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As the battle for Idlib looms, a Russian task force cruises the Mediterranean - by chance or plan?

Elijah J. Magnier
American Herald Tribune
Mon, 03 Sep 2018 00:00 UTC
Frigate in Bosporus
© Yörük Işık/ Twitter
The frigate Admiral Grigorovich transits the Bosporus en route to Tartus.
Russia has amassed large naval and air forces in the Mediterranean opposite the Syrian coast under the command of the Russian Navy commander Admiral Vladimir Korolev. 25 warships and 30 aircraft are involved in these extensive maneuvers: Tu-160 bombers, Tu-142s, II38 anti-submarine, Su-33s and Su-30SMs, and other aircraft. The drill is announced to end one day after the Tehran Summit between presidents Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Hassan Rouhani, to decide the fate and outcome of the battle of Idlib. This may indicate that Russia is about to provide huge firepower for the Syrian Army offensive in the north of Syria against jihadists, thus creating a shield for the dissuasion of a possible US tactical attack against Damascus.

Sources close to the leadership command in Syria said that there is no doubt that the battle of Idlib will take place, regardless of US threats. It will be divided into several steps. The first objective is to ensure the safety of the Russian Hameymeem military base on the Syrian coast that has been subject to several armed drone attacks, carried out by al-Nusra, aka Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the ex-al Qaeda in Syria, as claimed by Russia. This makes the rural Latakia area the first objective, followed by rural Idlib. Turkey has offered substantial information which has been added to Syrian intelligence and Russian information gathering. This has created a bank of objectives against HTS, Tanzim Hurras al-Deen (THD) and all the other jihadists and foreign fighters in the city and its rural area.

Comment: Except in opposition, the US is irrelevant to the final stages of the war in Syria. That it may through false means create a deadly diversion - a final hurrah - would be no more than a validation of immaturity and empirical intent at the expense of thousands of innocent lives.

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Attention

Trump warns Assad against a 'reckless' attack on Syria's Idlib province


RT
Mon, 03 Sep 2018 22:29 UTC
AssadTRump
© Unknown
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad • US President Donald Trump
US President Donald Trump has warned Syrian leader Bashar Assad not to attack Idlib province, one of the last terrorist hideouts in the country, also advising Iran and Russia against taking part in the "potential human tragedy."

Expressing his concern that hundreds of thousands of lives might be at risk during the Syrian army's looming operations to clear the Idlib province of militants, Trump cautioned Damascus, as well as Moscow and Iran, against "making a grave humanitarian mistake."

"President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province," Trump tweeted on Monday afternoon. "The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy."

Comment: The US, losing its cover reasons for being in Syria along with the remnants of its proxy forces, is putting a negative spin on the culmination of the war for its own intents and purposes. When this fails to deter the Idlib operation, it has a trip wire false flag threat in place.

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Laptop

Judicial Watch obtains emails revealing Podesta Group's work for Pro-Russia Ukrainian political party


Judicial Watch
Thu, 17 May 2018 00:00 UTC
John & Tony Podesta
© unknown/KJN
Emails show longtime Obama and Clinton counselor John Podesta lobbying on behalf of the Podesta Group.

Judicial Watch today released new documents from the U.S. Department of State showing the Podesta Group working on behalf of the pro-Russia Ukrainian political group "Party of Regions." The new documents also show longtime Obama and Clinton counselor John Podesta lobbying on behalf of his brother's firm.

Judicial Watch obtained the documents in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department filed on November 20, 2017, (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:17-cv-02489)). The lawsuit was filed after the State Department failed to respond to a September 13, 2017, FOIA request for:
  • All records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of State and any principal, employee, or representative of Podesta Group, Inc.
  • All records produced related to any meetings or telephonic communications between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of State and any principal, employee, or representative of Podesta Group, Inc.
  • All records regarding the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine.
  • The FOIA request covers the timeframe of January 1, 2012 to the present.
A March 28, 2013, email from now-Deputy Executive Secretary in the Office of the Secretary of State Baxter Hunt shows the Podesta Group, led by Tony Podesta, a Clinton bundler and brother of Clinton's 2016 campaign chairman John Podesta, represented the Party of Regions, a pro-Kremlin political party in Ukraine.

Comment: Where is the corruption and collusion Mueller is seeking? Not where he is looking.

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Attention

Rick Sterling: 'US wants terrorists to remain in Idlib; what would Pompeo say if they were in Oregon?'


