Syria

No sooner has the idea of a US withdrawal from Syria been floated than Assad launched a chemical weapons attack on the suburbs of Damascus...or so we are being asked to believe. But this is not the first time we have been lied to about chemical weapons claims. What is the evidence about this situation, and what are the latest developments with regard to the international response? Corbett Report members are asked to contribute to this open source investigation by posting information and links about this breaking news event. [Editor Candobetter.net: Thank God for the alternative press. We here at candobetter.net are so tired of listening to the uncritical warmongering on the ABC, SBS, CBN, and in parliament. Are they all suicidal? Please write in if you hear anyone on the MSN or in politics in Australia question this warlust.]

Carlson is a real performer, but he also asks real questions. About the so-called chemical weapons purportedly used in Syria. He seems to be alone in the United States mass media - and the Australian mass media - to ask crucial questions about the gung-ho attitudes of US-NATO members, who treat war like a video game and believe they have the right to assassinate and murder whom they wish. In this video Carlson interviews Roger Wicker, Mississipi senator, on the subject, affording us an intriguing view of a psychopathic politician sleepwalking it through the questions, believing that everyone in the audience is too stupid and brainwashed to care. After that interview he talks to Theo Padnos, a journalist who was held hostage for two years by takfiri terrorists in Syria. And after that, he interviews Douglas MacGregor, retired army colonel and author. Each interview affords a different perspective and I didn't agree entirely with any of them, but I sure admire Tucker for asking those questions. Right at the end he also interviews a lawyer who is running for political office in San Francisco, on the issue of illegal immigrants and the flight of the middle classes from California.

Lee Camp, of Redacted Tonight, speaks with Eva Bartlett, who explains everything about the so-called Syrian war that the US war machine and the Australian Government doesn’t want you to know. Camp is a comedian with his own show, but he has made a special video of this interview. (Video inside article)

This is a truly outstanding analysis, by James Corbett of the Corbett Report, of an unusual case of internet bullying. It is an unusual case because it involves adults bullying adults. Furthermore, it involves journalists bullying journalists. Additionally, the first journalist, Sibel Edmonds, who is being mean to another journalist, Vanessa Beeley, is an ex-FBI employee. It seems that the objective is for Budnews, which Sibel Edmonds owns, to undermine real alternative news. All the stranger since Sibel Edmonds has appeared on many sites she now implies are fake news and has endorsed their points of view on Syria. It is not as if she is coming out and saying that she has changed her mind; she appears to be in some form of denial. Her apparent confidence in carrying out a campaign of evident defamation, lacking logic, truth or moderation, is hard to understand, unless she has major financial backing. It is hard to see any other beneficiaries of her political campaign, which I would call severe disinformation, except the US-NATO military industrial and media complex. This complex already has the backing of the entire corporate media, but it seems that it has a program of encouraging fake alternative news-sites, because its ability to dominate middle-class and influential 'memes' is severely threatened by real alternative news reporting. By the way, candobetter.net has published articles by Vanessa Beeley, based on their logic, her reporting from the field, and our knowledge of the situation in Syria, which is based on geopolitical experience, history and geography, plus multiple sources and logic, unlike reports emanating from the corporate media.

This video begins with an overview of what the corporate media are feeding us this week, but quickly goes onto the real news about continuing global conflict, Trump's behaviour and Israel's preparations for war. They discuss a poll that claims to reveal that over 70% of Americans now believe that a 'deep state' runs the country, partly because of the reversal of Trump's pre-election policies on everything. In this video, Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange [not to be confused with the exploitative change.org] is joined by Western Australia's wonderfully intelligent Syrian Partisan Girl. This is an enlightening discussion of how politicians are pirouetting around the threshhold of WW3, notably via politics around Syria.

“We note your concerns” is a response that ABC critics are familiar with. It seems to mean, “We’ve ignored your arguments but made a small mark on the negative side of the “balance” tally.

On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 9:33 PM, David Macilwain wrote:

Dear Reeha,

As another writer and critic of the ABC’s unbalanced reporting of the war on Syria, Jeremy Salt has forwarded me your response to his complaint about Sophie McNeill’s recent report on Ghouta.

Jeremy shared his complaint with me at the time, and I endorse the points he made in their entirety, regarding both the true situation in Syria and Ghouta, and on the ABC’s consistent and seven-year long failure to present a balanced picture of the Syrian government’s war with foreign-backed Islamist terrorists.

Consequently I am bemused by the ABC’s response today. Taken at face value, it betrays an almost complete lack of understanding of the ‘geopolitics’ of the conflict, as well as the role that the ABC has played over the last seven years in helping to deceive and misinform the Australian public.

So serious is this failure, and that of all the other “Western mainstream” media organisations, that almost the whole of Western society, including leaders and commentators, NGOs and even the UN, have an idea about the war on Syria which is a total fabrication.

Put simply, – and I need to spell it out – the war ON Syria was started and fomented by the US and NATO governments in coordination with their local Middle Eastern allies – the Gulf Arab theocracies, Israel and Turkey. These countries and their intelligence agencies conspired to ship an arsenal of weapons into Syria, and jihadists from across the region, with the intention to destroy Syria’s secular government and replace it with a Western friendly puppet.

This criminal attack by “proxies” and mercenaries might not have succeeded in Syria, where there was little interest in removing the government, and certainly not by force. So the role played by some media networks, in particular Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, and the collusion of Western media agencies such as the Guardian and BBC – and by association the ABC – was critical to creating support for this lethal invasion amongst those in the West who had some say in what their governments were doing.

The propaganda from Arabic media, including Al Jazeera before it was kicked out of Syria, was also important in persuading some Syrians that their own government was attacking them. Many Syrians who fled the country continue to believe this, even as support for their government and army by the majority who remained is at record levels.

That is the background to the war on Syria, but there are two particularly important aspects of the subsequent misreporting of the war – as “Civil war” for instance, or as some sort of sectarian war against Sunnis – that need special mention. These two things have recently come together in the incredible propaganda campaign over the Syrian Army’s operation to liberate Eastern Ghouta from its terrorist besiegers.

This ugly propaganda partnership is between the White Helmets and their “Chemical Weapons”. And it was perfectly illustrated in the scenes we saw – over and over again – of White Helmets hosing down children they claimed to have been affected by Sarin gas in Khan Shaikoun last year. This supposed attack is now thoroughly debunked, due to a complete lack of credible evidence either of Syrian airforce bombing or of proven Sarin contamination. While the UN made such claims, it refused to send an investigative team to the area – under control of Al Nusra terrorist groups – or respond adequately to Russia’s detailed criticism and protestations at the UN.

In fact, the most cursory viewing of the Khan Shaikoun footage – filmed by the White Helmets’ photographers and transmitted to Western media by unknown and unverified “activists”, would lead an uninformed – or un-misinformed – viewer to ask questions about its credibility. They might ask – and have – how the “White Helmets volunteers” seem unaffected by the Sarin contamination of their victims.

But if they know a little more, or do some simple research on the symptoms of Sarin poisoning, they wouldn’t ask this question; victims of Sarin and other nerve agents do NOT gasp for breath, because they cannot breathe. They also turn blue from lack of oxygen, in contrast to the rosy faces of these poor children, supposedly dying from Sarin exposure.

The well-informed viewer would then conclude – as I have and Jeremy Salt has, and thousands of observers and commentators in “non-Western” and alternative media have done – that both the White Helmets and their Sarin, and “Chlorine” attacks are a FRAUD. A criminal fraud, which has led to the deaths of tens and hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians and Syrian defence forces by being endlessly repeated and echoed in Western media.

Even though these media organisations may not be intending to mislead, and may – like their audiences – genuinely believe that the White Helmets are a volunteer rescue organisation and that the Syrian government is killing its own people with chemical weapons – these media must hold some responsibility for the atrocious situation we now find ourselves in.

It will be a hard road back to truth and responsibility for the ABC and SBS, and their foreign media partners, but it is not too late to turn around and face reality. The consequences of not doing so are becoming increasingly severe.

Finally I would just like to address several points and claims that you made in your response to Jeremy Salt’s complaint.

You say that:

“As we have noted in our previous correspondence to you, the ABC has presented vast and comprehensive coverage of events in Syria. This coverage has included a broad and diverse range of perspectives over time, as required by the editorial policies.”

This beggars belief. “Vast and comprehensive coverage” that failed to inform your audience about the 10,000 strong “Army of Conquest” that was created by Saudi Arabia and Turkey in March 2015, and invaded Idlib province at a time when the Syrian army and its allies were finally making great progress to liberate the area from the clutch of insurgent groups. Now three years later, and countless thousands of deaths later, the Syrian army has driven the insurgents back to Idlib, with assistance from Russia.

“Comprehensive coverage” that somehow failed to tell your audience about the billion dollar Oil export business being run by Islamic State, in collusion with the US, Israel and Turkey, which was brought to an end by Russian bombs and cruise missiles? And that also failed to note how huge convoys of IS fighters and weapons had crossed the desert to reach and attack Palmyra without being stopped or attacked by US coalition forces?

A “diverse range of perspectives over time” that completely failed, over a very long time, to present the “perspective” of Syria’s legitimately elected government or that of the majority of its people? Their perspective on the foreign backed head-choppers of Al Nusra and Ahrar Al Sham, Jaish al Islam and Islamic State, is quite simple – they are all terrorists killing innocent Syrians, and if Western governments won’t cooperate in the joint operations with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah to drive them out and kill them, then they have no right to level any accusations against the Syrian government and its partners for acting in whatever way they see fit to defend their sovereign territory.

I’m afraid that the ABC’s response to this criticism is quite inadequate, and evidently a parody of truth. Citing two recent reports where there was mention of terrorist attacks on Damascus only highlights the absence of such a perspective from normal coverage. The titles of both reports focused on the usual half-truths about attacks on ‘rebel-held’ Ghouta by the Syrian army, misleading readers away from the reality – that the Syrian Army’s actions are a defensive response to the terrorists indiscriminate shelling of residential areas of Damascus.

It should also be borne in mind that Ms McNeill was not actually in Eastern Ghouta, so her sources are suspect. There is no credible information available on the number of children suffering or killed in Ghouta, and what information does reach us is mostly misinformation, from the White Helmets and their “anti-government” partners. When you have seen one fake “child rescued from the rubble” by these men you have seen them all, and should ask why it is that these bombed suburbs seem to have no inhabitants other than White Helmets “volunteers” and young children?

In consideration of my own criticism, which must also constitute a formal complaint, I would ask that you refer to my recent article posted on John Menadue’s blog “Pearls and Irritations”, which questions our alliance with America over the war on Syria, as well as the role and nature of the White Helmets.

http://johnmenadue.com/david-macilwain-standing-up-against-america/

I look forward to your considered response,

kind regards,

David Macilwain.
Sandy Creek, Victoria

"Before becoming an academic I was for many years a journalist, with the Herald and Age in Melbourne, with UPI and AP in London and with the 'daily star' in Beirut. Thus I have a reasonable idea of what journalistic standards should be, and again, in publishing Sophie O'Neill's report, 'bombed, starved, trapped: this could be the worst place on Earth to be a child', the ABC has again violated them." (Dr Jeremy Salt). Dr Salt is the author of The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, University of California Press, 2008) See also https://www.candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/7778.

[Candobetter.net Editor Comment: We have introduced capitals in several instances where they were not included in the original comment, which was made via an online comment form.]

