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Old 12th May 2018, 05:20 AM   #321
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They sure are...
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Old 16th May 2018, 08:39 PM   #322
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Originally Posted by PartSkeptic View Post
But if one wishes to terrorize the enemy one can use names like "Hellfire Missiles".
In my experience, you use Hellfire missiles for something much less complicated: to kill the enemy. They do that nicely. As a 'terrorizing' tool they are not very good.

The scaring of the enemy is left to the Psyops folks, and you can find a few nice examples from the 1991 Desert Storm Operation: using the Blu-82 after using Commando Solo to announce that a big bomb would drop. And one did. That's scaring (or terrorizing) the enemy. I'll allow you to read up on the after action reports, US Third Army published extensive volumes of that, to see if that worked. Do Your Homework!
Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
John Bolton's plan for Syria seems to be for 25,000 Saudi Arabians to now go to eastern Syria to face up to the Iranian troops who are now there
Your fantasy that the Saudis would go along with that is risible. The Saudis pay others to do their dirty work for them in Syria.
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Old 26th May 2018, 08:42 AM   #323
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There is an interesting article about Syria on the internet today which may be true, or may be the usual pack of lies, by Maya Gebeily and Rouba El Husseini. This is part of that article:

Quote:
He expects the remaining 8,000 residents of Fuaa and Kafraya to be forced out "sooner or later."

Not far from Abbas's estranged hometown, another communal conflict is unfolding.

A Turkish-led assault this year displaced over 137,000 people from Kurdish-majority Afrin to nearby regime zones, or even farther to Kurdish areas in the northeast.

Some of their homes now house other displaced. Around 35,000 of those bussed out of the onetime rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus have resettled in Afrin.
Their houses either destroyed or occupied, Afrin's original residents see return as a distant dream.

"I'm not optimistic. The more time passes, the more entrenched the demographic changes are," says Ahmad Yussef, an academic who fled Afrin.
Kurdish authorities accuse Turkey of ethnic repopulation, and observers say Ankara wants to resettle the 3.5 million Syrian refugees in its territory into Afrin.

The accusations go both ways: Syrian Arabs accuse Kurdish fighters of preventing them from returning to their northern hometowns after ousting jihadists.

Widespread destruction and complex legislation on property restitution have compounded fears of permanent displacement.

And despite calls to include transitional justice in a political solution, real reconciliation remains unlikely, says Diana Semaan of Amnesty International.
"Because there won't be a truth commission or public acknowledgement by the government towards the Sunnis or armed groups towards Alawites or Christians, there will be no accountability or justice," Semaan says.
"This is why Syrian society will be polarised and disintegrated, and why all the sects will turn internally."
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Old 27th August 2018, 06:02 PM   #324
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It's building up again:

Originally Posted by ACLOS Newsticker, selected items
26 Aug. Konashenkov gives another statement saying that according to information received today from "residents", "foreign experts" have arrived in the southern Idlib Hbrit settlement and plan to target Kafr Zita with a staged chlorine attack in the next two days. If this is the same group from yesterday's statement with changed plans was not immediately clear.

25 Aug. Konashenkov gives a statement in which he describes details of another false flag chemical attack planned by Al Qaeda with the help of UK special services. Eight containers with chlorine have been delivered to Jisr al-Shugour where they were given to a Turkistani Jihadi group which now stocks them in the near village of Halluz. The attack is to be staged in Jisr al-Shugour and a rescue operation simulated by "a special group of terrorists who have been trained by specialists of the UK private military company Olive", the Russian MoD spokesman elaborated.

22 Aug. John Bolton, ahead of his visit to Moscow to meet Nikolai Patrushev: Russia stuck in Syria / Iran must leave (Reuters), (kommersant.ru) / US would act very strongly if Syria uses chemical weapons.

21 Aug. FUKUS releases a statement on the fifth anniversary of the Ghouta chemical weapons incident, warning that they would "respond appropriately" to any future use of chemical weapons by Syria.
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Old 28th August 2018, 09:06 AM   #325
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Nice to see Childlike Empress back on this forum, after it seems like about six months. I agree with her that it is possible there will be another chemical attack by Isis in Idlib to incur the wrath of America and Britain, so that it can be blamed on Assad. Sky News can then use it to do sob stories about the White Helmets.

