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On June 25th, U.S.-aided fighters in southern Syria were fleeing from the Syrian Government’s Army, southward toward U.S.-allied Israeli-controlled areas in the Golan Heights and toward America’s ally Jordan; and, according to the AP’s news-report, “The majority of these rebels in southern Syria were U.S- and Jordan backed, although some local al-Qaida-linked militants still operate there.” The U.S. has relied heavily upon Al Qaeda in southern Syria, to lead the jihadist groups against Syria’s Government, ever since 2012.

The expectation when Donald Trump came into the U.S. White House had been that his predecessor’s war to conquer Syria or at least to seize territory there, would end. But Trump instead continues that invasion and occupation of Syria, and he even does so under the very same excuse that Obama had used, which is the ‘humanitarian’ one, of protecting people against Syria’s Government and against ISIS, which is one of the dozens of fundamentalist-Sunni ‘rebel’ groups of jihadists (ISIS and Al Qaeda being only the most famous ones) who have been brought in from all over the world and financed mainly by the Sauds, and armed and advised mainly by the Americans. They’ve been fighting to overthrow Syria’s Government. The rulers of the U.S., who bombed Iraq and Libya to hell and have done the same to Syria and now also to Yemen, say that their motivation is ‘humanitarian’. Even George W. Bush did, when he invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003 (but he mainly gave the reason, “Saddam’s WMD,” which didn’t any longer even exist). Somehow, most Americans think that this Government in Washington represents them; but I am an American and I don’t think that the U.S. Government represents the American people. It certainly doesn’t represent us in Syria.

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Jordan Sends Tanks To Border Amidst Syrian Army Advance

June 23, 2018

Jordan Sends Tanks To Border Amidst Syrian Army Advance

Images surfaced overnight Thursday of a large Jordanian military convoy reportedly headed to the border near the Syrian province of Daraa, including M-60 battle tanks and heavy military equipment.

This as German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman on Thursday, telling him, “You live not just with the Syria conflict, but also we see Iran’s activities with regard to Israel’s security and with regard to Jordan’s border.”

Beirut based Al Masdar News published the photos provided through its sources in the region with the description: The Jordanian military is deploying reinforcements, including heavy military equipment, on the border with the Syrian province of Daraa, according to Jordanian and Syrian sources.

*A Jordanian M-60 battle tank en route to border with Syria. Via Al Masdar News*

As we reported this week, the long awaited battle for Daraa has begun despite repeat warnings issued to the Syrian government from the US not to extend its military campaign to the country’s south, where the conflict first began with fierce anti-Assad protests in 2011 which quickly spiraled into violence.

The convergence of geopolitical interests among the external and regional powers which have long fueled the Syrian proxy war makes Syria’s southwest region the perfect storm for potential outside intervention and dangerous broader conflagration.

The below summarizes this week’s developments which makes the rapidly unfolding events in Syria’s southwest provinces a highly volatile and escalating situation:

Israel has warned against the deployment Iranian and Hezbollah fighters allied with the Syrian government, especially near the contested Golan Heights area.
The US has threatened to take “take firm and appropriate measures” should Damascus continue its military campaign in Deraa.
The Syrian Army and the US-backed group, Jaysh Al-Mughawir Al-Thoura from the Al-Tanf area clashed on Thursday, leaving one Syrian soldier dead.
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Is It Time for A Nice, “Little” Nuclear War?

April 19, 2018

Is It Time for A Nice, “Little” Nuclear War?

I have been accused by many of being cynical. My accusers make this claim in the context of my being “pessimistic, sardonic, or negative.” Having been a middle-school student crouching under his desk with a piece of notebook paper over his head during the “Cuban Missile Crisis,” a teenager expelled from high school for organizing a student walk-out against the Vietnam War, a witness to the Nixon “presidency,” and all and sundry since, I prefer to regard myself as a realist. A pessimistic, cynical realist.

I admit, I have devolved over the time since middle-school from a true believer in the myth of America as world policewoman, to a defender of the US Constitution as the last hope to avoid nuclear annihilation. Now, I see, I may have been wrong. Rather than harp on the “negative” aspects of nuclear war, I should have focused on how a “nice, little nuclear war” may actually be a good thing.

Recent events in the Mideast, Syria, Jordon, and Israel indicate, to my cynical nature, that the USA may get the answer to all those “Nuke ‘Em” prayers so many Americans have been trumpeting for so long. If things “go wrong” with Syria, a “nice, little nuclear war” could be in the cards. You have Syria, with Russian troops present, being struck by US cruise missiles. This is dangerous enough. But in addition, you have the USA building up troops in Jordan as reported by the Marine Times on Friday the 13th of April, 2018:

As tensions come to a boil in Syria over an alleged chemical attack, thousands of U.S. troops and Marines will be gathering in neighboring Jordan for the start of a major training exercise.

