So in order to bypass rcalcitrant Ukraine (read article above), Russia has made a deal with Turkey for a new gas pipeline which should be completed soon enough, despite Russia and Turkey having their own differences on the price of fish.

Meanwhile the cartoon by Cathy Wilcox in the SMH today is an atrocious one-sided view of this complex Syrian conflict, in which the rebels were far more responsible for the bloodshed. The boffins at the SMH are furiously independently sucking the Yankee teat.

Read the real story at top. Now read the fantasy from the New York Times:

Watching the fall of the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo has been excruciating. Civilians who survived weeks of intense shelling have reportedly been slaughtered by the forces of the Assad government as they have fled the battle zone, some shot in house-to-house searches. Thousands more are trapped with no food, water or shelter. “This is a message from someone saying farewell and who could face death or arrest at any time,” a medic wrote on a messaging service. The United Nations called the catastrophe a “complete meltdown of humanity.”

The Assad forces are close to retaking Aleppo, the last major city not in government hands. In 2011, President Bashar al-Assad ignored the demands of peaceful protesters and unleashed a terrifying war against his people. More than 400,000 Syrians have been killed while millions more have fled across regional borders and to Europe.

But Mr. Assad could never have prevailed without the support of President Vladimir Putin of Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran. That is a truth that President-elect Donald Trump, a Putin apologist who is surrounding himself with top aides who are also Kremlin sympathizers, cannot ignore. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Putin for being “a better leader” than President Obama. This would be a good time for him to persuade Mr. Putin to end the slaughter.

Mr. Putin’s bloody actions — the bombing of civilian neighborhoods, the destruction of hospitals, the refusal to allow noncombatants to receive food, fuel and medical supplies — are all in violation of international law. At the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said to Mr. Assad, Russia and Iran that they had put a “noose” around Aleppo’s civilians and: “It should shame you. Instead, by all appearances, it is emboldening you.”

At the start of the conflict, when hard-nosed diplomacy in the Security Council might have forced Mr. Assad to make political compromises and avert war, Russia used its veto to shield him from criticism and sanctions. By October 2015, when it looked like Mr. Assad was losing, Russia sent jetsand troops and became an active combatant on the government’s behalf against the rebels, including those trained and assisted by the United States and Arab nations. Hezbollah, backed by Iran with arms and money, has also been a vital asset for the Assad regime, reportedly deploying at least 5,000 fighters in Syria. The chaos has let the Islamic State establish a headquarters in Syria and become a major terrorist threat.

Read at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/opinion/aleppos-destroyers-assad-putin-iran.html

Read also: the western media is pathetic...

As major parts of Aleppo are liberated, the information war between Russia and the West continues to heat up. “There is an information war going on,” Truscott told RT, adding that “it occurs against the background of a level of Russophobia which I have not seen for many, many years.”

“I have been following Russia and international relations closely for 35 years and I have never witnessed so much Russophobia as I am witnessing today,” Truscott said. “It is not just the accounts of what is happening in Syria but a general attitude towards Russia. I think people just need to calm down. I am hopeful that the new Trump administration will take a more measured position [towards] Russia.”

Truscott sees a number of causes for this, as well as strategic reasons for the West to continue using Russia as pretext for things going wrong in Syria or beyond.

He sees the current situation in Syria as, firstly, a proxy war in which various regional players fight for different sides and, of course, different strands of Islam. However, it’s also a geopolitical split, where multiple players vie for control, their spheres of influence intersecting.

“What we are witnessing is Syria is a proxy war in effect and various regional players support different sides in this conflict that represents a religious split,” Truscott told RT, adding that “it is also a geopolitical split with the West on one side and largely Russia on the other.”

Ultimately, for Truscott, the reason Syrians – especially those in Aleppo – have it worse than they could is because rebuilding is being sacrificed for alternative aims, such as regime change. This leads to underreporting on both sides, be it the bombing of western Aleppo or the current situation in Yemen – a country the United States has business interests in, as long as it’s dealing with Saudi Arabia.

