Syria: Assad thanks Russia & Putin for helping to liberate Aleppo

The Syrian President, Bashar Assad, has expressed his gratitude to Vladimir Putin and the Russian people for their help in liberating Aleppo from terrorists as the two leaders talked a day after Damascus assumed full control over the city.

The phone conversation was initiated by Russia as Putin congratulated his Syrian counterpart with the conclusion of the Aleppo operation.

“The two sides discussed during the phone call the next political process in Syria, with President al-Assad thanking President Putin and Russia as a key ally for Syria which contributed along with other allies to liberating Aleppo,” the Syrian state-owned news agency SANA reported.

Read more: Assad thanks Russia & Putin for helping to liberate Aleppo — RT News

War Criminals: Hospitals Cannot Be Targets in War - by Jason Cone

On April 27, a series of airstrikes hit Al Quds hospital in the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo, killing upwards of 50 people, including at least 29 women and children, and wounding scores more. The hospital—its emergency room, its intensive care unit, its operating theater, all of it—was destroyed. Doctors were among the dead as well, including one of the very few, if not the last, pediatrician in Aleppo.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) supported Al Quds hospital with supplies and funding to help its remarkably brave staff assist patients. The bombing was shocking news. But, like a painfully recurring nightmare, it was not surprising.

There have been far too many of these attacks in recent years, in far too many places. It seems obvious enough that people, even people at war, should not attack hospitals and kill medical workers and patients. And yet in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan and elsewhere, it happens over and over again—a man-made, and eminently avoidable, epidemic of death and destruction.

Read more, click here: Time Magazine

Middle East - Syria: Will a No-Fly Zone Help the People of Aleppo?

Media coverage has recently been saturated with distressing scenes showing the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo, where aerial bombardment has led to a heavy loss of civilian life. The severity of the crisis instinctively makes us want to help – scores of protesters gathered outside the seat of the British prime minister on Saturday holding signs calling on the government to “Save Aleppo” and impose a “No-Bomb Zone Now”. While the anger is understandable, the way it is being channeled reflects a circumscribed policy debate – there are other options than a No-Fly Zone, which should be avoided as it would harm rather than help efforts to alleviate the suffering of Syrian civilians.

In any area of policy, the mainstream debate revolves around policy alternatives that reflect establishment divisions. For example, in economics, ‘there is no alternative’ to neoliberalism, at least there wasn’t until Keynesianism was rediscovered by some elites after the 2008 crisis. The debate over what is to be done over Syria revolves around two policy alternatives: the hawks, including likely next U.S. president, Hillary Clinton, advocate a NFZ and the doves, including the current U.S. administration, maintain that the sanctions regime should be increased. This effectively reflects a division within the establishment on how to proceed. Serious policy alternatives are not discussed. In particular, discussion of increasing aid and support to refugees, surely the most obvious way of directly helping civilians in Syria, and what the UN has called on industrialized countries to do, is curious by its absence.

This circumscribed debate does not logically follow from its supposed pretext – stopping civilian loss of life. In fact, a NFZ is a policy that would unavoidably lead to civilians dying. Enforcing a NFZ means destroying air defenses, which are located to defend cities – i.e. they are located in areas where there are many civilians. Even the flagbearer for the hawks, Hillary Clinton, has admitted privately that with a No-Fly Zone “you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians”; such intervention will “take a lot of civilians”. This realization would seem inconsistent with the often-used humanitarian pretext, but it makes sense given Hillary Clinton’s recent admission that her top priority in Syria is removing Syrian President Assad.

There is a clear parallel with the imposition of a NFZ in Libya, which prolonged the conflict and worsened the situation for civilians. NATO bombing directly led to scores of civilian deaths and facilitated the overthrow of the regime by rebel militias that have killed, and are continuing to kill, thousands. Particularly repugnant was the ethnic cleansing of black people, including through public lynching. In a 2013 paper, Alan Kuperman, a Harvard academic, argued that NATO intervention extended the war by a factor of 6 and increased the death toll 7 to 10 times; given that Libya is now a failed state, torn apart by warlords, we can safely say that these estimates were too conservative. President Obama privately calls the situation in Libya a “shit show”. Only last month a report from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British Parliament found that the humanitarian justification was an insufficient pretext and based on falsehoods, the supposedly limited intervention led “ineluctably” to regime change, and that the (British) government, and by implication other participating Western powers, did not seriously consider diplomatic alternatives to military action.