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War Preparations: Leaked Images Allegedly Show US Military Tanks Arriving In Jordan

March 26, 2018

War Preparations: Leaked Images Allegedly Show US Military Tanks Arriving In Jordan

Syrian government forces have now secured most of the eastern Ghouta enclave, the last remaining rebel-held area near Damascus, the capital and the largest city of the Syrian Arab Republic.

With Syrian forces nearing full control of the war-torn region, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley recently warned, Washington “remains prepared to act if we must,” if the United Nations Security Council fails to act on Syria for its assault on eastern Ghouta.

Last week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov commented on the critical situation in eastern Ghouta and called on Washington to completely abandon its plans for a military strike against Syrian government forces.

“We’ve warned and warned the US that these plans must be unconditionally refused. Any such unlawful use of force, similar to what happened almost a year ago at the Shairat air base, would be an act of aggression against a sovereign state, as defined by the relevant article of the UN Charter,” he said.

Washington had the previous experince of launching a military intervention without the consent of the United Nations Security Council, when President Donald Trump lobbed 59 Tomahawk missiles onto Syria’s Shairat airbase in April 2017.

According to Muraselon news agency, Syrian forces have acquired most of the eastern Ghouta region through “achieving sweeping military victories or concluding evacuation deals.” The independent media outlet says Syrian forces “will most probably be heading to the country’s south in order to secure the borders with Jordan.”

Could Syria’s southern border with Jordan be the next confrontation zone in the country’s multiple regional wars?

Sputnik news agency recently uncovered leaked images of U.S. military equipment arriving in Jordan’s Aqaba Industrial Port via the vehicle carrier ship “Liberty pride” for the upcoming participation in the annual war drill “Eager Lion.” During the unloading process, the images reveal the “M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks, the M113’s variation for medical evacuation and the M2A3 Bradley armored personnel carriers” were offloaded from the 199-meter (652 feet) military transport vessel, said Sputnik.

Sputnik indicates that Eager Lion war drill is an important military exercise between the U.S. Armed Forces and Jordanian Armed Forces, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Further, the war drill could flare up tensions on the Jordan–Syria border, and as we know, sometimes war drills go live.

“Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and other US allies will join the “Eager Lion” military exercises, which have been conducted every year since 2010. After the latest reports of a planned US strike on Syrian governmental forces these drills could possibly create tensions between Jordan and neighboring Syria.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bombshell: King Of Jordan Blames Turkey For Terror In Europe, Says Israel “Looks Other Way” On Al-Qaeda

March 26, 2016

Bombshell: King Of Jordan Blames Turkey For Terror In Europe, Says Israel “Looks Other Way” On Al-Qaeda

When Vladimir Putin told the world that ISIS gets a significant portion of its funding by selling oil to Turkey, he had just finished meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah.

The King is no stranger to confronting the jihadists. Last year, Abdullah threatened to fly combat missions against Islamic State himself following the release of a horrific video that depicted a Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a cage.

Here is the picture the King sent to the militants:

In January, Jordan agreed to share intelligence with Russia in the fight against ISIS and when the French began flying sorties against the extremists following the Paris attacks, their staging ground was an undisclosed Jordanian location.

In short, Jordan has at times appeared to be more genuine in its commitment to fighting extremism than say, the Saudis, whose determination to spread Wahhabism adds fuel to the ideological fire that drives the groups the kingdom claims to be fighting. “The global war — what I call the Third World War by other means — is one that is a generational one,” Abdullah told CNN in January. “Not only inside Islam, as we as Muslims gain the supremacy against the crazies, the outlaws, of our religion, but also reaching out to other religions that Islam is not what they have seen being perpetuated by 0.1% of our religion.”

On Friday, we learn that Abdullah met with US lawmakers in secret during the week of January 11 and disclosed that British SAS forces as well as Jordanian soldiers had been on the ground fighting ISIS in Libya since at least the beginning of the year. ”

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Egypt Bars Journalist From Leaving Country as Crackdown on Dissent Widens

February 24, 2016

Egypt Bars Journalist From Leaving Country as Crackdown on Dissent Widens

One of Egypt’s leading investigative journalists, Hossam Bahgat, was prevented from boarding a flight to Jordan today when officials at Cairo International Airport informed him that his name had been added to a list of citizens barred from traveling abroad.

Bahgat, who was detained and interrogated for three days in November by military intelligence officers, wrote on Facebook that officials at the airport told him that the order confining him to the country had come from Egypt’s public prosecutor, but they could provide no details of any case against him.

With some exasperation, the reporter pointed out that this surprise punishment by the Egyptian judicial system came as he was on his way to Jordan “to participate in the United Nations meeting on justice in the Arab world!”

The travel ban was quickly condemned by Egyptian activists, including Heba Morayef, the associate director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a prominent human rights group that Bahgat founded and led before turning his attention to journalism after the country’s 2011 revolution. Writing on Twitter, Morayef observed that the space for dissent against Egypt’s authoritarian government seemed to be narrowing, given that the restrictions on Bahgat were imposed just weeks after a similar ban was placed on Gamal Eid, a lawyer with the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, and days after health officials ordered the closure of El Nadeem, a renowned clinic for the rehabilitation of torture victims.

