Battle for Aleppo: US-Backed Rebels Shut Off Water for 1.5 Million Civilians

The so-called “moderate” rebels turned off the water to 1.5 million civilians living in West Aleppo in retaliation for a Syrian Army airstrike on East Aleppo that allegedly left 250,000 residents without water setting the stage for an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.

The city of Aleppo is “dying” according to United Nations officials after a fierce wave of bombing last night by the Syrian Army in an attempt to break the stalemate in what once was the economic capital of the country but is now left to rubble after years of combat between the Assad government and rebels.

Last night’s airstrikes according to early reporting by the United Nations left 115 dead as hostilities have intensified following the collapse of the ceasefire earlier this week resulting in large part from a US-led coalition airstrike on a Syrian Army base in Deir Ez-Zor that left 62 dead and hundreds injured “paving the way” for a major offensive by Daesh (ISIS) terrorists and over 300 ceasefire violations by the rebels.

The rebels signaled in the day before the ceasefire that they would not comply with the agreement brokered by the United States and Russia with the second largest rebel group Ahrar al-Sham even saying that it was “impossible” for the group to breakaway from al-Nusra Front terrorists (formerly Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate prior to a rebranding effort) because the two groups had become too entangled fighting under the common banner of the Army of Conquest.

With hopes for peace on hold Syrian airstrikes have escalated which the rebels claim undermined attempts to repair a water pump supplying rebel-held districts in East Aleppo with water allegedly blocking the flow of the vital resource to some 250,000 residents.

In an act of reprisal, the rebels switched off the Suleiman al-Halabi pumping station that provides water to 1.5 million Syrian civilians in government controlled West Aleppo raising the possibility of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in what has already turned into the largest displacement of civilians in human history.

Kieran Dwyer, spokesman for the UN Children’s Rights & Emergency Relief Organization (UNICEF) explained that the Bab al-Nairab pumping station supplying rebel-held parts of Aleppo was allegedly damaged on Thursday and subsequent strikes rendered repairs impossible.

“Then in retaliation for that attack a nearby pumping station that pumps water to the entire western part of the city – upwards to 1.5 million people – was deliberately switched off,” said Dwyer.

 UNICEF fears that families in West Aleppo will be forced to use contaminated liquid carrying waterborne diseases to which children are particularly vulnerable as a result of the intentional act of terroristic sabotage by the rebels in contravention of international humanitarian standards.

“Aleppo is slowly dying, and the world is watching, and the water is being cut off and bombed – it’s just the latest act of inhumanity,” said UNICEF Deputy Director Justin Forsyth.

Terrorists in Fighter Jets: Israel Warns Obama Stop Gulf Aircraft Sales

A $1 billion fighter jet package to Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait raises a host of concerns that known systematic violators of human rights may turn weapons against their own population or that the weapons may ultimately find their way into the hands of Daesh.

On Sunday, top US Air Force officials urged the US government to speed up its review of long-standing bids by Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain to buy American fighter jets citing growing frustration among key US allies in the Gulf about delays in procurement that threaten to undermine the mission in Syria.Air Force Deputy Undersecretary Heidi Grant expressed that she found herself in a bind attempting to reassure countries that Washington’s refusal to approval billions of dollars in US arms sales was not an indication of a weakening of the bilateral air force-to-air force relationships that exist.

Although Grant expressed that she “would like to see a decision soon” in an interview with Reuters on the eve of the Farnborough Airshow in England, the procurement process to the Gulf states with systematic records of human rights abuses presents a troubling legal and ethical conundrum for the United States.

Bahrain, specifically, has shown a willingness to turn US provided weapons against peaceful Shiite majority demonstrators who demand that the repressive Sunni King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa open the country to democratic reforms. These demonstrators, far from subversive, have proposed the idea that the King remain in the role of a government figurehead while policies are executed by the people.

The government in Manama struck fervently against this opposition routinely attacking, imprisoning, executing and torturing civilian demonstrators while outlawing the leading opposition party prescribed to by the majority of the population and stripping citizenship from opponents rendering people clamoring for self-determination stateless with US approval.

The situation has in fact become so dire in Bahrain that a group of hawkish US Senators led by Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) have called on John Kerry’s State Department to address the political situation in Bahrain and to eliminate arm sales to Manama.

The tiny island kingdom of Bahrain, however, plays host to the Navy’s 5th Fleet which is why the State Department has repeatedly circumvented the Leahy Law, named after US Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) which proscribes the sale of weapons to systematic abusers of human rights, by breaking arms sales into hundreds of smaller sales to improperly maneuver under the small-scale weapons sale exclusion.

Yes, the State Department is currently aiming to facilitate acts against humanity by employing the preferred method of money launderers who break transfers into cycles to avoid breaching the threshold required for filling out a currency transaction report.

Despite the patent illegality of this practice, the Obama administration’s Pentagon and State Department have both willfully signed off on the sale of 36 F-15 fighter jets to Qatar, 24 F/A 18E Super Hornets to Kuwait, and 16 F-16 fighter jets to Bahrain in a deal valued at just under $1 billion.

