Don’t Believe the Hype: Here’s Why ISIS Hasn’t Been Defeated

U.S. Army soldier with captured ISIS flag in Iraq, December 2010

Source: Don’t Believe the Hype: Here’s Why ISIS Hasn’t Been Defeated

With permission from

http://www.counterpunch.org

by Robert Fisk

March 24, 2019

 

After all the headlines about the supposed defeat of Isis, anyone who doesn’t believe a word of it may seem a bit of a spoilsport. But whenever I read that victory has been declared – whether it be of the Bush “mission accomplished” variety or the “last Isis stronghold about to fall” fantasy – I draw in my breath. Because you can make a safe bet that it’s not true.

Not just because the fighting around Baghouz is, in fact, still continuing outside the wrecked town. But because there are plenty of Isis fighters still under arms and ready to fight in the Syrian province of Idlib, along with their Hayat Tahrir al Sham, al-Nusra and al-Qaeda comrades – almost surrounded by Syrian government troops but with a narrow corridor in which they could escape to Turkey; always supposing that Sultan Erdogan will let them. There are Russian troop outposts inside these Islamist front lines, along with Turkish military forces but the tentative ceasefire which held for five months has become a lot more tenuous in the past few weeks.

Maybe it’s a failure of our institutional memory – or it’s just plain simpler to go along with the simplest story – but Idlib has for three years been the dumping ground of all Syria’s Islamist enemies, or at least the antagonists who didn’t surrender when they fled the big cities under Syrian and Russian bombardment.

Last September – though we seem to have forgotten this – Trump and the UN were warning of the impending “last battle” for Idlib, fearing – so they said – that the Syrians and Russians would use chemical weapons in their assault on Isis and its chums. Even the Syrian army announced the impending conflict, minus the chemicals, in a military website called “Dawn at Idlib”.

But I took a long trip around the Syrian front lines at Idlib, from the Turkish frontier then south, east and north again up to Aleppo and saw no tank convoys, no troop transporters, few Syrian helicopters, no supply trains and concluded – even as the warnings of final extinction continued – that this particular “last battle” was still a long way away. On the day I arrived south of Jisr al-Shughur, al-Nusra and Isis had fired a few mortars at Syrian army positions – the Syrians had fired a few shells back at them – but that was it.

A complicated truce agreement, involving both the Turks and the Russians, managed to forestall the carnage everyone predicted. There was much talk of the Isis, al-Nusra and al-Qaeda men – some of whom are Saudis – being shipped out by the Turks under a laissez passer to the wilds of Saudi Arabia for a little “re-education”. I always hoped this might be the woefully hot Empty Quarter where their superheated theology might be turned to a crisp.

But they are still in Idlib, happy no doubt to hear that the west thinks it has scored its “final victory” over Isis. The battle for Baghouz, of course, was always likely to pick up the headlines. The American air bombings and the presence of the friendly (and very brave) Kurds made this a more accessible – although still dangerous – story. And it switched attention away from other questions: like who invented the title “Syrian Democratic Forces” – which are in fact mostly Kurdish, many of whose members would prefer not to be thought of as Syrians, and whose ranks never enjoyed a democratic election in their lives.

If the Americans are in fact leaving at last, the Kurds are still going to be betrayed and left to the mercy of their enemies – be this Turkey or the Syrian regime (with whom the Kurds held some not very successful talks last year). A good time for the Americans, therefore, to call it a day outside Baghouz – a victorious one of course – and get the hell out. Hoping that the world will forget about Idlib.

But I don’t think it will. The Syrian war is not yet over – although that’s what the world (including, it seems, the Syrian government) believes. Idlib remains a land of tens of thousands of refugees as well as legions of fighters, a place of destitution, broken railways and blown-up motorways and Islamist groups who sometimes fight each other with more enthusiasm than they wish to fight the Syrian military.

But this will now be Russia’s chance to show it knows how to defeat Isis. There are contacts, of course, between Moscow and every group involved in the Syrian war. Isis fighters left Syrian cities over the past two years under Russian military protection. This could be repeated. Putin has allowed the Isis women and children to return home. There is still just a chance that Isis, Nusra/al-Qaeda and their comrades will be able to leave unharmed – although time suggests they may yet have to fight a real last battle for Idlib.

But even then, it might be a good idea to put a hold on our “victory” headlines.

More articles by:Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk writes for the Independent, where this column originally appeared. 

