The Syrian War

[John H]

Assad's grave-robbing echoes Nazi-era abuses

The Assad regime has once again reminded the world just how savage, uncompromising and merciless it truly is.

In the past week, it has unleashed an unrelenting aerial assault on Eastern Ghouta, accompanied by Russian warplanes that killed more than 600 civilians and injured thousands of others.

This is a regime that knows no moral bounds, and at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, is every bit as detestable as Germany's Nazi Party of the 1930s.

Like the warmongering, secular-fascist governments of the previous century, it too spares no one who stands in its way, deploying chemical weapons on children, barrel bombs on hospitals and artillery fire on residential neighbourhoods.

Last week, the UN chief described the situation as "hell on earth" for civilians besieged by the Assad regime in the rebel-held suburb.

But exclusive photos obtained by The New Arab appear to shed new light on the barbarism inflicted upon Syrians who remain cornered in Assad regime-held territory.

...Assad's Syria has become a "safe haven" for Nazi activity, hosting European Nazi organisations in 2017, while also remembering it once provided sanctuary to the Austrian Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner.

While comparing anything to the Nazis is of course an "inherently tricky business", and while the scale of the tragedy of the Holocaust should never be minimised, the nature of the fallout from the Assad regime's brutal war is not too dissimilar to that of Hitler's Germany.

Read more: Why Nazis from Charlottesville to Europe love Bashar al-Assad

For instance, and as Nicholas Kristof once noted, "the Anne Frank of today is a Syrian girl", meaning Syrians continue to die because the West fears Syrian Muslim refugees the same way it feared European Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s.

..At the risk of stretching the all-too-often overused Nazi metaphor further, the Assad regime also has built crematoriums to dispose of those it murders in its prisons. Presumably, of course, after its thugs have first stripped their Syrian victims of their personal belongings, including the gold fillings in their teeth.

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/C...i-era-abuses?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=sf

--

It's not like Nazis to love genocidal tyrants after all...

WHY WHITE NATIONALISTS LOVE BASHAR AL-ASSAD

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/08...nalists-love-bashar-al-assad-charlottesville/

 

[John H]

Looks like it's a very bad day for Russia's systematic slaughtering campaign in Syria.

 

[awaremind]

In other news, that's not Islamic terrorists crocodile tears, large numbers of sdf (backed by USA) are leaving the fight against ISIS, who is still fighting btw, to fight Turks and their FSA proxy forces in Afrin or Manbij. This may leave a power vacuum, either for ISIS to come back, USA to entrench themselves, or pro government forces to recover some (important) territory. Very interesting.

 

[John H]

More than 1,000 people killed in Eastern Ghouta in 2 weeks, MSF says


Medical facilities supported by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have received over 1,000 dead and 4,800 wounded in Syria's Eastern Ghouta in just two weeks, the organization said in a statement.

The group said the numbers -- dating from the start of the renewed Syrian regime assault on February 18 until March 4 -- are an "underestimate" and do not include the data of all MSF-supported medical facilities or facilities not supported by the humanitarian organization.

MSF's death count was last updated on Sunday, according to Wednesday's statement. Monitoring groups have reported scores killed daily this week as activists reported "apocalyptic" scenes in the streets of Eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.

Fifteen out of 20 MSF-supported facilities have been shelled or bombed in the continuing government offensive, according to MSF

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/08/middleeast/syria-eastern-ghouta-death-toll-soars-intl/index.html

 

[John H]

Russia dropping napalm and white phosphorus on civilians in East Ghouta! The 21st century genocide continues, on full display on all media. A million shame on the useless UN.

 

[John H]

Normalising Assad's chemical weapon savagery

For tyrants around the world, Assad is reasserting their right to power by the most brutal means.

The illusion of the US in the Obama era as an imperfect world police force was shattered, even by those who bought into the idea in the first place. Evan McMullin, a senior adviser to Congress on national security, tells a chilling storyof when he confronted a senior state department official on the lack of US action over Assad's use of chemical weapons.

At the time, regime use of chlorine bombs had first been documented, and McMullin asked the official why the Obama administration wasn't "more forcefully condemning the atrocities". The official's reply was cruel but honest, "We're afraid the media will then ask us what we're going to do about it."

US intelligence now reports that the Assad regime is developing new chemical weapons, almost certainly with Iranian support, while Russia, following the shooting down of one of its war planes in Idlib, seems to have for the first time overtly sanctioned the use of poison gas.

The Trump regime might make tokenistic noises about all this, but there's no indication that either Assad or Russia are deterred.

