Interview on Lee Camp’s Redacted Tonight: on war on Syria (with many relevant links)

An interview I did while in NYC last week, with thanks to Lee Camp for having me on his show.

Important Related Reading/Links (in order of mention):

-Stephen Gowans: “The (Largely Unrecognized) US Occupation of Syria“, Mar 11, 2018
-Elijah Magnier: “Three leaders in Ankara: the Syrian war is over but the US remains dangerous“, Apr 5, 2018
-Qatar’s former PM admits arming terrorists
-Bab al-Hadid, Aleppo resident (VIDEO): “Wherever the army is, there is safety. Wherever the ‘rebels’ are…they’re called ‘rebels’ but they’re all terrorists.”
-‘They know that we know they are liars, they keep lying’: West’s war propaganda on Ghouta crescendos, 21 Mar, 2018, RT.com
-My Oct 2015 article: “Deconstructing the NATO Narrative on Syria“. Excerpt:
“…it is known that from the beginning, in Dara’a  and throughout Syria, armed protesters were firing upon, and butchering, security forces and civilians. Tim Anderson’s “Syria: how the violence began, in Daraa” pointed out that police were killed by snipers in the March 17/18 protests; the Syrian army was only brought to Dara’a following the murder of the policemen. Additionally, a storage of protesters’ weapons was found in Dara’a’s al-Omari mosque.
Prem Shankar Jha’s, “Who Fired The First Shot?” described the slaughter of 20 Syrian soldiers outside Dara’a a month later, “by cutting their throats, and cutting off the head of one of the soldiers.” A very “moderate”-rebel practice.
In “Syria: The Hidden Massacre” Sharmine Narwani investigated the early massacres of Syrian soldiers, noting that many of the murders occurred even after the Syrian government had abolished the state security courts, lifted the state of emergency, granted general amnesties, and recognized the right to peaceful protest.
The April 10, 2011 murder of Banyas farmer Nidal Janoud was one of the first horrific murders of Syrian civilians by so-called “unarmed protesters.” Face gashed open, mutilated and bleeding, Janoud was paraded by an armed mob, who then hacked him to death.
Father Frans Van der Ludt—the Dutch priest living in Syria for nearly 5 decades prior to his April 7, 2014 assassination by militants occupying the old city of Homs—wrote (repeatedly) of the “armed demonstrators” he saw in early protests, “who began to shoot at the police first.”
May 2011 video footage of later-resigned Al Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem shows fighters entering Syria from Lebanon, carrying guns and RPGs (Hashem stated he’d likewise seen fighters entering in April). Al Jazeera refused to air the May footage, telling Hashem to ‘forget there are armed men.’ [See: Sharmine Narwani’s “Surprise Video Changes Syria “Timeline””] Unarmed protesters?”
-My Nov 2, 2017 article: “Absurdities of Syrian war propaganda“. Excerpt:
America’s fake war on ISIS
In June 2017, the American-led coalition illegally attacked Syria, shooting down a Syrian plane. America did so admittedly to protect its proxy forces, the Kurdish SDF, which the US is using not to fight ISIS but in its continued attempts to destabilize Syria and control its oilfields.
In September 2016, the US-led coalition waged a nearly one hour attack on a Syrian military position in Deir ez-Zor, enabling ISIS to take over the post.
In May 2015, convoys of ISIS streamed through hundreds of kilometers of open desert, taking over ancient Palmyra. The well-equipped, high tech, US-led coalition, offered no resistance, something which even Robert Fisk, openly sour about his dislike of the Syrian government, noted.
America has also “accidentallydelivered weapons to ISIS and has long sought to use a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria, aka Islamic State, as per a declassified US DIA document. One can always listen to John Kerry speaking in September 2016 about how America watched ISIS flourish. Excerpts include Kerry sayingWe were watching. We saw that, that Daesh was growing in strength. And we thought Assad was threatened.
ISIS terrorist bedfellows with Israel
In July 2017, the Washington Post reported on an Israeli attack on Syria, citing Benjamin Netanyahu as saying they had attacked Syria “dozens” of times. Mint Press News reported on Israel giving medical treatment to over 3,000 terrorists. A 21st Century Wire article said the preference of Israeli politicians was even for an ISIS victory in Syria.
According to the Times of Israel, ISIS has opened fire on Israel and apologized. This is the jihadist group, ISIS, which doesn’t attack the natural target, Israeli regime occupying Palestine, but instead, collaborates with it.”
-on sanctions on Syria, my March 3, 2016 article: “Western media ignoring reality on the ground in Syria: terrorism and anti-Syria sanctions which help
“Sanctions: It is the Syrian People Who Are Suffering
Dr. Shaaban emphasized the Syrian realities at a meeting in her office in December.
A crucially-important issue that media pundits ignore is that of the crippling sanctions on Syria. In terms of how to provide actual relief to the Syrian people, Dr. Shaaban stated:

The first thing the West should do in this battle against terrorism is to lift the sanctions from the Syrian people. The sanctions are helping terrorists against the Syrian people, who are suffering doubly from the terrorists and from Western measures against the Syrian people.