I'm annoyed about Iranian justice at the moment with regard to this British Iranian woman who has being wrongly convicted and imprisoned. It's bad government there. It interferes with international trade and it's not safe for Britishers to go there. To my mind it was better there under the Shah of Iran, even though it looks like the Shah was installed by the CIA. BBC Pravda TV use to complain all the time at that time about the Shah's human rights violations! There is a bit of background at this website:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...zanin-zaghari/
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Old 1st September 2018, 07:55 AM   #326
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I don't like the way Trump is now cutting off food supplies to the Palestinian and Syrian refugees. Typical Kraut. I suppose he is getting his orders from Israel as usual.
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Old 1st September 2018, 01:17 PM   #327
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
I don't like the way Trump is now cutting off food supplies to the Palestinian and Syrian refugees. Typical Kraut. I suppose he is getting his orders from Israel as usual.
Interesting. Why, exactly, would Israel want Syrian refugees to miss meals?
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Old 11th September 2018, 03:20 AM   #328
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That yid John Bolton has now just closed the Palestinian consulate in Washington and withdrawn from the International Criminal Court. It's a lack of comprehensive vision and ignorance of international law. Bolton and Israel wanted an Isis government in Damascus, which is ridiculous besides the usual Assad must go policy. It's causing immigration problems in Europe. It looks like war between Israel and Saudi Arabia and Iran is inevitable. It doesn't help to calmly face the future with all this Brexit waffle going on.

There is a bit of background to John Bolton at this website:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...curity-adviser

Quote:
The mustachioed Bolton has had a long, frequently controversial career in government. He held senior positions in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush, where he led successful US opposition to joining the international criminal court and made a strident attempt to block the introduction of stronger global controls on biological weapons.

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Old 11th September 2018, 03:59 AM   #329
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
That yid John Bolton has now just closed the Palestinian consulate in Washington and withdrawn from the International Criminal Court. It's a lack of comprehensive vision and ignorance of international law. Bolton and Israel wanted an Isis government in Damascus, which is ridiculous besides the usual Assad must go policy. It's causing immigration problems in Europe. It looks like war between Israel and Saudi Arabia and Iran is inevitable. It doesn't help to calmly face the future with all this Brexit waffle going on.

There is a bit of background to John Bolton at this website:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...curity-adviser
good choice of words to indicate how seriously we should take your analysis.
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Old 11th September 2018, 07:48 AM   #330
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
That yid
....in which I ignore the entire rest of your post because you're just another anti-semite.

Keep it up! You might just cause yourself to be the first person I ever actually put on "ignore".
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Old 11th September 2018, 09:59 AM   #331
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
That yid John Bolton has now just closed the Palestinian consulate in Washington and withdrawn from the International Criminal Court. It's a lack of comprehensive vision and ignorance of international law. Bolton and Israel wanted an Isis government in Damascus, which is ridiculous besides the usual Assad must go policy. It's causing immigration problems in Europe. It looks like war between Israel and Saudi Arabia and Iran is inevitable. It doesn't help to calmly face the future with all this Brexit waffle going on.

There is a bit of background to John Bolton at this website:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...curity-adviser
I suppose your racist epitaphs are designed to distract from the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about. It's not working.
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Old 11th September 2018, 10:11 AM   #332
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Oh, I thought they were intended to flag that up to us?
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Old 16th September 2018, 02:17 AM   #333
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The people of Idlib/Idleb are anti-Christian. They are supported by BBC Pravda and ITV Pravda and Sky News, and the head choppers in the Persian Gulf.
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Old 20th September 2018, 02:25 AM   #334
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There needs to be sane government not gangster government or corrupt bankers or a kleptocracy and this applies to Syria as well.
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Old 20th September 2018, 11:40 AM   #335
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
There needs to be sane government not gangster government or corrupt bankers or a kleptocracy and this applies to Syria as well.
I agree that people need good things and bad things need to be avoided. However I am unclear as to what this has to do with the fact that the Assad regime has been using chemical weapons - including battlefield* nerve agents, as well as less sophisticated chlorine barrel bombs



