Puppet Masters
The Nusra Front terrorist group targeted the Syrian city of Al-Baath in Quneitra province in the Golan Heights with high explosive yield missiles, resulting in the death of civilians, an informed source told Sputnik on Wednesday.
"Jabhat al-Nusra [Nusra Front] has launched two missiles with a substance that provides a high explosive power. Several civilians were killed in the assault on the town of Al-Baath," the source said.
This consolidation of power is raising tensions with the US and European Union, with concerns that the president's resort to repression will bring his Western partners into disrepute.
The West may be vexed by Erdogan's truculence, but the strategic importance of his regime for both the US-led NATO military alliance and the EU suggest that they will turn a blind to his excesses - even if those excesses involve further violation of democratic rights.
Comment: The US behavior towards Saudi Arabia and Israel, two allies who are well-known for their cruel human rights practices, should make it clear that the US could care less whether Erdogan turns Turkey into a dictatorship, as long as he capitulates to US interests.
Washington's NATO agenda of encircling, undermining Russia; and the EU's desperate need to halt the influx of refugees mean that Erdogan knows he can crackdown at will. The West may mouth misgivings, but in the end their priority concerns have little to do with international law or democratic rights. And the savvy Erdogan knows that.
There are reports that Erdogan private jet was nearly blown out of the skies by F-16 fighter jets flown by coup-plotters. Such reports lend Erdogan heroic kudos and greater license to crackdown on opponents.
"The French unjust aggression claimed the lives of more than 120 civilians, most of them are children, women and elderly, in addition to tens of wounded citizens, the majority of them are also children and women as reports say that the fate of scores of other civilians who still under debris are unknown too," the Syrian Foreign Ministry wrote, as cited by the Syrian Arab News Agency. The mass death toll in Toukhan Al-Kubra came just a day after US war planes killed around 20 people, mainly women and children, while many more were injured in and around the city of Manbij, the Foreign Ministry states.

A photograph of a Russian BUK missile system that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt published on Twitter in support of a claim about Russia placing BUK missiles in eastern Ukraine, except that the image appears to be an AP photo taken at an air show near Moscow two years earlier.
Perhaps it's only fitting that as we reach the second anniversary of the horrific shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flights 17, The New York Times would mark the occasion by once more using the tragedy as a propaganda club to advance the neocon goal of a new, costly and very dangerous Cold War with Russia.
On Saturday, the Times again demonstrated its disdain for normal journalistic practices as it picked up an amateur assertion that the Russians had faked satellite imagery showing Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile systems in eastern Ukraine before the civilian airliner was blown out of the sky on July 17, 2014.
Since that moment, the Times and other mainstream Western publications have been determined to pin the blame for the deaths of 298 people on Russian President Vladimir Putin so the world could plunge ahead into the latest neocon scheme of destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia with the eventual aim of "regime change" in Moscow.
As revolting as it has been to watch the deaths of innocents exploited in the name of big-power geopolitics, what has been most troubling from a journalistic perspective is that the Times has cast aside any pretense of professional objectivity, much as it did during the deception of the American public over Iraq's fictitious weapons of mass destruction in 2002-2003.
RT: Do you think Sheremet's death may have been caused by his work as a journalist?
Aleksandar Pavic: Judging by what has been happening in Ukraine ever since the coup on Maidan I think it is definitely linked with his journalistic work. This isn't the first time we had a journalist being targeted in Ukraine over the past couple of years. We had a prominent journalist killed last year, only several days after his name, address and personal details were published on a website which is supported by, among other factors, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. So, I think this definitely could be linked to at least parts of the Ukrainian state, and to Sheremet's work as a journalist.
"Ukraine is a dangerous place. We could have thought Ukraine would be more peaceful since the so-called ceasefire but it appears that Ukraine still is not safe. Even Kiev, the capital, which is supposed to be more peaceful than Donbass or the Southern region of Ukraine." - Bruno Drweski, professor at the National Institute of Languages and Eastern Civilizations
Mainstream media and even the rebel-friendly Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have confirmed the killings and the civilian victims.