ABC program: news
Response required: Yes
Date of program: 11-Feb-2018
Contact type: Complaint
Location: O/S

Subject: ABC misreporting

Comments: Before becoming an academic I was for many years a journalist, with the 'Herald' and 'Age' in Melbourne, with UPI and AP in London and with the 'daily star' in Beirut. Thus I have a reasonable idea of what journalistic standards should be, and again, in publishing Sophie O'Neill's report, 'bombed, starved, trapped: this could be the worst place on Earth to be a child', the ABC has again violated them. I have written before about Ms O'Neill's 'reporting', specifically in connection with the 'Australian story' report from Madaya, a town held by one of the most vicious takfiri groups in the Syrian war, Ahrar al sham, responsible for many massacres, a fact she did not mention. Now she has done it again. Of course, the situation in eastern Ghouta is shocking, if no more shocking than any other part of Syria that has come under attack from these takfiri groups in the past seven years. As for being the 'worst' place on earth for children, other candidates would be Yemen, bombed by Saudi Arabia with the support of the U.S, or Gaza, starved and strangled by Israel. but let this slide for the moment. The reason for the misery in Eastern Ghouta is that the district has been infiltrated by takfiri groups you should have no hesitation in describing as terrorist. Fighting under the umbrella of Jaysh al Islam (the Army of Islam), they include Hayat al tahrir al sham (Free men of Syria) formerly Jabhat al nusra (Front of Victory), Al Qaida in Syria, which has been designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group; Ahrar al sham (Free men of Syria); and Faylaq al sham (Army corps of Syria). All of these groups have a long record of massacre behind them and all are committed to the same basic ideology as the Islamic state, which is to destroy the secular government in Damascus and replace it with a hardline Islamic regime that would extirpate all Shia and Alawi and would extinguish the civil rights Syrian women currently enjoy. Sophie O'Neill merely describes these groups as 'opposition' fighters, hiding a truth which your readers are surely entitled to know.

The Syrian government is doing what any government would be doing, which is trying to drive these people of Eastern Ghouta. O'Neill did not mention that these takfiris are constantly sending mortar shells into the heart of Damascus, killing many civilians, including children. She mentions being sent photos, which suggests to me that she is regarded as a useful propaganda conduit by the agents of these groups.

I note that you illustrated your article with a photo of the 'White Helmets' in action. This group is embedded with the takfiris, operates in no area that is not under their control and has been thoroughly exposed as a propaganda arm of the foreign governments that have orchestrated the war on Syria. Please, the ABC has a reputation to maintain, does it not? You are degrading it by publishing material like this. Your readers might swallow it because they don't know any better. Is this good enough for you?

yours

Jeremy Salt

Network - ABC Online
RecipientName - Audience & Consumer Affairs
Referrer - Complaint

ABC Response to Dr Jeremy Salt's complaint

From: ABC Corporate_Affairs11
Date: 9 March 2018 at 08:47
Subject: RE: abc misreporting

Dear Mr Salt,

Thank you for your email regarding the ABC News Digital story Syria’s Eastern Ghouta could be the worst place on Earth to be a child right now.

In accordance with the ABC's complaints handling procedures, your correspondence has been referred to Audience and Consumer Affairs, a unit separate to and independent of the content making areas of the ABC. Our role is to review and, where appropriate, investigate complaints alleging that ABC content has breached the ABC's editorial policies. The ABC's editorial policies can be found here: https://edpols.abc.net.au/.

Your comments and personal views have been noted, including your views on what should have been included in the piece and your personal views about the White Helmets. As we have noted in our previous correspondence to you, the ABC has presented vast and comprehensive coverage of events in Syria. This coverage has included a broad and diverse range of perspectives over time, as required by the editorial policies. This particular piece focused on the experiences of people, particularly children, currently in Eastern Ghouta.

The ABC has previously covered the make-up of the insurgents in Syria including the association of some to Al-Qaeda (including http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-08/syria-idlib-air-strikes-described-as-a-war-against-civilians/9408578). The ABC has covered insurgents attacking Damascus with civilian casualties (including http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-20/more-than-70-killed-in-rebel-held-ghouta-amid-un-warning/9463658).

Within the context of a piece focused on the ongoing challenges facing children in Eastern Ghouta, Audience and Consumer Affairs is satisfied with the level of detail provided. Furthermore, we note that the piece contributes to the ongoing diversity of perspectives shown across the ABC.

Having reviewed the piece, and with consideration for the additional information provided by ABC News, Audience and Consumer Affairs are satisfied the piece kept with the ABC’s editorial standards.

Nevertheless, your comments and views have been noted by our unit and ABC News.

Yours sincerely,

Reena Rihan

Audience and Consumer Affairs

Dear Marina,

As producer of the segment this morning about the current campaign to liberate Eastern Ghouta from its terrorist besiegers, I would like to offer this alternative perspective on what is actually happening in Syria. I understand only too well that all Western governments, NGOs and UN organisations, including Amnesty International, speak with one voice, but they still present the situation in Damascus and its suburbs in completely misleading and false terms.

While these voices talk of a “humanitarian disaster”, and make many claims regarding deaths of children and attacks on “hospitals” and “Syrian civil defence”, their sources are not in any way trustworthy.

The armed groups who have occupied Damascus eastern suburbs since 2012, holding the local population under siege, are the very same groups who staged the so-called Sarin attack in Ghouta in 2013, distributing videos of kidnapped children they had themselves gassed through the sympathetic media networks supporting the Syrian insurgency.

Regardless of whether we believe this in the West, or dismiss it as propaganda from “Assad apologists” or “Kremlin Stooges”, the fact remains that the vast majority of Syrian citizens know it to be the case, along with most Russians, Iranians and Lebanese. Their media do not present videos produced by the “White Helmets” as credible evidence of crimes by the Syrian Army, but as evidence of the criminals behind the White Helmets organisation in Westminster and Washington.

And while our media and leaders just dismiss Russian opinion and expertise as invalid, and portray Russia’s role at the UN as criminal, it is only the media who actually believe this. There would not be an intelligence agency in the US/UK/French/Israeli/Saudi network who does NOT know the truth of what their countries are trying to do to Syria, which makes their crime in fomenting and sponsoring the war on Syria truly the crime of the century.

People close to Syria and Russia, including myself, have been trying to bring the truth to the attention of the media here for the last seven years, as it was apparent within weeks of the so-called uprising that it was not genuine and not supported by Syrians.

There are now many commentators and journalists presenting the truth in alternative internet sites in the West, and in public broadcasters in the ‘non-West’ such as on RT, Al Mayadeen, Press TV and Xinhua.net, and at some point the Western mainstream is going to have to come to terms with this.

But things don’t look good. Many people fear that a “World War” is imminent, because of the US and Israeli attacks on Syria, and the NATO moves in Ukraine. Given the US recent talk of using tactical nuclear strikes against conventional attacks, such a conflict will rapidly become an inferno.

We have reached a crisis point, but it will not be solved by UN meetings calling for ceasefires, or Amnesty calling out the alleged war crimes of America’s enemies. What must be called out is OUR OWN direct sponsorship of terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria, including IS, to achieve our global strategic objectives.
These objectives have absolutely nothing to do with “democracy and freedom” or “responsibility to protect”, as the war on Syria so amply demonstrates. This war would have been finished in 2013 had the West’s media organisations done their job, and exposed the sponsors of the Sarin attack – Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the US.
It is these countries, including all their partners – Australia, UK, France, Qatar, UAE, who hold responsibility for the half million deaths in Syria, and the swath of destruction across the region, NOT the Syrian government, nor its allies, Hezbollah, Russia and Iran and Iraq.

Veteran correspondent Robert Fisk is one journalist who has learnt the lesson that the mainstream needs to learn, and wrote this particularly accurate article about the campaign on Ghouta yesterday.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ghouta-siege-syria-death-toll-civilians-armed-attack-rebel-aleppo-latest-a8221086.html

I would like to think that all at the ABC read this and think about it, as they – and probably quite innocently – shield the real criminals from the public’s view. Fisk used to regularly get interviews – with Fran Kelly amongst many others – on the ABC, perhaps until he started showing sympathy towards the Syrian army. It is urgent that his view is now shared with your audience again, along with that of many other investigative journalists and commentators who write in the alternative press, and are frequently interviewed on its programs.

I hope you can bring this to the attention of your colleagues, and senior staff.

I welcome your response.

kind regards,

David Macilwain,
Sandy Creek, Victoria, 3695

Syrian women are helping to save Syria and all of humanity against the scourge of Western-supported terrorism. The Canadian government, [Candobetter.net editor: and others, including Australia's, supporting the US-NATO agenda] on the other hand, is destroying women’s rights (and all human rights) in Syria and beyond.  If the truth were ever accepted by broad-based populations, then our government, led by those who project progressive fronts, would be exposed as the misogynist, life-hating rot that it is.

This article was first published at https://www.globalresearch.ca/womens-rights-in-syria/5629648

Canada's Sanctions Regime against Syria Undermines Women's Rights

Trudeau is destroying Syria through illegal sanctions, and through direct and indirect support of every single terrorist in Syria. Canada is a member of the NATO terror organization, which along with its allies, seeks to create “regime change” in Syria, — the highest crime according to Nuremburg Principles.

All Syrians, but especially Syrian women, have much to lose if the Canadian government’s diabolical ambitions are realized.

Amany Ashy[1] lives in a government-secured area of Syria where she is headmistress of a high school.  She explains that life for women in government-secured areas hasn’t changed much. She explains that

The government supports women’s right and liberty before and now. We have the liberty to choose our work , to wear whatever we like , to choose the type of education we want and even to fight side by side with the army. We have the safety to go at anytime during day or night.

She also explains that

men now are busy fighting with the army or trying hard to work double shift after the crazy raise of prices and after the sanctions. Women’s life as the life of all Syrian has been affected badly by the sanctions. The prices of food and vegetables have become double. Medicine prices are very high and some are not available.

Life in terrorist-occupied areas, however, is entirely different, and alien to Syria and to most Syrians. Ashy explains that

women in the areas controlled by the US- backed terrorists have no rights at all. They have to wear a black uniforms to cover their bodies and this uniform must be very simple and loose and if any women try to break their rules they take them to Hespah (prison). They keep them imprisoned for hours and force them to buy a uniform that they have and agree on … Women are prevented from going to schools or working any kind of job that they don’t approve of.

Ashy adds that the government respects freedom of thinking and religion and that nobody has the right to interfere in someone’s religion.

Saudi Arabia, one of Canada’s allies in the war for terrorism and against human rights is both a fountainhead of terrorism and Wahhabism, and it is this Wahhabi ideology that prevails in terrorist-occupied areas of Syria.  It is also this Wahhabi ideology (takfiri/salafi) that is referenced in a 2012 DIA document[2] (14-L-0052/DIA/287) which laid out clearly the West’s plans to destroy Syria, one of the 7 countries targeted for destruction as enumerated by General Flynn.

As the U.S and its terrorist allies occupy the oil rich areas of Eastern Syria – also laid out in the aforementioned DIA document — Canadians should remember that this war, like its predecessors in Libya, Iraq and beyond, was sold to them and continues to be sold to them through outrageous, constantly repeated, war lies.

*

Notes

[1]Amany Ashy is a pseudonym for an actual Syrian source. She shared her narrative in a private Facebook message dated 2 October, 2017.