You can't simply claim to oppose one method of genocide, such as poison gas, while tacitly endorsing the genocide in its totality.

It was the great horrors of imperialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries that provided a zeitgeistal impetus for the rise of European fascism.

One might say there was blood in the air, whether from the British use of concentration camps against Africans and Boers, or the German empire's genocide in Namibia or WWI itself. The past decades had normalised new industrial forms of brutality.

It's no surprise that the Syrian civil war with its internationally accepted brutality should be rumbling away as democracy recedes and authoritarian brutality breaks through once more around the globe.

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2018/2/9/normalising-assads-chemical-weapon-savagery

 

[awaremind]

The militants are firing on civilians trying to leave, as they also did in Aleppo, which is by the way thriving now it's liberated from the choppy ones. They clearly only care about civilians in so much as they can be used as human shields or hostages or pr tools. It sucks to be in a war zone but there's nothing stopping them from surrendering. Should have stuck by the ceasefire and joined the reconciliation process.

 

[awaremind]

From Patrick Cockburns article in the independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...ans-deaths-eastern-ghouta-assad-a8247206.html
"I have been struck since 2011 by the unbalanced way in which the Syrian war has been reported by the media. Vast attention was given to the sufferings inflicted on the people of East Aleppo in 2016 under attack by Syrian government and Russian airstrikes, but very little notice was taken of the almost complete destruction of Isis-held Raqqa, with massive civilian casualties, at the hands of the US-led coalition.

I used to attribute such uneven coverage of the war to the greater skill and resources of the Syrian opposition in recording and publicising atrocities committed by the Syrian government and its allies. Isis had no interest in the fate of civilians under its control. But in Afrin there is no shortage of film of the suffering of civilians, but it simply is not widely broadcast or printed. In many respects, the role of the international media in the Syrian war has been as partial and misleading as the warring parties inside the country or their foreign sponsors without."

 

[John H]

From Patrick Cockburns article in the independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...ans-deaths-eastern-ghouta-assad-a8247206.html
"I have been struck since 2011 by the unbalanced way in which the Syrian war has been reported by the media. Vast attention was given to the sufferings inflicted on the people of East Aleppo in 2016 under attack by Syrian government and Russian airstrikes, but very little notice was taken of the almost complete destruction of Isis-held Raqqa, with massive civilian casualties, at the hands of the US-led coalition.

I used to attribute such uneven coverage of the war to the greater skill and resources of the Syrian opposition in recording and publicising atrocities committed by the Syrian government and its allies. Isis had no interest in the fate of civilians under its control. But in Afrin there is no shortage of film of the suffering of civilians, but it simply is not widely broadcast or printed. In many respects, the role of the international media in the Syrian war has been as partial and misleading as the warring parties inside the country or their foreign sponsors without."

Patrick Cockburn, Charles Glass and the fake news from Syria

Fact-checking the latest propaganda rolling off the Assadist assembly-line

Cockburn's another one of Assad's aristocratic cheerleaders - like Vanessa Beeley, daughter of Sir Henry, who inveighs against Western elitism and privilege (coz hereditary dictator Assad's the voice of the downtrodden y'know) from her chateau in the south of France.

Yes we should certainly believe the great Orientalist and scion of privilege Patrick Cockburn, who's also wept crocodile tears for the victims of the Western War on Terror even while cheering for genocide in Syria in the same War on Terror, rather than believing ordinary Syrian people, awaremind.

How can one believe ghastly little people who aren't even from the elite, who don't even support hereditary dictatorship and who aren't beneficiaries of the same hereditary privilege as dear Patrick and his brother Alexander, who've made a very comfy living from complaining about Western elitism while coming from very Western hereditary aristocracy? The proles simply must be militants as dear Bashar and Patrick say.

 

[John H]

Jeremy Corbyn, Stop Some Wars, Max Blumenthal, George Galloway & the rest of the West's pro-Assad "anti-imperialist" posse are remarkably silent on this US imperialist military intervention in support of, er, Assad...

America’s Dirty Secret in Syria: A De Facto Alliance With Assad


Turkey’s intervention in the area of Afrin in northern Syria has exposed an essential truth that the Pentagon has long tried to conceal: The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces the United States relies on to fight the so-called Islamic State in eastern Syria is allied with the infamous regime of Bashar al-Assad.

This became obvious because in another theater of this multifaceted, multifront war, in what is referred to as the north Syrian Afrin pocket, the SDF was daily losing territory to Turkey—and asked the Assad regime for support.

