All posts filed under: conflict zones

The Syrian Test of Trump-Putin Accord

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By Ray McGovern via Information Clearing House The U.S. mainstream media remains obsessed over Russia’s alleged “meddling” in last fall’s election, but the real test of bilateral cooperation may come on the cease-fire in Syria, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. July 09, 2017 “Information Clearing House” – The immediate prospect for significant improvement in U.S.-Russia relations now depends on something tangible: Will the forces that sabotaged previous ceasefire agreements in Syria succeed in doing so again, all the better to keep alive the “regime change” dreams of the neoconservatives and liberal interventionists? Or will President Trump succeed where President Obama failed by bringing the U.S. military and intelligence bureaucracies into line behind a cease-fire rather than allowing insubordination to win out? These are truly life-or-death questions for the Syrian people and could have profound repercussions across Europe, which has been destabilized by the flood of refugees fleeing the horrific violence in the six-year proxy war that has ripped Syria apart. But you would have little inkling of this important priority from the large page-one headlines …

Russia Announces No-Fly Zone in Syria

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Late on Monday the 19th, was reported by Russia’s Sputnik: “In areas where Russian aviation is conducting combat missions in the Syrian skies, any flying ojects, including jets and unmanned aerial vehicles of the international coalition discovered west of the Euphrates River, will be followed by Russian air and ground defenses as air targets” — meaning ordered out, or else immediately shot down.

Taboo Subject in NATO Media: Refugees, America’s Gift to Europe

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by Gregory Barrett, via Greanvillepost In the latest episode in the never-ending series of indignities, calamities, and disasters to be visited upon the heads of the world’s millions of suffering and desperate refugees, they are now being stabbed in the back by the one leader of an affluent NATO country who had risked any political capital to help a substantial number of them, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At the height of the refugee wave from NATO war zones into Turkey and Europe a couple of years ago, Merkel opened the borders and allowed nearly a million refugees into Germany. Although she is a conservative woman and an obedient servant of the neoliberal economic order and American hegemony, with whom I have always disagreed about almost everything, I was proud of her for a while for taking this courageous stand against much of Europe, including at least half of her own party, the tragically misnamed Christian Democratic Union. The political center in Germany is somewhat to the left of America’s center (which has raced to the …

Philippines ‘Dirty’ Duterte facing ‘same ISIS dynamic’ as Assad in Syria

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Beleaguered residents, including women and children, bring whatever they can as they flee Marawi City to escape the fighting between government troops and terrorists who have occupied portions of the city. —AFP   RT interviews Patrick Henningsen, Executive Editor of 21st Century Wire.com: Someone has unleashed ISIS, which forces the Filipino government to come down hard, to declare martial law, and then the international organizations will demonize Duterte, Patrick Henningsen, Executive Editor of 21st Century Wire.com, told RT. Fighters linked to ISIS went on a rampage in the Philippines’ city of Marawi. The country’s President Rodrigo Duterte has declared martial law there. RT:With terrorism as his new target, do you think Duterte will receive much international support, given that his war on drugs was condemned by many and called too brutal? Patrick Henningsen: This President is already under intense scrutiny by the sort of wider international community, if you will, and specifically by the US. He has sort of gone at loggerheads with Washington on more than one occasion. This is a bit of a …

State Dept.: “Bad guy did bad things, we saw it from space”

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by Ricardo Vaz from InvestigAction After the previous hit singles, “Russia hack 2016: take our word for it” and “Assad used sarin: bomb first, never ask questions”, US government agencies are at it again with their new chart-topping release “Bad guy did bad things, we saw it from space”. With journalism standards in the mainstream media at an all-time low, this is a sure bet to become a fake news hit! On May 15th all the mainstream media screamed more or less the same bombshell headline, “State Dept. says Assad is burning people in a crematorium”. The source was a State Department press briefing which was then uncritically plastered everywhere. Assistant Secretary Stuart Jones claimed that the Syrian government had built a crematorium next to Saydnaya prison (more on this later), which was being used to burn 50 bodies of hung prisoners a day. Then came the “evidence”, in the form of satellite pictures. The earliest indictment that this evidence was on the embarrassing side of the scale came from the fact that many outlets …

US coalition bombs pro-govt convoy in Syrian “deconfliction zone”.

