Standing shoulder to shoulder with the Resistance against imperialism.
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Vanessa Beeley
I will provide commentary on Syria, Yemen, Middle East and the issues that affect all of us globally
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Welcome
- You will be updated daily on events in the Middle East - I am currently based in Damascus, Syria
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Recent posts
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Renegade Inc: The BBC's road to Damascus
Vanessa Beeley and Piers Robinson
It is incredibly rare that the BBC ever admits that one of their reports on Douma in Syria failed to meet the Corporation's editorial standards for accuracy by reporting false claims…
Blink and you’d have missed this admission, but we didn’t, and it adds to a volley of misreporting that has dogged journalism and peace in the Middle East for decades.
Ross Ashcroft is joined by political scientist Dr. Piers Robinson and journalist Vanessa Beeley to discuss the crumbling narrative around the alleged Douma chemical attack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ps2JavcSSQ
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Debunking CIA and MI6 Syria narratives – one by one
The UK/US deep state talking points about Syria are familiar. The President is a “tyrant”, the state is “authoritarian”, “political prisoners” abound and the nation is a “police state”. These reductionist labels stick. They stick because regime change-pushing media outlets repeat them ad nauseam until they are absorbed into our psyche as truths. “The interventionist war is bad but Syria is still “at fault” because The Guardian or CNN say so” is a paraphrase of the statements of many geopolitical commentators, even those allegedly onside with exposing the UK/US-led regime change war in Syria.
Ten years into the CIA/MI6-orchestrated war against Syria, even self-proclaimed anti-imperialist journalists deploy this terminology with zero hard evidence or context. History teaches us to examine every corporate media tagline with cynicism but many times such misrepresentation is allowed to slip through the analysis net.
Perhaps hanging on to the “less harmful” criticisms of Syrian governance will prevent the Assadist label being applied to journalists by the colonial media outlets determined to maintain control of the Syria narratives. Some would describe it as “choosing your battles. Personally, I would call it negligence, even cowardice. As journalists, our job is to unpack everything, every media-mass-produced accusation that has been used to subjugate, devastate and bleed a target nation dry.
Peter Ford, former UK Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain and an eminent Arabist told me:
“I always like to say that maybe Syria is a so-called “police state” because in states which the West tries to subvert there is a lot of policing to be done! Bravo on your effort to counter the sloppy labelling.”
Over the next few weeks, I intend writing a series of short articles detailing aspects of Syrian society and the context of the latest destabilisation campaign engineered by CIA, MI6 agencies & supported by allies in Israel, Turkey, EU, Gulf States, NATO. I hope to expose the reductionism that continues to plague the Syria narrative on both sides of the fence – and to bring to light perspectives that have previously been kept from view.
Next week, Off-Guardian will publish a comprehensive timeline of CIA/MI6 interference in Syrian affairs post World War 2 which will explain some of the context to the creation of a security apparatus in Syria to combat such intelligence operations that have been ongoing for decades, including assassinations and coup d’etats.
Speaking to Syrians about Syria
Speaking to Syrians about Syria is a selective process in the West. Rarely does colonial media speak to or cite the millions of Syrians who support their government, their President, their military and their allies in the war against foreign interference. I spoke at length with Syrian journalist, Kevork Almassian who opened my eyes to the freedom given to Syrian TV drama producers in the three decades leading up to the externally-manufactured “uprising” in 2011. Almassian said:
First of all, we need to define the “police state” which is a type of state where government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. The most common way of exercising control is by the deployment of internal security and police forces and allowing them to play a heightened role in governance.Is this the case in Syria? The simple answer is no. Although it is true that Syrian security apparatuses don’t enjoy the best reputation in Syria, facts on the ground indicate that security apparatuses weren’t heavily involved in civil society and the turmoil that the CIA and its regional allies triggered in Syria in early 2011, suggests that, if the security apparatuses had an upper hand in the period before the war, Syria would have better prepared for the American plot.
Almassian told me that Syria holds a prestigious reputation in the Arab world for the quality of its drama productions. Not many people are aware that Syrian drama reflects the current issues in Syrian society, politically, economically and religiously. Syrian drama started to develop in the early 90s addressing controversial issues that took many Syrians by surprise. Topics that were formerly taboo became commonplace on Syrian TV – the malpractice of the Security apparatus, corruption of senior officials and even the growing phenomenon of religious extremism.
Almassian recounted that high ranking religious and security figures were reported to have lobbied hard to prevent the airing of a drama series called “Ma Malakat Emankoum” in 2010, he told me:
The series sheds light on the middle class, its problems and concerns, and on controversial issues such as religious extremism, corruption and terrorism. The series stirred controversy among the Syrian society, and especially among the religious figures who were against screening such work. Their attempt at censorship failed because Syrian law gave complete freedom to the Drama production teams and they were unequivocally supported by the political leadership.
