LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
June 15/12

Bible Quotation for today/Watchful Servants/Sadness and Gladness
John 16: "16-23: "In a little while you will not see me any more, and then a little while later you will see me. Some of his disciples asked among themselves, What does this mean? He tells us that in a little while we will not see him, and then a little while later we will see him; and he also says, It is because I am going to the Father. What does this a little while mean? We don't know what he is talking about! Jesus knew that they wanted to question him, so he said to them, I said, In a little while you will not see me, and then a little while later you will see me. Is this what you are asking about among yourselves? I am telling you the truth: you will cry and weep, but the world will be glad; you will be sad, but your sadness will turn into gladness. When a woman is about to give birth, she is sad because her hour of suffering has come; but when the baby is born, she forgets her suffering, because she is happy that a baby has been born into the world. That is how it is with you: now you are sad, but I will see you again, and your hearts will be filled with gladness, the kind of gladness that no one can take away from you. When that day comes, you will not ask me for anything. I am telling you the truth: the Father will give you whatever you ask of him in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your happiness may be complete

Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources
STL hits another snag /By: Arthur Blok/Now Lebanon/June 14/12
Is there a savior in Syria/By Ali Ibrahim/Asharq Alawsat/June 14/12
The end of the tyrant/By Hussein Shobokshi/Asharq Alawsat/June 14/12

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for June 14/12
Deputy PM: Israel must attack Iran before letting it go nuclear
Iran's parliament softens stance on nuclear talks
Syria has started “descent into hell,” Vatican envoy says
France wants U.N. to be able to enforce Annan plan
Russia accuses U.S. of arming Syria rebels
Iranian businesses get creative to limit effect of sanctions
Peres receives Medal of Freedom from Obama at White House ceremony
Turkish official: Gaza flotilla report not enough, Israel must apologize
Russia, U.S. Lock Horns Over Syria
Syria in civil war, U.N. official says
Secret US poll projects 70 pc lead for Muslim presidential candidate Morsi
Egypt Christians rally behind rival of Islamists
Mubarak fears prison doctors will murder him
Defense: STL created to ensure one party prevails
Syrian forces kidnap farmer in Arsal, torch mayor’s farmhouse
Dialogue and disassociation dominate in Lebanon -
Sleiman: We must detach Lebanon from Syria crisis
Man kidnapped in Beirut for $50,000 ransom
 More Lebanese opting for civil marriage abroad
Lebanon to launch wide tourism blitz
Beirut is Amazing project aims at greening the capital
Local Lebanese NGO praised by WHO for anti-smoking campaign
Dialogue and disassociation dominate in Lebanon
Syrian troops plant mines inside Lebanon, security official says
Hezbollah condemns settlement construction on Palestinian territories
Marada Movement mark 34th anniversary of Ehden massacre
NNA: Lebanese man flees abduction in Baalbek
Arab League chief commends Lebanon’s national dialogue statement
Syria Crisis Puts Pope's Lebanon Visit in Doubt
LF Nominates Fadi Karam to Run in Koura By-Election
Lebanese Rights Groups Urge Annan, Sayda to Address 11 Pilgrims Case
Syrian Troops Release Lebanese Man Kidnapped in Arsal as March 14 Holds Govt. Responsible
Suleiman Says Dialogue Leaders agreed to Disassociate Lebanon from Syria Turmoil

Syria has started “descent into hell,” Vatican envoy says
June 13, 2012 /Now Lebanon
Syria, where a 15-month conflict is intensifying, has started its descent into hell, the Vatican's ambassador to the Middle East country said Wednesday. Nuncio Mario Zenari would not be drawn on whether Syria was in the midst of a "civil war", a term being used increasingly by the international community, but he said "the impression prevails [that for] the people a descent into hell has started."Zenari told Vatican Radio that Christians could bridge a gap in the stricken country but denied that they were being targeted by particular persecutions. "It is the Christians' mission to play the role of a link at all levels," he said.
"They're active in very painful situations, such as in Homs where we have priests, nuns and monks... who are setting an example and risk their lives." They were also helping to impose ceasefires and assisting people trapped in areas where they have come under attack. Zenari rejected reports by unspecified media that minority Christians were being targeted by some armed opposition groups.
Vatican news agency Fides reported on Tuesday that Christians had massively fled the town of Qusayr, near Homs, where only about 1,000 were left of the 10,000 who lived there before the outbreak of violence.Fides said they were forced to leave after an armed opposition group led by General Abdel Salam Harba set an ultimatum. Christians in Qusayr were reportedly no longer allowed to move around freely and forced to let Muslims pass first. "So far, I would say that Christians share the same sad fate as all Syrians… I would not say that they are the object of particular discriminations, less so persecutions," said Zenari. The lot of Christians in Syria today does not compare to that in other countries in the region, he said. "Sometimes it is compared to Iraq, but you cannot compare this."
