Kevork Almassian unpacks CIA talking points on Syria
In one of the best interviews I have seen on Syria for a very long time, Franc Analysis and Kevork Almassian discuss the latest tsunami of repeated CIA and MI6 talking points on Syria – coming from the so called anti-imperialist camp. A must watch.
“Who is the Syrian Army? It’s my friends, my schoolmates, they’re my neighbours, they’re my cousins and family members. This is the Syrian Army.” Kevork Almassian
Syrian Civilians Attacked by Terrorists using American Weapons
Vanessa Beeley in Idlib
UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres celebrated the extension of a “humanitarian” border crossing at Bab Al Hawa, on July 10th, as a “lifeline for millions of people” – many Syrians would rather describe it as a “lifeline” for Al Qaeda.
On the 15th July I visited Jurin, a village to the north of the Hama governorate and only 5km from the Syrian allied military frontlines with the Al Qaeda-dominated armed groups controlling Idlib, north-west Syria.
We arrived at around 9 am to the boom of mortar and rocket fire from the Jabal az Zawiya mountain that is under control of Turkish-backed armed groups. Jurin is in the Al Ghab plains at the foot of two mountain ranges and is an easy target for the elevated terrorist positions, occupying Jabal az Zawiya.
On June 20th, a three-year-old child, Massa Akram Saleh, was murdered by the armed groups who targeted her family home, injuring her father and brother, five-year-old Akram Saleh, whose body was lacerated by shrapnel wounds. Massa was rushed to Al Sqeilbiyyeh hospital, a journey of one hour, but later died. Her brother and father are still receiving treatment. Massa’s grandfather told me:
If this had been a child of the militants, the UN would have made a big case of it. Hundreds of children have died in our area but it is as if nobody died at all”
The grandfather describes a daily deluge of attacks from the Turkey-assisted armed groups, targeting the triangle of Jurin, Al Safafeh and Zkereh. He begs the Syrian forces to push the militants at least as far as the M4 highway and away from the region, to bring an end to the ceaseless aggression.
This is an aggression that apparently is not worth mentioning in UN reports on the cross border “humanitarian” activity. He thanks the Syrian Arab Army for doing everything they can to keep the extremist groups at bay.
While the grandfather is talking to me, a mother carrying a baby, hugging her children, is cowering and weeping in the background as the shells continue to fall. Next to her is Massa’s grandmother who cannot move without her walking frame.
One shell had hit the outer wall of the house just before we arrived, another had blown a two meter crater in the garden behind the extended family home. A third exploded five meters from where I was standing while I interviewed a second family member, Ghaith Ghazi Saleh. He told me:
We are being targeted on a daily basis with shells from Az Zawiya mountain. During the last two or three years we have seen Turkish convoys coming into the area not more than 2km from our farmlands, they prevent us from cultivating our farmlands [..] the artillery that bombards us is Turkish. The coordinates are provided by the terrorists”
On left the rocket that targeted the Saleh family home, on right the debris from this attack. Photo: Vanessa Beeley
Saleh informed me that the armed groups target schools, residential areas and civilian infrastructure. They even targeted a funeral procession and a condolences gathering two years ago, according to Saleh. He describes the Turkish and armed group destruction of the land. Saleh talks of the intensification of militant aggression to target Russian/Syrian humanitarian corridors that are an effort to allow Syrian civilians to safely escape the armed occupation of north-west Syria.
This is something that I had previously witnessed in Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta as civilians attempted to flee to the safety of Syrian Arab Army humanitarian collection points, they were cruelly shelled or sniped by the occupying extremist groups, furious that their human shields were evading them.
US-MANUFACTURED WEAPONS IN THE HANDS OF AL QAEDA AFFILIATES
It is no secret that the CIA Timber Sycamore operation supplied US-manufactured weapons to “moderate” extremist groups that mysteriously ended up in the hands of terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Weapons that included the TOW anti-tank missiles that are liberally used by the Idlib armed groups against civilian targets which is an undeniable war crime according to investigative journalist, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, who has specialised in uncovering the illegal arms trade in Syria.
In Gaytandzhieva’s latest investigation, she reveals that the Pentagon is “buying $ 2.8 billion worth of weapons for conflict zones around the world. Most of the weapons are destined for Syria.” Videos and images released by the armed groups clearly show that Hayat Tahrir As Sham (HTS) an Al Qaeda offshoot have been supplied with US TOW missiles in Idlib.
Unexploded TOW missile that was used against civilian targets in Jurin. Photo: Vanessa Beeley
During my visit to Jurin, I was shown a number of weapons that had been used against civilian infrastructure and residential areas. They included a 155mm Turkish Army artillery shell and an unexploded US-origin TOW missile. According to residents, Turkey is supplying the armed groups with incendiary missiles which are being used to torch farmland and agricultural crops, again a familiar tactic to starve civilians and force them to leave their land. I was shown fields that were blackened and burned as evidence of this barbaric practice.
Burned and charred fields in Jurin. Photo: Vanessa Beeley
It must raise the question – how do these weapons enter Idlib? Press TV journalist, Serena Shim, revealed in 2013 that World Food Programme (WFP) “humanitarian” aid trucks were being used to smuggle ISIS terrorists and weapons into Syria via the Turkish border crossings.
Shortly after Shim reported on this nefarious activity, she died in a suspicious car accident after being threatened by Turkish authorities. 2020 Nobel Peace Laureate WFP still has a presence and involvement in Bab Al Hawa.
In 2021 the official border crossings have been reduced down to one, Bab Al Hawa. A Russian UN representative statement informs us that:
The UN still has no presence in Idlib de-escalation zone which is controlled by international terrorists and fighters. It’s not a secret that the terrorist groups control certain areas of the de-escalation zone and use the UN humanitarian aid as a tool to exert pressure on [the] civil population and openly make profit from such deliveries.”
In May, Sedat Peker, a gangster and former aide of Turkish President Recep Erdogan exposed the trafficking of weapons and vehicles from Turkey to Al Qaeda by a contractor called SADAT that was run by Erdogan’s former military advisor.
WHO CONTROLS BAB AL HAWA?
According to an Al Monitor article in May 2020, HTS seize at least 10% of the ‘humanitarian” aid entering Bab Al Hawa. HTS benefit from illicit trade of UN-supplied equipment and aid and have a monopoly over the processing of oil stolen by the US Coalition and proxies in occupied North-East Syria via their lucrative WATAD operation.
The HTS warlords make an estimated $130 million per month from this criminal merchanting of Syrian resources and UN “aid” while imposing heavy taxes and “customs fees” on civilians to supplement their dwindling foreign assistance.
Syrian analyst, Ibrahim Mohammad, highlighted a May 2020 report in Amjad Media, a known Nusra Front (Al Qaeda) media outlet that revealed the establishment of a military “unified operations room” in Bab Al Hawa which included Turkish military officers and HTS fighters. In other words, an Al Qaeda central command supported by NATO member state, Turkey.
Other recent articles highlighting the true purpose of the US Coalition determination to maintain Bab Al Hawa can be found here and here.
TURKEY IS EMBEDDED IN IDLIB TO SUPPORT AL QAEDA AND TARGET SYRIAN CIVILIANS
Nine months ago a Turkish convoy entered Quqfin to the east of Jurin and established a military observation base. According to the Syrian military personnel I spoke to in Jurin, this Turkish base is providing surveillance and coordinates for HTS enabling them to target not military installations but civilian infrastructure, schools, farmland and homes. Turkey is enabling war crimes and committing them, according to Syrian residents in Jurin.
Turkish base in Quqfin.
Turkish convoy entering Quqfin in October 2020.
ZEYZOUN POWER PLANT, TURKISH-BACKED INDUSTRIAL THEFT OF SYRIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
In May 2020 the former Syrian Ambassador to the UN, Dr Bashar Al Jaafari, detailed the Turkish sponsored theft of the largest power station in north-west Syria, Zeyzoun power plant. The plant supplied electricity to the Al Ghab region where Jurin is located, Hama, Latakia, Tartous (on the coast) and to Idlib.
The plant was destroyed by the armed groups under Turkish control prior to plundering the remains and transporting them to Turkey via the Bab Al Hawa “humanitarian” crossing. This left the Al Ghab area with extended electricity outages which are exacerbated by the US direct and proxy occupation of Syrian oil resources in the North East. Destruction of essential civilian infrastructure is, again, a war crime.
Various groups have occupied Zeyzoun since 2015 but the dominant warlord is still HTS or Al Qaeda. However, according to a field source at the time of the dismantlement and destruction, it was members of the salafist Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) that brought engineering equipment and machinery to Zeyzoun to dismember the plant for scrap and revenue.
The same group had been accused of theft of electrical transformers and agricultural crops to trade and provide income as their financial backing had largely dried up. The power plant comprised three gas generators each with a capacity of 128 megawatts, powered by gas and fuel. The following is a video of the final demolition of the power plant by the TIP.
Combined with the US Coalition illegal occupation of fuel resources, the damages sustained by the electricity and energy sectors in Syria and sanctions have devastatingly impacted on the ability of the Syrian state to provide electricity and power to civilians. This is a deliberate policy by the US/UK alliance to collectively punish the Syrian people and to coerce them into opposition to the Syrian government and Presidency. The destruction of Zayzoun alone will need an estimated $ 450 million to restore.
The NATO-member-state extremist proxies have deliberately destroyed and looted Syrian infrastructure in every region they have occupied, this is not coincidence. In October 2015, the US Coalition directly bombed the Aleppo power station plunging the region into darkness.
This sadistic tactic had been employed previously in Iraq in 1991and is ongoing today with the ISIS destruction of electrical power grids and stations – actions by a terrorist group that the US has empowered, equipped and trained despite it being the false pretext for the US/UK/EU military footprint in the Middle East. It is a major part of the psychological war being waged against the Syrian people to bring them to heel and to force “regime change”.
WHY DID RUSSIA SANCTION THE 6-MONTH EXTENSION FOR THE BAB AL HAWA CROSSING?
Russia and Syria have historically opposed the UN “aid’ runs via Turkey for reasons that become obvious when considering the benefits for Al Qaeda. Many were surprised that Russia in the end approved the 6 month extension. However, there is a promised “substantive” UNSG report into the Cross Border Mechanism transparency which will be of concern to the US Coalition and Turkey as Russia will presumably be gathering evidence to prove that much of the aid is destined for Al Qaeda and to sustain the war against the Syrian government.
I believe Russia took this decision to prevent US accusations of belligerence post the Biden, Putin summit in Geneva while hoping to ensure that terrorist sponsorship by NATO member states is fully exposed and that those involved should be held accountable for the resulting war crimes.
Many Syrians, however, including those suffering daily attacks in Jurin and the other frontline villages will deem this decision a political one which will have dire consequences for their communities. This is another example of how this externally fomented and sustained war has impacted so horrifically upon the Syrian people, leaving nobody untouched by tragedy and loss.
BAB AL HAWA IS NOT A LIFELINE FOR THE SYRIAN CIVILIANS OF JURIN
One thing is clear from my recent visit to the Idlib battle frontlines – the Bab Al Hawa border crossing is not the “humanitarian” lifeline as described by US, UK representatives and aligned officials at the UN. For these civilians, it represents the perpetual threat of death or injury, the destruction of their livelihood and a life of deprivation, bloodshed and fear.
The Saleh family home in Jurin that has been repeatedly targeted by NATO-backed terrorist groups. Photo: Vanessa Beeley
Western media is still amplifying the alleged “war crimes” of Sryian and Russian forces battling to liberate Syrian territory from the clutches of terrorist groups that would massacre the residents of Jurin in an instant if they could break through Syrian and Russian defences.
Two days after my visit, during the night of the 17th July, eleven civilians were injured by HTS shelling, including one child. This is the reality of this war, never explored by the NATO-aligned media outlets and “humanitarian” agencies who seek only to demonise the Syrian government and to “disappear” these inconvenient Syrians who expose the moral vacuum of their Syria narratives.
My journey from the Syrian Christian town of Al Sqeilbiyyeh to Jurin, northern Hama, the new frontlines with Turkey backed (NATO) terrorists in Idlib. I will be writing a full report with testimony from civilians who are targeted daily by the armed groups, equipped with American weapons smuggled in through Turkey and via the "humanitarian" crossing at Bab Al Hawa. US manufactured TOW missiles are being used to target civilians. This is an undeniable war crime.
Under attack from NATO terrorist groups with US weapons
My journey from the Syrian Christian town of Al Sqeilbiyyeh to Jurin, northern Hama, the new frontlines with Turkey backed (NATO) terrorists in Idlib. I will be writing a full report with testimony from civilians who are targeted daily by the armed groups, equipped with American weapons smuggled in through Turkey and via the "humanitarian" crossing at Bab Al Hawa. US manufactured TOW missiles are being used to target civilians. This is an undeniable war crime.
SARS-CoV-2 pet vaccine roll-out is psychological warfare against Humanity
Science is a dangerous gift unless it can be brought into contact with wisdom that resides in the sensual, intuitive and ethical aspects of our nature. For most non-Western cultures, nature is truly alive, and every entity within it is endowed with agency, intelligence and wisdom.”Robert Riversong
In December 2020 Sciencemag asked if our pets require Covid-19 vaccines. SARS-CoV-2 has never been an exclusively human problem, apparently.
The article claimed cats and dogs can become infected with the yet-to-be-isolated virus. Mink farms have been allegedly hard hit, leading to massive culls and claims of human infections. “Scientists” worry domestic animals could transmit the virus to wildlife “creating an uncontrollable reservoir of the disease”.
At this stage the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was not approving commercial licenses for Covid pet vaccines and without that license it is impossible to sell or distribute the vaccines even if veterinary pharmaceutical companies wish to work on research and development. Sciencemag’s experts warned us that Apes and Mink were the high-risk species.
One US-based vet pharma company, Zoetis, had already started work on a vaccine for mink and domestic pets in early 2020.
Their vaccine is compared to the Novavax Covid approach, delivering a shot of a modified form of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein which is reported to have a detrimental effect on vascular cells and potential to trigger blood clots according to a number of research papers and experts.
Zoetis’ data does not conclude that the vaccine will protect the animal against infection – therefore, similar to the human Covid vaccine, it is effectively not a vaccine. At this stage, December 2020, Zoetis was pushing USDA to license their mink vaccine which could be “rapidly adapted” for cats and dogs and mirroring a human vaccine that was still undergoing clinical trials and is suspected to have long term adverse consequences for the human body.
THE PHARMACEUTICAL RULE BENDING.
As early as January 2021, Zoetis were administering a vaccine that was only in the planning stages one month prior. A 28-year-old Orangutan, Karen, received the “Covid vaccine” on January 26th at San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
Karen was the first ape in the world to be jabbed with an experimental vaccine, still not licensed by the USDA.
Karen was reported to have no adverse reactions and Zoetis then launched a vaccination programme for the San Diego primates. Zoetis apparently got permission from the USDA to provide the doses on an experimental basis.
So, these captive animals, many of them rare, are effectively being exploited to test Big Vet Pharma drugs just as laboratory animals are abused to do the same. This vaccine is barely out of the developmental starting blocks yet a reported three dozen zoos across the US have “put in orders” for the unlicensed vaccine.
Sharon Deem, a veterinary epidemiologist at the St Louis Zoo and member of a hazard preparedness group of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums that represents 240 zoos said this:
I think given how horrible this particular pathogen has been to humans, and that we know it can be transmitted between humans and animals, that there is great interest to use an animal vaccine as soon as it is available.
Members of our gorilla troop tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Aside from some congestion and coughing, the gorillas are doing well and we are hopeful for a full recovery. Read the full update: https://t.co/HIezWKBFxGpic.twitter.com/MAkPYPzxWP
“Experts” consider humans to be the primary vector of SARS-CoV-2 but the “threat” to wildlife is being amplified, despite the very real evidence that this virus is not an abnormal threat to human beings and is certainly not the pandemic it is being hyped up to be.
An article in National Geographic clearly states that little is known about the effects of the virus on animals. So, why the mad rush to jab these caged animals and to target domestic pets? Does the risk warrant a warp-speed response?
