Most recent activity
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If Lib Dems pulled out of the coalition right now they would force an election and the current agenda that is being pursued by Cameron could be brought to a halt.
I don't recall ever saying re-electing Labour was the solution.
So, how do you foresee the neoliberal agenda being halted?
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Instead, the Western interests are using their proxies and such paragons of democracy and human rights (Saudi, Qatar, Turkey) to funnel arms and pay the "rebels'" salaries, as well as directly providing military "advisors" and special ops teams themselves.
The "rebels" have been planting bombs, with the supine "liberal" media like the Guardian, being very sceptical about such claims and alleging false flag operations. Yet, where was this selfsame scepticism (as I've asked before) with regards to claims by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the FSA?
Regarding Annan's peace plan, when did the FSA or other armed militia support it? With the exception of the NCC (which is against NATO intervention), neither the SNC (based in Paris), nor the FSA (based in Turkey) want a negotiated peace settlement. al Qaeda (al Farouq Brigade and al Nursa Front) has exploded bombs in Damascus, Idlib, Aleppo etc...
The Syrian government did agree to Annan's peace plan on the condition that the "rebels" would do so too. They didn't, so the violence continues. Would you have the Syrian government lay down its arms so that the armed "rebels" could overrun the country and lead to a situation similar to that of Libya (ethnic cleansing, racially motivated crimes against humanity, endemic torture, massacres perpetrated by NATO and by the "rebels" acting under NATO air cover, which are still ongoing, with total impunity and where any dissent will be violently terminated)?
US calls for an implementation deadline solely on the part of the government, are laughable in this context, and would serve as a precursor to NATO humanitarian intervention aka shock and awe.
Ah, I see the Guardian's at it again. Former Foreign Secretary David Owen calling for war on Syria because "the scale of the humanitarian tragedy in Syria demands" it. The very same David Owen who, when he "licensed the sale of the first Hawks to Indonesia in 1978, he dismissed reports of the East Timorese death toll, then well over 60,000 or 10% of the population, as "exaggerated"."
Will the Guardian be giving space to the accused to defend themeselves or will we continue to see overwhelming bias towards Western sources, analysis, and perspectives?
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If Lib Dems pulled out of the coalition right now they would force an election and the current agenda that is being pursued by Cameron could be brought to a halt.
As if Labour's champagne socialists would be any different! Don't you recall that this was the selfsame party that pushed through PFI, deregulation of casino capitalism, the ability of private companies to cherrypick contracts from the NHS, ATOS' targets to remove disabled benefits, increased harassment of those on state benefits, a massive erosion in civil liberties and criminal war mongering? Do you really believe that New Labour has changed its spots? And if so, to what? Old Labour?
The Myth of Old Labour:
Let’s all vote Labour without illusions
Labouring in Vain - a critical history of the Labour Party -
UN monitors in Syria after being denied access to the latest area which has alledgedly been the subject of a massacre by government forces, were fired upon(although they are not 100% sure by whom, syrian forces are suspected though).
"according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurte r Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. For its account of the massacre, the report cites opponents of Assad, who, however, declined to have their names appear in print out of fear of reprisals from armed opposition groups.
According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed."
-- Report: Rebels Responsible for Houla Massacre"Marat Musin, a journalist for the Abkhazian Network News Agency (ANNA), writes that killings took place in the village of Tal-Dow (or “Taldou”) on May 25, which is apparently a district of Houla (or “Al-Hula”) or neighboring village. The original report is in Russian, but relying on Google’s translation, Musin comments, “Apparently, the purpose of this operation was the adoption of UN Security Council resolution for the start of NATO military operations in Syria.”
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Musin states that the rebel account that militias loyal to Syrian regime were responsible for the massacre is inconsistent since “the names of those killed were from people loyal to the authorities”."
-- Eyewitnesses Corroborate Syrian Government Account of Houla Massacre"A direct testimony from the Syrian city of Homs collected by the Swiss journalist Silvia Cattori, who paints a very different picture than that spread by a majority of western media. Since 6 February Cattori has lost contact with her local informants, terrorized by armed groups "wildly shelling, killing to kill”, as reported in an interview with an inhabitant of Homs."
-- Homs in the hell of armed groupsGilles Jacquier was killed by the "rebels":
"In Homs, a French journalist who worked for the France 2 channel was killed and a Belgian journalist was injured. The Government and opposition accused each other of being responsible for the incident, and both sides issued statements of condemnation. The Government formed an investigative committee in order to determine the cause of the incident. It should be noted that Mission reports from Homs indicate that the French journalist was killed by opposition mortar shells."
-- Report of the Head of the League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria for the period from 24 December 2011 to 18 January 2012 (page 6, section 44)Channel 4 News' chief correspondent Alex Thomson writes of his recent experiences:
"Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s-land....
I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian Army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus.
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Please, do not for one me moment believe that my experience with the rebels in al Qusair was a one-off.
This morning I received the following tweet:
“@alextomo I read your piece “set up to be shot in no mans land”, I can relate as I had that same experience in Al Zabadani during our tour.”
That was from Nawaf al Thani, who is a human rights lawyer and a member of the Arab League Observer mission to Syria earlier this year.