Heba Morayef ‎@hebamorayef

Hossam Bahgat has just been banned from travel. After Gamal Eid travel ban + Nadim Center closure order. Closing in.

10:46 AM – 23 Feb 2016

The move to shutter the clinic that helps torture victims seems particularly perverse as it comes just as Egypt’s interior ministry is under pressure to explain the apparent torture and murder of an Italian labor researcher, Giulio Regeni, who was last seen being led away by security agents near Tahrir Square on the fifth anniversary of Egypt’s uprising.

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World War 3 Could Start This Month: 350,000 Soldiers In Saudi Arabia Stand Ready To Invade Syria

February 15, 2016

World War 3 Could Start This Month: 350,000 Soldiers In Saudi Arabia Stand Ready To Invade Syria

350,000 soldiers, 20,000 tanks, 2,450 warplanes and 460 military helicopters are massing in northern Saudi Arabia for a military exercise that is being called “Northern Thunder”. According to the official announcement, forces are being contributed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Sudan, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, Oman, Qatar, Malaysia and several other nations. This exercise will reportedly last for 18 days, and during that time the airspace over northern Saudi Arabia will be closed to air traffic. This will be the largest military exercise in the history of the region, and it comes amid rumors that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are preparing for a massive ground invasion of Syria.

If you were going to gather forces for an invasion, this is precisely how you would do it. Governments never come out and publicly admit that forces are moving into position for an invasion ahead of time, so “military exercises” are a common excuse that gets used for this sort of thing.

If these exercises are actually being used as an excuse to mass forces near the northern Saudi border, then we should expect an invasion to begin within the next couple of weeks. If it happens, we should expect to see the Saudi coalition storm through western Iraq and into Syria from the south, and it is likely that Turkey will come in from the north.

The goal would be to take out the Assad regime before Russia, Iran and Hezbollah could react. For the past couple of years, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and their allies have been funding the Sunni insurgency in Syria, and they were counting on those insurgents to be able to take down the Assad regime by themselves.

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War games in Middle East could prepare UK for ‘potential’ Russian war with NATO – report

February 8, 2016

War games in Middle East could prepare UK for ‘potential’ Russian war with NATO – report

The British Army is to deploy 1,600 troops in Jordan to take part in war games which could be preparation for a potential ‘confrontation’ between Russia and NATO member countries in Eastern Europe, the Daily Telegraph has reported, citing sources.

Army sources told the paper that the exercise, which will simulate an Iraq invasion for the first time in over a decade, is not a prelude to sending ground troops to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS, ISIL), rather Exercise Shamal Storm could be seen as a practice routine to fight off any potential Russian invasion of Ukraine or Eastern Europe.

“This isn’t a counter-Isil exercise. If anything, this is much more about us being prepared to join the US in Ukraine than it is in Syria,” a source said as cited by the Daily Telegraph, adding, “This is not the sort of kind of force you expect to roll into Aleppo to take on a bunch of jihadists.”

However, the British Ministry of Defence has dismissed claims made by the media that the upcoming drills are connected with preparations to go to war with Russia.

“It is not an exercise about war with Russia,” a Defence Ministry spokesman told RIA Novosti on Monday.

The drills are an annual event testing the army’s capability “to deploy and support an armored force of up to 30,000 troops anywhere in the world,” he said. London is not “preparing to go to war with Russia,” he concluded.

In January, around 80 military vehicles were sent from the UK, bound for the Jordanian port of Aqaba. More than 300 will be used in total. The exercise will be held in the southwestern desert area of the country, while troops from three UK divisions will be taking part.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Jordanian King Warns Of Impending World War III

December 10, 2014

Jordanian King Warns Of Impending World War III.

When OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, imposed an oil embargo on the West for its support of Israel in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the French came out with a series of public service announcements on how to save oil. The 30-second ads gave consumers advice on various ways to economize gas and oil consumption. And the announcements would end with a voice saying: “In France we don’t have oil, but we have ideas.”

Today, much the same can be said about Jordan. The country is the only one in the region not producing oil. Its neighbors – Iraq, Syria, Israel and Saudi Arabia, all produce oil to varying degrees, except for Jordan and Palestine.

And in the turbulent world that is the Middle East today, Jordan’s lack of oil may well be a blessing in disguise, rendering it financially uninteresting to groups such as the so-called Islamic State that has occupied large swaths of land from Syria and Iraq, where incidentally, oil is found. But that does not mean that Jordan is altogether off the Islamist’s radar. The country counts large numbers of sympathizers of the Islamic State and its “lighter” version, the Muslim Brotherhood. Many among them would very much like to see the Hashemite kingdom replaced by an Islamic state.

During his visit to Washington last week the King of Jordan said that the events unfolding in the region today were nothing less than the start of World War III.

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