Shortly after the Nice attack, French president Hollande vowed to retaliate by stepping up bombing in Iraq and Syria.
True to his word, Hollande has today killed more than 120 civilians in Syria (warning graphic photos) in retaliation for the actions of a French resident of Tunisian origin (who is said to not even have been a practicing Muslim).
We may be left asking the obvious couple of questions. Why do 120 innocent Syrian civilians deserve to die because 84 innocent French civilians were killed in a terrorist attack? And how does France expect to avoid further blowback for its aggressive Middle East policy if it continues to provide endless recruiting narratives?
Comment: This comes at the same time that the same mainstream sources are reporting on U.S. airstrikes killing 56 civilians in Manbij. SOHR (the British anti-Assad 'observatory', i.e., one guy on his computer) is even reporting 11 dead children.
In a statement, rights watchdog Amnesty International said the U.S.-led coalition must do more to prevent civilian deaths. "Anyone responsible for violations of international humanitarian law must be brought to justice and victims and their families should receive full reparation," Amnesty's interim Middle East director Magdalena Mughrabi said.The coalition admits that Daesh takes over hospitals and uses them as command centers. Kinda puts reports that Syria and Russia 'bomb hospitals' into perspective, doesn't it (disregarding the obvious fake reporting designed to smear Assad and Putin)?
...
The Observatory said at least 104 civilians have died from air strikes since the start of the Manbij offensive in late May.
Syria's main opposition body, the High Negotiations Committee [i.e. the Saudis], criticized both the SDF and the coalition, which it blamed for what it said were hundreds of civilian deaths around Manbij.
...
Between Sept. 10, 2015 and Feb. 2, 2016, coalition air strikes in Iraq and Syria probably killed 20 civilians and injured 11 others, the U.S. Central Command said in April.
On Tuesday, the coalition said the SAC captured an IS command center in western Manbij on Sunday that was concealed in a hospital and was also being used as a logistics hub.
What's up with this uptick in reporting on American atrocities in Syria?
"I think this was done with one aim - to destabilize the situation in the country, possible ahead of some other events. I demand to establish an operational group and ask (Chief of Ukrainian National Police) Khatia Dekanoidze to head it," Proshenko said at the meeting with heads of law enforcement agencies. The Ukrainian president did not rule out foreign interests in Sheremet's murder.
He also demanded that Prosecutor General Yury Lutsenko and head of Security Service Vasily Gritsak "send their best specialists and do everything possible to resolve this crime as soon as possible." Lutsenko noted two main possible motives behind Sheremet's murder - his professional activities and destabilization of the situation in the country.
It was earlier reported that Pavel Sheremet, a renowned journalist, had been killed in downtown Kiev.
In alphabetical order, states and territories and the District of Columbia all officially cast their delegate votes for the presidential nomination. With some states passing on their turn, it was New York's delegation that put Trump over the 1,237 delegate threshold.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas trailed with just over 200 delegates, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Ohio Governor John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson claimed even fewer. Their names garnered some boos from the convention floor when announced during delegate vote counts.
Comment: It's worth noting that Nigel Farage decided to attend the GOP convention to "hear Trump's speech." Farage seemingly jumped off the UK ship and now wants to get on Trump's bandwagon.
"Several members of the city Mejlis (city council) have already joined the Constituent Assembly of the Federation. Many Arabs, Turkmens and Kurds from Manbij are already members of our Mejlis. It is for the people of Manbij to decide when to join the Federation. The city Mejlis will apply to join the Federal System based on the decision of the people of Manbij," she added.
While the US news cycle has completely turned into a Melania Trump, 'did she' or 'did she not' plagiarize Michelle Obama's 2008 speech, PhD debate, it was around the same 2008 time frame, that Michelle's, then Senator husband, was doing a bit of plagiarizing during his stump speeches...or as White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest so eloquently puts it (and I paraphrase), 'Obama never plagiarized, he was inspired.'
Comment: Please! Notice how both Deval Patrick and Barack Obama plagiarize Dr. King repeatedly. The article really begs the question does any politician have an original thought?














Comment: This incident will give Israel an excuse for occupying the Golan Heights.