“It is not just eastern Aleppo, which suffered from bombing and civilians being killed, but also western Aleppo – and that is being underreported. The Western media have been focusing on eastern Aleppo but it is being underreported what is going on in western Aleppo during some of the attacks that take place there,” he said, stressing that “another example of Western coverage is what is happening in Yemen.”

The primary casualties of this are of course civilians, Truscott said. But there is another victim – truth. With multiple business interests at stake – such as the $500 million the US pumped into the rebels, as well as deals with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Gulf States – regime change can be implemented, and money can be made.

“It is clear that the rebels are being supplied by weapons, munitions, equipment and money quite openly by countries like the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and some of the Gulf states. The US made no secret out of the fact that it pumped around $ 500 million in supporting some of the rebels,”Truscott stressed.

“Western foreign policy in Syria that is focused exclusively on regime change and getting rid of Assad has been an absolute disaster,” Truscott added. “You would think that the West would learn from history. It didn’t work very well in Iraq; it was a total disaster in Libya – which contributed to the refugee crisis that Europe is experiencing. And the same thing is going on in Syria.”

Pursuing regime change, Truscott said, “would just create a bigger crisis than [the one] that we are experiencing at the moment.”

So what is the reason behind Russia’s role as such a convenient enemy in Syria and the wider region? According to Truscott, it does not merely lie in Moscow’s support for Assad, but continues the old Cold War policy supported by the US military industrial complex due to its perceived low costs.

“The military industrial complex needs an enemy to justify its massive defense spending. It is very convenient for some to pick Russia as an enemy because they do not think there is much cost involved in that,” he told RT.

He also explained that the US sees a rivalry with Russia as a less risky option than a potential conflict with China. “If one picks China as an enemy, it is much more difficult to deal with a population of 1.4 billion people and a rising superpower as well as an economic powerhouse, which the US needs for trade,” Truscott said.

He went on to say that some people in the US military regard tense relations with Russia as a convenient justification for pursuing their old doctrine and pretending that their strategy is still relevant.

“It is quite an easy option for a lot of people in the military and security establishment to fall back on Russia as an old Cold War enemy and that is a bit of a comfort zone that gives them existential justification for their existence in their current stance,” Truscott told RT.

At the same time, he stressed that Western politicians must adapt to the rapidly changing reality and acknowledge the existence of new threats that pose a real danger, instead of promoting the old myth of perceived Russian aggression.

“The existential threat to the West is not Russia, it is Islamist fundamentalism,” he said.

https://www.rt.com/news/370445-truscott-russophobia-isis-syria/

read Gus' view at top and the crazy New York Times editorial below it...

It is "a shame and a disgrace" to claim that Aleppo, one of the largest cities in Syria which has been fully liberated last week, "has fallen," Father Mtanios Haddad, archimandrite of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, told Sputnik.

Aleppo, the commercial and industrial heart of the country prior to the war, "did not fall," he insisted. "The city has once again become part of the Syrian state thanks to countless sacrifices that our army had to make. The Syrian Arab Army paid for Aleppo's liberation with blood and suffering."

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201612221048861639-syria-aleppo-liberation/

From Chris Floyd

The end result of every Islamist terror attack (or even alleged Islamist terror attack) is: 1. Heightened authoritarian powers for governments. 2. Demonization of law-abiding Muslims. 3. More money for war-profiteers, since more war is always the ultimate response. None of these outcomes advance the attackers’ cause in any way save one: more repression, demonization and war can lead to more ‘radicalisation’ of the people being repressed, demonized and bombed. Thus the responses, which are always the same, always reward the perpetrators of these atrocities by giving them the only thing they can get from the attacks: recruitment tools.

“So what are we supposed to do then?” comes the angry cry. Well, one thing we could do to begin breaking this deadly cycle is to quit living in a dreamworld and recognize what the actual policies of our governments are, what our governments are actually doing, and the actual consequences of these actual events. We have to be done with the childish notion that our greatness and goodness is forever being assaulted out of the blue by motiveless monsters who don’t appreciate how greatly good we really are.

