“The photograph published by AFP shows that only one wall of the school is damaged, and all the desks inside the classroom are in place. The outer fence seen through the hole has no traces of damage from bomb fragments. In a genuine airstrike this is physically impossible – the furniture would have been swept away by the blast wave, and there would have been damage marks on the classroom wall and the outer fence.”
The Russian Defense Ministry says that it dispatched a drone to analyze the site of Wednesday’s alleged bombing of a school in Idlib, Syria. The ministry says that the aircraft spotted no evidence of airstrikes, and accused the White Helmets of faking digital images of the attack.
“On Thursday, a Russian UAV was directed to the area, to conduct detailed digital photography,” said a statement from Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov. “As can be seen from the photos taken by the drone, there are no signs of damage to the roof of the school, or craters from airstrikes around it.”
“We have analyzed the photo and video ‘evidence’ of the supposed attack. The video published in a range of Western media outlets appears to consist of more than 10 different shots, filmed at different times of the day, and in different resolutions that were edited into a single clip,” continued Konashenkov.
“The photograph published by AFP shows that only one wall of the school is damaged, and all the desks inside the classroom are in place. The outer fence seen through the hole has no traces of damage from bomb fragments. In a genuine airstrike this is physically impossible – the furniture would have been swept away by the blast wave, and there would have been damage marks on the classroom wall and the outer fence.”
The Moscow official said that the findings of the Russian drone could be verified by the American side, as during its photo mission, a US MQ-1B Predator UAV was in the same area.
Konashenkov also added that it is an “indisputable fact” that no Russian Air Force plane was present in the airspace in the vicinity of the school on the morning of the supposed attack.
The attack was first reported by the controversial two-man, London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Civil Defense Network, also known as the White Helmets, which claimed that 22 children and six teachers died in an aerial assault on Wednesday morning.
Later the same day, Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, called the incident a “tragedy” and an “outrage,” and said that “if deliberate” it amounted to a “war crime.”
“Our evidence points to UNICEF falling victim to another scam from the White Helmet fraudsters. Before making resonant statements, UNICEF should check its sources more carefully, to protect the reputation of the respected organization,” continued Konashenkov.
The White Helmets is a Western-funded volunteer civil defense body that operates in Syria. Its official mission is to offer first aid to victims of bombings, but Syrian and Russian authorities have accused the White Helmets of spreading anti-government propaganda, and of close ties with Islamist rebels.
France, US accused Russia and Assad of bombing
Despite an absence of independent verification of Wednesday’s incident, several leading Western powers were quick to pin the blame on Moscow or Damascus.
“We don’t know yet that it was the Assad regime or the Russians that carried out the air strike, but we know it was one of the two,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said during a press briefing in Washington on Thursday. “Even if it was the Assad regime that carried it out, the Assad regime is only in a position to carry out those kind of attacks because they are supported by the Russian government.”
“Who is responsible? In any case it is not the opposition because you need planes to launch bombs. It’s either the Syrians – the regime of Assad – or the Russians,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told the media in Paris. “It’s yet another demonstration of the horror of this war, which is a war against the Syrian people, which we cannot accept.”
In recent weeks, both France and the US have leveled the accusations of war crimes against Bashar Assad and the Russian military, particularly in relation to events in Aleppo, where a multi-faction battle continues to rage.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “appalled” by the reported incident and called for “an immediate and impartial investigation of all attacks against civilians,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, as cited by Reuters.
Before Thursday’s revelations from the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian officials have also publicly supported a full inquiry into the school attack, while denying any responsibility.
Source: RT News
Related: How US Propaganda Plays in Syrian War | Why Everything You Hear About Aleppo is Wrong | CrossTalk: White Helmets, Really? | First Victim of War is Truth
Sheikh Imran Hosein Interview with the Strategic Culture Foundation of Serbia
In this 2015 interview conducted by Belgrade-based think tank, Strategic Culture Foundation, controversial religious scholar and geopolitical analyst Sheikh Imran Hosein distills the current chessboard including the US, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Russia, Syria, Serbia, Turkey, the Ukraine, Crimea, and the real risks of a nuclear war triggered by a false flag – which could plunge the world into another dark age.
Source: 21st Century Wire
By Afra’a Dagher
The US is not fighting ISIS in Syria. Together with its ally Saudi Arabia it is using ISIS and other Wahhabi terrorist groups like Jabhat Al-Nusra to wage a war of aggression against Syria so that it can take control of Syria and gain possession of the resources of the Middle East.