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“Inherent Resolve” have announced on Twitter their forces just attacked a pro-government convoy “advancing in a de-confliction zone”. May 18 #Coalition struck #Syrian pro-regime forces advancing in a de-confliction zone near At Tanf posing a threat to #US partner forces1/3 — Inherent Resolve (@CJTFOIR) May 18, 2017 This was despite #Russian attempts to dissuade pro-regime movement towards At Tanf, #Coalition aircraft show of force, & warning shots2/3 — Inherent Resolve (@CJTFOIR) May 18, 2017

Aleppo: Where hospitals were turned into Sharia gaols

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Photo of the Aleppo hospital visited by Gail Malone after its liberation from jihadi rebels by the Syrian Army. All other photos also by her. Gail Malone, an Australian peace activist who recently visited Syria, writes in her blog: In April [2017], as part of our fact finding mission, we travelled to Aleppo.  We visited a hospital there which MSF has accused Assad and Russia of deliberately bombing. MSF also mentioned that they had not given either Syria or Russia the co-ordinates of ‘their’ hospital.  As you will see from the photographs the hospital has not been bombed, although mortar and small weapons fire is obvious.  Factors to note; no one from MSF are actually on the ground to verify what they are being told.  There was no aerial bombardment at the time of the report and the liberation. Aleppo was predominately a ground offensive … suburb to suburb, block to block, street to street and house to house and room to room.   This building (photo 1) was turned from a modern hospital, servicing …

“The regime will be there” – U.S. Concedes Raqqa…and the Syrian East?

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from Moon of Alabama A new Wall Street Journal piece, primarily about the ISIS held city of Raqqa on the Euphrates, casts doubt on long term U.S. plans for such an occupation. Its core quote: “We won’t be in Raqqa in 2020, but the regime will be there.” There were already doubts that a big U.S. move in east-Syria was really going to happen. Jordan opposes any such move. While the U.S. and Jordan have trained, equipped and paid Syrian “rebels” to hold a zone of control in south-west Syria, little preparations have been seen for a large move in the south-east. The U.S. has so far vetted and trained at most 2,000 local Arab fighters in the area. Fewer are ready to go. Even with U.S. special forces embedded with them these forces are way too small to take an ISIS defended city or to capture or to hold a significant area. At least ten to twenty thousand troops would be needed (likely more) for such an endeavor. The current force is probably only …

The US Aggression on Syria and the Principles of a “Just War”

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by Prof. Vladislav Sotirovic The US military forces committed a classical example of the aggression on one sovereign and independent state on April 6th, 2017 by bombing the territory of Syrian Arab Republic with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Killing civilians who are proclaimed, as usual, as “collateral damage”. A formal excuse for the aggression was based, as many times before (from Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya), on traditional political false flags and mainstream media fake news used by the US propaganda machinery to sanction the Pentagon’s hegemonic policy of the Pax Americana. The Fundamental Dilemma The fundamental dilemma is why the US administrations of Obama & Trump were and are supporting different kinds of the Islamic fundamentalist jihad organizations in Syria and the Mideast regardless on the fact that they are called by the White House as “moderate terrorists”? A terrorist is simply a terrorist and there is no any difference between “moderate” or “hardcore” terrorist if the first term can exist at all from both logical and moral reasons. It is already known that …

Middle Eastern Surgeon Speaks About the “Ecology of War”

