Five years ago this month, Russia began conducting fateful military operations in Syria at the request of the government in Damascus. It was a momentous “turning point,” as noted by Syria’s President Assad this week, whose nation is slowly rising from the ashes of war.
Thousands of Turkish-backed militants from Syria’s Idlib province have been recruited as mercenaries to support Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia.
Several reports indicate that the Syrian fighters were already dispatched to Azerbaijan before the latest flare-up in hostilities with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Terrorism is a very peculiar word indeed. In the Middle East, it’s hard to find two people who agree on who they deem terrorist, versus who they consider a venerable freedom fighter or legitimate army. That said, one question which is being applied more to Trump these days, is did he do anything in his term to reduce terrorism? Or in fact did he merely fan the flames? Or perhaps, does he have any clue at all what he is doing in any of these so-called terror campaigns and is merely a four-year-old playing with crayons hoping that something, at some point, will become clearer?
The report caused the establishment to throw a tantrum ‘symptomatic of the reflexive defensiveness’ of the blob.
Barbara BOLAND
Patrick COCKBURN
Desperate refugees crammed into cockle-shell boats landing on the shingle beaches of the south Kent coast are easily portrayed as invaders. Anti-immigrant demonstrators were exploiting such fears last weekend as they blockaded the main highway into Dover Port in order “to protect Britain’s borders”. Meanwhile, the home secretary, Priti Patel, blames the French for not doing enough to stop the flow of refugees across the Channel.
Jacob G. HORNBERGER
With today being another anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it’s important to recall why it was that that deadly event came about.
No, the terrorists didn’t attack us because they hated our “freedom and values,” as U.S. officials and American interventionists claimed after the attacks. Instead, the attacks occurred in retaliation for what the U.S. national-security establishment, specifically the Pentagon and the CIA, had been doing to people in the Middle East prior to the 9/11 attacks.
It has been almost two decades since the infamous terror attacks on 9/11. The towers tragically falling demanded action, but did America make the right response? Watch the video and read more in the Editorial article.
This week marks 19 years since the 9/11 terror attacks hit the northeastern United States resulting in nearly 3,000 deaths. It was an era-defining event which has shaped the first quarter of the 21st century, and perhaps even beyond that. Within weeks of the horror, the United States launched a global “war on terror” which continues until today with even greater horrific consequences.
Caitlin JOHNSTONE
A new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project has found that at least 37 million people have been displaced as a result of America’s so-called “war on terror” since 9/11, a conservative estimate of a number that may actually be somewhere between 48 million to 59 million.
