“Pro-Assad/Russia loons & propagandists have been so effective in muddying the waters, casting aspersions on Assad’s victims, & deflecting criticism away from this century’s most brutal dictator that they undermine any coordinated & sustained international effort to protect the Syrian people from a genocide.”
–Saad Bin Muhammad
Last week 22 countries sent a letter to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva denouncing China’s concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims. The list of signatories is not impressive since most of them have troops deployed in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, & elsewhere. They include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, & the UK. The US was not a signatory since they had earlier walked out of the UNHCR.
In response, Cuba, Venezuela, & Syria were among 37 of the worst human rights violators in the world, including Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, North Korea, UAE, Qatar, Nigeria, Angola, Togo, Tajikistan, the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Myanmar, & Belarus, in signing a shameful letter to the UNHRC praising China’s remarkable achievements in human rights & claiming that concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims are necessary to fight “separatism” & “terrorism.”
We’d like the propagandists & guppies of the Cuban, Venezuelan, & Syrian regimes to explain why those three governments which they declare bastions of democracy sided with genocide if they are so damn progressive? Or does that explain why, among Assadists, denial of the Uyghur genocide is now as de rigueur as kissing the asses of those three regimes?
(Photo of one of the concentration camps where China holds more than a million Uyghurs from Reuters)
Amir & Tasnim Zakareya Hussein al Sayyed were killed yesterday along with their mom & dad by a Russian airstrike on Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib province. Authorities have not been able to identify which faction of “al-Qaeda affiliated Salafi-jihadi terrorists” the family belonged to because they were just civilians.
(Photo from journalist Asaad Hanna on Twitter)
Sketch from eyewitness photo: last Thursday, a White Helmet rescue worker tried to save a child who had been disemboweled in a slaughter by Syrian & Russian bombers.
Stop the slaughter! Stop bombing Idlib!
(Sketch by artist Marc Nelson on Twitter)
Sketch from eyewitness photo: a hospital in Idlib was targeted by Syrian & Russian bombers after it announced a blood drive. Women & children were bombed to death, including this infant.
Stop the bombing of Idlib! Stop the bombing of hospitals!
(Sketch by artist Marc Nelson on Twitter)
Sorry for not explaining my absence. It wasn’t a Facebook suspension this time. I was ill & had a sick puppy so took time to recoup. I hope somebody missed me.
A wonderful album of photos from a protest in Berlin against Syrian & Russian bombing of Idlib:
This crying, scared little girl in the town of Kfar Ruma, Idlib is running for cover from airstrikes by Syrian & Russian bombers. Contrary to the claims of the Assad dictatorship & its irredeemable guppies, there were over three million civilians in Idlib, including one million children, when the bombing offensive began on April 26th. Over 300,000 have been forced to flee for their lives. Idlib is not a place where only terrorists live–even if we agreed about who was a terrorist under the rubrics of the Islamophobic ‘war on terror.’
Political analysis is complex because human societies are complex & contradictory so there are many issues that need to be debated for clarity & understanding. But bombing or shooting at civilians is not one of them, especially if barrel bombs & incendiary weapons are involved. There is no possible & certainly no principled justification for carpet bombing Idlib for now almost three months. For Assad, his propagandists & his guppies to claim only terrorists are holed up in Idlib & that all civilians long ago fled is nothing more than a contemptible lie to justify bombing the place to smithereens. Like it or not, even Assadists have to concede to the Geneva Conventions or take their place with war criminals.
(Photo from AFP )
These four little kids who look like siblings were among the recently killed in Syrian & Russian bombing of the village of Mhambil in Idlib. That al-Qaeda is so devious. These four may look like little kids to us but the Assad dictatorship recognized them immediately as top commanders in the “al-Qaeda affiliated Salafi-jihadi terrorists” that Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Rania Khalek, & their unquestioning guppies constantly denounce.
Syrians in their village however are mourning their loss because they knew them to be just four little kids, not terrorists.
Stop the bombing of Idlib. They are civilians, not terrorists.
(Photo from several Syrian sources on Twitter)