The area I was standing in was made safe only a few days previously by the SAA victory in Douma and East Ghouta as a whole. Under the surrender terms Jaysh al Islam agreed to release all their kidnapped civilians, a number believed to be around 5000. All the families of these disappeared turned up hoping to be reunited with them, but only 200 people emerged from the tunnels. The others had all been killed.
Anti-Russia hysteria reached parodical proportions in the ‘mainstream’ media in the wake of the Sergei Skripol ‘novichok’ incident in recent days but what this burlesque spectacle actually reveals is the toxic interdependence between the corporate state and the corporate media – the operative word there being ‘corporate’ – exposing how they always work together to sweep us all along on a tide of fast-rising nationalistic fervour into the next geopolitically convenient conflict.
Today, Ghouta and tomorrow Daraa … This is not about Syria nor about the war on its soil : it is all about an open war between the axis led by United States of America, Europe and their allies in the Middle East against the axis led by Russia and its allies. It’s a war about control, influence and dominance in […]
I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve gas as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather […]
The Kurdish region of Afrin in northern Syria has become a new geopolitical pivot point in the conflict. With so many actors’ interests overlapping, whose positions will be weakened and whose solidified if hostilities escalate? With so many different agendas now converging along the borderlands, many fear that Turkey’s latest military masterplan and march towards Afrin threatens to open up […]
Afghanistan has never recovered. After the last Soviet combat troops left the country in 1989, it bled terribly for years, consumed by a brutal civil war. Its progressive government had to face the monstrous terror of the Western and Saudi backed Mujahedeen, with individuals like Osama bin Laden in command of the jihadi genocide.
By dunning NATO nations to chip more money into the military alliance, President Trump may inadvertently cause some Europeans to rethink the over-the-top anti-Russian propaganda, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Trump’s polite deference to Obama this week, and vice versa, shows in an unintended way what Obama meant when he said “we are all on one team”. That “team” is the American oligarchy. It is not the American nation. Disenfranchised working-class Americans may simply have gotten Trump into the “team” – against their genuine aspirations for radical democratic change.
Prospects of increased US-led military provocations against Russia are sharpening tensions within Europe. In an article titled “Whether Clinton or Trump wins, for Germany things will get uncomfortable,” German news magazine Der Spiegel warned of the long-term implications of an aggressive US-led policy against Russia, which it assumed would continue regardless which of the two candidates secured the White House.
This deployment is highly uncharacteristic of what the Russians have been training for. They have basically found a way to reinforce the Russian contingent in Syria, especially against Hillary’s “no fly zone” nightmare.
Their mission is to stop the planned American war on Syria and to prevent the US Navy from launching airstrikes or Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian Arab Army or the Russian forces in Syria. This is a repetition of the situation in August 2013, this time with an even larger Russian naval presence.
U.S. aircraft, which have been operating in Syrian skies without Syrian government approval, could be vulnerable to attack with the Russian government preemptively warning that such an incident won’t be Moscow’s fault.
