The West To Pay A High Price For Targeting The Syrian Government

Beirut — A number of analysts and security experts who specialize in intelligence and security subjects in Lebanon and France have expressed  this week shock at the way many Western authorities,  including several in Europe and the United States, are avoiding engagement with the Syrian authorities and thus missing important avenues to help end the crisis in Syria. This dismay follows increasing evidence of the grave dangers now threatening to turn Syria into a main operations base for anti-Western... Read article

US And Israel Lobby Reel From Hezbollah Al-Qusayr Victory

Beirut — Although al-Qusayr may not be the decisive battle for Syria, it is irrefutably an important turning point in the crisis which has given the regime much sought military momentum. Plenty of adjectives and some clichés are being bandied about from Washington to Beirut to describe the al-Qusayr battle results and significance. Among them are “game-changer,” “mother of all battles,” “altered balance of power,” critical “turning point in the civil war,” and so on. It... Read article

The EU Votes For Arms To Syria

The EU continues targeting the Civilian Population of Syria with US-led sanctions while scraping the arms embargo… Beirut – Under withering pressure from Washington and the UK, the European Union met this week to decide whether to increase the pressure on the Syrian public by repealing the March 2011 arms embargo that was intended to prohibit arms shipments to Syria and whether or not to continue economic sanctions against the Syrian public. On 5/27/13 it decided to open the flood gate of arms flow into Syria... Read article

Hezbollah And The Syrian Pit

Why Washington and Tel Aviv Want Hezbollah to Keep Fighting in al-Qusayr… Homs Province, Syria… During a tour of some of the neighborhoods in Homs, Syria’s third largest city after Aleppo and Damascus, with a pre-conflict population of approximately 800,000 (nearly half  Homs residents have fled over the past two years) located maybe about 22 miles NE of the current hot-spot of al-Qusayr, this observer engaged is a few interesting conversations.  More accurately labeled diatribes–with some long bearded... Read article

How Lebanon’s Palestinians Are Being Pulled Into Syrian War

Refugee Camps As War Zones… Homs Palestinian Refugee Camp, Syria… Historically, Palestinian refugees, wherever they have sought temporary sanctuary following the ethic cleansing of their country by the 19th Century Zionist colonial enterprise, and pending their Return to Palestine, have insisted on avoiding local and international conflicts while seeking a modicum of interim civil rights from the host countries. This was true at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil war, in Jordan during the run up to Black September, the... Read article

UN General Assembly Vote Reflects Shift In Syrian Public Opinion

It’s not hard to find critics of the Assad government in the Governorate (Muhafazat) of Homs or for that matter, to varying degrees in Syria’s other thirteen Governorates according to Syrian analysts interviewed by this observer and reports from human rights groups including lawyers representing dissidents in Syria. However, after nearly 27 months of turmoil, the public opinion pendulum is markedly shifting back in support of the current regime. One international political result was registered at the United Nations... Read article

Professor Falk Graces Lebanon And Gets An Ear Full

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Professor Richard Falk, came to Lebanon last week on an unofficial visit to survey opinion while fact finding the condition in Palestinian refugee’s camps. It was the Professors first visit to Lebanon since the fateful summer of 1982. Back then, en route by sea to Beirut, which was under Israeli siege and blockade, Falk was Vice-Chair of the Sean McBride Commission of Inquiry into Israeli crimes against Lebanon. Mid –way between Cyprus and Lebanon, the Zionist navy,... Read article

Pushing Al Qaeda To Take On Hezbollah

Zionists and Gulf Monarchs Ponder… Beirut – “This is one damn fine idea, what took us so long to see a simple solution that was right in front of our eyes for Christ’s sake”, Senator John McCain of “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” and “no-fly zones for Syria” notoriety, reportedly demanded to know from Dennis Ross during a recent Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) brain storming session in Washington DC.  Ross, a founder of WINEP with Israeli government start up cash (presumably reimbursed unknowingly... Read article

Has The Arab League Mortally Wounded Itself By Declaring War On Syria?