WHO ARE ZOETIS?
Zoetis are world leaders in the animal vaccine industry. The global animal vaccine market generated $ 9.09 billion in 2020 and is estimated to achieve $ 13.78 billion by 2028. This growth is on track despite the negative impact of the Covid-19 restrictions and lockdown.
The company has existed for more than 65 years and until 2013, Zoetis was Pfizer’s animal health unit. Pfizer has been fined almost five billion dollars in the last twenty years for making false claims about their products.
Zoetis is the leading animal health company, dedicated to supporting its customers and their businesses. Building on more than 65 years of experience in animal health, Zoetis discovers, develops, manufactures and commercializes veterinary medicines, vaccines and diagnostic products, which are complemented by biodevices, genetic tests and precision livestock farming.”
In 2020, Zoetis generated revenue of $6.7 billion with 11,300 employees.
This is taken from the Zoetis press releases. [Emphasis added]:
As the world leader in animal health, Zoetis has a long history of developing solutions for emerging infectious diseases in animals, including quickly developing a diagnostic test that can be used to detect SARS-CoV-2 in animals. This test is being offered in our reference labs upon request and was used to identify cases in companion animals. While this test is available, the USDA and global veterinary organizations are not recommending broad testing of companion animals at this time.”
There is little information about the diagnostic test to detect SARS-CoV-2 and if it is based on the human PCR test, questions must be raised about its efficacy. Zoetis shared the results of initial development work on a dog and cat vaccine at the 6th World One Health Congress virtual event.
In these preliminary studies, the vaccine has been demonstrated to be safe and have a reasonable expectation of efficacy.”
This is an extraordinary claim to be made so early in the development stage.
Supporters of World One Health include the Scottish government, Global Affairs Canada, US Defence Threat Reduction Agency, Big Pharma groups – Roche, GlaxoSmithKlein, World Health Organisation (WHO), British Medical Journal (BMJ) and a plethora of virus research and vaccine development agencies.
After a troop of eight western lowland gorillas got sick in January, San Diego Zoo staff received experimental COVID-19 vaccines to give to great apes in their care. See how Zoetis helped make this happen. https://t.co/b2Ji3YEKmn via @NatGeo
In 2017 Zoetis received a $14 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fund the African Livestock Productivity and Health Advancement initiative (ALPHA).
Over 1.7 billion doses of vaccines and medicines have been administered since the launch in Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda. Gates is pivotal to the SARS-CoV-2 “pandemic” narratives and the human vaccine roll-out.
Gates also has a controversial reputation with regards to his vaccination programmes in Africa.
Zoetis buys in to the Great Reset ‘sustainability” lexicon, arguing that their vaccine intervention will generate “a more sustainable livestock production” in some of the poorest regions of the world with a focus on the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit and COP-26 – “The COP26 summit will bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
The Gates-sponsored GAVI alliance is unsurprisingly running with the SARS-CoV-2 pet vaccine narrative:
ZOETIS PRIOR BREACH OF VACCINE LICENCING WITHOUT SUFFICIENT CLINICAL TRIALS
In 2018, horse-owners brought a $53 million class action lawsuit against Zoetis for failing to warn of side effects of a Hendra virus vaccine.
Owners claimed that 1500 horses out of 500,000 vaccinated had suffered adverse reactions and had been unable to return to work. The Hendra virus is transmitted by “flying foxes” or bats, similar to claims made about the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
LHD lawyers argued that Zoetis had aggressively marketed the Hendra vaccine for all horses in Australia in “breach of the licencing and without proper clinical trials to identify side effects”. Perhaps most importantly, the lawsuit alleged that Zoetis overstated the risks of Hendra virus to the horse community.
Are we seeing a repeat of this overstatement of risks with the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for livestock? Certainly we are seeing similarities in the bypassing of controls over distribution of a trial-stage vaccine.
THE ‘ZOONOTIC THREAT’ IS PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
The SARS-CoV-2 disproportionate measures against entire global populations are designed to dehumanise us, to mask us, to prevent touch, hugs, all the human interaction that makes us human. The isolation felt by many during lockdown may have been alleviated by their dog or cat.
Now, even this connection is being potentially severed or rendered “risky”.
The Zoonotic risk narrative is another attempt to separate humans from nature and from the healing it brings. Ultimately there is potential that human beings will be driven out of the countryside and into the Great Reset “smart cities” – surveillance hubs, sterile inhumane environments devoid of character or individuality.
"If you don't vaccinate you are a risk to your pet."
President Joe Biden is endorsing door to door vaccination campaigns while exploiting human connection to domestic animals to overcome “vaccine hesitancy”, a ridiculous term to describe people informing themselves of the multiple threats to their health from the experimental SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, or those simply exercising their health sovereignty.
This is also about profit, the domestic animal vaccine market is a lucrative one and veterinary Big Pharma sees an opportunity to exploit the SARS-CoV-2 crisis and cash in. Build a crisis, develop a warp-speed solution and breach the licencing laws under the pretext of “emergency use”. Where have we seen this before?
The number of post-human-vaccine deaths has now reached almost 7000 according to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) but it is estimated that 90% or more of the severe adverse reactions and deaths are not being recorded.
An overblown crisis has been the portal to mass vaccination with an experimental drug that is having devastating consequences and the Big Pharma giants are immune from legal prosecution. Now wildlife is to be experimented upon.
Please watch the following ABC news video, if you still have your humanity intact you will be distressed by the caged animals being jabbed with a developmental drug with little concern over the long term effects of such a campaign.
The connection between mankind and nature should be stronger than ever because we are both under attack from the same malevolent forces that envisage our extinction.
What Is Wrong with the “Humanitarian Crossing” into Syria?
A friend sent me a link to a Foreign Policy news story about the Turkey / Syria border crossing at Bab al Hawa. He asked, “Is this accurate?” What could be wrong with humanitarian aid?
There have been many such stories, both short and long. The essence of them all in western media is that Bab al Hawa must be kept open for humanitarian reasons. Many of the articles castigate Russia or any other country such as China which might vote to block a renewal of United Nations authorization of the border crossing.
There are important facts which western media stories typically leave out or distort. Here are some reasons why the Bab al Hawa border crossing should NOT be renewed.
The aid is supporting Syria’s version of Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS). They control the region on the Syrian side of the crossing. They are the foreigners and hard-core extremists who invaded Idlib from Turkey in 2015 plus those who left Aleppo and other cities when the militants were defeated by the Syrian army. Even if the United Nations inspects all the trucks going into Idlib province in northern Syria, the truck deliveries are ultimately controlled by HTS (formerly called Jabhat al Nusra).
The aid is effectively supporting the partition of Syria. Idlib province, and the militants which govern there, seek to separate permanently from Syria. They are attempting to Turkify the region through sectarian education, promoting the Turkish language and even using Turkish currency.
The aid violates the United Nations Charter which says all member countries shall refrain from threatening the territorial integrity of another member state. Turkey and the USA are the major violators, since they have military troops illegally occupying Syrian lands. But it is a shame for the United Nations to be complicit through the authorization of aid to the breakaway Al Qaeda dominated region.
The aid to northwest Syria is prolonging the conflict instead of helping end it. It is evident that after failing to militarily overthrow the Syrian government, western powers are now using other means to attack Damascus. They continue to interfere in Syria’s domestic affairs. Led by the USA, they have economically attacked Syria while pouring support into the breakaway northwest region.
Western aid to the Al Qaeda dominated region distracts from the pain, damage, and destruction which US and European sanctions have wreaked on most Syrians. The Caesar sanctions, imposed by the USA amid the Covid19 pandemic, have had a horrendous impact. By outlawing the Syrian Central Bank and making it nearly impossible to trade with Syria, US sanctions have undermined the Syrian currency. Many goods have increased in price by 4 and 5 and even 10 times. Like a modern-day gangster, the US has been openly stealing the oil and wheat from eastern Syria. The US has attacked the electrical grid by prohibiting parts, engineering, or construction to repair or rebuild power plants. “Caesar” sanctions prohibit support for anything government related including schools and hospitals.
According to a December 2020 United Nations General Assembly resolution, Unilateral Coercive Measures such as the “Caesar” law are illegal and a violation of the UN Charter, international law, and international human rights law. Yet because of US global economic dominance, it is still in force and the US claims the right to prohibit any country, company, or individual from supporting or trading with Syria. This is what makes US claims to humanitarian concern so ironic and cynical.
The western aid to Syrians through Bab al Hawa is discriminatory and serves to divide the country. Before the conflict Idlib province had a total population of 1.5 million persons and the number is LESS today. Much of the population left when the province was over-run by extremists. Some fled into Turkey; others fled to Latakia province to the west. Some opposition militants and their supporters chose to go to Idlib rather than reconcile with the government. For example, when East Aleppo was taken back by government soldiers, there were about thousands of militants and their families transferred – but not hundreds of thousands as was incorrectly predicted in the wave of propaganda before East Aleppo was recaptured. So, in contrast with some estimates, there are one million or fewer persons in Idlib.
The civilians in north west Syria are being effectively bribed to live there through cash payments and vastly greater relief. One thousand trucks per month are taking aid into northwest Syria. As noted in in OCHA document, people are “incentivized by access to services and livelihoods.” This is understandable but the divisive effect is also clear.
In contrast, there are between 14 and 17 million Syrians living elsewhere in Syria. They are receiving little if any of the aid. Instead, they are bearing the brunt of vicious US unilateral coercive measures.
Aid to civilians in Syria should be distributed fairly and proportionally. This can be done with monitoring or supervision by a respected international agency such as the Red Crescent / Red Cross. In keeping with the UN Charter, western countries should respect the political independence of the Syrian government and stop their continuing interference and efforts at “regime change”.
Weaponizing “Humanitarian Aid”
There are many western NGOs crying out about Bab al Hawa. For example, the International Rescue Committee has raised many millions of dollars which should have gone to help all Syrians but has not. Their literature should be carefully considered however because – according to their 2019 tax returns – western governments are their main funders at $440M in 2019. The CEO, David Miliband, is well compensated at over $1 million per year. We can be sure they keep on message with the US State Department.
Humanitarian aid is big business and has been politically weaponized. While there are many well-meaning people working hard, there political agendas at work.
If Russia and other nations in the UN Security Council veto the extension of the Bab al Hawa crossing, there are good reasons why.
This is the story of Bassel Karful one of the thousands of the brave martyrs who fought and died for Syria. Bassel was from Tartous. Everyone who knew him said that he was a joyful always smiling young man whose love for this family has no equal except his love for his homeland.
His ardent patriotism was the key in making this rather humble guy a hero of legendary status. He destroyed three explosive laden trucks and stood his ground against a fourth that the terror groups have used to attack the army's post. Those heroic acts earned him his spot amongst the greatest in heaven.
It was by mere coincidence that Bassel manned the " Metis " ATGM platform instead of his comrade Ahmad Abbas who was on leave in Tartous due to his uncle's death.
Soldiers received orders to move and to ready themselves after the arrival of certain intelligence of an impeding attack by armed gangs from eastern Idleb aimed at storming Aleppo using four explosives laden BMPs.
While Bassel was busy alongside fellow soldier Khatib in preparing the atgm platform, his friend Ahmad Abbas called him to inform him that he arrived in Aleppo, was aware of the impeding battle and that he was coming to replace Bassel in manning the atgm platform.
Bassel answered the call albeit he was busy and told his friend to rest , have something to eat and then join his brothers in their position.
Ahmad answered that he ate and was in no need to rest informing Bassel that he will join him right away in the al Zahraa residential area .
Soon all hell broke loose. The armed gangs attacked covered by intensive bombardment. Civilians were fleeing . Khattib was severely wounded and was martyred .Bassel was hit in the shoulder. Abbas Hussein replaced Khattib. Bassel fired a missile on the first terrorist used BMP that was racing towards the residential neighborhood and blew it up.
Ahmad Abbas from distance was urging Bassel to retreat alongside the civilians.
" It's too late my brother, the armed men are nearby and their " cri de guerre" are deafening" was Bassel's answer to Ahmad' pleas to retreat.
Bassel managed to destroy two more explosives laden BMPs. The terrorists were coming close to where Bassel was. Abbas who was a soldier in the Syrian Center for Scientific Research and not an ATGM expert aided Bassel in destroying three of the four BMPs the armed gangs used.
The fourth detonated before Bassel and Abbas were able to arm a missile. The wave of the massive explosion threw them both of the top of the building in different areas. Bassel fell on the tile roof of a ground floor . The fall was excruciatingly painful. Bassel fell on his back losing the ability to move his broken legs
Soldiers were approaching , Bassel still motionless on the tile floor right next to the armed men. Abbas legs were crushed. A girl hiding in her house snuck out and tried to pull Abbas away but failed to do so because of his heavy weight, so she wrapped his legs with ointments and tissues and went back to her house eventually feeling relieved after seeing Abbas' friends reaching him
Ahmad, soldier Yamen Sabbagh and first warrant officer Abu Ali Mahdi who is an old man reached Abbas with Abu Ali staying near him while Yamen and Ahmad continued advancing towards Bassel covered by heavy fire from a soldier stationed a little further away, firing frantically trying to open a passageway for them to reach Bassel quickly. Bassel stared at the blurry sky motionless, hearing his friends calling him. He didn't answer out of fear of exposing his whereabouts to the gunmen lurking nearby.
With the gunmen retreating and the army advancing, Ahmad reached a building rooftop. Looking down he saw Bassel lying on his back on the brick floor. Seeing Ahmad , Bassel slightly moved his hand as a sign that he was still alive. Ahmed hurried downstairs and tried to reach Bassel quickly but failed to do so because of the heavy presence of the gunmen near him.
All became clear for Bassel. The sky was as clear as tears falling from his mother's eyes, a breeze making similar tunes to those of summer nights sea waves, sounds of the advancing army towards him were like of birds singing that he used to hear in his peaceful village in Drekish countryside.
Suddenly all turned into a heavy silence with the sky covered in darkness. A gunman was standing above Bassel, after noticing him. Bassel did not move trying to trick the gunman into believing he was dead. That did not work. The terrorists used to shoot even martyred soldiers disrespecting the sanctity of Death. He pointed his gun at Bassel's head who bravely kept his eyes open as did the valiant soldiers of al Kindi Hospital before him at the moment of their cold blooded execution.
The sound of a bullet tore the fearful silence that reigned for moments. That bullet landed in Bassel's head followed by another one right in the middle of his heart. Those bullets ended the life of a man who has just saved Aleppo thanks to his belief, strength, patience and determination.
Finally the soldiers reached Bassel, Ahmed ran towards him and put his hand on his face then neck. He didn't even dare to think only lifting him with the help of his comrades running towards an ambulance that drove them to an hospital. There a doctor told them that Bassel was martyred.
Martyr Bassel Karful from Tartous/ AlDrekich /
Bouwaydat AlZamam
Injured Abbas AlHussayn from Hama/Mysiaf
Ahmad Abbas from Tartous/Masaken El-isment
Yemen Sabbagh from ElQurdaha
Abou Ali Mahdi from ElFoua
Martyr Khattib from Noubol
Written by William Abdallah for the Syrian Arab Army Facebook page.
On Friday 25th June 2021, Abu Fadel was at the confrontation line. The other Yemeni fighters were surrounded by the mercenaries, among the fighters there were injuries and lack of supplies.
He decided to go to deliver supplies and evacuate the wounded under the heavy fire of the mercenaries.
He went the first time, delivering supplies and evacuating the wounded, and the vehicle was damaged, but he reached safety.
The second time, he used another vehicle and was able to evacuate the wounded, but the vehicle was also damaged.
On the third time, he did not find his wounded friends, so he kept searching for them under the heavy fire until his vehicle broke down from the heavy fire and he was martyred.
The Yemeni forces carried out an offensive that led to the liberation of the area, the lifting of the siege and the recovery of the hero's body.
UN Security Council set for showdown over cross-border aid to Syria
The United Nations Security Council is bracing for a showdown between Russia and Western countries over the cross-border mechanism (CBM) of humanitarian aid deliveries to Syria - Press TV
The 15-member council approved four border crossings when deliveries began in 2014, three years after foreign-backed militancy erupted in Syria.
