“The Victory of Syria over Global Terrorism Will Benefit Humanity”: Vanessa Beeley on Syria War

By Vanessa Beeley and Mark Taliano

Mark Taliano: Why is the truth about Syria important?

Vanessa Beeley: It is important because in Syria the “humanitarian” hybrid war strategy of the Globalist powers in the so-called civilised “global north” is being exposed real time as Syria sweeps to a military victory against the heavily financed proxy invasion of their country, orchestrated by the US alliance that includes aligned Gulf States, Turkey and Israel. By pushing back against the dominant establishment narrative on Syria, we, as journalists and activists, are effectively defending international law which is being violated by our own rogue states. We are standing in solidarity with an unprecedented resistance against global terrorism which has also enabled the  formation of an axis of resistance that has turned the tide of neoconservative hegemony in the region. We are defending the right of the Syrian people to decide their own future without foreign meddling. The precedents being set by this externally imposed conflict and its outcome will define the future of global security for all Humanity – what more important principle is there to defend?

MT: Why are people trying to “de-platform” you? Who is trying to de-platform you?

VB: People – all aligned media, think tanks, UN agencies – are trying to de-platform me because diverging views, including those of the “disappeared” Syrian people, challenge and confront their fabricated narrative that has “manufactured consent” for the US Coalition criminal aggression against Syria for nine years. The revelations provided by many independent voices exposes the corruption and corrosion of established institutions that should be ensuring world peace and who are, instead, promoting, sponsoring and enabling world instability in order to provide resource scavenging opportunities for the plutocrats who reign over us. Freedom of speech, thought and expression is being eroded and this is the principle we should all be defending or we are ALL Julian Assange – tortured, oppressed by the pseudo “free world”.

MT: Should Canadians believe the White Helmets? Amnesty International? Human Rights Watch?

VB: Canadians should use international law as their yardstick to determine truth, the violators of international law are their own government which is a vassal state of the US and UK. The White Helmets, AI and HRW are all compromised organisations which are sponsored and were established by the same governments as part of their smart power complex – an integral and now crucial part of their hybrid war strategy which are established to infiltrate prey nation society, always on the side of the US Coalition foreign policy agenda – predominantly to ensure the vilification of the target government or leader in order to provide justification for proxy or direct military intervention or economic terrorism under the guise of sanctions.

Do You Choose the Truth or War Propaganda? Your Choice Makes a Difference.

MT: When Syria wins this war, the world will be a safer place. Why?

VB: As I have explained above, the victory of Syria over global terrorism will benefit humanity. Syria has had a policy of containing these terrorist groups within Syrian borders in order to prevent the same fate befalling the EU, UK and US citizens with the inevitable return or flow of these radicalised extremist factions to those regions. Syria and her allies have adhered to international law both from a military and a diplomatic perspective, thus ensuring a stable future for mankind. Syria’s victory will ensure that history is written by the targeted nation – exposing the destructive hegemony of the US alliance in the region and globally.

MT: What should Canadians do to spread the truth about the war on Syria?

VB: Canadians must fight for freedom of speech and against the de-platforming of diverging views. They should join genuine anti-war movements and defend  the principles of international law which have been cynically abused and abandoned by the UK, US and France on the security council.

*Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer and associate editor at 21st Century Wire. Vanessa was a finalist for one of the most prestigious journalism awards – the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism – whose winners have included the likes of Robert Parry in 2017, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Nick Davies and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism team.

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

Western States Salvage Terror Assets in Syria

BY FINIAN CUNNINGHAM

Western states made a dramatic intervention in the Syrian war earlier this week to extricate hundreds of terrorist militants. The militants are to be fast-tracked for resettlement in Europe and Canada.

But in saving their terror assets, Western governments are risking future public safety as well as sowing seeds for increasing multicultural strife.

In a stunning revelation of the foreign links to the extremists in Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his military forces to evacuate up to 800 militants belonging to the so-called White Helmets. They are the propaganda merchants for Nusra Front and other al-Qaeda-linked terror organizations.

Netanyahu announced that the blatant intervention to rescue the jihadists in southwest Syria was made at the personal request of US President Donald Trump and the Canadian premier Justin Trudeau, “among others”.

Separately, there were reports of four senior jihadist commanders being given safe passage by Israeli forces out of Syria as the Syrian army closed in on the last-remaining militant strongholds around the southwest city of Daraa and Quneitra province.