Almassian argues that under a “police state” such “subversion” would be heavily censored. This particular series was revelatory for many, exposing the emerging Salafist scene in Syria which influenced many among the ranks of Syrian officials who betrayed their country in 2011 and joined the “opposition”. Peter Ford agrees with that take, referring to the UK state policing of dissent over Covid narratives:
“If we in the UK have not been living in a police state for the last year and three months you could have fooled me. The tyrannical state has interfered in the most intimate aspects of our lives in a way that even China’s Red Guards would have considered excessive. On pain of receiving a visit from the police and being dragged away people have been forbidden from leaving their own houses, from seeing their parents, from rescuing elderly parents from care homes become torture chambers, from taking holidays abroad, from even travelling a few miles, even from breathing freely without masks.This has all been imposed under the pretext of a national health emergency in which the most common symptom of the allegedly lethal disease from which the state is protecting you is that you feel absolutely fine. This is the Nanny State become Police State, cheered on by a corrupt political class including a puny official opposition and by a state broadcaster, the BBC, who is capable of totally ignoring the most massive street protest in Britain this century.”
Almassian referred to two other Drama series that reinforce his opinion. “When wolves get old” aired in 2019 and addressed the era of the 1980s immediately after the much misreported Muslim Brotherhood “rebellion” against the secular government of Hafez Al Assad. Instead of glorifying the Syrian government, the series exposed the Government and Security vulnerabilities and mistakes – highlighting the policies of re-integration and amnesty with Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist instigators of violence which are believed to have led to an increase in their leverage within government and civil society leading up to 2011.
Almassian summarised thus:
To put in simple words, the Muslim Brotherhood understood that it can’t overthrow the Assad government by force and shifted its policy to penetrating the state institution, hoping for a stronger presence and better preparation for the future, which happened in 2011, as the Muslim Brotherhood “rebellion” lasted more than 10 years now comparing to 3 years in the first rebellion between 1979-1982.
The final example is the famous Syrian drama “Maraya” (Mirrors) which screened from 1981-2013, perhaps the most dangerous point of the war against Syria when the US/UK-led proxy coalition of armed groups were gaining a serious foothold on Syrian territory. This series was liberally critical of the Syrian government and security services. Almassian finished by telling me:
There are hundreds of Syrian series that I can mention but for the time being, these examples are enough to conclude that Syria is surely not a model for freedom of speech, but at the same time, it is very far from the police state that some try portray without a shred of evidence except for the propaganda of the “Syrian opposition” that is itself funded by brutal dictatorships in the Gulf and imperialist powers.
As Laith Marouf, a lifelong activist for Palestine and an end to imperialist wars, pointed out, the biggest police state in the world is the US itself and the majority of despotic regimes with which it is allied – Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey etc:
The true ultimate Police State is the USA; where the country has the largest prison population in human history, 25% of the global total, where every Black and Indigenous revolutionary in the past 100 years have been liquidated, jailed or exiled, where all media and communication is monitored by the most advanced surveillance system on the globe. Claiming Syria is a police state in this context, a state that had a lower than average incarceration rate, and almost no electronic surveillance, would be disingenuous if not malicious.
Seyed Mohammed Marandi, an Iranian academic also refers to the historical context of where Syria is today:
I have been to Iraq during Saddam’s reign and I have spent 4 months in Saudi Arabia. Taxi drivers in Damascus say things that people in Baghdad couldn’t tell their children and people in Riyadh still cant say to their children. The same people who were silent when their governments were giving Sadam Hussein chemical weapons to use extensively against Iranians and his own people, call Syria a police state to justify the NATO led dirty war as well as infanticidal economic sanctions.
***
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From Syria to Covid, the Hollywood narrative managers
Netflix poster remodelled by Cory Morningstar of Wrong Kind of Green.
Now Einsiedel has returned with a fear-inducing glorification of the Coronavirus “pandemic” narrative. A ‘pandemic’ that is not a Pandemic. The following is a quote from a glowing review of Einsiedel’s new production:
British documentarian Orlando von Einsiedel has a deep understanding of the very helpers that Rogers spoke of so indelibly. His Oscar-winning short from 2016, “The White Helmets,” was an utterly galvanizing account of the first responders who saved the lives of Syrian civilians buried in the debris left from airstrikes. A sequence in which a baby is pulled safely from what appears to be a birth canal made of concrete until its cries provoke cheers of elation is as profoundly moving as any single image, nonfiction or otherwise, captured on film.
There are numerous moments in von Einsiedel’s new COVID-19 documentary on Netflix, “Convergence: Courage in a Crisis,” that achieve a similar power, particularly those involving migrant workers who have risked catching the virus in order to heal others, all the while being treated as second-class citizens. What’s interesting is in how the film’s chief strength simultaneously proves to be its occasional stumbling block. Ten co-directors from around the globe were assembled by von Einsiedel to provide their own perspectives on those who have kept society afloat during the pandemic.
The cross-over is complete and we now see the same players who brought you the Syrian regime change narratives bring you the Coronavirus “pandemic” reinforcing chronicles. Einsiedel is another tool working for the predator class multi-spectrum-war project. If this ‘pandemic’ were real there would be no need for the Hollywood make-over to persuade you that your life is in grave danger from the Al Qaeda of viruses.
