The successful Syrian army operation to liberate Abu-Duhur airbase left a large enclave (pink) controlled by al-Qaeda and ISIS fighters in east-Hama. Further advances towards Idleb have been halted for now to clean up the cauldron that could otherwise create future troubles behind the lines.

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Most of the al-Qaeda/HTS aligned Takfiris are though to have fled the now enclosed area before it was encircled by the Syrian government forces. A few hundred ISIS fighters who had earlier slipped into there then claimed to have occupied dozens of empty local villages. But these forces are in fact too small to hold onto anything. They will now be sought out and destroyed. In just one day some 20 hamlets were liberated. It will take a week or two to bring the total area under control.

A Turkish military convoy came from Turkey and went to Al-Eis, an important high point south-west of Aleppo. The convoy was protected by al-Qaeda forces. A similar convoy had earlier been attacked and had to retreat. This time the Turkish troops were attacked by missiles as soon as they had reached their positions. According to Turkish media at least five of the soldiers were wounded and one killed.

The Turks claim that the "observation point" comes as part of its responsibilities under the Astana agreement about a de-escalation zone in Idleb. The Russian's seem to agree with that, at least for now, but Iranian and Syrian forces in the area see the Turks (rightly) as their enemies intended to hamper their further moves against Idleb city. The Turks in Al-Eis are quite isolated and have no air support. Their positions is more endangered that Turkey seems to appreciate.

Al-Qaeda or a group aligned with it shot down a Russian ground attack air plane by using a man portable missile (MANPADS). There are various speculation where that missile came from but it has long been known that there are warehouses in Turkey and Jordan filled with such missiles ready to be distributed to anti-Syrian forces. The Wall Street Journal reported in February 2014:

Cont. reading: Syria – Is The Turkish Attack On Afrin Intended To Split The U.S.-Kurdish Alliance?

And the Pope said, “Some people are fun, others though …”

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Jan 28 – Robert Parry Has Died

I am really, really sad about this.

Jan 29 – Syria – Neo-Conservatives Demand "Action" – Hope For A Larger War

The crazies won't let go. They are not alone. U.S. media is solidly supporting them. See for example this screenshot from today's New York Times. The actual piece is about cooperation of Israel and Egypt against ISIS in the Sinai. Nothing in the report has to do with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Iran. But it is headed by a picture of Netanyahoo pointing at the mystic 'Shia Crescent'. What for?

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Jan 30 – U.S. Runs Headscarf Campaign Against Iran

Voice of America and similar U.S. government entities are obviously instruments of 'regime change' which is why they initiated the fake headscarf campaign. The University of Maryland just published a new poll it made in Iran: Iranian Public Opinion After the Protests (pdf). Large majorities in Iran support their system of governance. While they see demonstrations about economic problems as justified they are against the aims of those who hijacked them. They favor the Iranian support for Syria and Iraq and want to uphold their somewhat conservative, religion based values.

Jan 31 – Sleuthhound Puppy Takes 'Deep Dive' Into MoA – (Funny)

Some nutty kid tried to dox Moon of Alabama and gloriously failed …

Feb 1 – Syria – Erdogan's Bashibazouk Want To Ravage Afrin

There is some weird dealing behind the Afrin campaign between the Russians and Turkey. The Syrian army has temporarily halted parts of its campaign in east Idleb and Turkey has promptly transported a large number of its Takfiri 'rebels' from Idleb across the border into Turkey to intensify the attack on the Kurdish enclave Afrin from there. I am not sure who is playing whom in this.

Feb 2 – Memo: Democrats Made Up Evidence Enabled Eavesdropping On Trump Campaign

The turn of the anti-Trump campaign from "Publishing the memo is treason!" to "The published memo is a nothing-burger." was quite amusing to watch. It demonstrated that there is some panic that more might be revealed. David Habakukk at Sic Temper Tyrannis puts the anti-Trump anti-Russia campaign into its much larger context.

Feb 3 – Freelancer Despairs: "My Lies About Hizbullah Can't Compete With Trump" – (Updated)

A dissection of a quite devious way to smuggle anti-Hizbullah lies into the record …

A request to my readers: Help this blog to become better. Which of the posts this weeks were good, which were not so good? What other themes should I post about?

Use as open thread …

[Updated throughout – Feb 3, 2:30pm EST]
—

There is a special class of young, enterprising journalists and 'experts' who claim to have access to the inner thinking of the Lebanese resistance organization Hizbullah. Journalists with decades of on the ground experience in Lebanon like to mock them:

Elijah J. Magnier‏ @ejmalrai – 6:49 AM – 3 Feb 2018
"Hezbollah experts": "I was walking in "Hezbollah stronghold" & bumped into a man who turned out to be a "High commander". As a sign of courtesy of our 1st encounter, revealed to me Hezbollah will attack 7 countries. He delivers all plans to me & went off". U have to believe me.

The story below touches on that phenomenon. But there is more to it. Such journalists and experts are tools for planting Israel's propaganda into the minds of their readers. That is the real plot behind this curious story.

A few days ago the Columbia Journalism Review published a whiny piece about dwindling foreign reporting in U.S. media:

Freelancing abroad in a world obsessed with Trump

The story is build around one U.S. freelance reporter in Lebanon, Sulome Anderson, who laments that her work is no longer requested or published. Like all other miserable issue in this world Anderson's lack of income is caused by one Donald Trump:

Sulome blames a news cycle dominated by Donald Trump. Newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs simply have less space for freelance international stories than before—unless, of course, they directly involve Trump.

It that really the problem Anderson has?

Before the 2016 election cycle, Sulome would pitch a story once, maybe twice, before finding a home for it. Now she pitches anywhere from three to 10 editors before a story gets the green light, if it gets picked up at all.

