With the attack on the legitimate government of Syria, the US has increased the danger of more bloodshed, The US, under Trump has indulged in a stupid vengeance act that has no place in a modern world. Australia should condemn the Trump aggression but I know it won't. The whole thing has nothing to do with Syria and Assad, but affirming Trump hawkish Nazi views of the world, in step with the hawkish Democrats, which should give him a few points at home as a "man of decision". Pity he misunderstands the situation completely. 

Is this the a first dangerous blow to kill off the idea that Donald was sleeping with Putin?

The attack on the Syrian government has begun:

On President Donald Trump’s orders, US warships launched 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The strikes are the first direct military action the US has taken against the leadership of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s six-year civil war and represent a substantial escalation of the US’ military campaign in the region, which could be interpreted by the Syrian government as an act of war [bold mine-DL].

Obviously, launching dozens of missiles at the armed forces of another country is an act of war, so it would be odd if the government targeted by that attack would consider it to be anything else. There is no legal basis for what Trump has done, and he has no authority to initiate hostilities against Syria’s government. If we actually cared about constitutional government in this country, he would be called to account for this, but we all know he won’t be.

Trump’s decision is the worst sort of hasty, unthinking, reflexive “do somethingism,” and we can only hope that it doesn’t have the dangerous consequences that it is likely to have. The remarkable thing about this action is that there is no pretense that it has anything to do with U.S. security or protecting American interests. It is an example of Trump’s willingness to use military force just to show that he can. This attack won’t fix anything in Syria, and in all likelihood it will make things worse if more bombing follows.

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/trump-orders-attack-on-sy...

 

Meanwhile, Daesh, the vilest of terrorist organisation on the planet and supported by Saudi Arabia, is laughing its head off...

President Trump's 180-degree reversal on Syria puts an end to any illusion about his presidency. Far from representing a revolution, Trump's election last year is only the umpteenth proof that the democratic process is today incapable of effecting real changes in the political life of the great states. Fixed by a state apparatus which never changes. By attacking Syria, Donald Trump - a man whose self-confidence is close to megalomania - has in reality proved to be the puppet of what is called the "deep state." Since his inauguration, we have observed the extent of opposition, including within its own party, to its stated willingness to have a good working relationship with Moscow. This fierce opposition turns into delirium, as evidenced by the obsession with the fantasy of Russian interference in American elections in Trump's favor.

read more:

https://francais.rt.com/opinions/36542-trump-homme-paille-girouette-sans...

 

Many people think that Trump is trying to look better than he is by doing something "presidential". This from the merde-och New York Post that had been waiting for some bully action:

 

Leadership. That’s what we lacked for eight years. In the early hours of Friday morning in Syria — late Thursday evening here — our military, acting on the order of our commander-in-chief, avenged the slaughtered innocents in Syria and sent a clear message that we will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. Well done!

 

read more bullshit:

http://nypost.com/2017/04/07/trump-shows-we-finally-have-a-fearless-lead...

Today's cover of the Daily Telegraph is pissing good. After a few weeks of not mentioning the Trump and his congress woes (except a couple of lines on page 44 -- Gus exaggerates), the Murdoch stable is proud as punch. They got him elected (not the Russians -- but they letting this feat as dormant as possible) and now, take this, Mr whatever, in the name of re-gilding the fading lily. And of course, Malcolm, the other Murdoch appointee, approves.

Only 24 missiles reached their target. What happened to the other 25?

 

See toon at top.

Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest, says that “military and intelligence personnel,” “intimately familiar” with the intelligence, say that the narrative that Assad or Russia did it is a “sham,” instead endorsing the Russian narrative that Assad’s forces had bombed a storage facility. Giraldi’s intelligence sources are “astonished” about the government and media narrative and are considering going public out of concern over the danger of worse war there. Giraldi also observes that the Assad regime had no motive to do such a thing at this time.

listen to more:

https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/scotthortonshow/4617-philip-giraldi...

 

See also:

Philip Giraldi (born c. 1946[1]) is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligenceofficer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a columnist and television commentator who is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a group that advocates for more even-handed policies by the U.S. government in the Middle East.[2]

read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Giraldi

 

US Defense Secretary James Mattis claims the Pentagon’s recent assault on the Sha’irat air base in Homs, Syria led to the destruction of 20 percent of the Syrian Arab Army’s aircraft.

