Syria and the West are intimate friends. For years Western leaders courted Bashar Assad, arguing he was a moderate and a vehicle of change. Vogue even produced a propaganda edition on the Assad family. Elsewhere, Russia and China continued to support…
A yearly Christian festival has come in for criticism to the extent that Greenbelt felt compelled to put out a Statement on Israel/Palestine programming by Greenbelt. Whilst there is the broader question of, whether or not Westerners should be interfering in the Middle East, there should be…
So much to blog so little time to do it. I have been meaning to do a couple of posts and roundups, but never finally get round to finishing off. In the interim, this is a meagre effort. Given the…
Despite the many benefits of the Internet, access to news from all parts of the world and almost instantaneous translation, it is sometimes difficult getting a grasp of what is really happening in a certain country, particularly those in the…
I recently read a disturbing and under-reported aspect of the conflict in Syria, violence against women. Video: WMC’s Women Under Siege director tells CNN of the horrors we’ve documented in Syria. Lauren Wolfe in the ultimate assault: Charting Syria’s use…
I suppose we should not be terribly surprised by the latest outburst from the Assad regime: “The Syrian regime has threatened to use its chemical and biological weapons in case of a foreign attack, in its first-ever acknowledgement that it…
In the West conspiracies have always been popular. They play to a certain irrational desire to simplify events, to explain away complexities and interactions by reference to some controlling force, outside of our view. That holds true for the JFK…
Often PR companies are not too choosy as long as their clients pay well. So it is with those in the business of polishing the image of Assad’s murderous regime, the Indy reports: “At the very least, it was a…
Until the uprising just over year ago the coverage of the Syria in the West was piecemeal and even complimentary. The crimes of the Assad family regime were conspicuously forgotten, as Western Governments and the media tried to suck up…
This is a compelling account: “Raslan served until last Saturday in the Syrian Air Force in the strategically vital port city of Tartous. He had been in Houla on leave when the town was shelled just after 1pm last Friday,…
Fifteen months on, some 13,000+ killed, 100,000s injured and about half a million people displaced in Syria and finally, the role of the Shabiha is being questioned in the Western media. Ghosts of Syria: diehard militias who kill in the…
No, they didn’t say that, but they could have. If you took the trouble to listen to the early reports of the massacre in Houla, Syria then you could be forgiven for wondering how the Syrian government would respond. Instead…
There is some debate as to whether or not it was appropriate for an exam paper to ask: “Explain briefly why some people are prejudiced against Jews.” My gut feeling was how inappropriate such a question might be for children,…
So much happening across the world and so little (infinite) blogging space to put it into. The Sudanese government seems to be itching for a war in the region and it is the people that really suffer, the Indy reports…
This clip from PBS News provides an insight to the diabolical attack on a refugee camp for displaced Syrians: Syria's Cross-Border Violence May Be No Accident
According to the Guardian, Twitter instead of objecting to interference from the Syrian dictatorship capitulated to it: ‘Twitter closed down a string of accounts purporting to be authored by the Syrian president and the first lady, emails reveal. A senior…
AP relates: “The U.N. refugee agency said Monday that as many as 2,000 Syrians crossed into Lebanon over the last two days to flee the violence in their country. In the Lebanese border village of Qaa, families with women with…
HRW has released some striking images of the Syrian government’s shelling in Homs: “Local sources have reported that approximately 700 civilians have been killed and thousands wounded in Homs since the Syrian military began its current assault on the city…
I suspect that lot of what Yossi Gurvitz says applies to attitudes in Britain and Europe: “Last Thursday, a special UN commission on Syria found that the Assad regime is committing crimes against humanity, and that senior regime officials are…
