At the same time, the Israeli prime minister who is carrying out that holocaust has nominated the American president who is helping him perpetrate genocidal atrocities for a Nobel Peace Prize.
The US has imposed sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for using her position to oppose the most thoroughly documented genocide in history.
At the same time, the US has removed Syria’s Al Qaeda franchise HTS from its list of designated terrorist organizations, because its leader successfully carried out the regime change in Damascus that the western empire had been chasing for years.
At the same time, the UK has added nonviolent anti-genocide activism group Palestine Action to its list of banned terrorist organizations for opposing the Gaza holocaust.
The man below is the founder of Al Qaeda in Syria. The US just took his organization off its terror list and lifted sanctions on him.
The woman below is the UN rapporteur on Israel and Palestine. The US is about to impose sanctions on her.
At the same time, the Israeli prime minister who is carrying out that holocaust has nominated the American president who is helping him perpetrate genocidal atrocities for a Nobel Peace Prize.
At the same time, the Trump administration has enraged its MAGA base by concluding that Jeffrey Epstein had no client list for any kind of sexual blackmail operation and definitely committed suicide.
The western empire is one nonstop insult to our intelligence. The peace advocates are terrorists, the genocide architects deserve peace prizes, the journalists are dangerous, and Epstein was just a wealthy socialite who made a few mistakes.
In the coming weeks and months, it will be important to learn the history of the Syria War and Washington’s role – first and foremost its support of crazed al-Qaeda head-choppers, the “moderate rebels.”
But no one in Washington cares about Syrians, nor do their mouthpieces in the corporate press. If they are paying attention to the killing, it’s likely to prime Americans for yet another intervention.
Over the weekend, the jihadists that Washington and its Mideast partners installed in Damascus predictably began mass killing based on ethnicity.
Antiwar.com’s Jason Ditz broke down the deadly rampage:
“The fighting erupted Thursday, when the militias launched an organized attack on an HTS-run checkpoint near Jableh. It quickly escalated, and now the reported death tolls are enormous. The Associated Press is reporting over 600 killed, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) is saying over 1,000 deaths are believed to have happened. Currently, 125 militia fighters and 148 government forces loyal to the HTS have been confirmed killed, though those numbers are expected to rise, as the fighting continues across the region.
The majority of the deaths though, potentially the vast majority, are Alawite civilians, as HTS forces from the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry have been carrying out revenge killings en masse in several locations. At least 745 civilians have been killed in summary executions over the past three days, though that number is expected to continue to rise as the incidents continue.”
It should come as no surprise that HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an umbrella group of jihadist militants led by Syria’s official al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra) is now killing massive numbers of Alawite civilians. Over a decade ago, the Syrian opposition adopted the slogan “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave.” Alawites are now filling mass graves.
As our director Scott Horton hates to say: “It didn’t have to be this way.”
Horton and many guests on the Scott Horton Show long warned that this would be the outcome of the CIA’s Timber Sycamore program. Under the Obama administration, CIA Director John Brennan sent hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to Syria’s extremist-led opposition fighting to oust Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, Turkey allowed jihadists – many of them veterans of the war against the US occupation in Iraq and the NATO regime change against Gaddafi in Libya – crossed the border into Syria to join the “civil war.”
The obvious result of the policy was that the opposition became dominated by Syrian al-Qaeda (the group led by Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the current leader of post-Assad Syria), as well as the marginally more radical Islamic State.
While Trump finished crushing ISIS and ended Brennan’s treasonous support for al-Qaeda, he continued an economic war to strangle Assad. By not allowing Assad, along with his Russia and Iranian allies, to eradicate al-Qaeda, he permitted al-Jolani to remain in Syria.
Joe Biden – or whoever was running the White House during his administration – seems to have returned to Obama’s policy of backing the terrorists.
“But in the shell game of U.S. proxy war, HTS and its leader are Washington’s assets. From 2011, the Americans and their NATO partners used Al Qaeda, ISIS, Jabhat al Nusra Front (later HTS) with ratlines of weapons and fighters from Libya, Turkey and all over the world to descend on Syria to inflict horrors.