Regardless, the mantra of Western foreign policy is “it will be different this time” – unlike all recent Western military interventions this one will be limited, successful and won’t leave a worse humanitarian situation in its wake. Although, if the dire humanitarian situation in Aleppo necessitates immediate action, then why are there not equally loud calls for action for civilians facing similar situations? U.S. bombing in Manbij and Kobane in Syria and Ramadi and Fallujah in Iraq has resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and flattened entire neighbourhoods; more than a third of US and UK backed Saudi airstrikes in Yemen have hit civilian sites, including schools, hospitals, weddings and funerals.

The U.S. and its allies want to remove Syria from Russia’s orbit, so therefore the dictator there must go, but airstrikes to support the dictator in Yemen are fine, because the dictator there is a friend of close U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.

Read more: Will a No-Fly Zone Help the People of Aleppo?

Syria: Massacre continues - Aleppo hospitals deal with patient surge after offensive

 Hospitals in Western Aleppo are dealing with a surge in patients caught up in a rebel attack on government forces, who have the east of the city under siege.

Activists say at least 15 civilians have been killled and more than 100 wounded by rebel shelling.

State media say seven people died.

Syrian rebels launched a counter-attack on government forces and their allies in western Aleppo on Friday.

The aim was to break a weeks-long siege on the eastern Syrian city.

The assault was mainly focused on the city’s western edge by rebels based in the countryside outside Aleppo.

Photographs seem to show insurgents approaching Aleppo in tanks, armoured vehicles, bulldozers, pick-up trucks and on motorcycles.

A large column of smoke can also be seen.

Read full report: Aleppo hospitals deal with patient surge after offensive

The US Corporate Press: "The Fable Of Good and Bad Deaths in the Middle East

Note how differently The New York Times prepares the American public for civilian casualties from the new U.S.-backed Iraqi government assault on the city of Mosul to free it from the Islamic State, compared to the unrelenting condemnation of the Russian-backed Syrian government assault on neighborhoods of east Aleppo held by Al Qaeda.

In the case of Mosul, the million-plus residents are not portrayed as likely victims of American airstrikes and Iraqi government ground assaults, though surely many will die during the offensive. Instead, the civilians are said to be eagerly awaiting liberation from the Islamic State terrorists and their head-chopping brutality.

“Mosul’s residents are hoarding food and furtively scrawling resistance slogans on walls,” writes Times’ veteran war correspondent Rod Nordland about this week’s launch of the U.S.-backed government offensive. “Those forces will fight to enter a city where for weeks the harsh authoritarian rule of the Islamic State … has sought to crack down on a population eager to either escape or rebel, according to interviews with roughly three dozen people from Mosul.

The Times article continues: “Mosul residents chafed under social codes banning smoking and calling for splashing acid on body tattoos, summary executions of perceived opponents, whippings of those who missed prayers or trimmed their beards, and destroying ‘un-Islamic’ historical monuments.”

So, the message is clear: if the inevitable happens and the U.S.-backed offensive kills a number of Mosul’s civilians, including children, The New York Times’ readers have been hardened to accept this “collateral damage” as necessary to free the city from blood-thirsty extremists. The fight to crush these crazies is worth it, even if there are significant numbers of civilians killed in the “cross-fire.”

By contrast, the Times routinely portrays the battle for east Aleppo as simply a case of barbaric Russian and Syrian leaders bombing innocent neighborhoods with no regard for the human cost, operating out of an apparent lust to kill children.

Rather than focusing on Al Qaeda’s harsh rule of east Aleppo, the Times told its readers in late September how to perceive the Russian-Syrian offensive to drive out Al Qaeda and its allies. A Sept. 25 article by Anne Barnard and Somini Sengupta, entitled “Syria and Russia Appear Ready to Scorch Aleppo,” began:

“Make life intolerable and death likely. Open an escape route, or offer a deal to those who leave or surrender. Let people trickle out. Kill whoever stays. Repeat until a deserted cityscape is yours. It is a strategy that both the Syrian government and its Russian allies have long embraced to subdue Syrian rebels, largely by crushing the civilian populations that support them.

“But in the past few days, as hopes for a revived cease-fire have disintegrated at the United Nations, the Syrians and Russians seem to be mobilizing to apply this kill-all-who-resist strategy to the most ambitious target yet: the rebel-held sections of the divided metropolis of Aleppo.”

Again, note how the “rebels” are portrayed as local heroes, rather than a collection of jihadists from both inside and outside Syria fighting under the operational command of Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which recently underwent a name change to the Syria Conquest Front. But the name change and the pretense about “moderate” rebels are just more deceptions.

Read more: Consortiumnews – Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995

Middle East - Syria: 30 FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS (ISRAELI, US, TURKISH) KILLED IN MISSILE ATTACK IN ALEPPO

Reports have been appearing in various pro-government media outlets since September 20 that some Russian warships, deployed in Syria’s coastal waters, hit with missiles a foreign-led military operations room near Aleppo city, killing 30 Israeli, US, Turkish, Saudi, Qatari and British officers.