The taking of innocent lives is an abominable evil. It is never justified. It is not justified when sectarian extremists strike at the West; it is not justified when Western nations take innocent lives, on a mass scale, in Muslim countries. But from our side, there is not even the slightest chance of breaking this deadly cycle if we do not acknowledge the realities of what we have done and what we are doing in the world. Knowledge is the only way out of this impasse — if there is a way out of it.

We could see that the policy of destroying whole nations in military actions based on false pretenses or deliberately exaggerated threats, as in Iraq and Libya, spreads ruin, chaos, violence, extremism, refugees and weapons rippling through many other lands, destabilizing them in their turn.

We could acknowledge the plain and incontrovertible fact that one main cause of the spread of violent Islamic extremism has been our own support — covert and overt — for groups who push this doctrine, when it suits our own geopolitical purpose. This has happened over and over — such as the support for the violent retrograde sectarian extremists in Afghanistan, whom we called “freedom fighters” when it suited our purpose. It happened in Libya, where, once again, we armed and supported violent extremist groups while pretending they were secular moderates fight for Jeffersonian principles of liberty and freedom. It is happening in Syria, where we are arming, funding and bombing on behalf of some of the most virulent sectarian extremists on earth, including al Qaeda, while, again, pretending they are secular moderates. It is happening in Yemen, where for the 15 months, the U.S. government has been directly aiding the religious extremists of Saudi Arabia in a vicious war and murderous blockade that has cleared the way for the resurgence of al Qaeda, just as it had almost been wiped out in that country.

We could acknowledge the plain and incontrovertible fact that these deliberately chosen policies — chosen as the means to pursue various geopolitical and economic goals, none of which have anything to do with freedom or liberty or human rights — have resulted in waves of refugees flooding into countries unprepared for them. They have resulted in further radicalization and repression both in the West and in many Muslim lands, straining and tearing at civic structures, particularly in the latter.

We could acknowledge the plain and incontrovertible fact that as long as our governments pursue the agenda of advancing and maintaining economic and political dominion in the world – by whatever means necessary – then the fallout, the blowback from these policies will continue. It is striking how our savants can recognize this in regard to other countries, but never our own. The assassination of the Russian ambassador in Turkey this week was immediately described as blowback or revenge for Russian actions in Syria. “You see,” said American pundits and politicians, “if you go meddling in the affairs of other countries for your own selfish political ends, this is what happens! You radicalize people and then they come after you!” The very clear implication — and sometimes stated assertion — is that the Russians are “reaping the whirlwind” of their military intervention in the Middle East.

The very same principle applies to Western interventions. But as we all know, one is not allowed to say this. Because of the goodness of our greatness, our interventions are always pure. It is only other countries that pursue amoral policies for their own aggrandizement. If they are met with a violent response to these policies, it’s only what they deserve. But if this happens to us, then we are innocent lambs lost in an unfair world. We are floating in an anxious cloud of learned helplessness, wilful ignorance and historical amnesia. Knowledge is the only way out of this impasse — if there is a way out.

Beginning in the late Seventies, we actively, deliberately helped build, fund and arm a global network of violent sectarian extremists in order to bedevil the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. We did this: we laid the base (or, in Arabic, "al Qaeda") of global jihad, along the lines of Saudi religious extremism. We stoked this jihad network for more than a decade until every single vestige of secular society was destroyed in Afghanistan and the Taliban took over. We worked with and made a hero of Osama bin Laden (whose family had long-standing business ties in America, including with the Bush family). He was written up in American newspapers as a “freedom fighter” in Afghanistan who had put down his guns and turned his hand to good works in Sudan.