In January 2020, Russia used its veto power to limit aid deliveries to two border crossings given Syrian army gains against Takfiri terrorists, and in July 2020, to only one.
Today, aid is delivered through the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey to Syria’s militant-held northwest, and its mandate expires on July 10.
Norway and Ireland have recently circulated a draft resolution to keep the Bab al-Hawa crossing open and restore aid deliveries through the al-Yaroubiya crossing point from Iraq.
The one-page motion, cited by The Associated Press, would also end the current six-month mandate for the crossings and restore a one-year mandate.
Journalist Vanessa Beeley described the move as complete “dishonesty and hypocrisy, not only by the US, but the entire US regime change coalition and the UN, of course.”
Talking to Press TV, the resistance activist noted that Bab al-Hawa is the last remaining urban crossing, which is completely under the control of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), effectively an al-Qaeda rebrand.
“All of the humanitarian aid which enters Bab al-Hawa is seized by HTS and sold at extortionate prices to the civilians under their control in the last remaining al-Qaeda haven,” she explained.Beeley maintains that by trying to maintain cross-border operations, the US intends to to sustain the terrorist enclave in Idlib and the war against the Syrian government.
She predicted that Russia would very strongly oppose the extension of the mandate for the border crossing, adding that China has also been taking a position against the maintenance of the crossing.
Damascus is negotiating with the World Health Organization and the World food Program to set up humanitarian stations inside government-held areas in Idlib.
“This is absolutely the correct way to go about it. Of course, America is a rogue state that does not adhere to any international law,” she commented.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Wednesday that aid should be delivered within Syria instead, criticizing the UN and the West for doing nothing in this regard over the past year.
“Back in 2014, when the Security Council was adopting resolution 2165 that opened 4 border crossings on the Syrian border to ensure access of UN humanitarian assistance, Russia agreed to this solution which violated Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity only for one reason. The Syrian Arab Republic was being torn apart by terrorists, Syrian statehood per se was at risk, and refugees and IDPs badly needed humanitarian assistance ‘here and now,’” he added.
“Since then, supported by Russian Air-Space forces who arrived in Syria upon request of its legitimate government, Damascus has fought back terrorists, liberated almost 90% of its territory and embarked on solid efforts to improve the life of its people. In these conditions, the CBM is a mere anachronism. In the meantime, our Western partners act as if time stood still. They carefully ignore the fact that it is quite possible (and sometimes much easier) to provide assistance to remaining refugees from within Syria.”
The Russian envoy further underlined the need for respecting Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“Syria’s grave humanitarian problems have a solution, and it should not be sought in the CBM domain. The argument that humanitarians find it more convenient to work within the CBM is little convincing to us. Respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria is much more important than this inconvenience, which, as the situation with the closing of “al-Yaroubiya” demonstrated, can be overcome. Unless our Western colleagues both in words and deeds prove their commitment to this goal, there is no point in speaking about the renewal of the CBM. We still have some time before the “D-Day”, Hopefully, it will not be wasted,” he said.
Nebenzia also blasted Western states for targeting the Syrian nation with sanctions while raising concerns about the humanitarian situation in the Arab country.
“During this past year our colleagues were moving in the opposite direction and did everything to exacerbate the problems that Syrians encounter in the government-controlled areas. Suffice it to mention the illegal sanctions, imposed by sidestepping the Security Council - a heavy burden that every Syrian citizen has to shoulder. You blow the whistle regarding humanitarian access while pretending that the problem of Syria’s suffocation with sanctions does not exist,” he explained.
On Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham terrorist group is blocking cross-line humanitarian convoys “with the connivance of Ankara.”
Lavrov also accused Western donors of “blackmailing” by threatening to cut humanitarian financing for Syria if the mandate for Bab al-Hawa is not extended.
“We consider it is important to resist such approaches,” he said in an oral statement conveyed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
Tools of destabilisation - mainstream media propaganda
A talk I prepared for last night's webinar:
In order to fully understand the role of the corporate media as an instrument of destabilisation in the hands of the neocolonialist cartel, led by the UK, US, France and Israel, we must examine the concept of hybrid warfare. This expression was invented by members of US military command. Hybrid war is said to involve “a mix of conventional, irregular terrorism and criminal means or activities - deployed by a combination of state and non-state actors, to include covert action, economic blackmail or coercion, diplomatic duplicity and media manipulation. Hybrid warfare is also referred to as multi spectrum or full spectrum warfare - which can be interpreted as a reference to the US Department of Defence document “Joint vision 2020” published in 2000 which has as its objective, American full spectrum dominance (globally).
My focus is on Syria but the role of the media as identified here can be applied to every nation targeted for “regime change” or US allied intervention in state affairs. In Syria, the media operations have been an ongoing and devastating element of the US Coalition hybrid war strategy, heavily state-financed and intelligence agency-masterminded.
The ten basic principles of war propaganda were succinctly laid out by historian and academic, Anne Morelli, in 2001. 1. The aggressor nations claim they don’t want war, the implication is that they want “peace”, they are only “defending themselves” against an existential threat from the prey nation or they are defending the people of that nation from tyranny. 2. The “adversary” is solely responsible for this war and is threatening our moral values by their behaviour or endangering humanity, freedom, democracy. 3. Our adversary’s leader is inherently evil and demonic. Persuading the public to hate a group of people is difficult, it is more efficient to direct hatred towards the leader of an enemy nation. This leader will be criminalised and Hitlerised in order to enable the punishment ethic to be deployed. The aggressor, the US/UK and coalition member states will portray themselves as pacifists, humanitarians, forced into war by the “inhumanity” & intransigence of the enemy leader. 4. The aggressor is defending a noble cause, not their regional interests or supremacist goals - the war is not to steal resources but to defend human beings from a “brutal dictator” and to introduce “democracy”. 5. The enemy is committing atrocities and war crimes, the aggressor only commits them by mistake or for the greater good. 6. The enemy makes use of illegal weapons - Iraq WMD, Syria chemical weapons. 7. The aggressor suffers few losses, the enemy is mortally wounded - this is important to swing public opinion in favour of perpetual war. 8. The aggressor has artists, academics, historians, authors and photographers on board manufacturing consent for war, R2P doctrine. 9. The cause of the aggressor is “sacred” presented as a “divine” mission, the Bush “crusade against the axis of evil”, the West’s divine right to remove elected leaders from power because they do not comply with US/UK globalist agendas. 10. Whoever challenges the aggressor’s propaganda is considered a traitor and must be discredited, if you defend a target nation, you are immediately an enemy of democracy & in the case of Syria, an Assadist.
The corporate media complex is the interface between the state, intelligence agencies and military industrial complex and the public. The media will follow the road map outlined by Morelli, ensuring the success of each element, in particular the demonisation of the leader in the crosshairs and the obfuscation of the underlying reasons for war. Intelligence operations will be covered up and even when they become public knowledge the state-aligned media will protect power from truth.
We saw this with regards to the recent leak of UK FCO documents detailing the huge extent of UK intelligence interference in Syria and Lebanon - In Syria,complex operations providing PR and media support for the mercenary armed groups that have waged a ten year war against Syria and the region, dominated by Al Qaeda. The evidence released in these leaks exposed British media, in particular the BBC, as nothing more than outreach agencies for UK FCO and Intelligence interventionist foreign policy, a policy that has ensured the destabilisation of Syria and the region for decades. UK/US/EU regimes have invested unprecedented resources into a media campaign to precipitate a “regime change” war and to criminalise not only the leader of the country, President Bashar Al Assad, but also Iran, Russia and Hezbollah - the primary allies of this blockaded, besieged and war torn nation.
As journalist, Sharmine Narwani, said, “these are media combatants” and they are just as responsible for the destruction of Syria and the collective punishment of the Syrian people as the armed groups sponsored by the same regimes that tightly manage the colonial media output. These media extremists are effectively lobbying for war and intervention, advocating No Fly Zones that even Hillary Clinton admitted would kill more Syrians. Journalists within the complex who speak out or question dominant narratives are sidelined, censored and de-platformed, independent journalists are smeared, discredited and dismissed as “conspiracy theorists”
In the recent OPCW scandal, dissenting inspectors who concluded that there had been no chemical attacks in Douma April 2018, have been intimidated, maligned and ignored by the so-called international community. The OPCW has been revealed to be corrupted and compromised, yet the corporate media cabal have combined forces to protect the organisation, to denigrate the inspectors and to deny the evidence presented that their regimes bombed Syria based on a non-existent dossier that was retrospectively doctored to provide justification for UK, US and French supreme war crimes.
The debate on Syria is kept within tightly controlled parameters in order to prevent constructive dialogue. The corporate media exists to promote war, not diplomatic resolution, stability or peace. By delegitimizing the elected Syrian leadership, the media cartel effectively deprives the Syrian people of their sovereignty in lock-step with the United Nations and associated agencies that also support the criminalisation of the Syrian government.
As historian John Laughland said of the UN “it has failed institutionally and constitutionally and is nothing more than an instrument of unjustifiable intervention”. Laughland also pointed out the lack of redress for smaller, weaker nations against weaponised agencies like the UN and criminally negligent media outlets that have the backing and protection of their predator regimes. Non-intervention is the “forgotten doctrine”, globalism is a universal tyranny and corporate media is the manipulator of facts and evidence to influence public opinion, dehumanise target peoples and amplify intelligence agency talking points in order to enforce that tyranny through violence and bloodshed.
I want to focus on sanctions and humanitarian aid as the perfect example of how western media reporting on Syria frames the narrative in favour of their own regime foreign policy agendas, covering up the criminality of the US Coalition sadistic destabilisation campaign:
Sanctions
A recent report in Reuters entitled “Syrian drought puts Assad’s ‘year of wheat’ in peril”which blames looming wheat shortages on climate change - this is framed entirely to ‘disappear’ the real reasons for Syria’s food insecurity and 90% of population living in abject poverty - US/UK/EU illegal unilateral coercive measures , the most recent being the barbaric Caesar sanctions which are targeting the poorest of the Syrian people and those worst affected by the ten year war waged against them by the US coalition proxies.
Sanctions are mentioned in passing in the report by Reuters. What is not mentioned is the deliberate scorched earth policy of US Coalition members, the dropping of thermal balloons by US Occupation Forces under the Trump administration and the occupation of the most fertile Syrian territory by US Coalition contras - the former PKK or so-called Syrian Democratic Forces who steal and trade Syrian wheat outside Syria rather than allow it to enter government-secured areas where it would alleviate the bread queues and enable the state to keep providing subsidised bread to their people.
We have to remember that there are barely any western journalists actually on the ground in Syria, except those who enter Syria illegally via Turkey and who embed themselves with Al Qaeda and affiliates in Idlib. Corporate media will take their reports from three main corporate/military complex owned agencies, Reuters, AP and AFP (Agence France Presse) - so Reuters misrepresentation of the egregious collective punishment of the Syrian people will be copy/pasted into the BBC, the Guardian, CNN etc.
In Syria and Yemen the humanitarian crisis is being manufactured by the US globalist coalition and its aligned agencies, including the UN yet the corporate media will portray it as a disconnected tragedy or exploit it to further criminalise the Syrian government or the Ansarullah-led Resistance against Saudi genocidal colonialism. Here I would argue that the western media cartel is potentially complicit in war crimes and genocide under the Genocide Convention article II (e) - deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
On the same day Voice of America ran with the headline “Somalia, Congo, Afghanistan, Syria among most dangerous for children in conflict”. The dishonesty of the article, including statements from UN representatives is shameful - reporting on “grave” child abuse & conflict-related suffering without addressing the root cause, US-led intervention and economic terrorism, is war criminal apologism.
The media will also exploit the misery inflicted upon the Syrian people by sanctions, war and illegal US Coalition occupation of essential resources and infrastructure to further vilify the Syrian government. Western media claim that government corruption is the root cause of food insecurity, rising food prices, soaring inflation, fuel and gas shortages - this misrepresentation of the facts is effectively killing the Syrian people just as surely as the extremist armed groups the media has euphemistically described as “rebels” for ten years.
Humanitarian Aid
Not only is the US Coalition occupying oil fields and stealing the oil or allowing it to be traded by their contra forces, Al Qaeda, ISIS and Kurdish separatist groups - it is using “humanitarian aid” as a means of sustaining the Al Qaeda-dominated occupation of north-east Syria, Idlib. Recent Biden administration demands to keep the Bab Al Hawa crossing open on the borders with Turkey and Syria are being amplified by the aligned media. Why? Because Bab Al Hawa is an Al Qaeda (assorted rebrands) trading post - humanitarian aid enters the crossing and is appropriated by the armed groups who then sell the supplies at extortionate prices to their civilian hostages.
This has been the situation in all formerly occupied regions of Syria - “humanitarian aid” supplied by the UN agencies is hijacked by the armed groups and used to provide revenue, while they deliberately starve civilians and deprive them of essential medical treatment.
Of course, Russia is the villain for vetoing the Bab Al Hawa crossing and previously closing other crossings in Idlib and the north-east - the media will never present the context for Russian and Syrian reluctance to allow these terrorist rat-runs because this is not in the interest of the terrorist-sponsoring corporatocracy they serve. Russia is arguing that Damascus in collaboration with WHO and WFP should be in charge of humanitarian assistance to occupied Idlib, not Turkey.
While the media will express outrage at the deteriorating living conditions of Syrian civilians in Idlib, they will not inform you of the reality or of Syrian-led solutions - that the majority of these civilians are being abused by the armed groups, executed, detained, tortured, used as human shields, their children abducted and trafficked (according to testimony). They will not inform you that Western incubated and financed pseudo NGOs like the White Helmets and offshoots are involved in this abuse of Syrian civilians and are suspected of running organ trafficking rings alongside the armed groups. If you read corporate media or UN agency reports, you will be convinced that the Syrian state and Russian forces alone are responsible for the misery of these civilians.
Effectively, western media ensures the protracted suffering of these Syrian people, including refugees and provides protectionism for the armed groups and their White Helmet auxiliaries who are their go-to source for their Syrian coverage.
What will also not be covered by the predator media class is the fact that the Pentagon is buying $ 2.8bn worth of weapons for conflict zones around the world (many from eastern Europe) - majority of these weapons will end up in the hands of Al Qaeda in Idlib, perhaps supplied as “humanitarian aid”. It was independent journalist, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva who unearthed this latest evidence of US support for terrorist organisations in Syria but it will not be picked up by the western media. An informed public is a public who will oppose war, it is the media’s job to keep them ignorant of what is being done in their name.
Corporate media is a criminal entity with zero integrity with the exception of a small number of journalists within the machine who have not completely sold out. It operates to protect power and to start and maintain wars. It is more than state media, it is a homogenized narrative management cartel, offering PR for war and whitewashing terrorism. Its information monopoly is currently under attack from independent media and Resistance bloc media which is why we are seeing the closure of channels, mass censorship and fascist silencing of dissent.
“My experience of international travel in Covid times”
I had not planned to travel abroad this year, especially after the UK government’s announcement in early 2021 that foreign holidays were forbidden. Even heading towards the airport with an intent to go on a foreign holiday could result in a £5000 fine or imprisonment! Surreal.
Where we live in London under a flight path to Heathrow, we notice that although there are fewer flights, they have not ceased completely. So how do people travel? It’s not something I have thought about.
One day at the end of April I receive a message that my elderly father’s condition is critical. Within an hour I am looking at flights back home in Eastern Europe and checking the UK government travel ‘advice’ webpages.
I say ‘advice’ but that word belongs to the past. Today, ‘command’ might be more appropriate. According to the government, only “essential” international travel is permitted for named valid reasons; ‘medical and compassionate’ is the category which applies to me.
I wonder whose compassion this is a reference to: mine, for wanting to be with my sick father, or the government’s for including this as a possibility. Reassured that I can go, it is now a question of buying the plane tickets, checking in and packing, right? Not quite.