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Iran’s fuel delivery to Lebanon slap in face of US, Israel, says analyst
A political commentator says the recent delivery of Iranian fuel to Lebanon facilitated by the Hezbollah resistance movement and Syria is “a slap in the face of US and Israeli hegemony” as it broke the sanctions and siege imposed on the countries.
In an interview with Press TV on Tuesday, Vanessa Beeley stressed that Washington and Tel Aviv engineered the fuel crisis in Lebanon in a bid to demonize Hezbollah, but the resistance group, along with Tehran and Damascus, used the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to provide the much needed aid to the Lebanese nation.
“The successful delivery of Iranian fuel, through Syria to Lebanon organized by Hezbollah is a slap in the face of US and Israeli hegemony in the region. It has broken the sanctions and siege imposed and enforced by the US in an effort to bring both Syria and Lebanon to their knees economically,” she said.
“The US and Israel are being cornered by their own corrupt policies and multi-spectrum-dominance agendas. Having engineered the fuel crisis in Lebanon in order to demonize Hezbollah and to allow their corrupt puppets within the Lebanese political sphere to benefit from fuel theft and hoarding, they have effectively given Hezbollah, Iran and Syria the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to bypass US Coalition barbaric sanctions and to provide the much-needed humanitarian and energy aid to the people of Lebanon, thus elevating the image of Hezbollah and Syria in the eyes of Lebanese civilians, many of whom had been turned against both by US and Israeli propaganda.”
Hezbollah imported Iranian fuel to ease the pain of the people in Lebanon, which is nearly paralyzed by fuel shortages amid an economic crisis.
Iranian ships unload their fuel cargo at Syria’s Baniyas port, from where it is being transferred to Lebanon with tankers.
The first convoy of the tanker trucks carrying Iranian fuel arrived in northeastern Lebanon on Thursday, with people celebrating their arrival by lining roads, waving flags, distributing sweets and blasting heroic anthems.
Elsewhere in her interview, the London-based journalist said the threatened attacks on the Iranian tankers did not materialize in the face of the unity and collaboration of the nations that have suffered under the supremacist US policies for decades.
“As an ultimate irony, yesterday power cuts disrupted the parliament session in Lebanon and MPs were forced to request power generators from Hezbollah. The new Prime Minister Najib Makati who campaigned against the delivery of Iranian fuel but who needed the parliamentary session to secure a vote of confidence for the newly-established cabinet had no other option than to be rescued by the Iranian fuel facilitated by Hezbollah and Syria,” she added.
“The Resistance bloc… will perceive this as a demonstration of the anti-imperialist emerging dominance in both Syria and Lebanon at the expense of US and UK efforts to establish alternative proxy political regimes which are failing on a daily basis.”
Beeley further referred to the latest advances by the Syrian army in the country’s southern provinces against foreign-backed terrorists and the liberation of Dara'a al-Balad, a southern district of Dara’a city.
“Recent events in Syria also herald a new Resistance push-back against the US imperialist cabal… Three years of UK/US-backed assassinations, suicide attacks and clandestine operations to overthrow the Syrian government and to murder anyone considered 'loyalists' has been curtailed and brought back under the auspices of the Syrian military and state,” she said.
“This will inevitably lead to the movement of Hezbollah forces closer to the Syrian border with the Zionist entity and it is notable that there have been no unlawful Israeli attacks against Syria since the Dara’a ceasefire came into effect on August 31.”
Dara’a province returned to government control in 2018 under a ceasefire backed by Russia. However, militants stayed on in Dara'a al-Balad and clashed with government forces over the summer.
A new Moscow-brokered truce has seen dozens of anti-Damascus militants bused out and government forces deployed to the area over the past few weeks.
Hundreds of armed militants have also handed over their weapons to the Syrian army under the reconciliation process.
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Organ trafficking, the White Helmets in Syria, Israel and the UAE
My recent interview with Press TV Under-Reported:
In late July, the United Arab Emirates and the Israeli regime celebrated what they described a historic organ transplant exchange. In less than a year after the normalization of relations between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv, an Israeli woman donated a kidney to a patient in the UAE, as part of a new cross-border organ donation program. Then a woman in Abu Dhabi underwent surgery to donate her kidney to a woman in Haifa. Yet, regardless of this publicity blitz, both the Emiratis and Israelis have a shady track record when it comes to organ transplant, or in better words, organ trafficking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghKR0cAqrGc
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MI6 forced to admit that Assad is key to peace in Middle East
The recent article in The Guardian written by suspected MI6-linked Martin Chulov is a sign of the collapsing regime change project driven by the UK and US intelligence agencies since well before 2011. A war in a series of wars and coups that have plagued the region for decades. I recently wrote about the West being forced to partially normalise relations with President Assad after demonising him relentlessly since 2011. This is only the first in what will be a long line of climb-downs by the US/UK Coalition of intervention.
I asked Peter Ford, former UK Ambassador to Syria, to comment on the latest climb down by the UK deep state. This was his concise and scathing response:
How galling it must be for the Guardian, cheerleader of the interventionist Left, to see the wheels coming off the West’s Syrian interventionist project.