“Only last week before the final push on the Syria capital, Damascus, Al-Jawlani, the HTS commander, was given a primetime interview/platform by CNN, the U.S. news channel, to rehabilitate his image as a statesman-like leader instead of being a wanted terrorist. Al-Jawlani says the days when he and his organization were associates of ISIS and Al Qaeda are long gone. And CNN and other Western media do their best to make the claim sound plausible. Ah, such a happy ending!”
I have complained about the difficulty of acquiring an understanding of Syria’s sudden disappearance. Neither the Western nor Russian media provide a believable account. Recently I came across Finian Cunningham’s article,”Syria after 13 years of US State terrorism,” on the website of the Strategic Culture Foundation. https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/12/10/syria-after-13-years-of-us-state-terrorism-what-do-you-expect/ This site is often difficult to access, because Washington stupidly regards it as Russian disinformation.
On the surface Syria’s sudden collapse looks like Syria’s allies, Russia and Iran, might have sold out Syria. This perception could prevail to the disadvantage of Russia and Iran as reliable allies, but the real explanation is that the years of economic and trade sanctions the West enforced on Syria, the years of Washington’s proxy war against Syria, the foreign occupation of Syria’s oil and wheat provinces by American and Turkish military forces, thus depriving the government of revenues, hollowed out the Syrian economy and left the Syrian military poorly paid for its services. Syria, Cunningham wrote, fell to “a 13-year war of attrition” on which all the victims on both sides were Arabs. The Syrian people, starved of food, medicines and fuel, with over half the population displaced, suffered high inflation and a destroyed currency, and ran out of ability to resist.
I contacted Finian, an international journalist whom I have known for years and learned much that permits me to provide an explanation of Syria’s destruction.
I begin by withdrawing my suspicions of Russian and Iranian perfidy in Syria’s collapse that I expressed in recent columns and interview on Dialogue Works with Nima https://www.youtube.com/live/NfxD_4DhxFo . Cunningham agrees that Russia and Iran’s fateful strategic blunder was, having repelled the American proxy forces, halting the conflict before decisively defeating Washington’s terrorist proxies and forcing the few American troops controlling the oil fields out of Syria. Cunningham has convinced me that Russia and Iran were genuinely blindsided by the sudden collapse of Syria, indicating perhaps intelligence failure and unpreparedness, but not perfidy.
Thirteen years of US and European sanctions and proxy war together with US and Turkish occupation of Syria’s oil and wheat provinces deprived the state of export revenues, leaving the people with blackouts and hyperinflation and the soldiers impoverished and demoralized. The halt in the conflict prior to the total defeat of the American proxies and eviction of Turkey and Washington from Syria meant that the exhausting multi-year struggle had no payoff for Syria. For their own reasons Putin and Iran wanted the fighting to stop, and it stopped before Syria achieved any benefit from the success in repelling Washington’s proxy army. The oil and wheat provinces remained in enemy hands. So the war stopped too soon and the victory was hollow.
Assad’s ability to govern was crippled by normal Arab corruption and a self-serving bureaucracy. Additionally, Assad was lured by Saudis and oil sheikdoms with false promises of normalizing relations of the Alawite Syrians with Sunni Arabs.
The Arabs have always been their own worst enemy, and now they have managed to destroy the Arab world with only Saudi Arabia remaining. Recently, the Israeli Zionist government added a large part of Saudi Arabia to the map of Greater Israel.
he media brothel has presented the HTS terrorist/democratic opposition as Syria’s rescuer promising peace and friendship. But videos emerging reveal a campaign of violence, hangings and machine-gunning of people. It is Muslims killing Muslims, Arabs killing Arabs. The reason Arabs are powerless is that they had rather kill each other than fight against their common enemies. The borders of Arab countries were created by European colonists like the countries in Africa that combined hostile tribes into a country. So Middle Eastern countries contain Shia and Sunni populations. The two sects have been at sword’s point for centuries, enabling the West to use one against the other. Here are a few of the videos of the democratic opposition’s brutal violence. The truth is in the videos, not in the media staged scenes of Syrians celebrating the downfall of Assad:
Iran is largely Persian, not Arab and more unified. But there are progressive, pro-Western elements, and among the young there is desire for lessening of religious restraints. There are always those who prefer sin to righteousness. The US works on the progressive elements and now Iran has a reform government.