WADING THROUGH THE RED TAPE
Since holiday travel has effectively been banned, the government created intricate webpages full of information on what is and what is not allowed, where citizens cannot travel, and if they must, what documents they need to prepare. So complicated travel advice alone has become that the webpage now includes a step by step flowchart with endless links within each step to be followed.
Getting through this information would take at least a day. It’s like a cross between a maze and a vortex. I soon understand that I cannot buy my tickets until I have uploaded the right Covid related paperwork onto the airline website!
First, I need to fill a Declaration for International Travel (since the 17th May it is no longer required) which asks for personal details including my date of birth, passport number, home address and destination.
The key question is the reason for international travel – and in the actual online questions, the phrase is: ‘What is your excuse for travel?’ My excuse? What kind of language is that? Am I asking a teacher to let me leave the classroom? Am I asked to explain why I haven’t done my homework?
That really shocks me, although I have already noticed my own reaction to the very idea that I need permission to leave the country, as if I was back in Eastern Europe before 1989…I read the following declaration and tick the right box out of the given options.
I hereby declare that my reason for being outside my home to travel internationally is for:
– Work – Volunteering – Education – Medical or compassionate reasons – Funeral – Ending a temporary visit (non-UK resident) – Allowing access to parents with children who do not live in the same country – Other reasonable excuse – please specify
Next, I am required to sign to ‘certify that the information I have provided is true. I understand that if I provide false or misleading information, I may be issued with a fixed penalty notice and/or a direction to return home or be arrested’.
So, by signing this, and I have no choice not to if I want to get my ticket, I have given the UK authorities permission to arrest or fine me should my excuse to travel turn out to be incorrect. What if my father is not that ill, then what?
But of course, that is not enough. I now need to provide evidence of my father’s illness. How do you do that when the whole of the world is still in lockdown; imagine having to get a doctor’s note on demand. I am still just trying to get a ticket.
I want to travel tomorrow morning, my sister-in-law tells me, Dad is given a couple of days. I ask my brother to send me an email confirming the family crisis, he does that within an hour. He is also trying to copy the notes from my father’s last doctor’s visit and the most recent diagnosis.
Then, still before I buy a return ticket, I need to get a kit of two Covid tests which I will need to take upon return to UK. Another link takes me on to a list of government-approved Covid test providers. A whole list of them, each can be accessed via a separate link. I try a few. They average around £200 each. The cheapest ones are £99 but are sold out.
Why can’t I see any free NHS ones? The ones given out like sweets in schools and local pharmacies? Why are these not available? Why could I not just pick a free one at the airport?
But of course, there is no to answer these questions, I am desperate to leave so agree to this, too. No test, no flight. So, I order one of these almost £200 test kits, get an email confirming the order, upload all the documents and finally I can complete the purchase of my tickets which, as usual, turn out not so low cost after all.
I check in. My boarding card (lucky I had just bought a printer the previous week) says at the top of the page ‘Covid Documentation Uploaded’. So, now I have the boarding card and a pile of printed pages which presumably I will need to show at UK border control in order to prove my excuse for leaving the country is legitimate.
Finally, I download and fill in the compulsory Passenger Locator Form for the destination country that will enable the system to track and trace me. It is nearly bedtime and I now need to pack.
ON THE GO
My husband drives me to Stansted in the middle of the night. An early morning flight, no public transport available but at least it’s quiet and there is no traffic. The airport is still closed; a group of families with young children are waiting for the door to open.
These are not holidaymakers breaking the law to get some forbidden fun. No idea where they are travelling but they look like they are going home somewhere south, southeast perhaps? Turkey, Bulgaria or Ukraine? No idea but they do look like part of the globalised chain of workforce escaping poverty and perhaps the lockdown has pushed them to return. Better to be jobless and poor in your own village. The weather tends to be better and the environment less hostile.
Finally, the doors open. I push the scarf up over my face, my hand clutching a plastic folder with a wad of documents allowing me to leave. It is quiet, no waiting. I go through security, passport control seems non-existent, shops still closed so nothing to stop for. I wonder at which point someone will ask me to see the papers. Ask me what my excuse for leaving is. Strangely, that never happens. I am almost disappointed. I spent about four hours sorting out all that paperwork the night before and now this is not even checked!
Immediately I catch myself: why am I disappointed? Because no one will give me the all-clear? Have I been conditioned to want to be waved through the green light already?
Perhaps that is how normalising oppression works. But of course, there is no need to check, the documents been uploaded and recorded somewhere and someone now knows everything about me, my plans, my reason (“excuse”) for leaving the country. Or perhaps the intimate details of my family crisis; my father’s terminal illness and my attempt to get to him before it’s too late have now just been converted into big data slushing around the corpo-government’s control AI machine, and turned into useful predictions.
I guess this type of authoritarianism does not even need stern looks from border control officials, no need to divulge private dramas in public. Hours of stress of getting the documents turned into a discreet but vital small print on my boarding card; the only visible proof that my travel is acceptable to the corpo-state. It is all so neat, tidy, hi-tech and invisible that we can just pretend that all is just normal.
After all, the airport trimmings look all the same; with adverts, duty-free shopping, same old queues at departure gates and same safety drills on the plane, down to the irritating Ryanair voice thanking us for choosing to fly with them (no one chooses to fly with Ryanair, just like no one chooses to go to the dentist, you do it because you have to and you hope it won’t be too unpleasant).
We can pretend nothing has changed. Except the masks on faces, of course. Slow drinking and eating is my solution. During the flight many noses protrude against the regulations, of course. People do need to breathe.
We land on time. I send a message to my father, anxious, hoping he is still there. He is not responding. I am worried. From the tarmac I can see the arrivals hall is full. There is no way of entering so the crowd from my plane stops outside and waits in the drizzle. I wonder why that is. Is that Brexit or is it that people’s papers are now checked after all?
The queue moves very slowly, twenty minutes after landing I send my father another message saying that I’m still waiting for border control. I have no idea why this is so slow; each person seems to spend a good few minutes at the control desk. Finally, an hour and a half after landing I get into the taxi. As the driver pulls away, I notice a long queue of passengers outside the arrivals hall waiting to get a Covid test. I arrive home and find my father hanging on.
MY FATHER’S ILLNESS
There is a twist to this story. My father has been treated for cancer but has been still doing quite well and has been planning to spend the summer away from his flat, in the countryside. His sudden deterioration it unexpected to me but I have not had time to think of reasons. I only learnt of this yesterday. But now I am in the flat, taking my shoes off when my brother drops the bombshell: ‘you know, Dad took the vaccine’.
I am shocked. He told me he was not going to, because he found the registration process too difficult, so he decided to stop trying. I was relieved; I had been persuading him that he should not, that being immunocompromised, his system might not cope. I told him what I knew and what I worried about. My brother tells me another family member helped organize his jab and took him there. Jesus. But I am to pretend I don’t know about it; Dad asked my brother not to tell me.
So, I learn that the day after the Pfizer jab he started to feel weak, and within ten days he was prescribed blood thinning injections, a daily drip and he became bedbound. My brother has hired a hospital-style bed and an oxygen machine, set them up in father’s bedroom and organized a private nurse for daily visits. Dad had not wanted to go to hospital: he believed that hospitals were overrun by contagious Covid patients and that going to hospital would mean certain death under a ventilator.
Luckily (I never thought I would say this), unlike the UK, this ex-communist country never managed to build up its own national health service to a level able to deliver comprehensive care, so a secondary private sector filling the gaps exists and is not beyond the means of many people. So here he is, in his own bedroom and getting care at home.
He is happy to see me but asks me not to touch him. I feel sad, guessing he might worry I am bringing contagion. That hurts. I pretend I know nothing about the jab. Later, much later, I remember this moment and think that, he might have wanted to protect me. He knew the jab made him ill and he worried he was fighting vaccine induced-Covid and did not want to give it to me.
He never told me about the vaccine, I never told him I knew.
QUARANTINE ONE: THE APP
The day after arriving I receive a text message telling me I am now under statute of law obliged to download a particular app and use it during my 10-day home quarantine. I start the download but can’t complete it. Something is stuck and I have no idea how to fix it. I try for a while and then abandon it. I spend most of the time caring for my father who now slips in and out of consciousness.
The next morning I get a phone call but it stops ringing before I have time to answer it. The following day the same happens. I realise this is the local track and trace. They ring but don’t wait for me to answer. Their call is logged, the box gets ticked but the robot or a human cannot be bothered to do the job properly. Actually, it must be a human as a robot would not give up. Good. The tyranny will fail due to human error or sheer laziness.
I don’t know what possessed me but somehow, I manage to complete installing the Quarantine App. The system springs into action. I get a message from the app that I must take a selfie within the next 30 minutes and submit it. I take a selfie from the app which gives me as many times as I like to choose the best shot. I choose the worst shot.
Of course, there is a way to cheat: after doing my selfie I could leave the phone at home and go out for a walk. Trouble is, the selfie demand comes at a different time each day, usually towards the end of the day. But I have no reason to go anywhere, really, I have come here to be with him, and his condition continues to be critical. And at some point, during this journey I decided that I would do everything by the book, just to see what the new normal travel feels and looks like, and what exactly they want us to experience.
Well, here I am, in a 10-day quarantine in a flat with my dying father. We are lucky. I have my brother to get the shopping in and kind neighbours ready to help. We are lucky my father is at home. What would be the point of coming here all this way, only to be stuck in quarantine if he was in a hospital with no visitors allowed? So, all in all, we are lucky.
DIFFICULT DAYS
Days go by, my father’s condition improves a little, I am his nurse, and of course I touch him – he stopped protesting as soon as he needed a glass of water; I continue to take my selfies. We talk, I read to him, feed him, then he sleeps. He dies two days after my quarantine ends. That is good timing.
There is a lot to do now, and I will not be breaking the law trying to organize the funeral…I remember my favourite literature lesson at school when we debated who was right: Creon or Antigone. Even then, I was in team Antigone.
A doctor arrives to certify death. She is nice and takes her time. Talks a little. Does not look like a corporate bot. She is sitting at a coffee table doing the paperwork. For the cause of death, she writes ‘Thrombosis’. I ponder for a bit and then hesitatingly say: ‘Did you know he was vaccinated?’.
Her face changes and she asks: ‘No, when?’ We tell her, ‘Four weeks ago, exactly’.
‘I am not allowed to say anything,’ she says, ‘but I can tell you I have seen a lot lately. A lot!’ We try to encourage her to talk more but she is cautious. I just ask her: ‘Why would a person on cancer treatment be given a vaccine? Surely that had not been done before?’ She looks at me and says: ‘Because they want to vaccinate us all.’ So, she knows.
This kind of conversation would have been typical in the days of strict communist authoritarianism before 1989. You never knew whom you could trust so you just dropped hints and checked for people’s response. In those days careless talk was dangerous, and I am too young to remember the worst times: the Stalinist years when children were encouraged to denounce their parents; many were imprisoned, tortured and killed.
Now the threat is only a loss of income and public humiliation and yet the new order based on lies, fraud and corrupt science is already in place. Everyone is just doing their job. A perfect example of Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil in which those, following orders in this elaborate house of cards, often do not even know their active contribution to harm inflicted on others. They do not realise because they refuse to look and to know. They stopped taking responsibility for their individual part in the whole.
There is a small group of doctors in the country who are challenging the official narrative, attempt to offer treatment for Covid patients and warn against the untested ‘vaccines’, particularly now that governments want to jab children. Their voices are censored, the people get smeared, ridiculed and shamed by the professional licensing medical body. The modern-day governance in Western democracies!
TRAVELLING HOME
As the funeral preparations get underway, I need to organise my return travel. I check the UK government website again. Travelling from an ‘amber’ coded country, I must test negative for Covid within 72 hours prior to departure. Tricky when the flight is on Monday afternoon.
I start to search for UK government-approved tests available in the city. Only a handful provide the specified UK approved antigen test with results in English. They are also open only in the mornings so if I test on Friday morning, I might be testing a few hours too early to fit within the 72 hours.
After hours of online searching, I find one that looks almost right. I pay the equivalent of £35 online and am told to come on the day, without an appointment. The laboratory website provides useful advice, how to prepare for the test. I learn that I should not brush my teeth or use mouthwash on the morning of test. So now I know what to do.
I arrive at the testing centre early, having heard that queues can be quite long. It is, and it is in the street. The lab’s waiting room only allows three people at a time so the rest stand outside. After about an hour it is my turn. I am allowed inside the surgery.
On the right, by the door, a masked man sitting at a desk behind a glass screen is checking my name and the type of test I have purchased. Then, a young tall, man in full white hazmat suit, his face covered, and in protective glasses ushers me to sit on a chair and tip my head backwards.
This is my first Covid test ever and I am terrified. I have rehearsed telling them how sensitive my face feels and asking not to go deep but there is no eye contact, no talk trying to help me feel comfortable, no attempt to put me at ease. He just tells me to tip my head back far.
I just manage to ask him to go into the left nostril as my right one is not straight. He happily obliges and shoves the long stick into my nostril. As soon as the tip enters my nose I feel shock, a feeling of something unnatural, wrong and threatening happening. The area he just touched is too soft, sensitive and the sensation so unfamiliar I involuntarily, and to my own shock, find myself pushing the man’s arm away. He moves back and looks at me, his body language (there is no face available) disapproves of my behaviour.
I say, please don’t go that deep, you already have some but he insists, tells me not to defend myself and does it again. And again, that feeling that a part of me which is vulnerable and should not be touched, gets scraped. He gets his sample and nods for me to go. I am frozen in that chair, unable to move for what seems like a while. I have tears in my eyes, and I am alone with two hazmat wearing robots. No word is uttered as I leave.
I get my negative result within hours. I recover with an old friend. By then I have a splitting headache and my left nostril is moist with a slight leak. The headache lasts for a couple of days but the leak persists for at least ten.
I arrive at the airport early because I have difficulties completing the UK Passenger Locator Form which UK needs from all passengers. I pass through a manned gate with an automatic wrist temperature check. The airport is unusually quiet, and the staff help me identify the problem which stops me from completing the form. The reference number for the double Covid test needed for the Passenger Locator Form is wrong. I ring home and ask my husband to read the reference number off the Covid test kit. Surely it has arrived now. It hasn’t. It looks like the Day 2 and 8 Test I ordered has not been paid for.
I am told I need to buy a new kit if I want to get this flight. I do as I’m told. No form, no flight. I stand next to the luggage drop off counter feeling sweats, and with my hands shaking I battle the website on my phone. Again, all the ‘cheap’ ones are sold out and somehow, at the last minute I manage to make a purchase for £180, get an email, a reference number, complete the form and have my luggage accepted.
I hurry to my gate and make it just in time as passengers are starting to board. I slow down to join the Ryanair herd waiting on the tarmac for the aircraft to be processed before we are told we can travel.
The pavement is marked with lines at 2-meter intervals. Two men behind me are joking loudly that we must stand on the lines correctly, otherwise the virus will jump on us. I turn and smile (no mask, we are still outside) and make eye contact with the fellow humans.
QUARANTINE TWO: TRACK AND TRACE
Back home in London, the following day I get my first out of ten phone calls from Track and Trace. Each time a different voice reads the same script.
I am contacting you on behalf of the NHS Test and Trace as you have recently travelled into the UK from abroad. Are you happy to continue in English?”
No idea what would happen if I said ‘no’.
Before we proceed, I need to make you aware that this call will be recorded for training and quality improvement purposes and should just take a few minutes of your time. I can confirm I have completed the necessary data security training and all information you provide today will be stored securely. NHS Test and Trace may need to share your details with other organisations including the Home Office, and further information on data security and privacy can be found on gov.uk/coronavirus. Sharing information in the call today means you consent for it to be stored in the ways I have described. Are you happy to proceed with the call?”
I wish I could say, no, I am not. Once or twice I ask how long the data is going to be stored. The caller is not sure and advises me to find this out from the government website. The call proceeds with them checking my year of birth. Then they ask if I have opted into a ‘test to release’ – I frankly don’t even know it is my option, so I say ‘no’.
I later learn that the Test to Release scheme does not replace the compulsory Day 2 and 8 test. The ten-day quarantine can be shortened to 5 days by ‘opting into’ Test to Release for an additional £99. I realise they ask this question to advertise another product!