Despite self-congratulations on the part of Washington for its "success" in the mission, Foreign Policy reported that jets took off from the Sha’irat airbase less than 24 hours after the missile attack. 

According to Mattis, the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces "lost the ability to refuel or rearm aircraft at Sha’irat airfield and at this point, use of the runway is of idle military interest." 

One estimate provided by GlobalFirePower.com indicates that the Syrian armed forces maintain 461 total aircraft. Thus, on Mattis’ account, the strike resulted in the elimination of about 92 aircraft. 

The Pentagon estimated that "the strike resulted in the damage or destruction of fuel and ammunition sites, air defense capabilities, and 20 percent of Syria’s operational aircraft."

The US Navy’s launch of 59 tomahawk cruise missiles took place from two destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea. The missiles alone rang up a bill of about $83 million, Sputnik reported. 

Mattis ended his statement with language that could escalate tensions and violence between regional players in Syria. "The Syrian government would be ill-advised ever again to use chemical weapons."

The Syrian government has denied allegations that it conducted a chemical attack on its own people. Rather, Syrian officials say Syrian jets struck a rebel weapons depot where opposition forces had been producing deadly nerve gases. 

read More:

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201704101052505070-mattis-claims-stri...

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Then the general who has more cotton wool between the ears than a merino sheep, had the gall to add that the rsponse was "measured" whatever crap this means... 

 

 

Survivors and witnesses of a US airstrike in Mosul that killed more than 100 civilians have told journalists the building they were living in was not an Islamic State group target.

Key points:

• Coalition aircraft bombed Al Jadidah, in western Mosul, on March 17
• Survivors say the building was full of families taking refuge
• The UN says more than 1,590 residences have been destroyed in western Mosul

The bombing was the deadliest single incident in the months-long battle for the Iraqi city.

After the strike, US officials suggested Islamic State group militants may have crammed the building with people, booby-trapped it with explosives, then lured in an airstrike by firing from the roof.

"Armed men in the house I was in? Never," Ali Zanoun, one of only two people in the building to survive the March 17 strike, told the Associated Press.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-03/mosul-bombing-survivors-recall-imp...

 

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Two weeks ago, the American military finally acknowledged what nongovernmental monitoring groups had claimed for months: The United States-led coalition fighting the Islamic State since August 2014 has been killing Iraqi and Syrian civilians at astounding rates in the four months since President Trump assumed office. The result has been a “staggering loss of civilian life,” as the head of the United Nations’ independent Commission of Inquiry into the Syrian civil war said last week.

“At least 484 civilians have been unintentionally killed by coalition strikes,” the United States Central Command, or Centcom, the military command responsible for the Middle East, said in a June 2 statement. Four months earlier, Centcom had said at least 199 civilians had been killed up to that point in the bombing campaign. Estimates by independent monitors are much higher. Airwars, a watchdog group, says coalition airstrikes have killed nearly 4,000 civilians.

The civilian death toll has risen mainly because the battle has moved deeper into major cities. But even as the civilian death toll ticks upward, the American military has relaxed oversight, investigation and accountability on civilian casualties. Finding out the reasons for these tragic mistakes, seeing what can be learned from them and enforcing the American military’s own standards could save thousands of lives.

Mr. Trump has given the military “total authorization” to decide how, and how much, force will be used, authority that was more closely held by the Obama White House. But Secretary of Defense James Mattis insisted on May 28 that the rules of engagement have not changed. “There is no relaxation of our intention to protect the innocent,” he said.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/isis-syria-iraq-civilian-casualties.html?mcubz=0

 

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US Defense Secretary James Mattis has recently claimed that Washington received a mandate to operate in Syria from no less than the UN itself. The problem is the UN never did any such thing as it does not even have any legal capacity to do so.

The UN cannot sanction a foreign invasion of Syria or any other country because it is absolutely impossible under international law, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said, commenting on the issue. “The UN cannot do such things,” he told the Russian media.

 

He went on to say that “Syria is a sovereign independent state,”adding that “only the Syrian government can invite armed forces of the third countries onto its territory” while “the UN has no such right,” as reported by Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily. The diplomat also said that “the fight against terrorism does not give any states or coalitions a free hand to establish their presence on Syrian territory.”

