Washington’s Long War on Syria
Publication date April 17.

When President Barack Obama demanded formally in the summer of 2011 that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down, it was not the first time Washington had sought regime change in Damascus. The United States had waged a long war against Syria from the very moment the country’s fiercely independent Arab nationalist movement came to power in 1963. Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad were committed to that movement.

Washington sought to purge Arab nationalist influence from the Syrian state and the Arab world more broadly. It was a threat to Washington’s agenda of establishing global primacy and promoting business-friendly investment climates for US banks, investors and corporations throughout the world. Arab nationalists aspired to unify the world’s 400 million Arabs into a single super-state capable of challenging United States hegemony in West Asia and North Africa. They aimed to become a major player on the world stage free from the domination of the former colonial powers and the US.

Washington had waged long wars on the leaders of the Arab nationalist movement. These included Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and Syria’s Assads. To do so, the US often allied with particularly violent forms of political Islam to undermine its Arab nationalist foes. By 2011, only one pan-Arabist state remained in the region—Syria.

In Washington’s Long War on Syria Stephen Gowans examines the decades-long struggle for control of Syria. This struggle involved secular Arab nationalism, political Islam, and United States imperialism, the self-proclaimed Den of Arabism, and last secular pan-Arabist state in the region.

https://gowans.wordpress.com/

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The Revolutionary Distemper in Syria That Wasn’t
October 22, 2016

Apparently, the US Left has yet to figure out that Washington doesn’t try to overthrow neoliberals. If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were a devotee of the Washington Consensus–as Counterpunch’s Eric Draitser seems to believe–the United States government wouldn’t have been calling since 2003 for Assad to step down. Nor would it be overseeing the Islamist guerilla war against his government; it would be protecting him.

By Stephen Gowans

There is a shibboleth in some circles that, as Eric Draitser put it in a recent Counterpunch article, the uprising in Syria “began as a response to the Syrian government’s neoliberal policies and brutality,” and that “the revolutionary content of the rebel side in Syria has been sidelined by a hodgepodge of Saudi and Qatari-financed jihadists.” This theory appears, as far as I can tell, to be based on argument by assertion, not evidence.

A review of press reports in the weeks immediately preceding and following the mid-March 2011 outbreak of riots in Daraa—usually recognized as the beginning of the uprising—offers no indication that Syria was in the grips of a revolutionary distemper, whether anti-neo-liberal or otherwise. On the contrary, reporters representing Time magazine and the New York Times referred to the government as having broad support, of critics conceding that Assad was popular, and of Syrians exhibiting little interest in protest. At the same time, they described the unrest as a series of riots involving hundreds, and not thousands or tens of thousands of people, guided by a largely Islamist agenda and exhibiting a violent character.
Time magazine reported that two jihadist groups that would later play lead roles in the insurgency, Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, were already in operation on the eve of the riots, while a mere three months earlier, leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood voiced “their hope for a civil revolt in Syria.” The Muslim Brothers, who had decades earlier declared a blood feud with Syria’s ruling Ba’athist Party, objecting violently to the party’s secularism, had been embroiled in a life and death struggle with secular Arab nationalists since the 1960s, and had engaged in street battles with Ba’athist partisans from the late 1940s. (In one such battle, Hafez al-Assad, the current president’s father, who himself would serve as president from 1970 to 2000, was knifed by a Muslim Brother adversary.) The Brotherhood’s leaders, beginning in 2007, met frequently with the US State Department and the US National Security Council, as well as with the US government-funded Middle East Partnership Initiative, which had taken on the overt role of funding overseas overthrow organizations—a task the CIA had previously done covertly.

Washington had conspired to purge Arab nationalist influence from Syria as early as the mid-1950s, when Kermit Roosevelt, who engineered the overthrow of Iran’s prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh for nationalizing his country’s oil industry, plotted with British intelligence to stir up the Muslim Brothers to overthrow a triumvirate of Arab nationalist and communist leaders in Damascus who Washington and London perceived as threatening Western economic interests in the Middle East.

Washington funnelled arms to Brotherhood mujahedeen in the 1980s to wage urban guerrilla warfare against Hafez al-Assad, who hardliners in Washington called an “Arab communist.” His son, Bashar, continued the Arab nationalists’ commitment to unity (of the Arab nation), independence, and (Arab) socialism. These goals guided the Syrian state—as they had done the Arab nationalist states of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi and Iraq under Saddam. All three states were targeted by Washington for the same reason: their Arab nationalist commitments clashed fundamentally with the US imperialist agenda of US global leadership.

Bashar al-Assad’s refusal to renounce Arab nationalist ideology dismayed Washington, which complained about his socialism, the third part of the Ba’athists’ holy trinity of values. Plans to oust Assad—based in part on his failure to embrace Washington’s neo-liberalism—were already in preparation in Washington by 2003, if not earlier. If Assad was championing neo-liberalism, as Draitser and others contend, it somehow escaped the notice of Washington and Wall Street, which complained about “socialist” Syria and the country’s decidedly anti-neoliberal economic policies.

A Death Feud Heats Up With US Assistance

In late January 2011, a page was created on Facebook called The Syrian Revolution 2011. It announced that a “Day of Rage” would be held on February 4 and 5. [1] The protests “fizzled,” reported Time. The Day of Rage amounted to a Day of Indifference. Moreover, the connection to Syria was tenuous. Most of the chants shouted by the few protesters who attended were about Libya, demanding that Muammar Gaddafi—whose government was under siege by Islamist insurrectionists—step down. Plans were set for new protests on March 4 and March 5, but they too garnered little support. [2]

Time’s correspondent Rania Abouzeid attributed the failure of the protest organizers to draw significant support to the fact that most Syrians were not opposed to their government. Assad had a favorable reputation, especially among the two-thirds of the population under 30 years of age, and his government’s policies were widely supported. “Even critics concede that Assad is popular and considered close to the country’s huge youth cohort, both emotionally, ideologically and, of course, chronologically,” Abouzeid reported, adding that unlike “the ousted pro-American leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, Assad’s hostile foreign policy toward Israel, strident support for Palestinians and the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah are in line with popular Syrian sentiment.” Assad, in other words, had legitimacy. The Time correspondent added that Assad’s “driving himself to the Umayyad Mosque in February to take part in prayers to mark the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, and strolling through the crowded Souq Al-Hamidiyah marketplace with a low security profile” had “helped to endear him, personally, to the public.” [3]

This depiction of the Syrian president—a leader endeared to the public, ideologically in sync with popular Syrian sentiment—clashed starkly with the discourse that would emerge shortly after the eruption of violent protests in the Syrian town of Daraa less than two weeks later, and would become implanted in the discourse of US leftists, including Draitser. But on the eve of the signal Daraa events, Syria was being remarked upon for its quietude. No one “expects mass uprisings in Syria,” Abouzeid reported, “and, despite a show of dissent every now and then, very few want to participate.” [4] A Syrian youth told Time: “There is a lot of government help for the youth. They give us free books, free schools, free universities.” (Hardly the picture of the neo-liberal state Draitser paints.) She continued: “Why should there be a revolution? There’s maybe a one percent chance.” [5] The New York Times shared this view. Syria, the newspaper reported, “seemed immune to the wave of uprisings sweeping the Arab world.” [6] Syria was distemper-free.

But on March 17, there was a violent uprising in Daraa. There are conflicting accounts of who or what sparked it. Time reported that the “rebellion in Daraa was provoked by the arrest of a handful of youths for daubing a wall with anti-regime graffiti.” [7] The Independent’s Robert Fisk offered a slightly different version. He reported that “government intelligence officers beat and killed several boys who had scrawled anti-government graffiti on the walls of the city.” [8] Another account holds that the factor that sparked the uprising in Daraa that day was extreme and disproportionate use of force by Syrian security forces in response to demonstrations against the boys’ arrest. There “were some youngsters printing some graffiti on the wall, and they were imprisoned, and as their parents wanted them back, the security forces really struck back very, very tough.” [9] Another account, from the Syrian government, denies that any of this happened. Five years after the event, Assad told an interviewer that it “didn’t happen. It was only propaganda. I mean, we heard about them, we never saw those children that have been taken to prison that time. So, it was only a fallacious narrative.”[10]

But if there was disagreement about what sparked the uprising, there was little disagreement that the uprising was violent. The New York Times reported that “Protesters set fire to the ruling Ba’ath Party’s headquarters and other government buildings…and clashed with police….In addition to the party headquarters, protesters burned the town’s main courthouse and a branch of the SyriaTel phone company.” [11] Time added that protesters set fire to the governor’s office, as well as to a branch office of a second cellphone company. [12] The Syrian government’s news agency, SANA, posted photographs of burning vehicles on its Web site. [13] Clearly, this wasn’t a peaceful demonstration, as it would be later depicted. Nor was it a mass uprising. Time reported that the demonstrators numbered in the hundreds, not thousands or tens of thousands. [14]

Assad reacted immediately to the Daraa ructions, announcing “a series of reforms, including a salary increase for public workers, greater freedom for the news media and political parties, and a reconsideration of the emergency rule,” [15] a war-time restriction on political and civil liberties, invoked because Syria was officially at war with Israel. Before the end of April, the government would rescind “the country’s 48-year-old emergency law” and abolish “the Supreme State Security Court.” [16]

Why did the government make these concessions? Because that’s what the Daraa protesters demanded. Protesters “gathered in and around Omari mosque in Daraa, chanting their demands: the release of all political prisoners…the abolition of Syria’s 48-year emergency law; more freedoms; and an end to pervasive corruption.” [17] These demands were consistent with the call, articulated in early February on The Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page “to end the state of emergency in Syria and end corruption.” [18] A demand to release all political prisoners was also made in a letter signed by clerics posted on Facebook. The clerics’ demands included lifting the “state of emergency law, releasing all political detainees, halting harassment by the security forces and combating corruption.” [19] Releasing political detainees would amount to releasing jihadists, or, to use a designation current in the West, “terrorists.” The State Department had acknowledged that political Islam was the main opposition in Syria [20]; jihadists made up the principal section of oppositionists likely to be incarcerated. Clerics demanding that Damascus release all political prisoners was equal in effect to the Islamic State demanding that Washington, Paris, and London release all Islamists detained in US, French and British prisons on terrorism charges. This wasn’t a demand for jobs and greater democracy, but a demand for the release from prison of activists inspired by the goal of bringing about an Islamic state in Syria. The call to lift the emergency law, similarly, appeared to have little to do with fostering democracy and more to do with expanding the room for jihadists and their collaborators to organize opposition to the secular state.

A week after the outbreak of violence in Daraa, Time’s Rania Abouzeid reported that “there do not appear to be widespread calls for the fall of the regime or the removal of the relatively popular President.” [21] Indeed, the demands issued by the protesters and clerics had not included calls for Assad to step down. And Syrians were rallying to Assad. “There were counterdemonstrations in the capital in support of the President,” [22] reportedly far exceeding in number the hundreds of protesters who turned out in Daraa to burn buildings and cars and clash with police. [23]

By April 9—less than a month after the Daraa events—Time reported that a string of protests had broken out and that Islam was playing a prominent role in them. For anyone who was conversant with the decades-long succession of strikes, demonstrations, riots, and insurrections the Muslim Brotherhood had organized against what it deemed the “infidel” Ba’athist government, this looked like history repeating itself. The protests weren‘t reaching a critical mass. On the contrary, the government continued to enjoy “the loyalty” of “a large part of the population,” reported Time. [24]

Islamists played a lead role in drafting the Damascus Declaration in the mid-2000s, which demanded regime change. [25] In 2007, the Muslim Brothers, the archetypal Sunni political Islamist movement, which inspired Al-Qaeda and its progeny, Jabhat al Nusra and Islamic State, teamed up with a former Syrian vice-president to found the National Salvation Front. The front met frequently with the US State Department and the US National Security Council, as well as with the US government-funded Middle East Partnership Initiative, [26] which did openly what the CIA once did covertly, namely, funnel money and expertise to fifth columnists in countries whose governments Washington opposed.

By 2009, just two years before the eruption of unrest throughout the Arab world, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood denounced the Arab nationalist government of Bashar al-Assad as a foreign and hostile element in Syrian society which needed to be eliminated. According to the group’s thinking, the Alawite community, to which Assad belonged, and which the Brothers regarded as heretics, used secular Arab nationalism as a cover to furtively advance a sectarian agenda to destroy Syria from within by oppressing “true” (i.e., Sunni) Muslims. In the name of Islam, the heretical regime would have to be overthrown. [27]

A mere three months before the 2011 outbreak of violence in Syria, scholar Liad Porat wrote a brief for the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, based at Brandeis University. “The movement’s leaders,” the scholar concluded, “continue to voice their hope for a civil revolt in Syria, wherein ‘the Syrian people will perform its duty and liberate Syria from the tyrannical and corrupt regime.’” The Brotherhood stressed that it was engaged in a fight to the death with the secular Arab nationalist government of Bashar al-Assad. A political accommodation with the government was impossible because its leaders were not part of the Sunni Muslim Syrian nation. Membership in the Syrian nation was limited to true Muslims, the Brothers contended, and not Alawite heretics who embraced such foreign un-Islamic creeds as secular Arab nationalism. [28]

That the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood played a key role in the uprising that erupted three months later was confirmed in 2012 by the US Defense Intelligence Agency. A leaked report from the agency said that the insurgency was sectarian and led by the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the forerunner of Islamic State. The report went on to say that the insurgents were supported by the West, Arab Gulf oil monarchies and Turkey. The analysis correctly predicted the establishment of a “Salafist principality,” an Islamic state, in Eastern Syria, noting that this was desired by the insurgency’s foreign backers, who wanted to see the secular Arab nationalists isolated and cut-off from Iran. [29]

Documents prepared by US Congress researchers in 2005 revealed that the US government was actively weighing regime change in Syria long before the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, challenging the view that US support for the Syrian rebels was based on allegiance to a “democratic uprising” and showing that it was simply an extension of a long-standing policy of seeking to topple the government in Damascus. Indeed, the researchers acknowledged that the US government’s motivation to overthrow the secular Arab nationalist government in Damascus was unrelated to democracy promotion in the Middle East. In point of fact, they noted that Washington’s preference was for secular dictatorships (Egypt) and monarchies (Jordan and Saudi Arabia.) The impetus for pursuing regime change, according to the researchers, was a desire to sweep away an impediment to the achievement of US goals in the Middle East related to strengthening Israel, consolidating US domination of Iraq, and fostering open market, free enterprise economies. Democracy was never a consideration. [30] If Assad was promoting neo-liberal policies in Syria, as Draitser contends, it’s difficult to understand why Washington cited Syria’s refusal to embrace the US agenda of open markets and free enterprise as a reason to change Syria’s government.

To underscore the point that the protests lacked broad popular support, on April 22, more than a month after the Daraa riot, the New York Times’ Anthony Shadid reported that “the protests, so far, seemed to fall short of the popular upheaval of revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.” In other words, more than a month after only hundreds—and not thousands or tens of thousands—of protesters rioted in Daraa, there was no sign in Syria of a popular Arab Spring upheaval. The uprising remained a limited, prominently, Islamist affair. By contrast, there had been huge demonstrations in Damascus in support of—not against—the government, Assad remained popular, and, according to Shadid, the government commanded the loyalty of “Christian and heterodox Muslim sects.” [31] Shadid wasn’t the only Western journalist who reported that Alawites, Ismailis, Druze and Christians were strongly backing the government. Times’ Rania Abouzeid observed that the Ba’athists “could claim the backing of Syria’s substantial minority groups.” [32]

The reality that the Syrian government commanded the loyalty of Christian and heterodox Muslim sects, as the New York Times’ Shadid reported, suggested that Syria’s religious minorities recognized something about the uprising that the Western press under-reported (and revolutionary socialists in the United States missed), namely, that it was driven by a sectarian Sunni Islamist agenda which, if brought to fruition, would have unpleasant consequences for anyone who wasn’t considered a “true” Muslim. For this reason, Alawites, Ismailis, Druze and Christians lined up with the Ba’athists who sought to bridge sectarian divisions as part of their programmatic commitment to fostering Arab unity. The slogan “Alawis to the grave and Christians to Beirut!” chanted during demonstrations in those early days” [33] only confirmed the point that the uprising was a continuation of the death feud that Sunni political Islam had vowed to wage against the secular Arab nationalist government, and was not a mass upheaval for democracy or against neo-liberalism. If indeed it was any of these things, how would we explain that a thirst for democracy and opposition to neo-liberalism were present only in the Sunni community and absent in those of religious minorities? Surely, a democratic deficit and neoliberal tyranny, if they were present at all and acted as triggers of a revolutionary upsurge, would have crossed religious lines. That Alawites, Ismailis, Druze and Christians didn’t demonstrate, and that riots were Sunni-based with Islamist content, points strongly to the insurrection, from the very beginning, representing the recrudescence of the long running Sunni jihadist campaign against Ba’athist secularism.

“From the very beginning the Assad government said it was engaged in a fight with militant Islamists.” [34] The long history of Islamist uprisings against Ba’athism prior to 2011 certainly suggested this was very likely the case, and the way in which the uprising subsequently unfolded, as an Islamist-led war against the secular state, only strengthened the view. Other evidence, both positive and negative, corroborated Assad’s contention that the Syrian state was under attack by jihadists (just as it had been many other times in the past.) The negative evidence, that the uprising wasn’t a popular upheaval against an unpopular government, was inhered in Western media reports which showed that Syria’s Arab nationalist government was popular and commanded the loyalty of the population.

By contrast, anti-government demonstrations, riots and protests were small-scale, attracting far fewer people than did a mass demonstration in Damascus in support of the government, and certainly not on the order of the popular upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia. What’s more, the protesters’ demands centered on the release of political prisoners (mainly jihadists) and the lifting of war-time restrictions on the expression of political dissent, not calls for Assad to step down or change the government’s economic policies. The positive evidence came from Western news media accounts which showed that Islam played a prominent role in the riots. Also, while it was widely believed that armed Islamist groups only entered the fray subsequent to the initial spring 2011 riots—and in doing so “hijacked” a “popular uprising”— in point of fact, two jihadist groups which played a prominent role in the post-2011 armed revolt against secular Arab nationalism, Ahrar- al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, were both active at the beginning of 2011. Ahrar al-Sham “started working on forming brigades…well before mid-March, 2011, when the” Daraa riot occurred, according to Time. [35] Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, “was unknown until late January 2012, when it announced its formation… [but] it was active for months before then.” [36]

Another piece of evidence that is consistent with the view that militant Islam played a role in the uprisings very early on—or, at the very least, that the protests were violent from the beginning—is that `”there were signs from the very start that armed groups were involved.” The journalist and author Robert Fisk recalled seeing a tape from “the very early days of the ‘rising’ showing men with pistols and Kalashnikovs in a Daraa demonstration.” He recalls another event, in May 2011, when “an Al Jazeera crew filmed armed men shooting at Syrian troops a few hundred metres from the northern border with Lebanon but the channel declined to air the footage.” [37] Even US officials, who were hostile to the Syrian government and might be expected to challenge Damascus’s view that it was embroiled in a fight with armed rebels “acknowledged that the demonstrations weren’t peaceful and that some protesters were armed.” [38] By September, Syrian authorities were reporting that they had lost more than 500 police officers and soldiers, killed by guerillas. [39] By late October, the number had more than doubled. [40] In less than a year, the uprising had gone from the burning of Ba’ath Party buildings and government officers and clashes with police, to guerrilla warfare, involving methods that would be labeled “terrorism” were they undertaken against Western targets.

Assad would later complain that:

“Everything we said in Syria at the beginning of the crisis they say later. They said it’s peaceful, we said it’s not peaceful, they’re killing – these demonstrators, that they called them peaceful demonstrators – have killed policemen. Then it became militants. They said yes, it’s militants. We said it’s militants, it’s terrorism. They said no, it’s not terrorism. Then when they say it’s terrorism, we say it’s Al Qaeda, they say no, it’s not Al Qaeda. So, whatever we said, they say later.” [41]

The “Syrian uprising,” wrote the Middle East specialist Patrick Seale, “should be seen as only the latest, if by far the most violent, episode in the long war between Islamists and Ba’athists, which dates back to the founding of the secular Ba‘ath Party in the 1940s. The struggle between them is by now little short of a death-feud.” [42] “It is striking,” Seale continued, citing Aron Lund, who had written a report for the Swedish Institute of International Affairs on Syrian Jihadism, “that virtually all the members of the various armed insurgent groups are Sunni Arabs; that the fighting has been largely restricted to Sunni Arab areas only, whereas areas inhabited by Alawis, Druze or Christians have remained passive or supportive of the regime; that defections from the regime are nearly 100 per cent Sunni; that money, arms and volunteers are pouring in from Islamic states or from pro-Islamic organisations and individuals; and that religion is the insurgent movement’s most important common denominator.” [43]

Brutality as a Trigger?

Is it reasonable to believe that the use of force by the Syrian state sparked the guerrilla war which broke out soon after?

It strains belief that an over-reaction by security forces to a challenge to government authority in the Syrian town of Daraa (if indeed an over-reaction occurred) could spark a major war, involving scores of states, and mobilizing jihadists from scores of countries. A slew of discordant facts would have to be ignored to begin to give this theory even a soupcon of credibility.

First, we would have to overlook the reality that the Assad government was popular and viewed as legitimate. A case might be made that an overbearing response by a highly unpopular government to a trivial challenge to its authority might have provided the spark that was needed to ignite a popular insurrection, but notwithstanding US president Barack Obama’s insistence that Assad lacked legitimacy, there’s no evidence that Syria, in March 2011, was a powder keg of popular anti-government resentment ready to explode. As Time’s Rania Abouzeid reported on the eve of the Daraa riot, “Even critics concede that Assad is popular” [44] and “no one expects mass uprisings in Syria and, despite a show of dissent every now and then, very few want to participate.” [45]

Second, we would have to discount the fact that the Daraa riot involved only hundreds of participants, hardly a mass uprising, and the protests that followed similarly failed to garner a critical mass, as Time’s Nicholas Blanford reported.[46] Similarly, the New York Times’ Anthony Shadid found no evidence that there was a popular upheaval in Syria, even more than a month after the Daraa riot.[47] What was going on, contrary to Washington-propagated rhetoric about the Arab Spring breaking out in Syria, was that jihadists were engaged in a campaign of guerilla warfare against Syrian security forces, and had, by October, taken the lives of more than a thousand police officers and soldiers.

Third, we would have to close our eyes to the fact that the US government, with its British ally, had drawn up plans in 1956 to provoke a war in Syria by enlisting the Muslim Brotherhood to instigate internal uprisings. [48] The Daraa riot and subsequent armed clashes with police and soldiers resembled the plan which regime change specialist Kermit Roosevelt had prepared. That’s not to say that the CIA dusted off Roosevelt’s proposal and recycled it for use in 2011; only that the plot showed that Washington and London were capable of planning a destabilization operation involving a Muslim Brotherhood-led insurrection to bring about regime change in Syria.

We would also have to ignore the events of February 1982, when the Muslim Brothers seized control of Hama, Syria’s fourth largest city. Hama was the epicenter of Sunni fundamentalism in Syria, and a major base of operations for the jihadist fighters. Galvanized by a false report that Assad had been overthrown, Muslim Brothers went on a gleeful blood-soaked rampage throughout the city, attacking police stations and murdering Ba’ath Party leaders and their families, along with government officials and soldiers. In some cases, victims were decapitated [49] a practice which would be resurrected decades later by Islamic State fighters. Every Ba’athist official in Hama was murdered. [50]

The Hama events of 1982 are usually remembered in the West (if they’re remembered at all), not for the atrocities carried out by the Islamists, but for the Syrian army’s response, which, as would be expected of any army, involved the use of force to restore sovereign control over the territory seized by the insurrectionists. Thousands of troops were dispatched to take Hama back from the Muslim Brothers. Former US State Department official William R. Polk described the aftermath of the Syrian army assault on Hama as resembling that of the US assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, [51] (the difference, of course, being that the Syrian army was acting legitimately within its own sovereign territory while the US military was acting illegitimately as an occupying force to quell opposition to its occupation.) How many died in the Hama assault, however, remains a matter of dispute. The figures vary. “An early report in Time said that 1,000 were killed. Most observers estimated that 5,000 people died. Israeli sources and the Muslim Brotherhood”—sworn enemies of the secular Arab nationalists who therefore had an interest in exaggerating the casualty toll—“both charged that the death toll passed 20,000.” [52] Robert Dreyfus, who has written on the West’s collaboration with political Islam, argues that Western sources deliberately exaggerated the death toll in order to demonize the Ba’athists as ruthless killers, and that the Ba’athists went along with the deception in order to intimidate the Muslim Brotherhood. [53]

As the Syrian army sorted through the rubble of Hama in the aftermath of the assault, evidence was found that foreign governments had provided Hama’s insurrectionists with money, arms, and communications equipment. Polk writes that:

“Assad saw foreign troublemakers at work among his people. This, after all, was the emotional and political legacy of colonial rule—a legacy painfully evident in most of the post-colonial world, but one that is almost unnoticed in the Western world. And the legacy is not a myth. It is a reality that, often years after events occur, we can verify with official papers. Hafez al-Assad did not need to wait for leaks of documents: his intelligence services and international journalists turned up dozens of attempts by conservative, oil-rich Arab countries, the United States, and Israel to subvert his government. Most engaged in ‘dirty tricks,’ propaganda, or infusions of money, but it was noteworthy that in the 1982 Hama uprising, more than 15,000 foreign-supplied machine guns were captured, along with prisoners including Jordanian- and CIA-trained paramilitary forces (much like the jihadists who appear so much in media accounts of 2013 Syria). And what he saw in Syria was confirmed by what he learned about Western regime-changing elsewhere. He certainly knew of the CIA attempt to murder President Nasser of Egypt and the Anglo-American overthrow of the government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.” [54]

In his book From Beirut to Jerusalem, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that “the Hama massacre could be understood as, ‘The natural reaction of a modernizing politician in a relatively new nation state trying to stave off retrogressive—in this case, Islamic fundamentalists—elements aiming to undermine everything he has achieved in the way of building Syria into a 20th century secular republic. That is also why,” continued Friedman, that “if someone had been able to take an objective opinion poll in Syria after the Hama massacre, Assad’s treatment of the rebellion probably would have won substantial approval, even among Sunni Muslims.” [55]

The outbreak of a Sunni Islamist jihad against the Syrian government in the 1980s challenges the view that militant Sunni Islam in the Levant is an outcome of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the pro-Shi’a sectarian policies of the US occupation authorities. This view is historically myopic, blind to the decades-long existence of Sunni political Islam as a significant force in Levantine politics. From the moment Syria achieved formal independence from France after World War II, through the decades that followed in the 20th century, and into the next century, the main contending forces in Syria were secular Arab nationalism and political Islam. As journalist Patrick Cockburn wrote in 2016, “the Syrian armed opposition is dominated by Isis, al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham.” The “only alternative to (secular Arab nationalist) rule is the Islamists.” [56] This has long been the case.

Finally, we would also have to ignore the fact that US strategists had planned since 2003, and possibly as early as 2001, to force Assad and his secular Arab nationalist ideology from power, and was funding the Syrian opposition, including Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups, from 2005. Accordingly, Washington had been driving toward the overthrow of the Assad government with the goal of de-Ba’athifying Syria. An Islamist-led guerilla struggle against Syria’s secular Arab nationalists would have unfolded, regardless of whether the Syrian government’s response at Daraa was excessive or not. The game was already in play, and a pretext was being sought. Daraa provided it. Thus, the idea that the arrest of two boys in Daraa for painting anti-government graffiti on a wall could provoke a major conflict is as believable as the notion that WWI was caused by nothing more than the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Socialist Syria

Socialism can be defined in many ways, but if it is defined as public-ownership of the commanding heights of the economy accompanied by economic planning, then Syria under its 1973 and 2012 constitutions clearly meets the definition of socialism. However, the Syrian Arab Republic had never been a working-class socialist state, of the category Marxists would recognize. It was, instead, an Arab socialist state inspired by the goal of achieving Arab political independence and overcoming the legacy of the Arab nation’s underdevelopment. The framers of the constitution saw socialism as a means to achieve national liberation and economic development. “The march toward the establishment of a socialist order,” the 1973 constitution’s framers wrote, is a “fundamental necessity for mobilizing the potentialities of the Arab masses in their battle with Zionism and imperialism.” Marxist socialism concerned itself with the struggle between an exploiting owning class and exploited working class, while Arab socialism addressed the struggle between exploiting and exploited nations. While these two different socialisms operated at different levels of exploitation, the distinctions were of no moment for Westerns banks, corporations and major investors as they cast their gaze across the globe in pursuit of profit. Socialism was against the profit-making interests of US industrial and financial capital, whether it was aimed at ending the exploitation of the working class or overcoming the imperialist oppression of national groups.

Ba’ath socialism had long irritated Washington. The Ba’athist state had exercised considerable influence over the Syrian economy, through ownership of enterprises, subsidies to privately-owned domestic firms, limits on foreign investment, and restrictions on imports. The Ba’athists regarded these measures as necessary economic tools of a post-colonial state trying to wrest its economic life from the grips of former colonial powers and to chart a course of development free from the domination of foreign interests.

Washington’s goals, however, were obviously antithetical. It didn’t want Syria to nurture its industry and zealously guard its independence, but to serve the interests of the bankers and major investors who truly mattered in the United States, by opening Syrian labor to exploitation and Syria’s land and natural resources to foreign ownership. Our agenda, the Obama Administration had declared in 2015, “is focused on lowering tariffs on American products, breaking down barriers to our goods and services, and setting higher standards to level the playing field for American…firms.”[57] This was hardly a new agenda, but had been the agenda of US foreign policy for decades. Damascus wasn’t falling into line behind a Washington that insisted that it could and would “lead the global economy.”[58]

Hardliners in Washington had considered Hafez al-Assad an Arab communist, [59] and US officials considered his son, Bashar, an ideologue who couldn’t bring himself to abandon the third pillar of the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party’s program: socialism. The US State Department complained that Syria had “failed to join an increasingly interconnected global economy,” which is to say, had failed to turn over its state-owned enterprises to private investors, among them Wall Street financial interests. The US State Department also expressed dissatisfaction that “ideological reasons” had prevented Assad from liberalizing Syria’s economy, that “privatization of government enterprises was still not widespread,” and that the economy “remains highly controlled by the government.” [60] Clearly, Assad hadn’t learned what Washington had dubbed the “lessons of history,” namely, that “market economies, not command-and-control economies with the heavy hand of government, are the best.” [61] By drafting a constitution that mandated that the government maintain a role in guiding the economy on behalf of Syrian interests, and that the Syrian government would not make Syrians work for the interests of Western banks, corporations, and investors, Assad was asserting Syrian independence against Washington’s agenda of “opening markets and leveling the playing field for American….businesses abroad.” [62]

On top of this, Assad underscored his allegiance to socialist values against what Washington had once called the “moral imperative” of “economic freedom,” [63] by writing social rights into the constitution: security against sickness, disability and old age; access to health care; and free education at all levels. These rights would continue to be placed beyond the easy reach of legislators and politicians who could sacrifice them on the altar of creating a low-tax, foreign-investment-friendly business climate. As a further affront against Washington’s pro-business orthodoxy, the constitution committed the state to progressive taxation.

Finally, the Ba’athist leader included in his updated constitution a provision that had been introduced by his father in 1973, a step toward real, genuine democracy—a provision which decision-makers in Washington, with their myriad connections to the banking and corporate worlds, could hardly tolerate. The constitution would require that at minimum half the members of the People’s Assembly be drawn from the ranks of peasants and workers.

If Assad was a neo-liberal, he certainly was one of the world’s oddest devotees of the ideology.

Drought?

A final point on the origins of the violent uprising in 2011: Some social scientists and analysts have drawn on a study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to suggest that “drought played a role in the Syrian unrest.” According to this view, drought “caused crop failures that led to the migration of as many as 1.5 million people from rural to urban areas.” This, in combination with an influx of refugees from Iraq, intensified competition for scarce jobs in urban areas, making Syria a cauldron of social and economic tension ready to boil over. [64] The argument sounds reasonable, even “scientific,” but the phenomenon it seeks to explain—mass upheaval in Syria—never happened. As we’ve seen, a review of Western press coverage found no reference to mass upheaval. On the contrary, reporters who expected to find a mass upheaval were surprised that they didn’t find one. Instead, Western journalists found Syria to be surprisingly quiet. Demonstrations called by organizers of the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page fizzled. Critics conceded that Assad was popular. Reporters could find no one who believed a revolt was imminent. Even a month after the Daraa incident—which involved only hundreds of protesters, dwarfed by the tens of thousands of Syrians who demonstrated in Damascus in support of the government—the New York Times reporter on the ground, Anthony Shadid, could find no sign in Syria of the mass upheavals of Tunisia and Egypt. In early February 2011, “Omar Nashabe, a long-time Syria watcher and correspondent for the Beirut-based Arabic daily Al-Ahkbar” told Time that “Syrians may be afflicted by poverty that stalks 14% of its population combined with an estimated 20% unemployment rate, but Assad still has his credibility.” [65]

That the government commanded popular support was affirmed when the British survey firm YouGov published a poll in late 2011 showing that 55 percent of Syrians wanted Assad to stay. The poll received almost no mention in the Western media, prompting the British journalist Jonathan Steele to ask: “Suppose a respectable opinion poll found that most Syrians are in favor of Bashar al-Assad remaining as president, would that not be major news?” Steele described the poll findings as “inconvenient facts” which were” suppressed “because Western media coverage of the events in Syria had ceased “to be fair” and had turned into “a propaganda weapon.”[66]

Sloganeering in Lieu of Politics and Analysis

Draitser can be faulted, not only for propagating an argument made by assertion, based on no evidence, but for substituting slogans for politics and analysis. In his October 20 Counterpunch article, Syria and the Left: Time to Break the Silence, he argues that the defining goals of Leftism ought to be the pursuit of peace and justice, as if these are two inseparable qualities, which are never in opposition. That peace and justice may, at times, be antithetical, is illustrated in the following conversation between Australian journalist Richard Carleton and Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian writer, novelist and revolutionary. [67]

C: ‘Why won’t your organization engage in peace talks with the Israelis?’

K: ‘You don’t mean exactly “peace talks”. You mean capitulation. Surrendering.

C: ‘Why not just talk?’

K: ‘Talk to whom?’

C: ‘Talk to the Israeli leaders.’

K: ‘That is kind of a conversation between the sword and the neck, you mean?’

C: ‘Well, if there are no swords and no guns in the room, you could still talk.’

K: ‘No. I have never seen any talk between a colonialist and a national liberation movement.’

C: ‘But despite this, why not talk?’

K: ‘Talk about what?’

C: ‘Talk about the possibility of not fighting.’

K: ‘Not fighting for what?’

C: ‘No fighting at all. No matter what for.’

K: ‘People usually fight for something. And they stop fighting for something. So you can’t even tell me why we should speak about what. Why should we talk about stopping to fight?’

C: ‘Talk to stop fighting to stop the death and the misery, the destruction and the pain.’

K: ‘The misery and the destruction the pain and the death of whom?’

C: ‘Of Palestinians. Of Israelis. Of Arabs.’

K: ‘Of the Palestinian people who are uprooted, thrown in the camps, living in starvation, killed for twenty years and forbidden to use even the name “Palestinians”?’

C: ‘They are better that way than dead though.’

K: ‘Maybe to you. But to us, it’s not. To us, to liberate our country, to have dignity, to have respect, to have our mere human rights is something as essential as life itself.

To which values the US Left should devote itself when peace and justice are in conflict, Draitser doesn’t say. His invocation of the slogan “peace and justice” as the desired defining mission of the US Left seems to be nothing more than an invitation for Leftists to abandon politics in favor of embarking on a mission of becoming beautiful souls, above the sordid conflicts which plague humanity—never taking a side, except that of the angels. His assertion that “no state or group has the best interests of Syrians at heart” is almost too silly to warrant comment. How would he know? One can’t help but get the impression that he believes that he, and the US Left, alone among the groups and states of the world, know what’s best for the “Syrian people.” Which may be why he opines that the responsibility of the US Left, “is to the people of Syria,” as if the people of Syria are an undifferentiated mass with uniform interests and agendas. Syrians en masse include both secularists and political Islamists, who have irreconcilable views of how the state ought to be organized, who have been locked in a death feud for more than half a century—one helped along, on the Islamist side, by his own government. Syrians en masse include those who favor integration into the US Empire, and those who are against it; those who collaborate with US imperialists and those who refuse to. In this perspective, what does it mean, to say the US Left has a responsibility to the people of Syria? Which people of Syria?

I would have thought that the responsibility of the US Left is to working people of the United States, not the people of Syria. And I would have imagined, as well, that the US Left would regard its responsibilities to include disseminating a rigorous, evidence-based political analysis of how the US economic elite uses the apparatus of the US state to advance its interests at the expense of both domestic and foreign populations. How does Washington’s long war on Syria affect the working people of America? That’s what Draitser ought to be talking about.

My book Washington’s Long War on Syria is forthcoming April 2017.

NOTES

1 Aryn Baker, “Syria is not Egypt, but might it one day be Tunisia?,” Time, February 4, 2011

2 Rania Abouzeid, “The Syrian style of repression: Thugs and lectures,” Time, February 27, 2011

3 Rania Abouzeid, “Sitting pretty in Syria: Why few go backing Bashar,” Time, March 6, 2011

4 Rania Abouzeid, “The youth of Syria: the rebels are on pause,” Time, March 6, 2011.

5 Rania Abouzeid, “The youth of Syria: the rebels are on pause,” Time, March 6, 2011

6 “Officers fire on crowd as Syrian protests grow,” The New York Times, March 20, 2011

7 Nicholas Blanford, “Can the Syrian regime divide and conquer its opposition?,” Time, April 9, 2011

8 Robert Fisk, “Welcome to Dera’a, Syria’s graveyard of terrorists,” The Independent, July 6. 2016

9 President Assad to ARD TV: Terrorists breached cessation of hostilities agreement from the very first hour, Syrian Army refrained from retaliating,” SANA, March 1, 2016

10 Ibid

11 “Officers fire on crowd as Syrian protests grow,” The New York Times, March 20, 2011

12 Rania Abouzeid, “Arab Spring: Is a revolution starting up in Syria?” Time, March 20, 2011; Rania Abouzeid, “Syria’s revolt: How graffiti stirred an uprising,” Time, March 22, 2011

13 “Officers fire on crowd as Syrian protests grow,” The New York Times, March 20, 2011

14 Rania Abouzeid, “Arab Spring: Is a revolution starting up in Syria?,” Time, March 20, 2011

15 “Thousands march to protest Syria killings”, The New York Times, March 24, 2011

16 Rania Abouzeid, “Assad and reform: Damned if he does, doomed if he doesn’t,” Time, April 22, 2011

17 “Officers fire on crowd as Syrian protests grow,” The New York Times, March 20, 2011

18 Aryn Baker, “Syria is not Egypt, but might it one day be Tunisia?,” Time, February 4, 2011

19 Nicholas Blanford, “Can the Syrian regime divide and conquer its opposition?” Time, April 9, 2011.

20 Alfred B. Prados and Jeremy M. Sharp, “Syria: Political Conditions and Relations with the United States After the Iraq War,” Congressional Research Service, February 28, 2005

21 Rania Abouzeid, “Syria’s Friday of dignity becomes a day of death,” Time, March 25, 2011

22 Rania Abouzeid, “Syria’s Friday of dignity becomes a day of death,” Time, March 25, 2011

23 “Syrie: un autre eclarage du conflict qui dure depuis 5 ans, BeCuriousTV , » May 23, 2016, http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-aleppo-doctor-demolishes-imperialist-propaganda-and-media-warmongering/5531157

24 Nicholas Blanford, “Can the Syrian regime divide and conquer its opposition?” Time, April 9, 2011

25 Jay Solomon, “To check Syria, U.S. explores bond with Muslim Brothers,” The Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2007

26 Ibid

27 Liad Porat, “The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the Asad Regime,” Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, December 2010, No. 47

28 Ibid

29 http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf

30 Alfred B. Prados and Jeremy M. Sharp, “Syria: Political Conditions and Relations with the United States After the Iraq War,” Congressional Research Service, February 28, 2005.

31 Anthony Shadid, “Security forces kill dozens in uprisings around Syria”, The New York Times, April 22, 2011

32 Rania Abouzeid, “Syria’s Friday of dignity becomes a day of death,” Time, March 25, 2011

33 Fabrice Balanche, “The Alawi Community and the Syria Crisis Middle East Institute, May 14, 2015

34 Anthony Shadid, “Syria broadens deadly crackdown on protesters”, The New York Times, May 8, 2011

35 Rania Abouzeid, “Meet the Islamist militants fighting alongside Syria’s rebels,” Time, July 26, 2012

36 Rania Abouzeid, “Interview with official of Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s Islamist militia group,” Time, Dec 25, 2015

37 Robert Fisk, “Syrian civil war: West failed to factor in Bashar al-Assad’s Iranian backers as the conflict developed,” The Independent, March 13, 2016

38 Anthony Shadid, “Syria broadens deadly crackdown on protesters”, The New York Times, May 8, 2011

39 Nada Bakri, “Syria allows Red Cross officials to visit prison”, The New York Times, September 5, 2011

40 Nada Bakri, “Syrian opposition calls for protection from crackdown”, The New York Times, October 25, 2011

41 President al-Assad to Portuguese State TV: International system failed to accomplish its duty… Western officials have no desire to combat terrorism, SANA, March 5, 2015

42 Patrick Seale, “Syria’s long war,” Middle East Online, September 26, 2012

43 Ibid

44 Rania Abouzeid, “Sitting pretty in Syria: Why few go backing Bashar,” Time, March 6, 2011

45 Rania Abouzeid, “The youth of Syria: the rebels are on pause,” Time, March 6, 2011

46 “Can the Syrian regime divide and conquer its opposition?” Time, April 9, 2011

47 Anthony Shadid, “Security forces kill dozens in uprisings around Syria”, The New York Times, April 22, 2011

48 Ben Fenton, “Macmillan backed Syria assassination plot,” The Guardian, September 27, 2003

49 Robert Fisk, “Conspiracy of silence in the Arab world,” The Independent, February 9, 2007

50 Robert Dreyfus, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Fundamentalist Islam, Holt, 2005, p. 205

51 William R. Polk, “Understanding Syria: From pre-civil war to post-Assad,” The Atlantic, December 10, 2013

52 Dreyfus

53 Dreyfus

54 William R. Polk, “Understanding Syria: From pre-civil war to post-Assad,” The Atlantic, December 10, 2013

55 Quoted in Nikolas Van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Ba’ath Party, I.B. Taurus, 2011

56 Patrick Cockburn, “Confused about the US response to Isis in Syria? Look to the CIA’s relationship with Saudi Arabia,” The Independent, June 17, 2016

57 National Security Strategy, February 2015

58 Ibid

59 Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, Three Rivers Press, 2003, p. 123

60 US State Department website. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3580.htm#econ. Accessed February 8, 2012

61 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002

62 National Security Strategy, February 2015

63 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, March 2006

64 Henry Fountain, “Researchers link Syrian conflict to drought made worse by climate change,” The New York Times, March 2, 2015

65 Aryn Baker, “Syria is not Egypt, but might it one day be Tunisia?,” Time, February 4, 2011

66 Jonathan Steele, “Most Syrians back President Assad, but you’d never know from western media,” The Guardian, January 17, 2012

67 “Full transcript: Classic video interview with Comrade Ghassan Kanafani re-surfaces,” PFLP, October 17, 2016, http://pflp.ps/english/2016/10/17/full-transcript-classic-video-interview-with-comrade-ghassan-kanafani-re-surfaces/

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/the-revolutionary-distemper-in-syria-that-wasnt/

Our Sieges and Theirs
October 20, 2016

The hypocritical Western heart beats for all except those the US Empire drowns in blood. [1]

By Stephen Gowans

“In Syria almost everybody is under siege to a greater or lesser degree,” observes the Independent’s Patrick Cockburn. [2] Most people, however, think the only siege in Syria is the one imposed on (East) Aleppo by Syrian and Russian forces. But siege as a form of warfare is hardly uniquely embraced by the Syrian Arab Army and Russian military. On the contrary, the United States and its allies have been practicing siege warfare in the Levant and beyond for years, and continue to do so. It’s just that US-led siege warfare has been concealed behind anodyne, even heroic, labels, while the siege warfare of countries Washington is hostile to, is abominated by Western state officials crying crocodile tears.

Here’s how the deception works:

Sieges of cities controlled by Islamic State, carried out by US forces and their allies, are called rescue operations, or campaigns to liberate or retake cities—never sieges. Other sieges—the ones carried out by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly Al Nusra, which, herein, I’ll call Al Qaeda for convenience—are ignored altogether (which might suggest something about the relationship of Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate to the United States.) And a particularly injurious form of siege—economic sanctions — is presented as a separate category altogether and not siege warfare at all. But sanctions, imposed by rich countries, such as the United States and those of the European Union, on poor countries, such as Syria, are a modern form of siege, and have been called sanctions of mass destruction, in recognition of their devastating character.

In the Levant, the sieges which are identified as such by Western state officials, and in train, by the Western mass media, are sieges of cities controlled by Al Qaeda, carried out by Syrian forces and their allies. These sieges—which cause hunger, kill civilians, and destroy buildings—are denounced in the West as ferocious attacks on innocents which amount to war crimes. “Russia’s bombardment backing the siege of Aleppo by Syrian government forces,” notes the Wall Street Journal, “has created a humanitarian crisis.” [3] A UN Security Council resolution—vetoed by Russia—has called for an end to Russian bombing of Aleppo. British foreign minister Boris Johnson has mused openly about war crimes indictments against Syria and Russia.
Yet US campaigns to drive Islamic State out of Manbij, Kobani, Ramadi, Fallujah, Baiji and Tikrit, and now Mosul, have also caused hunger, killed civilians, and destroyed buildings. Unlike the Syrian military’s siege of East Aleppo, these campaigns have been celebrated as great and necessary military victories, but have, themselves, created vast humanitarian crises.

Cockburn observes that the “recapture” of “cities like Ramadi, Fallujah, Baiji and Tikrit…would scarcely have happened without the coalition air umbrella overhead.” [4] That is, the cities liberated by Iraqi forces and their US patron were bombed into submission, even though civilians were trapped inside. Iraqi ground forces only moved in after these cities were left in ruins by coalition airstrikes and Iraqi artillery bombardment, as mopping up forces.

Rania Khalek, writing in the Intercept, points out that “U.S.-backed ground forces laid siege to Manbij, a city in northern Syria not far from Aleppo that is home to tens of thousands of civilians. U.S. airstrikes pounded the city over the summer, killing up to 125 civilians in a single attack. The U.S. replicated this strategy to drive ISIS out of Kobane, Ramadi, and Fallujah, leaving behind flattened neighborhoods.” [5]
To recover Ramadi from Islamic State, Iraqi forces surrounded and cordoned off the city. [6] In addition, the US led coalition bombarded Ramadi with airstrikes and artillery fire. [7] The bombardment left 70 percent of Ramadi’s buildings in ruins. The city was recovered, but “the great majority of its 400,000 people” were left homeless. [8]

Iraqi forces also besieged the city of Fallujah, preventing most food, medicine and fuel from entering it. [9] Militias “prevented civilians from leaving Islamic State territory while resisting calls to allow humanitarian aid to reach the city.” [10] This was done “to strangle Islamic State” [11] with the result that civilians were also “strangled.” Inside the city, tens of thousands endured famine and sickness due to lack of medicine. [12] Civilians reportedly survived on grass and plants. [13] Many civilians “died under buildings that collapsed under” artillery bombardment and coalition air strikes. [14]

The current campaign to recover Mosul is based on the same siege strategy US forces and their Iraqi client used to liberate Ramadi and Fallujah. US and allied warplanes have been bombarding the city for months. [15] Iraqi forces, aided by US Special Forces, are moving to cordon it off. “Some aid groups estimate that as many as a million people could be displaced by fighting to recapture the city, creating a daunting humanitarian task that the United Nations and other organizations say they are not yet ready to deal with.” [16]

Writer and journalist Jonathan Cook commented on the utter hypocrisy of Westerners who condemn the Syrian/Russian campaign to liberate East Aleppo from Islamist fighters while celebrating the Iraqi/US campaign to do the same in Mosul. Targeting the British newspaper, the Guardian, beloved by progressives, Cook contrasted two reports which appeared in the newspaper to illustrate the Western heart beating for all except those the US Empire drowns in blood.

Report one: The Guardian provides supportive coverage of the beginning of a full-throttle assault by Iraqi forces, backed by the US and UK, on Mosul to win it back from the jihadists of ISIS – an assault that will inevitably lead to massive casualties and humanitarian suffering among the civilian population.

Report two: The Guardian provides supportive coverage of the US and UK for considering increased sanctions against Syria and Russia. On what grounds? Because Syrian forces, backed by Russia, have been waging a full-throttle assault on Aleppo to win it back from the jihadists of ISIS and Al-Qaeda – an assault that has led to massive casualties and humanitarian suffering among the civilian population. [17]

Central to Western propaganda is the elision of the Islamist character of the Al Qaeda militants who tyrannize East Aleppo. This is accomplished by labeling them “rebels,” while the “rebels” who tyrannize the cities the United States and its allies besiege are called “Islamic State,” ISIL” or “ISIS” fighters. The aim is to conjure the impression that US-led sieges are directed at Islamic terrorists, and therefore are justifiable, despite the humanitarian crises they precipitate, while the Syrian-led campaign in East Aleppo is directed at rebels, presumably moderates, or secular democrats, and therefore is illegitimate. This is part of a broader US propaganda campaign to create two classes of Islamist militants—good Islamists, and bad ones.

The first class, the good Islamists, comprises Al Qaeda and fighters cooperating with it, including US-backed groups, whose operations are limited to fighting secularists in Damascus, and therefore are useful to the US foreign policy goal of overthrowing Syria’s Arab nationalist government. These Islamist fighters are sanitized as “rebels.”

The second class, the bad Islamists, comprises Islamic State. Islamic State has ambitions which make it far less acceptable to Washington as an instrument to be used in pursuit of US foreign policy goals. The organization’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, aspires to lead a caliphate which effaces the Sykes-Picot borders, and is therefore a threat, not only to the Arab nationalists in Damascus—an enemy the organization shares in common with Washington— but also to the US client states of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which Islamic State attacks. The US objective in connection with Islamic State is to push the organization out of Iraq (and out of areas in Syria that can be brought under the control of US-backed fighters) and into the remainder of Syria, where they can wear down Arab nationalist forces.
Syria’s “moderates”—the “rebels”—if there are any in the sense of secular pro-democrats, are few in number. Certainly, their ranks are so limited that arming them, in the view of US president Barack Obama, would make little difference. The US president told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that his administration had “difficulty finding, training and arming a sufficient cadre of secular Syrian rebels: ‘There’s not as much capacity as you would hope,’” Obama confessed. [18] Obama’s assessment was underscored when “a US general admitted that it had just four such ‘moderate’ fighters in Syria after spending $500 million on training them.” [19] Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk dismissed the idea of the “moderates” as little more than a fantasy. “I doubt if there are 700 active ‘moderate’ foot soldiers in Syria,” he wrote. And “I am being very generous, for the figure may be nearer 70.” [20]

Elizabeth O’Bagy, who has made numerous trips to Syria to interview insurgent commanders for the Institute for the Study of War, told the New York Times’ Ben Hubbard that my “sense is that there are no seculars.” [21] Anti-government fighters interviewed by the Wall Street Journal found the Western concept of the secular Syrian rebel to be incomprehensible. [22]

To be clear: Syrian and Russian forces are waging a campaign to liberate East Aleppo from Islamists, whose only difference from Islamic State is that they’re not a threat to the US client states, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It’s “primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo,” US Department of Defense spokesperson Colonel Steve Warren said on April 25, referring to Al Qaeda. [23] Other militant Islamist organizations, including US-backed groups, are also in Aleppo, intertwined with, embedded with, sharing weapons with, cooperating with, and acting as auxiliaries of Al-Qaeda.

Author and journalist Stephen Kinzer, writing in the Boston Globe, reminds us that:

For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it. [24]

The Invisible Sieges

While sieges imposed by US-led forces are hidden by not calling them sieges, sieges imposed by Washington’s Al-Qaeda ally are simply ignored.

“Only three years ago,” notes Fisk, the same Islamist fighters who are under siege today in East Aleppo, “were besieging the surrounded Syrian army western enclave of Aleppo and firing shells and mortars into the sector where hundreds of thousands of civilians lived under regime control.” [25] Fisk observes acidly that the “first siege didn’t elicit many tears from the satellite channel lads and lassies” while the “second siege comes with oceans of tears.” [26]

To the ignored Al Qaeda-orchestrated siege of West Aleppo can be added “the untold story of the three-and-a-half-year siege of two small Shia Muslim villages in northern Syria,” Nubl and Zahra. Those sieges, carried out by Al-Qaeda against villages which remained loyal to Syria’s Arab nationalist government, left at least 500 civilians dead, 100 of them children, through famine and artillery bombardment. [27] The “world paid no heed to the suffering of these people,” preferring to remain “largely fixed on those civilians suffering under siege by (Syrian) government forces elsewhere.” [28]

And then there’s the largely untold story of the 13 year-long siege imposed on a whole country, Syria, by the United States and European Union. That siege, initiated by Washington in 2003, with the Syria Accountability Act, and then followed by EU sanctions, blocks Western exports of almost all products to Syria and isolates the country financially. This massive, wide-scale siege plunged Syria’s economy into crisis even before the 2011 eruption of upheavals in the Arab world [29]—demonstrating that Washington’s efforts to force Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down began long before the Arab Spring. The roots of US hostility to Assad’s government are found in the danger of its becoming “a focus of Arab nationalistic struggle against an American regional presence and interests” [30] – another way of saying that the Arab nationalist goals of unity, independence and socialism, which guide the Syrian state, are an anathema to the US demand—expressed in the 2015 US National Security Strategy—that all countries fall in behind US global “leadership.”
Under US siege warfare, unemployment shot up, factories closed, food prices skyrocketed and fuel prices doubled. [31] “Syrian officials” were forced “to stop providing education, health care and other essential services in some parts of the country.” [32] Indeed, so comprehensive was the siege, that by 2011 US “officials acknowledged that the country was already under so many sanctions that the United States held little leverage.” [33]

Western siege warfare on Syria has blocked “access to blood safety equipment, medicines, medical devices, food, fuel, water pumps, spare parts for power plants, and more,” [34] leading Patrick Cockburn to compare the regime change campaign to “UN sanctions on Iraq between 1990 and 2003.” [35] The siege of Iraq—at a time when the country was led by secular Arab nationalists who troubled Washington as much, if not more, than the secular Arab nationalists in Syria vex Washington today—led to the deaths, though disease and hunger, of 500,000 children, according to the United Nations. Political scientists John Meuller and Karl Meuller called the siege a campaign of economic warfare amounting to “sanctions of mass destruction,” more devastating than all the weapons of mass destruction used in history. [36] When the West’s siege warfare on Arab nationalist Iraq ended in 2003 it was immediately resumed on Arab nationalist Syria, with the same devastating consequences.

According to a leaked UN internal report, the “US and EU economic sanctions on Syria are causing huge suffering among ordinary Syrians and preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid.” [37] Cockburn notes that “Aid agencies cited in the report say they cannot procure basic medicines or medical equipment for hospitals because sanctions are preventing foreign commercial companies and banks having anything to do with Syria.” [38] “In effect” concludes the veteran British journalists, “the US and EU sanctions are imposing an economic siege on Syria as a whole which may be killing more Syrians than die of illness and malnutrition in the sieges which EU and US leaders have described as war crimes.” [39]

Meanwhile, a U.S. Navy-backed blockade of Yemen’s ports [40]—in other words, a siege— has left much of the country, the poorest in the Arab world, “on the brink of famine.” [41] Last year, a United Nations expert estimated “that 850,000 children in the country of 26 million” faced “acute malnutrition” as a result of the US-backed siege. The blockade amounts to “the deliberate starvation of civilians,” the UN expert said, which constitutes a war crime. [42] “Twenty million Yemenis, nearly 80% of the population, are in urgent need of food, water and medical aid,” wrote British journalist Julian Borger last year. The siege, also backed by Britain, has created “a humanitarian disaster.” [43]

That Washington protests so vehemently about the humanitarian consequences of Syria’s campaign to liberate East Aleppo from Al Qaeda, while US forces and their allies kill civilians through airstrikes, artillery bombardments and siege-related famine and disease in campaigns to capture territory from Islamic State, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and Syria’s secular Arab nationalists, invites the obvious question: Why the double standard? Why does the Western heart beat for the civilians harmed in the campaign to liberate East Aleppo but not for the civilians harmed by Western campaigns to bring territory under the control of the United States and its proxies?

The answer, in short, is that Al Qaeda is a US asset in Washington’s campaign to overthrow the Arab nationalists in Damascus, and therefore Washington objects to military operations which threaten its ally. On the other hand, Washington sparks one humanitarian crisis after another in pursuit of its foreign policy goal of coercing submission to its global leadership. Jabhat Fatah al-Sham’s value to Washington resides in its implacable opposition to the secularism of Syria’s ruling Arab nationalist Ba’ath Party, and its willingness to accept the Sykes-Picot boundaries drawn up by Britain and France after WWI. Thus, the Syrian al-Qaeda outfit limits its operations to working toward the overthrow of secularists in Damascus. Washington is unwilling to accept radical Islamists seizing control of the Syrian state, but is willing to work with Al-Qaeda to eliminate a common enemy.

Washington plays a similar game with Islamic State, by calibrating its military campaign against the bad Islamists, in order to prevent them from threatening Iraq and Saudi Arabia while at the same time using them as a tool to weaken Syria’s Arab nationalist state. US airstrikes have been concentrated in Iraq, reports the Wall Street Journal. The air war focusses on Islamic State targets in Iraq, explains the newspaper, because “in Syria, U.S. strikes against the Islamic State would inadvertently help the regime of President Bashar al-Assad militarily.” [44] Likewise, France has “refrained from bombing the group in Syria for fear of bolstering” the Syrian government. [45] The British, too, have focused their air war overwhelmingly on Islamic State targets in Iraq, conducting less than 10 percent of their airstrikes on the Islamist organization’s positions in Syria. [46] The New York Times reports that “United States-led airstrikes in Syria … largely (focus) on areas far outside government control, to avoid … aiding a leader whose ouster President Obama has called for.” [47] Hence, US-coalition “airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria” have been so limited as to make them “little more than a symbolic gesture.” [48] Fisk sums up the phony war against Islamic State in Syria with a sarcastic quip: “And so we went to war against Isis in Syria—unless, of course, Isis was attacking Assad’s regime, in which case we did nothing at all.” [49]

Consistent with the US approach of employing Al Qaeda as a cat’s paw against Syria’s secular Arab nationalists, any military operation which sets back Al-Qaeda’s campaign to overthrow the Assad government is a blow against a US foreign policy objective. Those who implore the United States to join Russia in a coalition to destroy Islamist militancy in the Muslim world miss the point. Washington only abhors jihadists when they threaten the United States and its satellites; otherwise, the US state embraces militant Islam as a useful tool to be used against secular governments which refuse to submit to the international dictatorship of the United States.

Owing to the harm they inevitably inflict on non-combatants, it is easy to condemn military campaigns to liberate cities occupied by enemy forces. But it is much more difficult to suggest a realistic alternative to using force to extirpate enemies from urban redoubts. Compromise and negotiation? For the United States, compromise means Arab nationalists stepping down and yielding power to US puppets—not compromise, but the fulfillment of US objectives. Washington isn’t interested in compromise. It has declared that it can and will lead the world, which means it is determined to set the rules. But even if there were a willingness in Washington for compromise, why should the United States have a role to play in deciding Syria’s political future? We can’t be true democrats, unless we fight for democracy in international relations. And we can’t have democracy in international relations if the United States and its allies intervene in other countries, enlisting jihadists to carry out their dirty work, in order to have a say in a political transition, once their mujahedeen allies have created a catastrophe.

What’s more, even had Damascus and its Russian ally concluded that the humanitarian consequences of attempting to drive Al Qaeda out of East Aleppo were too daunting to warrant a siege campaign, the day of siege would only be delayed. Were Syria’s secular Arab nationalists to yield power under a US negotiated political settlement, the United States, acting through its new Syrian client, would arrange the siege of the city to crush its former Islamist allies, who could not be allowed to challenge the new US marionette in Damascus. Only this time, the siege would be called a rescue operation, the label “rebel” would be dropped in favor of “radical Islamist terrorist,” the ensuing humanitarian crisis would be duly noted then passed over with little comment, and hosannas would be sung to the US military leaders who slayed the Islamist dragon.

On October 19, a Swiss journalist confronted Assad on civilian deaths in East Aleppo. “But it’s true that innocent civilians are dying in Aleppo,” the journalist said. Assad replied: “The “whole hysteria in the West about Aleppo (is) not because Aleppo is under siege…Aleppo has been under siege for the last four years by terrorists, and we (never) heard a question (from) Western journalists about what’s happening in Aleppo (then) and we (never) heard a single statement by Western officials regarding the children of Aleppo. Now they are asking about Aleppo…because the terrorists are in bad shape.” The Syrian Army is advancing “and the Western countries—mainly, the United States and its allies (the) UK and France” feel “they are losing the last cards of terrorism in Syria.” [50]

My book Washington’s Long War on Syria is forthcoming April 2017.

NOTES

1 Adapted from Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, 1897. “Our bishops scream to high heaven when the Armenians are violated by the Turks, but say nothing about the much worse crimes committed by their own countrymen. The hypocritical British heart beats for all except those their empire drowns in blood.”

2 Patrick Cockburn, “The silent devastation of Daraya: Capture of suburb is a big step toward Assad winning the battle for Damascus,” The Independent, September 8, 2016

3 Anton Troianovski and Amie Ferris-Rotman, “Germany hosts Putin and Poroshenko for Ukraine summit,” The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2016.

4 Patrick Cockburn, “Iraq’s ‘ramshackle’ Mosul offensive may see Isis defeated but it will expose deep divisions between the forces involved,” The Independent, October 18, 2016

5 Rania Khalek, “US and EU sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians and crippling aid work, UN report reveals,” The Intercept, September 28, 2016

6 Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. set to open a climactic battle against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq,” The New York Times, October 7, 2016

7 Patrick Cockburn, “Air strikes on ISIS in Iraq and Syria are reducing their cities to ruins,” The Independent, May 27, 2016

8 Ibid.

9 Matt Bradley, “Iraqi blockade of occupied Fallujah takes toll on civilians,” The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2016

10 Tim Arango, “In effort to defeat ISIS, US and Iran impede one another,” New York Times, April 25, 2016

11 Matt Bradley, “Iraqi blockade of occupied Fallujah takes toll on civilians,” The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2016

12 Tim Arango, “Iran-led push to retake Falluja from ISIS worries U.S.” The New York Times, May 28, 2016; Rania Khalek, “US and EU sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians and crippling aid work, UN report reveals,” The Intercept, September 28, 2016

13 Matt Bradley, “Iraqi blockade of occupied Fallujah takes toll on civilians,” The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2016

14 Tim Arango, “Iran-led push to retake Falluja from ISIS worries U.S.” The New York Times, May 28, 2016

15 Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. set to open a climactic battle against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq,” The New York Times, October 7, 2016; Missy Ryan, “Mosul offensive poses key test for U.S. strategy against Islamic State,” The Washington Post, October 14, 2016

16 Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. set to open a climactic battle against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq,” The New York Times, October 7, 2016

17 Jonathan Cook, “Guardian front page channels Orwell’s 1984,” Jonathan Cook Blog, October 17, 2016

18 Thomas L. Friedman, Obama on the world,” The New York Times, August 8, 2014

19 Patrick Cockburn, “The West has been in denial over how to tackle the threat of Islamic State,” Evening Standard, November 19, 2015

20 Robert Fisk, “David Cameron, there aren’t 70,000 moderate fighters in Syria—and whosever heard of a moderate with a Kalashnikov anyway?” The Independent, November 29, 2015

21 Ben Hubbard, “Islamist rebels create dilemma on Syria policy”, The New York Times, April 27, 2013

22 Nour Malas, “Islamists gain momentum in Syria”, The Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2013

23 Sam Heller and Avi Asher-Schapiro, “’The regime can’t be trusted’: Inside Syria’s Aleppo as a shaky truce begins,” Vice, May 5, 2016

24 Stephen Kinzer, “The media are misleading the public on Syria,” The Boston Globe, February 18, 2016

25 Robert Fisk, “No, Aleppo is not the new Srebrenica—the West won’t go to war over Syria,” The Independent, August 4, 2016

26 Ibid.

27 Robert Fisk, “Syria civil war: The untold story of the siege of two small Shia villages – and how the world turned a blind eye,” The Independent, February 22, 2016

28 Ibid.

29 Nada Bakri, “Sanctions pose growing threat to Syria’s Assad”, The New York Times, October 10, 2011

30 Moshe Ma’oz, Bruce Cumings, Ervand Abrahamian and Moshe Ma’oz, Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth about North Korea, Iran, and Syria, The New Press, 2004, p .207

31 Nour Malas and Siobhan Gorman, “Syrian brass defect, bouying rebels”, The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2012.

32 Joby Warrick and Alice Fordham, “Syria running out of cash as sanctions take toll, but Assad avoids economic pain”, the Washington Post, April 24, 2012

33 David E. Sanger, “U.S. faces a challenge in trying to punish Syria”, The New York Times, April 25, 2011

34 Rania Khalek, “US and EU sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians and crippling aid work, UN report reveals,” The Intercept, September 28, 2016

35 Patrick Cockburn, “The silent devastation of Daraya: Capture of suburb is a big step toward Assad winning the battle for Damascus,” The Independent, September 8, 2016

36 John Mueller and Karl Mueller, “Sanctions of mass destruction,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999

37 Patrick Cockburn, “US and EU sanctions are ruining ordinary Syrians’ lives, yet Bashar al-Assad hangs on to power,” The Independent, October 7, 2016

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Maria Abi-Habin and Adam Entous, “U.S. widens role in Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen,” The Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2015

41 Shuaib Almosawa and Ben Hubbard, “A roar at a funeral, and Yemen’s war is altered,” The New York Times, October 9, 2016

42 Shuaib Almosawa, Kareem Fahim and Somini Sengupta, “Yemeni government faces choice between a truce and fighting on,” The New York Times, Aug 14, 2015

43 Julian Borger, “Saudi-led naval blockade leaves 20m Yemenis facing humanitarian disaster,” The Guardian June 5, 2015

44 Maria Abi-Habib, “Islamic State remains unchallenged from its sanctuary in Syria”, The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2014

45 Matthew Dalton, “Reports on Islamic state plans in Europe fueled French move to prepare Syria strikes, The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2015

46 Patrick Cockburn, “Government has no strategy, no plan and only ‘phantom’ allies in Syria, scathing Commons report reveals,” The Independent, September 22, 2016

47 Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad, “ISIS fighters seize control of Syrian city of Palmyra, and ancient ruins, “The New York Times, May 20, 2015

48 Patrick Cockburn, “Chilcot report: Tony Blair, the Iraq war, and the words of mass destruction that continue to deceive,” The Independent, July 4, 2016

49 Robert Fisk, “I read the Chilcot report as I travelled across Syria this week and saw for myself what Blair’s actions caused,” The Independent, July 7, 2016

50 “President al-Assad to Swiss SRF 1 TV channel: Fighting terrorists is the way to protect civilians in Aleppo,” SANA, October 19, 2016

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/our-sieges-and-theirs/

Our Sieges and Theirs
October 20, 2016

The hypocritical Western heart beats for all except those the US Empire drowns in blood. [1]

By Stephen Gowans

“In Syria almost everybody is under siege to a greater or lesser degree,” observes the Independent’s Patrick Cockburn. [2] Most people, however, think the only siege in Syria is the one imposed on (East) Aleppo by Syrian and Russian forces. But siege as a form of warfare is hardly uniquely embraced by the Syrian Arab Army and Russian military. On the contrary, the United States and its allies have been practicing siege warfare in the Levant and beyond for years, and continue to do so. It’s just that US-led siege warfare has been concealed behind anodyne, even heroic, labels, while the siege warfare of countries Washington is hostile to, is abominated by Western state officials crying crocodile tears.

Here’s how the deception works:

Sieges of cities controlled by Islamic State, carried out by US forces and their allies, are called rescue operations, or campaigns to liberate or retake cities—never sieges. Other sieges—the ones carried out by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly Al Nusra, which, herein, I’ll call Al Qaeda for convenience—are ignored altogether (which might suggest something about the relationship of Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate to the United States.) And a particularly injurious form of siege—economic sanctions — is presented as a separate category altogether and not siege warfare at all. But sanctions, imposed by rich countries, such as the United States and those of the European Union, on poor countries, such as Syria, are a modern form of siege, and have been called sanctions of mass destruction, in recognition of their devastating character.

In the Levant, the sieges which are identified as such by Western state officials, and in train, by the Western mass media, are sieges of cities controlled by Al Qaeda, carried out by Syrian forces and their allies. These sieges—which cause hunger, kill civilians, and destroy buildings—are denounced in the West as ferocious attacks on innocents which amount to war crimes. “Russia’s bombardment backing the siege of Aleppo by Syrian government forces,” notes the Wall Street Journal, “has created a humanitarian crisis.” [3] A UN Security Council resolution—vetoed by Russia—has called for an end to Russian bombing of Aleppo. British foreign minister Boris Johnson has mused openly about war crimes indictments against Syria and Russia.
Yet US campaigns to drive Islamic State out of Manbij, Kobani, Ramadi, Fallujah, Baiji and Tikrit, and now Mosul, have also caused hunger, killed civilians, and destroyed buildings. Unlike the Syrian military’s siege of East Aleppo, these campaigns have been celebrated as great and necessary military victories, but have, themselves, created vast humanitarian crises.

Cockburn observes that the “recapture” of “cities like Ramadi, Fallujah, Baiji and Tikrit…would scarcely have happened without the coalition air umbrella overhead.” [4] That is, the cities liberated by Iraqi forces and their US patron were bombed into submission, even though civilians were trapped inside. Iraqi ground forces only moved in after these cities were left in ruins by coalition airstrikes and Iraqi artillery bombardment, as mopping up forces.

Rania Khalek, writing in the Intercept, points out that “U.S.-backed ground forces laid siege to Manbij, a city in northern Syria not far from Aleppo that is home to tens of thousands of civilians. U.S. airstrikes pounded the city over the summer, killing up to 125 civilians in a single attack. The U.S. replicated this strategy to drive ISIS out of Kobane, Ramadi, and Fallujah, leaving behind flattened neighborhoods.” [5]
To recover Ramadi from Islamic State, Iraqi forces surrounded and cordoned off the city. [6] In addition, the US led coalition bombarded Ramadi with airstrikes and artillery fire. [7] The bombardment left 70 percent of Ramadi’s buildings in ruins. The city was recovered, but “the great majority of its 400,000 people” were left homeless. [8]

Iraqi forces also besieged the city of Fallujah, preventing most food, medicine and fuel from entering it. [9] Militias “prevented civilians from leaving Islamic State territory while resisting calls to allow humanitarian aid to reach the city.” [10] This was done “to strangle Islamic State” [11] with the result that civilians were also “strangled.” Inside the city, tens of thousands endured famine and sickness due to lack of medicine. [12] Civilians reportedly survived on grass and plants. [13] Many civilians “died under buildings that collapsed under” artillery bombardment and coalition air strikes. [14]

The current campaign to recover Mosul is based on the same siege strategy US forces and their Iraqi client used to liberate Ramadi and Fallujah. US and allied warplanes have been bombarding the city for months. [15] Iraqi forces, aided by US Special Forces, are moving to cordon it off. “Some aid groups estimate that as many as a million people could be displaced by fighting to recapture the city, creating a daunting humanitarian task that the United Nations and other organizations say they are not yet ready to deal with.” [16]

Writer and journalist Jonathan Cook commented on the utter hypocrisy of Westerners who condemn the Syrian/Russian campaign to liberate East Aleppo from Islamist fighters while celebrating the Iraqi/US campaign to do the same in Mosul. Targeting the British newspaper, the Guardian, beloved by progressives, Cook contrasted two reports which appeared in the newspaper to illustrate the Western heart beating for all except those the US Empire drowns in blood.

Report one: The Guardian provides supportive coverage of the beginning of a full-throttle assault by Iraqi forces, backed by the US and UK, on Mosul to win it back from the jihadists of ISIS – an assault that will inevitably lead to massive casualties and humanitarian suffering among the civilian population.

Report two: The Guardian provides supportive coverage of the US and UK for considering increased sanctions against Syria and Russia. On what grounds? Because Syrian forces, backed by Russia, have been waging a full-throttle assault on Aleppo to win it back from the jihadists of ISIS and Al-Qaeda – an assault that has led to massive casualties and humanitarian suffering among the civilian population. [17]

Central to Western propaganda is the elision of the Islamist character of the Al Qaeda militants who tyrannize East Aleppo. This is accomplished by labeling them “rebels,” while the “rebels” who tyrannize the cities the United States and its allies besiege are called “Islamic State,” ISIL” or “ISIS” fighters. The aim is to conjure the impression that US-led sieges are directed at Islamic terrorists, and therefore are justifiable, despite the humanitarian crises they precipitate, while the Syrian-led campaign in East Aleppo is directed at rebels, presumably moderates, or secular democrats, and therefore is illegitimate. This is part of a broader US propaganda campaign to create two classes of Islamist militants—good Islamists, and bad ones.

The first class, the good Islamists, comprises Al Qaeda and fighters cooperating with it, including US-backed groups, whose operations are limited to fighting secularists in Damascus, and therefore are useful to the US foreign policy goal of overthrowing Syria’s Arab nationalist government. These Islamist fighters are sanitized as “rebels.”

The second class, the bad Islamists, comprises Islamic State. Islamic State has ambitions which make it far less acceptable to Washington as an instrument to be used in pursuit of US foreign policy goals. The organization’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, aspires to lead a caliphate which effaces the Sykes-Picot borders, and is therefore a threat, not only to the Arab nationalists in Damascus—an enemy the organization shares in common with Washington— but also to the US client states of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which Islamic State attacks. The US objective in connection with Islamic State is to push the organization out of Iraq (and out of areas in Syria that can be brought under the control of US-backed fighters) and into the remainder of Syria, where they can wear down Arab nationalist forces.
Syria’s “moderates”—the “rebels”—if there are any in the sense of secular pro-democrats, are few in number. Certainly, their ranks are so limited that arming them, in the view of US president Barack Obama, would make little difference. The US president told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that his administration had “difficulty finding, training and arming a sufficient cadre of secular Syrian rebels: ‘There’s not as much capacity as you would hope,’” Obama confessed. [18] Obama’s assessment was underscored when “a US general admitted that it had just four such ‘moderate’ fighters in Syria after spending $500 million on training them.” [19] Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk dismissed the idea of the “moderates” as little more than a fantasy. “I doubt if there are 700 active ‘moderate’ foot soldiers in Syria,” he wrote. And “I am being very generous, for the figure may be nearer 70.” [20]

Elizabeth O’Bagy, who has made numerous trips to Syria to interview insurgent commanders for the Institute for the Study of War, told the New York Times’ Ben Hubbard that my “sense is that there are no seculars.” [21] Anti-government fighters interviewed by the Wall Street Journal found the Western concept of the secular Syrian rebel to be incomprehensible. [22]

To be clear: Syrian and Russian forces are waging a campaign to liberate East Aleppo from Islamists, whose only difference from Islamic State is that they’re not a threat to the US client states, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It’s “primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo,” US Department of Defense spokesperson Colonel Steve Warren said on April 25, referring to Al Qaeda. [23] Other militant Islamist organizations, including US-backed groups, are also in Aleppo, intertwined with, embedded with, sharing weapons with, cooperating with, and acting as auxiliaries of Al-Qaeda.

Author and journalist Stephen Kinzer, writing in the Boston Globe, reminds us that:

For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it. [24]

The Invisible Sieges

While sieges imposed by US-led forces are hidden by not calling them sieges, sieges imposed by Washington’s Al-Qaeda ally are simply ignored.

“Only three years ago,” notes Fisk, the same Islamist fighters who are under siege today in East Aleppo, “were besieging the surrounded Syrian army western enclave of Aleppo and firing shells and mortars into the sector where hundreds of thousands of civilians lived under regime control.” [25] Fisk observes acidly that the “first siege didn’t elicit many tears from the satellite channel lads and lassies” while the “second siege comes with oceans of tears.” [26]

To the ignored Al Qaeda-orchestrated siege of West Aleppo can be added “the untold story of the three-and-a-half-year siege of two small Shia Muslim villages in northern Syria,” Nubl and Zahra. Those sieges, carried out by Al-Qaeda against villages which remained loyal to Syria’s Arab nationalist government, left at least 500 civilians dead, 100 of them children, through famine and artillery bombardment. [27] The “world paid no heed to the suffering of these people,” preferring to remain “largely fixed on those civilians suffering under siege by (Syrian) government forces elsewhere.” [28]

And then there’s the largely untold story of the 13 year-long siege imposed on a whole country, Syria, by the United States and European Union. That siege, initiated by Washington in 2003, with the Syria Accountability Act, and then followed by EU sanctions, blocks Western exports of almost all products to Syria and isolates the country financially. This massive, wide-scale siege plunged Syria’s economy into crisis even before the 2011 eruption of upheavals in the Arab world [29]—demonstrating that Washington’s efforts to force Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down began long before the Arab Spring. The roots of US hostility to Assad’s government are found in the danger of its becoming “a focus of Arab nationalistic struggle against an American regional presence and interests” [30] – another way of saying that the Arab nationalist goals of unity, independence and socialism, which guide the Syrian state, are an anathema to the US demand—expressed in the 2015 US National Security Strategy—that all countries fall in behind US global “leadership.”
Under US siege warfare, unemployment shot up, factories closed, food prices skyrocketed and fuel prices doubled. [31] “Syrian officials” were forced “to stop providing education, health care and other essential services in some parts of the country.” [32] Indeed, so comprehensive was the siege, that by 2011 US “officials acknowledged that the country was already under so many sanctions that the United States held little leverage.” [33]

Western siege warfare on Syria has blocked “access to blood safety equipment, medicines, medical devices, food, fuel, water pumps, spare parts for power plants, and more,” [34] leading Patrick Cockburn to compare the regime change campaign to “UN sanctions on Iraq between 1990 and 2003.” [35] The siege of Iraq—at a time when the country was led by secular Arab nationalists who troubled Washington as much, if not more, than the secular Arab nationalists in Syria vex Washington today—led to the deaths, though disease and hunger, of 500,000 children, according to the United Nations. Political scientists John Meuller and Karl Meuller called the siege a campaign of economic warfare amounting to “sanctions of mass destruction,” more devastating than all the weapons of mass destruction used in history. [36] When the West’s siege warfare on Arab nationalist Iraq ended in 2003 it was immediately resumed on Arab nationalist Syria, with the same devastating consequences.

According to a leaked UN internal report, the “US and EU economic sanctions on Syria are causing huge suffering among ordinary Syrians and preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid.” [37] Cockburn notes that “Aid agencies cited in the report say they cannot procure basic medicines or medical equipment for hospitals because sanctions are preventing foreign commercial companies and banks having anything to do with Syria.” [38] “In effect” concludes the veteran British journalists, “the US and EU sanctions are imposing an economic siege on Syria as a whole which may be killing more Syrians than die of illness and malnutrition in the sieges which EU and US leaders have described as war crimes.” [39]

Meanwhile, a U.S. Navy-backed blockade of Yemen’s ports [40]—in other words, a siege— has left much of the country, the poorest in the Arab world, “on the brink of famine.” [41] Last year, a United Nations expert estimated “that 850,000 children in the country of 26 million” faced “acute malnutrition” as a result of the US-backed siege. The blockade amounts to “the deliberate starvation of civilians,” the UN expert said, which constitutes a war crime. [42] “Twenty million Yemenis, nearly 80% of the population, are in urgent need of food, water and medical aid,” wrote British journalist Julian Borger last year. The siege, also backed by Britain, has created “a humanitarian disaster.” [43]

That Washington protests so vehemently about the humanitarian consequences of Syria’s campaign to liberate East Aleppo from Al Qaeda, while US forces and their allies kill civilians through airstrikes, artillery bombardments and siege-related famine and disease in campaigns to capture territory from Islamic State, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and Syria’s secular Arab nationalists, invites the obvious question: Why the double standard? Why does the Western heart beat for the civilians harmed in the campaign to liberate East Aleppo but not for the civilians harmed by Western campaigns to bring territory under the control of the United States and its proxies?

The answer, in short, is that Al Qaeda is a US asset in Washington’s campaign to overthrow the Arab nationalists in Damascus, and therefore Washington objects to military operations which threaten its ally. On the other hand, Washington sparks one humanitarian crisis after another in pursuit of its foreign policy goal of coercing submission to its global leadership. Jabhat Fatah al-Sham’s value to Washington resides in its implacable opposition to the secularism of Syria’s ruling Arab nationalist Ba’ath Party, and its willingness to accept the Sykes-Picot boundaries drawn up by Britain and France after WWI. Thus, the Syrian al-Qaeda outfit limits its operations to working toward the overthrow of secularists in Damascus. Washington is unwilling to accept radical Islamists seizing control of the Syrian state, but is willing to work with Al-Qaeda to eliminate a common enemy.