RT
Mon, 03 Sep 2018 15:52 UTC
al-Qaeda's Nusra Front
© Ammar Abdulah/Reuters
al-Qaeda's Nusra Front
The Syrian government has the right to retake all of Syria, but none of the countries that supported terrorists there want them to return to their own countries, investigative journalist Rick Sterling told RT.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Moscow and Damascus of escalating the Syrian conflict by seeking to clear terrorist groups from Idlib province. He said the civilian population will end up as victims of any offensive.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Idlib was the last terrorist stronghold in Syria and should be liberated.

RT: According to the UN, there are up to 10,000 terrorists in Idlib. The US says it's in Syria to fight terrorism, why would it oppose an offensive here?

Rick Sterling: Because elements within the US - and NATO, for that matter - want to prolong the conflict. We've seen a pattern from the past - whether it was East Aleppo or East Ghouta, or more recently in Daraa - the number of civilians is hugely exaggerated. And at the end of the day, it turns out they were far fewer and they immediately rush into the safety of the government-controlled zones. The humanitarian corridors that are being set up by Syria with Russian assistance is a very positive sign. And it is kind of hypocritical for Mike Pompeo to criticize Syria for trying to expel terrorists from its own territory.

Comment: The war in Syria could end, should Syria be unchallenged in its resolve and actions. It has the only right to call this shot.

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X

Nikki Haley: Palestinian Right of Return should be 'off the table'


Middle East Monitor
Thu, 30 Aug 2018 12:51 UTC
Nikki Haley
© Atılgan Özdil/Anadolu Agency
Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has said that the right of return of Palestinian refugees displaced since 1948 is an issue that should be taken "off the table", according to the Times of Israel.

Commenting at an appearance at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, a pro-Israel think tank based in Washington DC, Haley suggested on Tuesday that the Trump administration would consider an official rejection of the Palestinian demand that all refugees who were displaced as a result of the Nakba (Catastrophe) and their descendants, be allowed to return to their ancestral homeland following a peace deal with Israel.

"I absolutely think we have to look at right of return," Haley told attendees, before agreeing that the issue should be taken off the negotiating table. "I do agree with that, and I think we have to look at this in terms of what's happening [with refugees] in Syria, what's happening in Venezuela."

Earlier this week, Israeli media sources reported that the Trump administration is allegedly planning to release information on the US government's official position on the right of return in the coming days. They are expected to argue that only half a million Palestinians can be considered legitimate refugees, and will reject the UN designation that gives refugee status to the children of those expelled.

Comment: See also:

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Jet1

New Israeli air strike leaves one dead, four wounded in Syria


RT
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 17:54 UTC
Israeli F-35
© Amir Cohen/Reuters
Israeli F-35
An Israeli air raid has targeted government-held areas in central and western Syria, killing one and wounding four, state-run SANA news agency has reported.

It said Israeli jets flying at high altitude over Lebanon fired a number of missiles into Wadi Ayoun in Syria's Hama province and the town of Baniyas in the coastal Latakia province.

The attack, which reports said killed at least one person, began at around dusk on Tuesday. It is believed that Syrian government air defenses shot down five of the Israeli missiles.

The Syrian government has accused Israel of being behind a number of recent strikes targeting government and allied military installations, including the striking of a weapons research facility in July.

Meanwhile, Moscow has criticized US President Donald Trump's warning against a potential Syrian government attack on the militant-held Idlib province. Asked on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called Idlib a "hornets' nest of terrorists" and said that the White House does not have a "comprehensive approach" to solving the Syrian crisis.
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Star of David

Mainstream media's biased coverage of the Great March of Return: 'The Economist' as a case study

Richard Hardigan
CounterPunch
Fri, 08 Jun 2018 18:22 UTC
IDF soldiers Palestinian protest
© Jonas Moffat | CC BY 2.0
A Gallup poll of March, 2018 about opinions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict revealed that 64% of Americans sympathize more with Israel, while 19% view the Palestinians more favorably. The fact that the root cause of the conflict is the expulsion of the indigenous population and consequent seizure of much of Palestine by a foreign people seems to be lost on the American public at large. Much of the opinion is a direct result of the generally one-sided coverage of the conflict by the mainstream media.

The coverage of the events of May 14, when the Israeli army killed sixty Palestinians and injured thousands more in Gaza during the Great March of Return, provides a depressing snapshot of the Western media's treatment of the conflict.

I will focus here on a recent article in the Economist, the British current affairs magazine that has a wide circulation in the United States. It is considered to be conservative economically but liberal politically. The Economist's article employs many of the tools used by the mainstream media when discussing the conflict. It repeats and accepts as fact Israeli and Western talking points about the conflict without analysis; it uses loaded terminology; it chooses which aspects of the events to focus on in order to present its biased point of view; it almost entirely ignores the larger context in which they have taken place.

