Never Forget: The Inspiring, Courageous Life & Suspicious Death of American Journalist Serena Shim

I think I'll file this post under the category of "Zeros and (S)Heroes"...

In the wake of Donald Trump‘s stupidly unsupervised phone call with Turkish President Erdoğan (in which the former was, obviously, rolled by the latter), immediately followed by Trump’s announcement of the strategically-ignorant withdrawal/retreat of about 1000 spec ops troops and the unconscionable, callous, and deadly abandonment of the United States’ only allies in the region - the ISIS-crushing Kurds...

I urge everyone to, please, acquaint themselves with (and/or remember) the truly inspiring life, utterly fearless work, and tragic, premature, and suspicious death of American journalist, Serena Shim:

Five years on, Press TV journalist Serena Shim's legacy lives on...

Syria Sarin Gas Attacks: Yes, Déjà Vu, Again ('Cept For The 59 Tomahawk Missiles)

DEJA VU!! Or, Vuja De!* (*Or, something like that... IF you don't count the 59 Tomahawk Missiles our trigger-fingered Twitterer-in-chief fired at one, little, Syrian airstrip. But, then, you can't not count those. Especially at $1.59 Mil+ a pop (or, "... a KABOOOOM"). (Excerpted from: Seymour Hersh’s article, in the London Review of Books, on 17 April 2014, titled “The Red Line and the Rat Line: Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels.”)

"... after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta (August of 2013)

, he (President Obama) was ready to launch an allied air strike... to punish the Syrian government (Assad) for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons." "Then, with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to * relinquish his chemical arsenal * in a deal brokered by Russia." "In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya?" (*Please Pay Close Attention To THIS*) "Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal."

Re: The recent Idlib Sarin gas attack:

"Cough, cough, False Flag!, cough, cough!"* (*And, not even an Original one!) *Please Note: The news-report that the famed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh could not find an American publisher for, and that was consequently published only in Britain, has now been publicly confirmed by a research study into the matter, a study whose findings were made public on October 21st (2015) by a committee of Turkey’s parliament and published that day in Turkey’s leading newspaper, Zaman.

(Source: Seymour Hersh’s News Report Banned in U.S., Is Finally Confirmed in Turkey)

(Full article)

The Red Line and the Rat Line: Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels

Africa: What Lies Behind Different Reactions to Paris and Beirut Attacks? And, Baghdad?

                                          ISIS struck Beirut, then Baghdad, then Paris.

Many are asking, "Why Paris - Again?!".

"France is also a country with a strong anti-immigration political rhetoric that actively discriminates against those who are different. The most renowned case was the controversy surrounding the hijab.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for these attacks.

World leaders have pledged support, solidarity and condemnation of terrorism. In the next few weeks we may even see a resurgence of rhetoric calling for more resources to fight this (abject failure known as the) War on Terror (which has only succeeded in producing more terrorists!).

There is also the inherent risk that Islamophobia may take deeper root - not just in France but in Europe as a whole.

Yet as the world consumed the messages of support, sentiments of outrage and condemnation of violence, some also asked:

'Why such a strong show of support for Paris but, not the same for Beirut?'

The answer, seemingly, was that it is because Arab lives matter less than those of Europeans."
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Contrary to what President Hollande declared, these were not 'acts of war'.

These were Acts Of Terrorism committed by individual people compelled by - what? Desperation... marginalisation and... what else?

Perhaps it's rage at the West for doing whatever it wants to do, to whomever it wants to do it, whenever it wants (*and 'damn the torpedoes!')?:

"Oops!  Our bad!  (sheepish grin)  Sorry for bombing the hell out of your beloved homeland and - in doing so - for blowing up your families, homes and businesses - all in the name of some non-existent WMDs!  Wow!  Are our faces red?!  Ttyl!  Oh, and good luck with Al Qaeda!"

Perhaps we should start to try to figure that out?"

Africa: What Lies Behind Different Reactions to Paris and Beirut Attacks - allAfrica.com

US Coalition Bills Iraq $260 Million For... Failure to Stop ISIS Advances

ISIL (ISIS) and Ebola have been running neck and neck in the race to be the mainstream media's Imminent-Danger Darlings ("This is CNN: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.").

I thought I'd dig up a truthful, timely and pertinent article on the fight against ISIL (ISIS).

When I heard that a U.S.-led coalition was going to be flying sorties/air strikes against ISIL, my first thought was, "Well, those a**holes are finally gonna get what they deserve.".

Sadly, not only has ISIL getting their just desserts not been the result of military activities but, apparently, the U.S.-led coalition is planning on billing Iraq hundreds of millions of dollars (that Iraq never agreed to pay in the first place) for... what exactly?

Cities are reported under siege.  Cities are allowed to fall (It's not a tactically significant target.").  But, significant for whom?  The people living somewhere ISIL is about to overrun?  The priceless archaeological treasures which are part of humanity's collective heritage and are being plundered?  I've heard war is good for the economy, but shouldn't it also be good for something other than making money?  If that's at all possible?

"The Iraqi people and their political leadership were optimistic when the United States first announced its intention to form an international military coalition to assist Iraq in its war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). At the time, everyone assumed that a solution was close and that Western jet fighters will wipe out ISIS. They all believed that the Obama administration will be Iraq’s savior from terrorism."

"Ever since the onset of the aerial campaign, coalition aircrafts have focused on the border region between Mosul under ISIS control and Iraq’s Kurdistan in the north, raising suspicions that the West is actually worried about its own interests and is not fighting terrorism, especially since some threatening rallies have emerged near Baghdad, but the West has so far refrained from targeting them."

Here's a direct link to an eye-opening article about the coalition's activities, the actual results of those activities and the cost (From globalresearch.ca):

US-led Coalition Bills Iraq $260 Million Despite Failure to Stop ISIS Advances