President Putin “regards the strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, noting that the president believes the strikes were carried out “in violation of international law, and also under an invented pretext.”

LIVE UPDATES: US missile strike against Syria

Peskov also insisted that “the Syrian army doesn’t have chemical weapons,” saying this had been “observed and confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a special UN unit.”

Putin sees the US missile strike on Syria as an attempt to distract attention from civilian casualties in Iraq, Peskov added.

“This step deals significant damage to US-Russian ties, which are already in a deplorable state,” Peskov said.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/383815-putin-us-syria-aggression/

Syrian General Staff called the recent US strike on Ash Sha'irat military airfield near Homs in Syria a 'blatant agression' act aimed against Syrian Army.

The Syrian Defense Ministry also added that this strike puts the US as an ally of such terrorist groups as Daesh and Jabhat Fatah al Sham (formerly known as the al-Nusra Front).

"This US aggression shows that the United States continues implementing a wrong strategy, which disrupts the Syrian Armed Forces' efforts to fight terrorism and renders the United States an ally of the Islamic State (Daesh) terrorist group and the Nusra Front [both outlawed in numerous countries], which have been attacking army checkpoints and military bases since the very beginning of the war in Syria," the statement said.

"[It was] aggression against one of our military airbases in the central district. The missile strikes resulted in killing six people, several others were injured, considerable material damage was caused," the statement read.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201704071052390493-us-syria-strike-agre...

The US aggression was aimed at the Shayrat airbase, which backs the Syrian army’s military operations against terrorists, and IS in particular. The base is in 45 kilometers from eastern Homs,” he said.

The attack on this base is “a direct act of aggression against the Syrian Army with the aim of weakening its capacity to fight IS,” the governor added.

Earlier, unnamed sources reported that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) had launched a massive offensive in the eastern part of the Homs Governorate and, without essential air support, the situation could worsen any moment, a local military source told Al-Masdar.

On Friday, US warships in the eastern Mediterranean fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield that the Pentagon claimed was used to carry out a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town in the Idlib province a few days earlier.

At least five people were killed and seven wounded in the missile strike, and reports suggest that the Syrian airbase has been completely destroyed, with the fire there ongoing.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/383826-isis-used-us-airstrike-syria/

Late last night, The Pentagon stated that their attack on the Syrian Government air-base near Homs was not targeting the regime’s supposed chemical weapon stocks. Despite “all the signs” pointing to Assad’s guilt, and it being “very likely” that this base is where the gas attack originated…no efforts were made to destroy any chemical weapons. At all.

The Pentagon’s official statement says:

The strike was a proportional response to Assad’s heinous act. Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4.

And that the attack…

…was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again.”

But the targets were limited to:

…aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars.

So they “know” where the chemical weapons are. And they “know” Assad used them on civilians and (for all they know) may well do so again. 

So why not target and destroy these weapons? Wouldn’t that be the easiest option?

Well, it is NOT because they know Assad doesn’t really have any. They want to be very clear on that point. Rather, it’s because they want to prevent possible casualties by putting chemicals into the atmosphere, as The Guardian reports:

But that tenuous self-defence justification was weakened by the Pentagon’s insistence that the goal of the strike was not to destroy chemical weapons. In fact, it took great pains to avoid bombing any sites where chemical weapons may have been stored, for fear of causing civilian casualties downwind. 

But, hold on, isn’t this statement in total and complete contradiction to all the media coverage of the Idlib attack so far? Why yes, yes it is!

When the Russian government suggested the chemical casualties were caused by the bombs hitting a rebel weapons stockpile, these claims were rubbished as “fanciful” by the current go-to expert on chemical weapons, Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon. He told the Guardian, the BBC and others:

“No I think [the Russian explanation] is pretty fanciful, no doubt the Russians trying to protect their allies,” he said.

“Axiomatically, if you blow up sarin, you destroy it.”

“It’s very clear it’s a sarin attack,” he added. “The view that it’s an al-Qaida or rebel stockpile of sarin that’s been blown up in an explosion, I think is completely unsustainable and completely untrue.”

read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2017/04/07/american-military-take-precautions-t...

Gus Talks to himself...

Q: So are you saying that Assad is a nice guy?

A: No. I am saying that the situation in Syria is complicated, including the fact that the Americans have been supporting rebels. The US called them “moderates” and the Western press goes along with this false narrative, as many of these “moderates” are affiliated to Al Nusra (now with a new name) and Al Qaeda terrorist networks. Many of the so-called “moderates” defect to -- or align themselves with -- ISIS (Daesh) as well.