Political Censorship: French far-right leader Marine Le Pen ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation

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Jonathon Gatehouse · CBC News

Posted: Sep 20, 2018

Leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, has been ordered to undergo a psychiatric assessment as it probes her posting of graphic images of Islamic State executions on social media. (Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images)

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Le Pen probe

A French court has ordered far-right leader Marine Le Pen to undergo a psychiatric assessment as it probes her decision to publish graphic images of Islamic State executions on social media.

The 50-year-old head of the National Front — recently rebranded as the National Rally — posted three gruesome photos on Twitter in December 2015 after a journalist told a French television program that her party shared a “community of spirit” with the extremist group.

“ISIS is THIS,” Le Pen wrote in an outraged response to the accusation, attaching pictures of a man being burned alive, another being run over by a tank, and the headless corpse of American journalist James Foley.

Marine Le Pen delivers her comeback speech in Frejus, France, on Sunday. She said today that she would skip the psychological tests ordered by a French court. (Eric Gaillard/Reuters)French law prohibits the dissemination of “violent messages that incite terrorism or … seriously harm human dignity.”

Le Pen, a former member of the European Parliament, was only put under formal investigation in March after that body voted to strip her of immunity as part of an unrelated fraud investigation. If convicted, she faces up to three years in jail and a fine of €75,000 ($113,000 Cdn).

Today, Le Pen reacted angrily to the court’s assessment order, posting a photo of the legal papers on her Twitter account and calling the decision “crazy.”

Later, speaking to reporters, she suggested that the evaluation is part of a wider attempt to silence her and the party, and said that she will skip the tests.

“I’d like to see how the judge would try and force me do it,” Le Pen said.

Legal experts were quick to point out that such an assessment is in fact required under the law to establish whether she suffers from any mental illness that might have diminished her capacity to understand what she was doing when she posted the images. The psychiatrist will also determine whether she poses a risk to herself or the public.

Other European populists were quick to leap to her defense.

“A court orders a psychiatric assessment for Marine Le Pen. Words fail me! Solidarity with her and with the French who love freedom!” said Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister and leader of the far-right League party, in a statement.

The National Front/Rally and its leader have suffered a number of setbacks since Emmanuel Macron resoundingly defeated Le Pen in the run-off election for France’s presidency in 2017.

The campaign posters of French presidential election candidates Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron are seen in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, in April 2017. Macron resoundingly defeated Le Pen in the run-off election for France’s presidency. (Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images)French banks, which had denied her requests for campaign loans, closed her personal and party accounts last fall. Le Pen denounced the moves as political “persecution.”

And she has been ordered to repay almost 300,000 euros ($455,000 Cdn) to the European Parliament after an internal investigation determined that she improperly used her office budget to pay aides to do non-parliamentary work for the National Front.

Le Pen, who maintains that she did nothing wrong, is appealing the findings and has refused to pay up.

But the EU has been playing hardball, garnishing her salary and obtaining a temporary order from a French court to stop her party from receiving €2.35 million ($3.6 million Cdn) in state subsidies.

“The investigating judges are applying a death sentence by confiscating our public grant,” she complained in July.

A final decision will handed down Sept. 26.

Le Pen has been busy trying to turn all those controversies to her advantage and whip up public sympathy.

“Our political adversaries want us to fail,” she told a rally in the the northern town of Hénin-Beaumont earlier this month. “And when I hear the president of the Republic say that the National Rally is not a political opponent but an enemy, I can only conclude that he is doing everything within his power to break us down, to make us disappear from the country’s political life.”

And Le Pen is already campaigning for next spring’s European elections, trying to form alliances with other far-right parties and tap into “The Movement,” a new Steve Bannon-organized venture to raise funds and support for European populists.

Le Pen and former U.S. President Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon give a joint press conference during the National Rally’s annual congress on March 10 in Lille, north of France. (Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images)The strategy may be working.

As Macron’s popularity plummets amidst the scandal over his former bodyguard’s physical assault of anti-government protesters, Le Pen’s fortunes are rising.

A poll last month put the National Rally “coude à coude” with the president’s En Marche party, both with 21 per cent support for the coming European vote.

Decision to bring White Helmets to Canada dangerous and criminal

Source link

http://www.rt.com

Published time: 10 Aug, 2018

© Alaa Faqir / Reuters

Did Canadians get to vote on whether or not to bring potential terrorists or supporters of terrorists to Canada? No. Will Canadians get a say in where these potentially dangerous men will be settled? Highly unlikely.

Ninety-eight members of the White Helmets, and a few hundred of their families, were evacuated by Israel and allies to Jordan late in evening of July 21. They will seemingly be shipped off to a few Western nations for resettlement: Canada, the UK, and Germany. So far, Canada has pledged to take 50 White Helmets and around 200 family members.