We further stoked radicalization in the region when we intervened in a border dispute between Iraq (which we had supported for years, despite its brutal dictator) and Kuwait, whose royal rulers were longtime business partners of the Bush family. (Our former ally, bin Laden, was angered by the presence of U.S. ‘infidel’ soldiers on Saudi soil; he, like the Americans, wanted to see the secular government of Iraq overthrown, but he had wanted it done by Muslim forces. So he turned against his American partners.) We shattered Iraq, imposed sanctions on it which our own leaders acknowledged killed more than half a million children. Finally, in 2003, when the country was not just on its knees but face down in the dirt, we bravely invaded again, citing the presence of weapons of mass destruction which our governments knew were not there, having been given full evidence of their destruction by the man who destroyed them — Saddam’s son-in-law (as reported by Newsweek long before the 2003 war) — and also having found no trace of weapons or a weapons program in years of UN inspections, including a full-scale, wide-open inspection just before the war.

It is very odd that most Americans believed — and apparently still believe —there would be no consequences from this morally insane and strategically stupid policy. No consequence for killing up to a million innocent people (according to the UK government’s method of casualty assessment). No consequence for sending millions of refugees flooding into Syria, a country already greatly strained by a prolonged drought which had wrought massive social upheaval. No consequences for creating a chaos in Iraq where the global jihad movement we helped build poured in and flourished as never before.

read more:

http://www.chris-floyd.com/home/articles/eyes-wide-shut-flying-blind-in-...

In 2012, Swann had questioned President Obama directly about the US effort to arm forces in Syria which included members of al-Qaeda in their ranks. The president suggested at the time that he 'shared that concern', and that US efforts have been to provide non-lethal assistance to opposition groups that observed human rights.

Unfortunately, the journalist noted, "one year later, in 2013, the CIA began delivering weapons to those Syrian rebels." The Washington Post reported on the deliveries, confirming that the State Department was also involved, supplying vehicles "and other gear." The Washington Post said at the time that this "flow of material" marked "a major escalation of the US role in Syria's civil war."

"But things only got worse," Swann said, "because as the weapons were flowing in, so were jihadists, and by September of 2013, the London-based global defense consultancy group IHS Jane's reported that 10,000 of the estimated 100,000 insurgent fighters were linked to al-Qaeda. Another 30-35,000 belonged to powerful factions that were fighting for an Islamic State within a larger Middle East caliphate stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean."

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201612281049083365-ben-swann-syria-rebels-report/

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat, says she made a secret, four-day trip to Syria — meeting with ordinary people and even President Bashar al-Assad — because the suffering of the Syrian people “has been weighing heavily on my heart.”

“I wanted to see if there was in some small way, a way that I could express the love and the aloha and the care that the American people have for the people of Syria, and to see firsthand what was happening there, to see that situation there,” Gabbard told CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper on Wednesday.

She returned with a message:

“I’ll tell you what I heard from the Syrian people that I met with, Jake, walking down the street in Aleppo, in Damascus, hearing from them.

“They expressed happiness and joy at seeing an American walking through their streets. But they also asked why the U.S. and its allies are providing support and arms to terrorist groups like al-Nusra, al-Qaida or al-Sham, ISIS who are on the ground there, raping, kidnapping, torturing and killing the Syrian people.

“They asked me, why is the United States and its allies supporting these terrorist groups who are destroying Syria when it was al Qaida who attacked the United States on 9/11, not Syria. I didn’t have an answer for them,” Gabbard said.

“The reality is… every place that I went, every person that I spoke to, I asked this question to them, and without hesitation, they said, there are no moderate rebels. Who are these moderate rebels that people keep speaking of?

Regardless of the name of these groups, the strongest fighting force on the ground in Syria is al Nusra, or al Qaida and ISIS. That is a fact,” Gabbard said.

“There is a number of different, other groups — all of them essentially are fighting alongside, with, or under the command of the strongest group on the ground that’s trying to overthrow Assad.

“The Syrian people recognize and they know that if President Assad is overthrown, then al Qaida — or a group like al Qaida, that has been killing Christians, killing people simply because of their religion, or because they won’t support their terror activities, they will take charge of all of Syria.

