Rogue Media

by Pepe Escobar

Here’s a crash course on the “democratic” machinations of the Arab League – rather the GCC League, as real power in this pan-Arab organization is wielded by two of the six Persian Gulf monarchies composing the Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-revolution Club; Qatar and the House of Saud.

Essentially, the GCC created an Arab League group to monitor what’s going on in Syria. The Syrian National Council – based in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries Turkey and France – enthusiastically supported it. It’s telling that Syria’s neighbor Lebanon did not.

When the over 160 monitors, after one month of enquiries, issued their report … surprise! The report did not follow the official GCC line – which is that the “evil” Bashar al-Assad government is indiscriminately, and unilaterally, killing its own people, and so regime change is in order.

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by Luke Harding, Mona Mahmood, Matthew Weaver and James Meikle   –  from guardian.co.uk

Opposition activists say tanks are pushing deeper into residential areas before feared final ground assault.

Helped by a friend, an injured man leaves hospital in Baba Amr. Photograph: AP

Scores of people have been killed in the fifth straight day of shelling in the beseiged Syrian city of Homs, according to opponents of Bashar al-Assad‘s regime.

The continuing bombardments of the districts of Bayadah, Baba Amr, al-Khaldiyeh and Karm el-Zeytoun caused many deaths, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Omar Shaker, an activist in Baba Amr, said the district was under “very intense shelling” by tanks, mortars, artilleries and heavy machine guns. He said he had counted five bodies.

Other reports suggest 47 civilians died early on Wednesday in the government’s continuing attempts to subdue opposition areas. At least 150 people have died in the last two days, activists and oppostion sources have told Reuters.

One activist, Muhammad Hassan, said by satellite phone: “Electricity returned briefly and we were able to contact various neighbourhoods because activists there managed to recharge their phones. We counted 47 killed since midnight.” Hassan said the bombardment had intensified in Sunni Muslim neighbourhoods that have risen up against Assad.

“Mortar and rocket fires have subsided but heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns are still strong … Tanks are in main thoroughfares in the city and appear poised to push deep into residential areas,” Hassan said.

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by News Sources  from   -   warincontext.org

Seumas Milne writes: There is no limit, it seems, to the blood price Arabs have to pay for their “spring”. After the carnage in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, Syria’s 11-month-old uprising grows ever more gruesome. Four days of bombardment of rebel-controlled districts in the Syrian city of Homs have yielded horrific images and reports from the embattled Bab al-Amr opposition stronghold: of mosques full of corpses, streets strewn with body parts, residential areas reduced to rubble.

Television footage broadcast in the Arab world is still more graphic, and the impact convulsive. Whatever the arguments about the number of dead on either side, the scale of human suffering is unmistakable – and comes after almost a year of continuous bloodletting, torture and sectarian revenge attacks.

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