Washington plays a similar game with Islamic State, by calibrating its military campaign against the bad Islamists, in order to prevent them from threatening Iraq and Saudi Arabia while at the same time using them as a tool to weaken Syria’s Arab nationalist state. US airstrikes have been concentrated in Iraq, reports the Wall Street Journal. The air war focusses on Islamic State targets in Iraq, explains the newspaper, because “in Syria, U.S. strikes against the Islamic State would inadvertently help the regime of President Bashar al-Assad militarily.” [44] Likewise, France has “refrained from bombing the group in Syria for fear of bolstering” the Syrian government. [45] The British, too, have focused their air war overwhelmingly on Islamic State targets in Iraq, conducting less than 10 percent of their airstrikes on the Islamist organization’s positions in Syria. [46] The New York Times reports that “United States-led airstrikes in Syria … largely (focus) on areas far outside government control, to avoid … aiding a leader whose ouster President Obama has called for.” [47] Hence, US-coalition “airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria” have been so limited as to make them “little more than a symbolic gesture.” [48] Fisk sums up the phony war against Islamic State in Syria with a sarcastic quip: “And so we went to war against Isis in Syria—unless, of course, Isis was attacking Assad’s regime, in which case we did nothing at all.” [49]

Consistent with the US approach of employing Al Qaeda as a cat’s paw against Syria’s secular Arab nationalists, any military operation which sets back Al-Qaeda’s campaign to overthrow the Assad government is a blow against a US foreign policy objective. Those who implore the United States to join Russia in a coalition to destroy Islamist militancy in the Muslim world miss the point. Washington only abhors jihadists when they threaten the United States and its satellites; otherwise, the US state embraces militant Islam as a useful tool to be used against secular governments which refuse to submit to the international dictatorship of the United States.

Owing to the harm they inevitably inflict on non-combatants, it is easy to condemn military campaigns to liberate cities occupied by enemy forces. But it is much more difficult to suggest a realistic alternative to using force to extirpate enemies from urban redoubts. Compromise and negotiation? For the United States, compromise means Arab nationalists stepping down and yielding power to US puppets—not compromise, but the fulfillment of US objectives. Washington isn’t interested in compromise. It has declared that it can and will lead the world, which means it is determined to set the rules. But even if there were a willingness in Washington for compromise, why should the United States have a role to play in deciding Syria’s political future? We can’t be true democrats, unless we fight for democracy in international relations. And we can’t have democracy in international relations if the United States and its allies intervene in other countries, enlisting jihadists to carry out their dirty work, in order to have a say in a political transition, once their mujahedeen allies have created a catastrophe.

What’s more, even had Damascus and its Russian ally concluded that the humanitarian consequences of attempting to drive Al Qaeda out of East Aleppo were too daunting to warrant a siege campaign, the day of siege would only be delayed. Were Syria’s secular Arab nationalists to yield power under a US negotiated political settlement, the United States, acting through its new Syrian client, would arrange the siege of the city to crush its former Islamist allies, who could not be allowed to challenge the new US marionette in Damascus. Only this time, the siege would be called a rescue operation, the label “rebel” would be dropped in favor of “radical Islamist terrorist,” the ensuing humanitarian crisis would be duly noted then passed over with little comment, and hosannas would be sung to the US military leaders who slayed the Islamist dragon.

On October 19, a Swiss journalist confronted Assad on civilian deaths in East Aleppo. “But it’s true that innocent civilians are dying in Aleppo,” the journalist said. Assad replied: “The “whole hysteria in the West about Aleppo (is) not because Aleppo is under siege…Aleppo has been under siege for the last four years by terrorists, and we (never) heard a question (from) Western journalists about what’s happening in Aleppo (then) and we (never) heard a single statement by Western officials regarding the children of Aleppo. Now they are asking about Aleppo…because the terrorists are in bad shape.” The Syrian Army is advancing “and the Western countries—mainly, the United States and its allies (the) UK and France” feel “they are losing the last cards of terrorism in Syria.” [50]

My book Washington’s Long War on Syria is forthcoming April 2017.

NOTES

1 Adapted from Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, 1897. “Our bishops scream to high heaven when the Armenians are violated by the Turks, but say nothing about the much worse crimes committed by their own countrymen. The hypocritical British heart beats for all except those their empire drowns in blood.”

2 Patrick Cockburn, “The silent devastation of Daraya: Capture of suburb is a big step toward Assad winning the battle for Damascus,” The Independent, September 8, 2016

3 Anton Troianovski and Amie Ferris-Rotman, “Germany hosts Putin and Poroshenko for Ukraine summit,” The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2016.

4 Patrick Cockburn, “Iraq’s ‘ramshackle’ Mosul offensive may see Isis defeated but it will expose deep divisions between the forces involved,” The Independent, October 18, 2016

5 Rania Khalek, “US and EU sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians and crippling aid work, UN report reveals,” The Intercept, September 28, 2016

6 Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. set to open a climactic battle against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq,” The New York Times, October 7, 2016

7 Patrick Cockburn, “Air strikes on ISIS in Iraq and Syria are reducing their cities to ruins,” The Independent, May 27, 2016

8 Ibid.

9 Matt Bradley, “Iraqi blockade of occupied Fallujah takes toll on civilians,” The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2016

10 Tim Arango, “In effort to defeat ISIS, US and Iran impede one another,” New York Times, April 25, 2016

11 Matt Bradley, “Iraqi blockade of occupied Fallujah takes toll on civilians,” The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2016

12 Tim Arango, “Iran-led push to retake Falluja from ISIS worries U.S.” The New York Times, May 28, 2016; Rania Khalek, “US and EU sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians and crippling aid work, UN report reveals,” The Intercept, September 28, 2016

13 Matt Bradley, “Iraqi blockade of occupied Fallujah takes toll on civilians,” The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2016

14 Tim Arango, “Iran-led push to retake Falluja from ISIS worries U.S.” The New York Times, May 28, 2016

15 Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. set to open a climactic battle against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq,” The New York Times, October 7, 2016; Missy Ryan, “Mosul offensive poses key test for U.S. strategy against Islamic State,” The Washington Post, October 14, 2016

16 Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. set to open a climactic battle against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq,” The New York Times, October 7, 2016

17 Jonathan Cook, “Guardian front page channels Orwell’s 1984,” Jonathan Cook Blog, October 17, 2016

18 Thomas L. Friedman, Obama on the world,” The New York Times, August 8, 2014

19 Patrick Cockburn, “The West has been in denial over how to tackle the threat of Islamic State,” Evening Standard, November 19, 2015

20 Robert Fisk, “David Cameron, there aren’t 70,000 moderate fighters in Syria—and whosever heard of a moderate with a Kalashnikov anyway?” The Independent, November 29, 2015

21 Ben Hubbard, “Islamist rebels create dilemma on Syria policy”, The New York Times, April 27, 2013

22 Nour Malas, “Islamists gain momentum in Syria”, The Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2013

23 Sam Heller and Avi Asher-Schapiro, “’The regime can’t be trusted’: Inside Syria’s Aleppo as a shaky truce begins,” Vice, May 5, 2016

24 Stephen Kinzer, “The media are misleading the public on Syria,” The Boston Globe, February 18, 2016

25 Robert Fisk, “No, Aleppo is not the new Srebrenica—the West won’t go to war over Syria,” The Independent, August 4, 2016

26 Ibid.

27 Robert Fisk, “Syria civil war: The untold story of the siege of two small Shia villages – and how the world turned a blind eye,” The Independent, February 22, 2016

28 Ibid.

29 Nada Bakri, “Sanctions pose growing threat to Syria’s Assad”, The New York Times, October 10, 2011

30 Moshe Ma’oz, Bruce Cumings, Ervand Abrahamian and Moshe Ma’oz, Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth about North Korea, Iran, and Syria, The New Press, 2004, p .207

31 Nour Malas and Siobhan Gorman, “Syrian brass defect, bouying rebels”, The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2012.

32 Joby Warrick and Alice Fordham, “Syria running out of cash as sanctions take toll, but Assad avoids economic pain”, the Washington Post, April 24, 2012

33 David E. Sanger, “U.S. faces a challenge in trying to punish Syria”, The New York Times, April 25, 2011

34 Rania Khalek, “US and EU sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians and crippling aid work, UN report reveals,” The Intercept, September 28, 2016

35 Patrick Cockburn, “The silent devastation of Daraya: Capture of suburb is a big step toward Assad winning the battle for Damascus,” The Independent, September 8, 2016

36 John Mueller and Karl Mueller, “Sanctions of mass destruction,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999

37 Patrick Cockburn, “US and EU sanctions are ruining ordinary Syrians’ lives, yet Bashar al-Assad hangs on to power,” The Independent, October 7, 2016

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Maria Abi-Habin and Adam Entous, “U.S. widens role in Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen,” The Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2015

41 Shuaib Almosawa and Ben Hubbard, “A roar at a funeral, and Yemen’s war is altered,” The New York Times, October 9, 2016

42 Shuaib Almosawa, Kareem Fahim and Somini Sengupta, “Yemeni government faces choice between a truce and fighting on,” The New York Times, Aug 14, 2015

43 Julian Borger, “Saudi-led naval blockade leaves 20m Yemenis facing humanitarian disaster,” The Guardian June 5, 2015

44 Maria Abi-Habib, “Islamic State remains unchallenged from its sanctuary in Syria”, The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2014

45 Matthew Dalton, “Reports on Islamic state plans in Europe fueled French move to prepare Syria strikes, The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2015

46 Patrick Cockburn, “Government has no strategy, no plan and only ‘phantom’ allies in Syria, scathing Commons report reveals,” The Independent, September 22, 2016

47 Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad, “ISIS fighters seize control of Syrian city of Palmyra, and ancient ruins, “The New York Times, May 20, 2015

48 Patrick Cockburn, “Chilcot report: Tony Blair, the Iraq war, and the words of mass destruction that continue to deceive,” The Independent, July 4, 2016

49 Robert Fisk, “I read the Chilcot report as I travelled across Syria this week and saw for myself what Blair’s actions caused,” The Independent, July 7, 2016

50 “President al-Assad to Swiss SRF 1 TV channel: Fighting terrorists is the way to protect civilians in Aleppo,” SANA, October 19, 2016

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/our-sieges-and-theirs/

‘Unlike Western mainstream media, I’ve spent the last three days in East Aleppo’
Published time: 15 Dec, 2016 13:48

‘Unlike Western mainstream media, I’ve spent the last three days in East Aleppo’
Residents in a liberated district in eastern Aleppo. © Mikhail Alaeddin / Sputnik

Western media and propaganda have supported the incarceration, torture, abuse and horror that these civilians had had to go through says journalist Vanessa Beeley. Columnist Brent Budowsky and Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute join the debate.

Syria unrest

After liberating eastern Aleppo, government troops are making advances against terrorists that still control several districts of the Syrian city.

In response, the militants have again been targeting civilian areas of western Aleppo.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media continue to blame President Assad and Russia for the civilian suffering.

The grim picture of Aleppo's liberation painted in the mainstream media has prompted crowds to protesters on the streets of European cities. People gathered in the German city of Hamburg as well as Paris calling to stop the slaughter of people in Aleppo.

Also, the lights of the Eiffel Tower have been turned off in solidarity with the civilians of Aleppo.

RT spoke to independent researcher and journalist Vanessa Beeley, the executive director of the Ron Paul Institute Daniel McAdams and columnist for 'The Hill' Brent Budowsky and heard some very different opinions on the Syrian conflict.

Tonight at 8pm I will turn my lights off to show the support of Paris to the inhabitants of the city Alep in Syria.

RT: Why so much hysteria in the media? Why is no one talking about defeating terrorists - who are Al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria?

Brent Budowsky, columnist for the Hill: Nobody wants to kill and defeat the terrorists more than I do and more than the US, but what is happening in Aleppo is a moral crime against humanity. I agree with what Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Russian government should do everything to stop it, to end it, to support a ceasefire, to end the carnage, the killing and the bombing of innocent civilians. The UN is concerned about it. And I agree with their investigation into possible war crimes. I agree with what the pictures tell us. The bombing of civilians and the massacre of the innocents must stop. My strong advice to President Putin would be to follow John Kerry’s advice and end that carnage and killing right now. So should Assad, so should the Syrian army. It is a joke to treat them as liberators; they are mass-murdering civilians…

RT: Vanessa, what is your reaction to this political view of the events? As a journalist, how do you feel about that?

Vanessa Beeley, journalist: I’ve just returned from three days in East Aleppo, and I would like to 100 percent correct the lies that are being disseminated by the media, think tanks, governments across the West. Particularly your guest who has just uttered complete lies. I’ve spent basically three days in all the various liberated areas of East Aleppo… Many of the testimonies that we received from the civilians that this gentleman has just accused Russia and Syria of bombing, actually told us that they had been incarcerated for the last four years by the various US-backed terrorist militant groups such as Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki whom we know beheaded the 12-year old Palestinian child. We were told stories about civilians who were trying to leave this imprisonment when the Russian and Syrian governments opened the humanitarian corridors. I interviewed one lady, I have her on film, where she tells me that one woman, who had been kept in a condition of starvation and malnutrition by these militant factions – who were stockpiling any humanitarian aid that came in and either selling it at extortionate prices. When this lady went on her knees to beg for food, she was shot in the mouth by the militant factions that have been imprisoning these civilians for the last four and a half years. Your [American] media and propaganda have supported that incarceration, torture, abuse and absolute horror that these civilians had had to go through.

RT: The spokesperson of the US State Department said he hasn't seen the videos of people celebrating on Aleppo’s streets. He's in a senior position; he must know what he's talking about, doesn't he?

Brent Budowsky: We can witness day by day dead babies by dead babies. You can watch the CNN, the BBC, any other television station. The point is – the killing, the bombings of civilians must stop. The dead children and babies is a moral outrage against humanity.

‘When camera gone they leave people under rubble’ – Aleppo residents on Western-backed White Helmets

Vanessa Beeley: Can I ask one question? Where are these sources being able to transmit this information from? Because in East Aleppo there is no 3G, there is no wi-fi, there is no electricity. So I’d like to know how these sources are able to get this information via Skype connection to organizations – I’ll use that term loosely – like CNN, BBC, Channel 4. I would very much like to know how they achieve it and how there’re able to do that in East Aleppo. Unlike the corporate mainstream media, I have been in East Aleppo for the last three days, therefore, I’m giving you eyewitness testimony unlike your mainstream media that has not been there and relies upon spurious activists – like the White Helmets, who are funded by every single nation that has a vested and declared interest in regime change in Syria. That is your reliable source. Or perhaps the ‘Aleppo Media Center’ – French Foreign Office funded…

Daniel McAdams, executive director at Ron Paul Institute: This is a good example of what is wrong with the mainstream media. You have a mainstream media source like this Brent Budowsky who goes on television telling us: “You’ve got to believe the US government.” This is the same media that lie through its teeth about Iraq; that lied through its teeth about Benghazi, about the slaughters that were not happening there. There are no foreign media sources in East Aleppo right now. They are not on the ground. They are all using information that they are getting through rebel sources. That is the truth. So, Budowsky, what you are doing right now is you are putting out fake news. And you know it because there are no sources on the ground. You’re saying, ‘Just believe the US government.’ You’re supposed to be in the media! You’re supposed to be doing independent work…

Go back to 2005 in a document from the US Embassy in Damascus was sent back to Washington outlining exactly how to destabilize and overthrow the Syria government, which is exactly the roadmap they took. Who was really responsible for the carnage in Syria? It is the interventionists in the West and their enablers in the mainstream media that push a regime change policy that destroys countries like Iraq, like Syria, like Libya, like Afghanistan, and so on. They are the real perpetrators of this crime.

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/370401-syria-aleppo-msm-russia/

Syrian Elections 2016: US, NATO Criminals, Liars & Hypocrites’ Failed Attempt to Deny the Will of the Syrian People
APRIL 14, 2016 BY VANESSA BEELEY


“We declare our right on this earth…to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” ~ Malcolm X

Yesterday Parliamentary elections were held in Syria. 7000 polling booths were opened across the country. 11, 341 candidates were proposed from across Syria with 250 to be elected to Parliament, including a number of female candidates.

Candidates were spread out as follows: 988 in Damascus, 817 in Damascus countryside, Aleppo 1437, in Aleppo regions 1048, In Idleb 386, in Homs 1800, Hama 700, Lattakia 1653, Tartous 634, Deir Ezzor 311, Hasaka 546, Raqqa 197, Daraa 321, Sweida 263 and in Quneitra 240

Voting centres opened at 7.30 am and were obliged to extend their sessions by five hours to accommodate the high turn out of voters.
women

Some of the women candidates in Syrian Parliamentary elections.

“The voting centers include over 2,000 centers in Damascus, 17 in Deir Ezzor, 1,047 in Lattakia, 661 in Homs, 347 in Sweida, 741 in Hama, 368 in Hasaka, 816 in Tartous, and 347 in Sweida are receiving voters.

It should be noted that voting centers were opened in Damascus, Damascus Countryside, Hama, Lattakia, Aleppo, Tartous, Hasaka, and Deir Ezzor to receive voters staying in these provinces who are originally from other areas, namely the provinces of Idleb, Raqqa, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, and Daraa.” ~ SANA

So contrary to spurious claims from western governments and media, efforts were made to open the voting to all Syrian civilians including those who have fled terrorists held areas. We must also bear in mind that over 90% of IDPs [Internally displaced persons] have fled to Government controlled areas, thus further discrediting claims that these elections are non representative.
For a full photo report on the Syrian elections: Peoples Assembly Elections 2016

On an equally positive note, of course ignored in the western and gulf media, 1.7 million of these internally displaced refugees have been able to return home thanks not only to the SAA [Syrian Arab Army] liberation of whole swathes of Syrian villages and towns from US NATO terrorist occupation but also due to the Syrian Governments laudable efforts to rebuild and restore infrastructure in these areas.
Small government loans are being given to impoverished families to enable them to re-establish their lives torn apart by the illegal war of aggression that has been waged against Syria by the US, NATO, GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] and Israel for the last five years.

It is guaranteed that none of these initiatives will be reported in the mainstream media, including the Syrian Higher Committee for Relief’s efforts to facilitate the delivery of Humanitarian aid to the remaining terrorist held civilian areas in Syria.

As Professor Tim Anderson [who is in Syria to observe the elections as indeed he was in 2014] said:

“Syrian democracy needs no outside approval. Repeated outside demands that ‘Assad must go’, or that a Washington-approved executive ‘transition government’ be formed, have become meaningless, since the military tide turned in the embattled country’s favour.”

The Syrian elections proceeded according to the Syrian constitution and law. We see this being enforced in Aleppo for example where it was decided that violations of the voting process had taken place and a re-election was called for.

UNSC [Security Council] resolution 2254 stated clearly that Syria’s future is in the hands of the Syrians and the Syrians are proving that they are doing just that with little fuss but a lot of enthusiasm and determination to deny foreign intervention in their sovereign affairs.

The Syrian “Dictator” goes to Vote

Now lets have a look at the President that western governments and their media minions would have us believe to be a bloodthirsty, butchering dictator as he and his wife Asma head for the polling booths with no security in sight.


Compare this if you will, to the protests being held across Britain demanding that David Cameron aka “Dodgy Dave” resign over the Panama papers scandal, the subsequent police clamp down and the manhandling of protestors.

Perhaps even more laughable in the face of the UK Government’s own deteriorating human rights record at home and abroad, is their statement on the Syrian elections:

Britain said Damascus’ decision to go ahead with the elections in the war-torn nation, where hundreds of thousands cannot take part, shows “how divorced (the government) is from reality.”

With homelessness and child poverty reaching Victorian levels in Britain, legal cases pending for criminal arms sales to the genocidal Saudi coalition conducting wholesale slaughter of Yemeni civilians, and recent reports on the British government clandestine assassination programmes, one would be justified in saying the British government has not only divorced itself from reality but from Humanity in every feasible way.

“Reprieve highlights the fact that Britain conspired in a US-inspired Kill List soon after 9/11. It says quite categorically that “Starting in 2002, working closely with the Americans, Britain had played a leading role in the euphemistic Joint Prioritized Effective List. As with Yemen, the JPEL Kill List was not even limited to a war zone – it spanned over into Pakistan, which was an ally, not an enemy at war.”

What this effectively means is that not only has Britain brought back the death penalty it has done so without public or parliamentary consultation, and carried out these deadly deeds regularly without even a basic trial.” ~ Britain’s Secret Assassination Programme

France takes the hippocritic oath.

France has also hit the deck with cries of illegitimacy regarding the Syrian elections.

“The idea that there could be elections is not just provocative but totally unrealistic. It would be proof that there are no negotiations or discussions [in Geneva].”~ Francois Hollande

Legion of Honour

This statement comes from the man who crossed an executioners palm with silver to secure a multi billion dollar arms deal with Qatar.

In this photo Hollande is presenting France’s most prestigious award, the Legion D’Honneur to Saudi interior minister, Muhammed Bin Nayef. Bin Nayef is personally responsible for choosing who of the many prisoners in Saudi jails is eligible for execution or crucifixion without trial and usually on trumped up charges.

So one is once more justified to ask, which leg is Hollande standing on when he denigrates Syrian elections while commending one of the world’s most renowned terrorists on his efforts to combat…terrorism.

The award for hypocrisy goes to..

US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said that the US “would view those elections as not legitimate in the sense that they don’t represent… the will of the Syrian people.

“So, to hold parliamentary elections now, given the current circumstances, given the current conditions in the country, we believe is at best premature and not representative of the Syrian people,” Toner said.
Early last week Toner said that “a political process that reflects the desires and will of the Syrian people is what should ultimately decide the future leadership and the future government of Syria.” ~ RT
Here is the response of the Syrian people to Mr Toner’s comments:

Mohammed Ali of Press TV reports from Damascus

Conclusions

As I said in yesterday’s exchange of messages with ex Ambassador to Syria and alleged death squad creator, Robert Ford:

“History is repeating itself a little too often Mr Ford, be very careful that you don’t bring your own house of cards down around your ears..Syria is denying your agenda time and time again and I can appreciate your Governments frustration but mistakes are being made and your propaganda apparatus is coming apart at the seams due largely to the integrity and unity of the Syrian people.

The day the US or any NATO member can say it had to extend the voting because such huge numbers turned out, is the day you can lecture me about “regimes”. The day your own Government is finally sanctioned and prosecuted as a war criminal for its policy of overtly or covertly butchering the peoples of sovereign nations is the day you can criticise any other duly elected world government.”

The US, NATO, GCC and Israeli agenda has careered into the brick wall of Syrian resistance, integrity and unity. The will of the Syrian people is being listened to by the Syrian government.

Ideologically and spiritually the Syrian people believe in their political and military victory. The Syrian people have said “no” time and time again to foreign intervention. They have endured crippling economic sanctions, invasions by proxy terrorist armies, occupation by mass murderers funded and armed by the US and NATO alliance but their resilience will ensure their self determination against all odds.

To achieve their objectives in Syria, the US and NATO are reliant upon mercenaries, terrorists, rapists and felons who have no vested interest in victory other than lining their own pockets with drugs and oil revenue.

The US and NATO agenda in Syria has no basis in law or even sound ideology, it is based upon pure greed and power sustained by corruption and inhumanity. It shall fail and Syria will emerge unbowed, stronger and ultimately victorious. The Syrian people have redrawn the geopolitical road map with strength of will alone. This is the will you should be respecting Mr Toner, no other.

“The Syrian people are engaged in a war that has been going on for five years, through which terrorism managed to shed innocent blood and destroy much infrastructure, but it failed in achieving the primary goal it was assigned, which is destroying the principle structure in Syria, meaning the social structure of the national identity.” ~ President Bashar al Assad.

http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/04/14/syrian-elections-2016-us-nato-criminals-liars-and-hypocrites-failed-attempt-to-deny-the-will-of-the-syrian-people/

U.S./UK Paid "White Helmets" Help Blocking Water To 5 Million Thirsty Syrians

The blockade of water from Wadi Barada to 5 million people in Damascus is taking an interesting turn. The U.S. and UK financed White Helmet organization seems to be directly involved in it. This increases the suspicion that the illegal blockade of water to civilians in Damascus is part of a organized campaign under U.S. command. The campaign is designed to block utilities to government held areas as revenge for the liberation of east Aleppo.

As we described it yesterday:

After the eastern part of the city of Aleppo was liberated by Syrian government forces, the local rebels and inhabitants in the Barada river valley were willing to reconcile with the Syrian government. But the al-Qaeda Takfiris disagreed and took over. The area is since under full al-Qaeda control and thereby outside of the recent ceasefire agreement.
On December 22 the water supply to Damascus was suddenly contaminated with diesel fuel and no longer consumable. A day later Syrian government forces started an operation to regain the area and to reconstitute the water supplies.

Photos and a video on social media (since inaccessible but I saw them when they appeared) showed the water treatment facility rigged with explosives. On Dec 27th the facility was blown up and partly destroyed.

The Syrian government is ready to send repair teams to rehabilitate the water flow to the millions of civilians in Damascus. But access to the site is denied and the Syrian army is now trying to push al-Qaeda and its allies away from it.

Curiously some "civil" groups today offered access under several (not agreeable) conditions:

Hassan Ridha @sayed_ridha - 2:10 AM - 3 Jan 2017
Wadi Barada statement: we will let teams to fix water spring if SAA-Hezb stop attack, siege lift & monitor ceasefire by intl observers
[attachment]

EHSANI2 @EHSANI22 - 6:43 AM - 3 Jan 2017
Offer by opposition to trade access to water source for #Damascus with halting of military operations by army
[attachment]

Here is the attachment to both tweets. Note who signed it:


Check the logos of the undersigning organizations You will probably recognize the middle one in the second row. Here it is magnified.


And here is the original of that logo taken directly from the website of the Syrian Civil Defense organization aka The White Helmets:



The organizations who make an offer to lift the water blockade of Damascus obviously think they have the power to do so. They then must also be held responsible for keeping the blockade up. They must also have intimate relations with the al-Qaeda fighters who currently occupy the damaged water facilities.

The U.S. and UK government created and paid White Helmets are "impartially", "neutrally" and "for all Syrians" blocking the water supply to 5 million Syrians in Damascus. U.S. military and CIA officers run the "operations rooms" in Jordan and Turkey that direct the insurgency.

This increases suspicion that the blockade is part of an organized response by the enemies of Syria to the recent liberation of east-Aleppo. As noted yesterday:

This shut down is part of a wider, seemingly coordinated strategy to deprive all government held areas of utility supplies. Two days ago the Islamic State shut down a major water intake for Aleppo from the Euphrates. High voltage electricity masts of lines feeding Damascus have been destroyed and repair teams, unlike before, denied access. Gas supplies to parts of Damascus are also cut.
Even after 14 days of water crisis in Damascus the "western" media are not reporting about the al-Qaeda blockade of water for 5 million Syrians. We can be sure that not a word will be written by them about this illegal hostages taking of millions of civilians in Damascus by their favorite propaganda organization White Helmets.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/01/usuk-paid-white-helmets-help-blocking-water-to-5-million-thirsty-syrians.html

Al-Qaeda Cut Leaves 5 Million Thirsty In Damascus - Western Media Unconcerned

There is a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Syria and the "western" media ignore it.

On December 22 al-Qaeda aligned Takfiris in the Wadi Barada valley shut down the main water supply for the Syrian capital Damascus. Since then the city and some 5-6 million living in and around it have to survive on emergency water distributions by the Syrian government. That is barely enough for people to drink - no washing, no showers and no water dependent production is possible.

This shut down is part of a wider, seemingly coordinated strategy to deprive all government held areas of utility supplies. Two days ago the Islamic State shut down a major water intake for Aleppo from the Euphrates. High voltage electricity masts on lines feeding Damascus have been destroyed and repair teams, unlike before, denied access. Gas supplies to parts of Damascus are also cut. A similar tactic was used by the Zionist terrorists of the Haganah who in 1947/48 poisoned and blew up the water mains and oil pipelines to Palestinian Haifa.

Wadi Barada is a river valley some 10 miles west of Damascus at the mountain range between Lebanon and Syria. It has been in the hands of local insurgents since 2012. The area was since loosely surrounded by Syrian government forces and their allies from Hizbullah.



bigger

Two springs in the area provide the water for Damascus which is treated locally and then pumped through pipelines into the city's distribution network. Since the early 1990s there is a low level conflict over the water diversion of the Barada river valley to the ever growing Damascus. The drought over the last years has intensified the problems. Local agriculture of the water rich valley had to cut back for lack of water as this was pumped into the city. But many families from the valley moved themselves into the city or have relatives living there.

The local rebels had kept the water running for the city. Al-Qaeda aligned groups have been in the area for some time. A propaganda video distributed by them and taken in the area showed (pic) the choreographed mass execution of Syrian government soldiers.

After the eastern part of the city of Aleppo was liberated by Syrian government forces, the local rebels and inhabitants in the Barada river valley were willing to reconcile with the Syrian government. But the al-Qaeda Takfiris disagreed and took over. The area is since under full al-Qaeda control and thereby outside of the recent ceasefire agreement.

On December 22 the water supply to Damascus was suddenly contaminated with diesel fuel and no longer consumable. A day later Syrian government forces started an operation to regain the area and to reconstitute the water supplies.

Photos and a video on social media (since inaccessible but I saw them when they appeared) showed the water treatment facility rigged with explosives. On Dec 27th the facility was blown up and partly destroyed.

Suddenly new organized "civil" media operations of, allegedly, locals in the area spread misinformation to "western" media. "There are 100,000 civilians under siege in Wadi Barada!" In reality the whole area once had, according to the last peacetime census, some 20,000 inhabitants. The White Helmets propaganda organization now also claims to be in the area. "The government had bombed the water treatment facility," the propaganda groups claimed.

That is a. not plausible and b. inconsistent with the pictures of the destroyed facility. These show a collapse of the main support booms of the roof but no shrapnel impact at all. A bomb breaking through the roof and exploding would surely have left pocket marks all over the place. The damage, in my judgement, occurred from well designed, controlled explosions inside the facility.

Some insurgents posted pictures of themselves proudly standing within the destroyed facility and making victory signs.


source bigger

There is more such cheer-leading by insurgents on social media. Why when they claim that the government bombed the place?

On December 29 the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued an alarm about the water crisis:

The United Nations is alarmed that four million inhabitants in Damascus and surrounding areas have been cut off from the main water supply since 22 December. Two primary sources of drinking water- Wadi Barada and Ain-el-Fijah-which provide clean and safe water for 70 percent of the population in and around Damascus are not functioning, due to deliberate targeting resulting in the damaged infrastructure.
One of the two springs, Al-Feejeh, has now been retaken by the Syrian army. 1,300 civilians from Ain AlFeejeh, the nearby town with the treatment facility, have fled to the government held areas and were taken in by the Syrian Red Cross. The other spring and the treatment facility are still in Takfiri hands. The government has said that it will need some ten days to repair the system after the Syrian army has gained control of the facilities. That will still take some time.

Western media have hardly taken notice of the water crisis in Damascus and their coverage seems to actively avoid it. A search for Barada on the Washington Post website brings up one original piece from December 30 about the freshly negotiated ceasefire. The 6th paragraph says:

Airstrikes pounded opposition-held villages and towns in the strategically-important Barada Valley outside Damascus, activists said, prompting rebels to threaten to withdraw their compliance with a nationwide truce brokered by Russia and Turkey last week.
Then follow 16 paragraphs on other issues. Only at the very end of the piece comes this (mis-)information:

The Barada Valley is the primary source of water for the capital and its surrounding region. The government assault has coincided with a severe water shortage in Damascus since Dec. 22. Images from the valley’s Media Center indicate its Ain al-Fijeh spring and water processing facility have been destroyed in airstrikes. The government says rebels spoiled the water source with diesel fuel, forcing it to cut supplies to the capital.
On December 29 a piece by main WaPo anti-Syria propagandist Liz Sly did not mention the water crisis or the Barada valley at all.

The New York Times links a Reuters pieces about the UN alarm about the water crisis. But I find nothing in its own reporting that even mentions the water crisis. One piece on December 31 refers shortly to attacks on Wadi Baradi by government forces at its very end.

A Guardian search for Barada only comes up with a piece from today mixed from agency reports. The headlines say "Hundreds of Syrians flee as Assad's forces bomb Barada valley rebels". The piece itself says that they flee to the government side. In it the Syrian Observatory (MI-6) operation in Britain confirms that al-Qaeda rules the area which "Civil society organisations on the ground" deny. Only the very last of the 12 paragraph piece mentions the capital:

The Barada valley is the primary source of water for the capital and its surrounding region. The government assault has coincided with a severe water shortage in Damascus since 22 December. The government says rebels spoiled the water source with diesel fuel, forcing it to cut supplies to the capital.
Surely a few people "fleeing" (to the government side) "as Assad's forces bombs" are way more important than 5 million people in Damascus without access to water. That the treatment facility is destroyed seems also unimportant.

All the above papers have been extremely concerned about every scratch to any propaganda pimp who had claimed to be in then rebel held east-Aleppo. They now show no concern at all for 5 million Syrians in Damascus who have been without water for 10 days and will likely be so for the rest of the month.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/01/al-qaeda-cut-leaves-5-million-thirsty-in-damascus-western-media-unconcerned-.html#more

Sabotage Of East-Aleppo Evacuation Is Part Of A Plan

Update (Dec 19, 0:00 EST):

The culprits of the bus burning were "rebels" from Ahrar al-Sham and Jund al Aqsa. Both are favorites of the CIA and Turkey and in Idleb governate aligned with and under the military command of al-Qaeda.
After Turkey put heavy pressure on the groups it somewhat controls the evacuation deal is, for now, back on. The first exchange bus run occurrs right now. I expect a new sabotage attempt to jeopardize the deal.
Turkish media claim that Shia inhabitants of Fu'a and Kafraya burned the buses or that it is unknown who did it. Video and pictures proudly posted by the Takfiris themselves show that these radical Sunnis did it.
End-Update - original post follows:

The removal of defeated al-Qaeda fighters and their families from east-Aleppo has been on and off for several days now.

The agreement between Turkey and Russia on which the evacuation is based stipulates the parallel evacuation of wounded people from the al-Qaeda besieged Shiite village Fu'a and Kafraya in Idleb province. Note that neither the U.S. nor the (partisan) UN were involved in these negotiations.

The process was interrupted on Friday after al-Qaeda fighters in east-Aleppo opened fire on evacuating civilians. In parallel buses moving into Fu'a and Kafraya to evacuate the wounded were held up by al-Qaeda aligned groups in the area. Opposition claims that Hizbullah fighters was killing people that were evacuating from east-Aleppo were, according to a BBC producer, lies.

The agreement and evacuations were put on again and proceeded this morning after some new negotiations with unknown additional terms. The movements were to take place in strict parallel. Any move out of east-Aleppo on the government provided public buses would only happen at the very same moment that the wounded would move out of Fu'a and Kafraya on similar buses.

Today's evacuations were again sabotaged by al-Qaeda forces:

Several buses en route to evacuate the sick and injured from two government-held villages in Syria's Idlib province have been burned by rebels.
The convoy was travelling to Foah and Kefraya, besieged by rebel fighters.

Pro-government forces are demanding people be allowed to leave the mainly Shia villages in order for the evacuation of east Aleppo to restart.

Thousands of people are waiting to leave in desperate conditions, reports say.

Al-Qaeda gangs themselves provided video of the bus burning. The bus drivers were likely murdered which pretty much guarantees that no further buses will come or go.

I doubt that this is a solely al-Qaeda induced incident. It seems to me that the certain U.S. forces (aka the CIA) are trying to prolong the removal of al-Qaeda from east-Aleppo for their own purpose.

Just yesterday even the Washington Post (again) reported on the years long collusion between the CIA and al-Qaeda in Syria:

The CIA meanwhile continued to push a program that targeted Russia and its Syrian and Iranian allies — and helped shield Jabhat al-Nusra.
There are several "western" groups that want to keep the evacuation stalled to continue their anti-Syrian, anti-Russian and anti-Iran agenda.

The U.S. administration is miffed that it was kept out of the recent negotiations. It wants to demonstrate that any negotiations without its participation will not have any positive result.

The hundreds of "last video from Aleppo" of "Bana" and other propaganda creatures claiming to be there look like a highly coordinated Information Warfare campaign. The "Stand with Aleppo" campaign in the U.S. was started and is propelled by a Democratic party operative who is also CEO of a public relations company and "strategic affairs consultant" in Chicago, Becky Carroll. Its aim is to escalated the situation in Syria.

Meanwhile members of the Syrian opposition, or rather their "western" controllers in the CIA, are now emphasizing Iran, not Russia, as alleged spoiler in Syria. They claim, without any evidence, that Iran or its operatives held up the evacuations. This is part of a plan to preempt announced Trump policies of negotiating an end of the Syria conflict.

The French president Hollande, despised by his people and with an approval rating between 4 and 6%, is calling for another UN Security Council vote over east-Aleppo. Such a vote, demanding UN observers for the evacuation, is intended to hold it up. Observers would need days to be in place and would lack any reasonable protection. Hollande also wants to provide food to the non-existing "civilians" in east-Aleppo while Reuters provides video showing that al-Qaeda and allies in east-Aleppo have horded enough food for years. The idea behind the UNSC resolution is to let it fail and to then go to the UN General Assembly which, under the right pressure, might allow a war by any nation against Syria.

Earlier Hollande ordered the lights at the Eiffel tower to be turned off to mourn the liberation of Aleppo from Takfiris and to make it look like the flag of his defeated al-Qaeda friends. His sponsors in Qatar and Saudi Arabia will reward his principled stand.

With the burning of the buses the evacuation agreement is dead and unlikely to be revived.

The Syrian army should tell al-Qaeda in Aleppo that there will be no longer be any ceasefire. It must make clear that they will now either be interned or killed. The final fighting should be over in a day or two. Meanwhile as much air support as possible should be provided to the defenders at Fu'a and Kafraya.

The Russian military learned the hard way in Grozny that any ceasefire or pause you give to a mostly defeated enemy only helps the enemy and will, in the end, cost more lives on both sides.

Putin and Lavrov have fallen for various negotiation scams with the U.S. that were designed to only hold back attacks on al-Qaeda and allies so that those forces could reorganize and resupply for renewed attacks on government held areas. Kerry's promises to separate "moderates" from al-Qaeda in Syria was repeated over months until he finally claimed that the groups were too "marbled" to be taken apart. U.S. military attacks on Syrian government forces were launched to sabotage any agreement. Similar deceiving delaying tactics are now evident with the negotiated evacuation of east-Aleppo.

Meanwhile the next al-Qaeda stronghold to be attacked by government forces in the governate and city of Idleb can be prepared for defense. With the Syrian army and its allies still busy in Aleppo new arms supplies can arrive in Idleb and new formations can be organized. The British government even sends more troops to train "moderate" al-Qaeda allies.

It is time to end such sorry play. Clean up Aleppo already. Hollande, Samantha Power and other stooges will howl anyway - no matter how the final scene is done.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/12/delays-in-east-aleppo-evacuation-are-part-of-a-plan.html#comments

ALEPPO: ‘Local Activists’ or Al Qaeda Rogue’s Gallery?
JANUARY 4, 2017
Paul Mansfield

The “activists” were out in full force during the last days of the final liberation of Aleppo, decrying what they saw as the fall of the city and transmitting their “last” messages as they awaited death or abduction by the “evil Assad regime” forces. They made quite an impact in social media and some were picked up for 15 minutes of fame in the regime-change-shilling Western media. Meanwhile foreign independent and Syrian journalists continue to present a narrative which is anathema to the mainstream, hence their exclusion from any coverage.

Lina Shamy has been a real hit on regime-change-cheerleading media such as Al Jazeera. She solemnly tells us people are living through an Assad genocide, many having lain under the rubble of bombed Aleppo buildings, with what she calls the civil defence, or more accurately, the ‘White Helmets’, unable to rescue them. Incidentally, the White Helmets are not the real Syrian Civil Defence. They have been set up as a shadow state institution, colonizing and subverting the provision of emergency response in this war-torn country.

There is a real Syrian Civil Defence, naturally enough performing under the mandate of the legitimate, internationally recognised Syrian government. It comes as no surprise then that it is the certified civil fire and rescue organisation according to the International Civil Defence Organisation (ICDO). Shamy is quite careless with her interpretation of who the civil defence is, and the carelessness doesn’t end there.
Shamy, interviewed on Al Jazeera, said she had to flee her house in Aleppo with nothing but her clothes. Yet those hanging on her every video report will be pleased to know she still managed to bring her electronic devices, so she can continue to tell the world about the genocide being committed by the regime. How fortuitous is that.

Shamy is one of the sources of the accusations that Syrian soldiers and militias walked the streets of Aleppo, executing entire families and burning 60 people to death hiding in a basement. She claimed if the Syrian soldiers think there is the remotest connection to the rebel groups they will execute civilians. She is a rather vague source however, not having witnessed any of this herself.

She is in actual fact a secondary source, recounting what “activists” have said about alleged atrocities. Once the reality behind the horrific headlines is unpacked however, the credibility of the accusations starts to crumble away. It is difficult to know if the allegations are true or if they are plucked from thin air. Thankfully she can rely on propagandist bullhorns such as Al Jazeera to promote her claims.

Shamy is famous, along with other activists, for posting her “last video.” It all seems very well coordinated in a chaotic war environment. If it was conceived and coordinated from public relations operatives from abroad we could understand how slick and attention grabbing the “last this, last that” theme is. But I am sure we are not as cynical as to believe we are being duped, are we?

If Shamy’s allegations of widespread executions are true, we may be entitled to question how she, as an activist in the so-called firing line, managed to leave Aleppo unscathed. Her fans must be grateful that she is now in Idlib, tweeting that the “flag of the revolution is fluttering high. ” Undoubtedly she is honing her media performances to tell us of future Assad “atrocities” in Idlib.


Follow
Lina shamy @Linashamy
The demonstrations in #Idleb city today 30 of December 2016
and the flag of the revolution is fluttering high <3#SyrianRevolution #Syria
9:33 AM - 30 Dec 2016
1,128 1,128 Retweets 1,369 1,369 likes

Bilal Abdul Kareem is another ‘activist’ who has been advocating for direct western intervention in Syria since at least 2013, while simultaneously opposing attacking Islamist groups. In other words, wage war on the people of Syria and give ISIS and Al-Nusra a free pass. This scenario could only lead to another Libya, with ISIS and al-Qaeda struggling for control of the country and its gas and oil reserves. Speaking to Channel 4 News just after the Ghouta chemical attack on 21 August 2013 Kareem said, “There needs to be more dialog with these Islamic fighters because what they’re fighting for and what the west actually wants, really isn’t so incompatible. And I’ve said this before.” When asked about why radical Islamists should be supported he responded with the glib, “I don’t think there’s anything radical about wanting to save lives.” He said the west would find a ‘compatible partner” in the Islamist fighters.

Kareem, in an interview in 2015, gave a platform for former Al-Nusra spokesman Abu Firas to justify the forceful imposition of an Islamic state on secular Syria and the bloodshed necessary to achieve this goal. He also interviewed Abdullah Muhaysini, the Saudi Jihadist ideologue who says all able-bodied Sunni Muslims are obliged to travel to Syria to wage Jihad. He says Syrians today are standing strong against the Shia coming at them from more than ten countries, obliging Sunni from abroad to fight for their Sunni brothers. Apparently he’s fine with the idea of Muslims killing Muslims. He calls the Alawites enemies who also must be wiped out. Muhaysini claims to be an independent sharia scholar, but is believed to be a senior Al-Nusra (now Jabhat Fatah al-Sham) leader. He was added to the US government’s list of designated terrorists in November 2016.

Terrorist supporter and darling of Western media, Bilal Abdul Kareem

Kareem also got on the “last video” bandwagon saying, “This might be close to, if not the last communication.” He clearly saw this as the fall, not the liberation of Aleppo, and was determined to spread a gloomy perspective that has not been shared by thousands of Syrians relieved and thankful to be liberated in East Aleppo.

Political analyst Andrew Korybko points out how this “shadowy figure” who has been “actively spinning the Orwellian narrative that the ‘rebellious locals’ are under ‘deadly oppression’ by the SAA” has been touted and feted by the mainstream media as an “independent journalist” who can provide reliable, on-the-ground information. With his Islamist leanings, it is more accurate to say Kareem is “infamously contributing to the epidemic of fake news,” while fakerstan media such as CNN and Al Jazeera are infamously promoting the cause of violent jihadism in Syria.

In contrast, Korybko points out that the work of the outstanding independent journalist, Vanessa Beeley, who has been on the ground in Aleppo conducting interviews, taking videos, providing photographic evidence of the large scale humanitarian operation and the feelings of relief and joy among liberated Syrians, is ignored by the western mainstream media. When you actually give the people of Syria an unfiltered voice not shaped and redefined through the ministry of truth you become persona non grata in fakerstan medialand.

Bana Alabed, the seven-year-old girl who has become a Twitter sensation and until recently lived in East Aleppo, always seemed to be able to tweet in Wifi-less Aleppo. But if you have an account you could tweet from anywhere. Bana accumulated followers at a staggering pace at the same time the Syrian army and its allies were repelling counteroffensives by the opposition and preparing for the final push to liberate Aleppo.

Her tweets were faithfully retweeted by the Syrian opposition and figures from the mainstream Western media, and she even gained a fan in J. K. Rowling, who sent a Harry Potter book – in English of course – to the little girl who can only recite rote-learned short sentences in English. Whoever is writing the tweets, it is clearly not Bana (it’s probably her mother, who can be seen whispering answers to her in post-liberation interviews). This child is clearly a prop being used to cynically manipulate us to believe in Russian and Syrian war crimes and that the “civilised” world must urgently intervene to stop the murderous rampage.

Bana constantly tweeted about her house being bombed, of the terror she and the family feel, that the Syrian army will target them because of the tweeting, that death could be imminent, of nearby bombings killing numerous civilians, and appealed for help to western leaders including Barack Obama to rescue them from the clearly evil regime deliberately targeting her and other innocent children.

There is an overwhelming and pervasive emotional tugging at the heart strings here, with the dual message that the “regime” is bombing and killing civilians and, you, the western public must demand your leaders intervene to save them. The no-fly zone is already pre-destined as the form of intervention, so this is what “Bana” is really asking for. Very sophisticated for a 7-year-old girl.

In reality this is an extremely cynical use of an innocent child to promote a now failed regime change project. A project that has cost thousands of lives, forced people to flee their homes, and in some cases their country, has left Syria in ruins and a people heartbroken. Heartbroken; but resilient, brave, and determined to defeat the NATO/GCC backed terrorists and rebuild Syria.

Bana was recently photographed with Recep Erdogan. So after all the tweets fearing death at the hands of the Syrian Army, she, along with her family (not to mention thousands of terrorist fighters) were safely evacuated. She may be disappointed if she thinks Erdogan is going to be Al-Nusra’s saviour, as he seems to have joined the Russia/Syria/Iran alliance which has taken upon itself the task of resolving the Syrian war.

There were others posting similar “last tweets”, “last videos”, goodbyes, etc. who, if they really were in East Aleppo, had a genuine fear for their lives in a war zone. However what is objectionable is the attribution of blame solely to Syrian and Russian forces and the lack of acknowledgement of the atrocities carried out by the opposition, whom it must be remembered held government controlled areas of Aleppo under siege for over three years. One such person was Abdulkafi Alhamdo, a teacher and activist who in one of the worst pieces of acting you will see, complete with regular sighs for dramatic effect, claimed Russia and Syria did not want to see them leave alive, they wanted them dead and that he expected coming massacres. It is a very small leap of faith for those who accept this at face value to believe the massacres did happen as reported.

Article after article in the Western mainstream media condemns Russia and Syria for alleged war crimes spun by the above mentioned activists. Kirill Koktysh, Russian political scientist, associate professor of International Politics at Moscow-based MGIMO University, speaking to Sputnik News summed up the value for Washington in this misleading narrative:

Commenting on a recent article in the US media decrying once again Syria and Russia for their “atrocities” in Aleppo, with, of course, no proof whatsoever of the “crimes against humanity” proffered other than some jihadist propaganda, a Russian political scientist explained to Sputnik that Washington relies on articles like this to “save its face.”

The singular theme of these testimonies (in contrast to testimonies of reporters like Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett) is how unconvincing they are. They feared for their lives in East Aleppo, and if it was because of Russia bombs or the Syrian army, then blaming Russia or Syria is myopic in the extreme. The Syrian army, aided by Russia, literally liberated East Aleppo from years of occupation by Western-sponsored terror groups. Not once did they deliberately attack civilians. Why would they? On the other hand, the brutalisation of civilians in the four years of terrorist group rule was intentional and designed to strike fear in the hearts of people, to ensure they were too scared to rise up or resist. The murder of 27 East Aleppo civilians who had the temerity to protest their captivity was intentional. The torture, execution and dismemberment of civilians found in mass graves was intentional, gruesome and sadistic, as too was the execution by terrorists of 100 soldiers in defiance of the withdrawal agreement. Syria

News reported on the discovery of a mass grave of civilians shown on Syria TV:

“Syrian TV showed another horrible massacre in the eastern part of Aleppo, the part which was controlled by the “rebels.” The recent report was of a mass grave of 23 victims in al Kallas district, which was a terrorist headquarter. It was found after those terrorists were transported to Idlib. The video shows the bodies of mostly massacred women and children, shot at close range. Many of the victims also had their legs and hands amputated.

This is what the West-backed “moderate monsters” left behind. What’s more, they were planning to use those victims to attribute their crimes to our government, as they are used to doing. This propaganda is always being supported by mainstream media like CNN, the English speaking Qatari Al-Jazeera etc.”

The terrorists seem to have little time for any notion of international or humanitarian law, something unlikely to be reflected on by US/NATO/ Gulf States, even as they squirm with embarrassment at these gruesome revelations. The irony of the squawking hysteria by western leaders and fakerstan media of unproven Russian/Syrian/Iranian atrocities compared to the firm evidence of these horrific executions is quite prophetic.

We are constantly assailed with the truism that Russian media is state controlled, and therefore is nothing more than state propaganda. The mention of RT comes with the mandatory adjunct of “Kremlin controlled.” And, as Russia is the root of all evil, and is to blame for everything, obviously its media can be nothing more than a pack of lying newshounds.

On the subject of the war in Syria, or the war on Syria, depending on where you stand, those who dissent from the regime change party line are dismissed as Russian trolls, Kremlin puppets, or Putin’s useful idiots. This includes well respected and credentialed journalists, activists and even ordinary people expressing their views via social media. We have all been willingly or unwillingly duped to follow the Kremlin line, to our eternal condemnation and to the never ending suffering of Syrians at the hands of the barbaric dictator Bashar Al-Assad and the Russian bully boy, Vladimir Putin.

So while Western governments would have us believe that Russian media lies all the time, somehow this total control of media output does not apply to the Western mainstream media or our politicians when it comes to their reports from the ground in “rebel” held areas of Syria, most notably in Aleppo.

The terrorists – let’s be frank here, that is what they are – who controlled Aleppo are not exactly shining examples of press freedom or independent reporting. If they were included in the World Press Freedom Index, they would languish at rock bottom.

Take Lina Shamy for example who filmed with terrorists walking along in the background carrying their guns. That’s real independent media right there. She no doubt had the freedom to walk alongside armed terrorists and brazenly report a narrative not approved by their leadership.

Or consider Bilal Abdul Kareem (mentioned above) interview of a spokesman for John Kerry’s favorite terrorist group ‘al-Nusra’. Kareem is a long-time confidante and proxy spokesperson for the terrorists. He even interviewed a terrorist supposedly evacuating Aleppo with an explosive vest. How far would Kareem be able to go if he departed from the Nusra line? Are we ever likely to hear those in fakerstan media call him a “Nusra troll,” or will he remain a respected “independent journalist.”

The icing on the cake when it comes to disseminating propaganda though has to be The White Helmets. Formed in 2013 by former British special forces soldier, John Le Mesurier, it was a UK Foreign Office/ State Department operation from the very beginning. There was no agonizingly-slow growth of a grass roots movement struggling to even stump up the cash for office pens here. It is a slick intelligence operation pivotal to the psyops war which has been funded to the tune of $100 million and counting. It has now been funded by many countries all keen to show they are committed to the Atlanticists and the dictators in the Gulf States.

The ‘White Helmets’ as humanitarian outfit is the stuff of Hollywood. The aura surrounding them is that of adored movie stars. They have been pumped up with claims of having rescued over 78,000 people in Syria, been nominated for the Nobel peace prize, complete with an intense lobbying effort, which if successful would have been the biggest insult to peace since Barack Obama’s shameful award. The White Helmets have stained democracy by being feted at the French parliament, been gushingly praised by the sycophantic Boris Johnson, applauded without due scrutiny by the western media, been the subject of a slick documentary which continues the theme of carefully crafted public relations serving the purposes of further demonizing Bashar al-Assad, deflecting criticism from the sponsorship of terrorism by NATO/Gulf States and helped build the case for direct intervention by openly calling for a no fly zone. To top it all off, we now have literally one of the biggest names in Hollywood, George Clooney planning a film on the White Helmets, thus elevating them to the status of some sort of Hollywood deity.

The synopsis of The White Helmets documentary on the IMDB website propagates the myth of the heroic first responders:

“As daily airstrikes pound civilian targets in Syria, a group of indomitable first responders risk their lives to rescue victims from the rubble.”

This synopsis of the movie reinforces the idea of the fearless volunteers risking life and limb to rescue their fellow Syrians, while, without directly naming them, demonizing the governments of Bashar al-Assad and Russia, as they of course are the ones delivering the airstrikes. No mention here of the alternative view that the White Helmets stage manage their “rescues” are affiliated with terrorist groups, or that Russia and Syria are targeting terrorist groups and not civilians.

Clooney appears to have missed the fact that the White Helmets have been caught out time and again posing with terrorist groups, brandishing guns, accompanying terrorist groups as they abduct and kill Syrian soldiers and calling Syrian soldiers “Shabiha” whose dead bodies are to be thrown in the trash. There is an abundance of video and photo evidence out there in social media, easy to track down if you are inclined to do so. So-called diligent corporate media journalists could not fail to uncover this material, yet they see nothing, report nothing.

On the contrary, the fakerstan media has made it their duty to target and vilify alternative media journalists who are prepared to look beyond the hype and glamour to uncover the murky underbelly of the White Helmets beast.

Eva Bartlett, who gave a monumental performance at a recent United Nations panel discussion on Syria, finds herself being set up to be discredited, vilified, humiliated, and ultimately silenced. First she was questioned as to whether she was at the panel on the behest of the Syrian government. No, she was there as an independent journalist of high repute, which she has been for a very long time.

Vanessa Beeley is routinely accused of being a “paid propagandist” a “shill for Assad.” Baseless claims are made that she is only allowed in Aleppo because the Syrian government like what she has got to say. Beeley, like other western journalists who have been able to freely travel into Aleppo, is protected by the Syrian Army in war zones, which is exactly what you would expect. Their opinions make no difference to the Syrian Army who have a duty to protect all those under their care.

The real problem is that Beeley is providing an abundance of evidence of the liberation of Aleppo and how happy people are that they have finally been liberated. This is what the media and so called activists can’t stand, that she is letting the people speak for themselves, and their message is; we are free, we are liberated, and we hated the terrorists who controlled East Aleppo.

Beeley has told of how, among all the people she spoke to in East Aleppo, not one knew who the White Helmets were. When pressed they would say, ” ah yes the Nusra Front civil defence that only worked with the terrorists and did not help civilians“.

Beeley spoke to people who said the Al-Nusra dominated groups ruled through “fear, torture, humiliation, starvation and brutality.” She mixed with groups of children able to finally raise a smile. She gathered the testimonies of residents who recounted the living hell they had experienced. Beeley says the “testimonies we filmed testified to starvation, wholesale deprivation of humanitarian aid, summary executions, torture and the use of civilians as human shields.”

Beeley has been in Aleppo where the warehouses full of humanitarian aid denied to civilians by the terrorist groups were revealed. She was there when the horrifying report broke of the discovery of mass graves of civilians, with many women and children shot at close range. She was also there when the discovery was made of the 100 Syrian soldiers executed by the terrorists prior to being given safe passage to Idlib where they can resume hostilities and possibly perpetrate future atrocities on civilians and government fighters.

The stories of Syrian army and militia massacres were nowhere to be seen. Nor were the accusations that Assad is entirely to blame for their suffering. Beeley also was there as the peaceful evacuation took place, contrary to reports which claimed otherwise, including the claims that hundreds of men went missing from East Aleppo.

This reporting is consistent with what the Bolivian actress and filmmaker Carla Ortiz found. Telesur reports on her time spent in Syria and the film she is about to release titled “Voice of Syria,” in which “she documents the peaceful evacuation process from Eastern Aleppo, effectively debunking mainstream media narratives claiming the opposite.”

During a recent interview with Fox 11 News, Ortiz said: “I was right there in six different front lines, and I talked to the people when they were getting in the buses…at the shelters, and actually the evacuation wasn’t burning, there was not mass shooting anywhere on the streets.”

So the caravan of media and activist propaganda rolls on. Their next stop is Idlib; the last remaining stronghold of the non ISIS dominated terrorist factions. Undoubtedly it is all going to be barrel bombs, White Helmet heroics, deliberate bombing of schools and hospitals, and valiant resistance from “rebel” groups. That the presence of a hard line, mass murdering group such as Al-Nusra (Jabhat Fatah al-Sham) is hidden beneath the moderate rebel tag is an absolute scandal and will continue to obfuscate the truth of the dirty US/NATO/Gulf State/Israel war on Syria.

http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/01/04/aleppo-local-activists-or-al-qaeda-rogues-gallery/

Syria and Washington’s ‘New Middle East’

By Prof. Tim Anderson
Global Research, November 28, 2015

The following text is chapter two of professor Tim Anderson’s forthcoming book entitled “The Dirty War on Syria”


Prof. Tim Anderson

After the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the destruction of Libya, Syria was to be the next state overthrown. Washington and its regional allies had planned this for some time.

After ‘regime change’ in Damascus, Syria’s ally Hezbollah, leader of the Lebanese Resistance to Israel, would be isolated. The Islamic Republic of Iran would remain the only Middle East country without US military bases. After Iran, Washington would control the entire region, excluding possible competitors such as Russia and China. Palestine would be lost.

This was all part of Washington’s plan for a ‘New Middle East’; but it was not to be. Determined and coordinated resistance can never be discounted. Syria’s national army has resisted wave after wave of fanatical Islamist attacks, backed by NATO and the Gulf monarchies, and Russian and Iranian support remained solid. Importantly, Syria has built new forms of cooperation with a weak but emerging Iraq. Washington had worked for decades to divide Iran and Iraq, so the strengthening ties between Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine represent a regional challenge to the new ‘Great Game’ of our times. The Middle East is not just a big power playground.

The US and its close regional collaborators (Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan), we now know, have been behind every anti-Syrian extremist group since the beginning of the recent conflict. They have used the worst of reactionary and sectarian forces to pursue their ends. The Axis of Resistance, on the other hand, should not be misunderstood as a sectarian phenomenon. This group – the Islamic Republic of Iran, secular Syria, the Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah and the Palestinians – is deeply anti-imperial. Syria, the only remaining ‘secular’ state in the region has long allied itself with the Islamic Republic of Iran, including against Saddam Hussein’s secular Iraq. Saddam in turn was used by Washington to degrade Iran, after that country’s 1979 revolution. On the other hand, Iran never backed the sectarian Muslim Brotherhood in any of its insurrections against secular Syria. Iran does support the Shia Muslims of Hezbollah, but it is most demonised for arming Palestine, which has hardly any Shia. This plurality disproves any claims that the Axis of Resistance is sectarian. Promotion of sectarianism in the Middle East mostly comes from Washington’s key allies, Saudi Arabia, the other gulf monarchies, and the ethnic cleansers of Israel. They share the US aim of keeping the region weak and divided.

How did Syria come to be targeted? We can chart the hostility back to Syria’s central role in the Arab-Israeli wars, especially those of 1967 and 1973, a common regional struggle against the expansionist Zionist state. After that, Syria’s support for 1979 Iranian Revolution put it offside with Washington. As far back as 1980, under the Carter administration, Washington was searching for a ‘change of regime’ in Damascus. A cable from the National Security Council to Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski urged a coordinated study, including with their European and Arab monarchy partners, of ‘identifying possible alternative regimes’ to the Government led by Hafez al Assad. They were considering how to ‘reduce the problems of ill-considered reaction [by Syria’s ally, the Soviet Union] to a change of regime in Damascus’. The memorandum also recognised that any withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon (Syria had entered Lebanon to stop the civil war, in 1975; it would stay until 2005) would run a ‘high’ risk of renewed civil war in that country and create ‘high incentives for Israeli military engagement in southern Lebanon’ (NSC 1980).

It was thus no coincidence that the Muslim Brotherhood, – always the most organised Syrian opposition group, and whose history of collaboration with outside powers dated back to the 1940s – began a series of bloody sectarian attacks from this point onwards, until their last insurrection was crushed in Hama in 1982. That insurrection had been backed by US allies Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein and Jordan (Seale 1988: 336-337). US intelligence at the time observed that ‘the Syrians are pragmatists who do not want a Muslim Brotherhood government’ (DIA 1982: vii). However US analysts, soon after, used the repression of the Muslim Brotherhood at Hama to demonstrate ‘the true establishment of Syria as a totalitarian state’ (Wikas 2007: vii). This was a useful fiction.

The next strategic shift against Syria came after the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre New York, and the decision of Bush the Second to declare a ‘war on terror’. Although various pretexts were made for the interventions which followed, an overall plan for the Middle East was very rapidly set in train. Former senior US General Wesley Clark said in his memoirs that, two weeks after the September 2001 attacks, he was told by a ‘senior general’ at the Pentagon that the attack on Iraq (which came 18 months later) was already decided. Six weeks later he says that same general told him, ‘It’s worse than that’, before indicating a memo ‘from the Office of the Secretary of Defence … [saying] we’re going to take out seven countries in five years’.

That list began with Iraq and Syria and ended with Iran (Clark 2007). Iraq’s ruler Saddam Hussein had been an enemy of Syria, through his opportunistic backing of the Syria Muslim Brotherhood and for his collaboration with the US in the long and bloody war against Iran. However the Syrian Government, led by Hafez al Assad, had supported the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait in what has been called the First Gulf War (1990-1991). That war, whatever one thought of Kuwait’s monarchy, was a clear breach of the UN doctrine of collective security and, on that basis, attracted a UN Security Council mandate to intervene. However both Syria and Iran opposed the later invasion of Iraq (2003), even though it would depose their mutual enemy Saddam. The invasion of Iraq was clearly illegal and a war of aggression.

It was the unintended consequences of the invasion and occupation of Iraq that led to a shift in US policy, a move which was called a ‘redirection’ (Hersh 2007). Once Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist administration had been deposed, a newly installed government in Damascus began a shift towards friendlier relations with Iran. It was not just that the majority of Iraq were Shia Muslims like, but not to as great an extent as, in Iran. Iraqis had developed a more pluralist culture, and did not want a religious state. However with Iran’s enemy Saddam out of the way, matters of genuine common concern could be discussed in a more normal climate of neighbourly relations. Yet the idea of good neighbourly relations between Iraq and Iran seriously worried Washington. They had not fuelled the Iraq-Iran war, nor invaded Iraq, to help bring about that outcome.

As early as 2005 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began to speak of spreading ‘creative chaos’ in the region, to advance President Bush’s plan for a New Middle East (Karon 2006). Drawing on the traditions of the great powers, Washington set up a new ‘divide and rule’ strategy. White House insiders called Bush’s new policy ‘the redirection’, involving a more open confrontation with Iran and attempting to drive a ‘sectarian divide between Shiite and Sunni Muslims …[Yet] to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite dominated government of Prime Minster Nuri al-Malaki’ (Hersh 2007). Rice told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee she saw ‘a new strategic alignment’ in the region, with ‘Sunni states’ [the Gulf monarchies] as the centres of moderation and Iran, Syria and Hezbollah ‘on the other side of that divide’ (Hersh 2007).

The idea was to play on community divisions to create conflict, particularly in Iraq. US Central Command’s ‘Red Team’ exercises began in 2006, with military planning focused on divisions which they characterised as Arabs versus Persians (Iranians), later asking themselves whether ‘Sunni-Shia [might be] a more appropriate framework?’ Their key assumption was that ‘there does not appear to be a scenario where Arabs and Persians will join forces against the US/West’ (Narwani 2011). The cutting edge of the operation would be the creation of al Qaeda in Iraq (IQI), funded by the Saudis and carrying out sectarian attacks on mosques and other community centres, to inflame community tensions. Senior western officials have acknowledged privately that the various billionaires of Saudi Arabia (along with the other Gulf monarchies) constitute ‘the most significant source of funding to Sunni [sic] terrorist groups worldwide’ (Jones 2014).

Although al Qaeda in Iraq, a.k.a. the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), at first claimed to be overwhelmingly Iraqi (Felter and Fishman 2008: 3), Saudi finance and recruiting significantly internationalised it. Records captured by the US military in October 2007 at Sinjar, on the Iraqi-Syrian border underline this. Those records referred to a group of about 500, half of whom were Saudi, then North African (Libyan, Algerian, Tunisian, Moroccan) and then others. Other estimates between 2005 and 2007 suggested greater or lesser degrees of various nationalities, with the largest group (40-55%) being Saudis (Felter and Fishman 2008: 8, 30-31).

A notorious example of the strategy to provoke sectarian conflict was the February 2006 bombing of the al Askari mosque in Samarra, in southern Iraq, which killed over a thousand people. Despite calls for restraint by Shia leaders in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, there were sectarian reprisals. When arrests were made this act was said to have been carried out by an al Qaeda seven-man cell, led by an Iraqi with a Tunisian, four Saudis and two other Iraqis (Ridolfo 2007). Although al Qaeda was implicated from the start, US media and analyst focus shifted to what they called ‘Iraq’s sectarian divide’ (Worth 2006). Yet while Saddam Hussein had backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, he did not allow al Qaeda groups in Iraq. That was a more recent development, and not just an ‘organic’ reaction to the US occupation. Western sources sometimes acknowledge that much of the finance and the fighters for Al Qaeda have come from Saudi Arabia (Bruno 2007). However they also cloud the issue with claims that Iran and Hezbollah have, from time to time, supported al Qaeda (Kaplan 2006). Such claims are quite false.

Israel was deeply embedded with the New Middle East plan and in July-August 2006, after getting the ‘green light’ from Washington (Hersh 2006), seized on a pretext to invade southern Lebanon. The broader aim was to degrade and disarm Hezbollah. However after almost 1200 Lebanese and 165 Israelis had been killed, a UN ceasefire was brokered. Israel had failed in all its objectives. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called this tragedy, at a time when 400 had died and half a million were displaced, simply the ‘birth pangs of a New Middle East’ (Karon 2006). That statement prompted Rami Khouri of Beirut’s Daily Star to write: ‘Washington is engaged almost exclusively with Arab governments [the Gulf monarchies] whose influence with Syria is virtually nonexistent, whose credibility with Arab public opinion is zero, whose own legitimacy at home is increasingly challenged, and whose pro-US policies tend to promote the growth of those [extremist] Islamist movements’ (Khouri 2006).

During the destabilisation of post-Saddam Iraq, Syria was on Washington’s ‘back-burner’, but hardly forgotten. From cables released by Wikileaks we know that the US Embassy in Syria was concerned that, despite the sanctions imposed in 2005 for Syria’s non-cooperation over Iraq, Syria had ended 2006 ‘in a much stronger position domestically and internationally than it did in 2006’. Washington had tried to accuse Damascus of harbouring Iraqi resistance fighters (Syria had taken in well over a million refugees from Iraq, after the US invasion in 2003) but the US Embassy privately acknowledged that ‘extremist elements increasingly use Syria as a base, while the SARG [Syrian Arab Republic Government] has taken some actions against groups stating links to Al-Qaeda’. Nevertheless the Embassy suggested the State Department look for opportunities to ‘disrupt [Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s] decision making, keep him off-balance and make him pay a premium for his mistakes’ (US Embassy Damascus 2006).

Meantime the groundwork was being laid for intervention. The US State Department had allocated $5 million for ‘Syrian governance and reform programs’ in early 2006 (Wikas 2007: viii). The Bush administration was funding media channels and NGOs. US cables confirm that the US State Department had funded the London-based Barada Television and a network of Syrian exiles called the ‘Movement for Justice and Development’ (Whitlock 2011).

This was a special program set up in parallel with similar work done more widely through the State Department funded National Endowment for Democracy. This funding came through intermediary groups in the US, in particular the Democracy Council, which in turn received grants from the Middle East Partnership Initiative. Cables from the US Embassy in Damascus from 2009 onwards say the Democracy Council received $6.3 million to run a Syria program called ‘Civil Society Strengthening Initiative’, which included ‘various broadcast concepts’ including Barada TV. A higher figure of about $12 million between 2005 and 2010 was later noted, with the US Embassy in Damascus telling the State Department that the Syrian Government ‘would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as tantamount to supporting regime change’. They were concerned that Syrian intelligence (the notorious Mukhabarat) was hot on the trail of these programs (Whitlock 2011).

Although the Bush administration imposed a series of sanctions on Syria, between 2003 and 2008, supposedly linked to its role in Lebanon and Iraq, there were also high level diplomatic contacts with the Syrian Government. Often US policy seemed incoherent, but hostility was not far below the surface. The US demanded liberalisation of Syria’s economic policy, but blocked its attempt to join the World Trade Organization (Sadat and Jones 2009). William Rugh, former US Ambassador to the UAE, characterised US policy towards Syria as one of ‘isolation and monologue’, while ex-CIA analyst Martha Kessler says the entire policy had to be based on ‘the context of a belief among many in this [US] administration that this regime [the Syrian Government] has to go’ (Sadat and Jones 2009).

That ambition included military preparation, but not just conventional military preparation. The British were on board. Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas said, two years before the violence erupted in Syria: ‘I met with top British officials who confessed to me that they were preparing something on Syria … Britain was organising an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer Minister of Foreign Affairs, it I would like to participate.’ He says he refused (Lehman 2013). Just what detail there was to this 2009 plan is not clear.

Nevertheless the US had long experience in dirty, covert wars, fought through proxies, in Central America (e.g. El Salvador and Nicaragua), in Africa (e.g. Zaire and Angola) and in the Middle East (e.g. Afghanistan). After President Bush declared his ‘War On Terrorism’ in 2001, the US Army manual on ‘unconventional warfare’ (UW) was revised several times to take account of the range of activities the US needed to pursue its ambitious plans. The 2008 version of this manual quotes with approval the ancient Chinese scholar of war, Sun Tsu: ‘defeating the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill’ (US Army 2008: 1.1). That is, it is both efficient and effective to develop a range of means, short of direct military confrontation. The manual envisages ‘unconventional war’ which ‘must be conducted by, with or through surrogates’, citing the earlier examples of this in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. The manual emphasises, the ‘clearly stated purpose of UW [is] to support insurgencies, resistance movements and conventional military operations’ (US Army 2008: 1.1-1.2). That unconventional war is precisely what was in preparation for Syria, before the events of late 2010 and early 2011 in Egypt and Tunisia, which came to be known as the Arab Spring. The model would be an extension of al Qaeda (or the Islamic State) in Iraq, drawing on Syrian Muslim Brotherhood networks and the ever faithful, sectarian and vicious Saudis.

Had Syria been isolated, like Iraq and Libya, this plan might have been more straight-forward. But the NATO and Gulf Arab proxy armies would face an Axis of Resistance, with some powerful allies and with experience of sectarian provocations.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-and-washingtons-new-middle-east/5491908

How the War in Syria is About Oil, not ISIS
Home»Foreign Policy»How the War in Syria is About Oil, not ISIS
September 29, 2014
Carl Gibson

“… the Persian Gulf, the critical oil and natural gas-producing region that we fought so many wars to try and protect our economy from the adverse impact of losing that supply or having it available only at very high prices.” –John Bolton, George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations

(ReaderSupportedNews) All the hubbub over Syria is all about oil. And if you don’t believe me, believe John Bolton.

When there’s something being talked about in the news on a regular basis, and if one angle of the story is being consistently reported by various reputable news organizations, you can be sure there’s something else to the story that isn’t being told. Matt Taibbi called this “chumpbait” when referring to the media’s unified dismissal concerning Bradley Manning’s court-martial. The same applies to the latest corporate media stories speculating on US military involvement in Syria. Image credit: roy.luck

refineryIf the US were really concerned about spreading Democracy in the Middle East, we’d be helping the Occupy Gezi movement oust Turkish Prime Minister Ergodan and condemning his violent suppression of human rights, rather than assisting the Free Syrian Army. And the only reason the powers controlling the US would be interested in intervening in Turkey would be if Turkish protesters or government forces shut down the highly-productive Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which goes from Iraq through Southern Turkey.

All of the media has been atwitter about whether or not the US should get involved in the civil war unfolding in Syria by supporting anti-government forces. The atrocities recently committed by the Free Syrian Army are reminiscent of the kind committed against the Soviets in the 1980s by the Afghan mujahideen, whom we actively funded and supplied with arms. (Remember the movie Charlie Wilson’s War?) It should be worth noting that the same mujahideen fighters we funded to fight our enemies for us in the 1980s became our enemies even before the 9/11 attacks.
In a roundabout way, the US media is making the argument that because the Assad regime is using chemical weapons on the Syrian people, the US military should intervene by arming and training the Free Syrian Army in the hopes of overthrowing President Assad. On the surface, most Americans would agree that Assad is a brutal dictator and should be removed from office. But if you asked most Americans whether or not the US military should intervene in Syria to make sure the profit margins of oil companies remain strong, it’s likely most rational folks would say no. Digging just beneath the surface, it’s easy to see that US interest in Syria isn’t to provide Democracy to Syria, but to ensure the Kirkuk-Banias oil pipeline will be restored to profitable status. Even President Obama’s press secretary said that foreign policy isn’t driven by what the people want, but by what is best for “American interests.”

The Kirkuk-Banias pipeline runs from Kirkuk in Northern Iraq, to the Syrian town of Banias, on the Mediterranean Sea between Turkey and Lebanon. Ever since US forces inadvertently destroyed it in 2003, most of the pipeline has been shut down. While there have been plans in the works to make the Iraqi portion of the pipeline functional again, those plans have yet to come to fruition. And Syria has at least 2.5 billion barrels of oil in its fields, making it the next largest Middle Eastern oil producer after Iraq. After ten unproductive years, the oil companies dependent on the Kirkuk-Banias pipeline’s output are eager to get the pipeline operational again. The tension over the Syrian oil situation is certainly being felt by wealthy investors in the markets, who are thus dictating US foreign policy.

It’s easy to see why the oil-dominated US government wants to be involved in Syria’s outcome. The Free Syrian Army has since taken control of oil fields near Deir Ezzor, and Kurdish groups have taken control of other oil fields in the Rumeilan region. Many of the numerous atrocities that Assad’s government committed against unarmed women and children were in Homs, which is near one of the country’s only two oil refineries. Israel, the US’s only ally in the Middle East, is illegally occupying the Golan Heights on the Syrian border and extracting their resources. The US wants to get involved in Syria to monopolize its oil assets, while simultaneously beating our competition – Iran, Russia and China – in the race for Syrian black gold.

Big oil’s ideal outcome would be for US troops to back the FSA’s overthrow of the Assad regime, meaning that sharing in Syrian oil profits would be part of the quid-pro-quo the US demands in exchange for helping the Syrian rebels win. It would be very similar to when the US, under Teddy Roosevelt, backed Panama’s fight for independence in exchange for US ownership of the Panama Canal. But even after numerous interventions, including the kidnapping of Panama’s head of state, the Torrijos-Carter accords gave control of the Panama Canal back to Panama in 1999. The imperialistic approach to Panama turned out to be more costly than it would have been if we had just left Panama alone in the first place.

George Santayana said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If we don’t learn from our past mistakes, like basing foreign policy goals on greed-inspired imperialism, Syria will blow up in our faces.

http://theantimedia.org/how-the-war-in-syria-is-about-oil-not-isis/

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/10/24/oil-gas-war-over-syria-maps.html

Beeley and Bartlett have been doing great work.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1koWq2WEAAF6d6.jpg

These women shame the entire MSM. From Morningstar.

Syrian Woman on Torture under NATO Rebels in Aleppo
January 13, 2017

https://i0.wp.com/www.syrianews.cc/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Syrian-woman-tortured-by-moderate-terrorists-in-eastern-Aleppo-1.jpg?resize=478%2C381
Syrian woman tortured by moderate terrorists

by Afraa Dagher

The western media always tries to discriminate FSA from ISIS, calling the first “moderates” as if they were any different than “ISIS” in terms of degrading secular Syria into a theocratic state, using all forms of barbarism and atrocities. The video below is of a woman who survived life in FSA-controlled eastern neighborhood of Aleppo, telling her personal story, after her neighborhood was liberated by the Syrian Arab Army. It should convince its viewers that FSA “jihadists” are the same, and even worse, than those horrific acts of “ISIS.”

The life under the so-called moderate rebels in the eastern neighborhoods occupied by NATO armed and funded savages was not one of freedom, despite reports from CNN and others. These were the monsters that UN Spec Stefan de Mistura wanted my country to grant autonomy to, after he ostentatiously offered himself as human shield for terrorists to “…leave in dignity with your weapons…I personally am ready, physically, to accompany you.”

https://i2.wp.com/www.syrianews.cc/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/msm-on-UN-spec-misturas-offer.jpg?w=639
NATO msm cheered UN Spec de Mistura’s offer, but was mute when he was a no-show
His offer was shared throughout western msm, msm that was mute when he did not show up during the humanitarian pause offered by Syria, when his dignified terrorists where murdering everyone who tried to get on the Green buses, to leave. de Mistura only returned, months later, with the demand for ‘autonomy.’

The voice of the woman in the video is full of pain. She is brave to have recorded this testament of her bearing witness, of her own torture. She is fully covered, until the very end, when she removes her gloves. Then we see that her fingers have all been broken, and her bones were not reset. She talks about the ‘rebels’ threw Syrians from the tops of buildings, how they stoned women to death, beat them with belts.

They burnt her chest with cigarettes. They scalded her neck.

They put men who smoked into holes, and beheaded them.


http://youtu.be/dBMo_xDDKXI

They imposed al sharia on us. They were starving us, and if one stole a loaf of bread to eat, his hand was cut off. For women, we were not allowed to marry from our own men, from our own people, our own choices. We were told we had to marry them. They said it is not allowed to let women to marry those who are pro-government, because they let women put on make up and work, and let women outside without covering faces. And this is taboo! Such women should be beheaded. And what kind of marriage to such terrorists would this be? It is just to please the man for one hour. They he will leave and send you to ‘sex jihad’! This happened to my friends. And they took our kids to join them, too. It has been two years I have not seen my son. They stole him. alNusra Front did that. Women who refused to obey them were tortured…beheaded and put into cars carrying their severed heads, driving around the city as lessons to other women.

They starved us and stole our homes and stole everything in our homes.

They killed my husband. They took his body to Turkey and later sent his dead body back to me, without his organs. I saw how they stitched up his body.

Everything is taboo and forbidden. I was burnt by a gas tank, but no doctor would treat me. Science is taboo. I ran into a doctor I know and asked for help, but he refused to treat me, saying under the new rules it is taboo to see a woman’s body.

After my mother and I were released from prison, I asked to be taken to a hospital in Turkey, but they refused.

I am 21 years old. Look at my hands. I was refused medical treatment. I lost my looks. Who would marry me now?

Note the mainstream media non-stop talking about Russian and Syrian strikes against hospitals in eastern Aleppo! Damn, which hospital is this, with such ‘sharia’? No hospitals. No healthcare. No schools, either. The terrorists dictated that it was forbidden for children to join schools…all of such facilities were turned into centers for these terrorists and their weapons.

https://i2.wp.com/www.syrianews.cc/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jaafari.jpg?resize=300%2C230
https://i0.wp.com/www.syrianews.cc/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/rebel-held-school-room-1.jpg?resize=300%2C154
No children in this ‘rebel’ classroom; just mortars from NATO countries

https://i0.wp.com/www.syrianews.cc/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/rebel-run-school.jpg?resize=230%2C300
Another classroom. NATO terrorists blew out the wall, to make sniping more efficient
Note the “AMC” logo of this photograph. These NATO-funded terrorists who turned children’s schoolyards into weapons barracks — filled with surface to surface, and surface to air missiles — have been invited to be lauded in Paris, by fraud socialist politicians, and to Capitol Hill, lauded by war criminals.

https://i2.wp.com/www.syrianews.cc/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/amc-foto-of-rebel-school-yard.jpg?resize=300%2C217

As Aleppo was on the verge of liberation by the Syrian Arab Army, western msm and warmongering ‘alternative’ media were spewing lies that Syrian women were committing suicide. The reality was that moderate terrorist men had requested an Islam-hating wahhabi ‘cleric’ to allow them to engage in femicide, and other family annihilation.

https://i2.wp.com/www.syrianews.cc/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/takfiri-fatwa-for-femicide.jpg?resize=300%2C298
Takfiri ‘fatwa’ for femicide

http://www.syrianews.cc/syrian-woman-on-torture-under-nato-rebels/

what's left
What the Syrian Constitution says about Assad and the Rebels
with 15 comments

By Stephen Gowans

The idea that the uprising against the Syrian government is inspired by a grassroots movement thirsting for a pluralist, democratic state is a fiction. The opposition’s chief elements are Islamists who seek to establish a Sunni-dominated Islamic state in place of a Syrian government they revile for being secular and dominated by Alawi “heretics.” “Al Qaeda-linked groups…dominate rebel ranks,” notes The Wall Street Journal. [1] “There is frustration with the West’s inability to help nurture a secular military or political opposition to replace Mr. Assad,” echoes The New York Times. [2] “Islamic forces seem to be ascendant within the opposition,” observes Gerald F. Seib. [3]

Indeed, almost from the opening moments of the latest outbreak of Islamic unrest in Syria, the government has said that while some protesters have legitimate grievances, the uprising is driven by militant Islamists with foreign backing.” [4] It’s no secret that Saudi Arabia and Qatar- monarchies which abominate democracy—are furnishing Islamist militants with arms, while Turkey, Jordan, Israel, France, Britain and the United States are also lending support.

