President Bashar al-Assad

The Syria Solidarity Movement applauds the Syrian people for their widespead participation in the first competitive election since the new Constitution approved in 2012. The voting by Syrians living or taking refuge in Lebanon was massive. Voting in Beirut needed to be extended by a full day. Similarly, the voting inside Syria on June 3, 2014 exceeded expectations and polls remained open until midnight to accommodate the huge numbers of Syrians waiting to vote.

As thousands upon thousands of Syrians made their way to embassies around the world to vote, US President Obama addressed the West Point Military Academy and proclaimed that the US would “ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition” and that the US would “coordinate with our friends and allies in Europe and the Arab World to push for a political resolution of this crisis.”  Such a stance is nonsensical.  Isn’t an election the esse

Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
—George Orwell

 World View: New claims say Ankara worked with the US and Britain to smuggle Gaddafi’s guns to rebel groups

 
 
By Patrick Cockburn
 

 
by NICOLA NASSER
Long gone the days when the U.S.-led so-called “Friends of Syria” could plausibly claim that two thirds of Syria was controlled by rebel forces, that Syrian capital Damascus was under siege and its fall was just a matter of time and that the days of President Bashar al-Assad were numbered and accordingly he “should step down.”

Not only is Middle East “Peace Envoy”, Catholic convert and Butcher of Baghdad, Tony Blair gunning for another overthrow and mass destruction in Syria, he has recruited the son of an Archbishop to help him.
Not any old Archbishop either.  Blair’s latest recruit is son of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England, who heads both the Church of England and the eighty million member Anglican Communion worldwide.

 
by PATRICK COCKBURN                           Counterpunch
It is a chilling five-minute film made by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), showing its fighters stopping three large trucks on what looks like the main highway linking Syria and Iraq. A burly bearded gunmen takes the ID cards of the drivers who stand nervously in front of him.
“You are all Shia,” he says threateningly.

By Patrick Cockburn 

 

 
Among dozens of Syrian and foreign journalists covering the Syria peace talks in Geneva, Elissar Moualla stands out.
The popular Syrian news anchor, working for the state-sponsored Syrian TV, never misses an opportunity to confront the opposition delegation.

 By Dr Ismail Salami
 
A five-minute audio message by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri went viral on the internet in which he enjoins the rebels in Syria to end their infighting and focus their energies on battling against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.