How callously typical of it to voice pique at outcomes such as the gas deal which would bring relief to the sorely pressed people not only of Syria, but also Lebanon. Far better, in the Guardian world view, for ordinary Syrians and Lebanese to go on suffering indefintely until their countries become new Afghanistans, as long as the totem of resistance to the West, Assad, is removed.
How tiresome (so the Guardian seems to think) of Syria’s regional neighbours to accept that Syrian regime change has failed and look to their own self interest rather than plough on with a policy of ostracising and destabilising Syria which could only embolden the Syrian Taliban in Turkish-occupied northern Syria!
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Peace deal celebrations in Daraa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7yZxivGsBE
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The so-called ‘cradle of the revolution’ against Assad has been liberated – the West’s campaign to topple him is all but over
After three years of a fragile ceasefire and a campaign of assassinations of Syrian government ‘loyalists’ by embedded fundamentalist armed groups, the Syrian flag has once more been raised in Daraa Al Balad.
Western media persists in portraying the emergence of extremist armed groups in Daraa, south of Damascus, as the “cradle of the revolution” to overthrow the Syrian government. The reality is that Daraa was the touchpaper lit by hardline Libyan mercenaries imported into the city prior to 2011.
From Daraa, the “revolutionary” flames fanned by the US, UK and Israeli-led coalition headquartered in Jordan, funded by Gulf-state blood money, would engulf Syria for ten long years. In Daraa, the CIA/MI6-backed Muslim Brotherhood extremist gangs fronted the orchestrated uprising, power multiplied by Libyan arms and terrorist factions and given credibility by the colonial media complex spearheaded by the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera.
Attempt to absorb extremist military into Russian-controlled armed brigades backfires
In 2018, an uneasy truce was brokered by the Russian reconciliation teams, and the illegal armed groups that remained in Daraa Al Balad, the hub of the violent US-sponsored insurgency, were persuaded to surrender their heavy weapons but allowed to keep their light arms as part of the peace deal. Russia effectively attempted to bring these brutal armed groups into line by absorbing them into Russian-founded and controlled armed divisions. According to armed-group-aligned media outlets, a former Free Syrian Army leader, Ahmed Al-Awda was given command of the 8th Brigade, “a subdivision of the Russian-founded Fifth Corps.”
However, this was perhaps a miscalculation by Russia in its desire to bring fighting on the southern front to a swift conclusion. The armed groups that had committed multiple war crimes and atrocities against Syrian civilians and anti-terrorism armed forces had no intention of relinquishing their campaign of retaliatory crimes against anyone they considered to be loyal to the Syrian government and state. A vicious offensive was unleashed by these extremist gangs formerly associated with terrorist Al Qaeda and ISIS factions in the southern region.
Since mid-2019, even the EU-funded Syrian Observatory for ‘Human Rights’ reported on more than 1,136 attacks and assassinations that claimed the lives of 774 Syrians, including 12 women and 22 children, by gunfire, IED detonations, as well as suicide car and motorcycle attacks. The gangs also fought among themselves, assassinating rival gang leaders and members. In July 2021, civilians including a child were killed and injured when the armed gangs shelled the National Hospital in Daraa, having clearly replenished their heavy-weapons arsenal.
The presence of UK Special Forces in the region was an indication that the armed groups were still being trained in the use of IEDs for anti-government operations by the British – in March 2020, RAF Chinook helicopters based in Cyprus were scrambled to rescue an SAS soldier injured in an IED explosion “deep inside the warzone” in southern Syria.
I met Adham Alkarad, commander of the Engineering and Missile Division of the FSA, in September 2018 after a precarious visit to Daraa, while the ink was not yet dry on the Russian-brokered agreement. Alkarad cornered me as a British journalist, assuming I was sympathetic to the cause, and informed me that they would never capitulate and that, even with light weapons, they would continue their violent US coalition-backed-crusade to topple the Syrian government and to wipe out “loyalists” who condemned the armed group’s presence in Daraa.
Alkarad told me back then that the protests would continue and that he would contact the BBC and CNN directly to elicit their coverage and support. Alkarad designed the 500kg Omar Rocket that caused horrifying damage to civilian infrastructure and military targets during the reign of terror in Daraa. Alkarad was himself assassinated by unknown gunmen in October 2020.
Russian and Syrian flags above the square in Daraa Al Balad. Photo | Vanessa Beeley
Damascus loses patience with armed extremism and regains control of Daraa Al Balad
After months of negotiations, siege and military clashes between Damascus and the armed groups in Daraa, a final ceasefire was achieved on August 31, with Russia taking a less prominent role in the settlement. One week before this agreement was reached, King Abdullah II of Jordan had met with President Putin in Moscow to prioritise the resolution of the Daraa security issues.
On September 9, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained the agreement brokered to resolve the Daraa province tensions. It is interesting that this explanation was given during a joint press conference with Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs, Yair Lapid. The original 2018 Russian deal with the armed groups had offered Israel guarantees that Iran and Hezbollah would be kept a safe distance from Israeli borders with Syria.
