Skip to content

Syria

On Contact: Realities Of War

On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the realities of war, its appeal for young men and its destruction of them, with Salar Abdoh, novelist and essayist. Abdoh's new novel, 'Out of Mesopotamia', considered one of a handful of great modern war novels, tells the story of Saleh, a jaded, middle-aged Iranian reporter who accompanies Shia militias, as Abdoh did, in Iraq and Syria during the heavy fighting between 2014 and 2017.

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

This latest Biden airstrike is being spun as “defensive” and “retaliatory” despite its targeting a nation the US invaded (Syria) in response to alleged attacks on US forces in another nation the US invaded (Iraq). You can’t invade a nation and then claim self-defense there. That’s not a thing. If you’re uncritically repeating US government claims about its justifications for acts of mass military violence, you’re not doing journalism, you’re writing Pentagon press releases. It’s like the Biden administration is actively trying to vindicate everyone who spent the last four years saying that as far as policy decisions are concerned there’s nothing unusual about the Trump administration.

Biden’s First Strike

The United States carried out airstrikes in Syria early Friday morning, killing several people and destroying several buildings. The Pentagon says that the airstrikes were a response to a rocket attack that occurred on Feb. 15, some 10 days earlier, at Erbil airport in northern Iraq, some 400 km away. That rocket attack killed a Filipino contractor, wounded four American contractors, and wounded a U.S. soldier. It’s not clear whether the U.S. airstrikes targeted the group responsible for the rocket attack, or other groups affiliated with it. The Pentagon says “the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian backed militant groups including Kait’ib Hezbollah and Kait’ib Sayyid al Shuhada.”

Tell Biden: Stop Bombing Syria!

It has taken only 36 days in office for the Biden administration to show the world, through a bombing attack on Syria, that it is belligerent, aggressive and hell-bent on war. There was only a short respite from Trump’s vile words and actions. Now we have to face Biden’s vile deeds and resist them. Even the excuse U.S. imperialism gave for bombing Syria was feeble. A rocket attack some weeks ago killed a mercenary in Iraq. Excuses like that open the door to new U.S. wars and interventions all over countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America where Washington has replaced official U.S. troops with soldiers of fortune. You might think the Biden administration had enough problems at home to keep it busy. The COVID-19 pandemic still rages despite the vaccines – whose distribution has been a disgrace.

US-Backed Militants Steal 140,000 Barrels Per Day Of Syrian Oil

Tehran - Militants of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is supported by Washington, steal 140,000 barrels of crude oil on a daily basis from oil fields in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah, according to a report. Ghassan Halim Khalil, governor of Hasakah, announced the grim news in an interview with the Lebanese al-Akhbar newspaper on Saturday, adding that the SDF militants are plundering Syrian oil in various ways, all with the participation and support of American forces deployed to the region. He stressed that precise intelligence collected and received show that US-backed militants use tanker trucks from the Taramish area in Tigris and al-Malikiyah to smuggle the Syrian oil to neighboring Iraq.

Government Secrecy Causes Conspiracy Theories

The DC Circuit has ruled that the CIA is under no obligation to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests pertaining to its involvement with insurgent militias in Syria, overturning a lower court’s previous ruling in favor of a Buzzfeed News reporter seeking such documents. As Sputnik‘s Morgan Artyukhina clearly outlines, this ruling comes despite the fact that mainstream news outlets have been reporting on the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities in Syria for years, and despite a US president having openly tweeted about those activities. “In other words, the CIA will not be required to admit to actions it is widely reported as having done, much less divulge documents about them to the press for...

UN Expert: End US Sanctions On Syria

An independent United Nations expert is calling on the US to lift its crippling sanctions on Syria. Under the Caesar Act, US sanctions explicitly target Syria’s reconstruction in the aftermath of a catastrophic 10-year war. Alena Douhan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the impact of sanctions, says that the US sanctions are illegal and depriving Syrian civilians of their basic needs. “People shouldn’t die, people shouldn’t suffer, and people shouldn’t fear whether they can survive after tomorrow, because they have neither medicine or food, because of the sanctions applied,” Douhan says.