Syria’s post-colonial history is punctuated by Islamist uprisings. The Muslim Brotherhood organized riots against the government in 1964, 1965, 1967 and 1969. It called for a Jihad against then president Hafiz al-Assad, the current president’s father, denigrating him as “the enemy of Allah.” By 1977, the Mujahedeen were engaged in a guerrilla struggle against the Syrian army and its Soviet advisers, culminating in the 1982 occupation of the city of Hama. The Syrian army quelled the occupation, killing 20,000 to 30,000. Islamists have since remained a perennial source of instability in Syria and the government has been on continual guard against “a resurgence of Sunni Islamic fundamentalists.” [5] The resurgence, touched off by uprisings in surrounding countries, prompted Glen E. Robinson to write in Current History that the rebellion was a continuation of “Syria’s Long Civil War.” [6]

But the Western media, echoing former colonialist powers and high officials in Washington, would call it something different: a popular, grassroots uprising against a brutal dictator. Today, however, the flood of YouTube videos by Islamic terrorists, chronicling their killings of POWs, eviscerations of captured soldiers, and barbecuing of heads, has spoiled the narrative. It’s no longer possible to angelize the Syrian rebellion as a popular insurrection against dictatorship. Now even the Wall Street Journal and New York Times share Assad’s view.

Still, the rebels’ spin doctors aren’t yielding entirely. They insist that while the rebellion may be dominated by religious fanatics with a penchant for terrorism, that it wasn’t always so. Instead, they say, it began as a peaceful plea for democracy that was eventually hijacked by jihadists only after the government used brute force to crush a protest movement. At that point, protesters were forced to take up arms in self-defense.

This view is dishonest. To start, it sweeps aside the reality that the rebellion is dominated by Islamists who care not one whit for democracy and indeed are actively hostile to it. What’s more, it conceals the fact that the Assad government made substantial concessions in the direction of creating the kind of pluralist, democratic society the rebels are said to thirst for. The rebels rejected the concessions, and that they did, underscores the fact that the rebellion’s origins are to be found in Islamist, not democratic, ambitions.

In response to protestors’ demands, Damascus made a number of concessions that were neither superficial nor partial.

First, it cancelled the long-standing abridgment of civil liberties that had been authorized by the emergency law. The law, invoked because Syria is technically in a state of war with Israel, gave Damascus powers it needed to safeguard the security of the state in wartime, a measure states at war routinely take. Many Syrians, however, chaffed under the law, and regarded it as unduly restrictive. Bowing to popular pressure, the government lifted the security measures.

Second, the government proposed a new constitution to accommodate protestors’ demands to strip the Ba’ath Party of its special status, which had reserved for it a lead role in Syrian society. Additionally, the presidency would be open to anyone meeting basic residency, age and citizenship requirements. Presidential elections would be held by secret vote every seven years under a system of universal suffrage.

Here was the multi-party democracy the opposition was said to have clamored for. A protest movement thirsting for a democratic, pluralist society could accept the offer, its aspirations fulfilled. The constitution was put to a referendum and approved. New parliamentary multi-party elections were held. Multi-candidate presidential elections were set for 2014. A new democratic dawn had arrived. The rebels could lay down their arms and enjoy the fruits of their victory.

Or so you might expect. Instead, the insurrectionists escalated their war against Damascus, rejecting the reforms, explaining that they had arrived too late. Too late? Does pluralist democracy turn into a pumpkin unless it arrives before the clock strikes twelve? Washington, London and Paris also dismissed Assad’s concessions. They were “meaningless,” they said, without explaining why. [7] And yet the reforms were all the rebels had asked for and that the West had demanded. How could they be meaningless? Democrats, those seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict, and the Assad government, could hardly be blamed for concluding that “democracy was not the driving force of the revolt.” [8]

Elaborating on this theme, the Syrian president noted:

It was seemingly apparent at the beginning that demands were for reforms. It was utilized to appear as if the crisis was a matter of political reform. Indeed, we pursued a policy of wide scale reforms from changing the constitution to many of the legislations and laws, including lifting the state of emergency law, and embarking on a national dialogue with all political opposition groups. It was striking that with every step we took in the reform process, the level of terrorism escalated. [9]

From Washington’s perspective, the new constitution opened space for alternative political parties. Washington could exploit this new openness to gain leverage in Syria by quietly backing parties that favor pro-US positions—a plus.

From the Islamists’ point of view, however, there were only negatives. First, the constitution was secular, and not rooted in Islam. Second, it proposed to ban political parties or movements that were formed on the basis of religion, sect, tribe, or region, as well as on the basis of gender, origin, race or color. This would effectively ban any party whose aim was to establish an Islamic state.

There were negatives too for Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv.

First, the constitution’s preamble defined Syria as “the beating heart of Arabism,” and “the forefront of confrontation with the Zionist enemy and the bedrock of resistance against colonial hegemony on the Arab world and its capabilities and wealth.” This hardly accorded with Washington’s desire to turn Syria into a “peace-partner” with Israel and clashed with the Western project of spreading neo-colonial tentacles across the Arab world.

Second, the constitution formalized the political orientation of the Syrian Ba’athists. This has been summed up by Assad as “Syria is an independent state working for the interests of its people, rather than making the Syrian people work for the interests of the West.” [10] Accordingly, the constitution mandated that important sectors of the Syrian economy would remain publicly owned and operated in the interests of Syrians as a whole. Western firms, then, were to be frozen out of profit-making opportunities in key sectors of the Syrian economy, a prospect hardly encouraging to the Wall Street financial interests that dominate decision-making in Washington.

Ba’ath socialism has long irritated Washington. The Ba’athist state has always exercised considerable influence over the Syrian economy, through ownership of enterprises, subsidies to privately-owned domestic firms, limits on foreign investment, and restrictions on imports. These are the necessary economic tools of a post-colonial state trying to wrest its economic life from the grips of former colonial powers and to chart a course of development free from the domination of foreign interests.

Washington’s goals, however, are obviously antithetical. It doesn’t want Syria to nurture its industry and jealously guard its independence, but to serve the interests of the bankers and major investors who truly matter in the United States, by opening Syrian labor to exploitation and Syria’s land and natural resources to foreign ownership.

Prior to Assad drafting the new constitution, the US State Department complained that Syria had “failed to join an increasingly interconnected global economy,” which is to say, had failed to turn over its state-owned enterprises to private investors, among them Wall Street financial interests. The State Department also expressed dissatisfaction that “ideological reasons” had prevented Assad from liberalizing Syria’s economy, that “privatization of government enterprises was still not widespread,” and that the economy “remains highly controlled by the government.” [11]

Were Assad to demonstrate a readiness to appease Wall Street’s demands he would have departed holus bolus from the dirigiste practices that had irritated the State Department. Instead, he did the opposite, drafting a constitution that mandated that the government maintain a role in guiding the economy on behalf of Syrian interests, and that the Syrian government would not make Syrians work for the interests of Western banks, oil companies, and other corporations. This was effectively a slap in Washington’s face.

He then compounded the sin by writing certain social rights into the constitution: security against sickness, disability and old age; access to health care; and free education at all levels. Now these rights would be placed beyond the easy reach of legislators and politicians who could sacrifice them on the altar of creating a low-tax, foreign-investment-friendly climate. To make matters worse, he included an article in the constitution which declared that “taxes shall be progressive.”

Finally, he took a step toward real, genuine democracy—a kind that decision-makers in Washington, with their myriad connections to the banking and corporate world—could hardly tolerate. He included a provision in the constitution requiring that at minimum half the members of the People’s Assembly are to be drawn from the ranks of peasants and workers.

Therein were the real reasons Washington, London and Paris rejected Assad’s concessions. It wasn’t that they weren’t genuine. It was that they were made to the wrong people: to Syrians, rather than Wall Street; to the Arabs, rather than Israel. And nor was it that his reforms weren’t democratic enough. It was that they were too democratic, too focussed on safeguarding and promoting the interests of Syrians, rather than making Syrians promote the interests of Wall Street, Washington and Tel Aviv.

The Syrian constitution clarifies the orientation of the Syrian Ba’athists and underscores why the Syrian government ought to be supported in its struggle against foreign-backed Islamist rebels. In short, because it is, on balance, progressive, and the forces arrayed against it are retrograde. The Syrian government is pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist, anti-colonialist, and anti-imperialist. It is committed to secularism, non-sectarianism, and public ownership of the commanding heights of its economy. These are values that have traditionally been held high by the political left. Were the Syrian government to fall, it is almost certain that a US-client regime would be implanted in Damascus that would quickly adopt a pro-US foreign policy, abandon the Palestinians, capitulate to Israel, and cater to Western investors and corporations. The left project would, accordingly, be dealt a serious blow, and yet another state, dedicated to national liberation—not to say one with a sufficient democratic orientation to enshrine social rights in its constitution—would be crushed under the steamroller of US imperialism.

1. Adam Entous, “White House readies new aid for Syrian rebels”, The Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2013.
2. Anne Barnard, “Syria campaigns to persuade U.S. to change sides”, The New York Times, April 24, 2013.
3. Gerald F. Seib, “The risks holding back Obama on Syria”, The Wall Street journal, May 6, 2013.
4. Anthony Shadid, “Assad says he rejects West’s call to resign”, The New York Times, August 21, 2011.
5. US Library of Congress. A Country Study: Syria. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/sytoc.html
6. December 2012.
7. David M. Herszenhorn, “For Syria, Reliant on Russia for weapons and food, old bonds run deep”, The New York Times, February 18, 2012.
8. Zeina Karam, “In rare public appearance, Syrian president denies role in Houla massacre”, The Associated Press, June 3, 2012.
9. Bashar al-Assad May 19, 2013 interview with Clarin newspaper and Telam news agency
10. Bashar al-Assad May 19, 2013 interview with Clarin newspaper and Telam news agency
11. US State Department website. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3580.htm#econ. Accessed February 8, 2012.

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/what-the-syrian-constitution-says-about-assad-and-the-rebels/

Meanwhile Russian 'diplomacy' is at it again, trying to get the Syrian government to accede to it's own dismemberment.

http://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR185_-_NO_GOING_BACK_-_WHY_DECENTRALISATION_IS_THE_FUTURE_FOR_SYRIA.pdf

More Russian treachery, but not what they're talking about.


A state flag of the Syrian Arab Republic by an Orthodox church in an old Christian block of Aleppo, SyriaText of Draft Syrian Constitution Proposed by Russia Revealed © Sputnik/ Michael Alaeddin

14:33 26.01.2017(updated 18:05 26.01.2017) Get short URL194139387

Sputnik has obtained a document of the draft Syrian constitution proposed by the Russian delegation during the Astana talks.

Earlier in the week, the draft Syrian constitution, prepared by Russian experts, was presented to the Syrian opposition during the settlement talks in the capital of Kazakhstan. Head of the Russian delegation Alexander Lavrentyev underlined that Russia was not interfering in consideration of constitution and presented the draft to the opposition simply in order to accelerate the process.

Russian constitutional proposals for Syria that were handed over to the opposition during Astana talks suggest that the word "Arab" be removed from the official name of the country, the document obtained by Sputnik, reads.
"The Syrian Republic is an independent democratic sovereign state based on the principles of people and supremacy of law and equality and social unity and respect of the rights and the liberties of all citizens without any differentiation. The names of the Syrian Republic and Syria are equal," Russian-proposed constitutional draft, obtained by Sputnik, reads.

The document envisages changing Syria's borders only if the country's nationals support the move via a referendum.

"Any loss of Syrian territories is not acceptable, change of state borders can only be allowed through a general referendum with the participation of all citizens and on the basis of the desire of the Syrian people."

Russian proposals for Syria suggest that the Kurdish autonomies can use Kurdish and Arabic languages on equal rights.

"The Arabic language is the official language and the way in which the official language is used will be specified by the law." "The Kurdish cultural self-ruling systems and its organizations use both the Arabic and Kurdish languages equally," the document reads.
The documents suggest that the cultural diversity of the Syrian society must be ensured. "Upon the national heritage which promotes national unity, the cultural diversity of the Syrian society will be ensured."

Moreover, the draft constitution proposed by Russia suggests extension of the Syrian parliament’s powers so that it could declare war, impeach the president and approve the head of the Central Bank.

"The People’s Assembly will be responsible for … decisions on war and peace issues, the removal of the president from the office, appointment of the members of the Supreme Constitutional Court, appointment of the head of the Syrian National Bank and his dismissal from office."

The document also suggests the Syrian army not to be allowed to interfere in politics or used as a means of oppression.

"The [Syrian] armed forces and other armed units are under the society’s supervision and they will protect Syria and its territorial integrity. They should not be used as a means of oppression of Syrian people and interfere in the sphere of political interests. They do not play a role in the process of transition of power."

The constitutional proposals for Syria suggest that international law should be a priority in case domestic law contradicts it. The document stipulates the supremacy of the international law.

"The recognized principles and provisions of the international law and Syria’s international treaties are an integral part of its legal system. If an international treaty defines different rules than that of the Syrian law, then the rules of the international treaty will be used."

Russian constitutional proposals for Syria that were presented to the opposition during Astana talks stipulate that all confessions and nationalities must be given equal representation in the government, the document obtained by Sputnik, reads.

"The nomination to the posts of Vice Prime Minister and ministers shall adhere to the proportional representation of all ethnic and national factions of the Syrian population, while certain posts shall be preserved for national and sectarian minorities. The president and the prime minister have the right to consult in this regard with the representatives of the People’s Assembly and regions," Russian-proposed constitutional draft, obtained by Sputnik, reads.

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201701261050028006-text-syria-constitution/

This is a blueprint for balkanization, which has been the aim of US capital all along. The proposal may have been presented by the Russian delegation but it was probably written in Langley.

More Russian treachery, but not what they're talking about.



This is a blueprint for balkanization, which has been the aim of US capital all along. The proposal may have been presented by the Russian delegation but it was probably written in Langley.

This represents (as far as I can see) a total betrayal of the Syrian people. Point to an army in the world that does not reflect the coercive power of the nation it is the army of - it is the point of armies. For any outsider to tell the Syrian people that they must not use the word "Arab" in the title of their own nation, is so in believably imperial, Putin should wear an Obama mask when he speaks. Syria is not allowed to be an "Arab" state, but Israel proudly proclaims itself a "Jewish" state - double standards is not just bourgeois, it is particularly Anglo bourgeois. Putin in sucking up to some fine examples of humanism there. Christ! Just fucking Christ...

THOSE WHO TRANSMIT SYRIAN VOICES ARE RUSSIAN PROPAGANDISTS? FAKE NEWS NEGATE SYRIAN SUFFERING

https://ingaza.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/10376143_687418851293807_9084825192015740406_n.jpg?w=620

*In the old city of Homs, June 2014, speaking with Zeinat and Aymen al-Akhras who endured years of hell under the rule of militant factions. In May 2014, an agreement saw the reportedly 1,200 militants bussed out of Homs (as recently happened in Aleppo), bringing peace to the neighbourhoods they’d occupied and terrorized. Excerpt from my article on this visit and interviewing residents of the old city of Homs: “I dropped to 34 kilos. Aymen told me to weigh myself. I got on the scale and said, ‘What’s 34 kilos?’. A ten-year-old weighs more than that! And Aymen was 43 kilos. For a man, 43 kilos…”
“We were twelve siblings with eight houses in the area, and the family house. We all had stores of food.”
“Thirty-eight times they came to steal our food. The first couple of times, they knocked on the door, after that they just entered with guns. The last things they took were our dried peas, our cracked wheat, our olives, finally our za’atar (wild thyme). We started to eat grass and whatever greens we could find in February, 2014, and that’s all we had till Homs was liberated,”–Zeinat al-Akhras. Read: Liberated Homs Residents Challenge Notion of “Revolution”

Russian Propagandists?

Since it is a theme that those who report differently than the MSM war propaganda on Syria must therefore work for either & or Syria or Russia, I’ll address that in this brief post, drawing on some interviews and related material, since I continue to be incredibly busy.

Some excerpts from: ‘If I write in line with Russian media, it’s because we both tell the truth’ – Eva Bartlett to RT, 17 Dec, 2016, RT

“Some people have taken issue with the things I said because I was basically criticizing much of the corporate media reporting on Syria, and instead of actually digesting what I said and criticizing the details of what I said, people have gone to the usual tactic of trying to smear who I am and imply that I am an agent of either or both Syria and Russia,” Bartlett said, adding that it’s been openly implied she is on the payroll of the Syrian and Russian governments. The fact that she is an active contributor to RT’s op-edge section has also been jumped all over.

“The fact that I do contribute to the RT op-edge section apparently, in some people’s eyes, makes me compromised. I began contributing to the RT op-edge section when I lived in Gaza, and this was not an issue for people who then appreciated my writing,” she stated.

“What I am writing, and what I’m reporting, and who I am citing are Syrian civilians whom I’ve encountered in Syria.

“If people do not wish to hear the voices of Syrian civilians and if they want to maintain their narrative which is in line with the NATO narrative – which is in line with destabilizing Syria and vilifying the government of Syria and ignoring the overwhelming wishes of the people of Syria – then they do this by accusing me of spreading propaganda,” the journalist stressed.

“The fact that my writing is in line with the Syrian people… in some respect aligns with Russian media reports, does not mean that I’m reporting Russian propaganda, and it does not mean that what Russian media is reporting is propaganda. It happened to be that I report the truth as I see it on the ground, and some Russian media happen to report the truth as they see it on the ground.

“Why do we not see these accusations when a BBC journalist goes to Syria and reports what I often believe to be not the full story? Why are they not accused of working for the State of England? Why are Al Jazeera journalists not accused of working for Qatar?”

My Related Comments:

*Please note, I do not have ‘my own blog’ on RT, as written in the RT overview of an interview I gave to the site (and as also alleged by a factually-challenged ‘fact check’ by Channel 4 News, the debunking of which will be out soon). In fact, the RT disclaimer at the bottom of Op-Edge contributions is clear: “The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.” How did the fact checkers at Channel 4 miss that?

Since April 2013, I have contributed a total of 8 opinion pieces to RT’s Op-Edge section (3 of which were from or on Gaza, Occupied Palestine), an RT section which contains writings from over 70 authors.

8 articles in a period of nearly 4 years, that’s not exactly “active” writing dedicated to RT. Take a look at some of the other authors who are indeed very active. In fact, to the claims that any of my writing is opportunism, wouldn’t one expect me to thus direct most of my articles to RT and get paid something (nothing compared to BBC, NYTimes or other fake news journalists), rather than instead directing my articles to a variety of lesser or not at all paying sources? I have no qualms about my scant contribution of opinion pieces to RT, but to paint me as ‘working’ for RT is a fact-checking error, one which I believe to be intentional.

Further, Dr. Helen Caldicott and William Engdahl also contribute to RT Op-Edge. Will Channel 4 and other smear sites now claim they are working for Russia?

Thus, I am not ’employed by’ RT, I contribute sporadically to RT, as well as more regularly to a host of independent media (21st Century Wire, SOTT.net, MintPressNews, Dissident Voice, and formerly: Al Akhbar English, American Herald Tribune, Zero Anthropology, and others).

If not already glaringly clear, the intention of such ‘fact-check’ pieces is solely to discredit myself and others like me. And even though I strongly disagree with the lexicon of ‘civil war’ and ‘rebels’ frequently used in RT reports and commentaries, RT has been one of the few English-language media outlets to consistently have journalists on the ground, risking their lives to report the realities MSM would not report. I would encourage people to follow RT’s reports on Syria.

https://ingaza.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/10460727_687418844627141_7212818420073803069_n.jpg?w=620

*From June 2014, old city of Homs, interviewing Nazim Kanawati, who knew and was a friend of Father Frans van der Lugt and who arrived moments after the 75-year-old priest had been shot in the back of the head. From my article on this visit: “Father Frans was a peace-maker and played an important role in arranging the evacuation of civilians from the Old City during the siege. He was trusted by both sides, and didn’t distinguish between Christians and Muslims. He was concerned with humanity.” Like Father Frans, Kanawati refused to leave Homs while others fled. “I didn’t want to leave, I’m a Syrian, I had the right to be there.”

https://ingaza.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/dscn5852.jpg?w=620

*Entering Damascus neighbourhood by shared taxi from Beirut, Oct 2016.

On Funding:

Addressing the smear-tactic accusations that I’m funded by either or both the Syrian and/or Russian governments, for the sake of time I’ll share excerpts from a social media post I wrote not long ago:

Writing truth doesn’t pay. Independent sites which are courageous enough to host the truth usually cannot afford to pay more than $50/article, or often nothing at all. But for those who have principles and are not writing about Syria and related issues for profit, this is irrelevant.

So the obvious question that hacks have assumed they know the answer to: how do people like myself and colleagues manage to exist, if not being paid ridiculously-well per article as some in corporate media, often writing lies, are.

In order to go to Syria many times, I have either saved money slowly and when able traveled to the country, or I have publicly fundraised. I travel the cheapest means, always with long layovers and inconvenient routes, but ensuring airfare that is far cheaper than those in corporate media traveling to Syria. Then again, that’s me making an assumption: perhaps they also flew economy from North America to Dubai (much further east than destination Beirut), slept on the airport floor, traveled back west to Beirut, stayed in the cheapest closet-sized rooms in the city or outside where it is cheaper, and took a shared taxi to Damascus.

I’m aware of many colleagues like myself who live on the edge, sometimes down to the last dollars in their pockets until a meagre payment comes in for an article many hours/days worked on. Many I know have had to borrow money, as have I, in order to travel to Syria, or fundraise, or wait until we accumulate enough through writings and also the kind donations to our work by people who value it.

https://ingaza.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/castello.jpg?w=620
*Castello road, shelled on Nov 4, 2016 by militants 7 times on humanitarian corridor day, twice while I was there.

Independents Only Go To Safe Areas of Syria?

This is another charge levied at independent journalists and others who go in solidarity to Syria to speak directly with Syrian people, instead of getting the story from the one man UK-based ‘observatory’, the SOHR, or from lying corporate media whose propaganda has been debunked and whose use of a photo from Iraq was highlighted by the photographer himself, disputing BBC’s allegations that the photo was in Ghouta, Syria.

Government-secured areas of Syria are not free of danger: many have been or continue to be subject to terrorism, whether in the form of car bombings (as with the many times terror-attacked district of al-Zahra’a, Homs, which I visited some days after a major series of car and suicide bombings in December 2015 or as with the Akrama school in Homs, Oct 2014, killing at least 41 children, to cite 2 of endless examples. Some more examples here), rocket and mortar attacks, and snipings.

On 6 visits to Syria, when back in Damascus I’ve stayed in the Old City and was in the midst of mortar attacks which in 2014 and 2015 were near-daily and quite heavy. In 2016, there were still mortar attacks but less than prior. That said, a dear friend lost her sister and that woman’s infant son to such a mortar attack in July 2016. The ‘moderate’ ‘rebels’ idea of ‘revolution’ is the indiscriminately shell civilian areas. These maimed children were a sampling of the injured (some critically so) when I visited Damascus’ University Hospital in February 2015. These children were injured in April 2014, when militants mortared their school in Old Damascus.

Prior to its liberation, to enter Aleppo the sole route (with the exception of the August securing of Castello road) was via Ramouseh road, known for snipings and shelling from militant factions. I traveled that road 6 times (3 visits), in times when snipings had recently occurred. Traveling the Castello road even posed a danger, as I and colleague Vanessa Beeley learned in August 2016 when leaving Aleppo. The road was being mortared by militant factions and our simple taxi, while trying to speed along, was boxed in by other trucks also leaving.

https://ingaza.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/aqrab.jpg?w=300&h=196 https://ingaza.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/taaouna.jpg?w=300&h=225

While in Taaouna this summer, taking the testimonies of survivors of the Aqrab massacre–perpetrated by the ‘moderates’ of the Free Syrian Army–there was great risk of shelling or sniping by the terrorists still occupying Aqrab. Of that visit, I wrote:
“Yesterday, via a winding road through the Masyaf region hills, descending to the village of Ta’aouna, I met with residents of neighbouring Aqrab, which in December 2012 was attacked by the so-called “Free Syrian Army” who massacred between 120-150 Aqrab residents (more on their testimonies soon).

Standing on the roof of the home to which three Aqrab survivors had come to give their testimonies, the village of Aqrab, roughly 500 metres away, was distinctly visible—as are any people in Ta’aouna who go rooftop (for laundry, water or other reasons) to terrorist snipers in the hills near Aqrab. The home owner pointed out holes from such snipers’ bullets prior.

Two hundred metres down a lane, some fifteen houses remain inhabited by local Ta’aouna families (including children), in homes 300 metres from where terrorists and their snipers lie.

When terrorists massacred villagers in Aqrab in December 2012, they were then known as “Free Syrian Army” terrorists.

Now, occupied villages in the region comprise terrorists from Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, and Da’esh (ISIS). As most Syrians I’ve met say, they are the same, with different names and financial backers, but commit the same heinous beheadings, assassinations, kidnappings and other western-sanctioned crimes in Syria.

Rooftop the home closest to the dirt embankment beyond (this particular house uninhabited, although only 5 metres from the next inhabited one), Abu Abdo, a local defense volunteer explains how he and others in the village take night shifts to watch for attempted terrorist infiltrations. The Syrian Arab Army has hilltop posts around Ta’aouna, but nonetheless the village defenders (including many who are family men and formerly served in the SAA) watch to see if/where terrorists are shooting from/at. “We organized ourselves, since 2011. We communicate with the army and give them targets, and they do the same with us,” he says of the watch for terrorist attacks.

We sit behind a wall of tires, some concrete blocks to one side serving as a defensive wall from behind which to watch for and shoot at terrorists. A second local defender appears, greets me with a friendly handshake, explains that in late 2013 terrorists managed to advance to the low hills to our right. But not since.

I ask Abu Abdo what he did prior to the war on Syria. A school principal, and he still is, he does the defense volunteering after hours….

They point to the land between Ta’aouna and the low hills flanking the village, and the start of Aqrab beyond.

“That small cement building on the land, right near there, about one month ago, a university student was shot in his head and killed, by a terrorist sniper. He was an engineering student.”

Earlier they’d told me about this, and about another university student who roughly 2 weeks ago was torn apart by shelling from terrorists in Aqrab. “He had just finished his exams,” they had said.

Descending from the roof, we walk past a nearby house, the children on the porch stoop. The second defense soldier tells me, with a proud smile, they are his kids. He takes me to the side of the house to show three creatively covered holes, “Dushkie” shots from the terrorists about 10 days ago.” READ MORE ABOUT THAT VISIT HERE

https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/those-who-transmit-syrian-voices-are-russian-propagandists-fake-news-negate-syrian-suffering/

much more at link

What’s Happening in Syria? The Media “Kills the Truth”, “Terrorism” is Described as “Moderate Opposition”: Eva Bartlett


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOmaxtuL3F4

Extrapolated Hearsay - Amnesty Report Claims Mass Executions, Provides No Proof

A new Amnesty International report claims that the Syrian government hanged between 5,000 and 13,000 prisoners in a military prison in Syria. The evidence for that claim is flimsy, based on hearsay of anonymous people outside of Syria. The numbers themselves are extrapolations that no scientist or court would ever accept. It is tabloid reporting and fiction style writing from its title "Human Slaughterhouse" down to the last paragraph.

But the Amnesty report is still not propagandish enough for the anti-Syrian media. Inevitably only the highest number in the range Amnesty claims is quoted. For some even that is not yet enough. The Associate Press agency, copied by many outlets, headlines: Report: At least 13,000 hanged in Syrian prison since 2011:

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as "the slaughterhouse," Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.
How does "at least 13,000" conforms to an already questionable report which claims "13,000" as the top number of a very wide range?

Here is a link to the report.

Before we look into some details this from the "Executive Summary":

From December 2015 to December 2016, Amnesty International researched the patterns, sequence and scale of violations carried out at Saydnaya Military Prison (Saydnaya). In the course of this investigation, the organization interviewed 31 men who were detained at Saydnaya, four prison officials or guards who previously worked at Saydnaya, three former Syrian judges, three doctors who worked at Tishreen Military Hospital, four Syrian lawyers, 17 international and national experts on detention in Syria and 22 family members of people who were or still are detained at Saydnaya.
...
On the basis of evidence from people who worked within the prison authorities at Saydnaya and witness testimony from detainees, Amnesty International estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015.
There are several difficulties with this report.

1. Most of the witnesses are identified as opposition figures and "former" officials who do not live in Syria. Some are said to have been remotely interviewed in Syria but it is not clear if those were living in government or insurgent held areas. Page 9:

The majority of these interviews took place in person in southern Turkey. The remaining interviews were conducted by telephone or through other remote means with interviewees still in Syria, or with individuals based in Lebanon, Jordan, European countries and the USA.
It is well known that the Syrian insurgency is financed with several billion dollars per years from foreign state governments. It runs sophisticated propaganda operations. These witnesses all seem to have interests in condemning the Syrian government. Not once is an attempt made to provide a possibly divergent view. Amnesty found the persons it questioned by contacting international NGOs like itself and known foreign financed opposition (propaganda) groups:

These groups include Urnammu for Justice and Human Rights, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, and the Syrian Institute for Justice and Accountability.
2. The numbers Amnesty provides are in a very wide range. None are documented in lists or similar exhibits. They are solely based on hearsay and estimates of two witnesses:

People who worked within the prison authorities at Saydnaya told Amnesty International that extrajudicial executions related to the crisis in Syria first began in September 2011. Since that time, the frequency with which they have been carried out has varied and increased. For the first four months, it was usual for between seven and 20 people to be executed every 10-15 days. For the following 11 months, between 20 and 50 people were executed once a week, usually on Monday nights. For the subsequent six months, groups of between 20 and 50 people were executed once or twice a week, usually on Monday and/or Wednesday nights. Witness testimony from detainees suggests that the executions were conducted at a similar – or even higher – rate at least until December 2015. Assuming that the death rate remained the same as the preceding period, Amnesty International estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015.
From "x to y", "once or twice a week", "suggests", "assuming" the headline numbers are simply extrapolated in in footnote 40 in a " back-of-the-envelope calculation. "If A were true then X would be B":

These estimates were based on the following calculations. If between seven and 20 were killed every 10-15 days from September to December 2011, the total figure would be between 56 people and 240 people for that period. If between 20 and 50 were killed every week between January and November 2012, the total figure would be between 880 and 2,200 for that period. If between 20 and 50 people were killed in 222 execution sessions (assuming the executions were carried out twice a week twice a month and once a week once a month) between December 2012 and December 2015, the total figure would be between 4,400 and 11,100 for that period. These calculations produce a minimum figure of 5,336, rounded down to the nearest thousand as 5,000, and 13,540, rounded down to the nearest thousand as 13,000.
2. I will not go into the details of witness statements on which the report is build. They seem at least exaggerated and are not verifiable at all. In the end it is pure hearsay on which Amnesty sets it conclusions. One example from page 25:

“Hamid”, a former military officer when he was arrested in 2012, recalled the sounds he heard at night during an execution:
"There was a sound of something being pulled out – like a piece of wood, I’m not sure – and then you would hear the sound of them being strangled… If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling. This would last around 10 minutes… We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death. This was normal for me then."
A court might accept 'sound of "I'm not sure" "kind of gurgling" noise through concrete' as proof that a shower was running somewhere. But as proof of executions?

Of all the witnesses Amnesty says it interviewed only two, a former prison official and a former judge, who describe actual executions (page 25). From the wording of their statements it is unclear if they have witnessed any hangings themselves or just describe something they have been told of.

3. The numbers of people Amnesty claims were executed are - at best - a wild ass guess. How come that Amnesty can name only very few of those? On page 30 of its report it says:

Former detainees from the red building at Saydnaya provided Amnesty International with the names of 59 individuals who they witnessed being taken from their cells in the afternoon, being told that they were being transferred to civilian prisons in Syria. The evidence contained in this report strongly suggests that in fact, these individuals were extrajudicially executed.
and

Former prison guards and a former prison official from Saydnaya also provided Amnesty International with the names of 36 detainees who had been extrajudicially executed in Saydnaya since 2011.
Those 95, some of whom may have been "executed" - or not, are the only ones Amnesty claims to be able to name. That is less than 1-2% of the reports central claim of 5,000 to 13,000 executed. All those witnesses could provide no more details of persons allegedly killed?

Amnesty acknowledges that its numbers are bogus. Under the headline "Documented Deaths" on page 40 it then adds additional names and numbers to those above but these are not from executions:

the exact number of deaths in Saydnaya is impossible to specify. However, the Syrian Network for Human Rights has verified and shared with Amnesty International the names of 375 individuals who have died in Saydnaya as a result of torture and other ill-treatment between March 2011 and October 2016. Of these, 317 were civilians at the time of their arrest, 39 were members of the Syrian military and 19 were members of non-state armed groups. In the course of the research for this report, Amnesty International obtained the names of 36 additional individuals who died as a result of torture and other ill-treatment in Saydnaya. These names were provided to Amnesty International by former detainees who witnessed the deaths in their cells
The "torture" claims by the "Syrian Network for Human Rights" (SOHR), a group in the UK connected to British foreign intelligence, are also unverified. SOHR is known for labeling armed non-military Syrian insurgents (i.e. not foreigners) as "civilians" even if they die while fighting the government.

Note that none of the mostly "civilians" SOHR claims to have died in the prison are claimed to have been executed. How is it possible that the organization frequently quoted in the media as reliable, detailed source of casualties in Syria has no record of the 5,000 to 13,000 Amnesty claims were executed?

4. The report is padded up with before/after satellite pictures of enlarged graveyards in Syria. It claims that these are a sign of mass graves of government opponent. But there is zero evidence for that. Many people have died in Syria throughout the war on all sides of the conflict. The enlargement, for example, of the Martyrs Cemetery south of Damascus (p.29/30) is hardly a sign of mass killing of anti-government insurgents. Would those be honored as martyrs by the government side?

5. In its Executive Summary the Amnesty report says that "Death sentences are approved by the Grand Mufti of Syria and ...". But there is no evidence provided of "approval" by the Grand Mufti in the details of the report. On page 19 it claims, based on two former prison and court officials:

The judgement is sent by military post to the Grand Mufti of Syria and to either the Minister of Defence or the Chief of Staff of the Army, who are deputized to sign for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and who specify the date of the execution.
It is very doubtful that the Syrian government would "deputize" or even inform the Grand Mufti in cases of criminal legal proceedings. Syria is a secular state. The Grand Mufti in Syria is be a civil legal authority for some followers of the Sunni Muslim religion in Syria but he has no official judiciary role. From the 2010 Swiss dissertation Models of Religious Freedom: Switzerland, the United States, and Syria quoted here:

In Syria a mufti is a legal and religious expert (faqih and ‘alim) who has the power to give legally non-binding recommendations (sing. fatwa, pl. fatawa) in matters of Islamic law.
...
Queries which are either sought by a shari‘a judge or private individuals regard the personal status laws of the Muslim community only. In the Arab Republic fatawa are given neither to public authorities nor to individual civil servants, ..
Neither the Syrian constitution nor any Syrian law I can find refers to a role of the Grand Mufti in any military or civil criminal courts. The Amnesty claim "approved by the Grand Mufti of Syria"is not recorded anywhere else. It is very likely false. The Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, is a moderate, recognized and accomplished scholar. He should sue Amnesty for this slander.

Syrian law includes a death penalty for certain severe and violent crimes. Before 2011 actual executions in Syria were very rare, most death sentences were commuted. Allegedly the laws were amended in late 2011, after the war in Syria had started, to include the death penalty as possible punishment for directly arming terrorists.

It is quite likely that the Syrian military and/or civil judiciary hand out some death penalties against captured foreign and domestic "rebels" it finds them guilty of very severe crimes. It is fighting the Islamic State, al Qaeda and other extreme groups well known for mass murder and other extreme atrocities. It is likely that some of those sentences are applied. But the Syrian government has also provided amnesty to ten-thousands of "rebels" who fought the government but have laid down their arms.

The claims in the Amnesty report are based on spurious and biased opposition accounts from outside of the country. The headline numbers of 5,000 to 13,000 are calculated on the base of unfounded hypotheticals. The report itself states that only 36 names of allegedly executed persons are known to Amnesty, less than the number of "witnesses" Amnesty claims to have interviewed. The high number of claimed execution together with the very low number of names is not plausible.

The report does not even meet the lowest mark of scientific or legal veracity. It is pure biased propaganda.

Posted by b on February 7, 2017 at 04:41 AM | Permalink

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/02/amnesty-report-hearsay.html

Why is the media ignoring leaked US government documents about Syria?

by Ian Sinclair
Originally published in The New Arab, and then censored
February 2017

Discussing Western reporting of the Syrian war, veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn recently noted “fabricated news and one-sided reporting have taken over the news agenda to a degree probably not seen since the First World War.” Professor Piers Robinson, Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield, concurs, arguing “We must now seriously entertain the possibility that the war in Syria has involved similar, if not greater, levels of manipulation and propaganda than that which occurred in the case of the 2003 Iraq War”.

An incredibly complex and confusing conflict with hundreds of opposition groups and multiple external actors often keen to hide many of their actions, how can journalists and the public get an accurate understanding of what is happening in Syria?

As governments routinely use their public statements to deceive the public, traditionally leaked government documents have been seen as the gold standard of journalistic sources – a unique opportunity to see what those in power are really thinking and doing behind closed doors. “Policy-makers are usually frank about their real goals in the secret record”, notes British historian Mark Curtis in his book Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses.

When it comes to Syria there have been a number of US government documents leaked about US policy in the region. However, though these disclosures were reported by the media at the time, they have been quickly forgotten and have not contributed to the dominant narrative that has built up about the conflict. As Professor Peter Kuznick noted about the American history he highlighted in The Untold History of the United States documentary series he co-wrote with director Oliver Stone, “the truth is that many of our ‘secrets’ have been hidden on the front page of the New York Times.”

For example, liberal journalists and commentators have repeatedly stated the US has, as Paul Mason wrote in the Guardian last year, “stood aloof from the Syrian conflict.” The leaked audio recording of a meeting between President Obama’s second Secretary of State John Kerry and Syrian opposition figures last year shows the opposite to be true. Challenged about the level of US support to the insurgency, Kerry turns to his aide and says: “I think we’ve been putting an extraordinary amount of arms in, haven’t we?” The aide agrees, noting “the armed groups in Syria get a lot of support.”

Amazingly, before noting the US had sent an “extraordinary amount of arms” to the rebels, Kerry tells the activists “we can always throw a lot of weapons in but I don’t think they are going to be good for you” because “everyone ups the ante” leading to “you all [getting] destroyed”. This explanation of the logic of escalation is repeated later in the meeting by Kerry’s aide, who notes “when you pump more weapons into a situation like Syria it doesn’t end well for Syrians because there is always somebody else willing to pump more weapons in for the other side.”

A classified 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, published by the right-wing watchdog Judicial Watch, provides important context to Kerry’s remarks. In the heavily redacted document the DIA — the intelligence arm of the US Department of Defense — notes “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI (al-Qaida in Iraq) are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” and “The West, Gulf countries and Turkey support the opposition”. Speaking at a 2013 Jewish United Fund Advance & Major Gifts Dinner – the transcript of which was published by Wikileaks – former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed that US ally Saudi Arabia “and others are shipping large amounts of weapons—and pretty indiscriminately—not at all targeted toward the people that we think would be the more moderate, least likely, to cause problems in the future.”

It gets worse. Discussing the crisis, the DIA report notes “There is the possibility of [the opposition] establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria… and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime”.

This appalling revelation was seemingly confirmed by General Michael T Flynn, the Director of the DIA from 2012-14 (and now National Security Advisor to President Trump), in a 2015 interview with Al-Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan – and also, it seems, by Kerry when he told the Syrian activists:

The reason Russia came in [to the conflict] is because ISIL [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] was getting stronger. Daesh [another name for ISIL] was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus and so forth… And we know that this was growing. We were watching. We saw that Daesh was growing in strength. And we though Assad was threatened. We thought, however, we could probably manage – you know, that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him.
In summary, the leaked information wholly contradicts the popular picture of Western benevolent intentions let down by President Obama’s ineffective leadership and inaction. Instead the evidence shows the US has been sending an “extraordinary amount” of weapons to the armed insurgents in Syria in the full knowledge that Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaida in Iraq were the “major forces” driving the insurgency. They did this understanding that sending in weapons would escalate the fighting and not “end well for Syrians”. Furthermore, the US has long known that its regional ally Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have been supporting extremists in Syria. And, most shocking of all if true, both Kerry and the DIA report seem to show the US allowed forerunners to ISIL and/or ISIL itself to expand and threaten the Syrian Government as this corresponded with the US’s geo-strategic objectives.

More broadly, by highlighting how the US welcomed the growth of ISIL in Syria, the leaks fatally undermine the entire rationale of the ‘war on terror’ the West has supposedly been fighting since 2001. These are, in short, bombshells that should be front page news, with lengthy investigative follow ups and hundreds of op-eds outraged at the lies and hypocrisy of Western governments. Instead the disclosures have disappeared down the memory hole, with the ginormous gap between the importance of the revelations and the lack of coverage indicating a frighteningly efficient propaganda system.

There is one very important caveat. I’m not an expert on Syria or the Middle East. There could well be important context or information that I am ignorant of which provides a different take on the leaked material, that lessens its importance and, therefore, justifies why the media has largely ignored them.

Of course, the best way of confirming the accuracy and importance of the leaks is for the media to do its job and thoroughly investigate the disclosures, devote significant resources and manpower to the story and ask awkward and searching questions of established power.

I’m not holding my breath.

https://ianjsinclair.wordpress.com/

Amnesty International Admits Syrian "Saydnaya" Report Fabricated Entirely in UK

February 9, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Amnesty International's 48 page report titled, "Syria: Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria," boasts bold claims, concluding:
...the Syrian authorities’ violations at Saydnaya amount to crimes against humanity. Amnesty International urgently calls for an independent and impartial investigation into crimes committed at Saydnaya.

However, even at a cursory glance, before even reading the full body of the report, under a section titled, "Methodology," Amnesty International admits it has no physical evidence whatsoever to substantiate what are admittedly only the testimony of alleged inmates and former workers at the prison, as well as figures within Syria's opposition.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q151uKZJeX8/WJwa4GSNj_I/AAAAAAAAPUY/ISUEIbyuWXAuWbamZynBTwK9oH91HB_qwCLcB/s640/saydnaya-1-jpeg.jpg
Image: What you are looking at is a 3D model fabricated entirely in the United Kingdom, based solely on satellite pictures and hearsay. Passed off as evidence this technique of "forensic architecture" may soon become a new tool in the dissemination of war propaganda if it is not exposed.

Within the section titled, "Methodology," the report admits:
Despite repeated requests by Amnesty International for access to Syria, and specifically for access to detention facilities operated by the Syrian authorities, Amnesty International has been barred by the Syrian authorities from carrying out research in the country and consequently has not had access to areas controlled by the Syrian government since the crisis began in 2011. Other independent human rights monitoring groups have faced similar obstacles.
In other words, Amnesty International had no access whatsoever to the prison, nor did any of the witnesses it allegedly interview provide relevant evidence taken from or near the prison.

The only photographs of the prison are taken from outer space via satellite imagery. The only other photos included in the report are of three men who allege they lost weight while imprisoned and a photo of one of eight alleged death certificates provided to family members of detainees who died at Saydnaya.

The alleged certificates admittedly reveal nothing regarding allegations of torture or execution.

Articles like, "Hearsay Extrapolated - Amnesty Claims Mass Executions In Syria, Provides Zero Proof," provide a detailed examination of Amnesty's "statistics," while articles like, "Amnesty International “Human Slaughterhouse” Report Lacks Evidence, Credibility, Reeks Of State Department Propaganda," cover the politically-motivated nature of both Amnesty International and the timing of the report's promotion across the Western media.

However, there is another aspect of the report that remains unexplored - the fact that Amnesty International itself has openly admitted that the summation of the report was fabricated in the United Kingdom at Amnesty International's office, using a process they call "forensic architecture," in which the lack of actual, physical, photographic, and video evidence, is replaced by 3D animations and sound effects created by designers hired by Amnesty International.

Amnesty Hired Special Effects Experts to Fabricate "Evidence"

In a video produced by Amnesty International accompanying their report, titled, "Inside Saydnaya: Syria's Torture Prison," the narrator admits in its opening seconds that Amnesty International possesses no actual evidence regarding the prison.


http://youtu.be/ysgnadic3Yo

The video admits:
There are almost no pictures of its exterior [except satellite images] and none from inside. And what happens within its walls is cloaked in secrecy, until now.
Viewers are initially led to believe evidence has emerged, exposing what took place within the prison's walls, but the narrator continues by explaining:
We've devised a unique way of revealing what life is like inside a torture prison. And we've done it by talking to people who were there and have survived its horrors...

...and using their recollections and the testimony of others, we've build an interactive 3D model which can take you for the first time inside Saydnaya.
The narrator then explains:
In a unique collaboration, Amnesty International has teamed up with "Forensic Architecture" of Goldsmiths, University of London, to reconstruct both the sound and architecture of Saydnaya prison, and to do it using cutting-edge digital technology to create a model.
In other words, the summation of Amnesty International's presentation was not accumulated from facts and evidence collected in Syria, but instead fabricated entirely in London using 3D models, animations, and audio software, based on the admittedly baseless accounts of alleged witnesses who claim to have been in or otherwise associated with the prison.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ioJ2_J44VQs/WJwaxE6YqCI/AAAAAAAAPUU/1JB1up_ML00k5MliXM_H5PelTN6z4NadQCLcB/s640/AI_ForensicArch_Syria.jpg

Eyal Weizman, director of "Forensic Architecture," would admit that "memory" alone was the basis of both his collaboration with Amnesty International, and thus, the basis for Amnesty's 48 page report:
Memory is the only resource within which we can start [to] reconstruct what has taken place. What does it feel like to be a prisoner in Saydnaya?
Weizman's organization, "Forensic Architecture," on its own website, describes its activities:
Forensic Architecture is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. It includes a team of architects, scholars, filmmakers, designers, lawyers and scientists to undertake research that gathers and presents spatial analysis in legal and political forums.

We provide evidence for international prosecution teams, political organisations, NGOs, and the United Nations in various processes worldwide. Additionally, the agency undertakes historical and theoretical examinations of the history and present status of forensic practices in articulating notions of public truth.
In other words, special effects experts and their tools - usually employed in the creation of fictional movies for the entertainment industry or for architectural firms to propose yet-to-exist projects - are now being employed to fabricate evidence in a political context when none in reality exists.

While the work of "Forensic Architecture" may be of interest to developing theories, it is by no means useful in providing actual evidence - evidence being understood as an actual available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid - not a fabricated body of supposed facts or information.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lpAqrnY5yBY/WJwbpWgcDYI/AAAAAAAAPUg/Ip2u9-x8AsMofLHrDhO9OBWQlsTmW3DoACLcB/s640/Saydnaya-Syrian-Torture-Prison-Forensic-Architecture-digital_dezeen_2364_0-852x479.jpg
Image: Technology used for creating Hollywood dinosaurs and aliens, or an architectural proposal for a vacant lot, is now being used to fabricate evidence for politically motivated reports when no actual evidence exists.
The work of "Forensic Architecture" and the witness accounts gathered by Amnesty International - all of which were admittedly gathered outside of Syria - would form the basis of an initial inquiry, not a final report nor the basis of a conclusion that human rights violations not only took place, but that they constituted crimes against humanity and demanded immediate international recourse.

Amnesty International's report lacked any actual evidence, with its presentation consisting instead of admittedly fabricated images, sounds, maps, and diagrams. Amnesty - lacking actual evidence - instead abused its reputation and the techniques of classical deception to target and manipulate audiences emotionally. What Amnesty International is engaged in is not "human rights advocacy," but rather politically-motivated war propaganda simply hiding behind such advocacy.

Exposing this technique of openly and shamelessly fabricating the summation of an internationally released report - promoted unquestioningly by prominent Western papers and media platforms, including the BBC, CNN, the Independent, and others - prevents Amnesty and other organizations like it from continuing to use the trappings of science and engineering as cover to deliver monstrous lies to the public.

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/02/amnesty-international-admits-syrian.html?spref=tw

GOVT FORCES REACH SOUTHERN GATES OF AL-BAB, BUT NOT GOING TO ENTER ISIS STRONGHOLD – RUSSIAN MOD

https://southfront.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/196.jpg
Syrian government forces walk in an area south of the city of al-Bab in the northern province of Aleppo on January 14, 2016. ©AFP

The Syrian army, supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces, have liberated the key town of Tadif located south of the ISIS stronghold of al-Bab in the province of Aleppo, the Russian Defense Ministry said on February 11.

Tadif was one of the most fortified stronghold of the terrorist group due to its strategic location at the southern gates of al-Bab. According to the ministry over 650 ISIS members were killed during the operation.

“During the fighting near the Tadif populated area, the [Syrian] government forces killed more than 650 terrorists, destroyed two tanks, four armored personnel carriers, 18 off-road vehicles equipped with heavy weapons, seven mortars and six ‘jihad-mobiles’ [technicals].”
After liberating Tadif, the Syrian army will not enter al-Bab. The Syrian military agreed with Turkey on a demarcation line with pro-Turkish forces (the Turkish army and pro-Turkish militant groups).

“As a result of the advance, the Syrian government forces have reached a demarcation line with the Free Syrian Army’s units as it had been agreed with the Turkish side.”
Meanwhile, the Syrian army has got a control over the highway linking al-Bab and the ISIS self-proclaimed capital of Raqqah.

https://southfront.org/govt-forces-reach-southern-gates-of-al-bab-but-not-going-to-enter-isis-stronghold-russian-mod/

The perfidy of Russian diplomacy, sacrificing Syrian sovereignty that Lavrov might ingratiate US.

The perfidy of Russian diplomacy, sacrificing Syrian sovereignty that Lavrov might ingratiate US.

I got "unfollowed" on the twit for saying that there were no "good guys" connected with any government besides Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah. And even with those there are large caveats involved. We are against all imperialism - it is just that you have to not get caught-up in the "lesser imperialism" ala the "lesser evil" in politics. None of the countries involved are working class oriented - not even Syria. The Ba'ath are more socialist leaning than capitalist, but not to lose your head over. US imperialism must be fought and opposed on ever front, but when dealing with Russia and Iran you have to keep your hand on your wallet (if not your pistol).

I got "unfollowed" on the twit for saying that there were no "good guys" connected with any government besides Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah. And even with those there are large caveats involved. We are against all imperialism - it is just that you have to not get caught-up in the "lesser imperialism" ala the "lesser evil" in politics. None of the countries involved are working class oriented - not even Syria. The Ba'ath are more socialist leaning than capitalist, but not to lose your head over. US imperialism must be fought and opposed on ever front, but when dealing with Russia and Iran you have to keep your hand on your wallet (if not your pistol).

I always make a point of zeroing in on 'diplomacy', those Rus fighting and dying got my greatest respect. which just makes the diplomacy worse, that's some serious disrespect.

I ain't got many 'Russian' followers left.

Syria’s alleged gas attack: An imperialist provocation
6 April 2017

The Trump administration publicly responded to unsubstantiated allegations that forces loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad bore responsibility for a chemical attack in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province with the threat of a new escalation of the American intervention in the war-ravaged Middle Eastern country.

Speaking alongside one of Washington’s favorite Arab puppet rulers, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, during a joint news conference at the White House, Trump declared that the “heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated” and had “crossed a lot of lines for me.” While condemning his predecessor, Barack Obama, for failing to carry through on a threat to intervene militarily in Syria over alleged chemical weapons attacks in 2013, Trump declared “I now have the responsibility,” adding that his “attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.”

Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, meanwhile, issued an even more direct threat of unilateral US military action in the run-up to an anticipated Russian veto of a provocative Western-backed resolution that could serve as a fig leaf for aggression against Syria. “When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” she said.

Fourteen years after the US invaded Iraq, turning that country and much of the Middle East into a charnel house, Washington is at it again, employing a strikingly similar pretext for imperialist aggression.

Once again, the US and world public is being bombarded with unsubstantiated claims about “weapons of mass destruction” allegedly employed by an oppressed former colonial country, mixed with crocodile tears and feigned moral outrage from a government responsible for more civilian deaths and war crimes than any regime since the fall of the Nazi Third Reich.

The pretext for this orchestrated campaign has all the earmarks of an imperialist provocation planned and executed by the Central Intelligence Agency and allied Western secret services with the aim of shifting US policy in relation to Syria.

First, there is the question of motive. Who benefits from such a crime? Clearly, it is not the Assad regime, which, with the aid of Russia and Iran, has largely vanquished the Islamist “rebels” that were armed, financed and trained by the CIA and Washington’s regional allies in the bloody six-year-long war for regime change. The government now rules over 80 percent of the country, including all of its major cities, with the Islamists’ hold reduced to largely rural areas of Idlib province. Under conditions in which the Trump administration had been signaling a shift in focus from toppling Assad to fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), why would Damascus carry out such a provocative attack?

The CIA-backed “rebels” themselves, however—along with their patrons in the US military and intelligence apparatus—have every interest in staging such a provocation as a means of thwarting the government’s consolidation of its rule throughout Syria. Moreover, numerous investigations, including by the UN’s own chemical disarmament agency, have made it clear that these forces, dominated by the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate, the Al Nusra Front, have carried out similar attacks using both chlorine and sarin gas, which they have received from their regional backers in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey and which they themselves have proven capable of manufacturing.

Then there is the issue of timing. The alleged gas attack was launched Tuesday morning, coinciding with the opening in Brussels of a European Union-sponsored “Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region,” which was to review proposals for “political transition” in Syria as well as Europe’s intervention in the potentially lucrative reconstruction of the ravaged country. The alleged chemical attack set the stage for renewed demands for regime change and criticism of the Trump administration for suggesting that the ouster of Assad was no longer a priority.

There is a definite pattern here. The last time that Washington and its allies accused the Assad regime of a major chemical weapons attack and nearly launched a full-scale war on that pretext was in August 2013. That alleged attack, which subsequent revelations exposed as a “rebel” provocation carried out with the help of Turkish intelligence, was launched on the very day that UN weapons inspectors arrived in Damascus.

The most telling aspect of the entire affair, however, is the extraordinary coordination of the entire corporate media in the launching of a full-throated campaign for military action before the basic facts of the incident were even known, much less a serious investigation conducted. It seemed that even before the alleged incident in Syria was reported, all of the major newspaper editors and columnists as well as the television news commentators had received the same talking points.

None of them, of course, bothered to inform their readers and viewers that the sole sources of the information they retailed as good coin consisted of Al Qaeda-connected “activists” in Syria along with US intelligence and military officials pushing for war.

Leading the pack, as usual, was the New York Times, which carried the headline “Chemical Attack on Syrians Ignites World’s Outrage.” What evidence there is of such “outrage,” outside of the world of intelligence agencies, state officials and their media hacks was not clear. Nor, for that matter, was there any explanation for the selective character of this “outrage.”

It is noteworthy that this moral outpouring came just a day after Trump gave the red carpet treatment to Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the butcher of Cairo, who slaughtered 1,000 unarmed demonstrators in a single day. Nor, for that matter, did the Times evince any such “outrage” over the 200 Iraqi civilians killed in a single US bombing raid in Mosul last month, or the hundreds if not thousands more buried alive by US bombs and missiles dropped on schools, mosques and homes in Syria itself, not to mention in Yemen.

There are certain bylines that appear on such articles that brand them as the product of direct collaboration with US intelligence. In this case, it was that of Anne Barnard, who has provided such services over the entire course of the US-orchestrated war for regime change in Syria. Her work was supplemented by that of Thomas Friedman, who has backed every US imperialist intervention over the course of over a quarter century. He offers a modest proposal for the “partition of Syria” and the creation of “protected” zones enforced by the US military. “It won’t be pretty or easy,” he allows, noting reassuringly that the US maintained 400,000 troops in Europe during the Cold War.

What is also strikingly uniform in the media propaganda campaign over the events in Syria is the across-the-board indictment of Iran and Russia as equally culpable in the alleged chemical attack. The Times editorial charged that the attack speaks to Assad’s “depravity and that of his enablers, especially Russia and Iran.”

A Washington Post editorial insisted: “Now it is Mr. Trump’s turn to decide whether to stand up to Mr. Assad and his Iranian and Russian sponsors.”

The aim is clear. The murky events in Syria are to be exploited in order to shift the bitter internal debate on foreign policy within the US ruling establishment. The intention is to bring the Trump administration into line with the predominant tendency within the US military and intelligence apparatus which is pushing for an uninterrupted buildup to military confrontation with both Iran and Russia.

That these efforts are having their desired effect found concrete expression Wednesday not only in Trump’s remarks on Syria, but also in the removal of Stephen Bannon, Trump’s fascistic chief strategist, from the principals committee of the National Security Council. The ouster of the ideological architect of Trump’s “America first” right-wing nationalist demagogy was reportedly dictated by Gen. H.R. McMaster, the president’s new national security adviser, an active duty officer who speaks for the Pentagon. Faced with intractable social and political crises at home, Trump, like his predecessors, appears to be turning toward war abroad.

The working class in both the US and internationally must take these developments, along with the CIA provocation in Syria and its accompanying media propaganda campaign, as a deadly serious warning. It faces the threat of being dragged not only into a renewed bloodbath in the Middle East, but a far more dangerous conflagration involving the world’s two major nuclear powers.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/06/pers-a06.html

Controlling the Narrative on Syria

Posted Dec 13, 2016 by Louis Allday

Since 2011, the torrent of ill-informed, inaccurate and often entirely dishonest analysis of events in Syria has been unremitting. I have written previously about the dangers of using simplistic explanations to make sense of the conflict, a problem that has surfaced repeatedly over the past five years. However, there is a greater problem at large. The mainstream discourse on Syria has become so toxic, detached from reality and devoid of nuance that anyone who dares to even question the constructed narrative of ongoing ‘revolution’, or opposes the arguments of those who advocate for the imposition of a no-fly zone by the West, can expect swift retribution. Such dissenters are immediately attacked, frequently slandered as ‘Assadists’ or ‘Pro-Assad’ and often accused of showing cruel indifference to the suffering of Syrians. One of many truths lost within this discourse is the reality that the creation of a no-fly zone would, in the words of the most senior general in the US Armed Forces, mean the US going to war “against Syria and Russia”. I wish to be clear from the outset that I write this as someone who has previously lived in Syria and cherishes deeply the memories of my time there. I remain in touch with many Syrian friends, most of whom are now refugees outside of the country. So it is particularly difficult for me to swallow accusations of callousness towards the plight of Syrians and their country: nothing could be further from the truth.

In the current environment, to express even a mildly dissenting opinion, point out basic but unwelcome facts such as the presence of significant public support for the government in Syria, or highlight the frequently brutal acts of rebel groups, has seen many people ridiculed and attacked on social media. These attacks are rarely, if ever, reasoned critiques of opposing views; instead they frequently descend into personal, often hysterical, insults and baseless, vitriolic allegations. Generally, a set of core arguments are used to denounce those who question the dominant narrative: they include the notion that it is somehow Islamophobic to criticise the actions of rebel groups or to label them as extremists, and that to highlight the central role of US imperialism in the conflict is Orientalist as it denies Syrians their ‘agency’. Often, legitimate criticism is simply dismissed outright as ‘fascist’, ‘Stalinist’, ‘Putinist’ or all three. The policing of acceptable opinion in this way has a simple and practical function: to foster a climate in which people feel too intimidated to speak out, thus allowing the dominant narrative to remain unquestioned so that, crucially, it can continue to be utilised to generate public support for further Western intervention in Syria.

Of course, this is a strategy with a well-established precedent; the treatment given to many opponents of NATO’s assault on Libya in 2011 and the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 are obvious recent examples. Unfortunately, it remains an effective means to stifle dissent and establish the acceptable parameters of mainstream debate. Its success has meant that those in favour of greater Western intervention in Syria have virtually monopolised the popular debate and control the narrative. I know several people who have admitted to me that they are too intimidated to write or speak honestly about Syria in public and so either limit what they say or, if possible, do not broach the topic at all. I am certain that many reading this will have noticed a glaring difference between private conservations they have with friends and acquaintances that work on Syria in some capacity, and the statements that they make in public.

I have not been silent on the issue in the public domain, but frankly I too have occasionally found myself feeling intimidated. Consequently, I have not written as much on this area as I could have. Indeed, it is likely that as a result of writing this article, some of the individuals that I mention will attack me publicly as some kind of combination of crypto-fascist Assadist, stooge of Putin/Iran and deluded white anti-imperialist; many others may silently judge me in much the same way. However, notwithstanding the short-term uncertainty regarding the exact direction of US foreign policy that has been caused by Donald Trump’s recent victory and looming presidency, direct US military intervention in Syria with the aim of regime change or a partition of the country remains a distinct possibility. Therefore, I feel it is incumbent upon me, as well as others, to speak out, if only to disrupt the usual spurious talking points that have been largely unchallenged for too long. Bassam Haddad has recently observed that the debate over Syria has now reached a dead end; in the UK, as in many other cases, the debate still continues, but it is increasingly dominated by a relatively small yet extremely vocal group of activists. The figures of whom I speak—the overwhelming majority of whom are non-Syrian—are not a monolith; but what appears to unite virtually all of them is their full blooded support for the creation of a no-fly zone (which is, to be clear, an intrinsically pro-war stance), unquestioning support for the White Helmets, and utter disdain for any principled anti-imperialist position taken in respect of intervention in Syria. Many also share an inaccurate, and at times dishonest, analysis of NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011, which is frequently deployed to justify their stance on Syria.

In this context, I think it is important to be clear that I do not oppose any potential intervention by the West simply because it ‘won’t help’ as some argue: I do so because I do not believe that such an intervention would be motivated by humanitarian intentions. This clarification is crucial, because to accept this humanitarian premise before mounting any disagreement concedes important ground before the argument has even commenced. Reinforcing the notion that the US or the UK would be motivated to intervene in Syria, or anywhere else, through a genuine desire to ‘stop the bloodshed’ is ahistorical and fundamentally disingenuous. On the contrary, any such intervention, in addition to inevitably killing more civilians, would constitute a self-interested and dangerous escalation in the West’s ongoing campaign of aggression against the Syrian state. Such an escalation would not only heighten the chances of the permanent dismemberment of Syria becoming a reality (evidently a long-standing and strongly desired outcome by some parties), but would potentially spark a broader conflict with Russia, the consequences of which could be absolutely catastrophic.

Arguably, no war has been more mediated by misunderstanding than the conflict currently taking place in Syria. This article will seek to correct some of the major fallacies in circulation, illuminate how dissenting voices are forced out of the mainstream debate through smears and intimidation, and unmask the ostensibly neutral stances of a number of prominent voices on the conflict.

The Myth of Western Non-intervention
One of the many fallacies that predominate in this prevailing narrative is that the West has not intervened in the conflict in Syria. For instance, Amnesty International has recently described the UK as “sit[ting] on the sidelines” of the conflict. This fundamentally false position ignores several years of the West and its regional allies (primarily Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar) arming, funding and training rebel groups, the crippling economic sanctions imposed against the Syrian Government, ongoing airstrikes, special forces operations, and a host of other diplomatic, military and economic measures that have been taken. Not only has the West (primarily the US) intervened, it has done so on a very large scale. For instance, in June 2015, it was revealed that the CIA’s involvement in Syria had become “one of the agency’s largest covert operations” in which it was spending roughly $1bn a year (about $1 for every $15 in the CIA’s announced budget). At that time, this operation based out of Jordan had already “trained and equipped nearly 10,000 fighters sent into Syria over the past several years”. As Patrick Higgins has remarked, “[i]n other words, the United States launched a full-scale war against Syria, and few Americans actually noticed”. It is vital to place this aggression in the context of long-standing US animosity to the Syrian Government. As diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks have revealed, since at least 2006, the US has consistently sought to undermine it “by any available means”, utilising a variety of techniques including an effort—in co-ordination with Saudi Arabia—to encourage Islamic fundamentalism and sectarianism in the country by playing on fears of Iranian influence. Indeed, although it is rarely mentioned, a senior US intelligence official is on record in a televised interview with Mehdi Hasan confirming that facilitating the rise of ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups in Syria and Iraq was a “wilful decision” on behalf of the Obama administration. The BBC has recently reported that ISIS use ammunition bought legally in Eastern Europe by the US and Saudi Governments that is then transported via Turkey into Syria and Iraq, “sometimes only two months from leaving the factory”.

When US intervention in Syria is acknowledged, it is regularly portrayed as having been small-scale and insufficient. Professor Gilbert Achcar of SOAS has remarked that “Washington’s support to the opposition is more the stuff of jokes than anything serious”. Given that Achcar made this observation six months after the revelations concerning the enormous scale of the CIA’s Syria operation, it is hard to imagine exactly what level of military support would be required in order to be considered more than a ‘joke’. This misleading narrative of non-existent or inadequate US intervention, coupled with a propensity to defend it with insults, is extremely common, including among commentators who write for ostensibly left-leaning publications. Some pundits such as Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept have recently even gone so far as to claim that the US is in fact intervening in Syria, but “in favor of Assad“, an absurd argument that Glenn Greenwald has also expressed.

An Atmosphere of Intimidation
I tell the following anecdote not to portray myself as some kind of victim or to try and garner sympathy, but rather to provide a small example from personal experience that indicates the level to which the discourse on Syria has descended and to illustrate why so many people are now fearful of partaking in open debate on the issue. In August 2016, Murtaza Hussain conducted an interview with Mostafa Mahamed, then spokesperson of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the recently re-branded Jabhat al Nusra (i.e. al-Qaeda in Syria), during a period when the Western media were giving the group substantial coverage that was frequently entirely uncritical. In the interview, Mahamed pontificated on his vision for the future of Syrian society and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham’s role within it. Reading this interview I was struck that just as a Sky News interview with Mahamed had failed to do so four days before, Hussain had not thought it pertinent to ask why Mahamed, an Egyptian-born Australian fundamentalist with no previous links to the country, should have any say on the future of Syrian society. I posed this question to Hussain on Twitter and he responded dismissively, before declaring crudely: “It’s amazing how quickly Assadists start sounding like Mark Regev“. In so doing, and without a second’s thought, he had not only denounced me to his 50,000 followers as an “Assadist”, but also cheaply compared me to one of Israel’s most repugnant propagandists.

Hussain’s knee-jerk response to immediately delegitimise even polite questioning of his work by implying that it came from an “Assadist” perspective is revealing and is indicative of the broader tendency at work. Following this exchange, a number of people questioned Hussain’s dismissal of me in such a manner. One of those individuals was the American journalist, Rania Khalek, who has subsequently become perhaps the most prominent victim of this trend. Khalek, who was already being widely criticised at that time, was eventually hounded for her stance on Syria to such an extent that in October 2016, after agreeing to attend a conference in Damascus, she was forced to step down as an editor of Electronic Intifada. Ironically, while Khalek ultimately did not even attend the conference, several other mainstream journalists and analysts who did so have received no criticism. Khalek was specifically targeted for several months by a group that included Oz Katerji, who currently works for the Turkish state broadcaster, TRT World and fellow journalist Charles Davis. In direct messages, Katerji warned Khalek to “change your rhetoric or we will continue to campaign against you“; he also sent similar aggressive messages to Khalek’s colleague, Asa Winstanley.

A recent two-part investigation by the American journalist Max Blumenthal sparked an irate response and subsequent campaign of intimidation similar to that which Khalek faced. In the investigation, Blumenthal reported numerous inconvenient facts regarding the White Helmets and the lobbying group the Syria Campaign (both of which strongly advocate the imposition of a no-fly zone) that sent many of the groups’ supporters into meltdown. Blumenthal’s investigation, which I recommend reading, was factual, and anything but the ‘smear’ it was widely depicted to be. The fury of the reaction to Blumenthal’s work took me aback, not only because much of the information it contained was already well known in some circles online and had been published elsewhere previously, but because Blumenthal did not explore the explosive allegations that the White Helmets have faked some of the footage and images. These allegations (to even mention which online had seen people condemned as heartless and sickening) have subsequently been lent some credence after a bizarre incident in which the White Helmets posted online a so-called ‘mannequin challenge’ video (that has since been taken down) in which two of its members and a supposedly injured man trapped in rubble posed silently and motionlessly for thirty seconds before a dramatic rescue began and the man suddenly began to wail in pain.

Notwithstanding this omission, after his investigation was published, Blumenthal was immediately attacked and insulted by a number of prominent voices on Syria; Robin Yassin-Kassab slandered him as “pro-fascist filth” who was “desperate for attention, to distract from genocide and Russian imperialist crimes”. Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, who has declared that the White Helmets are his family and that “[a]n attack on them is an attack on me”, reacted to the articles with similar fury. Indeed, Blumenthal has alleged that many abusive and threatening phone calls that he received after the investigation was published were in fact from Idrees Ahmad. In his response to Blumenthal’s work, the BuzzFeed journalist Borzou Daragahi employed another tactic commonly used to smear leftist political positions, namely their pathologization, and claimed that the “Left’s obsession with SyriaCivilDef [the White Helmets] so unseemly. Likely points to unresolved mommy issues. So much of left psychologically damaged.” Daragahi proceeded to elaborate on this obscene domestic abuse analogy, stating “Perhaps daddy beat mommy, as Assad bombs civilians. You feel guilty for siding with daddy (Assad) and feel rage at mommy (civilians).” Previously, Daragahi has vilified anti-imperialists as “not really leftists, just anti-West. They are angry, damaged people with huge Oedipal issues”. In an exchange with Vijay Prashad, Joey Ayoub of Global Voices denigrated Blumenthal as a “pseudo-journalist with clear disdain for Syrians”, a particularly hypocritical criticism for Ayoub to make, considering that—in a truly crass distortion of reality—he then declared that there are not two sides in Syria, since the “overwhelming majority of Syrians rose up against Assad”. For Ayoub to so brazenly dismiss a substantial proportion of Syria’s population solely because it does not agree with his own perspective raises serious doubts about his objectivity.

It appears that the source of this widespread and often hysterical reaction to Blumenthal’s investigation by Ayoub, Daragahi and others—none of whom were able to challenge the accuracy of the reporting itself it should be noted—is not only due to the fact that for the first time, a journalist of Blumenthal’s stature was daring to critique the Syria Campaign and the White Helmets, but that in the words of a now fierce critic of his, Blumenthal “used to be one of us“. Indeed, in 2012 Blumenthal resigned in very public fashion from the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, citing its purportedly pro-Assad editorial stance. A strong response to Blumenthal’s decision to resign written by Sharmine Narwani—one of the Al-Akhbar writers he criticised—can be read here. The treatment that both Blumenthal and Khalek have received is indicative of how extremely restricted the mainstream debate on Syria is. Both have previously expressed ‘anti-Assad’ sentiment and have only changed their stances on Syria relatively recently. Yet despite their high profile, or possibly due to it, both have been widely attacked as supposedly callous pro-Assad stooges; and in the case of Khalek, the campaign against her forced her out of her place of employment.

https://mronline.org/2016/12/13/allday131216-html/

Syria: New U.S. Air Support On Request Scheme For Al-Qaeda

On this day one hundred years ago the U.S. joined World War I. Last night the U.S. attacked a Syrian government airport in an openly hostile and intentional manner. The strike established a mechanism by which al-Qaeda can "request" U.S. airstrikes on Syrian government targets. It severely damaged the main support base for Syria's fight against the Islamic State in eastern Syria. The event will possibly lead to a much larger war.

On April 4 Syrian airplanes hit an al-Qaeda headquarter in Khan Sheikoun, Idleb governate. Idleb governate is under al-Qaeda control. After the air strike some chemical agent was released. The symptoms shown in videos from local aid stations point to a nerve-agent. The release probably killed between 50 and 90 people. It is unknown how the release happened.

It is unlikely that the Syrian government did this:

In 2013 the Syrian government had given up all its chemical weapons. UN inspectors verified this.
The target was militarily and strategically insignificant.
There was no immediate pressure on the Syrian military.
The international political atmosphere had recently turned positive for Syria.
Even if Syria had stashed away some last-resort weapon this would have been the totally wrong moment and totally wrong target for using it. Over the last six year of war the Syrian government army had followed a political and militarily logical path. It acted consistently. It did not act irrational. It is highly unlikely that it would have now take such an illogical step.

The chemical used, either Sarin or Soman, was not in a clean form. Multiple witnesses reported of a "rotten smell" and greenish color. While the color would point to a mixture with Chlorine the intense smell of Chlorine is easily identifiable, covers up most other odors and would have been recognized by witnesses. Both Sarin and Soman are in pure form colorless, tasteless and odorless. The Syrian government once produced nerve agents on a professional, large scale base. Amateurishly produced nerve-gases are not pure and can smell (example: Tokyo subway incident 1995). It is unlikely that the Syrian government experts would produce a "rotten smelling", dirty, low quality stuff in an unprofessional and dangerous process.

The nerve agents in Khan Sheikoun, should they be confirmed, came either from stashed ammunition at the place attacked by the Syrian government or it was willfully released by the local ruling terrorist groups -al-Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham- after the strike to implicate the Syrian government. The relatively low casualty numbers of mostly civilians point to the second variant.

Several reports over the years confirm that Al-Qaeda in Syria has the precursors and capabilities to produce and use Sarin as well as other chemical agents. This would not be their first use of such weapons. Al-Qaeda was under imminent pressure. It was losing the war. It is therefor highly likely that this was an intentional release by al-Qaeda to create public pressure on the Syrian government.

For a release incident of powerful chemical weapons the casualty numbers were low, lower than the casualty numbers of recent conventional U.S. air strikes in Syria and Iraq. Despite that fact a huge international media attack wave, seemingly prepared in advance, against the Syrian government was released. No evidence was presented that the incident was caused by the Syrian government. The only pictures and witness reports from the ground came from or through elements, like the White Helmets, who are known to by embedded with al-Qaeda and ISIS (video) and are acting as their propaganda arm.

Last night U.S. president Trump "responded" to the incident by ordering the launch of 59 cruise missiles on the Syrian military airport Al Syairat (vid). The cruise missiles were launched from sea in a volley designed to overwhelm air defenses. According to the Syrian and Russian military only 23 cruise missiles reached the airport. The others were shut down or failed. Six Syrian soldiers were Killed, nine civilians in a nearby village were killed or wounded and nine Syrian jets were destroyed. The airport infrastructure was severely damaged. The Syrian and Russian governments had been warned before the strikes hit and evacuated most men and critical equipment. (Was the warning part of a deal?) The air attack coincided with an Islamic State ground attack east of the airport.

The Pentagon alleges, without any evidence, that Sarin had been stored at the airport and a chemical attack launched from it. Both seems highly unlikely. The airport was accessible for UN inspectors. It is not as well covered by air defenses as other Syrian airports, for example in Latakia governate. Its ground approaches are not completely secured. Some medium range air defense system near al Syairat was recently used against Israeli planes attacking Syrian forces fighting ISIS near Palmyra.

Al Syairat lies in Homs governate, 150 km south of Khan Sheikoun in Idleb governate. It is the main support and supply airport for the besieged Syrian government enclave in Deir Ezzor which will now again be in even more serious trouble. It was also used to launch attacks on the Islamic State which fights the Syrian government troops in east Homs.

Al-Qaeda and its sidekick Ahra al-Sham welcomed the U.S. strikes and Abu Ivanka al Amriki on their side. The theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia offered its full support as did its British creators.

The U.S. airstrike delivers a message to al-Qaeda. Whenever under military pressure al-Qaeda can now stage or fake a "chemical attack" and the U.S. will act to destroy its enemy, the Syrian government. Acts as the one last night are then direct military support by the U.S. on al-Qaeda's request.

A similar scheme had earlier been established on the Golan heights. Al-Qaeda, fighting against Syrian government positions, would launch a mortar round that would land within Israeli controlled territory. Israel would then launch artillery strikes against Syrian government positions because "the Syrian government is responsible for what happens in the area". Al-Qaeda then used the battle field advantage created by the Israeli strike. The scheme and the Israeli military "reasoning" was published several times in Israeli media:

A number of mortars have landed in Israeli territory as a result of spillover fighting over the last several years, raising fears among residents near the border.
The IDF often responds to fire that crosses into Israel by striking Syrian army posts.

Israel maintains a policy of holding Damascus responsible for all fire from Syria into Israel regardless of the source of the fire.

The U.S. administration has now established a similar mechanism, on a larger scale, of direct military U.S. support for al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria.

The Trump presidency had been held hostage by unfounded allegation of "Russian interference" in the U.S. elections in support of the Trump candidacy. The air strikes on Syria might have been the ransom that was demanded for the release of the hostage. His opponents are now gushing about him. The allegation of any Trump-Russia connections may now die down.

Yesterday major Democratic leaders in Congress supported strikes on Syria. Despite that they are also likely to attack Trump over them. The strikes are a "strong man" gamble. As Trump said when Obama ordered strikes such are a desperate move. Most parts of the State Department and the NSC were not consulted about them. The chances that these will "blow back" politically as well as strategically are high.

Trump is the third U.S. president in a row who promised less belligerence during his campaign only to deliver more after the election. The "democratic" veil of the U.S. oligarchic rule thus rips further apart.

Open U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria will now cease. U.S. planes in Syrian airspace are from now on constantly under imminent danger. There will also be some larger revenge against the U.S. for last night's strikes. Likely not in Syria but in Iraq, Afghanistan or at sea. A "message" will be send. The U.S. reaction to that "message" will be a decision over a much larger war.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/syria-us-creates-new-air-support-request-scheme-for-al-qaeda.html#comments

US launches cruise missile attack against Syrian government
By James Cogan
7 April 2017

Between 8 and 9 p.m., US Eastern Time Thursday, two US warships in the Mediterranean fired a barrage of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base at Shayrat, near the city of Homs. The attack is the first direct assault by the United States on the Russian- and Iranian-backed government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has plunged the world into days of uncertainty as to the consequences. Highlighting the utter recklessness and criminality of the American action, Russian forces were at the base.

The Syrian government has issued a bitter condemnation of the US attack, denouncing it as “aggression.” There are reports that at least four Syrian troops were killed and that the air base was virtually destroyed.

The Russian military was reportedly given notice that the air base was going to be bombed. Russia has large numbers of aircraft and personnel in Syria assisting Assad’s forces fight a six-year, US-sponsored insurrection by predominantly Islamist militias. If the Russians were given notice, questions remain as to whether they were given a sufficient window of time to withdraw their assets from harm’s way.

The pretext for the US attack is the sinister and dubious allegation that Assad’s air force used chemical weapons in an attack on a rebel-held town on Tuesday. The claims are dubious, above all, because the Syrian government had no motive to use such weapons, knowing that it would be seized upon to demand that Trump order a direct US-led intervention. The Islamist rebels, by contrast, along with their CIA advisors, had ample motive under conditions in which they are facing complete military defeat. Moreover, the Al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra militia is known to be in possession of, and to have used chemical weapons.

On Thursday, the Assad government again categorically denied any responsibility for a chemical weapons attack. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem stated: “I stress, once again, that the Syrian Arab Army did not and will not use such weapons even against the terrorists who are targeting our people.”

The attack on Syria is the outcome of months of political civil war in Washington, which has seen Trump denounced by the Democratic Party and much of the media as a virtual Russian puppet for his stated agenda of improving relations with Moscow. His domestic opponents have succeeded in compelling the new administration to shift and make the immediate focus of US foreign policy stepped-up operations in the Middle East.

The result is the prospect of a rapid descent toward a confrontation with Iran and nuclear-armed Russia. It is entirely conceivable that the Syrian military, using sophisticated Russian-supplied anti-aircraft missile systems, will now retaliate by engaging American aircraft in Syrian airspace or launching attacks on the American troops operating on the ground with various rebel militias in parts of the country.

Trump appears to have authorised the bombardment even as he was sitting down for dinner and a photo opportunity with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who arrived in the US just hours before and whose government has consistently aligned with Russia to defend Assad’s government.

Among the numerous questions posed by the US strike is whether the top-level summit between Trump and Xi can even proceed. The situation is, by any standard, unprecedented for a Chinese leader. Xi will face immense recriminations in China if he is seen sitting alongside Trump in polite diplomatic talks, at a luxury golf resort in Florida, while his own government, Russia, Iran and other countries are denouncing a unilateral and illegal American act of war on Syria.

Moreover, the Trump administration has been threatening to launch a pre-emptive attack on North Korea and trigger a catastrophic war on China’s borders. The missile strike on Syria will remove any doubt in Chinese strategic and military circles as to whether Trump would be prepared to order such action.

Trump held a press conference Thursday evening at his Florida mansion. In words dripping with imperialist hypocrisy, he stated: “Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.”

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson subsequently issued a statement accusing Russia of being “complicit” in the alleged gas attack and denouncing it for failing to meet its undertakings in 2013 to ensure Syria destroyed its chemical weapons. At the time, the Obama administration, in the face of doubts in the US military establishment and popular opposition, used the Russian guarantees to back away from its plans to wage a massive air war on the Assad government.

The Putin government in Moscow, backed by Bolivia, has signaled that it will demand an emergency session of the UN Security Council on Friday to condemn the American strike. The Russian Senate Security and Defense Committee chair Viktor Ozerov told journalists that the attack was an “act of aggression against a United Nations member.” Prior to the missile strikes, Russia had demanded an impartial investigation into the alleged gas attack and warned Washington that there would be “negative consequences” if it instead took military action.

The other key supporter of the Assad government, Iran, has issued a statement through its foreign ministry that it “roundly condemns” the US action. Large numbers of Iranian military personnel are on the ground not only in Syria, but in Iraq, fighting alongside Shiite militias that are nominally loyal to the US-backed government in Baghdad.

