BRICS members Russia and China double veto to the United Nations Security Council resolution imposing regime change in Syria backed by the haven of democracy, the GCC League, formerly known as the Arab League. Ask why ?

New York / NationalTurk – United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the double veto from Russia and China on Syria regime change a “travesty”. Then Hillary Clinton pointed out “friends of democratic Syria” to keep working for regime change in Syria, a ‘justified’ topple of Assad which was the object of the UN’s resolution.

Syria : Un Security Council backed by Arab League : Something smells fishy

Neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy holds the copyright for this idea as he was the one who pushed the button for operation ‘Liberating of Libya’. Sarkozy said Paris administratşon was already working to create a NATOGCC “Friends of the Syrian People Group” in charge of implementing the Arab League’s regime change plan.

Meanwhile Burhan Ghalyun, the head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) – the opposition umbrella group – referred in diplomatic talks as the ‘Paris Puppet’ – also summoned these countries “friendly to the Syrian people”.

Friends of democratic Syria are; the US, Britain, France, Israel, Turkey and GCC members Qatar and Saudi Arabia. With “friends” like these, the Syrian people certainly don’t need enemies.

United States ambassador to the UN Susan Rice called the double veto “disgusting”.

Even the venerable stones of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus know that only Washington has the right to wield veto power at the UN – overwhelmingly to protect the state of Israel’s right to kill Palestinian men, women and children with tanks and shelling without bothering about pesky UN resolutions.

Russia, vocally – and China, silently – had been adamant for weeks; forget about a UN resolution for regime change in Syria, or worse yet, opening the doors for a Libya-style NATO humanitarian bombing.

Russia has its own geopolitical reasons to consider Syria a red line; Syria hosts Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean, in the port of Tartus; and Syria buys Russian weapons. But in fact all the five BRICS – plus the overwhelmingly majority of the developing world – are in synch; forget about regime change-enabling UN resolutions, promoted by the usual suspect Western trio US-Britain-France and – the summit of hypocrisy – devised by the “democratic” House of Saud and Qatar.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will be visiting Damascus this Tuesday to meet with estranged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and discuss a serious lay-out to try to resolve the conflict and bring an end to the bloodshed. Lavrov has calmly uncloaked the reasons for the Russian veto, followed by China’s.

Syria Violence : The reasons behind Russia veto on Syria UN Resolution

He had sent Russian amendments to the UN Security Council’s draft resolution regarding Syria and Syrian regime directly to Hillary Clinton; “The rationality and objectivity of these amendments should not cause anyone’s doubt.” But to no avail; the resolution remained “unilateral” – demanding nothing from Syrian anti-government armed groups. Lavrov stressed, “No president with self-respect, no matter how treated, will agree to surrender inhabited localities to armed extremists without resistance.” Imagine if Homs was in Texas.

Still, the SNC now holds Moscow and Beijing “responsible for the escalating acts of killing and genocide”, and facilitators of a “license to kill”. Lavrov is imperturbable; “We have repeatedly said that we are not protecting Assad but international law. The prerogative of the UN Security Council does not envision interference in internal processes.”

Homs massacre: Who’s killing whom? or What happens in Homs that we don’t know ?

Syria’s UN ambassador Bashar Ja’afari strongly denied the Syrian National Council’s accusation of Bashar al-Assad regime forces bombing the Khadiliya neighborhood in Homs with tanks and artillery and killing over 200 people – arguing that “no sensible person” would launch such an attack the night before the UN Security Council was discussing a resolution. Without any preliminary investigation, France called it a “massacre” and a “crime against humanity”. Like France’s performance during the Algerian war?

Russia said the resolution was biased and would have meant taking sides in a civil war. Syria is Moscow’s only big ally in the Middle East, home to a Russian naval base and client for its arms. China’s veto appeared to follow Russia’s lead.

