Source: nsnbc International
By Christopher Black : On Tuesday, May 19th the Russian consulate in Damascus suffered another attack by NATO proxy forces trying to overthrow the government of Syria. The Russian Foreign Ministry responded with a statement condemning the attack as an act of “terrorism” and asked the “international community” to respond to the attack and urged “all parties enjoying influence on extremists in Syria to demand they immediately stop such actions.”

But was this an act of terrorism or an act of war? Let’s examine what an act of terrorism is. It is an attack on civilians by individuals or small groups with the objective of creating terror in the population in order to achieve political purposes. An attack on a military post or an attack on a military unit are not acts of terrorism, but are acts of war. The shelling of a foreign embassy by organised armed units engaged in a war is not an act of terrorism either. It is an attack on the foreign state itself and therefore is an act of war and meant as such.

And who is this mysterious “international community” they refer to? Well, everyone who is not blind, deaf and dumb knows it is the United States of America and its lieutenants in crime who are engaged in the war against Syria; Britain, France, Canada, Jordan, Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia. It is not a matter of these countries “enjoying influence” as the Foreign Ministry stated but a matter of their direct support and control of the forces that attacked the consulate.

This attack was not just the work of rogue “extremists”. Like the NATO attack on the Chinese embassy in its aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999, it is an act of war and is meant as a message to Russia to give up its support of Syria or suffer worse.

The Russian government’s attempt to diminish the responsibility of the United States and its puppets is perhaps understandable in view of the greater objective, which is to avoid a direct conflict with the hegemonic power, but it is impossible to cover over the fact that this was a direct act of aggression against Russia just a few days after the Victory Parade in Moscow that was boycotted by NATO leaders and just after the American foreign secretary John Kerry met with President Putin in Sochi.

The meeting between President Putin and Mr. Kerry drew a lot of speculation that the Americans had recognised their “mistakes” in Ukraine, that they had realised their strategy had failed, and that there was a real division between the EU and their masters in Washington, all of which had brought the Americans to their senses. But the sharp words of the German Chancellor to President Putin when she went to Moscow to lay a wreath the day after the Victory Parade prove the opposite is true. There is no split between the Americans and their puppets. There is complete accord on the ultimate objective, the subjugation of Russia, There is disagreement on only two things in achieving this objective, strategy and timing.

Chancellor Merkel, arch hypocrite that she is, used her short time in Moscow after laying a wreath to the war dead, to attack President Putin at their press conference. She lied and accused Russia of committing “crimes” in Crimea and Ukraine and that, far from liberating Europe from Nazism, Russia had suppressed “democracy” in Eastern Europe. Her comments, downplayed in Russia but amplified in the American press, were a deep insult coming from the leader of the nation that had destroyed Russia in World War II and which supported fascist formations during the breakup of Yugoslavia and viciously bombed that country in 1999. They were also a distortion of history and the facts since socialist democracy in Eastern Europe has not been replaced by “freedom” and “liberty” but by the steadily increasing oppression and pauperisation of the citizenry that is characteristic of capitalist “democracy” in the west and its police state apparatus.

This is also the same woman who supported the putsch against President Yanukovich and who has continued to support the war crimes committed against the populations of east Ukraine by the Poroshenko junta in Kiev ever since. And let us not forget that German troops took part in the operations to illegally sever the Serbian province of Kosovo from the rest of Serbia, participated in the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo and sat back and watched as countless Orthodox churches and cultural sites in the heart of Serbia were ruthlessly destroyed.

The timing of the shelling of the Russian embassy after these meetings cannot be merely coincidence coming right after them and coinciding with the Chinese-Russian naval drills in the Mediterranean and the attempt by the NATO pact to overthrow the government of Macedonia in order to disrupt the South Stream gas pipeline project. The insults go with the military and economic pressure.

But what is to be done about all this? The attack on the consulate is a violation of international law and constitutes an act of aggression under the Rome Statute which states that the crime of aggression includes,

Article 8bis(g) “The sending by or on behalf of a State of armed bands, groups, irregulars or mercenaries, which carry out acts of armed force against another State….”

But there is no mechanism by which the state criminals behind these actions can be brought to justice. The International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction and is a tool of the west in any event. The Security Council has been reduced to a carnival sideshow with the psychopathic ravings of the American ambassador the principal attraction.

The United States has remained silent so far on this bombing but we can expect the same hypocritical statement the State Department made regarding the attack on the Russian embassy in Damascus on November 28, 2013, and another attack in January of this year. It issued statements condemning the attacks while at the same time supporting those who carried them out. The Americans played the same game when the Russian embassy in Kiev was attacked on June 14, 2014 by a violent mob, including members of the Azov battalion and the Kiev foreign minister. They issued a statement condemning it but immediately turned around and excused the attack by accusing Russia of moving its forces into Ukraine.