This deal has stalled, despite standing in stark contradiction to the State Department’s own findings that Bahrain continues to suppress democratic practice and is engaged in systematic human rights violations not out of adherence to US law, but rather because of objections raised by Israel that equipment sent to the Gulf states could fall into the wrong hands and be used against the United States.

The legacy of the Obama administration may ultimately be Daesh terrorists flying around in Super Hornets and F-16 fighter jets if the deal is allowed to move forward and it is for that reason that the Air Force Deputy Undersecretary Heidi Grant should not hold her breath waiting for approval.

State Department Forms an Army Social Media Trolls To Spread Propaganda

The latest initiative by the country’s diplomatic offices mirrors the social media disinformation campaign used against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential campaign and may have disquieting impacts on the perceptions of people around the world.

The Obama administration is set to request $21.5 million next year for a propaganda outfit designed to combat Daesh’s growing influence on social media. The program will be fashioned after faux news and social media empire of Hillary Clinton confidante David Brock.

Known as the “Global Engagement Center” (GEC), the division will be part of the US State Department and will have the authority to hire any individual who can “change the narrative” on social media.

This taxpayer-funded boondoggle has grown from a $5.6 million venture in 2015 to $15 million in 2016, with costs continuing to rise. Despite the budget increase, progress continues to stagnate.

Much like David Brock’s “Correct the Record,” which was used to spread vitriol about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s opposition Bernie Sanders, the State Department will employ internet trolls to ‘shift narratives’ on the US-led coalition.

If the US government’s new army of social media trolls is focused on degrading the appeal of terrorist entities like Daesh and al-Qaeda, the effort will prove much more noble than Brock’s Media Matters platform, which used its influence to acquire a polling service firm and a digital media entity known as Blue Nation Review that is used to distort public perceptions.

But Washington appears to be focused on expanding its mission well beyond combating terrorism. The GEC will also sponsor and fund foreign journalists who are not required to disclose that they receive the lion’s share of their funding from US government sources.

The largest such operation is the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which will have a $777.8 million budget in FY2017 to not only operate defunct media outlets like Voice of America, but to also subsidize foreign reporters while hiding their influence and bias behind the brands of local, impartial news outlets.

With news industry standards deteriorating around the world due to hidden corporate and government support, people around the world have taken to social media to research the facts on the ground in real-time in order to be one step ahead of the spin.

That was the case in the US presidential election, when media titans pushed for Clinton’s nomination while treating Sanders as a longshot candidate.

As David Brock’s $1 million army of internet trolls has proven to be true, grassroots activists can quickly be drowned out. The 2016 election brought with it the realization that propaganda can be extended to social media, and now that the US government realizes it, the truth may never be the same.

NATO’s Collapse: Turkey May Exist Over Refugee Blockage, Arming of Kurds

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan envisioned himself the Sultan of a new Ottoman Empire, but now faces the bleak reality that he is the annoying little brother of the US and Europe who will never get his way.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced this week that NATO will expand its presence in the Mediterranean in order to stem the tide of Syrian refugees flowing from Turkey into Europe. Ankara has objected, feeling the alliance’s resources could be put to better use elsewhere.

Turkish officials argue that NATO’s limited resources should instead be directed towards combatting ‘Russian aggression’ in a bid to hamstring the alliance’s efforts to prevent human smuggling in the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece.

There are currently over six million refugees of the Syrian Civil War, with 2.75 million seeking shelter in neighboring Turkey. The country has become the single largest host nation of migrants fleeing the horrors of war and the threat of enslavement at the hands of Daesh extremists.

In addition to the large initial intake of refugees, Ankara also offered to shelter an additional one million refugees currently residing in Europe in exchange for approximately $7.3 billion. The deal also included concessions that would provide Turkish citizens with visa-free travel within Europe’s Schengen Zone and expedite the country’s European Union membership.

That deal has wavered in recent weeks following the Turkish government’s crackdown on both the media and dissent, including advancing a constitutional amendment that will allow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to prosecute all opposition lawmakers from the Kurdish HDP Party under the country’s anti-terrorism laws.

This move toward totalitarianism follows Turkey’s aggressive decision to shoot down a Russian warplane. The Erdogan government has also faced accusations of being engaged in illegal arms and oil trade with Daesh militants, stoking the flames of war.

British Prime Minister David Cameron suggested that Turkey may not be ready for inclusion in the European Union, and the EU has soured on the idea of offering visa-free travel to Turkish citizens. Erdogan responded by threatening to unleash a new wave of migrants onto Europe’s mainland.

Now the military alliance of 28 nations is looking to strip Ankara of their greatest bargaining chip by blockading migrant sea smuggling from Turkey.

Additionally, Erdogan’s regime has been forced to endure the US arming of Kurdish YPG forces in the struggle against Daesh extremists in Syria. Ankara has repeatedly denounced Washington’s policy of cooperation with the YPG, labelling the group a terrorist organization and calling the organization an offshoot of the PKK.

The move by US and European officials to push Turkey aside may soon result in fracturing the alliance and, at minimum, looks to undermine the effectiveness of the organization’s efforts in Syria and abroad.