In Syria, the Saudi- and Turkish-financed and armed Islamist Ahrar al-Sham militia declared that it “welcomes any US intervention through surgical strikes.” The Israeli government has issued a statement voicing its complete support for the American operation. Turkey had already given blanket support in advance of the strikes.
As the US strike took place late in the night European time, the imperialist allies of Washington in Europe, after spending days exploiting the alleged gas attack to denounce Assad and Russia and call for action, have not yet issued formal statements.

On the other side of the world, an indication of how numerous US allies may respond has been given in Australia. The country’s defence minister was phoned by US officials several hours before the US strikes. Australia has fighter-bombers and other aircraft operating with American forces in Syria and Iraq. Both the government and the main Labor Party opposition have made statements fully endorsing the US strike, though Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull would not confirm if the Australian military would join attacks on the Syrian government.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/07/syri-a07.html

SYRIA: Another Chemical Weapon False Flag on the Eve of Peace Talks in Brussels
APRIL 4, 2017 BY 21WIRE
Paul Antonopoulos
Al Masdar News

“At least 58 people were killed in an alleged horrific gas attack in the Idlib Governorate this morning“. However, even before investigations could be conducted and for evidence to emerge, Federica Mogherini, the Italian politician High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, condemned the Syrian government stating that the “Assad regime bears responsibility for ‘awful’ Syria ‘chemical’ attack.”

The immediate accusation from a high ranking EU official serves as a dangerous precedent where public outcry can be made even before the truth surrounding the tragedy can emerge

Israeli President, Benjamin Netanyahu, joined in on the condemnation, as did Amnesty International.

Merely hours after the alleged chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhun, supposedly by the Syrian government, holes are beginning to emerge from opposition sources, discrediting the Al-Qaeda affiliated White Helmets claims.

For one, seen in the above picture, the White Helmets are handling the corpses of people without sufficient safety gear, most particularly with the masks mostly used , as well as no gloves. Although this may seem insignificant, understanding the nature of sarin gas that the opposition claim was used, only opens questions.

Within seconds of exposure to sarin, the affects of the gas begins to target the muscle and nervous system. There is an almost immediate release of the bowels and the bladder, and vomiting is induced. When sarin is used in a concentrated area, it has the likelihood of killing thousands of people. Yet, such a dangerous gas, and the White Helmets are treating bodies with little concern to their exposed skin. This has to raise questions.

It also raises the question why a doctor in a hospital full of victims of sarin gas has the time to tweet and make video calls. This will probably be dismissed and forgotten however.

4 Apr
maytham @maytham956

Terrorist Mohammed Alloush is not a gas expert, he is just one of the participants in the crime#Idlib #Syria https://twitter.com/maytham956/status/849235559117619201 …

Follow
Malinka @Malinka1102
@maytham956 Hmm...'Patients are flooding in' YET this 'doctor' (seems the main source of 'gas attack') has time to film, tweet and videocalls...#Syria pic.twitter.com/SfLOfjE2pG
8:54 AM - 4 Apr 2017
View image on Twitter
228 228 Retweets 191 191 likes
It is also worth mentioning that Dr Shajul Islam has been struck off the medical register in the UK.

It is known that about 250 people from Majdal and Khattab were kidnapped by Al-Qaeda terrorists last week. Local sources have claimed that many of those dead from the chemical weapons were those from Majdal and Khattab. This would suggest that on the eve of upcoming peace negotiations, terrorist forces have once again created a false flag scenario. This bears resemblance to the Ghouta chemical weapons attack in August 2013 where the Syrian Army was accused of using the weapons of mass destruction on the day that United Nations Weapon’s Inspectors arrived in Damascus.

Later, Carla del Ponte, a UN weapons inspector said that there was no evidence that the government had committed the atrocity. This had however not stopped the calls for intervention against the Syrian government, a hope that the militant forces wished to eventuate from their use of chemical weapons against civilians in Ghouta.

Therefore, it is completely unsurprising that Orient TV has already prepared a “media campaign” to cover the Russian and Syrian airstrikes in neighbouring Hama countryside against terrorist forces, with the allegations that the airforces have been using chemical weapons. And most telling, their announcement of covering the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, hours before this allegation even emerged…….. Seems like someone forgot to tell him that it would not occur for a few more hours before his tweet.


Within Syria @WithinSyriaBlog
Orient TV reporter :

"tomorrow we are launching a media campaign to cover the airstrikes on Hama country side including the usage of CW"
8:42 AM - 4 Apr 2017

234 234 Retweets 169 169 likes

Meanwhile, pick up trucks have been photographed around bodies of those killed. Again, it must be questioned why there are people around sarin gas without any protective gear, and not affected at all when it can begin attacking the body within seconds? Also, the pick up trucks remain consistent to what local sources have said were used to transport many of the victims identified as kidnapped by Al-Qaeda terrorists from pro-government towns in rural Hama.

Idlib attacks

Also, what is brought into question is where the location of the hose is coming from in the below picture, a dugout carved into the rock. This also suggests that the location is at a White Helmets base where there are dug out hiding spots carved into the mountainside and where they have easy access to equipment, as highlighted by Twitter user Ian Grant.

idlib 2

In response to the allegations, the Syrian Arab Army soldiers in neighbouring northern Hama denied the use of any chemicals weapons today. This is consistent with the Russian Ministry of Defense who denied any involvement in the attack.

The army “has not and does not use them, not in the past and not in the future, because it does not have them in the first place,” a military source said.

And this of course begs the question. With the Syrian Army and its allies in a comfortable position in Syria, making advances across the country, and recovering lost points in rural Hama, why would they now resort to using chemical weapons in Nusra Front occupied Idlib? It is a very simple question with no clear answer. It defies any logic that on the eve of a Syria conference in Brussels and a week before peace negotiations are to resume, that the Syrian government would blatantly use the non-existent stock of chemical weapons.
All evidence suggests this is another false chemical attack allegation made against the government as seen in the Ghouta 2013 attack where the terrorist groups hoped that

former President Obama’s “red-line” would be crossed leading to US-intervention in Syria against the government.

Most telling however, is that most recent report shows that the government does not deny striking Khan Sheikhun. Al-Masdar’s Yusha Yuseef was informed by the Syrian Army that the air force targeted a missile factory in Khan Sheikoun, using a Russian-manufactured Su-22 fighter jet to carry out the attack. Most importantly, the Su-22’s bombs are unique and cannot be filled with any chemical substances, which is different to the bombs dropped from attack helicopters.

Yuseef was then told that the Syrian Air Force did not know if there were any chemical substances being stored inside the missile factory in Khan Sheikhoun. It remains to be known whether there actually were chemicals in the missile factory targeted by the airstrikes, or whether the terrorist forces used gas on the kidnapped civilians from the pro-government towns and brought them in the lorry trucks to the site of the airstrikes. Whether they were gassed by the militant forces, or the airstrikes caused a terrorist controlled chemical weapon factory to explode, the gruesome deaths of children, seen foaming in the mouth because of the gas, lays in the hands of the terrorists.

Therefore, it becomes evident that the area targeted was definitely a terrorist location, where it is known that the White Helmets share operation rooms with terrorist forces like Al-Qaeda as seen after the liberation of eastern Aleppo. Civilians and fighting forces, including Kurdish militias, have all claimed that militant groups that operate in Idlib, Hama and Aleppo countrysides, have used chemical weapons in the past.

Therefore, before the war cries begin and the denouncement of the government from high officials in power positions begin, time must be given so that all evidence can emerge. However, this is an important factor that has never existed in the Syrian War, and the terrorist forces continue to hope that Western-intervention against the government will occur, at the cost of the lives of innocent civilians.

http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/04/04/syria-another-chemical-weapon-false-flag-on-the-eve-of-peace-talks-in-brussels/

b: The symptoms shown in videos from local aid stations point to a nerve-agent.

b: The chemical used, either Sarin or Soman, was not in a clean form.

These are absolutely a false statements. People repeating the sarin myth only prove how effective this particular false-flag is. Quit being gullible.

Khan Sheikhoun is Ghouta II. In both cases the internet lit up with "Sarin!! Sarin!! Sarin!!" before anyone could possibly know what happened. This is not sarin.

And the reasons I say it are too numerous and too complicated to go into in a blog comment. Here is a 278 page thesis on the Ghouta Massacre that explains the pharmacology of these organophosphate agents.

http://logophere.com/Ghouta%20Massacre/Contents.htm

Here is a shorter version for those not into biology.

http://logophere.com/Topics2016/16-01/16-01-02.htm

Please, people. Educate yourselves. This is important.

This best way to see immediately that the victims have not died from sarin intoxication is that in almost every case their skin is red/pink. Sarin turns people blue -- always. Sarin makes people puke on themselves, urinate on themselves, shit themselves. Show me the evidence of sarin. Scores and scores of "sarin victims," not a single one has the constellation of symptoms produced by sarin. Not a single one.

The red/pink color of the victims in the vids suggests the people were executed with cyanide or carbon monoxide, which, in turn, suggests these scenes are staged after the executions. The evidence for KS is just now being collected. The evidence for Ghouta is very, very strong: those people were gassed by the terrorists using, probably, CO.

Please quit spreading the lie that these are sarin victims and sarin attacks. They are false flags and now that there is a moron in the WH we see how effective those false flags will be unless the public understands what is going on biologically.

My PhD is in pharmacology, specializing in neuropharmacology, University of Virginia. My postdoc was at Harvard in neurosciences. I am a lawyer. I know bullshit when I smell it. This sarin bullshit has to stop.

Open U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria will now cease. U.S. planes in Syrian airspace are from now on constantly under imminent danger. There will also be some larger revenge against the U.S. for last night's strikes. Likely not in Syria but in Iraq, Afghanistan or at sea. A "message" will be send. The U.S. reaction to that "message" will be a decision over a much larger war.

And who exactly gonna do that? Not Russia, too busy prostrating itself to it's 'partner' to defend it's Syrian ally with it's vaunted S400 missile defense. Sometimes people express idealistic notions that evil will, must, be avenged, corrected, but it ain't necessarily so. Older I get the more occasions of 'people getting away with murder' accumulate. Guess I'm just impatient, huh?

So I guess a false flag operation by US terrorists proxies posing as Iranians/Hezbollah is possible, that would totally serve US interests, both justifying aggression against those folks and excusing further tightening of the screws of the security state at home.

PS reports I'm seeing from Syria claim than only 23 missiles hit the base only 5 aircraft were destroyed, less than a dozen killed and that some missiles fell in nearby villages. Needs to be ascertained and quite different from reports of overwhelming success that sound as if Trump wrote them himself.

Syrian Communist Party - Syrian Communist Party
3 hrs ·
America is the biggest terrorist in the world
Comrade Secretary - General Dr. permit. Ammar Bikdash
Radio Damascus on the seventh morning of April
What happened today is a continuation of the American aggression against our country, this attack on the military base of the Syrian army is a continuation of the American aggression. Valomercan, before the attack, carried out Anzala to their forces in the north-east of our country. This aggression proves once again what we have referred to earlier that the main enemy of our people is US imperialism and its ally Israel membership in the Zionist region. If this is a continuation of the American aggression, and that aggression must be confronted as any aggression against peoples. America proves once again that it is the biggest terrorist in the world, it is practiced state terrorism on all the peoples of the world in line with the colonial expansionist interests.
In my opinion, the talk about that the American policies is instantaneous illusions, and is in the same illusions that can neutralize America. America's expansionist policy steady in the whole world, especially in our region, and all the disasters in the region and the tragedies experienced by the Syrian people since more than six years is the result, primarily, returning to the US imperialist policy. The main enemy is America, which has never disappeared from the scene, you may sometimes work directly, and sometimes working behind the scenes, but it is the main actor in the attack on the peoples in the region, including the Syrian people, primarily now the Syrian people.
The United States has no interest in finding any solution that is in favor of the independence of the Syrian people, national sovereignty, and the unity of the Syrian land, these things aspire to the Syrian people, which is fighting for, which was submitted for this lofty goal, thousands of martyrs the altar of the homeland.
Therefore, whoever thinks that he could be America 's positive role regarding the peace process in Syria, is also the most important, this catch the wind, and the vanity of vanities.
America is in its interest to subject peoples of the region to manage, full dominance, through the primary agent, Zionist Israel 's inauguration, Kmtsrv this region, and this is what was sought by the project «big new Middle East», and still, who cook jointly between the ruling circles in United States of America and international Zionism.

https://www.facebook.com/SyrianCommunistParty/posts/795541253932998

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The Syrian-Sarin ‘False Flag’ Lesson
Amid Official Washington’s desire to censor non-official news on the Internet, it’s worth remembering how the lack of mainstream skepticism almost led the U.S. into a war on Syria
byRay McGovern

A review of events leading to the very edge of full-blown U.S. shock-and-awe on Syria three years ago provides a case study with important lessons for new policymakers as they begin to arrive in Washington.

It is high time to expose the whys and wherefores of the almost-successful attempt to mousetrap President Barack Obama into an open attack on Syria three years ago. Little-known and still less appreciated is the last-minute intervention of Russian President Vladimir Putin as deus ex machina rescuing Obama from the corner into which he had let himself be painted.

Accumulating evidence offers persuasive proof that Syrian rebels supported by Turkish intelligence – not Syrian Army troops – bear responsibility for the infamous sarin nerve-gas attack killing hundreds of people on Aug. 21, 2013 in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus. The incident bears all the earmarks of a false-flag attack.

But U.S. and other “rebel-friendly” media outlets wasted no time in offering “compelling” evidence from “social media” – which Secretary of State John Kerry described as an “extraordinary tool” – to place the onus on the Syrian government.

However, as the war juggernaut started rolling toward war, enter Putin from stage right with an offer difficult for Obama to refuse – guaranteed destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons on a U.S. ship outfitted for such purpose. This cheated Washington’s neocon mousetrap-setters out of their war on Syria. They would get back at Putin six months later by orchestrating an anti-Russian coup in Kiev.

But the play-by-play in U.S.-Russian relations in summer 2013 arguably surpasses in importance even the avoidance of an overt U.S. assault on Syria. Thus, it is important to appreciate the lessons drawn by Russian leaders from the entire experience.

Putting Cheese in the Mousetrap

So, let us recall that on Dec. 10, 2015, just over one year ago, Turkish Member of Parliament Eren Erdem testified about how Turkey’s intelligence service helped deliver sarin precursors to rebels in Syria.

The Official Story blaming Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was already collapsing – largely discredited by reports in independent media and by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh – though it remained widely accepted in the U.S. mainstream media which repeatedly cited the case as the moment when Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” against using chemical weapons and Obama had failed to back up his threat.

But Erdem took the debunking of the “official” tale to a public and official level. Based on government documents from a Turkish court, which he waved before his MP colleagues, Erdem poured ice water on the West’s long-running excited belief that Assad had “gassed his own people.”

But, alas, if you do not understand Turkish, or if you missed this story in the Belfast Telegraph of Dec. 14 or if you don’t read some independent Web sites or if you believe that RT publishes only Russian “propaganda,” this development may still come as a huge surprise, for Erdem’s revelations appeared in no other English-language newspaper.

So, those malnourished by “mainstream media” may be clueless about the scary reality that Obama came within inches of letting himself be mousetrapped into ordering U.S. armed forces to mount a shock-and-awe-type attack on Syria in late summer 2013.

Turkish MP Testimony

Addressing fellow members of the Turkish Parliament, Turkish MP Erdem from the opposition Republican People’s Party directly confronted his government on this key issue. Waving a copy of “Criminal Case Number 2013/120,” Erdem described official Turkish reports and electronic evidence documenting a smuggling operation with Turkish government complicity.

In an interview with RT four days later, Erdem said Turkish authorities had evidence of sarin gas-related shipments to anti-government rebels in Syria, and did nothing to stop them.

The General Prosecutor in the Turkish city of Adana opened a criminal case and an indictment stated “chemical weapons components” from Europe “were to be seamlessly shipped via a designated route through Turkey to militant labs in Syria.”

Erdem cited evidence implicating the Turkish Minister of Justice and the Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation in the smuggling of sarin. Small wonder that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately accused Erdem of “treason.”

Erdem testified that the 13 suspects, who had been arrested in police raids on the plotters, were released just a week after they were indicted. The case was shut down abruptly by higher authority.

Erdem told RT that the sarin attack at Ghouta took place shortly after the criminal case was closed and that the attack probably was carried out by jihadists with sarin gas smuggled through Turkey.

Erdem’s disclosures were not entirely new. More than two years before Erdem’s brave actions, in a Memorandum for the President by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity of Sept. 6, 2013, we had reported that coordination meetings had taken place just weeks before the sarin attack at a Turkish military garrison in Antakya, some 15 miles from the border with Syria.

In Antakya, senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials were said to be coordinating plans with Western-sponsored rebels who were told to expect an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development.” This, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria, and rebel commanders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Assad government.

A year earlier, The New York Times reported that the Antakya area had become a “magnet for foreign jihadis, who are flocking into Turkey to fight holy war in Syria.” The Times quoted a Syrian opposition member based in Antakya, saying the Turkish police were patrolling this border area “with their eyes closed.”

Kerry Dancing

It is a safe bet that Secretary of State John Kerry’s aides briefed him in timely fashion on Erdem’s revelations. This may account for why, on a visit to Moscow on Dec. 15, 2015 (four days after Erdem’s testimony), Kerry chose to repeat the meme that Assad “gassed his people; I mean, gas hasn’t been used in warfare formally for years and gas is outlawed, but Assad used it.”

Three days later, The Washington Post dutifully echoed Kerry, charging that Assad had killed “his own people with chemical weapons.” And this charge remains a staple in U.S. corporate media, where Erdem’s testimony is still nowhere to be found.

Kerry also didn’t want to admit that he had grossly misled the American people on an issue of war and peace. Just days after the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin attack at Ghouta, Kerry and his neocon allies displayed their acumen in following George W. Bush’s dictum: “You got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

On Aug. 30, Kerry solemnly claimed, no fewer than 35 times, “We know” the Assad government was responsible for the sarin deaths, finally giving Kerry and the neocons their casus belli.

But on Aug. 31, with U.S. intelligence analysts expressing their own doubts that Assad’s forces were responsible, Obama put the brakes on the juggernaut toward war, saying he would first seek approval from Congress. Kerry, undaunted, wasted no time in lobbying Congress for war.

On Sept. 1, Kerry told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that briefings in Congress had already begun and that “we are not going to lose this vote.” On Sept. 3, Kerry was back at it with a bravura performance before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, whose leaders showed in their own remarks the degree to which they were lusting for an attack on Syria.

The following offers a taste for Kerry’s “protest-too-much” testimony: “the Assad regime, and only, undeniably, the Assad regime, unleashed an outrageous chemical attack against its own citizens. … In their lust to hold on to power, [they] were willing to infect the air of Damascus with a poison that killed innocent mothers and fathers and hundreds of their children, their lives all snuffed out by gas in the early morning of August 21st.

“Now, some people here and there, amazingly, have questioned the evidence of this assault on conscience. I repeat here again today that only the most willful desire to avoid reality can assert that this did not occur as described or that the regime did not do it. It did happen, and the Assad regime did it.

“Within minutes of the attack, the social media exploded with horrific images of men and women, the elderly, and children sprawled on a hospital floor with no wounds, no blood, but all dead. Those scenes of human chaos and desperation were not contrived. They were real. No one could contrive such a scene. …

“And as we debate, the world wonders, not whether Assad’s regime executed the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century — that fact I think is now beyond question — the world wonders whether the United States of America will consent through silence to standing aside while this kind of brutality is allowed to happen without consequence.”

Kerry’s added a credulity-stretching attempt to play down the role and effectiveness of Al Qaeda in Syria, and exaggerated the strength of the “moderate” rebels there. This drew unusually prompt and personal criticism from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin: “Kerry Lies”

Rarely does it happen that a president of a major country calls the head diplomat of a rival state a “liar,” but that is the label Russian President Putin chose for Kerry on the day after his congressional testimony. Referring to Kerry during a televised meeting of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council on Sept. 4, Putin addressed the sarin issue in these words:

“It is simply absurd to imagine that Assad used chemical weapons, given that he is gaining ground. After all, this is a weapon of last resort.” Putin claimed, correctly, that Assad had “encircled his adversaries in some places and was finishing them off.”

Putin continued: “I watched the congressional debates. A congressman asked Mr. Kerry, ‘Is Al Qaeda present there? I’ve heard they have gained momentum.’ He replied, ‘No. I can tell you earnestly, they are not.’”

Putin continued, “The main combat unit, the so-called Al-Nusra, is an Al-Qaeda subdivision. They [the Americans] know about this. This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. After all … we talk with them, and we assume they are decent people. But he is lying, and he knows he is lying. That is sad. …

“We are currently focused on the fact that the U.S. Congress and Senate are discussing authorization for use of force. … As you know, Syria is not attacking the U.S., so there is no question of self-defense; and anything else, lacking U.N. authorization, is an act of aggression. … we are all glued to our televisions, waiting to see if they will get the approval of Congress.”

On the following day, Sept. 5, Obama arrived in St. Petersburg for a G-20 summit, with ample reason to suspect that Putin was right about Kerry lying about the sarin attack – the President having been warned the previous week by National Intelligence Director James Clapper that there was no “slam-dunk” evidence against the Assad regime. So, Obama agreed to Putin’s offer to get Syria to surrender its chemical weapons for destruction, and the war fever began to abate.

Curiously, Kerry himself was kept in the dark about the Putin-Obama agreement and was still making the case for war on Sept. 9. At the very end of a press conference that day in London, Kerry was asked whether there was anything Assad could do to prevent a U.S. attack. Kerry answered that Assad could give up every one of his chemical weapons, but “he isn’t about to do that; it can’t be done.”

Still later on Sept. 9, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Syrian counterpart announced that Syria had agreed to allow all its chemical weapons to be removed and destroyed. As soon as Kerry arrived back in Washington, he was sent off to Geneva to sign the deal that Obama had cut directly with Putin. (All Syria’s chemical weapons have now been destroyed.)

Yet, two weeks later, Obama was still reading from the neocon teleprompter. In his formal address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2013, he declared, “It’s an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the [Syrian] regime carried out this [sarin] attack.”

More Candor With Goldberg

Earlier this year, though, Obama was bragging to his informal biographer, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, about having thwarted planning for open war on Syria, even though that required disregarding the advice of virtually all his foreign-policy advisers.

One gem fished out by Goldberg was Obama’s admission that DNI Clapper had warned him in late August (a week before he went to St. Petersburg and a month before his U.N. speech) that the evidence pinning blame on Damascus for the sarin attack was hardly airtight.

Goldberg wrote that Clapper interrupted the President’s morning intelligence briefing “to make clear that the intelligence on Syria’s use of sarin gas, while robust, was not a ‘slam dunk.’” Clapper chose his words carefully, echoing the language that CIA Director George Tenet used to falsely assure President George W. Bush that the case could be made to convince the American people that Iraq was hiding WMDs.

Even though Obama continued to dissemble and the mainstream U.S. news media has continued to treat Syria’s “guilt” in the sarin attack as “flat fact,” the neocons did not get their war on Syria. I describe an unusually up-front-and-personal experience of their chagrin under the subtitle “Morose at CNN” in “How War on Syria Lost Its Way.”

Nor did neocon disappointment subside in subsequent years. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, has remained among the most outspoken critics of Obama’s decision to cancel the attack on Syria in 2013.

On Dec. 3, 2014, Corker complained that, while the U.S. military was poised to launch a “very targeted, very brief” operation against the Syrian government for using chemical weapons, Obama called off the attack at the last minute.

Corker’s criticism was scathing: “I think the worst moment in U.S. foreign policy since I’ve been here, as far as signaling to the world where we were as a nation, was August a year ago when we had a 10-hour operation that was getting ready to take place in Syria but it didn’t happen. … In essence and – I’m sorry to be slightly rhetorical — we jumped in Putin’s lap.”

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/12/12/syrian-sarin-false-flag-lesson

These are excellent points about the motives behind the wild cry of the Trump administration about the chemical attack in Idlib. More than ninety persons were killed and many others were injured. First of all, the Syrian Arab Army is expanding its control on the Syrian land, beating terrorists very badly. It has also prevented the Turkish army with its allies to move toward AL Raqqa. Most terrorists, AL Nusra and others, are sent to Idlib and their time is coming to be eliminated. US imperialist investment in these terrorist organizations is disintegrating. US imperialist war crime in Mosul under the new war criminal president has reached more than 517 persons, rather than 100. In Yemen, more than 50 innocent persons were killed by Mr. Trump. In Syria, more infrastructure has been destroyed and several mosques have been destroyed, killing many innocent people and showing hostility towards Islam and Muslims. Therefore, unsurprisingly, all these factors, and all internal issues including Israel push to keep the civil war going on in Syria, have pushed Mr. Trump to cover his "ass" by blaming AL- Assad about the gas attack without providing any evidence, according to his shitty UN ambassador Haley. Taking all these issues, US imperialism is losing its imperialist war against the Arab resistance forces, and if US imperialism continues its hostility towards the Arabs will suffer a major defeat and total disintegration of its fictitious economy. Finally, the chemical weapons these terrorist organizations have were sent to them by the war Criminal Obama through Turkey. The weapons were taken from Libya. Please next time write the elected president Bashar AL-Assad who was elected by the Syrian people.

Comrades please take note that this alleged Syrian gas attack report that is surfacing now in all mainstream media networks is happening at a time when Assad regime is gaining the upper hand in the Syrian conflict. Moreover, I'm not here at all defending the past record of Assad regime, but one needs to raise a simple question as to what are the incentives for President Assad in ordering a Chemical attack in Idlib Syria which is the stronghold of ISIS at a time when the whole world is watching him to make the first wrong move. In any case, how could the Syrian leader who has personally survived for more then 6 years in this brutal conflict risk a chemical attack at a time when he is closing in on Western backed Jihadist fighters on all essential fronts. Besides the logic here states that only desperate political actors in war situations launch unconventional means as a possible means to survive, and as of this writing the Assad regime is still surviving. Therefore, we can say here that the entire Western news reports that we are hearing these days in this regards does not make sense.

These are excellent points about the motives behind the wild cry of the Trump administration about the chemical attack in Idlib. More than ninety persons were killed and many others were injured. First of all, the Syrian Arab Army is expanding its control on the Syrian land, beating terrorists very badly. It has also prevented the Turkish army with its allies to move toward AL Raqqa. Most terrorists, AL Nusra and others, are sent to Idlib and their time is coming to be eliminated. US imperialist investment in these terrorist organizations is disintegrating. US imperialist war crime in Mosul under the new war criminal president has reached more than 517 persons, rather than 100. In Yemen, more than 50 innocent persons were killed by Mr. Trump. In Syria, more infrastructure has been destroyed and several mosques have been destroyed, killing many innocent people and showing hostility towards Islam and Muslims. Therefore, unsurprisingly, all these factors, and all internal issues including Israel push to keep the civil war going on in Syria, have pushed Mr. Trump to cover his "ass" by blaming AL- Assad about the gas attack without providing any evidence, according to his shitty UN ambassador Haley. Taking all these issues, US imperialism is losing its imperialist war against the Arab resistance forces, and if US imperialism continues its hostility towards the Arabs will suffer a major defeat and total disintegration of its fictitious economy. Finally, the chemical weapons these terrorist organizations have were sent to them by the war Criminal Obama through Turkey. The weapons were taken from Libya. Please next time write the elected president Bashar AL-Assad who was elected by the Syrian people.

Comrades please take note that this alleged Syrian gas attack report that is surfacing now in all mainstream media networks is happening at a time when Assad regime is gaining the upper hand in the Syrian conflict. Moreover, I'm not here at all defending the past record of Assad regime, but one needs to raise a simple question as to what are the incentives for President Assad in ordering a Chemical attack in Idlib Syria which is the stronghold of ISIS at a time when the whole world is watching him to make the first wrong move. In any case, how could the Syrian leader who has personally survived for more then 6 years in this brutal conflict risk a chemical attack at a time when he is closing in on Western backed Jihadist fighters on all essential fronts. Besides the logic here states that only desperate political actors in war situations launch unconventional means as a possible means to survive, and as of this writing the Assad regime is still surviving. Therefore, we can say here that the entire Western news reports that we are hearing these days in this regards does not make sense.

Perfectly succinct, though I don't think this one defeat will unravel the empire, gonna take more than that. Too bad that it's utterly irrelevant to the many persons who saw 'it' on TV, they saw children dying, they saw the dead piled up, when you tell them about the white helmets you get that 'horn in the center of your head' look. When you talk about motives they just repeat "But I saw it on TV." I am helpless and useless before the electronic image.

The Regime That Isn’t
December 19, 2016

By Stephen Gowans

“A substantial body of research conducted over many decades highlights the proximity between western news media and their respective governments, especially in the realm of foreign affairs,” writes Piers Robinson, Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield. “For reasons that include overreliance on government officials as news sources, economic constraints, the imperatives of big business and good old-fashioned patriotism, mainstream western media frequently fail to meet democratic expectations regarding independence.” Robinson’s study of news coverage of the 2003 US-UK war on Arab nationalist Iraq found that mainstream media reinforced official views rather than challenged them. [1]

One of the ways in which the mainstream media reinforce official views is by characterizing foreign governments which reject the United States’ self-proclaimed role as leader of the global order as violating Western democratic norms, regardless of whether they do or do not. At the same time, foreign governments which categorically reject Western democratic norms, but which agree that the United States “can and must lead the global economy” (as the 2015 National Security Strategy of the United States insists) are treated deferentially by the Western press. “We give a free pass to governments which cooperate and ream the others as best as we can,” a U.S. official explained, [2] a statement of modus operandi which applies as much to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and other Western news media, as it does to the US government.

Forthcoming April 2017 from Baraka Books.
Forthcoming April 2017 from Baraka Books.

That there exists a glaring double-standard on democratic norms, under which lies a consistent standard of demonizing governments which reject US primacy while refusing to demonize governments that do not, is exemplified in a recent juxtaposition.
On December 18, US secretary of state John Kerry was in Riyadh, rhapsodizing about “His Majesty King Salman,” the head of an absolutist state which is the very antithesis of Western democratic norms. It “is good to have solid friends” in the Saudi monarchy, said the United States’ top diplomat. The “United States partnership with Saudi Arabia is, frankly, so valuable,” added Kerry. The “relationship between our countries remains strong in every dimension. It is a relationship that’s been a priority for President Obama and myself. We’re partners, but we’re also friends.” [3]

The US government’s friend and partner is a tyranny which crushed a 2011 Arab Spring uprising for democracy that erupted on the Arabian Peninsula, while sending tanks into Bahrain to crush a related uprising there. Saudi authorities suppressed a movement for democratic rule by executing the uprising’s leadership, relying on decapitation as the favored method of liquidating democratic trouble-makers. The regime practices an official misogyny that goes so far as to deny women the right to drive automobiles. Saudi clerics propagate worldwide an austere, hate-filled, anti-Shia strain of Islam that, along with Muslim Brotherhood ideology, inspires Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and Jabhat al Nusra. And the House of Saud, the family dictatorship which tyrannizes the Arabian Peninsula, has not, for one second, tolerated the slightest democratic challenge to its autocratic and sectarian rule.

In short, Salman—good friend and partner of US presidents and secretaries of state, to say nothing of US arms dealers, the CIA, US oil companies, and New York investment bankers—is a dictator and a strongman who uses Western-supplied tanks to crush calls for democracy and leads a regime that is aptly characterized as a dictatorship. If ever these terms have been used by the mainstream media and US government officials to refer to the head of the Saudi state and the government he leads, I’m not aware of them. Yet these terms fit to a tee.

On the very same day Kerry was paying tribute to the anti-democratic strongman in Riyadh and celebrating the bonds of friendship between the United States and the despot in Riyadh, an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal, titled “The Dictator Who Stole Christmas.” [4] Therein Wall Street Journal editor Mary Anastasia O’Grady, a practitioner of journalism for the world’s “freest press,” labelled the subject of her article a “strongman” at the head of a government she called a “regime” and a “dictatorship.” O’Grady’s broadside was not targeted at an absolute monarch but at the president of a republic. It concerned not a leader who had assumed his role as head of state through hereditary succession, but through an election no one of an unbiased mind thought was coerced or unfair. Astonishingly, the alleged dictator O’Grady was writing about was Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, who was elected on April 14, 2013, defeating opposition candidate Henrique Capriles (much beloved by the Wall Street Journal and other Wall Street-types) in a free and fair election. The democratically-elected Maduro, according to O’Grady, contrary to what you and the Venezuelans who elected him may think, is a dictator and strongman who leads a regime.

That O’Grady can so easily label Maduro as an aberration from Western democratic norms in egregious contradiction of the facts only underscores “the proximity between western news media and their respective governments,” as Robinson put it, or the propaganda role played by the mainstream media on behalf of US foreign policy. This should remind us that other leaders of governments, who, like Maduro, govern with the consent of their people, but who refuse to kowtow to the international dictatorship of the United States, have also been demonized in the same manner, namely as dictators and strongmen at the head of regimes, not governments. The most salient current example of this style of propaganda is the depiction of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad along the same lines.

The depiction is completely undeserved, and is a reflection of US distaste for governments which insist on self-determination and sovereignty, instead of submission to its international dictatorship (which the mainstream media euphemize as the “Washington-led global order,” and Washington as “American global leadership.”)

Washington’s hostility to the Assad government is ideological, and is unrelated to the Syrian government’s response to the Islamist insurrection which broke out (afresh, given that similar insurrections have plagued Syria since the 1960s) in March, 2011, in no small measure helped along by the United States. Washington has conspired to oust the government of Bashar al-Assad since at least 2003, when it launched a vicious campaign of economic warfare against the country with the intention of undermining popular support for the government by making life miserable for ordinary Syrians. Soon after Washington began to conspire with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, historically the main internal opposition to the secular Arab nationalist governments of Bashar al-Assad, and his predecessor, Hafaz al-Assad, to resume jihad against secularism in Damascus. [5]

The Muslim Brothers, and their ideological descendants, the Islamic State, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, and the other Al Qaeda spinoffs, allies and auxiliaries which make up the main armed Syrian opposition, hate the Assad government because it is secular and non-sectarian, and because it rejects the Brotherhood tenet that the Quran and Sunna, the latter the record of the Prophet Muhammad’s actions and sayings, are a sufficient (and coming from God, perfect) legal foundation for Syrian society, jurisprudence and politics.

For its part, Washington hates the Syrian government for three reasons, which can be summed up in the three major goals of the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party, the party Assad leads: unity of the Arab nation, which threatens US domination of the petroleum-rich Middle East and North Africa; freedom from foreign domination, a position that is inimical to the principle, expressed in multiple US strategy documents that “American leadership” is “indispensable,” [6] “U.S. leadership is essential,” [7] and that the United States “will lead the world” [8]; and socialism, a form of economic organization Washington abhors, to the point that it has been willing to carry out economic warfare against its practitioners with the explicit intention of coercing its abandonment.

For example, US president Eisenhower approved economic sanctions against Cuba, anticipating “that, as the situation unfolds, we shall be obliged to take further economic measures which will have the effect of impressing on the Cuban people the cost of this Communist orientation.” [9] Similarly, the reason some US sanctions have been imposed on North Korea is listed as either “communism”, “non-market economy” or “communism and market disruption,” according to the United States Congressional Research Service. [10] In other words, the US government believes it has a right to dictate to the people of other countries how they can organize their own economic affairs and to punish them by carrying out campaigns of economic warfare—and sometimes worse—if they fail to comply.

In short, Washington is hostile to the Syrian government because Damascus safeguards its sovereignty, insists on self-determination, and in its Arab nationalist aspirations, challenges US hegemony over the Arab world. “Syria,” Assad told an Argentine journalist, “is an independent state working for the interests of its people, rather than making the Syrian people work for the interests of the West.” [11] Washington abhors independent states.

Prior to 2012, Assad governed with the consent of the people obtained in a presidential referendum. While this fell short of the multi-candidate presidential elections favored in the West, it was far more democratic than the hereditary succession that brought the king of Saudi Arabia and emir of Qatar, key U.S. allies in the war against Syria, to power in their countries. In 2012, Assad led efforts to move Syria closer to Western-style representative democracy, amending the country’s constitution to transform presidential elections into multi-candidate contests. Assad stood for election against other candidates and won handily. This was not unexpected, since he is popular.

On the eve of the Islamist insurrection’s most recent outbreak, in March 2011, Time magazine reported that even “critics concede that Assad is popular” and that he had endeared himself, “personally, to the public.” [12] A week after the eruption of violence in Daraa, Time’s Rania Abouzeid would report that “there do not appear to be widespread calls for the fall of the regime or the removal of the relatively popular President.” [13] Moreover, the demands issued by the protesters and clerics did not include calls for Assad to step down. And the protests never reached a critical mass. On the contrary, the government continued to enjoy “the loyalty” of “a large part of the population,” reported Time. [14] Over a month after the outbreak of violence in Daraa, the New York Times’ Anthony Shadid would report that the protests fell “short of the popular upheaval of revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.” [15]

That the government commanded popular support was affirmed when the British survey firm YouGov conducted a poll in late 2011 showing that 55 percent of Syrians wanted Assad to stay. The poll received almost no mention in the Western media, prompting the British journalist Jonathan Steele to ask: “Suppose a respectable opinion poll found that most Syrians are in favor of Bashar al-Assad remaining as president, would that not be major news?” Steele described the poll findings as “inconvenient facts” which were suppressed because Western media coverage of the events in Syria had ceased “to be fair” and had turned into “a propaganda weapon.” [16]

Hence, in 2011 Syria was closer to the Western model of democracy than virtually any other Arab country, and was certainly closer to Western-style democracy than were Washington’s principal Arab allies, which were all monarchical or military dictatorships.

Nevertheless, just days before flying to Riyadh to praise the Saudi dictatorship and wax rhapsodic about the strong bonds between King Salman’s regime and the United States, John Kerry offered remarks on Syria in which he referred repeatedly to the Syrian government as a regime. [17] Descriptions of Assad in the mainstream media as a dictator and strongman are commonplace.

The Syrian government is not a regime. Syria is a multi-party representative democracy headed by an elected president. Its leader is neither a strongman nor a dictator, anymore than is Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro. While the US government may not like the Arab nationalist orientation of the Syrian government as a repudiation of Washington’s self-appointed role as leader of a global order, this does not make the Assad government a dictatorship headed by a strongman. Syria, on the contrary, is closer to Western democratic norms than virtually any other Arab country, and is far closer to those norms than are the monarchies, sultanates, emirates, military dictatorships and settler colonial religious tyrannies which constitute Washington’s principal Middle Eastern allies.

If the Western mainstream media need to denounce heads of state as dictators and strongmen and foreign governments as dictatorships and regimes, they will find the list of their own governments’ strong allies and partners teeming with suitable candidates. Of course, asking them to draw from this list is to expect too much. They won’t. As Robinson notes, mainstream media are “overly deferential to the political and economic order.” [18] The reason why is that as large businesses themselves, owned by wealthy investors, news media are integral parts of the very same political and economic order they profess to police, but which they, in reality, defend, justify and promote. Labelling democrats dictators, and ignoring the dictatorships of allies, is simply part of the ideological role Western news media play to defend and promote the foreign policy interests of the interlocked US political and economic elite.

1. Piers Robinson, “Russian news may be biased—but so is much western media,” The Guardian, August 2, 2016

2. Craig Whitlock, “Niger rapidly emerging as a key U.S. partner,” The Washington Post, April 14, 2013

3. Joint Press Availability with Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir; Secretary of State John Kerry; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 18, 2016 , http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/12/265750.htm

4. Mary Anastasia O’Grady, “The Dictator Who Stole Christmas,” The Wall Street Journal, December 18, 2016

5. See my “The Revolutionary Distemper in Syria That Wasn’t,” what’s left, October 22, 2016

6. Remarks of President Barack Obama-State of the Union Address as Delivered,” January 13, 2016, whitehouse.gov/SOTU.

7. Mission Statement, FY 2004-2009 Department of State and USAID Strategic Plan.

8. National Security Strategy, February 2015.

9. Louis A Perez Jr., “Fear and loathing of Fidel Castro: Sources of US policy toward Cuba,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 34, 2002, 237-254.

10. Dianne E. Rennack, “North Korea: Economic Sanctions,” Congressional Research Service, October 17, 2006. http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl31696.pdf

11. President al-Assad: Basis for any political solution for crisis in Syria is what the Syrian people want,” http://www.syriaonline.sy/?f=Details&catid=12&pageid=5835

12. Rania Abouzeid, “Sitting pretty in Syria: Why few go backing Bashar,” Time, March 6, 2011.

13. Rania Abouzeid, “Syria’s Friday of dignity becomes a day of death,” Time, March 25, 2011

14. Nicholas Blanford, “Can the Syrian regime divide and conquer its opposition?” Time, April 9, 2011

15. Anthony Shadid, “Security forces kill dozens in uprisings around Syria”, The New York Times, April 22, 2011

16. Jonathan Steele, “Most Syrians back President Assad, but you’d never know from western media,” The Guardian, January 17, 2012

17. Remarks on Syria; Secretary of State John Kerry; Washington, DC, December 15, 2016, http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/12/265696.htm

18. Robinson

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/12/19/the-regime-that-isnt/

AMERICA ILLEGALLY BOMBS SYRIA UNDER FALSE PRETEXTS. LINKS FOR CRITICAL THINKING.

https://ingaza.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/1syria-e1491437279413.jpg?w=620
*“…the White Helmets are handling the corpses of people without sufficient safety gear, most particularly with the masks mostly used , as well as no gloves. Although this may seem insignificant, understanding the nature of sarin gas that the opposition claim was used, only opens questions. Within seconds of exposure to sarin, the affects of the gas begins to target the muscle and nervous system. There is an almost immediate release of the bowels and the bladder, and vomiting is induced. When sarin is used in a concentrated area, it has the likelihood of killing thousands of people. Yet, such a dangerous gas, and the White Helmets are treating bodies with little concern to their exposed skin. This has to raise questions.” (from: “Jumping to conclusions; something is not adding up in Idlib chemical weapons attack“)

This morning, under the orders of President Trump, the US military fired a reported 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an airbase in Syria, killing at least 6, according to early reports. The false pretext for this is the tired old refrain that “Assad used chemical weapons”, a ‘red line crossed claim’ made–and disproven–in 2013 in Ghouta, and in allegations prior and since. Any actual instances were the western-backed ‘rebels’. All others were fabrications of the NATO aligned media and faux human rights groups.

I’ll keep my own commentary short other than to emphasize that I do not believe for one second that the Syrian government used toxic gases on Idlib last week. My reasons are logical and many, but I will list just a few here and continue with suggested reading/listening:

–The Syrian army had no need to do so, are making advances on the ground in various areas of Syria with conventional means of fighting terrorism. Using a chemical weapon is precisely the ‘red line’ act America and NATO/Gulf/Zionist allies would leap upon to wage their war of ‘regime change’ fully on Syria, as per Libya and Iraq before. Meanwhile, western-backed ‘rebels’ have a history of using toxic gas in Syria (even the UN’s Carla del Ponte admitted this).

-Recently, apparently relations with America, via Trump, had improved. At the time of the alleged gas attacks, relations were looking positive. (That said, today, sadly, Trump has launched an illegal attack on Syria, using at least 59 cruise missiles on a military site and causing unknown deaths. This is an unprovoked act of war. Trump/America have zero evidence that the Syrian government authorized and used toxic gas, something even the United Nations admittedeven the United Nations admitted.)

For the sake of time, because this is an urgent issue that needs clear thinking and a firm stance against American (and Zionist/NATO/Turkish/Gulf) attacks on Syria, I am posting excerpts from a number of good analyses already online. Please share.

**

“Ex-UK Ambassador: Assad wasn’t behind the chemical attack“, Apr 5, 2017

“Former British Ambassador to Syria Peter Ford says he believes it is “highly unlikely” that Russia or the Assad regime was behind the attack in Idlib.”


http://youtu.be/pS6Oa_aDS6E

https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/america-illegally-bombs-syria-under-false-pretexts-links-for-critical-thinking/

Much more at link, recommended.

US threatens more strikes after cruise missiles hit Syria
By Bill Van Auken
8 April 2017

The day after US warships rained some 60 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian government airbase, US officials made it clear that this unilateral and criminal attack against an oppressed former colonial country is merely the first shot in what is to be an escalating and widening campaign of American military aggression.

The governor of Syria’s central Homs province reported Friday that the missiles killed at least 15 people, including nine civilians. Four of the dead were children. Many more civilians were injured by two of the missiles, which struck nearby villages. Six of the dead were Syrian personnel at the al-Shairat airbase.

The missile strike was the first time that Washington has carried out a direct military attack against Syrian government forces since the US and its regional allies orchestrated a war for regime change utilizing Al Qaeda-linked Islamist “rebels” as its proxy ground troops. The attack on the airbase is a direct intervention in that war on the side of the Al Qaeda elements.

Russian Prime Minister Medvedev warned on Friday that the immensely reckless action had brought Washington to “the verge of a military clash” with nuclear-armed Russia, which had an air unit at the base struck by American missiles.

Washington seized on an alleged incident Tuesday involving chemical weapons in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province as the pretext for Thursday night’s attack. Syria has denied any use of such weapons, and Washington and its allies have presented no evidence to support their allegations in relation to the incident, which has all the earmarks of a provocation staged by the CIA and its Islamist proxies.

The Russian government and others have pointed out the obvious fact that the elaborate attack carried out Thursday night from two US destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean had to have been planned well before the alleged incident even happened. The event was staged, with Al Qaeda-linked and US-funded “media activists” conveniently on hand to film it, in order to provide Washington with the propaganda pretext it required for its aggression.

In a heated exchange in the United Nations Security Council Friday, US Ambassador Nikki Haley brushed aside denunciations by other diplomats that the unilateral US action was a gross violation of the UN Charter and international law, instead provocatively insisting that US imperialism is prepared to the do the same thing again and far more.
“The United States took a very measured step last night,” Haley said. “We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary.”

Knowing full well that the US attack was imminent, Haley, who is acting as the council’s rotating president for the month of April, postponed a vote on a compromise resolution calling for an objective investigation into the alleged chemical attack that was being drafted Thursday by the 10 nonpermanent members of the Security Council.

Washington has no interest in such a probe, which would almost certainly reveal that the source of any chemical weapons incident was not the government of President Bashar al-Assad, but rather the Al Qaeda elements that control that area of Idlib Province. There is also no doubt that the US strike provides the Islamist elements in Syria with every motivation for staging more chemical weapons incidents to provide the pretext for a spiraling escalation of US military aggression.

The UN Security Council session was convened at the request of Bolivia, Russia and Syria. Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Llorenti began the debate with a blistering denunciation of the US attack, declaring that the US officials “believe that they are investigators, they are attorneys, judges and they are the executioners.”

He called the US strike “an extremely serious violation of international law,” while stressing that this was “not the first time.” Llorenti held up a picture of then Secretary of State Colin Powell delivering his February 5, 2003 speech to the same UN council insisting that Washington had irrefutable proof of nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction,” the notorious pretext for the US invasion barely a month later.

This war based upon lies, the Bolivian envoy added, resulted in “a million deaths” and “a series of atrocities” throughout the Middle East.

Llorenti denounced Washington for its “double standard,” invoking “human rights,” “democracy” and “multilateralism” only when it serves its own strategic interests. He recalled the series of military coups orchestrated by the CIA in Latin America and the Pentagon’s training of Latin American security forces in the art of torture.

Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Vladimir Safronkov, similarly condemned the US bombardment as a “flagrant violation of international law,” warning that the “consequences for regional and international stability can be extremely serious.”

Safronkov charged that Washington had acted deliberately to derail any “independent and unbiased investigation” into the alleged April 4 incident in of Khan Sheikhoun. “You were afraid of it,” he said, “as its results might wreck your anti-regime paradigm.”

The Russian ambassador ridiculed the performance given earlier by US Ambassador Haley in which she held up the photographs of two Syrian children and demanded, “How many more children have to die before Russia cares?”

“I will not stage a cynical show and hold up photographs,” he said, but asked why there was no such concern for the children of Mosul, where a single US bombing raid killed over 300 civilians, most of them women and children, last month. Thousands more have been killed and injured in US airstrikes carried out in both Iraq and Syria.

Syria’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Munzer Munzer, denounced the US attack as a “barbaric, flagrant act of aggression,” and a continuation of US support to Al Qaeda-linked “terrorists,” who he noted had repeatedly stockpiled and used chemical weapons in attacks inside Syria with the support of their patrons, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

All of the representatives of the Western European powers voiced support for the US missile strike in terms that suggested that their governments may carry out their own military actions as part of an imperialist scramble for control of the oil-rich Middle East. Italy’s Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi was perhaps the most explicit along these lines, stressing his country’s “major and direct interests in the Mediterranean.”

The prospect for the US military action provoking a wider and potentially catastrophic world war was made clear on Friday, with Moscow’s announcement that it was suspending a 2015 memorandum of understanding reached with the Pentagon on “deconfliction,” which set up lines of communication between US and Russian military units operating in Syria to avoid clashes between the two countries’ warplanes. Russia also indicated that it would increase its missile defense systems around bases that it jointly uses with the Syrian military.

Meanwhile, senior Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters Friday that they were investigating possible Russian “complicity” in the alleged chemical attack, indicating that the US military command is looking to ratchet up the confrontation with Moscow.

In Washington, Trump’s sudden reversal of his previous policy eschewing conflict with the Assad government in Syria in favor of a US military intervention centered on combating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) drew vocal bipartisan support, particularly from Democrats who had previously demonized the administration for its alleged ties with Russia.

To the extent that leading Democrats qualified their enthusiasm for the act of US military aggression, it was to demand that Trump spell out a proposal for its continuation and escalation.

The US Senate’s Democratic Minority Leader Charles Schumer praised the attack on Syria. “Making sure that Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do.” He added, however, “It is now incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a coherent strategy and consult with Congress.”
Similarly, Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged Trump, “Give us your Syria strategy, and come to us if you’re using force, because you need to get authorization.” He added that while Thursday’s attack could be a one-off attack, “circumstances could change.”

“I think it was the right thing to do,” Senator Amy Klobuchar (Democrat, Minnesota) said of the missile strikes Friday. “Going forward I think we should have an Authorization for Use of Military Force, if in fact there are going to be additional actions taken.”

Unstated in the Democrats’ call for a new authorization to use of military force (AUMF) is the fact that both the Trump and the Obama administration had previously invoked the 2001 authorization of military action against those responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Now, however, the US is intervening militarily in a civil war that the CIA itself orchestrated, providing military support to Al Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for 9/11. The Syrian government reported that, in the immediate aftermath of the US missile strike, both the Al Nusra Front and ISIS launched new attacks.

The Democrats’ rallying around Trump in support of US military aggression in Syria makes clear that the party’s opposition to the new administration was based not on its reactionary attacks on democratic rights, immigrants and the social conditions of the broad mass of the American people, but rather the threat that it would pull back from the longstanding plans of the US military and intelligence apparatus to escalate aggression and provocation against not only Syria, but its principal ally, Russia.

With the military consolidating its control over the Trump administration’s foreign policy through figures like Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis, a recently retired Marine general, and H.R. McMaster, the active duty Army general who has taken over as national security adviser, the Democrats are rallying around Trump as the titular “commander-in-chief.”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/08/syri-a08.html

Top US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria

Evidence leads directly to the White House, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabia´s Interior Ministry.

The Strategic Situation, leading up to the Use of Chemical Substances in the Eastern Ghouta Suburb of Damascus on 21 August 2013.

Christof Lehmann (nsnbc) : On 21 August 2013, the Syrian Arab Army launched a major military campaign in Damascus. The campaign, called “Operation Shield of the Capital”, was the largest military operation of the Syrian Arab Army in the Damascus region since the beginning of the war in 2011.

ObamaDempseyBandarAlthough U.S. Intelligence reports repeatedly stressed that the opposition was incapable of launching a major, well coordinated attack, the Syrian Army in Damascus was confronted with an organized fighting force of 25.000 men under arms.

The Saudi Arabia backed Jihadist front had amassed 25.000 fighters, organized in 13 battalions or kitab, to to launch a major assault against the capital Damascus. Most of the battalions belonged to Jabhat al-Nusrah and Liwa-al-Islam. The other battalions that took part in the campaign, were the Abou Zhar al-Ghaffari, al-Ansar, al-Mohajereen, Daraa al-Sham, Harun al-Rashid, Issa bin Mariam, Sultan Mohammad al-Fatih, Syouf al-Haqq, the Glory of the Caliphate, the Jobar Martyrs.

During the night of 20 to 21 August and during the early morning hours of 21 August, the Syrian Arab Army broke through the insurgent lines in the area near the Jobar entrance. The breakthrough resulted in a collapse of the jihadists defensive positions and to a crushing and decisive strategic defeat of the Jabhat al-Nusrah led brigades.

Al-Mafraq to Jobar
The (A) is located in the Jobar district of Damascus.

The Strategic Significance of the Jobar Entrance and the Defeat. Cutting off the Insurgents’ Logistical Life-Line to Al-Mafraq and U.S. – Saudi Supplies.

The significance of the Jobar Entrance was that it both enabled the insurgents to launch attacks against the center of Damascus and that it was the sole remaining logistical supply route.

From Jobar, the insurgents could launch attacks. From Jobar they could infiltrate operatives, bombs and car bombs into the heart of Damascus. Loosing the Jobar Entrance also meant that the insurgents lost their last remaining route through which they could receive reinforcements and U.S. and Saudi supplies from Jordan.

Loosing Jobar effectively cut off the insurgents connection to the Jordanian border town of Al-Mafraq, the most important logistical base for the insurgents as well as for Saudi Arabia and the United States in Jordan.

Al-Mafraq was already used as a major staging ground for the two failed attempts to conquer the city of Homs in June and July 2012. In 2012 al-Mafraq became the staging ground for some 40.000 fighters; more than 20.000 of them fought under the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was under the command of Abdelhakim Belhadj and his second in command, Mahdi al-Harati.

The CIA maintains a station, US Special Forces (JSOC) train insurgents, and several other US institutions are present in al-Mafraq. The point is of particular importance with regards to the visit of the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Jordan, which will be detailed below. Al-Mafraq has been the major transit point for Saudi and U.S. arms shipments since 2012, and the delivery of advanced Saudi and U.S. weapons to the insurgents since early August 2013.

Al Mafraq NATO Mercenaries in Buffer Zone
The al-Mafraq region has since 2012 been declared a military zone. It functions as a major military training and staging area. U.S. Intelligence Services and Special Forces are present, training insurgents, among others, in “handling captured chemical weapons”.

The foreign-backed mercenaries’ defeat during the night from 20 to 21 August and the early morning hours of 21 August frustrated any hope for a successful, large-scale, CIA-U.S. Special Forces-led military campaign against Damascus.

The insurgents also suffered a decisive, strategic defeat on 17 – 18 August, when a brigade was encircled and fought down near the Syrian Israeli border in the Golan, while they were en route from the Ramtha Airbase in Jordan to Damascus.

It is very likely that much of the newly-delivered advanced weaponry from Saudi Arabia and the USA was destroyed there. That includes, among others, advanced Konkurs anti-tank missiles.

The road is also used for weapons and troop transports from the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan, where Israeli Intelligence and the insurgents, according to an Austrian UNDOF officer, maintain a joint operations room.

Liwa-al-Islam and Jabhat al-Nusrah’s Elite Troops to Hold Jobar At Any Cost.

The collapse of the insurgent front prompted the front commanders, most of which work in liaison to U.S. Special Forces, to deploy an elite force that should prevent the Syrian Army, at all costs, from gaining access to the Jobar Entrance, and from gaining control over the Jobar area. The majority of the insurgent crack forces came from Liwa-al-Islam with some additional troops from Jabhat al-Nusrah.

The commanding officer of the elite forces was a Saudi national who is known by the name Abu Ayesha, whom eyewitnesses from Ghouta later identified as Abu Abdul-Moneim. Abdul-Moneim had established a cache of weapons, some of which had a tube-like structure, and others which looked like big gas bottles. The cache was located in a tunnel in the Eastern Ghouta district of Damascus.

Reports about this tunnel and the weapons cache emerged in international media, after the son of Abdul-Moneim and 12 other fighters lost their lives there, because they mishandled improvised chemical weapons and caused a leak in one of them.

Besides Abu Abdul-Moneim, the supreme leader of the Liwa-al-Islam and commander of their chemical weapons specialists, Zahran Alloush took personal charge of the elite troops and chemical weapons specialists who were operating under his direct command.

Liwa-al-Islam has, along with other al-Qaeda brigades, the capability to manufacture and launch primitive, but none the less very deadly chemical weapons. The chemical weapons which Zahran Alloush had delivered to Damascus were most likely from al-Qaeda’s (ISIL) chemical weapons stockpiles in Iraq.

Javad ZarifIn early September 2013, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stated, that Iran had sent a memo to the White House via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran. Tehran had reportedly informed the USA that handmade articles for chemical weapons, including Sarin gas, were being transferred to Syria. The White House failed to respond.

Having to hold the Jobar Entrance and the Jobar district of Damascus “at any cost to maintain any hopes of launching a successful, major military assault on Damascus”, the insurgent commanders decided to launch a chemical weapons attack to halt the advance of the Syrian Arab Army.

The political and military opposition and core members of the international alliance behind them had already decided that chemical weapons should be used in August – September. The large scale use of chemical weapons should justify renewed calls for a military intervention. Intelligence about this decision transpired in June. nsnbc international issued several reports in late June and early July, warning that the insurgents would use large scale chemical weapons attacks in August or September.

Image: After firing a single rocket, the truck is promptly covered and prepared for transit. The purpose of a national chemical arsenal is to provide a deterrence against foreign aggressors and for deployment in pitched, full-scale warfare. This modified truck was clearly designed for launching a single rocket, at a painfully slow rate of fire - not for tactical purposes. It is however, literally, the perfect vehicle for a false-flag attack, particularly the chemical attack carried out in Damascus in late August.
Image: After firing a single rocket, the truck is promptly covered and prepared for transit. The purpose of a national chemical arsenal is to provide a deterrence against foreign aggressors and for deployment in pitched, full-scale warfare. This modified truck was clearly designed for launching a single rocket, at a painfully slow rate of fire – not for tactical purposes. It is however, literally, the perfect vehicle for a false-flag attack, particularly the chemical attack carried out in Damascus in late August.

The decision to launch the chemical weapon on 21 August was most likely based on two considerations. That the use of chemical weapons was already planned. That the Jobar Entrance should be defended at all costs. The final decision, made by Zahran Alloush may in fact have been predetermined together with his U.S. – Saudi liaison officers.

Launching a chemical weapons attack would allow the USA, UK and France, to call for military strikes against Syria and to turn the tide.

Also, Russian and Syrian intelligence sources described the weapons which were used in the attack as rockets which were altered so as to carry chemicals, launched by Liwa-al-Islam. The projectiles were most likely fired from a flatbed.

Saudi and U.S. Involvement. Political and Military Responsibility.

There is a growing and substantial amount of evidence that indicates direct U.S. and Saudi involvement in the chemical weapons attack. To begin with one merely has to answer the fundamental question “Who Benefits”, and the answer is definitely not “the Syrian government”.

In fact, the Federal German Intelligence Service (BND) claims that it has intercepted phone calls between Syrian officers and the Syrian High Command. The BND is convinced that none of the Syrian forces have used a chemical weapon. Leaving alone any moral considerations, the domestic and international repercussions were foreseeable and there would not have been any strategic benefit for the Syrian Army or the government.

Members of the UN Security Council raise their hands as they vote to approve a resolution, which condemns the use of chemical weapons in Syria and calls for their destruction, on September 27, 2013.
Members of the UN Security Council raise their hands as they vote to approve a resolution, which condemns the use of chemical weapons in Syria and calls for their destruction, on September 27, 2013.

In the end, it was the USA, Saudi Arabia and Israel who achieved a major strategic and political victory by forcing the Syrian government to put its chemical weapons under international control for destruction.

The USA benefits from UNSC resolution 2118 (2013), which calls for measures under the UN Charter´s Chapter VII in the case of non-compliance by the Syrian government.

Moreover, UNSC Resolution 2118 (2013) paved the way for a presidential statement by the Security Council which for the first time introduced the “Responsibility to Protect” principle in the conflict.

Also, the involvement of Saudi Arabia ultimately points towards Washington and the White House. The involvement of Liwa-al-Islam in the chemical weapons attack establishes a strong chain of circumstantial evidence to the Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

The supreme leader of Liwa-al-Islam and commander of the groups’ chemical weapons specialists, Zahran Alloush, has been working for the then Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Turki al-Faisal in both Afghanistan and Yemen in the 1980s.

Since the 1990s, Alloush was involved in the Salafist – Wahabbist terrorist networks in Syria which led to his arrest by Syrian intelligence. He was released in early of 2011, when the Assad administration granted a general amnesty. Immediately after his March 2011 release from prison, Zahran Alloush began receiving substantial funds and weapons from Saudi intelligence, which enabled him to establish Liwa-al-Islam as a de facto Saudi Arabia sponsored mercenary brigade under the auspices of the Saudi Interior Ministry.

Liwa-al-Islam is not the only al-Qaeda brigade which the Saudi Interior Ministry has deployed to Syria. Russian and Syrian intelligence services reported already in late 2011, that intercepted internet chatter indicated that Saudi Arabia had deployed al-Qaeda´s Omar Brigade to Syria. The Omar Brigade is specialized in high level assassinations and large scale bombings.

Saudi funding enabled Alloush to establish the Liwa-al-Islam as a major fighting force in Syria. The group gained fame due to risky, high-profile attacks. On 8 July 2012, the group carried out a bomb attack against the headquarters of Syria’s National Security Council in Rawda Square, Damascus. The group succeeded in assassinating several high profile members of Syria’s security establishment, including the Deputy Minister of Defense and brother-in-law of President Bashar al-Assad, Assaf Shawkat, Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Hassan Turkmani, a former Defense Minister and military adviser to then Vice-President Farouk al-Sharaa.

Weakening Qatar, Strengthening the U.S.-Saudi Axis.

Syria_AlQaeda_In_AleppoAfter the defeat of the predominantly Qatar-backed Muslim Brotherhood and Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces, which were reinforced by Libyans in June and July 2012, the U.S. – Saudi Axis was strengthened. Uncooperative Qatari-led brigades which rejected the new command structure had to be removed.

The influx of Salafi – Wahhabbi fighters to Syria was documented by the International Crisis Group in their report titled “Tentative Jihad”. The CIA and Saudi Interior Ministry man, Zahran Alloush, and Liwa-al-Islam should also play a lead role in this development.

In June 2013 Alloush withdrew his Liwa-al-Islam troops during a major battle with the Syrian Arab Army without announcing the sudden withdrawal to the Qatar-sponsored First Brigade and the Liwa Jaish al-Muslimeen. Both brigades were literally wiped out by the Syrian Army.

Qatar-backed forces have not made a significant recovery in the Syrian theater since the June 2013 defeat, and the primary fighting forces today are Jabhat al-Nusrah and Liwa-al-Islam. Both of them receive weapons from the USA and Saudi Arabia. The development has also weakened the Free Syrian Army (FSA) which in the middle of 2013 had become a minor player in the Syrian theater.

The influx of Saudi backed mercenaries and the prospect of Syria being “Balkanized” into any number of infighting Caliphates caused many patriotic FSA commanders to consider a realignment with the Syrian Arab Army and the government. The Syrian government encourages these commanders’ decisions and offers reasonable and honorable conditions.

In conclusion; the primary, foreign-backed “opposition forces” in Syria since July 2013, are U.S. – Saudi – backed al-Qaeda brigades. Most prominent among them are Jabhat al-Nusrah and Liwa-al-Islam, while the FSA still receives some support, which is primarily granted for the purpose of giving the White House the possibility to maintain a narrative about supporting “moderate forces”. Another aspect is, that the FSA is the last representative of Qatar’s, Turke’s and Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood in the Syrian theater.

Both the USA and Saudi Arabia cooperate closely with Jabhat al-Nusrah, Liwa-al-Islam and other al-Qaeda brigades, including the brigades which were responsible for launching the chemical weapon on 21 August to change the tide during a catastrophic, strategic defeat.

U.N. Inspectors protected by Perpetrators of Chemical Weapons Attack in East Ghouta, Damascus, on 21 August 2013.

INspectors arrive in Damascus, photo courtesy of ITAR TASS
INspectors arrive in Damascus, photo courtesy of ITAR TASS

The U.S. – Saudi hand is also clearly visible with regards to the inspection of the scene of the chemical weapons attack by U.N. Inspectors.

Before looking at the details at the scene of the crime, however, it is necessary to note that the U.N. Inspectors only agreed to accept Syria´s invitation after considerable diplomatic pressure from Russia, and after Syrian troops seized massive stockpiles of chemicals from the insurgents.

The seizure of 281 barrels of chemicals from terrorists in the city of Banias prompted the Syrian U.N. Ambassador, Bashar Jaafari to announce:

“The Syrian authorities have discovered yesterday, in the city of Banias, 281 barrels filled with dangerous, hazardous chemical materials, capable of destroying a whole city, if not the whole country”.

In late August, when U.N. Inspectors prepared to inspect the scene of the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta, the convoy was delayed because an “unidentified sniper” fired at the U.N. Inspectors’ vehicles.

Moreover, the “opposition” insisted that Zahran Alloush and the Liwa-al-Islam would escort the U.N. experts, and provide security for them while they investigated the use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta. Zahran Alloush delegated the actual on the ground “security escort” for the U.N. experts to his close ally, the Liwa al-Baraa brigade from Zamalka. The U.N. inspectors who gathered evidence in Eastern Ghouta were thus in the custody of those who had perpetrated the chemical weapons attack.

The renown and arguably world leading expert on chemical weapons, Dr. Abbas Forouthan, sharply criticized the U.N. expert´s report, pointing out sharp irregularities. Dr. Forouthan´s statements about the report were published in an article by Sharmine Narwani, titled “CW Expert Opinion on UN Report on Syria”. Dr. Forouthan concludes, that:

Overall in my view this report should be received/accepted medically with great caution and should be observed again by a team of international expert clinicians. My intention is not the denial of sarin but at least from the clinical point of view, the evidences of this report are not enough to prove the existence of a nerve gas [sarin] in this incident.

Russian and other experts have repeatedly stated that the chemical weapon could not have been a standard issue Syrian chemical weapon and that all available evidence, including the fact that those who offered first aid to the victims were not harmed, indicates the use of liquid, home made sarin. This information is corroborated by the seizure of such chemicals in Syria and in Turkey.

Zahran Alloush receives Orders directly from Saudi Intelligence.

Liwa_al-Islam Commander and Chemical Waeapon Expert Zahran Alloush has been working for Saudi Intelligence since the 1980s
Liwa_al-Islam Commander and Chemical Waeapon Expert Zahran Alloush has been working for Saudi Intelligence since the 1980s

Several commanders of al-Qaeda brigades in Syria have stated that Zahran Alloush receives his orders directly from Saudi Intelligence. Russian diplomatic sources stated among others, that many, even opposition members, were appalled by the use of chemical weapons in Syria and that people of many different political observances have provided information to Russian diplomats.

Statements to the effect that Zahran Alloush receives his orders directly from the Saudi Intelligence are corroborated by the fact that both Alloush and the Liwa-al-Islam are financed by the Saudi Interior Ministry. The group was literally established with Saudi money after Alloush was released from prison in 2011. According to international law, this fact alone is sufficient to designate Alloush and the Liwa-al-Islam as Saudi mercenaries.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has acceded the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries (Mercenary Convention) on 14 April 1997 (with reservations). Whether these reservations are sufficient to exempt Saudi Arabia from the provisions of the convention or not in this case would be for experts in international law to determine.

Regardless the answer to this question however, Saudi Arabia is sponsoring an internationally banned terrorist organization and is issuing direct orders to a terrorist organization’s supreme commander, Zahran Alloush. Al-Qaeda commanders in Syria have also repeatedly stated that the Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince Bandar, considers Liwa-al-Islam as his personal brigade in Syria. If proven in a court of law this would have severe implications for Bandar, Saudi Arabia as well as for U.S. Officials. That is, implications with regard to the political responsibility for the attack and the Nuremberg Principles.

Political Responsibility for Chemical Weapons Attack in East Ghouta, Damascus, on 21 August, arguably, at the highest level of the White House.

Even though no evidence has yet transpired that would tie Prince Bandar directly to the chemical weapons attack on 21 August, his role in the attack could place the political responsibility for the attack directly with him, the President of the United States, Barack Obama and other top-U.S. Officials.

Moreover, it is likely that a thorough investigation within the framework of an international court of law would produce the evidence. Leaving the question whether to investigate or not to the ICC, knowing that it is unlikely that the ICC would investigate, let alone charge Saudi or U.S. Officials, it is necessary to suffice with the now available evidence which is circumstantial, but sufficient to warrant further investigation. It is also sufficient to approach the ICC to demand that action be taken.

To begin with, it would be sufficient to look into the many documented and admitted cases in which the Saudi Interior Ministry either admitted, or in which it has been proven that Saudi Arabia supports al-Qaeda brigades. With regards to the chemical weapons attack in East Ghouta, there is one point that stands out. That is Bandar’s threats during a meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. The minutes of the meeting clearly suggest Bandar’s direct involvement with regards to political responsibility, and Bandar also implies political responsibility of top-U.S. Officials.

BandarThe Bandar Putin Meeting.

On 2 August Prince Bandar met Russia’s President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. Putin and Bandar spoke, among others, about the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta and the future of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

Bandar tried to bribe Putin with weapons and oil deals in order to gain the Russian President’s support for ousting the Assad government. Bandar supposed that the Syrian government should be replaced with the Saudi-backed and sponsored opposition.

Bandar guaranteed that Russia’s interests in Syria would be preserved by this Saudi-backed government if Russia supported the regime change. While Bandar attempted to gain Putin as a potential ally for regime change in Syria, he also delivered a thinly veiled threat, saying among others:

“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the direction of the Syrian territory without coordinating with us. These groups don´t scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria´s political future”.

Putin filePutin responded by saying that the Russians know that the Saudis have supported the Chechen terrorist groups for a decade, and that the support which Bandar just had offered was utterly incompatible with the common objectives of fighting global terrorism.

Bandar continued discussing Syria, saying words to the effect that the Assad government has no future and that Saudi Arabia would not allow Assad to remain at the helm.

Putin stressed that the Russian position is that the Syrian people are best to speak for themselves, rather than those liver eaters. Putin referred to an al-Qaeda commander who had cannibalized the liver of a slain Syrian soldier.

Bandar resorted to threats again, warning Putin that their dispute over the future of Syria led him to conclude that there is no escape from the (U. S. -led) military option, because the political stalemate would leave the military option as the only available choice to end the stalemate.

The most important statement Bandar made however, was that he said that he expected such a U. S. -led military intervention to come soon and that Bandar made this statement almost three weeks before the chemical weapons attack in eastern Ghouta.

arabia-bandar_bin_sultanThe Statement indicates Foreknowledge. CIA Chief Brennan and Washington have most likely been informed.

Bandar’s statement strongly suggests foreknowledge, and given the close relations between Bandar and the U.S. Director of Central Intelligence, John Brennan, one must imply that top-level White House executives, including President Obama have been briefed and have had the same foreknowledge. The implications warrant an in depth investigation by an international prosecutor.

Another strong indication of foreknowledge at top-White House level is that Bandar, during his Moscow visit insisted, that his initiative and his message had been coordinated with the highest authorities in the Obama administration. Either Prince Bandar lied to Putin, or top-White House officials were informed. Bandar said:

“I have spoken with the Americans before the visit, and they pledged to commit to any understandings that we may reach, especially if we agree on the approach to the Syria issue”.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey

Foreknowledge – U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey visit to Jordan.

Another strong indicator of foreknowledge by top-U.S. Officials can be deducted from the visit of the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey to Jordan and a statement he made prior to the Jordan visit.

On 18 July, Dempsey said at a hearing at the U.S. Senate´s Armed Services Committee, that the Obama administration is preparing various scenarios for a possible U.S. Military intervention in Syria, and considering whether the USA should use “the brute of the U.S. Military, and kinetic strikes”. “The issue”, said Gen. Dempsey, “is under deliberation inside of our agencies of government”.

Already on 7 July however, nsnbc international published a report, based on information from a Syria-based, Palestinian intelligence expert, who stated that the armed and political opposition, along with the international alliance behind it, is preparing a large political and military campaign in August – September.

The report mentions specifically the chemical weapons use and the Jordanian city al-Mafraq, where U.S. Special forces train insurgents.

Dempsey in Jordan only Days before Chemical Weapons Attack and while Saudi / U.S. Weapons Deliveries begin flowing across the Border from al-Mafraq.

On 15 August 2013, the website of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) informed that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey is visiting troops in Jordan. Dempsey’s visit came against the backdrop of major weapons deliveries to the Syrian opposition, including advanced weapons like the Konkurs anti tank missile.

On the agenda in Jordan was, among other, the “Team Jordan”. The DoD informs, that “The team Jordan also includes liaison officers linking them to the services, special operation forces, the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, USAID, Britain, Canada and France. Its primary focus is planning for Syria”.

It is inconceivable that U.S. Special Forces and the CIA would have given the green light for the use of chemical weapons – for example in a situation where the insurgents lose their hold on the Jobar Entrance – without the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the very least being informed about it.

​Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mashaal Al Zaben met with US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey.
​Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mashaal Al Zaben met with US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey.

As stated before, U.S. Special Forces in al-Mafraq were training insurgents in special operations, including the securing of captured chemical weapons. A Palestinian intelligence expert stated to nsnbc that informants have claimed that U.S. Special Forces were training insurgents in chemical weapons use.

Shortly after Dempsey arrives, on 17 August, the insurgents suffer a major strategic defeat en route from al-Mafraq to Damascus. On 21 August, shortly after Dempsey’s departure, the Liwa-al-Islam brigade launches the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta because the insurgents could, despite the delivery of some of the new, advanced weapons not hold the Jobar Entrance and Jobar district of Damascus.

Criminal Charges on the Basis of the Nuremberg Principles.

Even though Prince Bandar’s statement in Moscow does not directly involve the U.S. President in the chemical weapons attack, the implied threat along with the statement that he is authorized by the highest level at the White House, places political responsibility with the U.S. President.

The guilt of Prince Bandar is sufficiently documented even in this article. It is unlikely that CIA Chief Brennan and Bandar did not coordinate the Moscow visit as well as the use of chemical weapons. It is inconceivable that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not informed about the planned use of chemical weapons in August – September. The involvement of the above mentioned mercenaries could be corroborated, arrests need to be made. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has more than sufficient material to warrant an investigation into the alleged guilt of all of the above.

Additional articles and the Need to Establish an International Commission for the Prosecution of the 21 August Chemical Weapons Attack and Related Crimes:

The following articles support top US, Saudi, and other core NATO and GCC member states as well as top Libyan officials political and command responsibility for the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta on 21 August 2013, as well as related crimes.

The articles are divided into the categories 1) UN Report, 2) Falsification of Evidence, and 3) Evidence.

The total body of information contained in these articles establishes a solid foundation for the initiation of in depth investigations by international prosecutors.

I strongly suggest the establishment of an international commission to produce a report to be styled to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Should the ICC fail to investigate and prosecute, the commission would be tasked with establishing other mechanisms for the prosecution of the 21 August chemical weapons attack and related crimes.

Witnesses experts and representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations who are in a position to further the establishment of such a commission are invited to contact me at dr.christof.lehmann@gmail.com .

Dr. Christof Lehmann

UN Report:

CW Expert Opinion on the UN Report on Syria

Dr. Forouthan, who is quoted in this article, is one of the world´s leading experts on the medical aspects of chemical weapons.

Falsification of Evidence to be investigated by international prosecutors:

“Doctors” Behind Syrian Chemical Weapons Claims are Aiding Terrorists

Photo-Video Evidence of Chemical Attack Fabricated say Experts to UN

Children killed for staging Ghouta Chemical Attacks “Evidence”

Chemical weapons in Syria: who, what, where, when, why?

Evidence to be investigated by international prosecutors:

VIDEO: Rockets in Damascus CW Attack Fired from Makeshift Flatbeds

Senior UN Official; Syria Not Involved In Chemical Weapons Attack

Pentagon: al-Qaeda Delivered Sarin via Turkey

Al-Nusra Producing Chemical Weapons in Turkey

Syria’s “Rebels” Threaten UN – Will Use US Weapons

CIA documents reveal Israeli stockpile of chemical weapons

False Flag Chemical Attack on Israel may be planned – Warns RT

Russia released Key Findings of Chemical Weapons Probe

Deployment of US/Allied Warships planned before 21 August Chem-Attack

Iran warned US about Insurgent´s Chemical Weapons 9 Months ago

War as Way to Cover Evidence that West Used Chemical Weapons

U.S. War Plans for August / September; Known since June

Obama Sent Libyan Sarin to Syrian Rebels to Destroy Aleppo

Former Jabhat al-Nusrah Member admits Chemical Weapons Use

Phone Intercept proves “Terrorists used Chemical Weapons in Homs”

US Weapons to Terrorist Groups in Iraq to fight Iran and Shia Muslims

August – September War on Syria has begun. 30.000 Flee Kurdish Region

Western-Gulf Intelligence Coordinate Major Arms Delivery to Syria

Al-Qaeda Campaign against Syrian Kurds Part of August September War on Syria

Jaàfari “UN turns Blind Eye to Terrorist´s Crimes in Syria, EU Buys Oil from Terrorists to Finance Mercenaries”

New Massacre in Khan al-Assal Kills 123, Many Are Reported Missing. Syrian Minister “Terrorists and Countries Supporting Them Will Pay Dearly”

US Talks About “Political Solution” while Continuing War Effort against Syria. USA Accountable for Full Responsibility for Syria

Top US General, “US is Preparing “Kinetic Strikes” against Syria”

UN Inspectors accept Syrian Invitation after Russian Pressure and Seizure of Massive Chemical Depot from Opposition

Syrian Army seizes Massive Chemical Stockpile from Insurgents. Enough to Wipe Out Entire Country

Secret Meeting to Plan Renewed Rebel Offensive against Syria

Syrian “Opposition” Prepares Political and Military August / September Campaign

Former French Foreign Minister Dumas Blows the Whistle on Western War Plans against Syria

Dumas, “Top British Officials Confessed to Syria War Plans Two Years before Arab Spring”

Major Regional Military Campaign against Syria in August – September

Qatari Military Officers Supplied Chemical Weapons to Syria Insurgents. Turkey was Informed.

Austrian UNDOF Officer withdrawn from Golan Confirms Large-Scale Israeli Support of Terrorists

Western – Russian Stand-Off over Syria Intensifies as “Rebels” suffer Decisive Defeat

ADDITIONAL REPORTS IN SUPPORT OF WAR CRIMES CHARGES, ADDED AFTER EDITING OF THE ARTICLE, REGULARLY UPDATED:

Syria Demands Turkey´s Cooperation in Terrorist Indictments for WMDs

Saudi NGO´s “Terrorist Hospitals” Discovered in Turkey

Turkey: New Bust of Truck with Rockets and Bombs for Al-Qaeda in Syria

The UN Syria Mission Confirms that Rebels Were in Possession of Chemical Weapons

ADDITIONAL OFFICIAL REPORTS SINCE THE EDITING OF THE ARTICLE:

United Nations Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic.

https://nsnbc.me/2013/10/07/top-us-and-saudi-officials-responsible-for-chemical-weapons-in-syria/

Seymour Hersh facilitates limited CIA Hangout, covers-up Obama’s and Top-US Official’s Involvement in Chemical Weapons Attack

Seymour Hersh’s Disclosure of Information from anonymous CIA Deep Throat, about “Obama’s Knowledge about Al-Nusrah’s Chemical Weapons Use in Syria, covers-up Direct Political and Command Responsibility of Top-White House Officials, Pentagon Officials, Top-CIA Officials and Top-Saudi Interior Ministry Officials.

Christof Lehmann (nsnbc) , – Another Western Mainstream Media Establishment “Hero Journalist” the Pulitzer Prize Winning Seymor Hersh, is revealing information from another “anonymous CIA Deep Throat”, who disclosed that US President Barak Obama was “aware of the fact that the Jabhat al-Nusrah had used chemical weapons in Syria but kept the fact secret, so as to hold the Syrian government accountable”.

Simon Hersh, Photo courtesy of Aydinlik Daily
Simon Hersh, Photo courtesy of Aydinlik Daily

Nothing New except for the Omission of Direct Political and Command Responsibility. In fact, neither the CIA Deep Throat nor Seymour Hersh reveal anything that was not publicly known already. What Hersh’s anonymous CIA Deep Throat and Hersh omit, however, is that the direct political and command responsibility for the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta, on 21 August 2013 has already been placed in October.

Moreover, the responsibility has been directly placed with US President Barak Obama, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Army General Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Arabia’s Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, and top-officials in the Saudi Ministry of the Interior.

As correct as the statements Hersh made in an article, published in the London Review of Books are, they have all the typical hallmarks of a limited CIA Hang Out operation, Psy-Op or MISO. The three main red flags are:

Red flag number one, the immediate publication if the information in major Western mainstream media, despite of the, arguably, very sensitive and controversial nature of the information.
Red flag number two, the scapegoating of the Al-Qaeda associated Jabhat al-Nusrah and the simultaneous omission of evidence that places direct responsibility with the Top-US Officials.
Red flag number three, the timing of the disclosure, which comes as the Obama administration attempts to distance itself from Saudi Arabia and Saudi-backed “Al-Qaeda mercenaries”, who carried out the chemical weapons attack, while attempts are made to position the Free Syrian Army as “moderate” and by implication, worthy of support.
ObamaDempseyBandarThe Hershey Bar – Raising the Bar for Truthful Reporting. Let us hear out Hersh and then compare his statements with the evidence which he omits, and which has been in the public domain, latest, since the publication of the article “Top-US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria”.

