BBC Posts Picture Of Syrian Victims? Actually, Victims of Saddam Hussein's Gas attacks.

This photo run by the BBC is supposed to be victims of Assad's gas attacks in Syria. It is in fact a photo of Kurds gassed by Saddam Hussein in 2003. So gas attacks in Syria must meet a response. So says those who opposed toppling SAddam who did the same thing in greater numbers. The hypocrisy of politics that redefines humanitarianism.

Wikileaks: Obama Wanted To Apologize for Hiroshima & Nagasaki

From: The Japan Times Online

A senior official of Japan's Foreign Ministry told the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo it would be premature for U.S. President Barack Obama to visit the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima during his November 2009 trip to Japan, according to a secret U.S. cable recently released by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

The cable indicates the Japanese government was then effectively discouraging Obama from visiting Hiroshima despite growing expectations over it following his call for a world free from nuclear weapons in a speech in Prague in April 2009.

The cable, dated Sept. 3, 2009, and sent to U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton, reported Japan's then Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling Ambassador John Roos on Aug. 28 that antinuclear groups would speculate over whether the president would visit Hiroshima in light of his Prague speech on nuclear nonproliferation.

"He underscored, however, that both governments must temper the public's expectations on such issues, as the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a 'non-starter'," said the cable.

It also quoted Yabunaka as saying, "While a simple visit to Hiroshima without fanfare is sufficiently symbolic to convey the right message, it is premature to include such program in the November visit."

"Yabunaka recommended that the visit in November center mostly in Tokyo," it said.

Yabunaka, now adviser to the Foreign Ministry, said Monday he would not comment on or confirm any document that was released in an unfair manner.

At a news conference during his visit to Japan in November 2009, Obama said he would be honored and it would be significant for him to visit Hiroshima and the other atomic-bombed city of Nagasaki in the future.

Syria Christians fear for religious freedom

From: Jerusalem Post

Syria's minority Christians are watching the protests sweeping their country with trepidation, fearing their religious freedom could be threatened if President Bashar Assad's autocratic but secular rule is overthrown.

Sunni Muslims form a majority in Syria, but under four decades of rule by Assad's minority Alawites the country's varied religious groups have enjoyed the right to practice their faith.\

Calls for Muslim prayers ring out alongside church bells in Damascus, where the apostle Paul started his ministry and Christians have worshipped for two millennia.

But for many Syrian Christians, the flight of their brethren from sectarian conflict in neighboring Iraq and recent attacks on Christians in Egypt have highlighted the dangers they fear they will face if Assad succumbs to the wave of uprisings sweeping the Arab world.

"Definitely the Christians in Syria support Bashar al-Assad. They hope that this storm will not spread," Yohana Ibrahim, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo, told Reuters.

Protests erupted in Syria two months ago, triggered by anger and frustration at widespread corruption and lack of freedom in the country ruled with an iron fist by the Assad family for nearly half a century.

Although some Christians may be participating in the protests, church institutions have not supported them.

Christians contacted by Reuters said they backed calls for reform but not the demands for "regime change", which they said could fragment Syria and give the upper hand possibly to Islamist groups that would deny them religious freedom.

"The Christians in Syria -- whether Orthodox, Armenians, Maronites, Anglicans, Assyrians or Catholics -- consider themselves first (Syrian) citizens, the sons of the land," said Habib Afram, president of the Syriac League.

"The general atmosphere from the churches' positions and from Christian figures is fixed on stability and security because religious freedom is absolutely guaranteed in Syria," he said.

Syrian Christian: Minority "ruled by the military or the turban of a cleric"

Syria's military shows signs of division amid crackdown

From: Christian Science Monitor

Cracks may be emerging in Syria's military as more soldiers appear to be taking a stand against firing on protesters six weeks into the popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian security forces launched an offensive against several flashpoint towns at dawn today, closing the border with Jordan and using tanks and live ammunition to clear streets and arrest suspected protesters, according to opposition activists and eyewitnesses. But Syrian military units reportedly clashed with each other in Deraa when soldiers refused to open fire.

