It seems clear that the entry of Iran into the line came at the request of Damascus, which thus wanted to balance the Iranian role with the information that constantly talks about common and intertwined personal and official interests between Presidents Putin and Erdogan.
The following is the English translation from Arabic of the latest article by Turkish career journalistHusni Mahali he published on 2nd Feb 2023 on Al-Mayadeen news site Al-Mayadeen Net:
Two days after President Erdogan’s statements, in which he said, “Let Turkey, Iran, and Syria meet to discuss possibilities for a final solution,” Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said, in the press conference, with his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, in Moscow, “Today, an agreement has been reached aimed at Iran’s participation in the process of settling and normalizing relations between neighboring Turkey and Syria.
This means Cairo’s approval, perhaps on behalf of other Arab countries, of the Iranian role. This was recognized, the day before yesterday, by Ibrahim Kalin, Erdogan’s spokesman, when he said, “We will be happy with Iran’s contribution to the mediation efforts with Damascus because Tehran is an important player in the Syrian crisis from the beginning.”
Minister Lavrov’s words came after a series of contacts and visits by his Iranian counterpart, Hussein Abdollahian, to Beirut, Damascus, and Moscow, followed by the visit of the Foreign Minister of Qatar, Ankara’s ally, to Tehran, days after the Abu Dhabi summit, in which the leaders of a number of Arab countries, including Qatar and Egypt, participated. This explains Minister Lavrov’s taking advantage of Minister Shukri’s visit to Moscow to talk in his presence about Iran’s involvement in the mediation efforts between Erdogan and President Assad.
It seems clear that Iran’s entry into the line came at the request of Damascus, which thus wanted to balance the Iranian role with the information that constantly talks about common and intertwined personal and official interests between Presidents Putin and Erdogan, which was reason enough for Moscow not to put pressure on Ankara on the issue of Idlib and the Syrian north. in general, but succeeded in persuading Ankara to seek rapprochement with Damascus.
There is much talk in the Turkish media about Russian financial support for Erdogan, to help him win the upcoming elections, which are crucial for Erdogan, Turkey, and Russia as well.
It has become clear that Turkey, before and after these elections, will witness interesting developments related to Erdogan’s foreign calculations, which will have direct and indirect repercussions on the internal situation. The Syrian crisis comes at the forefront of these calculations, and the reason for this is the problem of the Syrians in Turkey, which will be an important electoral material that the opposition will use against Erdogan.
It has also become clear that he, that is, Erdogan will make the minimum concessions required of him to ensure his meeting with President Assad before these elections, and his chances are still few, according to all independent opinion polls, especially after the “Nation Alliance” announced its electoral project that includes 2,300 items aimed to fix everything Erdogan destroyed during his 20 years of rule.
Among these concessions was his acceptance of Iran’s entry into the line of rapprochement between him and President Assad at this time, when Tel Aviv, Washington, Western countries, and its other allies are conspiring against Iran, which was attacked by unknown drones that targeted a military complex in the city of Isfahan.
In parallel, tension appears between Baku and Tehran due to the armed attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Iran and the killing of one of the embassy guards. This is what some nationalist circles in Turkey and Azerbaijan exploited to launch a hostile campaign against Tehran, which they have been doing for a long time due to Iranian support for Syria in the years of the so-called “Arab Spring”.
On Tuesday, the leader of the National Movement Party, Devlet Bahchali, who is an ally of President Erdogan, said, “Azerbaijan is a state and nation of Turkish origin, the same as South Azerbaijan,” meaning northwestern Iran. This Turkish nationalist provocation is accompanied by a similar provocation and escalation from the nationalist circles in Azerbaijan, which has established and developed in recent years intertwined military and intelligence relations with “Tel Aviv”, which has established a number of espionage bases near the Azerbaijani border with Iran, which is what it did in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, especially in areas under the rule of Masoud Barzani
At a time when the Jewish lobby controls most of the Azerbaijani media, which is waging a hostile and violent campaign against Iran, which coincided with the visit of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to Azerbaijan, and a day later to Armenia, the two neighbors of Tehran.
Minister Lavrov’s talk about an “agreement” on Iran joining the Russian mediation between Assad and Erdogan seems clear that it came in support of the Astana process, but this time with Egyptian and Gulf approval, which may be reflected in support for the Egyptian-Turkish reconciliation path, that is, of course, if the Gulf capitals are sincere in their desire to return things to normal with Damascus.
It is not clear what practical positions the aforementioned capitals will take towards Iran entering the rapprochement line, which, if achieved, will undoubtedly be with the consent of the Gulf, which Erdogan hopes to support him financially, politically, and psychologically on the eve of the elections that will be on May 14.
Everyone knows that Erdogan was and still needs significant financial support from abroad, just as he needs media materials to help him gain more support, which will be achieved by meeting President Assad and announcing together their agreement to return Syrian refugees to their country. It is the issue that, if Erdogan succeeds in it, he will pull the rug out from under the feet of the opposition, which holds him responsible for the refugees and the entire Syrian crisis.
And while waiting for the American, Israeli, and European reaction to Iran’s entry into the mediation line between Erdogan and Assad, which is a victory for Iranian diplomacy at this particular time, everyone is waiting for President Erdogan to take practical and quick moves to resolve the issue of rapprochement before he is exposed to any external pressure, and the situation east of the Euphrates will be one of the most important elements of these pressures, since the rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus will aim, first or second, at joint action against the Kurdish “SDF” and “People’s Protection Units”.
This will be the biggest challenge for Erdogan and before Assad, especially if the Americans think about confronting Russian plans through Turkey, Syria, Iran, and perhaps Iraq as well. This may lead to a real and serious crisis in the relationship between Ankara and Washington, and it has enough reasons for such a crisis, as Turkey is a member of NATO which has many of its bases on its soil.
Ultimately, the bet remains on the success of Russian diplomacy in persuading Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar (Erdogan’s ally) of the necessity of urgency in achieving the Turkish-Syrian rapprochement, and by completing it, Erdogan’s reconciliations with Cairo, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh will acquire practical importance from which everyone will benefit.
And without it being clear how Tel Aviv will respond to these Russian moves, which Washington will obstruct by various means, and its biggest weapon for that is the Syrian Kurds with their extensions in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. They are Tel Aviv’s weapon also until the Gulf regimes convince Netanyahu and his allies in the terrorist government that the war is no longer in their interest and that the Palestinian youth generation, after the events in Jenin and the heroic Al Quds (Jerusalem) operation, is not the generation that will surrender to the conspirators against it internally, regionally and internationally, as long as there are those who stand and will stand by its side among the honorable people of the nation, and everyone knows them and they are the true source of terror for the Zionist entity and its allies in the region!
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We were defining success. Having lavishly financed and miserably failed all options that were on, under, above, besides, and in secret compartments of the metaphorical-turned-legendary table against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the unholy trinity, US-Zionists-UK, went back, once again, to the drawing board. Hope springs eternal. This time, the trio pinned all their hopes on a mirage that gleamed and shimmered on vast cognitive and physical domains of the Iranians and the Iranian Plateau through which the Wilayat of God and the Old and New Silk Roads pass respectively.
The mirage was the mother of all mirages. It felt so real they believed the oasis. Therein lied their folly. The chores were divvyed up, the sounds of Arrahil! Arrahil![1] echoed in local and global virtual and beamed chambers; the calls proliferated upon algorithmically-designed ethereal caravans to get moving. Rented personalities, disposable celebrities, background actors and extras nestled inside snowball-samples of clueless young men and women interspersed with trained and armed sleeping cells severing as “page-turners”, “autonomy- seekers”, “hate-preachers”, and “killers”. They were all activated at once and the orchestra began playing a symphony of death and destruction. Ironically, the codename was “secure & reliable.”[2] The trio hedged their bets in multiple loosing hands. Therein lied their second folly.
Paradoxically, the societies of taxpayers, who have to flip a coin “to choose” whether to pay for their grocery bills or their needed medicine and are unable to heat their homes in the winter, are graced with footing the bills. Of course, Head-chopping House of Saud, too, is always eager to be milked and supplement.
The swarms were tasked to upload and download their virtual carriages and camels with robotically woven tapestries of deception, denigration, degradation, disruption, destruction, and denial, again lavishly financed and produced at an industrial scale in lie factories of the unholy trinity, US-Zionists-UK. The mirage and the cyber caravans were a match made in the land of grand delusions. All manners of hot, cold, soft and hard wares and power were used to work over tender pressure points of the Iranian nation’s nervous system.
Their failure was a foregone conclusion. But, what do they really want? Where did they go wrong? And, why? Most importantly, what was the Islamic Republic of Iran’s strategy? Those are appropriate questions and we shall explore them in this essay.
Facts on the Ground
Let’s begin with a few facts on the ground. I made a collage using sample photos, extracted from various news sources, of some of the discovered weapons (or spoils of war, depending on your frame of reference) from some very peaceful protestors who were arrested while protesting rather peacefully and from the nests of some who were aiding and abetting:
That’s not all. Rocks, fists, and boots, too, all served as convenient weapons. Here in Karaj, where I live, a trial was held for 16 very brave and peaceful protestors, the champions of human rights, women rights, gay rights, lesbian rights, dog lover rights, cat lover rights, and any other rights your mind could fathom. The defendants had been arrested on the charges of mob killing of Seyyed Ruhullah Ajamian, disrupting the peace, and creating public insecurity during their extremely peaceful protest on Aban, 12, 1401 [Nov. 3, 2022].
Martyr Ajamian was a 26-year old volunteer Basiji who worked as a day-time and seasonal minimum-wage construction worker alongside his father. He was at the scene trying to unblock the road (Karaj-Qazvin Freeway) to ease the traffic jam caused by roadblocks placed by the protestors. He was not carrying any sort of weapon (none of the Basijis are) nor did he have any other tool with him. Not even a stick.
The freedom-loving protestors had been corralled using digital horns by a very peace-loving couple, the Qara Hasanlooes, to stage a protest in Behesht Sakineh Cemetery in Karaj. The protests needed to have all elements of a good quality show: blocking of the roads, creating traffic jams, inciting violence, killing and injuring for special effects, and filming the entire event to be then sent to Persian-language television networks housed in civilized nations of England, France, Germany, and the United States of America, the lands where the police force treats the civilians with tender love and care.
It appears, Martyr Ajamian, unprovoked by extremely calm protestors (as evident from the videos), suddenly began hitting his body, repeatedly and relentlessly, to the fists, tip of the boots, knives, knuckle weapons, bricks, and woods of and in the hands of the human-right loving protestors, the champions of “Women, Life, Freedom” to the point of his own death. According to the interviews conducted with some of the gentle and innocent protesters who were just accidentally present at the scene without any prior intention or plans, the martyr’s blood aggressively forced itself on the shoes, boots, and hands of the peaceful protestors.
The level of violence Martyr Ajamian’s body and blood exacted upon the fists, knuckles, breaks, and knives of the peaceful protestors cannot be described by any words I could think of. Perhaps it would be clearer if we read (and watch for those who know Farsi) the testimonies of the innocent protestors in their own words. You could watch (at your own risk) parts of the scene and the interviews here and parts of the testimonies in court here. What is transcribed here could also be seen in the videos.
The Judge: “Tell those who are present, what this martyr’s crime was that he had to be killed in such an oppressive way; and after being killed, his body to be dragged here and there on the paved road.”
M.M. Karami: “Sir, Judge, I was under the influence of what I was hearing from foreign media. We were deceived… someone from somewhere said, ‘he is a Basiji.’ I turned my head that way. It was a dirt hill. It looked like he had fallen on the ground. Two or three people were around him and were hitting him…while he was running away, rocks, wood, and bare hands, and punches… they were throwing at him. Perhaps, I could easily say, those who were throwing things at him were more than 30 or 40 people. Now, someone would punch him once or twice and would run away. Someone would hit him once and stay around. Someone would stand and watch…I was watching. I could see knives, knuckle weapons of different sizes. Some people had rocks in their hands. With my left hand, I grabbed his [the martyr’s] right shoulder and turned him around and hit his head with a rock. After I hit him, I punched him on the head three more times.”
M.M. Karami: “I saw he had fallen on the ground. As his body had folded like this, someone was jumping on his ribs, on his right side. When it was less crowded around him, I went and hit him in his groin…”
The Judge: “With what?”
M.M. Karami: “…with my foot. Then, I kicked his knees twice. Around this time, someone else came. As far as my eyes could see, there were three or four knife strikes. I don’t know the reason. Cuts were about as deep as two finger joints. He hit a few times more. After this guy had hit him with the knife and gone off his belly, I grabbed his legs and pulled his body in front of the truck there. While doing this, his shoe came off into my hand. Here, is that scene [the defendant pointed to a specific point on the video screen]… this is the boot…here [pointing to the martyr’s face] I hit his face twice more with the boot.”
Below is part of another defendant’s testimony, Muhammad Hosseini:
M. Hosseini: “I saw a few people who had rocks in their hands. They had a lot of rocks in their hands. The security guards were standing across the road on the other side of the freeway [Karaj-Qazvin freeway]. I, without really wanting to, picked up a few rocks. I did this without any intentions. I threw two rocks but they were standing too far and the rocks, thank God, did not reach them… I had the knives with me because I wanted to dig a hole near my parents’ grave to buy flowers and plant flowers there.”
The Judge: “You had a whole bunch of knives, swords, and daggers there, you claim you wanted to plant flowers over your father’s grave with them; in addition, you had quite a few of these items at your home. What were they for, for planting more flowers?”
M. Hosseini: Before, I used to teach sports. I am a physical education instructor…
The Judge: “…with knives?”
M. Hosseini: “Allow me, I am a physical education instructor and those are devices used for in-class practice…. I got to the martyr’s side. I took out my knife and, as deep as two finger joint [about 2.5 inches], I did not strike but I just put it [the knife] in and pressed it inside.
Shahid Ajamian’s death is one of the least gruesome deaths. Pouring gasoline on a solider and setting him on fire, slashing the throat of another policeman, and decapitating yet another one have been some other examples of savagery supported by the very exact regimes that created, trained, financed, and armed ISIS.
According to the most recent statement released by the Council of National Security, nearly 200 people have been killed and martyred by random shootings, mass shootings (e.g., Shahcheragh, Shiraz and Izeh), and during protests in the past few months since the start of the protests.[3] Of those killed, more than 60 belong to the police, the security, and the Basiji forces so far. The number of injured is in thousands. Sardar Fadavi, Vice Commander of IRGC, stated this week that “Had we not shown restraint, we could have finished the riots in six days.”[4] We will discuss the reasons for this “restraint,” or what has been dubbed as “Strategic Patience” in dealing with the rioters and protestors first and will then attend to the questions raised earlier in the sections that follow.
“Strategic Patience” in Dealing with Protesters and Violent Rioters
If, as Sardar Fadavi stated, the Iranian government could have finished the entire event within 6 days, how come the police and security forces allowed for the riots to go on and cause the destruction of public and private properties costing billions of Tomans, the death of 200 people that includes more than sixty of their forces, and injury to thousands of people, policemen, and Basijis?
