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Kurds come out in support of Assad, Syria, after Syrian fighters enter Afrin to protect Kurds from Turkish invaders

afrin kurds ssad
© AFP 2018/ Ahmad Shafie BILAL
Residents of a Kurdish-held enclave in northern Syria that recently became ground zero of a major Turkish military operation staged a rally to welcome the arrival of pro-Damascus militia units.

During a rally held in the main square of the city of Afrin, the assembled people waved Syrian flags and portraits of Syrian President Bashar Assad as they welcomed the arrival of pro-government militia troops to the beleaguered province, Press TV reports.

The participants of the rally insisted that "Afrin is an integral part of the territory of Syria" and swore to prevent both Turkish troops and "terrorist groups" from taking their homeland.


Comment: From Fort Russ:
"Kurds and Arabs are one people, we have protected the Kurdish protection units, and now the Syrian Arab Army also came to protect us, we are all one. The Syrian people are one," said one of the Kurdish locals.

"We are against [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, and against the Ottoman Turkish aggression, we Syrian people are one people, the land is one, and we are united," said one of the soldiers.

So far the net benefit of the Turkish invasion has been to show the Kurds who their real friends are: the Syrian government.


Question

Missing CDC employee left work sick 10 days ago, hasn't been seen since

Timothy Cunningham
© Atlanta Police Department
Timothy Cunningham, 35, a CDC employee.
Police are asking the public for help finding a missing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employee who went home sick 10 days ago and hasn't been seen or heard from since.

Timothy Cunningham, 35, went to work on Feb. 12 and left sick, the Atlanta Police Department said. Cunningham, who studied at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is a commander in the Public Health Service and has been sent to respond to public health emergencies including the Ebola virus and the Zika virus, according to the CDC.

The CDC in a statement called Cunningham "a highly respected member of our CDC family."

Info

Berlin women's march protests migrant violence, Islamisation of Germany

Leyla Bilge - Screenshot Epochtimes
© Leyla Bilge - Screenshot Epochtimes
Europe's women marched in Berlin to protest against migrant violence and child marriages. Organiser of the march in Germany's capital, was women's rights activist and AfD party member Leyla Bilge. The motto of the demonstration today was: "It's enough!"

One of the reasons for the protest today is the endangerment of Germany's women by uncontrolled mass migration, the flyer says. It adds that women lose self-determination by the "government-enforced Islamisation of our homeland".

On the flyer the group demands "immediate securing of Germany's border and the deportation of all illegal immigrants". According to them "Germany is not an experimental laboratory for medieval experiments".


Comment: Funny how leftist policies of "diversity and inclusion" just end up creating more problems for women... Unfortunately for German women, however, migrant-related problems don't count. Diversity trumps safety.


Attention

Five reasons for the prohibition of pornography

Porn
© shutterstock
If you had asked the average person 50 years ago whether it should be legal to distribute grotesque, hardcore pornography through a medium where people of all ages, especially kids and young teens, might have easy and free access to it, he probably would have been shocked that you even needed to ask the question. Of course it should not be legal, he would have said. We are civilized human beings, aren't we?

Ask the same question to the average person today and he will also be shocked that you felt the need to ask it. Only he is shocked for the opposite reason. Even the standard "conservative" in today's culture thinks that any discussion of banning or censoring porn is madness. Porn has been widely available through the internet for a couple of decades, therefore it must always and forever be available. He cannot possibly conceive of any other option.

But there is another option, whether or not the modern mind - with its extraordinarily limited field of vision, and its propensity to accept literally everything it sees as an absolute and unchangeable given - can imagine it.

Comment: Embracing sexual licentiousness and hedonism is a hallmark of civilizations on the decline.


Handcuffs

Three men arrested in cannibalistic attack in Paris suburb

Eiffel tower
© Fabian Brandimarte / EyeEm / Getty Images
Three men have been arrested in the refugee hotspot of Clichy-sous-Bois outside Paris and charged with biting a man on the face - and then eating the pieces of flesh they had ripped off!