[2] Brad Hof, “2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State ‘in order to isolate the Syrian regime.’ “ LEVANT REPORT THE REAL MIDDLE EAST, DEBUNKING THE SOUND BITES. 19 May 2015. (https://levantreport.com/2015/05/19/2012-defense-intelligence-agency-document-west-will-facilitate-rise-of-islamic-state-in-order-to-isolate-the-syrian-regime/) Accessed 18 February, 2018.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.  

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

U.S. imperialism’s deteriorating position in the Middle East was confirmed on Jan. 17, by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s bold assertion for U.S. plans in Syria. The arrogant statement was followed, within hours, by almost immediate backpedaling.

Tillerson’s talk at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University confirmed that the only hope of maintaining U.S. domination is another desperate attempt to close all borders and dismember the entire region. But the latest plan has also created a rupture in NATO, the oldest and largest U.S.-commanded military alliance. [Article first published on Global Research at https://www.globalresearch.ca/war-in-syria-the-us-a-wounded-predator-spreads-chaos-in-middle-east/5627212]

Meanwhile, Turkish planes bombed 100 positions in Syria of U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG forces (the Kurdish acronym for People’s Protection Units) on Jan. 21.

As the war in Syria stretches into the seventh year, Tillerson grandly announced the U.S. military will remain in Syria indefinitely. The newest U.S. plan is to create and train a military border force of 30,000 soldiers. The Secretary of State also arrogantly restated the U.S. demand that has met with failure for seven years: the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic government.

This was not the first mention of new U.S. plans there. General Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, said on Dec. 24 that a training program was being established for Kurdish and Arab fighters to become a permanent U.S. occupying force in Syria. Votel declared, “What we don’t want to do is leave a mess.” (us.pressfrom.com, Dec. 24)

In fact, U.S. long-term plans are to permanently divide Syria and Iraq and expand their imperialist “mess” into Iran.

Since Jan. 14, news reports around the world reported U.S. plans to create a new “border force” in Syria on the borders of Turkey and Iraq. This U.S. plan would separate the oil-rich northern region from the rest of Syria, create a mini-state and close the borders.

Washington said it would help Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of militias in northern and eastern Syria led by Kurdish YPG militias, to set up a new 30,000-strong border force.

A flurry of other U.S. statements drew out this plan more explicitly.

The coalition’s Public Affairs Office said: “The base of the new force is essentially a realignment of approximately 15,000 members of the SDF to a new mission in the Border Security Force as their actions against ISIS [the Islamic State group, IS] draw to a close.” (Reuters, Jan. 14)

Before the announcement of a new U.S. plan to occupy and divide the region, numerous commentators described an unprecedented development with the defeat of IS – open borders among Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. The whole region has been divided since the 1991 U.S. war to recolonize and divide Iraq.

Turkey immediately slammed this new plan of a permanent U.S. occupation through an alliance with YPG Kurdish forces in Syria. Turkey warned of military action against the U.S.-armed and -protected YPG forces.

In the face of Turkey’s fierce opposition, Tillerson claimed, “That entire situation has been misportrayed, misdescribed, some people misspoke. We are not creating a border security force at all.” (aljazeera, Jan. 18)

The Kurdish Nation

Turkey’s great fear is that a “border force” of U.S.-armed Kurdish militias will siphon off advanced U.S.-supplied weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles, to Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) forces in Turkey.

Although there are 1.5 to 2 million Kurds in Syria, there are almost 20 million nationally oppressed Kurds in Turkey. Making up 20 percent of population, they are the majority population in southern Turkey, bordering northern Syria, Iraq and Iran.

For decades the Pentagon has armed Turkey and aided in the brutal repression of the Kurds, who resisted under the leadership of the PKK.

But imperialism sees an opportunity to use the smaller Kurdish population in Syria, where they are 5 percent to 8 percent of the Syrian population, as a way to divide Syria. The Kurds in Syria are under the leadership of the Democratic Union Party (PYD); their armed units are the YPG. These are the main units of the U.S.-armed Syrian Democratic Forces.

U.S. imperialism used a similar scenario to impose a division on Iraq. This is imperialism’s divide-and-rule strategy for the entire region. Using the Kurds’ national aspirations for a temporary U.S. military or political advantage, and then cynically dropping them, dates back to Henry Kissinger.

The Kurds are a historically oppressed nation with a distinct language and culture, numbering over 30 million people. They are the largest nation without a state. They live in the underdeveloped, mountainous region spanning four countries: southern Turkey and northern Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Some 72 Turkish jets bombed U.S.-backed Kurdish militias in Syria on Jan. 21. The Turkish news agency Anadolu reported that jets bombed more than 100 targets, including an air base, in the first day of air operations against YPG militias. The operation targeted YPG barracks, shelters, positions, weapons, vehicles and equipment.

Each U.S. maneuver has created greater destruction, but the U.S. has been unable to consolidate its position in the region or gain stable allies.

U.S. divide-and-destroy tactics

Since 2011 the U.S. has covertly armed a whole series of conflicting militias and mercenaries.

With a wink and a nod from U.S. forces in the region, which were arming numerous extremist militias, Saudi Arabia and Turkey armed the fanatical IS army. This became an excuse for open U.S. bombing of Syrian infrastructure.

The U.S. military command pulled 19 other NATO and Gulf countries into the war in Syria. This military onslaught was totally uninvited by the Syrian government.

The Syrian government appealed to Iran, Russia and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon to aid them in defeating IS and the Pentagon-funded militias and mercenaries. This forced Washington to change tactics, but not its objective -- the recolonization of the region.

U.S.-imposed sanctions against Iraq and then Syria were an effort to destroy all forms of normal economic exchange and to shut down all commercial and social life. The U.S. occupation of Iraq divided the country into walled-off mini-states with checkpoints and inspections. All borders were closed. U.S. intervention in Syria was designed to do the same thing.

U.S. wars in the region have displaced more than 10 million people and decimated the region. They have created animosity and suspicion on every side, divided the corrupt and a brutal feudal Gulf state regime aligned with imperialism, and are now dividing the oldest U.S. military alliance -- NATO.

But after seven years of war and 15 years of sanctions, U.S. imperialism has still not succeeded in destroying the sovereign government of the Syrian Arab Republic.

About Sara Flounders: Sara Flounders is an American political writer who has been active in anti-war organizing since the 1960s. Flounders sits on the board of directors for the International Anti-imperialist Coordinating Committee, is founder and an organizer with United National Antiwar Coalition, and is Secretary of the National Board of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms.

All the news today is about Turkey attacking Afrin, a Kurdish governed city in northern Syria and threatening another Kurdish run city named Manbj. This is a very dangerous situation and another devastating assault on the Syrian people who have already suffered so much from a war that that was started by foreign manipulation and fed by foreign fighters, foreign weapons and foreign cash. The war should have ended by now and be winding down, but Syria’s enemies are persistent and cunning. We should not forget, however, that the foremost enemy of Syria, the strongest, most powerful country, the managing force in this war to destroy Syria is the United States […A Brief Analysis] Article first published 20 January 2018 at https://unac.papillonweb.net/2018/01/20/increasing-us-aggression-in-syria-leads-to-chaos/

Syrian Internal Security Forces are sworn in during their graduation ceremony, at Ain Issa desert base, in Raqqa province, northeast Syria, Thursday, July 20, 2017. Some 250 residents of Syria’s Raqqa province are the latest batch to graduate from a brief U.S-training course that is preparing an internal security force to hold and secure areas as they are captured from Islamic State militants. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla) MintPress, 10/17

US Occupation Forces

The United States has announced that the US is preparing a ‘border force’ of 30,000 fighters to “keep the peace in Syria”.    The plan is for these forces to have the US backed, Kurdish led forces of the SDF (Syrian Defense Forces) at their core, and will occupy nearly a third of sovereign Syrian territory.   This region is not the traditional Kurdish homeland in Syria, but rather the area east of the Euphrates that the SDF was able to occupy with US assistance while the Syrian Arab Army and their allies were busy liberating the rest of Syrian including the more densely populated regions in the west, reintegrating neighborhoods, towns and villages one by one, demining and removing dangerous remnants of the war while providing whatever services and resources they could to local civilians.

According to a report in Bloomberg,  US Secretary of State Tillerson said that the US is not into ‘nation building’ but they will assist with rebuilding Syria AFTER Assad is gone.   In any case, Syrians will wait a long time for any constructive US aid.  So far, the US has done little or nothing to assist with recovering Mosul or Raqqa, not even demining, and certainly nothing that would encourage the return of the civilian population.

The Kurdish forces, originally allied with the Syrian Government, were independent enough to operate on their own with government provision of arms and other resources when they were adopted and offered an independent state by the United States.   The YPG fighting forces emerged from a small sliver of land on the Turkish border  inhabited by several ancient Christian sects, Arabs and Turkomen, indigenous Kurds and Kurdish immigrants who have been arriving in waves throughout the 20th century, escaping pogroms targeting Kurds in Turkey.   The recent immigrants from the 1980s, affiliated with the PKK, a Kurdish resistance organization in Turkey, form the nucleus of the YPG.   Since  the Syrian war began they have been increasingly dominating the other residents of their region, and they now they have spread well beyond it to occupy Raqqa and other cities in a largely Arab region.

US Proxies on the Move

Today the US backed SDF  centers around the Kurdish YPG, but also includes local tribal leaders who want to keep control of their own territories and ISIS members rescued from previous war zones by the US for future use.   According to an article on the World Socialist Organization website, the US has about 2,000 forces in Syria though I have heard estimates as high as 5,000.  They currently claim  to have 230 men in training.   US actions in Syria are spreading chaos and risking a wider regional war – or worse. According to the WSW:

[Turkish President] Erdogan condemned US support for the YPG, declaring on the weekend: “The US sent 4,900 trucks of weapons in Syria. We know this. This is not what allies do.” At a rally yesterday he reiterated his determination to “vanquish” the Kurdish militia. “We have finished our preparations,” he said. “The operation can start any time.” Erdogan accused the US of “creating a terror army on our border,” adding: “What we have to do is nip this terror army in the bud.”

The Syrian government denounced the planned pro-US border force as a “blatant assault” on the country’s sovereignty. The state-run news agency, SANA, cited a foreign ministry spokesperson as insisting that the army was determined to thwart the US “conspiracy, end the presence of the US, its agents and tools in Syria, establish full control over the entire Syria territory and preserve the country’s sovereignty.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday accused the US of seeking to split up Syria, saying it “does not want to keep Syria as a state in its current borders.” Washington was helping “the Syrian Democratic Forces to set up some border security zones.”

An investigation by a couple of Russian journalists has been published on Sputnik reports that the US has a training camp for jihadists near al Tanf, a primary border crossing between Syria and Iraq.   They claim that there are as many as 1,500 fighters there including SDF, New Syrian Army (perhaps represented by the Free Syria Army leaders in Washington last week) and over 200 ISIS fighters.    These men are on the payroll.   Another 5,000 potential fighters reside in nearby Rukban refugee camp which is cut off from all outside access including the United Nations and other NGOS.   Syrian and Russian forces are bombed if they approach the area.   Civilians in Rukban and the US controlled territories are in a desperate situation.   They are lacking the basic necessities while members of criminal gangs control the wells and sell water at inflated prices.    Restless fighters rob  local homes and attack trucks passing on the highway.