Russia is necessarily proceeding with caution and circumspection but it is faced with antagonists who are set on forcing her to the wall and who are experts at provocation, subterfuge, chaos and killing. We must hope that Russia and China, with the BRIC countries at their side, can continue to develop another vision of the world in which concern for the other is a natural part of world diplomacy and that, in the meantime, what President Assad of Syria recently referred to as the Axis of Resistance becomes strong enough to defeat the aggression of the dark forces in the west that live only for power, profit and world domination.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Source: Xinhua English
DAMASCUS, May 20 (Xinhua) — A mortar shell slammed into a school in an upscale neighborhood in the capital Damascus Wednesday, injuring 23 students and killing one female teacher, the official Syrian TV reported.

The mortar round exploded at a school in the upscale neighborhood of Malki, said the report.

The attack comes as part of ongoing mortar shelling from rebel-held areas at the outskirts of the capital against residential neighborhoods in different parts of Damascus.

A day earlier, two mortar shells struck the Russian embassy in northern Damascus, leaving only damages.

Meanwhile, the official SANA news agency said the Syrian army backed by the Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah group continued to advance against the rebel positions in the rugged Qalamoun region north of Damascus and along the borderline with Lebanon, capturing new hilltops as part of the ongoing military showdown there.

SANA – Reports
Source: SANAEnglish

Provinces, SANA- A civilian was killed and eight others were injured on Thursday in separate terrorist mortar attacks that hit al-Mazraa neighborhood in Damascus city and Harasta suburb and al-Wafideen Camp in Damascus countryside.

Two mortar shells fired by terrorists landed in the residential al-Mazraa neighborhood, leaving a civilian killed and three others injured, in addition to causing material damages to several houses, cars and shops in the area, the Police told SANA.

In Damascus Countryside, five more civilians were injured by a mortar shell that fell in al-Wafideen Camp neighborhood.

A third terrorist attack with three mortar shells hit areas in Harasta suburb, causing material damage only.

On Wednesday, a teacher was killed and 23 students were injured in a terrorist mortar attack that hit a Basic Education school in al- Malki neighborhood in Damascus city.

Daraa

Four civilians were killed and 15 others were injured in a terrorist rocket attack on Iszaa city in Daraa, southern Syria.

Terrorists targeted Izraa city with several rockets, killing four civilians and injuring 15 others, some of who are in critical condition, a source in Daraa province told SANA.

The rockets also caused material damage to residents’ houses and properties.

Earlier today, terrorists targeted the Airport neighborhood in Daraa city with a number of shells at the time when Basic Education students were heading to schools to take final exams.

No human casualties were reported however, the source said.

Aleppo

In the same context, terrorists targeted the residential al-Ashrafiyeh neighborhood in Aleppo city with several rocket shells, leaving two civilians killed.

The rockets were fired by terrorists positioned in Bani Zaid neighborhood.

17 more civilians were also reported injured in the attack.

English Bulletin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H4OhVA2T1k

The Economic War on the Syrian Arab Republic

By Jay Tharappel

Syria is being destabilised both militarily and economically. Militarily by insurgent forces sponsored by NATO, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Economically by the sanctions regime imposed by the United States, the European Union, and even the Arab League.

The Syrian economy has contracted by roughly 35 percent since the beginning of the war. Although the crisis began in March 2011, throughout that year the inflation rate registered at 4.8 percent above the previous year, then in 2012 it jumped to 36.9 percent which coincided with the stronger sanctions imposed in August 2011. In 2013, the inflation rate jumped to 59.1 percent (see appendix).

The corporate media has lamented the humanitarian crisis currently afflicting Syria without addressing the issue of what’s causing it. Often charities and NGOs will encourage donors to send money to refugee camps in neighbouring countries like Jordan, Lebanon, or Turkey. The vast bulk of the humanitarian burden is carried by the institutions of the Syrian state who are currently providing for 5.7 million internally displaced persons.

Often sanctions are justified on the grounds that they’re “targeted” in the sense that they don’t explicitly prevent the export of basic necessities like food. However, what this ignores is that sanctions needn’t directly prevent the trade of basic necessities to make those goods increasingly scarce and unaffordable in the targeted country.

Imposing barriers on trade, especially on financial transactions, increases both the real and perceived ‘sovereign risk’ for entities doing business in that nation, which inexorably undermines the value of that nation’s currency.

The U.S. government has imposed various sanctions on Syria since 1979 which is when Syria was designated a “State Sponsor of Terrorism”. These measures entered a new phase of hostility after the U.S. led ‘War on Terror’.

In 2004 the Bush administration issued the Executive Order 13338, which prohibited the export to Syria of various types of industrial machinery and raw materials crucial for the development of a modern economy. Further sanctions involved blocking the assets of individuals in Syria involved with supporting various resistance organisations in Lebanon and Palestine.