Wrongly dubbed the “Syrian Civil Defense” (the actual Syrian Civil Defense has existed since 1953), the White Helmets narrative is flawed in every conceivable manner.

Read more

White Helmets boss denies terror links, spreads whataboutism in contentious RT interview

Packaged as neutral, heroic, volunteer rescuers, who have “saved 115,000 lives”, according to White Helmets leader Raed Al Saleh, they are in reality a massively Western-funded organization with salaried volunteers, and have no documentation of those 115,000 saved. They contain numerous members who have participated in or supported criminal acts in Syria, including torture, assassinations, beheading, and kidnapping of civilians, as well as inciting Western military intervention in Syria.

James LeMesurier, a former member of the British military who founded the White Helmets, did so in countries neighbouring Syria: in Turkey and Jordan. They have since worked solely in terrorist-held areas of Syria, and according to Syrian civilians in eastern Ghouta, they worked directly with, or were themselves, extremists of Jaysh al-Islam or other extremist groups. Civilians in east Aleppo said that White Helmets worked with al-Qaeda in Syria (the Nusra Front).

The fact that White Helmets centres are frequently, if not always, found near or next to headquarters of al-Qaeda and other terrorist factions further supports the accusations that they collaborate with terrorists—even with ISIS, as noted by ISIS hostage John Cantlie. He described the White helmets as an “ISIS fire brigade“.

White Helmets have also been at the scene of executions; filmed standing over dead Syrian soldiers; cheering on and cleaning up after an execution in Daraa Governorate, and disposing of the bodies of assassinated Syrian soldiers (including decapitated bodies) in Daraa Governorate.

White Helmets members were present to welcome Saudi terrorist Abdullah al-Muhaysini, leader of al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria) who the US government designated a terrorist for “acting for or on behalf of” al-Nusra, and helping to finance them.

Over sixty White Helmets members have clear ties to terrorist and extremist groups, as shown by their own social media accounts and videos. In many of their own photos they hold weapons. Some White Helmets members have called for the murders of Shia villagers in Idlib governorate, and were instrumental in the massacre and injury of over 300 villagers, including 116 children in April 2017.

Not exactly neutral and members of the Daraa batch of White Helmets could very possibly be among those soon to be en route to Western nations.

Read more

White Helmets coming ‘home’: West & Israel provide ‘exceptional’ rescue strategy for NATO’s ghosts

Not Russian propaganda: Canadian, American, British journalists first exposed the White Helmets

In September 2014, independent Canadian journalist Cory Morningstar wrote about the New York City PR firm, Purpose Inc, and its propaganda role regarding the White Helmets. In March and April 2015, independent US journalist Rick Sterling, further scrutinized the White Helmets and related “humanitarian” groups serving to call for a no-fly-zone in Syria.

Since then, and for years now, concerned journalists and commentators have written or posed questions on the entity known as the White Helmets. In addition to the years-long investigations by Vanessa Beeley, commentators – from former British ambassador to Syria Peter Ford, award-winning US journalist Gareth Porter, award-winning journalist John Pilger, and even rock legend Roger Waters, have noted that the White Helmets are a dangerous and fraudulent group, or as Pilger put it, a propaganda construct.

I have already outlined this chronology of investigations, refuting corporate media claims that voices critical of the White Helmets stem from Russian influence. Yet, slavish supporters of the White Helmets, continue to demonize anyone posing critical and needed questions on this group, generally labelling such people as “Russian bots”, “influenced by Russia”, or some variation of that, in an attempt to insist only people under the influence of Russia have been critical of the White Helmets.

In the case of the Atlantic Council’s Ben Nimmo, his tweet on the lack of or scant mention by RT or Sputnik in 2014, 2015, to mid 2016 of the White Helmets supports my argument: those are precisely the times when the above-mentioned independent journalists were investigating the group.

White Helmets next to terrorists’ headquarters

In Syria, I saw two different White Helmets centres in close proximity to terrorists’ headquarters: one in eastern Aleppo, and one in Saqba, eastern Ghouta. The Saqba centre was two hundred metres from a factory extremists used to manufacture mortars and missiles, quite possibly those used to bomb civilians in Damascus. It contained a fire-truck stolen from the real Syrian Civil Defense, as well as ambulances and vehicles all torched when the White Helmets left Ghouta with terrorists of Jaysh al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman, among others. They were all safely transported to Idlib as per the deal with the Syrian government.

