The world is a ball of crushed Coke cans,
my wine has a plastic-y nose,
there’s camels on Svalbard High Street,
burning coal to help us cool down;
too much info has left us all powerless,
with nematodes sporting louche crowns,
people going camping in cities,
and others planning jaunts to the moon.
Assad, the Butcher.
In the latest horrors from Syria, United Nations monitors are investigating a massacre in the hamlet of Qubeir, where some 78 people reportedly were shot, garroted or burned alive. If formally confirmed, it would be the fourth massacre in two weeks. Activists said an assault on the town of Hiffeh that began on Monday included the first use of missiles fired from helicopter gunships since the anti-Assad protests began 16 months ago.
Despite his claims that the violence is the work of “terrorists,” President Bashar al-Assad has a lot to hide. On Thursday, Syrian troops and pro-government supporters barred the monitors from Qubeir, and the monitors were fired upon. The team was finally permitted to enter the hamlet on Friday, and journalists and a spokeswoman for the monitors reported chilling evidence of multiple killings, including congealed blood and scattered body parts. Villagers said militiamen had trucked bodies away.
Having taken out Saddam in Iraq and Gaddafi in Libya, US/NATO/Israel moved onto the next bogeyman in the Middle East in 2011, Bashar Assad, president of Syria. However, Wikileaks documents reveal plans afoot to destabilise Syria as far back as 2006.The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), hatched by the Zionist neocon cabal in Washington, had Syria and the Middle East in its sights a decade before.
Assad has been falsely accused of attacking his own people with chemical weapons but like the stories of Kuwaiti babies being hurled from incubators by Iraqi forces or the Libyan army being given Viagra to facilitate rape as part of Gaddafi’s war on his own people, evidence indicates this is untrue. Bashar Assad is not the monster he’s made out to be.
One boy was filmed suffocating on the ground, his chest heaving and his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. Photographs show dead children lined up in rows on the floor or piled in heaps in the back of a vehicle, their clothes ripped from them by rescuers who used hoses to try to wash the chemicals from their bodies. Other images show victims foaming from their mouths or writhing on the ground as they struggle for air. Hours after the attack began, witnesses say, regime warplanes circled back over the area and dropped bombs on a clinic treating survivors.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has signalled his country’s intention to act on Syria, describing the use of chemical weapons as a “moral obscenity” and pinning the blame on the Syrian government.
“Let me be clear. The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable. And despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable,” Kerry said.
“The meaning of this attack goes beyond the conflict in Syria itself. And that conflict has already brought so much terrible suffering. This is about the large-scale indiscriminate use of weapons that the civilised world long ago decided must never be used at all, a conviction shared even by countries that agree on little else,” Kerry added.
Syrian rebel groups backed by the U.S. and its allies “have committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including abductions, torture and summary killings,” according to Amnesty International.
A report by the leading human rights organization details how extremist rebel groups have taken over large parts of major Syrian cities, in which they have created repressive theocratic regimes where critics are violently silenced and where religious and ethnic minority groups fear for their lives.
THE CASE FOR HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION
The concept of humanitarian intervention is at its core about protecting people. It rests on the premise that when gross abuses of human rights are taking place, when innocent people are being maimed and killed, then the international community cannot and should not stand idly by. What precisely should be done and by whom is a topic of great importance and debate. But that something should be done to stop such abuses is unquestionable. As Kofi Annan has stated unequivocally “massive and systematic violations of human rights, wherever they take place, should never be allowed to stand.”
As Beate Jahn has put it, the debate around “humanitarian intervention” centres on whether we believe the world is becoming more moral and, therefore, a new kind of “humanitarian” intervention is possible, or whether we think morality is essentially unchanging, but that we need a term to justify intervention in support of a particular political project, in which case labelling it “humanitarian” is inappropriate. She argues that history reveals morality and politics to be mutually constitutive and that “the concept of humanitarian intervention therefore does not describe new policies; instead it serves to hide the political nature of these policies today.”
An anti-refugee backlash seems to sweeping the globe, reflected in media coverage and government policy. Adam White asks what has happened to our collective sympathy and concern for the human rights of refugees?
We need new photographs of dead Syrian children. With politicians and sectors of the general public exhibiting a significant reduction in sympathy of late for the plight of incoming refugees, it might be necessary. The last time we all saw a dead Syrian child, in the form of Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach, it spearheaded major questions about the UK’s relative lack of support for Syrian refugees. Charity drives were launched, Facebook campaigns were all the rage, and celebrities announced their intentions to open up their homes to those most in need. Then it all seemed to stop.
We need new photographs of dead Syrian children. But here’s a surprise. As it turns out, though you’d be forgiven for not being aware, we already have them. When a boat of refugees sunk off the Turkish coast on January 28, killing all 37 Syrians on board, photographers were able to snap nearly identical images to the ones that shocked the world into (short-lived) action last summer. Like the images of Alan, these were similarly tragic photographs of another young Syrian child, cradled in the arms of a member of the Turkish armed guard.
But unlike Alan, this dead child hasn’t been splashed across the mainstream press. Instead there has been a significant shift in refugee coverage. No longer are refugees being depicted as humans in desperate need of help, nor even as relentless blights on Europe… they’re not being reported on at all.