In an October 2010 attack, militants stormed a church in central Baghdad, killing 44 worshippers, two priests and seven security force personnel. It was claimed by Al-Qaeda's local affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq.Dozens of attacks on churches and houses of worship since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 served to raise sectarian tensions there.-AFP/NOW Lebanon

Syria Crisis Puts Pope's Lebanon Visit in Doubt
Naharnet/13 June 2012/The crisis in Syria and its impact on Lebanon have put in doubt Pope Benedict XVI's planned visit to Lebanon in September, reports said Wednesday. The trip scheduled for September 14 to 16 remains confirmed on the program published regularly on the pope's planned visits. However, it "could be canceled at the last minute" due to the unrest in Syria, according to unnamed sources quoted by I.MEDIA, the agency specializing on Vatican news. The Vatican's "reticence at giving precise outlines on the voyage is telling of a desire to move slowly in a regional situation that is becoming more explosive daily," according to the website Vatican Insider. It said that the secretariat has been analyzing the development of the Syrian crisis closely, pointing in particular to claims that the conflict is being "fuelled by weapons and armed jihadists from overseas, including Lebanon." There are fears at the Vatican that the conflict could spill in to northern Lebanon. Alberto Gasbarri, who is in charge of the logistics of pontiff travels, will head to Beirut by the end of June to plan the visit. Prime Minister Najib Miqati invited the pontiff to visit in November last year during a visit to the Vatican. The trip will mark the second to the region for Benedict, who visited Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories in 2009. During the trip, he is expected to hand over an apostolic exhortation to bishops from throughout the Middle East, the Vatican said.
Source Agence France Presse.

Defense: STL created to ensure one party prevails
June 14, 2012/By Willow Osgood The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Defense teams of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon accused the U.N. Security Council Wednesday of establishing the court “ to ensure the success of one political party” in Lebanon.
In their first appearance in a public hearing at the court, the attorneys for the four Hezbollah members indicted in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri presented their pretrial motions challenging the jurisdiction and legality of the court, arguing that Security Council Resolution 1757, which created the STL, was an abuse of power and a violation of international law.
The argument hinges on the steps leading up to the May 2007 resolution, when the Lebanese Cabinet was negotiating with the U.N. to establish a special court. That eventual agreement was neither signed by then-President Emile Lahoud, nor was it approved by Parliament, both steps required by the Lebanese Constitution to pass an international treaty.
The defense teams maintain that when the Security Council passed the resolution, it was a unilateral imposition of the agreement on Lebanon in violation of the country’s sovereignty and international law, which requires that both parties agree to the terms of an international treaty.
“Resolution 1757 is inexistent legally with respect to Lebanese law,” said Antoine Korkmaz, who represents Mustafa Baddredine.
They further argued that the Security Council invoked Chapter VII not because it believed there was a threat to international peace, but in order to get around domestic obstacles to the agreement’s ratification.
“The Security Council used its powers ... to ensure the success of one political party over the other in the state of Lebanon,” argued Korkmaz. “The U.N. Security Council took sides.”
The court has long faced accusations by its detractors that it is a political tool being used to target rivals of the Future Movement, the party founded by Hariri.
Emile Aoun, who represents Salim Ayyash, referred to the preamble of Resolution 1757 which requested that Lebanon ratify the agreement by June 10, 2007, but would enter into effect without the country’s approval. “This was a kind of threat to Lebanese authorities in case they didn’t respond,” Aoun said, describing it as “unlawful coercion.” “Either you ratify it or we ratify it for you,” summed up Vincent Courcelle-Labrousse, counsel for Hussein Oneissi.
But prosecutor Norman Farrell replied that the defense’s emphasis on Lebanon’s consent was “a bit misplaced,” arguing that the Security Council did not need permission to invoke Chapter VII and the country that is the subject of the resolution, as a member of the U.N., has already ceded its sovereignty in those cases.
The defense also took issue with the Council’s estimation of the attack as a threat to international peace, arguing that it may not have constituted such a threat in 2005 and certainly did not two years after Hariri’s killing, when the resolution was passed.
In his remarks, Korkmaz asked why the Security Council did not consider the 2006 war with Israel, which caused thousands of civilian deaths in just over a month, “sufficiently serious” to be a threat to international peace, while Aoun asked the same question in reference to the Civil War, during which tens of thousands of Lebanese were killed.
Farrell countered by arguing that the Security Council has “wide discretion” to make such judgments and that establishing a court to try acts of terrorism is “completely in conformity” with the U.N. The prosecutor told the court that it “shouldn’t entertain the invitation to determine whether [the 2005 attack] did pose a threat.”