“This is the reality that the people of Syria are facing on the ground, and why they are pleading with us here in the United States to stop supporting these terrorist groups. Let the Syrian people themselves determine their future, not the United States, not some foreign country.”

Gabbard said initially, she didn’t plan to meet with President Assad: “When the opportunity arose to meet with him, I did so because I felt it’s important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we could achieve peace, and that’s exactly what we talked about.”

Tapper noted that Assad is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of people being forced from their homes and even their country during the five-year civil war:

“Did you have any compunctions about meeting with somebody like that, giving him any sort of enhanced credibility because a member of the United States Congress would meet with someone like that?” Tapper asked.

“Whatever you think about President Assad, the fact is that he is the president of Syria,” Tulsi replied. “In order for any peace agreement, in order for any possibility of a viable peace agreement to occur, there has to be a conversation with him,” Gabbard said.

“The Syrian people will determine his outcome and what happens with their government and their future, but our focus, my focus, my commitment is on ending this war that has caused so much suffering to the Syrian people.”

In a speech on the House floor earlier this month, Gabbard criticized America’s “interventionist wars.”

“Our limited resources should go toward rebuilding our communities here at home, not fueling more counterproductive regime change wars abroad.”

She urged her fellow lawmakers to support her bill, the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act,” legislation that would stop the U.S. government from using taxpayer dollars to directly or indirectly support groups allied with terrorist groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda in their war to overthrow the Syrian government.

“The fact that our resources are being used to strengthen the very terrorist groups we should be focused on defeating should alarm every American,” Gabbard said.

I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation and stop this madness.” 

Gabbard supported Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, but after the election, she was one of many people invited to meet with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York.

“President-elect Trump asked me to meet with him about our current policies regarding Syria, our fight against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as other foreign policy challenges we face,” Gabbard said about the meeting.

“I felt it important to take the opportunity to meet with the President-elect now before the drumbeats of war that neocons have been beating drag us into an escalation of the war to overthrow the Syrian government — a war which has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions of refugees to flee their homes in search of safety for themselves and their families.”

read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2017/01/27/just-back-from-syria-rep-gabbard-bri...

The origin of this sad situation is called Saudi Arabia, this fascist Sunni country, which the US is supporting to the hilt. Read from top.

"After Aleppo, Washington evidently has made every effort to push through its plan of resolving the Syrian conflict by splitting up the country. This is what they will advocate as part of the Geneva peace process," the former Editor-in-Chief at Radio France Internationale (RFI) said, adding that to that end the US has both voiced its support to the Turks and the Kurdish militias, whom Ankara largely views as terrorists.

Aleppo was partially controlled by foreign-sponsored radical armed groups from 2012 until late 2016. The Syrian Arab Army, assisted by Russia, Iran and its local allies, liberated the key city in December. Damascus' victory has dealt a major blow to forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201702101050536645-us-syria-splitting-up/

Syrian government forces and the armed opposition will be prevented from fighting each other and carrying out airstrikes within the safe zones by means of security buffers, checkpoints and observation posts controlled by the guarantor states.

Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed to prepare maps that will separate the areas controlled by the so-called“moderate opposition” from the territories held by the jihadists and provide precise safe zone demarcation by June 4.

Russian Aerospace Forces have already, on May 1 paused their airstrikes in the areas demarcated as safe zones, Russia’s Defense Ministry said.

The airspace over the safe zones may also be closed for the planes of the US-led coalition, with Russia’s Foreign Ministry saying the issue is being negotiated between the Russian and American militaries.

Around 42,000 opposition fighters currently remain on the territory of the four security zones, with the majority of the militants located in Idlib (14,500) and near the Jordanian border (15,000), according to Russian estimates.

The establishment of safe zones doesn’t mean that the fight against Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist groups will stop in the country. On the contrary, the move will allow Syria to free additional forces to tackle the jihadists, Russia’s Defense Ministry said.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/387304-syria-safe-zones-russia/

Meanwhile the ABC (Australia):

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian army.