Nor was it coincidental that the evacuation operations were accompanied by Israeli air strikes on Syrian government facilities in Hama province.

Damascus condemned the extraction of hundreds of jihadists by Israel and its Western allies as a “criminal operation” and further proof of the foreign sponsoring that has fomented the nearly eight-year war.

Of course, Netanyahu, Western governments and news media sought to portray the evacuation of the “White Helmets” as a “humanitarian gesture”. This was at the same time that Israeli warplanes and snipers were stepping up the killing medics and civilians in Gaza.

Britain’s newly appointed foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt described the Israeli “rescue” of “White Helmets” as “fantastic news”, saying that the militants were the “bravest of the brave”.

We won’t delay too much here on this fraud. The so-called first responders of the “White Helmets” are a CIA, MI6-backed propaganda outfit working hand-in-hand with the terrorist militia. Their fake videos of chemical weapons attacks and air strikes have been a key propaganda device aided and abetted by the Western news media to demonize the Syrian armed forces and its Russian ally.

The fictitious propaganda stunt alleging a chemical weapon attack in Douma on April 7 this year resulted in a barrage of air strikes by the US, Britain and France.

Created in 2013 by a British MI6 agent and former British army officer James Le Mesurier, the so-called White Helmets have been funded with hundreds of millions of dollars by the governments of the US, Britain and other NATO states.

There is abundant video evidence showing members of this fake rescue group participating in gruesome executions by the al Qaeda-aligned militants with whom they associate. One such video shows an execution of a Syrian army soldier in Daraa, the city from where the latest evacuation of jihadists by Israel took place. Daraa is also, by the way, mendaciously referred to in the Western media as the “cradle of the revolution” or the “birthplace of the uprising” against President Assad’s government back in March 2011. The only thing that Daraa was a birthplace of was the US-led foreign covert war for regime change in Syria.

Now here’s a curious thing about the latest salvaging of terror assets in Syria. The United States and Israel are not taking any of the 800 militants for resettlement. Independent investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, who has done much to expose the real macabre nature of the White Helmets and their terror links, says that both the US and Israeli no doubt realize that by taking in such “war refugees” they are inviting terrorists into their own societies.

Which makes you wonder why Britain, Germany and Canada are stepping up to the plate to offer the 800 White Helmets a home?

The case of Germany is particularly odd. Interior minister Horst Seehofer has personally authorized the resettlement of White Helmets spirited out of Syria by Israel. This is the same Seehofer who has mounted such a strong challenge to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “open door” policy towards immigrants.

What we are witnessing is a suicidal ignorance by Western governments to take in these cadres of White Helmets. Perhaps Seehofer and other government ministers like Britain’s Jeremy Hunt are simply woefully misinformed. But surely the state security agencies of their respective countries know all too well the criminal, psychotic nature of the people whom they are allowing into their societies.

Such a callous disregard for public safety is not unprecedented. In his well-researched book, My Fight For Syrian Freedom, Irish peace activist Dr Declan Hayes details numerous cases of how jihadist assets were knowingly cultivated by British and French state security services for the purpose of waging the covert war for regime change in Syria and Libya. These assets have been allowed to return to Britain and France under the cover of being “refugees”, with the security services turning a blind eye to their true identity.

The nefarious relationship has resulted in these terror assets committing atrocities in Europe. For example, as Hayes points out, the Manchester concert bomb attack that killed 22 people in May last year was carried out by operatives belonging to a Libyan jihad cell that MI5 and MI6 had previously overseen for their objective of prosecuting the regime-change war in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi.

Similar murky connections between jihadists “blooded in Syria” and state secret services have been have uncovered in terror attacks in France and Belgium. It is not clear if these terror assets go rogue or whether they are being used by British, French and other military intelligence as a deliberate provocation in order to promote tighter national security laws and greater surveillance powers over their citizens.

Declan Hayes reckons that the problem of Western-sponsored terrorists returning to Britain and other European countries under the cover of claiming to be “war refugees” is much greater than Western governments or their media are admitting.

Hayes says that in his experience of visiting Syria many times during the war, most families loyal to the government were adamantly defiant about staying in the country and defending their communities. He reckons that there is a legitimate concern that many of the refugees fleeing from formerly militant-held cities like Aleppo and Daraa are jihadists and their families.

This view supports the right of some European governments to be wary about taking in large numbers of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries. There is a case for rigorous vetting, but such a case is often emotionally blackmailed by naive media commentary as being “heartless” or “racist”.