Farrell also argued that all defense motions on the legality of the creation of the court were inadmissible because the rules of the STL allowing for pretrial motions on jurisdiction did not make mention of such challenges. The defense maintained that it was within the authority of the court to decide whether it was legally created, arguing that the judicial review of a Security Council resolution has legal precedent, an assertion questioned repeatedly by the Trial Chamber judges. Arguments will continue Thursday when attorneys for the victims will give their observations. A date has not been set for the ruling, but STL spokesman Marten Youssef said it could come before the judges go on recess in late July.

STL hits another snag
Arthur Blok, June 13, 2012
Now Lebanon
Leidschendam – In Lebanon the STL might be off the agenda for the time being due to the turmoil in neighboring Syria, but in Leidschendam it is business as usual. Like any other international tribunal in its pre-trial phase, some questions about jurisdiction and legality were raised by the counsels of the accused. According to them, the STL has been unlawfully established, does not have jurisdiction to try Lebanese nationals and is therefore illegitimate.
Geert Jan Knoops is a Dutch lawyer and an expert in international criminal law who worked for the Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone tribunals. He was also an advisor to the legal team that prepared the appeal of late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and he advised the lawyer of the Hariri family a few years ago about the upcoming trial and procedures. He follows the developments in Leidschendam with great personal interest.
In the past weeks, the defense counsels of the four accused in the 2005 assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others have filed preliminary motions. Though each of the teams representing Salim Ayyash, Mustafa Badreddine, Hussein Oneissi and Assad Sabra filed separate motions, many of their arguments challenging the STL’s jurisdiction overlap.
Head of the Office of the Defense Francois Roux explains that the two-day session is crucial for the future of the STL. “Following years of heated political debate in Lebanon, and in animated academic conferences and virulent press articles on whether or not the establishment of this Special Tribunal is legal, this matter will finally be addressed in a debate before the judges,” Roux told NOW Lebanon.
One of the main points of the defense teams is that the Security Council abused its powers in adopting Resolution 1757, which established the STL. They say that the 2005 assassination and the subsequent political situation in Lebanon “could not in any sense be considered to pose a threat to international peace and security.”
The defense counsels further argue that the Security Council resorted to its Chapter VII powers “only because the creation of the STL by means of treaty had failed.” That was an abuse of the Security Council’s powers under the Charter of the United Nations.
Roux says that the tribunal was established in the wake of a request in 2005 by the then-Lebanese cabinet. “But given the divisions riddling Lebanese society over this issue, the agreement was never ratified. Considering that this assassination represents a threat to peace and security, the Security Council issued 1757 on May 30, 2007, whereby this agreement would come into force on June 10, 2007 under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter,” Roux said. “The arguments developed by the defense are based—among others—on legal consultations of eminent Lebanese constitutional experts, which are not irrelevant.”
According to Knoops, an international court is usually created—as the Office of the Defense (OTD) correctly states—to try a category of crimes committed during an international or civil conflict. “This is the case in all other international courts such as the ICTY, ICTR and SCSL,” Knoops said, in reference to the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rawanda, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. “In the case of the STL we are dealing with one isolated criminal incident. So the OTD raises a fair point. Because it is without precedent, one could argue that the Security Council abused its power.”
Knoops says that if one looks at the history of similar requests before other international courts, it is “quite questionable whether it will have success.” This was, for example, the case in the trials of Charles Taylor and Slobodan Milosevic. The fact that the OTD argues that the Security Council favored one political tendency in Lebanon by establishing a tribunal could be an issue the court is sensitive to. “The questions the court has to answer are: May the UN establish a court in this way, or is it against international law? The same goes for trials in absentia; is it fair to do that? It has never been done before at an international court,” said Knoops.
Roux explains why the defense counsels filed their motions in light of this. “This wholly unprecedented procedure to establish an International Criminal Tribunal has since been widely commented, discussed and criticized, and will be judicially questioned by the defense. Given the current state of this still-recent international criminal justice, there is no universal Constitutional Court—yet—which one could go to in order to settle these issues. Therefore these tribunals have to decide on these matters themselves.”
Knoops remembers that the late STL President Antonio Cassese himself raised a similar issue in his book “International Criminal Law.” In his book Casese states that if we are dealing with the most serious crimes, a judicial process is only legitimate if the accused is present. “If not you can never have a fair trial. So I am very interested in what the court will decide on this matter.”
Knoops explains further that if the judges decide that the OTD is wrong, then what about international law? “If someone is sentenced in absentia for a case like this, that would be unprecedented and truly exceptional. That is why it is very difficult to predict what the judges will decide. It is very understandable that the defense raises the issue in this phase. Indirectly they are right. It is possible, however, that the judge will decide to continue with the trial and then once it comes to a verdict he can still address the fairness of the procedures.”