International law indeed envisages no way for the UN or any other international body to sanction an invasion of one state’s armed forces on the territory of another state. In fact, such actions are regarded as aggression under international law and are strictly prohibited.

UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 on the definition of aggression explicitly states that an “invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State” as well as “any military occupation, however temporary” or “bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another State” is what particularly constitutes aggression.

However, all these facts did not prevent Mattis from claiming that it was the UN that sanctified the presence of the US troops on the Syrian territory without the consent of the Syrian government. “You know, the UN said that … basically we can go after ISIS. And we're there to take them out,” the US defense secretary said, referring to the US actions in Syria as he answered a journalist’s question on Monday.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/409881-mattis-us-syria-un/

 

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On March 10, 2018 at 9:30 pm (Washington time), General Jim Mattis was interviewed by reporters on the plane that was taking him to Oman. Even before questions were asked, the US Secretary of Defense commented on President Putin’s statements to Russian parliamentarians [1].

According to General Mattis, these statements by Putin would be only part of the rhetoric of the presidential election campaign. The weapons described by Vladimir Putin would not be operational for a long time, so could not change the military balance in the present time [2].

In reply, the Russian Federation proceeded the next day to make a successful shot of Kinzhal missile.

The US press reports both events, but changes the chronology, suggesting that General Mattis commented on the firing of the hypersonic missile and not that Russia denied him.

Translation 
Marie-Hélène Penhard

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article200067.html

 

 

 

The following initial parameters and principles shall apply in all UN actors operating in Syria in order to ensure support and assistance is provided to those en need in all areas of Syria. Note that these parameters and principles are to be developped further and would also require setting a due-diligence process to ensure implementation. The principles and parameters, including any further revisions, must also be consistent with the principles of the Charter of the UN and relevant Security Council resolutions.

Parameters

• Life-saving humanitarian needs remain enormous in Syria and assistance delivery through the most direct routes remains critical. Humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence apply to life-saving humanitarian assistance as well as early recovery and resilience activities with humanitarian objectives. The UN, with the active engagement of the Secretary-General, will endeavour to secure the maximum possible flow of humanitarian assistance into Syria, including through the most direct route, ensuring non-interference with its operations, to sustain operations envisaged in the Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP).

• The HRP must remain humanitarian in order to ensure the United Nations can deliver on essential humanituian activities to save lives and ensure the basic needs for people. Development or reconstruction activities that are outside this will need to be reflected in other frameworks that me by nature a longer negociation with governments. This is essential given the complex legal and political issues involved.

• Early recovery and resilience activities in Syria, as currently outlined in the HRP, offer an opportunity to go beyond immediate life-saving assistance and offer minimum living conditions for local affected communities.

• The UN will advocate for the full range of durable solutions for lDPs and refugees, in the whole of Syria, support host communities and promote rights-based approaches in accordance with international law and standards. The UN will not promote the return of refugees and lDP, but will support returnees with a view to ensuring the safe, dignified, informed, voluntary and sustainable nature of return and reintegration, as well as the right of Syrians to seek and enjoy asylum.

• Only once there is a genuine and inclusive political transition negotiated by the parties, would the UN be ready to facilitate reconstruction.

Principles

The aforementioned activities are delivered under the following principles :

o Principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence in mind and keeping with basic principles of human rights-based approach to programming, including participation, empowerment, local ownership, and sustainability.

o Assistance must be prioritized based un the needs of the population (rather than government driven) with a particular focus on the needs of vulnerable groups and individuals, in a manner that protects human rights as an outcome.

o It musl be delivered in a fair, equitable, non-discriminatory and non-politiczed manner.

o The UN shall work directly with communities and households, such that United Nations assistance is delivered with uniformily throughout Syria, regardless of zones of influence.

o The UN shalI consider carefully human rights and protection implications, especially with regard to where and how assistance is provided. UN assistance must not assist parties who have allegedly committed war crimes or crimes against humanity.

• UN assistance shall be determined consciously and explicitly without prejudice to the goals of accountability for serious human rights violations, and the goals of legitimate, equitable, and sustainable political settlement.

• The specific needs and vulnerabilitics of women shall be at the forefront of UN response planning and implementation.

Implementation and next steps

• A multi-disciplinary working group under the auspices of the UN Syria Inter-Agency Task Force (lATF) will monitor adherence to the principles and parameters agreed by the UN system in this strategy, including political, legal, and human rights as well as humanitarian and development dimensions, and will report on this to the Secretary-General.