Mohammed Rasheed, a spokesman for the Jaish al-Nasr rebel group based in Hama, confirmed that fighting had broken out after midnight.

Iran and Turkey agreed on Thursday to a Russian proposal for de-escalation zones in Syria, but the memorandum the three guarantors signed has not been made public, leaving its details unclear.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-06/clashes-break-out-in-syria-as-de-e...

Obviously the ABC has misunderstood what the "Safe Zones' are. The details are reasonably clear on the map in in the agreement.

A young Syrian boy whose stunned face, covered in dust and blood, became a symbol of suffering in Aleppo, has appeared in a video posted by a pro-government television presenter.

Omran Daqneesh and his father appeared in the video clip, apparently still living in Aleppo and telling the reporter, Kinana Allouche, they did not want to leave Syria.

A photograph of the wounded boy, sitting alone in the back of an ambulance staring blankly after an airstrike, was circulated worldwide last August, highlighting the suffering of civilians in besieged east Aleppo.

His older brother, Ali, died from his wounds after the attack.

Omran's father told the reporter his son was in good health in Aleppo — which is now under the control of President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

He said he had cut his son's hair and changed his name to protect him from being kidnapped, and accused rebels of intimidating the family.

It was not clear whether the family had been coerced into taking part in the short video posted on Facebook, the first time the boy had been seen publicly since he was hurt.

However, Valerie Szybala from the Syria Institute, an independent research organisation focused on Syria, said the family was unlikely to have been speaking freely.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-07/syrian-boy-in-famous-photo-intervi...

Valerie Szybala from the Syria Institute is a sour bitch. Her "independent" research organisation is as independent as the moon is independent from planet earth... It is attached to the "free"-Syria-from-Assad movement, thus it is NOT independent. The point here is that the kid is still alive and his dad is still afraid that rebels (supported by Valerie's "independent" organisation) would kidnap his son...

Both the Syrian city of Aleppo and Iraq’s Mosul found themselves gripped in fierce battles in late 2016. Syrian forces were trying to liberate the eastern part of Aleppo from militant groups to end the mortar shelling, which was killing civilians in the western half, and to begin rebuilding the war-ravaged districts of the city. An ambitious Russia-backed effort to evacuate civilians from the warzone set up humanitarian corridors. It was the US-backed Iraqi battle for Mosul, however, that captured the Western media’s favor as a heroic struggle to liberate civilians from Islamic State (IS, ISIS/ISIL), while the war in Aleppo was presented in a markedly different light.

‘Bombing kitten sanctuaries’ in Aleppo

It’s no secret that the mainstream media coverage of eastern Aleppo’s liberation – more often termed as the “siege” or the “fall of Aleppo” in the West – focused exclusively on alleged atrocities of the Syrian Army rather than the full picture. Reports tugged at the emotional strings of the viewers, describing children's hospitals, schools and blood banks destroyed in the government bombing. However, they failed to mention that the former schools and hospitals often housed militant mortars, while the “last hospital in Aleppo” was destroyed multiple times as MSM readily cited militant-linked sources without verifying them.

But perhaps the most absurd of the stories spun by the media during the battle was the “bombing” of the cat sanctuary in the city. The home for orphaned felines, which was run by Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel, who was referred to as an “ambulance driver” and “the Catman of Aleppo,” was repeatedly brought into the spotlight, highlighting the hardships of the rebel-held parts of the city. In November 2016, the Catman reported that the facility was “bombed,” and several cats and a dog, aptly named Hope, were killed. The incident was squarely pinned on President Bashar Assad’s air forces and Russia. The next alleged attack on the sanctuary came with the MSM's weapon of choice – chlorine – according to the owner, who was eventually safely evacuated from Aleppo.

The man eventually settled in the militant-held western countryside of Aleppo, opening a new kitten sanctuary. The feline facility, sadly, has not received much media attention ever since. As the battle for Aleppo ended, the media largely lost its interest in the city, forgetting about the civilians who are now working hard to rebuild a peaceful life.