The military operations room was allegedly located in the western part of Aleppo province in the middle of Sam’an mountain. It was set up by foreign intelligence services in order to coordinate operations of various militant group against the Syrian government forces in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib.

While there are no doubts that various ‘opposition’ and terrorist groups in Syria are trained, supplied and managed by foreign intelligence services (mostly US, Turkish and Saudi), the pro-government sources have not provided video or photo evidences in order to confirm this report. The Russian Ministry of Defense has not commented on the issue.

Read more: 30 FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS (ISRAELI, US, TURKISH) KILLED IN MISSILE ATTACK IN ALEPPO | The Millennium Report

Syria: There is no method to this tragic madness as the global political establishment "implodes"- by RM

Aleppo, Syria

On 23 April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 470,000 that had died in the war.  

These cold numbers are the first thing that hit you about Syria. Figures telling of a human catastrophe on a scale hard to compute. Suffering on a level to which any rational response seems inadequate – 470,000 people killed, according to the latest estimates; 11.5 percent of the population injured; 45 percent of a country of 22 million made homeless; 4 million refugees and 6.36 million internally displaced persons. Life expectancy is down from 70.5 years in 2010 to an estimated 55.4 years in 2015. Welcome to the Syrian civil war. 

The Syrian conflict has become worse than a nightmare, because after a nightmare you usually wake-up to some kind of normality, instead this is an ongoing nightmare, from which you never wake up.

In the meantime, the global political establishment, our political leaders, representing different so-called "power blocks", blame everything and everyone, except themselves, as they fuel this war with weapons from their weapons industry and that from around the world. 

Worse still, is that these weapons purchases are financed with money from mostly ignorant and misinformed taxpayers. 

Taxpayers usually are more interested in using an App on their smartphone, or in finding out on social media, like Facebook,what a friend is doing, or even why his or her dog prefers a certain type of dog food above another. Being concerned about whatever does not directly affect him or her is the last thing on the agenda. 

In Europe the war in Syria hardly ever is looked at as a human tragedy, or has anyone ask who the real culprits are of this tragedy, but sadly equated to what kind of impact the large number of refugees will have on European living standards.

Former US President Dwight Eisenhouwer once said about the weapons industry: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron ".   

Yes indeed, arms dealers and their government cabinet-level cronies always profit from a war.

On top of that there is now also a perverse logic that pervades restrictions. Military aid and arms sales by the US, but certainly not restricted to them alone, are now approved to formerly off-limits regimes.

Of the 67 countries which have received or are set to receive U.S. military aid, 32 were  previously identified by the State Department as having "poor" or worse human rights records.

Obviously, the central question is: does this make the world a safer place for anyone but arms manufacturers and the politicians who love and have them funded ?

Every academic in the world will tell you, Syria today is the most awful humanitarian catastrophic drama to hit the Levant since World War II. Do politicians realize that and make an effort to remedy it? No, not at all.

Whole families with small children ‒ some people terribly wounded by the bombings ‒ living in  olive groves under the elements, with neither shelter nor provisions.

And the drama continues. Russia used its Security Council veto at the UN to prevent any concerted action against the regime. Moscow also keeps the weapons and bombs coming.

Turkey, a NATO member, whose leader has his own aspirations for the area, supports whoever can help him diminish the Kurdish influence in the area, even ISIS. 

The Iranians use their expertise in crowd control to help Assad control the demonstrations against his regime, and the Americans are funding and supplying a Kurdish proxy army and different rebel groups to fight Assad forces, in addition to also bombing so-called "enemy targets".

Our global political establishment has had chance after chance to remedy the situation, but greed and hypocricy within a defunct political world order has made that impossible.

Syria and the surrounding region is now the epicenter of what is still to come - it is the beginning of cataclysmic developments around the world that will clarify to the world at large, "who was", "who is", and "who will come".

© this report can be copied only if its source is mentioned

EU-Digest 

Syria: The drama continues as Aleppo strikes hit hospital, market, kill 18

A series of air strikes Friday in opposition areas in Syria’s northern Aleppo province killed at least 18 people, including children and two hospital staffers, when the missiles hit an open market, a women and children’s hospital and a village, activists and rescue workers said.Air strikes hit the only hospital for women and children in the town of Kafr Hamra before dawn Friday, killing two staffers including a nurse.

The first-responders team of Syrian Civil Defense said it pulled 10 people alive from under the rubble.

Kafr Hamra is adjacent to the northern frontline in the deeply divided city of Aleppo, where government troops have sealed the main route into opposition areas, effectively trapping nearly 300,000 residents.