*i.e. industrially designed and produced for the military in peacetime as opposed to improvised weapons of low purity.
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Old 22nd September 2018, 03:09 AM   #336
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I am not sure about these reports of Syrian air force barrel bombs because I have only seen allegations about it in the British biased media. There is proof that the Syrian opposition has used chemical weapons, including chlorine. There is a different point of view to jimbob in this Guardian newspaper article:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...eapons-attacks

Quote:
These are very serious claims and it is surprising that you still make the unqualified statement that "the Assad regime … was suspected of being responsible" (Chemical weapons body not ready to investigate Syrian attack claims, 12 April). At the very least, you should be reporting the doubts about who perpetrated these attacks, given that we could have been very nearly dragged into yet another Middle Eastern war on the back of bogus WMD allegations.
Dr Richard Carter
London

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Old 22nd September 2018, 03:19 AM   #337
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There are several websites that express doubts about chemical attacks by the Syrian army and not all, if any, are Russian backed:

https://www.thenewamerican.com/world...ttack-in-syria

Quote:
Among the most explosive allegations this year were documents supposedly obtained by hackers claiming that the Obama administration had previously approved a chemical weapons false-flag attack in Syria to be blamed on the regime. According to the ANI news wire, an alleged e-mail exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence documented a scheme to have Sunni Arab regimes “fund rebel forces in Syria to use chemical weapons.” The plan for a false-flag attack to be blamed on Assad was allegedly “approved by Washington.” The company denied the allegations and successfully sued a leading British paper that published them, but some analysts were not convinced by the denials and continue citing the alleged e-mails.

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Old 22nd September 2018, 05:14 AM   #338
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Originally Posted by Henri McPhee View Post
I am not sure about these reports of Syrian air force barrel bombs because I have only seen allegations about it in the British biased media. There is proof that the Syrian opposition has used chemical weapons, including chlorine. There is a different point of view to jimbob in this Guardian newspaper article:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...eapons-attacks
My first google hit:

http://brown-moses.blogspot.com/2013...-relative.html

And this about Russian disinformation

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena...disinfo-idlib/

Remember you have accepted that Russia was responsible for the Sailsbury attack, and there was similar attempts at obfuscation by Russia there.
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Old 22nd September 2018, 08:17 AM   #339
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Originally Posted by jimbob View Post
And this about Russian disinformation

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena...disinfo-idlib/

I could write a book abut the inaccuracies in that article. I agree with the comment about it by this person on that website:

Quote:
Nellymanson - September 7, 2018
( My comments will not be published )
You only publish things you can easily de-bunk! The people who still believe yours and all the others pushing fake news and propaganda, will soon come round to know what the many now understand that the Syria war was a war of empire from the start. The place Idlib is full of Al qaeda and all the rest of the Saudi, Turkey , usa, England and France. YOU ARE NOT journalists!
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Old 22nd September 2018, 08:41 AM   #340
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My understanding is that there are French and British troops in Syria, but they are only training in Jordan and helping to fight Isis, and it's official, and never reported. I'm inclined to agree with the journalist Peter Hitchens about the matter in this recent Mail on Sunday article:

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co....an-whitak.html

There is an intelligent comment on that Mail on Sunday article which makes sense to me:

Quote:
Thank you Peter and Ewan Maclean for trying to explain this question to Douglas Oswell. As Ewan says Assad was given a red line not to use chemical weapons. He and the Russians have liberated most of Syria from ISIS. Why on earth would he now use those weapons and cross the red line imposed by the West? It makes no sense.
In addition, when these so called chemical weapons occur the white helmets are always on hand to film the results in each occasion. It’s almost as if they knew it was going to happen. And where do the white helmets spend most of their time? In the areas where ISIS is holed up. This is odd because no other western media would be allowed anywhere near without being killed.
In the last few days Putin and the Turkish leader have agreed to the creation of safe zones for civilians to leave the last remaining city occupied by ISIS if they choose. Again, why would Assad agree to this if he wants to chemical attack these people? And again, why are refugees now returning to Syria if they fear Assad as much as the BBC keep telling us?

