News: Civil War in Syria

Pro-Freedom · Jun 2, 2017

As Syrians (and no doubt Assad's accomplices in the UN and 'international community') are very well aware

Syrian scientists say Bashar Al-Assad personally ordered nerve gas development

02-06-2017:..Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad ordered the development of chemical agents, including sarin, to use against opponents years before the outbreak of the country’s six-year civil war, according to exiled Syrian scientists.

Scientists involved in the country’s chemical weapons programme told French investigative news site Mediapart that the Assad regime ordered the equipping of seven military bases with storage facilities for chemicals needed to create sarin gas.

The nerve gas was later added to modified munitions that could be fired from helicopters, the report says.
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http://www.newsweek.com/bashar-al-a...-nerve-gas-development-use-against-his-619525

Pro-Freedom · Jun 5, 2017

Saydnaya: Syria's most notorious prison where inmates 'smelled the burning of bodies'

03-06-2017: ...The smell was pungent, like human flesh or hair being singed, he told the Telegraph from Sweden, where he is now seeking asylum.
“There were a lot of dead bodies each week, too many to dispose of normally,” he said. “Which is why I think they were sending them to a crematorium.”'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...smelled-burning-bodies/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_fb

Pro-Freedom · Jun 7, 2017

Syrian white phosphorus victim dying as she waits for $32,247 drug

07-06-2017: 'Raidah Dugain cannot lie down or lean back for too long. If she does, the 17-year-old chokes on water. Both her kidneys have failed, unable to excrete excess body fluids, so she has to make sure that she sits up on a wheel chair.

"Even at night I sleep on the chair," says Dugain. "I am really tired. I am not well at all."

A resident of Syria’s Idlib Province, Dugain is the mother of two young children, despite being only a teenager. She says her health began to fail after she was affected by what she and her family believe was a white phosphorus attack dropped by the warplanes of the Syrian regime leader, Bashar al Assad. Although she doesn’t remember the exact date of the alleged attack, she says it happened sometime in the first week of September last year.

By late October, her health had dangerously deteriorated. She came to Turkey’s Hatay Province, where she is receiving regular blood transfusions and dialysis at a government-run hospital.

Dugain’s medical condition is complicated. The illness has taken away the glow of youth from her face: she looks pale, her hands shiver and she is unable to hold her two-year-old son on her lap. She stares at the world with her striking blue eyes. The path that lies ahead of her is full of uncertainty.
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http://www.trtworld.com/magazine/sy...ctim-dying-as-she-waits-for-32247-drug-345004

Mani · Jun 9, 2017

Assad is actually more popular with his people now than he ever was, simply because the people of Syria who are living this Wahhabi horror show, know what type of sick medieval evil awaits them, if he goes.

872942682863218688 is not a valid tweet id

Pro-Freedom · Jun 10, 2017

Pro-Freedom · Jun 10, 2017

Pro-Freedom · Jun 12, 2017

Assad regime dropping Napalm/Fuel bombs on Daraa city

Pro-Freedom · Jun 12, 2017

With the world cheering for Assad's use of white phosphorous against civilians since 2012, long before he created Daesh to furnish a useful excuse to do so, surely the US is just joining in? Next up, maybe they'll borrow his Sarin gas

U.S.-led forces appear to be using white phosphorus in populated areas in Iraq and Syria

09-06-2017: ..The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria appears to have used white phosphorus-loaded munitions on at least two occasions in densely populated areas of Mosul and in the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, according to videos posted online and human rights groups.

The often-controversial munitions are common in western militaries and are used primarily to create smoke screens, though they can also be dropped as an incendiary weapon. When a white phosphorus shell explodes, the chemical inside reacts with the air, creating a thick white cloud. When it comes in contact with flesh, it can maim and kill by burning to the bone.

While international humanitarian law stipulates that civilians must be protected from all military operations, it also says that countries must take even more care when using white phosphorus. Additionally, because of the weapon’s ability to cause grievous and inhumane injuries, rights groups caution against using white phosphorus to kill enemy troops if other weapons are available.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...q-and-syria/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.0daa76d21751

Pro-Freedom · Jun 13, 2017

Goalcast uses footage of some of Assad's child victims choking on the poison gas deployed by the regime or pulled from the rubble of homes destroyed by his and his accomplices' warplanes, showing a fraction of the catastrophic devastation he and his accomplices have wreaked in Syria against people whose only crime was to demand freedom. This is accompanied by a timeless speech against dictatorship by Charlie Chaplin from a movie made about Hitler.