The opposition fighters launched a counteroffensive last week, breaching the siege from the southern front. That road remains under fire, and the UN has asked for a ceasefire to allow aid into the area.

Health facilities have been frequently targeted in the civil war in Syria. Aid groups have said the month of July was one of the worst since the war began in 2011, with some 43 facilities in opposition areas partially or totally destroyed.

Read more: Aleppo strikes hit hospital, market, kill 18 | GulfNews.com

Syria, Turkey border fire as clashes rage

Syrian mortar fire again struck a Turkish border village on Sunday, prompting artillery retaliation for the fourth day as fierce fighting rocked the key city of Aleppo and rebels lost ground in Damascus.

The Syrian mortar round struck hit Akcakale -- site of a similar strike on Wednesday -- as Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said President Bashar al-Assad should be replaced by Vice President Faruq al-Shara.

The mortar round hit the grounds of a public building without causing casualties, Turkey's NTV news channel reported, adding that the building had been evacuated beforehand.

Read more: Syria, Turkey border fire as clashes rage | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Syria rebels launch broadest push yet for top city

Rebels on Friday pressed their broadest assault yet to drive President Bashar Assad's forces out of Syria's largest city, activists said, with fierce fighting erupting in an Aleppo neighborhood that is home to Kurds, an ethnic minority that has mostly stayed out of the civil war.

In Washington, U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said intelligence suggests Assad has moved some of Syria's chemical weapons to better secure them. Panetta said the main sites are believed to be secure, though his comments indicated that there are lingering questions about what happened to some of the weapons.

On the diplomatic front, top representatives from Western nations and Middle East allies met Friday at the U.N. to urge Syria's fractured opposition to unite. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Friends of Syria group that the U.S. would deliver an additional $15 million in non-lethal aid and $30 million in humanitarian support, on top of more than $175 million already given to political opposition.

Diplomacy has been largely sidelined in the 18-month-old Syria conflict because a key tool -- U.N. Security Council action -- has been neutralized by vetoes from Assad allies Russia and China.

Read more: Syria rebels launch broadest push yet for top city | CTV News

Syria: Turkish, Saudi officers arrested in Aleppo

 A group of Turkish and Saudi officers who may have been aiding rebel Syrian forces have been arrested in Aleppo.

The arrests were reported Monday by Syrian state television as clashes continued in the city, Iran's state-run Press TV reported.

There was no immediate word on how many officers were arrested.

In early July, President Bashar Assad claimed in a Turkish newspaper Turkey was supplying "all logistic support" to the rebels.


Read More: Syria: Turkish, Saudi officers arrested - UPI.com

Middle East: Syria rebels brace for 'mother of all battles'

Waves of troop reinforcements have been pouring into the northern city of Aleppo -- Syria's commercial capital -- and a security source told AFP the offensive feared by the rebels could come as early as Friday.

"The special forces were deployed on Wednesday and Thursday on the edges of the city, and more troops have arrived to take part in a generalised counter-offensive on Friday or Saturday," the security source said.

Early Friday, helicopter gunships strafed a string of rebel neighbourhoods in the southwest of the city. Clashes also broke out in the Jamiliya district, adjacent to Aleppo's historic old quarter, a human rights watchdog said.

Three people were killed in shelling of the southern Fardoss district and one was shot dead in the Maysaloon neighbourhood, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Read more: Syria rebels brace for 'mother of all battles' - Region - World - Ahram Online

Syria rushes reinforcements to its largest city - by Elizabeth A. Kennedy

 Syrian troops rushed dozens of tanks and reinforcements Wednesday toward Aleppo, the country's strategically vital commercial capital, in a bid to crush a rebel advance that has spread to wide swaths of the sprawling city.

As five days of fighting in Aleppo intensified, and with rumors swirling of a final showdown in that city, neighboring Turkey tightened its borders but said refugees will be allowed through.

"We are expecting a big attack on Aleppo," Mohammed Saeed, an activist based in Aleppo, told The Associated Press. "People are worried they might face random shelling while fleeing."

Syria rushes reinforcements to its largest city - Businessweek

Syria revolt reaches Aleppo; rebels target cities

Riding a wave of momentum, Syrian rebels made a run on Aleppo Saturday in some of the fiercest fighting seen in the country's largest city, which has been a key bastion of support for President Bashar Assad over the course of the 17-month-old uprising.

The rebels also took over a third border crossing -- and the second one along Syria's northeastern frontier with Iraq -- another sign the regime's tight grip on the country is wobbling.

The fighting in Aleppo comes on the heels of intense clashes in the capital, Damascus, as rebel forces target the pillars of regime power in their attempts to usher in what they hope will be the end of Assad's rule.

Read more: Syria revolt reaches Aleppo; rebels target cities - Boston.com