So according to one narrative Syria has been liberated by brave freedom fighters and that’s wonderful, but according to another concurrent narrative Israel obviously needs to invade Syria because the nation has just been taken over by evil terrorists, and by yet another concurrent narrative those evil terrorists aren’t evil terrorists anymore because they’re going to be running a US puppet regime.
These are the kinds of contradictions you run into when your policies are guided by the blind pursuit of planetary domination instead of by truth and morality.
The US government is simultaneously (A) justifying Israel’s land grab in Syria by saying the nation has been taken over by terrorists, and (B) talking about removing those same forces from its list of designated terrorist organizations.
The US podium people have pivoted seamlessly from celebrating the liberation of the Syrian people in the removal of Assad to citing the fact that the nation is now overrun with terrorist factions in defense of Israel’s rapid move to militarily occupy large swathes of Syrian land while hammering Syria with hundreds of airstrikes.
At a Monday press conference, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said these moves by Israel “are temporary to defend its borders” and that Assad’s ouster “potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations that would threaten the state of Israel and would threaten civilians inside Israel.”
“Every country has the right to take action against terrorist organizations,” Miller added.
US Government: It is great and wonderful that the dictator Assad has been deposed and the people of Syria have been freed!
Press gallery: Do you oppose Israel grabbing Syrian land?
US government: No way man, don't you know Syria's just been taken over by a bunch of terrorists? pic.twitter.com/zfilinDn4L
During a Tuesday press conference Miller further clarified the US position on Israel’s land grab, saying, “What precipitated their move into the buffer zone was the withdrawal of the Syrian armed forces, which, as I said yesterday, creates potentially a vacuum that could be filled by any one of the numerous terrorist organizations that continue to operate inside Syria that have sworn to the destruction of the state of Israel.”
During the same Tuesday press conference Miller also stated that “there is no legal barrier to us speaking to a designated terrorist group” such as HTS, the group which led the run on Damascus whose leader has been an official in both ISIS and al-Qaeda.
And as it happens the US government has now taken a sudden interest in removing HTS from its listing as a designated terrorist organization, with Politico reporting that there is now “a furious debate playing out in Washington” as to whether or not the group should be removed from the list immediately. Somehow I doubt the debate is actually all that “furious”.
So according to one narrative Syria has been liberated by brave freedom fighters and that’s wonderful, but according to another concurrent narrative Israel obviously needs to invade Syria because the nation has just been taken over by evil terrorists, and by yet another concurrent narrative those evil terrorists aren’t evil terrorists anymore because they’re going to be running a US puppet regime.
These are the kinds of contradictions you run into when your policies are guided by the blind pursuit of planetary domination instead of by truth and morality.
The top Russian diplomat said the US envoy had previously dropped similar hints about rehabilitating HTS, formerly known as Nusra Front, an offshoot of the al Qaeda terror cartel, related to Islamic State (or ISIS). As Lavrov points out, these chameleonic groups are internationally proscribed terror organizations. They are not exempt from targeting under past de-escalation deals between Russia and Turkey.
It seems astounding that the US – which declares itself to be in a war against terrorism – is flagrantly acting as a mediator to spare these same terrorists from definitive military defeat.
Syria and Russia have previously accused Ankara of covertly supplying the terrorists with arms and cross-border logistics.
Turkey is supplying jihadists in order to eliminate the Kurds who want a piece of Turkey for their homeland.
The US courts jihadists to eliminate Shiites that never attacked US in order to benefit Sunni’s that have attacked US.
NATO member Turkey was recently caught out providing artillery support for terror groups in Syria’s Idlib province; now leader of the NATO alliance, the United States, is hinting at Russia and Syria holding dialogue with the terrorists to curb the upsurge in conflict.
