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Tag Archives: war crimes

Syria: The Horror: Around 2012

24 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2012, Assad, dictatorship, impunity, Political Crime, remembrance, Syria, war crimes

Putin-Assad-Khamenei

Bashar al-Assad By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44378508 | Vladimir Putiin By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60759727 | Ali Khameini By Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57953266


Houla, 2012

Posted to YouTube June 27, 2012.

Related:

Ryskulova, Nargiza and agencies.  “Syria: war crimes committed by regime in Houla, UN finds.”  The Telegraph, August 15, 2012.

“The commission found reasonable grounds to believe that government forces and the Shabbiha had committed the crimes against humanity of murder and of torture, war crimes and gross violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including unlawful killing, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual violence, indiscriminate attack, pillaging and destruction of property,” said the 102-page report by the independent investigators led by Paulo Pinheiro.

Torture

Human Rights Watch.  “Torture Archipelago”.  July 3, 2012.

Since the beginning of anti-government protests in March 2011, Syrian authorities have subjected tens of thousands of people to arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment, and torture using an extensive network of detention facilities, an archipelago of torture centers, scattered throughout Syria.


Hell of a title —

Bond, Anthony.  “We took their fingernails out with pliers and we made them eat them. We made them suck their own blood off the floor’: Grisly accounts from inside Syria’s ’27 torture centres'”.  Daily Mail, July 3, 2012.

Related:


Posted to YouTube May 16, 2013.


18+ torture video — “Syrian Police Torture Protester” — posted to YouTube September 1, 2011

BackChannels experience suggests that if it’s called what it is — “war p___n” — it will attract a lot of viewers, such are the low desires of the world when it comes to deliberately seeking artless depictions of sex and violence.  the above URL links to a video of a young man who wears a tire around his chest while receiving a beating.

Related

Black, Ian.  “Bashar al-Assad implicated in Syria war crimes, says UN.”  The Guardian, December 2, 2013.

A UN inquiry has found “massive evidence” that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is implicated in war crimes as the latest reported death toll in the country’s civil war reached 126,000.

Navi Pillay, the UN’s human rights chief, said a commission of inquiry into human rights violations in Syria “has produced massive evidence … [of] very serious crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity” and that “the evidence indicates responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state.”


Posted to YouTube Dec. 2, 2013.


Cumming-Bruce, Nick and Rick Gladstone.  “U.N. Says Execution Video from Syria Shows Apparent War Crime.”  The New York Times, November 2, 2012.

–33–

Syria: The Horror: 2011

29 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syria

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

autocratic control, dictatorship, fascism, forces of disorder, malignant narcissists, political absolutism, political criminality, Syria, Syrian atrocities, totalitarianism, tyranny, tyrants, war crimes

 

Putin-Assad-Khamenei

Bashar al-Assad By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44378508 | Vladimir Putiin By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60759727 | Ali Khameini By Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57953266


Related Reference

Asher-Schapiro, Avi.  “The Young Men Who Started Syria’s Revolution Speak About Where It All Began.”  VICE News, March 15, 2016:

Omar first heard about the graffiti at morning recess. It was winter, he was 14, in the middle of 10th grade, and his friends said it was just a prank. The day before, just after school, a handful of Omar’s classmates found some red paint and scrawled, “Your turn doctor,” on the school’s wall. Under most circumstances, in most places, such behavior might provoke a slap on the wrist — perhaps a stern visit from the police. But in Daraa, Syria, in February 2011, those words could get you killed.

Macleod, Hugh.  “How schoolboys began the Syrian revolution.”  CBS News / Global Post, April 26, 2011:

The local secret police soon arrested 15 boys between the ages of 10 and 15, detaining them under the control of Gen. Atef Najeeb, a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad.

In a gloomy interrogation room the children were beaten and bloodied, burned and had their fingernails pulled out by grown men working for a regime whose unchecked brutality appears increasingly to be sowing the seeds of its undoing.






–33–

Bana Alabed – One Video – One Tweet

02 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Bana Alabed, HRW, Russian Defense "Advertising", Russian Defense Sales, Syrian conflict, war crimes

Posted to YouTube by TRT World, November 28, 2016.