Roux also wonders if the arguments of the defense will be enough to convince the Lebanese, Australian and Swiss judges of the Trial Chamber. “This judicial debate will on the one hand at least have the merit of reminding that even within the framework of a trial in absentia the defense has an important role to play. On the other hand, it serves as a reminder that any decision will have to be made by independent judges following a contradictory and transparent public debate free from any taboos. This, as such, is already a success for this tribunal.”

Deputy PM: Israel must attack Iran before letting it go nuclear
By Ari Shavit | Jun.14, 2012/Haaretz
In exclusive interview, Moshe Ya'alon shares his political aspirations and 'moral disappointment' with Barak.
If Israel is forced to choose between bombing Iran and allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear bomb, it must choose the former, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon said in an exclusive interview with Haaretz.
Ya'alon, who is also minister of strategic affairs, said that during the past few months, Iran has significantly stepped up the pace of its uranium enrichment. The full interview appears in Friday's Haaretz Magazine. If the Islamic Republic is not stopped, it will have sufficient enriched uranium to manufacture seven or eight atomic bombs within a year, and it will be capable of putting together a more primitive nuclear device, a so-called dirty bomb, in less than six months, he said. As a result, according to Ya'alon, the Iranian nuclear threat is like a sword held to Israel's throat. If the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran are not increased swiftly, and if there are no other positive developments, he said the moment of truth will soon arrive. "Under no circumstances will Israel agree to let the sword touch its throat," Ya'alon stressed. "I hope that with regard to Iran it will be possible to say, as the old saw goes, that the work of the just is done by others," he said. But, he added, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" In recent years, Ya'alon has been perceived as a dove with regard to Iran. He said he dislikes the various Holocaust comparisons with regard to Israel and Iran's nuclear program, but does see some similarity between Israel's present situation and its situation on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War. During the interview, Ya'alon described his ideological conversion, from Labor to Likud, and noted that as long as the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, he will oppose all territorial concessions and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Ever since "land-for-peace became land-for-terror and land-for-rockets," he said, "I am not ready to forgo a millimeter." Ya'alon said he is not disturbed by the prospect of the current situation continuing, even for 100 years, and said the number of settlers in the West Bank could reach 1 million. Ya'alon expressed "moral disappointment" with Ehud Barak, whom he says has distanced himself from his principles. In response to a question about media personality-turned-politician Yair Lapid, Ya'alon said, "I find the notion that you can move from the media to being the leader of the country a bit childish."
Ya'alon acknowledged that, in the distant future, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "decides that he no longer wants to head the party and the country," he can "definitely" see himself contesting the leadership. "The premiership, too."

Secret US poll projects 70 pc lead for Muslim presidential candidate Morsi
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report June 13, 2012, /The Obama administration is girding up for the shock of Egypt becoming the first Arab country, and the most populous, to be ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood. The last of three secret polls US intelligence conducted in Egypt assigned the MB contender Muhammad Morsi a 70 percent win of the presidential election runoff, Saturday-Sunday, June 16-17, against former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq’s 30 percent, according to debkafile’s exclusive sources.
Although such polls often miss the mark, the US, Israel and the Middle East appear to be facing this fast-approaching prospect.
Egypt’s transitional government the Supreme Military Council (SCAF) has publicly pledged to transfer power to civilian control on July 1 whomsoever wins the election. There are signs of preparations for this game-changer in Washington, though not in Jerusalem – unless they are taking place in secret – although Israel’s strategic and regional situation faces radical change.
At the same time, as high-placed American sources monitoring events in Egypt point out, the incoming president’s powers are still undefined and the SCAF may hold off transferring authority until they are.
Defining the extent of presidential authority is one of the tasks up to the 100-member Egyptian Constitutional Assembly, which only began work Wednesday, June 13. It is impossible to predict the content of its final document, although the body has a Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi Nour majority.
Furthermore, a judicial body, Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, is due to hand down critical rulings Thursday, June 14, just two days before the presidential election. They promise major repercussions for voting patterns and the status of the two contenders and their parties.
One SCC recommendation is to abolish as unconstitutional the law passed by the Islamist-dominated parliament in April barring senior Mubarak-era officials (such as Ahmed Shafiq) from running for president. The SCC may also throw out the electoral laws under which The Brotherhood and the Salafist party gained 75 percent of seats in parliament, order it its dissollution and call a new general election.
If confirmed, these rulings could produce a Brotherhood president without constitutional powers or parliamentary backing. In these circumstances, Muhammad Morsi would be too weak to govern, or even become a figurehead, and the SCAF would stay in power.
