Syria: Broken Nation

[Landon Caeli]

Why are so many men fleeing Syria? Shouldn't they be banding together in Syria, blockading areas like Europeans did in medieval villages and castles?

Yeah. All refugees should be uniting and creating impenetrable strongholds.

 

[Landon Caeli]

Free will and contemplative thought should lead to it... This is what happens when mysticism is lost and fundamentalism is allowed to empty the spirit and the will to survive.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

I don't know if this is in Madaya, but it's somewhere in Syria:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10207289839795504

So upsetting.

 

[Landon Caeli]

So upsetting.

It is upsetting that millions of Syrians abandoned their sisters, mothers, cousins and other family members so that ISIS can have their way with them.

...I couldn't do that to my family -leaving them for dead like that.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

It is upsetting that millions of Syrians abandoned their sisters, mothers, cousins and other family members so that ISIS can have their way with them.

1.) Most refugees are Syrians who are fleeing Assad. Though they might be afraid of ISIS and hate them, it is Assad's regime and allies that kill the vast majority of civilians (like 96% of them, at least).

2.) 70% of the 2.1 million registered refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt are women and boys under the age of 12. I would guess that roughly the same percentages are representative of the 1.9 million registered refugees in Turkey.

3.) I actually agree with you to a certain extent that most Syrian men capable of fighting properly should ideally remain in Syria to fight against the main enemies of the Syrians (regime & allies and ISIS).

 

[aieyiamfu]

The mother in that video above who mentioned her baby's heart racing and either freezing up or trying to run away when he heard airplanes reminded me of this recent picture of a girl who thought the camera was a weapon so she held her hands up to surrender:

The photographer said of this 4-year old girl whom he took a picture of this past December:

"I was using a telephoto lens, and she thought it was a weapon," says Sağırlı. "İ realised she was terrified after I took it, and looked at the picture, because she bit her lips and raised her hands. Normally kids run away, hide their faces or smile when they see a camera..... It is the children who reflect the feelings with their innocence."

The photographer who broke the internet's heart - BBC News

A similar image:

"Another little girl was photographed in a Jordanian refugee camp, weeping with fear after mistaking an aid worker's camera for a weapon.

The photographer who took the heart-breaking image in November did not grasp how terrified she was until he was editing the photographs.


It was then Rene Schulthoff realised the girl - alone and barefoot among the metal huts - was so scared of his camera that 'she raised her hands to surrender because she thought it was a weapon'."


Red Cross shares image of SECOND Syrian girl who surrendered to a camera | Daily Mail Online

That is heartbreaking.

 

[wn123455]

1.) Most refugees are Syrians who are fleeing Assad. Though they might be afraid of ISIS and hate them, it is Assad's regime and allies that kill the vast majority of civilians (like 96% of them, at least).

2.) 70% of the 2.1 million registered refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt are women and boys under the age of 12. I would guess that roughly the same percentages are representative of the 1.9 million registered refugees in Turkey.

3.) I actually agree with you to a certain extent that most Syrian men capable of fighting properly should ideally remain in Syria to fight against the main enemies of the Syrians (regime & allies and ISIS).

Which group do you support in Syria? If you tell me which "rebel" group you support in Syria I get some sources to show you that the "rebel" group you support and their allies are killing more people than the Syrian government.

That is heartbreaking.

