Why Chemical weapons on own people and children? Syria used to be a civilization…

News broke out on April 4th 2017 that more than 80 people have perished in a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in north-western Syria. Worse, ONE THIRD of them were children who had not even an iota of knowledge about the political issues Syria is suffering since many years.

An air strike by Syrian forces left people gasping for breath as a reaction to the nerve agent released by bombs.

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“Witnesses say warplanes attacked Khan Sheikhoun, about 50km (30 miles) south of the city of Idlib, early on Tuesday, when many people were asleep. Mariam Abu Khalil, a 14-year-old resident who was awake, told the New York Times that she had seen an aircraft drop a bomb on a one-storey building.

The explosion sent a yellow mushroom cloud into the air that stung her eyes. “It was like a winter fog,” she said. She sheltered in her home, but recalled that when people started arriving to help the wounded, “they inhaled the gas and died”.

Hussein Kayal, a photographer for the pro-opposition Edlib Media Center (EMC), told the Associated Press that he was awoken by the sound of an explosion at about 06:30 (03:30 GMT). When he reached the scene, there was no smell, he said. He found people lying on the floor, unable to move and with constricted pupils.

Crater in a road after a suspected chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib province, Syria (4 April 2017)

Opposition activists said government warplanes dropped bombs containing chemicals. Mohammed Rasoul, the head of a charity ambulance service in Idlib, told the BBC that he heard about the attack at about 06:45 and that when his medics arrived 20 minutes later they found people, many of them children, choking in the street.

The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations (UOSSM), which funds hospitals in rebel-held Syria, said three of its staff in Khan Sheikhoun were affected while treating patients in the streets and had to be rushed to intensive care.

Victims experienced symptoms including redness of the eyes, foaming from the mouth, constricted pupils, blue facial skin and lips, severe shortness of breath and asphyxiation, it added.

Rescue workers said many children were among those killed or injured in the attack. A Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) medical team supporting the Bab al-Hawa hospital, near the Turkish border, confirmed similar symptoms in eight patients brought there from Khan Sheikhoun.”

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(Courtesy BBC News Portal : http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39500947)

2. Josie Ensor, Beirut and Charlotte Krol, video news producer have produced a video featuring the protest of Syrian children about world inaction, which will send chills down your spine. It is available on: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/06/syrian-children-protest-worlds-inaction-chemical-attack-idlib/

Children in Idlib, Syria, protest against international inaction after the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun

President Trump sent in his air force to target the air base in Syria from which the chemical weapon strike was believed to have been conducted on April 4, 2017.

Forces of President Assad of Syria have been using chemical weapons since many years.

3. Now, what are chemical weapons?

“Chemical weapons are classified as weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), though they are distinct from nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and radiological weapons. All may be used in warfare and are known by the military acronym NBC (for nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare). Weapons of mass destruction are distinct from conventional weapons, which are primarily effective due to their explosive, kinetic, or incendiary potential. Chemical weapons can be widely dispersed in gas, liquid and solid forms, and may easily afflict others than the intended targets. Nerve gas, tear gas and pepper spray are three modern examples of chemical weapons.

Lethal unitary chemical agents and munitions are extremely volatile and they constitute a class of hazardous chemical weapons that have been stockpiled by many nations. Unitary agents are effective on their own and do not require mixing with other agents. The most dangerous of these are nerve agents, GA, GB, GD, and VX as well as vesicant (blister) agents, which are formulations of sulfur mustard such as H, HT, and HD. They all are liquids at normal room temperature, but become gaseous when released. Widely used during the First World War, the effects of so-called mustard gas, phosgene gas and others caused lung searing, blindness, death and maiming.”

(Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapon)

4. International Treaty on Chemical Weapons

“The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is the most recent arms control agreement with the force of International law. Its full name is the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. That agreement outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. It is administered by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is an independent organization based in The Hague.^[9]

The OPCW administers the terms of the CWC to 192 signatories, which represents 98% of the global population. As of June 2016, 66,368 of 72,525 metric tonnes, (92% of CW stockpiles), have been verified as destroyed.^[10]^[11] The OPCW has conducted 6,327 inspections at 235 chemical weapon-related sites and 2,255 industrial sites. These inspections have affected the sovereign territory of 86 States Parties since April 1997. Worldwide, 4,732 industrial facilities are subject to inspection under provisions of the CWC.