• UN agencies, funds and programmes should strengthen internal control, monitoring and tracking systems for the implementation of UN and partner programmes in Syria, with a view of taking all reasonable steps to avoid the diversion of or interference with aid assistance.

• A consultative needs assessment would be required that takes account of bolh needs and principles, including future expectations. Rigorous standards of due diligence should apply, drawing from the principles of the Human Rights Due Diligence Policy.

• The UN shall apply the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights in all areas of its work in Syria, including in its post-agreement planning.

• UN funding modalities should be independent of both government and donors, to the extent possible. In this context, the UN, with the active engagement and advocacy of the Secretary General, will endeavour to ensure sufficient donor support.

These agreed parameters shall form the basis of common positions and coordinated advocacy with key member states and donors.

Jeffrey D. Feltman

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article202706.html

 

 

Who wants to relaunch the war in Syria?

by Thierry Meyssan

Seven years after the beginning of the war against Syria, fought by proxy jihadist forces, the partisans of its destruction want to start again. And yet they have suffered a definite defeat on the ground, where the population, after a momentary hesitation, massively chose to support the Republic. This attempt to restart the war from the beginning can only be understood if its objective has evolved.

Created in Washington in January 2018, under the presidency of David Satterfield, the « little group » was tasked with relaunching the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski project for the destruction of State structures in the Middle East in general and Syria in particular. It initially included Saudi Arabia, the United States, France, Jordan and the United Kingdom (on the understanding that the Arab member states would not be destroyed in the short term).

The entity was secret at its inception, but progressively became more public as Germany and Egypt joined. It seems to have become more reasonable and is now seeking an honourable exit from the crisis. It has made contact with the Astana group (Iran, Russia, and Turkey).

And yet the United Kingdom relaunched the project against Syria by preparing a false flag operation in Kafr Zita. For this purpose, specialists from the Olive company were sent to the area, and chemical weapons were moved to the governorate of Idlib. The White Helmets abducted 44 children, whom MI6 planned to sacrifice and blame their murder on a chemical attack by the Syrian Arab Army against the « rebels ».

MI6 organised the dissemination of this fake news in advance via the false witness testimony of a small child, Hala (photo). They created a Twitter account in her name on 29 July, and about thirty media immediately joined up, waiting for the signal (operation « Eyes on Idlib »). Among them are the BBC [1], Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [2], BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post [3] – these are media which knowingly participate in British war propaganda.

Simultaneously, the Pentagon deployed in the Gulf the destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG-68) with 56 cruise missiles on board, and a В-1В strategic bomber carrying 24 AGM-158 JASSM air-ground cruise missiles on the air base of Al-Udeid in Qatar.

While the responsibility of British Prime Minister Theresa May is clearly established concerning the actions of MI6, we do not know who ordered the US military deployment.

Always paddling in the wake of London, French President Emmanuel Macron has already put forward the idea of relaunching the war, speaking before a meeting of his ambassadors in Paris. Thus, with contempt for the Syrian People, who had democratically elected their President, he proposed to choose in their place - « Let us respect the sovereignty of Syria, but let us truly respect it, by allowing the people to express themselves and to incarnate this sovereignty », he declared.

The authors of this plan know perfectly well that they have already lost the war if we look at it only from the Syrian point of view. Their new objective seems to go even further. It is their intention to provoke a conflict with Russia – in other words, a war which would quickly become global.

Syria and Russia reacted by revealing the facts. Then Russia sent a quantity of military material to Tartus via the container-carrier Sparta-3. Moscow also reinforced its presence off the coast of Syria (currently ten ships and two submarines) by planning vast military manoeuvres, which engage twenty-five ships and about thirty aircraft.

Frightened, the US State Department has just sent ambassador James Jeffrey to calm the countries in the region. He is expected in Israël, Jordan and Turkey. He is accompanied by David Satterfield’s assistant, Colonel Joel Rayburn from Military Intelligence. The US delegation will assure all its interlocutors that Washington is not planning to bomb Syria under false pretences.

Duly noted.

If the hosts of the US delegation have courage enough, they will not fail to ask for specifics - is the assistant for the Secretary of State for the Greater Middle East, David Satterfield, pursuing the policies of George Bush Jr and Barack Obama, or is he implementing the new policies of Donald Trump? [4] While London’s position is clearly anti-Russian, and that of the White House pro-US, what about that of the Pentagon?