Lavrov effectively announced that the province would be handed back to the legitimate Syrian Arab Army forces and that extremist militants should again surrender their heavy weapons. Negotiations were underway about the withdrawal destination for the armed groups, as their remaining in Daraa was “unlikely.”
This is a blow for Israel, whose continued violations of Lebanese airspace and unlawful aggression against Syria have been largely unimpeded by retaliatory armed response and barely reported-on by the Western corporate media. This might change with Damascus back in the southern driving seat and the shift in power that will almost certainly open the door to an Iranian and Hezbollah military presence closer to the Israel/Syria borders as a deterrent against Israeli offensives.
Soldiers from the Syrian Arab Army 15th Division (Tiger Forces) in Daraa Al Balad. Photo | Vanessa Beeley
Certainly, when I entered Daraa Al Balad on September 12, we saw Russian and Syrian flags flying side by side, but in the square itself it was the Syrian flag that took pride of place. From conversations that I had with civilians, it was clear the ‘peace’ was still raw and volatile. Syrian soldiers from the 15th Division spoke to me about the prospects for lasting resolution and were optimistic.
A flare-up between armed group members and Syrian soldiers was defused respectfully while we were there. Children I spoke to told me they were glad to be finally going back to school. It is too early to predict the outcome of this agreement, but it is clear that there will be no compromise over Daraa and its surrounding countryside being back under the control of Damascus and the Syrian military until peace is fully restored and relations normalised between state and citizenry.
What does this power shift mean for Damascus and the US Coalition including Israel?
It is important to review the Daraa events in the context of emerging geopolitical alliances and concessions, in order to grasp the significance of what has just happened in southern Syria.
On September 13, the Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennet, visited Egypt for the first time in a decade, ostensibly to discuss Israel/Palestine relations with President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi. Egypt is moving towards normalisation of relations with Turkey, strained since the toppling of Muslim Brotherhood’s man in Cairo, President Mohammed Mursi, in 2013. The Egyptian Consul General in Damascus has intimated that conditions for a full recovery of Egyptian-Turkish bilateral relations is the withdrawal of Turkey from Syrian territory.
Perhaps the most significant concession to Damascus in the aftermath of Daraa has been made by the US itself. Desperate to avoid Hezbollah being hailed as the champion of the Lebanese people after they secured oil supplies from Iran via Syria, the US Ambassador to Lebanon intervened to partially lift sanctions on Syria in order to facilitate the transfer of natural gas and electricity from Egypt to Lebanon via pipelines between Jordan and southern Syria. Parts of the pipelines in Syria are in need of repair as they traverse Daraa towards Homs and then to Tripoli in northern Lebanon.
This not only informs us why Daraa was pivotal to US energy and resource-theft plans in Syria, but also shows us the intelligence of the Damascus moves to secure Daraa at this pivotal point in the regional chess game. The US has had its hand forced by a nation that has resisted its proxy military intervention for ten years and by Syria's most steadfast allies in Lebanon.
Jordan has for some time been trying to break free of its colonial chains and to normalise trade relations with neighbouring Syria. The breakthrough came in September 2021, when Syria was included in a four-way meeting hosted by Jordan and including Lebanon and Egypt, to focus on the logistics of Egyptian gas and electricity supply to energy-deprived Lebanon. This was the first visit of Syrian officials to Jordan since 2011–- the start of the dirty CIA/MI6-led war against Syria.
The final blow to US Coalition and Israeli/Turkish neocolonialist agendas in Syria came with the President Assad, President Putin summit on September 16 in Moscow. During a 90-minute closed session, the two leaders discussed military, political and economic priorities that included the Daraa province return to Syrian state control and the potential full and final liberation of Idlib in the north-west from Turkish direct and proxy terrorist occupation.
This summit, and the Syrian/Russian slamming of both Turkish and US illegal occupation and annexation of Syrian territory, does not bode well for the NATO member state regime-change project that has been an expensive, abject failure since its initiation in 2011.
The consequences of the Daraa resolution will be far-reaching for Israel, Turkey and the CIA/MI6 project to control the Syrian central economic hub in the Middle East. Damascus, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah have stolen the march on their enemies, despite the pressure Syria is under from the multi-spectrum war waged against it for ten years and it remains to be seen how the US Coalition will try to scramble back from this ignominious defeat and avoid admitting they have been forced to take a first step in normalising relations with President Assad.
***
First published at RT
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Daraa Al Balad after final liberation from US Israel Coalition proxies
Entering Daraa Al Balad today after the final reconciliation agreements were accepted and the Syrian Arab Army took full control, hoisting the Syrian and Russian flags on buildings previously occupied by the US Israeli Coalition proxies.
The peace is raw and fragile, some I spoke to were bitter and still angry, but admitted that peace is preferable to the exhaustion of war. The cure for the cancer which is fanaticism is often harsh but always necessary.