Q: but isn’t Assad gassing “his own people”?

A: Assad has a problem with a Wahhabi revolution in Syria which started in 2009 for various reasons we will explore later, including the “Arab Spring” of 2010. The concrete proofs of him gassing people are very flimsy. It is also highly more likely that the “rebels” have access to ordinary and complex chemicals to make chemical gas warfare. It is far more in the interest of the rebels to gas people and “blame” Assad, than for Assad to “gas his own people”, BECAUSE the western press has been prime to accept that ONLY Assad “gasses his own people”. 

In the latest instalment, images of kids in hospital suffering of gas inhalation is ludicrously insufficient to apportion blame on the origin of the gas. But journalists in the West follow the CIA and the Pentagon line that Assad “did it”. We should ALL know that the CIA deceives and this is its prime modus operandi. As well we need to understand that “a Pentagon without wars is like a beautiful woman without teeth”, as would have said old Opa Leonisky.

Retired generals and Pentagon dudes contradict themselves easily -- without a single argument from the Western Press (MMMM). For example one will say in one sentence that hitting the gas storage of the Syrian airfield would not destroy the gas, while also saying that the explanation of the Syrian government destroying a rebel gas manufacturing centre was not plausible because this would destroy the gas. Go figure. I must add here that there were NO gas storage facility at the base bombed by Trump and that Assad denies using bombs with gas in that latest attack which hit a rebel stronghold making gas bombs to send to Iraq and use in Syria.

Here we must look at the war waged on Iraq in 2003. “Mission Accomplished” managed to eventually displace 4 million people (mostly Sunnis, many of whom are now at the core of Daesh) and killed at least 500,000 people, plus more than 5,000 US troops. The premise for the invasion was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Without going into the many details which can be studied here on this site, we can say with confidence that the “intelligence failure” to find no WMDs, was actually “intelligence deceit”.

A slightly different inference is made in regard to Assad. Here, as an aside, we must accept that Julian Assange is doing a service to the world, despite what we think of him releasing unredacted documents. The latest release which has been shoved under the carpet by the Western press is about how the CIA and the NSA have infected the cyber network with Malwares of various kind, and did some “reverse” engineering of the cyber-spying, constructing their own spying devices as if it came from China and Russia. Germany and France beware.

A similar blaming technique was used when the Anthrax letters came in 2002 to prove Saddam was a nasty fellow, when the DNA origination was proven within 24 hours to be a domestic attack that had nothing to do with Saddam. Bush still used this anthrax affair a year later to blame Saddam for whatever and the Western press never dug into what really happened. The press eventually “bought” the lone loony scientist in a pharmaceutical lab that the FBI investigation “uncovered” and left it at that. It is likely that this had been a CIA false flag event that went arse up, then covered up... The CIA LIES! We all should study the “Gulf of Tonkin” false flag in Vietnam, the Iran-Contra Affair, the Pinochet dictatorship, the war on Saddam et all -- many manipulations and LIES which are fed to us as milk and honey. 

Q: Sure, but what about Assad?

A: At this stage we also need to consider the alliance of the USA and the Saudis, the other gulf states such as the UAE and the US relationship with Israel. We also need to look at the cold war and the agreement between Gorbachev and Reagan which stipulated that the West would not interfere in the affairs of the former Soviet Union countries -- an agreement which has been disregarded by the USA. Ever since the first day of this treaty, the US has spend huge amount of cash and disruptive influences, including fomenting “riots” in these countries. Ukraine is a case in point, Russia reclaiming its 1954 bequest to Ukraine, Crimea, in 2014. Meanwhile, the Russians have sided with Iran and Syria. These two Arabic countries had joined the dots in an “axis of evil” ( as G W Bush claimed in 2002) with Iraq -- mostly because they didn’t play the game of the Petrodollar. Saddam was selling the Iraqi oil in roubles. This spelled troubles and this was the real reason, as Greenspan, the former federal head banker stated, for the war. The war in Iraq was about oil, not about weapons of mass destruction. 

In regard to Syria, it’s a country made up of various ethnic groups, the majority of which is Sunni. The Sunnis have been trying to remove Assad and replace his “secular” government of Syria with a quasi-religious strict religious Sharia government, aligned with the Saudis. At stake is the life of many minority groups, including Christians and Alawites who fear the Sharia of the Sunnis taking over the government like it has in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is under a king’s rule rather than a “democratic” (autocratic) religious decrees, as would come to Syria. This would be a step backwards in an “enlightened” modern democracy. 