Maybe it is not Trump but the crude propaganda, and abysmal sourcing Anderson tries to sell:

In October 2017, Sulome thought she had landed the story of her career. The US had just announced a $7 million reward for a Hezbollah operative believed to be scouting locations for terror attacks on American soil—something it had never done before. Having interviewed Hezbollah fighters for the last six years, Sulome had unique access to the upper echelons of its militants, including that specific operative’s family members. Over the course of her reporting, Hezbollah members told her they had contingency plans to strike government and military targets on US soil and that they had surface-to-air missiles, which had not been reported before.

Why didn't she offer that story to The Onion – they would have had fun with it. Consider:

Cont. reading: Freelancer Despairs: “My Lies About Hizbullah Can’t Compete With Trump” – (Updated)

Over the last month political enemies of U.S. President Trump and the FBI and Justice Department have desperately tried to prevent the publishing of a memo written by the Republican controlled House Intelligence Committee.

The memo (pdf) describes parts of the process that let to court sanctioned spying on the Trump campaign. The key points of the memo that was just published:

* The Steele dossier formed an essential part of the initial and all three renewal FISA applications against Carter Page.

* Andrew McCabe confirmed that no FISA warrant would have been sought from the FISA Court without the Steele dossier information.

* The political origins of the Steele dossier were known to senior DOJ and FBI officials, but excluded from the FISA applications.

* DOJ official Bruce Ohr met with Steele beginning in the summer of 2016 and relayed to DOJ information about Steele's bias. Steele told Ohr that he, Steele, was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected president and was passionate about him not becoming president.

If the above memo proves to be correct one can conclude that a Democratic front organization created "evidence" that was then used by the FBI and the Obama Justice Department to get FISA warrants to spy on someone with intimate contacts into the Trump campaign.

The Democrats as well as the FBI have done their utmost to keep this secret.

Carter Page was a relative low ranking volunteer advisor of the Trump campaign with some business contacts to Russia. He had officially left the campaign shortly before the above FISA warrant was requested.

Andrew McCabe was an FBI assistant director. A few month earlier his wife ran for a Virginia State Senate seat with the help of $700,000 she had received from Clinton allies.

The wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the outlet hired by the Democrats to find Trump dirt. Fusion GPS hired the former British agent Steele.

The former British spy Steele had been hired by the Democratic Party via Fusion GPS to dig up dirt about Donald Trump. He came back with a package of "reports" which alleged that Trump was "colluding" with Russia or even a puppet of Putin. The content of the reports is hilarious and so obviously made up that one wonders how anyone could have treated it seriously.

Getting a FISA warrant on Carter Page meant that all his communication with the Trump campaign was effectively under surveillance of the Obama administration. While Page was no longer an official member of the campaign at the time of the warrant it is likely that he had kept contact. All internal communication that Page had access to was thereby also accessible for at least some people who tried to prevent a Trump election victory.

One must wonder if the FISA warrant and eavesdropping on Page was the only one related to the Trump campaign.

One may (like me) dislike Trump and the Republican party and all they stand for. But this looks like an extremely dirty play by the Democrats and by the Obama administration far outside of any decency and fairness. The Steele dossier is obviously made up partisan nonsense. To the use it for such a FISA warrant was against the most basic rules of a democratic system. It probably broke several laws.

There are still many questions: What was, exactly, the result of the surveillance of Carter Page and the Trump campaign? Who was getting these results – officially and unofficially?  How were they used?

I am pretty sure now that more heads of those involved will role. Some of the people who arranged the scheme, and some of those who tried to cover it up, may go to jail.

If Trump and the Republicans play this right they have practically won the next elections.

The map shows the situation in Afrin canton in north-west Syria. The Turkish army and associated Takfiri militia (green) are trying to push the Syrian Kurds (yellow) out of the area.

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What is claimed as newly Turkish conquered (light green arrows) on the map may overnight change back into Kurdish hands. This has happened several times over the last week. The fighting is quite intense (vid). The Kurds seem to have many anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) and the Turks have all the tools of a professional army plus a fanatic militia that serves as their infantry. These (vid) Turkish sponsored Takfiris in the Afrin area seem to come from various countries. One sings a Nasheed:

"…
We were steadfast in Grozny,
We were steadfast in Dagestan.
And we took Tora Bora as our den,
And we took Tora Bora as our den.
We made glory in Afrin and in sad Aleppo.
And Afrin is calling for us: 'Oh welcome good people.' "

Grozny and Dagestan, both in the Russian Federation, were devastated in wars against Takfiris. The Tora Bora caves in east-Afghanistan were al-Qaeda's stronghold before the U.S. waged war on the country. 

Here is another video of Erdogan's henchmen:

SURA‏ @AlSuraEnglish – 4:26 PM – 1 Feb 2018
#BREAKING – (Graphic Warning) #Turkish-backed #Syrian rebels strip and mutilate dead female #Kurdish #YPG (YPJ) fighter in #Afrin as offensive against #Afrin continues.

The graphic video, available through the tweet above (or on request through me), shows a dead young woman, partially clothed in military attire, who's breasts have been cut off. Some ten men in mixed military-civil cloth are standing around her in the 13 seconds video. They can not be identified.

SURA @AlSuraEnglish
Laughter is heard before #Syrian rebel pushes her chest with his boot, another says "No don't do things like this guys". The next fighter says "Bring the other one" referring to the female #Kurdish #YPG (YPJ) fighters corpse. #Turkey has not commented on rebel behavior yet.

I am not sure these are "Syrian militia" or "Syrian rebel" as SURA says – see first video above.

These marauding groups are Erdogan's neo-ottoman version of the Bashibazouk:

Cont. reading: Syria – Erdogan’s Bashibazouk Want To Ravage Afrin