The article was published in nsnbc international on 7 October 2013, two months before Hersh’s sensational “disclosure” and omission. Hersh states that,

“The absence of immediate alarm inside the American intelligence community demonstrates that there was no intelligence about Syrian intentions in the days before the attack. …A senior intelligence consultant told me that some time after the attack he reviewed the reports for 20 August through 23 August. … For two days – 20 and 21 August – there was no mention of Syria … It was not until 23 August that the use of Sarin became a dominant issue, although hundreds of photographs and videos of the massacre had gone viral within hours on YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites. At this point, the administration knew no more than the public.” (emphasis added)

The above mentioned article proves the statement that the Obama administration did not know more than the public wrong on several crucial points. But let us first give the Pulitzer Prize winning Hersh time to complete his limited CIA Hang Out before reading the article that precisely describes who carried out the attack, the name of the brigade, the name of the brigade commander, the roles top-US officials played in the attack, and more.

Hersh wrote that the statements made by the Obama administration to the effect that the administration was aware about the attack are false. Hersh adds that the claim made by the US government, that the Syrian army was responsible for the attack were just as untrue.

Also here Hersh directly contradicts the evidence published in the above mentioned article, which clearly shows that the Obama administration was very well aware that chemical weapons were being used. In fact, it has been aware of it some considerable time in advance.

The only truthful statement made by Hersh here, is that the US administration’s claims about the Syrian army’s responsibility were false.

weekendavisen_assadHersh then continues, stressing that the intelligence agencies have “cherry-picked pieces of evidence from a period of nine months”, to proof Assad’s responsibility for the attack, stressing that:

“When Obama said on 10 September that his administration knew Assad’s chemical weapons personnel had prepared the attack in advance, he was basing the statement not on an intercept caught as it happened, but on communications, analyzed days after 21 August. … ‘They put together a back story,’ the former [senior intelligence] official said, ‘and there are lots of different pieces and parts. The template they used was the template that goes back to December.’”

As true as Hersh’s statement may be, is significant that the “intelligence agencies” or Hersh’s “Deep Throat” apparently have cherry-picked evidence that shall convey the impression that top-US-officials don’t have a direct political and command responsibility for the chemical weapons attack in East Ghouta, Damascus, on 21 August 2013.

Arguably, Hersh’s statement warrants the questions whether the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist has taken part in cherry-picking the evidence himself, whether the intelligence agencies have cherry-picked it for him while he is a willing conduit, or whether Hersh can be excused because he was so unprofessional as not to pay attention to the evidence for the top-US official’s’ direct political and command responsibility, and that, even though it has been in the public domain since June, and in a more complete form since October.

Hersh continues, by constructing the impression that US intelligence has ignored reports which show that the Jabhat al-Nusrah had the capability to produce Sarin. Again Hersh uses a senior “intelligence consultant” as deep throat, stating:

” Already by late May, the senior intelligence consultant told me, the CIA had briefed the Obama administration on al-Nusra and its work with sarin, and had sent alarming reports that another Sunni fundamentalist group active in Syria, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), also understood the science of producing sarin. … An intelligence document issued in mid-summer dealt extensively with Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed, a chemical weapons expert formerly of the Iraqi military, who was said to have moved into Syria and to be operating in Eastern Ghouta. The consultant told me that Tariq had been identified ‘as an al-Nusra guy with a track record of making mustard gas in Iraq and someone who is implicated in making and using sarin’. He is regarded as a high-profile target by the American military.”

1916MomusPinocchioAnd with the Stroke of a Pen - And with the stroke of a pen, and a little bit of genius, Hersh and/or his deep throat have positioned the US military and intelligence community as our heroes of the day, because the purported Al-Qaida in Iraq chemical weapons expert has been “a high-profile target by the American military”.

There could hardly be any better storyline to close the CIA’s limited hang out with a slam dunk, was it not for the fact that there is an overwhelming amount of available evidence to fill in the blanks in Hersh’s and his deep throat’s story.

To know exactly why it is safe to say that Hersh and his deep throat cover up the evidence that places direct political and command responsibility with US President Barak Obama, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan and top officials in the Saudi Interior Ministry, all one has to do is to read and study the article titled Top US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria, as well as the 41 related and source articles.

The material there is sufficient for any prosecutor to launch an investigation and the prosecution of those who hold the full responsibility for the chemical weapons use in East Ghouta on 21 August 2013.

https://nsnbc.me/2013/12/10/seymour-hersh-facilitates-limited-cia-hangout-covers-up-obamas-and-top-us-officials-involvement-in-chemical-weapons-attack/

Boris Johnson might want to recall the words of former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas who admitted openly that top-British officials, in 2009, 2 years before the first “protests” in Syria, asked him is he wanted to participate in overthrowing the Syrian regime with “rebels”.

During an appearance on the French TV channel LPC in June 2013, Dumas made a short remark, saying that top British officials were preparing the subversion of Syria with the help of “rebels” two years before the first protests in 2011, and that he was asked, whether he wanted to participate.

Roland Dumas
Roland Dumas

During the TV appearance on LPC, in June, Dumas said:

“I am going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me, that they were preparing something in Syria”.

“This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer Minister of Foreign Affairs, if I would like to participate. Naturally, I refused, I said I am French, that does not interest me”

“This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned… in the region it is important to know that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance”.

“Consequently, everything that moves in the region…- and I have this from a former Israeli Prime Minister who told me ´we will try to get on with our neighbors but those who don´t agree with us will be destroyed. It is a type of politics, a view of history, why not after all. But one should know about it”.

https://nsnbc.me/2017/04/08/boris-johnson-flip-flops-cancels-moscow-visit-over-assad-links-forgets-british-officials-planned-war-since-2009/

SYRIA: Child Exploitation: Who is ‘Bana of Aleppo’?

http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/11/29/child-exploitation-who-is-bana-of-aleppo/

According to the intelligence of the Donetsk People’s Republic, an “Islamist battalion” numbering up to 500 men has arrived in Ukraine’s Mariupol. The terrorists unit’s tasks include guarding artillery stockpiles and taking control of the Mariupol port which has become a hub for illegal weapons trading, including chemical weapons and ammunition supply to Middle Eastern countries.

NATO provides overall intelligence, training and co-ordination of the terrorists around the world. That is why a number of videos from the “Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone” show the use of ISIS insignia.


===========

Are you really this gullible and missinformed? Firstly all US action in Syria breaches international law and constitute war crimes. Secondly this is a US war against Assad using proxies to create a faux civil war. Thirdly all evidence points to the US proxies as the groups that have used banned munitions. Fourthly attacking Assad supports terrorism in all its forms. The US proxies (Al Nusra and IS)are loosing and hence the US intervention.

Destroy a village to save it right?

===========

A secret agreement in 2012 was reached between the Black Hitler's Administration and the leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to set up a sarin gas attack and blame it on Assad so that the U.S. could invade and overthrow Assad.

Funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. At the same time the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was operating a “rat line” for Gaddafi’s captured weapons into Syria through Turkey. Seymour Hersh stated “Evidence leads directly to Obama, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabia´s Interior Ministry.” Now for the first time, Hersh has also indicated that Hillary Clinton may well have been directly involved in this “rat line.” or at least had extensive knowledge of it.

So why didn’t Obama attack Syria in 2013...................

At the end of 2016 the two largest ships of the Russian Navy, the battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy and the aircraft carrier 'Admiral Kuznetsov' steamed toward the eastern Mediterranean. Their mission was to establish a 1,500 km naval exclusion zone outside the coast of Syria and to sink any US carrier strike group willing to challenge them. This is to stop the planned American attack on Syria and to prevent the US Navy from launching airstrikes or Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian Arab Army or the Russian forces in Syria. This is a repetition of the situation in August 2013, this time though with an even larger Russian naval presence.

OPCW report: rebels used chemical weapons – not Assad
By Chris Tomson - 08/01/201666

https://media.almasdarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/20d872af015c5158701ea548d3ab5983-696x206.jpg
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has confirmed the traces of the sarin gas used in Syria are not linked with the Syrian government’s former stockpile of chemical weapons. The report corroborates the Syrian government’s assertions that the faction responsible for the chemical attack, as well as 11 other instances of chemical weapons use, was the Syrian opposition.

The report also substantiates last month’s claims from Ahmed al-Gaddafi al-Qahsi, cousin of Muammar Gaddafi, who said that the chemical weapons used in the incident had been stolen from Libya and later smuggled into Syria via Turkey by militants.

The announcement follows an investigation carried out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at the request of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government.

“In one instance, analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance” said Ahmet Uzumcu, the head of the OPCW. He later added that the sarin gas examined bore different characteristics to the one formerly owned by the Syrian government.

When the devastating sarin gas incident left some 1400 civilians dead in East Ghouta in 2013, the United States, European Union and Arab League were quick to accuse Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian military of utilizing its chemical weapons to combat Islamist rebels in the Syrian capital.

Subsequently, the Syrian government agreed with Russia and the US administration to have its stockpile safely demolished in Norway. Less than a month ago, it was announced that the entirety of the chemical stockpile had been safely disposed of.

Prior to the 2013 attack, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that the Syrian Army had seized chemical gas equipment from a militant field hospital in the western port city of Latakia. It cited a field commander stating that the nature of the equipment suggested militants had been planning to carry out chemical or biological attacks and blame the government.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/assad-never-used-chemical-weapons-islamist-rebels-did/

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has confirmed the traces of the sarin gas used in Syria are not linked with the Syrian government’s former stockpile of chemical weapons.

Will this be reported anywhere in the US? Doubtful.

Cruise Missile Attacks: A New Step in Washington’s Long Class War on Syria
April 8, 2017

By Stephen Gowans

Washington has added a new dimension to its long war on Syria: direct military intervention.

Since the mid 1950s, the United States has tried to purge Damascus of an Arab nationalist leadership which has zealously guarded Syria’s freedom from US domination and follows an Arab socialist development path which is at odds with the global free enterprise project advanced by Washington on behalf of its Wall Street patron.


Available from Baraka Books http://www.barakabooks.com/catalogue/washingtons-long-war-on-syria/

Until now, Washington has refrained from directly attacking Syrian forces, though it has intervened manu militari in Syria to hold the Islamic State in check so that the militant group remains strong enough to weaken Syrian forces but not so strong that it captures the Syrian state. [1]
This limited Islamic State-directed US intervention in Syria has involved both airstrikes and an estimated 1,000 boots on the ground. [2] However, the principal modus operandi of Washington’s long war on Syria has been war waged through proxies, both Israel, which annexed Syria’s Golan Heights and has carried out innumerable small-scale attacks since, and Islamist guerrillas, who, from the 1960s, have waged a jihad against what they view as Syria’s heretical government. [3]

The United States contemplated direct military intervention in Syria in 2003, as a follow-up to its invasion of neighbouring Iraq, but found that its resources were strained by efforts to pacify Afghanistan and Iraq and that other means of regime change would have to be pursued. [4]

In place of a muscular boots on the ground strategy, Washington imposed an economic blockade in 2003, which, by 2012, had caused Syria’s economy to buckle, according to the New York Times. [5]

By the spring of 2012, sanctions-induced financial haemorrhaging had “forced Syrian officials to stop providing education, health care and other essential services in some parts of the country.” [6]

By 2016, “US and EU economic sanctions on Syria” were “causing huge suffering among ordinary Syrians and preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid, according to a leaked UN internal report.” [7] The report revealed that aid agencies were unable to obtain drugs and equipment for hospitals because sanctions prevented foreign firms from conducting commerce with Syria.

Veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Cockburn wrote that “the US and EU sanctions” resembled the Iraqi sanctions regime, and were “an economic siege on Syria”—a siege it might be recalled that led to the deaths of more than 500,000 Iraqi children, according to the UN, a death toll greater than that produced by all the weapons of mass destruction in history. [8] Cockburn surmised that the Syrian siege was killing numberless people through illness and malnutrition. [9]

On top of its merciless campaign of economic warfare, Washington enlisted the Arab nationalists’ longstanding foe, the Muslim Brotherhood, to provoke a civil revolt in Syria. The revolt, inaugurated by Islamist-instigated riots in Daraa in mid-March 2011, soon mushroomed into an all-out campaign of guerrilla warfare, fueled by Saudi, Qatari, Turkish, Jordanian and US money. U.S. and Western intelligence services trained thousands of guerrillas in Jordan and Qatar. [10]

In 2012, the US Defense Intelligence Agency reported that the insurgency was Islamist, led by the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Islamic State’s forerunner, and that Western powers and the kings, emirs and sultans who preside tyrannically over Gulf oil states, were the backers. According to the intelligence agency, Turkey’s Reccep Tayyip Erdogan, a man infatuated with dreams of becoming a neo-Ottoman sultan, and himself an Islamist, was also a major backer. [11]

But until Washington ordered cruise missiles to rain down on Shayrat Airfield near Homs on April 6, the United States had relied on proxies and siege to bring about regime change in a country which Moshe Ma’oz had termed “a focus of Arab nationalistic struggle against an American regional presence and interests.” [12]

The Shayrat Airfield attack was presented for world opinion as a response to Syrian forces allegedly gassing civilians at Khan Shaykum on 4 April. The allegations were levelled by blatantly partisan sources.

One source was the White Helmets, which bills itself as a neutral civil defense outfit, but is in reality funded by governments entangled with Washington in its long war on Syria. It is enmeshed, too, or at the very least, cooperates with, al-Qaeda. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a one-person outfit based in the UK which overtly supports the guerrillas, was another source.

Significantly, no one even remotely impartial has investigated the allegations to determine whether (a) chemical agents were indeed used, (b) whether they were used deliberately, and (c) who used them? The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons refuses to weigh in on any of these questions until an investigation has been completed, the only sound course of action.

All the same, Washington and its lickspittle allies, exuding colonial arrogance, immediately pronounced in Olympian fashion that the accusations were beyond dispute, an outcome which was hardly surprising given that the Western champions of neo-colonialism share with the White Helmets and Syrian Observatory for Human Rights a common goal of overthrowing Syria’s Arab nationalist government. Washington can always be counted on to publicize any calumny against its Syrian enemy, no matter how untenable.

Despite assurances that a gas attack had been undertaken at Khan Shaykum on 4 April, and that Syrian forces were responsible, the United States, France and Britain, if they, were not themselves implicated, could have had no certain knowledge of this, since these matters take weeks of on the ground investigation to offer sound judgment, and even then the question of attribution—that is, who did it?—is often unanswerable. The reality, of course, is that Western powers have no idea whether the accusation is valid but seized the opportunity to claim it was to establish a pretext for military action in furtherance of the United States’ long war on Syria.

Mainstream journalists also rushed to judgement in advance of even the barest resemblance of an impartial investigation, their assessments aligning with the assessments, sans evidence, of their own governments.

On top of being predicated on an untested allegation by unquestionably partial sources, the US attack was illegal—and on two levels: internationally, because it was undertaken without UN Security Council assent, and domestically, because it represented an unauthorized act of war. The act of war was ordered unilaterally by the White House, notwithstanding the fact that declarations of war are the exclusive remit of Congress, which did not confer—indeed, was not asked for—its authorization.

But the point is academic.

The United Sates has already amassed a sizable record of crimes in Syria, and an even more sizeable record in the larger Arab world, not the least of which crimes is the intrusion of US military personnel on Syrian soil, an act of war itself.

As a military colossus, the United States is at liberty to violate international law with impunity, since there exists no higher authority capable of enforcing international law through the threat of a force greater than that which the Pentagon itself can wield. Expecting the United States to yield to international law is naïve and therefore any discussion of whether this or that act of the United States violates international law is a discussion of no consequence.

The White House is able to violate US law without punishment by eliciting at least the passive acceptance of the US public and its representatives for its wars of aggression; accordingly, with the Congress and the US public on side, there’s no one to hold the White House to account before the US constitution.

White House efforts to secure the acquiescence of the public, if not its jingoistic support, are facilitated by the measures the Pentagon takes to limit US troop casualties, so that no matter how devastating US military operations are for the victims, the US public is not inconvenienced or traumatized psychologically by an accumulation of US combat casualties.

Equally helpful from the point of view of mobilizing support for war in violation of US law is the demonization of Washington’s targets, an activity in which the news media, which accept the pronouncements of US officials on foreign policy at face value, engage with enthusiasm. Witness how easily the Bush administration and Blair government were able to dupe the Western mainstream media into believing (or if they weren’t duped, to ardently propagate) fairy tales about Arab nationalist Iraq concealing chemical and biological weapons.

Moreover, witness how easily Washington shapes the intellectual environment. It has persuaded the world that chemical and biological weapons (which can kill tens or at most hundreds of people under ideal conditions, and many fewer under typical ones) belong to the same class of weapons as nuclear arms (which can kill tens or hundreds of thousands.) This false conflation of minor weapons with authentic weapons of mass destruction has proved useful in portraying such military non-threats as Arab nationalist Iraq under Saddam as signal threats whose elimination is imperative for the safety of the world.

Demonizing targets—often by accusing them of having, using, or intending to use either falsely classified or genuine weapons of mass destruction—creates, from the vantage point of the public, a moral obligation for the United States to act. The Leftists who have an insatiable appetite for moral lapidation and florid language about “murderous regimes,” brutal dictators,” and “moral disgrace,” in connection with the leaders of former colonies which the United States is endeavouring to re-colonize, contribute to the mobilization of consent for war and to an international class struggle from above.

Left collaborators see only the completely powerless as occupying morally tenable ground. Any state which pursues emancipatory goals is denounced as brutal, murderous, or a moral disgrace and arguments are mounted that the state’s emancipatory goals are a sham. Only people without formal power, by this way of thinking, engage in class struggle against oppression and exploitation, while those who exercise formal authority are viewed as agents of oppression by definition.

This view is too simple.

The Italian philosopher Domenic Losurdo argues for a tripartite model of class struggle linked to the division of labour on (1) an international level, (2) a national level and (3) within the household. [13]

Class struggle on an international level corresponds to the exploitation of the people of one nation by another nation; for example, by the relegation of one country by another to a subordinate role in the international division of labour.

Class struggle on a national level corresponds to the exploitation of labour by the owners of capital within a country, while class struggle within the household pertains to the exploitation of female domestic labour by males.

Class struggle so conceived can be coterminous as when, for example, the people in one country are exploited en masse as a source of labour by the owners of capital of a second.

Washington’s long—and now expanded—war on Syria, is a class struggle on an international level. It is a class struggle in which the United States, as champion of the profit-making interests of corporate America and the class of billionaires who lead it, seeks to permanently relegate Syrians to a subordinate role in the international division of labour, one in which they will be limited to low wage jobs in extractive and basic manufacturing industries, if not subsistence farming.

Washington aspires to sweep away the Arab socialist impediments to the free enterprise, free trade, and free market capitalist nirvana it seeks to establish on a global scale, where US corporations have space to dominate the commanding heights of every country’s economy, and local labour is relegated to low-wage roles, and permanent penury.

Former chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz put it this way:

Colonialism left a mixed legacy in the developing world—but one clear result was the view among people there that they had been cruelly exploited…the political independence that came to scores of colonies after World War II did not put an end to economic colonialism. In some regions…the exploitation—the extraction of natural resources and the rape of the environment all in return for a pittance—was obvious. Elsewhere it was more subtle. In many parts of the world, global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank came to be seen as instruments of post-colonial control. These institutions pushed market fundamentalism…a notion idealized by Americans as ‘free and unfettered market.’ … Free-market ideology turned out to be an excuse for new forms of exploitation. [14]

Arab nationalists in Iraq and Libya waged a class war on an international scale, aiming to free the people of their countries from the disadvantages that colonialism had visited upon them and to end their continued economic exploitation by the West. Their struggle, while successful for a time, ultimately ended in failure, as the United States and its allies, through demonization, siege and warfare, overcame these struggles from below. These victories by Washington were victories in favor of exploitation.

The class struggle fought by Arab nationalists in Syria continues, despite the concerted efforts of Washington, its neo-colonial allies, its Arab satraps, apartheid Israel, and Leftist collaborators, to crush it. Concurrently, the Islamic Republic of Iran is conducting its own class struggle against Western efforts of re-colonization, though on a grander scale, with the larger Islamic world as the object of liberation.

The struggle between Iran and the United States is a class struggle on a colossal scale, with Washington seeking to open Iran while keeping the remainder of the Muslim world open to continued exploitation by US financial, industrial, commercial and petrochemical concerns, and Tehran leading a project to build “resistance” economies that prioritize the uplift of the people who live and work in the Muslim world over shareholders of US corporations. This struggle is intertwined with the class struggle at which Syria is the center.

Washington’s expanded war on Syria is, then, an expanded class war from above against an emancipatory struggle from below. Washington’s war-making relies on multiple weapons, from siege, to proxy war, to direct military intervention, and no less to information warfare aimed at demonizing Syria’s Arab nationalists.

1. See my Washington’s Long War on Syria. Baraka Books. 2017, chapter 4.
2. Thomas Walkom, “Putting Donald Trump’s strike against Syria in context,” The Toronto Star, April 7, 2017.
3. Washington’s Long War, chapter 2.
4. Ibid.
5. Nada Bakri, “Sanctions pose growing threat to Syria’s Assad”, The York Times, October 10, 2011.
6. Joby Warrick and Alice Fordham, “Syria running out of cash as sanctions take toll, but Assad avoids economic pain,” The Washington Post, April 24, 2012.
7. Patrick Cockburn, “US and EU sanctions are ruining ordinary Syrians’ lives, yet Bashar al-Assad hangs on to power,” The Independent, October 7, 2016.
8. John Mueller and Karl Mueller, “Sanctions of Mass Destruction,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999.
9. 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996; Patrick Cockburn, “US and EU sanctions are ruining ordinary Syrians’ lives, yet Bashar al-Assad hangs on to power,” The Independent, October 7, 2016.
10. Washington’s Long War, chapters 2, 3 and 4.
11. http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf
12. Moshe Ma’oz, Bruce Cumings, Ervand Abrahamian and Moshe Ma’oz, Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth about North Korea, Iran, and Syria, The New Press, 2004, p .207.
13. Domenico Losurdo. Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History. Palgrave MacMillan. 2006.
14. Quoted in Graham E. Fuller. A World without Islam. Back Bay Books. 2010. p. 262.

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2017/04/08/cruise-missile-attacks-a-new-step-in-washingtons-long-class-war-on-syria/

Is this the prelude to a new Iraq, 2003?
Yet again, Washington makes use of its power and arrogance and challenges the world with an act of barbarism that could end up detonating a ticking time bomb

Author: Elson Concepción Pérez | internet@granma.cu
april 10, 2017 15:04:55

http://en.granma.cu/file/img/2017/04/medium/f0016865.jpg
U.S. Navy destroyers launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea on Syria. Photo: Reuters

The montage regarding the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army against terrorists who have occupied part of this Arab nation was prepared by the United States, along the same lines as that staged in March 2003 by then President George W. Bush to justify the bombing and occupation of Iraq.

Donald Trump has taken the first step in this direction, ordering 59 cruise missiles be fired at an air base in the province of Homs, killing nearly a dozen people, and representing a clear challenge to the international community, which in some cases even believed his campaign pledges that he would not involve himself in such wars.

When Bush, fourteen years ago, began bombing Iraq without consulting with the UN, he alleged that the Arab nation had weapons of mass destruction. Months later, he admitted that this was not true, that U.S. intelligence services had provided erroneous information. But the deed was already done and the result today is almost a million Iraqis dead thanks to these attacks.

The current situation follows similar lines. According to the Pentagon, two U.S. Navy destroyers launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea on Syria.

Trump’s rhetoric could not be more similar to that of Bush: “There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons,” he stated in Florida, where he was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It would be worth asking the new occupant of the White House whether he is aware that Syria eliminated all its chemical weapons in 2014, under the supervision of the international institution in charge of the control of these devices.

It should also be noted that these U.S. bombardments occur at a moment of great tension in the area, with several other powers involved in one way or another. While Russia makes all kinds of political and military moves to eliminate terrorists of the so-called Islamic State and Al Nusra front - the latter of which is protected by the United States - and attempts to sit all factions involved in the Syrian conflict down at the negotiating table; the West, led by the United States, in its drive to remove Syrian President Bashar Al Asad from power, makes limited and calculated moves, with no serious commitment to peace in the region.

Russia condemned the U.S. strikes and urgently summoned a meeting of the UN Security Council given the seriousness of the situation.

Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that President Vladimir Putin views the attack as “an attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths caused by U.S. military intervention in Iraq.”

He added that the move had caused “significant damage” to U.S.-Russia relations.

Such is the current scenario, just a few days after the 59 U.S. missiles struck the Syrian military facility. A move which, however one seeks to justify it, represents yet another act of aggression against a sovereign country.

Yet again, Washington makes use of its power and arrogance and challenges the world with an act of barbarism that could end up detonating a ticking time bomb.

As missiles are launched and nearby Israel - the unconditional ally of the United States - enthusiastically applauds, Russia and Iran have warned the world of the true intention of destabilization of this Arab nation: the pretext that could be used to repeat in Syria the invasion and occupation to which Iraq was subjected in 2003.

http://en.granma.cu/mundo/2017-04-10/is-this-the-prelude-to-a-new-iraq-2003

Western firms primed to cash in on Syria’s oil and gas ‘frontier’
by Nafeez Ahmed

This exclusive is published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a crowd-funded investigative journalism project

US, British, French, Israeli and other energy interests could be prime beneficiaries of military operations in Iraq and Syria designed to rollback the power of the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) and, potentially, the Bashar al-Assad regime.

A study for a global oil services company backed by the French government and linked to Britain’s Tory-led administration, published during the height of the Arab Spring, hailed the significant “hydrocarbon potential” of Syria’s offshore resources.

The 2011 study was printed in GeoArabia, a petroleum industry journal published by a Bahrain-based consultancy, GulfPetroLink, which is sponsored by some of the world’s biggest oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Total, and BP.

GeoArabia’s content has no open subscription system and is exclusively distributed to transnational energy corporations, corporate sponsors and related organisations, as well as some universities.

Authored by Steven A. Bowman, a Senior Geoscientist for the French energy company CGGVeritas, the study identified “three sedimentary basins, Levantine, Cyprus, and Latakia, located in offshore Syria” and highlighted “significant evidence for a working petroleum system in offshore Syria with numerous onshore oil and gas shows, DHIs (direct hydrocarbon indicators) observed on seismic, and oil seeps identified from satellite imagery.”

France’s secret affair with Assad’s Syria

At the time, when civil unrest was sweeping across Syria, CGGVeritas was contracted to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Sources.
The French company is one of the world’s largest seismic surveyors. Backed by the French government which owns 18% voting rights in the firm, CGGVeritas had acquired seismic data on offshore Syrian resources in 2005, and since then has been the main point of contact for geophysical and geological datasets on behalf of the Syrian regime.

In 2011, the French firm had an exclusive contract with the Syrian government to provide technical support for that year’s Syrian International Offshore Bid Round for firms to explore, develop and produce oil and gas from three offshore blocks in the Mediterranean Sea by the Syrian coast.

“Exploration activity has increased in the Eastern Mediterranean in recent years following a series of major multi-TCF (trillion cubic feet) gas discoveries made in the offshore southern Levantine Basin,” wrote Bowman. “Licensing rounds are scheduled to be announced during 2011 for areas in offshore Syria, Lebanon, and Cyprus, which are believed to share strong geological similarities with these discoveries.”

Describing offshore Syria as “a truly frontier area of exploration”, Bowman — who was also involved in CGGVeritas evaluations of seismic datasets of energy resources in Libya — noted the discovery of several “flat-spots” which, if real, “will represent billion-barrel/multi-TCF [trillion cubic feet] drilling targets given the scale and volumetrics of the structures within which they occur.”

Image of Syrian offshore fields from 2011 GeoArabia study

Western energy majors court Assad

CGGVeritas was also licenced by the British government for the North Sea, where for the last several years Bowman has held responsibility for identifying prospectivity and coordinating licencing round activities.

In 2012, the US Department of the Interior published a US Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook, which observed that Assad’s government-owned Syrian Petroleum Co.:
“… cooperated with several international oil companies, such as Chinese National Petroleum Co. (CNPC), Gulfsands Petroleum of the United Kingdom, Oil and Natural Gas Resources Corp. of India, Royal Dutch Shell plc. of the United Kingdom, and Total SA of France through subsidiary companies.”

Two years earlier, the Syrian capital, Damascus, was host to the 7th Syrian International Oil & Gas Exhibition, convened by Assad’s Ministry of Petroleum. The exhibition was sponsored by CNPC, Shell, and the French major Total, and was attended by over a hundred representatives of international firms, 40% of whom were based in Europe.
A 2010 draft document produced on behalf of the Syrian Ministry of Petroleum by the exhibition organiser, Allied Expo, described how British company Shell was planning to work closely with the Assad regime to develop Syria’s gas production:

“Shell will devise a master plan for the development of the gas sector in Syria, following an agreement signed with the Ministry of Petroleum,” say the presentation slides, created in October 2010 to promote plans for a new oil and gas exhibition in 2012. “The agreement includes an assessment of the overall undiscovered gas potential in Syria, potential for upstream gas production, need for gas transmission and distribution networks…”

Slide from 2010 Syrian Ministry of Petroleum presentation (mistake in final sentence is from the original)

Throughout 2010, Shell officials held numerous meetings with British government ministers. In July, Shell met David Cameron to discuss “business issues”, Foreign Office minister David Howell to discuss “international energy matters”, and Charles Hendry, minister of state at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

Slide from 2010 Syrian Ministry of Petroleum presentation

Such meetings with multiple government departments and often dozens of senior officials continued for every month through to the end of the following year, except June 2010. These included meetings with the Prime Minister’s National Security Advisor Peter Ricketts; business secretary Vince Cable, various DECC ministers to discuss “energy issues” related to Qatar, along with several sessions with Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.

Declassified British government memos show that in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, oil firms BP and Shell held several meetings with senior government officials to guarantee a role of British energy companies in post-conflict Iraq.

While publicly the government decried criticisms of an oil motive for British involvement in the war as “the oil conspiracy theory”, one memo of a meeting between then Trade Minister Baroness Symons and UK oil firms revealed that in private, they believed “it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis.”

Slide from 2010 Syrian Ministry of Petroleum presentation

After the 2011 protests, even when Assad was brutalising demonstrators in the streets, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ruled out military intervention and insisted that the Syrian dictator was a “reformer” — which he took as a green light to escalate his crackdown.

As the cycle of violence intensified, Western governments disassociated from Assad when it became clear his rule had become completely unstable. With the outbreak of civil war, the plans of Shell and other oil majors to open up Syria’s offshore resources were unexpectedly suspended.

Military action to protect Mediterranean oil and gas

The sudden crisis in Syria threw a spanner in the works for longstanding efforts to explore and open up lucrative energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean.

A report published in December 2014 by the US Army’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) provides compelling evidence that American, British and Gulf defence strategists see the Mediterranean as an opportunity to wean Europe off dependence on Russian gas, and boost Israel’s energy independence.

As part of this process, the report revealed, military action is viewed as potentially necessary to secure Syria’s untapped offshore gas resources, which overlap with the territorial waters of other Mediterranean powers, including Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey.

The report by Mohammed El-Katiri, an advisor to the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defence and formerly a research director at the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Advanced Research and Assessment Group (ARAG), explicitly acknowledges that a post-conflict Syria would open up new prospects for energy exploration.

“Once the Syria conflict is resolved, prospects for Syrian offshore production — provided commercial resources are found — are high,” wrote El-Katiri. Potential oil and gas resources can be developed “relatively smoothly once the political situation allows for any new exploration efforts in its offshore territories.”

The US Army SSI report noted that Syria’s offshore resources are part of a wider matrix of oil and gas deposits in the Levant basin encompassing the offshore territories of these competing states.

The region is estimated to hold approximately 1.7 billion barrels of oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which could be just a third of the basin’s total hydrocarbons.
US-led military intervention has a key role to play, the report concludes, in “managing” conflicts and tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially the prospect of “Syria destabilising into de facto civil war.”

“US diplomatic and military support has a pivotal role to play in the East Mediterranean’s complex geopolitical landscape, and its importance will only grow as the value of the natural resources at stake increases,” the Army SSI report said:

“US security and military support for its main allies in the case of an eruption of natural resource conflict in the East Mediterranean may prove essential in managing possible future conflict.”

Neocons angling for Syria’s Golan oil bonanza

One of the key potential conflicts flagged up by the report is between Syria and Israel, over oil exploration licenses granted by the Israeli government to search for oil in the Golan Heights.

The Golan was captured by Israel from Syria in 1967, and unilaterally annexed in 1981 with the introduction of Israeli law to the territory.

The report recognised the risk of “another armed conflict between the two parties should substantial hydrocarbon resources be discovered.”

The company that has been granted exploration rights in the Golan Heights is a major American firm, Genie Oil and Gas. Data from exploratory wells explored by Genie’s Israeli subsidiary, Afek Oil and Gas, confirmed “significant” quantities of oil and gas after drilling into a column of reserves 1,150 feet thick, “about 10 times larger than the global average.”

Yuval Bartov, Afek’s chief geologist, recently told the Economist his firm had discovered an oil reservoir “with the potential of billions of barrels.”

Equity-holding board members of Afek’s parent company, Genie Oil and Gas, include global media baron Rupert Murdoch.

In late 2010, Murdoch teamed up with Lord Jacob Rothschild to buy a 5.5% stake in Genie, worth around $11 million. Lord Rothschild is chairman of RIT (Rothschild Investment Trust) Capital Partners, a $3.4 billion investment trust fund formerly associated with the Rothschild investment bank.

RIT Capital invests primarily in public equity, debt markets, real estate equities, gold and oil, including “sectors that we have a deep knowledge of” such as “energy, resources, financial services, TMT [technology, media and telecommunications] and consumer-related.”

Murdoch is the owner of News Corporation, the world’s second largest media conglomerate before it split in 2013 into News Corp, where he is executive chairman, and 21st Century Fox, where he is co-executive chairman, running the corporation with his two sons, Lachlan and James.

As such, Murdoch is a dominant force over newspapers, publishers and TV networks in the English-language media, encompassing BSkyB, The Times and The Sun in the UK; the FOX cable network including FOX News, Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and National Geographic in the US; The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, and Herald Sun in Australia — to name just a few.

“I believe Genie Energy’s technologies and vast shale oil licenses have real potential to spur a global, geo-political paradigm shift by moving a major portion of new oil production to America, Israel, and other western-oriented democracies,” said Murdoch explaining his reasons for investing in the firm.

During the Leveson inquiry, it emerged that the global media baron had numerous undisclosed meetings with Prime Minister David Cameron, who appeared to have close relationships with Murdoch and other senior News Corp. officials.

Murdoch and Rothschild also serve on Genie’s strategic advisory board. Joining them on the board are Larry Summers, former Director of President Obama’s National Economic Council; ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, a former Vice-President of NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, Director of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, advisory board member of anti-Muslim hate group the Gatestone Institute, international patron to the Henry Jackson Society; Dick Cheney, former Vice-President under George W. Bush; and Bill Richardson, former Secretary of Energy under Clinton, Governor of New Mexico and Obama nominee for Secretary of Commerce.

Dismembering Syria to stave-off peak oil

Another of Genie Oil and Gas’s subsidiaries is American Shale Oil, a joint project with the French major Total SA. Total was among the sponsors of the 2010 international oil and gas exhibition hosted by the Assad regime in Damascus.

American Shale Oil (AMSO) operates in the US in Colorado’s Green River Formation, estimated to hold 3 trillion barrels of recoverable oil.

On its website, the company offers an extraordinary declaration regarding its rationale for focusing on unconventional oil and gas resources in the US and Israel:
“The peaking of world oil production presents the US and the world with an enormous challenge. Aggressive action must be taken to avoid unprecedented economic, social and political costs.”

Screenshot of website of Genie Energy subsidiary

This candid statement demonstrates that the interests behind Genie Energy recognise the reality of ‘peak oil’ usually denied by the industry. Peak oil does not imply that the world is running out of oil, but rather the end of the age of cheap, easy oil as conventional oil production declines, and therefore an increasing shift to a new age of expensive, difficult oil.

Declassified documents along with senior US and British officials involved in the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq confirm that fears around the impact of ‘peak oil’ played an instrumental role in the Bush and Blair administration’s plans for war.

This illustrates that Genie Energy’s activities via Israel in Syria remain integral to the wider strategic goal of dominating the world’s remaining oil and gas resources, due to concerns about the impact of ‘peak oil.’

Obama appears to have few objections to the premise of Genie Energy’s oil exploration activities in the Syrian Golan Heights: that the territory will ultimately be ceded to Israel.
In early November, as Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook reports, “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took advantage of a private meeting… with Barack Obama — their first in 13 months — to raise the possibility of dismembering Syria.”

According to Israeli officials familiar with the conversation:

“Netanyahu indicated that Washington should give its belated blessing to Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria during the 1967 war…. Netanyahu claimed that Syria was no longer a functioning state, allowing ‘for different thinking.’”

Obama’s response was telling — he did not clarify to Netanyahu that the dismemberment of Syria was out of the question:

“[A]n unnamed White House official confirmed that Netanyahu had raised the matter. The official said: ‘I think the president didn’t think it warranted an answer. It wasn’t clear how serious he [Netanyahu] was about it.’

There is thus a surprisingly broad and powerful nexus of US, British, French and Israeli interests, encompassing defence, security, energy and media sectors, at the forefront of pushing for the break-up Syria.

An overriding motive for this is the control of what is believed to be potentially vast untapped oil and gas resources in Syria and the wider Eastern Mediterranean. Relatedly, the US and Britain aim to rollback Russian and Iranian influence in the region.

According to the 2012 US Department of the Interior’s Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook on Syria, the Syrian civil war has put paid to Assad’s ambitions to transform Syria into a gas transshipment hub to Europe allied with Russia and Iran:

“In the summer of 2011, Iran, Iraq and Syria signed a memorandum of understanding on laying a 5,000-kilometer pipeline, to be named the Islamic Gas Pipeline. The proposed pipeline would transport gas resources from Iran’s South Pars field and would extend through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon and to Europe under the Mediterranean Sea. Iran had suggested that the Islamic Gas Pipeline could serve as an alternative to the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline, which was set to supply Europe with gas resources by way of Turkey and Austria.”

The other alternative was a proposed pipeline backed by the US that would transport gas from the Qatar-owned part of the field overlapping with Iran, known as the North Field.
At 872 trillion cubic feet, the latter comprises the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world. Together, Qatar’s North Field and Iran’s South Pars constitute the world’s single largest natural gas deposit.

The Qatar pipeline would run through Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey where gas could then be transported to Europe. Companies that have a stake in developing Qatar’s North Field include the US-based ExxonMobil and France’s Total.

CGG Veritas, the French-government backed firm previously contracted to Assad’s regime in Syria to scope the country’s offshore resources, had also conducted seismic surveys of the North Field on behalf of Qatar, after which it was contracted to survey Qatar’s Dukhan field.

The conflict that increasingly engulfed Syria after Assad signed the Russia-backed pipeline deal with Iran has effectively annulled the Iran-Syria pipeline project, which was supposed to have been completed in 2016.

“The war and sanctions had an adverse effect on Syrian hydrocarbon sector activity, including development, exploration, export, production, transportation, and distribution,” observed the US Geological Survey report:

“As the war continued in the country, Syria’s prospect of becoming a significant energy transit country to Iraq, the Mediterranean area, and Europe was severely diminished.”
ISIS is a figleaf for the Mediterranean scramble

Despite that, or perhaps because of it, Russia is intent on laying its stake in the ground.

SoyuzNefteGaz, a Russian oil and gas company, began oil prospecting operations in September 2015 on Syria’s western coast — the same area scoped by CGGVeritas.
The operations follow on from a 2013 agreement between Syria and Russia, under which SoyuzNefteGaz would pump in an initial investment of around $90 million.
Russia’s increasing military build-up in Syria, justified as an offensive against ISIS, is more likely about propping up Assad within a self-contained Alawite mini-state allied with Iran.

Putin’s announcement after Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian jet that Turkey has been systematically facilitating ISIS oil sales illustrates how the terror-entity has become a figleaf to justify military action.

As INSURGEintelligence has previously reported, there is significant evidence that high-level elements of Turkish government and intelligence agencies have covertly sponsored Islamist terrorist groups in Syria, including ISIS, and that this has involved permitting black market oil sales.

Why, however, did Vladimir Putin wait until the murder of a Russian pilot before announcing Russia’s possession of intelligence on Turkish state-sponsorship of ISIS?

There can be little doubt that Putin had previously been more interested in protecting Russian relations with Turkey as an emerging gas transshipment hub to Europe, under which he and Erdogan planned to build the multibillion Russia-Turkey gas pipeline, Turkish Stream — now suspended after the recent diplomatic furore.

US, British and French military operations have been similarly inconsistent, inexplicably failing to shut down ISIS supply lines through Turkey, failing to bomb critical ISIS oil infrastructure including vast convoys of trucks transporting black market oil, and refusing to arm the most effective and secular Kurdish ground forces combating ISIS.
It has become increasingly clear that the US-led coalition strategy is aimed primarily at containment of the group’s territorial ambitions within Syria.

Shortly before the Paris attacks, Obama explained:

“From the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria it — they’ll come in, they’ll leave. But you don’t see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain.”

This strategy is, however, consistent with the de facto partitioning of Iraq and Syria apparently favoured by the nexus of neoconservative defence and energy interests described above.

As Russia expands its military presence in the region in the name of fighting ISIS, the US, Britain and France are now scrambling to ensure they retain a military foothold in Syria — an effort to position themselves to make the most of a post-conflict environment. As the US Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook put it:

“Most of the international investors who pulled out of Syria following the deterioration of the safety and security situation throughout the country… are expected to remain so until the military and political conflicts are resolved.”

In this context, as Russia and Iran consolidate their hold on Syria through the Assad regime — staking the claim to Syria’s untapped resources in the Mediterranean — the acceleration of Western military action offers both a carrot and a stick: the carrot aims to threaten the Assad regime into a political accommodation that capitulates to Western regional energy designs; the stick aims to replace him with a more compliant entity comprised of rebel forces backed by Western allies, the Gulf states and Turkey, whilst containing the most virulent faction, ISIS.

It is unlikely that this blood-soaked strategy to beat Russia and Iran to Mediterranean energy riches has any prospect of success, for any of the parties.
Judging by recent history, it is also likely to backfire in ways that cannot be foreseen, nor controlled.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the ‘System Shift’ column for VICE’s Motherboard, and is a weekly columnist for Middle East Eye.

He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award, known as the ‘Alternative Pulitzer Prize’, for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work, and was twice selected in the Evening Standard’s ‘Power 1,000’ most globally influential Londoners, in 2014 and 2015.

Nafeez has also written and reported for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, Counterpunch, Truthout, among others.

He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Anglia Ruskin University, where he is researching the link between global systemic crises and civil unrest for Springer Energy Briefs.

Nafeez is the author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT, among other books. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.

This article was amended on 2nd December 2015 to include evidence of secret meetings in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War between British government officials and UK oil majors.

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/western-firms-plan-to-cash-in-on-syria-s-oil-and-gas-frontier-6c5fa4a72a92

Genies and Genocide: Syria, Israel, Russia and Much Oil
Column: Politics Region: Middle East Country: Syria

Geopolitical stakes in the Middle East have just gotten higher by an order of magnitude. Take a little-known Newark, New Jersey oil company, the contested Golan Heights between Syria and Israel, add a reported major oil discovery there just as Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria goes into high gear, shake it vigorously and we have a potential detonator for World War III.

Initially–going back more than a decade when Washington neo-conservative think-tanks and the Bush-Cheney Administration were devising their Greater Middle East regime-change agenda–competing natural gas pipelines through Syria to Turkey or via Lebanon to the Mediterranean played a definite “supporting” role in Washington’s war on Syria’s Assad. Now oil, lots of oil, comes into the play, and Israel is claiming it’s theirs. The only problem is that it isn’t. The oil is in the Golan Heights which Israel illegally took from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War.

Genie in a stinky bottle

What do Dick Cheney, James Woolsey, Bill Richardson, Jacob Lord Rothschild, Rupert Murdock, Larry Summers and Michael Steinhardt have in common? They all are members of the Strategic Advisory Board of a Newark, New Jersey-based oil and gas group with the name, Genie Energy. It’s quite a collection of names.

Dick Cheney, before becoming George W. Bush’s “shadow president” in 2001, was CEO of the world’s largest oilfield services company, Halliburton, also reported to be a CIA-linked company tied to the Bush family cabal. James Woolsey, a neo-con former CIA Director under Bill Clinton, today sits as the chairman of the neo-con think-tank, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and is a member of the pro-Likud Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). He was a member of the infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC), along with Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and a gaggle of neo-cons who later staffed the Bush-Cheney administration. After September 11, 2001 Woolsey referred to the Bush-Cheney War on Terror as “World War IV,” counting the Cold War as World War III. Bill Richardson is a former US Secretary of Energy. Rupert Murdock, owner of major US and UK media including the Wall Street Journal, is the major financier of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard of Bill Kristol, who founded the PNAC. Larry Summers was US Treasury Secretary and drafted the laws that deregulated US banks from the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, in effect opening the floodgates to the US financial crisis of 2007-2015. Michael Steinhardt the hedge fund speculator, is a philanthropic friend of Israel, of Marc Rich and a board member of Woolsey’s neo-con Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. And Jacob Lord Rothschild is a former business partner of convicted Russian oil oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Before his arrest Khodorkovsky secretly transferred his shares in Yukos Oil to Rothschild. Rothschild is a part-owner of Genie Energy which in 2013 was granted exclusive oil and gas exploration rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights by the Netanyahu government. In short, it’s quite an eye-popping board.

Golan Heights and international law

The Israeli government gave the concession to Genie in the disputed Golan Heights in 2013 when the US-led destabilization of the Syrian Assad regime was in full force. Conveniently, Israel also began building fortifications at that time to seal off the illegally-occupied Golan Heights from Syria, knowing there was little Assad or Syria could do to stop it. In 2013, as Genie Energy began moving into Golan Heights, Israeli military engineers overhauled the forty-five mile border fence with Syria, replacing it with a steel barricade that includes barbed wire, touch sensors, motion detectors, infrared cameras, and ground radar, putting it on par with the Wall Israel has constructed in the West Bank.

Now, as Damascus fights for its life, apparently, Genie has discovered a huge oil field precisely there.

The Golan Heights, however, are illegally occupied by Israel. In 1981, Israel passed the Golan Heights Law, imposing Israeli “laws, jurisdiction and administration” to the Golan Heights. In response the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242 which declared Israel must withdraw from all lands occupied in the 1967 war with Syria, including the Golan Heights.

Again in 2008 a plenary session of the UN General Assembly passed a resolution 161–1 in favor of a motion on the Golan Heights that reaffirmed Security Council resolution 497, which was passed in 1981 after the Israeli de facto annexation, declaring the Golan Heights Law, “null and void and without international legal effect,” and called on Israel to desist from “changing the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and legal status of the occupied Syrian Golan and, in particular, to desist from the establishment of settlements…from imposing Israeli citizenship and Israeli identity cards on the Syrian citizens in the occupied Syrian Golan and from its repressive measures against the population of the occupied Syrian Golan.” Israel was the only nation to vote against the resolution. As recently as June 2007 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sent a secret communique to Syrian President Bashar Assad saying that Israel would concede the Golan Heights in exchange for a comprehensive peace agreement and the severing of Syria’s ties with Iran and militant groups in the region.

Genie claims huge discovery

On October 8, into the second week of Russian airstrikes against ISIS and other so-called “moderate” terrorists at the request of the Assad government, Yuval Bartov, chief geologist from Genie Energy’s Israeli subsidiary, Afek Oil & Gas, told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that his company had found a major oil reservoir on the Golan Heights: “We’ve found an oil stratum 350 meters thick in the southern Golan Heights. On average worldwide, strata are 20 to 30 meters thick, and this is 10 times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities.”

This oil find has now made the Golan Heights a strategic “prize” that clearly has the Netanyahu government more determined than ever to sow chaos and disorder in Damascus and use that to de facto create an Israeli irreversible occupation of Golan and its oil. A minister in the Netanyahu coalition government, Naftali Bennett, Minister of Education and Minister of Diaspora Affairs and leader of the right-wing religious party, The Jewish Home, has made a proposal that Israel settle 100,000 new Israeli settlers across the Golan in five years. He argues that with Syria “disintegrating” after years of civil war, it’s hard to imagine a stable state to which the Golan Heights could be returned. Further a growing chorus in Tel Aviv is arguing that Netanyahu demand American recognition of Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan as an “appropriate salve to Israeli security concerns in the wake of the nuclear deal with Iran.”

Energy war has been a significant component of US, Israeli, Qatari, Turkish, and, until recently, Saudi, strategy against Syria’s Assad regime. Before the latest Golan Heights oil discovery, the focus on Assad pivoted on the huge regional natural gas resources of both Qatar and of Iran on opposite sides of the Persian Gulf, comprising the largest known gas discovery in the world to date.

In 2009 the government of Qatar, today home to the Muslim Brotherhood and a major funder of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, met with Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

Qatar proposed to Bashar that Syria join in an agreement to allow a transit gas pipeline from Qatar’s huge North Field in the Persian Gulf adjacent to Iran’s huge South Pars gas field. The Qatari pipeline would have gone through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey to supply European markets. Most crucially, it would bypass Russia. An Agence France-Presse report claimed Assad’s rationale was “to protect the interests of his Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.” In 2010 Assad instead joined talks with Iran and Iraq for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field in the Iranian waters of the Persian Gulf. The three countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding in July 2012 – just as Syria’s civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo.

Now an apparent discovery of huge volumes of oil by a New Jersey oil company whose board includes Iraq war architect, Dick Cheney, neo-con ex-CIA head James Woolsey, and Jacob Lord Rothschild, business partner of one of Vladimir Putin’s most bitter critics, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, bring the stakes of the Russian intervention on behalf of Syria’s Assad against ISIS, Al Qaeda and other CIA-backed “moderate” terrorists” to a new geopolitical dimension. The US coup in Ukraine in 2014, and its financing and training of ISIS and other “moderate” terrorist gangs in Syria all have one prime target–Russia and her network of allies, a network, ironically, which Washington and Israeli policies are expanding almost by the hour.

http://journal-neo.org/2015/10/26/genies-and-genocide-syria-israel-russia-and-much-oil-2/

Russia maintains a presence in Syria to offset the war aims of US allies in the Emirates who want to destroy the Assad regime and build multinational pipelines to pipe natural gas through Syria and Turkey to compete with GAZPROM in Europe.

Pseudo-left endorses imperialist onslaught against Syria
11 April 2017

Nearly 16 years after the beginning of the “war on terror” and more than a quarter-century after the first Gulf War in 1991, the unending imperialist war drive is entering a new and more dangerous stage. In the aftermath of the Trump administration’s air strikes against Syria, the US media and political establishment, parroting the official propaganda line used to justify the attacks, is demanding even more aggressive action against Syria and Russia. There is the very real danger of a direct military conflict between the US and nuclear-armed Russia, with incalculable consequences.

And yet, fourteen years after the mass protests against the Iraq war in 2003, there does not exist any organized anti-war movement. With each successive war, accompanied by ever more brazen propaganda and lies, the level of organized popular protest has diminished. This is despite the fact that among broad sections of the population there is profound disquiet and hostility to the warmongering of the government. How is this to be explained?

It is impossible to answer this question without analyzing the role of the nominally “left” political parties and publications that have become vocal cheerleaders of US regime-change operations. Included among them are the International Socialist Organization (Socialist Worker) and the Pabloite International Viewpoint.

For years, these organizations have been among the leading proponents of the United States’ destabilization operation in Syria, and, before that, in Libya. To the extent that they opposed the foreign policy of the Obama administration, it was to criticize it for being insufficiently committed to removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power. A similar line is now being developed under Trump.

Between Tuesday, when the entire US media initiated a campaign to blame the government of Assad for the Khan Sheikhoun attack in preparation for a military strike, and Thursday, when the Trump administration ordered an air strike against Syrian government forces, both Socialist Worker and International Viewpoint maintained radio silence.

Immediately after Trump’s air strikes, they both sprang into action. While nominally opposing the air attack, their response was characterized by 1) promotion of the lies of the CIA as good coin and 2) criticizing the Trump administration for not really seeking regime-change. Their aim, above all, was to demobilize opposition to American imperialism.

Writing in International Viewpoint on April 9, Frieda Afary and Joseph Daher threw their full support to the fraudulent narrative about Assad’s “weapons of mass destruction.” Their article states: “The chemical bombing of innocent civilians … perpetrated by the Assad regime and its allies, Russia and Iran, on April 4 is yet another step in the murderous campaign to destroy what is left of the popular opposition to the Assad regime.”

As with the bourgeois media and political establishment in the US and Europe, they present no evidence for this blanket assertion.

They add, “Clearly, no peaceful and just solution in Syria can be reached with Bashar al-Assad and his clique in power.”

The target of their invective is not the US government, which is seeking to subjugate the people of the Middle East, but any and all political organizations that criticize the CIA-backed “revolution” in Syria, equating opposition to the US imperialist war for regime-change with support for Assad. Thus, Daher and Afary conclude with a chant: “Not Leftists, Not Leftists, Those Who Stand with Bashar al-Assad.”

Along the same lines, Philippe Pouto, the presidential candidate of France's Pabloite-pseudoleft New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), made clear on April 8 that his organization will oppose any effort to build an anti-war movement in opposition to US intervention in Syria. “We will not join the protests of the French political parties, who, in order to advocate a 'reasonable' peace with El Assad and his minions, close their eyes to the hundreds of thousands of deaths killed by the dictator and the millions of displaced and refugees.”

This reactionary justification of the NPA's de facto endorsement of French intervention in Syria entirely ignores the basic distinction, upon which Marxists insist, between imperialist states and their former colonial possessions. The attitude of a genuine French socialist movement is not determined by cataloguing the crimes of Assad, but, rather, by the economic nature and historical role of French imperialism. The removal of Assad cannot be assigned to blood-soaked representatives of the French Bourse or, for that matter, Wall Street. Their alternative to Assad is the partition of Syria, whose various parts are to be ruled by hand-picked agents of imperialism. The reckoning of Assad can only be achieved through the revolutionary struggle of the working class of Syria and the entire Middle East, on a clearly defined socialist, internationalist, and anti-imperialist program.

Tellingly, International Viewpoint calls for the formation of “antiwar movements” in Russia and Iran, but not in the US. Such “movements” would be the incubators for regime-change operations in those countries, paralleling the CIA-backed Islamist organizations they support in Syria. Their opposition to the Putin regime is not from the revolutionary socialist left, but from the pro-imperialist right. They do not oppose the regime as the end result of the Stalinist betrayal and destruction of the October Revolution, or as the representative of a capitalist oligarchy whose wealth is based on the conversion of state assets into private property. The pseudoleft, rather, frames its opposition to Putin virtually exclusively in the fraudulent "human rights" rhetoric of the CIA.

In Socialist Worker, the ISO’s Ashley Smith writes that “no one should be surprised by Assad’s willingness to violate the agreement [of 2013] and use chemical weapons.” Adopting the line of the Democratic Party, Smith declares that it is “hard to take Trump’s humanitarian pretensions seriously” because until recently “Trump supported some kind of rapprochement with Assad and Russia.”

In doing so, the ISO complains, the Trump administration “made explicit what had been implicit under Barack Obama—that the US would tolerate Assad staying on in power as a de facto ally for the sake of the war on ISIS.” The main problem with the policy of the US is that it “has turned a blind eye while Russia, Iran, and
Hezbollah intervened in support of Assad’s counterrevolutionary war to save his dictatorship.”

Thus, the ISO, along with International Viewpoint, aligns itself with the CIA and those factions of the ruling class that have criticized Trump not for his extreme right-wing and warmongering policies, but for being too close to Russia.

The position of these organizations is the outcome of broader social and political processes going back a half century. The anti-war movement as it emerged in the 1960s was predominantly middle-class in character, drawing in radical sections of young people opposed to universal conscription and dissatisfied with the conservative cultural environment that predominated. The organizations that led this movement sought to prevent the fight against war from developing into a movement of the working class against capitalism.

Over the course of the ensuing five decades, the leaders of the anti-Vietnam War protest movement have traveled far to the right, in many cases themselves becoming leading figures in bourgeois politics. Ideologically, these social layers have ever more openly repudiated Marxism and embraced post-modernism and identity politics. Politically, they have taken up the “human rights” justifications of US imperialism.

This noxious concoction of right-wing political and intellectual trends finds expression in a visceral hatred of Russia, a form of cold war anticommunism now directed at capitalist Russia. The denunciation of Russia, China and Iran as “imperialist” by these groups serves as a cover for their support for CIA-sponsored regime-change operations all over the world, including in Russia and China themselves.

The International Committee of the Fourth International has referred to such organization as the “pseudo-left.” They use populist phraseology and identity politics to promote the socioeconomic interests of affluent sections of the upper-middle class. They are pro-war and pro-imperialist, using the slogan of “human rights” to legitimize neo-colonial military operations.

Their political evolution reflects a social differentiation. Over the past 50 years, the top 10 percent of income earners have benefited substantially from the phenomenal rise in the value of stocks and other financial instruments, due in large part to the relentless decline in the wages and living conditions of the working class as a result of decades of betrayals by the labor unions.

Whatever their grievances with the top 1 percent, their interests are separated by a vast gulf from those of the broad mass of the population. Their stock market portfolios are dependent on the continued exploitation of the working class and, most critically, the global domination of US imperialism. The increasingly affluent position of this social milieu is reflected in its intellectual, cultural and, one might add, moral degeneration.

The renewed anti-war movement will emerge not from these middle-class layers, but from the working class. The most urgent task in the building of a genuine movement against war is the political exposure of these right-wing, middle-class political outfits and the social interests they represent.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/11/pers-a11.html

BREAKING || Civilians killed as US jets bomb ISIS chemical depot in Deir Ezzor: Syrian MoD

“DAMASCUS, SYRIA (1:30 P.M.) – The US-coalition Air Force has conducted airstrikes against ISIS positions in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, targeting a chemical depot for the terror group which resulted in the death of hundreds of militants as well as civilian, the Syrian Ministry of Defense said in an official statement.

“Yesterday between 17:30 – 17:50 p.m., the so-called anti-ISIS coalition fighter jets struck an ISIS position in Hatla village to the east of Deir Ezzor. After the airstrike, a huge white cloud was formed –later on turned yellow – as a result of an explosion in a chemical depot. A hug fire broke out until 22:30 p.m. Hundreds have been killed – including civilians – as a result of breathing toxic materials,” the statement detailed.

The official statement said this incident confirms beyond any doubt that “terror groups, particularly ISIS and Jabhet al-Nusra, already own chemical weapons, and have the ability to obtain, transport, store and use such chemical agents with the help of some regional countries. This also stresses the fact that those terror groups are coordinating with its sponsors to accuse the Syrian Arab Army of using chemical weapons.”

“The Syrian government forces have been accused of using Sarin gas against rebels in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4th, which killed at least 74 people.

The alleged attack has prompted the US to strike al-Shayrat airbase in central Homs with 59 cruise missiles”



US coalition air strikes hit ISIS chemical weapons depot–‘hundreds killed’

“Syria has stated that US led coalition bombings of ISIS in Deir ez-Zor hit a chemical weapons depot used by ISIS.

The resultant chemical weapons explosions are said to have killed ‘several hundred civilians’.

The statement from the Syrian General Staff reads.

“The jets of the so-called US-led coalition launched a strike at about 17:30-17:50 on a Daesh warehouse where many foreign fighters were present. First a white cloud and then a yellow one appeared at the site of the strike, which points at the presence of a large number of poisonous substances. A fire at the site continued until 22:30”.

The statement continued,

“This confirms that Daesh and al-Nusra terrorists possess chemical weapons and are capable of using, obtaining and transporting it”.

In a world governed by logic, this would vindicate Syria’s claims that terrorist groups throughout the country are illegally hoarding, trading, selling and using chemical weapons. It is true for Idlib, true for Dier ez-Zor and was true in Aleppo.

The insistence of the US and her subordinate allies to consistently blame Syria for actions of terrorists is not only an affront to objectivity, but a hindrance to actually fighting the terrorists who are using the outlawed weapons.”

http://thesaker.is/breaking-news-us-led-forces-has-bomb-a-chemical-warehouse-april-13-2017/

A multi-level analysis of the US cruise missile attack on Syria and its consequences
83541 ViewsApril 11, 2017 448 Comments
The latest US cruise missile attack on the Syrian airbase is an extremely important event in so many ways that it is important to examine it in some detail. I will try to do this today with the hope to be able to shed some light on a rather bizarre attack which will nevertheless have profound consequences. But first, let’s begin by looking at what actually happened.

The pretext:

I don’t think that anybody seriously believes that Assad or anybody else in the Syrian government really ordered a chemical weapons attack on anybody. To believe that it would require you to find the following sequence logical: first, Assad pretty much wins the war against Daesh which is in full retreat. Then, the US declares that overthrowing Assad is not a priority anymore (up to here this is all factual and true). Then, Assad decides to use weapons he does not have. He decides to bomb a location with no military value, but with lots of kids and cameras. Then, when the Russians demand a full investigation, the Americans strike as fast as they can before this idea gets any support. And now the Americans are probing a possible Russian role in this so-called attack. Frankly, if you believe any of that, you should immediately stop reading and go back to watching TV. For the rest of us, there are three options:

a classical US-executed false flag
a Syrian strike on a location which happened to be storing some kind of gas, possibly chlorine, but most definitely not sarin. This option requires you to believe in coincidences. I don’t. Unless,
the US fed bad intelligence to the Syrians and got them to bomb a location where the US knew that toxic gas was stored.
What is evident is that the Syrians did not drop chemical weapons from their aircraft and that no chemical gas was ever stored at the al-Shayrat airbase. There is no footage showing any munitions or containers which would have delivered the toxic gas. As for US and other radar recordings, all they can show is that an aircraft was in the sky, its heading, altitude and speed. There is no way to distinguish a chemical munition or a chemical attack by means of radar.

Whatever option you chose, the Syrian government is obviously and self-evidently innocent of the accusation of having used chemical weapons. This is most likely a false flag attack.

Also, and just for the record, the US had been considering exactly such a false flag attack in the past. You can read everything about this plan here and here.

The attack:

American and Russian sources both agree on the following facts: 2 USN ships launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Al Shayrat airfield in Syria. The US did not consult with the Russians on a political level, but through military channels the US gave Russia 2 hours advance warning. At this point the accounts begin to differ.

The Americans say that all missiles hit their targets. The Russians say that only 23 cruise missiles hit the airfield. The others are “unaccounted for”. Here I think that it is indisputable that the Americans are lying and the Russians are saying the truth: the main runway is intact (the Russian reporters provided footage proving this) and only one taxiway was hit. Furthermore, the Syrian Air Force resumed its operations within 24 hours. 36 cruise missiles have not reached their intended target. That is a fact.

It is also indisputable that there were no chemical munitions at this base as nobody, neither the Syrians nor the Russian reporters, had to wear any protective gear.

The missiles used in the attack, the Tomahawk, can use any combination of three guidance systems: GPS, inertial navigation and terrain mapping. There is no evidence and even no reports that the Russians shot even a single air-defense missile. In fact, the Russians had signed a memorandum with the USA which specifically comitting Russia NOT to interfere with any US overflights, manned or not, over Syria (and vice versa). While the Tomahawk cruise missile was developed in the 1980s, there is no reason to believe that the missiles used had exceeded their shelf live and there is even evidence that they were built in 2014. The Tomahawk is known to be accurate and reliable. There is absolutely no basis to suspect that over half of the missiles fired simply spontaneously malfunctioned. I therefore see only two possible explanations for what happened to the 36 missing cruise missiles:

Explanation A: Trump never intended to really hit the Syrians hard and this entire attack was just “for show” and the USN deliberately destroyed these missiles over the Mediterranean. That would make it possible for Trump to appear tough while not inflicting the kind of damage which would truly wreck his plans to collaborate with Russia. I do not believe in this explanation and I will explain why in the political analysis below.

Explanation B: The Russians could not legally shoot down the US missiles. Furthermore, it is incorrect to assume that these cruise missiles flew a direct course from the Mediterranean to their target (thereby almost overflying the Russian radar positions). Tomahawk were specifically built to be able to fly tangential courses around some radar types and they also have a very low RCS (radar visibility), especially in the frontal sector. Some of these missiles were probably flying low enough not to be seen by Russian radars, unless the Russians had an AWACS in the air (I don’t know if they did). However, since the Russians were warned about the attack they had plenty of time to prepare their electronic warfare stations to “fry” and otherwise disable at least part of the cruise missiles. I do believe that this is the correct explanation. I do not know whether the Russian were technically unable to destroy and confuse the 23 missiles which reached the base or whether a political decision was taken to let less than half of the cruise missiles through in order to disguise the Russian role in the destruction of 36 missiles. What I am sure of is that 36 advanced cruise missile do not “just disappear”. There are two reasons why the Russians would have decided to use their EW systems and not their missiles: first, it provides them “plausible deninability” (at least for the general public, there is no doubt that US signal intelligence units did detect the Russian electronic interference (unless it happened at very low power and very high frequency and far away inland), and because by using EW systems it allowed them to keep their air defense missiles for the protection of their own forces. Can the Russian really do this?

419

Take a look at this image, taken from a Russian website, which appears to have been made by the company Kret which produces some of the key Russian electronic warfare systems. Do you notice that on the left hand side, right under the AWACs aircraft you can clearly see a Tomahawk type missile turning around and eventually exploding at sea?

How this is done is open to conjecture. All that we are told is that the missile is given a “false target” but for our purposes this really does not matter. What matters is that the Russians have basically leaked the information that they are capable of turning cruise missiles around. There are other possibilities such as an directed energy beams which basically fries or, at least, confuses the terrain following and or inertial navigation systems. Some have suggested a “kill switch” which would shut down the entire missile. Maybe. Again, this really doesn’t matter for our purposes. What matters is that the Russian have the means to spoof, redirect or destroy US cruise missiles. It sure appears to be that for the first time these systems were used in anger.

[Sidebar: for those interested in seeing what such a system looks like here is a short video made by the Russians themselves showing how such a system is deployed and operated:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=J_BoWjYvOHY

In terms of technical details, or we are told that this system can jam any airborne object at a distance of 200km]
I would note that those who say that the Russian air defense systems did not work don’t know what they are talking about. Not only did Russia sign an agreement with the US not to interfere with US flight operations, the Russian air defenses in Syria are NOT tasked with the protection of the Syrian Air Space. That is a task for the Syrian air defenses. The Russians air defenses in Syria are only here to protect Russian personnel and equipment. This is why the Russians never targeted Israeli warplanes. And this is hardly surprising as the Russian task force in Syria never had the mission to shut down the Syrian air space or, even less so, to start a war with the USA or Israel.

However, this might be changing. Now the Russians have withdrawn from their agreement with the USA and, even more importantly, have have declared that the Syrians urgently need more advanced air defense capabilities. Currently the Syrians operate very few advanced Russian air defense systems, most of their gear is old.

Legal aspects of the attack:

The US attack happened in direct violation of US law, of international law and of the UN charter. First, I would say that there is strong legal evidence that the US attack violated the US Constitution, Presidential War Powers Act and the 2001 Authorization of Military Force (AUMF) resolution. But since I don’t really care about this aspect of Trump’s criminal behavior, I will just refer you to two pretty good analyses of this issue (see here and here) and just simply summarize the argument of those who say that what Trump did was legal. It boils down to this: “yeah, it’s illegal, but all US Presidents have been doing it for so long that they have thereby created a legal precedent which, uh, makes it legal after all“. I don’t think this kind of “defense” is worthy of a reply or rebuttal. So now let’s turn to international law.

Most people think that crimes against humanity or genocide must be the ultimate crime under international law. They are wrong. The ultimate crime is aggression. This is the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trial on this topic:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
So, following the long and prestigious list of other US Presidents before him, Donald Trump is now a war criminal. In fact, he is a “supreme war criminal”. It only took him 77 days to achieve this status, probably some kind of a record.

As for the UN Charter, at least for articles (1, 2, 33, 39) ban the kind of aggression the USA took against Syria.

I think that there is no need to dwell on the total illegality of this attack. I would just underscore the supreme irony of a country basically built by and run by lawyers (just see how many of them there are in Congress) whose general population seems to be totally indifferent to the fact that their elected representatives act in a completely illegal manner. All that most American people care about is whether the illegal action brings victory or not. But if it does, absolutely nobody cares. You disagree? Tell me, how many peace demonstrations were there in the USA about the totally illegal US aggression on Yugoslavia? Exactly. QED.

Political consequences (internal)

My son perfectly summed up what Trump’s actions have resulted in: “those who hated him still hate him while those who supported him now also hate him“. Wow! How did Trump and his advisors fail to predict that? Instead of fulfilling his numerous campaign promises (and his own Twitter statements) Trump decided to suddenly make a 180 and totally betray everything he stood for. I can’t think of a dumber action, I really can’t. I have to say that Trump now appears to make Dubya look smart. But there is much, much worse.

The worst aspect of this clusterf**k is how utterly immoral this makes Trump appear. Think of it – first Trump abjectly betrayed Flynn. Then he betrayed Bannon.

[Sidebar: I mostly liked Flynn. I had no use for Bannon at all. But the fact is that they were not my best friends, they were Trump’s best friends. And instead of standing up for them, he sacrificed them to the always bloodthirsty Neocons in the hope of appeasing them. This is what I wrote about this stupid and deeply immoral betrayal the day it happened:
Remember how Obama showed his true face when he hypocritically denounced his friend and pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.? Today, Trump has shown us his true face. Instead of refusing Flynn’s resignation and instead of firing those who dared cook up these ridiculous accusations against Flynn, Trump accepted the resignation. This is not only an act of abject cowardice, it is also an amazingly stupid and self-defeating betrayal because now Trump will be alone, completely alone, facing the likes of Mattis and Pence – hard Cold Warrior types, ideological to the core, folks who want war and simply don’t care about reality.
The worst aspect of that is that by betraying people left and right Trump has now shown that you cannot trust him, that he will backstab you with no hesitation whatsoever. Would you ever take a risk for a guy like that? Contrast that with Putin who is “notorious” for standing by his friends and allies even when they do something really wrong! There is a reason why the AngloZionists could not break Putin and why it only took them one month to neuter Trump: Putin is made of titanium, Trump is just an overcooked noodle]
And now Trump has betrayed HIMSELF by turning against everything he, himself, stood for. This is almost Shakespearean in its pathetic and tragic aspects!

During his campaign Trump made a lot of excellent promises and he did inspire millions of Americans to support him. I personally believe that he was sincere in his intentions, and I don’t buy the “it was all an act” theory at all. Just look at the total panic of the Neocons at the prospects of a Trump victory and tell me this was all fake. No, I think that Trump was sincere. But when confronted with the ruthless opposition of the Neocons and the US deep state, Trump snapped and instantly broke because he is clearly completely spineless and has the ethics and morals of a trailer park prostitute.

So what we really have is a sad and pathetic version of Obama. A kind of Obama 2.0 if you want. The man inspired millions, he promised change you can believe in, and he delivered absolutely nothing except for an abject subservience to the real masters and owners of the United States: the Neocons and the deep state.

Trump did get what he apparently wanted, though: the very same corporate media which he claimed to despise is now praising him. And nobody is calling him a “Putin agent” any more. None of which will prevent the Neocons from impeaching him, by the way. He chose a quickfix solution which will stop acting in just days. How totally stupid of him. He apparently also chose the option of an “attack for show” to begin with, which turned into one of the most pathetic attacks in history, probably courtesy of Russian EW, and now that the USA has wasted something in the range of 100 million dollars, what does Trump have to show? A few flattering articles from the media which he has always hated and which will return to hate him as soon as ordered to do so by its Neocon masters. Pathetic if you ask me.

Ever since he got into the White House, Trump has been acting like your prototypical appeaser (it makes me wonder if his father was an alcoholic). How a guy like him ever made in business is a mystery to me, but what is now clear is that the Neocons totally submitted him and that they will now turn him into political roadkill.

I am afraid that the next four years (or less!) will turn into a neverending Purim celebration…

Political consequences (external)

Trump has single handedly destroyed any hopes of a US collaboration with Russia of any kind. Worse, he has also destroyed any hopes of being able to defeat Daesh. Why? Because if you really believe that Daesh can be defeated without Russian and Iranian support I want to sell you bridges all over the world. It ain’t happening. What is much, much worse is that now we are again on a pre-war situation, just as we were with Obama and would have been with Clinton. Let me explain.

The following are the measures with Russia has taken following the US attack on Syria:

Denunciation at UN (to be expected, no big deal)
Decision to strengthen the Syrian air defenses (big deal, that will give the Syrians the means to lock their airspace)
Decision to cancel the Memorandum with the USA (now the Russians in Syria will have the right to decide whether to shoot or not)
Decision to shut down the phone hot line with the US military (now the US won’t be able to call the Russians to ask them to do or not do something)
The combination of decisions 2, 3 and 4 does not mean that the Russians will shoot the next time, not by itself. The Russians will still be restricted by their own rules of engagement and by political decisions. But this will dramatically affect the US decision-making since from now on there will be no guarantee that the Russians will not shoot either. The Russians basically own the Syrian airspace already. What they want to do next is to give a similar capability to the Syrians. Not only will that allow the Syrians to defend themselves against any future US or Israeli attacks, it will provide the Russians plausible deniabilty the day they decide to shoot down a US aircraft or drone. Finally, the Russians are rushing back some of their most advanced ships towards the Syrian coast. So after giving Trump the benefit of the doubt, the Russians are now returning to a Obama-times like posture in Syria. Bravo Trump, well done!

Yes, I know, Tillerson is expected to meet Lavrov this week. This was discussed ad nauseam on Russian TV and the consensus is that the only reason why the Russians did not cancel this meeting is because they don’t want, on general principle, to be the ones to refuse to speak to the other side. Fine. Considering that we are talking about a potential international thermonuclear war, I can see the point. Still, I would have preferred to say Lavrov telling Tillerson to go and get lost. Why? Because I have come to the conclusion that any and all types of dialog with the United States are simply a meaningless and useless waste of time. For one thing, there is no US policy on anything. Over the past week or so we saw both Nikki Haley and Rex Tillerson completely contradict themselves over and over again: “no we don’t want to overthrow Assad. Yes we do want to overthrow Assad. Yes we do. No we don’t“. This is almost painful and embarrassing to watch. This just goes to show that just like the Obama Administration, the Trump people are “недоговороспособны” or “not agreement capable”. I explain this term in this analysis (written about Obama! Not Trump):

The Russians expressed their total disgust and outrage at this attack and openly began saying that the Americans were “недоговороспособны”. What that word means is literally “not-agreement-capable” or unable to make and then abide by an agreement. While polite, this expression is also extremely strong as it implies not so much a deliberate deception as the lack of the very ability to make a deal and abide by it. For example, the Russians have often said that the Kiev regime is “not-agreement-capable”, and that makes sense considering that the Nazi occupied Ukraine is essentially a failed state. But to say that a nuclear world superpower is “not-agreement-capable” is a terrible and extreme diagnostic. It basically means that the Americans have gone crazy and lost the very ability to make any kind of deal. Again, a government which breaks its promises or tries to deceive but who, at least in theory, remains capable of sticking to an agreement would not be described as “not-agreement-capable”. That expression is only used to describe an entity which does not even have the skillset needed to negotiate and stick to an agreement in its political toolkit. This is an absolutely devastating diagnostic.
This is bad. Really bad. This means that the Russians have basically given up on the notion of having an adult, sober and mentally sane partner to have a dialog with. What this also means is that while remaining very polite and externally poker faced, the Russians have now concluded that they need to simply assume that they need to act either alone or with other partners and basically give up on the United States.

That applies only to the official Kremlin. Independent Russian analysts are not shy about expressing their total contempt and disgust for Trump. Some of them are suggesting that Trump decided to show how “tough” he is in preparation for the Tillerson trip to Moscow. If that is the case, then he is badly miscalculating. For one thing, a lot of them as saying that what Trump has engaged in is “показуха” – a totally fake shows of force which really shows nothing. What is certain is that demonstrations of force are very much frowned upon on the Russian culture which strongly believes that a really tough guy does not have to look the part.

[Sidebar: if John Wayne is the prototypical American hero, Danilo Bagrov, from the movies “Brother” and its sequel “Brother 2” is the prototypical Russian hero: rather shy, softly spoken, of modest means, a times charmingly clumsy and naive, but in reality “the toughest of us all” (as he is called by another character in the sequel (if you have not seen these two movies, I highly recommend them though I don’t know if they exist with English subtitles (dubbing them would be a crime)).

What is sure is that the John Wayne types would never survive in the Russian street, they would be immediately perceived as fake, weak and showing off to try to conceal their lack of strength and they would be crushed and humiliated. Nowadays when Americans adopt what I call the “Delta Force/Blackwater style” (pointy beard, long hair, dark sunglasses, and a ton of muscles etc.) they look comical by Russian standards, Russian special forces (and I have met a lot of them) *never* look the part if only because they try hard not to look it].
Personally I don’t think that impressing the Russians was Trump’s plan. Nor do I believe, like some, that launching that attack during the visit of Chinese Premier Xi was a deliberate affront or some kind of “message”. In fact, I don’t think that there was much of a plan at all beyond showing that Trump is “tough” and no friend of Putin. That’s it. I think that the so-called “elites” in charge running the USA are infinitely arrogant, stupid, uneducated, incompetent and irresponsible. I don’t buy the “managed chaos” theory nor do I buy the notion that if before the Anglo-Zionists imposed their order on others now they impose their dis-order. Yes, that is the consequence of their actions, but it’s not part of some diabolical plan, it is a sign of terminal degeneracy of an Empire which is clueless, frightened, angry and arrogant.

I have already explained in my previous analysis why Trump’s plan to defeat ISIS is a non-starter and I won’t bother repeating it all here. What I will say is that Erdogan’s endorsement of Trump’s attack is equally stupid and self-defeating. I really wonder what Erdogan is hoping to achieve. Not only did the Americans almost kill him in a coup attempt, they are now working on creating a semi-independent Kurdistan right on the border with Turkey. Yes, I know, Erdogan wants to get rid of Assad, fair enough, but does he really believe that Trump will be able to remove Assad from power? And what if Assad is removed, will Turkey really be better off once the Emirate of Takfiristan is declared in Syria? I very much hope that after the referendum Erdogan will recover some sense of reality.

What about the Israelis, do they really believe that dealing with Assad is worse than dealing with this Caliphate of Takfiristan?! But then, we can expect anything from folks with such a long history of making really bad decisions.

Still, it really looks like the all have gone completely insane!

Then there is the embarrassing standing ovation coming out of Europe and the Ukraine. I really am embarrassed for them. They are rejoicing at the attempted removal of one of the last mentally sane and secular regimes in the Middle-East. Don’t these European “leaders” realize that if Syria is replaced by a Caliphate of Takfiristan all hell will really brake loose for Europe? I am amazed at how blind these people are…


The US’ “subtle hint” to the DPRK and China
Now let’s look at what happened from the point of view of China and the DPRK. First, as I mentioned, I don’t think that Xi felt that the attack during his visit to the USA was a slap or an affront. From another civilized country, maybe. But not from the USA. The Chinese are absolutely under no illusion of the total lack of sophistication and even basic manners of US Presidents. That is not to say that they were not outraged and very concerned. It goes without saying that they also noticed the “coincidence” that The USN has canceled planned port calls in Australia for the USS Carl Vinson and is instead sending the aircraft carrier and attached group towards the Korean Peninsula. They also noticed that this move has been given maximal visibility in the US propaganda machine. One “show of force” in Syria is now followed by another “show of force” in East Asia.

Typical, isn’t it?

If anything, this move will only strengthen the informal but very strong and deep partnership between China and Russia. Just like the Russians, the Chinese will keep on smiling and make very nice statements about international peace and security, negotiations, etc. But everybody who matters in China will understand that the real message of out Washington DC is simple: “now it’s Assad – but you could be next”.

Which leaves the DPRK. I am no mind-reader and no psychologist, but I ask myself the following question: what is worse – if the Americans fail to really scare Kim Jong-un or if they successfully do? I don’t have the answer, but considering the past behavior of the DPRK leaders I would strongly suggest that both scaring them and failing to scare them are very dangerous options. The notion of “scare” should not be included in any policies dealing with the DPRK. But instead of that, the dummies in DC are now leaking a story (whether true or not) that the US intelligence agencies have finalized plans to, I kid you not, “eliminate Kim Jong-un“. And just to make sure that the message gets through, the latest US harpy at the UNSC threatens the DPRK with war.

Have they all really gone totally insane in Washington DC?

Do I really need to explain here why war with the DPRK is a terrible idea, even if it had no nuclear weapons?

Conclusion: what happens next?

Simply reply: I don’t know. But let me explain why I don’t know. In all my years of training and work as a military analyst I have always had to assume that everybody involved was what we called a “rational actor”. The Soviets sure where. As where the Americans. Then, starting with Obama more and more often I had to question that assumption as the US engaged in what appeared to be crazy and self-defeating actions. You tell me – how does deterrence work on a person with no self-preservation instinct (whether as a result of infinite imperial hubris garden variety petty arrogance, crass ignorance or plain stupidity)? I don’t know. To answer that question a what is needed is not a military analyst, but some kind of shrink specializing in delusional and suicidal types.

Some readers might think that this is hyperbole. I assure you that this is not. I am dead serious. Not only do I find the Trump administration “not agreement capable”, I find it completely detached from reality. Delusional in other words. You think Kim Jong-un with nukes is bad? What about Obama or Trump with nukes? Ain’t they much, much scarier?

So what can the world do?

First, the easy answer: the Europeans. They can do nothing. They are irrelevant. They don’t even exist. At least not in the political sense.