The report follows numerous other refusals as well as a spate of assassinations of military officials said to be sympathetic to the protesters, according to opposition activists.

Any split that emerges in the Army, which together with the intelligence services forms the state's principle means of enforcing its will, would present an unprecedented challenge to the Assad regime's four-decade rule and cast serious doubt on its ability to survive.

Today's intensified crackdown came after the worst protest violence yet witnessed, with more than 120 people killed since Friday. The sudden surge of casualties appears to have spurred the United States into considering sanctions against Syrian officials, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The report comes a day after Human Rights Watch called for sanctions against Syrian officials found responsible for using violence to suppress the anti-regime protests that have swept the country since mid-March.

Showdown in Deraa

At dawn today, as many as 3,000 Syrian troops backed by armored vehicles entered the southern town of Deraa, where the uprising first took root, and opened fire, killing anywhere between five and 20 people, according to various eyewitness accounts. The border with Jordan, which lies just 2.5 miles south west of Deraa, was closed and telephone lines and electricity in the area around the town were cut.

Death Warrant of Ancient Christianity

From: Real Clear Religion

Ever since the wave of popular movements started sweeping the Middle East, Western media have rarely found much good to say about the authoritarian regimes under attack. Few observers deny that the last generation or so of Arab rulers were indeed greedy despots, and it seems desirable for Western powers to intervene as forcefully as they can on behalf of what are commonly billed as pro-democracy movements.

The arguments against intervention are obvious enough, most obviously that it is much easier to begin a military intervention than to end it, while we rarely have much idea about the political character of the supposed democrats we are trying to aid. But in one case above all, namely Syria, debates over intervention have missed one overwhelming argument, which is the likely religious catastrophe that would follow the overthrow of the admittedly dictatorial government. Any Western intervention in Syria would likely supply the death warrant for the ancient Christianity of the Middle East. For anyone concerned about Christians worldwide -- even if you believe firmly in democracy and human rights -- it's hard to avoid this prayer: Lord, bring democracy to Syria, but not in my lifetime.

Why is Syria so critical to the religious geography of the region? From ancient times, the territory had a complex mixture of religious traditions, and one that was far too complex to reduce to a simple Christian-Muslim divide. Under the long centuries of Ottoman power, Syria retained its sizable Christian minority, but other minority populations also flourished, groups that originated within Islam, but which orthodox believers condemned as heretics and apostates. Particularly important were the Alawites, a group that certainly includes Christian and even Gnostic strands in its esoteric world view. In fact, they were long known locally as Nusayris, "Little Christians" The Druze are no less secretive in their beliefs, and are equally loathed by strict Islamists. Although estimates are shaky, a reasonable estimate is that Alawites make up around ten percent of Syria's population of twenty million, with the Druze at another three percent.

hristian numbers are still harder to determine. Over the past century century, Syria regularly served as the last refuge for Christian communities who had been largely destroyed elsewhere in the Middle East -- for Christians fleeing massacre in Turkey after 1915, or in Iraq after 2003. A standard figure for the number of Syrian Christians is ten percent, or around two million believers, but that omits an uncertain number of thinly disguised crypto-believers, not to mention the recent arrivals from the wreck of Saddam's Iraq. A fifteen percent Christian minority is quite probable.

On Libya,Syria,Yemen,Bahrain,Ivory Coast,Christian Minorities and A Humanitarian Foreign Policy

It is ever so obvious that Barack Obama's heart is not in Libya, but like every President since Jefferson he has come to recognize the harsh contradictions as the nation's chief executive and campaigning for the office. His predicament is nothing new. Principle meets the real world.

In the midst of the BP oil spill, I wrote that the President seemed "detached". This entire administration can now aptly described as "detached", but more importantly it can now be held accountable for gross contradiction in selectively determining "humanitarian" intervention.