The short answer is that the Iranian police and security forces are not in any way, shape, or form similar to their counterparts in the US, Europe, and other self-proclaimed “civilized” nations where protestors and rioters are turned into colanders for defying and attacking the police. As a general rule, the police and the security forces in the Islamic Republic of Iran do not act aggressively in a reflexive manner even if their acquiescence leads to serious injuries and their death. Force is used as an absolute last resort. Anyone claiming differently must provide solid, truthful, and verifiable evidence to support his claim. Making false claims and repeating them and doctoring images are not good substitutes for facts.
There is a longer and more nuanced answer to the question though. I list three critical reasons for this “strategic patience” exercised by Iran here. Firstly, when the socio-political ambiance is highly charged, as a consequence of non-stop bombardment of false information through social media and Persian-language satellite televisions, and when a sizable portion of the population has not become fully aware of what is really happening, heavy-handed approaches would simply lead to adding more fuel to the fire. So, the police, the security, and the Bassij endanger their own lives until the “fogs” dissipate and the people who are lethargic wake up and see things for how they really are.
Secondly, the delayed response, by the police and security forces, emboldened the true culprits and the trained actors and agents, and their masters and gave them a false sense of victory, that wonderful mirage. Therefore, they came out of their hiding places en masse. Many hidden hands and covert agents, some of whom were trained and in waiting for decades, have exposed themselves. Countless networks of operatives have been identified and destroyed. Key members of many of those networks have been arrested or killed. The details the arrested operatives provide in their confessions are rather illuminating.
I have transcribed portions of confessions from some operatives who were part of two to three teams carrying out a kidnapping and torture job for Mossad here inside Iran. Writing the details of each confession might seem mundane (and rather tedious for me), however, I think they provide a nice overview of how online teams of operatives get contacted, trained step-by-step, their information triangulated, and then guided through carrying out a pre-designed plan for killing, kidnapping, torture, etc. by foreign agents and organizations here and elsewhere around the globe. The video is in Farsi and could be accessed here.
“I have a friend by the name of Ozan. I was arrested on the charges of human trafficking. When I was in prison in Greece, I become friends with him… Later, I went to where he lived so that I could work with him…This Arya fellow visited us. He was Ozan’s friend. We lived there in a house. Arya said ‘I have given your number to someone and he’ll call you.’ So, I was waiting. After three weeks, a fellow by the name of Cyrus called and said, ‘My name is Syrus and Arya gave me your number so that you could do a job.’ I said, ‘Whatever you need, I’ll do it for you here.’ He said, ‘We have jobs from killing a cat to killing a human.’ Then he said, ‘There is job I want you to do. During that job, I teach you how to go, how to come, and what to do not to get arrested; how to escape the surveillance cameras. We’ll bring you here to do your job, film your work, and just like that return to your home. On your way back to your home, you’ll send the film to me. Then, when you arrived, in your own home and using your own mobile phone, you call me.’ I said, okay. It was this way. He trained me, through WhatsApp, how to come, how to go, …”
“The money was to be paid using digital currency. We downloaded and ran the Wallet on our mobile phones. He sent his address code to us for digital currency payment. When we were to begin the job, he would give us some amount then after we had done the initial work and sent photos, he would send some more. To purchase equipment, he would send money. After the job was finished, too, he would send money for the guys…”
“He said we have forces like you but we cannot have them do everything. Like, he would say, ‘I have someone in Turkey. I can’t send him all the way to Iran. His other duties would be neglected. So, we need forces.’ More than a hundred times, I conversed with Cyrus. He would call me every day. Every day, every three or four hours, he would call me…”
“He said, ‘Wait right there. Someone will bring a car with this plate number and this color. He sent a photo of the plate and the car itself. And I went there and saw it [the car] was there and I got it from Milad.”
“The next morning, it was decided for Shahin, Mustafa, and me to go and bring the person. But when we went the next morning, the guys became fearful and couldn’t do it. One day, we were late. For two to three days we couldn’t bring him. The third day, Cyrus got upset. He said, ‘You can’t do it. So, I’ll add two more people to your team and add another car.’ The night before we were going, that night he sent pseudonyms for everyone. He put my pseudonym as Zakaria.”
“I was inside when I realized I had been identified. I left the house to escape but I was arrested in the street. I didn’t think I could be identified. I didn’t think I would be arrested. Four days after the operation, I was arrested. That is the night of my arrest, a couple of hours before that, I was talking to Cyrus.”
“In whatever way they can, they convince you to do things for them. One day they tempt you, one day they show you a lot of money, one day they show you power… And, if you don’t want to do it, then they use threats to force you to do things.”
This next segment contains parts of another member’s confession as seen in the same video:
“It was the 10th month of last year, 1400. A woman in Instagram sent me a message. She was someone called Azita. We talked for a while and then she said, ‘I have a job proposition for you.’ I asked what it was. She said, ‘I have a brother who is very rich. He has a factory in Tehran. Send your number to me so that I send it to him to call you.’ A couple of weeks after I sent her the number, he called and introduced himself as Siavash… He would contact me through WhatsApp and he said, ‘I am a resident in Sweden. I have been here for a long time. My sister, Azita, too, is a resident here.’ His first job for me was to go to some street and take a photo of that street for him. It was somewhere uptown. For the second job, before telling me what it was, he said ‘you need to introduce someone else as well.’ So, I introduced Manouchehr to him. They talked and things were okay. It was decided that from there on, we do everything as a pair. Then, he gave us a job that entailed going inside a house in Tehransar to take photos and films from the inside. I okayed things with Manouchehr and we went there and filmed the inside of the house.”
“Every job he needed to send us money for, I would use my friend’s Wallet… Each time, he would transfer 10, 15, or 20 [Million] Toman…. It was around the end of the month of 12, near the New Year holiday, he said ‘You must buy a motorbike but do not buy it in your own name. Neither in your name, nor in Manouchehr’s.’ The next day he called me and asked, ‘Could you kidnap someone?’”
“…Then, we went to Abuzar Fallah and he told us ‘two guys will come to you, to your car by the names of Zakaria and Soheil. If they said those names, allow them into the car.’…”
“Then, they came and got into the car and they called Siavash right away. They were calling Siavash by the name of Cyrus. Siavash had told me ‘those fellows know me as Siavash so don’t say anything.’ As soon as we got there, Hosein called Cyrus and Cyrus told us ‘show them the house. Show them how to get in and how to get out. If you do this well, I’ll add another 50 million Toman to your payments.’”
“Then, there was a large black case. He put it in front of Hosein. Hosein was cleaning everything very carefully with chlorine solution. There was a choker, a tripod, a camcorder…there were bullets, two wireless phones,… He cleaned everything with chlorine solution and put them back into the case…”
“Mostafa had a machete in his hand. He said ‘this machete is enough for me.’ Mostafa and them were supposed to come by bike and we were to go by car…Hosein called through the wireless phone and told us the fellow was coming and to be ready. Shahin got off. The fellow realized something was about to happen. He turned to run away but Hosein caught him from behind. Shahin ran there and they both held him. Monchehr joined them as well. Then, they forced him into the car. Four of them sat in the back. We went to a street and I called Siavash. Siavash was laughing and said ‘you have done a very important job.’”
“The next day at 4:30 pm at Mehrabad Airport I was arrested. Until this moment, I think I am still in a dream.”
Another fellow confessed the following:
…he called me and told me you must go and get films from his street and his house…also from the building from outside. I said, ‘okay. We will go.’ Then, Hosein and I went and took videos of everything in the street, of the building, the door to the building, the building number, everything… and returned home. As soon as we got home, they had transferred 20 million Toman more into our accounts…”
“After his first call to us, he had transferred some money to Hosein’s. Hosein bought mobile phones, SIM Cards…and downloaded and ran WhatsApp on all them and gave one to each of us. Every time he contacted us, it was through this WhatsApp. When we would ask him, he would say ‘Don’t bother with knowing where I am….just do whatever I tell you to do. Do your job and get your money.’”
“He then sent us his photo, his address, his house number, everything and told us ‘go and see the neighborhood first and once you saw everything, then let me know and I’ll give you each 200 million Toman.’ As soon as he said he’ll give us 200 million Toman each, all three of us accepted.
Thirdly, in the line of reasons for “strategic patience”, experience of some real and actual chaos and insecurity are good reminders to us as a nation not to take things for granted, not to become spoiled and have a sense of entitlement, and appreciate the blessings God has given us. Some tremors every once in a while might cause some inconveniences but it is healthy and builds this nation’s character. It also gives us a chance to have a scholastic exercise in observing, examining, and measuring how sophisticated theories, models, and plans of sworn enemies of this nation come to naught and then observe their reaction.
Credible and substantiated rumors[5], courtesy of Edward Joseph Snowden, of course, had it for some times that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian nation have occupied a special and prominent place as targets of cyber and social influence operations run by the operatives of the so-called five-eyes countries[6]:
We are honored. I am often curious about the price tag for these sorts of operations. One of the documents[7] lists an annual price tag of $52.6 billion in “black budget”[8] earmarked for cyber operations in 2013, operations that also includes social influence operations. That is more than half a trillion dollar in the past ten years by just one of the so-called five-eyes countries, and only the covert budget, and only for the cyber operations. For the sake of sustainability, as defined by themselves, they could have used a tiny fraction of that amount to figure ways to keep all Europeans warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and their factories running all year long. I am just saying.
Where did US-Zionists-UK Go Wrong and Why?
I suppose we must first establish that the trio failed miserably since it is the assumption in the above question. On Wednesday, Azar 14 [December 5, 2022], Al-Alam Network published a special report on its interview with a security authority about the Islamic Republic of Iran having receive a secret message from key “Western governments” about stopping their support for the protests and riots in Iran if Iran fulfills four specific conditions. I translate part of the article (numbers in brackets and emphasized texts are mine):
“A security official, in a communication with Al-Alam Network, affirmed heavy support of several Western countries of riots in Iran and added these countries have said they will stop their support for the rioters should Iran accept 4 conditions. According to him, these countries have said if Iran [1] injects supplies of oil and gas into the global market without limits and pre-conditions during current energy crisis, [2] accepts the Western position in its nuclear files, [3] reaches an agreement with the Saudi regime with regards to regional issues, and [4] cuts all cooperation with Russia, they will stop their support for the protesters/rioters.”[9]
An amusing menu of wishes. They sure got on a “Streetcar Named Desire” and forgot to transfer. Nevertheless, the Iranian nation is awake and aware. The majority understands there are economic and social problems, but they are not willing to gamble with the nation’s security and independence. While you may get to see what your free media allows you to see in the virtual realm, the reality tells a different story. I think if Charles Dickens were to rise up and write a contemporary companion to his Tale of Two Cities paradox, he would have several excellent examples of real versus virtual lands in places like the Islamic Republic of Iran wherefrom to extract inspirations.
Below is a screenshot from the video of people attending the funeral of Martyr Ajamian in Karaj. Thousands of people attended the funeral:
The day after the martyrdom of Shahid Ajamian, on the 13th of Aban [November 4, 2022], the National Day of Fighting the Global Arrogance, the people of Iran showed up in unprecedented numbers and presented the images of reality in response to images created by media magicians on the payroll of the Global Arrogance. They created yet another Yaumullah, or “Day of God” since God and Only God can truly move people’s hearts.
There were massive demonstrations all over Iran shouting “We are standing to the End,” Down with the USA, Down with Zionist Regime, and Down with England. You could view sample videos from different cities like Dezful, Gilan, Isfahan, Tehran, Urumieh, and Zanjan in case the “free” press in the West has protected the citizens from reality.
It is befitting to provide a synopsis of what the Global Day of Fighting Arrogance is. The 13th of Aban [4th of November] was designated as the Global Day of Fighting Arrogance to remember 3 major events in Iran’s recent history: First, on this day in 1343 [1964], Imam Ruhullah Khomeini was sent to exile by the US puppet, Shah’s regime, for publicly objecting to the passage of a bill according to which Iran capitulated its right as an independent nation and agreed to terms that effectively made Iran a vassal state of the global arrogance. The seed of the Revolution was sown. Second, on this day in 1357 [1978], a group of revolutionary students who were sitting in protest were massacred by Shah’s security forces while they were locked behind closed university gates. The seed of the student movement was sown. Third, on this day in 1358 [1979], a group of students captured the United States of America’s Den of Spies ( ‘embassy’) and the spies (‘diplomats’) therein. The seed of a global fight against the Global arrogance was sown.
But, where did they go wrong?
An Iranian folk tale might be good place to start. A fellow, reputed for his ‘genius’, went to store to buy a sack of grain. Upon arrival, he noticed a long line of people waiting. Unwilling to wait patiently in line till his turn, he began a false rumor about some free stew that was being distributed a couple of blocks down the road. At first, a few people left their positions in the line in the hopes of getting some free stew. As the rumor spread, more and more people abandoned the line and hurried out of the store and down the block for their share of the free stew. Naturally, the fellow was quite pleased with his own genius and amazed at people’s gullibility. His wait time in line had now been slashed to a fraction of what it would have been. Upon observing the masses of people rushing away to get their share of free stew though, an anxious feeling overtook him: what if the rumor was true and he would be left out getting his share of the free stew. So, the fellow abandoned the line and hurried to get free stew before it was all gone.
In short, US-Zionists-UK believed their own lies and proceeded to act based on false narratives of their own production and not reality. That is lethal for any good planner. False narratives felt so true that even good old Biden got animated and promised to free Iran:
“So, you know, we found out that a lot of our soldiers, more people are coming back from Iraq, Afghanistan with serious brain injuries and tumors than any other war in American history, other than the civil war…more amputees are coming back than any wars in American history. And those burn pits…those burn pits, don’t worry we are going to free Iran…they are going to free themselves pretty soon.”
You go, tiger!
Humor aside though, the “First Man” in the West is in such a sorry state. I think his mind fills the blanks with just whatever of similar shape, color, and texture his brain has archived. Images of fire from young Iranian girls burning their scarfs and bras replace fire pits of US toxic military burn pits and triggers “we are going to free Iran.” Sort of like a “thought lottery.” We seek refuge in God when He teaches us lessons.
In any case, absence of a clear and solid strategy and plan, feeling helpless to stop how the world is changing, so desperate to get what they need, and over excited by what they thought they almost had, the trio brought to the battlefield most of their most precious “assets”, overt and covert, and burned them all. They spent billions of dollars and thousands of human- and bot-hours to fabricate falsehoods in order to “discredit, promote distrust, dissuade, deceive, disrupt, delay, deny, denigrate/degrade, and deter”[6] people of the world in the direction of their choosing against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Somewhere along the line, they began to believe their own lies and made critical decisions based on self-misperceptions of their own creation. Then, they spent billions of more dollars and thousands of more human- and bot-hours to re-analyze, recalculate, and re-figure where to go from there. Their four demands mentioned earlier are a pathetic manifestation of their desperation.
They underestimated the Iranian nation, once again, ignored the Will of God, once again, and overestimated their own power and reach, once again.
References:
[1] Arrahil (الرحیل) is an Arabic term that is also used as a call to all those traveling in a caravan to pack up and start moving (often very early in the morning when it is still dark).
[2] Amini was the last name of the Iranian woman whose death triggered the start of the protests in Iran. In Farsi, the name means being secure and reliable.