^{[11]” (Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapon)}

5. WHAT AN AMAZING CIVILIZATION SYRIA WAS, ONCE UPON A TIME?

Syria was an ancient civilization! In fact it used to be called the cradle of civilization! It ranked along with the Egyptian and Indus Valley civilizations to dazzle the emerging world of that time with advancements in knowledge and urban living.

Joshua J. Marka freelance writer and part-time Professor of Philosophy at Marist College, New York, who has lived in Greece and Germany and traveled through Egypt, teaches ancient history, writing, literature, and philosophy. He writes in Ancient History Encyclopedia about the Syrian civilization (published on 17 June 2014):

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“Syria is a country located in the Middle East on the shore of Mediterranean Sea and bordered, from the north down to the west, by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. It is one of the oldest inhabited regions in the world with archaeological finds dating the first human habitation at c. 700,000 years ago. The Dederiyeh Cave near Aleppo has produced a number of significant finds, such as bones, placing Neanderthals in the region at that time and shows continual occupation of the site over a substantial period. The first evidence of modern humans appears c. 100,000 years ago as evidenced by finds of human skeletons, ceramics, and crude tools. The historian Soden notes that, “Scholars have sought to deduce especially important developments, for example, folk migrations, from cultural changes which can be read in archaeological remains, particularly in ceramic materials…Yet there can be frequent and substantial changes in the ceramic style, even if no other people has come onto the scene” (13). It is clear, however, that an agrarian civilization was already thriving in the region prior to the domestication of animals c. 10,000 BCE.

SYRIA WAS AN IMPORTANT TRADE REGION WITH PORTS ON THE MEDITERRANEAN, PRIZED BY A SUCCESSION OF MESOPOTAMIAN EMPIRES.

THE NAME & EARLY HISTORY

In its early written history, the region was known as Eber Nari (‘across the river’) by the Mesopotamians and included modern-day Syria, Lebanon, and Israel (collectively known as The Levant). Eber Nari is referenced in the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah as well as in reports by the scribes of Assyrian and Persian kings. The modern name of Syria is claimed by some scholars to have derived from Herodotus’ habit of referring to the whole of Mesopotamia as ‘Assyria‘ and, after the Assyrian Empire fell in 612 BCE, the western part continued to be called ‘Assyria’ until after the Seleucid Empire when it became known as ‘Syria’. This theory has been contested by the claim that the name comes from Hebrew, and the people of the land were referred to as ‘Siryons’ by the Hebrews because of their soldiers’ metal armor (‘Siryon’ meaning armor, specifically chain mail, in Hebrew).

Early settlements in the area, such as Tell Brak, date back to at least 6000 BCE. It has long been understood that civilization began in southern Mesopotamia in the region of Sumer and then spread north.

Panorama of Palmyra

The two most important cities in ancient Syria were Mari and Ebla, both founded after the cities of Sumer (Mari in the 5th and Ebla in the 3rd millennium BCE) and both of which used Sumerian script, worshipped Sumerian deities, and dressed in Sumerian fashion. Both of these urban centers were repositories of vast cuneiform tablet collections, written in Akkadian and Sumerian, which recorded the history, daily life, and business transactions of the people and included personal letters. When Ebla was excavated in 1974 CE the palace was found to have been burned and, as with Ashurbanipal’s famous library at Nineveh, the fire baked the clay tablets and preserved them. At Mari, following its destruction by Hammurabi of Babylon in 1759 BCE, the tablets were buried under the rubble and remained intact until their discovery in 1930 CE. Together, the tablets of Mari and Ebla provided archaeologists with a relatively complete understanding of life in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BCE.”

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The video below has been posted by the Permanent Mission of the Syrian Arab Republic to United Nations, and encapsulates the Syrian civilization!

6. Now, the question arises why and how such beautiful civilizations are coming to an end with the use of weapons of mass destruction including chemical nerve gases? And why political issues are not been resolved by peaceful negotiation?

Is it because undeserving politicians are catapulted to the top?

Is it because half the world is not bothered about what happens to the other half?

Is it because humanity only reacts when own kin has died ?

Is it because people of the world are increasingly becoming selfish?

Is it because UN has no real teeth?