Some countries, however, are showing an absolutely amazing level of courage. Look at what the Bolivian representative at the UNSC dared to do:

And what a shame for Europe: a small and poor country like Bolivia showed more dignity that the entire European continent. No wonder the Russians have no respect for the EU whatsoever.

What Bolivia did is both beautiful and noble. But the two countries which really need to step up to the plate are Russia and China. So far, it has been Russia who did all the hard work and, paradoxically, it has been Russia which has been the object of the dumbest and most ungrateful lack of gratitude (especially from armchair warriors). This needs to change. China has many more means to pressure the USA back into some semi-sane mental state than Russia. All Russia has are superb military capabilities. China, in contrast, has the ability to hurt the USA where it really matters: money. Russia is in a pickle: she cannot abandon Syria to the Takfiri crazies, but neither can she go to nuclear war with the USA over Syria. The problem is not Assad. The problem is that he is the only person capable, at least at this point in time, to protect Syria against Daesh. If Assad is removed, Syria falls and Iran is next. Russia absolutely cannot afford to have Iran destroyed by the Anglo-Zionists because after Iran, she will next. Everybody in Russia understands that. But, as I said, the problem with military responses is that they can lead to military escalations which then lead to wars which might turn nuclear very fast. So here is my central thesis:

You don’t want Russia to stop the USA by purely military means as this places the survival of of mankind at risk.

I realize that for some this might be counter-intuitive, but remember that deterrences only works with rational actors. Russia has already done a lot, more than everybody else besides Iran. And if Russia is not the world’s policeman, neither is she the world savior. The rest of mankind also needs to stop being a silent bystander and actually do something!

Russia and China can stop the US, but they need to do that together. And for that, Xi needs to stop acting like a detached smiling little Buddha statue and speak up loud and clear. That is especially true since the Americans show even less fear of China than of Russia.

[Sidebar: the Chinese military is still far behind the kind of capabilities Russia has, but the Chinese are catching up really, really fast. Just 30 years ago the Chinese military used to be outdated and primitive. This is not the case today. The Chinese have done some tremendous progress in a record time and their military is now a totally different beast than what it used to be. I have no doubt at all that the US cannot win a war with China either, especially not anywhere near the Chinese mainland. Furthermore, I expect the Chinese to go full steam ahead with a very energetic military modernization program which will allow them to close the gap with the USA and Russia in record time. So any notions of the USA using force against China, be it over Taiwan or the DPRK, is an absolutely terrible idea, sheer madness. However, and maybe because the Americans believe their own propaganda, it seems to me like the folks in DC think that we are in the 1950s or 1960 and that they can terrify the “Chinese communist peasants” with their carrier battle groups. What the fail to realize is that with every nautical mile the US carriers make towards China, the bigger and easier target they make for a military which has specialized in US carrier destruction operatons. The Americans ought to ask themselves a simple question: what will they do if the Chinese either sink or severely damage one (or several) US Navy carriers? Go to nuclear war with a nuclear China well capable of turning many US cities into nuclear wastelands? Really? You would trade New York or San Francisco for the Carl Vinson Strike Group? Think again.]

So far China has been supporting Russia, but only from behind Russia. This is very nice and very prudent, but Russia is rapidly running out of resources. If there was a sane man in the White House, one who would never ever do something which might result in war with Russia, that would not be a problem. Alas, just like Obama before him, Trump seems to think that he can win a game of nuclear chicken against Russia. But he can’t. Let me be clear he: if pushed into a corner the Russian will fight, even if that means nuclear war. I have said this over and over again, there are two differences between the Americans and the Russians

The Russians are afraid of war. The Americans are not.
The Russians are ready for war. The Americans are not.

The problem is that every sign of Russian caution and every Russian attempt to de-escalate the situation (be it in the Ukraine, with Turkey or in Syria) has always been interpreted by the West as a sign of weakness. This is what happens when there is a clash between a culture which places a premium on boasting and threatening and one which believes in diplomacy and negotiations.

[Sidebar. The profound cultural differences between the USA and Russia are perfectly illustrated with the polar difference the two countries have towards their most advanced weapons systems. As soon as the Americans declassify one of their weapon systems they engage into a huge marketing campaign to describe it as the “bestest of the bestest” “in the world” (always, “in the world” as if somebody bothered to research this or even compare). They explain at length how awesome their technology is and how invincible it makes them. The perfect illustration is all the (now, in retrospect, rather ridiculous) propaganda about stealth and stealth aircraft. The Russians do the exact opposite. First, they try to classify it all. But then, when eventually they declassify a weapons system, they strenuously under-report its real capabilities even when it is quite clear that the entire planet already knows the truth! There have been any instances when Soviet disarmament negotiators knew less about the real Soviet capabilities than their American counterparts! Finally, when the Russian export their weapons systems, they always strongly degrade the export model, at least that was the model until the Russians sold the SU-30MKI to India which included thrust vectoring while the Russian SU-30 only acquired later with the SU-30SM model, so this might be changing. Ask yourself: did you ever hear about the Russian Kalibr cruise missile before their first use in Syria? Or did you know that Russia has had nuclear underwater missiles since the late 1970s capable of “flying under water” as speeds exceeding 230 miles per hour?]

Russia is in a very difficult situation and a very bad one. And she is very much alone. European are cowards. Latin Americans have more courage, but no means to put pressure on the USA. India hopes to play both sides. Japan and the ROK are US colonies. Australia and New Zealand belong to the ECHELON/FIVE EYES gang. Russia has plenty of friends in Africa, but they more or less all live under the American/French boot. Iran has already sacrificed more than any other country and taken the biggest risks. It would be totally unfair to ask the Iranians to do more. The only actor out there who can do something in China. If there is any hopes to avoid four more years of “Obama-style nightmare” it is for China to step in and tell the US to cool it.

In the meantime Russia will walk a very fine like between various bad options. Her best hope, and the best hope of the rest of mankind, is that the US elites become so involved into fighting each other that this will leave very little time to do any foreign policy. Alas, it appears that Trump has “figured out” that one way to be smart (or so he thinks) in internal politics is to do something dumb in external politics (like attack Syria). That won’t work.

Maybe an impeachment of Trump could prove to be a blessing in disguise. If Mike Pence becomes President, he and his Neocons will have total power again and they won’t have to prove that they are tough by doing stupid and dangerous things? Could President Pence be better than President Trump? I am afraid that it might. Especially if that triggers a deep internal crisis inside the USA.

The next four years will be terrible, I am sorry to say. Our next hope – however thin – for somebody sane in the White House might be for 2020. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard will run on a campaign promise of peace and truly draining the swamp? Maybe “America first” will mean something if Gabbard says it? Right now she seems to be pretty much the only one refusing the accept the “Assad did it” nonsense. So maybe she can provide the mix of peace and progressive social policies so many Americans really want? Maybe she could become the first woman President for all the right, rather then wrong, reasons. I don’t know. 2020 is still very, very far away, let’s just hope we all make it to that date before some imbecile in DC decides that war with Russia is a good idea.

What is certain is that the Democrat vs. Republican and Conservative vs Liberal dichotomy only serves to perpetuate a system which manages to betray the values of BOTH the Left and the Right. This is paradoxical because it is pretty darn clear that most Americans want their country to be at peace, to stop being constantly at war, and with civilized social and labor standards. Sure, the hardcore libertarians still believe that laisser-faire is a great solution, even if that hands all the power to corporations and even if that leaves the individual citizen defenseless against the oligarchy. But bet you that even hardcore libertarians would prefer “statism” (as they would say) with peace than “statism” with war. Likewise, many hardcore progressives want to severely limit the freedoms of many Americans (small business entrepreneurs, gun owners), but even they would prefer peace without rules and regulations than war without rules and regulations. So I think that the possibly unifying platform could be expressed in the notion of “peace and civil rights”. That is something which the vast majority of Americans can agree upon. Even the Black Lives Matter folks should agree to that kind of “peace and civil rights platform”. That, I think, ought to be the priority of the Federal government – dismantle the war machine and dismantle the state repression machine: a full pull-out of US forces deployed worldwide combined with a full restoration of civil and human rights as they were before the 9/11 false flag. And let the States deal with all the other issues.

Alas, I am afraid that the plutocracy in power will never allow that. The way the crushed Trump in one month tells me that they will do that to anybody who is not one of their own. So while hope is always a good thing, and while I like dreaming of a better future, I am not holding my breath. I find a sudden and brutal collapse of the Anglo-Zionist Empire followed by a break-up of the USA (as described here) far more likely.

We better prepare ourselves for some very tough times ahead.

Our only consolation is that all the dramatic events taking place right now in the USA are signs of weakness. The US elites are turning on each other and while the Neocons have broken Trump, this will not stop the fratricidal war inside the US plutocracy. Look at the big picture, at how the empire is cracking at every seam and remember that all this is taking place because we are winning.

Imperialism will die, discredited and hated by all those who will have to live through the upcoming collapse of the US-based AngloZionist Empire. Hopefully this time it will be the last empire in history and mankind will have learned its lesson (it would be about time!).

https://thesaker.is/a-multi-level-analysis-of-the-us-cruise-missile-attack-on-syria-and-its-consequences/

The Saker is a fine military analyst but his politics blow. He is a Russian monarchist and Putin fanboy, one of those on the Russian camp who still think the Donald mighta/woulda/coulda have been anything like a brake on imperialism, as can be seen above. And Tulsi Gabbard, really? And acting like there is an alternative within the ruling structure to 'neocons'...Is Hillary Clinton a neocon? Whadda marroon.

The Saker is a fine military analyst but his politics blow. He is a Russian monarchist and Putin fanboy, one of those on the Russian camp who still think the Donald mighta/woulda/coulda have been anything like a brake on imperialism, as can be seen above. And Tulsi Gabbard, really? And acting like there is an alternative within the ruling structure to 'neocons'...Is Hillary Clinton a neocon? Whadda marroon.

Yep- if I remember correctly he and most of his "followers" actively supported Trump. Mostly libertarians I believe.

It is also the case that Hillary is considered a neocon or in alliance with- she's not a "True Dem." This narrative seems to follow the thread of "How did the Dems go wrong", "DNC infiltration" etc...

And the Gabbard worship seems to me to be not only a way of continuing the facade that somehow the Dem Party can be salvaged (which includes ignoring it's entire history) but also a way of preserving the fundamental notion of "restoring America." So many of the intros to Gabbard (who's background is quite reactionary) begin with the classic- "As an Iraqi Vet..." and end with "...true American."

MIT Rocket Scientist: White House Claims on Syria Chemical Attack “Cannot Be True”
Posted on April 12, 2017 by Robert Barsocchini
One of the world’s leading rocket scientists, national security advisor and MIT Professor Theodore Postol, who has won awards for debunking claims about missile defense systems and has been a scientific adviser to the US Chief of Naval Operations, says today in a nine-page report that a four-page report released by the Trump administration yesterday intended to blame the recent chemical attack in Syria on the Syrian government “does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack”.

Postol notes the “only source the document cites as evidence that the attack was by the Syrian government is the crater” left by a munition.

Postol located the crater via satellite and examined it himself, concluding it reveals “absolutely no evidence that the crater was created by a munition designed to disperse sarin after it is dropped from an aircraft”.

The “data cited by the White House”, he says, “is more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane.” He says the evidence indicates that a tube of chemical agent was placed on the ground in the al Qaeda held area and then an explosive was placed on top of that and detonated, dispersing the chemical agent.

Trump’s claim that a chemical weapon was dropped from a plane is “erroneous”, and “no competent analyst” could avoid that conclusion.

Regarding a similar chemical attack in 2013, Postol notes the “Obama White House also issued an intelligence report containing obvious inaccuracies” (which are detailed in the report). While Obama initially blamed Assad for the attack, he received a briefing casting doubt on Assad’s guilt and, unlike Trump, refrained from launching an illegal attack at that time (though he continued illegally supporting proxy forces).

Postol notes that both the initial report blaming Assad made by the Obama White House and the one today by the Trump White House are “obviously false, misleading and amateurish” and may reflect politicization, similar, says Postol, to the way the W. Bush administration politicized ‘intelligence’ that was used to falsely claim ‘certainty’ that Saddam Husssein was stockpiling WMD in Iraq.

Award-winning journalist Robert Parry has noted evidence that Trump, like W. Bush, is simply excluding from meetings people he knows have information he doesn’t want to hear.

Postol concludes his report by noting this is a “very serious matter” and “what the country is now being told by the White House cannot be true” (emphasis in original).

Robert Parry today notes he has received reports that the chemical attack in question may have been carried out with assistance from a “Saudi-Israeli special operations base for supporting Syrian rebels” with the intention of creating “an incident that would reverse the Trump administration’s announcement in late March that it was no longer seeking the removal of President Bashar al-Assad.” Overthrowing Assad is longstanding US policy. US attempts to conquer Syria date to 1949.

Parry adds this Saudi/Israeli operation, if it is indeed what took place, has been “successful, since the Trump administration has now reversed itself and is pressing Russia to join in ousting Assad, who is getting blamed for the latest chemical-weapons incident.”

Thanks to Chris Kabusk for providing Postol’s full statement. Postol’s report includes the text of Trump’s report and quotes from the Trump White House as an appendix, bringing Postol’s full paper to 14 pages.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/66712.html

It ain't real if it ain't on TV.

How I yearn for the days of the hand-cranked press, but fuck that, it solves nothing. And I don't think that sitting back waiting for 'conditions' to materialize is good enough. As long as the perception of conditions is owned by the bosses that perception will be mitigated in favor of the status quo. Gotta figure out a way around this and I don't think it's a techno-fix. Something more basic, more human. People gotta start believing people instead of devices, human to human communications, eye contact, respectful and sincere, like a good conversation at a party. A Party! And perhaps that's all there is to it.

The myth of the sectarian character of this war has, astonishingly, proved to be very deeply rooted. Assad's support base is predominantly made up of Sunni Muslims, and the Syrian Arab Army is, according to some reports, over 80% Sunni. Although the best-known (in the West) political and military leaders are not Sunni (like Maher al-Assad, Suheil al-Hassan who are Alawite, or Issam Zahreddine who is Druze), they are exactly that: well known in the West as such because the media wants the public to see them "exposed"; meanwhile, there a lot of mostly locally-renowned Sunni officers and civilian leaders (including the Grand Mufti) who are as unwavering in their support for the Republic as the above-mentioned generals. Religion only serves as fuel for propaganda, it does not have much bearing on what is on the ground.

This war is not primarily a sectarian conflict. It is most of all a war of imperialism (ranging in scope and character from the global to the local), and civilisation. The "new democratic Syria" being envisaged by the so-called international community displays a level of atomisation and social organisation comparable to that of the Peninsular tribes from before Muhammad's unification (not to mention post-Qaddafi Libya).

It ain't real if it ain't on TV.

How I yearn for the days of the hand-cranked press, but fuck that, it solves nothing. And I don't think that sitting back waiting for 'conditions' to materialize is good enough. As long as the perception of conditions is owned by the bosses that perception will be mitigated in favor of the status quo. Gotta figure out a way around this and I don't think it's a techno-fix. Something more basic, more human. People gotta start believing people instead of devices, human to human communications, eye contact, respectful and sincere, like a good conversation at a party. A Party! And perhaps that's all there is to it.

I have been thinking the same. When I was in the hospital, I had really good discussions with the custodial staff. You wouldn't even have to prime the conversation, it would go straight to what fucks the bosses were and how wages made no sense because folks who do next to nothing make tons of money while those who do the bulk of the labor get beans. These were janitorial workers who were damned close to quoting the Manifesto! Sometimes I think with just a little person to person contact and organizing, we might actually get somewhere.

Video Evidence of False Claims Made in the White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017 by Ted Postol - Publius Tacitus

Here is the third paper by Professor Emeritus Theodore "Ted" Postol on the alleged Syrian Government chemical weapons attack. To reiterate--there was no Syrian Government chemical weapon attack.

Video Evidence of False Claims Made in the White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017

Theodore A. Postol
Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This is my third report assessing the White House intelligence Report of April 11, 2017. My first report was titled A Quick Turnaround Assessment of the White House Intelligence Report Issued on April 11, 2017 about the Nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria and my second report was an Addendum to the first report.

This report provides unambiguous evidence that the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) of April 11, 2017 contains false and misleading claims that could not possibly have been accepted in any professional review by impartial intelligence experts. The WHR was produced by the National Security Council under the oversight of the National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef01b8d27803fb970c-800wi

This image was extracted from a video of a worker during midday (note shadows) on April 5, 2017 next to the crater where sarin was allegedly released according to the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) issued of April 11, 2017. The WHR asserts that it reviewed commercial video evidence and concluded that sarin came from the crater next to a man. Other video frames show unprotected workers in the crater showing no evidence of sarin poisoning at the same time the dead birds are being packaged. The URLs to this and a related video are contained in this report.

The evidence presented herein is from two selected videos which are part of a larger cache of videos that are available on YouTube. These videos were uploaded to YouTube in the time period between April 5, 2017 and April 7, 2017. Analysis of the videos shows that all of the scenes taken at the site where the WHR claims was the location of a sarin release indicate significant tampering with the site. Since these videos were available roughly one week before the White House report was issued on April 11, this indicates that the office of the WHR made no attempt to utilize the professional intelligence community to obtain accurate data in support of the findings in the report.
The video evidence shows workers at the site roughly 30 hours after the alleged attack that were wearing clothing with the logo “Idlib Health Directorate.” These individuals were photographed putting dead birds from a birdcage into plastic bags. The implication of these actions was that the birds had died after being placed in the alleged sarin crater. However, the video also shows the same workers inside and around the same crater with no protection of any kind against sarin poisoning.

These individuals were wearing honeycomb face masks and medical exam gloves. They were otherwise dressed in normal streetwear and had no protective clothing of any kind.

The honeycomb face masks would provide absolutely no protection against either sarin vapors or sarin aerosols. The masks are only designed to filter small particles from the air. If there were sarin vapor, it would be inhaled without attenuation by these individuals. If the sarin were in an aerosol form, the aerosol would have condensed into the pours in the masks, and would have evaporated into a highly lethal gas as the individuals inhaled through the mask. It is difficult to believe that such health workers, if they were health workers, would be so ignorant of these basic facts.

In addition, other people dressed as health workers were standing around the crater without any protection at all.

As noted in my earlier reports, the assumption in WHR that the site of the alleged sarin release had not been tampered with was totally unjustified and no competent intelligence analyst would have agreed that this assumption was valid. The implication of this observation is clear – the WHR was not reviewed and released by any competent intelligence experts unless they were motivated by factors other than concerns about the accuracy of the report.

The WHR also makes claims about “communications intercepts” which supposedly provide high confidence that the Syrian government was the source of the attack. There is no reason to believe that the veracity of this claim is any different from the now verified false claim that there was unambiguous evidence of a sarin release at the cited crater.

The relevant quotes from the WHR are collected below for purposes of reference:

The United States is confident that the Syrian regime conducted a chemical weapons attack, using the nerve agent sarin, against its own people in the town of Khan Shaykhun in southern Idlib Province on April 4, 2017.
We have confidence in our assessment because we have signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence, laboratory analysis of physiological samples collected from multiple victims, as well as a significant body of credible open source reporting
We cannot publicly release all available intelligence on this attack due to the need to protect sources and methods, but the following includes an unclassified summary of the U.S. Intelligence Community's analysis of this attack.
By 12:15 PM [April4, 2017] local time, broadcasted local videos included images of dead children of varying ages.
… at 1:10 PM [April4, 2017] local … follow-on videos showing the bombing of a nearby hospital …
Commercial satellite imagery from April 6 showed impact craters around the hospital that are consistent with open source reports of a conventional attack on the hospital after the chemical attack.
Moscow has since claimed that the release of chemicals was caused by a regime airstrike on a terrorist ammunition depot in the eastern suburbs of Khan Shaykhun.
An open source video also shows where we believe the chemical munition landed [Emphasis Added]—not on a facility filled with weapons, but in the middle of a street in the northern section of Khan Shaykhun. Commercial satellite imagery of that site from April 6, [Emphasis Added] after the allegation, shows a crater in the road that corresponds to the open source video.
observed munition remnants at the crater and staining around the impact point are consistent with a munition that functioned, but structures nearest to the impact crater did not sustain damage that would be expected from a conventional high-explosive payload. Instead, the damage is more consistent with a chemical munition.
Russia's allegations fit with a pattern of deflecting blame from the regime and attempting to undermine the credibility of its opponents.
Summary and Conclusions

It is now clear from video evidence that the WHR report was fabricated without input from the professional intelligence community.

The press reported on April 4 that a nerve agent attack had occurred in Khan Shaykhun, Syria during the early morning hours locally on that day. On April 7, The United States carried out a cruise missile attack on Syria ordered by President Trump. It now appears that the president ordered this cruise missile attack without any valid intelligence to support it.

In order to cover up the lack of intelligence to supporting the president’s action, the National Security Council produced a fraudulent intelligence report on April 11 four days later. The individual responsible for this report was Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, the National Security Advisor. The McMaster report is completely undermined by a significant body of video evidence taken after the alleged sarin attack and before the US cruise missile attack that unambiguously shows the claims in the WHR could not possibly be true. This cannot be explained as a simple error.

The National Security Council Intelligence Report clearly refers to evidence that it claims was obtained from commercial and open sources shortly after the alleged nerve agent attack (on April 5 and April 6). If such a collection of commercial evidence was done, it would have surely found the videos contained herein.

This unambiguously indicates a dedicated attempt to manufacture a false claim that intelligence actually supported the president’s decision to attack Syria, and of far more importance, to accuse Russia of being either complicit or a participant in an alleged atrocity.

The attack on the Syrian government threatened to undermine the relationship between Russia and the United States. Cooperation between Russia and the United States is critical to the defeat of the Islamic State. In addition, the false accusation that Russia knowingly engaged in an atrocity raises the most serious questions about a willful attempt to do damage relations with Russia for domestic political purposes.

We repeat here a quote from the WHR:

An open source video also shows where we believe the chemical munition landed—not on a facility filled with weapons, but in the middle of a street in the northern section of Khan Shaykhun [Emphasis Added]. Commercial satellite imagery of that site from April 6, after the allegation, shows a crater in the road that corresponds to the open source video.

The data provided in these videos make it clear that the WHR made no good-faith attempt to collect data that could have supported its “confident assessment.” that the Syrian government executed a sarin attack as indicated by the location and characteristics of the crater.

This very disturbing event is not a unique situation. President George W. Bush argued that he was misinformed about unambiguous evidence that Iraq was hiding a substantial store of weapons of mass destruction. This false intelligence led to a US attack on Iraq that started a process that ultimately led to the political disintegration in the Middle East, which through a series of unpredicted events then led to the rise of the Islamic State.

On August 30, 2013, the White House produced a similarly false report about the nerve agent attack on August 21, 2013 in Damascus. This report also contained numerous intelligence claims that could not be true. An interview with President Obama published in The Atlantic in April 2016 indicates that Obama was initially told that there was solid intelligence that the Syrian government was responsible for the nerve agent attack of August 21, 2013 in Ghouta, Syria. Obama reported that he was later told that the intelligence was not solid by the then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.

Equally serious questions are raised about the abuse of intelligence findings by the incident in 2013. Questions that have not been answered about that incident is how the White House produced a false intelligence report with false claims that could obviously be identified by experts outside the White House and without access to classified information. There also needs to be an explanation of why this 2013 false report was not corrected. Secretary of State John Kerry emphatically testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee repeating information in this so-called un-equivocating report.

On August 30, 2013 Secretary of State Kerry made the following statement from the Treaty Room in the State Department:

Our intelligence community has carefully reviewed and re-reviewed information regarding this attack [Emphasis added], and I will tell you it has done so more than mindful of the Iraq experience. We will not repeat that moment. Accordingly, we have taken unprecedented steps to declassify and make facts available to people who can judge for themselves.

It is now obvious that this incident produced by the WHR, while just as serious in terms of the dangers it created for US security, was a clumsy and outright fabrication of a report that was certainly not supported by the intelligence community.

In this case, the president, supported by his staff, made a decision to launch 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base. This action was accompanied by serious risks of creating a confrontation with Russia, and also undermining cooperative efforts to win the war against the Islamic State.

I therefore conclude that there needs to be a comprehensive investigation of these events that have either misled people in the White House White House, or worse yet, been perpetrated by people to protect themselves from domestic political criticisms for uninformed and ill-considered actions.

Sincerely yours, Theodore A. Postol

POSTOL SIGNATURE

Professor Emeritus of Science,
Technology, and National Security Policy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Email: postol@mit.edu

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/04/video-evidence-of-false-claims-made-in-the-white-house-intelligence-report-of-april-11-2017-by-ted-p.html

Good grief, the birds...these clowns disgrace the term 'amateur'.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Video_Frames_Syria_1_590_1.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Video_Frames_Syria_1_590_1.jpg.html)

Video frames from the location in Khan Shaykhun where mass casualties either occurred or were being treated. (The wording below some of the images is embedded in the original recordings.)

Theodore A. Postol is professor emeritus of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a specialist in weapons issue. At the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, he advised on missile basing, and he later was a scientific consultant to the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon. He is a recipient of the Leo Szilard Prize from the American Physical Society and the Hilliard Roderick Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he was awarded the Norbert Wiener Award from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility for uncovering numerous and important false claims about missile defenses.

This analysis contains a detailed description of the times and locations of critical events in the alleged nerve agent attack on April 4 in Khan Shaykhun, Syria. The conclusion assumes that the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) issued on April 11 correctly identified the alleged sarin release site.

Analysis using weather data from the time of the attack shows that a small hamlet about 300 meters to the east-southeast of the crater could be the only location affected by the alleged nerve agent release. The hamlet is separated from the alleged release site (a crater) by an open field. The winds at the time of the release would have initially taken the sarin across the open field. Beyond the hamlet there is a substantial amount of open space, and the sarin cloud would have had to travel a long additional distance for it to have dissipated before reaching any other population center.

READ: A Critique of ‘False and Misleading’ White House Claims About Syria’s Use of Lethal Gas
Video taken on April 4 shows that the location where the victims were supposedly being treated for sarin exposure is incompatible with the only open space in the hamlet that could have been used for mass treatment of victims. This indicates that the video scenes where mass casualties (the dead and dying) were laid on the ground randomly was not at the hamlet. If the location where the bodies were on the ground was instead a site where the injured and dead were taken for processing, then it is hard to understand why bodies were left randomly strewn on the ground and in mud as shown in the videos.

The conclusion of this summary of data is obvious—the nerve agent attack described in the WHR did not occur as claimed. There may well have been mass casualties from some kind of poisoning event, but that event was not the one described by the WHR.

The findings of this analysis can serve two important purposes:

1. It shows exactly what needs to be determined in an international investigation of this alleged atrocity. In particular, if an international investigation can determine where casualties from the nerve agent attack lived, it will further confirm that the findings reported by the WHR are not compatible with the data it cites as evidence for its conclusions.

2. It also establishes that the WHR did not utilize simple and widely agreed upon intelligence analysis procedures to determine its conclusions.

This raises troubling questions about how United States political and military leadership determined that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged attack. It is particularly of concern that the WHR presented itself as a report with “high confidence” findings and that numerous high-level officials in the U.S. government have confirmed their belief that the report was correct and to a standard of high confidence.

Methodology Used in This Analysis

The construction of the time of day at which particular video frames were generated is determined by simply using the planetary geometry of the sun angle during the day on April 4. The illustration below of the sun-angle geometry shows the Day/Night Sun Terminator at the location of Khan Shaykhun on April 4. The angle of the sun relative to local horizontal is summarized in the table that follows the image of the planetary geometry along with the temperature during the day between 6:30 a.m. and 6 p.m.

The next set of two side-by-side images shows the shadows at a location where a large number of poison victims are being treated in what appears to be the aftermath of a poisoning event. The shadows indicate that this event occurred at about 7:30 a.m. This is consistent with the possibility of a nerve agent attack at 7 a.m. on April 4, and it is also consistent with the allegation in the WHR that an attack occurred at 6:55 a.m. on that day.

The timing sequence of the attack is important for determining the consistency of the timelines with the allegations of a sarin release at the crater identified in the WHR.

Assuming there was enough sarin released from the crater identified by the WHR to cause mass casualties at significant downwind distances, the sarin would have drifted downwind at a speed of 1 to 2 meters a second and for several minutes before encountering the only location where mass casualties could have occurred from this particular release. The location where these mass casualties would have had to occur will be identified and described in the next section. If there was a sarin release elsewhere, mass casualties would have not occurred at this location but would have occurred somewhere else in the city.

Assuming the victims of the attack were exposed to the plume, the symptoms of sarin poisoning would have expressed themselves almost immediately. As such, the scene at 7:30 a.m. on April 4 is absolutely consistent with the possibility of a mass poisoning downwind of the sarin-release crater.

The next figure shows the earliest photograph we have been able to find of an individual standing by the sarin-release crater where the alleged release occurred. The photo was posted on April 4, and the shadow indicates the time of day was around 10:50 a.m. Thus the individual was standing by the crater roughly four hours after the dispersal event.

If the dispersal event was from this crater, the area where this unprotected individual is standing would be toxic, and this individual would be subjected to the severe and possibly fatal effects of sarin poisoning. As a result, this throws substantial suspicion on the possibility that the crater identified by WHR would be the source of the sarin release.

At the time of the sarin release, the temperature of the air was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and the sun was at an angle of only 8 degrees relative to local horizontal. This means that liquid sarin left on the ground from the dispersal event would remain mostly unevaporated. By 11 a.m., the temperature of the air had risen to 75 degrees, and the angle of the sun relative to horizontal was at 66 degrees. Thus, one would expect that the combination of the rise in air temperature and the sun on the crater would lead to significant evaporation of liquid sarin left behind from the initial dispersal event. The air temperature and sun angle are such that the area around the crater should have been quite dangerous for anybody without protection to operate.

This is therefore an important indication that the crater was probably not a dispersal site of the sarin.

The final set of three photographs shows arriving victims seeking treatment at a hospital at some location in Khan Shaykhun. The arrivals at the hospital are between 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on the day of the attack. This is perhaps late since victims were seriously exposed by 7:30 a.m., but victims could have been trailing in after the initial arrival of severely affected victims. This time is considerably earlier than the time at which WHR alleges that a hospital was attacked while treating victims of the poisoning attack.

In the next section, we discuss the location where mass casualties would have occurred if the sarin release occurred at the location alleged by the WHR.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Sunrise_Sunset_in_Khan_Shaykhun_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Sunrise_Sunset_in_Khan_Shaykhun_590.jpg.html)

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Khan_Shaykhun_Sun_Angles_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Khan_Shaykhun_Sun_Angles_590.jpg.html)

Sun shadows at about 7:30 a.m. on April 4 at a location where large numbers of victims from a poisoning event were being treated.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Sun_Shadows_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Sun_Shadows_590.jpg.html)

A man without protective equipment standing next to the crater at 10:50 a.m. on April 4—roughly four hours after the sarin release alleged by the WHR.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Man_Without_Protective_Equipment_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Man_Without_Protective_Equipment_590.jpg.html)

Victims arriving at a hospital in Khan Shaykhun between 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on April 4 following the mass casualty event observed at 7:30 a.m.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Victims_at_Hospital_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Victims_at_Hospital_590.jpg.html)

An image from about 10:30 a.m. in Khan Shaykhun suggesting a possible additional location where casualties were generated from a poisoning attack.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Hell_on_Earth_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Hell_on_Earth_590.jpg.html)

Identification of the location of the mass casualties.

The figure on the next page shows the direction of the toxic sarin plume based on the assumption that the alleged release point was the crater identified by the WHR. The wind conditions at the time of the release, which would have been at about 7 a.m. on April 4, would have carried the plume across an empty field to an isolated hamlet roughly 300 meters downwind from the crater.

Although there were some walls and structures that would have somewhat weakened and inhibited the movement of the aerosol cloud from the release point, the open field would be an ideal stable wind environment to transmit the remaining sarin cloud with minimal distortion and dispersal. As such, with the weather conditions at that time, it is plausible that the sarin cloud could have led to mass casualties at the hamlet.

The sarin dosage level that results in 50 percent of exposed victims dying is known as the LD50. The LD50 for sarin is about 100 mg•min/m3.

The dose quantity mg•min/m3 can be understood simply.

An exposure of about 100 mg•min/m3 simply means that a victim is within an environment for one full minute when there is 100 mg/m3 of sarin in the air. If the victim is instead in an environment for 10 minutes where there is a density of sarin of 10 mg/m3, he or she will also receive a lethal dose of 100 mg•min/m3.

Assuming 5 to 10 liters were aerosolized at the crater as alleged by the WHR, this would have resulted in an average sarin exposure at the hamlet at the 300-meter range of about 10 to 20 mg•min/m3, assuming wind and temperature conditions that are near ideal for lethal exposures downwind. This estimate assumes that an individual would be outside and exposed to the sarin as the gas cloud passes by.

Postulated movement of sarin aerosol and gas cloud in the local winds at 7 a.m. on April 4 from the release crater alleged by the WHR.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Release_Site_From_Drone_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Release_Site_From_Drone_590.jpg.html)

Video details of the release site overlaid on a Google Earth image of the sarin release and casualty locations from the attack alleged by the WHR.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Release_Site_Google_Earth_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Release_Site_Google_Earth_590.jpg.html)

Details of the hamlet where mass casualties would have occurred if the WHR allegations were correct.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Mass_Casualties_Syria_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Mass_Casualties_Syria_590.jpg.html)

Since a cloud of sarin would not be uniformly mixed, there will be regions in the cloud that have much higher and lower doses than the average. In addition, as the cloud passes, sarin entering into open windows of aboveground and basement rooms would tend to become trapped inside these rooms, creating a significantly longer exposure to the nerve agent, certainly leading to lethal levels if residents did not evacuate the rooms immediately. Also, since the nerve agent cloud would be passing through an area that has buildings, it will tend to flow around and over buildings and down into open basement windows, resulting in buildups of sarin in some locations and diminished levels of sarin at other locations.

As a result, the hamlet could well have been within lethal range of the sarin exposure. However, areas further downwind from the hamlet would be far enough away for the sarin to disperse sufficiently so that it would not be capable of causing deaths.

Thus, the hamlet area 300 meters downwind of the crater is the only area where mass casualties could occur, if there had been a sarin release at the crater as alleged by the WHR.

The selected video frames collected on the next two pages show three important sets of data that indicate the following:

1. Unprotected civilians with clothing that have logos of the Idlib Health Directorate are tampering with the contents of the crater that the WHR alleges was the source of the sarin release. All indicators point to a ruptured tube that could have contained no more than 8 to 10 liters of sarin. This is the only container shown in any videos from this scene.

2. The next collection of video frames shows panoramic views of the target area taken from a drone equipped with a video camera. As can be seen in the video frames, a goat that was allegedly killed from the sarin dispersal is close to downwind of the alleged dispersal site. However, the hamlet that should have experienced major casualties, if the alleged dispersal site had been correctly identified, is only 300 meters downrange, and easily reachable by simply walking over to the site.
Yet none of the video journalists refer in any way to a mass casualty site nearby. They simply focus on a dead goat and present out-of-context images of a few dead birds. It is remarkable that no video journalists—of the many who reported from this crater area—referred in any way to the mass casualties that could only have occurred 300 meters away, if the attack had been executed from this crater.

3. The last collection of 18 video frames is from the area where mass casualties were piled on the ground haphazardly. They were dead or dying. Among these casualties were infants as well as men and women. This scene clearly could not have been at the location of the hamlet as one can see that the walls surrounding the area are carved out of rock. Thus, this scene could not possibly have been at the hamlet.

These video frames were generated by reviewing hundreds of videos posted on YouTube, plus additional videos and video frames found on Twitter.

Among the hundreds of videos reviewed, there seems to be no more than 50 to 60 seconds of actual original scenes like those laid out in the collection of 18 videos below. The vast majority of time in the videos contains the same repeated sequences of the same dead and injured infants and adults that could all be collected into less than a couple of minutes of independent scenes.

The overwhelming evidence is these videos repeat nothing more than redundant scenes that suggest one terrible event might have occurred. Almost none of the scenes contain any different information from the others. This raises a serious question about how much real data has been supplied that would indicate an actual significant nerve agent attack.

What is absolutely clear from the videos is the location of the sarin dispersal site alleged by the WHR and the mass casualty site that would have been produced if the sarin dispersal actually occurred are not in any way related to the scenes of victims shown in the other videos. The conclusion is obvious: The alleged attack described in WHR never occurred.

Unprotected officials from Idlib Health Directorate tampering with the crater at the alleged location of sarin release.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Unprotected_officials_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Unprotected_officials_590.jpg.html)

Panoramic of area around the alleged location of the sarin release where the dead goat was found and the hamlet where mass casualties would be expected to have occurred.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Sarin_Release_Panorama_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Sarin_Release_Panorama_590.jpg.html)

Video frames from the location where mass casualties either occurred or victims were being treated.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Video_Frames_Syria_1_590_2.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Video_Frames_Syria_1_590_2.jpg.html)

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/chlamor/Video_Frames_Syria_2_590.jpg (http://s31.photobucket.com/user/chlamor/media/Video_Frames_Syria_2_590.jpg.html)

Final Comments

This abbreviated summary of the facts has been constructed entirely from basic physics, video evidence and solid analytical methods. It demonstrates without a doubt that the sarin dispersal site alleged as the source of the April 4 sarin attack in Khan Shaykhun was not a nerve agent attack site.

It also shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only mass casualty site that could have resulted from this attack is not in any way related to the sites shown in the video alleged to have been made following a poisoning event of some kind at Khan Shaykhun.

This means that the allegedly “high confidence” White House intelligence assessment issued on April 11, which led to the conclusion that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack, is not correct. For such a report to be so egregiously in error, it could not possibly have followed the most simple and proven intelligence methodologies to determine the veracity of its findings.

Since the United States justified attacking a Syrian airfield on April 7, four days before the flawed National Security Council intelligence report was released to Congress and the public, the conclusion that follows is that the United States took military actions without the intelligence to support its decision.

Furthermore, it is clear that the WHR was not an intelligence report.

No competent intelligence professional would have made so many false claims that are totally inconsistent with the evidence. No competent intelligence professional would have accepted the findings in the WHR analysis after reviewing the data presented herein. No competent intelligence professionals would have evaluated the crater that was tampered with in terms described in the WHR.

Although it is impossible from a technical assessment to determine the reasons for such an egregiously amateurish report, it cannot be ruled out that the WHR was fabricated to conceal critical information from Congress and the public.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/nerve_agent_attack_did_not_occur_in_syria_expert_finds_20170419

The Apr04|17 incident at
Khan Sheikhoun, Syria.
A series of inquiries.

KS Post #3:
LogoPhere's Top Ten Ways to Tell When
You're Being Spoofed by False-Flag Sarin Attacks

Post #1
Post #2

http://logophere.com/Topics2017/2017-Images/465.jpg


Now that things have started to calm down a bit after Donald T. Dildo dropped a load of Tomahawks on Syria last week, a lot of us can resume pushing back against the insufferable idiots and anti-Assad liars in government, MSM, and cyberspace who are trying to pin yet another false-flag "sarin attack" on Bashar al-Assad in order to justify taking him out. Following my insistence that there was no "sarin attack" at Khan Sheikhoun a lot of people are asking: "How can we know it wasn't sarin?"

First of all, for the record, let me make it absolutely clear that as one trained in neuropharmacology I know with absolute certainty that the incident at KS, like the one in Ghouta in 2013, was not a sarin attack. I know, I know, I know . . . we've got D.T.Dildo and his minions all claiming to have intelligence saying Assad gassed his own people with sarin; we've Barbara Starr, CNN's chief anti-Assad propagandist, claiming the US has damning SIGINT; we've got reports out of Turkey (of all places) saying they have determined that samples they received are sarin. I address all of this yada in my closing comments below, but for now I would ask you to recall how the dufus/dishonest Bush crowd also claimed to have intelligence in the run up to the Iraq War.

But here's a little secret from 20 years of teaching and doing research in the neurosciences: trust the biology. It doesn't matter what the politicians and CIA, and MSM, and OPCW, and WHO say, if the biology does not show a sarin attack, then there wasn't a sarin attack. And in the case of sarin, the biology -- meaning symptoms and the absence of symptoms -- is not debatable, certainly when there are multiple supposed-victims. If the videos did clearly show victims exhibiting the symptoms of sarin intoxication, my position would be somewhat less certain because most of the symptoms of sarin poisoning can be easily faked. But when the videos FAIL TO SHOW the diagnostic symptoms of sarin, then you know two things: 1) it was not sarin, and 2) the terrorists were too stupid to fake the sarin symptoms.

After the Ghouta Massacre I wrote a book, Murder in the SunMorgue that explains in deep detail how I know that the Ghouta Massacre wasn't a sarin attack, and why I think the victims there were probably executed with cyanide or carbon monoxide. Some of the political and situational details are different with respect to the KS incident, but the biology has not changed, and so most of what I concluded about Ghouta is equally relevant now. The book is a free pdf download and goes into deep detail regarding how organophosphates like sarin kill people. I have put up a shorter version in three posts that begin here.

I continue to pound this theme in the present post, which is a shorter version of the short version and uses evidence from KS. But, again, the biology is the key and that is not going to change from one event to another. This is not speculation about motives, or zionism, or politics, or Sunni v. Shia, or . . . No, sir/ma'am, this is pure biology and biology could care less about all of that, and that's why the biology must come first in analyzing what did and didn't happen in these incidents of alleged sarin use. So bookmark this page and come back to it the next time the MSM lights up with allegations that Assad has gassed his own people with sarin.

LogoPhere's Top Ten Ways to Tell When You're Being
Spoofed by a False-Flag Sarin Attack

#1: People intoxicated with sarin don't look well. Ever. None of them.

It amazes me that I would even have to raise this point. But what also amazes me is how often one see perfectly healthy looking people being passed off as "sarin victims" in these terrorists' vids. I mean the only thing that would cause any objectively skeptical person to think there is a problem with a lot of these people is context of their surroundings: noisy, bustling clinics with bodies on the floor. And yet so many suckers see perfectly healthy looking people lying on gurneys and the suckers automatically conclude that the healthy looking person is a sarin victim. Don't be a sucker. Please.

For instance, there is a video out of KS last week that was produced by ex-Dr. Shajul Islam. I have recently analyzed this vid in detail and refer to it in this post as V-002. Right at the end of V-002 (09:55) a baby with earrings is shown on a clinic table with a blue pad. The baby is crying and kicking -- after all she's a wee infant, and that's what they do. A lot. But there is nothing obviously wrong with this child. She is chubby. Her color is perfect, glowing pink. If this same child had been videoed crying and kicking in the same way in her crib at home, no one would think a thing of it.


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And yet because this baby is shown in a video that purports to be about sarin victims, suckers immediately jump to the conclusion that she has been exposed to sarin. I'm talkin' about serious suckers like Donald T. Dildo. And suckers like Ivanka who got upset and told her daddy he had to kick some Syrian butt because Assad gassed the "beautiful babies" with sarin. They are beautiful, but Assad didn't gas them. But never mind the clear evidence of that, the next thing you know we've got a bunch of Raytheon Tomahawks being fired at Syria.

Don't be a bimbo like Invanka. Don't fall for it. If a so-called "sarin video" shows healthy looking people presented as victims, you can pretty well conclude immediately that the video is a fraud regardless of what else it shows. For reasons described in detail below, no sarin victim ever looks healthy. Mostly they suffer horribly for a few minutes immediately after exposure and then die silently. Anyone who doesn't die immediately would look like your worse hangover x1000.

#2: People intoxicated with sarin don't gasp, cough, cry, or pant.

Anoxia is one of those medical conditions that is either corrected immediately or never. Anoxia is when the amount of oxygen in the blood drops too low to sustain life. Anoxia is what sarin victims succumb to, and the reason is that sarin paralyzes the muscles required to move air in and out of the lungs -- the respiratory muscles. Understanding this simple pharmacological fact is key to understanding so much of what is going on in the fake sarin vids.

When a person is poisoned by sarin, by the time the brain realizes it isn't getting enough oxygen, it is too late to complain. The respiratory muscles are also the muscles used to gasp, cough, pant, cry, and scream. But sarin paralyzes those muscles, which is precisely why the person wants to gasp, cough, pant, cry, scream. It's a negative feedback loop of the worst kind.

These terrorists' videos depend on drama so that suckers like Ivanka will get their panties in a twist, and a lot of that drama comes from close-up views of people coughing and choking. The young fellow below, for instance, is shown in a video of the KS incident I refer to as V-005 (YT log-in required, alternative here.). This video has gone around the earth thousands of times. The boy in question is seen at 00:53 in that vid panting, coughing, and yet he's cherry-red. Look at those lips, cheeks, ears!


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I cannot tell you what the young man's problem is, but my best guess would be either he's play-acting or he has been poisoned with cyanide or carbon monoxide. What I can tell you is that, contrary to what Sean Spicer thinks, this kid has not been poisoned with sarin. If he had been, he wouldn't be able vigorously to pant and cough the way he is.

Yes, a video of a person gasping for breath really brings us to the edge of our collective seat. And we wish such people all the best. But don't be a sucker: they are not dying of sarin intoxication. Had they come into such bad fortune as to be poisoned by sarin, they would have died painfully, but quietly, before the photographer could get there. (If the photographer was close enough to the attack get the photos and vids we see on the internet, he would be dead, too. This whole thing is goofy from a biological point of view.)

#3: People intoxicated with sarin don't often foam at the mouth.

When I was a kid, it was a pretty easy thing to gross-out a substitute teacher by putting some baking soda in your mouth and then taking a mouthful of Pepsi. If you did it just right you could have foam coming out your nose and the whole class in stitches, except the teacher. Gross.

And gross is why so many of these terrorists' videos feature gasping victims with foam coming out of their noses and mouths. In some cases they show people long dead, but still foaming at the mouth, which could well be Pepsi and baking soda for all we know. And then there are the talking experts being interviewed by the MSM and always using the same, lame, useless phrase: "consistent with." They will say just about anything is "consistent with" sarin poisoning, including foaming at the mouth. It's not.

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The physiological issue with the foaming is much the same as with coughing and panting. Sarin does produce an increase in the production of mucus in the airways -- bronchorrhea -- but if the respiratory muscles are compromised or totally paralyzed, all of that mucus will not likely be pushed into the mouth and nose, nor will there be enough air-flow to aerate the mucus into a foam. The more common scenario is that the mucus will plug-up the airways and add to the victim's respiratory problems.

I have read of one case where sarin produced massive foaming at the mouth, but in that case the victim, a human guinea pig, received the antidote atropine immediately after exposure to sarin in a military test facility. The atropine obviously prevented the respiratory muscles from completely freezing up in his case, and, in fact, it took many hours for the private to die. And so because of the atropine he could generate enough force with his respiratory muscles to force the mucus into his mouth and nose and force air through the mucus, producing a foam.

But atropine has to be given immediately to be effective, and so it is highly unlikely that many of the victims seen in circumstances such as those shown in the terrorists' vids would ever have access to the antidote, hence it is unlikely they would have enough lung function to produce foaming. When you see it, be skeptical.

#4 & #5: People intoxicated with sarin defecate massively and urinate all over themselves.

Many of the "victims" shown in these dramatic videos from KS are shown in their underwear, which is, in an of itself, a little odd because when I worked in an ER, one of the first things we did with seriously ill patients of all kinds was to cut all of their clothes off so the clothes didn't get in the way or contaminate anything. But the point I want to make here is that in these terrorists' videos if the victims had soiled themselves, it would be immediately evident. And not just for the ones shown in their underwear.

And the reason I say it is that sarin squeezes the smooth muscles of the intestines and bladder so hard that everything is going to come out. I cannot in my worst nightmare image the stench of a clinic in which a dozen sarin patients are being attended to. And yet never -- not one time -- do you see incontinent patients or medical staff reacting as if there is a stench. And not to put too fine of a point on it, but we are not talking about a bout of diarrhea that we are all familiar with. The feces produced by sarin would be more like a normal bowel movement but immediate, uncontrollable, and voluminous.

For these reasons, the lack of feces and urine staining a person's clothes is one of the most evident clues that the person has not been poisoned by sarin. For example, you can be absolutely certain that the young man shown in the screen grab below from vid V-005 was not intoxicated with sarin, contrary to what the video attempts to portray.


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As a side note, in the same vid, V-005, there are several similar examples of people's underwear being so immaculate you'd think that when they left home in the morning they knew there were going to be appearing in the movies without their pants on. For instance, in the same vid there is a ghastly scene of a "victim" is being sprayed with water and in the background there is a young man hopping around in his socks and pristine skivvies as if he were getting dressed or undressed.


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#6: People intoxicated with sarin will vomit up everything they haven't defecated.

From both the physiological and evidentiary points of view, this diagnostic point is much the same as the last one. Sarin causes the smooth muscle that make up the stomach walls to contract so tightly that the person will vomit profusely and the evidence of such emesis will be readily visible.

If dozens or hundreds of victims can be seen in a collection of videos and many or most of the victims do not have any indication of having vomited, you are not looking at a sarin attack. I have waded through dozens and dozens of these videos purporting to show Assad's sarin attacks on his own people, I have seen hundreds of "victims" in those videos, and in all of that supposed sarin-carnage I have only seen two possible examples of vomiting.

#7 & #8: People intoxicated with sarin will produce a large volume of tears and a large volume of watery saliva.

One of the fetishes of the people making these anti-Assad sarin-porn movies is pin-point pupils, aka "miosis." And this is one of the things that the paid, know-nothing experts on CNN and elsewhere will say: "Yep, those pinpoint pupils are consistent with sarin poisoning."

Sure, sarin causes miosis, but then so do a lot of drugs and if you were going to fake a sarin attack, it would be simple to produce miosis in some people and then show close-ups of their eyes to prove to the world -- with the help of gullible or complicit "experts" -- that Assad dropped sarin on his own people. But in the absence of the symptoms discussed above, miosis doesn't mean anything.

Nevertheless, it's really the only symptom the terrorists have to convince the world sarin was used. And so in a lot of these terrorists' vids -- like V-002 -- you will see radical, dangerous anti-Assad Sunnis like Shajul Islam shinning flashlights in "victims'" eyes to demonstrate pin-point pupils. But what they are actually demonstrating is that the victim was not exposed to sarin.


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And the reason I make a point of it is that sarin acts directly on the tear glands to produce a constant, uncontrollable stream of tears. And yet what the terrorists show us when shinning the flashlight in "victims'" eyes is not just pin-point pupils but also absolutely dry eyes, meaning the person could not have possibly been exposed to sarin. And they do this over and over again, proving every time what liars they are. You can find dozens of these pin-point pupil episodes, and none showing excessive tears, except for kids who are crying.

And it is much the same with the salivary glands -- sarin directly stimulates them, too. And this would produce a large amount of saliva and copious drooling. So when the terrorist cameraman zooms in for the iconic shot of some poor distressed child's face close-up, and the child is not drooling like a bull mastiff at dinner time, then we have more proof that sarin was not involved in whatever the child's problem is, and most likely, neither was Assad.

#9: People intoxicated with sarin turn blue. Always.

Physiologically, dying from sarin is a lot like dying at the hands of a python, metaphorically speaking. They both produce death by preventing the respiratory muscles from working; consequently, spent oxygen in the blood cannot be replaced, and when oxygen levels drop, people turn blue. The medical term is "cyanosis."

Such cyanosis is most evident in the lips, cheeks, ears, nose where the blood vessels come close to the surface of the skin. Finger tips, toes and nipples are also prone to cyanosis. If a person is intoxicated by sarin, cyanosis will likely be evident before they are dead.

The image below is a cyanotic child, but not a child who has been exposed to sarin. So few people have ever been exposed to sarin that I doubt that any such picture exists anywhere in the world. But the picture, which is of a child with blue-baby syndrome, illustrates what a person exposed to sarin would look like.

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Cyanosis in blue-baby syndrome

Don't get spoofed. If the "victims" in a sarin attack aren't as blue as this baby, then they aren't victims in a sarin attack.

#10: People intoxicated with sarin never turn pink or red. Never.

From the foregoing description of cyanosis, it should not surprise you to learn that people exposed to sarin -- certainly sarin at high enough concentrations to kill -- do not turn red or pink, which is called being rubicund. Sarin causes anoxia, which causes the blood to turn bluish, which causes people to turn bluish, but blood that has large amounts of oxygen is bright red, which is why anyone who has been intoxicated with sarin cannot, physiologically speaking, be rubicund.

And yet look at the victims in those sarin-porn flicks that the terrorists put up on YouTube. Look at their skin color. Over and over and over the skin color is pink to bright red. Look at the victims shown in the images under points #1, #2, #3, #4 & #5 above. All of them are "supposed" to be sarin victims. All of them are healthy pink. Or look at this youngster, who is shown in strong sunlight during the alleged KS sarin attack.

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The toddler is being dramatically snatched up off of the bed of a truck by a White Helmets guy who then, with the cameras whirring, runs off with her towards no where in particular and for no discernable reason. The child's color is amazingly rubicund, which means 100% that she is not a victim of a sarin attack -- not a sarin attack by Bashar al-Assad or by anyone else. Ivanka and Donald T. Dildo, for all of their apparent concern for children, need to STFD and STFU until they understand the situation sufficiently to respond appropriately. They have already killed four Syrian children with their Tomahawk attack on al-Shayrat. They are not helping the situation.

Conclusions

In the introduction I noted that the US government and the MSM claim to have evidence that Assad dropped sarin on Khan Sheikhoun from Su-22 fighter jets. For instance, on Apr11|17 the White House released a four-page statement, which it calls an "assessment." Not an "intelligence assessment," just an "assessment." It is not a formal Intelligence Estimate. It is not even a formal assessment of the intelligence community. Not a single one of the 17 intelligence agencies has signed the document -- nobody has. It is not dated. It has no letterhead or any other indicia of being an official government document. It is, basically D.T.Dildo's bullshit reduced to a few typed pages, probably by his 30-something Israel-first minions: Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Ezra Cohen-Watnick. It starts off this way:

The United States is confident that the Syrian regime conducted a chemical weapons attack, using the nerve agent sarin, against its own people in the town of Khan Sheikhun in southern Idlib Province on April 4, 2017.

The mad president ends his anti-Assad diatribe by repeating allegations that the Obama administration backed away from in early 2014:

We must remember that the Assad regime failed to adhere to its international obligations after its devastating attacks on Damascus suburbs using the nerve agent sarin in August 2013, which resulted in more than one thousand civilian fatalities, many of whom were children.

But here's the thing . . . here's what illuminates the extent of DTD's stupidity: While he runs the tired old deceptive yada about pin-point pupils and foaming at the mouth being "consistent with" sarin at least three times, not once does he address the absence of the actual diagnostic effects of sarin. Not once does he mention the absence of feces, urine, vomit. Not once does he mention the absence of cyanosis. Nowhere does he explain why the victims shown in the terrorists' videos are cherry-red. In other words, Donald T. Dildo is doing the same thing the terrorists in Idlib Province are doing with their sarin-porn: he's trying to spoof you. He's a liar -- a very dangerous liar.

If you recall, in the aftermath of the Ghouta Massacre in 2013, the New York Times, Human Rights Watch and a motley of other anti-Assad players such as Dan Kaszeta and Elliot Higgins introduced "evidence" that sarin rockets had been fired into Ghouta by the Syrian Arab Army. I mean, to read these people you'd have thought the case against Assad could not get any stronger. But I had ultimate faith in the biology, and the biology then, as now, clearly showed us that there was no sarin attack, much less sarin rockets. All of these self-described experts were wrong. Eventually an MIT professor named Theodore A. Postol published a study that confirmed what the biology was saying -- there were no freaking SAA rockets filled with sarin. Did not happen.

And now Postol is back with an engineer's assessment of the White House's assessment of the KS incident, and it isn't pretty. Postol is not a biologist and, like his report on the Ghouta incident, he does not attempt to take issue with the assertions that sarin was used. Rather, he restricts his analysis to Dildo's claims that bombs from Syrian jets delivered the toxin. Postol concludes that there is no way this was a sarin attack by anybody's aircraft. Here is his professional opinion, in his words [my emphasis]:

I have worked with the intelligence community in the past, and I have grave concerns about the politicization of intelligence that seems to be occurring with more frequency in recent times – but I know that the intelligence community has highly capable analysts in it. And if those analysts were properly consulted about the claims in the White House document they would have not approved the document going forward.

/snip/

This is a very serious matter.

President Obama was initially misinformed about supposed intelligence evidence that Syria was the perpetrator of the August 21, 2013 nerve agent attack in Damascus. This is a matter of public record. President Obama stated that his initially false understanding was that the intelligence clearly showed that Syria was the source of the nerve agent attack. This false information was corrected when the then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, interrupted the President while he was in an intelligence briefing. According to President Obama, Mr. Clapper told the President that the intelligence that Syria was the perpetrator of the attack was “not a slam dunk."

We again have a situation where the White House has issued an obviously false, misleading and amateurish intelligence report.

The Congress and the public have been given reports in the name of the intelligence community about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, technical evidence supposedly collected by satellite systems that any competent scientists would know is false, and now from photographs of the craterthat any analyst who has any competent at all would not trust as evidence.

Indeed.

And while we're making comparisons with the false-flag Ghouta incident, there's CNN's Assad-vilification queen, Barbara Starr, whose bizarro fluttering of facts I have complained of previously.

In a CNN article dated today, Apr13|17, Starr claims to have information from an anonymous "senior US official" that the US ". . .intercepted communications featuring Syrian military and chemical experts talking about preparations for the sarin attack in Idlib last week." And I'm like . . . oh, Jesus, here we go again.

Let's dissect Starr's nonsense -- and I call it "nonsense" because I am so confident that the biology tells us there was no sarin attack, and no sarin.

First of all, Starr's source is not even described as an intelligence official, just a plain old "senior US official," which probably means Jared Kushner or Sean Spicer.

Second of all, what the hell does the phrase ". . . communications featuring . . ." mean? She doesn't say ". . . intercepted communications of . . .". She doesn't claim the intercepts were actually the Syrian military and chemical guys talking to each other. No, she says the intercepts featured military and chemical experts talking. So what she is probably saying in a deceptive sort of way is that the US "intercepted" a faux-communication between itself and Israel in which there is speculation about Syrian military and chemical experts. That would be a communication featuring Syrian experts talking without being a communication of Syrian experts talking.

Third, as McCain has famously said, we have seen this movie before. Back in the run up to the 2013 attack on Ghouta that didn't happen, part of the "evidence" being used to justify such an attack was a claim that the Israelis intercepted communication between Syrian military people planning a sarin attack. It was just total mendacity, which is what anyone would expect from the Israelis. But it almost got Damascus bombed by a B-52 and very well could have started WW-III. Sound familiar?

The media, and particularly CNN, and even more particularly Barbara Starr, spread this bogus "intel" like horse-poop on a rose bed. If it continues, a lot -- and I mean hundreds of thousands or millions -- of people are going to get hurt. Then whose babies will first-bimbo Ivanka fret about?

As Postol says, this is a very serious matter. Don't let the terrorists in Syria, the US government, and the MSM spoof you. When it comes to alleged sarin attacks, you now have everything you need to confirm or reject the allegations. Eventually the terrorists will wise up and they will start faking most of the biological symptoms of sarin. But until then, we can easily reject their sarin false-flags and the White House's fraudulent claims of chemical causus belli.

It's been a long-read. Thanks for sticking with it and for giving this scary situation your careful thought.

-- Denis O'Brien



Comments

1. Daniel W. ~ Apr14
In your report you say sarin causes muscles to contract. Might be worth explaining how this happens. My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is the following:

Acetylcholine (ACh) is a neurotransmitter which activates moisture glands (like saliva and tears), it also activates muscles (tenses muscle tissue). Acetylcholinsterase (AChEl) is an enzyme which terminates the signal transmission by hydrolysing ACh. Sarin is an AChEl inhibitor. Therefore, in sarin victims, active moisture glands and muscles that are tensed cannot relax or deactivate because there is no AChEl..
This means a sarin victim would not be able to breathe out (can't relax the diaphragm back down). The heart would stop functioning without oxygen.
My guesses: Vomiting and defecation - the body realises there's poison in the system and attempts to get rid of the poison (uncontrollable due to lack of AChEl).
Guess: Very low doses of sarin will not inhibit all AChEl and symptoms would be low severity or unnoticeable. Very high doses would cause breathing and heart to stop almost immediately before symptoms had time to develop (based on this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQKK34vChgQ).
So either all victims were very low/very high dose or it was faked with acting.
Showing pupils in contraction but no other symptoms seems impossible, must be drugged victims.
Regards
Daniel

Denis: Yep, that's a nice summary of the mechanism of action of sarin and other organophosphates neruotoxins. As for the gastrointestinal effects, as you note there is a system -- it's based on the chemo-triggering zone (CTZ) in the lower brain -- that causes vomiting when the brain detects a nasty substance in the blood.

But the effects of sarin are more direct and more powerful than merely stimulating the CTZ. Sarin stimulates the parasympathetic nerve fibers that control the gut and organs, and, in many cases, it also acts directly on the tissues, most of which have these Ach receptors.

From what I understand -- I've never actually worked with sarin -- its effects on the heart can go either way because the nerves that speed the heart up and slow it down are both driven by Ach. But, yes, when the oxygen runs out, the brain closes down first, then the heart. No more SMS. No more tweets.

I agree: the pinpoint pupils w/out other symptoms sounds like something funny. It would be simple to produce miosis with easily available drugs -- physostigmine for instance, which is a reversible acetylcholinesterase inhibitor.

You sound like a neuropharmacologist already. If you'd like more info on these drugs and how they act, in Chapter 7 of my book Murder in the SunMorgue I go into all the molecular details. It's a free pdf download. A bit long, but it's the only pharmacological analysis of the Ghouta Massacre I know of.

http://logophere.com/Topics2017/17-04/17_017-BLA-Sarin.htm

Like John Lee said, "boom boom boom"

RASHIDEEN MASSACRE: Children Lured to their Slaughter by NATO State Terrorists
APRIL 21, 2017 BY VANESSA BEELEY 3 COMMENTS

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Man from Kafarya and Foua,crying in Jebrin centre, Aleppo, after the suspected suicide bombing massacre of 200 civilians, including 116 children, 15th April 2017 in Rashideen. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

21st Century Wire says…

On April 15th 2017, the people of Kafarya and Foua were attacked, their children mown down deliberately, by a suicide bomb or expolosive detonation, that targeted these innocent children who had been lured to their deaths by NATO and Gulf state terrorists, including Ahrar al Sham and Nusra Front (Al Qaeda). Mothers had to watch from behind the windows of the buses they had been imprisoned in for 48 hours, while strangers, terrorists, picked up their children, their wounded, bleeding, mutilated children, and piled them up in the backs of trucks and Turkish ambulances before driving them away from the horrific scene and stealing them from their distraught, powerless mothers.

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“This is Zeinab, she was forced to watch the massacre of 116 children through the windows of a bus while the NATO and Gulf state terrorists, collected the dead, dying and mutilated bodies of her community’s children and flung them in the back of trucks and Turkish ambulances, before driving them to Turkey. She has 10 members of her family still missing. She has no idea where they are.

She gave her courageous and emotional testimony to us in Jebrin registration centre, where the survivors of the 15th April, suicide bomb attack, were taken for shelter after this horrific event, described by CNN as a “hiccup”.

I speak about part of her testimony with RT yesterday who also used my interviews in their news feed. Unlike corporate media, RT investigate these atrocities and honour the voices of the Syrian people.

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The Telegraph edited out this appalling and callous phrasing immediately after the RT interview.

The Telegraph described the dead Syrian babies as “Syrian Government supporters” in an attempt to whitewash the UK Regime terrorist crimes by proxy and to erase the existence of these innocent children from our consciousness..by the familiar dehumanization process that we have witnessed every time the various NATO and Gulf state extremist carry out mass murder of Syrian civilians.” ~ Vanessa Beeley
(Photo: Tommy Bergset Solvedt)

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Bombed out remains of one of the buses that had been carrying evacuated civilians from Kafarya and Foua to Rashideen holding centre. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Vanessa Beeley, associate editor at 21st Century Wire, was present at the scene and provided video footage of the witness and survivor testimony to RT for use in the news section. She also spoke to RT about the heartbreaking accounts given to her by Zeinab, a mother, from these besieged Idlib villages of Kafarya and Foua, who had seen the carnage and who still has 10 missing relatives, who were taken to Turkey by the waiting ambulances. A full report, and subtitled video will follow shortly, when internet and time allows, but for now, here is the report from RT and the interview at the end of the report.
For more details on Kafarya and Foua please read Eva Bartlett’s article: The Children of Kafarya and Foua are Crying in the Dark
RT Report:
Terrorists lured evacuees out of buses with snacks before blast – Aleppo attack witnesses:
Eyewitnesses to the bomb attack on a refugee convoy near Aleppo that killed dozens of children said the militants lured people out of the vehicles with snacks before the explosion, and also stopped them from escaping the blast site.
A powerful explosion hit several buses full of people leaving militant-held towns and villages outside Aleppo last Saturday, killing over 100 people, including dozens of children, and injuring scores more.

Read more on the White Helmets: ‘White Helmets helping rebrand terror groups to create Syrian no-fly zones’ – Vanessa Beeley

Following the attack, Vanessa Beeley of the 21st Century Wire website gathered first-hand accounts from those who survived the assault. People told her that the militants did their utmost to increase the death toll. The exclusive videos she provided to RT shed more light on the incident.
“Just before the explosion, a strange car got from the militants’ checkpoint. They said they were bringing snacks for children,” the bus driver who was in the convoy said.
“Then they got out of the car and started shouting, ‘Who has children? Who has children?’”
The driver said the militants knew for sure that the children “haven’t seen biscuits and crisps for so long” as they were under siege. “People have been stuck in buses for 48 hours as the rebels didn’t let us out,” he noted. A woman said that she and other evacuees were held in the buses “like prisoners,” adding that they were only allowed to get out and stretch 10 minutes before the explosion.
Many people, including children, left the buses and approached the car when the blast hit the convoy.
One of evacuees said that the militants “were throwing potato chips on the site of the future blast. One of the terrorists said that it was food for the infidels.”
The driver recalled that “there were Ahrar ash-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra [Al-Nusra Front], and some factions of the Free Syrian Army [FSA]…”
According to another witness, “the Ahrar ash-Sham fighters didn’t hide their faces, while Jabhat al-Nusra were always wearing masks. One could only see their eyes,” one of the eyewitnesses said.
WARNING: Graphic and distressing footage from the attack ~
(video at link)

There were many foreigners among the terrorists – “Uzbeks, Turks, people from Chechnya, Saudis and Qataris. One could judge on their appearance; their language,” another evacuee added.

“When the blast rocked the area, people rushed into the woods but militants surrounded them and forced back to the buses,” the bus driver said.
A female evacuee recalled that “the militants told us that terrorists from another group were shelling our buses and that we must flee towards the bushes… but then they said that the bushes were mined and found ourselves trapped.”
Another woman also told Beeley that even before the explosion, four yellow Turkish ambulances were present at the scene for some reason. After the blast, the ambulances started picking up the dead and injured, only to take them to an unknown location.
“We don’t know where they [the children] are. They’re gone. There are no bodies. We’ve searched for them, but with no result,” one of the witnesses said.
Many relatives of those missing still know nothing of their whereabouts, other witnesses said. Some people told Beeley that the controversial White Helmets were also seen at the blast site, retrieving bodies of Al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham militants, but apparently leaving injured civilians.
Beeley, who has consistently covered the Syrian war, also filmed people’s testimonies about their escape from the rebel-held areas. The evacuees boarded the buses on Friday in the Rashideen neighborhood of Aleppo, but were not allowed out of the vehicles for nearly three days.
Many of them, however, were happy to leave as “this place turned into a terrorists’ hotbed,” one woman said.
[Some] international organizations have already condemned the attack on the humanitarian convoy in the strongest terms.
“We must draw from this not only anger, but renewed determination to reach all the innocent children throughout Syria with help and comfort,” said UNICEF’s executive director, Anthony Lake.
“And draw from it also the hope that all those with the heart and the power to end this war will do so.”
However, Beeley told RT that not many in the West followed the UN’s example in decrying the attack.
“We’ve just witnessed one of the most heinous crimes of our lifetime, and yet corporate… there’s no international condemnation from governments, from NGOs, from the media,” she said.
On the contrary, the media is making an attempt to “whitewash this utterly abhorrent” incident, in which, according to Beeley’s information, 116 children lost their lives.
Full video interview. Watch ~


http://youtu.be/N8YOcdvCYis

http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/04/21/rashideen-massacre-children-lured-to-their-deaths-by-nato-state-terrorists/

One of the first videos to hit the internet on Apr04 claiming horrors of a sarin attack by Assad on Khan Sheikhoun (KS) is a 10.5 minute YourTube that I have designated as Vid-002 in my playlist of KS vids. It is basically 10 minutes of full-face selfie of a guy named Shajul Islam wandering around in what appears to be a clinic, purportedly in KS. I will have a full analysis of this head-chopper himself in the coming day or two. Suffice it for the moment to note that I don't refer to this terrorist as "Dr. Shajul Islam" as the MSM does, and the reason I don't is that his British medical license has been revoked and I have no information of him being licensed to practice medicine anywhere, not even the Islamic Caliphate.

Vid-002 has been featured by enough MSM writers shouting "Sarin!!" that it requires a really close look. The version of this vid I found was uploaded to YT at 1339:21 on Apr04|17 UST by "Erik fansclub." That would have been about 5.5 hrs after the alleged attack. The vid had only 1,336 hits as of 1048 on Apr05 PT, so I suspect there is another version of the vid running under a different URL.

In this analysis my focus is evidence that inculpates or exculpates Shajul Islam's claim that this was a sarin attack. When I note that evidence is inculpatory of sarin, I mean that the evidence supports the accusation that sarin was used. Evidence that is exculpatory of sarin leads a fair-minded person to conclude sarin was not responsible.

Description of V-002. (Times are running vid times.)

1. 00:02 -- the vid starts off in what we will call "Room 'A'". There is a bright red needle disposal box on the wall next to a bright blue spray bottle that will help identify this as room.

The camera is in Islam's face, where it remains for much of the next 10 minutes. Islam is dressed in a dark jacket. His English is good, British, Cockney. In the background is a portly dude with a Daesh beard, glasses, wearing a black leather jacket. As the camera approaches the portly dude, we can see he is forcing air down a victim's mouth through a ventilation bag -- called "bagging." He ignores the victim and the bag and watches the camera the entire time.

2. 00:21 -- close up of the "victim's" eye shows how well oxygenated the victim's blood is, which is strong exculpatory of sarin. It's hard to make out the victim's pupils clearly but they may be contracted in moderate light, which would be weak inculpatory evidence. Given how easily it is to produce miosis (pinpoint pupils) and how many drugs are miotic, the presence of miosis is not even close to being sufficient evidence to establish that there was a sarin attack. And yet this idgit Islam keeps coming back to this again and again. It's all he has.

3. 00:31 -- suddenly the portly dude in the background is in a white smock and has a face mask hanging down below his nose, which means 1) it is useless and 2) he probably doesn't have a clue how to use it.

4. 00:49 -- first exterior shot. Sudden snip to exterior view of ambulance entry; light blue, clear sky; grey/red van w/ "Ambulance" in English; ambulance workers all w/ face masks; patients and people walking around have none, suggesting the face masks are to hide identities. There is moderate traffic in street; shops open; long, strong shadows -- the sun is to the R of the camera.

NB: Although the video is 10.5 mins long, the exterior shots tell us that it covers the span of many hours. The shadows lengthen and move. People in some shots wear sweat-shirts with hoods pulled up, long-sleeve shirts, jackets, and shoes or socks with their sandals. In other exterior shots people are in short sleeves.

5. 01:15 -- a male "victim," whom I designate "M001," exits an ambulance and enters the building -- walking while holding his head. He looks a little unstable but walks on his own. He has no beard.

NB: Absolutely no signs of sarin w/ respect to M001. The workers are all dressed in new, white hazmat suits. Some have masks, which are no defense against sarin gas. Some have hazmat booties. Most are not wearing gloves.

6. 01:27 -- gurney enters clinic behind M001. It appears to carry a woman w/ black hijab. Patient count so far: 2 males, 1 female.

NB: In the background of this street-scene, there is what appears to be a shop across the street. It has a blue tarp for shade and garments or other merchandise hanging along the sidewalk as if business as usual.

7. 01:54 -- jump back to Room 'A' where about 6 men are donning new white hazmat suits; portly dude (see point 3) is still bagging the kid on the stretcher and we can see his hazmat suit includes booties.

8. 01:56 -- view into a room where a male "victim" lying on table, his hands folded on his stomach, no distress evident; 2 male workers appear to be intubating him. Patient count: 3 males, 1 female.

9. 02:12 -- M001 is stripped down and sitting in kitchen area, may be vomiting. This could be inculpatory of sarin. M001's color is good, which would be exculpatory of sarin. He is sitting upright w/out help, also exculpatory.
10. 02:15 -- close-up of patient who appears to be the woman seen at bullet 6, above. She is being bagged but she does not appear to be responsive. Someone reaches in and pulls back her eye-lid for the camera, but you can't see her pupil. A woman's voice can be heard behind the camera.

11. 02:30 et seq -- watching closely you can tell the camera leaves the room with the woman, enters a large hallway with black & white tiles, and then turns back toward the doorway of the same room as two women in black hijabs leave. These are the only two female workers I see -- among at least a couple dozen males.

12. 02:46 -- intubated male pt. on gurney being brought into Room 'A' through hallway. No beard, just stubble. Patient count: 4 males, 1 female.

13. 02:54 -- again, Islam reaches in and pulls back the patient's eyelid, but you can't see his pupil. Islam now has white lab coat on over his dark jacket.

14. 03:34 -- the male pt. on gurney appears unresponsive; he has what could be blistering or burns on R arm; facial color excellent. Exculpatory of sarin.

15. 03:52 -- out in the hallway someone is passing out plastic bags from a roll, the bags are marked in English "POLICE EVIDENCE BAG" -- Islam is explaining the clothes will be collected as evidence. "This is, no doubt, organo phosphate."

NB I'm like, WTF?? If the clothes were contaminated w/ sarin, all of these guys handling the "evidence" would be in convulsions by now and the floor would be covered with feces and puke.

16. 04:20 -- second exterior shot. Yellow ambulance; street looks very busy with lots of traffic - no indication of attack.

NB: Islam is complaining that they have to turn away the patients in the ambulance, and yet he has time to be making a video and yabbering his BS about pinpoint pupils.
17. 04:50 -- third exterior shot. Grey van. There is a 44 L. gas bottle on the ramp during this shot only.

18. 05:15 -- after Islam's dramatic statement that the clinic cannot take more patients, a male on a gurney is rolled into the clinic and into Room 'A,' which appears empty of patients. It is noteworthy that the camera shows mostly people just standing around in small groups grab-assing.

19. 05:31 -- the male has miosis, which is mildly inculpatory of sarin; his facial color is excellent and his eyes are bloodshot, which are strongly exculpatory. No beard.

20. 05:37 -- something odd appears on this male's nose -- a circle of white spots; looks like camera artifact; he has a non-bleeding gash or scar under his R eye. Patient count: 5 males, 1 female.

21. 05:50 -- a counter upon which about 20 amber vials are being set up; the vials are full and have their tops snapped off; a person behind the counter seems to be snapping the vials; no labels are visible on any of the vials

22. 05:55 -- camera scans past the vials to a clear plastic box that appears to contain similar amber vials and a hand-written card "Atropin" -- that's right, English for the viewing audience, although there is also some Arabic writing.

23. 06:13 -- the counter with the vials is shown in background, including the face of the worker behind the counter

24. 06:23 -- another look at the counter from the same angle -- all of the open vials are gone as is the plastic box with the "Atropin" label.

25. 06:47 -- boy ("B005") on orange gurney is rolled into the clinic and Room 'A' while being bagged; he has excellent color; tape w/ markings on chest, reminiscent of the "Caesar photos;" no indication of blood; no indication of sarin. Patient count: 6 males, 1 female.

NB: B005 is seen in another video in what appears to be a different clinic. See here.

26. 08:08 -- male on gurney in a room; good view of miosis unreactive to light, mildly inculpatory of sarin; man is intubated and responsive. No beard. Patient count: 7 males, 1 female.

27. 09:00 -- Islam moves from patient to patient rudely demonstrating miosis -- it's the only sarin-like symptom they have. Two more males, both with just stubble, no beard. Patient count: 9 males, 1 female.

28. 09:53 -- infant; good color; kicking and crying; no women around; Islam reaches in for the kid's eyelids, but it looks like the pupils are dilated so Islam let's it go without his constant droning about "pinpoint pupils."

29. 10:16 -- fourth exterior shot. Same grey/red van as point #4. Shadows much shorter than previous views and the sun is now behind the camera; beautiful blue sky. No gas tank on the ramp. At this point in the day they are still bringing patients in.

30. 10:27 -- male patient on gurney; very good face color; no beard; face flushed red. Patient count: 10 males, 1 female, 1 infant . Dozens of male workers, 2 female workers.

Observations, particularly comparing this incident with the Ghouta Massacre
31. This vid was uploaded about 10 hours or so after the attack was alleged to have occurred. From the way the shadows shift during the external shots, it is clear that many hours passed while the video was in the making. And then, of course, there is editing, which must have taken hours given all of the snips that are evident. Consequently, the video itself raises serious questions that it may have been pre-produced days prior to the alleged attack. For all we know everyone in this vid is an actor, or a drugged captive/prisoner, a suggestion that may give context to the observation that all of the victims shown are men except for two.
32. The vid shows 12 "victims" out of what has been advertised by the MSM as 100 to 300 victims total, including fatal and non-fatal injuries.

33. The gender bias of 10:1 for males is both huge and suspicious. While there appeared to be more male victims than females in the Ghouta Massacre videos, it was nowhere near 10:1.

34. The most prevalent action of the workers in the Ghouta videos was them incessantly throwing and rubbing water into the faces of victims. That weird, inexplicable behavior is not seen in this video.

35. I give no evidentiary weight one way or the other to the vials stacked on the corner. They are obviously supposed to be atropine and therefore suggestive of a sarin event, but one would have to be a sucker to buy that. First, the vials are not labeled; they could be anything, including water. Second, a hand written card in English saying "Atropin" would hardly be proper pharmacy practice, least of all in Syria. Third, the sequence smells like a spoof staged as an embellishment for a false-flag video -- as noted above, in the blink of an eye all of the vials disappear.

36. Virtually no blood is seen on the patients, the floor, the gurneys, etc. There is no evidence of high explosives, such as cement dust in the victims' hair or on their bodies.

37. None of the adult male "victims" have beards, another statistical anomaly. It is hard to make a comparison between victims and the dozens of workers because many of the worker are wearing masks, but just on the basis of the workers whose faces are not covered, only a very small number of them are beardless.

38. Contrary to news reports that 30% of the victims are children, in this sample of 12 "victims" there were only two children (17%), and one of those was a young man in his late teens.

Conclusions

39. There is next to no evidence in this video to support the allegation that sarin had anything to do with this incident in Khan Sheikhoun.

40. More specifically, the lack of the 5 primary clinical signs of organophosphate poisoning -- hyper-salivation, hyper-lacrimation, uncontrolled micturation, uncontrolled defecation, violent vomiting -- presents more than a reasonable doubt that sarin was in anyway responsible for these patients' problems.

41 Moreover, the positive clinical features of these people, particularly their bright red skin color, virtually guarantees this was not sarin.

42. Given that the time to produce the video was only 10 hrs. while the video itself spans many hours judging by the changing shadows in the exterior shots, and given the warped demographics of the "victims," the shaved beards, the symptoms consistent with cyanide poisoning -- well, all of this suggests to me a much more sinister explanation than the quotidian "Assad gassed his own people."

43. Based on just this one video and 12 subjects, the clinical picture appears to me to be more consistent with intoxication by cyanide, which is consistent with my conclusions of what caused the fatalities in the Ghouta Massacre. I would venture to guess, given the similarities in these two events, that a careful analysis of videos from both incidents will reveal "workers" and "medics" who appear in both performances.

44. The twisted demographics we see in Islam's video could very well mean that the whole thing was orchestrated by someone too stupid to pay attention to details. You know, like someone who thinks all he has to do is show the world a bunch of people with pinpoint pupils and the world will buy his bullspit about sarin.

45. A stronger hypothesis than the sarin hypothesis is the hypothesis that after failing to draw the US into the Syrian civil war by staging the Ghouta Massacre, these Wahhabi terrorists waited until the American voters put someone in the White House who would likely be a lot more easily manipulated by false-flag adventures and shocking allegations of Assad gassing his own people than Obama was. So last Tuesday they figured it was time to run the old sarin false-flag up the pole once more to see if they could sucker the US into attacking Assad. And judging by Trump's bluster today, the Wahhabis are getting the effect they wanted. Of course with Russia's Su's and SAMs protecting Syria, Trump's bluster could well end up being blow-back that the entire world comes to regret.

Someone -- Russia, the CIA, Jordan . . . who knows? -- was able to get to Obama and Kerry during the 2013 crisis over the Ghouta Massacre and explain to them what really happened in Ghouta. And the reason we know that is that suddenly, about spring of 2014, both Obama and Kerry quit accusing Assad of gassing his own people, and we never heard that accusation from them again. Let's hope someone gets the right information to Trump, and let's hope Trump takes the time to collect all the facts and all the opinions before pulling the trigger on Assad. And Putin.

Thanks for reading and for giving this important issue some serious thought.