Comment: Hardigan does a good job calling out The Economist's reprehensible article, but why expect anything different? The Economist is an elitist publication, merely fulfilling its duties as a media gatekeeper on any facts inconvenient to the Empire.

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Heart - Black

There is a deeper, more evil agenda afoot as the US cuts UNRWA aid to Palestinian refugees

Jonathan Cook
.jonathan-cook.net
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 18:12 UTC
occupied Palestine

Illegally occupied Palestine
Refugees are the final loose end in forcing Palestinians to accept Trump's 'deal of the century' peace plan

The Trump administration's decision to scrap all future aid payments to the main agency helping Palestinian refugees marks a new - and most likely disastrous - chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The US State Department said on Friday it would no longer continue its $360 million annual contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), depriving it of a third of its budget. US officials described the organisation as "irredeemably flawed".

The move follows an announcement last week that Washington had slashed $200 million from other aid programmes for the Palestinians.
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Mr. Potato

Partisan circus: Brett Kavanaugh hearing repeatedly interrupted by Dem objections, protests

Alex Pappas and Judson Berger
Fox News
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 17:07 UTC
Kavanaugh hearing
© PBS
Kavanaugh hearing, September4. 2018
Judge Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearing turned into a political spectacle within moments of Tuesday's kickoff, as top Democrats tried to overtake the session with a rapid-fire string of objections and protesters shouted and screamed from the audience.

The chaos led Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas to remark, "This is the first confirmation hearing subject to mob rule."

More than an hour and 15 minutes after the hearing began, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, moved past Democratic attempts to delay and delivered his opening statement, over the sustained shouts of protesters who were being escorted out of the room.

Comment: Breitbart News reports:
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) admitted Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court that he and other Democrats participated in a conference call on how to disrupt the hearings.

Durbin was responding to a question by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who cited an NBC News tweet from earlier in the morning that reported that Senate Democrats had planned over the Labor Day weekend to use protests and interruptions.


The hearing had already been disrupted several times by protesters - led by the anti-Trump and Democrat-aligned Women's March, which claimed credit - and several senators also interrupted proceedings with interjections.


Sen. Tillis asked: "I'm reviewing a tweet by NBC that said 'Democrats plotted coordinated protest strategy over the holiday weekend all agreed to disrupt and protest the hearing, sources tell me.' And, subsequent, 'Dem leader Chuck Schumer led a phone call, and committee members are executing now.' So, I just want to be clear: none of the members on this committee participated in that phone call or that strategy before the documents were released yesterday? Are you suggesting that this allegation is false?"

Durbin asked to respond, but merely deflected to the issue of whether the committee had been provided enough documents on Kavanaugh: "Mr. Chairman, there was a phone conference yesterday, and I can tell you, at the time of the phone conference, many issues were raised. One of the issues was the fact that over 100,000 documents related to Judge Kavanaugh had been characterized by the chairman of the committee as committee confidential."


Notably, Durbin did not dispute the allegations by NBC News.

Update: CBS News also confirmed NBC News' reporting:
CBS News' Nancy Cordes reports that a source familiar with the discussions confirms that Sen. Schumer held a conference call with Judiciary Committee democrats over the Labor Day weekend to discuss the strategy they are now deploying in a coordinated manner, interrupting the start of the hearing to call - one after the other - for a delay in the proceedings until senators get all the Kavanaugh documents they want and have time to read them.
The hearing eventually settled into opening statements, though protests continued.

Durbin later praised the protesters: "What we've heard is the noise of democracy."


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Rocket

Syrian air defenses thwart several Israeli missile attacks in Hama


Sputnik
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 19:05 UTC
An Israeli air force jet
© AP Photo / Ariel Schalit
An Israeli air force jet fighter plane
The Syrian news agency reports about a missile attack on Hama and Tartus carried out by the Israeli Air Force. The latter, however, has not yet commented on the strike.

Syrian air defense thwarted several rockets shot by Israeli planes in the Wadi al-Uyun region in Hama province and in Tartus, SANA reported. The state agency stated that military air defenses were used to confront several rockets fired by Israeli planes near Hama.

As the Al-Masdar media outlet reported, not all of the missiles have been intercepted, only five of them. According to media, the rockets were launched by the Israeli side, targeting Hama. The media failed, however, to specify what objects in Syria were targeted.

Comment: Israel would not limit its actions to Syria if it felt the need to deal with "Iranian threats" in the region, the country's Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman claimed on September 3, according to Reuters.
"We are certainly monitoring everything that is happening in Syria, and regarding Iranian threats, we are not limiting ourselves just to Syrian territory. This also needs to be clear," Lieberman said speaking at a news conference in Jerusalem.


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