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Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta is the head of the Plastic Surgery Department at the AUB Medical Center in Lebanon. He specializes in: reconstructive surgery. What it means in this part of the world is clear: they bring you people from the war zones, torn to pieces, missing faces, burned beyond recognition, and you have to try to give them their life back. Dr. Abu-Sitta is also a thinker. A Palestinian born in Kuwait, he studied and lived in the UK, and worked in various war zones of the Middle East, as well as in Asia, before accepting his present position at the AUB Medical Center in Beirut, Lebanon. We were brought together by peculiar circumstances. Several months ago I burned my foot on red-hot sand, in Southeast Asia. It was healing slowly, but it was healing. Until I went to Afghanistan where at one of the checkpoints in Herat I had to take my shoes off, and the wound got badly infected. Passing through London, I visited a hospital there, and …

A Lot of What You Know About North Korea Is Racist Nonsense

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Traffic ladies are iconic to North Korea and it’s a highly respected profession. Their movements are definitive and militaristic, saluting party delegates as they pass as pictured here. Photo Elliot/Earth Nutshell. Andrew Dobbs in Defiant: Pyongyang is not crazy Less than three months into Pres. Donald Trump’s reign we can already say that there is a non-trivial chance that the United States will soon be engaged in a nuclear war. The threat is still remote, but all the pieces are in place. An aircraft carrier group en route to North Korea, anonymous sources threatening a preemptive strike against them, a recent unilateral attack on the Syrian government and the dropping of a 21,000 pound conventional bomb in Afghanistan — interpreted by many as a message for North Korea. Any misjudgments or mistakes could easily spark a shooting war in which the North Koreans will face an existential threat they can only resist with their nuclear weapons. The United States would be likely to respond in kind. The main thing standing between us and this scenario? The cooler heads …

Mad-Dog Mattis Going Rabid

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byEric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org On Monday, April 25th, the AP headlined, “US general in Afghanistan suggests Russia arming the Taliban” and reported that U.S. Pentagon chief James “Mad Dog” Mattis was accusing Russia of violating the sovereignty of unnamed nation(s) and was supplying weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan — the very same group that the U.S. back in 1979 had begun arming in Pakistan so that the Taliban would invade Afghanistan and lure Soviet forces into Afghanistan, so as to make the Soviets “bleed” there, as the U.S. itself had bled in its Vietnam War. The U.S. National Security Advisor at that time went to Pakistan and rallied the Taliban there by saying “Your cause is right, and God is on your side!” (see above video). Mattis was also quoted in this news-report as saying, “We’re going to have to confront Russia where what they’re doing is contrary to international law or denying the sovereignty of other countries.” The United States has, in fact, invaded Syria — routinely violating the sovereignty of …

Debunking Trump’s Casus Belli in Syria

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by Philip Giraldi Wars and rumors of wars have been dominating news cycles of late. No one should be surprised that there is a “former intelligence officer” subculture that is particularly noticeable in the Washington, DC, area. We stay in touch, communicate regularly, have lunches to discuss the “old days,” and sometimes organize to raise objections to some of the foreign follies pursued by the U.S. government. Though we often try to stay under the radar, making personal but discreet contact with sympathetic congressmen and journalists, we sometimes work together to get letters to the editor or articles placed in national publications. More rarely we appear on television or radio to discuss our own perspectives on current events. There is an additional element that helps shape our perceptions—namely, that many of us are in contact with friends who are still in harness with the Intelligence Community or who are working as post-retirement contractors. Though current employees generally are highly cautious about what they are doing, and we are acutely aware that it is not a …

VIDEO: Trump Won’t Be Cancelling World War 3 After All

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from StormCloudsGathering On April 6th, 2017, on the 100 year anniversary of America’s entry into World War I, Donald Trump launched airstrikes against against the Syrian government; in retaliation for a gas attack supposedly perpetrated by Assad. There was no investigation, not even a hack job of a frame up like we had in 2003. The evidence we do have contradicts the official story, and the stakes are much higher this time around. Full transcript and sources available here.

