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Mon, 08 Nov 2021
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Nusra Front terrorist group launches deadly missile attack on Golan Heights

Golan Heights shelling
© AFP 2016/ JALAA MAREY
Nusra Front launched two missiles that killed several civilians in Quneitra province in the Golan Heights, according to a source.

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.

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


Vader

Erdogan tightening grip around Turkey in wake of failed coup

erdogan
© AFP 2016/ ADEM ALTAN
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is moving rapidly to tighten autocratic hold on power in the wake of the failed coup over the weekend.

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.

Jet5

Syria outraged over 'bloody massacres of 120 civilians perpetrated by the US and France', appeals to UN

U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle
© US AIR FORCE / Reuters
A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle
Syria is demanding the UN take action after it says French war planes killed more than 120 civilians during airstrikes on Tuesday near the Turkish-Syrian border. The deaths came just a day after US air assaults killed a further 20 people in Manbij. The Syrian Foreign Ministry sent letters to the UN secretary general and to the president of the UN Security Council, which at present is Japan. Damascus wants the organization to look into atrocities committed by France, which is a member of the US-led international coalition, after it targeted the village of Toukhan Al-Kubra, located near the Turkish-Syrian border and the city of Manbij.

"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.

Airplane

MH-17 - the gift that keeps on giving: Two years and counting of anti-Russian propaganda

BUK MH17 Ukraine Russia

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.
Two years ago, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine killing 298 people and opening an inviting path for a propaganda campaign toward a new Cold War with Russia.

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.

Footprints

Murder of Ukrainian journalist Pavel Sheremet reminiscent of how 'old- style Latin American dictatorship killed opponents'

Journalist Pavel Sheremet
© Ramil Sitdikov / Sputnik
Journalist Pavel Sheremet
If you are trying to report the facts from the war-torn regions in Donbass, or trying to pass along any sort of objective news that goes against the official line, then you are very much in peril working in Ukraine now, political analyst Aleksandar Pavic told RT. Prominent journalist Pavel Sheremet has been killed by a car bomb in Ukraine's capital Kiev. Ukraine's Interior Ministry says the bomb may have been detonated remotely. Pavel Sheremet worked in both Russia and Ukraine and had lived in Kiev for the last five years.

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

Eiffel Tower

Another French success: France bombs 120 civilians in Syria - 'retaliation' for Nice?

syria airstrike
Just days after Tunisian-born French resident Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck into a crowded Bastille Day celebration in Nice, France, killing at least 84, a French-led bombing attack on the Syrian villages of Tokhar and Hoshariyeh today has reportedly killed more than 120 civilians.

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 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.
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)?

What's up with this uptick in reporting on American atrocities in Syria?


Info

Poroshenko thinks journalist's murder aimed at destabilizing situation

Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko
© AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
The aim of famed journalist Pavel Sheremet's murder was to destabilized the situation in Ukraine, President Pyotr Poroshenko said on Wednesday.

"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.

Comment: High profile Ukrainian journalist Pavel Sheremet dies in car explosion


Snakes in Suits

God help us all: Trump earns enough delegate votes to be the Republican presidential nominee at GOP convention

trump
© Mario Anzuoni / Reuters
It's no longer presumptive. Despite some opposition, Donald Trump surpassed the required 1,237 delegate votes for the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Now, the first internet reactions are pouring in.

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.


Dominoes

A liberated Manbij will join the autonomous federation of N. Syria

Manbij fighters
© www.kurdishinfo.com
"We will liberate Manbij."
Amid the intensive fighting for the liberation of the northern Syrian city of Manbij from Daesh jihadists, Rojava-Northern Syria Democratic Federal System Constituent Assembly Co-President Hediye Yusuf tells Sputnik Turkiye that when fully liberated, the city will join the autonomous Rojava - Northern Syria Democratic Federal System. "Manbij will be liberated in a short while. After the liberation it will be integrated into the Rojava — Northern Syria Democratic Federal System," Hediye Yusuf told Sputnik Turkiye.

"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.

Take 2

Barack Obama's 2008 Speeches: Plagiarized or 'inspired'?

Obama
© nationalreview.com
Melania Trump, plagiarized. Barack Obama was inspired.

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?