Obama dithered for three weeks on Libya, missing a window of opportunity as rebels converged upon Tripoli. Only after a brutal counter attack and a prospective slaughter of rebels in Benghazi was a "No fly zone" approved. Not by Congress mind you, but the United Nations. Oh and the on again off again endorsement of the Arab League. Too little, too late. The morale of the rebels is shot.

Then there are the contradictory statements. Obama says "Khadafy must go", but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says his removal is not the objective. Hillary Clinton says Libya is a vital national interest, but Robert Gates says it's not. Isn't the first rule of governing to make sure you're all on the same page? Certainly, if you're sending young men into a conflict you might want a consistent front. As the Commander in Chief, Obama has a responsibility to tighten up the message so as to avoid confusion. Is there any evidence of a coordinated effort?

Like many I'm forced to ask a question:Why Libya? Why are they the beneficiaries of our newly discovered humanitarianism? We receive two percent of our oil from Libya and it has no strategic value. Contrasted to Bahrain, which has been claimed by Iran which houses the 7th Fleet. Our base in the Persian Gulf could be endangered by regime change in Bahrain, which alters the balance of power. Did we come to the aid of the rebels being spurred by Iran and suppressed by Saudi troops? Nope. I guess being a humanitarian only matters if the object of rebellion provides greater than two percent of our oil or if you base a carrier task force.

Why not Yemen? A brutal regime in a country strategically located and the home of Anwar al Awlaki of Fort Hood inspiration fame. But the government is cracking down. The response? For all intents and purposes it has been to shrug their shoulders and say "Yemen, what's Yemen"?

Why not Syria? The Assad's are one of the most brutal regimes on the planet. Bashir Assad is ruthlessly suppressing rebels and stands defiant. The response? Hillary Clinton calls him a "reformer". Yeah, he's a regular Martin Luther.

Then there's the Ivory Coast? The what you say? Ivory Coast? A brutal war being fought. The response? Well, if you listen carefully for any word from the Obama Administration you can hear a pin drop on a cricket. That is if all the crickets haven't been killed in the fighting. At any moment I expect someone from the White House to say "Ivory Coast?, I really do like their soap".

Of course in our politically correct, post 9/11 world where "Islamophobia" is the new catch word and all Muslims are victims we have the persecution and murder of Christians. Iraqi Christians are fleeing the country. Coptic Christians murdered and beaten in Egypt. Churches and synagogues burned in Pakistan and subjecting religious minorities to "blasphemy laws". Maybe if we coined the term "Christianaphobia" we might get a humanitarian response.

Personally, I think Obama was reaching for a reason and picked "humanitarian" out of a hat. Bad choice. Can you be a humanitarian on a case by case basis? Pick and choose whose humanity means more to your human sensibilities? Compassion by definition is not selective, but in the world of "realpolitik" natural selection is more often the rule.

Humanitarianism as a policy is a fraud, because there are logistical limitations in its application. Let's just be honest, let's just admit that this move in Libya was done for strategic reasons or to placate our allies. The larger issue is that we don't know the outcome and don't know anything about our Libyan rebel allies. Contrary to popular belief, the "enemy of our enemy is not our friend".

If Barack Obama doesn't believe in intervening in foreign conflicts, I'm ok with that, but to intervene on the fallacy of compassion is absurd. The Obama administration is engaging in a policy of "Selective Humanitarianism". Who would've guessed that such a populist as Obama would employ "Darwinian" tactics in the deployment of America's sons and daughters? How long before his "selectivity" comes back to bite us in the ass? 

President Assad Defiant

From: Christian Science Monitor

Beirut, Lebanon
 
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad struck a defiant stance Wednesday, blaming “conspiracies” for two weeks of unprecedented antiregime protests and stopping short of offering a widely anticipated reform package.