All this is of course speculative, debkafile's sources report. No one can tell for sure how Egypt’s first venture into full democracy will turn out. The Muslim Brotherhood’s violent campaign tactics have meanwhile had some unforeseen consequences and created unexpected bedfellows. Gangs of Islamist thugs have gone about burning Shafiq’s campaign branches, breaking up his public rallies and attacking the homes of his supporters and families. They turn up with loudspeaker cars on the fringes of pro-Shafiq rallies and shout slogans saying he should be hanged after the ousted ruler Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison for lesser crimes. Those tactics have absurdly sent some of the democratic and liberal forces which staged the Tahir Square revolution for toppling Mubarak rallying behind his last prime minister and adherent, as the lesser evil. However, those tactics have a more sinister side. debkafile’s intelligence sources report that local gangs of Islamist thugs are linking up into a nationwide organization, for which the Brotherhood is setting up regional headquarters. In Cairo this week, a central headquarters began coordinating their activities with a fleet of vehicles ferrying squads between districts for creating mayhem. The Brotherhood’s gangs are acquiring a hierarchical structure resembling the embryonic paramilitary militias which surfaced in the early years of Iran’s Shiite revolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s and evolved into Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. This manifestation will not disappear after elections are over but will be there to stay as part of Egypt’s political and street landscape, whoever is elected president. That is further cause for trepidation in the US and Israel.

Mubarak fears prison doctors will murder him
By Ahmed Yousef/Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat – Sources within the Egyptian Interior Ministry informed Asharq Al-Awsat that former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s health is “not stable”, whilst describing his psychological state as being “very bad” as reports reveal that he fears that prison doctors are trying to kill him. Interior Ministry sources also strongly denied reports that Mubarak had slipped into a coma in the Tora prison hospital where he – along with his two sons Alaa and Gamal – are being held.
Speculation has been rife regarding the health of the former Egyptian president, aged 84, since his conviction on charges of failing to stop the killing of protesters during the Egyptian revolution and subsequent sentence of life imprisonment. Mubarak was transferred to Cairo’s Tora prison immediately following his conviction on 2 June and he is being held in the prison’s medical ward.
Security sources also informed Asharq Al-Awsat that a team of medical doctors from the Egyptian Prison Service and Interior Ministry was formed to assess Mubarak’s health in prison. The medical team’s report revealed that Mubarak continues to suffer from breathing problems which occasionally cause him to lose consciousness and requires that he be placed on a ventilator, in addition to cardiac arrhythmia and high blood pressure. However the medical report stressed that despite these health complications, the Tora prison hospital is well-equipped to deal with Mubarak’s condition and this does not necessitate the former Egyptian president being transferred to a private hospital, as has been called for by Mubarak’s lawyer Farid el-Deeb.
Farid el-Deeb has been petitioning for Mubarak to be transferred to a better equipped military hospital due to the former president’s fragile health. He also raised questions about the level of health care being provided to Mubarak at Tora prison claiming that the prison doctors were unable to operate the ventilator on Mubarak’s first night in prison, stressing “this can’t be called a hospital.”
Appearing on a late night TV programme broadcast on CBC TV, a private station, Mubarak’s lawyer revealed that “Mubarak doesn’t trust anyone anymore. He was surprised to find new doctors treating him, not the ones who treated him before, and is afraid to take anything from anyone. He doesn’t recognize the faces around him. This is a big problem for him.”
El-Deeb also claimed that Mubarak fears his doctors are out to kill him, revealing that during a 90-minute visit with the former president in Tora prison, Mubarak lost consciousness three times and that he told him “help me, Farid…I’m uncomfortable and I don’t feel safe. I feel they [the doctors] are ordered to kill me.”
Farid el-Deeb claimed that the Egyptian authorities’ decision to transfer Mubarak to Tora prison came as a surprise to him and his legal team because Mubarak’s personal doctors had said that the former president’s health condition does not permit this.  Egyptian security sources also informed Asharq Al-Awsat that the presence of Alaa and Gamal Mubarak in Tora prison has helped the former president accept his imprisonment there and has resulted in a positive response to medical treatments prescribed by the Tora prison medical staff. The source added that Mubarak refuses to take any medicine before consulting with his two sons over fears that somebody could try to kill him by prescribing him the wrong medication.