The sanctions regime became even more punitive in August 2011, five months into the beginning of the conflict, when the Obama regime issued Executive Order 13582, which included a whole new range of sanction including most significantly, the prohibition of “the supply…of any services to Syria”.

This has meant financial sanctions, which were encountered first-hand by a member of the Hands Off Syria delegation who was blocked from using PayPal – a U.S. company that enforces these sanctions. PayPal also demanded that the HOS member write to the U.S. government explaining “why the attempted access from Syria was made” and requested confirmation that the “account is not held for the benefit of a person or organization in Syria”.

Given the hegemonic role of U.S. financial institutions in world trade, such sanctions have severely undermined the purchasing power of the Syrian pound. Before the war started the exchange rate was 45 Syrian pounds to the U.S. dollar, which has slid precipitously to what it is now – around 150 Syrian pounds to the U.S. dollar.

Over the course of the conflict the black-market rate soared far and above the official rate, reaching 320 Syrian pounds in July 2013, which was 210 Syrian pounds above the officially set rate of 110 Syrian pounds. The problem was solved by shutting down the operations of currency dealers who were selling their nation’s currency at well below the rate set by Damascus (Khalidi, 2013).

To pay for increasingly expensive imports and to prevent a balance of payments crisis (when imports exceed exports leading to currency depreciation), the Syrian government is forced to export greater quantities of oil which drives up local prices. This source of income however has proven unreliable ever since insurgent forces, namely the Al-Nusra Front and ISIS, gained control the oil fields in the north-east of Syria.

The European Union only lifted these sanctions on imports of Syrian oil once these insurgent forces took over these oil-fields. This in turn fuels the insurgency against the Syrian state via the theft of its resources, and also increases the price of oil domestically.

The collapse in the value of the Syrian pound has also impacted the healthcare system.

Prior to the conflict Syria’s healthcare system was relatively successful compared to other nations in the region. Although Syria has the fourth lowest per-capita GDP when compared with its fellow Arab states, it ranks third highest in life expectancy (at around 74 years) beaten only by the oil rich emirates Qatar and the UAE (World Bank).

Syria’s per-capita expenditure on health amounts to a mere $79, which is relatively low compared to Jordan ($246) and Egypt ($200), however, according to 2008 figures, Syria still managed a lower maternal mortality rate at 46 per 100,000 live births, compared to Egypt and Jordan, at 86 and 59 per 100,000 live births respectively.

The sanctions regime have initiated a reversal of many of these gains. Indeed according to Sen et al (2013, p. 198) writing for the Journal of Public Health and Oxford University:

“Sanctions have prevented the entry of essential medical supplies into the country, including those for cancer, diabetes and heart disease, which are not produced locally and is having an impact upon the thousands dependent upon such medication to treat long-term conditions.”

The sanctions have also forced the government to reverse its price controls on food, which have become increasingly unenforceable given the inflation on inputs determining the price of bread. According to Xinhua News, “the majority of merchants continue to charge high prices, citing the depreciation of the Syrian currency and the difficulty of importing goods into Syria under EU sanctions”.

Given the shrinking economy, the government has been forced to make difficult decisions to bolster the Syria pound under conditions of an economic siege, including reducing state subsidies on bread and fuel, thereby saving the Syrian exchequer approximately $80 million and $365 million U.S. dollars per year respectively according to Syria’s Minister of Domestic Trade Samir Qadi Amin.

According to Xinhua:

“The Ministry of Domestic Trade has doubled the prices of white sugar and rice from 25 Syrian pounds (about 0.17 U.S. dollar) to 50 Syrian pounds (about 0.33 dollar) per kg, and the price of subsidized bread bundle has also been raised from 15 Syrian pounds (0.1 dollars) to 25 pounds (about 0.17 dollars) (Xinhua, 2014).”

When the conflict began foreign exchange earnings from industries such as tourism collapsed as a consequence thereby forcing the government to impose import restrictions on non-essential items to mitigate the depletion of Syria’s foreign exchange reserves (Khalidi, 2011).

Ironically however, because the foreigner-infested insurgency, which is extremely unpopular with the Syrian people, requires a lifeline of foreign funding to survive, such inflows of hard-currency have had the unintentional effect of stabilising the value of the Syrian pound as they travel through the economy eventually their finding their way into the hard-currency reserves of Syria’s central bank.

