Category: News

Last month, as US border patrol agents began rounding up Central American women and children denied asylum, a small group of international peace activists from Voices for Creative Nonviolence boarded a plane for Helsinki, Finland, to visit two longtime Iraqi friends who fled Baghdad last summer and somehow completed a perilous seven-week journey over land and sea to reach this northern seaport. Negotiating our way from the airport in Helsinki to Laajasalo, a small island and suburb where we were to stay with a Finnish journalist, we crossed a frozen and snow-covered Baltic Sea, as white flakes swirled in the streetlights and the temperature dropped to minus-25 degrees Celsius, a long, long way from Baghdad.

Our friends Mohammad and his teenage son, Omar, come from a small farming village where they grow okra. Last autumn, like hundreds of thousands of others, they were part of the swollen river of refugees whose headwaters sprang from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, where endless war has devastated society and local violence has left so many people at grave risk. The journey to Europe is not merely a long, exhausting trip. It is treacherous from the start.

To begin with, while leaving their country of origin, people risk their lives traveling through contested parts of their country or over roads controlled by militias or warlords known to capture and kill people of their ethnicity or religious sect. Risks, we can be sure, they wouldn’t undertake except out of desperation. All of this merely to enter Turkey. In Istanbul, where refugees must try to find a trustworthy smuggler, make a deal with one of his agents, and pay a hefty fee – held in a sort of escrow until a specific, agreed-upon part of the trip is completed – Turkish police patrol the streets and coffee houses looking for migrants. Iraqis are particularly at risk. If captured in Turkey and identified, they are imprisoned and eventually turned over to Iraqi authorities. And in the charged, sectarian atmosphere in Iraq, refugees shudder to think what might follow.

Continue reading “A Swollen River of Refugees”

After four days of bombing US allies in Syria – the Kurdish YPG militia – the Turkish government is now requesting that the US begin a ground invasion of Syria. Saudi fighter jets have reportedly arrived in Turkey to take part in the invasion if the US agrees. Meanwhile, the US has asked the Turks to stop bombing Washington’s Kurd allies. And Turkey is also bombing Russian-backed Syrian government forces. We try to unravel this all in today’s Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

The violence in Syria has been devastating for years. New military actions in the country by the Turkish government threaten to escalate the situation into a much larger war.

Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Executive Director Daniel McAdams wrote about the most recent developments in the RPI Weekly Update sent out via email early this morning. Because of the great importance of sharing McAdams’ Syria comments with the largest audience possible, those comments from this morning’s email are posted below as well.

If you do not receive the RPI Weekly Update, you can subscribe for free here.

Here is what McAdams wrote in the portion of the RPI Weekly Update concerning Syria:

Dr. Paul and I started the week with a Liberty Report episode noting that Saudi Arabia had announced that it was putting together a force of 150,000 to invade Syria and “fight ISIS.” In the program we noted that it seemed odd for Saudi Arabia to be suddenly so interested in fighting Islamist extremists considering they had been funding and exporting them into Syria for the past five years. In fact, we pointed out, the Saudi invasion plan (troublingly encouraged by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter) was more likely a response to major gains against ISIS and particularly al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front by the Russia and Iran backed Syrian army around Syria’s second city, Aleppo. Aleppo had been occupied for at least three years by largely foreign imported al-Qaeda fighters, but dramatic gains by the Syrian government in the past weeks – with Russian help in the skies and Iranian and Lebanese help on the ground – had that last major rebel-occupied city in west Syria teetering on the edge of liberation. So the idea that Saudi Arabia would invade Syria to fight the very groups it had supported against the Syrian government was a bit much to swallow. Nevertheless, as this update goes to press, Saudi warplanes and personnel are amassing in Turkey poised to invade Syria.

Continue reading “Has Turkey Just Started WWIII?”

Oh, yes, and also civil war. Here’s a preview of what to expect in Iraq after ISIS is mostly run out of the country.

Set the scene: the country formerly known as Iraq was basically an steaming pile of ethnic/religious tension in 2003 when the U.S. invaded. It was divided among three broad groups we didn’t seem to know much about then, but damn well do now: Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. The Kurds, who always wanted to be independent, like from nearly the time of the dinosaurs always, saw their opportunity and broke away and are now essentially their own country. The Sunnis and Shia both wanted the same land and resources and freaking hate each other, and so have been fighting one another since 2003 when the post-U.S. invasion chaos unleashed them.

Among the many reasons the U.S. plans for Iraq failed was that it took the United States years to realize they were sitting squat in the middle of a civil war, hated by both sides as much as both sides hated them. The U.S. exit strategy, as it was, was a last gasp (The Surge) try to balance the power between Sunni and Shia and when that failed, run for the exit and allow Iran to push the Shias into power. The Sunnis took the bait from ISIS to be their protector from the Shias and zowie! it’s Mad Max in 2016.

Continue reading “US-Supported Shia Militias in Iraq Lead Ethnic Cleansing”

Reading Dennis Ross and David Ignatius is a good reminder that the neocons live in a different world than the rest of us. They do not conform their analysis to reality, but rather they conform reality to their view of the world. Where most people would be encouraged to read that Aleppo in Syria was about to be liberated from its 3.5 year occupation by al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, the neocons see a disaster.

On the brink of al-Qaeda’s defeat in Aleppo, the Washington Post‘s Ignatius is furious that, “President Obama won’t approve military tactics that could actually shift the balance.” Yes, he wants to shift the balance toward al-Qaeda because like the other neocons he is so invested in the idea of regime change in Syria that he would even prefer turning the country into another Libya than to see government forces defeat his jihadist insurgents. Failing to “shift the balance” toward al-Qaeda fighters in Aleppo only brings “greater misery for the Syrian people,” in the world of Ignatius.

Ignatius’s Washington Post, which has never seen a potential war it did not want to see turned into an actual war, thinks it a tragedy that the Syrian army’s advance on al-Qaeda occupied Aleppo has “cut off all vital routes of supply from Turkey to the rebel-held areas of the city.” Those would be Turkish supplies in support of al-Qaeda and ISIS rebels, but the Post is too deceptive to mention that fact.

Continue reading “Why Are Neocons So Desperate To Rescue al-Qaeda in Syria?”

After a breakdown in mediation between the State of Israel and the Palestinian villages of Massafer Yatta, Israeli authorities destroyed 24 homes in the South Hebron Hills. The homes lie within an area which Israel claims as Firing Zone 918, in which approximately 1000 Palestinian civilians live in 8 villages.

Early on the morning of February 2^nd, Israeli soldiers closed access to Firing Zone 918 and placed checkpoints near the Palestinian villages of Bir al Idd and Al Fakheit. In the village of Jinba, Israeli soldiers and border police demolished 15 houses. They also fired sound grenades and teargas. Several solar electric panels were confiscated by the Israeli civil administration. In nearby Halaweh village Israeli forces destroyed another 9 houses, bringing the total to 24. Israeli police confiscated a car used by international volunteers and Palestinian activists.

Israeli Firing Zones take up approximately 18 percent of the West Bank’s land area. Residents of Massafer Yatta live inside Firing Zone 918. They have refused to leave their land and have been engaged in court ordered mediation for several years. The Israeli military has issued demolition orders for the region’s clinic and two primary schools, as well as the villagers’ homes, mosques, agricultural buildings and wells. The families depend on the land for their way of life. Because they primarily subsist through dry land agriculture and the grazing of sheep and goats, relocation is economically impossible.

Continue reading “Homes Demolished in the South Hebron Hills”