The end of the tyrant
By Hussein Shobokshi/Asharq Alawsat
Why did the al-Assad regime commit a massacre in the Houla region of the Homs Governorate? I am raising this question amidst the most barbaric crimes and blatant savagery carried out by the regime's elements, most notably the notorious "Shabiha". The charred corpses of tortured children and women, the horrific slaughter of civilians with knives - chopping off their heads and amputating their genitals, and the rape of girls and women cannot simply be justified by the mere desire to defend the ruling system or the regime. The issue must have deeper roots within the mentality of the Shabiha and those who accompany them. With utter astonishment I read the interview that "The Times" of London recently conducted with "Jaafar", a member of the Shabiha who agreed to be interviewed and filmed without exposing his family name. Jaafar is an extremely muscular individual with a thick mustache, bushy beard, shaved head and tattoos of swords all over his arms. In his interview, he boasts that he was once a smuggler of all kinds of illegal commodities with the regime's full knowledge and support. He opened one shop after another to sell his smuggled goods in a scheme that also benefited the regime, and soon he promoted to defend some of al-Assad’s officials. This example applies to thousands of others who resemble Jaafar and who share the same social, cultural and economic background. The regime managed to recruit many of them and convinced them that their survival and lifestyle were closely linked with the continuity of the al-Assad regime, and that any change to the status quo would constitute high treason meriting killing and bloodshed. This explains exactly what is going on now in all Syrian provinces.
What happened in Houla was a mass act of revenge against the residents of a town to which one of the cooks of the Syrian Presidential Palace belonged. The cook had previously prepared a group dinner for several symbols of the Syrian regime, which caused severe food poisoning among many of them. As a result, some officials were taken to hospital, and it was even rumored that some of them had died. Immediately, strict orders were issued to enact revenge upon the town and its residents without mercy, and nevertheless, the cook was not arrested. Subsequently, other massacres took place that were no less bloody, criminal, violent or horrific, causing the death toll to rise in a staggering and alarming manner. This prompted UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Kofi Anan, the former Secretary-General of the UN and its current envoy to Syria, to admit that the Syrian regime must shoulder the responsibility for such incidents, violence and deaths.
Now, the international community seems to have begun to talk openly about the post-Assad era, as a result of the resounding conviction that the adherers of this regime can no longer defend it or prolong its stay in power,. This is especially in light of the advanced weaponry now being provided to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the rise in number of those (other than the defectors) who are refusing to join the regime’s army, and the increasing amount of liberated territories now under the control of the FSA. We are approaching the concluding chapters of the agonizing and horrific story written by the al-Assad regime, and the ending will be a happy one for the revolutionaries, although they have paid a huge price. Even the Shabiha - totally dedicated to defending their regime – are unable to save it. This is the end of the tyrant.

Peres receives Medal of Freedom from Obama at White House ceremony
By Natasha Mozgovaya | Jun.14, 2012/Haaretz
Shimon Peres: 'My vision is an Israel living in full, genuine peace, joining with all the people of the Middle East, former enemies and new friends alike.'
At 88, after 65 years in politics, it seems that the veteran statesman Shimon Peres won't be excited about yet another award bestowed upon him - but Wednesday night at the East room of the White House the Israeli President had a shy smile on his face, looking at the faces of the U.S. and Israeli officials that gathered around the tables decorated with tall white candles, to honor him - as if hardly believing Senya Persky from Wiszniewo shtetl, really got there. There were Vice President Joe Biden sitting next to the Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who entered with her husband, the former President Bill Clinton, a bit late - sitting next to the Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. There were Peres' three children: Zvia, Chemi and Jonathan - who came with Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, daughter of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro came. So did former Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fisher. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gently applauded. Later on, she sat at the same table with Peres, President Obama and his wife, and Haim Saban with his wife Cheryl. There is a big age difference between the two Presidents - but the relationship between them seems easy - before President Peres' remarks, President Obama fixed his microphone. Probably well aware of Peres' ups and downs in Israeli politics, President Obama tagged him as "the ultimate comeback." Obama said Peres ran for president and won when he was 83, adding that he "asked for all his tips."“The United States is fortunate to have many allies and partners around the world. Of course, one of our strongest allies, and one of our closest friends, is the State of Israel," Obama said in his speech before he presented Peres with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civic award in the U.S.. :"And no individual has done so much over so many years to build our alliance and bring our two nations closer as the leader we honor tonight—our friend, Shimon Peres.”
“In him we see the essence of Israel itself," Obama said of Peres. "an indomitable spirit that will not be denied.”
"To receive it is an honor. And to receive it from you, Mr. President, is a privilege that I shall cherish forever," Peres said after receiving the medal. "It is a testament to the historic friendship between our two nations. I receive this honor today on behalf of the People of Israel. They are the true recipients of this honor. With this moving gesture, you are paying tribute to generations upon generations of Jews who dreamed of, and fought for, a State of their own. A state that would give them shelter. A state that they could defend. Mr. President, you are honoring the pioneers who built homes on barren mountains, on shifting sands. Fighters who sacrificed their lives for their country. On their behalf, I thank America for days of concern, for sleepless nights, caring for our safety, for our future."