--- Denis O'Brien, PhD/Esq

http://logophere.com/Topics2017/17-04/17_015-BLA-ShajulIslam.htm

Video:

http://logophere.com/Syria/Khan%20Sheikhoun/Videos/Vid-002.mp4

TRACING BULGARIAN ARMS SHIPMENTS TO SYRIAN ISLAMISTS

https://trud.bg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MARIANNE_DANICA.jpg

Original by Diana Mikhailova, translation by J.Hawk.

This article is a continuation of an earlier one by the same author.

It’s April 6, 2017. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The Denmark-flagged Marianne Danica cargo ship has arrived in the biggest seaport in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The ship had left Burgas ten days earlier (March 28) loaded with tons of weapons, a fact confirmed by Marinetraffic.com satellite tracking data. The ship was declared as carrying a Hazard A (Major) dangerous cargo, which in accordance with the International Cargo Classification system denotes weapons and explosives. The dangerous cargo is unloaded within 8 hours of the ship arriving in Jeddah, and the ship sets return course to Burgas. The Bulgarian weapons shipments are not meant for Saudi Arabia which could not use it in any event, as its military uses only Western weapons.

In December 2016, Trud reporters discovered Bulgarian weapons manufactured at VMZ-Sopot, in 9 An-Nusra jihadists’ storage facilities in eastern Aleppo in Syria. An-Nusra is considered a terrorist group due to its ties with Al-Qaeda. In spite on the ban on exporting weapons due to the war in Syria, two million shells and 4 thousand Grad rockets have made their way from Bulgaria to the jihadists in Aleppo, as demonstrated by our investigation in Syria.

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The boxes in markings in the Bulgarian language, which indicate Bulgaria was the country of origin, contain 122mm Grad rockets. They are some of the most dangerous weapons to Aleppo civilians. Moreover, these jihadists have used 73mm rounds [the article does not make clear whether they are for SPG-9 RCLs or for the Grom cannon arming BMP-1 IFVs] and RPG anti-tank rockets.


http://youtu.be/DDQOWQMfDlM

https://trud.bg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Photo4.jpg

After our information was published, Prosecutor’s General office began an investigation, and we continued to look for traces of Bulgarian weapons beyond the port from which they were shipped–Burgas.

It turns out this was only one of many regular Burgas-Jeddah trips made by Marianne Danica during the recent months. According to Marinetraffic.com archives, this ship departed Burgas on March 7 and arrived in Jeddah on March 17. After a 12-hour port stay for unloading, it return to Burgas on March 28 at 9am. In the morning, Marianne Danica received a new batch of weapons and 9 hours later it was once again on its way to Saudi Arabia. The trips followed one another without a break, the ship did not stop anywhere else along the way. It only stopped for a few hours at Burgas and Jeddah. In the course of one month, it made two trips back and forth between Bulgaria and Saudi Arabia, carrying Bulgarian weapons.

https://trud.bg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Photo7.jpg
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https://trud.bg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Photo17.jpg
https://trud.bg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Photo16.jpg

Trud asked the VMZ-Sopot arms manufacturer for comments but, in spite of numerous requests, we have not received a single answer. The Saudi embassy stated that it will not explain where Saudi Arabia sent Bulgarian weapons, even though the Saudi military uses only Saudi weapons which are incompatible with Bulgarian munitions.

In an exclusive interview with Trud, Colonel Malik Al-Kurdi, a commander within the Free Syrian Army which is the West’s ally in its effort to overthrow the Syrian government, said that Saudi Arabia, together with intelligence services of 15 other countries, sends weapons to Syrian jihadists under the guise of aiding “moderate opposition” (the full interview is included below).

https://trud.bg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MARIANNE_DANICA2.jpg

http://logonoid.com/images/chemring-logo.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a1/Logo_for_Orbital_ATK.png

http://zadkulisite.com/img/docs/1438633535_%D0%B2%D0%BC%D0%B7%20%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%82.jpg
http://vmz.bg/

Our investigation has shown that VMZ-Sopot has a contract on supplying weapons with two US firms, Chemring and its affiliate Chemring Ordnance, and Orbital ATK. Both firms are US government contractors. In 2016 alone, Chemring obtained two contracts worth $47 million for supplying weapons which are not compatible with US systems (in this instance, Bulgarian), under the Non-Standard Weapons Acquisition Program. According to the official information about the company on the internet, these weapons are intended for US needs and for its allies. Orbital ATK received a contract to procure non-US weapons worth $50 million under the same program on January 27, 2016. Orbital ATK did not respond to Trud inquiries concerning which US allies were receiving VMZ-Sopot weapons.

In its reply to Trud, Chemring claimed that the information is confidential and recommended contacting VMZ-Sopot.

The ship’s owner, H. Folmer & Co. also refused to comment. Our investigation has shown this is not the first time the ship was used to transport weapons to problem regions. Amnesty International accused Marianne Danica in supplying tear gas to Egypt for use by the Hosni Mubarak regime on November 26, 2011 during the Arab Spring when hundreds of protesters were killed by the president’s forces on Tahrir Square in Cairo. The ship was chartered by a US firm, and after the ensuing scandal the US State Department spokesman confirmed the US firm even obtained the required export license.

From the interview with FSA representative Malik Al-Kurdi.

https://trud.bg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Malik_AL_Kurdi2-300x167.jpg

–How do you go about obtaining weapons?

– There is a headquarters comprising representatives of 15 countries, located in Turkey and Jordan. The weapons reach us through that HQ–how, it’s not our concern, we only care that the weapons arrive. We have clearly warned the Americans and Europeans that the weapons which are passing through the FSA General HQ are going to organizations which the West has declared to be terrorist organizations. It’s a double game–on the one hand, these organizations are labeled as terrorists, but on the other–they are receiving weapons through that HQ. It was surprising and embarrassing, but we still have no explanation. Even the FSA was deprived of weapons deliveries and received very little. Those who received the weapons were supposed to adhere to a certain ideology. By that I mean radical Islamism.

More than 15 foreign intelligence services are freely operating on Syria’s territory. Even the weapons deliveries through FSA HQ are under their control. These services belong to the US, UK, France, Persian Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar) and others. These services control weapon distribution among the rebels, with some going to the FSA but the majority being earmarked for the radical Islamists.

–Am I correct in understanding that what’s happening currently in Syria is the result of 15 countries supporting and financing Al-Qaeda?

–Yes, we can definitely say that, but the foreign intelligence services are acting in a contradictory manner. They can accuse someone of being a terrorist even as they are supporting them in order to obtain certain goals, in accordance with their political priorities, without even realizing that.

–How did you receive those weapons for terrorist groups in Syria?

–There are special networks which which handle the direct deliveries of these weapons, as part of deliveries to the FSA HQ. Another part of this aid is being sent as cash to these organizations, to allow them to procure weapons on the black market or obtain them directly from the intelligence services.
The FSA General HQ has the role of the intermediary between the countries providing the weapons and the militant units. The weapons are supplied in accordance with already prepared lists, and the HQ cannot make major changes to it.

https://southfront.org/tracing-bulgarian-arms-shipments-to-syrian-islamists

What's Behind the Wave of ISIS Assassinations in Deir-ez-Zor?

Apr 27th, 2017 by Alsouria Net (opposition website)

http://syrianobserver.com/tjcgArtImages/images/IMG-YQO-16233.jpg
Observers expect targeted killings of Islamic State members to continue throughout the eastern province as ISIS' power wanes and locals seek to enact revenge for atrocities carried out by the group and its associates, opposition outlet Alsouria writes

What
Information from the areas under Islamic State (ISIS) control in the Deir-ez-Zor province has confirmed reports of a wave of assassinations targeting members of the group.

Activists on social media said the number of executions carried out by ISIS in the city of Abu Kamal east of Deir-ez-Zor and in other cities and towns inside the province had increased, amid accusations of betrayal and working with the enemies of the group.

The Deir-ez-Zor Media Office said that an assassinations on Tuesday involved a number of women, reporting that an Iraqi woman was killed by gunshot in the green belt area on the outskirts of the the southern city of Abu Kamal. It added that the deceased was likely the wife of the deputy “Euphrates governor.”

This issue has encouraged a number of pages and networks concerned with the province’s affairs to shine a light on the incidents, with the Sons of Deir-ez-Zor Forum site saying: “The news coming out of the province indicates a weakening of ISIS' power, accompanied by an increase in assassinations which have hit group members in various parts of the province.”

It added that a number of observers expected “these assassinations to increase and may develop into liberation movements, expecting a lack of popular support for the group in the province and a state of resentment harbored by the residents because of the group’s practices throughout its time in power in the area.”

The opposition page continued: “The wish of a large number of residents for revenge against the group is rooted in the group's execution of individuals from these tribes, and there have even been cases of mass killings, forced displacement and confiscation of property.”

It concluded its view of this issue by saying: “The days of the organization in the province will not last, and people of the province may precede all the other parties that are trying to expel the group from the province.”

The journalist Ahmad Yassawi, a resident of Deir-ez-Zor, told Alsouria Net that “by following the available news, it’s become clear that ISIS is suffering a great deal and living through hard days. All the fronts are active, whether with the regime or with the Kurdish militias on the outskirts of Hassakeh or even in the Abu Kamal desert.”

“Most importantly, there are high-quality operations being carried out by the coalition and some agents from among the commanders are being removed. Even some important figures in the group are being arrested,” Yassawi said.

The journalist believed that all of these events had confirmed to residents that ISIS was undergoing a “state of chaos, confusion and weakness, and therefore some assassinations of their cadres have begun to appear without the group taking any action, as had happened recently.”

Yassawi stressed that the organization “does not have a popular base and the people of the region will seek revenge on the group which abused their brothers and sons monstrously, most prominently with the massacres of Shayrat and the massacre of Abu Kamal, and the execution of a number of leaders and journalists involved in the revolution in the city.”

He said these incidents are still felt by the people of the region and that they are waiting for the “right moment to pounce” on the group.

“I believe that if the coalition's military operations start to escalate, we will see a major collapse of the basic structure of the group, and events could proceed as no on is expecting,” he added.

http://syrianobserver.com/EN/Features/32671/What_Behind_Wave_ISIS_Assassinations_Deir_Zor/

Some relevant tweets:

The #Syrian Miracle: 6 years of war & the Syrians still get their monthly salaries ON TIME
@presidency_sy
@BasharAljafari1
@antonioguterres
0 replies 8 retweets 8 likes
Reply Retweeted 8
Like 8
Phil Greaves Retweeted
Ahmad Al-Issa‏ @ahmadalissa Apr 26
More
The #Syrian Miracle: 6 years of global war & Syria still has FREE education for all
@Presidency_Sy
@BasharAljafari1
@antonioguterres
0 replies 12 retweets 13 likes
Reply Retweeted 12
Like 13
Phil Greaves Retweeted
Ahmad Al-Issa‏ @ahmadalissa Apr 26
More
The #Syrian Miracle: 6 years of global war & Syria still has FREE Health Service for all
@Presidency_Sy
@BasharAljafari1
@antonioguterres

Damn those bloody handed tyrants.........

85% of Syrians are on the government payroll.

SYRIAN WAR REPORT – APRIL 28, 2017: GOVT FORCES ADVANCE ON MULTIPLE FRONTS

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: southfront@list.ru or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Clashes resumed in Al-Qaboun district in eastern Damascus as the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) capture more points from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies. The SAA detected a tunnel connecting many positions of the militants inside the district and destroyed it. Ahrar al-Sham claimed that its members had hit two SAA tanks in Al-Qaboun district.

Pro-militant sources say that opposition forces are in a critical situation in the area after government troops cut off supply lines operated by militants in the area. HTS-led forces suffer from shortages of ammunition and food.

Earlier this week, the SAA launched an operation against ISIS to in the Damascus desert east of the Syrian capital. So far, the SAA has advanced towards the Al-Sham desert around the Tishreen electricity station capturing some 6 kilometers. Pro-government sources report heavy losses among ISIS members.

There were also some reports about the dismantling of three Israeli spy and jamming stations by the SAA in the area. The stations used to monitor the Damascus International Airport and the Marj al-Sultan Airport.

The Tiger Forces, the 5th Assault Corps, a military wing of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and other pro-government units continued attempts to advance against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in northern Hama. Now clashes are mainly ongoing in the areas near Massanah and Zilaqiat. Government troops are attempting to reach al-Lataminah and to besiege this important militant stronghold.

In the province of Homs, government forces captured the abandoned battalion north of the T4 airbase and a range of strategic highlands near the Al-Mahr gas field. 5th Assault Corps troops had resized the Al-Sha’er gas field earlier this week. Separately, the SAA repelled an ISIS attack on the Al-Sukari area south of Palmyra. ISIS claimed that its members had killed four Syrian soldiers in the clashes.

ISIS had deployed some reinforcements to eastern Homs following the significant advances made by the SAA and the Free Syrian Army in the desert of Palmyra and Damascus. ISIS seeks to keep the presence in this area in order to prevent further advances of anti-ISIS forces along the Syrian-Iraqi border.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued its operations against ISIS in the districts of Al-Wahbe and Al-Iza’a in the southern part of Tabqa in the province of Raqqah.

In recent clashes, the SDF reportedly killed 20 ISIS militants and captured 10 others. The SDF also destroyed four ISIS vehicles and managed to capture an arms depot and a tank in the southern districts of Tabqa. The SDF operation is an actively supported by the US-led coalition airpower and military advisors.

The SDF released an official statement condemning Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish militia in northern Syria and called the international community to force Turkey to avoid such actions.

Meanwhile, Kurdish YPG fighters attacked a Turkish air defense site at the Syrian-Turkish border. YPG members destroyed a radar vehicle and a command vehicle with ATGMs in response to Turkish airstrikes and artillery strikes on YPG-aligned targets in northern Syria.

Israeli Air Force warplanes bombed the area of the Damascus International Airport early on Thursday, the Syrian Defense Ministry announced in a statement at its website. According to the statement, airstrikes hit objects in southwestern the international airport. The ministry confirmed that airstrikes caused some damage and denied any casualties. The statement also said that Israel airstrikes are aimed at supporting terrorists in Syria. According to media reports, at least 5 airstrikes hit the airport area on around 3:00-3:30 A.M. local time. Reuters reported (citing own sources) that the airstrikes hit a military hub operated by Hezbollah.

https://southfront.org/syrian-war-report-april-28-2017-govt-forces-advance-on-multiple-fronts/

Excellent video at link, recommended.

ALLIANCE OF CONVENIENCE: WHY ISRAEL SUPPORTS ISIS? (SYRIANA ANALYSIS)


http://youtu.be/--bSKC0ErUw

Apr 29, 2017, Syriana Analysis
Since the beginning of the war in Syria, Israel took the opportunity to pursue its strategic interests in the neighboring country, by tacitly and sometimes publicly allying itself with Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Syriana Analysis addresses the recent bombings of Israel and US on Syria, elaborating the geopolitical goals behind these strikes.

Apr 20, 2017, Nizar Abboud:

“At the UN Security Council the Syrian delegate, Bashar Al-Jafari attacks Israel’s help to terrorist group, including ISIL in Syria.”

~Excerpts of what Ambassador Bashar al-Ja’afari stated:

“…it’s a very dubious silence that we meet here in the council regarding Israeli policies and practices. This is what has encouraged Israel to continue its practice of occupation and settlement building. It’s also why Israel has violated the plan of disengagement regarding the Golan and all issues related to combating terrorism.

It’s also why this is why Israel has offered its support to various armed terrorist groups in particular on the Syrian Golan, in particular than al-Nusra Front. This is a body this is a group that the United Nations considers as a terrorist group. Well, this group actually receives assistance from Israel.

Israel has facilitated the the movement of these terrorist groups through the line of demarcation line and as a result of that these groups have threatened the Syrian people and it’s the Qatari regime also that has offered its support to these groups.

Israel has not contented itself with offering support to these groups but in fact it has also tried to violate Syrian airspace and to attack Syria this took place on the seventeenth of March of this year in Palmyra. Israel provided its assistance to Da’esh which was present in the area there just then.

All this clearly shows that Israel and terrorism are the two sides of the same coin.

When we say that Israel and terrorism are indeed the two faces of the same coin we need to recall that the history of Zionism itself is a history of terrorism: The goal is to kill and to violate the rights of others, and to base itself on a legend of a religious state which in fact is against all international laws. In fact it’s a state that doesn’t respect the freedom, justice or any principle.

…A state that creates millions of refugees cannot speak of democracy, does not have the right to speak of human values does not have the right to speak like this even though it is responsible for chaos, for the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

When this entity it’s up continues to distort history, to rob territory, to perpetrate massacres against this Arab peoples who live under occupation.

We see that this state has an arsenal of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and it is protected by the member states of the Security Council even what as we have tried to create a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East.

The world cannot disregard the fact that it is on the basis of the Balfour Declaration that this entity was created and this has had a serious impact on the history of humankind.

In fact a racist entity that excludes everyone else and that is based on an extremist religious ideology continues to operate in the region, which in many ways is hardly different from the methods used by Da’esh.

We insist on the Syrian sovereignty on occupied Golan based on the fourth of June 1967 borders. This is a right that is not subject to discussion, it is an inalienable right and we can this can not we cannot make any concessions on this. Our right on
this has been violated and we have to make sure that this territory returns to its rightful owners.

We have to call on Israel to free Sedki al-Maket (also: Sedqi al-Maqt)–who we call the Syrian Mandela–and others who are in Israeli prisons for taking pictures, taking photos that prove that Israel is cooperating with the al-Nusra Front on the occupied Paris Syrian Golan these photos were taken this is why these the 2 Syrian individuals were arrested by Israel.”

https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/alliance-of-convenience-why-israel-supports-isis-syriana-analysis/

Reports: US troops deploy along Syria-Turkish border
By SARAH EL DEEB AND BOB BURNS, ASSOCIATED PRESS BEIRUT — Apr 28, 2017, 1:48 PM ET
The Associated Press


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OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu speeches during a ceremony marking the OPCW's 20th anniversary in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, April 26, 2017. The global chemical weapons watchdog's ceremony comes just three weeks after dozens of people were killed in a suspected nerve gas attack in Syria. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, POOL)more +

U.S. armored vehicles are deploying in areas in northern Syria along the tense border with Turkey, a few days after a Turkish airstrike that killed 20 U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, a Syrian war monitor and Kurdish activists said Friday.

Footage posted by Syrian activists online showed a convoy of U.S. armored vehicles driving on a rural road in the village of Darbasiyah, a few hundred meters from the Turkish border. Clashes in the area were reported between Turkish and Kurdish forces Wednesday a day after the Turkish airstrike which also destroyed a Kurdish command headquarters.

The Turkish airstrikes, which also wounded 18 members of the U.S.-backed People's Protection Units, or YPG, in Syria were criticized by both the U.S. and Russia. The YPG is a close U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State group but is seen by Ankara as a terrorist group because of its ties to Turkey's Kurdish rebels.

Further clashes between Turkish and Kurdish forces in Syria could potentially undermine the U.S.-led war on the Islamic State group.

A senior Kurdish official, Ilham Ahmad told The Associated Press that American forces began carrying out patrols along the border Thursday along with reconnaissance flights in the area. She said the deployment was in principle temporary, but may become more permanent.

A Kurdish activist in the area, Mustafa Bali, said the deployment is ongoing, adding that it stretches from the Iraqi border to areas past Darbasiyah in the largely Kurdish part of eastern Syria.

"The U.S. role has now become more like a buffer force between us and the Turks on all front lines," he said. He said U.S. forces will also deploy as a separation force in areas where the Turkish-backed Syrian fighting forces and the Kurdish forces meet.

It is a message of reassurance for the Kurds and almost a "warning message" to the Turks, he said.

Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, did not dispute that U.S. troops are operating with elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) along the Turkish border, but he would not get into specifics. The SDF is a Kurdish-dominated alliance fighting IS that includes Arab fighters.

"We have U.S. forces that are there throughout the entirety of northern Syria that operate with our Syrian Democratic Force partners," Davis said. "The border is among the areas where they operate." He said the U.S. wants the SDF to focus on liberating the IS-held town of Tabqa and the extremist group's de facto capital, Raqqa, "and not be drawn into conflicts elsewhere."

Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the deployment seems limited and is aimed to "prevent fighting" between the two sides.

The U.S. has recently shifted from working quietly behind the scenes in Syria's conflict toward overt displays of U.S. force in an attempt to shape the fight.

Last month, about 200 Marines rolled into northern Syria backed with howitzers, significantly widening America's footprint in a highly toxic battlefield. The Marines' deployment came days after another intervention, when dozens of army troops drove outside the town of Manbij, riding Stryker armored vehicles, following an earlier conflagration of fighting between Syrian Kurdish troops and Turkish troops. The U.S. deployment in Manbij intentionally put Americans in the middle of that rivalry, hoping to cool it down.

The SDF retook Manbij from IS control, and Turkey — with its troops nearby — said it won't allow the town to be under Kurdish control, threatening to move on it. The American presence appears intended to reassure Ankara the Kurds don't hold the town.

But the new deployment puts U.S. troops directly along the border with Turkey, another flashpoint, and immerses Washington into that increasingly hot fight.

Separately, the chief of the international chemical weapons watchdog said on Friday that he has a team of experts ready and willing to travel to the site of this month's deadly nerve gas incident in Syria if their safety can be assured.

"We are willing to go to Khan Sheikhoun and we have undertaken some actions," Ahmet Uzumcu of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told a small group of reporters in The Hague.

Syrian ally Russia has called for an international investigation into the April 4 attack that killed nearly 90 people. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week expressed regret that the OPCW turned down the Syrian government's offers to visit the site of the attack and investigate. Russia has rejected Western accusations that Syrian President Bashar Assad's government was behind the attack.

Uzumcu said that the area of the town of Khan Sheikhoun where the incident happened is controlled by opposition rebels, adding that the watchdog experts will "need to strike some deals with them," such as a temporary ceasefire, to assure the team's safety before it can deploy.

The OPCW has been extremely cautious about sending investigators to Syria since a team of its experts came under attack there in 2014. Uzumcu said the organization is in daily contact with U.N. authorities over the security situation in Syria.

The Syrian president has categorically rejected accusations that his forces were behind the attack.

Uzumcu is not yet calling the April 4 incident a chemical weapons attack, but he has said that tests by his organization have established beyond doubt that sarin or a similar toxin was used.

Other nations, however, have already labelled it an attack and blamed the Syrian government.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said earlier this week that the attack "bears the signature" of Assad's government and shows it was responsible.

Uzumcu said his organization is not yet in a position to confirm the French findings.

The OPCW's team is already gathering evidence from victims and survivors and testing samples outside Syria. Uzumcu said he expects an initial report to be issued in about 10 days. The initial OPCW investigation will not apportion blame — that is left to a separate investigative mechanism made up of OPCW and U.N. experts.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/chemical-weapons-team-ready-visit-syria-safety-assured-47078360

This is an act of aggression, an act of war. USA to the Hague!

Yeah, right.

Syria Pays Tribute to Working Class on International Workers' Day

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Damascus, May 1 (Prensa Latina) On the occasion of the International Workers'' Day, Syrian workers reiterated their support for the Army and the people in the struggle against terrorism, as stated by trade unions, political and national government organizations.

In this regard, 'We still sustain all production-related efforts amid the present and tough circumstances' in close cooperation with government and social organizations, according to a statement from the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU).

GFTU President Jamal al-Qaderi praised the local working class's endeavors to outlive both the economic war and the one-sided unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States, and to stand up against the destruction of factories and infrastructures by the terrorists.

In turn, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party issued a statement in which 'Syrian workers will continue being the driving force, the main pillar for development and also a symbol of sacrifice', and make common cause 'to enhance Syrians' living conditions in all respects.

As part of dissimilar events taking place nationwide, Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis visited several industrial facilities in Damascus and stated, 'We have come here to convey President Bashar Al-Assad's congratulations to Syrian workers who have proved to be an example to the world and their tasks are all-important to fight the unfair terrorist war and for the reconstruction and maintenance of local infrastructure.'

http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=12349&SEO=syria-pays-tribute-to-working-class-on-international-workers-day

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The city of Raqqa is considered one of the biggest and most important Syrian cities. The city is located on the northeast bank of the Euphrates River, at the edge of “Sharqiya Syria”, a term used to describe eastern Syria.

Syria’s largest dam, the Tabqa Dam is located 40 kilometers east of Raqqa. The dam is one of the most important electricity and water sources in Syria.

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Click to see the full-size map at link

It was built between 1968 and 1973 to generate the hydroelectric power, as well as irrigate lands on both sides of the Euphrates. Syria’s largest water reservoir, the Lake Assad, is located east of the dam. The town of Tabqa and the nearby Tabqa Miitary Airport are located directly south of the dam.

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A look at the Tabqa dam on March 26, 2017. Source: @CJTFOIR/Twitter
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A look at the Tabqa dam on March 26, 2017. Source: @CJTFOIR/Twitter

Raqqa is linked with the Syrian industrial capital of Aleppo, the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor, and the fertile area Hasakah through the M4 Highway. The city’s inhabitants number 220,000 [predominantly Arabs of Sunni Islam; there is also a notable Christian minority], according to the 2004 census. The Raqqa countryside is home to about 100,000 people, most of whom are Bedouins.

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Raqqah. Scale: 500m

The strategic importance of the city as well as the nearby Tabqa dam turned Raqqah into a target for every faction involved in the war and all of them have attempted to take control of it.

At the beginning of the Syrian crisis, Raqqa was one of the calmest provinces, as it did not witness any significant protests or violence. Sporadic protests by opposition groups did not exceed a hundred protestors at their peak.

Thus, Raqqa and its capital became one of the safest provinces accepting scores of loyalist refugees displaced from the Aleppo, Hasakah, and Deir Ezzor where fierce clashes between pro-government forces and militants took place in 2012.

At the end of 2012, Ahrar Al-Sham with the support of Jabhat al-Nusra (the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda; Not it’s known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) declared its intention to capture the provincial capital of Raqqah and launched a military operation to do this. Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra captured the Jirah Airbase and the important town of Maskanah in the province of Aleppo, and entered into the province of Raqqah. Militants captured Tabqa and the Tabqa Military Airport and captured the city of Raqqah after 3 days of clashes on March 6, 2013.

The Syrian Army did not organize any real defenses for the city. This led to many questioning the loyalties of the provincial leadership, which seemingly played an integral role in the loss of this strategic province.

Initially, ISIS activities inside the city were aimed at supporting Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra in actions against the besieged Syrian Army military installations in its vicinity. However, later ISIS began own operation in order to recapture Raqqa from Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra. ISIS declared a control over Raqqa in January 2014. A majority of Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra militants fled, abandoning the entire city to ISIS. Those who remained either defected to ISIS or were executed. ISIS terrorists continued their attacks against Syrian military facilities capturing the Division 17 HQ, the Brigade 93 base, and the Tabqa Military Airport after months of relentless clashes carrying out massacres against the soldiers manning these sites.

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Tabqa Military Airport. Scale: 500m

While many believe that Mosul is the capital of ISIS, ISIS recognizes Raqqa as its official capital. In the past three years, ISIS was systematically strengthening its presence and influence in Raqqa as it did not face any real danger from other forces involved in the war.

In 2016, following the first liberation of Palmyra, the Syrian Army, backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces, launched an advance with the goal of recapturing the Tabqa Military Airport and even the city of Raqqa from ISIS. However, government forces did not reach even their first goal and were pushed to retreat after a series of ISIS counter attacks.

The start of the Russian military operation in Syria in 2015 dramatically changed the course of the war and returned an ability to conduct successful operations to the Assad government. The government advance on the Tabqa Military Airport resulted in no gains. Nonetheless, it became clear that if the US-led coalition against ISIS continues ignoring the terrorist group in Syria, the Syrian government and its allies would be able to solve this problem by themselves. [Just for example, in the same year, the Syrian army liberated the city of Aleppo from Jabhat al-Nusra and its allies. This was one of the biggest government victories in this war.] This could become a major diplomatic and PR failure for the US and its regional allies.

In October 2015, the new brand of the US-backed forces appeared in the war. The establishment of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was declared during a press conference in Hasakah, a town controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wing the People’s Protection Units (YPG). While the US and the mainstream media claimed that, the SDF was multi-ethnic organization, the YPG and the YPJ, the female equivalent of the YPG, became the core of the group. Understanding this problem, the US-led coalition contributed significant efforts in 2016 and in early 2017 to build an Arab faction in the SDF. However, the Kurdish militias remained the undisputed core of the SDF.

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YPG fighters

On November 6, 2016, the SDF, backed up by the US-led coalition’s air power and special forces, launched the Operation Euphrates Wrath aimed at expelling ISIS from the province of Raqqa.

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U.S. special operations forces are seen in the northern Syrian province of Raqqa on May 25, 2016. Delil Souleiman, AFP

Now, the SDF officially includes:

36,000 YPG fighters
24,000 YPJ fighters
20,000 Arab tribal fighters including groups like the Manbij Military Council

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Fighters of the Manbij Military Council

Between 10,000 and 20,000 members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) present in the SDF-held area in northern Syria and unofficially participate in SDF military operations. Official representatives of the PYD and the YPG have repeatedly denied this fact because it could negatively impact the US-Turkish relations. An official recognition of this fact will also create a pretext for Ankra to launch a military operation against the SDF. Turkey and a number of other nations describe the PKK as a terrorist group. The Turkish leadership insists that the YPG is just a branch of the PKK.

However, this does not stop Ankara from conducting military strikes on YPG targets along the Turkish-Syrian border. The United States have been pushed to increase its military activity along the border and at a contanct line between the SDF and pro-Turkish mlintants in the province of Aleppo to prevent a possible ful-scale Turkish military operations against the SDF/YPG in northern Syria. Thus, US troops play a role of buffer force between Turkey and the SDF.

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A March 5 photo shows a convoy of U.S. forces armoured vehicles driving near the village of Yalanli, on the western outskirts of the northern Syrian city of Manbij. Footage was posted Friday by Syrian activists online showed U.S. armoured vehicles driving on a rural road a few hundred meters from the Turkish border. (DELIL SOULEIMAN / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

The SDF advance in the Raqqa countryside is ongoing amid an immense fire support from the US Coalition’s warplanes, attack helicopters and artillery. The US also expanded few airfields inside Syria. They are used for delivering supplies to the SDF and as forward bases for US attack helicopters. The US, French and Germany special operations forces also play an important role in supporting the SDF on the ground. The US Marine Corps provides an artillery support for SDF operations around Raqqa.

So far, the SDF has been able to outflank Raqqah from the western, eastern and northern directions, to cross the Euphrates and to capture the Tabqa Military Airport, to capture a major part of the town of Tabqa [May 2, 2016: pro-Kurdish sources announced that the town is liberated] and to set a foothold for securing the Tabqa Dam and isolating the ISIS self-proclaimed capital from the southern direction.

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Click to see the full-size map
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A SDF member is removing an ISIS flag from the center of Tabqa

From its side, ISIS began preparing for the Battle of Raqqa since the Coalition’s announcement of the Raqqa operation in 2016.

Since the beginning, it became clear that ISIS was not intending to defend numerous villages in the Raqqah countryside. In turn, ISIS implemented a mobile defense approach. ISIS units were retreating under the pressure of the SDF and the US-led coalition from small villages and were counter-attacking relying on technicals and vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs).

The goal of this strategy was (and is) to deliver a maximum possible damage to the SDF manpower and military equipment instead of attempting to defend small settlements without any strategic value. Tabqa, the Tabqa Military Airbase and the Tabqa dam were the only locations that ISIS had attempted to defend because of their strategic value – controlling these sites, US-backed forces will have a foothold on the southern bank of the Euphrates west of Tabqa.

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An ISIS technical is in action against the SDF in the province of Raqqah

Inside and around Raqqa, ISIS started setting up a series of fortifications around the city at the end of 2016 by constructing a high berm and a trench that encircles the city in its entirety. Several local sources also reported that the terrorist group had worked on establishing an intricate series of tunnels, trenches, and cement barriers inside Raqqa.

Furthermore, opposition sources reported that ISIS began lacing explosives and planting IEDs in sensitive areas inside and around the city.

At the turn of 2017 following the success of US-backed forces in Raqqa’s western and eastern countryside and the cutting off of the Raqqa-Deir Ezzor highway in addition to the Syrian Army’s resilience in Deir Ezzor, ISIS began relocating its equipment and ammunition to the insides of the city as well as establishing firing points and sniper nests.

The terrorist group has been also relocating its most experienced fighters to the city. A notable number of elite fighters have been called from Deir Ezzor, Aleppo’s eastern countryside and the Homs desert. Some of them even arrived from Iraq.

In Raqqa ISIS reported has over 10,000 fighters and its most effective armament including TOW and Fagot missiles smuggled from Idlib given to them by FSA factions in Aleppo and Deir Ezzor. ISIS also has stocked weapons like RPG-29 and OSA M-79 for the Battle of Raqqa. Dozens of tanks and armored vehicles have been deployed inside the city. The group is actively manufacturing various kinds of VBIEDs using their stock of explosives.

A military planning, a motivated infantry and a sophisticated usage of VBIEDs are the key strong sides of ISIS forces.

The current goal of the US-led forces is to seize control of the Raqqa countryside putting an additional pressure on the terrorist group from the northern and western direction. It’s expected that the US-led coalition and its allies on the ground will attempt to repeat the Mosul-like operation. However, there is a difference: US-backed forces could leave an escape route for ISIS members south of Raqqa. This could allow to ease the resistance of ISIS members inside the city. Meanwhile, if this is done, many terrorist group members will be able to remain alive and free in Syria. Some of them could then move to Europe as refugees.

The storm Raqqa will include a heavy bombing campaign by the US-led coalition air force with warplanes, attack helicopters and drones, as well as Marine artillery. The United States will expand their military presence on frontlines against ISIS and deploy more troops and military equipment. Like in Mosul, Washington and the mainstream media will likely deny that US troops are directly engaged in a battle against ISIS in Raqqa. However, without an active US military support, the SDF will be hardly able to retake Raqqa from ISIS in a realistic time.

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This March 7, 2017 frame grab from video provided by Arab 24 network, shows U.S. forces patrol on the outskirts of the Syrian town, Manbij, in al-Asaliyah village, Aleppo province, Syria. (Arab 24 network, via AP)

ISIS will also use the Mosul exprieience, using well-equipped small groups of fihters, deploying huge numbers of experienced snipers on all streets of the city, and of course the heavy use of VBIED and suicide bombers to attack any gathering of SDF, and to deploy mines and IEDs on all roads.

One of the biggest problems that the SDF will face is a high number of civilians in the city. According to local sources, there are over 250,000 people, including refugees from Deir Ezzor and Iraq, and families of ISIS terrorists in Raqqa.

In general, the battle is expected to last months, and unfortunately, as in Mosul, large numbers of civilians will be killed due to a fighting and the coalition’s bombing campaign. US military officials argue that US-backed forces will start storming Raqqa this summer. Nonetheless, it’s complicated to forecast when the city is retaken from terrorists. Iraqi forces launched their final push towards the ISIS stronghold of Mosul on October 16, 2016 and the city has not been liberated completely so far.

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Click to see the full-size map

Tensions between the PYD/YPG and the Turkish government is another factor that impacts and slows down the SDF advance on Raqqa.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish-dominated SDF has announced that the liberated city will be included in the the Federation of Northern Syria–Rojava, the YPG/SDF-held area of northern Syria.

This raises a lot of concern in the Syrian government and many pro-government activists question the loyalty of the administration that will rule the city and the people’s desire to join Kurdish federalism, especially after much talk about the racist practices of the Kurdish federal administration in Hasakah and Qamishli against the Arabs. Some speculations even say that if SDF succeeded in controlling the city, it may fail in managing it.

However, it is too early to make such far-reaching conclusions. The liberation of Raqqa is an important part in a broader effort aimed at expelling ISIS terrorists from Syria and Iraq. And all sides share this point.

https://southfront.org/stronghold-of-raqqa/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

This is posted for it's comprehensive military analysis. The political analysis, ignoring the proto-comprador behavior of the YPG is inadequate.

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Full text of the agreement on the security zones in Syria.

Memorandum on the establishment of a de-escalation areas in the Syrian Arab Republic

Islamic Republic of Iran, Russian Federation and the Republic of Turkey as a guarantor country's compliance with the cessation of hostilities (RPBD) in the Syrian Arab Republic (hereinafter - guarantee):
the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution number 2254 (2015);
Reaffirming their commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic;
Expressing a desire to reduce the level of military confrontation and to ensure the safety of civilians Syrian Arab Republic,
have agreed as follows.

For the purposes of an early end to the violence, improving the humanitarian situation and create favorable conditions for the promotion of a political settlement of the conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic will be established following a de-escalation areas:

province of Idlib, as well as certain parts of the neighboring provinces (Latakia province of Hama and Aleppo),
certain parts of the north Homs province,
East Guta,
certain areas in the south of Syria (Daraa and Quneitra province).

Creating a de-escalation and safety strips zone is a temporary measure, which will last for 6 months with automatic extension on the basis of consensus, the Guarantors.

The boundaries of de-escalation areas:

cease hostilities between the conflicting parties (SAR Government and armed opposition forces, who have already joined or will join the RPBD), including the use of any weapons, including air strikes;
It provides fast, safe and unhindered humanitarian access;
the conditions for the provision of medical care and the satisfaction of basic needs of citizens;
measures are being taken to restore the infrastructure, especially water and energy;
create conditions for the safe, voluntary return of refugees and internally displaced persons.

3. In order to prevent incidents and clashes between the parties to the conflict de-escalation along the borders of the zones established by the Security strip.

4. Safety Bands include:

checkpoints - to ensure the smooth movement of the civilian population without weapons, the delivery of humanitarian assistance and the promotion of economic activities;
observation points - to ensure compliance with RPBD.
Work checkpoints and observation posts, as well as management of security zones will be the Guarantors forces on the basis of consensus. If necessary, force can be used by third parties on the basis of consensus, the Guarantors.

5. The Guarantor shall:

take all necessary measures to ensure that the warring parties RPBD;
take all necessary measures to continue the fight against LIH, "Dzhabhat en-Nusra" and all other persons, groups, undertakings and entities associated with "Al-Qaeda" or LIH, and other terrorist groups that are recognized as such by the United Nations Security Council both inside and outside the de-escalation of the zones;
continue efforts to join the RPBD formations of the armed opposition, which has not yet joined the RPBD.

6. To determine the boundaries of de-escalation and safety strips zones, as well as other operational and technical issues of implementation of this Memorandum Guarantors within two weeks after its signing will create a joint working group on de-escalation (hereinafter - the Joint Working Group) consisting of delegates.

Guarantors will take steps for the completion of the de-escalation and safety zones bands card up to June 4, 2017, as well as the disengagement of the armed opposition groups from terrorist groups referred to in paragraph 5 of the Memorandum.

By that same date, the Joint Working Group will prepare for the approval of a guarantee on the basis of a consensus map of de-escalation and safety strips zones and the draft Regulation on the Joint Working Group.

The Joint Working Group shall report on its activities during the international meeting on Syria in Astana.

This Memorandum shall enter into force on the day after the signing.

Done in Astana on May 4, 2017, in triplicate in the English language, all texts being equally authentic.

Signed:

For the Islamic Republic of Iran for the Russian Federation for the Republic of Turkey

http://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/ - / asset_publisher / cKNonkJE02Bw / content / i d / 2746041 - zinc

PS. Important detail, the contract allows to conduct operations in the "security zones" in the event that hostilities are conducted against militants. where the agreement does not apply. So that a complete cessation of hostilities in the North Hama and I would not expect in a number of areas of Idlib, "Al-Nusra", "Jund al-Aqsa" or "Noureddine en Zina" clearly did not stop the war. Just once again the parties noted the commitment to the territorial integrity of Syria in defiance of autonomist Kurdish aspiration heated US.
By June, it should become clear how the parties will be able to move forward in the realization of the stated provisions that are somewhat more specific than the agreement Lavrov and Kerry, in February 2016, which led to the first deal the United States and the Russian Federation. It should also be noted that Moscow and Washington have expressed their readiness to resume contacts on the implementation of the memorandum of flights to Syria, which was interrupted after the impact of the US Air Force airbase Shayrat. Subsequent events have shown that this show turned out to be intended primarily for China and the continuation was not followed, and she provocation Khan Shaykhun has not led to a decrease in air strikes intensity in northern Hama, but rather the opposite - after hitting the Shayratu, the intensity of the attacks on fighters in El Lataminskom ledge increased significantly.

Regarding the question - not whether insurgents are using another truce to compensate for losses and to prepare for future battles? Of course use. It will be so.
The question is - how to use the time of the transaction to carry out successful operations against the Caliphate and Al-Nusra with an eye on the need to prepare for the conduct of intense fighting in Eastern Guta, North Hama, Deraa and some other regions. If the truce CAA action to increment can cause a number of areas and sensitive lesions Caliphate and Al-Nusra, the transaction has itself to live up to everyone. The main thing is to monitor the activity of militants and their sponsors, not to return missed time fighting in the intensive phase. In other respects, the situation for the Syrian theater is not new, the periodic change of the focus of strategic operations (including forced), has long been an integral part of the local war, where parties to the conflict more than two. Hence the complexity of the military-political operations that fully prochustvovat all the key parties to the conflict. The effectiveness of this transaction would be appropriate to assess the relative current map Syrian fronts from the state in which they reside at the time of its probable end.

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/3402335.html

Google Translator

Well and good, except none of the terrorists have signed on, eerily reminiscent of Donbass. Prelude to partition?

Getting sick of Boris's reluctance to criticize Russian policy.

Syria, “De-Escalation Zones” and Ignorant Putinists
May 6, 2017 Stefan Heuer

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de-escalation zones in Syria agreement

The Putin-lovers (who support the Russian oligarchy instead of the US- and EU-oligarchy) say that the “safe zones” / “de-escalation zones” in Syria would prevent US-led coalition jets flying in. They repeat what the Russians said a day or so ago, and they celebrate this as big move by their idol, Putin.

I just dare to ask: Are these people brain-dead or desperate?

Facts:

These “zones” (give them the ‘Teletubbies’ names you like) are a blatant violation of the sovereignty of Syria – a nation that has been brutally crippled and devastated by the bloody Western imperialism for such a long time now. This “deal” between Turkey, Iran, Russia is nothing else but a brazen violation of International Law and a violation of the Syrian sovereignty, especially as the Syrian government was not allowed to take part in the negotiations. The “deal” was imposed on Syria by foreign powers in the very same imperialistic manner the Syrians do know so very well.
As Syria was no integral part of the negotiations for the “deal”, it is pretty clear that the deal does NOT reflect, nor represent, the Syrian state, but it represents the interests of those three Non-Syrian nations who made it.
Regardless the fact the Syrian government finally ‘agreed’ to this plan of their two so-called “allies”, Russia and Iran, with Syria’s deadly enemy, Turkey, it appears strange to me that only foreign powers deal with the fate of 21 mil. Syrians and the sovereign Syrian nation.
How would we like it if this happened to us?
Now the Putinists (Putinkjieh) claim it was clever to not allow the USA to bomb within these zones. Well… wait a second: Don’t these “zones” collect the regional alQaeda- / ISIS- /FSA-terrorists? They do. Why should the US-led “coalition”, which has proven to be alQaeda’s and ISIS’s air-force AGAINST Syria, fly in and bomb those they created to fight the Syrian state led by Assad?
Hasn’t the “Coalition” – especially since German Luftwaffe (Air Force) went in to take responsibility for the air “surveillance” and targeting – bombed residential areas, water supply units, electric power plants, the only thermal energy plant in Aleppo, hospitals, bridges, the Euphrates dam, schools, refugee-shelters, bridges, roads – in the attempt to genocide Syrians and destroy the infrastructure of the Syrian nation – in a blatant attempt to prevent the Syrian Arab Army from further progress against the western-made proxies of ISIS and alQaeda? Even if the US-“Coalition” would respect the No-Fly-Zone for her terror-bombers: it does not make much sense to attempt prohibiting a killer from killing those he would never kill.
In fact, this “deal” creates “No-Fly-Zones” for the Syrian Arab Air force- the force which is solely authorized to fly within the Syrian airspace, whilst they will not prevent the USA from further killing Syrians, illegally. Hence, these “zones” will not deliver any profit for Syria.
We have to keep in mind that every “ceasefire” yet has ended with the huge enforcement of terrorist groups, armed by the USA, UK, Germany, Turkey. Every enforcement of the terrorists illegally operating in Syria ended in the deaths of many Syrian soldiers, being killed by the US- and EU-made terrorists brought into Syria within the time frame of ceasefires.
Why do the Putinists assume that this will be different this time?

Dear Putinists – please wake up. You are about to fall for a deception. Russia is now fooling you, as they have sold Syria for Turkish-stream and S-400-sales to Erdoganistan – i.e. for profit. As they blatantly sold Syria, they now have to cover their treason with a bluff. Yes – a BLUFF. But regardless how big they blow the balloon – a bluff keeps being a bluff.
Don’t fall for hot air in a shiny bubble.

To end with a positive thought, here is my idea for an alternative “deal”:

All nations integrated into the anti-Syrian “Coalition” immediately stop all their military engagements, especially they withdraw their fighter jets and their military personnel.
All nations engaged into the war by arming, training, funding the terrorists, end their support immediately. No arms supply, no medical aid, no military or secret service support will be delivered.
Syria will be vastly supported financially and militarily – by arms supply, intel, to fight the western-made terrorists until total victory for the heroic Syrian Arab Army and their allies. The costs for this true anti-terrorist-mission are to be paid by the Western and Arab nations.
The Western nations and their regional partners – Turkey, Al Saud, UAE, Qatar, Jordan, ‘Israel’ – agree into Syria’s indisputable right to claim – and receive! – full material compensation for the war.
The Western nations and their regional partners agree on Syria’s indisputable right to receive reparations. These reparations will be paid to the Syrians and the process will be monitored by an international board which is to be established in Damascus.
‘Israel’ hands the Syrian Golan Heights over to Syria and does pay compensations for the oil, water and other resources stolen by the Zionist regime during the time of annexation.
The USA, EU and all other nations engaged into the anti-Syrian “Coalition” withdraw all military from the region, which also includes Iraq, Jordan and occupied Palestine.
There will be no ‘Kurdish state’ on the soil of Syria (and Iraq). Kurds will be granted cultural rights by Syria and Iraq, for they officially submit to the nation on which’s soil they live, and pledge their loyalty to the Syrian nation, as most of them have done and been integral part of Syria.
All further measures necessary will be taken and granted by the Western nations, monitored by an international board, to fully re-establish the status-quo ante – means: the political, economical, social status-quo of Syria before the Western-imposed war.
All reforms of the political system of Syria are to be decided by the Syrian people only, without any interference. This has to be formally agreed on by all western and regional enemies of Syria.

The author is a German historian and political scientists.

http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-de-escalation-zones-ignorant-putinists/

In pictures: Syrian drones spot hundreds of US, Jordanian armored vehicles at the border
By Chris Tomson - 09/05/20177

https://media.almasdarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/US-Jordanian-vehicles-inside-Syria-696x392.jpg
DAMASCUS, SYRIA (0:00 A.M.) – The US and Jordanian militaries may be prepping a massive invasion of Syria, intelligence reports gathered from surveillance drones suggest.

Damascus is reportedly on high alert after some 400 American and Jordanian military vehicles were located at a Jordanian military base near the Syrian desert border earlier today.

More pictures of the drone surveillance here:

https://media.almasdarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/18320547_10158593407200361_5243205202966064645_o-1078x395.jpg
Chris Tomson | Al-Masdar News

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Chris Tomson | Al-Masdar News

The foreign convoys may launch an incursion to aid allied Free Syrian Army (FSA) proxies based around the Al-Tanf border crossing.
In 2017 alone, FSA satellite forces have entered Sweida and Deir Ezzor while also coming dangerously near Palmyra and Damascus, areas under Syrian Arab Army (SAA) control.

In response to the looming invasion, the SAA has begun a large-scale offensive along the Damascus-Baghdad highway in a bid to dislodge FSA rebels from the Al-Tanf border crossing are link up with friendly Iraqi border guards.

The photos validate previous reports by an Al-Masdar News military source suggesting a major Jordanian and US buildup at the Syrian border.

UPDATE: The military base is located east of Az-Zarqa, 43 km away from the Syrian border. The tanks are supposedly Jordanian M60 types.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/pictures-syrian-drones-spot-hundreds-us-jordanian-armored-vehicles-border/

the American presence

colonelcassad
May 11, 21:17

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US special forces lit south in southern Syria, acting in combat formations of fighters "New Syrian Army" and affiliated groups, which occupies the desert regions of south-eastern Syria, indicating its presence there and showing the flag, using the fact that the main forces of the Caliphate of militants involved in the more important ways. In fact, they are American proxy patterns by which they increase their influence in the south-east of Syria to strengthen its negotiating position. This is so to speak an additional illustration for those who do not understand why the Americans deploy its military bases in the Syrian-Jordanian border.

In the article published yesterday indicated https://www.buzzfeed.com/mitchprothero/u s-special-Forces-are-Secretly-training-s Yrian-Rebels-and? Utm_term = .maL347kgPY # .f dDEM2RQkJ , that division "Delta "and" seals "participated in combat operations on the territory of Syria. Between the positions of the militants and the positions of the pro-Iranian Hezbally is now in accordance with Article 70 kilometers of desert. Battles with the Caliphate immediately reduced to collisions of small strongholds and roadblocks. About re-expedition to Abu Kemal thinking, but so far in the distant future.

A lower supply of equipment and military ammunition for the Kurds in anticipation of Raqqa assault.

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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_ebkyCXoAAjP_P.jpg

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/3412321.html

Google Translator

other photos at link.

Will America Partition Syria?
U.S. strategy seems to be shifting toward creating a buffer state between Iran and Israel.
By SHARMINE NARWANI • May 11, 2017

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Volodymyr Borodin / Shutterstock.com

BEIRUT—Given the rhetoric of most U.S. policymakers, one might conclude that the conflict in Syria is about establishing freedom and democracy in the Levantine state. But no genuine aspiration for democracy ever came from a line-up of allies that includes countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, and Turkey. Seen from the Middle East, American intervention here appears to be aimed at putting the last genuinely independent Arab state under Washington’s sphere of influence—and cutting off a key Iranian ally in the region.

Today, after six years of regime-change operations that failed to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and install a compliant regime in Damascus, the west’s strategy seems to be shifting toward partitioning Syria. Specifically, the new U.S. policy would seek to sever the unimpeded geographic line between Iran and Israel by creating a buffer entity that runs through Iraq and Syria.

But here’s the twist: in Syria’s northeast/east and in Iraq’s northwest/west, where the Islamic State once occupied a vast swathe of territory, ISIS has helped to enable this U.S. goal by delineating the borders of this future buffer zone.

The only question is which U.S. “asset” will rule that buffer zone once it is liberated from ISIS. Would it be Sunni Arabs of the sectarian variety? A declassified 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report seemed to suggest this option when it confirmed U.S. and Western support for the establishment of a “Salafist Principality” on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Or will it be a Kurdish-ruled zone? U.S.-Kurdish machinations have, after all, borne a similar Shia-thwarting buffer on Iran’s western border with Iraq, with the creation of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) headed by the famously opportunistic and corrupt Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani.

Either way, what transpired is this: ISIS occupied the areas flanking Syria and Iraq’s northern border. The U.S.-led coalition has had a presence in these territories for several years, without impairing ISIS control. At the right time, under U.S. cover, Kurds are moving in to “recapture” them.

Kurds constitute a minority in all these governorates, which is how the presence of ISIS became a valuable U.S./Kurdish strategic asset. ISIS’s invasion of these areas is delineating the borders of the new entity and depopulating it—creating an opportunity for Washington to champion the Kurds as the primary “liberating” force within those borders, after which Kurds can claim this territorial bounty.

“This is conquest masquerading as liberation,” says Assyrian writer Max Joseph, who explains how KDP Peshmerga forces disarmed Assyrian Christians and Yezidis two weeks before ISIS invaded in August 2014, then retreated from their promise to protect those populations just as ISIS entered Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains.

In the immediate aftermath of the ISIS invasion, Reuters quoted a KRG official saying: “Everyone is worried, but this is a big chance for us. ISIL gave us in two weeks what Maliki couldn’t give us in eight years.”

“By disarming and disabling communities who live in territories the Kurdish leadership have designs on controlling, then letting a ready-made aggressive foreign force invade and uproot native communities, forcing them to flee, KRG forces backed by Western airstrikes will be seen as ‘retaking’ land never even theirs,” explains Joseph.

Two years later, in July 2016, the KRG’s Peshmerga ministry gave credence to those claims by announcing that “Peshmerga forces will not withdraw from areas they have recaptured from the Islamic State.”

This is nothing less than an attempt to establish “Kurdistan,” a nation for the historically stateless Kurds, which has long-envisioned swallowing up parts of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran.

Some context helps explain the current situation. The KDP-ruled Kurdish entity in Iraq currently governs vast areas stretching from Iran’s western border to the Turkish border, stopping short east of Mosul and Kirkuk (an oil-rich city it openly covets). But the KDP has aspirations that run through Mosul to the western province of Nineveh—the historic home of a Christian Assyrian population—which would create a contiguous line across the north of Iraq to the Syrian border.

Last week, the “Kurdistan” flag was hoisted above all government buildings in Kirkuk—a move deemed unconstitutional and opposed by local non-Kurdish leaders and the Iraqi government alike.

A Syrian-Kurdish Entity?

In Syria, one can see a picture developing that mirrors Iraq’s experiences with the Kurds, Americans, and ISIS. Under U.S. patronage, areas occupied by the terror group are allowed to be “recaptured” by Kurdish forces, with a smattering of subordinate Arab Sunni forces to lend broader legitimacy.

Kurdish-controlled territory now traverses much of Syria’s three northern governorates where Kurds remain a minority—Hasakah, Raqqa, and Aleppo—and has earned the wrath of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has sent in troops and Arab proxies to break this “Kurdish corridor,” placing him in direct confrontation with the objectives of Washington, his NATO ally.

The Kurdish Nationalist Party (PYD) and its military wing. the People’s Protection Units (YPG), have unilaterally declared Hasakah a federal Kurdish state, a designation that is unrecognized by the Syrian government and other states. But Kurds barely make up 40 percent of the governorate’s population, which consists of Assyrians, Arabs, Armenians, Turkmen, and other ethnic groups as well. Likewise, in Aleppo, the most populous of Syria’s 14 governorates, where 40 percent of Syrian Kurds reside, Kurds make up only 15 percent of the population and are a majority only in Afrin and Ayn al-Arab (Kobane).

Meanwhile, Kurdish nationalists identify all of Hasakah and northern Raqqa/ Aleppo as “Rojova”—or Western Kurdistan—even though significant Kurdish populations live outside these areas and significant non-Kurdish populations live within them. Furthermore, many of these Kurds are not of Syrian origin, but fled Turkey last century after several failed uprisings against that state. The entire Kurdish population of Syria amounts to about 10 percent (although figures are slightly disputed both upward and downward). Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have since fled the conflict in Syria for safer shores. And there is not a single contiguous line of Kurdish majority-populated areas from the northeast to northwest of Syria.

Yet the U.S. is storming ahead with Project Buffer State, erecting military bases left, right, and center, in violation of Syria’s sovereignty and international law. Various news reports claim the Pentagon and its 1,000 or so troops in Syria have established up to six bases in the north of the country—in the Rmelan region near the Iraqi border, in Qamishli (Hasakah), Kobane (Aleppo), and now in Tabqa, several dozen kilometers west of the ISIS capital of Raqqa.

But the American plan to storm Raqqa has stalled due to Turkey’s refusal to be excluded, and its objection to Syrian Kurdish involvement. Washington wants its Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) allies to liberate the city, but this group consists mainly of YPG Kurds who are aligned with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a Turkish and U.S.-designated terrorist group. The U.S. pretends these Kurdish militias are the only fighting force that can defeat ISIS. Never mind that the Syrian army and its allied troops have been defeating ISIS and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants around the country for years.

The inconvenient fact is, besides the Kurds—not all of whom back the U.S. project on the Syrian-Iraqi border—no forces have fought ISIS and other terrorist groups more successfully than the Syrian army and its Iranian, Russian, and Hezbollah allies.

By contrast, ISIS actually expanded and strengthened after the U.S.-led coalition began its strikes against the terror group. Recall ISIS trekking in plain sight across the Syrian border from Iraq to capture Palmyra—or tankers filled with ISIS oil crossing over to Turkey with nary a U.S. strike. It wasn’t until the Russian air force entered the fray and shamed the U.S. coalition that ISIS began to suffer some defeats. Washington had only really contained ISIS within the borders it was shaping, not struck any serious blows to the group.

After all, it is Washington’s awkward alliance in the region—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Britain, France, Israel—that has supported the growth of ISIS and like-minded extremists. U.S. President Donald Trump even went so far as to accuse his predecessor Barack Obama of being “the founder of ISIS.”

Certainly, Obama watched as his Turkish NATO ally allowed ISIS freedom of movement across its borders and purchased its stolen oil in bulk. We also now know via email leaks that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was aware that U.S. anti-ISIS coalition allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding ISIS.

Why would Washington tolerate allied support of the very terrorist group it claims to want to destroy? By portraying ISIS as the worst of all terror groups, al-Qaeda and its affiliates—by far the most efficient fighting force against the Syrian army and its allies—were able to fly under the radar to fight for regime change. Furthermore, a globally demonized ISIS has also provided justification for direct Western action that might otherwise have been impossible after “humanitarian interventions” lost their allure, post-Libya. Finally, this supposedly very dangerous ISIS was able to invade and occupy, for great lengths of time, territories on the Syrian-Iraqi border that would create the boundaries for a buffer state that could eventually be “liberated” and led by Western-controlled proxies.

Stealing Syria

If the U.S. forges ahead with plans to lead its Kurdish allies into the Raqqa battle it will risk further alienating Turkey. Don’t expect ISIS to be defeated, however. Instead, expect ISIS to be driven southward toward Deirezzor and other eastern points along Iraq’s border, where the terror group’s presence can act yet again as a U.S. strategic asset—specifically, by moving the fight away from Washington’s Kurdish project in the north and hindering the ability of Iraqi militias to cross the border in aid of Syrian troops.

That’s not such a leap. Deirezzor is where U.S. fighter jets bombed the Syrian army for an hour straight last September, killing over 100 Syrian forces. The strikes enabled ISIS to capture several strategic points around Deirezzor airport, which the Syrian state was dependent on to protect populations in the ISIS-besieged area. The Pentagon swore it was an error, the Syrians and Russians swore it was not.

Meanwhile, in Syria’s south, U.S.-backed militants, aided by Jordanians, Saudis, and the usual Western suspects, are rallying their forces to expand the ground battle inside Syria.

Why the sudden surge of activity? Mainly because the Syrian government and its allies have, since the liberation of East Aleppo in January, succeeded in pushing back terrorists in key areas, regaining strategic territory, and striking reconciliation and ceasefire deals in other parts of the state.

“Western states with the United States at their head interfere in favor of the terrorists whenever the Syrian Arab Army makes a significant advance,” Assad observed in a recent interview.

But the U.S. overestimates its capabilities. With few troops on the ground, radical militants as allies, and pushback from Syria, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and Iraq, Washington will face a steep climb ahead.

In fact, all U.S. gains could be abruptly reversed with this one Kurdish card. Nothing is more likely to draw Syrians, Iraqis, Turks, and Iranians together than the threat of a Kurdish national entity that will seek to carve itself out of these four states. And as the U.S. tries to establish “self-rule” by its allies in the northeast of Syria, it will once again be confronted with the same crippling infighting that comes from foisting an un-organic leadership onto populations.

Syria will become an American quagmire. Washington simply cannot manage its partition plans with so few troops on the ground, surrounded by the terror forces it so recently spawned, as able adversaries chip away at its project. Stealing Syria will not be an easy trick.

Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Mideast geopolitics, based in Beirut.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/will-america-partition-syria/

President al-Assad to Belarus ONT channel: Russian initiative on de-escalation zones is correct and we supported it from the beginning to protect civilians

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11 May، 2017

Damascus, SANA-President Bashar al-Assad said that the war fought today by our people is not only against the terrorists, but also against those who sponsor terrorism. Terrorism is only an instrument used by the Western states which want to apply the same Nazi mentality which aims at dominating everyone else and turning states and nations into slaves, turning them into satellites and controlling everything they have, materially and morally.

The President added in an interview given to BELARUS’ ONT channel that the Russian initiative on de-escalation zones is correct in principle. And we supported it from the beginning because the idea is correct. As to whether it will produce results or not, that depends on the implementation.

Following is the full text of the interview;

Question 1: Good day, Mr. President, and thank you for agreeing to give this interview to the Belarus television. We meet you on a special day, the day the advanced world is celebrating the Great Victory.

You no doubt know that the greatest part of this victory was achieved by the Soviet people, by the people who live in the republics of the former Soviet Union. Unfortunately, we used to believe that the 20th century was the bloodiest, but we now see in the 21st century a new danger to humanity in the form of terrorism. Your country, Syria, is fighting terrorism for the seventh year on its own. It is fighting this horrible evil. In your opinion, how much power do your people have? And when will we be able to celebrate Victory Day the Syrian way?

President Assad: The fundamental power is the patriotic power. It is the moral power derived from a state of patriotism, from the patriotic spirit and the patriotic conscience that every citizen has. This is the natural thing in most countries of the world, and it is the most important element which feeds the state of resilience among a population living under very difficult circumstances, not only from a security and military perspective, but also in terms of livelihoods and living conditions in general, in the sense that all services have been affected and all individuals in Syria have been affected.

But when we talk about this danger being a new one, i.e. the danger of terrorism, what’s more important is to examine the mentality which underlies terrorism. What is the mentality which was behind Nazism, which was defeated by the Soviet people? The Belarus people were an essential component of the nations which fought and sacrificed themselves in that war.

The background is the same and the war is the same. Why did Nazism appear? What did it want? It wanted to dominate the world, to cancel the others out. The war fought today by our people is not only against the terrorists, but also against those who sponsor terrorism. Terrorism is only an instrument used by those Western states which want to apply the same Nazi mentality which aims at dominating everyone else and turning states and nations into slaves, turning them into satellites and controlling everything they have, materially and morally.

That’s why terrorism is only one instrument among others and only one outcome of that mentality. The war fought by your people then is the same war our people are fighting today. The difference lies in the titles and the instruments, while the content is the same.

Question 2: I would like you to know that people in our country are looking forward to hearing what you have to say. You have many friends; and I am sure the veterans constitute the largest army among them. I would like you to take this opportunity to congratulate the war veterans from here, from Damascus, from Syria, those war veterans, the Belarus popular defense, who experienced all the calamities of war. For all those who are watching you today, what do you want to say to them?



President Assad: This is a very good opportunity for me to congratulate the veterans of the Belarus army, the Belarus people and state led by President Lukashenko.

For us, those veterans who fought in that ferocious war – and the Soviet Union made great sacrifices, for it offered over 26 million martyrs, and as far as we know the number was closer to 30 million – were the main force; and today they offer a role model for the present generation and for future generations. They provide a role model of resilience and standing fast.

Who could expect the siege of Stalingrad at that time to end the way it did without the steadfastness of those heroes? Who could expect that the initial retreat of the Soviet army would turn into a victory later? Without the victory of the Soviet Union, the Normandy landings for Western states wouldn’t have been possible.

This is what many in the West are trying to obscure, i.e. the more important role played by the peoples of the Soviet Union at that time – including your people – in defeating Nazism. Today, these veterans play a vital role in strengthening the spirit of steadfastness, because you too are facing something similar to what Syria has been facing for decades. You are under siege, and President Lukashenko is facing demonization attempts, the same thing faced by President Putin recently, because they do not bow to the West. If past generations did not bow to Hitler, the present generations should not bow to the new Nazism, i.e. Western colonialism in its newest form in our age.

Question 3: Thank you very much for your congratulations, and now can we move to events in Syria? I cannot understand the factors behind your people’s resilience, particularly if we wanted to compare this with what happened in Iraq and Libya. The inventors of new ideologies, the organizers of velvet revolutions are still trying. What does make your people so resilient?

President Assad: There are a number of factors: first, Syria is an ancient country, and now you are in Damascus. Damascus, and Aleppo in the north, are the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in history. Nobody knows when life started in them. This means a historical accumulation for thousands of years. If you go back to written history, since writing was invented, you will see that Syria has always come under different forms of occupation and different forms of colonialism. It was invaded and destroyed. This means that the Syrian people have accumulated experiences in how to deal with historical campaigns. So, what’s happening now wasn’t surprising to the Syrian people, for all the lies which were promoted in the beginning were clear.

Second, the Syrian people are a patriotic people, but in a completely different sense than the one promoted by the West in the beginning, when it started to incite war in Syria by using sectarian terminology. The West wanted to create a problem among the Syrian people who have not known sectarianism for centuries. When the West made this “stupid step,” the result was that the Syrian people became more united in order to save national unity.

Third, if you are comparing what happened in Syria and what happened in other countries, there is something else, which is the nature of the relationship between the state and the people. The West has tried to cast this war as one fought in order for the president to keep his position, while the Syrian people were aware that it was a war over Syria.

For us, and for me personally, I have always been, before the war and during it, one of the sons of the Syrian people. I haven’t lived in separation from it. Had the Syrian people felt differently, that this president or this official is fighting battles for his personal interests, they wouldn’t have supported him for one single day. The West did not understand all these things because of the shortsightedness of its officials. That’s why, so far, they have made a lot of destruction in Syria, but they haven’t been able to achieve what they planned in the beginning, i.e. that all the Syrian people would come out on the streets in support of the fake democracy they claim and the fake freedom they promote in order to realize the Syrian paradise, as portrayed by the West, after the fall of the present state.

All these things were clear to the Syrian people; and that’s why the West has failed in realizing its plans. And this shows that the West, despite all the advance it has made, does not have an in-depth understanding of this region. The West is used to a group of lackey officials who ingratiate themselves with it for their personal interests. When it comes to the real state of patriotism, as in the deep and accumulative social concepts in this region, Western officials do not understand this at all. That’s why they failed.

Question 4: Something that a lot has been said about recently, and I can’t but raise, is the chemical attack in Idleb and the missile strike which targeted al-Shairat airbase. Who did that? What was the nature of the event? And who stands behind it? And do you think that what happened was only one link in a single chain of events?

President Assad: Of course, it was part of the campaign waged on Syria with the aim of demonizing the Syrian state. In the initial stages of the war, they tried to promote this demonization among the Syrian people, i.e. convincing the Syrian people that their state is bad. They were able to deceive a section of the Syrian people for a few months, and maybe for a year; but afterwards, they couldn’t do that, so they shifted towards convincing the Western public opinion in order to garner support for intervention and waging war.

After they failed in marketing their policy towards ISIS and al-Nusra through their support of these two organizations directly or indirectly, through Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or Qatar, or as I said through direct support from their states, they wanted to wash their hands of the subject and to show that the problem in Syria is not ISIS and al-Nusra but the state which is killing its innocent citizens by using toxic gases.

It was also a cover for the American intervention in Syria, because as you know Trump is facing an internal predicament and internal conflicts within his administration. He also has conflicts with other forces and lobbies in the United States, with the media, and the large corporations.

So by doing that, he wanted to present his credentials to these groups. The chemical attack issue is also a justification for this intervention. It is a planned process which is intended to achieve a number of objectives at the same time. They refused to conduct investigations. Russia and Iran presented a draft proposal to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and they refused to approve an investigation, because it will prove only one thing, that they were lying.

Question 5: How are things on the battlefront? Who is the army fighting against? Against the opposition, ISIS fighters, or against foreign powers?

President Assad: In fact, we cannot separate all these groups. ISIS and al-Nusra have the same Wahhabi ideology and the same terrorist doctrine. ISIS, al-Nusra, and Erdogan – who is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood – Al Saud, and Al Thani in Qatar uphold the same doctrine. All these groups have something in common which is the extremist Wahhabi ideology. And all of them are instruments in the hands of the United States.

I’m not saying that they are instruments in the hands of the West, because Western Europe doesn’t practically exist on the political map. Europe implements what America wants, without any objection. All of these groups operate under the American leadership. So, whether we say that they are foreign powers, ISIS and al-Nusra, or others, the director and financier is the same. They are all one group but with different names and different tactics.

Question 6: My Western colleagues have a lot of accusations against you and say that Bashar al-Assad is a dictator. Now I’m sitting with you and looking at a highly-educated and gracious man. I can even say that you are a modest person. I would like to tell you that I am in Syria for the fifth time, and I have moved around and talked with simple people. The most important thing, in my view, is that I found they respect and trust you. Tell me honestly, aren’t you tired of all this dirt that’s thrown at you? Can you sacrifice some valuable things for the sake of your country and its future? Or do you think that you have no reason now to step back, and that you have to go through to the end?

President Assad: As to feeling tired, I believe that they feel tired. I don’t. They are tired of the numerous lies that have not produced any results. On the other hand, this is positive, because as far as Western policies are concerned, when they describe a politician in another country negatively, it means that he is patriotic, because their standards for democracy, for example are represented by Al Saud, their close friends. They never say a word about them. This is just an example.

As you know, the West has supported Saudi Arabia recently to be in the UN Commission on the Status of Women and the UN Human Rights Council. So, only when the West talks positively about me, should I be in a confused state, and that will not make me comfortable at all. These accusations used against me now were used for many years against President Lukashenko because he stood against the West and did not accept to be an agent.

This is the West, and we should not pay any attention to what they say. What’s important is the relationship between the official and the people of his country, not with Western media or Western officials. I’m not concerned with what they say about me, negatively or positively. A few years before the war, they used to speak positively about me. At that time, I did not care because I don’t trust them. I know them very well. They are hypocrites, and this is the truth.

Question 7: You spoke very wisely when you said that it is the trust of your people that you highly appreciate. Do you agree with me that the opposition is also part of your people, and when you conduct dialogue with them, you talk about the future of Syria. What’s your view on that? There were the Geneva meetings and then the Astana meetings. Are there differences between these meetings? And what are the results they both produced, mainlyconcerning the relationship with the opposition?

President Assad: As to Geneva, so far it is merely a meeting for the media. There is nothing substantial in all the Geneva meetings. Not even one per million. It is null. The process aimed in principle at pushing us towards making concessions. You asked me about concessions in a previous question, and I did not give you an answer, and I’ll keep it bracketed. No, I will not make any concession, and for a simple reason: I do not own this country. Any concessions on the national level are not the prerogative of the president; they need a national decision and a popular decision, and this happens through a referendum. All the things related to sovereignty, national interests, the constitution, and independence are not the prerogative of the president and he cannot make concessions regarding them. I make concessions on personal issues which are of no importance to the people, the crisis, and they are not required of me anyway.

As to Astana, the situation is different. In Astana, the dialogue was with the armed terrorists under Russian sponsorship and based on a Russian initiative. Iran and Turkey joined later. Turkey is the terrorists’ guarantor and Russia and Iran are the guarantors of the legitimate Syrian state. This started to produce results through more than one attempt to achieve ceasefire, the most recent of which is what’s called the de-escalation areas.

Journalist: Four areas?

President Assad: Yes.

Journalist: Can we understand what they signify? What is expected from these areas?

President Assad: These areas include a mixture of civilians and terrorists. The terrorists are a mixture of al-Nusra, ISIS, other organizations, and some gangs. The objective is in the first place to protect the civilians in these areas. The second objective is to give the interested rebels an opportunity to reconcile themselves with the state, like what happened in other areas. So, de-escalation in these areas is an opportunity for them to settle their status with the state, i.e. they lay down their weapons in return for amnesty. It is also an opportunity for other groups which want to expel the terrorists, particularly ISIS and al-Nusra, from these areas. So, they have a number of aspects, but the most important for us is to reduce bloodshed in those areas while waiting for internal political steps between us and the groups operating in those areas.

Question 8: So the memorandum signed in Astana concerning the de-escalation areas can be considered a big success so far for the negotiations?



President Assad: Of course. As a Russian initiative, it is correct in principle. And we supported it from the beginning because the idea is correct. As to whether it will produce results or not, that depends on the implementation. Would the terrorist groups use this opportunity? Would the other states, particularly Western states, which claim to support this initiative, send more logistic and financial support to these groups? And would they send more weapons and recruits to those terrorists to enable them to violate these areas, and return the situation to square one?

This is very likely, and this is what happened before. Former initiatives failed not because they were wrong. They failed because those countries interfered in order to re-escalate militarily. That’s why we hope that this will give an opportunity to those states to realize that any escalation will fail, because the Syrian and Russian forces, with the Iranian support, and with support from Hezbollah, will strike any move on the part of the terrorists if they attempt to violate this agreement.

Question 9: Concerning these security zones and the crossings through which you will allow the rebels to move to other parts of Syria. You no doubt heard that many international organizations accuse you of ethnically-based human rights violations, or that you are displacing people. On the other hand, there are those who see in it a first stage towards partitioning Syria. How do you respond to such statements?

President Assad: This is an attempt at inciting some naive people in Syria, that demographic change is happening in Syria. This is untrue, and most Syrians know it is not. If you visit most of the areas where reconciliations have been achieved, you will find that the population is there. So, why do we displace people from one part and keep them in another? Why don’t we ask everybody to leave these areas? In fact, the Syrian state does not force anybody to leave. Reconciliation gives the choice to the people of the area, whether they want to leave or remain. It also gives the choice to the rebels who can stay if they wanted to lay down their weapons and settle their legal status, or leave if they don’t want to do that.

In fact, most of the rebels who leave are those who reject reconciliation. And the civilians who leave with them are their families. They leave together. The state does not ask anyone to leave. Second, if the state wants to effect demographic change, why doesn’t it bring people from other areas to settle them in the place of the original population? The areas whose population have left as a result of terrorist acts are still empty up till now. Nobody at all lives there, and the properties there are still registered in the name of the original population or owners. So, this is completely untrue and has no value whatsoever.

Question 10: I want to move to the question of the refugees. It is a painful issue, and unfortunately the number of refugees during the past six years has been very high. In your view, to what extent is Syria prepared for their return?How can you accommodate yourselves with the economic results of this war waged by global terrorism against you? Do you think that you can lodge complaints, prosecute, and ask states – among them some European states – whose representatives have invaded your holy Syrian land for compensation?

President Assad: The return of the refugees is necessary; and we always call on the refugees to return to Syria. As to the timing, every time is an appropriate time for any group of refugees to return. There are no obstacles in this regard; and the state is trying its best to provide the necessary services for those who are displaced inside Syria, and not necessarily outside Syria. Many of them changed places because of terrorism, and the state will provide services in this regard with support from friendly countries in the humanitarian field.

As to demanding rights, there is no doubt that the Syrian people have the right for compensations worth hundreds of billions. But as you know, these compensations need a legal and institutional framework. Imagine that you have a certain right in your country, but you don’t have – in Belarus, for instance – neither laws nor judges nor courts. Who do you complain to? In that case, it will be chaos. This is the reality of the international situation: there is no frame of reference, no respect for international law, and no fair and impartial institutions. There are institutions which are arms of the American state department which will not return rights to their owners. That’s why it is not possible practically to get results in this regard.

In general, we don’t need them now. We can build our country using our capabilities. Syria, throughout its ancient and modern history,has been built by Syrian hands, not foreign ones. We have the capabilities to rebuild our country. Money will come gradually. The refugees will bring their money back, and things will move ahead. We have no concerns about this, for we don’t need money from those states or those officials who supported terrorism and bloodshed in Syria during this crisis.

Question 11: I cannot but touch on the issue of Deir Ezzor. It is now the main target of the Syrian government. Why does the whole world turn a blind eye to what is happening there? After four years of being besieged by ISIS, there is famine and destruction, and what’s more horrifying is that children and simple people are dying. Look at the humanitarian aid provided by the 124 states of the world. According to information I’m sure you have, they support the rebels, and throughout the past four years, they have not dropped from the air one single loaf of bread despite all the humanitarian aid. There are 200,000 people who need bread and water as much as they need air.

President Assad: The reason is that global politics are not governed by principles and morality. They are governed by interests, even if they were at the expense of moral values, and often at the expense of principles and international law. Now, there is a group of colonial states which are not governed by principles at all. A large number of those states know this truth on the official and popular level, but they dare not say this truth because they fear the West.

However, there is a group consisting of a few states which say the truth as it is and take a principled and moral position, including Belarus, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Because these countries do not do the West’s bidding, they are called undemocratic or members of the axis of evil, or as I said a short while ago, are described negatively. But these are the only states which dare say the truth. This is the reason why you hear very little about groups consisting of hundreds of thousands of innocent people besieged somewhere and nobody talks about them.

Conversely, when the terrorists in Aleppo hijack a part of the city with its population, and kill people in the other part with daily shelling, nobody says anything about it. This doesn’t concern them. They defend the terrorists. And when we liberate this city of the terrorists, it is a violation of human rights because for them the terrorists are the humans, and all those who are not terrorists do not exist neither on the political nor on the humanitarian map.

Question 12: I totally agree. During my visits to Syria, I met the Grand Mufti, the Patriarch, and representatives of other sects too and found that all of them want peace, national unity, and solidarity. All of them support their country. Why nobody wants to hear what they have to say? Many people do not even want to know the truth of what is happening in Syria. Do you agree with me?

President Assad: Most Western officials know the truth, but they have gone too far with their lies. They have implicated their public opinion, and it has become difficult for them to do a U-turn, because any U-turn means that they acknowledge to the public opinion that they were lying. That’s why they have squeezed themselves into a tunnel and cannot return. They have now to persist in their lies because they are their only option. Any U-turn or shift constitutes a political suicide for them; and their political interests are more important than national interests and more important than the interests of other nations and the lives of other people.

That’s why they will only repeat the same lies they said in the beginning. They used to say that they were peaceful demonstrations, and it was proven that they were not peaceful. Afterwards, they said they belong to the opposition, but were moderate. When it was proven that they are extremists, like ISIS and al-Nusra, they said that the reason behind their existence is the Syrian state and the Syrian president. In other words, they are still determined to lie, but they change their narrative a little, not drastically. Their political future is linked to this big lie, and they can’t change.

Question 13: I want to move to Syrian-Belarus relations. Our relations, spanning decades, have reached a very good level. You know the official position of Minsk in support of peace and national and popular unity in Syria, the position that has always condemned global terrorism which interferes in your internal affairs and that media war waged on you unfortunately by Western states. What is your review of Lukashenko, considering that Belarus too was subjected to economic sanctions repeatedly and faced baseless criticism, but Lukashenko was able to deal with this. An important case in point is the Ukraine, and you can see that Minsk has now become the only platform where all parties try to reach an agreement to achieve the peace which they have waited for so long in the Donbass region in the Ukraine. Don’t you believe that Lukashenko may be able to intervene in the proceedings of the political solution for your country?



President Assad: Any solution to any problem needs a number of characteristics or elements, but the most important element is credibility, which you have. You belong to a country which has credibility, because what the Belarus policy is saying today is the same that it said at the beginning of the crisis. They are the same principles it was based on concerning other issues.

The principles on which this policy is based regarding Syria are the same principles on which it is based concerning the interests of the Belarus people and the interests of Belarus. They are the same principles which inform the role it plays in the Ukraine. It is a stable policy that has a clear vision and clear principles that do not change. This is essential for playing a role in any crisis. And this is what we need in Syria. Why is not the Syrian crisis solved politically? Because those who are supposed to play that role, with the exception of Russia and Iran, are states which have no credibility. They say something and do something else. Double standards are a basic principle in Western policies.

So, this is the most important element that President Lukashenko and the Belarus state have. In addition, we as a state have a strong and solid relationship with Belarus, since the days of the Soviet Union and after. And it is still there, despite all the pressures on your country and on Syria before the war. This relationship continued regardless of Western desires in this regard, and is based on common interests.

In this regard, President Lukashenko was a patriot, was truthful, and courageous. With all these attributes, I can say that Belarus can certainly play – beside Russia as a major player on the international arena concerning Syria – a vital and effective role. If Belarus has the desire, we strongly welcome any role it can play in the current war.

Question 14: Thank you for these words, and I want to ask about our economic relationship. I understand that the war has been going on for seven years, and there’s great destruction, but all of this has to be rebuilt one day. Do you know that Belarus has great capabilities in this regard? We remember that the first Belarus-made truck, manufactured by MAZ, appeared in Syria. And I also remember that when you visited Belarus in 2010, you drove a MAZ vehicle. When can we see these cars and trucks on your roads?

President Assad: In my last visit to your country, a few months before the war, there were broad-ranging economic agreements between us. The war came and obstructed everything. But recently, and after meetings held by the joint Syrian-Belarus committee, and after a visit paid by the Belarus co-chair of the committee and his meeting with the Minister of Industry a few weeks ago, some aspects of that agreement were reactivated and a number of deals benefitting the two parties were agreed.

I do vividly remember my visit to the factory at that time, and we did hope to start producing that car in less than two years. That was delayed because of the war, but recently we reactivated that subject, and export will start in the next few months. The first shipment of car parts will be exported in order to be assembled in Syria. So, despite the difficult circumstances that Syria is going through, and despite the sanctions against Belarus, and as a result of our strong will, we have been able to reactivate these relations. And this is the beginning, of course. Many of the areas we talked about before the war can be reactivated despite the security conditions in Syria. We do not have to reactivate all areas, but we can do that with a significant part of the agreement. This is what we are trying to do now, and the wheel has started moving recently.

Question 15: At the end of our interview, I believe that Belarus has economic capabilities. And it’s important that the Syrian people and the president have the desire to build relations and friendship with us. This is equally important, and I believe these relations and this cooperation have a great future. In the end I want to say that I have known Syria for a long period of time. This war that you have been fighting for seven years contributed to unifying your society.

I recall the Syrians as quiet and polite people. They distinguished themselves among Arab peoples by their tolerance, good will, and hospitality. You haven’t lost all that despite the pain and the tears. And I’ll tell you that you personally have been a role model for unifying society.

