Showing posts with label the West. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the West. Show all posts

Thursday, July 21, 2016

US-backed Syrian rebels beheaded a child

No any difference exists between the Syrian rebels and Assad regime, between the so called moderate rebels and Daesh. All they are the bloody butchers, criminals against humanity. Difference between them only in that that Assad is profitable for Putin but the 'moderate' rebels are profitable for USA.


And these are the 'good guys'! Sickening video shows US-backed Syrian rebels taunting and then brutally beheading a young boy because he was a 'spy'

Fighters from a US-backed Syrian militant group have been filmed brutally beheading a child as young as 11. 
The video captures Nour al-Din al-Zenki fighters in the back of a truck with a child they claim is an al-Quds soldier supporting Assad's Syrian forces.
One of the fighters shouts 'Allahu Akbar' meaning 'God is great' after taking a small knife to the boy's throat and cutting off his head in the Palesinian refugee Handarat Camp in Northern Aleppo. 


 The child, who is clearly under the age of 12, was arrested by the Islamist militants for allegedly being Palestinian Liwaa Al Quds, al-Quds Brigade fighter.
Sickening footage shot immediately before the boy is slaughtered shows him in ragged clothes surrounded by bearded militants in the back of a pick-up truck. 
One of them holds him by the hair and slaps him in the face. 
Judging by his ragged clothes and the marks on his arms, it appears the boy was impoverished and may have been tortured before he was murdered in the video, seen by MailOnline. 
The boy is placed face-down in the back of the truck with his arms tied behind his back when the executioner is handed a small knife by a fellow fighter. 
He then cuts the boy's throat before shouting 'Allahu Akbar' and holds his head aloft.
Before the video ends, he places the head on the boy's back before jumping down from the SUV.  



The video captures Nour al-Din al-Zenki fighters in the back of a truck with a child they claim is an al-Quds soldier on the Handarat front



Sickening footage shows the young boy - under the age of 12 - being killed in the back of a pick-up truck





Syria conflict: Boy beheaded by rebels 'was not fighter'



A Palestinian boy who was filmed being beheaded by Syrian rebels on Tuesday was not a fighter, a pro-government Palestinian militia has said.
The Liwa al-Quds (Jerusalem Brigade) said Abdullah Issa was just a 12-year-old from a poor refugee family who lived in a rebel-held area of Aleppo.
Members of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki Movement are accused of killing him.
Some woman calling herself "a sister" of the boy filmed being beheaded by Syrian rebels has disputed a claim by a pro-government Palestinian militia that he was not a fighter. She later said on Facebook that he was a Syrian from Homs who went to "fight and defend his country".
Two short videos emerged online on Tuesday morning showing a boy being taunted and then beheaded by a group of Syrian rebels.
The first shows the frightened child, who could be as young as 10, sitting in the back of a pick-up truck, surrounded by five men.
One of the men grips him by the hair as they accuse him of being a member of Liwa al-Quds, a Palestinian militia that fights in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and was involved in clashes with rebels on Tuesday in Handarat, to the north of Aleppo.
The second video shows the boy's murder.
Liwa al-Quds issued a statement on Facebook saying that its investigation had found he was a 12-year-old Palestinian named Abdullah Issa, who lived in Mashhad with his family.
It also said he had apparently been receiving medical treatment before being seized, noting that one photograph showed an intravenous drip in his arm.
Liwa al-Quds accused the rebels of killing the child simply because he was Palestinian, in order to take "cheap and despicable revenge" for battlefield losses.



Monday, December 21, 2015

Is Russia still a key world power?




Whether Russia, one of 15 successor states to the USSR, which broke up in 1991, is still a genuine world power in 2015 is open to question.
  • It remains the world's largest country and the largest oil producer
  • It retains its permanent seat on the UN Security Council (one among five)
  • Its nuclear arsenal (in Cold War times one of five countries, but now one of nine) has been progressively modernised
  • Sustained increases in defence spending have brought it close to its goal of escalation dominance in local and regional war
But the economic base for these capabilities is steadily declining.
Russia's economy is the 10th largest in the world, producing little of value beyond hydrocarbons.
Corruption and rent-seeking extract an enormous economic toll.
It remains burdened with Soviet era infrastructure, and its ability to meet the educational and medical needs of its population is rapidly declining.
Whatever one's view, two further points for and against Russia's global standing are undeniable:
  • Russia regards itself as a great power - it is not in question anywhere inside the country
  • China has long since eclipsed Russia as the world's number two power behind the US
Yet for all Russia's pretence about a rebalancing of priorities towards Asia, since the fallout over Ukraine, it still measures itself against the West, and America in particular.

Distinct Eurasian niche

Regardless of hypothetical rankings or real-world measurements, Russia has carved out a niche for itself as a distinct Eurasian pole in world politics, allied to neither Europe nor Asia but seeking influence there and beyond.
Its membership of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group of rising powers suggests an acknowledgement that Russia has not quite arrived (there is no contradiction for Russia between this and pre-existing great power status) but also that is it is civilisationally distinct from Europe.
Certainly, there is no current desire to be part of most prominent Western-led organisations such as the European Union.
Indeed, Russia has striven to come up with its own alternatives over the years, the latest of which, a Eurasian Union, is designed precisely as a counterweight but free of the burden of Western norms and values.
Whether it will have a longer life than its antecedents, considering Russia's failing economic fortunes and other countries' evident reluctance to be joined too closely, remains to be seen.
Russia's mission beyond the quest for influence is hard to discern.
It is the world's most ostentatious foe of democracy promotion.
But its foreign aid is minimal (especially beyond the other former Soviet states - where its purpose is often regarded as a double-edged sword), and its contribution to UN-led peacekeeping has withered since the 1990s. 


World's largest economies by gross domestic product (GDP) (in millions of US dollars, 2014):

  • US: 17,419,000
  • China: 10,360,105
  • Japan: 4,601,461
  • Germany: 3,852,556
  • UK: 2,941,886
  • France: 2,829,192
  • Brazil: 2,346,118
  • Italy: 2,144,338
  • India: 2,066,902
  • Russian Federation: 1,860,598


Until the recent campaign in Syria, Russia had talked of itself as a global power, but behaved like a regional power.
Russia's greatest challenge is to preserve its global importance while most of the relevant indicators are dropping and its allies are few and far between (dictators, largely).
For some, Russia's natural and historical pre-eminence mean it will always be a key player.
Others fear Russia may compensate for weakness with risky foreign adventurism.
Indeed, for many, it is already doing just that.