50 photos and other media to illustrate the truth about Syria and Assad.
Long 🧵
What happened since 2011 was NOT a civil war.
It was a proxy war waged by 100,000+ jihadists flown into Syria from all over the world.
Weapons also flowed from all over the world. And they were sneaked into Syria mostly across the Syria-Turkey border.
Some came in through Syria and Iraq as well.
The collusion to topple Assad involved many countries.
US and Israel supplied weapons, money and propaganda.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar provided money. Al Jazeera did the propaganda.
Turkey and Jordan played key roles in logistics.
UK provided propaganda and established the White Helmets.
France recruited traitors.
The two main reasons:
* US and Israel want total hegemony in the region. The US has had plans to break up many countries in the region. Plus, the Greater Israel project.
* Qatar wanted a gas pipeline thru Syria to Turkey to Europe. But Assad wanted an Iranian pipeline.
In 2010, the NY Times travel section listed "31 best places to visit in the world."
And Damascus - capital of Syria - was ranked #7!
Why? Because Syria under Assad was peaceful, safe and prosperous!
In 2010, Vogue magazine had a nice article on Asma Assad, the First Lady of Syria.
"A Rose in the Desert" described all her great works in education, theater, charity, hospitals etc.
Asma Assad was born and raised in the UK, where she met her husband, who was an ophthalmologist.
The West once loved Assad. He was called the "Lion of Damascus."
* France gave him the highest award -- Legion of Honor.
* Queen Elizabeth invited Assad and his wife
* Nancy Pelosi flew to Syria
* European + Arab leaders met with him all the time
* Even the Pope went to Syria
Syria under Assad was secular and moderate.
Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Alawites, Kurds, Armenians etc. got along with each other.
No Al Qaeda, no Sharia Law, no Muslim Brotherhood.
Syrians loved Assad. He could walk around and drive around Damascus and Syria without a huge security force.
In fact, the Arab world loved him. In a 2009 Zogby poll - an American firm - Assad was the most popular leader in the region!
Assad is also a good father and a husband. He raised smart, down-to-earth, and compassionate children.
Asma Assad was the ideal First Lady.
But for reasons discussed earlier, US and its evil friends decided to do a regime change in Syria.
The "moderate rebels" were neither moderate nor rebels. They are low-IQ extremists & head-chopping terrorists aligned with Al Qaeda & ISIS.
Al Qaeda = "Al Nusra" = "HTS" (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham)
The US-funded "rebels" are murderous thugs who ruthlessly execute men and women.
They would kill Shiites and Christians just because of the religion.
They have destroyed numerous Shiite shrines & mosques and Christian churches.
#Syria
"Syrian" rebels are actually jihadists from all over the world, including Uyghurs from Xinjiang, China.
These fanatics have terrorist camps for their own children, who are brainwashed to become even suicide bombers.
This is not a "popular uprising against President Assad."
While US/NATO-funded terrorists targeted Christians, it was #Assad who protected #Christianity in all its forms.
When the rebels destroyed historic Christian monasteries, Assad visited and rebuilt them.
All the church leaders in Syria have repeatedly spoken in favor of Assad, but the US media deliberately ignore them.
US actively planned regime change in Syria as early as 2004.
In 2005, CNN's Christiane Amanpour interviewed President Assad, when she brazenly told him that the US is funding Syrian opposition & trying to oust him in a coup.
Under George W. Bush, the US secretly recruited and funded opposition leaders in Syria. But Assad kept winning elections.
Later, US State Dept. gave millions of dollars to establish a TV station ("Barada TV") to broadcast anti-Assad propaganda within Syria.
#Wikileaks
2011 saw the biggest regime-change operations ever conducted by the US.
It was called the Arab Spring.
In Egypt, Mubarak was ousted. In Libya, Gaddafi was murdered by NATO. And so on.
But Syria was the exception, because Assad was very popular with people and the military.
Thus, US deep state recruited Al Qaeda (AQ).
Feb 12, 2012: AQ leader Zawahiri called jihadists all over the world to go to Syria & fight Assad ("cancerous regime").
Same day: Jake Sullivan - advisor of Hillary Clinton - sent an email:
"Al Qaeda (AQ) is on our side in Syria"
Islamic terrorism on steroids
Remember how the CIA armed the Mujahideen with guns and shoulder-powered stinger missiles to defeat the USSR in the 1980s?
It was 1000x worse in Syria, where Al Qaeda was given tanks, powerful rockets, mortars, "hell canons" etc.
#Assad
US weapons had an elaborate rat line that involved Azerbaijan's diplomatic airplanes, Saudi Arabia and finally through Turkey.
Al Qaeda and ISIS got weapons worth billions of dollars.
The CIA named its project, "Operation Timber Sycamore."
#Syria #Assad
"Salafists, Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood"
US government and media were fooling the world, but US soldiers and intelligence officers in the field knew that they were training & arming the same people who did 9/11.
Some Green Beret (US Special Forces) talked about it.
General Flynn also wrote the famous memo in 2012, where he told the Pentagon that the groups that opposed Assad consisted of "Al Qaeda, Salafists and Muslim Brotherhood."