There is no doubt that Western government agencies have fomented terrorist groups in Syria and elsewhere to do their dirty work for destabilizing target governments.

Now that the war in Syria is all but over with the Syrian army, backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, rooting out the last jihadist remnants, we are seeing Western states taking in their terror assets. Maybe as a desperate intervention to stop them from revealing the dirty secrets of Western government collusion.

The repatriation of the White Helmets terrorist propagandists to the UK, Germany and Canada is a classic illustration.

Western authorities are playing with fire. Not only are they running the risk of public safety from future terrorist incidents. They are also stoking the flames of xenophobia, racism and culture wars against many innocent refugees who have been given shelter in Western countries.

Analysis: Turkey, West relations in age of Erdogan

 

The June 24 elections of Turkey were highly significant in the country’s contemporary history, both because of bringing to rule a president with full executive powers and potential influences on the home and foreign policy.

(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The June 24 elections of Turkey were highly significant in the country’s contemporary history, both because of bringing to rule a president with full executive powers and potential influences on the home and foreign policy.

The elections marked a transition from the parliamentary to the presidential system of governance which was authorized on April 26 constitutional referendum during which people said yes to proposed changes. This means that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now can push with his domestic and foreign plans with little obstruction from his opponents.

One of the important cases of the foreign policy of Erdogan Turkey is the relations with the West. A set of cases are influencing this relation, including the economic partnership, refugee crisis, military cooperation, Syria crisis, post-ISIS Iraq, the Persian Gulf Arab states’ political row, and most importantly the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) annexation by the Israeli regime known as “deal of the century.”

With these in mind, in the next five years in which Erdogan leads the nation, Turkey is expected to experience friction with the West in a set of aspects.

Human rights issues, as in the past, are slated to continue hampering normal ties between the two. The Western governments will continue to question Erdogan’s crackdown on the political opponents, military campaigns against PKK militiamen in the Kurdish areas of the country, and a clampdown on the media freedom which followed failed military coup in 2016.

Erdogan plans to transform his country in the next five years into a power among the top 10 global economic powers, a global rank he wants to reach in 2023, the year the Republic of Turkey celebrates its centenary. Europe, in the meantime, is not optimistic about a shining record for the human rights situation in the country.

In the days that followed the elections, the German Foreign Minister Heiko Joseph Maas called on Turkey to end the state of emergency, in place since the unsuccessful power grab attempt two years ago. Foreign Minister Karin Kneissi of Austria, on the other side, criticized imprisonment of the opposition leaders, adding that despite the fact that Europe does not set much hope on democratic improvement in Turkey, it gives Erdogan another chance to seek democratic enhancement.

The Europeans’ discontentment sets up firm roadblocks ahead of long-held Turkish dream of joining the European Union. Although over the past decade Erdogan signaled that EU accession is no longer a priority for Ankara, a part of the Turkish society and political body remain committed to working towards the realization of this dream. Still, some experts suggest that the Turkish leader seeks to put together the 2023 vision puzzle by pushing for EU membership.

Politically, the analysts believe, Erdogan will highlight the disputes with the West to bolster a nationalistic spirit of the Turkish people. He won a little bit more than 50 percent of the votes, which means the other half of the Turkish society still opposes his political pathway. To address this challenge, the president will accentuate nationalism to get a majority of people around him. To this aim, he will work hard to present a picture of an independent Turkey with the power to make decisions not influenced by the Eastern and Western powers. He will also emphasize the security threats posed to the nation’s southern borders.

Erdogan will very likely continue military operations against the Kurdish militants in Iraq’s Qandi mountains and also in Syria’s north. The Kurds are making a point of dispute between Turkey and the US, a supporter of the Kurdish militias operating in northern Syria. Ankara views them as a threat to its national security but Washington takes advantage of them as an infantry serving its agenda in war-ravaged Syria. So, the upcoming months will possibly bear a more spirited rift between the two.

Russia, another power acting in Syria, is leaving Erdogan’s hands open in parts of northern Syria to attract Ankara to its side in a regional game of influence with the US. Moscow’s turning blind eye to Turkish military operations against the Syrian Kurds, on the one hand, and rows with the West, on the other hand, have dragged Turkey and Russia into a tactical alliance.

Turkey and the West will possibly clash over Ankara’s purchase of rival Russia’s S-400 air defense systems while being a NATO member. Warm ties with Ankara will allow Moscow’s free movement to Eastern Europe through Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, operated by Turkey. The West will possibly protest to Turkey as Russian ships’ passage through the straits will grant Moscow higher maneuvering power in the face of NATO.