From 2000 till 2009, Assad ruled with a firm fist and quashed rebellious activities from the Sunnis in Syria. He had married a Western woman, and has been modernising Syria with a more Western outlook. He imprisoned rebels, who for all intent and purposes were home-grown terrorists. That his troops used torture is not unique to this fellow. The US has been using torture from way before the Vietnam war, despite trying to claim rightfulness and still doing it in Guantanamo and other rendition places overseas. The French also have used torture and various means of coercion. The Catholic Church used torture during the Inquisition. Here I am not making excuses for Assad, though he had little choice but to protect the country from a possible shift to an ultra-religious sharia laws under the Sunni Wahhabi influence of Saudi Arabia. Under Assad, most people in Syria were actually happy and peaceful till 2011.

In 2009, Assad was told to provide a corridor in Syria for a US sponsored Saudi gas pipeline and possibly another one from the Gulf States. At the time, this was designed by the US to destroy the monopoly that Russia had in delivering gas to Europe, via Ukraine -- and make some serious cash. Assad refused because this would compromise his alliance with Russia.

By 2011, the Arab Spring fever had taken over the Middle East and this was used as a pretext by the US to foment more rebellion in Syria in order to “get rid of Assad”. The story goes that Assad troops fired on “peaceful” demonstrations, but the reality is that troops and police -- used to control the crowds like in every country in the world do -- were fired upon by snipers (the use of agents provocateurs is not new) to disrupt the “peace”. The troops responded in kind, but were labelled as “shooting the peaceful crowd”, which they possibly did to protect themselves. Soon after, the US started to train and finance the Syrian rebels. The US do admit to this, under the pretence that these were “moderate” rebels. As far as Assad was concerned a moderate rebel with a gun aimed at the country’s head had to be declared a “terrorist”. This was the start of the “civil” war in Syria, in order to get rid of Assad and get the Saudi gas pipeline through. Assad was painted by the CIA and the likes to the Western press as a tyrant, a despot who was killing “his own people” (which the US was funding to revolt against him). “Assad has to go” was the mantra in all the Western press. No-one paid attention that should Assad go, the country would become a Sharia paradise, with ruthless intentions towards the other minority groups, presently protected by Assad. Even recently, the Murdoch press alluded to this.

Meanwhile, the most extremist Sunnis in Syria saw an opportunity to ally with the most extremist Sunnis in Iraq, which had been displaced and belittled by the Shia government that had replaced Saddam in Iraq. This alliance soon became IS, ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, which became furiously baiting the West with atrocities and terrorism, within Iraq, Syria and throughout the world. This new alliance declared a Caliphate with the secret blessing of Saudi Arabia that saw its brand of religious extremism cleverly infecting the region nicely.

The West soon decided that Daesh was a “terrorist organisation”. To OFFICIALLY make such unilateral declaration tends to demand a lot of paperwork and various agreements within Congress, including international agreements. This is why some of the US sponsored rebels such as Al Nusra, have time to change their name to something else once they are declared a “terrorist organisation” which they were in first place but designated as “moderate” until they showed their true colours.

Q: Why would the US sponsor “terrorists” in Syria?

A: Gas pipelines from the Saudis to destroy the Russian profitable European gas market monopoly. Nothing else. No “morality”. When was the last time you saw “morality” and CIA aligned in the same sentence? “Empire? Yes. Morality? No.

Q: Will we win the war against Daesh?

A: Not until the West has made sure that Assad is gone, but who knows. For example, there was a little incident where Australian planes and others under instruction from the US, bombed a “rebel” outpost which actually was Syrian troops dug in near Deir Az Zor. This “unfortunate” little episode opened the road for Daesh to “re conquer” Palmira soon after -- and make more damage to the Roman ruins of this ancient city. The Australian helping Daesh? Was this Western bombing of Syrian troops ( nearly 100 killed) fighting Daesh deliberate or not? Officially not... but... One could speculate but this was not a great moment for the war against Daesh.

It has to be said that the Americans hate socialism far more that terrorism, for terrorism is incidental while socialism is structural. This is why there has been so much opposition to “Obamacare” in the USA. Assad’s form of government tends to be more socialistic with free education and free health care. Hence his major problem with the US capitalist position. 