The other White Helmets centre I saw was in the Ansari district of Aleppo’s east. Formerly a school (and now returned to this status), this centre was a half minute’s walk to the headquarters of al-Qaeda in Syria, as well as the Abu Amara Brigades, and other extremists.

Read more

White Helmets are terrorists, can choose surrender or death – Assad

Vanessa Beeley, who had previously been to Ansari, wrote a detailed article additionally noting that just 200 metres from that same White Helmets centre was Al Mashad Square, where 12-year-old Palestinian youth, Abdullah Issa, was savagely tortured and then slowly beheaded.

In the Old City, next to Aleppo’s citadel last May, I spoke with an older man who had remained in Aleppo during the terrorists’ rule. He told me: “The Civil Defence is supposed to rescue people, but they used to steal women’s earrings from their dead bodies. If she was wearing gold, they’d cut her hand to steal it. They are thieves, not rescuers. We saw them murdering people, many times.”

In Douma and Kafr Batna, I spoke with civilians who told me they saw Jaysh al-Islam extremists wearing White Helmets uniforms, and White Helmets working with Jaysh al-Islam. Another eastern Ghouta resident, Marwan Qreisheh, said the early White Helmets members who came to Ghouta weren’t Syrian, didn’t speak Arabic, and used their money to attract “volunteers”.

He spoke of them staging rescue scenes: “They’d start filming and claiming that SAA hit this area, it was in front of our eyes, and we knew it was all staged, but we didn’t dare to stand against them because they would kill us, they would empty their gun in you immediately.”

Who killed the civilians in White Helmets Douma videos?

It was the White Helmets who released (WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC) videos and photos alleging a chemical attack in Douma in April 2018. Yet, no civilian among the many I met in Douma believed there had been a chemical attack and medical staff didn’t see patients exposed to a chemical agent. More recently, the OPCW ruled out the use of a nerve agent used in Douma, finding only traces of “chlorinated organic chemicals”.

So, who and what killed the women and children shown in the White Helmets-distributed video from Douma? Did the White Helmets take part in their murder, or merely film their bodies (some arranged) after the fact?

Corporate media has diligently avoided asking a single honest question of the propaganda group they laud, and has for years attacked those of us who do ask questions and take testimonies of Syrian civilians on this matter.

Read more

‘They may be jihadists but they’re our jihadists’: White Helmets’ UK resettlement policy attacked

Canadian cover for White Helmets

Canada has been assisting the White Helmets for some years now, under the pretext of aiding humanitarians. While the full extent of Canadian financial support to the White Helmets has yet to be revealed, at least Can$7.5 million (US$5.7mn) was given to the group, helping with “the development and expansion of early warning air raid systems.”

Following the Israeli evacuation of White Helmets and their families from southern Syria, Global Affairs Canada released a statement by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, on the “courageous volunteers”, regurgitating the White Helmets “save the innocent and the wounded” unsubstantiated claim.

Unsubstantiated because, in spite of the fancy videos, neither the White Helmets nor its UK backers can provide a list of the supposed over 115,000 civilians rescued.

While the media has lauded Canada’s role in the evacuation of the White Helmets members, it’s worth noting the person, Robin Wettlaufer, behind this evacuation effort. Wettlaufer met with White Helmet leader Raed Saleh (once denied entry to the US due to his potential ties to extremists, according to Mark Toner) in late June, as the Syrian army was regaining territory in Daraa governorate.

READ MORE: ‘Propaganda organization’: White Helmets ‘engage in anti-Assad activities’ – author Sy Hersh to RT

Wettlaufer has held the Istanbul-based position of Special Representative for Syria, under  Global Affairs Canada, from March 2014 to present, according to her LinkedIn page.

In fact, she is the Special Representative to the Syrian Opposition, something noted in a December 2016 Global Affairs Canada video featuring Wettlaufer.

Given that Wettlaufer is thus Canada’s Representative to extremists in Syria, her key role in instigating the evacuation of the White Helmets is hardly surprising, let alone praise-worthy. But it should be worrying to Canadians. Did Canadians get to vote on whether or not to bring potential terrorists or supporters of terrorists to Canada? No. No vote in the Parliament, no public discussion. Will Canadians get a say in where these potentially dangerous men will be settled? No sign of that so far, and indeed highly unlikely.

Why did the Canadian government refuse the entry of 100 injured Palestinian children from Gaza in 2014, a truly humanitarian effort, and yet will fast-track the entry of potentially dangerous men with potential ties to terrorists?