Pro-Freedom · Jun 15, 2017

A recent report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) estimates that the number of detainees is likely to exceed 215,000. Ninety-nine percent of these have been detained by Syrian regime forces.

Syria's prisoners: Absent but never forgotten

This Ramadan, Syrian families across the country and around the world will be breaking their fast in the absence of a loved one.

As favourite delicacies are prepared and relatives gather, the empty chair at the table will be a painful reminder of those who are absent but never forgotten. Many will experience the ongoing pain and torment of having no news as to where their relative is being held, or if they are alive or dead.

A recent report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) estimates that the number of detainees is likely to exceed 215,000. Ninety-nine percent of these have been detained by Syrian regime forces. Last month alone, SNHR documented 577 cases of arbitrary arrest, of which 423 were arrested by regime forces, including 44 children and 88 adult women.

Most of these were civilians arrested in areas under regime control. Those detained include activists and the family members of armed opposition fighters. They also include many men in the 18-42 year age group who have been arrested for conscription purposes and will likely be sent to the front lines to fight.

The inhumane conditions in regime detention facilities have been widely documented by local and international human rights organisations and corroborated by the harrowing testimony of those who have been released.

Prisons are overcrowded and unsanitary. Detainees are given inadequate food - are sometimes purposefully starved - and suffer from medical neglect. Torture is practised on an industrial scale. Women, and men, have suffered rape and sexual abuse.
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https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2017/6/14/syrias-prisoners-absent-but-never-forgotten

Pro-Freedom · Jun 15, 2017

15th consecutive day of heavy Regime bombardment on Daraa.

Pro-Freedom · Jun 18, 2017

surely Assad and Iran's regime will surely now declare themselves at war against the USA? Perhaps Iran can host the war for a change rather than everyone coming together to butcher Syrian civilians?

#BREAKING @CENTCOM CONFIRMS, A #US F/A-18E SHOT DOWN AN #ASSAD SU-22 NEAR #TABQA THIS EVE.#Syria pic.twitter.com/nbvDjxDE1N
— Julian Röpcke🇺🇦 (@JulianRoepcke) June 18, 2017

Pro-Freedom · Jun 18, 2017

British MP Jo Cox, murdered by a neo-nazi white supremacist a year ago, was a truly great soul who represented what her party leader and the rest of the West's politicians never have - a genuine voice of principle.

Jo Cox’s compassion on Syria had no borders – nor should ours

Jo understood that the refugee crisis, the humanitarian crisis, and the terrorism threat all stemmed from a single atrocity: Bashar al-Assad’s war against those Syrian civilians who opposed his rule.

Jo rejected the suggestion that we “need to make a choice between dealing with either Assad or ISIS”. She recognised that “Assad is ISIS’s biggest recruiting sergeant, and as long as his tyranny continues, so too will ISIS’s terror”.

She advocated a comprehensive approach to Syria involving humanitarian, diplomatic, and military measures.

https://inews.co.uk/essentials/sport/football/football-opinion/jo-coxs-compassion-syria-no-borders/

Pro-Freedom · Jun 18, 2017

The heroic Ukrainian activist-journalists of InformNapalm, who know Putin's crimes all too well at first hand, continue documenting Russia's crimes (which are assisted by Austrian firm Schiebel) in Syria as in Ukraine.

Assad regime’s Air Force with the support of Russia destroys the city of Daraa

Despite the statements of the Russian General Staff about the “actual cessation of the civil war in Syria,” the Assad regime’s air force with the support of Russia has been conducting massive air strikes on the city of Daraa in the south of the country during the last nine days. Judging by the map of the fighting, the line of contact between the units of the Syrian opposition (marked in green) and the army of Assad (marked in red) passes through the city.

Based on the videos of the Syrian resource Nabaa Media located in the city of Daraa, we have established that the air strikes were conducted by the Su-22, MiG-27 and Mi-25 of the Syrian Air Force.