Can you confirm that you are quarantining at the address you provided on the passenger locator form and will continue to do so for ten days starting on the day after you arrive in the UK.”
So, again, I confirm, yes. What would happen if I said no?
As part of the Covid 19 response you are legally required to take the test on Day 2 and Day 8 and a failure to do so may result in prosecution.”
That answers my previous question…
Has your test arrived? And have you taken or do you intend to take your test?”
Yes.
Then I am asked if I got my test from the NHS or from a private provider. I am confused as I had no option to get an NHS test and I tell the caller. They seem happy with my answer and continue:
If your Day 2 test is positive confirming Covid 19, you do not need to take another test on Day 8.”
I think, on one occasion, I ask how I am expected to post the test if I am not allowed to leave the house. Of course, the assumption is there is someone else in the house, and if I still have difficulties, again, the go-to place is another NHS number. Amazing what they can do these days; they can even pick up your mail for you!
The call continues:
If you develop any of the three coronavirus symptoms which are: a new continuous cough, a high temperature, or a loss or change to your sense of taste or smell, please visit gov.uk/coronavirus for further advice. You should not go to the GP, hospital or a pharmacy. If you require medical advice, please ring the NHS on 111 or in an emergency dial 999”.
So here we have the admission of medical malpractice: if I fall ill, I must not seek help from NHS, not even by going to my local pharmacy. I must stay home without help, except of course, if I qualify for 999 ie, a ventilator…
The call continues:
I must advise you that if you test positive for coronavirus or are identified as a close contact of someone who has coronavirus you will be notified by NHS Test and Trace and may be contacted again. Is there anything you would like me to repeat?”
Of course, if someone I sat next to on the (half-empty) plane gets a positive result, my quarantine will stretch to a fortnight or longer! Each time, the call ends with a friendly, youthful, ‘have a great day’. All those who have called me are young voices, all kinds of accents, probably desperate for any job in the current climate. They are trained to stick to the script and any departure from it by my questions seems to trip them up.
And most of them probably think they are doing something socially useful and valuable.
THE QUARANTINE DIY TESTS
The one I have purchased in haste at the airport is a kit with two PCR tests to be administered at home on Day 2 and Day 8. The instructions tell me that the test is run at less than a 30-cycle value threshold.
The first thing to say about the swab is that it is long. It looks like a cotton bud used for everyday use, but on closer inspection it is different. The stick itself is about 12 cm long, that’s 6”, and designed to break off after the sample is collected and put into a small tube provided. The tip itself is 2 cm long, quite thin and covered in almost translucent spiky bristles protruding outwards. It looks a bit like a miniature harsh brush designed to scratch the delicate tissue inside the mouth and nose.
I am told to swab the back of the throat for 3-5 seconds over the posterior pharynx and tonsillar areas but to avoid tongue, teeth and the sides of the mouth. Then I am told to insert the same swab to each nostril about 2 cm deep and to rotate it for 3-5 seconds each time.
The form which I have to complete for each test is yet another mandated opportunity for the corpo-government to harvest my personal data, to store it for as long as it sees fit, yet, as is often the case in abusive relationships I have to (I repeat:) I have to give my consent for all this to happen, and even consent for my possible positive test result which may include my personal details: name, date of birth, gender, home address, telephone number, occupation, place of work, ethnicity and the fact that I have tested positive for Covid 19 to be communicated to Public Health England. Luckily, both of my test results are negative.
Eleven days after arrival in the UK my quarantine is officially over. It takes me a couple of days before I venture outside, I detect a bit of agoraphobia. In the last six weeks I spent twenty days in house arrest. They say it takes six weeks to develop a new habit.
POSTSCRIPTUM
I doubt very much I will travel internationally any time soon. Not planning to take the experimental Covid jab and so will not be enjoying the privilege of freedom promised to those with the vaccine passport. At the time of writing, it is no longer illegal to leave England but the elaborate hoops and the red tape remain and the government website reminds us that“to protect public health in the UK and the vaccine rollout, you should not travel to countries or territories on the red or amber lists”.
The ‘red and amber’ lists cover most countries of the world and returning from an amber list country will involve three or four tests which could come to £240-£340 per person plus the time spent completing all the online forms.
As to the red list countries; even a short spell there ends in an expensive £1750 per person prison-like stay at an airport hotel, as can be seen here.
So whilst not forbidden, even essential travel has been made into a series of expensive, degrading and time-consuming obstacles. Vaccine passports are being rolled out precisely to convince people they will magically bring freedom back to their lives. Do they not realise, that once they have their passports, the vaccine will need regular boosters?
Those still asleep; trusting the governments and the mainstream media think that easy travel is only temporarily put on hold but once the pandemic is ‘under control’, things will get back to the way they used to be. They do not realise the plan is to make travel an exclusive and rare event beyond reach of ordinary people.
This is done to us not just by the predatory elite class. Disappointingly, the pro-lockdown left continues to cheer these restrictions on and dismiss people’s desire and need to travel, as undeserved indulgence or middle-class privilege (interestingly, unrestricted travel around Europe was, until so recently, one of the main reasons for their fierce anti-Brexit position. What happened to their cherished principle of freedom of movement?). They could not be further from the truth.
They forget that, according to official migration data for the end of 2019, the UK is home to 6.2 million people – that is 9% of the total population – who have the nationality of a different country! And that data does not even include naturalised UK citizens like me, first-generation settled migrants who have close relatives all over the world and that unrestricted travel is an essential means to family life, something which is protected by Human Rights Act 1998.
The irony for those like myself, who grew up in communist Eastern Europe, is that freedom of movement, so taken for granted in the West, the right to travel and to have your own passport at home at all times is what we did not have then. The state set limits on where ‘citizens’, treated like its property, could travel.
For many who experienced those times, even as children, a return to state-mandated travel restrictions will feel like going back into tyranny.
As for my own journey: I will never forgive those responsible and all those lockdown fanatics for stealing my Dad’s, and so many other elderly people’s, last year by locking them up in the prison of fear and isolation, and then for pushing them to take the dangerous experimental jab which – for so many – was the last straw in their already weakened bodies.
Vanessa Beeley discusses Syrian Presidential elections with Franc Analysis
My interview with Franc Analysis on the Syrian elections - we discuss how some journalists claiming to be "anti-imperialist" still maintain CIA/MI6 talking points on Syria without important context and we cover the sanctions, the regional Resistance and more.
Economic sanctions are becoming an increasingly popular foreign policy instrument in Western countries, deployed alone or in conjunction with military and/or diplomatic interventions to achieve strategic political and policy goals, such as ostensibly protecting individuals and states from the behaviour of wrongdoers. Because economic sanctions are considered less violent than direct military assault, they are often supported by many on the left and the peace movement, who reluctantly accept the policy as a necessary evil.
This panel, part of a broader series on sanctions, will focus on their public health effects, through an analysis of five case studies: Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria and Iran. All but one of these countries are currently under sanctions by both Canada and the United States.
Speakers
Sara Kendall is a medical doctor trained in Havana, Cuba. Sara is a community organizer, arts and social justice education facilitator and professional paramedic from Vancouver, Canada. Over the past two decades Sara has been committed to international solidarity work collaborating with and supporting Latin American community struggles, particularly in the resistance to neoliberal free-trade agreements, support for migrant people, and the defense of land and life against Canadian mining corporations. This work, along with a profound respect for the Cuban medical project and her own dedication to integrated and universal healthcare led Sara to full-time study and work within the public health system in Havana, Cuba from 2014 – 2020.
Cira Pascual Marquina is a Political Science professor at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela in Caracas and a writer and editor for VenezuelAnalysis. She is also co‐producer and co‐host (with Chris Gilbert) of the Marxist education program Escuela de Cuadros, broadcast weekly on the Venezuelan television station ViVe and on the Alba TV dial, a social movements channel. Cira writes for outlets such as Rebelión, LaHaine, and CounterPunch, is author (with Chris Gilbert) of Venezuela: The Present as Struggle (2020, Monthly Review Press), and co‐compiler of two books: Para qué sirve El Capital: Un balance contemporáneo de la obra principal de Karl Marx and ¿Por qué socialismo? Reactivando un debate (both Editorial Trinchera).
John Perry lives and works in Masaya, Nicaragua, where he has been based since 2003. Originally from the UK, John works with a local NGO that promotes sustainable farming methods in the Masaya region, helping to build solar lighting schemes for families in isolated rural areas. John is also an independent journalist and reports on Nicaragua. He has published in The Nation, the London Review of Books, Counterpunch, The Council for Hemispheric Affairs, The Grayzone and NicaNotes, among others.
Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist and photographer who has worked extensively in the Middle East - on the ground in Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Palestine, while also covering Yemen since 2015. Currently based in Damascus, Syria, Vanessa holds several awards in journalism - in 2017 as finalist for the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, in 2018 as one of the most respected journalists in the UK by the British National Council for the Training of Journalists, and in 2019, as recipient of the Serena Shim Award for uncompromised integrity in journalism. Vanessa contributes regularly to Mint Press News, RT, The Last American Vagabond, and other independent media outlets.
Seyyed Mohammad Marandi is an Iranian American academic and political analyst, Professor of English Literature, Orientalism and American Studies at the University of Tehran in Iran. Prof. Marandi has published widely on topics of his expertise and appeared regularly as a political and social commentator on international news networks such as PBS, RT, ABC, CGTN, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and Press TV.
Moderator
Claudia Chaufan is a retired physician and practicing sociologist, with a medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires and doctorate in Sociology from the University of California. She is Associate Professor of Health Policy and Graduate Program Director at York University in Canada and has a long career of national and international teaching, writing and activism.
The International Manifesto Group began discussing the evolving political and geopolitical economy of the world order and its national and regional components at the beginning of the pandemic. It has members around the world, from North America to Japan. It meets fortnightly. Parts of its meeting, consisting of Panels and Presentations are public and we publish them here.
***
Talk by Vanessa Beeley - on Syria
Sanctions are designed to kill Syrians and to kill hope, post war.
Sanctions are very often described, by those enforcing them, as “non-lethal” measures. I would argue that sanctions, when used as a brutal and vindictive component of a neo-colonialist hybrid war strategy, are arguably more devastating than a military war. When they are imposed by global super-force nations against target nations like Syria, in conjunction with a proxy war that has been fomented and sustained by the same nations, it becomes as much a weapon of mass destruction as the terrorist/mercenary armies these US aligned nations have unleashed upon the Syrian people. Thus it is almost impossible to speak about the economic sanctions against Syria in isolation and without referring to the parallel measures that ensure they hit the poorest people in Syria the hardest.
I would argue that the effects of the US/UK/EU Turkish and Arab League sanctions are equivalent to the campaign of infrastructure destruction carried out by the illegal armed groups funded and armed by the US regime change coalition and promoted by their aligned media outlets. Terrorism can be defined by the “unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property in order to coerce or intimidate a government or the civilian population into furtherance of political or ideological objectives”.
The act of withholding means of sustaining life to innocent civilians in order to coerce an entire nation into submission to foreign agendas in the region must surely qualify as economic terrorism. The destruction of essential civilian infrastructure is a war crime, the withholding of essential resources or occupation of those resources is also a war crime. One could argue that the US Coalition is responsible for genocide in Syria under Genocide Convention article II (e) - deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
The correlation between economic and military coercion was made clear by previous Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s point-man on Syria, Ambassador James Jeffrey, who not only described Al Qaeda as a “US asset” in Syria but also bragged openly about the misery that sanctions had brought to the Syrian people:
And of course, we’ve ratcheted up the isolation and sanctions pressure on Assad, we’ve held the line on no reconstruction assistance, and the country’s desperate for it. You see what’s happened to the Syrian pound, you see what’s happened to the entire economy. So, it’s been a very effective strategy….
There are a number of sectors of Syrian society that are being targeted by sanctions and simultaneously by US occupation and proxy terrorism which ensure that quality of life for Syrian civilians is severely reduced and their human rights are being gravely violated:
The fuel/oil sector
Production had been affected by the sanctions applied in 2011/12. The effect of curtailing of import and export of petrol between 2011 and 2014 is estimated to be a 21 billion dollars loss for Syria. When ISIS occupied the Syrian oil-rich region of north-east Syria they were banking around $ 3million per day in stolen revenue. The Kurdish separatist US contras are now benefiting from the sale of Syrian resources on the back of the US occupation of the north-east oil fields. The US, itself is stealing Syrian oil via Delta Crescent Energy oil company, established under the Trump administration. Other beneficiaries include Al Qaeda who also set up an oil refinery monopoly, going by the name of WATAD, that receives stolen oil and then trades it in Turkey. Effectively, the US or their proxies seized Syrian oil fields early on in the conflict, this has provided revenue for the various contra forces under their control (including ISIS) enabling them to further steal resources, ethnically cleanse areas of Syria and destroy infrastructure while increasing sanctions and imposing a brutal blockade on the Syrian people, the majority of whom live in areas under the protection of the Syrian government.
Industrial sector
A huge number of factories have been forced out of existence by incremental sanctions and production has been reduced in those that survived. The cause is lack of fuel, electricity, parts for machinery (the majority came from the EU). A report from the Aleppo Chamber of Commerce in 2015 detailed total closure of 26,000 factories, partial closure of 17,000 and suspended production in 50,000 factories. At the same time, armed groups, including Nusra Front and ISIS invaded the industrial areas of Aleppo and dismantled thousands of factories, destroyed power grids, railways etc and to provide trade revenue in Turkey - many factories were re-established inside Turkey. In October 2015, the US Coalition bombed the Aleppo thermal power station, then under control of ISIS - ensuring total black-out in Aleppo and the surrounding countryside.
Agriculture sector
The agriculture sector has been affected by the rising costs of fuel, lack of machinery parts thanks to the sanctions. Some of the most abundant olive and cotton growing areas have been occupied by the armed groups who, again, benefit from the illegal trade of Syrian food crops via Turkey and Iraq. Vast swathes of Syrian forestry and wheat crops were deliberately burned in 2020. The US Coalition dropped thermal balloons into wheat crops in the north-east, Kurdish contras took control of wheat storage facilities and restricted supply to Damascus, to the Syrian people. Bread queues became a familiar scene throughout Syria and prices of food went through the roof. Syria is being driven into dangerous food insecurity by a combination of military and economic force, both backed by the same criminal US/UK-led alliance.
Health sector
While the claim is made that the “humanitarian sector” is exempt from sanctions, this is misleading. Almost 50% of Syrian hospitals have been destroyed during the war against this country, many were occupied by terrorist groups and converted into military centers, Sharia courts, detention and torture centers - for example the Eye and Childrens Hospital in east Aleppo which was finally liberated by the Syrian Arab Army and allies in December 2016. An estimated 20 Pharmaceutical factories were also destroyed or occupied during the terrorist invasions. Syria had a fleet of 703 ambulances in 2011, 350 have been destroyed or stolen by the armed groups or their western-backed auxiliary, the White Helmets. The remaining hospitals and equipment are suffering from lack of updated technology, parts and maintenance because the majority of the hardware was supplied originally by the EU.
This has led to the scarcity of drugs for chronic illnesses like Cancer, heart disease, kidney disease. The health sector, offering free healthcare for everyone inside Syria, has always been a source of pride for the Syrian state - now 41 public hospitals and 621 medical centers are out of commission. There are restrictions on the import of chlorine gas used as a water purifier which has resulted in the spread of infectious diseases due to the pollution of drinking water. At the same time, NATO-member-state Turkey, is deliberately depriving Syrian people of water in the Hasaka region, north-east Syria. The sanctions are again only one element of a war of hydro hegemony waged by the US Coalition against the Syrian people - a war that impacts upon the health sector with devastating consequences.
The most recent and savage Caesar Act sanctions introduced under Trump are preventing the rebuilding of hospitals and repair of essential machinery. The closure of many of the rural hospitals is leading to inevitable overcrowding of city hospitals resulting in delays in treatment and the spread of disease. Sanctions on the health sector are a deliberate and criminal targeting of the Syrian people by the US Coalition. This violates all human rights conventions and must be condemned.