Syria: The sadistic Kafria and Foua massacre by “moderate rebels” (w/videos)

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Some of the victims of the Kafria and Foua massacre in Syria. The sadism of western-backed terrorist ‘rebels’ and their White Helmets apologists knows no limits. Fares Shehabi writes: “Very important: This is a video of how NATO rebels exploded a suicide car bomb as Kafria & Foua kids were stranded for days, starved, then gathered on purpose to kill maximum number of victims! They succeeded in killing more than 116 kids! Then they sent their White Helmets actors to benefit by manipulating the tragedy to their favour knowing very well that they never set foot in the besieged towns of Kafria & Foua for 4 years simply because no Qaeda was there!! Surviving eyewitnesses spoke of bad treatments by these terrorist rebels after the blast & before the stage was set for WH’s! Many confirmed that “rebels” shot at them as they rushed to rescue their families & forced them into designated spots to make room for the WH show!” Related: A connection to Facebook must be established to view the two top videos

Big Bangs Can Not End The War On Afghanistan – Admitting Defeat Will

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from Moon of Alabama 5667 days after the beginning of the war between the mightiest military of the world and local Afghan farmers, Pentagon reporters were excited to report: BREAKING: US drops largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan – GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, via @barbarastarrcnn — Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) 13 April 2017 The U.S. generals demand, as they always do, more troops to “break the stalemate”. But there is no stalemate. The Afghan farmers are winning. The Taliban control more areas now than they ever controlled since 2002. Dropping 22,000 lbs of high explosives on some shack will not change that trend. (Though it will drown the news that the U.S. military just bombed and killed 18 of its Kurdish proxy forces in Syria.) So what can the U.S. do in Afghanistan but blaming Russia and Iran on dubious grounds. Those countries – like China and other nearby countries – see the obviously coming U.S. retreat and talk with the Taliban to prepare for it. The U.S. will have to and will leave and acknowledge …

VIDEOS: Kucinich & Savage on the likelihood Idlib was a false flag or fakery

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Two videos presenting contrasting but equally sceptical views on the alleged chemical attack in Idlib on April 6, which was the avowed incentive for Trump’s ill-advised missile attack on Syria a few days later. Veteran opponent of US warmonger, Denis Kucinich reminds Fox News there is as yet no evidence for who was behind the alleged attacks: Pithy radio host Mike Savage brings his own brand of scepticism to the question:

Only fools and liars will blame Assad

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Joe Hargrave in Fort Russ: So, here’s how it is. 1) There is still no evidence – that has been presented to the public – that Assad ordered a chemical weapons (CW) attack. 2) Yes, that evidence should be made public, discussed and debated by Congress, and a vote taken before we use force. I acknowledge that the War Powers Resolution gives the President the authority to use force for 60 days – but the interests of peace and stability are better served through a debate and a democratic process as opposed to a unilateral decision made in secret, especially when the military action is punitive and not in our immediate national defense interests. 3) Even if Assad ordered the attack and is responsible, the above still applies – that is, if “America First” actually means “America First”, though it is becoming rapidly clear that it means nothing at all from Trump’s mouth. 4) Our government has lied us into wars in the past and may be doing so again. 5) We are relying on …

Russia Reports Discovery of Rebel-Held Chemical Weapons at Site of Idlib Gas Attack

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This frame grab from video provided on Tuesday April 4, 2017, by the Syrian anti-government group, the Edlib Media Center, shows victims of a suspected chemical attack, in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, northern Idlib province, Syria. (Edlib Media Center, via AP)   By Whitney Webb on Mint Press News: MOSCOW– In the aftermath of yesterday’s chemical gas attack in Syria’s Idlib Province, numerous governments – including those that have funded and armed rebels in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian government – have accused the Syrian army of being primarily responsible for the attack, despite no independent confirmation of their claim and no investigation into who was truly responsible for the tragedy. As MintPress recently reported, the only information available regarding the attack so far has come from only two sources: the White Helmets and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Both groups have strong ties to pro-interventionist governments that have armed and funded rebel groups and even have ties to al-Qaeda. However, pro-interventionist elements in foreign governments and within the Syrian opposition seem …