Ex-UK Ambassador On Syria And Propaganda

Former UK ambassador to Syria Peter Ford on how the US and its allies continue to wage war on Syria via sadistic sanctions, an illegal US military occupation, the OPCW cover-up, and media propaganda that masks the brutality. Syria and its allies prevented regime change, but the US and its allies are continuing to squeeze Syria’s population with crippling sanctions on all aspects of civilian life and a US military occupation in Syria’s northeast breadbasket. Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria, analyzes the state of the Syria proxy war and the ongoing propaganda campaign to whitewash it.

Proponents Of Forever War In Syria Can’t Answer One Question

Before Robert Gates stepped down as secretary of defense after a five-year tenure, the veteran national security hand offered one more piece of wisdom to impart. Speaking to a roomful of Army cadets at West Point in February 2011, Gates made the pointed but astute observation that the U.S. military needed another Iraq and Afghanistan-like conflict like it needed a hole in the head. “In my opinion,” the outgoing SecDef advised that day, “any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

Media Silence Marks Ongoing OPCW Cover-Up Of Syria Chemical Weapons Scandal

This should be a global scandal,” said journalist Aaron Maté on the suppression of evidence from experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in order to push for war in Syria. “This is the U.S. government bombing Syria based on allegations that were later found by the investigating team to be false. But then once that team came back to write their report they were pressured by the U.S. government and had their evidence censored.” Unfortunately, it has not become a global scandal.

Two Massive New Leaks Show Dirty Underbelly Of Empire

Most Americans don’t know reality. They know their personal reality, but unfortunately their reality is thoroughly detached from real pure, uncut reality. For example, do they know that police across the country work with corporations to criminalize journalism? Do they know that large PR companies created a false reality to justify U.S. intervention in Syria? Do they know the word “intervention” acts as a euphemism for “cold-blooded murder under false pretenses”? Americans don’t know these aspects of reality. You and I wouldn’t know either if it weren’t for leaks and whistleblowers.

Ex-OPCW Chief Jose Bustani Reads Syria Testimony Blocked At UN

Jose Bustani was invited to brief the Security Council on the OPCW’s cover-up of an investigation into an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018. The US, UK, and France bombed Syria after accusing the Syrian government of dropping toxic gas in Douma. OPCW inspectors later found evidence that undermined the official narrative, but were censored by their superiors under US pressure. As the OPCW’s first Director General, Bustani experienced first-hand the costs of challenging pro-war narratives.

A Doctor Smuggles Lifesaving Equipment

He bought it in the United States, shipped it to a friend through Europe and into Lebanon, and found a way to smuggle it by road into Syria. But this was a piece of contraband only made illegal by the United States’ cruel policy of sanctions toward Syria—a critical part needed to fix a broken CT scanner, the sole machine in a city of over 100,000 people in Syria. Last year, Dr. Farid, a Syrian physician based in the United States, opened a large medical and cancer center in Syria. (He asked that neither his real name nor the name of his city be used for safety reasons.)

The Syria Boondoggle

Mark my words: an American soldier will soon die for next to nothing in Syria. Here’s a mission that takes all the absurdity of America’s post-9/11 wars of choice to their logical conclusion. As such, this muddled and aimless operation must stand forever tall in the pantheon of U.S. foreign policy folly – right up there with the three Seminole Wars (1817-18, 1835-42, 1855-58, 1,608 dead troops); Nicaraguan "Banana Wars" (1910, 1912-25, 1927-33, 159 dead); the Russian Civil War’s "Siberia” intervention (1918-20, 424 dead)...

US’ Theft Of Syrian Oil Has Very Little To Do With Money

Near the end of July, one of the most important recent developments in U.S. foreign policy was quietly disclosed during a U.S. Senate hearing. Not surprisingly, hardly anybody talked about it and most are still completely unaware that it happened. Answering questions from Senator Lindsey Graham, Secretary of State Pompeo confirmed that the State Department had awarded an American company, Delta Crescent Energy, with a contract to begin extracting oil in northeast Syria. The area is nominally controlled by the Kurds, yet their military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was formed under U.S. auspices and relies on an American military presence to secure its territory.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.