...At the Pentagon last Thursday, a spokesman was unable to answer a reporter’s question about whether the U.S. had become an ally of the Assad regime by virtue of the SDF’s collaboration with the regime. A later written response didn’t provide much clarity. The armed Kurdish groups in Afrin “are not defeat-ISIS coalition partners,” it said. The U.S. partnership with the SDF “is limited in scope to operations to defeat ISIS.”

As that suggests, to maintain the fiction that there are separate SDF groups, the U.S. government has had to duck reality. The Syrian Kurdish faction now in control of the Kurdish cities in northern Syria—and in Afrin—is in fact the PKK’s affiliate in Syria. It’s gone through name changes at the behest of the U.S. military, from the People’s Protection Force or YPG into the Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF, but the different factions, all of which call themselves SDF, still answer to a leadership beholden to the PKK, which is based in Qandil, Iraq.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/americas-dirty-secret-in-syria-a-de-facto-alliance-with-assad

 

[John H]

Better idea to read something by someone actually from Syria & who lived under the rule of the genocidal Assad dictatorship, rather than a western leftist assad propagandist who doesn't speak the language & has never suffered real oppression.

SYRIA’S “VOICE OF CONSCIENCE” HAS A MESSAGE FOR THE WEST

What did you expect from the left in its response to the Syrian revolution?

It came to me as a shock, actually, that most of them have sided with Bashar al-Assad. I don’t expect much out of the international left, but I thought they would understand our situation and see us as a people who were struggling against a very despotic, very corrupt, and very sectarian regime. I thought they would see us and side with us. What I found, unfortunately, is that most people on the left know absolutely nothing about Syria. They know nothing of its history, political economy, or contemporary circumstances, and they don’t see us.

In America, the leftists are against the establishment in their own country. In a way, they thought that the U.S. establishment was siding with the Syrian revolution — something that is completely false and an utter lie — and for this reason they have stood against us. And this applies to leftists almost everywhere in the world. They are obsessed with the White House and the establishment powers of their own countries. The majority are also still obsessed with the old Cold War-era struggles against imperialism and capitalism.

Recently, an event in Rome that displayed images of those tortured and killed by Assad was attacked by fascists. Just days before, it had also been attacked in a local communist newspaper for promoting “imperialism.” There is a growing convergence between the views of fascists and the far-left about Syria and other issues. The reason for this is that perspectives on the left are outdated.

They are interested in high-politics, not grassroots struggles. They are dealing with grand ideologies and historical narratives, but they don’t see people — the Syrian people aren’t represented. They are holding on to depopulated discourses that don’t represent human struggle, life, and death.

Over the past several years, there has been, in effect, a “Palestinization” of the Syrian people. We are being dealt with by the regime, and the world, as a people who will be annihilated politically. Maybe they won’t kill all of us. Many of us are still living. After all, only around half a million or so have been killed so far. But politically, they are annihilating us the same way that the Palestinians are being annihilated.

At the same time, there is a corresponding “Israelization” of the Syrian regime. The same way that Israel relies on the United States for United Nations Security Council vetoes to protect it internationally, the Syrian regime now relies on vetoes from Russia. In Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, only one side — Israel’s — has air power. The same is true in the conflict between Assad and the opposition.

The Assad regime has become a representative of the internal First World in Syria, the Syrian whites. I think the elites in the West find Bashar al-Assad more palatable than other potential interlocutors. He wears expensive suits and has a necktie, and, ultimately, these elites prefer a fascist with a necktie to a fascist with a beard. Meanwhile, they don’t see us, the Syrian people. Those who are trying to own the politics of their own country have been rendered invisible.

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/26/syria-yassin-al-haj-saleh-interview/

 

[John H]

The problem with leftist myths about Syria
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/problem-leftist-myths-syria-180304145557984.html

 

[Ned_Flanders]

FFS John H do you wanna actually post something you write, or are you just gunna spam links non stop?

TBH I'm just scrolling past all the s**t you're spamming out right now

 

[awaremind]

Sorry dude , you can't convince me that Syrian rebels are better than terrorists. The white helmets are fakes and take part in the execution of prisoners, they behead children, and they don't seem to allow women out of the house, much less to show thier face. They are the same guys who committed the massacres in Paris, Belgium, Germany and England. They are the useful idiots for Israel, since you can see they emenate from that area and are never attacked by them.

You can tell they are jihadists by the way they chant takbir- Allah Ackbar repeatedly after killing people. They are proud of who they are and what they represent, don't try to deny it.