The Russian military carries out aerial reconnaissance and target designation using the Horizon Air S-100 UAV which is a licensed version of the Austrian UAV Camcopter S-100, manufactured in Rostov-on-Don by Horizont jointly with Schiebel.
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https://informnapalm.org/en/assad-regime-s-air-force-support-russia-destroys-city-daraa/

Pro-Freedom · Jun 18, 2017

Iran continues with its regional Nakba and occupation, assisted and rubber-stamped by the world powers just like the last one.

Damascus' Contours Distorted in a Wave of Iran-Arranged Demographic Change

Increasingly, bids have been temptingly floating around, sweeping most property to Iranian ownership—desperate families left economically destitute by war are the first to sell. But a case of extortion can be made for some families who report on selling under pressure of unfounded accusations of harboring terrorists.

Samer, 30, told Asharq Al-Awsat that houses are getting caught up in flames under suspicious conditions which are later exploited by regime loyalists in forcing families out of their homes. Those families are then replaced by foreign Shi’ites.

Commenting on damage control and reconstruction, Samer expressed his deep concern over the incomers recklessly remodeling homes that are part and parcel of Syria’s cultural heritage.

Traditional courtyard houses, protected by the law, are being callously reshaped.

“It was impossible before for homeowners to get a legal permit to remodel any property covered by heritage protection stipulations,” said Samer.

With homes as old as tales comes a guide for restoration and renovation— however none of those rules protecting the culture behind the walls are being taken into consideration.

“Instead of preserving the character, stone and design making the traditional house, its details are erased, smothered in cement and re-partitioned differently–in some cases houses were rebuilt with additional floors,” Samer criticized.

It is worth noting that neighborhoods in Old Damascus, which make up to 5 percent of the capital’s area, were registered in 1979 on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
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https://english.aawsat.com/caroline...storted-wave-iran-arranged-demographic-change

Pro-Freedom · Jun 18, 2017

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1525646037510778

Iranian Monitor · Jun 19, 2017

The missiles launched by Iran against ISIS targets in eastern Syria were not only aimed at ISIS for its terrorist attack against Iran, but was also aimed as warning to all those who are implicitly and explicitly supporting the group as pro Assad forces work to clear eastern Syria from the scourge of this group and other like-minded terrorists.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/...-positions-eastern-syria-170618193251349.html
Iran fires missiles at ISIL positions in eastern Syria

Pro-Freedom · Jun 19, 2017

The world have apparently collectively decided that Syrians - other than Bashar al-Assad and his wealthy elite - are forbidden to have the freedom, democracy and human rights supposedly guaranteed to all people by the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Syrians do, however, have the option of subjugation, dictatorship and being conscripted into, terrorised or killed by one of Assad's or any of his allies' militias, including ISIS, the Hashd al Shaabi or the PKK, or being bombed, maimed and slaughtered by Assad, Iran, Russia, the US coalition or any combination of the above.

Pro-Freedom · Jun 19, 2017

UN: Record 65.6M people forcibly displaced worldwide

Turkey, for the third consecutive year, has hosted the largest number of refugees worldwide, a new UN report has said.

Turkey was also the world’s fourth-largest recipient of individual asylum claims in 2016, according to the UNHCR.

A record 65.6 million people were forcibly displaced across the world and the global refugee population was also the highest on record -- 22.5 million -- at the end of 2016, according to the agency.

The UNHCR's new Global Trends report on displacement said at the end of last year 300,000 more people than the preceding year had been displaced.

Out of the 65.6 million worldwide total, 22.5 million are refugees, 40.3 million are internally displaced and 2.8 million are asylum seekers.
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http://aa.com.tr/en/todays-headlines/un-record-656m-people-forcibly-displaced-worldwide/844475

Pro-Freedom · Jun 19, 2017

Unsurprisingly, Assad's PYD allies work the same way as the regime, now forcibly conscripting those they've displaced.

Kurdish militias step up conscription campaign

The powerful Kurdish PYD militia has launched a new arrest campaign in the villages of the al-Malikiya area in the countryside of Hasaka targeting young men among the internally displaced to conscript them to serve in the PYD militias.

The internally displaced young men and the young men of the Arab al-Ghamer Villages have until now been exempt from the mandatory service.