It must be noted that the United States has invested not a penny in rebuilding any part of Syria.  Secretary of State Tillerson has said that we will assist rebuilding AFTER Assad has left.     Since this is unlikely to occur, this responsibility will not fall on them in the foreseeable future.    The Arab population of Raqqa has been driven from the city to local refugee camps, and some into the government controlled areas of Syria.  Meanwhile, Syrians living in territories under the control of US forces and US proxies remain in the rubble of the war just as Palestinians in Gaza live in the rubble of the communities that Israel has destroyed.

Fox News has reported that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) members have been in Washington this week meeting with US officials. These are the same ‘moderates’ who have consistently fought side by side with ISIS and al Qaeda from the beginning of the war, and who could not be separated from those organizations to create functioning deconfliction zones.   The article says these FSA leaders claim to have 60,000 fighters.  This is absurd given that they didn’t have that many fighters before they lost the war, and according the investigative report below, they had only a couple of checkpoints in the remaining center of Syrian Opposition, which is controlled by al Qaeda (under various names) and an extremist group called Ahrar al Sham.

One of these FSA leaders in Washington is quoted as saying “Iran and Assad contributed to the creation of Al Qaeda and other extremist groups,” another absurdity since we know that the United States created Al Qaeda in the 80s to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, while Turkey, Qatar, Saudia Arabia and their US backers are responsible for transporting these foreign fighters into Syria as well as training the FSA forces. Today, Syria is terrorized by fighters from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Tunisia, and Iraq, Uighers from China, Chechens from Russia, rebellious youth from France, Germany, UK, USA and other western countries, and around the globe.  In fact, it’s big news when somebody takes out one of our own.

Syria for Syrians

The Syrian Government, after recovering Deir Ezzor, long under siege by ISIS, and clearing the Baghdad Damascus road across the border with Iraq, has turned it’s attention to Idlib province.    A strategy of restoring control to urban areas, towns and villages through reconciliation programs has been effective in freeing up the army to move from one area to another, and it has saved many lives.   Although the western media has focused on the use of siege to induce surrender in reconciliation areas, the program is more robust than that.

Areas under the control of Al Qaeda or criminal gangs affiliated with one militant organization or another are not well provisioned even in the best cases because the fighters keep the majority of supplies for themselves and govern through force.   The reconciliation programs attempt to create back channels to deliver resources to the civilian population.  By empowering the civilian population they can convince them to stand against the occupying forces.   The final resolution is negotiated for an end where as many civilians as possible will be protected; where Syrian citizens fighting against the government are given an opportunity to restore their citizenship.  Concessions are made. In some areas, sharia courts continue under the governance of local fundamentalists.   Those who might otherwise fight to the death are given an opportunity to leave.

Idlib

Those who chose to leave are allowed a personal firearm and bused with the families to Idlib province on the Turkish border.       Today, as the Syrian state moves to liberate Idlib,  the situation there is dire.   The province is completely under the control of al Qaeda forces (under various names) and flooded with foreign fighters.  The following is a video produced about a year ago by Jenan Mousa, a roving reporter for Al Aan TV, a pan Arab TV station in out of Dubai.

The reconciliation program will work in Idlib, and has been ongoing for some time. It is clear the civilians there have many unmet needs. The recent change of face implemented by al Nusra/Hayit Tahir al Sham seems superficial and clearly an initiative to influence western backers and not for the benefit of the locals.   The one difference from other reconciliation plans is that there will be no buses to an Al Qaeda haven.   Instead, extremists and mercenaries with families and those who do not want to die in Syria will be driven back across the Turkish border to their training camps and refuges where President Erdogan and the Turkish people will have to deal with the consequences of his folly  just as the people of Pakistan continue to deal with the consequences of Zia al Haq’s collaboration with US plans to build an army of fanatics to fight the soviets in Afghanistan.

Erdogan’s Dilemma

At the moment, Turkish President Erdogan is far more concerned about the Kurdish forces being trained by the US to occupy land in Syria that he once coveted for Turkish occupation.   He is quite beside himself over the US empowerment of Kurdish militias affiliated with the Turkish PKK in Syria.  The Turkish army has begun an attack on the largely Kurdish city of Afrin in northern Syria, and Erdogan has stated that once he has ‘liberated’ Afrin (from the US backed Kurdish forces) he will move on to occupy Manbj, another city in the original Kurdish region of Syria.       The YPG Kurds of the US backed SDF  are followers of a Abdullah Ocalan, a Turkish dissident currently residing in a high security Turkish prison.   The Turkish state has been persecuting the Kurdish people and fighting Kurdish rebellions within its borders since it’s inception.  At that time, an angry and disappointed Kurdish population found themselves denied a promised state in an area (Turkey) where they represented nearly a third of the population, unlike Syria, where Kurds, including recent immigrants, represent less that a tenth of the population.

Increasingly at odds with the US government, and engaged through Russian diplomacy in a tenuous detente with his erstwhile victims in Syria, Turkish President Erdogan is an easy target.  Turkey is the largest military power in the region, with a history of western alliances, and as the war has wound down he has been increasingly isolated and under threat.   They lost and he is holding the bag.  This is not to say that his own bad choices didn’t bring him to this place, but it certainly makes him a dangerous force in the Syrian conflict.   Denied the fruits of his support for the international attack on Syria, he is also faced with the reinforcement of an archetypal enemy of the Turkish state.   His reaction to the latter problem may well give him at least some of the rewards that providing services for the anti-Syrian forces did not.

US officials should have seen this coming.  Well, of course, they did see it coming.  What we are seeing here is politically a Turkish civil war being played out on Syrian territory at the expense of the Syrian people.   Two Turkish forces are fighting for control of northern Syria, one enabled by US backing.  If you look at US objectives, this situation is surely advantageous.   Even as the Syrian forces and their allies move in to clear out the last holdout of Al Qaeda and the other Turkish proxies, Turkey is moving in to occupy Syrian towns and villages along the border in areas where the US can’t hold them.

How convenient is that for US objectives, which include the breakup and destruction of the Syrian state.  In his rage and frustration, Erdogan continues or support the needs of US military strategists who do not really have the forces to hold the large  swathe of Syria they have announced their intention to occupy.   Yesterday, Tillerson again softened his line.   But he well knows that at this point, it doesn’t matter what he says.  He is blowing wind, talking to the press and the people of the United States.   There has been no significant diplomatic engagement with Turkey since Trump came in to office.   Meanwhile, the diplomatic initiative of the Russians has been disrupted and a loose cannon is pivoting out of control on the northern border of Syria.

US Policy in Syria

The US policy of destruction and devastation is clear in Syria as in Libya and Iraq, Afghanistan and even Yugoslavia.   They really only need enough land to put their regional military bases.    Destruction jand chaos are the goal.   Destruction by ISIS, by Al Qaeda/Al Nusra/…/Hayat Tahir,  by Turkey, by the Kurds, by the French and British, by our own forces, it really doesn’t matter.    It’s all the same to US strategists.   Blaming Russia, blaming Muslims, blaming the Turks blaming Iran, blaming Assad – its a ll a pretext for the destruction of an ancient land and culture, of a society that is at the root of our own culture.   This policy has not changed one iota since the beginning of the war fueled  by Libyan fighters with US weapons in the south and Turkish trained proxies armed and funded by the Saudi Arabia and Qatar in in the north.

We need to stand up and set aside our confusion NOW.   The US role and that of the Kurdish militias in Syria has no upside.   It is a bold initiative to create chaos and destruction in Syria and to continue the war that was started by the United States and its allies to crush the independent sovereign Republic of Syria.

Hands Off Syria!  Hands off the Middle East! 

Stand up today against the vicious policy of destruction adopted by the US government!

Although the US presence in Syria is illegal, the US is talking about putting more troops there, presumably to fire up a war that the Russians and the Syrians have almost succeeded in extinguishing. Erdoğan has accused the US of planning to form 'terror army' in Syria: 'Our mission is to strangle it before it’s even born’, said the Turkish president of 30,000-strong force aimed at dividing and conquering Syria by promoting a Kurdish separist movement. In this edition of The Debate, Press TV has conducted an interview with Hafsa Kara-Mustapha, a journalist and political commentator from London, and Wafik Moustafa, the chairman of Conservative Arab Network, from London, to discuss the United States' plans to station 30,000 militants on the Syrian borders with Turkey and Iraq. This videoed debate was first published on Iranian Press tv on Tue Jan 16, 2018 at http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/01/16/549062/Washingtons-deployment-plan-in-Syria

If the embedding function below does not show, click here to watch the program on press tv directly.

Propaganda is how they got people to go along with the so called 'revolution' in the first place.

What if armed men came to town and the cable TV news stations broadcast that there is a revolution and if you want a place in the new society you have to join now? What if you were poor and living in the ghetto when the announcement arrived and they told you that this was your chance to participate in the government and to become empowered in society? Then, armed checkpoints were set up everywhere, some operated by local people who might be armed and trigger happy, but at least they recognize you; others by strangers who are part of the national army, and they aren't in a good mood. Both sides believe that some of their members have been killed by the other for no good reason and they are angry. You weren't at the protests so you don't really know what happened. You've seen some very polarized 'news' on TV. and a call to battle. What do you do now?

[In North America]I have been introduced to a refugee family from Daraa. They are a young couple with three children between four and eight years old. They are having a hard time here for a number of reasons. They weren't really ready to be in a context with no family support. Mohammed, the husband, is deaf and, so far as I can tell, none of their relatives were killed. Wishan said that religious extremists are haram. She likes to listen to recordings of a man chanting the Quran, but she doesn't wear a hijab. She said that is a small thing in the eyes of Allah. I am pretty sure they were not directly involved in the war or the events that lead to the outbreak in 2011. She complained that her brother had been hassled at checkpoints, but he is alive and well in Europe somewhere at present. Most of the family is still in Daraa.

Wishan showed me photos of her destroyed home in a block of bombed out houses. But she also showed me a photo of the bruised and bloated corpse of an adolescent boy with what looked to be a 22 caliber bullet wound in the area of his heart. Her English isn't good but I think she was trying to tell me that was one of the boys who wrote anti-Assad graffiti and were abused by the government at the beginning of the war. The first thing I thought when I saw the picture is that I'm sure lots of boys have died in this war but there is no evidence in a naked corpse of who shot him, when, where, or why. I also thought that there is a whole world of Internet propaganda out there targeting Syrian civilians in the Arabic language news from the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia.

Its funny how stories spiral out in different directions. The government fired the governor responsible and sent a delegation to chill things out. According to our sources, they didn't come up with any hard information, which makes sense because if people had already got their kids back they might not want to risk any more attention to them. A year ago, Al Jazeera ran an article that focuses on one of the boys supposedly abducted and tortured by the government in Daraa. It was called "The boy who started the Syrian revolution". The article didn't specify the fate of any other boys involved though they noted that several were originally arrested, like maybe three or four. It seems to imply that they were released. This boy, however, is identified as currently a member of the Free Syrian Army and shown sitting at a low table before a laptop computer. An image tailored to liberal western tastes.

But this civilian refugee from the area is still carrying around a horrific photo of a boy she believes to be one of the boys who were tortured and killed by the Syrian government at the beginning of the war. This event has reduced her life to chaos. The eight year old said that he wants to go to Syria and fight against Assad when he grows up. When I told him the war is pretty much over, he was incredulous. I suggested he can go and help rebuild.

It's all very sad. Every war leaves the seeds of another war. And the propaganda is more toxic to those directly affected by the war in every way.