Barack Obama and Shimon PeresReuters"Palestinian-Israeli agreement is more urgent than ever before. It is necessary. It is crucial. It is possible. A delay may worsen its chances. Israel and the Palestinians are ripe today to restart. A firm basis already exists. A solution of two national states: A Jewish state – Israel. An Arab state – Palestine," Peres said. "My greatest hope is that a dawn will rise where every man and woman, Israeli or Palestinian, Syrian or Lebanese, young people, wherever they are, will wake up and be able to say to themselves: 'I am free to be free,'" Peres exclaimed.

Russia, U.S. Lock Horns Over Syria
Posted by Rick Moran Bio ↓ on Jun 13th, 2012/FrontPage
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Russia on Tuesday of planning to ship attack helicopters to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad — a move she said “will escalate the conflict quite dramatically.” Clinton’s remarks came on the same day that the UN peacekeeping chief, Herve Ladsous, told reporters that the Syrian conflict had escalated into a civil war. Lasdous is the first UN official to acknowledge what has been obvious for weeks: that the growing combat capability of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has been allowing the rebels to carry out larger and more sophisticated operations against the Syrian military.
As if to underscore Ladsous’ claim, violent clashes between the FSA and Syrian armed forces broke out in several cities and towns across the country — including for the first time in the capital of Damascus. The Syrian military was also changing its tactics as the use of attack helicopters on civilians occurred in Talbiseh and Rastan. Shelling continued in Homs and other flashpoint cities of the rebellion.
The civilian opposition, represented by the Syrian National Council, has taken what many observers believe to be a positive step by electing a Kurd to head the group for the next three months. Tying the nation’s one million Kurds closer to the political opposition would strengthen the claim of the anti-Assad forces that they represent a broad, national coalition of a majority of Syrians who want Assad out.
The US State Department said it believes that the Syrian military is planning another massacre of civilians, this time in Haffeh, as the government has been shelling the city with mortars and using helicopters and tanks to battle the opposition forces while deploying the dreaded Shabbiha militia. US officials called on the Syrians to stop using “horrific tactics” in trying to suppress the rebellion in Haffeh.
State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland pointed out that this Russian shipment of helicopters comes at a time when President Assad is escalating the violence he is using against civilians. “We have been pushing the Russians for months to break their military ties with the Syrian regime and they haven’t done it. Instead, they keep reassuring all of us that what they are sending militarily to Syria can’t be used against civilians,” she said.
The Russian statement is disingenuous at best when one considers that helicopters are already being used against civilians by the Syrian military. “We are seeing the Syrian government using helicopters to fire on their own people from the air,” said Nuland. “So our question remains: How can the Russians conscience their continued military sales to Syria?”
The US has been urging Russia for several weeks to not only stop selling arms to Syria, but also to use its influence with President Assad to find a negotiated way out of the violence. Criticism of the Obama administration for basically farming out responsibility to Russia for stopping the violence, instead of America taking a leadership role in the crisis, has been coming from experts as well as Republican politicians. Barry Rubin, Director of the Global Research and International Affairs (GLORIA) Center in Israel, has been among the most vocal of President Obama’s critics on Syria.
It’s Obama, not Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who is pushing this plan to put Russia in control! If your enemy tries to fool or cheat you, that’s a problem. If you beg him to cheat you and hand him the means to do so, that’s a betrayal of U.S. interests.
The Kurdish leader elected to head up the Syrian National Council for the next three months, Abdelbasset Sida, told reporters that the regime was “on its last legs” — a boast to be sure, but backed up by rebel attacks in the capital of Damascus. This is the first time that Assad’s stronghold had come under fire. Two central districts in the city were attacked by the FSA and Syrian tanks shelled several buildings in a futile effort to beat back the rebels. A general strike called to protest the recent massacres was apparently more successful than many believed possible. Reports say up to 90% of shops were closed, with one businessman telling the Telegraph, “During the strike, the military forces tried to burn some stores or force the doors open, but they were powerless,” said Omar Dimashki. This is a potentially damaging turn of events for Assad who has counted on the merchant class to support him during the crackdown.
Elsewhere in Syria, the FSA battled Assad’s forces in Homs, Deraa and Idlib, as well as in villages near Latakia on the Mediterranean coast. One Latakia village — Haffeh — has roused the concern of the UN and State Department as Assad’s forces have been pulverizing the town with mortars and helicopter gunships, and UN monitors have been prevented from entering. “People will be held accountable,” said spokesperson Nuland, referring to the gathering of forces outside of Haffeh, reported by UN monitors at the scene. As the monitors pulled back, local townspeople threw rocks at the UN vehicles and several shots were fired in their direction. Whatever is going to happen in Haffeh, it is apparent that the Syrian government doesn’t want any witnesses.
One expert believes that more massacres of civilians makes the establishment of “humanitarian corridors” more than a possibility. Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a policy group, told Bloomberg News, “The creation of safe havens has become inevitable and is relatively imminent. It’s not a question of if but when.”