 

[John H]

Obama's established a precedent of tacitly endorsing genocide with a non-existent red line. Hope he's enjoying his legacy.

What Happened to Trump’s Red Line on Chemical Weapons?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/opinion/trump-chemical-weapons.html?smid=fb-share



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/opinion/trump-chemical-weapons.html?smid=fb-share

 

[chargers 09]

Honest question - is there any feasible scenario that ends with Assad removed from power?

The US 'allies' there are either too close to IS for comfort or Kurds, which the Turks won't allow to seize power even regionally. There is no single unifying anti-Assad group that is likely to gain support from the bulk of other anti-Assad organisations.
The Russians are all in on Assad and are prepared to skirmish with Turkey to protect him.
Turkey ultimately don't hold the same power as the two superpowers and have less skin in the game as well if you ignore their Kurdish question.
Iran will back Assad to the hilt, as long as it stays out of the headlines.
Israel will hold out and support anti-Assad forces as long as they can but it doesn't appear to be a sustainable position given the shifting sands there and Russia's willingness for 'collateral damage' appears higher than that of the western interests.

I can't believe Assad is still alive.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[John H]

Assad's Western fans who find liberal democracy so intolerable, may soon enjoy for themselves what they're so very keen on for non-Western people.

The 'American Century' Is Over, and It Died in Syria

09-03-2018: Syria represents an assault on the very idea of moral progress. But it's not alone. Around the globe, longstanding legal and ethical norms are being eroded, and the world is being dragged back to a more ruthless, less-enlightened age. China, which may have a ruler-for-life, is chipping away at freedom of navigation in the Western Pacific; Russia has shattered the taboo against wars of aggression and conquest in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Yet Syria is where the erosion is most advanced and the consequences most horrific. The regime's continued use of starvation sieges, barrel bombs and illegal weapons against the civilian population -- and the international community's inability or unwillingness to bring the slaughter to an end -- demonstrates more painfully than anything else that the moral gains the world seemed to have achieved are now being rolled back, and the rules of conduct it seemed to have established are now being transgressed. Neither the Barack Obama administration, with its "red-line" fiasco of 2013, nor the Donald Trump administration, with its diplomatic disengagement from the conflict, has had an answer to this challenge.

...Some wars are ultimately remembered less for appalling harm inflicted on participants and bystanders than for what they revealed about the larger state of the world. We now see the Spanish Civil War, for instance, not just as a tragic episode in the history of that country, but for what it demonstrated about an international system under strain. Today, our own international system is fraying at the edges. If that process continues, we may one day look back on Syria as the crisis that foretold the greater unraveling to come.'

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/arti...can-century-is-over-putin-and-assad-killed-it

 

[Total Power]

Sorry dude , you can't convince me that Syrian rebels are better than terrorists. The white helmets are fakes and take part in the execution of prisoners, they behead children, and they don't seem to allow women out of the house, much less to show thier face. They are the same guys who committed the massacres in Paris, Belgium, Germany and England. They are the useful idiots for Israel, since you can see they emenate from that area and are never attacked by them.

You can tell they are jihadists by the way they chant takbir- Allah Ackbar repeatedly after killing people. They are proud of who they are and what they represent, don't try to deny it.

Why on earth will Isis attack israel, what purpose does it serve at the moment? they are on the same side of the conflict along with the US, are you trying to push P35 style CT?

 

[awaremind]

Why on earth will Isis attack israel, what purpose does it serve at the moment? they are on the same side of the conflict along with the US, are you trying to push P35 style CT?

Ok so I'm not saying ISIS are Israeli secret intelligence service, however it's despicable that they treat them in thier hospitals and attack the SAA the moment any mortar or rockets or Hezbollah or Iran come anywhere near them, while al-Qaeda and Isis are sitting pretty on their borders. It may be in line with balance of power politics but it is immoral and a bad longer term strategy. It wasn't that long ago they were immolating Jordanian pilots, holding women and children in cages as human shields and beheading western journalists, do you even remember any of this ?

Assad's Western fans who find liberal democracy so intolerable, may soon enjoy for themselves what they're so very keen on for non-Western people.