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Old 23rd September 2018, 08:05 AM   #341
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I was interested to see on RT today that the Russians, or I suppose the Russian military and Russian journalists, are definitely blaming Israel for that recent loss of life of Russian soldiers on a transport plane. Putin is being absurdly lenient with regard to these numerous Israel bombing attacks on Syria, which hardly ever get reported in the mainstream media, and which I think is the result of international law not being enforced.
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Old 23rd September 2018, 02:31 PM   #342
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I just added this to my recommended viewing list:

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.
I AGREE
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Old 24th September 2018, 06:17 AM   #343
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US military document reveals how the West opposed a democratic Syria

~ Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Quote:
US military documents from 2011 and 2016 reveal that although officials wanted a Syrian regime change in theory, they thought it was highly unlikely to actually happen — and hoped that if President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown, he would not be replaced by an opposition-led Syrian democracy but, rather, the same Alawite-Baathist ruling structure would continue. The end result was to be the decimation of the democratic opposition, the consolidation of Islamist forces and regime preservation.
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Old 29th September 2018, 07:25 PM   #344
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Originally Posted by JihadJane View Post
That does not support the claim and headline "opposed a democratic Syria", it supports them not thinking democratic forces had a chance of winning. Those are not the same thing.
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Old 30th September 2018, 08:23 AM   #345
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The new female head of the CIA has recently said on TV that Assad used chemical weapons on his own people. There are doubts and inconsistencies about that. There are not the same similar doubts about the use of chemical weapons by the head chopper Saudi supported Islamic extremist opposition, who have committed atrocities in the UK:

https://whowhatwhy.org/2014/12/01/re...weapons-syria/

Quote:
Then, in late May, Turkish newspapers reported that suspected members of al-Nusra were arrested carrying two kilograms of Sarin with plans to attack the US Air Force base at Adana, Turkey. By the time the case came to trial, however, the Turkish government did not prosecute the men for possessing Sarin. There’s no public record on why prosecutors didn’t pursue the chemical-weapons issue.

In another incident in late May, Iraqi authorities arrested five alleged members of the Islamic State for building two labs to manufacture Sarin and mustard gas. At a press conference, the police displayed lab equipment and weapons. At the time the Islamic State was part of al-Nusra and was also carrying out its own activities inside Syria.

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Old 16th October 2018, 03:10 AM   #346
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I don't like the way the BBC and Foreign Office and Saudi Arabia still support Isis with their 'Assad must go' policy, even though a policeman was murdered by an Isis on Westminster bridge not so long ago, along with others.
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Old 18th October 2018, 01:26 PM   #347
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US says Putin is making up Fake News about ISIS taking hundres of hostages in Syria:
Fox News: US officials rebut Putin ISIS hostage claims: 'fake news'.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-off...aims-fake-news
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Old 18th October 2018, 02:25 PM   #348
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^ thanks, nice item for our news ticker whose readers know about the new ISIS hostages since a couple of days, and of course not from Putin but from the Russian military briefings. The claim about the threats and the daily killings seems to be new, though. Valdai is an important event, after all (link to transcript over there).
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Old 19th October 2018, 10:43 AM   #349
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-45586903

Quote:
After seven devastating years of civil war in Syria, which have left more than 350,000 people dead, President Bashar al-Assad appears close to victory against the forces trying to overthrow him.

So how has Mr Assad got so close to winning this bloody, brutal war?

A joint investigation by BBC Panorama and BBC Arabic shows for the first time the extent to which chemical weapons have been crucial to his war-winning strategy.
Not that this will have been a surprise to many - except the blindest of Putin apologists
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Old 19th October 2018, 01:51 PM   #350
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That BBC is spouting junk from clown outlets like SOHR or Brown Noses or HRW? Of course that's not a surprise. The only surprise is how anybody able to tie their shoes is still sucking up the propaganda.