I am still working with Wishan and her family. Mohammed is a carpenter from a relatively well off family. They have gone from being respected members of a community to being beggars here. I am going to give some carpenter work to Mohammed and see if he can get a start building and selling furniture here. I'm thinking that over time we can become friends. Right now they are frightened and rather desperate but hopefully they can become more self sufficient.

I asked about Daraa today and Wishan said that things are calm there but very expensive to live. It is one of the cities where a reconciliation program has been negotiated by the government. There are local people controlling some basic services and running a Sharia court while the government controls the outside parameters and provides power, clean water, salaries for government employees and whatever aid they can. Of course there is little money for rebuilding at this point and Daraa was kind of a working class city to begin with.

The family of a child with appendicitis is in Daraa where they had to pay $500 for his surgery. Apparently medical services there are scarce and costly. He received his surgery in time to survive but he is now partly paralyzed. I don't know if it is from the toxins that must have been released into his abdomen when his appendix ruptured or something went wrong in the surgery. Perhaps the paralysis will improve with time. We can only hope.

This week, congress failed to renew the CHIPS program that has for provided health care for 2 generations of children in families living below the poverty level. They were busy passing a monstrous military budget and a tax bill that provides 'relief' for corporate behemoths already on the government dole. Meanwhile Wishan and Mohammed's children remain at risk due to lack of medical care here in the land of plenty. I think they kind of understand this but they are too desperate to consider it. There is no turning back for them.

War is terrible thing regardless of which side you are on. The physical war kills people and destroys resources while the propaganda war is waged to divide people against their neighbors and fuel hatreds. Refugees come to the United States, or Europe, or to Turkey, all countries who have fed the war with weapons and propaganda, countries that have profited, or at least hoped to profit, from the war that has beggared a relatively stable nation and disrupted an ancient culture built on religious and ethnic diversity. Unfortunately, refugees who come to the US from US engineered war zones face continued poverty, isolation and confusion.

About Judith Bello: Judith is a member of Administrative Committee at United National Antiwar Coalition, the Middle East Task Force at Fellowship of Reconciliation and Webmaster at Upstate Coaltion to Ground the Drones and End the Wars. She lives in New York and has visited Syria on anti-war projects.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in Sochi on 21st November 2017. The last time Assad visited Russia was at the beginning of the Russian campaign in Syria in 2015. According to the Syrian president, in two years of the Russian campaign the successes achieved have been evident and many residents of the country were able to return to their homes. He noted that thanks to Russia, Syria was saved as a state. (Text by Inessa S.)

The Chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, Valeri Gerasimov, said conditions have been created for the return of refugees to Syria, during the trilateral meeting with his Turkish and Iranian counterparts in Sochi. "The main thing is that the sovereignty, the territorial integrity of the country has been preserved, the civil war was stopped, conditions were created for the restoration of peaceful life and refugees' return," said Gerasimov.

President Putin similarly told his Czech counterpart, Milos Zeman, that "over 98% of the territory of Syria is under the control of Syrian government troops, during their meeting in Sochi. Zeman congratulated Russia for its role in the outcome in Syria, saying: "you have won in Syria, because he [Assad] now controls almost the entire Syrian territory."

The Russian military campaign in Syria began in late 2015, by invitation of the Syrian government. Meanwhile, the Western coalition was carrying out military activity there almost two whole years beforehand, illegally. Under the guise of fighting ISIS, they were simultaneously targeting Assad’s government forces, as well as letting ISIS spread like wildfire.

President Assad and President Putin met on 21st of November to celebrate the defeat of Daesh in Syria, but we hear little of this in the western media, which is distracting people with Hollywood scandals. In this brilliantly documented episode of The Debate, Iranian Press TV has conducted an interview with Janice Kortkamp, a journalist from Washington, and Jonathan Fryer, a London-based writer and lecturer, to discuss "the end of Daesh" terrorist group in Syria and Iraq.

The antagonism towards Russia by U.S. media and foreign policy elites goes far beyond allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. elections. Paul Jay of The Real News interviews
Larry Wilkerson, retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson was the 2009 recipient of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. This hour-long interview goes much further and wider than most on this issue. You won't agree with every idea expressed here, but you will be stimulated by many of them, because Wilkerson is intelligent, learned, and unfettered. I have not previously seen a debate cover so much history and geography. They look at the Middle East, Syria, of course, and at petro-politics and climate change. Russia's motives, attitudes. Bill Clinton's incursion into Georgia. Nazis in Ukraine and US encouragement of them. They look at the rise of China and the one belt road. At the reasons for conflict within Saudi Arabia. And they worry about the United States and MSN beating the war drums for Iran. At the end Wilkerson says what strategic advice he would give Trump, if he had the opportunity. Part of that advice is that America has too many enemies and how Trump might reduce the amount. And, finally, how the US, which is trillions of dollrs in debt, with about 20% of the productivity it had in its heyday, might go about partly sharing with and partly relinquising power to China.

In Syrian Girl's Facebook Ban Linked to Russia-gate Twitter Purge? - an Exclusive Interview (30/9/17) | Russia Insider, Charles Bausman reported that Facebook had blocked SyrianGirl's account after she had criticised Kurds.

Syrian Girl, the Australian activist, Youtuber, and social media powerhouse, tweeted on Thursday evening (EST) that her Facebook account has been blocked for her exposure of fraud during the Kurdistan referendum. She had 75,000 followers.

She also has 70,000 followers on Twitter, and 75,000 subscribers to her excellent Youtube channel.

She gave Russia Insider (RI) an exclusive interview on Friday, explaining that Facebook acted without warning, (which is unusual - usually they give people a chance to correct whatever is upsetting the censors), and so far have not responded to emails.

She speculated that perhaps her page had been caught up in the anti-Russian Twitter / Facebook purge currently unfolding. (Twitter removed 200 Russian accounts that targeted Facebook during election - USA Today)

…

This of course follows the evidence-free beat-up that alleged Russian interference somehow caused American voters to elect Russia's allegedly favourite candidate Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton the chosen favourite of the American corporate elite, including Zuckerberg himself.

As revealed by Julian Assange of Wikileaks, "Zuckerberg Colluded with Hillary Clinton Campaign":

Mark Zuckerberg's claims this week that Facebook was fair to Donald Trump during the 2016 election just took another serious blow.

The Facebook founder and CEO personally met with Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta a year before the 2016 election, according to an email released by Wikileaks.

The news comes a day after Wikileaks' Julian Assange dropped a bomb onto the heads of Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, alleging they colluded with Hillary Clinton's 2016 election campaign.

Assange Tweeted Thursday, linking the emails sent back and forth between John Podesta and Sandberg which reveal Sandberg wanted Clinton to win "badly." Assange said the women met privately numerous times during Clinton's campaign.

Assange included one email from Sandberg to Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager, which is particularly damaging in which the Facebook executive pledged to help elect Clinton.

What can we do about it?

This outrageous attempt at thought control and censoring of political information by Zuckerberg, as well as Google, YouTube and Twitter, shows that in a true democracy, the news media upon which we all depend, must be taken out of the hands of the corporate owners and placed in the hands of the people.

Alternatively, rival newsmedia and social media that are run transparently, and with a charter to promote a free contest of ideas, should be established.

This could easily be done with public funds and with popular support within purportedly democratic countries like Australia, France, Germany and the UK. Should this not occur, then alternatives could be set up. One such alternative is the community-owned minds.com.

Another alternative is for sovereign countries like Russia and Iran, which are independent of United States' hegemony, set up their own alternatives to Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. If they were also run transparently and with a charter to promote a free contest of ideas, they would very quickly draw away much of the current audiences of Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Such an initiative would surely cost those countries only a fraction of what they are currently obliged to spend on defence.

In fact, Russia has already set up Yandex an alternative to Google. Hopfeully, Yandex will soon be expanded to include more in English. Hopefully, also, other alternatives to Google, Facebook, and Twitter will soon be established.

Over time their need for defence expenditure would be greatly reduced as more and more people in Western countries are able to see through the lies of the corporate newsmedia. We could well see the end of war altogether.

See also: "Russia Threatens to Ban Facebook" (2/10/17) | Russia Insider by Tyler Durden – Russia demands data of Russian citizens be kept on servers physically located in Russia, "The push to 'Fight Foreign Propaganda' is the same as government book burning" (28/9/17) | Medium by Caitlin Johnstone.

There had been a general public opinion poll conducted by independent sociologists and political scientists from all around the world in war-torn Syria. The citizens of the state shared their views on the main events and situation now taking place in the country, their attitude towards other countries acting actively on the fate of the country and also called the main problems of the state.
Article first published at https://www.globalresearch.ca/first-opinion-poll-held-in-war-torn-syria-showed-general-feeling/5611409

This analysis led to the identification of the population of Syria’s relationship to the conflict with the participation of various parties, as well as to find out at last where the truth that the media usually publish lies and how big is the falsehood.

It is noticed that the survey was conducted in all the Syrian provinces including those under pressure of war.

According to preliminary data, 97% of respondents believe that the country is currently suffering from the crisis caused by corruption, internal weakness of the state and the collusion of other countries against Syria, consequences of which fuel and enhance a humanitarian catastrophe in the entire Middle East.

An interesting fact is that more than 70 percent of the voters support the policy of the head of state, do not believe in the inhumanity of Syrian President Bashar Assad and called the U.S. the main conspirator. The outskirts of Damascus were characterized by only 6 phrases: no housing, no work, monstrously high prices, a lot of street children, poverty, uncontrolled and mindless violence by the militants captured the villages. The residents of the main largest cities in Syria also complained about the destroyed infrastructure of the region, the lack of electricity and water, as well as non-working schools.

The opinion-poll experts pointed out that the overwhelming number of respondents cited themselves patriots of the country. The Syrians stressed that they would not have left their country, even if they had such an opportunity.

People are exhausted by the war, so often they expressed the desire to live in a strong state with functioning public institutions.

Sophie Mangal is a special investigative correspondent and co-editor at Inside Syria Media Center where this article was originally published.

An effective declaration of war on Russia in Syria by the US over the last two weeks has gone unnoticed in Western media. How long can they keep this deception going?

An American tradition

“Now to Syria” – says the presenter of “AM”, as if it were the most natural and obvious subject to report on, despite the stunning silence of the previous two weeks.

Could it be that we are about to hear an update on the momentous developments across the country, which only went unreported because of the crisis over North Korea and various natural and man-made disasters around the planet?

Perhaps I really thought so for a moment, reasoning that our blinkered media were going to have to find a way to tell us sooner or later that the US just effectively declared war on Russia. No-one who read the statements from the Russian Ministry of Defence could doubt the seriousness of the situation, following the “Joint” terrorist operation in Idlib that nearly took 30 Russian Military Police hostage. The Ministry had been unusually blunt and uncompromising, directly accusing the US of collaboration with Al Qaeda/Nusra, apparently in a desperate attempt to disrupt the Russian-Syrian advance across the Euphrates in Deir al Zour.

With each day that passed since the September 19th operation, and the subsequent dramatic destruction of the terrorist army and its extensive military hardware, I grew more incredulous at the media silence, seeing not one report on radio or TV or print media in Australia – in common apparently with other Western countries. Even the dramatic shots of cruise missiles emerging from Russian subs in the Mediterranean failed to grab the attention of this media machine.

