China, Russia vetoes thwart U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria

[scandal 951]

Ah, the UN, that paragon of virtue and moral justice.

Three cheers for those stalwart nations - let's name them! CHINA!, RUSSIA!, INDIA! BRAZIL!, SOUTH AFRICA!, LEBANON! - who either abstained or voted against this vile measure of the corrupt Americans and their Zionists lackeys to censure the Baathist Republic of Syria, long may it live and continue to slaughter its citizens like dogs in the streets. Hail, Russia. Hail, China. Hail India, Brazil, South Africa, Lebanon. Do not hesitate in your self righteous and indignant calls for universal human rights. Oh, excepting in your own countries or in "inconvenient" places like Syria ..............

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/04/world/meast/syria-unrest/

China, Russia vetoes thwart U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria

By the CNN Wire Staff

updated 10:53 PM EST, Tue October 4, 2011

(CNN) -- Russia and China blocked efforts of other major powers to pass a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria Tuesday, with a dramatic dual veto thwarting a call for an immediate halt to the crackdown in Syria against opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

Nine of the 15-member council countries, including the United States, voted in favor of adopting the resolution.

The Russian ambassador to the U.N. said Security Council action would be "an intervention" that would send the wrong message to the international community.

"I understand that my European colleagues are upset, having not obtained a resolution which they were trying to obtain," Russia's Vitaly Churkin told reporters afterward.

"Some capitals are being overly hasty in passing their judgment about the illegitimacy of the leaders in Syria," he added.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, meanwhile, said the United States "is outraged that this council has utterly failed to address an urgent moral challenge and a growing threat to regional peace and security."

The resolution, if passed, would have called upon Syria to stop oppressing its citizens.

"The unprecedented, aggressive language resorted (to) by certain ambassadors against my country, against the political leaders of my country, facilitated my task today," said Bashar Ja'afari, Syrian ambassador to the United Nations.

"This aggressive discourse reveals the prejudice in certain Western capitals against my country's political leadership," added Ja'afari.

Security Council member countries India, Brazil, South Africa, Lebanon abstained from voting on the resolution.

"After seven months of near complete inaction in the Council, while at least 2,600 people were being killed, and thousands injured, arrested or tortured, this vote is a disgrace. By casting their veto, Russia and China are enabling the Syrian government's abhorrent repression campaign," said Philippe Bolopion, the United Nations director for Human Rights Watch.

Meanwhile, another round of violence flared in Syria Tuesday, as reports of more deaths surfaced amid the relentless government crackdown on protesters.

The nearly seven-month-long offensive has drawn world condemnation and calls to action against the government of al-Assad.

[웃 910]

Ah, the UN, that paragon of virtue and moral justice.

Three cheers for those stalwart nations - let's name them! CHINA!, RUSSIA!, INDIA! BRAZIL!, SOUTH AFRICA!, LEBANON! - who either abstained or voted against this vile measure of the corrupt Americans and their Zionists lackeys to censure the Baathist Republic of Syria, long may it live and continue to slaughter its citizens like dogs in the streets. Hail, Russia. Hail, China. Hail India, Brazil, South Africa, Lebanon. Do not hesitate in your self righteous and indignant calls for universal human rights. Oh, excepting in your own countries or in "inconvenient" places like Syria ..............

http://www.cnn.com/2...t/syria-unrest/

Funny post!

[scandal 951]

Funny post!

[scandal 951]

[scandal 951]

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2011/1005/Syria-vote-may-prove-costly-for-three-countries-seeking-more-UN-clout

Syria vote may prove costly for three countries seeking more UN clout

Brazil, India, and South Africa all abstained in the Security Council vote condemning violence in Syria. That could cost them some support in their bids for council membership.

By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer / October 5, 2011

Washington

Russia’s and China’s vetoes of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the deadly state-sponsored violence in Syria disappointed the Obama administration, but were not a complete surprise.

But the abstentions cast by three of the council’s rotating members in the vote Tuesday evening – Brazil, India, and South Africa – raised a lot of eyebrows and are likely to have deep and long-lasting repercussions for the workings of the international community.

That’s because the three are aspirants for permanent seats in an envisioned Security Council expansion. As a result, world powers like the US that will ultimately decide who joins the world’s most exclusive – and arguably most powerful – international peace and security club are taking careful note of aspirants’ actions for clues as to how they might use enlarged international powers.

The Syria resolution achieved the minimum nine favorable votes, but was doomed by the rare Russia-China double veto. Lebanon also abstained.

Russia and China may have viewed the abstentions favorably for future reference, but for Western powers and their supporters who increasingly view advancing of a set of universal human rights as a key part of the council’s job, the three rising powers’ vote was troubling.

“By abstaining, [brazil, India, and South Africa] have not only failed the Syrian people, but [have] also failed to offer a credible alternative to end the bloodshed,” says Philippe Bolopion, UN director of Human Rights Watch in New York. “This vote erodes their credibility in the global arena and might come to define their tenure in the Security Council and undermine their claim to permanent membership.”