Frankly, it never was much of a “League” of Arab states. And arguably it never really achieved  a whole lot but two dozen  lavish ‘summits’  offering inflated rhetoric, often calculated to assuage the Arab people about their central cause, Palestine. This, despite high hopes across Arabia when its founders promulgated a Charter on March 22, 1945 and took a solemn oath to prevent the theft of Palestine by European colonists. Yet, notions of fundamental fairness require that we all acknowledge, that to its credit,... Read article

A Draft-Dodging, Zionist Friendly, Right-wing Texan Islamist To Lead Syria?

Could the White House Have Dreamt for More? Damascus – For the past year, a plan C or D, depending on how one numbers the failed US-Israel projects in Syria was badly needed for those presuming to topple the Assad government. And this week, according  to Congressional staffers, both Tel Aviv and the White House are pinching themselves in disbelief over their good luck with  installing republican leaning conservative Dixie businessman, the congenial, Ghassan Hitto, as Syria’s new interim Prime Minister. Securing... Read article

The Oft-Predicted Fickle Syrian ‘Tipping Point’ Has Tipped

Can Washington and Her Allies Stop Syria’s Reconciliation Efforts? Damascus – This observer lost count more than a year ago of the sheer number of predictions by analysts and lobbyists that the “tipping point” signaling the Assad government’s collapse was a sure thing and would happen any time now. “It’s just a matter of days, not weeks” President Obama declared back in 2011. Based on personal observations and interviews with a fair number of informed people who actually live in Syria, as opposed to... Read article

Israel Instructs Obama: “Iranian And Syrian Sanctions Are Not Painful Enough!”

Damascus – Iran is expected to meet with other world powers in Astana, Kazakhstan to discuss its nuclear program. Discussions that the occupiers of Palestine fervently hope will not be successful. It is toward this end that their key demand this week to the US Congress, the White House and the European Union is “to cast responsibility on the Iranians by blaming them for the talks’ failure in the clearest terms possible.” According to the Al-Monitor of 3/19/13, Israel also demands that the countries meeting in... Read article

Will Washington Grasp The Hand Being Offered By The Iranian People?

Truth told, this American observer has attended his share of international conferences and has traveled in more than 70 countries. But never has he visited such  a complex country, evolving culture,  and striving  energized society, populated by idealistic people of great warmth, sense of humor and caring for those in need as he experiences in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Except when traveling in his own country. Being in Iran during these tense times is to experience an epiphany. Which is that Iranians and Americans... Read article

US Officials Confess To Targeting Iran’s Civilian Population

Condemned By Every Syllable They Utter… Tehran — Azadeh, a graduate law student from Tehran University, on the sidelines of Iran’s Third Annual Hollywoodism (www.hollywoodism.orghttp) reminded her interlocutors, of the obvious damming admissions last week by two US politicians: “It would be a defense lawyer’s worst nightmare wouldn’t it? I mean to have one’s clients, in this case the Vice-President of the United States and the outgoing Secretary of state confess so publicly to serial international... Read article

Syria’s First Line of Defense: Dial 133

Damascus – There are more than 9000 of them. Predominately young but of all ages. Volunteers everyone. Often risking their lives just to come for a twelve hour work-shift, as many as seven days a week at the Syrian Arab Republic Red Crescent Society (SARCS) Emergency Operation center. Located at The New Zahera (blooming flowers) Hospital in Damascus just to the south of Yarmouk refugee camp, SARCS has its main emergency response teams HQ.  It is here where Syrians, some Palestinians and even a few from the region... Read article

US-led Sanctions Contribute To The Destruction of Syria’s Millenary History

Barring Medicines In Syria… What a difference a week can make. The heaviest snow in Syria in a quarter-century, some claimed, last week’s storm closed for a time even the main highway from Damascus to Beirut. But that was then and now its spring in Damascus, or so it feels to those of us used to New England Januarys. It’s nearly downright balmy here. Spring flowers are bursting out all over and the city parks are crowded with mothers pushing baby carriages, kids playing and young lovers cooing softly on the park... Read article

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