Yet this was the “news from Syria” according to Australia’s government broadcaster the ABC, and broadcast four days after the Idlib attack:

SABRA LANE: “In Syria the race to control the oil-rich east of the country is gathering pace, and the risk of conflict between Russia and the US along with it.

The eastern province of Deir al Zour is the largest remaining stronghold of the Islamic State group and US backed militias are in competition with the Syrian government to lay claim to the turf. It’s a competition which has brought them within just a few kilometres of each other.”

This “TURF” is actually part of Syria, and can’t be “claimed” or “controlled” by anyone other than Syria’s legitimately elected representatives, the Syrian government. Nor can the oil beneath the desert “turf” be removed and sold without the cooperation and approval of the Syrian people to whom it belongs. Such a detail should hardly need explaining.

But expanding on the “may the best force win” theme, the ABC’s Middle East “correspondent” Matt Brown continued:

“In that section near the Iraqi border still held by IS, there’s plenty of Oil, making it a valuable prize for whoever gets there first, and the commander of the SDF in Deir al Zour province, Ahmed Abu Ghawla, has told the ABC he intends to do just that with the help of US airpower”-

(Abu Ghawla, in Arabic) - “We have an agreement with the international coalition to liberate territories from the Terrorists” he says, - “If any force bombs our SDF positions the agreement is that the Coalition will defend us – they’ll retaliate with air-power, and we’ll fight back on the ground.”

Brown’s presentation of the “Deir al Zour Military Council” and its Sunni Arab commander would have sounded fair enough to the ordinarily ignorant ABC listener, who would assume the “Syrian Democratic Forces” are a legitimate force who deserve a reward for driving IS out of their country. Yet the title is an anachronism; not only is the SDF almost entirely Kurdish, but it has now moved into territories where Kurds were a minority.

Moon of Alabama had this to say on Ahmed Abu Ghawla:

“The local criminal Ahmad Abu Khawla, who had earlier fought for ISIS, was suddenly installed as commander of a newly invented "Deir Ezzor Military Council", set up under U.S. special force control.”

This unhealthy collaboration was confirmed following Russian satellite photos of US-SDF vehicles in IS occupied areas north east of Deir al Zour. A week has now gone by since Matt Brown’s report with no further mention of Syria despite another even more alarming event - the targeted assassination of Russian General Asapov in Deir al Zour.

Moon of Alabama again:

“Last night a Russian three-star general and two colonels were killed in a mortar attack while they visited a Syrian army headquarters in Deir Ezzor:

“Lieutenant-General Valery Asapov, of the Russian armed forces, has been killed after coming under shelling from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants near Deir ez-Zor”, the Russian Defense Ministry has announced.

In its statement, the ministry said that Asapov was at a command outpost manned by Syrian troops, assisting commanders in the liberation of the city of Deir ez-Zor.

Even had his death been a “random” event it should have merited some media attention, but the reality was far more serious, as explained by Moon of Alabama – it was undeniably a specifically targeted operation for which only US coalition special forces could have been responsible. (In the context of this crime and the ABC’s reports it must also be remembered that Australia is an integral part of the US coalition, both in aiding and abetting the US airstrikes and in carrying out strikes of its own.)

Lieutenant General Asapov was overseeing the crucially important bridging of the Euphrates, which the US and its local militias sought unsuccessfully to prevent. Betraying its long-term malicious intent in Eastern Syria, US coalition planes had bombed four bridges over the Euphrates exactly a year ago, and just two weeks after their lethal attack on the SAA base protecting Deir al Zour airport.

That attack, and Russia’s conclusions on the obvious collaboration between US forces and IS, combine with these events a year later to form extraordinary bookends in the US war against Syria and her allies. And it is a year distinguished by the even more incredible maintenance of a false narrative right across the Western media that has permanently discredited so many of those once-respected organisations.

The problem of maintaining this false narrative must be increasingly difficult, and necessitate the creation of new false stories or the resuscitation of old ones, as happened with the latest “news from Syria”. A video report on Al Jazeera was typical in its presentation of this story – of “civilian deaths in Idlib from Russian and Syrian bombing”- only with a nice twist.

For Russia and Syria the gloves are clearly now off, both in Deir al Zour and in the “de-confliction zone” around Idlib, following the joint US-Al Qaeda operations in both areas. The scale and success of their attacks on some of the most notorious centres of White Helmets-Al Nusra operations such as Khan Shaikoun and Urm al Kubra has evidently disabled the insurgents’ media operations, forcing Al Jazeera to use footage from a week earlier. Clearly marked “September 19”, this video actually showed insurgents under attack following their offensive against Russia’s military police, and not – as they stated – the “Russian bombing of civilians in schools and hospitals”.

This dichotomy between “the two sides” (which are fairly clearly delineated now I think) appears to be terminal. For those in the West – who far outnumber us in terms of control over Global presence and influence – to accept and cooperate with Russia and her allies, simply requires too great a shift in thinking.

Article first published on Russia Insider at http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/foiling-us-plans-steal-syrias-oil/ri21100?ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=ea0b0a445e&mc_eid=affffcca81 on September 30, 2017.

"The so-called “International Coalition” led by the US, which was created three years ago to allegedly fight terrorists groups such as ISIL, has killed much more innocent Syrians, mostly women and children, than terrorists and has destroyed vital infrastructure that the Syrians have worked for years to build. It has also used phosphorus bombs and other internationally-prohibited weapons before the eyes of the whole world. We cannot understand the silence of the international community in the face of these crimes. The international community has not condemned or sought to stop these crimes, even though the Syrian government has made a number of appeals to the Security Council to assume its main responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. The Syrian government has urged the Council to implement its own resolutions on counter-terrorism, particular resolution 2253, and prevent the Coalition from committing more crimes against the citizens of my country." (Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister Walid al-Moallem)

New York, SANA – Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister Walid al-Moallem delivered a speech at the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly, in which he affirmed that Syria is marching steadily towards the goal of rooting out terrorism, and that any solution in Syria must respect Syria’s non-negotiable principles, which include the territorial unity of Syria and its people, and the rejection of any external interference.

Minister al-Moallem affirmed that Syria is determined to scale up reconciliation efforts, and that it is committed to the memorandum on de-escalation zones, the establishment of which is a temporary arrangement, adding that the Syrian government reaffirms its commitment to the Geneva process.

Following is the full text of the speech:

President of the seventy-second session of the United Nations General Assembly, I would like to congratulate you on your election as President of the current session of the General Assembly and wish you all the success. I would also like to thank your predecessor for his important role at the helm of the General Assembly during the previous session. I congratulate Mr. Antonio Guterres on his appointment as Secretary-General of the United Nations and wish him the best in carrying out his responsibilities in service of the principles and purposes of the UN Charter.

Ladies and gentlemen, as we meet again, our world is facing mounting challenges and dangers on a daily basis, and a persistent standoff between two sets of forces: forces that seek to control and dominate nations and their riches, by turning back the clock, re-establishing a unipolar world order, fueling chaos and war, and violating international and humanitarian laws: and opposite forces that work tirelessly to create a more balanced, secure, and just world, one that respects the sovereignty of the states and the right of peoples to exercise self-determination and build their own future.

As we meet again, many people continue to pay dearly and sacrifice their lives, security, stability and livelihood, as a result of the policies of certain countries. Those countries falsely believe that they could use terrorism as a tool to satisfy their greed and further their ill-conceived agendas, which do not serve the interests of any people, not even their own. No people has suffered at the hands of terrorism more than the Syrian people, who, for six years now, has fought against terrorists pouring from all over the world, supported by parties from the region and beyond.

For more than six years, Syrians have endured the worst and have made great sacrifices to defend their country in the face of a terrorist war of unprecedented brutality, which has spared no one and no-thing, targeting innocent people, services, the infrastructure and cultural heritage. Despite it all, Syria is determined, more than ever, to eradicate terrorism from every part of the country, without exception, thanks to the sacrifices of our army and the steadfastness of our people.

Mr. President, since the beginning of the war, our state policy has followed two main tracks: combating terrorism, and working hard towards a political solution that stems the bloodshed and restores stability.

On the counter-terrorism, the Syrian Arab Army along with its supporting forces and allies are making daily achievements, clearing out territories and uprooting terrorists. However, the threat of this plague persists, claiming the lives of the Syrians on a daily basis, and depleting the country’s resources. We must all understand that terrorism and underlying Takfirist extremist ideology will continue to spread like a tumor throughout the world and haunt all of our people unless every one of us demonstrates a genuine will to cooperate to confront it together. Any such endeavor must respect the sovereignty and of states and the interests of the people, and must let go of the illusion that terrorism can be used as a tool for political gains and narrow interests.

On the political front, the Syrian government has spared no effort since the early months of the crisis to stop the bloodshed. The success of local reconciliations would not have been possible without the leadership’s political support and the numerous amnesty decrees issued by President Bashar al-Assad, which allowed everyone who had taken up arms to lay them down and resume their normal life.

These successful reconciliations have allowed tens of thousands of IDPs and refugees to go back home and helped improve the living conditions of a great number of Syrians who had fallen victim to terrorist crimes. Syria is determined to scale up reconciliation efforts, whenever possible, because it is the best means to alleviate the suffering of Syrians and restore stability and normalcy.

Ladies and gentlemen, since day one, the Syrian government has positively considered all initiatives to put an end to the war. However, these initiatives eventually failed after states that supported and fuelled terrorism decided to persist in their aggressive policies against Syria and its people.

As for the Astana and Geneva tracks, the Syrian government has shown seriousness and commitment and has done its best to provide the necessary conditions for these efforts to succeed and achieve their goals.

We are encouraged by the Astana process and the resulting “de-escalation zones” and hope that it will help us reach and actual cessation of hostilities and separate terrorist groups. Such as ISIL, Al-Nusra and others, from those groups that have agreed to join the Astana process. This will be the real test of how committed and serious these groups and their Turkish sponsors are. So far, Turkey under Erdogan has persisted in its aggressive policies against the Syrian people and continued to labor under the illusion that terrorism will help serve its subversive agendas in Syria and the countries of the region. Turkey’s position stands in stark contrast to the positive and constructive role played by Russia and Iran.

Notwithstanding its commitment to the memorandum on the ‘”de-escalation zones”, Syria reserves the right to respond to any violation by the other party. Syria also stresses that these zones are a temporary arrangement that must not violate the territorial unity of Syria.

The Syrian government reaffirms its commitment to the Geneva process and further progress on that track. This process has yet to bear fruit in the absence of a genuine national opposition that can be a partner in Syria’s future, and as countries with influence over the other party continue to block any meaningful progress.

Mr. President, it is truly unfortunate that these countries that block a solution in Syria are members of this international organization, including members of the Security Council.

The Syrian government has always insisted that any solution in Syria must respect Syria’s non-negotiable principles which are a red line for all Syrians. These include the complete rejection of terrorism, the territorial unity of Syria and its people, and the rejection of any external interference in political decisions regarding Syria’s future. Only Syrians have the right to make such decisions, whether now or in the future.

Ladies and gentlemen, for decades, Israel has continued its unscrupulous thuggish actions with full impunity.

This usurper entity has occupied Arab territories in Palestine and the Golan for more than seventy years and has committed horrific crimes against innocent civilians. Israel did not stop there. It has publicly interfered in the Syrian crisis since its early days. Israel has provided all forms of support to Takfirist terrorist gangs, including funds, weapons, material, and communication equipment. Israel has also bombed Syrian Army positions to serve terrorist agendas. Coordination between the two was at its best when terrorist groups decided to target Syrian air defense assets used to defend Syria against Israeli aggression. The unlimited Israeli support to terrorists in Syria did not come as a surprise. After all, the two share the same interests and goals. However, let me be clear. It is delusional to believe, even for a moment, that the crisis in Syria will take us for our inalienable right to recover the occupied Syrian Golan fully to the lines of June 4, 1967.