Expansion of the 15-member Security Council has been discussed for years, with proponents of reform arguing that a council make-up that reflects the post-World War II map no longer serves the 21st-century world of emerging powers. The five veto-wielding permanent members include France and Great Britain, but no Asian member other than China and no country from the Southern Hemisphere.

Even before Tuesday’s vote, the Obama administration was making it clear that it was not impressed with what it was seeing from the three council aspirants known as the “IBSA” countries (India, Brazil, South Africa).

At a Monitor breakfast with Washington reporters last month, the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said that the US had been especially watchful of the international actions of council members who aspire to permanent council seats – and she then offered a downbeat assessment.

“It’s been a very interesting opportunity to see how they respond to the issues of the day, how they relate to us and others, how they do or don’t act consistent with their own democratic institutions and stated values,” she said. “Let me just say we’ve learned a lot and, frankly, not all of it encouraging.”

Ambassador Rice cited specific issues ­– Libya, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire – where the US had been watching the council aspirants and said they had taken positions “that one might not have anticipated, given that each of them come out of strong and proud democratic traditions.”

In that context Rice’s unspoken list of council aspirants probably included Germany, which also holds a rotating council seat and which abstained in the March council vote that authorized enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya.

No doubt the US will now add Syria to that list of test cases the IBSA countries have failed. (Germany voted for the Syria resolution).

IBSA diplomats and some diplomatic analysts say the abstainers are not voting “no” to democracy or in favor of repression, but are instead acting in favor of another traditional principle: non-intervention of outside powers in countries’ internal battles.

Several representatives of the abstaining countries said after Tuesday’s vote that they did not want a repeat of the Libya scenario where, in their view, Western powers used Security Council resolutions to intervene on behalf of rebel fighters.

In her comments on Tuesday’s vote, Rice called such an argument a “cheap ruse” from countries more interested in maintaining lucrative arms sales with the Syrian regime than with supporting the Syrian people.

The IBSA abstentions may have been “principled” from the perspective of those countries, but they are not likely to move them any faster from the long list of Security Council rotating members to the rarefied world of the permanent few.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Does anyone actually take the UN seriously? The UN is like the EU as they are both about as useful as t*ts on nun.

[scandal 951]

Poor little Lebanon. Afraid to antagonize powerful Syria by voting ton condemn the slaughter of fellow Arab protesters in a neighboring country. Of course the fact that Lebanese politics is controlled by Hezbollah, themselves in cahoots with Assad, has nothing to do with the abstention vote......

Lebanon's Stance on U.N. Syria Vote Creates Controversy

by Naharnet Newsdesk

Lebanon’s decision to abstain from voting on the U.N. Security Council resolution against the Syrian regime triggered wide reactions locally, especially among the March 8 forces and the March 14-led opposition that strongly criticized it, An Nahar newspaper reported on Thursday.

Sources told the daily that the Foreign Ministry had directed Lebanon's Special Envoy to the U.N. Nawaf Salam to vote against the resolution, but urgent discussions among officials favored that Lebanon abstain from voting.

President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister Najib Miqati agreed to detach Lebanon from the international decision to avoid any possible pressure by the Syrian regime or the international community, the sources noted.

Al-Liwaa newspaper reported that the contacts remained ongoing between the President, the PM and Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour before the Security Council’s meeting.

However, the Russian and Chinese vetoes were enough to block the resolution.

During Wednesday’s Security Council meeting on Syria, Salam said Lebanon decided to disassociate itself from the council statement condemning violence in Syria.

“Lebanon is committed to defend the sovereignty of (Syria) and the unity of its people… but in order to protect Lebanon’s unity and stability, it abstains from voting,” Salam said.

Nine countries voted late Tuesday in favor of the draft resolution which had called for "targeted measures" if Syrian President Bashar Assad pursues his clampdown, which the U.N. says has left at least 2,700 people dead.

Russia and China voted against, killing the resolution because of their veto powers as council permanent members.

South Africa, India, Brazil and Lebanon abstained, reaffirming a divide in the 15-member body since NATO launched air strikes in Libya using U.N. resolutions to justify the action.

[Danno 1,228]

The U.N. is like every other political body, you have to give... to get.

I bet if we digger deeper we would find some of these countries like Russia or China wanted cooperation on other issues and didn't get it.

[scandal 951]

Poor Kurds.

If only they were Palestinians the world would give ashit about their plight.

Too bad for them they're just Kurds and nobody gives a damn.

I wish them all the best in their struggle to -- at least -- not be oppressed by a tyrant like Assad. They deserve much, much more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/killing-of-opposition-leader-in-syria-provokes-kurds.html

Killing of Opposition Leader in Syria Provokes Kurds

By ANTHONY SHADID

Published: October 8, 2011

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of a Syrian city on Saturday for the funeral of a celebrated Kurdish opposition leader whose assassination the day before unleashed fury in the country’s Kurdish regions and prompted condemnations from the United States and the European Union.