We may as well start with the US-led “anti-ISIS” coalition airstrikes on the Syrian Arab Army’s positions in the Thardeh Mountain in Deir El-Zour.
These airstrikes were an act of aggression against the Syrian Arab Army, which has been fighting terrorists from the beginning, whether these groups go by the name of the ‘Free Syrian Army’, ‘Al-Nusra Front’, ‘Fath al-Sham’, or what has now become the biggest phenomenon since the Taliban: ISIS.
This act of aggression was not just a violation of the ceasefire. It was an act of direct help for the terrorists, for ISIS above all.
The Thardeh Mountains are strategically important for the defence of the Queries Airbase. Their fall would also open up all of Deir El Zour to terrorist control. From there ISIS can spread into other areas of Syria.
US bombing of Syrian Arab Army positions was intended to give ISIS air cover for an offensive intended to enable it to expand across Syria.
The US not only bombed Syrian military positions. It also bombed bridges in Deir El-Zour province. It did so in the knowledge that the bridges were the terrorists’ escape route to Iraq.
After the bombing of the bridges this escape route has been closed. Terrorists who want to escape Syria for Iraq can no longer do so. They have to stay in Syria and wreak their havoc here, draining the power of the Syrian Arab Army and its Russian allies.
The blood of our Syrian soldiers and martyrs in Deir el-Zour has yet to dry. Yet instead of being ashamed of its lies the US claims it is “fighting ISIS.”
[…]
The US is fighting a war for the resources of the Middle East. It is not a war fought for democracy or for freedom or for the people living there. If you think it is then just look at who stands besides the US when it talks about “democracy in Syria” and “democracy in the Middle East”: Saudi Arabia, the US’s ally and friend, the greatest autocracy and the most monstrous tyranny in the whole Middle East and in the Arab and Muslim world.
Syria is the point in the Middle East where the gas and oil pipelines meet. It enjoys a key strategic position in the eastern Mediterranean. The Arab and Russian oil and gas industries would be greatly affected if the US and its Wahhabist allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar ever achieved control of Syria. It is for this reason that Qatar, the US, Israel, and Turkey, are all united against Syria.
Beyond Syria are Lebanon and Gaza, also with important gas resources, and Libya and Egypt.
This is the true reason for the US wars in the region. This is why the US and its allies constantly agitate for military action in Syria, itch to bomb Syrian airbases, and seek to protect the Wahhabi fighters and let them spread all across Syria until it is utterly destroyed.
The only ones who are really fighting terrorists in Syria, and who are fighting them on behalf of all humanity, are the Syrian people and their army, the Syrian Arab Army, and its allies: Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah.
Read the full article at The Duran
Related: Dr Papadopoulos Sets BBC Straight on Syria | Al-Nusra Commander: ‘The Americans Stand on Our Side’ | How US Propaganda Plays in Syrian War
In rare interview, Syrian president’s wife tells Russia 24: ‘I’ve been here since the beginning and I never thought of being anywhere else’
Syria’s first lady, Asma al-Assad, has said that she rejected offers of asylum from opponents of her husband, Bashar, in her first interview in several years.
“I’ve been here since the beginning and I never thought of being anywhere else at all,” the the former investment banker told the Russian state-backed television channel Russia 24.
“Yes, I was offered the opportunity to leave Syria or rather to run from Syria. These offers included guarantees of safety and protection for my children and even financial security. It doesn’t take a genius to know what these people were really after. It was a deliberate attempt to shatter people’s confidence in their president.”
Asma al-Assad, 41, a dual British-Syrian national who was born and grew up in London, has rarely granted press interviews in recent years as the country descended into torment and civil war.
Her last major media appearance was a glowing 2011 profile in Vogue, titled A Rose in the Desert, that praised the Assad family as “wildly democratic” and lauded their reforms in Syria, before the magazine took down the article and erased its online presence as the violence worsened.
The daughter of a former diplomat and a Syrian Harley Street cardiologist, she was raised as a secular Muslim and spoke Arabic at home, but attended a Church of England school in west London, where fellow pupils knew her as Emma. After the private Queen’s College girl’s school in Marylebone and King’s College London, where she studied computer science, she embarked on a brief career as a banker with JP Morgan in London and New York.
She married Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in December 2000 and has stood alongside him as hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict. Her public role in recent months has centred around comforting the families of soldiers who were killed battling the insurgency. She was personally sanctioned by the European Union.
Her interview with Russia 24 comes as Assad’s forces are on the front foot as a result of the Kremlin’s intervention in the war in defense of Assad.