For more than six years, states and parties that were behind the war on Syria, have continued to peddle lies and falsely accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons, despite a confirmation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that Syria has fully eliminated its chemical program. This is enough proof that there is an ill-conceived intention to tarnish the real image of the Syrian government in the international public eye, and come up with new excuses to continue the aggression against Syria in favor of terrorists and their supporters. This was the case when the United States blatantly attacked the Shayrat airbase, claiming that it contained chemical weapons used in the alleged Khan Shaykhun attack. And as was the case after every accusation of this kind, we confirmed our readiness to receive and cooperate with UN investigation teams.

Ladies and gentlemen, certain countries have boasted about fighting terrorism in Syria and having the interests of Syrians at heart. They have established “coalitions” and held dozens of conferences under deceiving titles, such as “friends of the Syrian people”. It is quite ironic that those are the same countries that are shedding the blood of the Syrians by supporting terrorists, bombing innocent civilians, and destroying their livelihoods.

The so-called “International Coalition” led by the US, which was created three years ago to allegedly fight terrorists groups such as ISIL, has killed much more innocent Syrians, mostly women and children, than terrorists and has destroyed vital infrastructure that the Syrians have worked for years to build. It has also used phosphorus bombs and other internationally-prohibited weapons before the eyes of the whole world.

We cannot understand the silence of the international community in the face of these crimes. The international community has not condemned or sought to stop these crimes, even though the Syrian government has made a number of appeals to the Security Council to assume its main responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. The Syrian government has urged the Council to implement its own resolutions on counter-terrorism, particular resolution 2253, and prevent the Coalition from committing more crimes against the citizens of my country.

Ladies and gentlemen, while the coalition failed to make any meaningful progress against the terrorist group of ISIL, the Syrian Army, along with its allies and friends has been able to secure real and significant gains and drives out terrorists from large parts of the Syrian Desert. In what was considered a strategic achievement, the Army was recently able to break the siege imposed on the city of Deir Ezzor and its people by ISIL more than three years ago. This achievement will significantly improve the humanitarian situation in the city and contribute to fight against terrorism in general.

We have declared more than once that it is impossible to combat terrorism without coordination with the Syrian government. This is the only way to make real gains in the war on terrorism. Any presence of foreign troops on Syrian grounds, without the consent of the government is considered a form of occupation, a wanton aggression, and a flagrant violation of international laws and Charter of the United Nations.

Mr. President, the war that the most powerful countries and terrorist groups are waging against Syria is not only a military war. It has taken other forms, no less brutal or aggressive, to break the will of the Syrian people and punish them for their firm support of the Army in its efforts to defend Syria’s political independence and territorial unity. For this reason, those countries have imposed a suffocating economic blockade on Syria, in blatant violation of international law, to destroy the livelihoods of the Syrians and increase their suffering.

These unilateral coercive measures have been imposed on vital sectors, most notably healthcare services. Syria used to have an advanced healthcare system. Today, however, Syrians are denied access to many types of medicine, even those used to treat life threatening conditions, such as cancer. Such sanctions are a clear sign of the hypocrisy of certain countries that shed tears over Syrians while practicing a different form of terrorism.

The refugee problem is one of the consequences of terrorism. As Syria will need the efforts of every Syrian over the upcoming period, the Syrian government has made the return of Syrians to their homes a top priority. To this end, the Syrian government has embarked on a mission to liberate and secure the areas occupied by terrorists improve the basic living conditions of all Syrians.

Mr. President, given the United Nations’ failure to uphold its own Charter and the principles of the international law, we must all consider reforming this international organization to be able to effectively play its role and to defend the legitimate rights against the law of the jungle that some are trying to impose.

Our nations yearn for a safer and more secure, stable and prosperous world. Such a world will remain a fantast as long as certain countries believe that they can go around, spreading chaos, creating troubles and imposing their will with full impunity.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my country, along with its steadfast people and its brave army, supported by our loyal allies, is marching steadily towards the goal of rooting out terrorism. The liberation of Aleppo and Palmyra, the lifting of the siege of Deir Ezzor and the eradication of terrorism from many parts of Syria prove that victory is now within reach.

I am confident that, when this unjust war on Syria is over, the Syrian army will go down in history as the Army that heroically defeated, along with its supporting forces and its allies, the terrorists that came to Syria from many countries and received large support from the most powerful countries of the world, including arms, funding, training, access and political cover.
Those terrorists have tried and failed to impose their backward ideology on a powerful nation that has been for decades a cradle of civilization.

The annals of history will recall for generations to come that achievements of the Syrian people and steadfastness in the face of a barbaric terrorist campaign and unjust measures, which have compounded their suffering and deprived them of their basic needs. The Syrian people have stood their ground, against all odds, because they knew that this was a war that sought to eliminate their country, and with it, their own existence. They are an example to follow by any people who might face, now or in the future, similar attempts to break their will and deny them their freedom and sovereignty.

Thank you Mr. President.

How many of us can truly say we have witnessed such exhilirating history in the making? Footage of the Syrian Arab Army and their allies entering the city of Deir Ezzor has just been released. Yet another one of the brutal and punishing sieges maintained by ISIS and assorted US coalition armed and funded extremist forces has had its back broken by the SAA and the stubborn resistance of the Syrian people. We are witnessing the end of our existing global order, the victory of Truth over Force and asymmetric power and the birth of a new geopolitical paradigm.
Our endless gratitude should be extended to the brave people of Syria for the gift they have given to Humanity – the proof that resistance will prevail despite all the odds against them. The following video was posted by independent Aleppo MP, Fares Shehabi, on Facebook. Watch (Article first published on 5 September 2017 at 21st Century Wire.)

The following report is from AlMasdarNews:

“Within minutes of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) lifting the siege on Deir Ezzor city, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad contacted three top Syrian commanders, all of whom played a major role in the victory, via phone.

According to reports, the Syrian president spoke with Rafiq Shahada (who is Deir Ezzor’s Chief of Security), Hasan Muhammad (commander of the 17th Reserve Division, whose men were the first to reach Syrian forces in Deir Ezzor) and Isaam Zahreddine (the operational commander of all forces in Deir Ezzor).

In the phone conversation, President al-Assad congratulated the three commanders for the historic victory which they have now achieved.

Whilst commanders Rafiq Shahada and Isaam Zahreddine played-out the role of protecting Deir Ezzor and its residents from relentless attacks by besieging ISIS forces over the last three years, Hasan Muhammad, the commander of the 17th Reserve Division, led the vanguard Syrian Army units which officially lifted the siege on the city.”

On August 12th, a group of gunmen entered a White Helmets compound in Sarmin, Syria and opened fire on sleeping members of the emergency rescue group. The White Helmets is a well-known group operating in conflict areas of Syria rescuing victims from the rubble after bombings. They were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and a short documentary about them won an Oscar. Most media outlets portray the White Helmets as a humanitarian organization made up of ordinary Syrians. However, an investigation published by Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet found that the White Helmets and their associated public relations firm, The Syria Campaign, are far from politically impartial. In fact, they're seeking regime change in Syria. In spite of all of this criticism, there was a targeted killing of seven members of this group. See inside 21 minute interview with Max Blumenthal, senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. His most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Originally published on 30 August 2017 at http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=19889.

Entire transcript is at The Real News, which is a great site. See http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=19889. You will find a number of other very interesting reports on Syria. We have not live-linked to it because it does not have an https address and that causes problems with some browsers, but the site is safe according to Norton Safe Search and has an SSL for commercial transactions.

Mimi al-Haram (aka "the Syrian Girl Partisan'), an Australian resident of Syrian nationality, predicted, on her YouTube channel in 2012, the chemical weapons attack of August 2013, staged by anti-government 'rebels' and blamed on the Syrian government, in order to justify an invasion.

Prediction: Impending strike on Syria by Trump or Israel?

In 2014, Mimi predicted that the US would claim that Syria had not disposed of all of its chemical weapons possibly as a pretext for another attack on Syria, but this time attacking both the Syrian government and the al-Qaeda-linked rebels, possibly after another staged chemical attack. She says that "this is exactly what trqnspired earlier this year".

At the end of this video, Mimi warns that she fears that "YouTube has been censoring some of my older videos and that they are rolling out new rules that will further stifle the truth" (see also Appendix 1, below). She continues, "Regardless, I promise to continue fighting the good fight here on YouTube, so long as they will let me. So please subscribe for more videos".

Appendix 1 : Articles about plans by Google, Facebook, YouTube and other social media to stifle free speech

Get Ready for the World Truth Ministry and the Unimaginable
(14/6/2017) by Phil Butler New Eastern Outlook, "Politically Correct": The War on Free Speech, Free Press, Free Internet and the Truth. What is the Endgame? (26/7/2017) by Joachim Hagopian | Global Research, DIGITAL TYRANNY: Google and Facebook's Automated Censorship Program (I Hope You Can Speak Chinese) (6/8/2017) | 21st Century Wire, Social media and the loss of privacy (10/8/2017) | PressTV, Orwellian Google censors news based YouTube videos (19/8/2017) by Adam Garrie | The Duran, Censorship On Youtube: SouthFront Channel Is Again Under Attack (17/8/2017) | The Vineyard of the Saker, An Open Letter to Google: Stop the Censorship of the Internet! (25/8/2017) | Global Research, The West's War on Free Speech (6/6/2017) by Tony Cartalucci || Land Destroyer

Appendix 2 : Articles here on Candobetter about the staged chemical weapons attacks in Syria

White House Appears to Be Planning Attack on Assad - Article by Jason Ditz (27/6/17), Putin shows up BBC propaganda on chemical weapons and Syria (12/6/17), White House claims on Syria chemical attack 'obviously false' - Prof. Theodor Postol of MIT (13/4/2017), Guilty until proven innocent: Assad and the mainstream press (12/4/2017) 19:42 by David Macilwain, More saying how chemical weapons story implausible - Prof Tim Anderson (11/4/2017). Video: Syrian gas attack is a lie - "Stop your governments!" - Russia (8/4/2017).

Appendix 3 : My post about Zionism and anti-Semitism

I posted the following on 30 August 2017 in response to the comment:

"This exactly what Trump said he would not do. Jews run our country. And sent our sons to die for them. We will never see peace in the world until we deal with these Marxist Jews."

Why presume that every jewish person supports the state of Israel?

Even within Irael, some jewish people have voiced opposition to their government's theft of Palestinian land. One notable example is Mordechai Vanunu, who blew the whistle on Israel's illegal nuclear weapons program in September 1986. For that Mordechai was abducted in Italy in October 1986 and taken back to Israel, where, after at a secret trial, he was imprisoned for 18 years, 11 in solitary confinement. Since his release in 2004, he has not been allowed to leave Israel. He has also been forbidden from owning a mobile 'phone, using Internet chat rooms or having any contact with foreigners. All his telephone and Internet use is monitored.

Anti-semitism, serves to reinforce the underlying justification for the original expulsion of Arabs from Palestine in 1947 by the Zionist invaders and Israel's subsequent wars, both covert and overt, against Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, Algeria, Iraq, Syria and Iran.