Is it because the world has failed to lay down standards of decent governance to be followed by all nations? Why can’t such a protocol be in place?

Why can’t a country whose political administration has failed, be taken over by a Global Board of Governance, formed under the United Nations safeguarding the lives, rights, language, culture, and privileges of the people?

Should a rogue administration be allowed to remain in power?

The world needs a certain discipline and a certain policing at the highest level. The world needs peace in the hearts of rulers, not greed and hunger for power.

The world needs more prayers than ever before!

LET PEACE PREVAIL AS WE REMEMBER THE CHILDREN OF SYRIA WHO DIED IN THE CHEMICAL WEAPON ATTACK!

STAND UP PLEASE FOR WORLD PEACE!!!

St. Petersburg deserves more Hymns than Bombs !

Pravda Image

(Image courtesy Pravda; on the Internet)

Time and again militancy rises from the Earth like treacherous snakes from a womb of evil ! Always the unsuspecting, innocent and uninvolved lose their precious lives for a cause not related to them.

NY Times carried a detailed article how this time it was students and innocent travelers who lost their precious lives in a dastardly moment early April in St. Petersburg.

Business Insider.com image

(Image courtesy www.businessinsider.com; on the Internet)

If you walk through their lives, as reported, you will question WHY THEM?

When we read of their ambitions, their struggling small lives we often wonder why they were chosen to die for nothing. Along with them crashed their dreams and hopes. Along with them perished a tiny flame of God’s own humanity.

Whether the issue voiced so loudly by a bomb, blood splashed on the ground was able to resolve and find solution? Whether the people who did it have any sense of remorse and guilt? These are questions before society and the policy makers. The police will apprehend the suspect, the courts shall start a trial and maybe for want of evidence the militant shall escape scot free after a score of years. But, the dead will never come alive. A requiem sung, some wreaths, few strong words by the people in power and the newspaper stories shall soon gather dust, the TV coverage shall be faded by bigger tragedies and more dead.

The civil society must work for more peace in the hearts of people living around them. State should draw mechanisms to report any suspicious activity easily maintaining anonymity of the citizen.

Most of all we need more good karma on Planet Earth to keep the balance in favour of peace!

(Acknowledgements to NY Times for reproducing their story below).

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“EUROPE

St. Petersburg Metro Attack Included Many Students Among Victims

By IVAN NECHEPURENKO and NEIL MacFARQUHARAPRIL 5, 2017

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A makeshift memorial at the Technology Institute subway station in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Wednesday. The dead included a famous doll maker and a beloved wrestling coach. CreditDmitri Lovetsky/Associated Press

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — The 14 people who died in a terrorist attack on the St. Petersburg subway were a cross section of the city, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There was a famous doll maker whose creations with often crazy hair were beloved by collectors, and who apparently saved her daughter’s life by shielding her as a bomb erupted deep underground around 2:40 p.m. on Monday.

There was a young wrestling coach adored by his team. When he did not appear for practice as scheduled and did not answer his cellphone, people posted pictures of him and his distinctive tattoos on social media, refusing to believe that he could have been swept away so suddenly and so young.

There were many students — some finished for the day, some playing hooky, many making plans that were abruptly, catastrophically cut short.

“I feel lost now,” said Mikhail A. Veprentsev, 18, one of more than 60 people injured, summing up the mood of those whose loved ones died and those who made it out of the subway train that was struck by a young suicide bomber. “I am just glad I was alone, without friends or relatives.”

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The doll maker, Irina Medyantseva, 50, was not alone. She and her grown daughter Yelena, also a doll designer, had just boarded the third carriage of the train at Sennaya Station when the terrorist struck. Relatives told Komsomolskaya Pravda, a tabloid, that the mother had protected the daughter, who ended up in intensive care.

Irina Medyantseva, in a picture taken from social media.

Mrs. Medyantseva was famous in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and imperial capital, for making dolls for the past 15 years. Her creations sported big eyes, big grins and droopy clothes, a little vulnerable and a little unconventional. Photographs of Mrs. Medyantseva showed her in her garden or donning big glasses to look a bit like one of her dolls.

“Catastrophe,” wrote her husband, Alexander Kaminsky, on his page on Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. “I’ve lost my beloved wife.” After the explosion, his daughter called him briefly to recount what happened before she was whisked to the hospital.