There are very little Syrians in refugee camps. Most Syrians are living good lives in the territory controlled by the Syrian government.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Russian airstrikes in Syria have 'killed more than 1,000 civilians' (in 4 months)

Total: 3,049:
Civilians: 1,015 (33.3%) (including 200 children)
Rebels: 1,141 (37.4%)
ISIS: 893 (29.3%)

And yet...."The military aim of our operations will be exclusively to provide air support to Syrian government forces in their struggle against ISIS," Ivanov added. Pentagon: Russia Airstrikes Are 'Pouring Gasoline on a Fire'

 

[wn123455]

Russian airstrikes in Syria have 'killed more than 1,000 civilians' (in 4 months)

Total: 3,049:
Civilians: 1,015 (33.3%) (including 200 children)
Rebels: 1,141 (37.4%)
ISIS: 893 (29.3%)

And yet...."The military aim of our operations will be exclusively to provide air support to Syrian government forces in their struggle against ISIS," Ivanov added. Pentagon: Russia Airstrikes Are 'Pouring Gasoline on a Fire'

LONDON // A record number of Muslim MPs - including the first women - will take their seats when the new House of Commons convenes in London on Tuesday. After what the Muslim Council of Britain described as a "momentous" election, the number of Muslim MPs has doubled to eight, including the first Conservatives.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/record-number-of-muslims-take-seats-in-new-uk-parliament

You are using The Guardian as a source when Islamists control the UK parliament?

 

[Oafman]

You are using The Guardian as a source when Islamists control the UK parliament?

How does the new Islamist 'control' of the commons (8 Muslims out of 650 MPs) impact on the Guardian's neutrality or trustworthiness?

 

[wn123455]

Russian airstrikes in Syria have 'killed more than 1,000 civilians' (in 4 months)

Total: 3,049:
Civilians: 1,015 (33.3%) (including 200 children)
Rebels: 1,141 (37.4%)
ISIS: 893 (29.3%)

And yet...."The military aim of our operations will be exclusively to provide air support to Syrian government forces in their struggle against ISIS," Ivanov added. Pentagon: Russia Airstrikes Are 'Pouring Gasoline on a Fire'

https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivi...deo_channel_4_in_tartous_russian_air_strikes/

Russian airstrikes are welcomed by Syrians.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

uh huh. Sure they and their families love being victims of Russian airstrikes and welcome them killing more civilians than they kill ISIS.

Mohammad al-Ibrahim, a resident of Maarat al Numan, in Idlib province said: “Whenever they hear [planes], the families run into these small caves that they dug up in the ground a while ago. My little brothers’ faces go pale … and they don’t utter a word for 20 minutes.

More:

Residents in the areas hit by Moscow late last week described widespread destruction of houses and buildings. “The destruction is incredible, and all of them are civilian homes,” said Adnan Kanjo, the head of the local council in Derrat al-Izza in western Aleppo. “This is the first time we see destruction at this scale. There is intense fear and terror – we can’t even open our schools.”

“The regime’s planes could bomb maybe one or two buildings, but now a whole district is destroyed. There is no specific time and we can’t take any more precautions. If you are destined to get killed you will get killed.

“These Russian warplanes say they are targeting Daesh [Isis],” he added. “Well, we have not had Daesh here in over a year. Marea [which Isis is besieging] is 60km away. And al-Bab [which it controls] is over 100km away. The bombing is targeting civilians. And where are the people going to go? I leave this question to be answered by the people who still have a conscience."

 

[wn123455]

uh huh. Sure they and their families love being victims of Russian airstrikes and welcome them killing more civilians than they kill ISIS.

Mohammad al-Ibrahim, a resident of Maarat al Numan, in Idlib province said: “Whenever they hear [planes], the families run into these small caves that they dug up in the ground a while ago. My little brothers’ faces go pale … and they don’t utter a word for 20 minutes.

More:

https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivi...rians_wrote_on_their_rooftop_as_russian_mi24/

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Link

Link for bottom tweet, link for top tweet

If this is accurate (Kerry. denies. it.), well...I wouldn't be surprised, tbh.

Link

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Fresh evidence has emerged of how starving Syrians are being forced to eat grass to survive as President Bashar al-Assad’s regime defies the UN to tighten sieges across Syria.

International aid agencies say that the regime is using humanitarian aid - which is supposed to be delivered freely under both international law and United Nations resolutions - as a bargaining chip.