According to the activist Abdul Malik al-Ali, members of the Military Disciplinary Units and the Asayish forces, subordinate to the Democratic Union Party, arrested dozens of young men in the villages of Mazrat al-Jamous, al-Ghamer Villages, Tel al-Sadak al-Ghamer, al-Sahiyet al-Ghamer, and Ayn al-Khadra al-Ghamer in the al-Malikya area. The young men were arrested and are expected to be transferred to the training camps run by the Party. Al-Ali added that the arrest campaign was expanded the following day to include young men in the village of Tel Tishreen in al-Darbasiya, and internally displaced men from Safira in eastern Aleppo living in al-Dawrah Village south of Ras al-Ayn.

Speaking to Zaman al-Wasl, al-Ali said that some of the men arrested were released after they signed a pledge that they would return to the conscription office to receive their “Self-Defense Service” booklets. Al-Ali indicated that these arrests extended to the residents of the al-Ghamer villages. The residents are Arabs whom the Syrian state awarded lands in al-Hasakah after water from the Euphrates Lake flooded their lands in al-Raqqah’s western countryside and Aleppo’s eastern countryside. The men of al-Ghamer villages have so far been exempt from serving in the PYD forces.
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https://en.zamanalwsl.net/news/27208.html

Pro-Freedom · Jun 19, 2017

Syrians aren't just standing against Assad, Iran, Russia, ISIS for freedom but the world's alt-left and alt-right conspiracy theorists who slander and malign heroic people as "terrorists" (and many on the alt-left then have the audacity to claim to oppose Islamophobia)

INSIDE THE CONSPIRACY THEORY THAT TURNED SYRIA'S FIRST RESPONDERS INTO TERRORISTS

Various White Helmet "truthers"—who range from Assad and his supporters to Russian embassies, and even to Alex Jones—accuse the group of staging rescue photos, belonging to al Qaeda, and being pawns of liberal bogeyman George Soros. The story of how that conspiracy grew is a perfect distillation of how disinformation can spread unchecked, supplanting fact with frenzy where no support exists.

Start With Lack of Information

Like any conspiracy theory, this one feeds on ignorance. Most outside Syria only know the conflict's broad strokes, and thus have little reason to doubt seemingly authoritative sources. "Disasters are an opportunistic social media moment," says Brian Houston, director of the Disaster and Community Crisis Center at the University of Missouri. "If you heard about a storm and you saw someone tweeting pictures of a tornado, why wouldn't you believe it was the right one?" That presumed trust provides the perfect growth medium for disinformation, like when Reddit erroneously treated an art project like a news dispatch.

It also gives bad actors fertile ground to sow disinformation—actors like ISIS, which has already leveraged the power of shareable content. "Jihadists are translating their core ideas into pictorial memes, like the one-finger salute that stands for the oneness of God and the destruction of the West," says Jytte Klausen, who teaches courses on terrorism and international relations at Brandeis University. In the war for hearts and minds, a photo beats a big block of text any day.
But in the cast of the one-finger salute, it's also a prime opportunity for fueling a conspiracy theory. After all, you see even non-ISIS members raising a single finger all over the place. Like, say, Obama. Or even the White Helmets.
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https://www.wired.com/2017/04/white-helmets-conspiracy-theory/

Pro-Freedom · Jun 20, 2017

A guide to how the US supported the Assad regime

20-06-2017:..Since its entry into the Syrian war in September 2014, the US government has served to prop up the Assad regime, rehabilitate it internationally, undermine the mainstream Syrian resistance and increase the suffering and killing of the Syrian people.

The US government has coordinated intelligence and airstrikes with the Syrian regime [1], whilst blockading the supply of heavy weaponry by pro-rebel regional states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, notably including the complete ban on the supply of anti-aircraft missiles [2]. The Syrian regime’s use of an airforce within its own borders between 2012-2016 (5 years) has been unprecedented in the Middle East history, with the regime airforce’s daily blitzkriegs eclipsing that of Spain’s infamous General Franco during the Spanish war. Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, has become the modern-day Guernica and now holds the “record” of being the most aerially bombarded city in the world since the Second World War.

