Mosul

This is the second time this month the US-led coalition has bombed a hospital’s property.

Photo of Hellfire missiles being loaded onto a US military Reaper drone in Afghanistan by Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson/U.S. Air Force.
The U.S. military said Thursday that it intentionally bombed a hospital in Mosul, Iraq as part of its efforts to “eradicate” Islamic State (ISIS) fighters.

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | November 7, 2016 The most fateful chapter of the war in northern Syria may be deemed to have commenced on Sunday with the launch of the offensive by Syrian Kurdish militia, backed by American and French Special Forces, to retake control of Raqqa, ‘capital’ of the Islamic […]

Exclusive: Though the U.S. has no legal right to operate inside Syria, Official Washington is boasting about its plans to liberate Raqqa from ISIS. But another problem: the battle plan makes no sense, says Daniel Lazare. By Daniel Lazare In…Read more →

The casualties were all from one family.

The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda.
The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term “public relations” as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions.
In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter Parade – behaviour then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, “Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!”

The US-backed campaign is off to a rocky start.

21st Century Wire says…
Just in time for the US presidential election day, the White House has finally launched its much anticipated US-led assault to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, from ISIS terrorist brigades.

Forging certainty in the dust of Middle Eastern plays of power is an impossibility its participants never wish to accept.  The imminent defeat of Islamic State forces in Mosul – deemed imminent, at least, by the forces assaulting the stronghold – provide a suggestion that there will be greater stability in the region.  Nasty fundamentalist forces will be banished, paving the way for a peaceful order.

The assault on Mosul starkly raises the boundless hypocrisy of US and European resolutions in the United Nations, and incessant media coverage, accusing Russian-backed Syrian forces of “war crimes” against civilians as they attempt to retake the eastern sectors of Aleppo from Islamist militias. In Iraq, the US, its allies and its puppet government in Baghdad have begun a savage onslaught against a far larger city, in which as many 1.5 million civilians, including 600,000 children, are trapped.