What is being covered in the British media of late are acts of degrading human indecency: identifying wristbands for refugees in Cardiff, coloured doors in Middlesbrough, neo-Nazi rallies in Dover. Following a week of high-profile stories, it’s easy to stop and ponder: has the absence of an emotional narrative contributed to the strange rise in anti-refugee sentiment in recent weeks? Or did we all just get a bit bored by it all?
this is proegada :O the norhe never forget . the USA is the eivel in the waord . may odini sloter you alle cristin skum
This is like Metal Gear Solid, but in real life..
Vitamin C Kills Implanted Alien Hybrid Embryos1 day ago
this video is pure jewry
What the TRUTH and what is fake,?
Child abuse, drownings, scary clowns. The kind of bad news stories that adults are exposed to every day but what about children and the way they process these stories? Sean O’Rourke asks if we should protect them from hearing bad news?
We have to offer some context. We have to explain as best we can what that’s about, why that’s happening because at some level we need to understand – What is it that they know? What sense are they already making about it? So you might ask them some follow up questions about what it is they’ve seen.”
After you’ve found out their thoughts and shared your own explanation of the facts. It can be helpful to offer some reassurance to your kids in a practical and honest way…Instead of denying the possibility of bad things happening it is better to assure your children that it’s very unlikely that anything will happen to them as the level of risk and danger is very low.
According to the United Nations, at least 2,700 children were among 8,000 evacuees allowed to leave the war-torn Syrian city in recent days.
But many more remain trapped in the remaining rebel-held areas.
In video footage, aired by Channel 4 News, one toddler, called Aya, sits on a stretcher in Aleppo’s last hospital, her face covered in dust and dried blood.
As chaos engulfs the room around her, the toddler doesn’t cry.
Journalists and a spokeswoman for the monitors reported chilling evidence of multiple killings, including congealed blood and scattered body parts. Villagers said militiamen had trucked bodies away.
Like the stories of Kuwaiti babies being hurled from incubators by Iraqi forces, evidence indicates this is untrue. Bashar Assad is not the monster he’s made out to be.
One boy was filmed suffocating on the ground, his chest heaving and his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. Other images show victims foaming from their mouths or writhing on the ground as they struggle for air.
Kerry: Syria gas attack a moral obscenity
“Let me be clear. The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable. This is about the large-scale indiscriminate use of weapons that the civilised world long ago decided must never be used at all, a conviction shared even by countries that agree on little else,” Kerry added.
Syrian rebel groups backed by the U.S. and its allies “have committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including abductions, torture and summary killings,” according to Amnesty International.
THE CASE FOR HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION
The concept of humanitarian intervention is at its core about protecting people. As Kofi Annan has stated unequivocally “massive and systematic violations of human rights, wherever they take place, should never be allowed to stand.”
The debate around “humanitarian intervention” centres on whether we believe the world is becoming more moral and a new kind of “humanitarian” intervention is possible. She argues that history reveals morality and politics to be mutually constitutive and that “the concept of humanitarian intervention therefore does not describe new policies; instead it serves to hide the political nature of these policies today.”
We need new photographs of dead Syrian children. The last time we all saw a dead Syrian child, in the form of Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach, charity drives were launched, Facebook campaigns were all the rage, and celebrities announced their intentions to open up their homes to those most in need. Then it all seemed to stop.
When a boat of refugees sunk off the Turkish coast, there were similarly tragic photographs of another young Syrian child, cradled in the arms of a member of the Turkish armed guard.
But unlike Alan, this dead child hasn’t been splashed across the mainstream press. No longer are refugees being depicted as humans in desperate need of help, nor even as relentless blights on Europe… they’re not being reported on at all.
Did we all just get a bit bored by it all?
This is like Metal Gear Solid, but in real life.
This video is pure Jewry
What is the TRUTH and what is fake?
Child abuse, drownings, scary clowns. Atrocities in Libya. What about children and the way they process these stories? What is it that they know? What sense are they already making about it? Instead of denying the possibility of bad things happening it is better to assure your children that it’s very unlikely that anything will happen to them, as the level of risk and danger is very low.
In video footage, one toddler sits on a stretcher in Aleppo’s last hospital, her face covered in dust and dried blood.
As chaos engulfs the room around her, the toddler doesn’t even cry.
Assad, the Butcher.
Scattered body parts;
morally obscene; a boy
like a fish out of water.
(But is this TRUE or is it fake?
Is he instead a bogeyman? (pure Jewry; extremist rebels)
Not the monster he’s made out to be?)
We should intervene of course,
except interventions are Political
and our empathy reserves are empty
(Ha! Real life Action-Adventure Stealth);
Besides. What are we to think or do,
how can we make anything
of a toddler who doesn’t cry.
Charlie Hill is a critically acclaimed novelist and short story writer. He has published a handful of poems in Under the Radar, Prole, Ink, Sweat and Tears and I am not a silent poet.
Ours is a state of eternal war,
where stiff-backed men parade
and slouchers sit at desks
tapping out tattoos.
There’s a Veteran’s Badge
for all who fight, but some
are also pressed for good,
behind less cynical bars.
This is for those heroes, Our Boys
who’ve sacrificed their truths
for us – a roll call of the other brave
that should be tapped out too:
Michael Lyons, Royal Navy;
Ben Griffin, SAS;
Joe Glenton, Royal Logistics Corps;
Malcolm Kendall-Smith,
of the RAF.
..
I am not a silent poet 