Q: Is Trump bombing of a Syrian base going to achieve the aim of the West?

A: Most unlikely. The dynamics here are that of gas supplies. Gas supplies are far more important in comparison to the Syrian problem. Gas supplies in the world has become one of the hottest topic, including Australia. Our own government prefer to suffer power outage rather than interfere with the lucrative export market of gas. Meanwhile the USA has started to increase its supply of gas to Europe with ships, as the Russians are bypassing troublesome Ukraine to supply Europe with gas on two more fronts. One pipeline through Turkey and one pipeline through the North Sea. At the same time, the Saudis are still planning gas pipelines through Jordan and Lebanon then through the Mediterranean into Greece and beyond. This one is more of a pipe-dream as the Med is quite a deep sea. The technology is difficult.

Q: What is Turkey position in the war against Daesh?

A: Good question. Turkey has been playing a dirty double game, because it has to deal with the Kurdish problem which they declare “terrorists” but which the US finances in need to defeat Daesh. Meanwhile both Iraq and Syria refuse to allow independence of the Kurdish people. Being too Muslim militant for joining the European Union, Turkey had to make a few deals in regard to Russia and in regard to refugees. Both agreements are worth a lot of cash. Turkey gets money from Europe and the UN to hold back about 2 million refugees (from Syria and Iraq) in camps on its territory and a lot of cash from allowing a pipeline from Russia into Greece. As well Turkey has benefited from dealing on the black-market with oil from Daesh.

Q: could the present Russian inspired peace treaty work in Syria?

A: Yes, but this treaty is not wanted by the US. The US is excluded from the negotiations and the bombing of a Syrian base is trying to disrupt a satisfactory resolution which would prevent the Saudi gas pipeline. Wars are about economic advantages, not about ideologies, despite ideologies being used as pretexts.

Q:  was the bombing of a Syrian base by Trump legal?

A: No. International laws prohibits such acts unless one is directly threatened. The US was not threatened in any way, shape or form by the Syrian army acting in Syria. Trump’s action IS A WAR CRIME.  

The Western media has gone totally pissweak at the knees. It is a if those MMMM who thought Trump was a loony and impeachable for "having slept with Putin" are confused by the Donald appearing to have balls of steel in his murderpants (sorry Freudian slip I mean to say "under"pants). The MMMM actually don't see that his brain is shrinking from the size of rabid rat (sorry rats) to that of a gnat... but they don't see this as a problem since the MMMM boffins' own brains are actually smaller than a pinhead.

Thinking has become a rare activity on this humanoid planet. Even some intelligent women hail the Donald for being a dog's nuts and want to have his "babies". It's the Iraq War fake mantra again as presented by Powell to the United Nations. Rumble rumble, the news is rumble... tumble...

Donald Trump has a “dangerous mental illness” and is not fit to lead the US, a group of psychiatrists has warned during a conference at Yale University.

Mental health experts claimed the President was “paranoid and delusional”, and said it was their “ethical responsibility” to warn the American public about the “dangers” Mr Trump’s psychological state poses to the country.

Speaking at the conference at Yale’s School of Medicine on Thursday, one of the mental health professionals, Dr John Gartner, a practising psychotherapist who advised psychiatric residents at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, said: “We have an ethical responsibility to warn the public about Donald Trump's dangerous mental illness.

read more:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-dangerous-...

See toon at top.

US-led coalition's attack on Syrian convoy on Thursday was an act of 'government terrorism', Bashar Jaafari, head of the Damascus delegation to the intra-Syria talks in Geneva, said Friday.

On May 18, the US-led coalition struck the pro-Assad fighters near the town of At Tanf in the area of an established deconfliction zone with Russia.

Jaafari told reporters in Geneva that he had raised the issue of the "act of aggression" on the US' part in talks with UN mediator Staffan de Mistura.

"We discussed the massacre that the US aggressor committed yesterday in our country. This subject was widely discussed," Jaafari said. "The important thing is that our political ambition is higher because we want to focus on fighting terrorism represented by armed groups and the state and government terrorism happening against our country. This includes the American aggression, French aggression and British aggression."

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201705191053773132-jaafari-us-strike-syria-government-terrorism/

The dogs of war are barking; they are straining at the leash in a period of unreason in which wisdom has been supplanted by madness.

Thus the time for equivocation is over and the time for unvarnished truth has come. And the unvarnished truth where the current incumbent in the Oval Office, Donald J Trump, is concerned is that the world is dealing with an unhinged maniac more suited to sitting at the head of a New York mafia crime family than leading a nuclear-armed state.