I spoke to a young 15th Division soldier and asked him if he believed that true long-lasting reconciliation was possible. He told me that between Syrians it is possible. He joined the Army in 2012. I asked if he was tired. He said "no, this is my country, I will fight until every inch is free and my country gives me the strength to keep fighting"
The video shows the entry and exit from Daraa Al Balad and then leaving bustling Daraa as a contrast, heading back to Damascus.
Article to follow at RT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM_OXq6R0uw&t=3s
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Afghanistan unpacked - the "new" Taliban, ISIS imports and the Chaos strategy
I speak to Kit Knightly, independent researcher and journalist at Off-Guardian about his recent article "6 questions we NEED to ask about Afghanistan".
We discuss everything from timing of the Afghanistan scene stealer and the pivot to the rebranded "country boy" Taliban away from the ten year regime change war waged against Syria by the Vulture class led by the US and UK.
Is the transnational corporatocracy deliberately creating chaos in Afghanistan and if so, why? Why did the US not use the lucrative Opium supplies to subsidise global morphine and related drugs markets in developing countries? While we cannot come to any conclusions during such an evolutionary period in Afghanistan's history we did raise questions that people should be asking themselves in the knowledge that colonial media will lie and lie again to obfuscate the real reasons behind what is being orchestrated in this war ravaged nation.
UPDATE
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The Lost Generation: the abuse and exploitation of Syrian refugee children in Turkey
I talk to opposition MP in Turkey, Ilay Aksoy, about the 2.5 million Syrian children in Turkey many of whom are being exploited and abused on an unimaginable scale. Many are not going to school, child marriages are rife, children are being "rented" from their parents in Idlib under occupation of western-backed Al Qaeda affiliated armed groups. These children are then being repeatedly abused.
Aksoy is also a founding member of the S-Generation Platform to respond to the needs of Syrian refugees in Turkey and to prevent the loss of an entire generation to the entities and individuals that prey upon the most vulnerable in society.
To discuss a refugee issue in a pragmatic way and to address the dangers of radicalisation of ghetto-ised communities is necessary and a human response to orchestrated human misery. Most NGOs in the West address only the symptoms and never the root cause which are the imperialist, capitalist wars and proxy military interventions that drive people from their homes and force them to seek shelter in inhospitable environments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrjlsRN4uwU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrjlsRN4uwU
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Lucy Morgan Edwards – Afghanistan in turmoil, the role of MI6 and CIA past and present
I interview Dr Lucy Morgan Edwards about the recent events in Afghanistan, the reality of life under the Taliban and why the NATO aggression post 9/11 should never have happened but US, UK intelligence agencies ensured it stayed on track despite political resolution being an option.
Lucy Morgan Edwards worked in Afghanistan for 7 years.[3] She arrived in Kandahar under a fatwa at the height of the Taliban regime to work for the UN, living within meters of Mullah Omar’s compound. After 9/11 she experienced the western military intervention as an election monitor, a journalist and Political Adviser to the EU Ambassador in Kabul. She spent months living in Jalalabad with a tribal family and this formed the basis of an investigation which led to ‘The Afghan Solution’ (from Wikispooks)
The Afghan Solution: The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan 2011
In late 2001, a group of Afghan tribal leaders met to plan how to topple the Taliban. Within weeks, the plan was in tatters, thwarted by the West and its leader, Abdul Haq, assassinated by the Taliban. Lucy Morgan Edwards’s investigation into Haq’s tragic mission led her to Taliban Ministers, warlords, spies, and two American Republican brothers who financed Haq’s venture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL5Bcxgf1NI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL5Bcxgf1NI
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Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi - the Iranian road map in Afghanistan and Israel's decline
I speak to Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi about the Iranian history of working to prevent civil war in Afghanistan, a war much desired by the US Coalition. We also discuss the impact of the recent events on Syria and the decline of Israeli hegemony in the region and the rise of the Resistance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4zDD-cV7yc
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Medical Apartheid - Unvaccinated will be taken off the organ transplant list
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJnbHUsv0Qk
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Syrian Air Defence intercept Israeli missiles over Damascus last night
Syrian Ministry of Defense || Military source: Around 23:03 this evening, the #Israeli enemy carried out air aggression with missiles from the southeast of Beirut, targeting some points in the vicinity of Damascus and the vicinity of Homs.
As usual, the Israeli warplanes took advantage of the civil aviation movement to carry out their treacherous strike, and while there are reports about a Lebanese civil plane that barely escaped the missiles, other reports said that a Middle East Airlines flight was warned to hold over the Mediterranean due to the hostile air raids on Syria.
Damascus, Homs and Qalamoun were targeted. Some missiles hit target but the majority were intercepted. The ground was shaking in much of Damascus.
Acting Director General of Civil Aviation Fadi Al-Hassan: The control towers in Syria and Cyprus asked the two planes to change their course due to the Israeli attack. They then returned back to course and landed normally at Beirut Airport.
Israel used two civilian airliners carrying hundreds of passengers as human shields to camouflage their warplanes during the attack and delay the response of the Syrian Air Defence. Any mistake or miscalculated actions by Syria, could have led to a massacre. The Syrian Air Defence did a superb job avoiding civilian human shields and intercepting the Israeli missiles fired from warplanes violating Lebanese airspace.