As Syria’s endgame closes, the protagonists and their proxies are coming more clearly into focus. NATO’s covert shadowy connection with the jihadist insurgents it has sponsored for regime change is being flushed out as the Syrian army and its Russian ally home in on the last stand of the terror groups.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this week ruled out any mediation with Tahrir Hayat al Sham (HTS), the main terrorist network holding out in Idlib in northwest Syria. Lavrov was referring to comments made earlier by US envoy James Jeffrey who suggested that HTS was “not a terrorist organization any more” and therefore might be included in negotiations for de-escalation.
The top Russian diplomat said the US envoy had previously dropped similar hints about rehabilitating HTS, formerly known as Nusra Front, an offshoot of the al Qaeda terror cartel, related to Islamic State (or ISIS). As Lavrov points out, these chameleonic groups are internationally proscribed terror organizations. They are not exempt from targeting under past de-escalation deals between Russia and Turkey.
It seems astounding that the US – which declares itself to be in a war against terrorism – is flagrantly acting as a mediator to spare these same terrorists from definitive military defeat.
The increasing violence in Syria over recent months is a result of jihadist militants continuing their attacks against civilians, as well as against the Syrian armed forces and their Russian allies in spite of several de-escalation attempts. The terrorists have used their areas of control in Idlib and Aleppo countryside to launch rocket attacks on government-controlled areas. Under the September 2018 deescalation agreement between Russia and Turkey, Ankara was obliged to facilitate a ceasefire by the jihadist groups which it is presumed to have influence over. But Turkey failed to implement its obligations.
Hence the Syrian government forces and their Russian ally were entitled to go after the culprits.
Turkey’s protests about the offensive serves to expose Ankara’s association with the terror groups. President Erdogan’s threats of deploying thousands of more troops in Syria’s north is in effect an admission of Turkey providing military support for the terrorists. It gives new meaning for the purpose of Turkish military observation posts along the border; more like command-and-assist posts.
Syria and Russia have previously accused Ankara of covertly supplying the terrorists with arms and cross-border logistics. What is quickly transpiring in the latest conflict phase is how Turkey’s state forces are openly participating with the illegally armed militants, as if the latter were a division of the Turkish army. Given Turkey’s NATO membership, the implication here is daunting: NATO, evidently, is in overt league with the terrorists waging war against Syria.
That collaboration was manifest last week on February 19 when Syrian army positions at Nayrab in Idlib came under attack from jihadist militants, believed to be HTS. The attack was supported by Turkish artillery and tank fire. Russian SU-24s were called in to repel the ground offensive. Two Turk troops were killed in the fighting.
Turkey’s Defense Minister HulusiAkar subsequently made an appeal to the US to supply Patriot air defense batteries. It is not clear if the US will actually take that step which would mark a dangerous escalation against Russian-backed Syrian forces.
The US and NATO envoys have, however, voiced renewed support for Turkey amid growing tensions with Syria and Russia.
It has long been suspected that the US and other NATO members have been arming the anti-government militants in Syria since the war erupted in 2011, including known terror groups, such as HTS and its myriad incarnations.
A recent auditing report by the Pentagon found that thousands of US weapons worth over $700 million have unaccountably gone missing from its military warehouses across the Middle East and in particular from arms depots in Kuwait and near the Jordanian-Syrian border. Militants in Syria have been documented as being armed with US-made shoulder-fired missiles (MANPADs) and anti-tank TOW rockets. The linkage to the Pentagon would therefore seem evident.
But what is emerging is the stark configuration of NATO troops alongside terror cadres on the battlefield.
The suggestion by US envoy James Jeffrey that Syria and Russia should talk terms with the terrorist HTS further demonstrates the allegiance between Washington, its NATO allies and the militants.
Syria, with the full support of Russia, has vowed to take back every inch of its territory from the foreign-backed insurgents who have done their utmost to destroy that state, committing unspeakable atrocities against the nation in the process.
International law mandates the Syrian government to take the battle to the end in order to crush and eradicate its enemies. No other state would tolerate anything less. We can only imagine the response by the US towards insurgents in its territory, and if Russia were to somehow call upon Washington to negotiate a truce.
Cornered in Idlib, the NATO powers are moving to salvage their terror proxies, by either giving them military cover or, as Washington is attempting to do, cut some slack through ceasefire negotiations.
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