[3] Mehr News Agency. “Two Hundred People have lost their lives in the recent riots.” News Code: 5645721. Azar 12, 1401 [December 3, 2022] @13:12. Accessed online at: mehrnews.com/xYZqP
[4] Jahan Emrouz News. “If we had not showed restraint, we could have finished the riots in six days, Vice Commander of IRGC.” News Code: 81605. Aban 29, 1401 [November 20, 2022] @ 13:45. Accessed online at: https://www.jahannews.com/news/819605
[6] Mandeep K. Dhami. “Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’s (Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group’s) Effects and Online HUMINT Operations.” Human Systems Group, Information Management Department, March 10, 2011. Available online at: https://grid.glendon.yorku.ca/items/show/147
[7] FY 2013 Congressional Budget Justification, Vol. I, National Intelligence Program Summary. February 2012, Available online at: https://grid.glendon.yorku.ca/items/show/8
[8] Chris Sanders & Catherine Austin Fitts. “The Black Budget of the United States: the Engine of a Negative Return Economy.” World Affairs:The Journal of International Issues, Vol. 8, No. 2 (April-June 2004), Pages 17-34.
[9] Al-Alam Network. “Special Al-Alam: Four Western Conditions in Return for no supporting the Rioters.” Monday, Azar 14, 1401, @ 11:50. News Code: 6465528. Available online at: https://fa.alalam.ir/news/6465528/
مع اقتراب الحرب في أوكرانيا من نهاية شهرها الثاني، وتقاطع التقارير والمواقف والتقديرات عند كونها ستسمرّ طويلاً، وكونها لن تضع أوزارها خلال أسابيع، وظهور حركة الجيوش والأسلحة في مساحات الاشتباك بما لا يمكن تفسيره بمقتضيات الحرب الأوكرانيّة وحدها، بل بصفتها مناورات استراتيجيّة في سياق حرب الشرق والغرب، حيث تختبر الإرادات والأسلحة والأسلحة المضادة والحروب الإلكترونية والمالية، وشيئاً فشيئاً بدأ يتضح ان الجيش والحكم والسلاح وخطط القتال في أوكرانيا لا تتحرك بحسابات أوكرانية، بل بصفتها خط المواجهة الأول لنخبة الجيوش الغربية وأسلحتها وخططها، وتحت سقوفها السياسية، وان الحركة الروسية العسكرية ونوعية السلاح الروسي المستخدم والسقوف السياسية المتحركة، لا تنطلق من متطلبات المعركة في النطاق الجغرافي لأوكرانيا بقدر ما تمثل استجابة لمتطلبات مواجهة أشمل وأوسع، يقف فيها الغرب الأميركي والأوروبي فيها قبالة الحسابات الروسية حيث يتم التخاطب باستعراض أنواع الصواريخ والقدرات العسكرية لبلورة موازين قوى على أرض الواقع وليس على الورق، تنتج وحدها قواعد الاشتباك وحدود قدرات الردع، وفّرت لها شروط الاشتباك حول أوكرانيا الفرصة المثالية للطرفين المتقابلين لخوض الشكل الوحيد الممكن للحرب غير النووية.
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أوكرانيا التي تقلّ عن مساحة دول المشرق العربي، سورية والعراق ولبنان والأردن وفلسطين، ويقلّ عدد سكانها عن مجموع سكان المشرق قليلاً، وتقع على الحدود الروسية بتاريخ وجغرافيا على درجة عالية من التشابك والتداخل، وتشكل الامتداد الأهم للغرب في قلب روسيا، ونافذة روسيا وأوروبا على البحر الأسود، وتمثل الجمع المشترك لتاريخ حروب البلقان والقرم معاً، التي كانت أساس حروب عالمية سابقة، هي اليوم مساحة الحرب العالميّة التي نعيش يومياتها، والتي يسعى الغرب من خلالها لإعادة تشكيل روسيا، وتسعى روسيا من خلالها لإعادة تشكيل أوروبا. والحرب تبدو مستمرة حتى يتحقق أحد الهدفين، او يتحقق الإنهاك والتسليم المتبادل بالحاجة لتنظيم قواعد الاشتباك وربط النزاع على قاعدة التوازن السلبي، ما يعني نصف انتصار لروسيا ونصف هزيمة للغرب. بينما نجاح الغرب بنقل الأزمة الى الداخل الروسي، من البوابة الاقتصادية أو العسكرية، وصولاً لبدء مسار التغيير في التوازنات السياسية الداخلية سيعني انتصاراً للغرب، فيما نجاح روسيا بالصمود ونقل التداعيات الناجمة عن العقوبات على الداخل الأوروبي إلى مرحلة الغليان، وبدء التحول الى عنصر فاعل في تشكيل مشهد أوروبي سياسي وشعبي جديد، سيعني انتصاراً روسياً في رسم معادلة دوليّة تكون لها فيها يد طولى.
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حتى الآن في المسرح العسكري نجحت روسيا بتفادي استدراجها لحرب استنزاف ونجح الغرب بتظهير قدرته على تمويل وتجهيز مسرح صالح لمثل هذه الحرب، وعنوانها كييف، ونجحت روسيا بدرجة كبيرة بجعل الحرب تدور تحت عنوان السيطرة على خطوط الإمداد براً وبحراً وجواً، ولذلك يسعى الغرب لتوسيع هوامش حركته نحو الداخل الأوكراني ملوحاً بتوسيع المدى الجغرافي نحو بولندا والسويد وفنلندا، أملاً بتراجع روسي أمام حركة الإمداد العسكري نحو الداخل الأوكراني. وبرز اختبار التدخل المباشر عن بُعد باستهداف الطراد موسكوفا بصواريخ أميركية، فجاء إغراق غامض للمدمرة الأميركية يو اس اس سوليفانز داخل بحيرة في ولاية أوهايو، ليظهر حرباً سريّة للأسلحة النوعية التي لم يتم اختبارها من قبل، ويرسم قواعد الردع والاشتباك في آن واحد.
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يبدو المسرح الاقتصادي والمالي عنواناً للميدان الأشد حيوية وأهمية في الحرب العالمية، فهي حرب تدور بين سعي أميركي لتهميش روسيا كمورد عالمي لا غنى عنه في موارد الطاقة، خصوصاً بالنسبة لأوروبا، مقابل سعي روسي للتلويح بتهميش الدولار كعملة عالمية أولى حاكمة في الأسواق العالمية، وفيما يبدو أن السقفين صعبا المنال ودونهما متطلبات تفوق قدرة الفريقين الراهنة، نجحت موسكو حتى الآن باحتواء الصدمة القاتلة لحزمة العقوبات الغربية القاسية، وانتقلت الى تحويل التحدّي الى فرصة بجعل معركة توريد الطاقة الى أوروبا قضية سيادية أوروبية تتصل بمصير النمو والتضخم والرفاه، ووضع عنوان الدفع بالروبل كرأس جسر لسقف المعركة المتصل بموقع الدولار كعملة محورية حصرية عالمياً.
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توقعات الربح بالضربة القاضية بمعنى النصر الحاسم لأي من الفريقين، يبدو بالنسبة للغرب مستحيلاً، وبالنسبة لروسيا متوقفاً على حدود الجاهزية الصينية للانتقال من الاصطفاف الدفاعي مع روسيا إلى المبادرة الهجومية، وفي حال بقاء الصين في التموضع الدفاعي في الحلف مع روسيا، ستكون فرص الربح بالنقاط لمحور روسيا الصين، أعلى من حظوظ الفوز بها من المحور الأوروبي الأميركي.
The Zionist movement is currently the most powerful fascist movement in the world.
Zionism, a movement of Indo-European lineage
The normalization of Palestinicide
Zionism is a European movement that in 1948 succeeded in imposing a colonial regime in Palestine called “Israel”. The Arabs, from the logic, from the entelechy, saw and felt that this project was impossible, absurd, and even laughable. It was seen as a surrealist project, but today it transcends into hyperrealism.
On the one hand, it is based on the falsification of history, under a fascinating mantle full of epic and epopee, all a charm of pirouettes, not only media, artistic and religious, but also in the intellectual and even academic field, that is, the Jewish People returning to their ancestral land after 2000 years… The Land that God promised to the Jews…
And while part of the world was and still is, under the spell of that mantra and nirvana of sublime love, “Israel”; Zionism founded its colonial regime on the basis of genocidal barbarism against the native Semitic population. Palestine at that time was comprised of 70% of a thriving peasant population, mostly literate and unarmed. A whole mega plan of terror, horror, cruelty, and terror was articulated against the native Palestinian people, who were also under British colonial rule. Explosions in popular markets, destruction of historical archives, destruction of crops, destruction of power plants, poisoning of water, destruction of infrastructures, looting of heritage relics, etc. Macabre massacres from village to village, in order to provoke people to flee and thus forge ethnic cleansing. More than 400 villages were razed to the ground. Palestinian peasants who found human Skulls when plowing the land. Colonial soldiers used to stab pregnant Palestinian women and bet on whether it was a dog or a bitch. Desperate Palestinians would ask for a missing relative and the colonial soldiers would throw an arm or leg of the relative they were looking for. 5% of the native population was killed and 80% were expelled from their homeland, this is known as Al-Nakba.
Fauziah Khalil, a Palestinian peasant survivor of Al-Nakba, my mother, described the cruel genocides by recalling her uncle’s massacre: My uncle Hassan was killed by the colonial Israelis and they found his leg on the roof of the house…
But in the face of this “cannibalism”, a typical aspect of colonialism, the trauma of the native Palestinian people, plus the infinite wound of the rest of the inbreeding, the Arab fraternity, the masterfully disinforming Western propaganda, where the victims become guilty: “Israel” surrounded by enemy Arabs, the anti-Jewish Arabs (although the greatest massacres of Jews and Christians were in Europe and by Europeans).
To hide the colonization of Palestine, the occupiers disguise it as a religious conflict, an ancestral hatred between Jews and Muslims (although the great passages of the history of hatred were Jewish-Christian in the West).
Decades later with the advent of the Internet, a great mass of the world begins to know the tragedy, pain, and trauma of the Palestinian people, but that does not necessarily mean that they know the inhuman colonial features that Palestinians are facing today in the XXI century.
The Zionist movement is currently the most powerful fascist movement in the world. There is no more powerful entity today than international Zionism. It is a fascist movement.
The most despotic tyranny in the world is Saudi Arabia. Petro-tyranny, oil, the resource of contemporary civilization. But more than a tyranny it is a neo-colonial regime (a native caste in imperial service). In reality the Arab-Persian world is politically classified into: 1. Israeli colonialism; 2. Saudi neocolonialism; 3. Arab dictatorships (some pro and anti-imperialist).
The instrumentalization of Peace: A sadistic instrumentalization of the extermination of the native Palestinian people
The normalization with the colonial regime of “Israel” by some Gulf tyrannies is not entirely new, that was a public secret, but it is the Palestinian leadership itself who officializes this lethal normalization through the Oslo Accords. The years have shown the path to the slaughterhouse of the Palestinian people.
Some neo-colonial Gulf petro-tyrannies, in their betrayal of the Palestinian people, are investing huge money in a new pedagogy, new schooling in favor of Zionist colonialism throughout the Arab world and peoples of Muslim confession.
Some are even promoting Israeli colonialism in Islamic schools, just like the obscurantism of some evangelicals, in which they preach: Whoever does not defend “Israel” will burn in the flames of hell. That is happening today in our XXI century…
At the same time, they see the Iranian government as the enemy of the Arab world and not Israeli colonialism.
But on the other hand, the sadism of Arab public figures in recognizing Israeli colonial expansionist anachronism in the name of peace is abominable. The instrumentalization of peace as a tool for the extermination of the native Arab-Palestinian Semitic people; to disguise this barbarism as something romantic, bohemian, and for peace, is totally sadistic.
Today the Palestinian struggle is in a very difficult reality, but it is in the most difficult moments that Revolutions also emerge. In 1982, the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, fled Lebanon. The PLO was dying in Tunisia, and then the first Intifada flourished and revived the national liberation struggle.
Let’s not get distracted by an attractive, tricky intellectuality that contributes to our Palestinicide. As native people we must abolish colonialism. Zionism lives on the power of ignorance and its sophisticated repression. It has falsified History, the West ignores and fears to address History. Let us not be afraid of Western fear. Let us unearth History in the face of this historicide. Let us liberate the West from its own fear, that goes through the liberation of Palestine. Otherwise, the Palestinicide would continue as well as the concatenated obscurantism, sadistically dressed up as wisdom, humanism and peace…
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
Terminology and definitions have always been part of wars used by the West in general, and Washington and London in particular against resistance movements and freedom fighters.
Western governments orchestrate systematic misleading campaigns and spend billions of dollars to tarnish the resistance image and portray them as ‘terrorists, smugglers and drug traffickers.’
They depict them as groups that carry ‘illegal and criminal activities to introduce them to the public as groups of organized crime committers.’
This kind of baseless and unfounded accusations by the Western governments aims at justifying the use of violence reaching to killing the resistance operatives and activists whether political or military.
The whole issue emanates from the open and unabated support those governments pledge to ‘Israel.’
Both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine fall under this category and they truly represent their people’s struggle against the ‘Israeli’ occupation.
Hezbollah has become a beacon of light and hope to tens of millions across the world after its success in resisting the occupation and inflicting successive defeats against it, thus bringing continuous victories and glory to the whole Umma.
Many Western governments have designated the party as a ‘terrorist entity’ following endless, heavy, and persistent ‘Israeli’ efforts and lobbying to this effect.
Hamas received equal treatment and faced the same tough measures for its continuous fight to protect the Palestinian people.
After many unsuccessful wars by the ‘Israelis’ to eradicate them, and after they emerged triumphant from their battles and become icons of hope to the people, the ‘Israelis’ started a restless campaign not only to tarnish their image, but to force laws and regulations all over the world to criminalize them so they can clamp their support and criminalize any support or any assistance they could receive and even to make any contact with them and their representatives as illegal.
Those measures reflect how hopeless ‘Israel’ has become because of the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon.
But no matter how hard they might try, it is evident that their sinister, unjust, and aggressive decisions will not bring them any positive result.
The Western governments who aided ‘Israel’ in its effort should be questioned held responsible by their people for their support to the number one terrorist and apartheid entity in the world nowadays.
The so called international community, especially the United Nations and human rights organizations bear equal responsibility in saying the truth and revealing the true face of ‘Israel.’
‘Israel’ should be ready to know that those resistance movements are not separated or fragmented, contrary, they are now in a real axis that stretches from Gaza to Sanaa.
Tens of millions of supporters believe in their choice and support their resistance.
Hundreds of thousands of trained military personnel are ready to join any war against ‘Israel’ as pronounced by the leaders of this axis.
They are also supported by governments and states that strongly believe in the cause.
The resistance movements in Palestine and Lebanon have proved their effectiveness in protecting their people and liberating lands.
However, although the ‘Israeli’ efforts and western support against Hezbollah and Hamas could help the Zionist entity gain some publicity, this can never change one letter in the dictionary of battle against occupation.
Our people and our Umma are more decisive than any time in the past to liberate their sacred lands and protect them. This has already been written, the ‘Israelis’ have only to wait and see how many defeats they will receive and how many victories the resistance will gain, and it is only a matter of time!