I am sick now, I have no medicine, no home, no clean water. This will make me die even before a bomb kill me. – Bana #Aleppo

— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) December 1, 2016

Posted 19 hours ago.

Excerpted from Human Rights Watch Report, “Russia/Syria: War Crimes in Month of Bombing Aleppo – UN General Assembly Should Organize Emergency Special Session” December 1, 2016:

(New York) – The Russian–Syrian coalition committed war crimes during a month-long aerial bombing campaign of opposition-controlled territory in Aleppo in September and October 2016.

Ruins of a residential house that was struck in an aerial attack, killing at least 24 civilians, on September 27, 2016.
EXPAND

Ruins of a residential house that was struck in an aerial attack, killing at least 24 civilians, on September 27, 2016. © 2016 Syria Civil Defense

The Violations Documentation Center, a Syrian civil monitoring organization, documented that the bombing campaign killed more than 440 civilians, including more than 90 children. Airstrikes often appeared to be recklessly indiscriminate, deliberately targeted at least one medical facility, and included the use of indiscriminate weaponssuch as cluster munitions and incendiary weapons. Satellite imagery that Human Rights Watch analyzed shows more than 950 new distinct impact sites consistent with the detonation of large high explosive bombs across the area during the month.

Excerpt from “The One Chart That Russia’s Military Should Be Very Afraid Of” –  The National Interest, November 26, 2016, on Russia’s economic performance and related defense sales:

The good news for Moscow is that Russian operations in Syria have provided effective advertising for Russian military hardware. Back in March, Vladimir Putin boasted that Russian arms sales in 2015 had exceeded US$14 billion, and prospective foreign orders had reached US$56 billion. (As a caution, SIPRI’s arms transfer database, which measures the value of delivered goods, lists a 2015 exports figure of less than US$10 billion).


Everyday online, BackChannels swims through a kaleidoscopic assortment of news-related e-mails, Facebook posts, tweets, reports, articles, and opinions — actually, the day begins with reading out of an old fashioned hardcover book (the latest – an autobiography by Stanislav Lunev) — and over time, the particles of reality sort themselves into sensibility.

The sensibility here today: Assad incubated ISIL; Assad, unable to blackmail or goad the west through “Assad vs The Terrorists“, has long chosen to follow his own dictate: “Assad, Or We Burn It“;  Putin, intent on both a KGB and Imperial Era revanche — the best of both his worlds, perhaps — has with Assad and Khamenei pursued that path that would defend and display “medieval  (and totalitarian) political absolutism” and reintroduce the democratic open societies to barbarism while destabilizing the same through the encouragement of extremist (Far Right and Far Left) political discord.

On the receiving end of that murderous ambition: a mother and her seven-year-old daughter using Twitter to reach out to the world.

Additional Fast Links

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/ – 10/2/2015.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/14/isil-groomed-for-a-role-in-assad-vs-the-terrorists/

Update – December 4, 2016

"SAA got access to all @AlabedBana mother communications ,even the account "
I was asked to publish this

— Within Syria (@WithinSyriaBlog) December 4, 2016

BackChannels often returns to check on its posts to see if new information has changed the message.  In this instance, the “AlabedBana” account appears to have been suspended.  Hypotheses: al-Assad’s Syrian State closed the account; Bana Alabed and her mother are gone; Twitter, for security, suspended the account.  Off the field and unable to either investigate or get an honest answer from Damascus — Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran speak with twisted tongues at best — there are no answer, only a melancholy and blank mystery in the Twitterverse.

–33–

Syria – ” . . . an onslaught beyond the capabilities of the Syrian Air Force alone . . . “

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Russia, Samantha Power, Syria, Syrian conflict, Syrian Tragedy, war crimes

Russia has been directly and repeatedly accused of war crimes at the UN security council in an unusually blunt session, as hopes of any form of ceasefire were flattened by the scale and ferocity of the Syrian regime’s assault on eastern Aleppo.

The war crimes accusations centred on the widespread use of bunker-busting and incendiary bombs on the 275,000 civilians living in the rebel-held east of the city, weapons that Moscow’s accusers say were dropped by Russian aircraft.