As for the claims of danger to the White Helmets in southern Syria, their comrades in eastern Aleppo and in eastern Ghouta were safely transported out of those areas, along with their families and with extremists who refused to take amnesty, while Aleppo and eastern Ghouta had peace restored. The White Helmets are potential security threats to citizens in the Western nations planning on hosting them.

As citizens privy to all this information and all the questions on the White Helmets, we must demand our governments reverse this plan, or at least provide us with confirmation that the immigrants in question have been fully investigated and have not been involved in terrorist activities in Syria in any way.

Eva Bartlett is a freelance journalist and rights activist with extensive experience in the Gaza Strip and Syria. Her writings can be found on her blog, In Gaza.

Trump, Putin and the White Helmets

“The planning and execution of this effort, in less than 24 hours, was both incredible and heroic. Israeli forces met absolutely no resistance from ISIS or al Qaeda but were, rather, greeted with full cooperation and open arms.”

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It’s late July, 2018. In the Middle East, 800 men and their families are heading for Western Europe, Canada and the US, to be resettled as refugees. The true story behind their evacuation by Israel and their proposed “resettlement” as heroes is one of the most devious and frightening tales of our time.

Sources also tell us that among the 800 are top ISIS commanders who will soon be living in Germany, Britain, Canada and the United States, doing what terrorist commanders do, organizing cells and murdering innocent civilians, just like they did in Syria and Iraq and just like the White Helmets had done all along.

The White Helmets are an enigmatic group, lauded as volunteers and life savers, servant of mankind, they were organized by Britain’s MI6 as a black propaganda and anti-Assad organization funded by the governments of Britain, the US, Germany and others. They are not an NGO. There is nothing “non-governmental” about them.

Essentially, they are terrorist mercenaries.

With up to 30,000 opposition fighters inside Syria giving up arms and either rejoining Syrian society under the Damascus government in the last 12 months, or for some being resettled and perhaps continuing the fight, the 800-man force known as the White Helmets is unique.

Perhaps this is why they had to be “disemboweled” from Syria though an illegal military incursion that to the trained observer also demonstrates the curious close relationships between ISIS, al Qaeda and the Israeli Defense Forces, almost as if they were one in the same and the White Helmets were simply just another ISIS or al Qaeda organization.

It was the White Helmet’s fabricated stories of gas attacks and “barrel bombings” that drove Donald Trump to calling the elected Syrian leader “animal Assad” and launching multiple strikes on Syrian territory without UN authorization or NATO consensus.

It was the same Trump advisors and the same Donald Trump who now says he believes President Putin that, not so long ago, took the word of perhaps the sleaziest of all CIA terror operations, the White Helmets, a CIA he now says has always misled him, has always been useless, as justification for attacking Syria.

Why then did Trump attack Syria when the information he based his decision on was, by his own admission, “fake news” from his political enemies. Taking it one step further, not just fake but crazy as well, with Syria triumphant on the battle field. Syria had warned the world that the White Helmets were preparing a provocation in order to justify an American defense of ISIS against a Syria more united than ever under President Assad.

That news was everywhere, certainly across the international and alternative media that Trump is known to monitor nearly 20 hours a day on his smart phone. How did he miss it?

Trump and Putin

One thing the world now knows beyond a doubt is that Donald Trump believes Vladimir Putin. But if this is true, which we know it to be, then Trump’s actions regarding the White Helmets are bizarre and even criminal. Let us take a closer look.

On July 18, 2018, President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

They asked that Israel send IDF units well into ISIS and al Qaeda held territory, into Syria, in violation of the 1974 cease fire agreement.

There, the IDF was to, in less than 4 hours, screen 800 adult males claiming to be “White Helmets,” along with their families, load same onto busses and drive them to CIA controlled training camps in Jordan about 50 miles south of the recently liberated Syria city of Daraa.

The planning and execution of this effort, in less than 24 hours, was both incredible and heroic. Israeli forces met absolutely no resistance from ISIS or al Qaeda but were, rather, greeted with full cooperation and open arms.

Let us remember that, only a week ago, American President Donald Trump met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Trump was effusive in his praise of Vladimir Putin, particularly in his trust of Putin and Trump’s belief that Vladimir Putin is an honest man.

This being the case, one can’t help but wonder why President Trump would ask Israel to rescue the White Helmets from the Syrian Arab Army. Moscow has stated for many months that the White Helmets are, in fact, a terrorist organization and has offered proof at both the United Nations and at The Hague backing its assertions.

In fact, the White Helmets, supposedly a civil defense NGO made up of Syrian volunteers, has long been exposed by journalists like Vanessa Beeley, Nahed al Husaini and Carla Ortiz as guilty of the murder of thousands of Syrian civilians through staged gas attacks and bombings.

