Meet the Syria Support Movement Steering Committee:
Ali Mallah is a Lebanese-Canadian anti-war and community activist with roots in the south Lebanon community. He is on the National Steering Committee of the Canadian Peace Alliance, the coordinating committee of the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, is a board member of the Centre for Social Justice and is a union activist. He is a former Vice-President of the Canadian Arab Federation, and is on the Board of Directors of Alternatives Canada, Urban Alliance on Race Relations and the Anti-Racism Task force. Ali has also helped to organize Canadian speaking tours and events featuring Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross, as well as journalists Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett. In addition, he arranged educational panel discussions and forums on Syria in order to bring a point of view in defense of Syria to the Canadian public
Ken Stone is a veteran anti-war, anti-racist, social justice, and environmental activist in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is the Treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War, a member of the Canada-Wide Peace and Justice Network, and a former Central Committee member of the Global March to Jerusalem. He has lectured widely about Syria, written a number of letters and articles on the Syrian crisis for the Hamilton Spectator and Global Research, and appeared numerous times on Press TV and RT. In 2016, Ken travelled with the Second International Tour of Solidarity with Syria to Damascus to observe the Syrian parliamentary elections of April 2016. On the basis of that visit, Ken wrote a booklet, entitled “Defiant Syria”, which is still available online for a few dollars on Amazon, iTunes, and Kobo.
Dr. Paul Larudee has been a faculty member at universities in California and Beirut, and has volunteered as a human rights activist in the U.S., Cuba, Palestine and other countries. He was an organizer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Palestine, and was one of eight ISM volunteers wounded by Israeli gunfire in Bethlehem on April 2, 2002. He co-founded the Global March to Jerusalem and the Global Campaign for the Return to Palestine, as well as the movement to break the Israeli siege of Gaza by sea, which successfully piloted the first boats to enter Gaza by sea in 41 years in 2008. In 2010 he and hundreds of other volunteers challenging the blockade were taken captive at sea by Israeli troops in. He visited Syria for the first time in May, 2013 as part of a delegation organized by Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross in partnership with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire. Soon after his return to the U.S., he co-founded the Syria Solidarity Movement (now Syria Support Movement so as not to confuse with anti-Syrian groups that later stole the name) and registered it in California. He led a delegation to Syria the following year and two months later was one of the international observers of the Syrian presidential elections. He has led several other delegations to Syria, the latest being to the international meeting of the Syrian Federation of Trade Unions in 2019, as well as to Cuba, Lebanon and Iran. He is Chief Executive Officer of the Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees, a human rights NGO active mainly in West Asia and Latin America, and he appears frequently on Press TV. His writings on Syria include Mythology, Barrel Bombs and Human Rights Watch, The National Geographic Hell on Earth Syria Hoax and The Syrian Charity Scam all of which expose fraud and disinformation in the western media as well as the terrorist groups that pose as humanitarian organizations under the protection of the U.S. and other western governments.
Yvette Tariyeh-Shamier is a Syrian citizen living in the Netherlands since 1999 and holds the Dutch nationality. She worked as a language teacher (English – Dutch – Arabic) until 2019. Between 2011 and 2016 she worked as project manager and consultant in several non-governmental organizations and was secretary of the Syrian Committee in the Netherlands between 2011 and 2017. From 2019 until now she has worked as a sworn interpreter (English – Arabic – Dutch) and coordinator of charity work for SSM in Syria
Rick Sterling is a Canadian American. Since retiring from his career as an electronics engineer, Rick Sterling works full time in support of anti-imperialist struggles internationally. In addition to being on the board of SSM, he is current board president of Mt Diablo Peace and Justice Center as well as Task Force on the Americas, 35 and 50 year old peace and solidarity organizations. Rick first visited Syria in spring 2014 with the International Peace delegation led by Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire. Since then, he has been to Syria numerous times including as an election observer in 2021. Over the past eight years, Rick has researched and written dozens of exposes of western media misinformation on Syria including: * one of the first exposes of the White Helmets; * the Caesar photo fraud; * Amnesty’s false prison report; * Doctors without Borders false claims about Al Quds Hospital in Aleppo; * false chemical weapons accusations; * how Bab al Hawa is falsely claimed as “humanitarian”; * how US Caesar sanctions on