For that, Flynn was fired! He later joined Trump's campaign.
US and Israel were openly supporting ISIS on one side and then using ISIS as an excuse to bomb Syria.
Israeli officials, Kissinger, Thomas Friedman (NY Times) etc. praised ISIS for countering Iran.
“Obama is the founder of ISIS.
Crooked Hillary Clinton was the co-founder”
— Trump in 2016.
Surprisingly, he knew as far back as in 2013 that the Syrian rebels are Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda leader, Al Golani, is now the presumed leader of Syria.
He is from “Golan” Heights, occupied by Israel. What a coincidence!
He also spent many years in an American jail in Iraq. Ideal place for recruitment.
In 2017, Trump put a $10 million bounty on Golani.
But now that terrorist is whitewashed and glorified by Western propaganda.
There were plenty of atrocity propaganda from the jihadists and the West regarding Assad.
Like the fake and staged chemical attacks.
Below: Guy wearing sandals and regular clothes collecting samples after a "Sarin gas" attack.
#Syria
Want to know Syria's future? Look at Idlib -- the province under "rebels" control.
💠Women forced to cover head to toe
💠Slogans like "Shiite Muslims are enemies of Islam" and "Democracy is a religion of the West"
💠Public execution (with guns), chopping heads off etc.
🧵 Can Save Trump Save the Dollar with Threats Against BRICS?
I cannot remember Trump ever talking about BRICS, but the first time he did was to threaten the multilateral organization with 100% tariffs, if it creates a BRICS currency.
Why?
America’s prosperity depends on the “exorbitant privilege” of USD
This allows US to run massive budget and trade deficits every year.
Trump knows it.
"If we lose the global reserve currency status of the dollar, we will become a third-world country! "
In the past, US deep state & military would stage coups, assassinate leaders or invade countries if anyone decided to walk away from the dollar – Iraq and Libya, for example.
So much for freedom, choice, sovereignty, free trade, rules-based order, and free-market capitalism.
Let’s put this fantasy to rest once and for all. There are two types of Americans who would wish to decouple from China:
💠Warmongers who know they cannot start a war with China, if the US economy is dependent on the geopolitical rival.
💠Those who wish to reduce US’ trade deficit and bring manufacturing back.
However, here are the reasons why trade wars with China are not easy and cannot be won:
1) This has been tried for the last 8 years with Trump tariffs, Biden tariffs, sanctions, friend-shoring and re-shoring. US imports from China have been stubbornly hovering around $450 billion a year since 2016. (see chart)
2) Note that this $450 billion translates to perhaps $4 trillion of sales and millions of retails jobs within the US economy. Like, how Trump pays $3 for a bible printed in China and sells it for $30!
3) There are many products for which China accounts for 50-100% of the US imports. It has been impossible to find alternate suppliers.
Some of these products include critical minerals and medicines, which are indispensable for normal functioning of US economy. Simply imagine the riots in the US if the shelves in Walmart, Target etc. are empty.
4) While the US has greatly increased imports from Mexico, Vietnam, India etc., guess what? Those countries buy intermediate goods from China, assemble them into final products, and export them to the US.
Thus, the supply chain is still dependent on China.
Americans are simply buying Chinese goods through a third party. This is why China’s exports to those countries have increased a lot since 2018. Fact is that nobody can match China’s scale, speed, price and quality. (see chart)
5) Companies like Apple and Tesla cannot survive without China. Those two companies have a combined market cap of $4.5 trillion!
Consider that one-third of all Tesla cars in the world are made in Shanghai; and 80% of iPhones are still assembled in China.
Then, there are companies like Starbucks, KFC, McDonald’s and countless American retail, fashion and hospitality (hotel) companies for whom China is the #1 or #2 largest market in the world. Same holds true for US tech giants like Qualcomm and Nvidia.
The S&P 500 companies earn $1 trillion from annual sales within China.
As Tim Cook said today, “We (Apple) cannot do what we do without China.” Heck, even the US military industrial complex depends on China – as Raytheon’s CEO admitted that his company depends on thousands of Chinese suppliers.
6) All the allies and vassals of the US are also highly interconnected with China. For Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia etc., their #1 trade partner is… China!
7) Finally, the big picture: China is the world’s largest trading nation. It is #1 in manufacturing, #1 in exports, and #2 in imports.
China's primacy in manufacturing will keep increasing. By 2030, China will account for 45% of global manufacturing! (see chart)
China is also #1 in patents and #1 in scientific papers. This is why Europe is now begging for technology transfer from Chinese companies to figure out how to make EV batteries, solar panels etc.
The US could have decoupled from China 30 years. However, now, it’s mission impossible.
Interestingly, as China becomes more independent and catches up in semiconductor technology, soon, the reverse could be possible – that is, China could decouple from the US!
Two more charts:
How China’s exports to Mexico and India have skyrocketed since the US-China trade wars began:
“China is the largest source of imports for 26 of the 59 minerals classified as critical by the U.S. government.”
Furthermore, China supplies 100% of 12 critical minerals for the US!