It has to make you wonder who else has had this experience when attempting to find out what is going on in rebel-held Syria."
-- Set up to be shot in Syria’s no man’s land?All an UN/NATO intervention does is to make a bad situation much much worse.
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I'm looking for a Canoscan FS4000US 35mm filmstrip holder. I've drawn a blank with Canon UK, Ireland & US and CRC in the UK who have the slide mount holder.
Does anyone know of a replacement (Canon tech didn't) or somewhere with non-working scanners?
Cheers.
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So I'm after any lens with ef mount
I'm giving away a Sigma DL 35-80mm f/4-5.6. It has a 52mm Skylight filter and hood but is missing the front lens cap.
I've not used it in a while and am sticking to Canon FD.
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Cockburn had also written:
"What makes the crisis in Syria so intractable is that three crises are wrapped into one. At one level, it is a popular uprising against a brutal, corrupt police state that started in March when security forces tortured children painting anti-regime slogans on a wall in Deraa in the south. The state disastrously misjudged its moment and an atrocity, intended to intimidate would-be protesters into silence, instead provoked them to revolt. Hatred of a despotic regime and fury at repeated massacres still impels great numbers of Syrians to go into the streets to demonstrate despite the dangers.There is no doubting their courage, but the struggle in which they are taking part has two other dimensions: it is part of the escalating conflict between Sunni and Shia and the 33-year-old battle between Iran and its enemies. The sectarianism of the Syrian opposition is persistently played down by the international media, but power in Syria is distributed along sectarian lines, just as it was in the recent past in Iraq, Lebanon and Ireland. Even supposing an anti-sectarian opposition, democracy in Syria means a loss of power for the Alawites and their allies and a gain for the Sunni.
Given that Sunni make up three-quarters of Syria's 24 million population, their enfranchisement might appear to be no bad thing. Unfortunately, many of the government's most committed opponents evidently have more fundamental changes in mind than a fairer distribution of power between communities. Core areas of the insurgency, where the Sunni are in the overwhelming majority, increasingly see Alawites, Shia and Christians as heretics to be eliminated.
Television reporting and much print journalism is skewed towards portraying an evil government oppressing a heroic people. Evidence that other forces may be at work is ignored."
-- http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-all-the-evidence-points-to-sectarian-civil-war-in-syria-but-no-one-wants-to-admit-it-6785682.html"There is no doubt that Assad’s police state is corrupt and brutal. There is every reason to press Assad towards reform. But it has become plain that negotiated reform is not on the agenda of the rebels. To the contrary, the bombs that killed 28 and wounded 235 in Aleppo, no doubt set by Sunni suicide bombers, probably operating through al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, were intended to elicit government repression, not to encourage negotiation."
-- http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/17/hypocrisy-and-syria/It's a horrible, horrible situation. I've lost non-immediate family in a civil war.
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This was written before I saw the post above.
The armed fighting seems to be mainly in Daraa and Baba Amr. What does this imply for a popular revolt that it's not widespread?
Does it matter to the people which group of villains are in charge? What if the cost of getting the newer, shinier version is widespread death and mayhem (as is the pattern)?
it seems fairly obvious that large parts of the Syrian regular army have rebelled
Do you have credible reports of this? Narwani throws doubt on the casualty figure narrative and shows instances when the claimed defectors weren't. I also ask again where are the credible reports of the altruism of the rebels and of the Syrian government wilfully targeting civilians in its response to the armed rebels?
Even Stratfor [1], said "most of the opposition's more serious claims have turned out to be grossly exaggerated or simply untrue, thereby revealing more about the opposition's weaknesses than the level of instability inside the Syrian regime."
-- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharmine-narwani/stratfor-challenges-narra_b_1158710.htmlThe Arab League monitors reported that the armed opposition had committed violence against civilians. Is that a credible source?
So the FSA aren't terrorists, even when they've killed civilians with car bombs? US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the FSA has been infiltrated by Al Qaeda. The same Al Qaeda assets who were prominent in the genuine people's revolution [TM] in Libya?
What's your point? That the Western media isn't to be trusted, whereas the Syria government is?
You insist on pulling quotes down from what look like very questionable sources, and then bleat on about the western media blah blah. It's boring.
After their great success in hoodwinking the public over Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, what are the odds that the Western media are telling anything remotely like the truth about Syria? Of course the Syrian government has its own propaganda. However, when this matches with the same pattern of covert assistance and backing of out of country activists as in Libya, I'm inclined to believe it. That doesn't mean that I accept everything from RT or Press TV.
Was Marie Colvin killed in "a rocket attack", by an "an artillery shell", or "a mortar strike"? If the media don't even know how she was killed, are they likely to know who killed her?
1 - "a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency."
-- http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html -
All hail the glorious people's revolutionaries! Long may they foster such noble acts of democracy! Blessings be upon us for our humanitarian intervention.
Iceland defaulted on $85 billion.
Fitch ratings on Iceland now:
"Unorthodox crisis policy has succeeded"
Unorthodox only in the sense of looking after their citizens rather than banks and the rulers.
It has succeeded since Iceland's economy is doing better than the eurozone and most of the OECD.
http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=19227