At the time the Zionists were conquering Palestine in 1947, Israeli Mossad agents went abroad to other Arab countries to, whilst posing as Muslim anti-semites, foment sectarian strife and commit terrorist acts against indigenous jews in order to frighten them into fleeing and becoming settlers on Palestinian land.

Another jew, Abram Leon, also a communist, was murdered by the Nazis in 1944. In his work "The Jewish Question" at https://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/leon/ , clandestinely written during the war, he explicitly opposed Zionism in the last chapter at https://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/leon/ch7.htm#e

Appendix 4: SYRIANGIRL: Clues Suggest US or Israeli Attack on Syria Could Happen Soon

Editor's note:

Check your bias at the door gentle reader.

We know SYRIANGIRL personally and can confirm that she is one of the sharpest and best-informed analysts reporting on the Syrian tragedy.

Her name is Maram Susli and she lives in Australia, where she grew up. Five years ago she was a getting her PhD in chemistry and was so outraged by the dishonesty of the media about the war that she started posting videos on Youtube about it.

Since then she has built an influential following with 72K subscribers to her channel, 6 million views, 70K Twitter followers, and 40K Facebook followers. When she posts, important people listen.

We've met her several times when she was speaking at international conferences and she is the real deal - a smart, articulate activist / wonk who does this in her free time when not in the lab. She has worked with MIT professor Theodore Postol in exposing the lie that Assad used chemical weapons.

She is not paid by any government or group, and relies on fan donations. Youtube even blocked her from monetizing her videos, so she really relies on you.

Please support her on Patreon, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook. Her work is invaluable and spot-on.

Here's SYRIANGIRL with another excellent analysis of what is happening in her suffering homeland. Every prediction she has made since 2012 has come true.

Let's see if she gets it right this time:

Her main points:

1. Bannon's departure means no one in the WH opposes US / Israeli escalation.
2. A recent video and photo showing Syrian insurgents teaching school children how to act like chemical weapons victims.
3. A fake news story in Reuters claiming the UN intercepted a North Korean shipment of chemicals to Syria. (Reuters is a well-known channel for this sort of deception - in the summer of 2014 their false stories about the Ukraine war were rampant - Ed.)
4. An article in the Daily Beast, (another notorious alphabet agency / neocon lie factory - Ed.) tying in Iran with Syria and North Korea.
5. A tweet from Nikki Haley, saying that the US will shoot first and ask questions later if any chemical weapons are used in the area, and a WH statement reminding people that Syria used chemical weapons in 2014. (Which has since been proved untrue) - suggesting an upcoming false flag.
6. Netanyahu's trip to Moscow where he told Putin he would prefer for ISIS to win over Syria and Iran and would attack Syria to prevent that from happening.
7. Syria's impending victory in Deir Ezzor puts the US in a position where they would have to attack in order to salvage their rapidly collapsing MIddle East policy.
8. Then she goes on to enumerate the correct predictions she has made since 2012.

Yeah, she's good.

Update 12 September 2018: All President Bashar al Assad's speeches on the Syrian Government channel have suddenly been removed from Youtube, in a manner that spreads darkness over the world.Speech by Bashar al-Assad on 21 August 2017 in English subtitled videos. The texts have also been transcribed by Sayed Hasan into English and French at http://sayed7asan.blogspot.fr. Assad notes that the west allows terrorists to advance in Syria, and when the Syrian Arab Army tries to fight the terrorists, the west tries to stop it, pretending that this is for humanitarian reasons. But the west's real objective is to allow the terrorists to regroup.

Speech by the President of the Syrian Arab Republic Bashar al-Assad on August 20th, 2017 to the Syrian Diplomatic Corps

Translation originally published at: http://sayed7asan.blogspot.fr

Transcript:

[...] The result of this resistance (of Syria) and the price we paid (for it) is (also) the shifts that have occurred recently in Western statements, which did not occur because their human conscience awoke and regained its health, or because they have (finally) felt that Syria is oppressed or anything like that. (The West) made this change because of the resistance of the people, of the state and of the armed forces (of Syria). And of course because of the support of our allies.

(The West) did not make this change because it has ethics or morality, because we have never seen any such thing, even before the war. But it is the reality on the ground in Syria, and the reality on the ground in their own countries (which imposed this turnaround on them). And today, a week or a month do not go by without an event (terrorist attack) occurring which is the direct result of their stupidity in their decision making and support for terrorism in the region. It is these realities that have forced them to change their positions, even partially, in a shy manner and without conviction,but these shifts were imposed on them.

This change of position does not mean a change of policy. The West, like the snake, changes its skin depending on the situation. At first they talked about supporting the popular movement, the popular movement that has never exceeded, in the best case, 200,000 people paid (by the West and the Gulf) throughout Syria, a country of 24 million inhabitants.

And after having tried their best, with weapons beings present on the stage but in a hidden way, to perpetrate massacres and foment sedition, they have failed, and passed to the open support to armed groups but they gave them the name of "opposition" as a cover, that is to say they presented them as political (factions), giving them a political color, and they were presented as "moderate", that is to say, as not extremists. Or the political denomination "opposition" was to (suggest) that they are not terrorists.

When this project failed and they were exposed for what they are (terrorists) in the eyes of the world public opinion, and in the eyes of the regional and local public opinion in their own countries, they switched to another version, the humanitarian pretext. We are currently at this stage. To summarize, it consists in keeping absolute silence as the terrorists advance or whatever, and perpetrate massacres and killings against civilians, but when it's the (Syrian) Army that is advancing at the expense of terrorists, then suddenly we begin to hear cries, lamentation and intercession to stop us, with the pretext of humanitarian slogans to stop the effusion of blood, to escort humanitarian aid, and other excuses that we Syrians know well. Their real goal is to provide an opportunity for armed groups to reform their ranks, to motivate, to bring equipment and to send reinforcements to help them, so they can continue their terrorist acts.

In truth, all these various tactics they employed during these stages could never deceive us in any case. From day one, we recognized terrorism, and on the first day, we hit terrorism, during the first stage, the second and third, and will continue to do so, as long as there is any terrorist anywhere in Syria. As for the media and the psychological war they conducted during the last several years, it could never, not a single moment, influence us to be distracted from this goal, namely combating terrorism,or to push us towards fear or hesitation. [...]

Bashar al-Assad thanks Iran, Russia and Hezbollah

Translation:

Transcript:

[...] Ladies and gentlemen,

Despite more than 6 years of this ferocious war against Syria and despite the fact that the Syrian army, with at its side the popular forces and our allies, leads the fiercest battles against the most formidable terrorist groups, supported by the most powerful and richest countries in the world, despite this, these forces, our forces made achievements and victories, week by week and day by day, crushing terrorists and purifying areas contaminated by (their presence), and they go on on this path.

What has been achieved by the heroes of the Syrian Arab Army, the armed forces and popular and allied forces, indeed heroic acts and sacrifices during the past war years, shows an example in the History of wars throughout History. And what they have accomplished in terms of sacrifices is a beacon for future generations, in the sense of commitment to national dignity, patriotism and sacrifices for the homeland and for the people. And the truth... [Applause]

And the truth is that it is these achievements that were the real lever to the march of national reconciliation that began 3 years ago, and it is they who have pushed many undecided (among armed groups) to come back in the lap of the nation. That is to say, to speak clearly and far from any embellishment, these military achievements of our armed forces were the very war and the very policy. Alongside the Army exploits, were it not for the endurance of the Syrian people, every citizen in his place, the student, the teacher, the worker, the civil servant, the diplomat,the employee, and so on in all layers and components of Syrian society, it would not have been possible that Syria resists to this day.

As for our friends and allies, they were a very important part of these achievements and successes.

Hezbollah, which needs no introduction and who willingly evades recognition and thanks, his fighters were no less attached to (the defense of) Syrian land than their brothers in arms in heroism of the Syrian armed forces. And when we talk about them, we speak with great pride, exactly the same as when we speak of any Syrian who defended his homeland. The same goes for their martyrs, their wounded and their heroic families.

As for Iran, it has not wavered in its presence with us since day one. It supplied weapons and quantities (of money, equipment and men) without any limit. It sent military advisers and officers to help us plan (the defense and offensive). It supported us economically, through the extremely difficult conditions we experienced. It led the political battles with us in all international issues and proved in each instance that it is sovereign and sole master of its decisions,true to its principles and its commitments, in which one can have full confidence.

Likewise for Russia. She used her veto several times in succession in her policy, in defense of the unity and sovereignty of Syria,and in defense of the UN Charter and international law. China did the same. And Russia has not limited herself to support the Syrian Army and provide everything it needed for its anti-terrorist operations. She later sent its air force and was directly involved in the fight against terrorism, offering martyrs on Syrian soil.

Thus, if the successes on the field have been made thanks to the determination of the heroes of the armed forces, Army and popular forces, the direct support of our allies, political, economic and military has greatly strengthened our capabilities to gain ground in the field, and narrowed losses and burdens of war. And therefore, they are now our true allies in these achievements, in the way of striking and completely annihilating terrorism and restoring security and stability in Syria.

And if the Syrian Arab people and with it the armed forces today are writing a new history for Syria and the region in general, there will also be volumes that will be written about our friends. About Iran and Imam Khamenei. About Russia and President Putin. About Hezbollah and Sayed Hassan Nasrallah. [Applause] These volumes will be written about their principles, their ethics, their virtues, for future generations to read. [...]

Press Statement Lays Groundwork for US Attack. Raising speculation that the US is about to attack Syria again, the White House has issued a statement late this evening accusing the Assad government in Syria of conducting “potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack,” claiming that such an attack would involve the “mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.”

Press Statement Lays Groundwork for US Attack. Raising speculation that the US is about to attack Syria again, the White House has issued a statement late this evening accusing the Assad government in Syria of conducting “potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack,” claiming that such an attack would involve the “mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.”

Original article by Jason Ditz published at news.antiwar.com/2017/06/26/white-house-appears-to-be-planning-attack-on-assad/
Posted on June 26, 2017 (Note that some links here will only work if you drop the 's' from the https preceding the URL, but we add the 's' here due to arbitrary browser protocol.)

The late night report was extremely light on details, but threatened to make Syria’s government and military “pay a heavy price,” suggesting that the statement was only issued to lay the groundwork for a new round of US attacks on Syrian government targets.

The US last attacked Syria in earnest in early April, firing 49 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base. The attack was carried out despite reports ultimately showing that the US intelligence community found no evidence a chemical weapon attack took place.

The White House statement ignored that revelation, and presented the early April incident as a “chemical weapons attack” just like the one they believe to be imminent. Since the administration is very keen to present what they did in April as justified, it would not be surprising if they did so again.

Such a move would be particularly risky now, coming amid Russian warnings that the US needs to stop attacking Syrian government targets. It also comes just hours after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke with Russia’s Foreign Minister about a ceasefire, which seems a particularly inopportune time to attack.

John Pilger and Vanessa Beeley talk about the amazing growth in mass-media supported war propaganda in our times, including the grotesque fantasies manufactured about Russian intervention in US elections and the creation of a false cold war. Vanessa Beeley describes how, when she was in Aleppo, she was witness to the absolute fabrication of what was happening there. And now, the almost complete silence on what seems like American ethnic cleansing of Arabs in Raqqua - where the US is using depleted uranium, phosporos weapons and not providing any humanitarian corridors.