Newsclick discusses with Vijay Prashad the current developments on Syrian crisis. Arms supplies by the Western powers to the rebels have gone up and their allies are taking up more aggressive positions on Syria. There are attempts being made by the Western media to create an environment which would find a justification for a military intervention in Syria.

If the US stops Genie Energy from going ahead with oil contract, it invites the wrath of myriad pro-Israel groups.

Bouthaina Shaaban, Political and Media Advisor to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, in a talk hosted by the Centre for Policy Analysis, answers the questions of journalists and people eager to have a deep understanding of the factors responsible for the ongoing conflict in Syria.

Bouthaina Shaaban, Political and Media Advisor to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, addressed a talk hosted by the Centre for Policy Analysis on the Syrian crisis. Newsclick presents the video of the talk. Shaaban says there are multifaceted factors responsible for the crisis. She says the expulsion of Syria from the Arab League has caused huge damage. The arming of Syrian rebels has still not abated. Every passing day is a tragedy with 2 million people already displaced, thousands killed and many more orphaned. Syria is being infused with sectarian beliefs and language, which is destroying the secular foundations of the system. Shaaban sees in Syrian crisis a whole design for the entire region. She hopes countries like India would be more pro-active at the upcoming BRICS meeting in South Africa in pressing for a non-military intervention in Syria.

The Islamist Syrian insurgent group that had kidnapped some Philippine UN peacekeepers and is also responsible for murdering a number of captured Syrian army soldiers has evidently received modern weapons through the U.S. led additional arming of the insurgency.

The return of negotiations between Iran and P5+1 – the US, Britain, France, Russia, China (Security Council 5) and Germany (+1) – in Almaty, Kazakhstan signal the possibility of resolving the issues between Iran and the US without a shooting war. Both Catherine Ashton, the lead negotiator of P5+1 and Saeed Jalili, the Iranian head of the delegation expressed guarded optimism and agreed to continue these meetings over March and April.

Syria has seen some changes recently. The Head of Syria’s main opposition coalition, Mouaz Alkhatib, says he is ready to talk with representatives of President Bashar al-Assad’s government and for the first time has not made the pre-condition that Assad has to go. Do the recent developments reflect a realisation that there could be no military resolution to the Syrian conflict?

I am one of those who out of principle condemn all military interventions by Western powers in the countries of the South, these interventions being by nature subject to the requirements of the deployment of control of the planet by the capital of the monopolies that dominate the system.

Vijay Prashad (author, "Arab Spring, Libyan Winter") talks to GRITtv's Laura Flanders about the vote to give enhanced status to Palestine at the UN. The US and Israel have to face a new reality in the Middle East says Prashad.

Many aspects of the current assault on Gaza pass under the radar screens of world conscience.