Another important mission for Erdogan in the new period is to maintain a balance in relations with the Western countries, which are fellow members in NATO, and Russia, which is important for Ankara leader as a source of huge income to the Turkish tourism industry.

Another important point in relation to the West-Turkey ties is the military bonds under NATO partnership. Over the past decade, Erdogan has learned well how to play Washington. He now knows where he can inflame the rifts and where he can wrest privileges from the West. Ankara’s shift from a terrorist groups’ backer to an active peace player in Astana talks for Syria bears witness to its foreign policy flexibility.

In general, despite a tactical alliance with Russia, and challenges surrounding human rights issues with the Western governments, Turkey’s bonds with the West in security, economic, and political areas are expected to continue in the new period. 

Attempts to take down Assad are all about weakening Iran

By 5Pillars

In a reply to Abdul Latif Halimi’s recent article on 5Pillars, Zafar Bangash argues that Muslims need to stop deluding themselves and realise that the Syrian conflict is nothing more than an imperial war to take down the Resistance Axis. While decrying Muslims’ reliance on “ill-informed” or “biased” sources vis-à-vis the war on Syria, Abdul Latif-Halimi urges them to build their own think-tanks and do more “lobbying” (presumably of Western governments and media). Wonderful! He also tells us that Bashar al-Assad has only 12% core constituency. One wonders what his source is? More troubling, he implies that Muslims need to continue relying on the same bunch of criminals – the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – to rescue the people of Syria by overthrowing Assad. But these malign forces have been the primary source of instability and mayhem in Syria and the broader Middle East region for decades.

Syrian president Bashar al AssadSyrian president Bashar al Assad Allah warns the committed Muslims in the noble Qur’an: “O you who are firmly committed to Allah (the covenant-bearing Muslims)! Do not take the political Jews (Zionists) and political Christians (imperialists) as your masters; they are allies of one another; and whoever amongst you takes them for a master, then he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people” (5:51). The opposite is equally true: Christians and Jews would never accept Muslims dictating to them. Have we no independence and pride? There is no secret about who is supporting the so-called “rebels”. From day one they have publicly called upon the imperialist powers and their regional proxies to attack Syria (by imposing a no-fly zone) so that they can come to power in a repeat of the Libya regime change operation. And look how well that ended. Prophetic history offers important lessons for Muslims. Moments before the Treaty of Hudaybiyah was formally signed, Abu Jundal (ra), a Muslim held captive in Makkah, managed to escape and arrived in Hudaybiyah. He showed visible signs of torture. But under the terms of the treaty, the Prophet (pbuh) handed him back to the Makkan torturers. The objective was to save the wider Islamic “project” emerging in Madinah. In other words to see the bigger picture, something that short-sighted Muslims obsessed with their paranoid conspiracy theories about “Iranian expansionism” are lacking nowadays. No wonder the Muslim world is on its knees with this level of schoolboy geo-political analysis! Iran The same applies to Islamic Iran and Hezbollah. By supporting the Syrian state they are maintaining a base on the borders of occupied Palestine to confront Zionism. Like them or not, the reality is that Iran and Hezbollah are the most effective Islamic models that resist imperialism and Zionism. They have actually fought Israel – directly and indirectly – and have expended much blood and treasure in doing so. The Syrian rebels, on the other hand, haven’t lifted a finger in support of Palestine and maybe when they do they will have the right to talk about it. Syria is also the only Arab state with a defence treaty with Iran that has facilitated help to Hezbollah to confront the Zionist occupiers of Palestine. So why should Iran violate this treaty with the side that has kept its part of the bargain? Islam forbids this. Those that disagree, go ahead, create an alternative to Hezbollah to expel the Zionists as Hezbollah did in Lebanon; like Iran provided the means for Sunni Bosnians and continues to do so for Sunni Palestinians to exercise self-defense when facing aggression. But the truth is that while Israel laughs at the non-existent threat posed by the takfiris and their supporters, it genuinely fears the threat of powerful Iran and Hezbollah. Rebel weakenesses Anyone who believes the Syrian government has 12% core support and is about to collapse lives in a CNN/BBC/Al Jazeera created bubble. If this were true, it would have collapsed long ago. Assad has the support of the overwhelming majority of Syria’s minorities as well as a large proportion of its Sunnis. Remember the Syrian Arab Army is majority Sunni and has done the overwhelming majority of fighting for the government side. British journalist Robert Fisk has interviewed many Sunni, Druze, Shia and Christian military personnel in Syria over the past year confirming their support for Assad. In 2012, prominent Arab journalist Jihad El-Khazen (former editor of Saudi owned Al-Hayat and Asharq Alawsat, the two largest Arab newspapers) wrote “the President [Assad] had the support of a clear majority of his people: all minorities are on his side, along with a majority of Sunnis.”