European countries have invaded and destroyed an endless list of other countries claiming they’re spreading ‘democracy’ and promoting ‘human rights’ in the targeted countries, the practice of these western countries, in reality, is everything but related to human rights or democracy, it’s pure evil.
Tens of thousands of women and children members of families of European terrorists who practiced the ‘Western values’ in the killing, maiming, uprooting, and displacing hundreds of thousands of Syrians, are now abandoned by their countries. These are women who were married to European terrorists and bred tens of thousands of children while their husbands were demonstrating western values in Syria.
The Kurdish SDF terrorists are holding tens of thousands of those family members in addition to thousands of Syrians in concentration camps in regions under their control in the worst inhumane conditions ever imaginable. The captives in the Kurdish-run concentration camps under the US forces’ supervision hail from 57 countries, 24 of those countries are western countries.
Moussa Assi has more in this report for the Lebanese-based Al Mayadeen news channel, followed by the transcript of the English translation:
Their number is 64 thousand, they are members of the families of terrorists who came from 57 countries to fight in Syria, 80% of them are women and children whose countries, most of which are Western countries, refuse to take them back in contradiction to the stipulations of human rights laws that require states to bear the responsibility of their citizens outside their lands, just as it is the case of the other citizens and regardless of any consideration.
The result is tens of thousands of children and women who are held in very harsh conditions in the camps controlled by the Qasd militia in northern Syria.
Fionnuala D. Ni Aolain – Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism: Thousands of children have been convicted on charges that classify them as adults because of their belonging to the families of which they were born. We see countries that have taken an arbitrary line towards them, saying that they are not actual children because they were born into similar families, and this is clear to Western governments.
Western countries present various arguments for not taking their citizens back, including that they must stay close to the place where the crimes were committed in order for them to receive a fair trial.
Fionnuala D. Ni Aolain – Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism: The idea of holding tens of thousands awaiting trial is unrealistic and intended to keep these people away from their home countries. As for saying that they pose a threat to societies, let me say that the long-term risks are of leaving these children there.
Out of more than 250 French children born from marriages of ISIS terrorists in Syria, France agreed to take back only 35 children, and these are either orphans or their mothers agreed on the condition that they abandon them and remain in the Syrian camp.
Western human rights countries [sic] refuse to take back the children of their terrorists who fought in Syria. They issued a final judgment on these children that they are terrorists from birth and represent a later danger to Western societies.
As the first Americans demanded their right to independence from British colonialism and the expulsion of the occupiers from America in the nineteenth century, and the French demanded the liberation of their country from Nazism in World War II, and Britain and the United States fulfilled their desire for that. We are in Palestine and Yemen, we call on the friendly Iranian state to seriously intervene to help us achieve our right to expel the Jewish Zionist, Wahhabi occupations, and to achieve the independence of our country …
This is the mouthpiece of the Palestinians and Yemenis who are suffering under the Western Zionism and Wahhabi Zionism.
International law grants this right to all peoples of the world to determine their own destiny and establish their independent sovereign state, governed by justice, law, and peaceful transfer of power, and people managing the affairs of the country.
In other words, we are not asking for more than what was demanded by the first president of the United States of America, when he was leading the American War of Independence (from the British colonialist), which lasted from 1775 to 1783, and ended with the independence of the United States from Britain.
This means that the Palestinian people, as well as the Yemeni people, have the full right to use all means, including military means, to liberate their homeland from the occupation and establish their independent Palestinian state, as well as Yemen, with democracy that guarantees equal rights and duties for all citizens, of different currents, affiliations, and sects.
These same rights were also used by General Charles de Gaulle, during the French War of Liberation, led by General de Gaulle, from May 1940 until the liberation of Paris from German occupation, on 25 August 1944, at the end of the Battle of Paris, which lasted from 19-25 August 1944.
It is the battle that was paved and supported by the United States and Britain, through the implementation of the massive sea and air landing operation, on the coast of Normandy (northwest of Paris) on 6 June 1944, where tens of thousands of soldiers and military vehicles were disembarked, who began their march towards Paris.
The Palestinian people and the Yemeni people have the right to use these means and the whole world, not just the Arab and Islamic nations, must provide the necessary support to the Palestinian and Yemeni peoples to achieve their legitimate goals.
Why all this blame and accusation to the vulnerable peoples today in seeking such deserved assistance and support guaranteed by international law..!?
Why make all these flimsy accusations against Iran or non-Iran for helping vulnerable people under the pretext of what they call interference in the affairs of other countries.!?
Why America and Britain have the right to intervene to save Paris, from the Nazi occupation, and the friends of Palestine and Yemen do not have that, why..!?
Why is the fear, hesitation and reluctance, whether from some of the right-holders themselves, or our resistance and friend’s media in presenting such facts to the world …!
Why some friends conceal the truth of their position or the help that they do or want to do?
So is what they do or intend to do a shame, sin, or crime … !?
Or is it a duty and a pride that they should raise their charges because of him and speak out loud about it and advocate for it in international forums … !?
For all this, an open, clear and firm intervention is required in order to end the continuing crimes of the Zionist and Wahhabi occupations of God-blessed Palestine, and Yemen.
من الآخر وبلا مواربة ولف ودوران، كما طالب الأميركيون الأوائل بحقهم في الاستقلال عن الاستعمار البريطانيّ وطرد المحتلين من أميركا في القرن التاسع عشر، وطالب الفرنسيون بتحرير بلادهم من النازية في الحرب العالمية الثانية ونفذت كلّ من بريطانيا والولايات المتحدة لهم رغبتهم في ذلك، نحن في فلسطين واليمن نطالب الدولة الإيرانية الصديقة بتدخل جدّي لمساعدتنا في تحقيق حقنا في طرد الاحتلالين الصهيوني اليهودي والصهيوني الوهابي وتحقيق استقلال بلادنا… وقضي الأمر الذي فيه تستفتيان…!
هذا هو لسان حال الفلسطينيين واليمنيين الذين يرزحون تحت نير الصهيونية الغربية والصهيونية الوهابية.
والقانون الدولي يمنح هذا الحق، لكافة شعوب العالم، في تقرير مصيرها وإقامة دولتها المستقلة ذات السيادة، والتي يحكمها العدل والقانون والتداول السلمي للسلطة وضمان مشاركة الشعب بأكمله في إدارة شؤون البلاد.
اي أننا لا نطالب بأكثر مما كان يطالب به الرئيس الأول للولايات المتحدة الأميركية، عندما كان يقود حرب الاستقلال الأميركية (عن المستعمر البريطاني)، والتي استمرت من سنة ١٧٧٥ وحتى سنة ١٧٨٣، وانتهت باستقلال الولايات المتحدة عن بريطانيا.
وهذا يعني انّ للشعب الفلسطيني كما للشعب اليمني الحق الكامل في استخدام الوسائل كافة، بما في ذلك الوسائل العسكرية، لتحرير وطنه من الاحتلال الصهيوني وإقامة دولته الفلسطينية المستقلة وكذلك هو الحال في اليمن العربي الأصيل، ومعها الديمقراطية التي تضمن الحقوق والواجبات المتساوية لكلّ المواطنين، من مختلف التيارات والانتماءات والمذاهب والطوائف.
هذه الحقوق نفسها سبق أن استخدمها أيضاً الجنرال شارل ديغول، ابان حرب التحرير الفرنسية، التي قادها الجنرال ديغول، من شهر أيار 1940 وحتى تحرير باريس، من الاحتلال الألماني، بتاريخ 25/8/1944، عند انتهاء معركة باريس التي استمرت من 19-25/8/1944.
وهي المعركه التي مهّدت لها ودعمتها الولايات المتحدة الاميركية وبريطانيا، من خلال تنفيذ عملية الإنزال البحري والجوي الضخم، على سواحل النورماندي (شمال غرب باريس) بتاريخ 6/6/1944، حيث تمّ إنزال عشرات آلاف الجنود والآليات العسكرية، الذين بدأوا زحفهم باتجاه باريس.
للشعب الفلسطيني وكذلك للشعب اليمني الحق في استخدام تلك الوسائل وعلى العالم اجمع، وليس فقط الأمتين العربية والاسلامية، تقديم الدعم اللازم للشعبين الفلسطيني واليمني لتحقيق أهدافهما المشروعة.
لماذا كلّ هذا اللوم والاتهام للشعوب المستضعفة اليوم في طلب مثل هذه المساعدة والإسناد المستحقين واللذين يكفلهما القانون الدولي..!؟
ولماذا توجيه كلّ تلك الاتهامات الواهية لإيران او لغير إيران بسبب مساعدتهما للشعوب المستضعفة بحجة أو ذريعة ما يسمّونه بالتدخل في شؤون الدول الأخرى..!؟
يعني أميركا وبريطانيا يحق لهما التدخل لإنقاذ باريس، من الاحتلال النازي، وأصدقاء فلسطين واليمن لا يحق لهم ذلك، لماذا..!؟
ولماذا التهيّب والتردّد والتلكّؤ سواء من بعض أصحاب الحق أنفسهم أو إعلامنا المقاوم والصديق في طرح مثل هذه الحقائق على العالم…!؟
بل وحتى تخفّي بعض الأصدقاء او إخفاء حقيقة موقفهم او حقيقة مساعدتهم التي يقومون بها او يريدون القيام بها للمستضعفين…!؟
فهل ما يقومون به او ينوون القيام به عيب او ذنب او جريمة…!؟
ام هو واجب وفخر يجب أن يرفعوا هاماتهم بسببه ويجاهرون به ويرافعون من أجله في المحافل الدولية…!؟
لهذا كله مطلوب تدخل صريح وواضح وحازم من أجل إنهاء الجريمة المستمرة والموصوفة للاحتلالين الصهيوني والوهابي لكلّ من فلسطين الأرض والسماء واليمن المنصور بالله.
2,750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate stored at warehouse 12 at Beirut harbour a few hours before the explosion while a blacksmith was working at a few centimetres from the AN bags lying on the floor since 2014.
On Tuesday 4thof August, an explosion at the Lebanese harbour in the heart of the capital Beirut caused devastating human casualties and material destruction. Over 140 people died instantly, 80 are still missing under the rubble, and over 5000 were wounded. More than 300,000 homes were destroyed and many more were damaged. 2,750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate (AN) (an equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT) somehow ignited and registered the largest explosion since the end of World War II. Many theories, accusing Israel or Hezbollah or the CIA, are circulating like wildfire in the Lebanese capital. Where is the truth? Cui bono?
The Rhosus, a ship flying the Moldavian flag was sailing from Georgia to Mozambique carrying (among other merchandise) 2,750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate destined for the Fabrica de Explosives in Mozambique. This shipment was paid for by the Banco Internacional De Mozambique. It stopped in Beirut on 20/11/2013 to offload agricultural machines and was expected to load goods from Lebanon for Jordan on its way to Mozambique. An inspection concluded the ship was unfit to sail, and local Lebanese authorities effectively prevented the Rhosus from sailing. Lebanese port authorities discharged the cargo into Port Warehouse no.12 and later confiscated the cargo due to bills unpaid by the shipowner.
Ammonium Nitrate has many properties, notably as a component of explosive mixtures (Mellor, 1922; Elvers 1989, Suslick 1992). Pure AN is very stable and should meet specified quality requirements to be used in the production of industrial explosives. According to the European Fertilizer Manufacturers Association, AN is especially difficult to detonate and does indeed need a substantial stimulus for this to happen. But it must be stored in a dry, well-ventilated and sealed storage area. Moreover, any electrical installation in the storage area must be resistant to ammonia vapour.
For over six years, the 2,750 tons of AN remained in the Lebanese warehouse without any plans to relocate or re-sell it. Moreover, the storage area chosen is subject to the changing weather of the Lebanese climatic seasons, which include suffocating heat in the summer. The storage area was of metal construction with no proper ventilation.
Last year, Captain Naddaf who works at the harbour under the National Security Service, called his superior to inform him about the presence of a “dangerous cargo at warehouse no. 12.” His superior officer, General A. instructed the young officer to provide a written report and take pictures of the warehouse and the contents. The warehouse construction had a breach big enough for the passage of a man, which would facilitate entry or even theft.
How is the Lebanese harbour organised? It is controlled by a kind of local mafia composed of high ranking officers, customs directors, administrators and security officials. Each person in charge has been appointed by a political leader offering his men immunity and protection. The harbour produces immense amounts of money and bribes are the daily bread of all those who run this “show”. In the face of such corruption, it is now clear that scientific expertise about what is happening to store AN and the conditions in which 2,750 tons of it are stored counted for little. Actually, many officers in this Port have no competence for the jobs they do and are appointed, as we have seen, by favouritism and through political connections. This is indeed the case for the Director of Customs and the Army intelligence, General S., responsible for harbour movements and contents. So, given all that, when a problem or a disaster occurs, as it did on Tuesday, it will obviously be very difficult to find those really responsible. So how did the conditions for this AN explosion arise?
On the 4th of August, at 15:00 local time, a blacksmith was asked to close the holes in the warehouse to prevent potential smuggling of the content. The blacksmith was not informed about the hazardous content of the warehouse, nor he was told to take the necessary precautions to prevent the spread of metal particles that produce fragments and can trigger a fire. He was working at a distance no more than a few centimetres from the AN bags that were lying on the floor, from which a clear substance was leaking. Once the job was done, between 16:30 and 17:00, smoke was seen coming from the warehouse.
Firemen were called to deal with the potential fire. At 18:08 the first explosion was heard, followed by the second one over a minute later. After the first explosion, a fire ignited inside the warehouse. The fire generated more heat, enough for the entire stock of AN to blow up and create a vacuum (negative pressure). The pressure of the explosion caused the many casualties and devastating destruction in the city.
Who called the blacksmith and allocated the budget for his work? Was he informed of the hazard of welding next to Ammonium Nitrate? Why were the 2,750 tons of AN left for more than six years in non-regulation storage for no justifiable reason whatsoever?
The question has to be asked: “who benefits from the explosion?” The affected area belongs mainly to people who are not generally friendly to Hezbollah. Therefore, it would not have been in Israel’s interest nor in that of the US to bomb and cause so much damage to the properties and businesses of friendly parties. Destroying this part of Beirut in order to impose a “new Middle East” or a “new Lebanon” makes no sense either, because the anti-Hezbollah population is currently weaker than ever and is not in a position to confront Hezbollah. France and the US are in no better position to influence the population.
Speculation about Hezbollah storing weapons at warehouse 12 is ridiculous and unfounded- because the place was under constant surveillance by cameras controlled by the security forces themselves. Hezbollah would certainly not store weapons in an area both unfriendly and not under its own control.
Hezbollah, in fact, is currently waiting for the Special Tribunal for the assassination of the ex-Prime Minister Rafic Hariri to announce its verdict. This is how the US, to please Israel, is trying to curb Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon- but to no avail. Indeed, the US and Israel have tried everything in their power in Syria, in Iraq and in Lebanon but failed in their attempts. The US is imposing harsh sanctions on Syria and Lebanon (preventing Gulf and European countries from assisting with the severe Lebanese financial crisis) but the outcome is the same: Hezbollah won’t submit.