Borger, Julian and Kareem Shaheen.  “Russia accused of war crimes in Syria at UN security council session.”  September 26, 2016.

The quotation in the title comes from Matthew Rycroft, British ambassador to the UN, speaking in the video at the top of the referenced article.

BackChannels has maintained that Syria represents a complete medieval theater of politics and war, one in which ISIL itself, playing the role of the “The Terrorists”, was deliberately incubated by Assad for show.

Yesterday, in remarks made before a UN Security Council briefing on Syria, Ambassador Samantha Power brought to a head the issue of the barbaric medievalism characterizing the Assad regime’s entire response to what had begun as a mild popular challenge to the regime’s character and course through an agricultural and related economic downturn in 2011.  Of course, the sadism was evident at the outset as the regime established its position by arresting and torturing schoolchildren.


Posted to YouTube by U.S. Department of State, September 25, 2016.

United States Mission to the United Nations.  “Remarks at a UN Security Council Briefing on Syria.” Transcript.  September 25, 2016.


Additional Reference

Al-Masri, Karam and Rana Moussaoui.  “Covering Syria through hunger and fear.”  AFP Correspondent, September 26, 2016.

Callaghan, Louise and Toby Harnden.  “Putin’s gigantic firebombs torch Aleppo.”  The Times, September 26, 2016.

Sanchez, Raf.  “U.S. levels ‘barbarism’ charge, Britain accuses Russia of war crimes over bombing of Syrian civilians.”  National Post, September 26, 2016.

–33–

 

10 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

freedom of speech, Gaza, human rights, Khaled Mashaal, war crimes

The complaint against Mashaal was not directed at Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, but at alleged war crimes Hamas perpetrated against the Gazan population.

The complaint alleged that on August 22, 2014, Hamas “executed 18 so-called collaborators who had been convicted of no crime,” including “publicly execut[ing] seven of these ‘collaborators.’” Moreover, the complaint said that on July 28, 2014, Hamas summarily executed 20 Gazan civilians for engaging in anti-war protests against its rule in the Strip.

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Shurat-Hadin-files-war-crimes-complaint-against-Abbas-with-ICC-381312 – 11/10/2014

Addendum to “United Nazis Workers Relief Agency (UNRWA)”

31 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by commart in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

corruption, Gaza, Hamas, UNRWA, war crimes

“Rather than falsely accusing Israel,” the letter continued, “one might have expected that as the executive head of the UN, you would have admitted responsibility of the UN for such abuse of its facilities, and instituted a thorough inquiry as to how and why UNRWA facilities were placed at the disposal of the Hamas terror organization, how and why the UN officials responsible for such facilities permitted this situation to occur, and why those rockets and other weapons that were discovered in such facilities were transferred to Hamas, for their continued use against Israel’s citizens.

“In permitting the storage of weapons, and in transferring such weapons into the hands of Hamas,” the letter asserted, “the UN has in fact permitted itself to become accessory to the commission of war crimes.”

http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/20841/unrwa-aiding-terrorism/#MxaSrOKRGtDwAy43.99 – 8/31/2014.

The above passage has been added to the piece on this blog titled “United Nazis Workers Relief Agency (UNRWA)”, which appears to have been abused by Hamafia and Associates, and that to allowing its budget and facilities to abet the terrorist organization with its assaults against Israelis and, in essence by way of its tactic of putting noncombatants and civilian assets directly in the line of fire, Gazans as well.

# # #

Yarmouk Camp – Played for Human Shields and Siege

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ethics, morality, political, political psychology, politics, refugees, starvation, war crimes, Yarmouk Camp

‫ weeping parents, and anger. Yarmouk refugee camp in the funeral of the martyrs of hunger. 11-1-2014 ‬ – YouTube

On YouTube, “TeachESL” noted (two days ago), “the man at 0:53 says: “We do not want Palestine or something. We want them to get us out here. We ask for Israeli citizenship, we do not want the right of return, we have sold Palestine. We do not even know anything about Palestine! We do not want Mahmoud Abbas. There are 1 billion and 300 million Muslims and they can do nothing! If there were even a single Israeli child in the Yarmuk camp, the problem would have been solved a long time ago.”

______

So what may the Jews do, whether of Israel or the Diaspora?