The White Helmets, lauded by American leftist and Hollywood actor, George Clooney, have been cited in the media, particularly in Russia, Iran and Syria, but other nations as well, as among the most dangerous terrorists in the world.

Why then, as Trump has stated he values Putin’s opinion so much, and this is a case where Putin’s opinion is backed up by significant and irrefutable evidence, has Trump done something so stupid?

You see, it isn’t just that Trump and Trudeau asked Israel to send troops into Syria in violation of UN agreements and Syria’s sovereignty, a war crime in itself, but Trump and to a lesser extent for Trudeau, knowingly asked Israel to aid terrorists who are guilty of crimes against humanity.

It gets worse.

According to the German newspaper, Bild, the White Helmets, 800 so far, will be sent to Germany, Britain, Canada and the US. There is considerable evidence that this is an army of “800 little bin Ladens,” with many trained bomb makers, nearly all jihadists and most minimally need to be adjudicated as to their crimes against the Syrian people.

Additionally, one might well note that no screening process was employed whatsoever. We are certain that Israel simply loaded anyone who showed up onto a bus.

Let’s take a second and picture this. We have 800 families who traveled to an embarkation point deep inside the ISIS enclave in Southern Syria, an enclave shrinking by the minute.

ISIS fighters are all around, flags and guns, many carrying their head chopping swords, others with cameras and phones, recording and uploading events to their YouTube channels and Facebook accounts that are never cancelled no matter what kind of material they post.

Along side them are IDF units, in uniform, armed, standing side by side with ISIS fighters while dozens of busses are driven in from Jordan.

Does anyone find anything wrong about this picture? Do I have something wrong here?

How was this going to be sold to the public when these ISIS terrorists show up at the Toronto or Indianapolis airports and are rushed through customs and into their new lives, paid housing, free medical care for life, government checks in the mail, their children not seized, no danger of deportation and detention.

Does anyone find anything wrong with this picture as well?

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of  Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Pakistan: Death toll rises to 149 in Mastung attack

At least 149 now reported killed in Friday’s suicide attack at a political rally in Balochistan province.

Source link

http://www.aljazeera.com

July 15, 2018

The suicide bombing was the most deadly attack in Pakistan in the past three years [AFP]

 

The death toll in one of Pakistan’s bloodiest attacks that targeted an election campaign event continues to rise as the country prepares for general elections later this month.

The number of dead increased to 149 with 189 other people wounded in Mastung district in Balochistan province, senior police official Qaim Lashari told Al Jazeera on Sunday.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives at an election rally of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) in the southwestern town of Drigarh, about 35km south of the provincial capital Quetta, on Friday afternoon.

Several of the wounded are still receiving medical treatment, provincial health official Mustafa Jamali said on Saturday.

https://players.brightcove.net/665003303001/BkyLdqdhZ_default/index.html?videoId=5809244514001

WATCH: Deadly attacks on Pakistan political rallies

It was the third deadliest attack in Pakistan’s history after the Karsaz bombing in 2008 and an attack on a school in Peshawar in 2014.

BAP leader Siraj Raisani, who was running for a provincial assembly seat in Pakistan’s general election later this month, was killed as the explosion occurred in the middle of a packed crowd.

There were conflicting claims of responsibility for the blast, with both the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and a faction of the Pakistan Taliban claiming the attack.

It was the third deadly incident of election-related violence this week.

On Tuesday, prominent politician Haroon Bilour was killed along with 19 others in a suicide attack at a Peshawar rally that also wounded 69 others.

That attack was claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban, also called the Pakistan Taliban, which has said it was responsible for killing Bilour’s father – a staunch opponent of the armed group – in 2012.

On Friday, another explosion targeted an election rally hosted by the JUI-F religious political party in the northwest town of Bannu, killing at least four people and wounding 19 others.

At least 158 people were killed and more than 670 wounded in about 120 attacks in the six weeks leading up to the election, according to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies research organization.

SOURCE: Al Jazeera News

From 2017: Putin Reveals 40 Countries That Are Funding ISIS At The G20 Summit

Source link

http://www.anonews.co

By David Cohen

Posted on January 14, 2017

(CE) On more than one occasion, Russian President Vladmir Putin has shared information that Western media won’t air. Two months ago he revealed that ISIS is funded by the West (you can watch that video below), and now he is making more noise at the G20 summit that’s currently taking place in Turkey, where he has supposedly shared intelligence data on Islamic State financing with his G20 colleagues.