The many “conspiracy theories” fail to line up with the facts of this accident. Ignorance, incompetence, favouritism and bureaucracy are the reasons for the loss of so many lives and the destruction of Beirut, a capital where people have not learned to stand together. This is a huge national tragedy. The Lebanese hold property in many foreign countries, west and east. This expresses the lack of a sense of belonging- because this is a country where elected politicians have amassed and stolen all the country’s wealth, where they hoard power, and where they pass it on to their sons.
“Fallout continues from recent Wikileaks revelations, which confirmed that the OPCW had been pressured to alter its report to cover up evidence about the alleged April 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria. Investigative journalist and on-the-ground reporter Eva Bartlett joins In Question to discuss.”
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I thank Robert Thorpe for his summary of the interview:
“Steadfast Canadian journalist Eva Karene Bartlett, who has spent months on the ground in many parts of Syria since 2014, discusses Western propaganda designed to mislead people about Syria, demonize the nation in support of Western efforts to overthrow its sovereign government, and the defacto complicity in terrorism of the US, British, Canadian and other NATO governments.
She raises the issue of the recent resignation of Newsweek journalist Tareq Haddad’s from the publication over the censorship of his coverage of recent leaked internal OPCW documents which show that the senior management of UN sponsored organization produced fraudulent reporting of the non-existent alleged gas attack (a White Helmet false flag) at Douma used to justify US, French and British missile attacks on Syria.
If the truth about the war on Syria was known and accepted by broad-based Western populations, then there would be no war on Syria.
If the truth were known and accepted there would be no terrorism in Syria.
If the truth were known and accepted Syria would still rank as one of the top five (1) safest countries in the world.
If the truth were known Christians and Muslims and everyone would be safe. Christians and Muslims in Syria would never have been slaughtered had the truth been known and accepted.
If the truth were known and accepted there would be no economic blockades that cause death and disaster and terrorism with intent.
But the truth is not known and accepted by broad-based Western populations because we have been smothered by blankets of suffocating, criminal war propaganda for years. Our tax dollars pay for the indoctrination. Just like our tax dollars pay for NATO and its globalizing tentacles of death and destruction that are literally imperilling the world.
So,why is the Truth not known and accepted by broad-based Western populations?
Renowned author Michel Collon demonstrates the characteristics of war propaganda that deny us the right to know.
First, the real interests that push for war must be hidden. Privileged access to and control of resources, including oil pipelines, must not be mentioned.
Second, history must be erased. People musn’t be aware of the longstanding imperial efforts to divide, weaken, and colonize Syria. They must not know that the war on Syria was planned well in advance by imperial powers.
Third, the leader of the country must be demonized. People must never know that elected President Assad has always been popular, even according to a NATO poll,(2) and that the invading terrorists were never accepted nor welcomed by the vast majority of Syrians.
People must not know that it is the aggressors, the US and allies, who have and use Weapons of Mass Destruction, not only in Syria, but in Iraq, and every other country that they invade. Depleted Uranium impacts present and future generations. Babies in Vietnam are still being born with deformities thanks to that war and the US deployment of Agent Orange.
Perceptions must be fabricated in such a way that the Western aggressors are seen as defending “victims”.
The entire Western-perpetrated war has created a country full of victims. The real intention of war is to kill and harm and maim and destroy. Destabilize means to destroy. The notion that it is humanitarian is beyond ridicule, but this is the perception that must be embedded in Western populations.
Finally, alternate viewpoints must be suppressed.
Warmongers must monopolize the discussion.
People must not know that the White Helmets (3) are terrorists, that they fabricate fake chemical weapons incidents, that they create false flags, that they engage in involuntary organ harvesting. People must not know the truth.
The Truth, widely accepted, would deliver Peace. The Truth must be erased.
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
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.
Zionist Noses. According to the September 12, 2019 edition of the American political journal POLITICO, Israel “likely” placed cell phone surveillance devices around the White House and other “sensitive locations” in Washington, D.C. The publication based its statement on three, unnamed, former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. (The story, however, first broke in June 2018 in a variety of news outlets which noted that the devices, called “stingrays”, had been detected the previous year.)
Stingrays are not fish but are, as Politico described them, devices “which mimic regular cell towers to fool cell phones into giving them their locations and identity information. Formally called international mobile subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture the contents of calls and data use.” American police departments use them and such use has occasioned a series of lawsuits alleging violations of the 1st and 4th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, regarding freedom of speech and warrantless searches.
Israeli officials, as is normally the case, denied any involvement. Donald Trump also denigrated the “alleged” Israeli activities, saying “My relationship with Israel has been great…Anything is possible but I don’t believe it.”
Why? Donald Triumph has long been known to be less than security-conscious. “POLITICO reported in May 2018 that the president often used an insufficiently secured cell phone to communicate with friends and confidants. The New York Times subsequently reported in October 2018 that “Chinese spies are often listening” to Trump’s cell phone calls, prompting the president to slam the story as “so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it.” According to its sources, Trump’s phone, POLITICO said, has been hardened against intrusion.
But Isn’t This Old News?Israel has been spying on the United States government, American businesses, and public officials for decades. In the 1950s, former ambassador Andrew Kilgore once noted, Israel had planted microphones in the American embassy in Tel Aviv.
“As Paul Pillar, the CIA’s former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, told Newsweek [in May 2014], old habits are hard to break: Zionists were dispatching spies to America before there even was an Israel, to gather money and materials for the cause and later the fledgling state. Key components for Israel’s nuclear bombs were clandestinely obtained here. “They’ve found creative and inventive ways,” Pillar said, to get what they want.”
Then there was Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy civilian employee. He had been arrested in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison for passing suitcases full of highly-classified documents to Israeli intelligence. After much Zionist pressure, his life term was commuted to 30 years and he was released.
In the first half of 2001, “Israeli art students” attempting to sell their wares turned up at government offices in 40 U.S. cities. They were attempting to penetrate the Drug Enforcement Administration and other U.S. government agencies, including those with addresses not known to the public. Salon, a news and opinion website, wrote in May 2002: “According to one account, some 140 Israeli nationals were detained or arrested between March 2001 and Sept. 11, 2001. Many of them were deported. According to the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service], the deportations resulted from violations of student visas that forbade the Israelis from working in the United States… After the Sept. 11 attacks, many more young Israelis — 60, according to one AP dispatch and other reports — were detained and deported.”
The journalist Wayne Madsen has written extensively about the “art students” and this writer can attest that they are still operating. A few years ago, he once visited the Pentagon City Mall (near the iconic military headquarters). A salesgirl, from a cart hawking perfume, approached him, asking if he had ever been to her country, Israel.
Yet, for obvious reasons, there has been little investigation of this by the Zionist-controlled U.S. media.
It Gets More Technical. As Christopher Ketcham wrote in a September 2008 issue of CounterPunch, “Since the late 1990s, federal agents have reported systemic communications security breaches at the Department of Justice, FBI, DEA, the State Department, and the White House. Several of the alleged breaches, these agents say, can be traced to two hi-tech [Israeli] communications companies, Verint Inc. (formerly Comverse Infosys), and Amdocs Ltd., that respectively provide major wiretap and phone billing/record-keeping software contracts for the U.S. government. Together, Verint and Amdocs form part of the backbone of the government’s domestic intelligence surveillance technology.”
The article went on to quote Philip Giraldi, former CIA counterterrorism and counterintelligence officer. He said “This is par for the course in the history of Israeli penetrations in the U.S.” Quoting annual FBI reports called “Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage”, Giraldi noted Israel is second only to China in stealing U.S. business secrets. One FBI account added “Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel’s sizable armaments industry.” A key Israeli method, warns the FBI report, is computer intrusion.
And In The End? Do we force Israel to divest itself of its spies and its companies deeply involved in espionage in the United States? Do we block visas for Israelis to enter this country? Do we end American financial support of Israel: $10 million a day/365 days a year? Plus tax-free purchase of Israeli bonds? Plus sales of Israeli-controlled consumer goods like Tribe and Sabra Hummus or Ahava beauty products?
Would government officials with knowledge of Israeli espionage activities admit their failures and resign? Would the American press cover this? In a country that passes laws to condemn criticism of Israel? Or of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS). Not hardly.
The United States of America is completely under the control of Israel and its Zionists. Things will not change until Israel does.
There’s a lot of talk of conspiracy theories at the moment, and of course, it’s the time of year to be reminded of the mother of all conspiracies – in the pyrolytic demolition of the Twin Towers eighteen years ago. Contributing to these discussions recently was Dr. Quassim Cassam of Warwick University, who has just published a book of his philosophical reflections in “Conspiracy”.
While falling foul of the same “intellectual character vices” he has written and spoken on previously – of “closed-mindedness, gullibility, prejudice and dogmatism” – he had an interesting observation on the “inside job” conspiracy theory of 9/11. He posited that the Official story was itself a conspiracy theory, in its claim the attack on the towers was an “outside job”. This provides a novel departure point for argument, but a dangerous one; the claim that a man living in a cave in Afghanistan had devised the whole fiendish plan, and arranged for the training of Saudi pilots two years in advance in the US to carry it out, without raising any suspicions amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies, seems almost as wild a theory as claims the moon landing was “faked”.
And of course that’s not all of it; Osama Bin Laden and his Wahhabi brothers had to somehow set the demolition charges and monitor them to make sure it all went according to plan – but we might overlook this flaw in the official conspiracy theory given we don’t actually know who did organize the operation or how they carried it out, yet.
What was strikingly lacking from the discussion above, with loyal establishment servant and senior ABC presenter Geraldine Doogue, was any mention of the most politically significant conspiracies of recent times. Theories on the death of Diana, or the assassination of JFK – whatever the truth – are beginning to look a little passé in the face of the Skripal hoax, MH17 or Chemical Weapons use in Syria.
But there is one overarching “conspiracy” that encompasses all the others of the last decade, which we can call the bastard child of that mother of all conspiracies that led to George W Bush’s War on Terror. What began as Al Qaeda and was rebadged as ISIS, developed and manipulated as a covert weapon to facilitate US hegemonic goals, must be seen now as the true object of that fiendishly evil deception. What makes this conspiracy different from those mentioned above also makes it harder to expose as a hoax; revealing the truth must be a matter of judgment and intelligence rather than of straightforward science.
Exposing a hoax, of course, is only half the battle, with no better illustration than the apparent poisoning and disappearance of the Skripals. Despite an almost complete absence of evidence supporting the British government’s claim that Russia tried and failed to poison a former double agent and his daughter using a super-toxic nerve agent smeared on a door-handle, and abundant evidence showing it couldn’t actually have happened, the Official conspiracy theory remains unchallenged and accepted. And even though many people may be skeptical of parts of the story, the alternative is to believe the conspiracy theory of “Kremlin trolls and Putin apologists”.
Despite continuing efforts to expose those lethal hoaxes and breakdown the framework of malicious disinformation that supports the Western establishment’s war on Russia and the “Resistance”, that brick wall still stands – and the Twin Towers do not! Science simply doesn’t cut it, either in the emotion-driven minds of the victims of Western mainstream propaganda, or in the convoluted official judgments of UN bodies like the UNHRC and the OPCW.
Recognizing the inability of scientific reasoning to change the emotionally hijacked minds of victims of NATO propaganda on issues like chemical weapons in Syria, or nuclear science in Iran, one wonders whether the latest exposé on Turkey’s support for ISIS could prove more persuasive. As reported by Robert Inlakesh, a Syrian Kurdish NGO has just issued a report detailing evidence for Turkish direct support for IS fighters as well as close business involvement with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The NGO obtained documents and testimonies from IS prisoners held by the SDF and concluded that:
“Turkish authorities allowed foreign fighters and their families to travel back and forth across the border with Syria, and also turned a blind eye to IS activities in Turkey…”. It also claims that Turkey “provided military and security support to IS indirectly, and made security, financial and business agreement with ISIS.”
Such claims have been around for years, with Turkish support for Al Nusra indisputable; the formation of the “Army of Conquest” as a joint project by Turkey and Saudi Arabia in March 2015 brought thousands of new fighters and weaponry into Idlib over the Turkish border. It was a shamelessly extremist combination of Ahrar al-Sham with Jabhat al Nusra, and its ruthless advance towards Damascus cost many Syrian lives.
Turkish support and collaboration with IS was less evident however until Russia entered the fray and bombed the IS Oil tanker convoys. Erdogan’s irritation at the disruption to his nice little earner – acting as a conduit for that stolen Syrian oil – soon led to a deterioration in relations with Russia that has only recently been rectified, to a degree. As Inlakesh observes, the cooperation between Turkey and Islamic State has become well known and accepted by the Syrian and Russian camp, and presumably also by the Kurds, so it’s clear that the Rojava Centre is seeking to further its interests by publishing its report at this time.
We might overlook the fact that these claims are actually a conspiracy theory, and considered such not just by Turkey but generally in the West. In fact, they are an accusation that Erdogan and his partners have engaged in covert criminal activity in pursuit of political and economic benefits, while lying repeatedly to the public and to other governments about their intentions and allegiances. But in the current atmosphere of extreme suspicion and confused allegiances between Turkey and the US, Russia, Syria and Brussels, the Kurdish viewpoint could be influential, and particularly on those in the West who need to wake up to the truth.
Those people – currently suffering under the impression that foreign forces are in Syria to fight the Islamic State – include Western media reporters. On several occasions recently, the ABC’s Beirut correspondent has visited Qamishli in NE Syria and reported on interviews with IS fighters held prisoner by the self-proclaimed “Kurdish Authorities”. His interest is only in Australians who went to join the Caliphate, who now mostly claim to have done nothing bad and want to return home. The Australian government has just passed a “law” to prevent them from doing so for two years, without consulting the Syrian government of course – or even the Kurdish “regional government”. “Preventing deportation” would seem a fairer starting point, and might lead to more interesting discussions.
But no doubt we will wait in vain for the IS fighter in a Kurdish prison who admits to collaboration with US special-forces. Like the truth of the 9/11 conspiracy, US “support” for the terrorist armies it cultivated and now controls is “thought-crime”, even for the US’ closest allies or for the fighters themselves. In identifying Turkey as the facilitator of their activities, the IS prisoners are saying what their Kurdish captors want to hear, as they try to maintain the support of their rogue ally.
What the Kurds don’t want to hear, and mightn’t even believe, is that their heroic fighters, lionized in the West for beating the Islamic State, have been fighting a mirage; neither their lives nor those of their supposed enemies in ISIS are of the slightest consequence to their US patrons, whose primary interest seems to be in maintaining their occupation and exploitation of Eastern Syria and Northern Iraq by whatever means works.
And the latest development in the conflict of allegiances in Northern Syria illustrates this perfectly. In a move condemned by the Syrian government, Turkey and the US have begun joint military patrols in Syria along the Turkish border. This looks like a bargain, drawing the US away from the Kurds and Turkey away from Russia. But it also confirms the ongoing partnership of the US and Turkey in keeping their Syrian caliphate alive.
يقف اللبنانيون مشدوهين أمام من انتخبوهم وهم يقوّضون ما بقي من البلاد. محاضرات العفة تملأ الأرجاء. لم يبقَ من القتلة واحد إلا وقدّم لنا على مدى أربعة عقود شهادات في حسن تخريب كل شيء. العائلة والقبيلة والطائفة والدولة. وها هم اليوم، يرقصون على جثث ضحاياهم، ويبتسمون لعائلاتهم ويعدون الجميع بموت أفضل. لكن الجمهور لا يبدو أنه ملّ منهم ومن ألاعيبهم، ولذلك، سيكون على الناس الاستعداد لموجة موت جديدة، وهذه المرة الخيارات ستكون واسعة: بالرصاص أو الذبح لمن يرغب، بالمرض والسموم لهواة الصنف، وبالاكتئاب والسأم لمن بقي صامداً. أما الهجرة، فلا يبدو أنها علّمت الناس شيئاً. لأن الانقسامات القائمة خارج البحار لا تقلّ قساوة عمّا هو موجود هنا. والفارق، أنّ شرور اللبنانيين في الخارج يجري التعامل معها بقسوة من قبل مجتمعات لا تعترف بأمراض هذا الشعب المجنون الذي يسميه البعض «الشعبَ الجبّار والخلّاق والعظيم»!
ولأنّ الجميع يرفض فكرة المؤامرة، لا يمكن الحديث عن تلاعب بالمسرح اللبناني. في لبنان، لا يزال من يقول بحروب الآخرين على أرضنا. وفي لبنان، لا يزال من يقول إنها شرارات الإقليم التي تصيب جسدنا. وفي لبنان أيضاً، من يعتقد أنّ العالم ينام ويعيش على أخبار هذه القبيلة اللبنانية، ويتسلى بها، ولذلك لا يريد لها الفناء. ولذلك، من الجنون توهُّم تغييرات جدية على المشهد القائم. حتى ولو قتل الآلاف يومياً، لأنّ الزعران الذين يتحكمون بالبلاد، يعيشون اطمئناناً غير مسبوق. وهذا مهرّجهم الأول وليد جنبلاط يعطي المثال:
سأقتل من أبناء جلدتي مَن أرغب، وسأرفع الصوت والسلاح بوجه الآخرين، وسيلحق بي أنصاري، لا أحد منهم يسألني ماذا أفعل، أو يلومني على شيء، وهم سيثقون بما أقوله. ولا ضير من أن يقول الخصوم كل ما يقولونه. لقد نجحت وربطت مصير هذه القبيلة بي، وبأفراد عائلتي، ولن يجرؤ أحد على معارضتي، وهاكم الدليل، ما يحصل الآن!
هذه حقيقة. قاسية جداً، لكنها حقيقة. وهذا الحال موجود عند الآخرين:
هل يتوقع أحد أن يخسر حزب الله المقعد النيابي في صور؟
أو هل ينتظر أحد اعتذاراً شاملاً من حركة أمل وابتعاداً عن السلطة؟
أم هل تتصورون أنّ سمير جعجع سيترك مقعده لأحد قبل أن يقرر الله ما يريد؟
أم أن جبران باسيل سيترك أحداً يناقشه داخل التيار الوطني، قبل أن يجبر المسيحيين على استعادة شعور الخوف من الآخر، أي آخر لا يهم؟
أم هناك من يعتقد أن سعد الحريري سيخرج من القمقم ويعيد الأموال التي جمعها كل أركان تياره على مدى ربع قرن ولا يزالون؟
أم ستتوقعون أن يتبرع رياض سلامة وصحبه من كبار المصرفيين بفوائد ودائعهم لمعالجة ملف النفايات؟
نحن عنوان التفاهة الكاملة، حكومةً وشعباً ومؤسسات، زعامات وقيادات وجماهير
ماذا ينتظر الناس من هذه المجموعة التي لم تترك شيئاً إلا وقصدته بهدف الاستيلاء أو المصادرة أو الاستخدام؟ هل منكم من يعتقد أنّ المراجع الدينية التي نصبتها الزعامات السياسية هنا وهناك، سترفع الصوت دفاعاً عن وصايا الله؟ هل تسألون الكنيسة المارونية عن هذا العشق الإلهي لتملّك الأراضي ثم التوجه بعظات إلى الناس لئلا يتبادلوا أملاكهم مع غير المسيحيين؟ ومن تعثّر، سيجد الكنيسة وكل منتجاتها الرهبانية في الانتظار لتولي الأمر. أم يوجد بينكم من لا يعرف حال المجلس الشيعي الأعلى، الذي لم يبقَ منه شيء إلا يافطة، يقف تحتها رجال دين يريدون تقرير مصير العائلات باسم الإله الحكيم. وهل منكم من يعرف ماذا يفعل الدروز بأوقافهم، بينما يكاد يموت الناس في الجبل ووادي التيم جوعاً، وينتظرون يوم العطلة ليقصدوا هذا أو ذاك من الزعماء بحثاً عن صدقة آخر النهار؟ أم ترون في دار الفتوى معمل التفكير لمواجهة كل الأفكار النتنة التي نطقت باسم أهل السُّنة والجماعة، فكفّرت وسبَت وقتلت، ولم يخرج من الدار صوت يسأل عن أصل هذا الكلام؟ ثم ترى هذا الجمع من العمامات يقفز إن تعرض مسؤول سياسي لنقد من صحافي أو سياسي آخر؟
ماذا ينتظر الناس بعد؟
هل لأحد فيكم أن يجيبنا ماذا فعلت كل هذه المنظمات غير الحكومية، غير إيواء أفراد باسم الكفاءة ثم تعطيلهم وتحويلهم أدوات لا تنتج غير بيانات وشعارات، ولم يحصل قَطّ، على الإطلاق، إن حظي الناس بمشروع واحد منهم؟ ثم من منكم يسأل عن جيوش المنظمات الدولية المنتشرة في الوزارات والمؤسسات العامة، تغرقنا بالاستشارات التافهة ثم يقبض جنودها من جيوبنا الأموال المكدسة؟ وما بال الناس في حالة دهشة عندما يتجول دبلوماسي غربي، من أقذر خلق الله، موزعاً علينا نصائحه حول الإصلاح والقانون وحقوق الإنسان، بينما لا تترك طائراتهم وجواسيسهم مكاناً هادئاً في العالم؟ هل تصدّقون فعلاً، أنه يمكن العثور على خير في أميركا أو فرنسا أو بريطانيا؟ أم تراكم تتطلعون إلى الثورات العالمية الصادرة من آبار النفط والغاز في السعودية والإمارات والكويت وقطر، أم تصلّون الليل والنهار علّ مصر تستفيق من غفوتها لساعات… هاكم المنظر الجميل من حولكم: فلسطين لم يبقَ منها شيء، والدمار أتى على سوريا والعراق واليمن وليبيا، والأردن يعيش على حافة القبر، بينما يغلي المغرب العربي في انتظار انفجار عسى أن يتأخر.
أيها اللبنانيون، نحن عنوان التفاهة الكاملة. حكومةً وشعباً ومؤسسات. زعامات وقيادات وجماهير. نحن اللاشيء الذي لا يراه أحد بعين الغيرة أو الحسد. نحن لا نستحق الشفقة… تباً لنا!
تستمر المفاوضات بين عسكريين أتراك وأميركيين في العاصمة التركية انقرة لتحديد المدى الذي يجب أن تشمله المنطقة الأمنية السورية المحاذية للحدود لينتشر فيها الجيش التركي.
الملاحظ ان استمرار هذه المباحثات يجري على وقع رحيل المبعوث الأميركي الخاص لشؤون سورية جيمس جيفري الذي التقى منذ يومين بوزير الدفاع التركي خلوصي أكار مع تقنيين من الجانبين وعاد الى بلاده.
تتواكب أيضاً مع استعدادات فرنسية وبريطانية لنشر وحدات عسكرية جنوبي هذه المنطقة الأمنية المزعومة.
هذا الى جانب رعاية أميركية وسعودية واردنية دقيقة لمحاولات دمج «مجلس دير الزور» العسكري الذي يقوده أحمد الخبيل مع شخصيات عشائرية اخرى وقوات النخبة في تيار الغد الذي يترأسه أحمد الجربا.
يتولى تجميع هذه العشائر كل من الأردن والسعودية يإيعاز أميركي واضح، لكنه يصطدم بتردّد من كرد منظمة «قسد»، لأنه يطالبها بالانسحاب من المناطق ذات الغالبية العربية في دير الزور وانحائها؟
يجمع هذا المشروع بالاضافة الى المايسترو الأميركي تركيا وفرنسا وبريطانيا والاكراد والسعودية والاردن وبعض المنتفعين من شيوخ عشائر المنطقة المثقلين بالأموال السعودية والإماراتية وبركات عاهل الاردن، وقد يضم تمثيلاً رمزياً عسكرياً من بعض دول حلف الناتو في أوروبا وكندا واوستراليا.
الأمر الذي يؤكد على أن الأميركيين يستعجلون تنفيذ مشروعهم القديم بالسيطرة على شرق الفرات والشمال بآليات غير أميركية يشرف عليها «البنتاغون» عبر قواته الموجودة في المنطقة السورية وبعض القواعد الاساسية في العراق.
اما العقوبات التي لا تزال تحول دون تنفيذه فأولها الإصرار التركي على الإمساك بمفردهم بالمنطقة الآمنة المزعومة بطول 600 كيلومتر وعرض لا يقلّ عن أربعين كيلومتر، وهو إصرار قابل للمساومة إنما على قاعدة الانسحاب الكردي الكامل منها، مقابل «السماح التركي» لقوات ترابط معهم فيها من فرنسا وبريطانيا بشكل ركزي فقط لا يرقى إلى حدود قوات مقاتلة.
أهذا هو الحل الذي توصلت إليه محادثات جيفري اكار ويعكف عسكريو الطرفين على وضع التفاصيل الاخيرة المرتبطة بها؟
فهل هذا ممكن؟ هناك مؤشرات توحي بالاستعداد التركي للتنفيذ بسرعة وتظهر على شكل حشود عسكرية تدفع بها تركيا الى الحدود لمقاتلة الأكراد في تل رفعت ومنبج وتل أبيض كما تزعم البيانات العسكرية التركية، فهل أحدٌ يصدق ان تركيا تهاجم اهدافاً أميركية او محمية منهم؟
ما يكشف ان هذه القوات التركية هي للزوم الانتشار التركي في المنطقة الآمنة المزعومة، بموافقة أميركية، لكن دون الموافقة الأميركية الكاملة، لا تزال هناك طلبات أميركية.
منها تقليص عمق المنطقة الآمنة الى 16 كيلومتراً والمشاركة الاوروبية العسكرية الوازنة فيها وضرورة قبول الاتراك بحلف مع قوات «قسد» الكردية يصل الى حدود التنسيق بين الطرفين.
ويطلب الأميركيون من الاتراك التمسك بمنطقة ادلب حتى لو تعرّضت لهجوم من الدولة السورية وروسيا.
يتبين بالاستنتاج ان الأميركيين على عجلة من امرهم لتفتيت سورية «ومشاغلة» دولتها وحليفتها روسيا في ادلب لمنعها من الانتقال الى شرقي الفرات.
تركيا من جهتها تجد أن بوسعها الاستفادة من الصراع السوري الروسي مع الأميركيين لابتزاز الروس والأميركيين على السواء.
فالروس يسعون لاستمالة تركيا استراتيجياً وليس فقط على مستوى سورية، لذلك فهم مهتمون لجذبها بالإغراءات الاقتصادية وإرجاء محاسبتها على ما ترتكبه في سورية، مقابل فك علاقتها بالناتو او الاكتفاء بعلاقات هامشية به مقابل تحسين علاقاتها «العامة» بموسكو المنطلقة نحو دور دولي.
الأميركيون بدورهم لا يريدون خسارة تركيا، لكنهم يريدون دوراً كبيراً للكرد المنتشرين في اربع دول متجاورة ومتواصلة.
هذا بالإضافة الى ان الأكراد موجودون في شرقي الفرات حيث يتدبّر الأميركيون مشروعهم التفتيتي.
لجهة السعودية والأردن فإن تدخلاتهما في شرقي الفرات آلية أميركية كاملة لا ترتقي الى حدود المطامع الخاصة، وهما دولتان وظيفيتان أنشأهما المستعمر البريطاني في مطلع القرن العشرين.
أما إيران فمنهمكة بمجابهة الأميركيين في الخليج وتتعرّض لحصار غير مسبوق يستهدف الدولة شعباً ومؤسسات، لذلك فهي تراقب ما يجري في الداخل السوري وتعتبره امتداداً للحصار المضروب عليها، لكنها تمنح الصراع في الخليج أولوية ترى أن صمودها فيه يزوّد سورية إمكانية النجاح أيضاً.
ماذا الآن عن صاحبة الديار سورية التي تجاهد منذ عقد تقريباً في وجه أكبر تآمر كوني في التاريخ؟
لم تبخل الدولة السورية بأي من إمكاناتها العسكرية في الميادين، بدعم من جيش شجاع وشعب باسل معتاد على مجابهة المستعمرين على مدار التاريخ.
لكن هذه الدولة تعرف أيضاً أن الحرب معارك وسياسة، خصوصاً اذا كانت بمستوى التآمر الدولي والإقليمي والعربي والارهابي المتحرك في ميادينها، بكل الآليات الممكنة. لذلك فهي تهاجم في جهة وتهادن في جهات أخرى، وتترك لحلفائها التفاوض في أنحاء ثالثة وذلك تبعاً لتطورات الميدان.
ضمن هذه المعطيات يمكن الجزم بأن الحرب لتحرير إدلب بدأت تلوح بقوة، ولم تعد بعيدة، لأن الروس اصيبوا بخيبات امل من التلاعب التركي الذي لا يحترم اتفاقاً.
لذلك فإن الجيش السوري مدعوماً من حلفائه الروس وحزب الله مقبلون على معركة ضخمة في ادلب تماثل معركة تحرير حلب، وبنتائجها نفسها فتؤدي أغراضها عسكرياً وتذهب نحو محاصرة ما تبقى من الاحتلالين التركي والأميركي وتمنع أيضاً تحقيق المشروع الأميركي بتفتيت شرقي الفرات والعبث بالإقليم.
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and the person Trump appointed to broker a Middle East peace agreement recently called Palestinians “hysterical and stupid.” That is particularly galling language coming from a notorious New Jersey, New York, and Maryland slumlord and the son of a federally convicted criminal. Kushner’s father and real estate mogul, Charles Kushner, spent fourteen months in prison after being convicted of tax fraud and witness tampering, among other crimes. Jared Kushner believes his father was wrongly convicted and imprisoned. But the wunderkind son-in-law of Trump has no problem in maintaining the status quo in the Middle East, one that has led to the large-scale incarceration of the people of the Gaza Strip in virtual desert ghetto.
Mr. Kushner does not have the business acumen to run a New York City sandwich cart, let alone a major foreign policy initiative like a final Middle East peace agreement. Such a concordat has eluded a every US president since the creation of Israel in 1948. Kushner’s real estate bankruptcies are legendary, and they have resulted in him and his father panhandling for loan relief financing from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and China, among other countries.
In the wake of Kushner’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan unveiled at a workshop in Bahrain in June of this year, government officials around the world reacted with an almost-unanimous thumbs down. The Bahrain conference more resembled a meeting of potential investors in one of Kushner’s real estate scams. The Palestinians, claiming that to present an economic plan for the Palestinian territories prior to a political settlement, boycotted the Bahrain conclave. Under the “Kushner Plan,” Gaza was to become a tourist resort with transport routes through Israel to the West Bank. No mention was made of the crippling Israeli and Egyptian blockades imposed on the densely populated Gaza enclave of 1.8 million people. Kushner displayed his utter ignorance of geo-politics, history, and diplomacy when he said Palestinians would reap a financial whirlwind of real estate development and tourism investment money if “there’s not a fear of people doing terrorism.” Doing terrorism? In Kushner’s pampered rich kid myopic view of the world, “doing terrorism” is like “doing lunch” or “doing a Broadway show.”
Participating in Kushner’s gabfest, US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin claimed that Kushner’s roll-out was like a “hot IPO,” an initial public offering of shares in a company. Seasoned Middle East experts, including diplomats and scholars, were far less enthusiastic, with one likening Kushner’s conference to a Monty Python sketch.
Kushner also lambasted the Palestinian leadership for saying “crazy things.” The son-in-law of the man who, on a daily basis, says and tweets “crazy things” believes that it is “crazy” for Palestinian leaders to condemn Israeli expansion into East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. In fact, “crazy” was Trump ordering the moving of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, shuttering the US Consulate General in Jerusalem that served as the de facto US mission in Palestine, cutting off all US economic assistance to the Palestinians, closing the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington, and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights.
Kushner called the Palestinians “stupid and hysterical.” However, nothing exemplifies hysterical and stupid more than Kushner family friend Binyamin Netanyahu, who once stood before the United Nations General Assembly and displayed a cartoon drawing of a bomb to “prove” that Iran was nearing development of a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu’s histrionics before the world assembly was not the first time he resorted to gimmickry and lying in order to tick off a list of favorite Zionist talking points.
Kushner does not appreciate the hyper-hysterical nature of Israel and its supporters, of which he is one. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement targeting Israel’s racist and expansionist policies has resulted in hysterical extreme measures aimed at undercutting constitutional and other inherent freedoms of speech in other countries. These anti-free speech actions have been advanced by Kushner’s friends and colleagues and include twenty-eight American states enacting legislation that bans individuals and companies supporting BDS from receiving state government contracts. Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, is actively working to disrupt the global BDS movement, including the operations of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
The anti-BDS campaign includes Mossad collecting intelligence on BDS operations in foreign countries and placing BDS leaders and supporters on INTERPOL and EUROPOL watch lists. Kushner’s Zionist friends have even spoken of Israel filing lawsuits against BDS organizations and individuals abroad. There was little surprise when Mossad’s anti-BDS activities in the United States were linked to the now-defunct Israeli private intelligence firm PSY-Group and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Kushner can whine all day long about Palestinians being “hysterical.” No one is more hysterical and hypocritical than Kushner and his Orthodox Jewish cabal that includes the dodgy Chabad movement – which has been tied into everything from drug and human organ trafficking to tax evasion and money laundering, as well as the 2020 presidential campaign of New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker. No sooner had New England Patriots football owner and Trump Mar-a-Lago club member Robert Kraft beat a criminal charge of soliciting prostitution from a Florida massage parlor employing Chinese indentured employees, he donated his $1 million Genesis Prize – Israel’s version of the Nobel Prize – to the anti-BDS movement. That kind of money would have paid for quite a lot of $57 “sessions” at Kraft’s favorite, but now closed, Florida massage parlor. Even though Kraft was dumb enough to get caught on video tape in a law enforcement sting on illegal prostitution activities, Kushner claims it is the Palestinians who are “stupid.”
Recently, Kushner’s friends in Israel and Germany forced the resignation of Dr. Peter Schäfer, a foremost scholar of Judaic Studies, as director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum. Using Inquisition-like tactics, Schäfer stood accused by Israel supporters of backing the BDS movement by tweeting a link to a letter signed by 240 Jewish and Israeli scholars opposing a bill passed by the German parliament that linked the BDS movement to anti-Semitism. The campaign against Dr. Schäfer was centered on the activities of an Israel-based organization called NGO Monitor. The group, which is nothing more than a cipher for Mossad, targets international non-governmental organizations tagged with being supportive of the Palestinians or the BDS movement.
Under pressure from such anti-democratic forces as NGO Monitor; its Geneva-based companion, UN Watch; the American Jewish Committee; and similar repugnant pressure organizations, the freedom of speech rights of pro-Palestine activists have been severely hampered by actions of the governments of Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, and other nations.
Mr. Kushner and his friends who gathered in Bahrain for his real estate development (land theft) prospectus seminar would trick the world into believing that it is the Palestinians who are “hysterical.” When international supporters of the Palestinians decide to hit the Israelis where it hurts the most – their wallets – all one can hear from the offices and board rooms of Tel Aviv, West Jerusalem, Haifa, Ashkelon, Eilat, Ramat Gan, New York, and other centers of Israeli commerce and intrigue is loud wailing and promises to “get even.” And Kushner accuses the Palestinians of being “hysterical.”
In fact, the Palestinians have been quite measured in response to Israel’s overt and covert campaigns against them and their inalienable rights. Since Trump and Kushner launched their diplomatic, political, and economic warfare against Palestine, the State of Palestine has been recognized by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Colombia; Italy voted for a UN Security Council for a resolution that opposed the US movement of its embassy to Jerusalem; the UN’s Group of 77 (G77) developing nations invited Palestine to chair the group’s meeting during 2019; Spain’s Josep Borell, who is pro-Palestinian and tough on Israel, was named the next Foreign Affairs Commissioner of the European Union; and former US President Jimmy Carter called on the United States to recognize Palestinian sovereignty. These small but significant advances on behalf of the Palestinians were achieved as a result of Palestine’s commitment to diplomacy, not the hysteria practiced by Kushner and his friends in Israel, as well as by pro-Israel embeds found throughout the Trump administration.
I am deeply skeptical that the US ever initiated a missile strike against Iran and then called it off, as was claimed by The New York Times.
Of course, the US “paper of record” routinely does terrible journalism – they repeatedly rely on anonymous sources, as they did for this claim. Anonymous sources cannot be considered credible, even if the The New York Times resorts to it over and over and over.
But their bad journalism does not stop there: the Times runs a scaremongering, tabloid, belligerent headline like Trump Approves Strikes on Iran, but Then Abruptly Pulls Back, and yet goes on to write:
“It was not clear whether Mr. Trump simply changed his mind on the strikes or whether the administration altered course because of logistics or strategy. It was also not clear whether the attacks might still go forward.”
About as clear as mud, I’d say. A smarter editor would have held the story… but this is The New York Times.
Every person and every nation has their own style of negotiating.
The historical US style is defined by never keeping promises, and by refusing to negotiate until peak US leverage has been obtained. US President Donald Trump’s business-influenced style is to use chaos and instability as a way to create turmoil among his opponents in order to increase his leverage. Trump Uses Chaos To Get Things Done, to quote a recent headline from The Atlantic.
Iran’s style is defined by transparency in their moral values – this causes vast consternation among the cynical practitioners of realpolitik who are a (overvalued) dime a dozen in the West. Iran’s style is also marked by the patience to follow a long term strategy – for example, in 2016 Iran signed a 25-year strategic relations agreement with China, another patient group.
Europe and the Eurozone nations – which are governed by the undemocratic structures of the European Union and the Eurogroup, respectively – have a negotiating style which can be defined as a high-class appearance which hides a pathetic, yet aggressive, servility.
It’s clear that negotiations between these groups and individuals reached a major impasse months ago, and also that the new lines and positions are now becoming clear.
As they have for nearly 40 years, the stance of the Iranian people continues to surprise and confound the West. Of course, they are used to dealing with compliant governments and puppet leaders….
The “aborted attack” on Iran proves that the shooting down of a US drone is viewed as a huge loss by the US: It is so important that many in Washington apparently want to start a war over it. But Iran’s drone victory is just a capper to a series of events and discussions in Iran which are proving the nation’s unity following the obvious failure of negotiating with the West.
(I write “the West” not because I am “anti-Western”, but because the non-Western JCPOA signatories (China & Russia) have actually upheld their word.)
After Washington reneged on the JCPOA in May 2018, it was natural that there was existential angst in Iran – years had been spent pursuing diplomacy, and then the nation’s archenemy said that diplomacy was impossible. It is natural that the Iranian people were exasperated by such Western belligerence and false promises, and that they did not know which way to turn back then.
However, it is clear one year later that the nation has recomposed itself and moved on.
There is routine public discussion in the tea houses and at the top levels of government that Iran should not even denigrate themselves with more diplomatic discussions. Clearly, Iran is not afraid – it is disgusted by the way the West has failed to honor their word. Politics change, but it seems as if Iran is going to wait until the 2020 US elections before seriously restarting more diplomatic efforts. This would also give the EU some time to grow a backbone. To the self-appointed “masters of the universe” in Washington – this reluctance to answer their phone calls is yet another slap in the face.
Not jumping at more negotiations, shooting down a drone, Iran publicly and politely declaring they will resume uranium enrichment, unexplained attacks in the Persian Gulf – all of these have caused the US to lose so much face in recent weeks.
Iran is making the US look bad, very bad. Therefore, it is little wonder that Washington and The New York Times have chose to wage maximum sabre-rattling with this “near attack”.
Frankly, I am unimpressed, and I think Iran will react the same way.
Iranians now appear united in their stance: negotiations were made in good faith and thus must be honored, or else there can be no new negotiations – certainly no jury would disagree. If a Western attack happens – sadly, it won’t be the first one.
Of course, this is merely the latest chapter in the effort to destabilise Iran to the point of civil war. The Iran-Iraq War, shooting down an Iranian passenger plane, sanctions on medicine, sanctions to achieve $0 in oil sales – for 40 years the US and their allies have single-mindedly sought to destabilise Iran to the point of creating a reactionary response which would overturn the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution.
Iranians have understood this reality for quite some time – they are united in this view as firmly as they are united in their wish that the West would honor diplomatic accords. Sadly, Westerners do not understand this reality – that the US goal in Iran is civil war, chaos and the end of Muslim Democracy. The Western public has been betrayed by their media and their 1% by decades of orchestrated Iranophobia.
Washington and Trump have actually foolishly painted themselves into a corner – after an “aborted attack” the only further escalation is an “actual attack”.
Of course, an attack on Iran has no future – 2019 Iran is not Afghanistan nor Iraq, to list two recent US military failures. An attack on Iran is to continue US policy: foment instability inside Iran, because Iran cannot be invaded.
But I would advise Iran not to play games with a cornered aggressor, and one led by such an inexperienced politician with such a lack of tethering to the idea of the “public good”.
Perhaps in the final 1.5 years of his term the erratic Trump can be switched to good sense on Iran? Perhaps Europe, China and Russia can help show that Iran is too strong to be endlessly antagonised? Perhaps the world will see that Iran has – in the Straits of Hormuz – a trump card it can play to demand the lies, sanctions and exclusions finally stop?
This will take more time. But Trump must know – at least instinctively – that Iran is not Syria, and that any strikes will have real consequences to Americans and American interests. That’s why he called off the strike… if he ever even called it on.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China.
Ynet’s headline yesterday acknowledged what has been obvious to many Middle East commentators: Israel can’t win the next war. The most respected Israeli military correspondent Ron Ben Yishai’s headline reads as follows: “Why won’t we win the next war?” Though most of Ben Yishai’s Hebrew articles are reprinted in Ynet’s English edition, this article is yet to be translated and for obvious reasons. It is probably too upsetting for Diaspora Jews.
Ben Yishai’s rationale is clear and sound: Israel can’t deal with military casualties. Israeli security matters have been politicised. Field commanders are regularly subject to legal proceedings that lead to heavy penalties including suspensions. Consequently, many of them have lost their motivation. Israeli society is too sensitive to kidnappings and hijackings and finally, parents are too involved in IDF matters.
Ben Yishai concludes that Israel is too weak “whether it is a war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria or all of them, we will not win!”
Ben Yishai is honest enough to admit publicly that Israel’s enemies understand the psychological, spiritual, cultural and political fabric of Israeli society. They are aware of Israel’s weaknesses and the IDF’s paralysis and they act upon these. According to Ben Yishai, the Shiite axis, Hamas and the Salafi-Jihadists all understood that they “could not destroy Israel with one or two violent military moves, therefore they went on to wage a war of strategic attrition against us.” Any violent round or war whose results are inconclusive in favour of Israel, Ben Yishai says, are going to be seen as another nail in the Zionist’s coffin.
“They see the public hysteria over losses on our side. They notice the media frenzy that weakens the confidence of Israeli citizens, they see the national probing committees punishing Israeli commanders after each round of violence which leads to mistrust in the political class and its decision-making process.” Ben Yishai points out that Israel’s enemies seem to believe that when “Iran achieves a credible capability to threaten Israel with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles,” the Israeli society will collapse into itself. The Jews who seek a better life and are ‘spoiled enough’ to act upon it will be scattered over the world to look for a quieter and safer place under the sun.
None of these observations are new to me. Already in the 1980s, in the wake of the first Intifada, I heard Israeli generals admitting in the open that ‘for the Palestinians to win all they need is to survive.’ Palestinian analysts have been commenting for years that ‘Israel may have many lethal bombs but the Palestinians have one bomb, the demographic bomb.’ I have repeatedly argued in my writings that Israel hasn’t won a single war since 1967. Even when it won on the battlefield (like in 1973), it failed to achieve its military objectives. Bizarrely enough, Israel’s greatest military victory in 1967 inflicted on the country some political, strategic and demographic problems that have made the future survival of the Jewish State in its current form an unrealistic scenario. Like Ron Ben Yishai (yet way ahead of him), I have been arguing that Israel lives on borrowed time.
But Israel and the IDF are not alone. The American, British and French armies, alongside NATO in general, are also incapable of winning wars. The Soviet army was literally defeated in Afghanistan for the same reasons. Modern armies do not win wars, they are good in spreading collateral damage. It may even be possible that modern armies are not supposed to win wars. Their real task is to sustain the military-industrial complex by means of constant conflict.
A clash with Hamas, for instance, leads to a growing demand for the Israeli Iron Dome. Britain, America and France launch one criminal war after the other, they never win but they clearly sustain the production of killing machines. Russia actually won a war recently together with Iran. This translated immediately into weapon-buying.
But it goes further. Western armies are set to follow military objectives that are defined by democratically elected governments. In the post-political era, the entire political class is disturbingly dysfunctional and totally unique in its inability to produce educated decisions, let alone set military objectives.
President Trump’s belligerent rants against Syria, Iran and North Korea are perfect examples of the above. Trump threatens to launch wars as often as he changes his socks, but he never provides his generals with an adequate set of objectives. Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy weren’t any better. They didn’t manage to set the objectives for Libya’s invasion or any other criminal Neocon conflict they launched.
Interestingly enough, I allow myself to suggest that one of the only state leaders who is fully aware of the inability of modern armies to win wars is Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli PM is aware of the fact that his army is weak and the Israelis are even weaker. Unlike his predecessors, Netanyahu actually tries to avoid large-scale conflicts with Gaza, Syria or Hezbollah as much as he can. Netanyahu is not a ‘lover of peace’ or a ‘humanist.’ He is happy to deploy snipers against civilians and ‘lets them’ shoot kids who get too close to the border. Netanyahu sends drones to attack Iranian targets in Syria . But he is very careful not to pull the region into a total war. Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t really need Ron Ben Yishai, he gathered many years ago that the IDF and Israeli society can’t win wars. He is buying time instead.