According to one Damascus based Syrian-banker interviewed by Reuters:

“The dollars which are changed to the pound are going back into the veins of the economy. They get into the economic cycle and in the last resort go to the central bank” (Khalidi, 2014)

In this case it seems the means by which foreign powers sustain the insurgency appears to be undermining their efforts to overthrow the Syrian state – a small victory on the economic front perhaps… 

Appendix

Syria: Economic Indicators (Sourced from DFAT Australia)

 

	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013
GDP (USD billion) (current prices):	52.6	53.9	60	57.96	47.52	38.97
GDP PPP (Int’l billion):	95.7	102.1	106.9	103.3	84.68	69.44
GDP per capita (USD):	2557	2557	2807	2711.6	2223.5	1823.3
GDP per capita PPP (Int’l):	4648	4841	4997	4827.1	3958.2	3245.7
Real GDP growth (% change):	4.5	5.9	3.4	-3.4	-18.8	-18
Current account balance (USD millions):	-673	-1584	-1709	-5900	-6700	-5900
Current account balance (% GDP):	-1.3	-2.9	-2.8	-10.3	-15	-15.4
Goods & services exports (% GDP):	37.5	29.1	32.7	–	–	–
Inflation (% change):	15.2	2.8	4.4	4.8	36.9	59.1

*Underlined figures have been derived from the GDP growth rates for those years.

2004 Executive Order 13338: In 2004 the U.S. President Bush “declar[ed] a national emergency to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States posed by the actions of the Government of Syria”

The United States justified its sanctions on Syria for the three reasons:

1. For “continuing its occupation of Lebanon”, which obstructed the Zionist regime’s objective of destroying the Lebanese resistance spearheaded by Hezbollah.
2. For “pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs”, which the United States would naturally oppose given Syria’s unwillingness to subordinate itself to U.S. interests.
3. For “undermining United States and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq”, referring to Syria’s support for the Iraqi resistance.

The EO states: “the Secretary of Commerce shall not permit the exportation or reexportation to Syria of any item on the Commerce Control List (15 C.F.R. Part 774)”. The exhaustive list includes various types of steel and aluminium, ‘bellow valves’, ‘compressors’, ‘gas blowers’, ‘heat exchangers’, and ‘gas centrifuges’, ‘metal heat-treatment furnaces for tempering metals’, that is, important industrial machinery and raw materials crucial for the development of a modern economy, as well as materials that could potentially be used to build a nuclear reactor; and construction equipment “built to military specifications”.

2005 Executive Order 13338: On the 5^th of April, 2005, the OFAC issued new regulations to implement the which most significantly allows for the blocking of assets held by people within the United States who have “been directing or otherwise significantly contributing to the Government of Syria’s provision of safe haven” to groups such as “Hamas, Hizballah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command”. These measures also extend to those who “have been directing or otherwise significantly contributing to the Government of Syria’s military or security presence in Lebanon”; “have been directing or otherwise significantly contributing to the Government of Syria’s pursuit of the development and production of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and medium- and long-range surface-to-surface missiles”; and “have been directing or otherwise significantly contributing to any steps taken by the Government of Syria to undermine United States and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq”. Furthermore the measures also extend to anyone who acts on behalf of blocked persons.

2006 Executive Order 13399: Targeted sanctions extended to those accused of being involved in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

2011 Executive Orders 13572 (03/05/2011)and 13573 (18/05/2011) are targeted sanctions against the following entities and persons:

Bashar Al Assad [President of the Syrian Arab Republic, born September 11, 1965]
Maher Al Assad [Brigade Commander of Syria’s Fourth Armored Division]
Farouk Al Shara [Vice President, born 1938]

Mohammad Ibrahim Al Shaar [Minister of the Interior, born 1950]
Ali Mamluk [Former Director of the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate]
Atif Najib [Former head of the Syrian Political Security Directorate for Daraa province]
Adel Safar [Former Prime Minister, born 1953]
Ali Habib Mahmoud [Former Minister of Defense, born 1939]

Abdul Fatah Qudsiya [Former Head of Syrian Military Intelligence, born circa 1950]
Mohammed Dib Zaitoun [Former Director of Political Security Directorate, born circa 1952]
Syrian General Intelligence Directorate
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp – Quds Force

2011 Executive Order 13582 (17^th of August, 2011), the following are prohibited:

1. New investment in Syria by a U.S. person, wherever located;
2. The direct or indirect exportation, reexportation, sale, or supply of any services to Syria from the United States or by a U.S. person, wherever located;
3. The importation into the United States of petroleum or petroleum products of Syrian origin;
4. Any transaction or dealing by a U.S. person, wherever located, in or related to petroleum or petroleum
products of Syrian origin; and
5. Any approval, financing, facilitation, or guarantee by a U.S. person, wherever located, of a transaction by a foreign person where the transaction by that foreign person would be prohibited if performed by a U.S. person or within the United States.

References

Sen, K. Faisal, W. Saleh, Y. (2013), ‘Syria: effects of conflict and sanctions on public health’, Journal of Public Health, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 195–199

Khalidi, S. (2013), ‘Syrian pound jumps after crackdown on speculators’, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/05/syria-crisis-currency-idUSL5N0IQ3GS20131105

Khalidi, S. (2011) http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/24/syria-idUSL5E7KO0ZF20110924