More Syrian children die as Assad's sieges intensify

Link also says that 49 of the 52 sieges (94%) are enforced by the regime/allies.http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-un-repeats-mistakes-of-the-past-in-madaya

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

But a UN insider has told BuzzFeed News that the decision to change the document has horrified other teams working in the region.

“Besieged and extremely hard-to-reach areas contain millions of people living under starvation and disease,” the insider said. “If this is not prioritised within the humanitarian response, then what are humanitarian agencies really doing?”

A senior NGO member involved in producing the report said: “It completely downscales the suffering and scale of the need in those areas. That’s what’s worrying about a lot of the changes – they were politically motivated changes that were just accepted."

[SNIP]

The UN employee, who wanted to stay anonymous to protect their job, accused the Damascus office of being ‘‘too close” to the Syrian government.

“There were three or four personalities on the Damascus [UN] end that went to work on it right away,” the source said. “There was a lot of toning down of some of the language, they rewrote entire sections… it was a full filtering system basically and this is what caused the bilateral uproar.

“These so-called colleagues of ours that are famed to have everyone’s best interests at heart took it upon themselves to make changes because of what the Syrian government had very obviously directed them to do.”

One of the changes that angered the whistleblower was the deletion of the words “besieged” and “siege”, which were instead replaced with “locations listed in UNSCR 2139, 2165, 2191” – a reference to adopted UN Security Council resolutions that have given aid agencies access to besieged areas without the Syrian government’s approval.

UN Accused Of Allowing Assad Regime To Censor Syria Aid Plan

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Even if the convocation goes forward, the concessions already made to the Assad regime and its backers in Russia and Iran probably will ensure that there is no progress in the foreseeable future....

...Rather than seeking to start the talks at any price, the United States should be working to create the conditions under which they can succeed. That will require giving the opposition the military support it needs to stop and reverse the Syrian-Russian military offensive. And it should mean insisting that as a starting point, the regime’s starve-or-surrender blockades, and Russia’s bombing of hospitals and food stores, stop once and for all.

Watered-down peace talks on Syria, if they happen, are unlikely to go anywhere

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

"The Danish parliament has passed a package of measures to deter refugees from seeking asylum, including confiscating valuables to pay for their stay, despite protests from international human rights organisations."

"The bill, which allows the confiscation of refugees' cash exceeding 10,000 kroner ($1,450), has prompted comparisons to Nazi Germany, which confiscated the goods of Jews during World War II."

Danish MPs approve seizing valuables from refugees

"I think it's despicable that Denmark and also in a sense Switzerland are moving to seize the last remaining assets of people, who by virtue of their movement and vulnerability tend to be impoverished and have very little on them," the executive director of HRW, Kenneth Roth, told a news conference in Istanbul.

Danish plan to seize migrants' valuables 'despicable': HRW

 

[Landon Caeli]

"The Danish parliament has passed a package of measures to deter refugees from seeking asylum, including confiscating valuables to pay for their stay, despite protests from international human rights organisations."

"The bill, which allows the confiscation of refugees' cash exceeding 10,000 kroner ($1,450), has prompted comparisons to Nazi Germany, which confiscated the goods of Jews during World War II."

Danish MPs approve seizing valuables from refugees

"I think it's despicable that Denmark and also in a sense Switzerland are moving to seize the last remaining assets of people, who by virtue of their movement and vulnerability tend to be impoverished and have very little on them," the executive director of HRW, Kenneth Roth, told a news conference in Istanbul.

Danish plan to seize migrants' valuables 'despicable': HRW

Don't they get free food, free shelter, free hot showers and a free warm bed to sleep in..?

And so those carrying around thousands of dollars in cash should not pay for some of these services? They should just be given things for free..?

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

My understanding is that under Danish law, a citizen who owns more that 10,000 kroner in valuables can be compelled to sell them before being elgible before to receive welfare benefits. Denmark is simply extending this requirement to asylum seekers.