The content of Mr. Assad’s first address since the unrest began dismayed the opposition, which had hoped that the president would reveal details of how he plans to reform the tightly policed state. Despite the government earlier this week dismissing the ruling cabinet and hinting at lifting the emergency law, Assad failed to announce concrete changes or meet any of the protesters' expectations.

Syria

From:The Economist

Road to Damascus

Mar 26th 2011, 11:13 by The Economist | DAMASCUS

AS RECENTLY as Thursday, few were willing to predict whether protests in Deraa would spread across the rest of Syria. Security forces have killed at least 37 people in the city, which is at the heart of a farming region in the south, about an hour's drive from the capital, since people there took to the street a week ago. The protests had been triggered by the detention of a group of teenagers who had been caught drawing anti-government graffiti, but the protesters' demands have since grown to calls for freedom—though not, at this point, for an end to the presidency of Bashar Assad.

Yesterday their calls were joined. Large crowds once again took to the streets in Deraa and the nearby town of Sanamein. More significantly, they spread: smaller protests were reported in the cities of Homs, Hama, Latakia and Damascus. Once again the police used force to put them down. As many as 20 people may have been shot dead by security forces in Sanamein, apparently after they had set fire to a statue of the former president, Hafez Assad, Bashar's father. Three protesters were reported to have been killed in a district of Damascus and at least two more in Latakia.

Less than 24 hours before, the government had pledged not to use violence. The Syrian government's confused response to these unprecedented protests has involved dangling a small carrot or two, as well as swinging its heavy truncheon. On Thursday evening it announced concessions that were supposed to quell the unrest: a pledge to look into lifting emergency law, which has been in place since 1963, and promises to draft new laws governing the media and political parties.

But the lack of concrete reforms only added fuel to the fire. New laws have long been on the table. Syrians—and the international community—are rightly outraged at the use of force. Yesterday Amnesty International said the death toll had climbed to at least 55; scores more have been injured.

Until now, many young Syrians had been willing to tolerate widespread corruption and suppression of basic freedoms in exchange for a “pro-resistance” foreign policy and vague talk of reform. But that bargain is starting to lose its appeal. Distressing, graphic video footage emerging from Deraa and Sanamein are casting Mr Assad’s rule in a different, more brutal light.

His regime is usually regarded as being canny, and relatively nimble. That is not the way it looks this week. No one outside its inner circle knows exactly what is going on. Unlike some of the region's monarchs, Mr Assad is finding it harder and harder to project an image of himself as being above the fray. Some critics are casting him in the same mould as his father, who crushed the last major domestic uprising, staged by the Muslim Brotherhood, with a massacre in Hama in 1982 in which perhaps 20,000 died. Other figures, including the main presidential adviser, have tried to exculpate Mr Assad. This has in turn led to rumours that Bashar is being countermanded within the regime, possibly by his brother Maher.

Meanwhile, the protests are getting more organised. The Syrian Revolution 2011 page on Facebook, not itself a spark for the protests, has become a focal point. Run predominantly by expatriate Syrians, it has disseminated tips for holding a successful demonstration. By posting videos of the dead and injured and promoting a show of national unity, it is building the rallying power that Syrian opposition figures had long struggled to find.

What happens next? Some fear it will be a race to the bottom, with the protests escalating in step with the state’s violence. Some citizens of Latakia, the home to Mr Assad's minority Alawite sect, have started packing up. The Syrian pound’s value on the black market has dropped. There are certainly many outside the country who would like to see Mr Assad go.

But Syrians may still step back. For a country of 22m people, turnout at the protests has till now been relatively low. Huge pro-Assad rallies have been charging round the capital for the past few nights. Few believe their noisy declarations of love for the regime to be spontaneous, but Mr Assad undoubtedly enjoys support. Rising sectarian chants emanating from Deraa, an orthodox Sunni area, have provoked fear elsewhere. Syria is home to large groups of Christians and Druze, as well as Alawites, and these minority groups tend to see Mr Assad as their best insurance against chaos. They eye with fear the long borders that divide their country from Iraq and Lebanon and their well-armed militant groups.

