by Steven Sahiounie, published on Mideast Discourse, December 15, 2022 Damascus is now bitterly cold and is soon to be blanketed with snow. About 12 million Syrians are facing a deadly winter without heating fuel, gasoline for transportation, and dark houses each evening without electricity. Aleppo, Homs, and Hama are …
Read More »Paris conference on Syria: US, European allies renew push for regime-change
13 Jan 2014, Alex Lantier Top US and European diplomats assembled Sunday in Paris for a two-day meeting of the so-called Friends of Syria group, renewing the push for regime-change in Damascus. The talks came amid reports that US officials are preparing renewed shipments of supplies to Syrian Islamist opposition …
Read More »Saudi Arabia: A Retrograde Rentier Dictatorship and Global Terrorism
Jan 11, 2014, James Petras Saudi Arabia has all the vices and none of the virtues of an oil rich state like Venezuela. The country is governed by a family dictatorship which tolerates no opposition and severely punishes human rights advocates and political dissidents. Hundreds of billions in oil revenues …
Read More »Volgograd and the Conquest of Eurasia: Has the House of Saud seen its Stalingrad?
Jan 4, 2014, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya The events in Volgograd are part of a much larger body of events and a multi-faceted struggle that has been going on for decades as part of a cold war after the Cold War—the post-Cold War cold war, if you please—that was a result …
Read More »Sunni monarchs back YouTube hate preachers: Anti-Shia propaganda threatens a sectarian civil war which will engulf the entire Muslim world
Dec 29, 2013, the Independent Anti-Shia hate propaganda spread by Sunni religious figures sponsored by, or based in, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, is creating the ingredients for a sectarian civil war engulfing the entire Muslim world. Iraq and Syria have seen the most violence, with the majority of …
Read More »The Russian-Saudi Showdown at Sochi
Dec 31, 2013, Consortium News Monday’s terrorist bombings only 400 miles away from the site of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, have a geopolitical back story involving implied threats from Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan to Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer when Bandar was pressing …
Read More »Pope Needs to Condemn US Warmongering
Jan 2, 2014, Information Clearinghouse In his annual New Year’s address, Catholic Pope Francis sounded particularly vexed when he urged an end to wars and conflict. “What on Earth is happening in the hearts of men? What on Earth is happening in the heart of humanity?” the pontiff decried to …
Read More »NYT Backs Off Its Syria-Sarin Analysis
Dec 29, 2013, Consortium News The New York Times has, kind of, admitted that it messed up its big front-page story that used a “vector analysis” to pin the blame for the Aug. 21 Sarin attack on the Syrian government, an assertion that was treated by Official Washington as the slam-dunk …
Read More »“Security Arc” forms amidst Mideast terror
Dec 21, 2013, al Akhbar Many observers are correct in noting that the Middle East is undergoing yet another seismic shift – that the Russian-brokered destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, a US-Iranian rapprochement, the diminished strategic value of Saudi Arabia and Israel, and a US withdrawal from Afghanistan will …
Read More »The Last Chance for Peace in Syria?
Dec 23, 2013, Counterpunch The war in Syria grinds on, an endless wreckage of shattered limbs and lives. The blood flows across borders, fueling the religious sectarian killing across the Middle East that is the life-blood of the Syrian conflict. Hopes rose in Syria after Obama’s last minute decision not to …
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