Source: The Guardian
Also see: A Rose in the Desert: Asma Al-Assad, Lady Diana of the Middle East
Previewing Abby Martin’s on-the-ground investigation in Palestine, The Empire Files looks at the long history of Zionist colonization, expansion and expulsion of Palestine’s indigenous inhabitants.
Giving critical historical context the occupation today, this timeline explores the creation of the state of Israel and how it came to cover so much land since. From the early settlements, to the Nakba, to it’s conquest of the West Bank, Abby Martin reveals the brutally honest root of what is behind the so-called “Israel-Palestine conflict.”
Now here’s a rare sight: the BBC allowed a genuine dissenting voice on to its airwaves.
Dr Marcus Papadopoulos, editor of Politics First, recently talked to the BBC News about the west’s massive disinformation campaign targeting Syria, and misinformation and Britain’s irrational fear-mongering over Russia.
This week, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called for “demonstrations outside the Russian embassy”, because of what Johnson alleges as “war crimes” in Syria. It seems that Johnson’s dangerous rhetoric merely typifies a general level of ignorance and political malaise taking hold over the British Parliamentarians recently.
Source: 21st Century Wire
This film series explores many aspects of our society. To rethink what is possible in our world, we need to consider what kind of world we want to live in. Although we refer to it as civilization, it is anything but civilized. Visions of global unity & fellowship have long inspired humanity, yet the social arrangements up to the present have largely failed to produce a peaceful and productive world. While we appear to be technically advanced, our values and behaviors are not. The possibility of an optimistic future is in stark contrast to our current social, economic, and environmental dilemmas. The Choice Is Ours includes interviews with notable scientists, media professionals, authors, and other thinkers exploring the difficulties we face.
Part I provides an introduction and overview of cultural & environmental conditions that are untenable for a sustainable world civilization. It explores the determinants of behavior to dispel the myth of “human nature”, while demonstrating how environment shapes behavior. The science of behavior is an important – yet largely missing – ingredient in our culture.
Part II questions the values, behaviors, and consequences of our social structures, and illustrates how our global monetary system is obsolete and increasingly insufficient to meet the needs of most people. Critical consideration of the banking, media, and criminal justice systems reveals these institutions for what they really are: tools of social control managed by the established political and economic elite. If we stay the present course, the familiar cycles of crime, economic booms & busts, war, and further environmental destruction are inevitable.
Part III explains the methods and potential of science. It proposes solutions that we can apply at present to eliminate the use of non-renewable sources of energy. It depicts the vision of The Venus Project to build an entirely new world from the ground up: a “redesign of the culture”, where all enjoy a high standard of living, free of servitude and debt, while also protecting the environment.
Part IV explains how it is not just architecture and a social structure that is in desperate need of change, but our values which have been handed down from centuries ago. They too need to be updated to our technological age, which has the potential to eliminate our scarcity-driven societies of today. Our problems are mostly of our own making, but we can still turn things around before the point of no return. It’s not too late for an optimistic outlook on the fantastic possibilities that lie before us.
The Venus Project proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but as totally unacceptable. Anything less will result in a continuation of the same catalog of problems inherent in today’s world.
Learn more at The Venus Project
Related: Zeitgeist: Moving Forward
The White Helmets: a heartfelt humanitarian NGO or an elaborate and cynical Western PR stunt promoting illegal regime change in Syria? Does wearing white helmets mean they are the good guys supporting a just cause? CrossTalking with Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, and Patrick Henningsen.
Related: How US Propaganda Plays in Syrian War | Why Everything You Hear About Aleppo is Wrong | CrossTalk: The Media’s Syria | First Victim of War is Truth
To learn who these people are, what they are fighting for, and who funds them, PRESS TV goes deep into their camps and brings you face to face interviews and exclusive footage. Many of those who were initially infatuated by the group’s promise of justice seem to be horrified and utterly disillusioned today.
Everyone who is not us is the enemy and should be branded as infidel. This seems to be the prevailing ideology of the extreme Takfiri terrorists known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Their aim is said to be the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. Shias, Christians, Sunnis, Yazidies, and whomsoever who dares to question them or raise his voice of dissent are persecuted under their highly distorted version of Islamic Sharia. Gruesome be-headings, crucifixions and mass executions are openly carried out under their iconic black flag which is more like a modern day equivalent of a Jolly Roger. At times, it seems like their victims are whoever who is unlucky enough to be in their path during their killing sprees. And yet they know how to manipulate social media and have succeeded in brainwashing some to join them in their “fight for justice”.
Against the Grain 