Syrian rebelsSyrian rebels In June 2014, Bashar al-Assad won the presidential election hands down. An estimated one million Syrian refugees that had fled to Lebanon allegedly because of Syrian army attacks came out in droves to vote for Assad – to the embarrassment of Al Jazeera TV station which loves to pretend that the “Syrian people” all hate Assad. Even the BBC could not deny this fact. The Canadian government did not even allow Syrians to cast ballot! Moreover, while Halimi points out Assad’s frailties, he completely neglects to mention those of the imperialist-Zionist-backed rebels who are busy fighting among themselves a lot of the time. Two more facts: 1) In 2014 it took one year for the takfiri terrorists (ISIS) to capture Tabqa airbase which was under siege for over a year within territory almost completely under their control. 2) Last month, another terrorist group, the Al Nusra Front captured Abu Alduhur, a Syrian military airbase in Idlib region after besieging it for nearly two years in an area dominated by NATO’s proxy forces since 2011. These two takfiri groups are supposedly the “best” fighters against Syria and would be the first to benefit should Assad fall. In fact, the war has come down to a straight choice between him and them? So if you want the rebels to win you know who you’ll get – the liberal human rights activists of ISIS and al Qaeda. All of this “spectacular” blitzkrieg to capture military bases (we are not talking about cities) is taking place with open logistical, financial and military support from NATO states, the GCC and the Zionist entity. It also shows Syrian army dedication – instead of surrendering a military base they choose to resist under siege for over a year. Russian manoeuvres Unlike the US, Russia does not appear interested in dominating the Middle East. Its strategic long-term goal is to gain leverage over Western powers and use it as a negotiating tool to strengthen its own position to deter Western interference in the territories of the former Soviet Union.

Vladmir Putin has vowed to stand by Syria Vladmir Putin has vowed to stand by Syria Dmitri Trenin articulated as early as 2009 in the Washington Quarterly the most accurate Western assessment of contemporary Russia within the current global power pyramid. He wrote: “Russia was not to be integrated into the core West, but managed by it… Putin aimed at integration with it [West]. Unlike [Boris] Yeltsin, Putin put a price on his country’s cooperation with the United States. Washington would have to recognize Moscow’s primacy in the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States].” Moscow’s involvement in Syria has a credible domestic component – the north Caucasus takfiri group the Caucasian Emirate split into pro-ISIS and non-ISIS factions last summer. There are also thousands of Russian citizens of north Caucasian ethnicity fighting to implement the NATO project in The Levant. Russia is taking preemptive steps before the takfiri virus reaches the north Caucasus on a larger scale. Assad will not fall Since 2011 there have been predictions of the imminent collapse of the Syrian government. These continue to be repeated today by an army of wishful thinkers, sectarian nutcases and the deluded. But the Syrian conflict has little to do with Bashar al-Assad or human rights. NATO supports regimes far worse than the one in Syria (ever heard of Saudi Arabia or Zionist Israel?). The primary objective of the war on Syria is to cut Iran’s presence on the borders with Palestine and destroy the logistical base for Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad that Syria used to be. This grouping is the only real military and political force that poses any threat to the Zionist entity while the Syrian rebels (with their fanatical sectarian mindset and lack of capacity to build anything worthwhile) never will. NATO thought this would be easy, but they have badly miscalculated. Iran’s actions at the political level, the P5+1 deal and its principled role in Yemen and Syria show that Tehran is not going to surrender to the imperialist project, no matter how much the West and the takfiris condemn and insult it. Muslims must stop formulating their views on events within the framework peddled by NATO through the corporate media – whether they realise it or not. It is time to think outside the neo-colonial box and analyze contemporary events within the Islamic philosophical and legal framework. The war on Syria is all about the imperialist project in defence of the Zionist State. Lobbying the imperialists – directly or indirectly – to solve Muslim problems shows how shallow such thinking is. Zafar Bangash is a Sunni Muslim Scholar, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought and Editor-in-Chief of pro-Iran Crescent International magazine.