China’s state-run media said western intervention in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq showed the error of forced regime change. “Currently, the situation in Syria is extremely complex. Simplistically supporting one side and suppressing the other might seem a helpful way of turning things around, but in fact it would be sowing fresh seeds of disaster,”

To understand what’s at stake, it’s crucial to keep in mind who’s defecting from the Syrian army. Syria’s top military – also members of the Ba’ath Party – are almost all Alawis, the folk Shi’ite sect (10% of the overall population). They are not defecting. The defectors are overwhelmingly Sunni troops (70% of the overall population); they are forming militias like the one in Libya, heavily infiltrated by mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, and fighting government troops. The Syrian government’s response has been to target the neighborhoods where the families of these defectors live. The center of Homs is controlled by the rebels at the moment.

So what’s really happening on the ground in Homs?

Here are sections from a crucial e-mail sent by a trusted Syrian Christian source:

Many Syrians are ecstatic about the double veto but Homs is very worrying. The opposition spread news about a massacre just before the vote and they quoted numbers in the hundreds … unbelievably quoted by all news channels (all based on “activists”) without any verification, only to bring the number down to something like 33 later. They never showed any bombing or taking people under rubble or any injured people … just clean-bodied men with their hands and feet tied up and shot mostly once and only in their underwear. Whatever the Syrian government has in its arsenal it seems there are very intelligent bombs that can strip and tie up people then shoot them in the head!!

The thing that we know fully well is that there are no army presence in Homs. My parents left the city then came back Saturday morning on the day of the alleged massacre and there was nothing. They usually call a hotline (115) and ask if the roads are safe and security operator will tell you to come to Homs or not. This time they told them to come and indeed there was nothing to be seen or heard. This of course doesn’t mean that most of the city and particularly the old city is under the control of the gunmen. Our old neighborhood where I grew up (the Christian Bustan al-Diwan) was completely taken over by the gunmen. YouTube videos show how the FSA cleared the army roadblock in the previous neighborhood (Bab al-Dreib) and then proceeded to destroy the one guarding our neighborhood.

People in my neighborhood did not complain of any major harassment or problem, however the “revolutionaries” did indeed break into a couple of homes that their people left either days earlier or at the time, also into a school, Homs Newspaper (operated by the Orthodox church for more than 100 years) and a few other restaurants but no other complaints. I mean, considering what these FSA do to Alawites, then the Christians are really getting very fair treatment so far.

What many believe now is that the bodies shown tied up and shot in Khalidiya and which are alleged to be “men, women and children” killed by a bombardment of the Syrian army were nothing but kidnapped Syrian soldiers. Add to them kidnapped Alawites who were not liberated (or actually exchanged). When the FSA kidnap some people, Alawites started to kidnap in return to exchange the prisoners. This doesn’t always work and some people who weren’t “exchanged for” turned up dead in Khalidiya.

Western Powers trying to plunge Syria into civil war

All in all up to this point there really isn’t any offensive by the Syrian army on the city. The rebels continue to attack other checkpoints. People are completely in the dark as to what the government is thinking regarding Homs. It’s devastating for me to see my neighborhood become another battleground and many of my friends leaving.

All this dovetails with an explanation by fine journalist Nir Rosen, author of the indispensable Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World ; Homs is essentially a question of rebels seizing government checkpoints – and government forces shelling a few neighborhoods with mortars. According to Rosen:

There was no fighting in Homs, just shelling from these safe locations (from the point of view of the regime), suggesting they are unable to actually attack Khalidiya with regime fighters … No opposition fighters were killed in the attack. And up to 130 people in Khaldiyeh were killed and 800 wounded (like I said not fighters). Now that’s a lot of people but if you were watching the news … you would think that Homs was destroyed while in fact this attack can also be seen as a sign of the regime’s weakness in the city.

Compare this with my Syrian source worried that “people are completely in the dark as to what the government is thinking regarding Homs”.

Imagine an armed insurrection in a mid-sized city in the US; the whole world saw how peaceful Occupy Wall Street was dealt with by billionaire New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. The BRICS have made it clear; there will be no NATOGCC humanitarian bombing of Syria. But NATOGCC may be succeeding in its more likely plan B: to plunge Syria into civil war.

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