diamond—- at the time, the victors of WWII were the great powers .

“the reasons why there are vetoes in the Un is so that great powers can not be
completely overridden which would lead to the break-up of the UN.”

And exactly who are these great powers? I’ve looked and I’ve looked and I’m damned if I can see a single power in the UN that I would call ‘great’. If you only listen to what they SAY, then you might be misled into thinking they’re great but when you see what they DO, oh then the scales fall from your eyes and you realize they have feet of clay and are bears of very little brain. The real reason some countries have vetoes and others don’t is so that the balance of power can be set in stone and never altered and the wars and injustices and the vast profits they generate for the ‘great’ powers can continue to the crack of doom. Great? I don’t think so.

the reasons why there are vetoes in the Un is so that great powers can not be
completely overridden which would lead to the break-up of the UN.

ti’s a recognition that it’s better to talk, even to talk shit, than to stop talking.

I heard someone on the radio say that to quell this uprising Assad needs to kill around 400,000 people. In other words he can’t win because eventually the UN will act, when its hand is forced and the many bodies, including children as young as seven, become too unsightly and too smelly to be ignored - as usual. I know freedom is costly but frankly what the west is allowing to happen in Syria is a scandal and a crime. There’s too kinds of sins: sins of commission and sins of omission. I’m sure you can work out which one is being committed by the UN and the west. As for China and Russia, since both are Fascist it comes as no surprise that they make common cause with other Fascists and makes me question why they have been given a veto in the UN. Who makes these tragic and amoral decisions? No one in the UN should have a veto. In a meeting of equals why are some more equal than others?

Okie—-it’s not a presidential election year in Syria.

Sorry, the Empire/Sunni alliance makes the skeptic alarm ring too loud.

Why does the single MSM source do nothing but reenforce the Empire’s position?

Would Israel be sated with a docile Shia population, while absorbing Lebanon and parts of Syria, or would that society’s make up force it to find more mortal enemies, using their nuclear arsenal to blackmail the planet into compliance?

How many times will we be given the same propaganda with, minor changes, until the majority quits panicking at every cluck of Chicken Little?

Does the Empire believe that the Syria, Iraq, Iran overland route will keep the Strait of Hormuz clear?

Is anyone shocked this is happening in a Presidential Election year?

and hilarity ensues…

we don’t like the USA so no matter of many Syrians the Assad family kills, it’s cool.

Escobar goes on to share the following:

So what’s really happening on the ground in Homs? Here are sections from a crucial e-mail sent by a trusted Syrian Christian source:

Many Syrians are ecstatic about the double veto but Homs is very worrying. The opposition spread news about a massacre just before the vote and they quoted numbers in the hundreds ... unbelievably quoted by all news channels (all based on “activists”) without any verification, only to bring the number down to something like 33 later. They never showed any bombing or taking people under rubble or any injured people ... just clean-bodied men with their hands and feet tied up and shot mostly once and only in their underwear. Whatever the Syrian government has in its arsenal it seems there are very intelligent bombs that can strip and tie up people then shoot them in the head!!

The thing that we know fully well is that there are no army presence in Homs. My parents left the city then came back Saturday morning on the day of the alleged massacre and there was nothing. They usually call a hotline (115) and ask if the roads are safe and security operator will tell you to come to Homs or not. This time they told them to come and indeed there was nothing to be seen or heard. This of course doesn’t mean that most of the city and particularly the old city is under the control of the gunmen. Our old neighborhood where I grew up (the Christian Bustan al-Diwan) was completely taken over by the gunmen. YouTube videos show how the FSA cleared the army roadblock in the previous neighborhood (Bab al-Dreib) and then proceeded to destroy the one guarding our neighborhood.

People in my neighborhood did not complain of any major harassment or problem, however the “revolutionaries” did indeed break into a couple of homes that their people left either days earlier or at the time, also into a school, Homs Newspaper (operated by the Orthodox church for more than 100 years) and a few other restaurants but no other complaints. I mean, considering what these FSA do to Alawites, then the Christians are really getting very fair treatment so far.

What many believe now is that the bodies shown tied up and shot in Khalidiya and which are alleged to be “men, women and children” killed by a bombardment of the Syrian army were nothing but kidnapped Syrian soldiers. Add to them kidnapped Alawites who were not liberated (or actually exchanged). When the FSA kidnap some people, Alawites started to kidnap in return to exchange the prisoners. This doesn’t always work and some people who weren’t “exchanged for” turned up dead in Khalidiya.

All in all up to this point there really isn’t any offensive by the Syrian army on the city. The rebels continue to attack other checkpoints. People are completely in the dark as to what the government is thinking regarding Homs. It’s devastating for me to see my neighborhood become another battleground and many of my friends leaving.

All this dovetails with an explanation by fine journalist Nir Rosen, author of the indispensable Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World ; Homs is essentially a question of rebels seizing government checkpoints - and government forces shelling a few neighborhoods with mortars. According to Rosen:

There was no fighting in Homs, just shelling from these safe locations (from the point of view of the regime), suggesting they are unable to actually attack Khalidiya with regime fighters ... No opposition fighters were killed in the attack. And up to 130 people in Khaldiyeh were killed and 800 wounded (like I said not fighters). Now that’s a lot of people but if you were watching the news ... you would think that Homs was destroyed while in fact this attack can also be seen as a sign of the regime’s weakness in the city.

This new piece by Pepe Escobar at the Asia Times has some important insights:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NB07Ak02.html

Some excerpts:

Russia has its own geopolitical reasons to consider Syria a red line; Syria hosts Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean, in the port of Tartus; and Syria buys Russian weapons. But in fact all the five BRICS - plus the overwhelmingly majority of the developing world - are in synch; forget about regime change-enabling UN resolutions, promoted by the usual suspect Western trio US-Britain-France and - the summit of hypocrisy - devised by the “democratic” House of Saud and Qatar.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will be in Damascus this Tuesday to meet with President Bashar al-Assad and discuss a serious plan to try to end the bloodshed. Lavrov has calmly explained the reasons for the Russian veto.

He had sent Russian amendments to the draft resolution directly to Clinton; “The rationality and objectivity of these amendments should not cause anyone’s doubt.” But to no avail; the resolution remained “unilateral” - demanding nothing from Syrian anti-government armed groups. Lavrov stressed, “No president with self-respect, no matter how treated, will agree to surrender inhabited localities to armed extremists without resistance.” Imagine if Homs was in Texas.

Still, the SNC now holds Moscow and
Beijing “responsible for the escalating acts of killing and genocide”, and facilitators of a “license to kill”. Lavrov is imperturbable; “We have repeatedly said that we are not protecting Assad but international law. The prerogative of the UN Security Council does not envision interference in internal processes.”

Homs: Who’s killing whom?

Syria’s UN ambassador Bashar Ja’afari strongly denied the opposition’s accusation of regime forces bombing the Khadiliya neighborhood in Homs with tanks and artillery and killing over 200 people - arguing that “no sensible person” would launch such an attack the night before the UN Security Council was discussing a resolution. Without any preliminary investigation, France called it a “massacre” and a “crime against humanity”. Like France’s performance during the Algerian war?

To understand what’s at stake, it’s crucial to keep in mind who’s defecting from the Syrian army. Syria’s top military - also members of the Ba’ath Party - are almost all Alawis, the folk Shi’ite sect (10% of the overall population). They are not defecting.

The defectors are overwhelmingly Sunni troops (70% of the overall population); they are forming militias, Libya-style, heavily infiltrated by mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, and fighting government troops. The government’s response has been to target the neighborhoods where the families of these defectors live. The center of Homs nowadays is controlled by the rebels.