Police arrested the men, all from the African island nation of Cape Verde, on Sunday after they attacked another man in the Hector-Berlioz alley, Le Parisien reports.

Le Parisien reported (translated from French):
Three Cape Verdeans were arrested on Sunday night in Clichy-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis) for voluntary violence, barbarity and cannibalism resulting in permanent mutilation.

Around 6 pm, Hector-Berlioz alley, four men argue for a story of money. Three men gang up to hit a fourth. They bite it violently on the lower lip and left ear before ingesting the pieces of flesh torn off. The victim defends himself by beating his attackers. She manages to hurt one of them at an ankle.

Sheriff

Des Moines cop pepper sprays and body slams teen girl; no investigation launched

police assault
A dramatic video was submitted to the Free Thought Project this week showing Des Moines police officer senselessly pepper spraying and then body slamming a small girl who was half his size.

The video has since sparked backlash against the Des Moines police department by people who think the officer went too far.

The incident took place just after 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday and was sparked over reports of unruly teenagers at the DART Central Station on Cherry Street.

As the Des Moines Register reports:
Authorities said officers tried to prevent fights that were brewing among a "loud and unruly crowd" of dozens of teenagers at the station. The teen who took the video, which she provided to the Register, however, said she believed one officer used unnecessary force.

Sgt. Paul Parizek, a Des Moines police spokesman, said up to a dozen officers went to the bus hub because more than 100 children and teenagers were allegedly being rowdy. He said officers tried to disperse the crowd to prevent fights similar to the ones that led officers to use pepper spray three weeks ago downtown.

Comment:




Arrow Down

US mediation on Israel-Lebanon offshore oil and gas blocks dispute reportedly failed

Lightning illuminates the sky offshore Beirut during a thunderstorm over Lebanon
© Jamal Saidi / Reuters
Lightning illuminates the sky offshore Beirut during a thunderstorm over Lebanon
The US mediation between Lebanon and Israel in a dispute over offshore oil and gas blocks and maritime borders has reportedly failed, Lebanese media reported on Wednesday.

David Satterfield, Acting US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, has been shuttling between Israel and Lebanon trying to mediate the dispute, which took another turn for the worse last week after the Hezbollah movement urged Lebanon to remain firm in its dispute with Israel and warned that it could act against Israeli oil facilities if necessary.


Lebanon-which shares the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean with Israel, Cyprus, and Syria-has been far behind Israel and Cyprus in exploring and developing its share of resources due to political impasse over the past few years, and a dispute with Israel over Lebanon's southern maritime border.

Comment: See also: Israel bolsters Navy to protect offshore and oil gas zone


Bulb

Moscow unveiling Ethereum-based voting system to prevent election-tampering

Putin, Vitalik Buterin

Putin and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin
The irony is so thick you'd think it was made from ballistic jelly. But, that's exactly what's needed to contain this shot across the election-tampering bow the Russians just pulled off.

According to Coindesk, the city of Moscow is unveiling an Ethereum-based version of its voting system called Active Citizen. By putting the votes on the blockchain, as long as the code is solid, then the results cannot be disputed.

This is one of the major promises of the trustless systems the crypto-community has been clamoring about for nearly a decade now. From the moment I heard about Ethereum and smart contracts, the first application that popped into my head was voting.

Votes need to be on the blockchain.

Comment: Arrogance: Former CIA chief Woolsey says US meddles in election of other countries 'for their own good'


Cross

Vatican introduces exorcism training for Italian priests to cope with 3-fold surge in demand

Exorcism
© Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters
Sicilian priest Benigno Palilla has said that the requests for exorcisms has tripled.
The Vatican is introducing exorcism training for Italian priests to cope with a surge in demand for the expulsion of evil spirits. Requests have tripled of late, according to Sicilian priest and trained exorcist Benigno Palilla.

The priest told Vatican Radio that the number of exorcism cases has risen to almost 500,000 each year. Palilla put the increase down to the upturn in people seeking out tarot readers and psychics. "Doing so opens the door to the demon and to possession," he said. However, he conceded that not all of the cases were related to demonic possession and some were in fact a result of psychological or spiritual problems.