Last edited by Childlike Empress; 19th October 2018 at 01:56 PM. Reason: + "or HRW" to let it sink in. Kenneth Roth is wickedda that Eliot Higgins, by far.
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Old 19th October 2018, 01:56 PM   #351
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Originally Posted by Childlike Empress View Post
That BBC is spouting junk from clown outlets like SOHR or Brown Noses? Of course that's not a surprise. The only surprise is how anybody able to tie their shoes is still sucking up the propaganda.
And it's only co-incidence that the chemical attacks have helped the regime, whilst harming the opposition.

Brown Moses/Bellingcat is significantly more credible than RT for example, which you often seem to take as truthful. We have seen this demonstrated in particular with the Russian claims in relation to the Sailsbury attacks and the information that is now in the public domain about that.
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Public/Compulsory Expenditure on healthcare
https://data.oecd.org/chart/60Tt

Every year since 1990 the US Public healthcare spending has been greater than the UK as a proportion of GDP. More US Tax goes to healthcare than the UK
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Old 19th October 2018, 02:18 PM   #352
Childlike Empress
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^ contrary to your and other people's perception, and I said it so often that I don't think saying it again has any effect on you, I don't read or watch RT or Sputnik on a regular basis. The only exception is with some specific authors who publicize there but whom I follow mostly through their own primary outlets.

Primary sources are what people should always go to in these times of total corporate media corruption. If anybody says Putin or Assad said this or that, go to where they said it. You can see my attempt to live up to that at the news ticker I linked to in #348, which I am the main author of (about 90%). You'll see my sources when it comes to Russian (and other) claims there. Find me the last time I linked to RT or Sputnik for something other than things people writing there have claimed themselves.
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Old 20th October 2018, 02:08 AM   #353
Henri McPhee
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Originally Posted by jimbob View Post
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-45586903

Not that this will have been a surprise to many - except the blindest of Putin apologists
The BBC supports Isis and Al Nusra and the White Helmets with their 'Assad must go' policy and they hardly ever report the 200 or so bombing raids made by Israel on Syria in the past year or so because they think Israel is above international law. There are still international laws with regard to aviation and seamanship.
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Old 15th November 2019, 08:18 PM   #354
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For the first time in quite a while, Assad has given an extensive interview to foreign media. SANA (the state news agency) has published an English-language translation of the originally Arabic-Russian thing which is quite read-worthy and touches on many things like the current Turkish invasion and the death of the "White Helmets" founder, "ex"-MI6 agent James Le Mesurier who "fell from the balcony" of his apartment in Istanbul a couple of days ago. One question picked by me for interesting answer:

Originally Posted by SANA
Question 10: Going back to the question of the political solution, militants continue to hand in their weapons; and we know that the Syrian government, and you personally, are doing a lot in order to reintegrate these people in society. What are your next plans in terms of providing assistance to the militants and their families whose legal status have been settled?

President Assad: This is an important point, and a critical challenge. There are various aspects that need to be addressed. First, we have children, because you correctly referred to families and not just militants in the abstract case. These militants have a family and they are part of a community, albeit small, but an extremist community. Their children have lived for a long period, sometimes their formative years, outside of the law and away from national curricula, as such they have learned wrong concepts. We announced a few weeks ago that schools would integrate these pupils within their programs and according to their age, so that they could adjust into the national curriculum within a few years and assimilate to patriotic concepts.

A second aspect is the religious extremism which has been promoted for years, and has become entrenched in the minds of entire communities in the areas governed by Al Qaeda and Wahabi ideology under the names of ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, Tahrir al-Cham, Jaish al-Islam, and others, it doesn’t matter who, because they all belong to one ideology and one doctrine. In Syria, the religious establishment plays a very important role in this regard; you cannot talk to those extremists in the beginning about national and humanitarian issues. They must first understand that the religious concepts they have learned are wrong and distorted, and in contradiction with religion. We are working extensively in order to flush out these wrong concepts.

The third aspect is that these communities have lived outside the law; they don’t know the meaning of the state, of laws, courts of law, traffic police, and other instruments used by society to organize itself. This is the more difficult aspect. The challenge here is how to reintroduce the state in the best possible way to these towns and villages, in order to restore concepts of law and order. These are the areas we are constantly working on, through various institutions, in order to reintegrate this community into Syrian society and ensuring they have a strong sense of patriotism.
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