These “safe havens” would have to be established and defended by troops on the ground — something that the UN would never vote for given Russia’s adamant opposition to using military force against Assad, and prospects for which no Western nation is eager to explore.
The real danger of a civil war is that it would spill over into neighboring countries with the potential for starting a general Middle East conflict. Syrian forces are massing near the Turkish border outside the country’s second largest city, Aleppo. Secretary Clinton says such a deployment could be a “red line” for Turkey, who has harbored the FSA as well as hosting the Syrian civilian opposition. “We are watching this very carefully,” she said.
It seems clear that the Syrian rebellion has entered a new phase. President Assad has stepped up the violence and brutality of his attacks while the FSA is fighting back with increasing skill and ferocity. As the war escalates, the chances of Western intervention of some kind rise substantially, despite reluctance in capitals from Bonn to Washington to undertake a humanitarian mission.
And Syrian civilians, caught in the crossfire and murdered indiscriminately by Assad’s regular and irregular forces, continue dying in the hundreds and thousands.
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Is there a savior in Syria
By Ali Ibrahim/Asharq Alawsat
There are signs that the Syrian crisis has entered a stage similar to the last weeks of the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya, when the Libyan regime was being stubborn and issuing fiery statements, and then there was a sudden collapse as the rebels entered Tripoli and the pillars of the regime fled, ultimately concluding with the bloody end that we witnessed. The Libyan regime, if it had adopted political solutions months before, could have spared the country the bloodshed, turmoil and collapse of institutions that occurred, the consequences of which are still being felt today.
Of course the Syrian case is different, even if there are similar features in the sense that the scenario has shifted from peaceful demonstrations calling for freedom and justice to armed confrontations and the development of something nearing a civil war using heavy weaponry. The Syrian internal political geography is more complex, as is the regional political geography, including the regional and international stances that have made the crisis part of a larger struggle for which the Syrian people will ultimately pay the price.
Signs of collapse and the regime losing control have become clear, and when we watch the video clip of the regime’s aerial bombardment of a rocket battalion base near Homs, after the opposition claimed it had defected, we must all feel threatened by the path that this conflict could take, between a regime that remains stubborn and is desperate to stay in power without offering any genuine solutions, and an opposition that has proven over a year and a half that this uprising cannot be suppressed, and that it is impossible to return to previous conditions.
The new president of the Syrian National Council is saying that the regime is in its last days and has lost control of large parts of Syria, and this confirms the escalation that we see in military activity, such as the constant bombardment of Homs and even neighborhoods in Damascus, the return of clashes to areas that the regime has entered previously, and the Friday demonstrations where hundreds of thousands come out in unison despite the suppression and arrests.
It is strange that there is almost unanimous regional and international agreement that the survival of this regime has become impossible, and that regime change is coming sooner or later, but there is no clear vision on how this can be achieved, or how to shorten the timeframe so that the cost does not become exorbitant, whether in terms of the price paid by the Syrian people or the cost to regional security in the Middle East.
Perhaps more worrying for some external parties is the fate of the huge arsenal of conventional and unconventional weapons in the Syrian regime’s possession, and what could happen to them if Syria’s military units and divisions fragment and divide, as we are beginning to see. However, what is more serious than all this is the concern over the future of Syria itself, should the bloodshed continue and the violence keep escalating in this manner, with massacres being committed by militias informally affiliated to the regime, and the feuds and difficulties that will come later regarding future reconciliation and the rebuilding of the state. It is clear that the world has been putting one leg forward and then one leg back in its dealings with the Syrian crisis since the beginning of the uprising, whilst granting the regime countless opportunities in an attempt to avoid the scenario that we currently see before our eyes. Yet there has been no response from the decision-makers in Damascus, and the regime has even dealt with UN peace envoy Kofi Annan’s plan in a disparaging manner, despite previously accepting it, and despite the fact that it could have provided a way out.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague has compared the current situation in Syria to that of Bosnia in the 1990s and the civil war there, before the West intervened militarily against Serbia to stop the massacres. If we cast our minds back to the Balkan crisis, we would find that it ended with a number of new geographical entities emerging from the ruins of the former Yugoslavia. Is this what the regime wants in Syria, especially as talk has begun to intensify now about not ruling out the option of military intervention, the prospects of which are growing every day with the frequency of the daily killings? If this happens it will be a painful path, no one wants a civil war in Syria, or the state’s geographical unity to be torn apart and its institutions to completely collapse. This path is being prompted by the regime’s current suicidal mindset, and there does not appear to be a savior from within the heart of the state’s institutions with the ability and courage to take responsibility in the transitional phase, and oust the current leadership.