As RT News reports:

[During the summit] I provided examples based on our data on the financing of different Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) units by private individuals. This money, as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them.

He also voiced his concern regarding the illegal oil trade by IS, stating that he has seen photos taken from space and from aircraft that demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products.

I’d also like to mention that I am aware that RT News is sponsored by Russia, but the fact remains that Putin has said that Western nations are funding ISIS before.

At the summit he also revealed that the “motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000  to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon. “

Again, it’s not the first time Putin has stressed that the people who are going after ISIS and invading other countries (U.S. and their allies) are the very same people who funded and created ISIS in the first place.

And it’s not as crazy as it might sound. If we take 9/11, for example, you may be surprised to learn that approximately half the population of the United States does not believe the official story provided to them by their government. Many people think that 9/11 was an inside job, a ‘false flag’ terrorist attack enacted in order to justify the infiltration of Iraq for ulterior motives. And there is a tremendous amount of evidence to prove it.

This trend appears to continue with the recent attacks in Paris. A Canadian Economist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Ottawa recently called them “9/11 French Style.”  He argues that the global war on terrorism is based on fake premises, and that the Western world is going after a fictitious enemy, the Islamic state, when in fact the Islamic state is fully supported by the Western military alliance.

As you can see, Putin isn’t alone in his thoughts, and even some celebrities have been weighing in. Russell Brand is one, who touches on the topic on this video, and Steven Seagal is another, doing the same in this video.

That  being said, when it comes to politics and the hidden hands that control this sphere, it is difficult to know what to believe, regardless of who is spreading the message. For all we know, this could all be part of one big, elaborate plan toward establishing a New World Order.

The world is waking up, and it’s not easy to come to grips with the fact that the version of reality being presented to you via your television might be completely false. If the so-called ‘terrorists’ we are going after are nothing but the creation of the same countries who are attacking them, what is really going on here? Why is it so hard to believe that Western media would be lying to us? Why do we instantly believe what mainstream media offers, without ever questioning it? Why do we experience such a harsh resistance to the simple questioning of these matters?

I did not delve into false flag terrorism with this article because we’ve written about it in detail in the articles below, so if you would like to learn more, feel free to check them out.

US War on ISIS Is the Biggest Lie Since the 2003 Iraq Invasion: Here’s the Proof

theantimedia.org

Written by Darius Shahtahmasebi

December 19, 2017

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — On November 13, 2017, the BBC dropped a bombshell report that exposed how the U.S. cut a secret deal with “hundreds” of ISIS fighters and their families to leave the Syrian city of Raqqa under the “gaze of the U.S. and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city.” The convoys reportedly included some of ISIS’ “most notorious” members, as well as its foreign fighters and tonnes of weapons and ammunition.

Almost a month later, Reuters reported that a high-level defector from Kurdish-led forces in Syria had revealed that the number of ISIS fighters given safe passage by the U.S.-led coalition was actually in the thousands, not hundreds. This account was seconded by a security official in Turkey despite the fact that Turkey and the Kurdish militia do not typically see eye to eye).

“Agreement was reached for the terrorists to leave, about 4,000 people, them and their families,” the defector said, as quoted by Reuters, adding that all but about 500 were fighters.

The defector also noted that the fighters were headed toward Deir ez-Zor, Syria’s most oil-rich region. The U.S. had been eager to bomb Deir ez-Zor for some time prior to the deal, and allowing ISIS safe passage to get there would merely give them the pretext to do so. In June of this year, regional outlet Al-Masdar released a video that appeared to show convoys of ISIS fighters leaving Raqqa, as well, though the media paid very little attention to this.

All of this begs the question: If the U.S. allowed 4,000 ISIS fighters to leave Raqqa, who on earth were they bombing during their brutal siege? Donald Trump’s illegal air campaign killed well over 1,800 civilians and brought the city to ruin — to the point that Russia accused the U.S. of wiping Raqqa “off the face of the earth.” The U.S. government knew ISIS was leaving the city safely but kept on bombing it into devastation, anyway.

Raqqa Secret Deal Barely Scratches the Surface

Now that we know the U.S. is amenable to granting ISIS fighters safe passage, ISIS’ ability to take over huge swaths of Iraq and Syria in the first place start to make a bit more sense. In June 2014, ISIS effortlessly took the strategic oil-rich cities of Mosul and Baiji and almost made it as far as Baghdad. The U.S. sat on its hands and did nothing the entire time, even as the militants took massive loads of American military equipment as spoils and brandished it all over social media. While ISIS was flaunting its activities untouched by the American military in Iraq, the U.S. was busy launching drone strikes in Pakistan, instead.