The 'American Century' Is Over, and It Died in Syria

09-03-2018: Syria represents an assault on the very idea of moral progress. But it's not alone. Around the globe, longstanding legal and ethical norms are being eroded, and the world is being dragged back to a more ruthless, less-enlightened age. China, which may have a ruler-for-life, is chipping away at freedom of navigation in the Western Pacific; Russia has shattered the taboo against wars of aggression and conquest in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Yet Syria is where the erosion is most advanced and the consequences most horrific. The regime's continued use of starvation sieges, barrel bombs and illegal weapons against the civilian population -- and the international community's inability or unwillingness to bring the slaughter to an end -- demonstrates more painfully than anything else that the moral gains the world seemed to have achieved are now being rolled back, and the rules of conduct it seemed to have established are now being transgressed. Neither the Barack Obama administration, with its "red-line" fiasco of 2013, nor the Donald Trump administration, with its diplomatic disengagement from the conflict, has had an answer to this challenge.

...Some wars are ultimately remembered less for appalling harm inflicted on participants and bystanders than for what they revealed about the larger state of the world. We now see the Spanish Civil War, for instance, not just as a tragic episode in the history of that country, but for what it demonstrated about an international system under strain. Today, our own international system is fraying at the edges. If that process continues, we may one day look back on Syria as the crisis that foretold the greater unraveling to come.'

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/arti...can-century-is-over-putin-and-assad-killed-it

Honestly there was never any moral order, it has just become blatantly obvious with this war. The USA backed Saddam, it indiscriminately slaughtered Vietnamese, it handed over the names of pro communists in Indonesia for Suharto's Islamist militias to slaughter in their hundreds of thousands, etc, etc. the biggest difference is the internet, mobile phone cameras, and resurgent Russian media.

They have been embarrassed by putin checkmating thier interest in Syria. Now they either have to help Kurds against their crucial Ally Turkey, or vice versa, or Sunni terrorists against their mostly Shia ally Iraq or vice versa and if they attack Syria directly they risk ww3 with Russia , who has basically just declared nuclear superiority. The definition of stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The media is losing its hold over the people in the west, many of whom are Christian and are repulsed by supporting groups who slaughter their co-religionists, or whom are not so stupid that they realise the guys who do the terrorist attacks in Europe are the same who are trying to conquer Syria. Assad may be brutal and not good, but he is far preferable to a Sunni terror regime, which is the other viable option.

Libya hasn't exactly turned out to well either. Western intervention has only made things much worse there, and also for Europe, as its refugee massing point central.

Look also at western attitudes towards turkey and Saudi Arabia, the latter has been seen as tyrannical and the source of Sunni terrorist funding and leadership for decades, and it's only the plutocrats who love them and th ire cash, and turkey is slowly becoming erdogans fascist terror state, enacting yet another genocide, and very firmly under one mans control.

 

[Total Power]

Ok so I'm not saying ISIS are Israeli secret intelligence service, however it's despicable that they treat them in thier hospitals and attack the SAA the moment any mortar or rockets or Hezbollah or Iran come anywhere near them, while al-Qaeda and Isis are sitting pretty on their borders. It may be in line with balance of power politics but it is immoral and a bad longer term strategy. It wasn't that long ago they were immolating Jordanian pilots, holding women and children in cages as human shields and beheading western journalists, do you even remember any of this ?

There is plenty of fake news here too just like the fake news about Israel apologising to ISIS for attacking them and actually wishing for a Daesh victory in Syria.israel had a policy (I don't think it's in effect any longer) to give medical aid to any wounded person left at the border in the Golan Heights. That's all. Other than the humanitarian effort, they gained intelligence from whomever they pick up so it was advantageous to Israel in order to keep tabs on the rapidly shifting borders and alliances of the various factions fighting in Syria.

These are all bs conspiracy theories.I mean, face it. The entire "Israel controls ISIS" argument rests on a single fact: that ISIS has never directly attacked Israel. A far better way to explain the fact is that ISIS has no military strength near enough to Israel and they know that if they attack it would be a pointless suicide mission.

 

[John H]

By Yassin Al Haj Saleh one of Syria’s most iconic political dissidents, intellectuals and authors. He was imprisoned by the Assad regime for 16 years, he is one of the key intellectual voices of the Syrian revolution.

The Palestinization of Syrians

The Palestinian cause has been used as a tool to control the Syrian and Palestinian people, and to suppress political agency both in Syria and the region. All of this has been intended to secure that the Assadist state stays in power forever. It has nothing to do with a struggle for the liberation of Palestine or its people. This game would not have possible without a degree of complicity from the side of Syrians themselves, due to their awareness that Israel is really antagonistic and aggressive. The Syrian people are more radical in their stance towards Israel than their rulers, despite their apathy sometimes towards certain political tactics, even though their radicalism does not mean they are always for confronting Israel militarily. Every time Palestinians suffered Israeli aggression, everybody would rally with Palestine regardless of their diversity of opinions towards Palestinian politics or the politics of this Palestinian side or that.