Electricity and transport sectors
The electricity sectors in Syria have been devastated by a combination of war and sanctions. There has been a drastic lowering of output which is affected by the lack of fuel thanks to the occupation of oil-resources and inability to source spare parts. Damages in 2015, due to electricity outages, were estimated at 16 billion dollars, now in 2021 that figure will be hugely increased.
Armed groups, dominated by Nusra Front, have systematically destroyed electrical power stations, fuel warehouses, gas and oil pipelines and stolen entire power grids to trade inside Turkey. Entire railway lines have been torn up and melted down inside Turkey or sold as scrap. The Syrian transport system is affected by lack of fuel, spare parts and destruction of essential infrastructure. All of these have a debilitating knock-on effect on Syrian society and how it functions.
Education sectors and tourism sectors in Syria are also being undermined by sanctions and an inability to rebuild and restart after the effects of war.
Overall effects of economic terrorism on the Syrian people
There have been huge price hikes in food across Syria, around 300% increases in some instances. Fuel prices have gone through the roof, inflation is only just under control. This is engendering food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty among 80% of the population. Wages have remained static so an average government employee is earning SYP 50,000 per month ( $ 16 dollars at today’s rate) while, for example, 2kg of chicken is now SYP 20,000. In the winter many areas of Damascus were receiving electricity for only 3 hours per day, in rural areas even less. The cost of heating fuel and gas for cooking is now extortionate - for one gas bottle on the black market, between 30-40,000 while there are long waits for subsidised government supplied gas.
There is a shortage of fuel which has led to queues of up to 2 days to receive 20 litres of fuel. Lebanon is also now out of fuel, having been one of the main suppliers of black market fuel to Syria. Unemployment is rising exponentially. Apartment rental costs have soared, while the building of new projects are on hold due to lack of materials, equipment and investment. Families are being torn apart because young people are risking the dangers of illegal travel routes to the EU and beyond to try to earn money to send back to their impoverished relatives in Syria. The sanctions are suffocating Syria and they are being used to deliberately increase the suffering of the Syrian people who have resisted ten years of war waged against them by the US/UK Coalition that is ensuring their inability to rise out of the quagmire of war.
The US Coalition is effectively following a policy of collective extermination of the Syrian people by military and economic means. This is a crime against Humanity, a war crime and a flagrant violation of the right to life and a life of dignity. Syria is a member of the United Nations, these coercive unilateral measures targeting the people of Syria are a violation of the UN Charter.
Under the most recent and barbaric Caesar sanctions, considered by many experts to be illegal, greater pressure is being brought to bear against nations who would try to help Syria rebuild. At the same time, the US, UK, EU, Turkey and Israel continue to support and promote terrorism in Syria and enable their proxies to pillage and plunder Syrian resources, further punishing the Syrian people. The sanctions against Syria are a malevolent attempt to bring the country to its knees after one of the most protracted and expensive UK/US led regime change wars has failed militarily. The sanctions are not affecting the alleged targets, they are killing the Syrian people and they are killing hope - we must campaign against them to restore peace and stability to Syria and to the region.
On the 27th May 2021, Syria changed history. President Bashar Al Assad was re-elected with an overwhelming majority that even outshone his popularity in the 2014 elections.
This was about Syrians sending a message to the West. A message that defied ten years of externally orchestrated war, US/UK/EU economic barbarism and an unprecedented colonial media war that has been fought from the upper echelons of the BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Channel 4 etc, yet has failed, dismally, to suppress or deny the Syrian people’s support for their President.
A young girl held aloft in Arbin, Eastern Ghouta, formerly under control of western-backed extremist armed groups. Liberated in 2018. Photo: Vanessa Beeley
These elections were never just about the re-election of President Assad. These elections were about Syria and the Syrian people. A sovereign nation that has resisted one of the most punishing hybrid wars ever witnessed in our time. Literally every weapon in the globalist war manuals has been thrown at these resilient people. I have seen their exhaustion, their poverty, their misery first hand for many years now but last night everything was thrown aside in their defiant determination to show the West that they are unbowed, unbeaten by these sadistic tactics.
Umayyed Square, Damascus
The Syrian people came together, from all sects, from all walks of life and they partied, they danced on the remnants of Western credibility and they declared the West irrelevant.
Let us not forget that in 2012, war-hawk Hillary Clinton told the world that “Assad’s days are numbered”, Clinton also advocated a No Fly Zone in Syria in 2015, whilst admitting that such measures would bring about greater bloodshed and “would kill a lot of Syrians”. The “Assad must go” mantra is now trampled under foot by the Syrian people. World leaders who participated in the dirty war against Syria have fallen by the wayside while Assad remains, perhaps more popular than ever before.
One former Guardian journalist with integrity, Jonathan Steele, wrote in 2012:
Most Syrians back President Assad but you’d never know from Western media”
Charlie Skelton is another Guardian journalist who maintained the journalistic principles that have since been sacrificed at the altar of regime change narratives, wrote in 2012 [emphasis added]:
They’re [US/UK regimes] selling the idea of military intervention and regime change, and the mainstream news is hungry to buy. Many of the “activists” and spokespeople representing the Syrian opposition are closely (and in many cases financially) interlinked with the US and London – the very people who would be doing the intervening. Which means information and statistics from these sources isn’t necessarily pure news – it’s a sales pitch, a PR campaign. […] But it’s never too late to ask questions, to scrutinise sources. Asking questions doesn’t make you a cheerleader for Assad – that’s a false argument. It just makes you less susceptible to spin. The good news is, there’s a sceptic born every minute.”
In 2016, acclaimed journalist, John Rosenthal, gave a scathing portrayal of the universal censorship applied to any contradiction of the overarching “regime change” narratives. “The world has played with fire in Syria” he told Brics Post and he also said:
Once Washington and its European allies had established the terms of the politically “correct” narrative of the Syrian crisis, facts that failed to jibe with that narrative were unwanted and anyone who tried to report them was inevitably attacked as “pro-Assad”.”
Rosenthal describes the “stifling of debate and the homogenization of the media as regards hot-button foreign policy issues” that came to the fore under Obama’s administration, as unprecedented regarding Syria when compared to Iraq or Libya where journalistic integrity came under less attack. Rosenthal explains it thus:
I suppose it is because the Syrian “playbook”, so to speak, so closely resembled the Libyan one that the screws had to be turned even tighter.”
The West will argue that Assad winning a landslide victory, 13,540,860 votes or 95.1% is a “rigged election” because that is the only come-back they have left, aside from their rebranding of a former Al Qaeda operative as viable opposition to the Syrian presidency that has maintained stability in a country torn apart by Western regimes and their proxy mercenary forces. The number of eligible voters was 18 million, turn-out was an estimated 78%.
THE CORPORATE MEDIA SPIN
The Guardian “Middle East correspondent”, Bethan McKernan, predictably spins the inevitable result as “civil war, raging poverty, but Assad is guaranteed to win Syria’s fake election”.
Of course, McKernan is not in Syria. Very few of the globalist media cartel have set foot inside Syria during the ten year onslaught against the Syrian people – unless they have entered illegally into areas controlled by the armed groups and been escorted by Nusra Front or affiliates as they produce their misinformation barrage designed to manufacture consent for another endless quagmire of criminally unnecessary war.
McKernan’s bitterness reflects the mood in the globalist camp:
Seven years later, after the regime’s Russian and Iranian allies intervened and turned the tide of the war, most of Syria is now back under Assad’s grip. On Wednesday, his citizens will return to the polling booths for a sham democratic display designed to give the president a veneer of legitimacy both at home and abroad.”
Syria and her allies have beaten back the regime change movement on every front and on Wednesday the Syrian people demonstrated the self-determination that the West would steal from them by force. The “sham democracy” resides in the West where the same corrupted media led a campaign to smear and discredit Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, perhaps the last hope for an anti-war party in a country overrun by craven attack-dog Blairites and Conservative neocolonialism.
We don’t have a genuine two party system in the UK, we have an undeclared coalition of Zionist-influenced carpet baggers intent on waging an obscene hybrid war against their own people while plundering global resources from nations weakened by their military adventurism and economic savagery.
Look closer to home Ms McKernan and do your own people a service of providing real journalism, instead of joining the throngs of misinformationists that have de facto killed the Syrian people with their misrepresentation of facts on the ground for ten bloody years.
If McKernan had spent time in Syria, she would know that people on the streets liberally criticise government measures without retribution as she claims in her Imperialist-narrative-protectionist article. I have regularly published interviews where Syrian people complain about electricity, water, bread, inflation, the rising cost of food – but invariably those interviews end with “God bless the President”.
As many Syrians will tell me, their lives are unendurably difficult but the President is a red line they don’t cross however tough their predicament. Their faith in the ability of the President to resolve their daily difficulties is still intact and every Syrian will tell you that it is the US alliance that is responsible for their hardship and poverty and that sanctions are impeding the Syrian reconstruction and return to the stability and security they enjoyed prior to 2011.
Of course, McKernan does not highlight the injustice of sanctions or the UK/US role in the “civil war” and “raging poverty” – she toes the establishment line and sells the narrative that enables the misery she ostensibly condemns. This is not journalism, this is criminal confirmation of bias.
McKernan talks about areas of Syria where the Syrian government “grip is more tenuous”, what she fails to explain to The Guardian readership is that areas of the north-west and north-east are still under the occupation of US/UK allied proxies which include Al Qaeda, ISIS and the Syrian Democratic Forces or YPG Kurdish contras.
The Kurdish forces are dominated by the PKK, formerly declared a terrorist organisation by the US before they were converted into a “useful” ally when Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, launched the partitioning of Syria plan B. Journalists like McKernan and The Guardian have misled the British public throughout the duration of the war against Syria, a war their own regime has been extensively invested in.
Western media must be made as irrelevant as their state’s expansionist and supremacist foreign policies. No UK/US-led neocolonialist war would have ever got off the ground unless the media were on hand to swing public opinion in favour of yet another faux “humanitarian” intervention that is destined to devastate target nations and to reduce sovereign countries to failed states.
THE PERPETUAL WAR MACHINE HAS BEEN STOPPED IN ITS TRACKS
The superior US alliance-supplied military equipment of the ISIS, Al Qaeda-linked armed groups, the vast resources of the Imperialist media machine, the harnessing of UN agencies to further criminalise the Syrian government, the political and diplomatic coercive measures, the economic blockade, the burning of crops, criminal theft and occupation of resources, the attempts to isolate Syria and to demonise the Syrian President – all these measures have failed and the scenes on the streets of every town and city across Syria are evidence of this failure.
People in the West must be asking themselves why their globalist regimes have endless resources, multi-billion budgets, when it comes to waging war against a country that is no threat to “national security” or sustaining a “war against terror” when the terror brand they nominate as the new bogeyman is de facto their proxy on the ground, ethnically cleansing the people of the target nation, in this case Syria.
The US alliance fought this war to allegedly “contain ISIS”, to prevent Iranian expansion of influence in the region thus protecting Israel’s “security”, to weaken the ties between Syria and Russia (a particular grudge of the British), to derail China’s Silk Road initiative which had Syria at its center, to destroy Hezbollah and the Resistance against the Zionist savage settler-occupation and terrorism throughout the Middle East and to impose a medieval Islamist regime upon the Syrian people that would serve US/UK interests while catapulting a progressive nation back into the dark ages of religious intolerance and sectarianism.
Every single element of their destructive policy has failed and ISIS is expanding under the protectionism of the US occupation forces exposing the fallacy of any need for their military footprint in Syria and Iraq.
Iran is expanding its influence because it is arming and aiding the military organisations that are fighting the US-spawned terrorism branded as ISIS. Russia’s ties with Syria are stronger than ever before and Syria is home to a developing Russian military outpost that challenges US hegemony in the region. China is building strong trade links with Syria and its neighbours that will edge the US out of any post-war reconstruction contracts, denying the US Coalition its customary exploitation of the wars it started in countries it destroyed.
Hezbollah is stronger and more militarily prepared than ever before in history. The Palestinian Resistance is united and empowered by Iranian and Syrian military hardware and support. The Zionist entity is hemorrhaging citizens and credibility after its “super power” facade was destroyed by the Resistance in Gaza and the Occupied territories. The US Coalition Middle East project is disintegrating and Syria is rising from the ashes of this implosion with its sovereignty a beacon for the future and for the people who refused to be divided to the point of no return.
This is only the beginning of the end of Imperialism in the Middle East. We are living through historic times and Syria is leading the way.
UNIFICATION OF SYRIAN PEOPLE BEHIND THEIR SECULAR GOVERNMENT IS THE TURNING POINT
Leading up to the elections, I visited areas previously under the control of the Western-sponsored armed groups, led, in many instances, by Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria.
In these areas I saw the same outpouring of support for the President as I saw in what are always described as “loyalist enclaves” by the colonial media outlets.
The Syrian government Amnesty and Reconciliation campaigns have been largely successful in the regions I visited to the north of Damascus City. Reintegration of Syrians who were persuaded to take up arms against their neighbours has been a controversial move on behalf of a beleaguered government but it has succeeded.
We must ask if any Western regime would follow such policies if their own population turned against them violently and with heavy duty weapons supplied by hostile states.
EU governments tried very hard to prevent diaspora Syrians from voting in the elections. Germany banned voting at the Syrian embassy in an attempt to turn back the tide of support for President Assad. Syrians gathered to protest this violation of their democratic rights – rendering the West’s demands to impose their distorted version of “democracy” in Syria, farcical.
Bashar Al Assad and his wife, Asma, voted in Douma, the town at the center of the “chemical weapons” controversy, in April 2018, that has exposed the corruption at the heavily US/UK-influenced Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that effectively lied in its final report, omitting crucial evidence from former senior inspectors who denied any chemical attack had taken place, in an attempt to retrospectively justify US/UK/FR war crimes – the bombing of Damascus and surrounding countryside before the OPCW inspectors had even started their investigation. The message was clear – the West’s opinion and falsified condemnation has no bearing on Syrian lives.
[Important Twitter thread from Syrian journalist, Kevork Almassian, here.]
Areas of North-East Syria also came out in support of President Assad despite the restrictions imposed upon them by the US Occupation forces and their Kurdish contras. Syrian support for their country and their sovereignty was irrepressible.
"The Syrian Orthodox Archbishop of Al-Hasakah governorate to President Assad: “We say to you: we are all with you, we are all with you”. And then: God, Syria and Bashar."
THE IRRELEVANT WEST LEFT BEHIND BY AN EMERGING RESISTANCE BLOC
In an interview with Afshin Rattansi of RT Going Underground, the Political and Media Advisor to the Presidency, Dr Bouthain Shaaban emphasised the irrelevance of the self-appointed “international community” or, in other words, the Imperialist bloc dominated by the US and the UK.
Dr Shaaban explained that the Western sponsored terrorism and the Zionist aggression were not going to inhibit Syrians practicing their constitutional rights. Countries that were invited to observe the elections were from the non-aligned bloc excluding all those nations who have contributed to the devastation in Syria. This is another message for the western political elite – their power is dwindling and with it, their global influence is in decline.
Diplomacy is dead in the West.
Ambassadors have been reduced to nothing more than talking heads for power, there are no longer any checks and balances from senior diplomats who once held sway over their government policy. These days we see juvenile reactions from gravitas-deficient representatives of UK and US bi-partisan war parties.
We in the West are represented by ambitious careerist popinjays who will run PR campaigns for sadistic regime foreign policy without a second thought for the peoples affected. It is up to us to reverse the trend and to demand that those who lead us to wars we don’t want and who kill people we identify with, in our names, are stopped. Not just this time but for always. We owe it to Syria.
I asked former UK Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain, Peter Ford, for a statement, this is what he wrote:
“The most significant thing is that the elections were held at all. With three foreign armies occupying part of their soil (Turkey, the US and Israel), with the West waging savage economic war on them to turn them against their President, with years of indescribable suffering at the hands of Western-backed militants behind them, the Syrian people delivered a resounding verdict in favour of stability as represented by the holding of elections on schedule.