Stephen Gowans recently wrote about the US government’s long-time plans to topple the Syrian government, sanctions being one part of the plot.

Documents prepared by US Congress researchers as early as 2005 revealed that the US government was actively weighing regime change in Syria. …As an alternative to direct military intervention to topple the Syrian government, the United States chose to pressure Damascus through sanctions and support for the internal Syrian opposition.

The advocacy website, End the Sanctions on Syria, notes:

Similar sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s were shown to have caused the deaths of more than half a million Iraqi children.

The site went on to report that (as of May 2014):

701 of 1,921 Syrian health centres have been ‘completely gutted’ by the terrorist attacks. Yet rehabilitation of these centres is retarded by the US-EU sanctions, which have already left ‘a deep mark on the healthcare system’… including by blocking access to medicines, medical equipment, transport and communications.

A May 27, 2015 article in The Lancet reports:

The cost of basic food items has risen six-fold since 2010, although it varies regionally. With the exception of drugs for cancer and diabetes, Syria was 95 percent self-sufficient in terms of drug production before the war. This has virtually collapsed as have many hospitals and primary health-care centres.
Economic sanctions have not removed the President: …only civilians are in the line of fire, attested to by the dire state of household and macro-economies. Sanctions are among the biggest causes of suffering for the people of Syria.”

-On the Quds hospital, reported “destroyed” by MSF: “Syria War Diary: What Life Is Like Under ‘Moderate Rebel’ Rule“, Aug 24, 2017
-On Omran Daqneesh: “MintPress Meets The Father Of Iconic Aleppo Boy, Who Says Media Lied About His Son“, June 9, 2017
-Vanessa Beeley: “The ‘other’ Omran: Aleppo civilians expose MSM lies & child exploitation“,  Sep 4, 2017
-Father of #Omran, in #Aleppo, June 6, 2017 (VIDEO): “The Syrian Army always protects the country. I served in the Syrian army. This is the Syrian army’s duty, to protect people, to protect the country, to protect the civilians. The army is the people, and the people are the army.”
-On Madaya and al-Waer: “Syria War Diary: Order Returns To Western Cities, Civilians Recount Horrors Of ‘Rebel’ Rule“, Sep 26, 2017
-Cory Morningstar on the White Helmets’ PR ties: “SYRIA: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire“,  Sep 17, 2014
-Vanessa Beeley on the White Helmets: “‘White Helmets’: New Breed of Mercenaries and Propagandists, Disguised as ‘Humanitarians’ in Syria“, Sep 1, 2015 [More of Vanessa Beeley, and others, writings on the WH here]
-Mint Press News: “EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack“, Aug 29, 2013
-Sharmine Narwani: “Terrorist capabilities laid bare in an Eastern Ghouta chemical lab“, Mar 16, 2018
-153,240 people have been evacuated from the Eastern Ghouta with the help of the Russian Centre for Reconciliation (source)
More than 40,000 people returned to Syria’s Ghouta, Apr 3, 2018
-return of more than 12,000 students to their schools in eastern Ghouta and the makeshift centers (source)
-“41,126 militants and their family members left the settlements of Erbin, Jobar, Ein Tarma and Zamalka,” (source)
-My article: “The Terrorism We Support in Syria: A First-hand Account of the Use of Mortars against Civilians“, Sep 11, 2014
-My early 2015 article: “University Hospital, Damascus: Meeting Victims of Western-backed Mortar and Rocket Terrorism
-Distorting the facts around terrorist bombings. “Absurdities of Syrian war propaganda“, Nov 2, 2017. Excerpt: “When “rebels” fire mortars into civilians areas, corporate journalists like to claim the Syrian government was the perpetrator. On a November 2016 day when two mortars hit Aleppo’s Castello road, less than 100 meters from where I stood without a helmet or flak jacket, the NY Times wrote that soldiers blamed “rebels” and “rebel groups denied it.” Yet, there was no disputing that the shells came from an Al-Nusra area.
In April 2014, after an elementary school was mortared by terrorists east of Damascus, killing one child, the BBC later reported, “the government is also accused of launching them into neighborhoods under its control.” On a recent social media post, I noted this deceitful journalism, and the BBC could have easily learned about the trajectory of mortars and from where the mortar in question could only have come: the “moderates” east of Damascus.”

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