More on the tragedy of the Syrian people - as the world watches
The Russian and Chinese governments have a lot to answer for, IMHO.
A bit about the politics behind this: Russia and China have blocked recent UN attempts to provide binding resolutions on Syria. OTOH, if one considers the Iranian angle to this, I don't find myself blaming just the Russians and the Chinese, given the US and Israel's recent operations against Iran and the response this has provoked.
One aspect of this that has been underappreciated, I suspect, is the Iranian angle: Iran has ties to the Assad regime (ethnic ties among others). Israel and (most probably) the US are currently involved in covert targeting of the Irananian regime's interests (e.g. the recent assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists).
As for Russia and China, they have quietly been moving away from the US: for instance on early sally in this 'war' was in 2010 when they announced they would no longer use US dollars when trading with each other. They have also provided support to Iran in opposition of US interests.
An additional aspect of this is that the US may actually have given nuclear technology to the Iranians: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/jan/05/energy.g2.
In conclusion: All of this is massively beside the point, however. Which is something I wish politicians would get: this should be a simple equation. In other words: people being killed = we help. Not so complicated is it, when one ceases to think like a politician and begins to try to see things from a humanitarian perspective?
----------------------
'Ghastly images flow from shattered Syrian city'
(From the NY Times)
CAIRO - During a terrifying two minutes on Wednesday morning, 11 rockets slammed into a single apartment building in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, the city in Syria that has been besieged by government forces for 19 days. When the barrage stopped, the surviving occupants stampeded down the building’s narrow concrete staircase, hoping to escape to the street. Then suddenly the bombardment resumed. More rockets splattered masonry and scattered shrapnel, blowing holes in walls and staircases, and leaving a trail of the dead and the dying from the fifth floor on down.
At least 22 bodies, including that of 6-year-old Mohammad Yahia al-Wees, were recovered from the scene, according to accounts and videos compiled by activists. And on the stairwell of the ground floor, 10 yards from the door and possible safety, amid the rubble, lay two foreign journalists, Marie Colvin, a veteran war correspondent, and Rémi Ochlik, a noted photojournalist. Both had been killed. They were among the few outsiders able to reach Homs, taking great personal risks and defying a government determined to hide its repression from the world. In the end, they died trying to reveal what was happening there.
As hundreds of homemade videos pouring out of Homs have made clear, the bombardment of the apartment building was just one episode in the Syrian Army’s daily and sustained assault on the city. Heavy weaponry has been used to devastating effect against civilian neighborhoods that have virtually no defense, beyond a few army defectors and lightly armed activists.
(...)
By Wednesday, 104 YouTube videos of deaths from Tuesday’s violence had been posted, their links cataloged by Mr. Jarrah’s activists. Many of the more telling ones were quickly rebroadcast on satellite television networks, including images of a wounded father who crawled over to his son on the floor of a makeshift clinic, hugging him and crying, “Why did they kill you?”
And then he turns to the camera and says, “Oh humans, oh world, look, what could he have done?”
-----------------
More at the source.
A bit about the politics behind this: Russia and China have blocked recent UN attempts to provide binding resolutions on Syria. OTOH, if one considers the Iranian angle to this, I don't find myself blaming just the Russians and the Chinese, given the US and Israel's recent operations against Iran and the response this has provoked.
One aspect of this that has been underappreciated, I suspect, is the Iranian angle: Iran has ties to the Assad regime (ethnic ties among others). Israel and (most probably) the US are currently involved in covert targeting of the Irananian regime's interests (e.g. the recent assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists).
As for Russia and China, they have quietly been moving away from the US: for instance on early sally in this 'war' was in 2010 when they announced they would no longer use US dollars when trading with each other. They have also provided support to Iran in opposition of US interests.
An additional aspect of this is that the US may actually have given nuclear technology to the Iranians: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/jan/05/energy.g2.
In conclusion: All of this is massively beside the point, however. Which is something I wish politicians would get: this should be a simple equation. In other words: people being killed = we help. Not so complicated is it, when one ceases to think like a politician and begins to try to see things from a humanitarian perspective?
----------------------
'Ghastly images flow from shattered Syrian city'
(From the NY Times)
CAIRO - During a terrifying two minutes on Wednesday morning, 11 rockets slammed into a single apartment building in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, the city in Syria that has been besieged by government forces for 19 days. When the barrage stopped, the surviving occupants stampeded down the building’s narrow concrete staircase, hoping to escape to the street. Then suddenly the bombardment resumed. More rockets splattered masonry and scattered shrapnel, blowing holes in walls and staircases, and leaving a trail of the dead and the dying from the fifth floor on down.
At least 22 bodies, including that of 6-year-old Mohammad Yahia al-Wees, were recovered from the scene, according to accounts and videos compiled by activists. And on the stairwell of the ground floor, 10 yards from the door and possible safety, amid the rubble, lay two foreign journalists, Marie Colvin, a veteran war correspondent, and Rémi Ochlik, a noted photojournalist. Both had been killed. They were among the few outsiders able to reach Homs, taking great personal risks and defying a government determined to hide its repression from the world. In the end, they died trying to reveal what was happening there.
As hundreds of homemade videos pouring out of Homs have made clear, the bombardment of the apartment building was just one episode in the Syrian Army’s daily and sustained assault on the city. Heavy weaponry has been used to devastating effect against civilian neighborhoods that have virtually no defense, beyond a few army defectors and lightly armed activists.
(...)
By Wednesday, 104 YouTube videos of deaths from Tuesday’s violence had been posted, their links cataloged by Mr. Jarrah’s activists. Many of the more telling ones were quickly rebroadcast on satellite television networks, including images of a wounded father who crawled over to his son on the floor of a makeshift clinic, hugging him and crying, “Why did they kill you?”
And then he turns to the camera and says, “Oh humans, oh world, look, what could he have done?”
-----------------
More at the source.