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal and security services. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me and others.
Time before the war, Syria was a peaceful place where we used to live at peace. Peace meant to us life. But now we lost life since we lost peace. My daughter, that little girl at that time of peace had had a dream of being a famous person. War has destroyed our castle of dreams. We found ourselves living dead, terrorism pervaded every single aspect of our life. We started to struggle in order to keep breathing in such an ocean of killing everywhere.
Many questions had raised in our minds, what did we do to all those western countries that made them support those terrorists who destroyed our country?? Why?? put yourselves in our shoes, would you accept that to your countries and your children. We didn’t lose just our little homes, we lost our big home Syria. War seems to be ended, but the fact is no, war never ends after war. Life is not the same, people are not the same, feelings are not the same. War, because of western support, destroyed Syrians from the inside. We suddenly found ourselves internally displaced have nothing but what we put on our bodies. We can rebuild the country, but can we make the dead people come back to life again ..no alas. And here is the tragedy.
We were a welcoming country. We never hurt any other country, then why?? Why did you do that to us??? It wasn’t easy for my children to experience such war and see rivers of blood in the street of our city Palmyra.
Days passed, then weeks, children started to lose temper and ability to stand all this. Many times my daughter Arwa fell unconscious. My daughter, who became 18 years old full of ambition and great expectations where to go??? What to do?? Arwa, my daughter, started studying architecture engineering. In spite of the bombs all the way long to her university going and coming back, she still has that insistence, she still has the same determination to be a famous person. Worked hard and now she is in the second semester of the fourth year. One more year Arwa will be graduated. What next. Her dream is still the same. Master then PHD. But where?? Who is going to help a girl with such glowing dream? If you can’t stop that absurd situation in Syria, at least give a help hand to people of Syria. Many students like to find better education out of Syria who is still suffering bad war effects. Most students are, like Arwa, looking for an opportunity of finding a university to continue study. Some must help, to make children regain their laugh and hopes. Help them to find an asylum. To give me the power to say; Arwa, wait, things will be better soon.
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Sumaya AlEssmael is an English language teacher in Palmyra, Syria.
Now that ISIS is being defeated by Syria’s Government (and by its allies Russia and Iran) in Syria, the United States and its allies are trying to find other governments that will take them in as refugees. It’s part of a deal the US regime reached with ISIS.
The issue of what to do with the thousands of surviving but (temporarily) defeated ISIS members — and with their spouses and children — has raised hypocrisy to perhaps the highest level in all of history. Its background needs to be understood if one wants to understand the sources of that enormous hypocrisy. Here’s this background:
And then on 26 February 2019, Syria’s government news-agency reported that the US had sent to the US Federal Reserve 40+ tons of gold that ISIS had accumulated from selling, on the international black markets, oil from Syria’s oil-producing region around Deir Ezzor — Syria’s oil stolen by ISIS and the proceeds now being stolen yet again by the US regime — and this gold now being sent to the US (On March 8th I reported the further background and context of that US theft from Syria.) The US regime had offered to ISIS-members who were in Syria’s oil-producing region a choice either to become captured and killed by Syria’s Government, or else for them to give to the US that gold, and the option which was selected by the jihadists was to give the gold to the US, which is therefore now trying to find other countries to send the jihadists to as ‘refugees’ (since Syria certainly doesn’t want them, and neither does the US regime). The US regime is honoring its commitments to those ‘former’ ISIS members and their families, to assist them to find countries which will accept those people as ‘refugees’. Sweden, being very liberal (meaning ideologically very confused), happens to be one of these countries, and is actually considering and debating whether to allow them in.
Zero Hedge is perhaps the keenest news-site for exposing The West’s rampant hypocrisies (and so all of The West’s propagandistic ’news’-sites hate it and call it ‘fake news’ even though it actually is more reliably accurate than the mainstream ones themselves are); and, on March 10th, it pointed out that Sweden was in a flurry over whether to accept, as refugees, ISIS jihadists who have escaped, and their spouses and children. Zero Hedge truthfully pointed out that,
Sweden’s new government, which was finally formed in January after months of delay, is introducing policies that will lead to more immigration into Sweden — despite the main governing party, the Social Democrats, having run for office on a promise to tighten immigration policies. The right to family reunion for those people granted asylum in Sweden who do not have refugee status is being reintroduced — a measure that is estimated to bring at least 8,400 more immigrants to Sweden in the coming three years. According to the Minister of Migration, Morgan Johansson, this measure will “strengthen integration,” although he has not explained how. “I think it is a very good humanitarian measure; 90 percent [of those expected to come] are women and children who have lived for a long time in refugee camps, [and] who can now be reunited with their father or husband in Sweden”, Johansson said.
This is supposed to be ‘democracy’?
However, that article, as noted at Zero Hedge, was written by Judith Bergman, of the Gatestone Institute. Sometimes, even such vicious propaganda-organizations, as that, produce authentic news, and here was such an instance. (It’s yet another reason why arguing ad-hominem, instead of strictly — that is, 100% — ad-rem, is essential to avoid, in order to determine truth and reject lies. That was a truthful article. Though Bergman wrote for a hate-mongering anti-Muslim site, the reporting in it was honest and factual. So, here’s some ad-hominem background to it, not as a part of the argument in this particular case — regarding Sweden’s debate over whether to accept former ISIS members as refugees — but instead as context explaining how this truth came to be published by the hate-mongering Gatestone:)
The Gatestone Institute is a rabidly pro-Israeli-Jews, and rabidly anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim operation, which was founded and is run by the heir and grand-daughter, Nina Rosenwald, of the biggest early (1895) investor in Sears Roebuck & Co., Julius Rosenwald. He died in 1932. His heir and son was Nina’s father, and in 1939 he“was one of three founding members of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA).[12] [Nina] Rosenwald’s mother, a professional violinist, was a refugee from both the Russian Revolution and Nazi Germany.[9].” Nina, being not very bright, was never able to rid herself of the prejudices her parents felt against Palestinians and generally against Muslims (since Israel’s main supremacism is against Muslims, because Israel’s ruling ethnicity, Jews, have been stealing land from Muslims). Nina identifies herself as “a human rights activist”. (As was said at the start here, this issue “has raised hypocrisy to perhaps the highest level in all of history.”) She had, in fact, hired John Bolton as Gatestone’s Chairman; and, for his service as that, during June 2017 to March 2018 (when he became hired as Trump’s National Security Advisor), Bolton received $310,000. So, Bill Berkowitz headlined on 27 September 2018 “Meet Nina Rosenwald, the Sears Heiress Seeding Islamophobia at Home and Abroad”, and he brought together and linked to the great reporting by Max Blumenthal and by Lee Fang, documenting the Gatestone Institute’s rabid global hate-mongering for Israel.
But, in this particular case (the article by Judith Bergman), there was no deceit, because nothing in her reporting violated Nina Rosenwald’s biggest hatred, hatred of Muslims — so, these truths were acceptable to Rosenwald. Bergman’s article happened to be truthful Israeli propaganda. (After all: some propaganda is truthful.)
The Israeli regime won’t have any credibility whatsoever unless it condemns Sweden’s compassion for jihadists and for the wives and children of jihadists. Israel’s Minister of Justice had endorsed exterminating all Palestinians, but that rationale — sheer bigotry — for opposing them, isn’t suitable for foreign consumption, and so it was almost immediately disappeared from its public posting (shown there at that link). If Israel can’t pretend to be against Muslims on account of jihadists, then Israel’s barbaric treatment of its Palestinians won’t make any sense at all to the many fools (mainly in America, Israel’s chief patron) who support Israel (such as the Rosenwalds do). The US regime hides the barbarous reality of Israel, but that reality isn’t blacked-out quite as much in the rest of the world; so, Israel can’t afford to be publicly silent regarding jihadists, even in cases where the US regime would prefer such silence. Obviously, the US regime wants Sweden to accept those ‘former’ ISIS members (because the US regime aims to conquer Russia and all nations — such as Syria — that are allied with Russia, and uses ISIS, Al Qaeda, and nazis, as “boots-on-the-ground” mercenaries, in order to do that), and so this ISIS-as-refugees issue is one on which the American regime and the Israeli regime happen to disagree.
Bergman closed her article by describing the Swedish Government’s efforts to be compassionate toward jihadists while the Swedish Government also provides an appearance of caring for the safety of non-jihadist (the vast majority of) Swedes:
On a positive note, however, at the end of February, the Swedish government presented plans to introduce legislation that would criminalize membership of a terrorist organization. This new law would enable the prosecuting of returning ISIS fighters who cannot be connected to a specific crime, but who were proven to have been part of a terrorist organization. Critics have pointed out that it has taken years for the government to take steps to criminalize membership of terror organizations.
Sweden is hypocritically ‘neutral’, but actually a vassal nation of the United States. Sweden is being pushed by its master, the US regime, to accept some of the people the US Government had been protecting in order for the US to become enabled to take over Syria and to deliver it to the US aristocracy’s chief ally the Sauds; and, so, the Swedish Government is now trying to square this circle, in order to satisfy everyone at least somewhat. This split loyalty (between the imperial master, and the domestic public) is what’s called ‘democracy’, nowadays. The master pulls one way, the public are confused or undecided, and the US regime’s other main Middle Eastern ally, Israel, is pulling in the exact opposite direction, on this particular matter. This is how international affairs actually are being decided. The various aristocracies come to an agreement on how to proceed. The respective publics are virtually ignored, except as fronts for their PR. That’s today’s international order, just as has been the case for thousands of years: it is agreements that are reached between aristocracies.
Back in September of 2018, the US regime was backed by the United Nations in opposing Russia’s and Syria’s plan simply to slaughter all of the tens of thousands of Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists (and their families), whom the Syrian Government had exiled to Idlib, Syria’s most pro-jihadist province, and who were being collected there with the intention to destroy them all at the very end of the war — finally to finish them off there. Both Syria’s Government and Russia’s Government wanted simply to destroy them en-masse, at the war’s end. However, because of the success of that US-based (and also U.N.-backed) international propaganda campaign arguing that bombing them would be ‘inhumane’, those jihadists survive, and will probably also be moved to other nations. Sweden could become one such nation, if they decide to take in not only ‘former’ ISIS but ‘former’ Al Qaeda, as ’refugees’. The US has protected both of those groups, against Syria’s Government.
Hypocrisy exists when people don’t care enough about their values so as to think carefully through to decide what values — if any — they actually hold, and what their actual priorities are. Fools like that are the meat upon which their aristocrats constantly feast, producing, as the aristocracy’s excrements, bigots (such as jihadists, and such as the majority of Israelis — and such as people who accept those bigots). Without those fools, aristocrats would need to actually earn a living, instead of merely to live off the fat (the fools) of the land and thereby producing this waste-matter, bigots, who make things difficult for everybody else, including for any decent people who might happen to exist in the given receiving nation (such as in Sweden).
The origin of The West’s hypocrisies that claim to be supporting “human rights” and “democracy” around the world, while actually invading or overthrowing target-governments, go back at least as far as Cecil Rhodes in the late 1800s, and the rationale that’s given of it is entirely fraudulent. It is the difference between, on the one hand, an authentic revolution, which can sometimes produce a democracy, versus, on the other hand, a coup or else an invasion, neither of which can, nor is actually designed to, produce a democracy. But the PR has to say the reason for an invasion or coup or sanctions (such as against Venezuela or Iran or Syria or Libya or Iraq or Ukraine) is to promote ‘human rights’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘oppose corruption’ in the given target-country that’s to be, basically, destroyed. Suckers are necessary, in order for this fraud — the actual aristocratic control of international relations — to succeed. And that’s how the system works. It works by that combination, of liars and fools.
DAMASCUS, (ST)- A number of European intellectuals, currently visiting Syria, have underscored that Syria has become an example to be followed by the world’s freedom-loving peoples in terms of its struggle and steadfastness in the confrontation of terrorism.
During a symposium held in Damascus on Saturday the intellectuals, who are members of the International Movement for Supporting Peoples’ Sovereignty, regretted their governments’ support for terrorism and their participation in the war on Syria, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said.
Emmanuel Leroy, a French political activist, expressed his respect for the Syrian people and highly appreciated the Syrians’ steadfastness in the face of terrorism, saying: “I came to greet you as Syrian nationals…Forget about the governments of the West..they adopted bad and wrong stance that we condemn..think about the peoples which support you”.
Europeans fed up with the Zionist intervention in the European decision
On his part, French historians and researcher Youssef Hindi said that the Zionist lobby in Europe in general, and in France in particular, support wars in the world and that many opinion leaders in Europe have been fed up with the Zionist intervention in the European decision which go against the national interests of the European people.
French Lawyer Arnaud Develay, on his part, said the European governments have lost control because they have embraced Zionism and abandoned the humanitarian values and principles they claimed and promoted and they have participated in a horrible crime by attacking an independent state like Syria.
Syria fought against colonialist schemes
Daria Douguina, a Russian researcher in Philosophy, asserted that Syria has fought against colonialist schemes and that the global war waged on it depended on extremists of different nationalities and who were backed by several European countries.
Iurie Rosca, former deputy parliament speaker of the Moldavian parliament, regretted his country’s government’s policy towards Syria and its subordination to NATO.
European have been brainwashed
French journalist Lucien Cerise affirmed that the Europeans have been brainwashed in order to falsify the facts about Syria and to form a bloc that supports the decisions of the French government on participating in the war on Syria.
Italian journalist Alessandro Sansoni, on his part, clarified that only a few Italian journalists have been able to talk about the reality of events in Syria given the misleading information reported by western media outlets to the Europeans. He called for more meetings and contacts between the Syrians and the Europeans to join efforts in the fight against evil forces and disinformation policies.
Syria is the world’s beacon
Antony Drumel, a French publisher and journalist, hailed the sacrifices and heroic deeds of the Syrian people in the confrontation of terrorism. “Today, your Syria is the world’s beacon which ended the era of hegemony and created a new era through struggle and resistance.
French intellectual and writer Jean Michel Vernochet said that the steadfastness of the Syrians has defeated the strongest and most developed weapons, stressing that the economic war will be difficult, but easier than the terrorist war the Syrians has been experiencing over the past years.
Member of the Baath Arab Socialist Party Central Leadership, Mahdi Dakhlallah, stressed the importance of contacts with the peoples of Europe as to influence the public opinion there, particularly after some European governments have adopted wrong policies by obeying US dictates and supporting the terrorist war on the Syrian people.
On his part, Adnan Azzam, the founder of the International Movement for Supporting Peoples’ Sovereignty said that the movement was launched on January 20th 2019 and that it is now comprising elite European intellectuals who support the Syrian people’s struggle.
Italian journalist Alessandro Sansoni, on his part, clarified that only a few Italian journalists have been able to talk about the reality of events in Syria given the misleading information reported by western media outlets to the Europeans. He called for more meetings and contacts between the Syrians and the Europeans to join efforts in the fight against evil forces and disinformation policies.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 