The high turnout, the participation of Syrians in parts of the diaspora, and the popular rallies all underlined the message of the people to the West: leave us in peace, stop persecuting us.
Let us be honest. There are no circumstances in which these elections could have been held under impartial international supervision. The example of the OPCW whistleblowers is there to teach us that Western-dominated institutions cannot possibly be impartial. No UN observers who valued their careers or the safety of their families could have conceivably testified to the fairness of an election which gave victory to President Assad. This is the real fraud, corruption of faith in the integrity of institutional institutions which have been weaponised by Western powers.
The election has delivered a rebuff to those who thought that occupation and sanctions would make the people rise up against the government. How much longer before Western governments and their media mouthpieces like the BBC realise that their regime change by stealth policy is not going to work?”
The Syrian people have sent a powerful message and we must hear it. Long live truly free Syria.
“How can you thank a man for giving you what’s already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what is yours?”Malcolm X
“Truth has a powerful beautiful presence which resonates with every unpolluted soul” ~ Nahida Izzat
“Having lived in Gaza during the 2012 Israeli bombardment, my opinion is based upon direct experience and witnessing of the Israeli atrocities, brutality, racism, abuse and oppression of the indigenous population upon whose bones and carcasses their illegal state has been founded. We are talking oppressive and hardline brutal occupation lasting over 60 years with no let up on the pressure or process of provocation and crimes against humanity.
Of course there has been a backlash, it is called resistance and is legal under international law.
I was there when Israeli tanks and helicopters came into Gaza and murdered 13 year old Hamid Abu Dagga. His crime, playing football outside his house. Hamid is one child in thousands who are massacred, incarcerated, abused, tortured, maimed and marginalised by their Israeli prison wardens.
While you have such an asymmetric conflict, there can be no peace….and Israel knows this, the International community knows this. Until all military funding is withdrawn from Israel [$8.5m per day from US alone] and her nuclear capability dismantled [I wont even go into the irony of the fearmongering over Iran] there can be no negotiations for peace. The simple fact is, Israel’s policy is genocide, be it slow trickling, one by one murder or their sporadic “mowing of the lawn” that we saw in 2014..their intention is to ethnically cleanse Palestine so that they can appropriate not the 88% they already have but the whole 100% where the existence of the nation they usurped can be forever denied.
So, yes, love is great and is the source of our resistance against any form of hegemony but to imagine that peace and stability can be achieved against such an oppressive occupying [internationally backed] force as Israel without some form of violent and active resistance is delusional and insulting to the Palestinian cause.
Revolution is violent, it is messy, it is terrifying…look at Vietnam and how long they resisted the US brutality and how many lives were lost. We sit in the West and we pontificate about love and peace, we have NO idea of what it is to live under violent occupation and to see our children shot in the head on their way to school, our sisters raped and humiliated in detention, our fathers tortured and abused under interrogation, our mothers crippled by the weight of their suffering, our brothers blown apart by illegal DIME bombs or having their flesh ripped from their bodies by flechette missiles. This is not some antiseptic conflict, this is a hideous daily flaying of an entire people.” ~ Vanessa Beeley
“Resistance is not a choice, its a must,
We were not consulted when the British occupation at that time decided with the terrorist Zionist leaders to occupy Palestine and invent an alien Zionist state on our land. They just stormed our land, massacred, destroyed, forced and tried the maximum they can to end our presence on our own land, to finish the Palestinian existence in Palestine, remember their slogan at that time “Land with no people for people with no land”, they even denied that we existed at the first place to make it easier for them when they kill and destroy to convince the world that the land was empty and had no people to kill, it was a desert according to them and they made it heaven, this is what they said to the West’s mainstream media at that time to confirm over and over again that Palestine was empty and has no people….
But through resistance and resistance only Palestinians have send their very clear message that we are here, we have been always here, and have no other place but here, then the world realized that the Zionist occupation and those supporting them false fake propaganda was a big lie meant to “Justify the illegal seizure, theft, loot of our own Land, properties, history, culture, heritage, and everything connected to our being…So, people of Palestine, never give up, never get tired, never be in despair, never frustrate, never kneel, Resistance is the Answer, and by Resistance and steadfastness only we will Prevail, we will be Free, 2 September 2015.”
Younes Arar, Khalil, Hebron.
“We swear to God that we shall not rest until we restore Arab nationalism to Palestine & Palestine to the Arab nation. There is no room for imperialism & there is no room for Britain in our country, just as there is no room for Israel within the Arab nation.”
Gamal Abdul Nasser speech in Sanaa, Yemen 1964
“There is NO “equality” and “coexistence” between serial killers and their victims
No “equality” and “coexistence” between the raped and the rapist
No “equality” and “coexistence” between the oppressed and their oppressors
No “equality” and “coexistence” between robbers and those whom they robbed
These very beautiful words have been abused in order to protect the future of Jewish “israeli” USURPERS and to enable them to REMAIN on STOLEN land UNPUNISHED while KEEPING the LOOT
Love… Peace… Equality… Coexistence
These seemingly innocent words have been utterly misused in the context of Palestine. Gatekeepers, who are interested in protecting the future of Jewish “israelis” and in ensuring they live in security and prosperity on STOLEN lands, use this word as means of perception management, to create a false paradigm in which the world is duped into thinking that “israelis” have a “right” to stay on a land they utterly looted, destroyed and disfigured. Their aim is to offer and prepare for a cruel “solution” in which mass murderers are protected and absolved from facing prosecution and armed robbers are shielded from GIVING BACK stolen lands and property, and from paying COMPENSATION and from the RESTITUTION of Palestinian land to its RIGHTFUL OWNERS.
Gatekeepers do NOT belong to the Palestinian camp of LIBERATION, they belong to the camp of violent supremacist Jewish invaders.” ~ Nahida Izzat
You may rob me of the last span of my land You may ditch my youth in prison holes Steel what my grandfather left me behind: Some furniture or clothes and jars, You may burn my poems and books You may feed your dog on my flesh You may impose a nightmare of your terror On my village Enemy of light I shall not compromise And to the end I shall fight….
With the passing of the 73rd anniversary of the Nakba, (the establishment of the illegal Zionist state on the land and homes of Palestinians), should we mourn or celebrate? Professor Nurit Peled–Elhanan wrote of her mourning:
“I will mourn on Nakba Day. I will mourn for vanished Palestine most of which I never knew. I will mourn for the holy land that is losing its humanity, its landscape, its beauty and its children on the altar of racism and evil. I will mourn for the Jewish youngsters who invade and desecrate the homes of families in Sheikh Jarrah, throw the inhabitants into the street, and then sing and dance in memory of Baruch Goldstein, the infamous murderer of Palestinian children, while the owners of the desecrated houses with their children and old people are sleeping in the rain, on the street, opposite their own homes. …All these things I will mourn on Nakba Day. I will join the millions of dispossessed, downtrodden and humiliated who have not given up on the future and who still believe there is a chance, who stand as witnesses and as firebrands of the true human spirit.…”
For the last 64 years, Palestinian women, men, elderly, and youth have steadfastly and spiritedly resisted the occupation and the Zionist state. It is a resistance that continues flourishing among Palestinians from all walks of life both inside and outside Palestine, be they farmers, workers, students, poets, or intellectuals.
The criminal Zionist campaign to erase Palestinian history and to whitewash Zionist massacres and the expulsion, imprisonment, and abuse of Palestinians continues 64 years after the Zionist state was founded on the ethnically-cleansed land of Palestine. In spite of the decades that have passed since May 15, 1948, Palestinians have not forgotten the Nakba, nor the 531 Palestinian villages razed and destroyedby Zionists before and after 1948, nor the over 750,000 Palestinians violently expelled from their homes in Palestine. The refugees are future returnees, and as they await justice—the right to return to the homes and land from which they were forcibly expelled—they don’t do so complaisantly.
The shelves of the United Nations Security Council and UN General Assembly are full of resolutions affirming the illegality of the Zionist state’s actions and colonies. Among these resolutions, the right to return is spelled out clearly:
Palestinian Refugees have the right to return to their homes
“Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return…”
“Reaffirms the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in Palestine…to self-determination without external interference” and “to national independence and sovereignty.”
Calls for the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”and “acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”
“Determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”
Palestinians have a long, rich history of struggling for their fundamental and unalienable rights—those rights affirmed by numerous more UN resolutions and human rights enshrined in international law and enjoyed by people around the world. It is a struggle which goes back to the early days of Zionist colonization of Palestine and which thrives in various forms today throughout occupied Palestine and in exile. Palestinian scholar and rights activist Mazin Qumsiyeh recently wrote:
“We have an amazing history of 130 years of struggle against the most well-financed, most-organized, most-supported colonial project in human history.”
As Qumsiyeh alludes, Zionist terrorism extends back decades before the Jewish state was formed on the ruins of Palestinian towns. Palestinian popular resistance against the racist and destructive Zionist project, extends back to the late 1800s when the first Zionist colonists began arriving in Palestine.
The Nakba is imprinted in the minds of 11 million Palestinian women, men and children, passed on from generation to generation along with the keys to their homes in occupied Palestine. Every day in occupied Palestine there are new Nakbas as still more Palestinians are violently displaced from their homes, land, and families or are murdered at the hands of the IOF and Jewish colonists. Badil reports that:
“Internal displacement continues unabated in the OPT today. Thousands have been forcibly displaced in the Jordan Valley as a result of closure, home demolition and eviction orders, and the threat of displacement hangs over those who remain. Similar patterns of forced displacement are found in Israel, where urban development plans for the exclusive benefit of Jewish communities are displacing indigenous Palestinian communities in the Naqab (Negev) and Galilee.”
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine at the hands of Zionist terrorists organizations like the Irgun, the Stern Gang, and the Hagana, began years before 1948 and continues until this day, under the more palatable (to unethical politicians and apologists around the world) pretext of a state “defending” itself.
“Jewish terrorist groups such as Haganah, Irgun and Stern terrorized the Palestinian street, destroyed villages and slaughtered entire Palestinian families. Approximately 50% of all Palestinian villages were destroyed in 1948 and many cities were cleared from their Palestinian population… Israeli forces killed an estimated 13,000 Palestinians and forcibly evicted 737,166 Palestinians from their homes and land.”
Throughout occupied Palestine, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) “defend” the Zionist state by demolishing Palestinian homes, expelling Palestinian residents from homes their families have lived in for generations, escorting armed Jewish colonists as they attack and shoot Palestinians, imposing lock-downs on Palestinian towns, arresting Palestinian men, women, teens and children under false pretexts of “security threats”, violently quelling non-violent demonstrations, firing on Palestinian farmers and fishers in the Gaza Strip, and abusing and torturing Palestinian political prisoners—including hunger-strikers demanding their most basic rights.
The Zionist state “defends” itself by annexing more Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem with its Separation Wall, expanding already massive illegal Jewish colonies in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, periodically waging brutal and criminal bombing campaigns on the imprisoned population of the Gaza Strip, enforcing 35 discriminatory laws against Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship (non-Jews), and refusing to enact UN Resolution 194 which has been reiterated over 130 times.
In one of its more recent criminal acts, the Zionist state “defended” itself when slaughtering over 1450 Palestinians in the 2008-2009 Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, as it “defended” itself when perpetrating similar massacres in Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 and later. It “defended” itself on May 15, 2011 by opening live fire on crowds of Palestinian women, men and youths commemorating Nakba Day, killing 14 civilians and injuring hundreds more.
It again “defended” itself in March 2012 when violently quelling Palestinians’ popular demonstrations on Land Day—killing a youth from Gaza and injuring over 300 throughout occupied Palestine—and two months later in Nakba commemorations. The United Nations reports that “at least 370 Palestinians were injured by Israeli forces in demonstrations” on Nakba Day 2012. In weekly non-violent demonstrations throughout the occupied West Bank against the Zionist Separation Wall, the IOF have killed at least 21 Palestinians (10 of them minors) and have injured hundreds more.
Right of Return:
My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveller” – Mahmoud Darwish
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, among other things, that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Yet the Zionist regime does not allow Palestinians violently expelled from their homes and land to return, although this was conditional for Israel’s entry into the United Nations. An inalienable and non-negotiable right, the right for Palestinian refugees to return cannot be sold by anyone, be they Zionist or compromised Palestinian representatives.
The Zionist state passed a Jewish-specific law on coming to occupied Palestine. Badil notes: “In 1950, Israel enacted the Law of Return, granting any Jew anywhere the right to citizenship as a Jewish national in Israel and (since 1967) also in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) while the 1952 Citizenship Law denationalised the Palestinian refugees.”
Al Awda, the Return:
Little known nowadays, Palestinians in the 1980s attempted to use creative non-violent resistance against the Zionists’ banning of Palestinians’ right to return. And while Cyprus and freedom boats would come into the spotlight in 2008 and later years, the initial concept of sailing from Cyprus dates back to early 1988. PLO officials and activists Marwan Kayyali, Mohammed Tamimi, and Mohammed Buheis organized the first of what would two decades later be a stream of boats sailing to Palestine. Purchasing a Greek ferry, the Sol Phryne, the team re-named it al-Awda and readied it to carry over 130 Palestinians, along with an anticipated several hundred journalists and observers, to Haifa port.
The boat never left Cyprus. In February, 1988 a bomb was planted on the boat, and shortly after on February 15, Kayyali, Tamimi and Buheis were assassinated when a remote-controlled bomb was detonated in their car. All fingers pointed to “Israel”—which had publicly stated that the boat would never be allowed near Haifa—and its Mossad (Secret Services), but as with uncountable assassinations by “Israeli” agents, “Israel” got away with murder!
The Intifada:
In 1976, the Zionist state announced plans to expropriate still more Palestinian land—thousands of acres—for “security and settlement purposes.” On March 30, Palestinians responded by holding a general strike, and organized marches throughout occupied Palestine. Not surprisingly, the IOF was heavy-handed in their quashing of the demonstrations and killed six Palestinians in the process, injuring hundreds more. Land Day, as it came to be known, is commemorated yearly, with more reasons yearly to protest continuing Zionist land-grabs.
The First Intifada (uprising) broke out throughout occupied Palestine in December 1987, lasting until 1993, with popular demonstrations, strikes, civil disobedience and other manifestations of unified non-violent resistance to the Zionist occupation. The IOF killed over 1000 Palestinians during the years of the Intifada and employed a criminal bone-breaking campaign on Palestinian protesters and other civilians.
On September 28, 2000, when war criminal Ariel Sharon—accompanied by1000 troops and paramilitary police, and scores of Jewish colonists—entered the al-Haram al-Sharif complex, one of Islam’s holiest sites and in which Al Aqsa Mosque is housed, hundreds of Palestinians revolted, starting off the Second Intifada. Like the First Intifada, the collective uprising against the Zionist occupation spread throughout occupied Palestine. It lasted until 2005, with Palestinians subjected to more Zionist crimes and brutality, including massive IOF invasions into Palestinian towns and cities and the bulldozing of thousands of homes throughout occupied Palestine. Well over 5500 Palestinians were killed in the Second Intifada. Yet, Palestinians’ uprising has not stopped, as the Zionist occupation continues.
In August 2008, after planning and mobilizing for two years, the Free Gaza movement completed what Marwan Kayyali and others had been trying to do before they were assassinated: Free Gaza sailed tworickety fishing boats filled with international solidarity activists, journalists, and Palestinians from Cyprus to Gaza, Palestine. Four more successful missions carried Free Gaza activists, including Palestinians, to and from the Gaza Strip. On the next three attempts, Israeli gunboats rammed a Free Gaza boat three times, nearly sinking it, and forcibly boarded the other two Free Gaza boats, abducting and deporting all on board.
New initiatives sprang forth from Free Gaza’s example, including boats from Malaysia, Libya, Canada, Ireland, Turkey, and a boat of Jewish activists. All of these were prevented by the IOF from reaching Gaza, Palestine. In another brazen display of ruthlessness, Israeli commandos assassinated nine Turkish civilians participating in the Freedom Flotilla in May 2010. Air-dropped onto the Turkish Mavi Marmara, the Israeli commandos descended firing machine guns and proceeded to hunt down passengers, shooting many “point-blank assassination style,” as Kevin Neish, a Canadian participant, described.
