This is a must-listen interview with my dear friend, courageous journalist @VanessaBeeley, who was there when terrorists invaded Damascus and her district west of Damascus. They attacked her home in attempts to loot it. Thankfully she was able to exit Syria in spite of the huge danger, from these takfiris, of trying to do so.
A harrowing account.
She gives needed context to this terrorist coup of Syria and the propaganda we're subsequently being inundated with now.
Listen also from 22 minutes when Vanessa outlines how HTS terrorists will be going house to house, searching civilians' phones, etc to see whether they supported the Syrian government, or even if they didn't but were against the rule of the terrorists.
"The mass executions that are now ongoing ...This is how you "heal" Syria."
Related to what Vanessa mentioned re BBC/Lyse Doucet
When “rebels” fire mortars into civilians areas, corporate journalists like to claim the Syrian government was the perpetrator. On a November 2016 day when two mortars hit Aleppo’s Castello road, less than 100 meters from where I stood without a helmet or flak jacket, the NY Times wrote that soldiers blamed “rebels” and “rebel groups denied it.” Yet, there was no disputing that the shells came from an Al-Nusra area.
In April 2014, after an elementary school was mortared by terrorists east of Damascus, killing one child, the BBC later reported, “the government is also accused of launching them into neighborhoods under its control.” On a recent social media post, I noted this deceitful journalism, and the BBC could have easily learned about the trajectory of mortars and from where the mortar in question could only have come: the “moderates” east of Damascus. ingaza.wordpress.com/2017/11/10/abs…
Me: my reports from on the ground in Syria from 2014-2021, every year, multiple times a year, pivital times & issues. ingaza.wordpress.com/syria/syria-my…
For example, in 2016, a year rife with Washington's propaganda about "last doctors" in Aleppo & much more garbage, I spent 4 months in Syria (2 in summer, 2 in October/November), going 4 times to Aleppo but also other key areas.
Uttering propaganda and cliches isn't a strategy of integrity.
President Assad isn't a war criminal, he & the Syrian Arab Army and their allies defended Syrian civilians against the terrorist factions which Stein's government funded & armed in Syria.
President Putin isn't a war criminal. He exercised immense restraint, constantly urging Ukraine to adhere to the Minsk agreements (which both Ukraine & its Western backers NEVER intended to adhere to, we learned) & telling NATO to stop threatening Russia. He waited until the latest possible before finally launching the Special Military Operation.
Do some research, Stein. Your ignorance and ignorant Tulis Gabbard-like statements do not flatter you.
I don't for a moment believe Stein will actually do some research & reconsider her idiocy.
However, for others, here's Jacques Baud laying out the history of how the current situation re Ukraine came to be:
Been smeared for years because since 2014 I reported from on the ground in Syria what Syrian civilians were enduring under the terrorism funded & backed by the West.
This very important clip by Dr. Mads addresses not only that the number of Palestinian deaths (Israeli army murdering of) in Gaza is far, far, higher than official numbers, but also the (preventable) reasons for the "indirect" deaths (starvation, disease, etc).
(Speaking of the Minister of Health in Gaza, Dr. Yousef abu al-Rish, Gilbert said):
"He told me in November last year: It's not now mainly the bombing and the military attacks that's killing our people in Gaza. It is the triangle of death. He called it the triangle of death due to the lack of food entering Gaza and the destruction of the food basket in Gaza. The agriculture, the fisheries, the poultry, the dairy farms, and so on.
And then it is the lack of water, which leads to dehydration and infections. We knew from before this attack that as much as 90-95% of the water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption, because of very high salination content and the contamination from sewage, because the Israeli occupation army has also destroyed the sewage cleaning system."
Dr. Mads has lived in and worked from Gaza, under Israeli bombs, for years. I briefly met him at al-Shifa hospital in January 2009, arriving there with the Palestinian medics I was accompanying in northern Gaza during that Israeli massacre of Gaza.
Like him, I've been writing & speaking for years about the critical, prevetable, issues that have contributed to the water crisis, the food crisis, the medical crisis (all under Israel's nearly 2 decades long siege.
I say this to make the point: these crises are not new, not post October 2023, but have been deliberately created by Israel over the years, to slowly kill Palestinians when Israel wasn't all out warring on Gaza, and to set the stage for now, Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The UN has long been aware of these factors and periodically issued meek-worded statement of concern, but did nothing to stop Israel from worsening conditions, just as the UN and international bodies do nothing to stop Israel's genocide of Gaza.
In this December 2013 interview, I outlined many of these things.