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 
Pete Kimberley

Source 
Al-Watan (Syria)

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article202717.html

 

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On 2 July 2012, Jeffrey Feltman, ex-assistant to Hillary Clinton, became the number 2 of the United Nations. He swore his oath on the UN Charter before the then Secretary General, the extremely corrupt Ban Ki-moon.

 

 

In October 2017, the UN under-secretary for Political Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, secretly drew up a list of instructions for all UN agencies about the attitude they should adopt concerning the conflict in Syria.

None of the member-States of the Organisation, not even the members of the Security Council, were informed of the existence of these instructions. At least, not until the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sergueï Lavrov, revealed them on 20 August last [1].

We have just acquired a copy of the list [2].

This document betrays the United Nations Charter [3] by inverting its priorities. While the UN’s main objective is to « maintain peace and international security », Feltman’s instructions place the « respect for human rights » above this goal. In this way, those rights become an instrument which work against peace.

The expression « human rights » existed well before it was given a legal definition (in other words before it became opposable in court). In the 19th century, the British Minister for Foreign Affairs made frequent use of the phrase in order to justify certain of its wars. It was in order to defend the populations, he declared, that he was ready to wage war against the Ottoman Empire. In reality, it was nothing other than a clash between the British Empire and the Sublime Porte. The People who had allegedly been « liberated » by London were never made more comfortable under this master than any other. In the 20th century, the term « human rights » was first of all the trade mark of the « no frontiers » NGO’s, and then the slogan of the Trotskyists allied with CIA, the neo-conservatives.

Although the UN Charter uses the expression « human rights » six times, it does not make it an ideal in itself. Respect for these rights can only exist in times of peace. Do we need reminding that war is a period of trauma during which individual rights are shattered? It is a terrible situation where, in order to save a People, we have to accept that some of them will be forfeit.

This is why we make a distinction between the police and the army. The police protects individual rights, while the army protects collective rights. The police must respect « human rights », while the army can ignore them. It seems that our contemporaries, imprisoned by their comforts, have lost the sense of these elementary distinctions.

If « human rights-ism » was initially a mask for territorial conquest taken to the extreme, it has become the ideology of the destruction of national state structures. For our rights to be respected, we have to be « citizens of the world » and accept an « open society », « without frontiers », administrated by a « world government ».

This is to scorn the history and culture of each of these « citizens of the world », and impose on them what seems to be best for us… and therefore for them.

In this new document by Jeffrey Feltman, « human rights » are once again a pretext. This personality participated in the government of Iraq by a private company designed on the model of the East India Company, the badly-named Coalition Provisional Authority [4], thus showing how little respect he had for the rights of the Iraqis. He expressed his true goal for Syria in a series of documents known as the « Feltman Plan » [5]. In these documents, he proposes to cancel the sovereignty of the Syrian People and install a foreign government, just as he did in Iraq.

Self-assured, he writes - « The Plan for humanitarian action must remain humanitarian in order to guarantee that the UNO will be able to bring to a successful conclusion the essential humanitarian activities necessary for saving lives and guaranteeing the essential needs of the populations. Apart from that, development or reconstruction activities should be reflected in other contexts which, by their nature, will involve longer periods of negotiation with the governments. This is essential, given the complex legal and political questions in play ». In other words, feed the refugees, but do not fight the starvation which is wasting them – it should remain an argument we could use in our negotiations with the Syrian state.

The Jordanians, the Lebanese, the Turks and the Europeans will be surprised to read - « The UNO does not favour the return of refugees or displaced people, but will support the repatriated with a view to guarantee the safe, dignified, informed, voluntary and durable character of return and reintegration, as well as the rights of Syrians to seek asylum ». Borrowing from the theory of Professor Kelly Greenhill [6], Feltman does not want to help the exiles to return to their homes, but intends to use their exodus in order to weaken their country.

« UN assistance must not help those who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity », he specifies, forbidding, as a conservative measure, all aid to any power at all.

He states - « It is only when a true and inclusive political transition has been negotiated by the parties concerned that the UNO will be prepared to facilitate reconstruction ». We are a long way from the ideal of the Charter.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 
Pete Kimberley

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article202751.html

 

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