Syria are a crime against humanity; * how slick computer simulations are used to deceive the public. Rick has also exposed false adulation of Marie Colvin and the ugly western attacks on the Syrian First Lady. He and his family live in Walnut Creek in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Dr. Adnan Muhammad Sha’aban Azzouz is a Syrian academic and faculty member at Damascus University, Qasyoun University, IUST University, and Syrian Virtual University. He joined the General Federation of Trade Unions in Syria in 2005 as a translator and interpreter. Since then, he represented Syria alongside Syrian trade union delegations worldwide. In 2017, he was elected Secretariat Member of World Federation of Trade Unions, in charge of the Middle East Office in Damascus. He has raised awareness towards occupational and health safety for Syrian workers, especially during the Syrian crisis since 2011. He also participated in the programs of ILO in Syria regarding protection of children working in unhealthy environments in wartime. He represented WFTU around the world to protect workers’ rights. He issued dozens of statements and interviews against illegal U.S. sanctions. He published many articles on international humanitarian law, linguistics, translations and modern teaching techniques. He published many books such as “Qura’an and Bible Spring from One Origin”, “Terms’ Conflict: Mass Media and Regime Overthrow”, “The Evolution of Human Language” and “In other words: A Course Book on Translation”. Dr. Azzouz is now the Dean of the Faculty of Literature and Head of English Department at Qasyoun University of Science and Technology. He has an M.A. in International Humanitarian Law from Syrian Virtual University under the title: “The International Criminal Responsibility of Military Coalitions for the Violations of Humanitarian International Law: An Applied Study on the Intervention of NATO in the Armed Conflict in Libya”.
Judy Bello is a retired software engineer who has participated in several peace delegations to the Middle East. She visited Syria three times, first as an election observer in 2014, then in 2017 for a series of meetings with government officials and others about aspects of the war including both terrorism and reconciliation. In September 2019 she attended an international trade union forum hosted by the General Federation of Trade Unions in Syria, held in solidarity with Syrian workers and people to break the economic sanctions and in rejection of imperialist interventions and terrorism. On two occasions she brought several suitcases full of medical supplies from a local hospital in her hometown. Judy has also been active in her support to Iran and Pakistan, She is is currently editor of the UNAC (United National Antiwar Coalition) Blog, and the Syria Support Movement Website. She also serves on the UNAC Administrative Committee.
Dr. Amal Wahdan is a longtime Palestinian resistance activist and co-founder of the One Democratic State of Palestine (ODSP) initiative. She is a founding member of women, student and workers unions and was elected to their leadership councils. Co-founder of the Unified National Leadership of the Intifada (1987). She was under house arrest for seven years during the first Intifada and deported in 1990. During her house arrest she was co-founder of the Unified National Leadership of the Intifada (1987). She returned in 1994 as part of the Oslo Agreement. In 2001 she traveled to the U.S. where she founded the Arab Gazette newspaper to defend Arab and Muslim communities after September 11, 2001 and joined the Faculty of Arts at Myers University. In 2012 she co-founded the Popular Committee in Defense of Syria, which has satellite committees in Palestinian cities and refugee camps. She is a member of the Lebanon-based Global Gathering to Support the Choice of Resistance and was on several delegations to Syria., including two with the Syria Support Movement. The latest was in 2021 to witness the presidential election. She also authored a Statement and collected signatures of more than 2000 signatures of Palestinian groups and individuals in the occupied homeland, refugee camps and diaspora condemning the global war on Syria.
Dr. Tim Anderson is Director of the Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, based in Sydney, Australia. He was for twenty years an academic in Political Economy at the University of Sydney and before that taught at other Australian universities. He researches and writes on development, rights and self-determination in Latin America, the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. In 2017 he was awarded the Cuban Medal of Freedom by the Cuban Council of State. He has published dozens of articles in a range of academic books and journals, and a total of ten books, the most recent of which are: Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea (2015), The Dirty War on Syria (2016, in ten languages), Axis of Resistance (2019) and ‘The Pandemic and Independent Countries’ (2020). Among his many articles are The Dirty War On Syria: Chemical Fabrications, The East Ghouta Incident, How America backed the ISIS takeover an destruction of Palmyra and The Siege of West Asia. In addition to his academic career in Australia, he has lectured at the University of Damascus, Syria, and has given many televised and radio interviews.