The occult market in Italy is booming, according to a 2017 consumer report which claims 13 million people turn to psychics and pseudo healers annually. Unemployment, economic problems and uncertainty about the future are among the top reasons for seeking these services, the report noted.

Comment: The surge in demand for exorcisms has been increasing around the world for a number of years:


Hourglass

East Ghouta: Syria wants to liberate it, the West wants to save the terrorists occupying it

ghouta
© REUTERS/ Bassam Khabieh/File
Daily mortar and missile attacks against the Syrian capital Damascus have been ongoing for years but intensified in recent months. The often quoted Syrian Observatory notes:
... raising to 116 persons at least including 18 children and 14 citizen women, who were killed as a result of the fall of these shells since the beginning of escalation on the capital Damascus and its suburbs on the 16th of November, and the SOHR documented the injury of more than 563 persons who were injured in these daily targeting during 3 consecutive months.
Other accounts report higher casualty numbers.

Some of the attacks on Damascus city hit well-designated targets. The Russian embassy in Damascus has been mortared several times. Earlier this month more well-targeted projectiles hit other Russian interests:
Maxim A. Suchkov‏ @MSuchkov_ALM - 4:03 AM - 7 Feb 2018
#Russia's trade mission in #Damascus got hit by 120-mm bomb & is badly damaged. Earlier Rus aid delivery point in the city came under fire killing two local Syrians, Rus non-gov delegation (Christian & Muslim leaders who brought collected aid) had to be evacuated.
All these mortars and missiles were fired from east-Ghouta, a Takfiri-held area consisting partly of densely urban blocks and partly of agricultural villages. Some 400,000 people originally lived in the area but the number of people living there now is likely less than half of that.
ghouta map

Comment: Yep, it's Aleppo all over again. Former UK ambassador to Syria Peter Ford told RT: "A naive viewer might imagine that Assad was just bombing civilians for the hell of it because the jihadi fighters are totally absent from the picture. And the pictures are literally provided by the jihadists themselves." Yet even after the liberation of Aleppo exposed the media blitz as based on total lies, they're doing the exact same thing, following the same script.
"We have seen this kind of atrocity level pulled over and over again a few months ago, with Aleppo for example," Jim Jatras, political analyst, and media and government affairs specialist, told RT. "Every time the Al Qaeda linked groups are on the ropes and the Syrian army is on the verge of liberating territory, then we hear all these horror stories, some of which may have a basis in truth, some not, about how civilians are suffering but nothing on who the terrorists are who are controlling these areas and oppressing the people who live there."
The media are saying Ghouta is the new Srebrenica. These people have no shame. John Wight writes, for Sputnik:
Srebrenica has long been a potent weapon in the arsenal of regime change propagandists, rolled out when the chips are down in the last gasp attempt to sow moral panic and bounce the 'international community' - namely Washington and its vassals - into action against a government that refuses to acquiesce in its own downfall.

Writing in the Guardian, Simon Tisdall asserts, "With every child who dies, with every act of brutality that goes unpunished, eastern Ghouta more closely resembles what Kofi Annan once called the worst crime committed on European soil since 1945. Eastern Ghouta is turning into Syria's Srebrenica."

Such sentiments beg the question of why no reference to Srebrenica is ever made when it comes to Israel's regular massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, civilians who when they aren't being massacred are being besieged, reduced to a state of abject immiseration by the only democracy in the Middle East? And, too, why no reference to Srebrenica over Saudi Arabia's brutal military campaign in Yemen, described by Amnesty as the 'forgotten war'?

The moral outrage of these champions of regime change is of course, and in time-honored fashion, selective - although no less egregious for all that. But making it even more contemptible is the fact they betray not one tincture of evidence of having learned any lessons from Iraq or Libya, previous and recent examples of regime change wars, resulting in both countries being pushed into the abyss of societal collapse and chaos, and out of which, in the case of Iraq, the monster of Salafi-jihadism emerged.
More recent coverage on East Ghouta: