needs to be broken.
The federal government’s Trade Minister, Ed Fast, presented the deal as a triumph of diplomacy. The Conservatives have downgraded talk of human rights and aid in favour of more explicit economic focus to foreign policy matters, a posture they have branded as their Global Markets Action Plan. As Fast explained, “Our government will continue to support our exporters and manufacturers to create jobs, as part of our government’s most ambitious pro-trade, pro-export plan in Canadian history.”
The government claims the export deal will mean 3,000 jobs per year, with overall economic benefits spread out over 500 Canadian businesses. (Military-industrial production and supply chains, as we saw with the F-35 plans, are typically spread over many regions and companies.)
Notably, the agreement between General Dynamics, a U.S.-based multinational arms producer, and Saudi Arabia is being underwritten by the feds’ Canadian Commercial Corporation.
When Caterpillar shuttered its London, Ontario plant in 2012 in an unsubtle act of union-busting, Harper’s government threw up its hands and did nothing. Same with the more recent case of Heinz closing its plant in Leamington, Ontario. But the Saudi deal confirms that the Conservatives, for all their “free market” ideology, do believe in industrial strategy and government intervention in the economy – at least when military hardware and arms, or bitumen, are involved.
Official Opposition NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar expressed concerns about the Saudi deal, as reported in The Globe and Mail, “Is this just open-for-business for whomever wants to buy arms from us? I am concerned what these arms could be used for.”
It’s a very valid concern. Back in March 2011, Saudi forces including armoured vehicles (LAV-3s) supplied by General Dynamics rolled into the small Gulf state of Bahrain to crush that country’s democracy movement. As the Ottawa Citizen reported in 2012:
“Video and photos shot by protesters and media outlets in March 2011 showed Saudi troops using LAV-3s to suppress an uprising inspired by events in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and opposed to Bahrain’s ruling Khalifa family.”
“More than 30 protesters were killed, hundreds wounded and nearly 3,000 arrested in the joint Saudi-Bahraini crackdown, which was largely ignored by Canada and other Western states because of Bahrain’s strategic relationship with the U.S.”
The Harper government’s real Global Action Plan, it indeed seems, is to sell pretty much anything to anyone. Compare this posture to the rhetoric of “ethical oil” which the government deployed in tandem with far right-wing boosters of the Alberta tar sands. The claim was that expansion of the tar sands was “ethical” since the alternative was to continue importing oil from places like Saudi Arabia.
There are layers of bad faith and hypocrisy to peel back from this line or argument, but let’s stick to the most obvious: by this Conservative logic it’s unethical to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia because they’re a repressive government, but it’s ethical and praiseworthy to sell Saudi Arabia the very means of repression.
The deal with Saudi Arabia comes following a year in which Foreign Minister John Baird frequently met with top officials throughout the Gulf states. Last spring, Baird took a trip that included stops in Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE – where, of course, he held a photo-op at the local Tim Horton’s.
A press statement about the tour blandly and falsely proclaimed, “In visits to Qatar and Bahrain, the link between peace and prosperity will be explored in detail – to the benefit of those in the region and beyond.”
It’s not just this massive arms deal which deserves more scrutiny, but the entire Harper government foreign policy stance toward the Saudis and other Gulf petro-dictatorships. While the Harper government’s uniquely over-the-top alliance with the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn widespread attention, the increasingly close ties with the Gulf dictatorships has gone almost unnoticed.
We need to explore in much more detail the links between prosperity for corporations and war and repression in places like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. A good start would be a vigorous debate, both in the media and in Parliament, about the largest export manufacturing deal in Canadian history.
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Obama, after Geneva 2, Re-Climbing the Syrian tree

February 22, 2014, 11:49 am
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On the anniversary of the United Arab Republic

February 22, 2014, 7:29 pm
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خطاب الوحدة مع دمشق 1 - عبد الناصر 1958

رسالة عبد الحكيم جمال عبد الناصر إلي بشار الأسد ودلالاتها

مصر 30 يونيو- بقلم/ د.محمد أشرف البيومي
قرأت الرسالة المرفقة الذي أرسلها المهندس عبد الحكيم جمال عبد الناصر إلي الرئيس بشار الأسد والتي نشرتها مجلة الوعي العربي في 24 يناير 2014. وبالإضافة إلي الأهمية الرمزية للرسالة من أخوين عربيين تعبر بشكل واضح عن الارتباط الوثيق بين مستقبل مصر وسوريا ومصير الأمة العربية رغم مقولات قوي التفتيت والتقسيم وثقافة التجزيء والاختزال.

الرسالة:
“إلى أخى الرئيس بشار الأسد

 لا يرهبك هؤلاء الخونة و هم مستقويين بالشيطان الأمريكى الأكبر
999606_501558529933943_1497895926_n
 أنت الآن تمثل سوريا الوطن و جيش الجمهورية العربية السورية الذى هو هو جيش الجمهورية العربية المتحدة الأول رافعا علم الجمهورية العربية المتحدة الذى رفعه جمال عبد الناصر منذ ٥٥ عام على مصر وعلى قلب العروبة النابض دمشق



فلذلك تسلح بصلابة عبد الناصر فى ٥٦ عندما واجه بريطانيا وفرنسا و حتى رغم هزيمة ٦٧ تسلح بإيمانه بشعبه العربى و عدالة القضية العربية ضد الصهيونية فى حرب الإستنزاف حتى موافقته على مبادرة روجرز لإستكمال حائط الصواريخ لذى كان مفتاح نصرأكتوبر العظيم

. تحية لسوريا قلب العروبة النابض و لشعبها العروبى الوفى والخزي والعار لخدام النيتو تجار الدين الخونة .

الدلالات
جاءت هذه الرسالة لتعبر عن عدة دلالات وفي توقيت هام يتذكر فيه جموع المصريين وأغلبهم لم يعاصروا عبد الناصر كيف أنه انحاز في قراراته للطبقات الشعبية وأنه تبني برنامج اقتصادي طموح لبناء مصر المستقلة كما أنه تحدي قوي الهيمنة الأجنبية وحلفائهم ولم يخضع لإملاءاتهم وحافظ علي السيادة الوطنية. أذكر من هذه الدلالات مايلي:


الارتباط العضوي للأمن القومي المصري والسوري وهو من البديهيات والحقائق التاريخية والجغرافية الراسخة منذ آلاف السنين والتي لا بد من التذكير بها خصوصا وأن مصر و سوريا تواجهان إرهابا من ذات المصدر والهدف.
من البديهي أن أولوية الأولويات هي حماية الدولة الوطنية والدفاع عنها دون إهمال قضايا أخري مثل الحريات أو التنمية. أتسائل هل من الضروري التأكيد أنه بدون دولة متماسكة وقوية يندثر كل شيء، وهل تعني هذه المقولة سواء من قريب أو بعيد إهمال القضايا الأخري؟
التذكرة بالماضي المجيد عندما كان البند الأول هو القضاء وليس التعاون والتنسيق مع الاستعمار وأعوانه، وكيف أن سوريا في نضالنا المشترك فجرت أنابيب البترول عام 56 وكانت بطولة جول جمال من اللاذقية الذي تصدي لمدمرة فرنسية كانت تهدد بورسعيد تضامنا عمليا مع الشعب المصري وقيادته. كما أن جيش سوريا الوطني هو الذي حارب مع الجيش المصري في أكتوبر 73 رافعا علم الجمهورية العربية المتحدة الذي التف به عبد الناصر في حياته ومماته.
دعم القيادة السورية والشعب والدولة السورية ورفض الادعاءات الكاذبة من قوي العدوان وممولي الإرهاب بحرصهم الخادع علي الديمقراطية والحريات. إن هذا الدعم بوسائله المختلفة من قبل الدولة والشعب هو واجب قومي في مواجهة المشروع الشرق أوسطي الذي يسعي حثيثا لإضعاف الدول العربية المحورية و جعل جيوشها غير قادرة علي الدفاع عن أمن وسيادة دولها. ألم تعلن الإدارة الأمريكية أن إسرائيل هي حليفها الاستراتيجي وأنها تضمن تفوقها العسكري علي كل الدول العربية؟ ألم يعلن وولسي رئيس السي آي إيه السابق أيام الحصار الإجرامي علي العراق أن البداية بالعراق تتبعها سوريا ثم مصر التي وصفها بالجائزة الكبري؟
الحس الوطني والقومي لم يندثر بل سينهض بقوة رغم كل العقبات ورغم مقولات الليبراليين الجدد مما يسمي بالنخبة التي تتتجاهل قضايا السيادة والاستقلال الوطني( راجع الشعارات المرفوعة من “لا للتمديد ولاللتوريث” إلي “حرية،عدالةاجتماعية،عيش) أدركت الآن شرائح متسعة من المجتمع بأن سيناء لا تخضع للسيادة الكاملة وأن استقلال الإرادة المصرية وحرية صنع القرار في العديد من المسائل ليست مكتملة وأن كامب دافيد ومعاهدة “السلام” مع العدو الصهيوني وما صاحب ذلك من سياسة قوي السوق الاقتصادية هي قلب المصائب و السبب الرئيسي للتدهور. نعم الحس الوطني لم يمت بل هو كامن وحي ويكفي أن نلاحظ الغضب العارم للتدخلات عبر السفراء والوزراء والوفود الأمريكية والآوروبية في صميم شئوننا الداخلية، والاستياء من الممولين أجنبيا سواء أفراد أم منظمات.
الخطاب يصر علي ضرورة الصمود في مواجهة دعاة الهزيمة والتبعية بقوة وحزم وتعرية مقولاتهم الانهزامية
التأكيد علي أنه ليست العبرة بالموافقة علي مبادرات أوضاع مجحفة مثل مبادرة روجرز في ظروف قاسية. أضاف الخطاب القصير والبليغ وبصراحة كاملة أن القبول بمبادرة روجرز تصبح جريمة إذا كانت تعبيرا عن الاستسلام وتعني التقاط الأنفاس إذا كانت استعدادا للمواجهة ولاستنزاف العدو. إذا العبرة ليست بموقف ما إنما بما يتبعه أو يصاحبه من مواقف أخري. فمقولة غياب رصاصة تجاه الجولان تتناسي عمدا رفض الدولة السورية الاستسلام أو الموافقة علي معاهدات مثل كامب دافيد أو وادي عربة، بالإضافة إلي دعم الدولة الحاسم للمقاومة اللبنانية في 2006، كل هذا له تفسير واضح وهو الاستمرار في استراتيجية الصمود والمقاومة وعدم الرضوخ للإملاءات.
تحية لك يا إبن عبد الناصر لهذا الدعم المعنوي لسوريا وكما ذكرت في نهاية خطابك “
تحية لسوريا قلب العروبة النابض” كما وصفها القائد العربي العظيم جمال عبد الناصر وتحية” لشعبها العروبى الوفى والخزي والعار لخدام النيتو تجار الدين الخونة “

د.محمد أشرف البيومي
أستاذ الكيمياء الفيزيائية بجامعتي الإسكندرية وولاية ميشجان (سابقا) 26 يناير 2014
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ناصر قنديل _ ذكرى الوحدة بين سورية ومصر / حوار الاخبارية 22 02 2014

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The Corporate Media’s Dubious Syria Coverage

February 22, 2014, 8:12 pm
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 / 2 hours ago
Feb 11, 2014, James F. Tracy
news1Western news media reportage on the rampant criminal activities of foreign-backed paramilitary groups operating within Syria still relies heavily on unreliable sources frequently referred to as “activists.” Such spokespersons routinely claim the Syrian military are committing atrocities against the Syrian population. The reports are often disputed by the Bashar al-Assad government and proven suspect or false when additional information is unearthed by independent researchers and alternative news media.
In July 2012 UK journalist Charlie Skelton reported that Western news outlets remain willing accomplices in a propaganda campaign being carried out by public relations practitioners. According to Skelton, “the spokespeople, the ‘experts on Syria’, the ‘democracy activists’ … The people who ‘urge’ and ‘warn’ and ‘call for action’” against the Assad regime are themselves part of a sophisticated and well-heeled propaganda campaign to allow NATO forces to give Syria the same medicine administered to Libya in 2011. “They’re selling the idea of military intervention and regime change,” Skelton reports,
and the mainstream news is hungry to buy. Many of the “activists” and spokespeople representing the Syrian opposition are closely (and in many cases financially) interlinked with the US and London – the very people who would be doing the intervening. Which means information and statistics from these sources isn’t necessarily pure news – it’s a sales pitch, a PR campaign.[1]
One needn’t look far for current examples of such uncertain reportage and sourcing from eminent news organizations. For example, a prominent February 8, 2014 story from Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency, titled, “Aleppo Bombings Kill 23, Activists Say,” carries the lead, “At least 23 people have been killed as a regime helicopter dropped barrel bombs on an opposition-controlled district in Syria’s largest city Aleppo on Saturday, activists said.”[2]
The New York Times reports, “Rebel and government groups have each been accused of massacring civilians, and the government has stepped up air attacks on Aleppo with barrages of improvised ”barrel bombs” packed with high explosives that activists say have killed more than 200 people.[3]
Similarly influential papers such as the Washington Post also remain unabashedly forthright in their reliance on such sourcing. A recent Associated Press piece carried in the paper, titled, “Activists: Syrian Forces Launch New Aleppo Strikes,” quotes the Aleppo Media Center, a self-described “anti-Bashar Assad activist group.” Post readers are assured the entity “has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting.”[4]
Likewise, in November 2013 the BBC, whose Syria coverage tilts strongly toward “activist” observations, cites the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights to break the story of Syrian government air strikes “kill[ing] dozens in Aleppo.“ As Skelton noted in his 2012 exposé, “The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is commonly used as a standalone source for news and statistics” which are taken at face value and parroted by corporate media. While SOHR sounds like a credible and non-partisan human rights outfit, “’They’ are Rami Abdulrahman (or Rami Abdel Rahman), who lives in Coventry,” Skelton observes. In 2011 Reuters reported that when Abdulrahman “isn’t fielding calls from international media, [he] is a few minutes down the road at his clothes shop, which he runs with his wife.”[5]
The analysis suggests how despite the fact that those regularly quoted as authorities on Syria are often far-removed from what is transpiring on the ground and thus involved in a more far-reaching disinformation program to confuse the public on the calculated murder and chaos being carried out throughout Syria by Western-financed mercenary forces.
With the foreign-backed destabilization of Syria now well over two years old, major corporate-owned and government-backed news media, perhaps amazingly, continue to rely on such questionable entities as sources. Indeed, a Google search of “activists say” and “Syria” yields 919,000 results.
A more careful LexisNexis database search for “Syria,” “Assad,” “government” and the phrases “activists say” or “activists report” in the subject headings or text of news items for conventional print outlets indexed for June 1, 2012 to February 7, 2014 yields a data set consisting of close to 2,000 pieces—1,638 newspaper articles, 205 BBC broadcast transcripts, and 148 web-based articles.[6] A total 134 articles appeared in the New Zealand Herald, 52 in the Washington Post, 38 in the New York Times, 30 in the Financial Times, and 28 in the International New York Times.
The following table breaks down the news outlets that, based on the above search parameters, appear to have used so-called “activists” as sources 20 or more times since June 1, 2012.
News OutletNews Articles / TranscriptsReferencing “Associated Press”
British Broadcasting Corporation205
New Zealand Herald13443
Belfast Telegraph Online97 –
Washington Post5226
Daily Star (Lebanon)38 –
New York Times385
Today’s Zaman (Turkey)36 –
The National (UAE)3421
Anadolu Agency32 –
Bismarck Tribune30 –
Financial Times3015
Scotsman29 –
Guardian28 –
International New York Times288
The Capitol (Annapolis MD)2613
McClatchey Tribune26 –
Times of Oman26 –
Salt Lake City Tribune2523
Times & Transcript245
Times (London)23 –
The Mirror22 –
About 13.5% of the sample (270) either reference the Associated Press as a source or are AP wire stories. A search for “Associated Press” within the search results yields 270 articles, including a significant number appearing in the New Zealand Herald (43), the Washington Post (26), The National (21), the Bismarck Tribune (15), and the International New York Times (8). A far smaller number of the overall sample (33) reference “Reuters.”
Combined with an acquiescent news media that are arguably complicit in such deception, the end result amounts to sheer propaganda selling the “Syrian revolution” and further conditioning world public opinion for the inevitability of gradual regime change or even more direct military intervention.
After over two decades of phony atrocity stories and tall tales involving Middle Eastern bogeymen and their legion hordes—from babies being thrown out of incubators in Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait to bin Laden’s alleged 9/11 attacks, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, and Muammar Gaddafi’s fabricated “crackdown” on his people—the public should well understand that much of corporate news media merely function as a well-oiled propaganda machine where “special interests” pull the strings. This is particularly the case when the true powers that be seek to undermine sovereign governments and carry out programs of wholesale terrorism and destruction against their populations.
Notes
[1] Charlie Skelton, “The Syrian Opposition: Who’s Doing the Talking?” Guardian, July 12, 2012.
[2] “Aleppo Bombings Kill 23, Activists Say,” Anadolu Agency, February 8, 2014.
[3] Anne Barnard and Mohammad Ghannam, “Dozens Are Killed in Syrian Violence, Even Amid Preparations for Peace Talks,” New York Times, December 23, 2013, 12.
[4] “Activists: Syrian Forces Launch New Aleppo Strikes,” Associated Press / Washington Post, February 1, 2014.
[5] Skelton, “The Syrian Opposition”; “Coventry: An Unlikely Home to Prominent Syria Activist,” Reuters, December 8, 2011.
[6] A search including the past tense phrases “activists said” or “activists reported” would have likely retrieved an even larger sample.
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Suicide Bomber Attacks Lebanese Army Post, Kills 3

