NATO Strategies, Economic Sanctions and the R2P
Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, Jan 11 2013
Prior to the US-UK-EU-NATO supported insurgency, Syria had produced 90% of its drugs and medication needs. However, according to WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic:Production has been hit by the fighting, lack of raw materials, impact of sanctions and higher fuel costs. Further, nearly all pharmaceutical plants are located in fbs areas of heaviest fighting, Aleppo, Homs and Damascus provinces, and have suffered substantial damage. The result is a critical shortage of medicines. Drugs for tuberculosis, hepatitis, hypertension, diabetes and cancer are urgently needed, as well as haemodialysis for kidney diseases. The health facilities that have stopped functioning are located in the most affected areas where the urgent need for medical and surgical interventions is the most prominent.The Syrian Health Ministry reported that it lost 200 ambulances stolen or destroyed in a few weeks through June and early August 2012. Banks ran out of cash and the 2012 wheat harvest is likely to have been wrecked because of the shortage of labour, according to UN agencies. In the Middle East bread is still truly the staff of life. This all mirrors Iraq, even down to the wheat harvest. In Iraq, those bombing the country over the 13 years before the invasion dropped flares on the harvested wheat and grain, reducing tentative bread security to ashes. Syria struggles to meet its annual grain imports of around four million4m tons because of a superb sleight of hand by the siege imposers. Essential foods are exempt from sanctions, but moneys are frozen, thus the wherewithal to trade. The country is continually hours away from a bread crisis. In 2011, Syria’s own harvest was hit by blight, water shortages and conflict. In Dec 2012, Iran sent consignments of flour to Syria, temporarily easing the bread crisis, but the siege under which Iran struggles is also of enormity, and shamefully under-reported in the West. As Iran shipped flour to Syria, Iran’s Health Ministry was approaching India for a life-saving list of denied medications, for the most critical conditions in patients. Vital items denied included: “drugs to treat lung and breast cancers; brain tumours; heart ailments; infections after kidney, heart and pancreas transplants; meningitis in HIV patients; arthritis; bronchitis and respiratory distress in newborns; and epilepsy.” (iv) And here again is that sleight of hand:
Although trade in medicine is exempt from international sanctions imposed by the UNSC and the unilateral sanctions announced by the US and EU, Western banks have been declining to handle transactions.Targeting the sick is the action of the criminally insane. For targeting the newborn surely no expression has been conceived, except by Madeleine Albright when referring to Iraq’s sanctions related, half million child deaths: “We think the price is worth it.” It was not a slip of the tongue. It was clearly to be the New World Order. This partial list of medications unobtainable by Iran should be put on a wall of shame in Washington and all those Nobel-winning EU capital cities
As the New Year was celebrated across Europe and the Land of the Free, Upper Mesopotamian Archbishop Jaques Behnan Hindo was writing an urgent appeal to the Presidency of the UN FAO, saying:The situation could soon become catastrophic. Supply routes are halted and every economic activity appears paralyzed. There is depletion of vital goods and soaring prices. The lack of fuel prevents heating homes and leads to the complete closure of all agricultural activities, just as the planting season begins. The grain silos were looted and the wheat was sold to Turkish traders, who conveyed it into Turkey under the gaze of the Turkish customs officers.It is impossible not to reflect that NATO ally Turkey is the equivalent of the bombing flame droppers on the Iraqi harvests. In addition to the plundered, grain, the Archbishop denounced the gradual disappearance of other vital products including, as in Iraq, baby milk. Archbishop Hindo also sent an appeal to Iraqi PM Maliki, saying:Please help us as quickly as possible, by sending 600 fuel tanks, 300 tanks of gasoline and some tons of flour.The first victims are the children. You experience in your body, in your soul, and in the children all the injustice caused by draconian, life-threatening, illegal collective punishment of a nation’s people, yet again starting with the unborn, the newborn, and the barely crawling. At the end of WW2, Leningrad (now Saint Petersberg) was awarded the status of Hero City for collective unwavering courage, resistance and inventiveness under Nazi atrocities. The world is surely in need of the status of Hero Country for those who exhibit the same courageous qualities against those nations who emulate the same atrocities.

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