Many believe this Israeli attack is in response to Sayed Nasrallah's speech during which the leader of Hezbollah threatened retaliation if any of the Iranian oil tankers bringing supplies to Lebanon were attacked by Israel or the US.
On a personal note, the ground in my area of Damascus was shaking and the sound of incoming missiles and interception was directly overhead, the dogs were not impressed :-) and all piled onto the bed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js9IB-3J8IY
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Peter Ford investigates the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and UK response
I speak to Peter Ford, former UK Ambassador to Bahrain and Syria, about the emerging geopolitical alliances in Afghanistan and how they will impact upon Syria and the region after the dust has settled on the theatre that is US withdrawal. Will the Taliban bring "democracy" or Sharia law brutality to the war-ravaged nation? How will the ruling classes in the US maintain their money laundering operations? How will Russia, China and Iran react and does Israel stand to benefit as usual?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpB2liZ-fBw&t=2s
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Seeing through the fog of war: Markey Talks With Vanessa Beeley about the conflict in Syria
As the Syrian people continue to suffer through proxy war, terrorism, sanctions and looting of their resources, Markey talks with Independent Mid-east journalist Vanessa Beeley. Vanessa was in Damascus, Syria, when we recorded the interview and despite electricity black-outs due to the war, she gave a detailed and at times harrowing interview on the proxy war being waged in Syria, the propaganda war, OPCW corruption, fake and real chemical attacks, and so much more. An eye-opening interview that must be shared.
M-Compass Media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_omUlWJBjW0
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Israel stoking regional tensions to avoid war with Hezbollah, says journalist
A British independent journalist and photographer says Israel is escalating tensions in the region by targeting resistance groups in a bid to prevent an inevitable war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Speaking to Press TV on Friday, Vanessa Beeley who has worked extensively in the Middle East, said the Tel Aviv regime is becoming “increasingly belligerent and to some degree desperate” under new hardliner prime minister Naftali Bennett.
Bennet “does not believe in a peace process in Palestine, preferring ‘management' of the Resistance against the Zionist terrorist occupation of Palestinian territory and the brutal siege of Gaza. Therefore, we can expect an expansion of Israeli violence regionally as demonstrated by the recent unprecedented airstrikes on Najaf, Iraq and the bombing of southern Lebanon last week,” she said.
On July 26, two drones targeted an ammunition warehouse belonging to Iraq’s anti-terror Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) or Hashd al-Sha’abi in the holy city of Najaf, south of the capital Baghdad. The PMU said the US and the Zionist regime were behind the strike.
On August 4, Israel struck an area in southern Lebanon in response to alleged rocket fire towards the occupied lands. Two days later, Hezbollah units hit open fields near Israeli positions, using dozens of rockets. Israeli media said that Hezbollah’s retaliatory rocket attack sent settlers in the occupied Golan Heights and Galilee scrambling for shelters.
Elsewhere in her remarks, Beeley said Israel knows that a strong Syria is a threat to its security and thus is directly supporting the anti-Damascus terrorist armed groups operating inside the Arab country.
“Israel will be looking to throw the region into chaos in an attempt to prevent the inevitable war with Hezbollah which Israel would surely lose and will be preemptively targeting what it will describe as ‘Iranian militia’ in Iraq and Syria and perhaps even Lebanon, using the familiar pretext of ‘self-defense’ to justify its violation of international law and Geneva convention,” she added.
The journalist also noted that the resistance front in the region has responded to the Israeli attacks and conveyed the message that unlawful acts of aggression will no longer be tolerated.
“We have arrived at a serious tipping point where we have an ultra-extremist PM in Israel who has no desire to broker any kind of coexistence deal with Palestinians and who is ramping up aggression regionally. We appear to be heading towards a major escalation in the conflict between the Resistance axis and Israel,” she pointed out.
“The region is on the brink of a hot war. The leadership of the Resistance axis are visionary and cool-headed especially when compared to the supremacist, extremist Zionist regime," she said.
"We know from the most recent reaction from the Gaza armed resistance against Zionist tyranny in the Occupied Territories that this conflict has been prepared for some time by the Resistance command centers. Israel knows it faces an organized, well equipped, united armed force if it goes too far but the question is, will Israel back down and the likelihood is no,” she added, referring to the May rocket barrage from Gaza towards the occupied lands in retaliation for the Israeli military aggression.
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
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Is Erdogan a US/UK stooge or a rogue dictator with delusions of empire?
Today I spoke with Dr Marcus Papadopoulos, historian, analyst and author of the new book "Arise Rossiya: The Return of Russia to World Politics"
We cover the recent unrest in Turkey and backlash against the growing Syrian refugee population, now believed to be an estimated five million. We talk about emerging energy sector alliances that may be surprising in who they bring together, partnering Israel with Lebanon to counter the rise of Russian influence in the region with Iran and Hezbollah. Marcus addresses the erratic leadership of Erdogan driven by ideological sectarian policies and delusions of a return to the Ottoman Empire. Marcus always brings new insight and perspective to geopolitical analysis, I highly recommend listening to his bringing together of all the loose threads.