I travel around the world, and I have many Syrian friends. Today, there is no Syrian family that does not have a Syrian flag at home. This is what has unified or integrated the whole society in one melting pot. I want you to know that on behalf of our people and on behalf of Belarus, I wholeheartedly wish your state peace, prosperity, and unity so that you can keep moving forward, and so that the mothers who have buried their sons do not have pain after now. I hope that everything will keep moving as we have seen throughout history so that life continues and Syria remains as it has always been, the cradle of civilization, and to remain prosperous. This is what we genuinely hope.

President Assad: Thank you very much for all your kind words about Syria and the Syrian people. One of our most important attributes in Syria is loyalty, loyalty to all those who have stood with us in difficult circumstances, and this is what Belarus has done.

I thank every Belarus citizen for what they have done for Syria, because the net outcome of this support is the decision taken by the president, for the Belarus president cannot support Syria without having popular support for this policy. We take every support, every word, and every political position that the Belarus state has taken on all levels as an expression of the reality of what the Belarus people think and feel. I hope the Belarus people will achieve another victory in a different form.

War doesn’t always have to be in the military field. The Belarus people have been facing that war for over two decades now. I hope that they will achieve another victory in that war, in lifting the sanctions and enshrining the patriotic state and forcing their respect particularly on those who want to dominate your country. And I hope it will coincide with Syria’s victory in its war against the terrorists, because for us it is also a national war. Thanks again, and thank you for visiting Syria.

Journalist: I would like you to know that this is a symbol of our victory. Today is the 9th of May. Our parents and grandparents kept water here. This is the holiest thing. I asked one of my colleagues here to fill it from one of the sacred water springs near Damascus, and today I will symbolically pour this water for you now. This water bottle is from Belarus and the water in it comes from the spring which was occupied by the terrorists three times. As you know, water is the symbol of life. I want the long-awaited peace to prevail on your good land, the land of paradise, and that no Syrian family should need food and water again. May God bless you. It really tastes nice.

President Assad: Water is a blessing, because it is a gift from God, but this water that you drank from al-Fijeh water spring specifically has an added significance because it was mixed with the blood of the Syrian fighters in their battle to restore water to every house in Damascus. Millions of people were deprived of this blessing for long months, because of the siege imposed by the terrorists. We drink it in the hope that the blood of those heroes, the fighters of the Syrian Arab Army, is not spilled in vain, but rather to restore water, electricity, and safety to every house in Syria.

http://sana.sy/en/?p=105890

Well, i guess I stand corrected...mebbe.

President Bashar al-Assad said that the war fought today by our people is not only against the terrorists, but also against those who sponsor terrorism. Terrorism is only an instrument used by the Western states which want to apply the same Nazi mentality which aims at dominating everyone else and turning states and nations into slaves, turning them into satellites and controlling everything they have, materially and morally.

Pretty good description of imperialism.


Well, i guess I stand corrected...mebbe.

Yeah, but what can Assad do? He's got a dance partner that calls the steps.

US-backed rebels suffer major setback as Syrian Army troops capture much of eastern Sweida
By Leith Fadel - 18/05/20170


BEIRUT, LEBANON (5:30 P.M.) – The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), alongside the National Defense Forces (NDF), resumed their offensive operations in the eastern countryside of Al-Sweida on Thursday, Al-Masdar’s Majd Fahd reported from Damascus.

The Syrian Arab Army’s 5th and 7th armored divisions managed to capture 35km of rebel-held territory in eastern Al-Sweida, today, reaching the imperative Al-Rasi’i Well after a fierce battle with the US-backed Jaysh Assoud Al-Sharqiya (FSA unit).

According to Fahd, the Syrian Arab Army is steadily pushing east to secure the Al-Sweida Governorate, while also applying pressure on the US and Jordanian forces trying to carve out a niche in this province in southern Syria.

Meanwhile, north of the Al-Sweida Governorate, the Syrian Arab Army’s 5th Legion, alongside the NDF, are preparing to resume their offensive in the southeastern countryside of Damascus; this attack will focus on the Iraqi border-crossing at Tanf.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/us-backed-rebels-suffer-major-setback-syrian-army-troops-capture-much-eastern-sweida/

The timing of the 'crematoria' propaganda push, even though it had already been debunked, got nothing to do with this, right?

Int’l coalition’s attack on Syrian military site exposes its fake claims of fighting terrorism


19 May، 2017

Damascus, SANA – A military source announced on Friday that the so-called international coalition attacked one of the Syrian army’s military points on al-Tanf road in the Syrian Badia.

The attack, which took place at 16:30 pm on Thursday, left a number of people dead, in addition to causing material damage, the source said.

The source described the attack as “blatant”, saying it uncovers the fake claims of the international coalition about fighting terrorism and reveals the undoubted reality of the Zionist-U.S. project in the region.

“The attempt to justify this act of aggression by saying that the targeted forces failed to respond to the warning to stop advancing is completely rejected,” the source stressed.

“The Syrian Arab Army,” the source said, “is fighting terrorism on its territory, and no party whatsoever has the right to determine the course and destination of the army’s operations against the terrorist organizations, mainly ISIS and al-Qaeda.”

The source added that “those who claim to be fighting [those two terrorist organizations] should direct strikes against them and not against the Syrian Arab Army, which is the only legitimate force that is fighting terrorism along with its allies and friends.”

The source asserted that the army will continue performing its duty of fighting ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra and defending its entire territory, and will not be discouraged from doing this “sacred” duty by these attempts of the so-called international coalition.

H. Said

http://sana.sy/en/?p=106462

It would be an act of war except the US is doing it.

Thousands of Hezbollah Forces Deployed in Al-Tanf to Foil US Plot in Syria

http://media.farsnews.com/media/Uploaded/Files/Images/1395/09/08/13950908000448_Test_PhotoI.jpg

TEHRAN (FNA)- Thousands of Hezbollah troops were sent to al-Tanf passageway at Iraq-Syria bordering areas to prepare the Syrian army and its allies for thwarting the US plots in the region and establish security at the Palmyra-Baghdad road.
Hezbollah has deployed 3,000 forces in al-Tanf region to participate in Badiyeh operations in Syria. Most of the forces had earlier been stationed in al-Zabadani, Madhaya and Sarqaya regions as well as the Western parts of the town of al-Tofail and Brital, Ham and Ma'araboun heights in the Eastern mountain.

Other units, including the Syrian army allies, have also been sent to this front to block the way to the US-backed forces.

A well-informed military source said on Wednesday that the Syrian army forces will not allow the US and its western or regional allies to create a buffer zone in the Southern part of the country as a safe heaven for militants' activities.

The Russian-language Izvestia daily quoted a field source as saying that the Syrian pro-government sources are getting ready to take control over a chunk of Damascus road to Baghdad to restore sustainable security to the main supply line of importing arms and other military equipment from Iraq.

In the meantime, Mohammad Abbas, a retired army general and military expert, said that terrorist groups and the US as their main backer intend to create a buffer zone in parallel with the Golan Heights and borders with Jordan and Iraq in Southern Syria, but the Syrian Army is to prevent them to do their plan.

Intelligent agents reported last week that the US, British and Jordanian forces were preparing for a possible invasion of Syria under the pretext of war on ISIL terrorists.

According to reports, Damascus went on the alert after intelligence reports gathered from surveillance drones suggested that the US, Britain and Jordanian militaries might be prepping a massive invasion of Syria.

Nearly 400 American and Jordanian military vehicles were located at a Jordanian military base near the Syrian desert border, the reports said, adding there was no ISIL terrorists in the region in which the US, British and Jordanian forces were operating.

The reports further added that activities of these three countries at border were aimed at gathering Arab and Western forces in al-Zarqa camp in which there were almost 4,500 gunmen.

The report went on to say that the gunmen in al-Zarqa camp went under training to battle the Syrian army to stretch a belt around Syria, a plan that was nothing more than an occupation.

The intelligence reports also said that the military convoys of the US, Jordan and Britain might launch an assault to help the West-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) around the Al-Tanf border crossing.

Reports also said that the Syrian Army troops, in response to the possible attacks by the US, British and Jordanian forces on their soil, launched a large-scale operation along the Damascus-Baghdad highway to drive FSA out of the border crossing of al-Tanf.

http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960228000475

Hybrid warfare in Suwayda
May 18 at 21:30

http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/colonelcassad/19281164/1181319/1181319_900.jpg

Briefly about US airstrike in southern Syria.
Today, there have been reports https://www.buzzfeed.com/nancyyoussef/th an e-us-the launched-new-airstrikes-Against-a-pro ssad-Forces-in? Utm_term = .jg1352l9QD # .jg1 352l9QD , that US aircraft attacked blow to the mobile group of Shiite militia that is moving towards the border with Iraq. There is no particular specificity - to write about social networks destroyed carts and even tanks, but some distinct evidence yet, although the fact that the impact in the American press is recognized with reference to anonymous sources in the Pentagon. A little later, the Pentagon official said https://vz.ru/news/2017/5/18/870849.html that a blow to the pro-government forces had suffered because they approached the district of US Special Forces locations in Al-TANF.

What's going on here at all? Schematically nakidal general disposition.

US, Britain and Jordan hands "New Syrian Army" action from the territory of Jordan supports the operation of "green" in Deraa province, as well as take the desert with sparse network of roads and settlements, which especially Caliphate and not in control. That map is usually painted either black or green, in fact naked desert nobody controlled - value are expensive (especially road junctions), rare localities few reference points in the desert, which rather denote the presence and demonstrate flag than form a single front line or to provide control over a huge nothing.

The deterioration of the situation in Syria to the Caliphate, created the prerequisites for a class of large areas of central and southern Syria, and for which there is a serious fight. On the one hand we see the US operation and the Kurds in the region of Raqqa http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/342 1864.html , on the other hand, supported by the Russian CAA conducts offensive operations to the east of Aleppo, advancing to the south of the air base Giro as well as developing an offensive in Homs province, increasing efforts in the Palmyra area.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAHXe7AUMAAUkSJ.jpg:large
Advancing north of the airbase Tiyas.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAH4HOHXYAAivOA.jpg
Mi-28 Russian VKS in Palmyra area.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAH4jduXkAAlg7h.jpg
Battery howitzers MSTA-B firing on positions of the Caliphate in the north-east of Palmyra.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_4jTLnXoAA2Gc-.jpg
Hit from anti-tank T-62 "of the 5th legion."


http://youtu.be/NCBIn63dPwQ
CAA offensive line dayr hafir - Jira. Having lost the main outposts east of Aleppo, the front of the Caliphate naturally rolled south. Sporadic counterattacks Giro much success they have not brought.

In the south, the US plans was a mix of the enclave of "green" in East Kalamune with the main forces acting Jordanian bases. To do this they had to connect at the crossroads to the south of Al-Karyateyna (which has already been seen
American special forces). But these plans were amended. Compounds of the CAA and the Shiite formation tied to Iran, began a rapid eastward, resulting in not only have taken two strategically important crossroads, but also creates the prerequisites for a full entourage of "green" in East Kalamune, simultaneously solving the challenge of the southern flank of Palmyra groups. It is not difficult to notice the current state of affairs, "green" in East Kalamune hopelessly losing the race to the east. But this is one side of the coin.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_eE1DHU0AErJWi.jpg
Trophies seized from militants in East Kalamune.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_oimCMUAAEaGDc.jpg
Advancing along the road, "the Baghdad-Damascus".

Many photos from the eastern Suwaidi here https://twitter.com/MmaGreen

On the other hand, Iran is implementing more ambitious plans related to the rapid roll to the border with Iraq, in order to speed up the connection of its forces in Syria with connections "Hashd Shaab" acting on Iraq (about 150,000 men under arms) and take control of the border with Jordan and Iraq, depriving Americans opportunities to conduct operations in Syria through a proxy structure. About plans for the accumulation of Iran's efforts on the Syrian and Iranian theater he wrote in early 2017 http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/317 8613.html . It is also worth noting the February report of the ISW http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/322 4166.html , which also points to the fact that Iran continues to develop its hybrid strategy with regard to Syria and the Iraq war.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzMS3r1XcAAgkHy.jpg
Collective image of the war with Shiite Caliphate.

In May, it was possible to see how Iran hands of its "proxy" has launched a proactive strategy in South-East Syria. Therefore, Iran and pushes mobile units farther east to the border to take a more favorable position for the next stages of the war. Ideally - Iran would be beneficial to push gos.granitse Syrian troops "Hesbally" interspersed with the CAA, then to side to move Rutby troops "Hashd Shaab" and issue "meeting on the Elbe-2", looking up at the border of Syria and Iraq flags, while de facto, it will open the way for a free transfer of military resources from Iraq to Syria, which will facilitate subsequent cleaning of the Caliphate and strengthen the position of both Assad and Iran itself in Syria.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_9wQ06UwAAjaDm.jpg
Fighting in the area Rutby between the Caliphate and the Iraqi security forces.

According to the Caliphate, the Iraqi army and security forces have lost in the last month in the region of 122 people Rutby killed and 39 units of equipment.
Problems north of Rutby, also serve as an obstacle to the implementation of ambitious plans.

As the main force of the Caliphate are north of the theater, and the forces of "green" here is quite limited, and without the support of the US Special Forces little to suit (see. "The defeat by Abu Kemal" http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/283 3358. html and "On Syrian-Jordan border" http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/334 8480.html ), the Iranian (under Syrian flag) is actually carried out in deep offensive operational vacuum, since opponents enough strength to seriously strain flanks (except raiding operations). Therefore, the airstrike was required to temper Iranian ambitions that hands "Hezbally" and Iraqi Shiites, trying to build on the success achieved in East Kalamune. In addition, since the beginning of May there is an information campaign against pro-Iranian Shiite force in Anbar province, who are accused of war crimes against the civilian population in the territories of the Caliphate (about Mosul say a word) exempted from power. You can also remember about stuffing wound IRGC Gen. Qasem Soleimani in southern Syria, which was later refuted.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-997FiXkAAy2cE.jpg:large
Qasem Soleimani at the funeral of one of his colleagues in Iran.

It appears that Iran's ambitious plans for the connection of their forces in the south-eastern Syria with groups operating on the territory of Iraq, not remain without attention of the Pentagon and it is now actively oppose, in the framework of information and psychological operations, as well as the framework of such airstrikes.
The first round of the fight was for Iran, who won the race in East Kalamune. Now we look at the second round, where they solved the question of whether Iran will be able to maintain control over the road leading to the border with Iraq. If Iran were to win this fight, the Americans and the British will only almost bare desert. Therefore, the United States raises the stakes.

Of course, the air strike on the conditional "Hezballe / Shiite militia" may intensify the fighting in southern Syria, as sub-Kalamuna and in Deraa. Iran may insist that the Syrian air force supported the further advance of the border and struck back by American "proxy". It is not excluded that this issue will be discussed with Russia, even though Russia is more interested in the further development of operations to the east of Aleppo and Homs in the East, which now focuses the activities of the Russian Federation videoconferencing. Russia this situation is objectively beneficial, since on the one hand Assad grows territory, and Washington's plans to mix its "proxy" with the encirclement of East Kalamuna were thwarted.

On the other hand, the Kremlin has to accept the fact that Iran in addition to joint plans related to the support of Assad, there are also considerations on the development of operations in Iraq and Syria. It is also an important feature of the coalition war http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/291 4062.html , which does not imply a complete Allied agreement on all issues. On the topic of whether the offensive in the purely Iranian Suwayda development strategy or the matter agreed with Moscow, we see the character of subsequent events and the reaction to the activities of Americans in the area of the Jordanian border.

We can confidently say that in the south-eastern Syria will continue to increase hybrid war, which gets extremely meager press coverage. Major players acting in their hands a "proxy" or special units, solve the problem of redistribution of spheres of influence, which is important for the further conduct of the war, and for the potential of negotiations on a final settlement.

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/3425927.html

Google Translator

Other photos at link.

President al-Assad stresses need of boosting pan-Arab sentiment to face projects plotted against the region


17 May، 2017

Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad received a delegation of Arab figures who have taken part in the Arab National Congress and the International Arab Forum on Justice for Palestine.

Discussions touched upon the situation in Syria under the terrorist war it is subjected to and the problems currently facing the Arab World, including those of weakness, fragmentation and spread of terrorism and extremism and the effect of the deterioration of the Arab situation on the Palestinian cause.

President al-Assad stressed that Syria would not have been able to stand its ground in the face of this war, was it not for the sacrifices of its army and its people’s faith in their homeland and unity.

He noted that the Syrian people, with all their components, have provided great examples in making sacrifices.

In his comments on the Arab situation, the President said the challenges facing the Arab World now necessitate work to develop awareness of the state of Arabism as an identity and an all-inclusive cultural frame and not just as an ideology, affirming the need to commit to the pan-Arab dimension and thinking and boost the pan-Arab sentiment in facing the projects of fragmentation plotted against the region.

The delegation members, for their part, stressed the need to stand by Syria in the face of what it is being subjected to as they believe that supporting Syria means supporting the Palestinian Cause and the entire Arab nation since Syria is the gate to the Arab national security.

They expressed their confidence that Syria will achieve victory over terrorism and foil all the plots hatched against it and their conviction that this victory will pave the way for positive strategic changes in the Arab region.

H. Said

http://sana.sy/en/?p=106336

State Terrorism: US Is Doing an End Run Around International Law in Syria

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TEHRAN (FNA)- The four “de-escalation zones” in Syria were supposed to be safe zones for everyone, even “moderate” rebels, but now the Trump White House and the Pentagon regime have done the unreasonable.
Shredding the rules of engagement and brushing under the carpet the International Law, US warplanes on Thursday attacked a vehicle convoy in a “de-escalation zone” near al-Tanf, identifying the targets are Syrian forces, and destroying multiple vehicles. Casualty figures are as of yet unknown, and the US claiming that the May 18 attack was “defensive in nature” is rubbish. The targeted forces were 55km away from a “US training base” at al-Tanf, where US occupying troops are stationed, and the Daraa safe zone is farther away from the area that the base is in. Syrian forces didn’t pose any threat to US ground troops. They were not there to fight. They were there to make sure the safe zones agreement holds.

It’s an agreement between Iran, Russia and Turkey, under which four de-escalation zones have gone into effect, with an aim of separating warring factions around the country. This was working until US warplanes decided to attack Syrian forces. This makes clear that a lot can still go wrong with the deal, as the US says it has no intention to respect the agreement and will continue to dismiss the terms of the agreement, which is what the terrorist groups of ISIL, Al-Qaeda, and their regional sponsors want.

To put it mildly, if this is not state terrorism and an act of war, we don’t know what is. The US claims its ground troops are stationed in the base at al-Tanf, while in fact it is housing special forces training Qaeda-linked rebels to fight against the Syrian government. More so, as a presidential candidate, the world’s most famous Islamophobe spent much of the election campaign needling, critiquing, denouncing, and even threatening Saudi Arabia and its terror proxies in Iraq and Syria. Yet as president, Trump is making his first foreign visit to Riyadh, all while giving the go-ahead to US warplanes to target Syrian forces and allies on the ground, which are fighting ISIL and Al-Qaeda.

It’s a true sight to behold: US warplanes targeting Syrian forces and allies within the de-escalation zones is deliberate and by design. The world is repulsed by this deceitfulness, as it has little to do with fighting terrorism and everything to do with regime change in Damascus. This is not the first time US warplanes intentionally or accidentally struck the Syrian army. Back in April 7, the United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian military airfield in al-Sha’irat, located about 40 kilometers from the city of Homs. Moreover, on September 17, 2016, US-led coalition aircraft carried out four strikes against the Syrian army near the Deir Ezzur airport, killing 62 soldiers and wounding some 100.

In the face of International Law forbidding unilateral use of force except in self-defense, the Pentagon regime has no right to unilaterally launch strikes against a country that has not attacked the United States, and without any authorization from the United Nations. Doing so violates some of the most important legal constraints on the use of force.

Bombing Syria is a diversionary tactic to make intervention in Syria seem more useful than it is. The Iranian and Russian governments are not going to be intimidated by an attack on Syria’s government. They are much more likely to become more intransigent, and they view it as blatant animosity directed towards them.

Instead of respecting the de-escalation zones agreement and appreciating how close the US has come to making a huge and potentially very costly mistake, the Trump White House seems only too eager to blunder into a new war. Their cheap arguments do not provide justification for the Pentagon regime to do an end run around International Law. The hypocrisy of their rationale to train Qaeda-allied “moderates” is galling too. War-party Washington is undermining the de-escalation zones agreement, which the world community supports as helpful, and which does not justify still more US lawlessness.

The Trump administration’s strikes contravene the UN Charter, which is a binding treaty obligation for the US and helps preserve international peace and security. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the use of force in the territory of another state unless authorized by the Security Council or in self-defense in response to a sudden attack. Neither condition was met before May 18 strike.

For all these reasons, the United Nations and the international civil society must act swiftly and do its job by taking up the monumental question of whether the Trump White House and the Pentagon regime may continue to use military force against Syria. To do otherwise would be an abdication by the UN of the powers reserved for it under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.

http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960230001415

In these days appealing to the UN against the US is pissing into the wind. Better figure out how to win without Russian help.

In these days appealing to the UN against the US is pissing into the wind. Better figure out how to win without Russian help.

This is the problem. The US cannot be stopped - depending upon how far the US is willing to go. No one can say how far that is. Only two states in the world have even a modicum of a chance to thwart US imperialism, China and/or Russia. Neither state appears willing to stand up.

Part of the great fear is the memory of WWII and the capacity and growth potential in US industry - the "Sleeping Giant" thing. The other part is "skin in the game". China seems to feel little impetus to become involved in the Middle East, it appears more focused on East Asian and Pacific Rim issues, naturally enough. Russia, weaker than China in many ways, sees more urgency in trying to deal with US aggression in some way...any way - even massive concessions.

I am no doubt an old curmudgeon, but stopping US aggression and expansion looks doubtful.

This is the problem. The US cannot be stopped - depending upon how far the US is willing to go. No one can say how far that is. Only two states in the world have even a modicum of a chance to thwart US imperialism, China and/or Russia. Neither state appears willing to stand up.

Part of the great fear is the memory of WWII and the capacity and growth potential in US industry - the "Sleeping Giant" thing. The other part is "skin in the game". China seems to feel little impetus to become involved in the Middle East, it appears more focused on East Asian and Pacific Rim issues, naturally enough. Russia, weaker than China in many ways, sees more urgency in trying to deal with US aggression in some way...any way - even massive concessions.

I am no doubt an old curmudgeon, but stopping US aggression and expansion looks doubtful.

OTOH, the amount of effort expended to keep all their balls in the air is immense, and while a certain synergy exists in their war/profit model they nonetheless preside over a house of cards. We must always hope that we're seeing the bottom and sooner or later we will. What's left for us to work with is another story, and that's what puts my chin in the soup. I'm sure it has felt like this many times for many who would change the world. I try to keep my chin up because that's what we're supposed to do, what we need to do, be an example.(I realize how absurd that sounds coming from someone like myself...) It's what anax did, he was a good communist, I'm a crummy one but refuse to be a total slacker. If we cannot advance then we must hold our positions and look for an opportunity to sally.

China bides it's time, building it's strength. Pretty soon they will field a top of the line tactical/interceptor fighter in serious numbers and then the game will be afoot.

I'll 'see' your 'old curmudgeon' & raise you a cranky old fart.

OTOH, the amount of effort expended to keep all their balls in the air is immense, and while a certain synergy exists in their war/profit model they nonetheless preside over a house of cards. We must always hope that we're seeing the bottom and sooner or later we will. What's left for us to work with is another story, and that's what puts my chin in the soup. I'm sure it has felt like this many times for many who would change the world. I try to keep my chin up because that's what we're supposed to do, what we need to do, be an example.(I realize how absurd that sounds coming from someone like myself...) It's what anax did, he was a good communist, I'm a crummy one but refuse to be a total slacker. If we cannot advance then we must hold our positions and look for an opportunity to sally.

China bides it's time, building it's strength. Pretty soon they will field a top of the line tactical/interceptor fighter in serious numbers and then the game will be afoot.

I'll 'see' your 'old curmudgeon' & raise you a cranky old fart.

I agree in total. We must "keep our chin up" and never doubt the eventual outcome - working class power and dominance is coming. We must also view all situations and events and conditions materialistically and without shading. The current conditions are daunting, but the US is not the power it once was and there are many cracks in the US/NATO/EU facade.

President al-Assad to Wion TV: Situation in Syria has improved dramatically, Wahhabi terrorist extremist groups are retreating

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3 June، 2017

Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad affirmed that the situation in Syria has improved dramatically because the terrorist groups, mainly ISIS and al-Nusra and like-minded groups who are Wahhabi terrorist extremist groups, are retreating.

In an interview given to India’s Wion TV, President al-Assad said that the situation on the ground, from a military point of view, is much better than before, but this is not the whole picture; as this is not only about military conflict, but is about different things including the ideology that the terrorists try to spread in our region, which is the most dangerous challenge that we may face in the near and long term.

“We respect a lot the Indian position, because first of all it’s based on the international law, it’s based on the charter of the United Nations, it’s based on the morals of the world, of the human civilizations first, and Indian civilization second, the Indian people’s morals,” President al-Assad said, noting that in spite all the Western pressure on every country including India to join the embargo against the Syrian people, India wouldn’t cease its relation with Syria.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Question 1: Welcome Mr. President, and thank you for speaking to Wion. I’d like to begin by asking you about the situation obtaining in Syria today. Now, by all accounts, Mr. President, it is the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time, and hundreds of thousands of people, including innocent people, have been killed in this war, in this conflict. So, how is this campaign of yours against terrorist groups such as the Islamic State progressing?

President Assad: Thank you for coming to Syria; and you come at a time when the situation has improved dramatically, let’s say, because the terrorist groups, mainly ISIS and al-Nusra and like-minded groups in Syria who are Wahhabi terrorist extremist groups, are retreating, or let’s say the area under their control has been shrinking. So, the situation on the ground, from a military point of view, is much better than before. But this is not the whole picture; it’s not only about military conflict, it’s about different things, about the ideology that they try to spread in our region, which is the most dangerous challenge that we may face in the near and long term.

Second, it’s about the support that those terrorist groups have been gaining from regional countries like Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, and European and Western countries like the United States, France, and UK, mainly, which mark a new era in the world where you can use terrorism, any kind of terrorism, to implement a political agenda. This is something more dangerous than any other danger that we may face in our modern world.

Question 2: Mr. President, you mentioned the names of some terrorist groups, you mentioned the names of some countries including Saudi Arabia and other countries, but if I were to ask you, Mr. President, who or what do you blame for the crisis in Syria today?

President Assad: If I want to be objective, we always say that if you don’t have your own, let’s say, defects in your society, in your country, the external factor would be minimal. So, we always talk about our mistakes or our loopholes or defects, but at the end, we didn’t bring the terrorists, we didn’t support the terrorists, we didn’t support this ideology. Mainly, who started this conflict was Qatar under the supervision and the endorsement of the Western countries, mainly France and UK, at the very beginning, but when you talk about France and UK, they wouldn’t do something without the permission of the United States. We all know that the real mentor is the United States, but they allow others to play different roles. So, if you want to blame about who supported the terrorists and who started this blood-letting and blood-shedding in Syria, it was the West and Qatar, and later Saudi Arabia, one year later joined the same effort, and of course Turkey, we wouldn’t forget Turkey which was the main player with the terrorists in Syria from the very, very beginning.

Question 3: Mr. President, you spoke about how to end this blood-letting. Would you be open for a negotiated political settlement going forward, maybe underwritten by Russia or some other members of the UN Security Council?

President Assad: Of course, we have already joined these efforts since Geneva in 2014, something like this, a few years ago, it’s not only about joining that effort; you need a real effort, you need a methodical effort that could produce something in reality that could be fruitful. Till this moment, we haven’t had any real political initiative that could produce something, although Astana has achieved, let’s say, partial results, through the recent de-escalation areas in Syria, which was positive in that regard, but you cannot call it a political solution till this moment. A political solution is when you have all the different aspects of the problem being tackled at the same time. So, we took the initiative in dealing directly with the terrorists in some areas in order to make reconciliation, where they can give up their armaments and we can give them amnesty, and that has worked in a very proper and good way in Syria.

Question 4: Mr. President, you mentioned about the United States. Now, we know that you had historical differences, if I can put it that way, with the American administrations, subsequent American administrations, but the US President Donald Trump has just completed his inaugural tour of West Asia, as it were, or the Middle East, as others call it. Is Donald Trump someone you think you can do business with?

President Assad: The problem in the United States is about the whole political system, it’s not about one person. Trump’s election has proven again, for us, again and again, that the president is only a performer, he’s not a decision-maker. He’s part of different lobbies and the deep state or the deep regime as we can call it, who implement and dictate on the president what should he be doing, and the proof to what I’m saying is that Trump after he became president, he swallowed most of the promises and the words that he was boasting during his campaign. He made a 180 turn in nearly every promise. So, why? Because the deep state wouldn’t allow him to go in a certain direction. That’s why for me dealing with him as a person, it could be, but can that person deliver? No. In the United States, the president cannot deliver, the whole state, the deep state only is the one who can deliver, and this is the problem. This deep state doesn’t accept partners around the world; they only accept puppets, and they only accept followers, they only accept proxies, that’s what they accept, and we’re not any of these.

Question 5: Mr. President, I want to draw your attention to the events of 4th of April, when the world was told about a so-called chemical attack or a chemical incident. Now, in your estimation – and you’ve been asked this question several times before – what is the truth behind the April 4 incident, and who do you think might be behind it?

President Assad: You know, every politician can say “no, we don’t do it,” morally or for any other reasons, and the viewers can say “no, no, he’s not honest.” I wouldn’t talk about this in that traditional way. I would say let’s ask the question: would it be logical to be used? If we have it. We don’t have chemical weapons, but if you have it, if you want to use it, why would you use it in that case? One week before that alleged incident, the terrorists were advancing, we didn’t use it. So, why to use it when the army was advancing and the terrorists were retreating? This is first.

Second, it was used – as they said, we don’t know if it’s true or not – against civilians in one of the cities. So, if the Syrian Army wanted to use those kinds of weapons, why doesn’t it use it against the terrorists who’ve been in the field, not against the civilians? So, all this story doesn’t have, let’s say, legs to stand on, it’s not realistic, it’s not logical. So, who’s behind it? It was very simply the United States and the Western intelligence with the terrorists. They staged this play just to have a pretext to attack Syria, and that’s what happened a few days later when they attacked our airport, and actually they supported the terrorists, because ISIS launched an attack the same day of the American attacks on our airbase. And they wanted to demonize again, to re-demonize the Syrian state and the Syrian President. So, this is the only headline that could capture the audience and the public opinion around the world.



Question 6: Mr. President, also you’ve been asked this question several times before, I’ll ask you one more time for the benefit of viewers who might be watching you from South Asia and around the world: does Syria have chemical weapons today? Have all your chemical weapons inventory been destroyed by the OPCW? Also, would Syria be holding on to some chemical weapons or hiding it? Your thoughts, Mr. President?

President Assad: Actually, they announced a few years ago that Syria is devoid of chemical weapons. Even John Kerry announced that Syria is free of any chemical weapons. They wouldn’t have done so if they weren’t sure about this. No, we don’t have, and we don’t have the facilities now, even if we wanted to do so.

Question 7: Mr. President, on that note I want to shift your focus away from domestic issues to Syria-India relations, and we know that Syria-India relations have stood the test of time. India in particular has taken a neutral, independent position. It is against foreign intervention of any sort in any domestic crisis around the world. It believes in having a non-violent solution to issues, so what do you make of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India’s policies, especially India’s policies towards Syria in the recent years?

President Assad: We respect a lot the Indian position, because first of all it’s based on the international law, it’s based on the charter of the United Nations, it’s based on the morals of the world, of the human civilizations first, and Indian civilization second, the Indian people’s morals. This is very important, that’s the difference between state and regime: the state bases everything, all its vision, all its policy on the ethics of its own people. So, we respect the Indian position in that regard.

Second, as you just mentioned a very important word, it was “independent.” In spite all the pressure, all the Western pressure on every country including India to join the embargo against the Syrian people, India wouldn’t cease its relation with Syria, and some of the investments are still going on in Syria with Indian participation in different sectors because of that independent position.

Question 8: Mr. President, both Syria and India happen to be surrounded by hostile forces or hostile neighborhood, and India knows that Syria has supported India on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, for instance, but that said, terrorism is common to both countries, and we are victims of terrorism as we call it. What are the lessons one could learn, Syria, from the Indian experience of combatting terrorism, extremism, radicalization, and also how can India learn from your experience of combating the Islamic State or Daesh as it’s called here?

President Assad: I think our independence came at the same time, in the 40s, in that era, and the geography could be different, the reason why we have been facing terrorism could be different, but at the end terrorism is one, and the ideology that we’ve been facing is the same one, and the most important thing is that the terrorism has been used in India for political reasons, for a political agenda, and Syria is the same. To support terrorist organizations for political agenda, this is something very dangerous. It’s beyond only India and beyond Syria. If you look at the map of the world now, if you look at Libya, at Yemen, at what happened recently in Egypt, in France, and recently in UK, it tells you that terrorism has no borders, so what we have to do is not only to learn from our experience, if you talk about Syria and India, it could be very similar, we could learn a lot from each other, but it’s more than that; we need to have an international coalition against terrorism, a genuine one, to work against terrorism, to learn from each other, and to support each other in the fight against terrorism. As you mentioned, we can cooperate, but cooperation is not only intelligence, it’s about the ideology, it’s about the politics that’s been supporting these terrorists or this terrorism, how can we work together politically to prevent terrorism from spreading and prevailing in the world.

Question 9: Mr. President, when we talk about terrorism and its ideology, one can’t but talk about the Wahhabi or the influx or influence of Wahhabism on countries around the world, especially in West Asia. Now, when you talk specifically about countries such as Saudi Arabia, some commentators say that while Saudi Arabia successfully deflected criticism from its own actions, it re-directs the criticism to countries such as Iran in the neighborhood. So, how do you explain this, or the role of countries such as Saudi Arabia in the region?

President Assad: To be precise, the word “deflect” is not precise for one reason: because when the Saud family created this kingdom, they created it in cooperation and in coordination with the Wahhabi institution, so it’s one institution. The Wahhabi institution, the extremism or the extremists in Saudi Arabia defend the state because it’s their state, it’s their own state, so it’s one. You cannot talk about terrorism and Saud family as two entities, I have to be very frank with you. That’s why they didn’t deflect; they exported the terrorism or the extremism or the Wahhabi ideology to the rest of the world. Nearly every “madrasa” in Asia, in Europe, every mosque, has been supported financially and ideologically through books and through every other means by the Wahhabi institution. That’s why I wouldn’t say, no, they didn’t deflect, they exported.

Question 10: And Mr. President, talking about the contemporary situation obtaining in Syria today, do you see any role at all for India in the reconstruction in Syria? Also, any possible role which you may see or view India is playing in the peace process, also?

President Assad: Definitely, definitely. First of all, if you want to talk about the political part, the most important factor for any player to play any role in such a complicated conflict is to have credibility, and India through the history has always been credible. Through the different parties that took power in India, we never noted that there’s any fluctuation in their policy because it’s based on morals and ethics as I said. So, this credibility is a very important factor for India to play a role, not necessarily within Syria, because the Syrian conflict is not only Syrian; the main factors are regional and international, and the most important part of this that how can we protect international law. So India as a main country on the political arena today has to do its utmost in order to protect the international law and the Charter of the United Nations through its relations. India has relations with every country in this world. So, with their effort, the effort of their officials and the government, they can help in that regard.

If you want to talk about the reconstruction, as you know when you have war in any country that destroys much of the infrastructure, the most profitable sector would be the rebuilding, and India is welcome to play an economic role in the reconstruction of Syria, something that we already started. We started this project in Damascus, and now we are expanding that project in most of the cities in Syria, of course after the liberation from ISIS and al-Nusra and those terrorist groups. Of course we welcome any Indian company.

Question 11: Mr. President, you visited India in 2008, and on that occasion you also visited the Taj Mahal in Agra. When do you plan to visit India next? Would you like to make India your first destination… you seldom travel abroad, so would you like to visit India soon?

President Assad: Of course, definitely, definitely, and the scope of the relation between Syria and India, I would describe it as ample scope, and that was my plan in 2008, and this relation was moving upward. Because of the war, things have changed in a different way, but of course after this war India will be one of the first countries to visit, not because of the scope of the relation, but actually because we have to be faithful or loyal to every country that was objective and moral in its position toward the war in Syria.

Question 12: And talking specifically about the ongoing campaign against the Islamic State or Daesh, how many more months would you give the Daesh before it’s pushed out of your sovereign territory?

President Assad: If you want to talk about our war, regardless of the influence of the external wars, ISIS is not very strong, it would take a few months, even with al-Nusra. Now, the problem is that ISIS has been supported by the United States. The United States attacked our army that’s been fighting ISIS three times during the last six months or so, and every time they attacked our forces in that area, ISIS attacked our forces at the same time and took over that area. So, the realistic answer is: that depends on how much international support ISIS will get. That’s my answer.

Question 13: Mr. President, I now want to talk a bit about President Assad, the man, the family man. You’ve been in power for now 17 years. How has this current phase of crisis affected you and your family, your children? What’s the kind of conversation that you might be having, or they might be having with you about the situation that they see around them today?

President Assad: Everybody would think about the security part of your question. Actually, no, we live in the middle of the city, or the middle of Damascus, my house is not far from here. We’ve been, like every Syrian, been subjected to every kind of threat, including mortars and other means, so this is not a big issue for us as family. For us as a Syrian family, the thing that affected us more than any other thing is the feeling, the pain, the suffering because of the blood-shedding that affected every family, nearly every family in Syria. This is the most important thing. Apart from that is the kind of dialogue that you’ve had in your family with the children that they’ve grown up on a very strange scene, which is not the natural one, not the normal one, not the Syria that we used to see before the war. So the question would be: why, what’s happening, why we don’t have…

Journalist: And what would you tell them?

President Assad: I tell the truth. You have to be very transparent and very realistic, because in spite of all the bad aspects of the war – as you say every cloud has a silver lining – it’s a lesson, it’s a lesson they should learn, because maybe our generation and the previous generation didn’t learn from the mistakes, that’s why you have the war. They should learn from that lesson in order to protect our country in the future when they are grown up.

Question 14: Mr. President, you’ve been in power since the year 2000, it’s been 17 years now, and many world leaders have come and gone; President Obama in the US, President Sarkozy, President Hollande in France, and many countries around the world, but you’ve survived, you’ve stayed there, you’ve stayed the course. What’s your secret of success?

President Assad: I don’t have a secret; it’s the Syrian secret, it’s the public support. If you have public support, you can withstand any storm, that’s a very simple fact. If you don’t, you would have withstood for a few weeks or a few months, not few years, you cannot. I don’t think the battle is the president’s battle as the Western media tries to portray. It’s not my battle, I’m not fighting for my position, I don’t care about that position; I only care about the public support. So, for us as Syrians, it’s a national war, everybody is fighting for his country, not for the president. This is the secret, maybe, that the West didn’t discover, because they were too superficial to analyze the situation in Syria. So, actually, it’s not a secret; it’s something they didn’t see, but it’s not a secret.

Question 15: Mr. President, do you ever tend to take a chance to look in the rear view mirror, as it were if you would go back in time, would you like to do things differently maybe?

President Assad: If you talk about daily things, you always have different vantage points to look at things, so you can say I would have done it in a different way, but if you want to talk about the main strategy, headlines, like fighting terrorism, of course we’re going to fight terrorism. This is constitution, this is the law, and this is our duty as government to defend the people. So, we wouldn’t discuss this. To have dialogue with everyone, including the terrorists, of course, it’s a strategy that we think that has produced positive effects. How can we change or fine-tune this strategy, this is another issue. You can fine-tune it, but as a headline, of course, I would say that was correct. To open up even with another country like the Western countries that allegedly wanted to help Syria, it was correct, but it didn’t produce. I think the only mistake that we made is when we believed that the West has values; this is one of the mistakes that we committed in the past, and we thought some countries like Saudi Arabia could have values, but the only value that they have is the Wahhabi value.

Question 16: Mr. President, there’s a lot of narrative about the Western media perceptions about you, personally speaking. Now, we’ve seen the humanitarian issue or angle from the pictures and videos of children who have been sufferers of this conflict, we saw the case of Alan Kurdi who was washed ashore dead in Turkey, Omran Daqnish, the boy who was sitting in an ambulance, even Bana al-Abed whose tweets went viral. Don’t you sometimes think that, you know, this thing has gone on for far too long, it’s gone too far, and maybe everybody, and I mean everybody, should step back from the brink?

President Assad: The West, you mean, mainly the Western? No, they cannot, because if they do any U-turn or any turn, their public opinion will tell them “you were lying, you’ve been talking about this bad person and this bad government and the killing for seven years, now you want to tell us the truth?” They cannot tell the truth. So, they have to continue till the end with their lies, till these lies will be debunked by their public opinion. They cannot.

Question 17: And Mr. President, have you ever considered a life outside Syria, maybe stepping down, or life outside Syria?

President Assad: Stepping down, as president, because you came through elections, will be through elections, or when you notice that the Syrian people will not support you, because if they don’t support you, you cannot achieve, you cannot produce. This is where you have to leave. Because the situation is not like that, and you’re in the middle of the storm, Syria is in the middle of the storm, I cannot say I’m going to give up and leave. This is going to be very selfish and very un-patriotic, let’s say, if we can call it this way. No, in the middle of a storm, you have to do your job as president till the people tell you “go, leave, you cannot help your country.” This is where you have to leave. So, this is regarding leaving Syria, but for me personally, to leave Syria, no, it’s not an option for me. Since I was young, I was, how to say, brought up as a person who can only live in his country, not any other country.

Question 18: Mr. President, the last 17 years you’ve seen one crisis after another, starting from 2003 Iraq war till now. 17 years is a long time, do you at all make time to relax, maybe to watch a movie, hear some music, spend time with family and kids?

President Assad: The family is a duty; it’s not relaxation, it’s not entertainment, it’s a duty. You have to find time for your family like you have to find time for everything. If you don’t feel your family, you cannot feel the other families that have been suffering in your country. So, of course, but for the entertainment, it’s not only a matter of time, it’s a matter of feeling. Now, you cannot feel the entertainment while everybody surrounding you is suffering from terrorism; it’s a matter of psychology. So, it’s not my interest at this time. I think most of the families in Syria, they don’t have this interest. The interest now is the daily survival for many families.

Question 19: And Mr. President, in conclusion just a couple of more questions. In your moments when you’re alone with yourself, do you at all think how would President Hafez would have dealt with some situation if he were here today, do you miss his advice maybe?

President Assad: No, because it’s not the first time for us to face the terrorism; we’ve been facing terrorism before Hafez al-Assad, before President al-Assad, in the 50s when the Muslim Brotherhood came to Syria, since that time, the conflicts in Syria started in a similar way, but on a different scale. So, the principle of the conflict is the same; terrorism is terrorism, extremism is extremism, no matter what names you use for the organizations. The methodology of all those terrorists are the same, that’s what I want to say. So, President Hafez al-Assad fought those terrorists in the 70s and the 80s and we have to fight them today, and if we face them 50 years later with another generation, we have to fight them. So, I think this is one response and one methodology. Again, it’s about the details. The details could be different not between two eras and two presidents, it could be different from day to day, because when you have such a war, you can have things that have been fluctuating or changing in a very fast pace.

Question 20: Mr. President, in conclusion, very few people know that you studied medicine, you are an ophthalmologist, do you miss your London days, I mean, do feel like going back in time, as it were?

President Assad: But actually, I was an ophthalmologist in Syria before I was in London. I worked three years and a half in Syria, and then I went to London for about two years. So, if you want to talk about missing the job, of course, it’s something you always feel passionate toward, you don’t have to say that you miss it, that you don’t like this job. Today, you are on a bigger scale when you help the Syrian people, this is something you should love. If you don’t love it, if you don’t have this passion toward it, you cannot succeed. Of course, I have a very strong passion for this, but the scientific field in general is my second passion since I was young, not only ophthalmology, all the science sectors in general. So, you always feel this passion and you feel that you want to know what’s the update, what are the new trends in that field.

Question 21: Mr. President, is the worst behind you?

President Assad: I hope so, I hope. I mean, because things now are moving in the right direction which is a better direction, because we are defeating the terrorists, unless the West and other countries and their allies, their puppets, supported those extremists in a very, how to say, massive way, I’m sure the worst is behind us.

Question 22: At the end, very quickly Mr. President, in very briefly, what would be your message to the people watching this, especially in India and South Asia and around the world, your message to them?

President Assad: I think during the last few decades, mainly after Bush came to power in the United States, the West tried to promote its society, its political system, its behavior as the minaret that the world should follow socially and politically and in every other aspect. I think India, the Indian people are the one that could be that minaret because of the diversity that you have, because of the civilization that’s deeply rooted in the history, and because of the morals that you base your society and your politics on, because of the real democracy that India showed to the world, because of many things, I think India is the one who are ready to lead that direction if they want to set an example for any other country to follow. This is my most important message, because we know what’s the meaning of diversity because we are a diverse country but on a smaller scale.

Journalist: On that note, Mr. President, I want to thank you, and it’s a pleasure talking to you.

President Assad: Thank you. Thank you for coming to Syria.

http://sana.sy/en/?p=107447

Sturm Raqqa
colonelcassad
June 6th, 16:31

Officially launched the assault Raqqa. Thus, the time required to engage in Raqqa, will count on 6 June.

Wait encirclement circuit did not, apparently, hoping to solve this problem in the process.
On the one hand, we can talk about the failure of the previously set deadlines, which shifts the first of April, and after that, in May.
On the other hand, the beginning of the assault without complete environment may indicate a rush associated with the defeat of the Caliphate in the East of Aleppo and the entry of Syrian troops in the province of Raqqa.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBpBOwaWsAA5gev.jpg:large
See you on the Euphrates remained nothing.

Of course, it is unlikely that the CAA shifting to the south bypass buffer in Tabka and come out to Rakka from the south, but speeding up the assault should give a clear assurance that hang over the city in the first place the American flag. Last week the Americans are actively saturated with combat formations north of Raqqa armored vehicles, while the Kurds pulled up additional forces infantry.

At the same time, in the caliphate may have their own adjustments to these plans, as an example of Mosul, an assault that continues to this day and is accompanied by enormous losses of the Iraqi army, clearly shows that the "black" often adjust various paper plans for their defeat, though of course on they win it no longer is. It is expected that the main resistance will be provided in the central areas of the city, while the suburbs are relatively fast busy mobile assault groups. Sami fights promise to be very bloody, considering the whole experience of defense major cities Caliphate. At this point, the Kurds continue to squeeze a semicircle on the north bank of the Euphrates and moving directly to the suburbs from the east and northeast. It is also worth to expect action and on the southern bank of the Euphrates and the active continuation of the air campaign. For today already carry several tens airstrikes on positions of "black" around Raqqa.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBoWC4bXUAA8KOo.jpg:large
The official statement of the US assault on the top Raqqa.

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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBpBTJaXUAAh25A.jpg
Refugees

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBo-VErU0AAJOX9.jpg

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/3464600.html

Google Translator

I'll be surprised if the Russians don't 'persuade' the Syrians to back off, direct confrontation with US troops is the compradors worst nightmare. If they don't it's gonna be dicey.

Looks like they're folding the tent on this circus and Qatar is the borrowed scape-mule.

US-led coalition destroys pro-government forces within deconfliction zone in Syria - Pentagon
Published time: 6 Jun, 2017 18:35
Edited time: 6 Jun, 2017 19:42

US-led coalition destroys pro-government forces within deconfliction zone in Syria - Pentagon

https://cdn.rt.com/files/2017.06/original/5936fa89c36188bc2a8b4567.jpg
A US Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt-2 © Hamad I Mohammed / Reuters
16

The US-led coalition inside Syria says that it has destroyed pro-government forces that entered the deconfliction zone established by the United States and Russia around a coalition training facility. The coalition last struck a pro-government convoy in the area on May 18.
“The Coalition destroyed additional pro-Syrian regime forces that advanced inside the well-established deconfliction zone in southern Syria,” said a statement from the US Central Command.

“The Coalition does not seek to fight Syrian regime or pro-regime forces but remains ready to defend themselves if pro-regime forces refuse to vacate the deconfliction zone.”

The deconfliction zone, with a radius of about 55 km, was established around the town of At Tanf, where the US has set up base to train special forces for the final assault on the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa.


“Despite previous warnings, pro-regime forces entered the agreed-upon deconfliction zone with a tank, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, armed technical vehicles and more than 60 soldiers posing a threat to the Coalition and partner forces based at the At Tanf Garrison,” said the CENTCOM statement. “The Coalition issued several warnings via the deconfliction line prior to destroying two artillery pieces, an anti-aircraft weapon, and damaging a tank.”

On May 18, the Coalition attacked a convoy of what the US called “Iranian-directed troops,” who were moving in the direction of the training base, which houses several hundred US staff.

The bombardment was condemned by Damascus, which has repeatedly accused Washington and its allies of operating within its sovereign territory, and Moscow, which according to media reports, had tried to prevent the escalation of the standoff, relaying messages between the two sides.

The American attack occurred on the same day US-backed militias launched an all-out assault on Raqqa which has served as the Islamic State’s unofficial “capital” since its capture in 2014. Raqqa is located 300 km to the north of At Tanf.

The battle for the city, where up to 4,000 ISIS fighters are still thought to be holed up, is expected to be quicker than the siege of Mosul, where fighting still continues eight months after the initial assault began. The International Rescue Committee says that 200,000 civilians are still trapped in Raqqa.

https://www.rt.com/news/391150-coalition-strike-syria-forces/#.WTcJUNyKb4I.twitter

Syrian CP, Statement of the Central Committee of the Syrian Communist Party 17/5/2017 [Ar]

Friday, 26 Join Date : May 2017 15:32 Syrian Communist Party E-mail Print PDF
Statement of the Central Committee of the Syrian Communist Party 17/5/2017 [Ar]



Communiqué of the Central Committee of the Syrian Communist Party meeting


The Central Committee of the Syrian Communist Party held a meeting of her, headed by its Secretary-General, Comrade Ammar Bakdash, on 17 May 2017.

And when examining the political situation, the Central Committee considered that the international situation is getting strained and dangerous, and this is due primarily to the intensification of the contradictions between imperialism and which became more acute after the big cyclical economic crisis that the world between 2008 and 2010 witnessed shows historical experiences that the recession economic post-crisis, especially if this size is usually characterized by an increase of aggressive imperialism in order to overcome the effects of the crisis quickly and at the expense of others. At the present stage of these contradictions between imperialism more units appear in multiple aspects of the confrontation between the traditional imperialist centers and so-called emerging countries. The reach of this confrontation in several areas to military conflicts, as in the Eastern Mediterranean region and Ukraine and sustainable conflicts in several regions of Africa and the focus of the Afghan, and the East Asia region is witnessing an escalation of tension capable of explosion at any moment. The new worker who entered the military conflict, is that if the military confrontation already taking place, as a rule, by third parties any allies and followers of regional, it is at the current stage, besides, being the participation of gradually increasing the countries of imperialism directly in these confrontations.

And force the most aggressive and widely used methods of direct colonialism, American imperialism is mounted colonial wars blatant at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of this century, most notably those launched by Iraq and Afghanistan, and before that Yugoslavia. US imperialism has also participated in the NATO aggression against Libya, giving European allies the interface in that aggression. American imperialism has played and plays an essential role in the conspiracy and acts of aggression against Syria, as well as against Yemen.

The escalating trend expansionist aggressive American imperialism, with the arrival of the new US administration, which its actions reckless dispelled illusions that he was carrying some of the narrow-minded, about the possibility of understanding with this administration, based on some of the statements made by the current US president during his campaign. But the actions taken by the new US administration has shown, it is not to retreat from the aggressive line, but the escalation of him. It is the first steps of this administration was to go to the big lifting of the US military budget. And then came the military strike of the Syrian air base, including totally incompatible with the most basic concepts of international law. At the same time, it was a very dangerous escalation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea direction. It is clear that this escalation against North Korea, targeting the biggest rival of US imperialism, namely the People's Republic of China. It is no coincidence that the strike against Syria and the escalation of rhetoric against Korea, the Democratic People's held during the Chinese president's visit to the United States. It is clear more and more, that drives the international trends the current US administration, the interests of the oligarchy monopoly the most reactionary and aggressive. There is also a large Zionist influence within this administration.

Because of these two key working world is witnessing an escalation of the tone and the acts of aggression by the current administration of US imperialism aimed at reducing and hitting key sites of its competitors in the international arena, especially China and Russia. This reflected an increase of tension in the eastern Mediterranean and in Eastern Europe (Ukraine, in particular) and in the Far East. Along with the resumption of the campaign against Iran, by the current US administration, which sees this as an important factor in its hegemonic and expansionist campaigns from successive.

Despite Russia's diplomatic efforts to find a compromise with Western imperialist centers, but these attempts have not led to the results satisfy Russia. It is clear that the Russian authority is currently being targeted by Western centers vital sites for Russia in the near surroundings, can lead to irreversible very serious consequences for Russia's place in the international system.

The intensification of contradictions between imperialism is associated with increased severity of other contradictions of the capitalist system, as it continues to attack on the national liberation movements around the world. One obvious example is witnessed in Latin America, especially Venezuela, the Bolivarian which is in direct confrontation with the imperialist attack and local clients. As well as the Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea, where the raging confrontation with imperialism and its customers.

Besides, the imperialist monopolies attack on the rights of working people continue in the center of the imperialist countries. Thereby raising the pace of class confrontations in many of them. It accumulates latency popular rejection of the policy of monopolies in many western and southern European countries. This is evidenced by the political transformations in which the mass movements. The reformist parties play a new and bearing falsely label «new left», a subversive role in the failure of the mass movements of anti-monopolies, as happened and is happening in Greece.

The French election has shown great influence global Zionism in defining European policy. Where these circles again brought the figure to the presidency nonperson targeted sites strengthen monopolies above nationalism on the one hand, and on the other hand to ensure the positions of the French administration in the confrontation raging with Russia. And all this is happening in the context of seeking to mitigate the destabilizing effects of the European Union as the second imperial center globally.

The growing contradictions of imperialism contemporary threatens not only the independence of peoples and progress, but also threatens the existence of humanity. Which calls for increased efforts to strengthen the global anti-imperialist front.

Upon consideration of the latest developments in the region, the Central Committee felt that being articulated regional alliances serve US imperialism's expansionist policy. Gulf states have led all the duties of loyalty to the new US administration. The rapprochement with these countries, especially with Saudi Arabia one of the key directions of foreign policy of the current US administration. Despite the great economic difficulties experienced by the Gulf states and the resulting decline in the price of oil, hold arms deals with huge amounts of America, which will lead to the recovery of the US economy almost crisis. The Gulf axis shows the form of a military alliance linked to clearly with America and less visible with Israel, under the banner of anti-Iranian expansion alleged. The aggressive actions of this axis heading in two directions: against Syria and against Yemen. It should be noted that the horrors experienced by the Yemeni people constitute at the same time haemorrhaging for Saudi Arabia.

At the same time expanding Turkish aggression towards Syria, and became the government Alokhounjah in Ankara does not hide its expansionist ambitions through its demand to reconsider the agreement of Lausanne. Despite the increasing dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood on the reins of power in Turkey, but the situation is not prevailed because of the economic difficulties and resistance circles secular mass influence the broad constant tension in the Kurdish regions of Turkey. The ruling circles are trying to overcome the economic difficulties Turkey to hold great deals with Russia, especially in the oil and gas and nuclear energy field and re-torrent Turkish exports to Russia.

The goal that combines the US and Western imperialism in general and international Zionism and reactionary regimes and the client in the region is to undermine Iran-oriented sites clearly anti-imperialist, and the division of Syria, after these forces failed to drop.

The Central Committee was of the view that during the last period achieved the struggle of the Syrian people and important achievements in confronting the enemies of the homeland. One of the most important achievements of liberalization Aleppo full and important progress on some of the northern eastern and northern axes made by the Syrian army after this great victory. It also took positive changes in some central regions, as have been restored from the grip of terrorists destroyed, as has been restored some of the oil and gas fields in the mid-east of the country, which positively affects the supply of hydrocarbons. It was also to keep the rebels, and several methods of sensitive areas in the vicinity of the capital and around. Thus increased invincibility of Damascus was to keep a large portion of the risk it. This factor strengthens national steadfastness in general. Although it took place at the same time, re-distribution of the rebel forces and send them to the areas are important to their masters.

But the colonial powers have stepped up its aggression against the achievements of the Syrian army and its allies. The hostile forces seeking to increase the scope of the colonial occupation in Syria. Is currently under way to increase the US military presence in the north-eastern regions, which takes in many cases the most blatant forms without covering up allies and clients. The blow bristles base on the seventh of April embodiment of the aggressive tendencies blatant, even though the primary motivation for this aggressive strike related to US domestic factors, but this act of aggression is to show the American willingness to use all violent methods against Syria. More recently it has been along the American and British military presence to the south-eastern regions and relying on Amihma veteran Jordanian regime.

Turkey is also NATO forces client and its subsidiaries currently occupies the north-east of Aleppo important areas. Day after day take place steps to stabilize the Turkish influence is absolutely in the province of Idlib.

During the meeting between the Russian and Turkish presidents in Sochi at the end of the month of April, it was declared a «low tension» or «areas to reduce tension» in Syria. It was also during the press conference in which he declared it, the statement that there is no difference between the concepts of areas of «low tension» and «safe areas». It is striking, as stated in the same press conference, the explicit declaration that it was consulting with the US administration about it, which in turn expressed their consent to this agreement without acceding to it. Crystallize this agreement later in the city of Astana at the beginning of the month of May of this as a tripartite agreement between the Russian and Iranian and Turkish parties have taken place.

Despite the fact that the areas of «low tension» is four, but the most important strategically at the current stage, namely the northern and southern regions. The Turkish side has shown that the northern region «low tension» has become his territory absolutely. The colonial powers seeking to become the southern region «low tension» input to increase the activity of aggressive expansion of US and British forces and Amillethma Jordan.

It is striking that the Russian Foreign Minister's visit to Washington, which followed the Astana Declaration on the areas of «low tension» did not lead to the United States to join this harmonic framework. They valomercan thus clearly indicated that they are seeking to impose their areas of influence through military operations and the occupation of eastern Syria without compatibility with other international powers.

The global colonial and Zionist forces conspire to divide Syria. There is no doubt that there are certain differences between the imperialist powers about the form of this process, but not on its content.

The Central Committee believes that in the fierce colonial attack on the homeland, the basic task is to fight against the occupiers and terrorist gangs complementary to their aggressive. And that all national forces struggle steadfastly for:

1 defense of national independence.

2 defense of full national sovereignty.

3 struggle tirelessly for the unity of the national territory.

The Central Committee considers that the difficult conditions experienced by the country requires a radical shift in the socio-economic policy enhances the invincibility of the country and meets the interests of the mainstay of the national steadfastness of the Syrian supervisor of any toiling masses of the people.

The interests of national steadfastness requires the full break with the liberal nature of the socio-economic trends. Including the revision of laws that the erosion of the public sector, such as the development of participatory law and peers. Encouraging foreign investment in all areas, as stipulated in the laws in force, it means wasting the state of key sites remaining in the economy. In social terms, the participatory will lead to a weakening of the working class in the centralized state enterprises and thus weaken the momentum of public support for national policy.

We must re-examine radically how to secure the budget resources and it is not by increasing fees and indirect taxes, which is its weight is primarily on the shoulders of hard-working, but through direct prejudice to the great interests of capitalism, private groups non-productive, parasitic ones, whether by loading the tax burden commensurate with its earnings, or profit by closing the parasite outlets, thus being encouraged production and composition of important resources in the hands of the state.

In agriculture, you must undo the big increases in production inputs, especially fuel and fertilizer prices ... and follow a rewarding price policy to buy crops.

The national policy will find a socio-economic support through the implementation of policies that reduce the burden of living toiling and working for the benefit of producers. The Central Committee considers that the alternative economic liberalism current practice is reflected in capitalism with a social character of the state, which means:

Support for industrial and craft production.

Effective support for agricultural production.

Increase the role of the state, especially in the field of internal trade.

The actual revival of state institutions in the field of foreign trade.

Raise wages and salaries commensurate with the rise in prices. Make linking salaries to prices a permanent process mechanism.

Expanding social support for the population of the scope of systematically and not in the form of emergency campaigns.

The Central Committee stressed that the socio-economic front has an extraordinary role in this national battle waged by our people. It also stressed the need for attention to the logistical struggle of the popular masses by all party bodies and adopt all its forms, including the simplest.

The fateful stage through which the nation confirms and stronger health slogan that lifted the historic leader of our party Khalid Bakdash: homeland defense and the defense of the People's Summit!

The Central Committee also examined the reality of party publishing, emphasizing the interest in it by all comrades, as a vital area of ​​party activity.

The Central Committee examined some organizational matters relating to the life of the party and took appropriate decisions in question.

The Central Committee also reviewed the extensive mass activities undertaken by the Party organizations and youth Khalid Bakdash in honor of national, class and internationalist events and commended the campaign.

Thus, the Central Committee ended its work.



DAMASCUS, May 17, 2017


The Central Committee

Communist Party of Syria

http://www.solidnet.org/syriasyrian-communist-party/syrian-cp-statement-of-the-central-committee-of-the-syrian-communist-party-17/5/2017-ar

google Translator

We appear to be watching the partition of Syria, as it takes place. Al Assad may remain in power, but of a reduced and weaker Syria...

Army’s Command: Arrival at Iraqi border is strategic turning point in war on terrorism

http://sana.sy/en/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/army-command-1-660x330.jpg

10 June، 2017

Army Command: Army units establish control over Tadef town, southeast of al-Bab city
26 February، 2017

Damascus, SANA – The arrival of the Syrian Arab Army and its allies at the Iraqi border and their control of vast swathes of the Syrian Badia form a strategic turning point in the war on terrorism, the General Command of the Army and the Armed Forces said on Saturday.

“Units of the Syrian Arab Army, in cooperation with the allied forces, completed on Friday evening the first stage of the military operations in the Syrian Badia and were able to reach the border with the friendly Iraq northeast of al-Tanf,” the Command said in a statement.

The arrival at the border, the statement said, was achieved after controlling a large number of positions and strategic points inside the Badia over 20 square kilometers since operations first started south and east of Palmyra, where hundreds of ISIS terrorists were killed.

“This achievement is a strategic turning point in the war on terrorism and a springboard to expand military operations in the Badia and along the border with the friendly Iraq,” added the statement.

The new advance, the army’s Command said, also tightens the noose around the remaining ISIS groups in the region and cuts off supply routes of the terror organization in several directions.

The Command went on saying that this achievement by the army and its allies stresses their ability and determination to defeat terrorism and affirms that they are the “only effective force in fighting terrorism.”

The Command reiterated its warning of the dangers of the repeated attacks launched by the so-called “international coalition” and its attempts to hinder the advance of the Syrian Arab Army and its allies in their war on terrorism.

The Command concluded its statement by renewing its resolve to continue the war against ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra and the terrorist groups linked to them until restoring security and stability to the entire Syrian territory.

H. Said

http://sana.sy/en/?p=107861

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Militants from “Euphrates Shield Operations” turn themselves over to Syrian Army units in Aleppo countryside

9 June، 2017

Aleppo, SANA – Members of an armed group affiliated with the so-called “Euphrates Shield Operations” turned themselves over to units of the Syrian Arab Army along with their weapons and vehicles upon reaching areas controlled by the army in Aleppo province’s northern countryside to have their legal status resolved and benefit from the amnesty decree.

One of the militants who was a leader in the Euphrates Shield Operations nicknamed “Abu al-Kheir” said that the group was in the northern countryside and exited the area in three batches to benefit from the amnesty, appealing to others who are still members in these Operations to follow suit, saying that what Turkey is doing is an attempt to occupy Syria which is unacceptable, and adding “we won’t be slaves to the Turks.”

Another military leader from the group named Jadaan Mohammad Hassem aka “Abu Hatem” called upon other militants who care about their country to return to their senses and not follow the path of division and sabotage.

Another militant who didn’t want to be identified by name said that while the Turks claim to receive refugees, they actually get paid for this and accumulate funds at the expense of Syria and its people whose money and properties they steal.

Hazem Sabbagh

http://sana.sy/en/?p=107838

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US-led coalition acknowledges the use of internationally banned white phosphorus munitions in Syria

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10 June، 2017

Washington, SANA – The US-led coalition acknowledged the use of internationally banned white phosphorus munitions in Syria.

According to Russia’s Novosti news agency, the coalition claimed to use the white phosphorus for acts of camouflage, screening, obscuring and marking in an attempt to deny its crimes.

In its statement, the coalition referred to “cautious and rational measures taken to reduce the dangerous effects of white phosphorus on civilians and infrastructures.”

The US-led coalition warplanes carried out 25 airstrikes on residential buildings in Raqqa city during the past 24 hours, using internationally prohibited white phosphorus bombs.

R.Raslan/Mazen

http://sana.sy/en/?p=107851

Meanwhile the backstabbing compradors in the Kremlin are again doing their utmost to ensure that the blood and toil will be in vain.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/337193-us-is-discussions-on-syria-safe-zone-with-russia-report

US releases statement accusing Syrian jet of attacking Kurdish forces
By Leith Fadel - 19/06/201720

https://cdn.almasdarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/DCoVytXXYAAFfSg-696x865.jpg

BEIRUT, LEBANON (11:45 P.M.) – The U.S. Coalition released a statement tonight, accusing the Syrian Air Force of attacking the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) at the town of Ja’ydeen in western Al-Raqqa.

In response to the Syrian Air Force’s attack, the U.S. claimed it had warned the latter about approaching this area before downing the jet near the Islamic State stronghold of Resafa.

“At 6:43 P.M., a Syrian regime Su-22 dropped bombs near SDF fighters south of Tabqah and, in accordance with rules of engagement and in collective self-defense and Coalition partnered forces, was immediately shot down by a U.S. F/A-18E Super Horne,” the Coalition’s statement read.

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Despite claims that the Syrian Democratic Forces controlled Ja’yadeen south of Tabaqa, the Syrian Arab Army had actually captured the town earlier in the day, contrasting the U.S.’ statement.

The Syrian pilot that was flying Su-22 is still at the moment.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/us-releases-statement-accusing-syrian-jet-attacking-kurdish-forces/

The Syrian pilot is in fact very still, dead.

Another act of war. The Russians will blather then cave.

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Russian military ‘to track coalition jets as targets in Syria’: Ministry of Defense
By Ivan Castro - 19/06/20173


DAMASCUS, SYRIA (3:25 P.M.) – Russian military will track all the aircraft west of Euphrates river in Syria, including US-led coalition’s jets and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), as legitimate aerial targets, Interfax agency quoted Russian Ministry of Defense as saying.

“Any aerial objects, including warplanes and UAVs belonging to international coalition, spotted west of Euphrates river, will be escorted and tracked by Russian air defense systems both on the ground and in the air as aerial targets,” MoD announced in its official statement issued soon after US-led coalition brought Syrian fighter jet down in Raqqa province.

In addition to that, Russian MoD announced it had halted coordination with Pentagon on Syria after yesterday’s incident.

"As of June 19, Ministry of Defense halts coordination with U.S. counterparts within the framework of Memorandum on incident prevention and flight safety in Syria,” MoD officials said.

In the meantime, Franz Klintsevich, head of Defense Committee in the Russian Parliament, clarified that Russia “will not automatically shoot down aerial objects in the areas of Russian Air Force operations, as decisions are to be made individually in each particular case”.

He elaborated, however, that “in case of any aggressive actions by those objects, these actions are going to be firmly suppressed”.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/russian-military-track-coalition-jets-targets-syria-ministry-defense/

and they really mean it this time.........we who have had a ring-side seat at the tragedy of Donbass know better.

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Syrian government forces liberate Rusafa town in southwest Raqqa
By Ivan Castro - 19/06/20174

https://cdn.almasdarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Rusafa-696x432.jpg
DAMASCUS, SYRIA (12:30 P.M.) – Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has liberated the important town of Rusafa and the crossroads of the same name in southwestern Raqqa countryside having expelled jihadists of the so-called “Islamic State” from this strategic location.

SAA’s elite Tiger Forces division was engaged in fierce clashes with IS militants since yesterday, with assault further intensified after US-led coalition had shot down a Syrian Arab Air Force (SyAAF) fighter jet in the area.

Dmitry Zhavoronkov, military correspondent for Russian Federal News Agency embedded with Syrian government forces has published photos of Tiger Forces in the recently recaptured town:

https://cdn.almasdarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/SAA-in-Rusafa_1.jpg
Dmitry Zhavoronkov / RIA FAN

https://cdn.almasdarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/SAA-in-Rusafa_2-200x200.jpg
Dmitry Zhavoronkov / RIA FAN

This major development allows SAA to secure the future path to Deir Ezzor as Rusafa is the junction of the roads leading from the north (Raqqa city) and from the southeast (Deir Ezzor province).

It is also noteworthy to mention that with Rusafa under SAA control, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are now blocked from advancing south of Tabqa district towards Rusafa oil fields.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/syrian-government-forces-liberate-rusafa-town-southwest-raqqa/

Syrian government forces are reclaiming their country's territory across the front and while their prowess and bravery are great the implosion of ISIS is as much to do with defunding by their employers(including US) as their part of the project to disassemble all secular Arab states moves to the next phase.

Correction: the pilot LTC Ali Fahd has been rescued by Syrian Arab Army

Israel provides steady flow of cash, aid to Syrian rebels, says WSJ reportUnique military unit oversees assistance to anti-Assad forces in ‘Good Neighborhood’ policy aimed at insuring friendly forces on Syrian side of Golan border, according to rebel fighters quoted in a newspaper report.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing interviews with half a dozen rebel leaders and three persons familiar Israel’s undeclared policy, that the Jewish state is helping these forces, which are opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Iranian, Lebanese and Russian allies, in an effort to help set up a buffer zone on its border with forces friendly to Israel.

According to the report, Israel set up a special military unit in 2016 to oversee and coordinate the transfer of the aid, which helps the groups pay salaries and buy weapons and ammunition.

This “secret engagement,” as the report calls it, is aimed at strengthening Syrian rebel groups at the expense of forces hostile to Israel, namely Iranian proxy and Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, as well as various Iranian units fighting on Assad’s behalf in Syria.

http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2013/06/F130626HOKG003-1-e1372318708856-635x357.jpg
File: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon observe a drill of the Golani Brigade on the Golan Heights, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. (Kobi Gideon/GPO/Flash90)

Israel has dubbed this operation in the Golan Heights the “Good Neighborhood” policy, according to prominent Israeli journalist and analyst Ehud Ya’ari, who noted that it began under former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon.

“It’s a matter of interests,” one unnamed person cited in the report said.

“Israel stood by our side in a heroic way,” a spokesman for the rebel group Fursan al-Joulan, or Knights of the Golan, Moatasem al-Golani, told the Journal. “We wouldn’t have survived without Israel’s assistance.”

Abu Suhayb, a nom de guerre of the commander who leads the group, told the newspaper he receives approximately $5,000 a month from Israel. According to the report, the group made contact with Israel in 2013 after a raid on regime forces and turned to Israel for help with its wounded. The group said it was a turning point as Israel then began sending funds and aid, assistance soon extended to other groups.

A fighter with another rebel group in the Golan, Liwaa Ousoud al-Rahman, said “most people want to cooperate with Israel.”

Israel has largely stayed out of the Syrian civil war, which broke out in March 2011, but has over the years acknowledged that it helps treat wounded Syrians who arrive at its border and provides some of them with humanitarian assistance. It has also claimed a number of airstrikes in Syria it says were meant to prevent arch-foe Hezbollah from acquiring advanced weaponry from Iran via Damascus. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly confirmed that Israel was actively working to disrupt Hezbollah’s arms smuggling operations in Syria and build-up of capabilities on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.



In response to the Wall Street Journal report, the IDF said Israel was “committed to securing the borders of Israel and preventing the establishment of terror cells and hostile forces… in addition to providing humanitarian aid to the Syrians living in the area.”

Fursan al-Joulan has approximately 400 fighters in Quneitra province in the Syrian Golan Heights and is allied with at least four other rebel groups who also receive Israeli assistance, the fighters told the newspaper. They added that roughly 800 rebel fighters in a dozen villages in the area rely on support from Israel, as do some of the thousands of civilians living there.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-provides-steady-flow-of-cash-aid-to-syrian-rebels-report/

Self-Defense Is No Defense for US Acts of War in Syria
The shooting down of a Syrian fighter jet by US forces this week comes on the back of several aggressive actions by American military on the ground. Taken together the US actions mark an alarming escalation of intervention in the Syrian war – to the point where the Americans can be said to be now openly at war against Syria.

The American military actions also come despite repeated warnings from Russia against such unilateral deployment of force. Following the shoot-down of the Syrian SU-22 fighter bomber this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denounced the American violence as an act of «flagrant aggression» against a sovereign state. Some Russian lawmakers such as Duma foreign affairs chief Alexei Pushkov went further and condemned it as an act of war by the Americans.

Of course, Washington’s logic is riddled with absurdity. To claim that its forces are acting in self-defense overlooks the glaring reality that the US-led military coalition has no legal mandate whatsoever to be in Syria in the first place. Its forces are in breach of international law by operating on Syrian territory without the consent of the government in Damascus and without a mandate from the UN Security Council.

Another absurdity is the claim that the US forces are «protecting» militants whom they are supposedly training to «fight» the Islamic State terror group (ISIS). On at least three occasions over the past month, American military have carried out air strikes on Syrian government forces and their allies near a strategically important border crossing between Syria and Iraq. The Americans claim that the Syrian government forces were posing a threat to a military base at Al Tanf on the Syrian side of the border where they are training militants belonging to a group called Maghawir al Thawra.

The Pentagon claims that these militants are being trained to «fight and defeat» ISIS. The installation last week of long-range artillery batteries known as HIMARS at Al Tanf was justified as a self-defense measure. US Colonel Ryan Dillon said: «We have increased our military footprint and are prepared for any threat that is presented to us by the pro-regime forces».

As with the shooting down of the Syrian fighter jet this week, American forces are invoking «self-defense» as a legal rationale. But as Moscow has pointed out, the Americans have no legal right to be present on Syrian territory and then, secondly, to be unilaterally declaring «deconfliction zones» for what are de facto invasive forces.

A further nail to the American lie is exposed when the nature of the militant group is looked at more closely. Unverified video footage showing the US-backed militants at Al Tanf indicates that they are another brand of jihadist terrorism. The videos show Maghawir al Thawra militants repeatedly shouting the jihadist slogan «allu akbar». They are also equipped with the notorious top-of-the-range white Toyota land cruisers that other jihadist groups have obtained through funding by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies.


Syrian sources have confirmed to this author that the group displayed in the videos is indeed the Maghawir al Thawra and that they are unquestionably jihadist. Yet this is the same group that the US has openly declared to be training at its military base at Al Tanf to «fight and defeat ISIS», and which the US is supposedly «protecting» from advancing Syrian army units and their allies.

What’s more, it is reported that in addition to American forces at Al Tanf, there are British and other NATO troops, as well as those from two other Arab states. This amounts to a full-scale US-NATO intervention in the Syrian war – an intervention which seems to be clearly on the side of jihadist terror groups.

After the shooting down of the Syrian warplane by American forces this week, Moscow noted pointedly that Washington has openly taken sides with terror groups aiming to topple the sovereign government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. There can be no other pretense.

The bolstering of the US military footprint at the Al Tanf base near the Syrian-Iraqi border is another sign of brazen American siding with terror groups. As the videos above show, the notion that these militants are somehow «moderate rebels» who are combating ISIS does not bear scrutiny.

This US-led charade of supporting «moderate rebels» has been going on for nearly six years in Syria. The mercurial «Free Syrian Army» and the «Syrian Defense Forces» are part of this smoke and mirrors game designed to obscure the fact that the Americans and their NATO allies are using proxy militant groups dominated by jihadist terror networks, for the objective of regime change. The plethora of different names for these proxies – all whom are illegally armed groups – is just part of the cynical game to conceal the fact that Washington and its allies are waging a criminal war against a sovereign nation.

As independent investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley told this author: «The labelling by the US of any extremist faction fighting in Syria as a Free Syrian Army division is nothing more than a cynical marketing ploy to rebrand these group as ‘moderate’».

Beeley says that the Maghawir al Thawra militants whom the US claim to be protecting in a supposed campaign to defeat ISIS is just another instance of Washington «rebranding terror groups as moderates».

Another giveaway to the real nature of this US-patronized group came from a Reuters report in which one of the Maghawir commanders was interviewed.

Maghawir al Thawra spokesman Abu al Atheer said the goal of the US forces was to take the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor. That city is already under the control of the Syrian government forces and their allies. If the US and its militants were motivated to defeat ISIS, then why are they moving on Deir Ezzor?

The Maghawir commander also revealed his extremist ideological affiliations when he went on to talk about Iranian-backed forces allied with the Syrian government. «The battle is not over and we will not allow the Iranian Shi'ites to occupy our land. Our response to those who stand against us will be cruel», he told Reuters.

Recall this is the same supposedly «moderate» group whom the US, British and Norwegian NATO troops are training at Al Tanf and for which the US has installed long-range artillery batteries in «an act of self-defense».

Events in Syria seem to be spiraling toward a bigger international war. This week Iran hit ISIS bases near Deir Ezzor with medium range ballistic missiles fired from inside Iranian territory. Tehran says the action was coordinated with the Syrian government. Meanwhile, the US is stepping up its direct assault on Syrian government forces.

Another telling development in the slide to wider war is that the US forces are moving towards blatantly defending jihadists like Maghawir al Thawra from Syrian, Russian and Iranian forces who are the only ones actually taking the battle to defeat jihadists. The US mask of hiding behind «moderate rebels» is slipping. Washington is now seen to be increasingly at war in Syria. It seems only a matter of time before US forces come into direct clash with Russian and Iranian military.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/06/20/self-defense-no-defense-for-us-acts-war-syria.html

This is good analysis but for one thing, it assumes that Russia is 'serious'. Having observed Russian behavior over the last three years pretty closely I ain't too worried about a shooting war between USA & Russia. It can be reliably assumed that push come to shove, Russia will back down. Putin bends over as far as he is able to please the US, which only encourages the US to demand more. This Syrian op is way behind schedule so the US pushes the envelope, get er done. The question is how far the Syrians and their neighborhood buds can defy the 'benevolence' of their Bear buddy.

Russia might shoot down a drone but I seriously doubt a manned aircraft, there will be no confrontation. In Europe there will be no attack on Russia until there at least another 100K US troops on the line and if all the major 'allies' gun-up. Fat chance. It's all bluff that the US can get away with cause they got the number of the Russian oligarchy. The Kremlin would be even more abject and accede to every demand if not for the necessity of maintaining Putin's popularity(not as great as advertised) and avoiding mass dissatisfaction. Lavrov's great skill is in making surrender look like diplomacy.

This is good analysis but for one thing, it assumes that Russia is 'serious'. Having observed Russian behavior over the last three years pretty closely I ain't too worried about a shooting war between USA & Russia. It can be reliably assumed that push come to shove, Russia will back down. Putin bends over as far as he is able to please the US, which only encourages the US to demand more. This Syrian op is way behind schedule so the US pushes the envelope, get er done. The question is how far the Syrians and their neighborhood buds can defy the 'benevolence' of their Bear buddy.

Russia might shoot down a drone but I seriously doubt a manned aircraft, there will be no confrontation. In Europe there will be no attack on Russia until there at least another 100K US troops on the line and if all the major 'allies' gun-up. Fat chance. It's all bluff that the US can get away with cause they got the number of the Russian oligarchy. The Kremlin would be even more abject and accede to every demand if not for the necessity of maintaining Putin's popularity(not as great as advertised) and avoiding mass dissatisfaction. Lavrov's great skill is in making surrender look like diplomacy.

Agree in total. Russia is tied to the imperial hegemon through its oligarchs, and Putin is a creature of those oligarchs. The Donbas would have been the easiest and most defensible move in opposition to US hegemony. The US would have had a hard time saying that the Donbas was not ethnically Russian and that the Ukronazies consider Russians as insects. A referendum would have easily passed and been defensible. But even that was too much for the Russian bourgeoisie to risk. So Syria has no chance to get any real Russian push back against the US boss...

Israeli Air Force Attacks Syrian Army After Projectiles Fall in Golan Heights © AFP 2017/ JALAA MAREY

17:22 24.06.2017(updated 18:31 24.06.2017)
The Israeli Air Force attacked the Syrian government forces' tanks and artillery positions after 10 projectiles fell on the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights, the IDF said.

Israeli soldiers walk near a fence in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights on the border with war-torn Syria
© AFP 2017/ JALAA MAREY
Israel Intercepts Airborne Target Over Golan Heights - IDF
Earlier in the day, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that projectiles fired from Syrian territory hit an open area in the northern Golan Heights with no injuries as a result of the incident.
"In response to over 10 projectiles launched from Syria, IAF aircraft targeted origin of launches & 2 Syrian tanks," the IDF stated.


"Due to the unacceptable breach of Israeli sovereignty, an official protest has been filed with UNDOF," the IDF added.


According to Al Mayadeen channel citing a source, at least two Syrian army soldiers were killed in the airstrike.

The majority of such incidents are described by the Israeli military as accidental overspills during clashes between the Syrian government forces and opposition groups.

The Golan Heights, internationally recognized as Syrian territory, was seized by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. In 1981, the Israeli parliament voted to annex two-thirds of the region. The United Nations has repeatedly stated that Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights is illegal, calling for it to be returned to Syria.

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201706241054945118-israel-syria-golan-heights/

My understanding is that regardless of Israeli excuses in fact the Israeli jets were flying air support for Al Qaeda, which was conducting offensive action against the Syrian Arab Army.