The United States is directly complicit in this “record-breaking”. The US government continues to blockade measures by regional countries to end this unprecedented reality. Not only this, in 2014 the US airforce entered Syrian airspace on the same side of the fascist genocidal Syrian regime, coordinating intelligence with it and even supporting its ground forces in certain offensives [3]. Syrian residents have routinely sardonically remarked that they were be bombed by the regime airforce during the day and the US airforce at night [4]. As a symbol of the extent of the US government’s complicity with Assad’s unparalleled blitzkriegs, the US has even refused to grant early radar warnings of incoming regime airstrikes to rescue workers of the Syrian Civil Defence (“White Helmets”), which would simply allow them to try and evacuate civilian areas before destruction hits [5]. Up to (and potentially more than) 1,500 civilians have been killed by the US-led “International Coalition” campaign in Syria and Iraq [6], to add to the thousands killed every month by the fascist regime and its allies.
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https://eternispring.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/a-guide-to-how-the-us-supported-the-assad-regime/

Pro-Freedom · Jun 20, 2017

Palestinians and Syrians Are Allies in the Struggle for Freedom

The colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine is not a historical incident. It is, instead, a historical process, ratified by the ongoing Israeli occupation and reflected in the lives of Palestinians who continue to suffer its effects through each passing generation.

This is the essence of the Palestinian Nakba—or “catastrophe.” Like the memory of the Holocaust, the Nakba is not merely a recollection of death, torture, and expulsion. It is an immutable, spiritual trauma that will endure beyond any future political solution ending the occupation of Palestine.

By the same token, Syrians are currently experiencing a Nakba of their own, the effects of which will linger over them for decades to come. With the popular struggle against President Bashar Al-Assad now edging closer to its sixth year, nearly half a million Syrians have died and approximately five million others have become refugees. 13.5 million Syrians inside the country are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, while nearly 6.5 million are internally displaced.

Like the Palestinians who have subsisted for seven decades despite global apathy toward (and complicity in) their suffering, Syrians are boldly persisting in the face of numerous foreign interventions, starvation sieges, and incessant bombardments, among other tragedies. Even though there are countless domestic and international pressures on their revolution, the Syrian people have refused to concede loss—constantly insisting they will never stop fighting for a free Syria.

As the popular mantra goes: existence is resistance. Fighting for freedom and justice and resisting tyranny are not restricted to the battlefield. Indeed, the intellectual, artistic, social, and political accomplishments of Palestinians and Syrians represent their refusal to give into or accept their ongoing Nakbas.
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https://muftah.org/palestine-syria-allies-struggle-freedom/#.WUl_h-vyiM8

Anthony · Jun 20, 2017

Pro-Freedom said: ↑

A guide to how the US supported the Assad regime

https://eternispring.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/a-guide-to-how-the-us-supported-the-assad-regime/
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That's funny because a bunch of my left-wing friends are posting stuff in their Facebook feeds that claim the US, UK and Israel formed ISIS to get rid of Assad. We shot down a Syrian plane on Sunday, an Iranian drone today, and the Russians said they will start treating our planes as hostile.

And the US is SO pro-Isis, that in Iraq and Syria we are bombing them while supporting military action against ISIS (including group troops that no one likes to talk about).

Can't you people make up your mind?

Though I will give you points for not blaming Israel -- usually with people like you it is all about the Jews.

Assad, Iran, ISIS, al Nusra, Hizbullah -- a pox on all your houses. But for the fact that innocent Syrians are suffering thanks to all of you (and thanks to our stupid policy) I would just say let you all you all kill each other and be done with it. Then the refugees could go home and there would be none of you to bother them.

Pro-Freedom · Jun 20, 2017

Imagine a world whose leaders were as keen to safeguard Syrian civilians as they are to protect their own troops, weapons and warplanes. Crazy idea.

US Pilots Will Defend Themselves As Russia Threatens Aircraft Over Syria, Pentagon Says

20-06-2017: U.S. pilots over Syria will defend themselves if attacked by Russians, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday, following a report that Russia will treat U.S. or coalition aircraft as targets if they fly over areas in western Syria controlled by Russia.

The Russian Defense Ministry made the threat Monday after a U.S. F/A-18E Super Hornet shot down a Syrian Su-22 after that plane bombed U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces that are working with the U.S., supposedly to defeat the Islamic State, on Sunday.
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http://qasioun.net/en/news/show/769..._Threatens_Aircraft_Over_Syria,_Pentagon_Says