Hushed strikes on Mosul

The chaotic battle for Mosul, where IS terrorists ruthlessly used civilians as human shields amid relentless US-led coalition bombing, was no less of a tragic story of suffering, but the absence of evacuations for civilians made the city warfare particularly extreme. When it came to coverage, however, the MSM mostly picked military advances while the toll of the fighting was covered in a hushed and infrequent manner.

While footage and photos of the city, taken by a few real reporters on the ground, showed the vast destruction and carnage, no widespread outrage was to be seen in the aftermath of mass civilian casualties reported. Warnings from international human rights groups, including the UN bodies, which highlighted the dire refugee situation and apparent disregard for “collateral damage” by the coalition, were also left largely unaired.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/430616-aleppo-mosul-liberation-aftermath/

The Syrian war was the first fully observed conflict on social-media and the ability to connect directly with Syrians real time as they were experiencing the crisis was unprecedented. This created a unique opportunity to get unfiltered information directly from all sides of the conflict to gain insights and understanding. The results have helped shake off the control by conventional news media over foreign events reporting and analysis. While this has created some chaos, valuable lessons have been (or should have been) learned.

I began researching Syria and the war there in late 2012, and have made seven extended journeys traveling around during the war from 2016 through 2019, meeting with hundreds of Syrians from different backgrounds, walks of life, and opinions as a 100 percent non-affiliated, unpaid, and self/crowd-funded, independent citizen-journalist.

It became clear that what’s been happening in Syria was not a spontaneous, organic, popular uprising against a tyrant, but a proxy regime-change attempt war in the works since the mid 2000’s against the quite popular Assad. This effort was spearheaded by the US, UK, France, and Israel, using Sunni violent fundamentalists and extremists (unpopular with the majority of Syria’s Sunni population as well as minority groups) armed and funded by the West and regional allies of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar to start the violence and do the dirty work. The basic character of the rebel groups was apparent from the beginning: Syrian and non-Syrian fighters most Westerners would call terrorists and be screaming for their government to crush if the same heavily armed groups had taken over their cities, towns, and suburbs by massacring, beheading, torturing, kidnapping, and raping.

Syrians often remarked to me that before the war their country was “almost a paradise.” The middle class was the largest economic sector and growing. Religious harmony was the norm and Christians there were doing well. International investment was increasing as were the tourists. Women were equal or outnumbering men in the universities and present in leadership roles in nearly all aspects of society. Syria had made the “Top 5” list of the world’s most personally safe countries. President Assad had brought the Internet into the country and kept it open throughout the war and the people there knew all that was being said in the West about the crisis.

This doesn’t mean Syria was perfect and Assad beloved by all Syrians. There were and are many problems there which are directly attributed to the government with corruption always being number one on the list of grievances. These internal issues have been exacerbated by the war.

Now, after 11 years of war, 90 percent of Syrians are poor, many are starving; the economy is shattered. Between the fighting, US/Western sanctions, loss of production capability (though an impressive number of factories have been rebuilt), shortages of electricity and fuel, the black market and smuggling, dearth of employment opportunities, Covid-19, and the economic meltdown in Lebanon, the situation seems destined to remain desperate for the foreseeable future. The pressure by the US and most allies continues including increased sanctions, and three on-going illegal occupations: US has seized control over 1/3 of the country (the part with the richest oil fields); Turkey holds much of the north; and Israel is still occupying the Golan while making routine air strikes in Syria with no condemnation. There are numerous terrorist groups including ISIS cells and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliate) to get rid of in the northeast and Idlib.

As for Russia’s role in Syria, I’ve watched it closely – including observing some Russian military operations personally in Deir Ezzor, Homs, and Palmyra. Russia and Iran are in Syria legally, asked to join in the fight against ISIS and al Nusra by the Syrian government.