Still, it has become clear that there is widespread dissatisfaction with a government that has failed to provide jobs and an acceptable standard of life for its citizens. Fear of speaking up is dissipating. Confusion at the top is giving the unrest a chance to grow. There will be more funerals and more crowds this weekend. If there is also more bloodshed, yet more Syrians may join the protests, and their demands may grow.

Syrian troops murder protestors: Where's the UN?

FROM: American Thinker

Apparently, Bashar Assad has not murdered enough innocents to deserve the scrutiny of the "Responsibility to Protect" crowd. The New York Times:

Military troops opened fire during protests in the southern part of Syria on Friday and killed peaceful demonstrators, according to witnesses and news reports, hurtling the strategically important nation along the same trajectory that has altered the landscape of power across the Arab world.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators in the southern city of Dara'a and in other cities and towns around the nation took to the streets in protest, defying a state that has once again demonstrated its willingness to use lethal force.

It was the most serious challenge to 40 years of repressive rule by the Assad family since 1982, when the president at the time, Hafez al-Assad, massacred at least 10,000 protesters in Hama, a city in northern Syria.

Human rights groups said that since protests began seven days ago in the south, 38 people had been killed by government forces - and it appeared that many more were killed on Friday. Precise details were hard to obtain because the government sealed off the area to reporters and would not let foreign news media into the country.

Apparently, there is a super-duper secret threshold of dead civilians that must be crossed before our humanitarian president springs into action, along with the pious hypocrites at the UN. Clearly, there's a difference between murdering a couple of hundred protestors and a couple of thousand. Perhaps it's a matter of the volume of blood spilled. No doubt there are Official Counters of the Dead working in the basement of the UN building keeping score of how many demonstrators Baby Assad murdered today.

The question is simple; why not intervene in Syria? Good God! Getting rid of Assad would be a huge plus. It might even change the balance in the Middle East if we can kick the dictator out and substitute someone more to our liking. Syria might move away from Iran's orbit, or at least, not be as obedient to the mullahs in Tehran in doing their bidding.

Alas, there is one reason why we would never intervene in Syria as long as Barack Obama is president; it would be in America's interest to do so. Such action would fail John Kerry's international test that intervention should occur only when it damages our interests or doesn't impact them at all.

Meanwhile, the bombs continue to fall on Gaddafi's forces while Bashar Assad spills almost as much innocent blood. When you figure it all out, let me know.

Syria's security forces fire on protesters

From: Christian Science Monitor

Syria

Syrian protesters staged a "Day of Dignity" Friday, holding demonstrations across the country, including the capital of Damascus. Al Jazeera reports that about 200 people turned out there to show their support for protests that have been taking place all week in the southern city of Deraa, where security forces opened fire on protesters today and dozens have already died in clashes. Meanwhile, the government began making concessions, including lifting the state of emergency that has been in place since 1963.

Libya

NATO has taken control of implementing Libya's no-fly zone, while French and British forces retain responsibility for carrying out strikes against military targets. France announced that Libyan airspace was "under control" of allied forces. Meanwhile, after nearly a week of international support, rebels are still struggling to retake the eastern city of Ajdabiya. Allied forces attempted to give some breathing room to the rebels by striking Qaddafi's troops that are shelling the city.

Yemen

Protesters in Sanaa took a rare step back Friday in order to give room for political negotiations to progress. Negotiators are attempting to work out a transfer of power from President Ali Abdullah Saleh that could see him step down within days, though the transition could well take longer. On Friday, President Saleh said he would be willing to transfer his power on the condition that it went into "safe hands."

Bahrain

Protesters in Bahrain are planning to hold protests Friday – the first large protests since Saudi Arabia sent in troops to help put down the demonstrations and the Bahraini government declared a state of emergency. In response to the plans, security was ramped up in Shiite villages and in and around the capital of Manama.