February 22, 2014, 8:14 pm
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Local Editor

A civilian and two Lebanese army soldiers were martyred on Saturday in a massive suicide car bomb that targeted an army checkpoint at the entrance of the Bekaa town of Hermel, in eastern Lebanon.

army checkpoint attacked
The blast killed two troops, among them an army officer, and wounded five others while other 10 civilians were also lightly injured in the bombing.

Immediately after the attack, military police imposed a security cordon on the region, as they searched for suspects and evidence, said the National News Agency (NNA). The agency also said Lebanon's judicial authorities ordered the collection of evidence at the scene of the blast, as well as a DNA test on the remains of the attacker's body.

The NNA provided details on the moment of the explosion: “When army troops asked the driver to turn the lights on inside the car, he refused to do so and then detonated the vehicle.”
Media reports also said the checkpoint was not the target.

The attack comes just four days after eleven people were martyred in a twin bomb attack in Bir Hassan, Beirut. And on February 1 a car bombing killed four people at a petrol station in Hermel, in an attack later claimed by the terrorist Al-Nusra Front in Lebanon.


Source: Agencies
22-02-2014 - 21:53 Last updated 22-02-2014





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‘Coalition of the Willing’ Promotes No Fly Zone

February 23, 2014, 3:43 am
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Syrian Regime Solidifies Recent Gains
Feb 23, 2014,
Syrian Army-Valentine



Franklin Lamb
Damascus

Al-manar

Since around Valentine Day and aided by truly magnificent warm weather for this time of year, the dozens of parks in Damascus have been receiving unusually large numbers of visitors, not least of whom are Syrian soldiers on leave, enjoying the green space with girlfriends, families and friends. At the large garden with dozen of benches and sculptures, called Al-Manshia (Presidents Bridge) public park, and located between two five-star hotels, the Dama Rose and the 4-Seasons, some soldiers, presumably from out of town and with many appearing utterly exhausted, can be seen simply laying on the grass fast asleep under the warm healing sunshine.