The crowds attending the funeral of the leader, Mashaal Tammo, a prominent figure who had escaped an attempt on his life only a month before, constituted some of the biggest gatherings in weeks in the nearly seven-month uprising against Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Activists said at least two people were killed when security forces opened fire on the funeral in Qamishli, a city in northeastern Syria, risking an even broader confrontation with a Kurdish community the government had tried to avoid provoking.

The government has demonstrated little political strategy in coping with the revolt so far, relying almost exclusively on violence since August, deepening opposition in virtually every region of the country with a growing death toll and provoking extended clans in eastern and southern Syria. Yet picking a full-fledged fight with the Kurdish minority would add a new, dangerous facet to a revolt that has ebbed but remained resilient despite a crackdown that has killed, by a United Nations count, more than 2,900.

“My father’s assassination is the screw in the regime’s coffin,” said Fares Tammo, who spoke by telephone from the Kurdish city of Irbil in neighboring Iraq. “They made a big mistake by killing my father.”

Mashaal Tammo, 53, was a respected activist who had been released last summer after spending more than three years in jail. Activists and relatives said he was killed by four masked gunmen who stormed his house on Friday, and they blamed government forces for his death. Founder of the liberal Kurdish Future Movement Party, Mr. Tammo had angered both the government and rivals in the Kurdish community with his outspoken support for a pluralistic democratic state, in which Kurds would be an essential component.

Kurds make up about 10 percent of Syria’s 20 million people, concentrated in the remote northeast, which borders Iraq and Turkey, but also in Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two largest cities. They have long faced harassment and discrimination, and for years many were denied Syrian citizenship. Though the community has sympathized with the uprising, its traditional leadership has yet to decisively enter the fray against Mr. Assad, and the government itself, veering between crackdown and concession, had appeared reluctant to provoke the Kurds.

Early in the uprising, the government had informally negotiated with Kurdish leaders, reaching what some had termed “a gentleman’s agreement” to forestall mass unrest. Mr. Assad even promised to give tens of thousands citizenship in April, though activists say few, in fact, have received it.

The Syrian news agency blamed an “armed terrorist group” for Mr. Tammo’s death, a phrase it often deploys to underline its view of the uprising as an armed insurgency led by militant Islamists.

“There’s a real potential for it getting out of hand,” said Peter Harling, a Syria-based analyst and researcher with the International Crisis Group. He said the killing was a vivid illustration of the consequences of the government’s shift toward what it calls the “security solution,” a decision that seems to have been made before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began in August.

“The security solution essentially amounts to giving a free hand to the security services to dramatically raise the levels of violence in an attempt to restore the wall of fear,” Mr. Harling said. “In doing so, the regime has undermined its own ability to think and act politically. This is sheer violence, with no limits, a ‘solution’ that has every chance of creating many new problems.”

Activists said Mr. Tammo’s funeral quickly turned into a rally attended by as many as 50,000 people. Video broadcast on Al Jazeera showed his coffin draped in a Kurdish flag and covered in flowers. At the funeral, activists said, mourners shouted for the fall of Mr. Assad, who inherited power 11 years ago from his father, Hafez.

[Captain Oates 911]

Steve's Jobs' dad was a Syrian - Steve Jobs was a Syrian-American

The more turmoil in Syria, the more talented Syrians will leave and benefit the US economy

The US therefore, has a vested interest in maintaining the turmoil, and as Syria has no oil and is anti-Israeli, stability is not desirable

In fact, if those guys got it all together, they plus Egypt could be a problem to US foreign policy.

Divide and conquer

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Steve's Jobs' dad was a Syrian - Steve Jobs was a Syrian-American

The more turmoil in Syria, the more talented Syrians will leave and benefit the US economy

The US therefore, has a vested interest in maintaining the turmoil, and as Syria has no oil and is anti-Israeli, stability is not desirable

In fact, if those guys got it all together, they plus Egypt could be a problem to US foreign policy.

Divide and conquer

Ya the US is causing turmoil in Syria and Egypt to get all their "talented workers".

Mubarak was a US ally. As far as Syria goes, it's run by a tyrant and the people are getting the sh*ts of it. Look at Syria's history, Assad's father did pretty much the same thing and even massacred a few villages while he was at it.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Middle east instability drives down oil prices. During the Iran/Iraq war oil prices dropped to $10 per barrel. They can't do anything without selling oil to pay for it.

[Captain Oates 911]

oil - and the best part is --- if they wont sell it, we will come and take it (see Iraq war)

They know it

Syria ? jeez - 2 weeks self catering apartment in Syria anyone ?

Edited October 9, 2011 by Austin Devon

[Danno 1,228]

oil - and the best part is --- if they wont sell it, we will come and take it (see Iraq war)

They know it

Syria ? jeez - 2 weeks self catering apartment in Syria anyone ?

I'm still waiting for all the4 Bush-oil to come flooding in.

Next time we "go to war for oil",

I hope we actually get some.

Edited October 10, 2011 by Danno