Why would the Obama administration prioritize air strikes in a country that overwhelmingly disapproves of them when it could have prevented ISIS from setting up a mini-state in Iraq at the same time? 

Over the last few years, we have seen this similar pattern occur over and over again. When it came to Obama’s grand offensive to retake Mosul in 2016, reports also began emerging that the U.S. was granting safe passage for ISIS fighters to move from Mosul into Raqqa. Even if the U.S. hadn’t cut a formal deal with ISIS on this particular occasion, the reality on the ground was that the U.S. was allowing ISIS fighters to make their way into Syria from Mosul and doing little to stop them regardless. As Anti-Media documented at the time:

“According to Army Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati, as reported by anti-Russian newspaper, the Guardian, ISIS militants are already fleeing Mosul to Syria. This was further confirmed by the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, who said that if ISIS were forced out of Mosul, they would likely go on to Syria.”

Why weren’t they striking these traveling ISIS fighters before they made it to Syria? When viewed in its recent historical context and with the most recent reports in mind, the answer to that question should be clear.

The U.S. Has Also Provided ISIS With Direct Air Support

The Syrian government and its allies are the most heavily engaged entities fighting ISIS inside Syria – not the U.S. military (or its allies). Yet the U.S. military has struck these pro-government forces directly multiple times over the last year, even when these troops have proven to be very effective against the jihadist group.

In September 2016, the U.S.-led coalition launched a barrage of airstrikes at Syrian government troops who were fending off the ISIS component of Deir ez-Zor at the time. Russia accused the U.S. coalition of providing air cover for ISIS because the terror group used the coalition strike to launch an offensive of their own. Over 60 Syrian soldiers died as a result of this illegal act of war, but no one was held accountable.

It has also been speculated that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Syria strike in April paved the way for an ISIS offensive, as well.

ISIS Took Advantage of U.S. Weapons Transfers

So far, we know that ISIS has received safe passage from the U.S. on at least one occasion and that the terror group has also received free air support on a number of other occasions. We also know the U.S. either directly or indirectly allowed ISIS to gain territory in the first place only to provide the pretext for a military intervention.

But wait, it gets even better. Just this month, a report conducted by the U.K.-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR) group, which analyzed 40,000 items its investigators recovered along ISIS’ front lines between July 2014 and November 2017, found that the terror group was able to successfully arm itself by taking advantage of U.S. weapons transfers between Washington and its other allies in Syria. ISIS even garnered some of the more powerful anti-tank missiles through the CIA’s covert arms program.

“International weapon supplies to factions in the Syrian conflict have significantly augmented the quantity and quality of weapons available to IS forces — in numbers far beyond those that would have been available to the group through battlefield capture alone,” the report said.

The U.S. didn’t need to wait for an official report for this horrifying development to come to light. As far back as October 2012, the New York Times reported the following:

“[M]ost of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster…” [emphasis added]

Even if the U.S. had zero control over ISIS and the mayhem it has exacted over Iraq, Syria, and beyond — and was genuine in its bid to rid the world of its ideology and the horror the terror group has unleashed — there is one issue yet to be discussed: ISIS’ existence.

US Created Conditions for ISIS to Exist

ISIS evolved out of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which only became a formidable fighting force after the U.S. invaded in 2003. This was in part due to the Bush administration’s decision to fire close to 400,000 servicemen in Iraq, simply because of their affiliation with Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist party. Some of these disgruntled servicemen now hold senior ISIS positions and are responsible for the terror group’s success.

History clearly demonstrates that al-Qaeda only exists in the first place because the U.S. actively trained, funded, and armed the mujahideen in Afghanistan as a means of bogging the Soviet empire down into a quagmire. The Independent even ran a story on Osama bin Laden at the time, portraying him as a heroic freedom fighter and “anti-Soviet warrior.”

However, since 9/11, the U.S. made a specific point of making aiding and providing material support to al-Qaeda and its affiliated organizations a crime under U.S. law. Yet the U.S. has openly aided Syria’s al-Qaeda branch, as well as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen, and now we have more than enough formal proof that the U.S. has knowingly continued a foreign policy strategy that essentially provided all manner of material support to ISIS, one of the most deadly terror groups in recent history, as well.

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It’s time for someone to be held accountable. There is a case to be made against the U.S. for some very serious criminal behavior here, and if anyone is serious about defeating “radical Islamic terror,” they should start by launching a court action against the U.S. government for its die-hard support for terrorism in the Middle East and beyond.