Soldiers joke, laugh and seem pleased when citizens approach them to offer their thanks for the army’s service to the Syrian Arab Republic and to inquire about how things are going personally and if there is some help the citizen might offer the soldier. Such is the nature of Syrian nationalism and connection with Mother Syria that this observer has remarked about before and is strikingly rare from his experience. I love my country but frankly do not feel the pride and deep connection that Syrians appear to exhibit about their country’s 10,000 year history as the cradle of civilization. I would defend my country and fight for it if there were to be a legitimate war which frankly has not been the case in my lifetime.

Over the past 30 months of frequent visits to Damascus, the city has never appeared more ‘normal’. Last night this observer was up all night reading and there was not one bombing run or mortar or artillery fire to he heard, a first for more than two years. For many months, I used to avoid the historic Al-Hamidiyah Souk, the largest and the central souk in Syria located inside the old walled city of Damascus next to the Umayyad Mosque, despite its hundreds of interesting shops. The reason I tended to stay away was because I was one of very few people meandering among the warren of stalls and felt self-conscious when shopkeepers would plead with me to buy something-anything to help feed their families many of whom lived near the labyrinth.

Today, Al-Hamidiyah Souk, if not frequented with the numbers of shoppers and visitors as it was before March 2011, it is nonetheless very crowded such that foreigners can pass unnoticed…well, sometimes for at least the first hundred yards or so. In Damascene neighborhoods, no longer do citizens quickly disappear into their homes at the first sign of dusk but the streets and many cafes are crowded well past 9 p.m.

“Quo Vadis Syrie”, (‘where is Syria heading’) one Damascus University classics major, turned international law student, asked this visitor as we both sat on the steps of the Law Faculty while enjoying a bit of sun yesterday afternoon. “Is our crisis nearly over so we can start re-building Mother Syria or do our enemies have other plans to destroy us? I worry that today’s calm will soon disappear with an arriving hurricane.” His comment was perhaps triggered by a certain sense here and more widely elsewhere that a forming “coalition of the willing” appears to be pressing for a ‘humanitarian’ No Fly Zone. Some American allies envisage and are making plans to implement, a NFZ stretching up to 25 miles into Syria which would be enforced using aircraft flown from Jordanian bases and flying inside the kingdom, according to Congressional sources.

Any NFZ would be very different from what is currently being promoted and advertised by certain war-mongers in Washington, Tel Aviv and several European capitals as well as among elements of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the League of Arab States. Post Round Two of Geneva II, the White House and the usual “bomb the bastards” coterie  in Congress and among the US Zionist lobby, are said to be re-thinking the idea of a No Fly Zone (NFZ) for Syria. It would be planned and executed with US and a yet to be specified, “Coalition of the willing” using aircraft now at the ready in Jordan and Turkey to begin with.

Ranking with the fake “non-lethal aid” concept, in terms of cynical deception (virtually all “non-lethal” aid is indeed lethal for its facilitates certain forces killing others including night goggles, telecommunication equipment, GPS equipment, salaries, fake IDs and much else), a limited, ‘humanitarian’ NFZ would almost certainly became a bomb anything/person that moves ‘turkey shoot’ as was the case in Libya in 2011 as was studied and witnessed first-hand by this an many other observers. What we observed in the then, but no more, Al Jamahiriya (state of the masses), was that the misnomer ‘limited humanitarian Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) promoted by Obama Administration UN Ambassador Susan Rice for Libya and now by her predecessor Samatha Power for Syria, was that a NFZ means essentially an all-out war for regime change at all costs in terms of expendable lives and treasury.

The Libya experience, conceding many differences between the two countries and their governments and quality of each country’s military, may be prologue for Syria. Backed by a U.N. Security Council mandate, NATO charged into Libya citing its urgent “responsibility to protect” civilians threatened by claimed bloody rampages occurring across the country. Within days, we witnessed the ‘limited carefully vetted’ targets bank turn from a promoted ‘several dozen purely military targets” into more than 10,000 bomb runs using over 7,700 ‘precision guided bombs” and from the ground and what we learned during weeks in Libya by victims and eye-witnesses it seemed at times that the targets were basically anything that moved or looked like it might have a conceivable military purpose of some sort.

Human Rights Watch documented nearly 100 cases of civilians being bombed and killed as part of the R2P campaign. Other estimates are several times the HRW published figures. To this day Libyan civilians and demanding to know from NATO, “Why did you destroy my home and kill my family?” No answer has to date been provided to the Libyan victims’ families despite investigations that showed NATO pilots frequently disregarded instructions and “we essentially bombed at if we were playing video games” according to post-conflict contrite  British airman.

Susan Rice, now Obama’s national security adviser, met with Saudi officials last week to discuss a NFZ and related strategy despite White House claims that it is still skeptical. Rice told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee late last month that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are working together again on Syria policy after a year of occasional bitter disagreement.

Among those currently petitioning the Obama Administration for a NFZ, which would quickly devolve into thousands of bomb runs across Syria that would likely decimate its air force and tank corps are the so-called ‘rebels.’  They tend to agree with France that problems lay ahead for them given April’s fast approaching Presidential election, in which the incumbent President, Bashar Assad, is likely to seek and win re-election.

In addition, Israel, according to a Congressional source, has offered to help ‘behind the scenes” with airbases if needed and certain activities along the southern Syrian border with occupied Palestine. A majority of Arab League countries, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) plus Turkey, France, the UK and some members of the EU also support the NFZ idea. Saudi Arabia has already approved large quantities of Chinese man-portable air defense systems or Manpads as well as antitank guided missiles from Russia and more cash to help rebels oust the Assad regime, according to an Arab diplomat. Meanwhile, the US has upped its contribution to pay the salaries of preferred rebel fighters.

Ominously, the U.S. has already positioned Patriot air defense batteries and F-16 fighter aircraft in Jordan, which would be integral to any no-fly zone.  The U.S. planes have air-to-air missiles that could destroy Syrian planes from long ranges. But officials have advised Congress that aircraft may be required to enter deep into Syrian air space if threatened by advancing Syrian planes. This could easily lead to all-out war with Syria and if Russia decides to provide advanced, long-range S-300 air defense weapons to Syria, it would make such a limited no-fly zone far more risky for U.S. pilots and it’s anyone’s guess what would happen next.

President Obama so far is keeping his own counsel as his Secretaries of Defense and State, current and former, and many other officials and politicians offer their advice for the White House ordering a NFZ. Hilary Clinton and General David Petraeus reportedly both favor a NFZ to ‘end this mess” in the words of the retired CIA Director.

To his great credit, Barack Obama appears so far  to many on Capitol Hill to be reluctant to give formal approval to another NFZ as he was last summer when he resisted calls to launch a war against Syria as well as Congressional war-monger demands to go to war with Iran on behalf of the Netanyahu government. This week Mr. Obama acknowledged that diplomatic efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict are far from achieving their goals. “But the situation is fluid and we are continuing to explore every possible avenue including diplomacy.”

If President Obama extends his record of putting American interests first to three key decisions over the past six months, and if he sticks with diplomacy rather than launch all-out war with Syria, and potentially the allies of Damascus, via a NFZ, he just may be on his way to earning his prematurely awarded Nobel Prize.

--Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (sssp-lb.com).


Source: Al-Manar Website
23-02-2014 - 09:45 Last updated 23-02-2014 - 09:48

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The geopolitics of the Ukrainian conflict: back to basics

February 23, 2014, 9:39 am
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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2014

Looking at the amazing footage coming out of not only Kiev, but also from many other cities in the Ukraine, one can get the idea that what is taking place is absolute total chaos and that nobody controls it.  This is a very mistaken impression and I think that this is a good time to look at who the actors of this conflict are and what they really want.  Only then will we be able to make sense of what is going on, who is pulling the strings behind the curtain, and what could happen next.  So let us look at the various actors one by one.

The dissatisfied Ukrainian people

There can be absolutely no doubt that a large segment of the Ukrainian population is deeply unhappy with the regime in power, Yanukovich himself, and what has been going on in the Ukraine for many years.  As I have written many times before, the Ukraine is essentially in the hands of various oligarchs, just like Russia in the 1990s, but only worse.  The vast majority the Ukrainian politicians are for sale to the highest bidder, this is true for the members of Parliament, the Presidential Administration, the regional governors, the government and, of course, of Yanukovich himself.  Collectively, these oligarchs also own the media, the courts, the police, banks and everything else.  As a direct result of that, the Ukrainian economy has been going down the tubes for years and currently is pretty much in ruins.

It should therefore surprise nobody that most Ukrainians are unhappy and what they want is prosperity, safety, the rule of law, business opportunities, the means for personal, social, professional and spiritual development.  Basically, they want what every human being wants: decent living condition.  Some of them see the EU as the best hope of achieving this goal, others see a participation in an economic union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan as a much better option.  The exact ratio really does not matter for a simple and mostly overlooked reason: the people of the Ukraine don't matter at all in this conflict, they are just pawns used by all sides.

The main Ukrainian politicians:


Well, in theory, Yanukovich, Timoshenko, Klitchko and Iatseniuk all want different things, but in reality they all have exactly the same agenda: to please their puppet-masters while making a career in politics.  The case of Tiagnibok might be a little different.  He has some very real chances of becoming a really powerful figure in the western Ukraine.  He is smart enough to realize that neither the USA nor the EU really want him around, but that he commands a much more powerful force (both politically and in terms of violent power) than any other Ukrainian politician.  Regardless, the leaders of the opposition or the pro-regime politicians are all puppets in the hands of much more powerful forces and if Tiagnibok is an exception to this rule, then he does not matter much either since his true ambitions are really local, limited to the western Ukraine.

Having rapidly looked at the locals, let us now turn to the folks that do matter:

The Ukrainian oligarchs:


Most of them believe that as long as the Ukraine maintains an anti-Russian stance the EU will let them do whatever the hell they want inside the Ukraine.  They are correct.  For them, signing an otherwise meaningless agreement with the EU is basically accepting the following deal: they become the faithful servants of their EU overlords in exchange for what the EU overlords will let them continue to pillage the Ukraine in pretty much any way they want.

There is a smaller group of oligarchs who still stands to lose more than win if the Russian-Ukrainian relations sour and if Russia introduces barriers to trade with the Ukraine (which Russia would have to do if the Ukraine signs an free trade agreement with the EU).  These oligarchs believe that more money can be made from Russia than form the EU and they are the folks who convinced Yanukovich to make his infamous "zag" from the EU towards Russia.  Thus, there is a split inside the Ukrainian oligarchy whose representatives can be found on both sides of the current struggle.

The EU:
The EU is in a deep, systemic, economic, social and political crisis and it is absolutely desperate for new opportunities to rescue itself from its slow-motion collapse.  For the EU, the Ukraine is first and foremost a market to sells is goods and services.  The Ukraine is also a way to make the EU look bigger, more powerful, more relevant.  Some believe that the Ukraine can also provide cheap labor for the EU, but I don't believe that this is a major consideration for the following reasons: the EU already has way too many immigrants, and the there has already been a steady stream of Ukrainians (and Balts) leaving their country for a better life in the West.  Thus, what the EU really wants is a way to benefit from the Ukraine but without suffering too many negative consequences from any agreement.  Hence the 1500 pages of the proposed agreement with the EU.

The USA:

The goals of the USA in the Ukraine are completely different from the goals of the EU, hence the very real tensions between their diplomats so well expressed by the "fuck the EU!" of Madam Nuland.  Furthermore, and unlike the bankrupt EU, the US has spent over 5'000'000'000 dollars to achieve its goals in the Ukraine.  But so what are these goals really?

This is were it gets *really* interesting.

First, we have to go back to the crucial statement made by Hillary Clinton in early December of 2012:
“There is a move to re-Sovietise the region,” (...) “It’s not going to be called that. It’s going to be called a customs union, it will be called Eurasian Union and all of that,”   (...) “But let's make no mistake about it. We know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.”
Now, it is absolutely irrelevant to argue about whether Hillary was right or wrong in her interpretation of what the Eurasian Union is supposed to become, what matters is that she, and her political masters, believe, and they really believe is that Putin wants to re-create the Soviet Union.  No matter how stupid this notion is, we have to always keep in mind that this is what the likes of Hillary sincerely believe.

Next, we need to recall another crucial statement, made this time by Zbigniew Brzezinski who wrote:

Without Ukraine Russia ceases to be empire, while with Ukraine - bought off first and subdued afterwards, it automatically turns into empire…According to him, the new world order under the hegemony of the United States is created against Russia and on the fragments of Russia. Ukraine is the Western outpost to prevent the recreation of the Soviet Union. 
Again, it does not matter at all whether evil Zbig is right or wrong.  What matters is that Zbig and Hillary jointly provide us with the key to the current US policy in the Ukraine: to prevent Russia from becoming a superpower. For them, and unlike the Europeans, its not about "getting the Ukraine", its about "not letting the Russians get the Ukraine".  And this is absolutely crucial: from the US point of view, chaos, mayhem and even a full-scale civil war in the Ukraine is much, much, preferable to any, and I mean any, form of economic or political union between Russia and the Ukraine.  For the Americans, this is a zero-sum game: the bigger the loss for Russia, the bigger the win for the AngloZionist Empire.

Russia:

Here we have to completely switch our point of view and realize the following, no matter how counter-intuitive this might seem to be, regardless of the extreme closeness between Russian and Ukrainian languages and cultures, regardless of a long common history, regardless of the fact that both Russians and Ukrainians jointly defeated Nazi Germany, regardless of the fact that the Ukraine is a big neighbor of Russia and regardless of the fact that the two countries have close economic ties, Russia does not need the Ukraine.  Hillary and Zbig are simply plain wrong.  Furthermore, Russia has absolutely no intention of re-creating the Soviet Union or, even less so, becoming an Empire.  This is all absolute nonsense, stupid propaganda to feed to the western masses, Cold War cliches which are absolutely inapplicable to the current realities.  Furthermore, Russia is already a superpower, quite capable of challenging the EU and the USA together (as the example of the war in Syria has so dramatically illustrated).  In fact, Russia has had its most spectacular growth precisely at a time when the Ukraine was occupied by Poland (14th-17th century):

Growth of Russia by years
Why would modern Russia need the Ukraine?  The Ukrainian economy is in ruins, the country is plagued by immense social and political tensions, and there are no natural resources in the Ukraine which Russia would want.  As for the "being a superpower", the Ukraine's military is a farce, and the Russian military would have little need to the so-called "strategic depth" offered by the Ukraine: this is 19-20th century military logic, modern wars are though throughout the depth of the enemy's territory, with long-range strike weapons and Russia is quite capable of closing the Ukrainian airspace without any form of economic or political union with it.

No, what Russia needs first and foremost has stability and prosperity in the Ukraine.  Not only does a non trivial-part of the Russian economy have ties with the Ukraine, but a total collapse of such a big neighbor is bound to affect the Russian economy too (which, by the way, is pretty close to getting into a recession for the first time in a long while).  Furthermore, millions of Russians live in the Ukraine and millions of Ukrainians live in Russia.  Most Russian families have ties with the Ukraine.  So the last thing Russia wants is a civil war in which it would almost inevitably be drawn in.

Even in Crimea all Russia really needs is a status quo: peace, prosperity, a good tourism infrastructure to host Russian tourists, and stable basing right for the Black Sea Fleet.  For that Russia does not need to occupy or annex Crimea.  However, should the Crimean Peninsula be attacked by the Ukrainian neo-Nazis there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the Black Sea Fleet will intervene to protect the local population with which it has many family ties.   It is important to remember that the Black Sea Fleet is infinitely better trained and equipped that the Ukrainian military and that it includes a very powerful Naval Infantry force (one Brigade and one Battalion, the latter specialized in counter-terrorism operations).  It is one thing to beat up and burn riot cops and quite another to deal with battle hardened (Chechnia, Georgia) and highly trained elite forces armed to the teeth with the latest and best military equipment.

As for the big scheme of things, Russia sees its future in the North and the East, not at all in its southwest.  The Arctic, Siberia, the Far East, China and the Pacific, these are the direction towards which Russian strategists are looking for the future of Russia, not the dying and decaying EU or the ruined and unstable lands of the Ukraine!

So what is likely to happen next?

I think that the EU is most unlikely to achieve its objectives in the Ukraine for a very simple reason: the Ukrainian nationalists and the so-called "opposition" (i.e. the armed insurgency) are all bought and paid for by the US.  The EU bureaucrats can continue visiting the Ukraine and make loud statements, they really don't matter.  


So its really the US vs Russia and here I have to say that the US goals is far easier to achieve that the Russian one:all the USA needs chaos, something easy to achieve and relatively cheap to finance, while Russia needs stability and prosperity and that, at the very least, means to provide is cardiac resuscitation to the basically ruined Ukrainian economy and to jump-start some kind of much needed reforms.  The latter probably cannot be done without breaking the backs of the Ukrainian oligarchs.  Does Russia have the means to achieve this?  I very much doubt it.  Not with its current signs of upcoming economic problems and not with a spineless and corrupt clown like Yanukovich in power.  So then what?

Well, if rescuing the Ukraine is not an option, then protecting Russia from the inevitable chaos and mayhem is the only option left.  That, and making darn sure that Crimea is safe.  Russia could, for instance, provide direct assistance to the eastern Ukraine, especially to region like Kharkov which are governed by competent and determined people.  Beyond that, the only option left for Russia is to hunker down and wait for either a viable force to take power in Kiev or for the Ukraine to break-up in pieces.

So what about the Ukrainian people?

I think that where I stand on this issue is clear from the above.  The EU needs them as slaves, the US needs them as pawns, and the only party which needs them prosperous is Russia.  That is simply a fact of geo-strategy.  If the Ukrainians are too stupid and too blinded by their rabid nationalism to understand that, then let them pay the price for their folly.  If they are smart enough to realize it, then let them find the courage to act on it and make it possible for Russia to help them.  If not, then at the very least I would advise them to stop hallucinating about some kind of invasion of "Moskal Spetsnaz forces" to invade and occupy the "independent Ukraine".  Moscow has better things to do and is already busy elsewhere.

The Saker
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Justice "European style" or how EU politicians have lost any sense of self-respect

February 23, 2014, 12:02 pm
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The Saker

The European Saker - in his own words:The EU is really terminally degenerate.  These two pearls come off the BBC website at the same time:
EU imposes Ukraine sanctions after deadly Kiev clashes (which the EU blames entirely on the government, nevermind that 13 unarmed cops were murdered by sniper fire overnight) 
Germany arrests three suspected Auschwitz guards (the three arrested men are 88, 92 and 94 and had therefore to be brought to a prison hospital)
I honestly don't know what to think about European politicians.  Are they just completely insane?  Have they lost any remaining drop of common sense?   Do they really not see how ridiculous and despicable they are?  How can they even look at themselves in the mirror and not die of shame?

Every time I hear or see any of these self-enamored pompous asses I feel like flushing a toilet and forgetting what I just saw.

Yeah, I agree with Mrs. Nuland - fuck the EU!

The Saker

Combat footage from Kiev



POSTED BY AT 

First evidence of assault-rifle and sniper rifles use by government forces

This is probably yet another case of way too little and way too late, but I suppose that this is better than nothing. It is, however, still pathetic that it took 13 dead policemen killed by opposition snipers to finally convince the regime to deploy counter-sniper teams. Let's hope that Yanukovich will not condemn these guys tomorrow morning and blame the violence on them (like he did with the Berkut forces).
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