The wrestling coach, Denis R. Petrov, 25, had been an assistant coach for children at a club called Warrior since September. He was a stocky blond with numerous tattoos — a dark blue Polynesian design across one shoulder, English phrases up both forearms and burst of color on his right wrist.

His left arm read “Better to reign,” while the right said, “Step by Step.”

He had called in the morning to say he would be there around 3 p.m., and when he did not appear, his colleagues began making a series of frantic telephone calls to try to find him. “We didn’t want to believe that he had died,” one told the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Kirill Mikhailov, the father of one of the children he coached, wrote on Mr. Petrov’s Vkontakte page, “My son’s wrestling coach and simply a good person Denis Romanovich Petrov died in the terrorist attack in the Petersburg metro, he was all of 25 years old!!! He will remain in our memories forever!”

Dilbara S. Aliyeva was one of the students killed. She was in her third year at Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University. On its website, the university announced the death and reported that 12 more of its students were injured.

Ms. Aliyeva — whose pictures show a woman with long black hair — was studying at the faculty of economics and management. She wanted to become a psychologist, the statement said.

“Like any girl, she had friends, was making big plans, loved life,” it said. Ms. Aliyeva was originally from Baku, Azerbaijan, but had moved to St. Petersburg with her family and completed high school there.

She posted a picture from a hipster cafe on her Instagram account in late January saying, “You can take the girl out of Petersburg but you can never take Petersburg out of the girl.”

Another student, Maksim Aryshev, 19, a native of Kazakhstan, was so close to the blast that at first there were reports — given the fears about suicide attackers from Central Asia — that he had been the bomber.

Mr. Aryshev, a third-year student at St. Petersburg State University of Economics, wanted to be a programmer. A classmate described him to the Meduza news website as cheerful and sociable, a man who loved to joke and the life of any party.

There was at least one mystery among the dead. Angelina Svistunova, 27, described as the wife of a military man, was said to have spent most days at home. Her family was mystified as to why she was on the metro in the middle of the day, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Finally, there was the bomber himself: Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, 22, a member of the Uzbek minority in the troubled city of Osh, in southern Kyrgyzstan, who came to St. Petersburg six years ago after obtaining Russian citizenship through his father.

He blossomed into a car mechanic. About the only signs of radicalization were a few links to Islamist websites on his social media pages, and one source told Interfax that he seemed to have returned from a rare visit home in February a changed man — sullen and withdrawn.

How he became radicalized — yet another in a line of lone wolves that have left a bloody trail around the globe — is part of the investigation. His father and mother arrived in St. Petersburg on Wednesday to identify the body and to speak with investigators. “I do not believe it,” was all the mother told reporters upon arrival, according to Interfax.

The names of the deceased have dribbled out slowly; the list was still incomplete by Wednesday morning, and the families were supposed to begin receiving their remains later in the day. Their relatives, as well as the injured, were mostly being shielded from public view at the various hospitals to which they were admitted. Dozens remained hospitalized.

Mr. Veprentsev, lying under a blanket at City Hospital No. 26 in St. Petersburg, answered a steady stream of telephone calls from friends inquiring about his health.

The young man was injured after he decided at the last minute to skip an afternoon class and go back home, dashing across the platform to the fateful train.

He was in an adjacent car when the door blew in on him. “I was shocked. I threw the door away from me and began to crawl through this whole mess,” he said. The dead around him had screws sticking out of their heads, he said, apparently part of the shrapnel in the bomb.

At first he went home, but, feeling ill, he was taken to the hospital by a friend. Doctors determined he had a concussion, multiple injuries, trauma inside his chest and glass injuries across his back.

Opposite him in the same tiny room, also under a blanket, lay Konstantin Y. Kolodkin, 40, a well-built man with a dark mustache who installs car alarms for a living. He had been on the way home from work and said he did not remember which car he had entered when suddenly there was a blast.

“I jumped out of the car like the cork out of bottle,” he said, then walked around dazed for while before going to the hospital, where he was found to have a concussion and multiple injuries.

“The car was full. I would say about 70 percent full for sure, students going home or going to classes,” said Mr. Kolodkin, who repeatedly criticized the government security measures that let a bomber slip through. “I just don’t know how I will be able to go down to use the metro again.”

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