His recent tweet, threatening Russia with a missile attack over the crisis in Syria, is inarguably the most disturbing and frightening public communication issued by an American president at any time in that country's history. Indeed it is so deranged it calls to mind Hitler's infamous speech in Berlin in 1940, during which the fascist dictator threatened Britain with invasion: "And when people in England today nosily inquire: ‘Well, why isn't he coming?' Calm yourselves: he is coming!"

It's at times like these that learning the lessons of history is non-negotiable, else be condemned to repeat history's mistakes. In this respect ancient Chinese philosopher, Sun-Tzu, in his timeless classic ‘The Art of War', provides a chilling injunction: "War is a grave affair of state; it is a place of life or death; a road to survival or extinction; a matter to be pondered carefully."

In the midst of the current crisis many have drawn comparison with the Cuban Missile Crisisin 1962, the last time relations between East and West were perched on the precipice of direct military conflict.

There is one key difference between then and now, however, the significance of which cannot be overstated. It revolves around the occupant of the Oval Office, an invaluable metric of US ascent or decline in a given epoch, as the case may be.

Thus a man of the substance, stature and nous of Abraham Lincoln, who smashed the Confederacy and ended slavery, stands tall when placed alongside his successor, Andrew Johnson, who ended federal protection of newly freed black slaves in the South to usher in racial oppression through the back door. Thus the towering figure of Franklin D Roosevelt, author of the New Deal and champion of the Grand Alliance between the US, UK, and Soviet Union against fascism in WWII, looms large over the sniveling opportunism of Harry S Truman, who ordered the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and who kick-started the Cold War.

Bringing matters up to date, who could possibly deny that John F Kennedy (JFK), occupant of the Oval Office during the Cuban missile crisis, was of an entirely different calibre than the current incumbent, Donald J Trump? And who could possibly argue that that the wisdom, intelligence and phlegmatism applicable to JFK are words of a foreign language where the 45th president is concerned?

On JFK's supreme role in averting catastrophe between the US and then Soviet Union in 1962, US journalist David Talbot writes: "virtually the entire national security circle around the president urged him to take aggressive actions that would have triggered a nuclear conflagration. JFK's lonely stand — which was supported only by his brother and McNamara within his inner council — was a virtuoso act of leadership."

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201804111063452771-trump-tweet-russia...

Read from top...

Syria’s Assad government allegedly used chemical weapons, and the usual suspects—the ever-egregious Lindsey Graham and John McCain, of course, along with many others—are urging President Donald Trump to wage war on Damascus. Yet even if Syria is responsible for such an attack, in practice there is little that Washington can and should do.

Chemical weapons have not been Bashar al-Assad’s biggest killer: explosives and bullets are responsible for most of the deaths in Syria. Absent initiating full-scale war, Washington is likely to do little other than inconveniencing Assad while escalating against Russia, risking American lives, and wasting more of the nation’s wealth—all while making the U.S. less secure.

President Trump recently spoke an essential truth on foreign policy when he stated that American troops should come home from Syria. The Islamic State has been defeated and Washington has no business trying to overthrow Assad, dismember Syria, get between the Turks and Kurds, confront Russia and Iran, and whatever other inane quests the neocon think tanks have come up with.

However, the Blob—as the foreign policy establishment and its extensive network of analysts, pundits, and officials is known—also dominates the president’s staff. Indeed, it is not clear he has anyone working for him, at least at the State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Council, who is not a card-carrying member of the Blob. That means his foreign policy aides spend most of their time trying to talk him out of his most sensible ideas.

So now it’s decision time. Will Trump resist pressure to launch large-scale attacks to punish Syria for its apparent use of chemical weapons? If so, it could be the moment when “Let Trump be Trump” finally occurs.

For instance, during the campaign, candidate Trump shocked the Blob by saying that he would be happy to talk to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. It seemed like a radical idea at the time, given the potential for the planned summit to collapse ingloriously. Nevertheless, such an opening also offered the best chance of a diplomatic breakthrough with Pyongyang. The president deserves kudos for backing what no one else imagined was possible.

Whether the now-agreed-to summit will survive the rise of uber-hawks Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who back war and regime change whenever possible, remains to be seen. But at the moment, at least, the meeting remains planned if not guaranteed.

Almost everywhere else, however, the president has surrendered to the Blob.

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-surrenders-to-the-...