The return movement inspired by Kayyali has not been limited to sea travel. Since early 2009, land convoys from Africa, Europe, and around the world have proceeded to Gaza via the Egyptian Rafah crossing, bringing supplies of humanitarian aid vitally needed in Gaza, but more importantly challenging the illegal Israeli-enforced complete closure of Gaza’s borders to people, goods and exports.
Palestinians, later supported by international activists, launched the growing BDS (Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign, the Gaza Freedom March, the Global March to Jerusalem, and organized theWelcome to Palestine campaign which saw people from around the world fly to Tel Aviv with the intent of visiting Palestine. Zionist security prevented the vast majority from entering Palestine, going as far as to send “no-fly” lists to airports around the world.
Final Comments:
For the last 64 years, Zionists in Palestine have been killing Palestinians, destroying homes, uprooting ancient olive trees, burning, poisoning, and destroying farm land, stealing water, imprisoning Palestinian men and women, girls and boys, and breaking their bones. They have been strangling the 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza, denying them rights to employment, agriculture, fishing, clean water, electricity, travel, education, and adequate medical care.
The massacres, from Deir Yassin to Gaza, are permanent witness to the Zionists crimes. However, the Palestinian spirits will never be broken, and with every new Palestinian infant inside occupied Palestine or in the diaspora, a new generation is born with as great determination to resist as their parents and grandparents. They memorize the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, Samih Al Qassem and many others as they memorize the names of every Palestinian town, hill and valley. They will return.
What is happening in Palestine and the region? - Vanessa Beeley interview with Gordon Dimmack
My interview last night with Gordon Dimmack, covering events in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian territories - the tide is turning against the Zionist entity.
A few important citations that I mentioned and others that are relevant:
Background to the Sheikh Jarrah communities, being ethnically cleansed by Israel:
"In the aftermath of the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians known as “Nakba”, around 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes to neighbouring countries. Following these events,28 families (today they are 38) families settled in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem in 1956. They reached an agreement with the Jordanian Ministry of Construction and Development and the UN refugee agency UNRWA to provide housing for them in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. At that time, the West Bank was under Jordanian rule (1951-1967).
The Jordanian government provided the land while UNRWA covered the cost of constructing 28 homes for these families. It was agreed that the residents pay a symbolic fee, provided that ownership was transferred to the residents more than three years from the completion of construction.”
This, however, was interrupted by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, in 1967, which prevented the registration of the houses under the names of families.
This month, Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said it had provided the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with 14 ratified agreements meant for the people of the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, which support their claim of their lands and property.
In a statement, the Ministry said it handed over a certificate to the residents proving that the Jordanian Ministry of Construction and Development had agreed with UNRWA to establish 28 housing units in Sheikh Jarrah to be delegated and registered in the names of these families. The process, however, was interrupted as a result of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967. The Ministry had previously provided the Palestinian side with all the documents that could help Jerusalemites maintain their full rights, including lease contracts, lists of beneficiaries’ names, and a copy of the agreement concluded with UNRWA in 1954.
In 1972, the Sephardic Committee and the Knesset Committee of Israel claimed that they owned the land on which the houses were built in 1885, and asked the court to evict four families from their homes in the neighbourhood, accusing them of land grab.
In 1982, the Israeli settlement associations filed an eviction case against 24 families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and 17 families assigned Israeli lawyer Tosia Cohen to defend them. The lawyer in 1991 signed an agreement, without the knowledge of the families, that the ownership of the land belonged to the settlement associations. The lawyer put Palestinian families under the threat of eviction if they failed to pay the rent to the settlement associations.
In 1997, Suleiman Darwish Hijazi, a resident, filed a lawsuit with the Israeli Central Court to prove his land ownership, using title deeds issued by the Ottoman Empire, brought from Turkey. The move, however, backfired when the court rejected the claim in 2005.
The court said the papers did not prove his land ownership, and Hijazi’s appeal in the following year was rejected. In November 2008, the al-Kurd family was evicted from their home, followed by the eviction of the Hanoun and al-Ghawi families in August 2009.
So far, 12 Palestinian families in the neighbourhood have received eviction orders issued by the Israeli central and magistrates courts. Four Palestinian families filed a petition with the Supreme Court, Israel’s highest judicial body, against a decision to expel them from their homes. The Israeli Central Court in East Jerusalem approved a decision earlier this year to evict four Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in favour of right-wing Israeli settlers.
In 1948, al-Sabbagh’s family fled their home in Jaffa, which Israelis now inhabit. Al-Sabbagh, a 32-member family, including ten children, is afraid that the court verdict will make him and his family refugees again."
Elijah Magnier
***
No to the ceasefire - written by Sharmine Narwani during the 2014 Zionist aggression against Gaza:
Five days after the latest ceasefire went into effect, Israel announced its biggest land-grab in 30 years, from five Palestinian villages in the West Bank.
On the same day, Israel began its game of unraveling ceasefire “concessions” by insisting on more “process.” A key ceasefire deal term was to allow Palestinians to import building materials to help rebuild the devastation in Gaza. After 50 days of negotiations, Tel Aviv now insists a “bilateral committee” be established to oversee this process, consisting of Israel, the PA and the UN? This post-deal demand, the Israelis know, means that All Things will perpetually be tied up in “discussions.”
Ceasefire? Please.
Israel and its western/Arab allies have a goal. They plan to dismantle the Palestinian Resistance in this last Gaza battlefield. To do that, they will carefully begin to insert their PA partners into all aspects of Gaza’s administration. We will see more initiatives like this after US Secretary of State John Kerry’s upcoming visit to the region. His Saudi and Egyptian partners are on board. Israel will lead this game.
What should Gaza do? It should beef up its existing alliances and continue stockpiling its weapons arsenal. Israel must continue to endure losses, experience pain, and watch its citizens flee the “unpredictability” – take their second passports and leave. There is absolutely no other way forward – none whatsoever.
Palestinians will never have political chips worth a dime in negotiations with a right-wing Israeli administration unless they can affect the “Aliyah” of Jews to Israel.
Ceasefire? A hollow victory indeed.
***
"The Resistance in Gaza is much more prepared and better equipped than you think. Wait."
1. So far, the statements and all the signs from the Biden administration is that #Israel can go it alone in this war. Within the special relationship between Israel and the #US, this means the US will not intervene, neither to openly support mil ops, nor to stop the war.
2. But make no mistake, even when #Israel is on its own, it has plenty of US support, financial aid and weapons transfer, as it happened during the Lebanon 2006 war.
3. #Israel going it alone means the Israeli leadership and the Israeli military own the decisions and own the ops, but #US support is always there...
4. In the current circumstances, providing this kind of laissez-faire support to #Israel, without having the usual channels active because the Biden-Netanyahu relationship is bad, means that the #US is out and Israel is left off the leash, militarily speaking...
5. Add to this situation the current political turmoil in #Israel where four consecutive elections failed to produce a majority to rule, and Israel's fierce opposition to the #US-#Iran renewed talks, and you can bet on a wide array of possibilities of how this war might unfold...
6. In any way, as far as the US administration is concerned, as long as it is Palestinians who are dying in the greater numbers, they don't give a damn... Excuse my cynicism...
7. If this war extends beyond Gaza, no one would be able to stop it. Few years back, the US was on speaking terms with Russia and China. This is no longer the case. And the Biden administration doesn't even have good channels with Netanyahu & Israel right now...
"The Zionists and their Imperialist masters are shell-shocked in a total daze; they can’t reconcile their imagined “Israel has a right to exist”, with the reality that Apartheid is ceasing to exist right before their eyes."
"The Zionist cowards are loosing their mind as they see their end in our eyes. Pogroms in Palestinian towns inside 1948 Palestine, Carpet Bombing Mass Genocide in the Gaza Concentration Camp, Trails of Tears in Jerusalem, and shrinking Reserves/Bantustans in the West Bank."
1. A #thread about what to expect will happen in the next few hours and days in #Palestine/#ApartheidIsrael. The Zionists have deployed the Boarder Guards, actual Army units, and West Bank Colonist militias to suppress the Indigenous uprising inside 1948 cities #alLydd etc.
2. It is expected that the Zionists will attempt to exact a pogrom on these civilians, for daring last night to expel the police & for the first time since 1948 Liberate themselves from Colonial rule. Already thugs attacked a mosque in alLydd and Palestinian stores in Yafa.
3. The pogrom tonight will be followed by Eid alFitr prayers tomorrow; where all Palestinian factions and religious leaders called on all Palestinians to gather at alAqsa Mosque for a unified prayer. Hundreds of thousands of people marching towards Jerusalem.
4. ...will be attacked before they reach the city; prompting even more people to join the march. As they reach the alAqsa Mosque, they will be faced by an army trying to stop them from entering the mosque; leading to repression and resistance at unprecedented scale.
5. The scenes of the pogroms in 1948 cities the night before, and Jerusalem on the Eid, will force the resistance in Gaza to intensify its targeting of Apartheid Israel, and the arrogance of the Zionists will blind them to the consequences and they will commit a massacre in Gaza.
6. The next day is the 73 year anniversary of the Nakbah, the catastrophe of the genocide of the Palestinian people in 1948, and the creation of the Apartheid Beachhead Colony. Thousands will confront the security forces of the Zionist regime across the West Bank and 1948 lands.
7. Having withdrawn all of the Border Guard Units from the WB, along with many army units to suppress the Indigenous population in 48 the night before, the Zionists forces will be stretched thin in the WB, and resistance factions may start an armed uprising to take advantage.
8. Again, because the Zionists have lost the ability to judge the situation under their nose, they will not be able to separate their imaginary self image from reality; and they will commit massacres across the WB and Jerusalem in their attempt to suppress the intifada.
9. Needless to say, during these 2 days, resistance in Gaza would destroy most of essential infrastructure of the Apartheid state and the Zionists would be asking to end the war. The resistance will agree to a cease fire under the minimum condition of complete withdrawal from WB.
10. At this point it will be impossible to predict the situation. Either Apartheid Israel would agree, withdraw from the WB, and sign a cease fire; or decide to carpet bomb Gaza, parts of the WB, and even 48 cities that are still out of control.
11. If the Zionists take the second choice; this would be the moment Palestinian resistance factions would activate the defence pack with the Resistance Axis, and request direct military support. Ballistic/Cruse missiles and drones would start raining on Apartheid Syria at first.
12. ...followed by Iraq, Yemen & if need be from Lebanon & Iran. They would be offered again a cease fire x liberation of the WB; whatever they decide then will either lead to the end of Apartheid Israel, or the prolongment of its life without the WB for a few more years.
"In a troubling trend that continues to be overlooked by international media, the Temple Activist movement that seeks to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and replace it with a Third Temple continues to advance its agenda. The movement’s forward progress is largely thanks to its successful efforts in recent years to rebrand as a “civil rights” movement — securing support from secular and religious Zionists alike — as well as to growing levels of support in Israel’s executive and legislative branches of government.
As was detailed in Part I of this series, the Temple Activist movement is now more mainstream than ever before and its effort to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam, has advanced with great rapidity since the year began and has picked up precipitously in recent weeks. Yet this new face of the Temple Activist movement — one that claims that its quest is to wrest control of the holy site from Jordanian and Palestinian custody in the name of “equal rights” for Israeli Jews — obfuscates the troubling origins of this once-fringe yet now normalized campaign."
"Palestinian resistance movement Hamas military wing, Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Ubaida stressed that operation “al-Quds’ Sword” being fought today is the continuation “of our people’s uprising in al-Quds and al-Aqsa Mosque and in support of the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood, adding that “al-Quds is the center of the struggle, the icon of the battles and the origin of uprisings.” Abu Ubaida emphasized that every price paid is for al-Quds as there is no sense for existence without defending al-Quds and the Aqsa Mosque."
"Abu Ubaida told the Zionist enemy: “The world has witnessed your defeat, while you were bombing civilians and residential towers to exhibit your fire power,” underscoring that “there is neither redlines nor rules of engagement when it comes to defending al-Aqsa and our people.”
"Violent resistance to colonization isn't merely a tactical issue. It's also about becoming whole. It's also about claiming a future. It's also about the dignity of fighting back."
The following is a short five minute paper I presented to the Arab International Forum to lift sanctions against Syria which was held on the 6th May 2021:
Sanctions are killing Syrians
In order to review the sanctions against Syria, we must see these sadistic, punitive measures in greater context. We must review US UK and EU neocolonialist foreign policy which invariably leads to conflict and is based on lies, in order to protect their world order which is the oppression and subjugation of sovereign states that do not comply with their need to control global resources.
On that basis the incremental and illegal sanctions now crippling the Syrian economy in its most fragile stage, post war, are an attempt by the US alliance to prevent Syria winning the hybrid war that has been waged against it for ten years and for decades prior to 2011. The latest batch of sanctions under the pretext of the Caesar Law are again based on falsehoods – the Caesar report, the latest in a long line of manipulated information, commissioned by Qatar who financed terrorism in Syria, to criminalise the Syrian government.
Syria has been the stage upon which a world war is being fought and our global power balance is being re-calibrated as a result – a balance which does not comply with US allied unipolarity. Russia, Iran, China and the non-aligned axis would see a multi-polar world emerge from the ashes of this conflict. Washington clings to the supremacist exceptionalism with which it has dominated the world and any threat to that supremacy must be crushed and destroyed – diplomacy is dead in the West. Politicians, diplomats in the US-aligned sphere have become talking heads for central power policy diktats, there is no anti-war party, there is no “democracy” there is only dictatorship and military aggression either direct or proxy when their demands are not met.
This is the “rules-based international order” that the Biden administration is advocating. It is portrayed as “a shared commitment by all countries to comply with agreed rules”. Of course, what it really means is that Washington will invoke this term when making unilateral demands of or interfering militarily in the affairs of other governments – “The US and aligned nations make the rules, the rest of the world must do as it is ordered or suffer the consequences”
The US has also ensured the erosion and corruption of any effective referee that might impede US hegemony. The UN has been rendered little more than an extension of US cabal power, international law is criminally politicised, global security organisations like the OPCW have been fully absorbed into the US war machine and have now been afforded a mandate to attribute blame – a dangerous development that has potential to bring us to the brink of war against another target nation. “Rules based international order” must be based on trust and the US Coalition is wholly untrustworthy.
Syria has contained international terrorism within its borders for ten years and prevented a global conflict by absorbing the bloodshed and terror on its territory. The sanctions we see being forced upon an already traumatised and exhausted population are also indicative of what will be enforced globally if we do not address what is being done to Syria.
Under Trump, the US distanced itself from the International Criminal Court. Now, under Biden, we see Washington making overtures to the ICC, appearing to offer back channel deals if the ICC will actively pursue a case against the Syrian President and government.
The vindictiveness and savagery of the US alliance-in-decline must not be underestimated. If we do not fight this hybrid war with the same vehemence that we supported the military war against terrorism then we will all face the same fate in the future. Syria is fighting our war, the war of Humanity against what can only be described as pure evil and unless we win this war we all face a future of servitude, fear and oppression under the jack-boot of neoconservative fascism and tyranny. A victory against the enemies of Syria on all battle fronts is a victory for the region and Humanity.
The criminal role of Western media in the destruction of Syria - Dr Bouthaina Shaaban
Dr Bouthaina Shaaban, media and political advisor to the Syrian Presidency addresses the Arab International Forum to Lift the Sanctions on Syria:
The second session of the Arab International Forum to Lift the Sanctions on Syria will be held virtually (via Zoom) at 5:00 pm (Jerusalem time) on Thursday, 6 May 2021.
Prominent international personalities and activists will participate in this session.
This forum is jointly organized by the Arab National Congress and the Arab International Centre for Communication and Solidarity as follow up to the Preparatory Meeting Against the Siege on Syria that brought together representatives of Arab conferences, federations and institutions in Beirut on 1 June 2019.
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Travel is much harder these days even inside Syria with rising fuel costs and reduced availability of drivers etc. In order to do my job effectively I must witness events first hand, your contribution helps me to do that. You are so appreciated. x
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