SoundCloud
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The Crown Jewels Of the Syrian War
We talk with independent researcher, writer and journalist Vanessa Beeley who is presently living in Syria on the untold side of the "invisible" British involvement in the Syrian so called "civil war".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_IX_qIIOU4
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Censorship of Syrian/Palestinian voices raised in protest against oppression
Laith Marouf is a lifelong activist and journalist campaigning for Palestinian rights and an end to Zionism. Marouf is of Syrian descent and has also been a thorn in the side of the Imperialist bloc particularly covering the regime change war waged against the Syrian people since 2011 and for decades prior to the latest destabilisation project. Marouf is outspoken about the white supremacy and orientalism among even the supposedly independent media and does not shy away from calling it out. His voice is becoming more and more important as the instruments of power in western media and social media ratchet up their censorship of indigenous voices challenging the dominant war-mongering narratives.
On Soundcloud.
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Cory Morningstar and Vanessa Beeley on Slow News Day - The NGO Complex
We cover a lot of details and subjects, including Covid-19, Syria and global insecurity thanks to the Imperialist bloc.
https://rokfin.com/stream/7947?jwsource=cl
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Syria Round Table Interview – Fighting War Propaganda From Mainstream & Independent Media Alike
"Joining today for a very special roundtable on Syria will be Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley & Kevork Almassian, here to discuss a recent surge in Syria propaganda, primarily coming from the independent media. We review these recent claims, their origin, and the evidence around them, or lack thereof, and compare this to the reality on the ground."
"Joining today for a very special roundtable on Syria will be Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley & Kevork Almassian, here to discuss a recent surge in Syria propaganda, primarily coming from the independent media. We review these recent claims, their origin, and the evidence around them, or lack thereof, and compare this to the reality on the ground."
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Conversation with Marwa Osman - the future of Lebanon
I interview Lebanese journalist, Marwa Osman one day after the one-year anniversary of the Beirut Port blast that tore the city apart. We cover a wide range of topics from the internal strife being fomented externally and the UK Foreign Office intelligence operations inside Lebanon, the ongoing tensions with Israel, the war in Syria and the history of the region that has led us to Lebanon being on the brink of economic failure and war with Israel.
https://soundcloud.com/vanessa-beeley/the-future-of-lebanon-conversation-with-marwa-osman
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Craig Murray – another butterfly broken on the wheel
Following the criminal incarceration of former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, I asked another former British diplomat and UK Ambassador to Syria from 2003-06, Peter Ford, to comment on the shutting down of voices raised against injustice in the UK and Scotland. Ford has also been a thorn in the side of the imperialist class regarding the ten year UK FCDO-sponsored regime change war in Syria.
Peter Ford:
If the lurch towards authoritarianism in the context of Covid-related restrictions was not enough to convince us that our freedoms were slipping away, here comes another blow to faith in British democracy and justice: the conviction and imprisonment of Craig Murray. The case has ramifications wider than the breaking of this particular butterfly upon a wheel.
Murray’s crime? He allegedly published on his blog a clue to the identity of the accusers of Alex Salmond, the former Scottish First Minister accused (but acquitted) of sexual harassment. Much could be said about the distortions of justice involved in the case, not least the court’s extraordinary endorsement of the view that the Crown must be obeyed when it orders a bit of censorship and that a different law applies for mainstream media from that which applies to mere bloggers. But Murray’s real crime was to be a thorn in the side of the British Establishment. Would he, a first time offender involved in a non-violent offence, really have been given a custodial sentence but for the aggravating factor that he was, well, aggravating to the Scottish and British Establishment?
Murray made the cardinal error of supporting Alex Salmond, a marked man in the eyes of the one party Scottish state he helped create. Shades of Lenin and Trotsky. But above all Murray probably more than anyone else has been responsible for keeping the Julian Assange case in the public eye. His blog has been the go to site for anyone following it. And in the eyes of the British Establishment Assange must be crucified, to teach a lesson to all whistleblowers who reveal the misdeeds of the security state. That Assange has already purged his punishment for the one British law he broke, skipping bail, and that he has not had due process in any US court, matters not a whit to the Establishment. And so he is kept rotting in Belmarsh prison, waiting on the good pleasure of his US and British tormentors to take forward the legal processes in which they have ensnared him. He is a political prisoner.
Now Craig Murray, in ailing health, has become Britain’s second most famous political prisoner. And as with Assange, it is sickening to see, or rather not to see, the media-ocracy spearheaded by the BBC, Guardian, Times etc leaping (sarcasm intended) to Murray’s defence, or at least questioning the severity of his sentence, the chilling implications for freedom of speech of the terms of his judgment, and the motivations of the political classes behind this travesty. And as for what is comically called the ‘opposition’ parties, go whistle. But then we have all become accustomed to being muzzled over the last year and a half, have we not?
***
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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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