...More than 11 million Syrians have been displaced from their homes; 6 million inside Syria and at least 5 million in both neighboring and faraway countries. Three thousand people have been swallowed by the water of the Mediterranean in 2015 alone.

This is the Syrian Nakba. Doesn’t it remind us of the Palestinian Nakba?

Following 72 months of revolution, a civil war and a broader regional war, as well as almost 47 years of a dynastic rule, the regime has never shown any willingness negotiate a political compromise that would result in even minimal changes to the political structure against which Syrians had revolted in 2011. Isn’t refusal to any real negotiation a very Israeli action?

The regime has gained immunity through 8 Russian and 6 Chinese vetoes. Russia has constantly maintained their military support for the regime. Isn’t this a very Israeli action, Russian and China substituting the erstwhile role of the USA?

During these 72 months, the regime has used its air force. Its helicopters has dropped barrel bombs on the populations. It has used war planes against populated areas. Don’t these actions resemble and surpass Israeli actions?

The Israeli exceptionalism and refusal to abide by international law offers a legal foundation for Assad, who is not abiding by any laws either. Israel has been annihilating its enemies –Palestinian people– politically, and physically whenever it needed to. The Assadist state has followed suit but more savagely, with more people murdered and more buildings destroyed.

Israel has stripped Palestinians from their ownership of Palestinian land. The Assadist state has done the same to Syrians and has transformed a family of murderers to owners of Syria, –they call it “Assad’s Syria.”'

https://www.aljumhuriya.net/en/en/critical-thought/the-palestinization-of-syrians

 

[John H]

Trump has simply continued Obama's policy. As Assad, Moscow, Tehran, Washington, the UN & ISIS agree, genocide of Arab peoples is a-okay, letting them have freedom is unthinkable.

Trump gives the Assad regime an open invitation to keep gassing children

The siege, the report says, has been “characterized by pervasive war crimes, including the use of prohibited weapons, attacks against civilian and protected objects, starvation leading to acute malnutrition, and the routine denial of medical evacuations.” Hospitals and schools have been systematically bombed; on a single day, Nov. 8, three schools were struck from the air. Hundreds of medical workers have been killed or injured in airstrikes, and women have begun giving birth at home rather than risk going to a hospital.

The United Nations documented three uses of chlorine against rebel fighters in July, and another attack in November in which a phosphorus-based pesticide was used. These are carefully calibrated atrocities. President Trump ordered a retaliatory strike following the regime’s use of nerve gas last year, but he has not responded to chlorine attacks. And so they continue.

Russian forces also target civilians, and the United Nations documented one incident it says “may amount to a war crime.” Last Nov. 13, a Russian plane was observed carrying out a series of airstrikes on the main market as well as surrounding houses in the town of Atarib, in Aleppo province. The report says at least 84 people were killed, including six women and five children. It said the plane dropped unguided “blast weapons,” even though “the use of such weapons in a densely populated area was certain to impact civilians.” That, no doubt, was the intention.

As the Ghouta offensive has continued, the State Department has objected; spokeswoman Heather Nauert castigated Russia on Twitter. The trouble is, Moscow knows that Mr. Trump feels differently. When he was asked about Eastern Ghouta, on Feb. 23, the president reiterated his view that the only U.S. interest in Syria was “to get rid of ISIS and to go home.” For the Assad regime and Russia, that’s an open invitation to continue gassing children, bombing hospitals and committing other war crimes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ab0aa0-2306-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html

 

[awaremind]

BEIRUT, LEBANON (10:28 A.M.) – Moments ago, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) released an official statement saying that the Russian military would respond to any US aggression that threatened its forces in Syria.

The statement more specifically eluded to a possible US strike against Syrian government targets in Damascus where Russian forces have a presence


Moscow is convinced that the US plans to use proxy elements in Syria to carry out a false flag chemical weapons attack that will be blamed on the Syrian Armed Forces and used as a pretext for military action.
Almasdar news.....

There are rumours that there are American special forces embedded and trapped with the Islamist rebels in Eastern Ghouta, same as in Eastern Aleppo.

 

[John H]

 

[John H]

RIP to a great scientist and a great man.
Article from February 2014.

Stephen Hawking: Syria's war must end - The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...1dea72-94f0-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html