I know: these are the sworn enemies of Israel, determined to overlook the defeat of Arab armies in a war of annihilation (of the Jews, period) in 1948; brainwashed to believe the Land of Israel magically, innately Arab when the ground itself tells of the continuance presence of Jewry on the land for more than 3,000 years and beyond; and trained by anti-Semitic image, lies (like “The Protocols”), by bombastic and narcissistic and manipulative power to hate Jews and erase Judaism, which is more a world to discover than extinguish, and a good and great world at that.  And yet there they are, the residents of Yarmouk Camp, trapped between a tyrant and his equally tyrannical opponents.

Neither Bashar al-Assad nor al-Nusra could give a flying crap about what they — no one else, not Israelis, not Russians, not Americans, God forbid — are doing to the humanity they have overrun and subjugated for the amusement of their own immense and unbridled egos.

Jews have stood against that kind of tyranny since the Exodus from Egypt, and whether in fact or in our heads makes no difference.

Jewish ethical universalism, whether joined by hand-wringing Christians or forward-looking Islamic Humanists, cannot today — and as too many among the powerful may do — look away from Yarmouk Camp.

The twisted rhetoric of The Palestine Chronicle (the fulcrum for that in language behavior splits loyalty away from integrity) notes the following:

There is no doubt that the Yarmoukian Palestinians are in Syria because of a historic injustice imposed upon them by a settler-colonial enemy that does not spare any effort to exacerbate their suffering and prolong their exile. However, this indisputable historic occurrence should not blind us from the fact that independent of what Israel has planned to increase Palestinian suffering, the party responsible for the current crisis (and here I must reiterate my emphasis on the word ‘current’) is the brutal and inhuman Syrian regime and its leader Bashar El-Assad.

How Not to Be in Solidarity with Palestinian Refugees in Yarmouk? | Palestine Chronicle – 1/17/2014.

It’s good to see someone wising up.

It’s late in the day but welcomed, if with a grain of salt, nonetheless.

* * *

In the Yarmouk camp, more than 55 people have died from hunger and the majority of children are suffering from malnutrition, according to Abdullah al-Khatib, a Palestinian activist living there. Most people are consuming soup made from water and spices, Khatib said, and some are reportedly eating grass for survival.

Starving to death in Syria’s Yarmouk camp – Features – Al Jazeera English – 1/29/2014.

Reminder: Russian President Vladimir Putin means to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in business (possibly unless or until he runs out of money or his sponsor in Tehran, that kindly smiling white bearded sower of sorrows, does — and that’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future).

* * *

I have long believed that that I’d engage Gideon Levy’s discourse in its disingenuous Israel-bashing facet, and so I might do so here with suggestion that the IDF — who else? — magically and miraculously transport the Yarmouk Camp to someplace peaceful like Judea and Samaria.

Bar’el was restrained as he referred to Yarmouk as resembling a World War II ghetto, and even this description fell on deaf ears. Only 20,000 people remain in the camp, where 150,000 lived before the civil war. Only the weak and helpless remain – to live in destruction under siege. The rest have suffered their second expulsion . . . . After the terror of Yarmouk, Israel should show a measure of humanity. It should try to save the 20,000 besieged residents – natives of this land, remember – and declare that its gates are open to them to reunite with their families.

Israel, save the Palestinians in Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp – Opinion Israel News | Haaretz – 1/22/2014.

Nonetheless, disagree though we may — and as may the Yarmouk Camp resident quoted — we are all standing by watching a war crime in the making.

* * *

What is remarkable is that the save Yarmouk initiative has infiltrated all fields and has been adopted and picked up by political groups that have not seen eye to eye.

Crisis in Yarmouk camp in Syria unites Palestinians – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 1/27/2014.

I’ll say!

Although the Al-Monitor article confines itself to telling of the in-solidarity feelings inspired between Fatah and Hamas and pro-Palestinian groups, that I’ve played up this story tells that our barriers may not be as strong as we believe.

Crime is crime.

Yarmouk surviving off stray animals: resident | Al Akhbar English – 1/29/2014.

20,000 people in Yarmouk camp face starvation | GulfNews.com – 1/29/2014.

# # #

 

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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