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Syria

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.

The US Expeditionary Kleptocracy

Of course, a desperate US military – and its Washington masters – had an expedient solution for the ethno-sectarian strife they’d catalyzed: consider it the Lebanon formula. So America’s orientalist ambassadors – most, staggeringly young Republican stalwarts with no knowledge of the Mideast – imported France’s imperial Levantine blueprint. Essentially, this meant sectarian quotas and preferences for political office: a Kurdish president, Sunni parliamentary speaker, and Shia prime minister. The French have actually added the term for this disastrous recipe – libanisation – to their dictionaries: "A process of state fragmentation, resulting from the clash between various communities of faiths." In Sectarian America, a people divided, distracted, and armed, battle for control of the nation’s streets, whilst their nominal leaders corruptly carve up contracts with the defense industry and in overseas fiefdoms. Washington’s duopoly elites ship their bombs to Saudi Arabia and their sons (well, not their sons) to Syria to secure arms deals and oil fields. And if, as a result, about a 100,000 Yemeni children, and a handful of American soldiers have to die, well – so be it.

Is The US Deliberately Trying To Provoke A Military Crisis With Russia?

There has been a long string of U.S. provocations toward Russia. The first one came in the late 1990s and the initial years of the twenty-first century when Washington violated tacit promises given to Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if Moscow accepted a united Germany within NATO, the Alliance would not seek to move farther east. Instead of abiding by that bargain, the Clinton and Bush administrations successfully pushed NATO to admit multiple new members from Central and Eastern Europe, bringing that powerful military association directly to Russia’s western border. In addition, the United States initiated “rotational” deployments of its forces to the new members so that the U.S. military presence in those countries became permanent in all but name. Even Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was uneasy about those deployments and conceded that he should have warned Bush in 2007 that they might be unnecessarily provocative. 

US And Russia Collide, While Syrian Tribes Call For US Withdrawal

On August 20, Pres. Trump met with Iraq’s PM, and said the US is leaving Iraq “fairly rapidly” and making decisions on Syria “fairly soon.”  The Iraqi Parliament called for the total withdrawal of US troops. A meeting of 5,000 Syrian tribal members in northeast Syria on August 11 demanded the US forces, and their SDF militia partners withdraw from occupation of the area after the SDF assassinated Sheikh Mutashar al-Hafil and his relative Dar Mihlef al-Khalaf, which provoked a wave of protests, and the call of “Yankee Go Home”. “We are calling on the international coalition to transfer control over the province directly to its Arab population, respecting Syria’s territorial integrity, as well as the rights of Syrian citizens“, the tribal elder’s statement said.

Syria: What Actually Happened In Collision Between US And Russian Forces

On Tuesday, four US service members were reported injured with concussion-like symptoms in an incident involving Russian forces. However, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Ullyot said on Wednesday that the injuries were the fault of the Russians, and that the US service members withdrew to deescalate - a far different story than that told by video footage of the event. "At approximately 10 a.m. (Syria Time), Aug. 25, a routine Defeat-ISIS Coalition security patrol encountered a Russian military patrol near Dayrick, in northeast Syria. During this interaction, a Russian vehicle struck a Coalition Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV) causing injuries to the vehicle's crew," the statement reads.

Lebanon: Inconvenient Truths About Syria, Iran, Hezbollah And The Shia ‘Street’

There’s been a lot of nonsense passing as truth in post-blast Lebanon reporting. Most centers around alarmism about Hezbollah’s nefarious influence, the West’s "opportunity" to destroy it, and the supposed struggle with Russia, China, and Iran for paternalist-preeminence in a country that isn’t ours (or theirs) to preside over in the first place. There’s little discussion in most mainstream reporting on the minor matter of why Hezbollah gained influence in the first place. Shia Muslims are difficult to provoke and almost impossible to suppress once aroused. Long led by a more "quietist" strand of conservative, apolitical, clerics, these massive Mideast minorities – all 100 million of them – have, since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, emerged as the most effective regional resistors to Israeli expansionism and Western neo-imperialism. They’ve met with meaningful and unexpected success – where nearly all Sunnis states and subgroups have mainly failed – combating Israel, America, and both’s assorted Arab clients for more than 40 years. Indeed, while hardly immaculate, the Shia resistance record is rather impressive.

Might Belarus Become The Next Syria?

There are signs that Russia is intervening in the Belarusian crisis (finally!) First and foremost, we can see a truly radical change in Lukashenko’s policies: if his initial instinct was to unleash brutal repression of both the violent rioters and the peaceful demonstrators, now he has made a 180 and the outcome is quite amazing: on Sunday there were large anti-Lukashenko demonstrations yet not a single person was detained.  Not one.  Even more amazing is this: the Polish-run Nexta Telagram channel (which is the main medium used by the Empire to overthrow Lukashenko) initially called for a peaceful protest, but at the end of the day a call was made to try to take over the main Presidential building.  When the rioters (at this point we are dealing with an illegal, violent, attempt to overthrow the state – so I don’t call these people demonstrators) got to the building they were faced with a real “wall” of riot cops in full gear: this (really scary) sight was enough to stop the rioters who stood for a while and then had to leave.

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.