If there was a Nobel Prize for hypocrisy, Turkey Foreign Minister Mevut Cavusoglu just won it. Speaking along side American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Ankara, Cavusoglu said,
“It is not good or realistic to work with a terrorist group while fighting another terrorist group”.
Speaking in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, Sergei Lavrov’s deputy at the Russian Foreign Ministry, gave a brief statement to the press, clarifying Russia’s much misunderstood position regarding a Syrian peace settlement.
Gatilov is a gentle, soft spoken man. At times he is too gentle, as many in Russia tend to be when faced with the onslaught of both western imperial aggression as well as the terrorist aggression of foreign fighters, currently plaguing the territory of their Syrian ally.
Druse participate in a rally, demanding the return of the Golan Heights, taken by Israel in 1967, close to the Syrian border in Buqata in the Golan Heights, Sunday, Feb. 14, 2016. The annual demonstration is in protest of the 1981 Israeli law in which the Jewish state annexed the strategic plateau it captured from Syria during 1967 Arab-Israeli war. (AP/Oded Balilty)
It is painful to watch Iraq die a million times before its penultimate death. Between 1990 and the present day, there have been more years when Iraq has been bombed by the US and its partners, than years during which the opposite was true.
No other country can say the same in respect of that 27 year time frame. When Iraq wasn’t being bombed by the US, it was being sanctioned to death, while pirates plundered the profits from the inherently inhumane Oil For Food programme.
Because the mainstream media have both an unrelenting neo-liberal/globalist/post-cultural agenda as well as a tendency to speak simplistically about deeply manifold subjects, there will be plenty of gloating form the likes of CNN and state owned British broadcaster BBC, over the fact that The Dutch Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders came second and secured far fewer seats than many had predicted.
The Syrian government signaled today its patience is exhausted with repeated Israeli airstrikes on its territory.
Syria said it would launch Scud missiles at Israeli targets the next time Israeli jets infringe its sovereignty, as reported by Sputnik:
Syrian rebels walk in an alley in Idlib, Syria, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012. (AP Photo)
DAMASCUS —(Editorial) During the past six years, a country that was previously absent from mainstream media coverage has taken center stage in the news. One needs only to turn on the TV, read a newspaper or hop online to hear about the ongoing conflict in Syria – a conflict that has been described as this decade’s most brutal humanitarian crisis.
I, along with others have been wondering just how the events in Syria from 2011 onwards might have unraveled had the internet not been as advanced as it has been in the last six years.
When the US and the UK invaded Iraq in 2003, those Iraqis who knew of the internet saw it as an exotic, alien entity. Mobile phones were scarce, and even satellite television was not permitted prior to 2003 while email services were mostly limited to government officials.
The 21st century has witnessed what many would call a sharp decline in the strength and stability in governments promoting Arab nationalism. Whether Ba’athism, Nasserism or Libya’s unique Third International Theory, many of the regimes that were once bulwarks of the various ideologies of Pan-Arabism have either been destroyed or severely compromised.
Terrorism is a border-less problem, even Great Britain which has no land borders is not immune from homegrown and foreign terrorists.
The recent attack on civilians outside the UK Parliament is just one such example of this truth that many cannot accept.
Not only can many not accept it, but they would rather pursue meaningless fights against other nations whose citizens and infrastructure are subject to the daily reality of terrorism, rather than join them in a collective effort to fight terrorism as part of something resembling a united front.