From 2011 through 2015 the situation was dire. In 2012 the US resolution at the UN called for President Assad to step down and both Russia and China vetoed it. The US and UK responded with “fury” according to The Guardian, while Syrians were out in the streets cheering. When Russian troops came in September of 2015, the priority was to put a stop to ISIS operations in the northeast. Massive ISIS oil convoys were taking the stolen oil up to Turkey, bringing the terrorist army equally massive amounts of money to use for their rampages while, according to a leaked, verified audio tape of John Kerry speaking with the Syrian opposition, the US was “watching ISIS grow” hoping the pressure would get Assad to negotiate. Instead, an appeal was made to Putin and answered. Within a few months, the ISIS oil convoys had been reduced significantly, cutting that cash flow.

By the end of 2016 total chaos had been replaced with more established battle lines and though violence was still occurring everywhere, there was some order. Palmyra was liberated from ISIS in the spring of 2016, after which the Russians and Syrians put on an orchestra concert to rededicate the spectacular archaeological site to culture; Western governments and media were not enthusiastic. It fell again to ISIS and many of the most important buildings were destroyed by the terrorists. The battles for Palmyra would have been the perfect opportunity to actually use chemical weapons – to protect that prized site and with ISIS forces isolated in the desert, however the fighting raged with conventional weapons and casualties were very high. In December 2016, Aleppo was freed from the terrorist groups that had been holding the eastern half of the city for years by the Syrian Army and its allies – with the ones fighting the terrorists being treated as though they were worse than ISIS in western media. The terrorist groups backed by the US and allies included the likes of Nour al din al Zenki that grabbed the young boy, Abdullah Issa, out of hospital with the IV still in his arm and beheaded him in the back of a truck on video while laughing. Al Zenki had received advanced weapons and other support by the US.

By October of 2017 when I was in Palmyra, Deir Ezzor and al Mayadeen, most of that area was freshly liberated from ISIS by the combined Syrian, Russian, Iranian, Iraqi, and Hezbollah forces. ISIS was still all around but its backbone of cities down the Euphrates had been severed. In Homs, I observed the transportation of armed groups twice from the Al-Waer suburb, overseen by the Russians. In addition, Russian de-mining efforts have insured relative safety for civilians returning to their homes after areas have been liberated.

To summarize, in my experience the Russians have indeed been effective in the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda while displaying professionalism, precision, and minimizing civilian casualties. The US has been using ISIS as a pretext for its own completely illegal occupation of the entire northeast third of Syrian lands, and has often been helping or working directly on behalf of the al Qaeda affiliate and similar terrorist groups.

However, the US/Western media is still saying the same things they’ve said since 2012, if anything entrenching deeper in the assertions of the US and other western governments. All major articles and stories are still about “the tyrant Assad killing his own people”; and the great majority of the Syrian people who supported their leader and army were made invisible. That support ranged from total devotion to begrudging acceptance because the alternative, Syria falling to the terrorists promoted by the West, was unthinkable. Anyone offering evidence and opinion different from that of the accepted narratives isn’t just ignored – they’re treated as enemies and attacked by the media.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is still in the early stages and although I’ve been tracking the situation since 2014, I certainly don’t to know all of what’s happening or will happen. To sort fact from fiction from all sides will be a painstakingly long process yet there is great urgency to avoid as much devastation as possible. War is painful, the most painful thing. It truly does hollow out souls as it lays waste to lands and lives and I hate it all, but I’ve seen the wall go up already which prohibits looking at the other side, hearing what their grievances and concerns are. That wall protects the easy to memorize, constantly repeated, approved talking points: “pre-meditated”, “unprovoked”, “unjustified” and that wall is already considerably taller, deeper, and wider than it’s been about Syria. For me, this is when the red light starts flashing, the alarm begins sounding, and I’m on full alert for more gross oversimplifications, exaggerations, unproven allegations, and outright falsehoods.

READ MORE:

https://www.unz.com/article/red-alert-what-seeing-the-war-in-syria-taught-me-about-us-western-government-and-media-propaganda/

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