Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
- December 23 – U.S. Media Bias Creates False Pictures Of Russia
Confirms our take:
For Wall Street, Russia Has Become ‘Bulletproof’ – Forbes
>“They’ve made themselves bulletproof,” says James Barrineau, co-head of emerging-market debt for Schroders Investment in New York. “They can pay off all their foreign debts with their central bank reserves. Plus, they’re cutting interest rates. The currency is very stable. And they have room on the fiscal side to spend on their economy.”<
- December 27 – Turkey's Military Intervention In Libya Might Help Syria
Related:
MOHAMMED HASSAN @MHJournalist – 18:42 UTC · Dec 28, 2019
A video shows members of the #Syrian_National_Army mercenaries fighting in #Libya in conjunction with the advance of the #Syrian army forces over the city of #Maarat_al_Numan and its countryside in #Idlib
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Other issues:
Russia has received a lot of criticism over the bombing of alleged 'hospitals' in Syria which were registered on a UN sponsored list. The Russian military argued that the positions on the UN list were not of real hospitals but of ammunition depots or command centers of the Jihadis. After it had published dozens of articles bashing Russia's campaign the New York Times has finally admitted that Russia was right:
The U.N. Tried to Save Hospitals in Syria. It Didn’t Work.
United Nations officials only recently created a unit to verify locations provided by relief groups that managed the exempt sites, some of which had been submitted incorrectly, The Times found. Such instances of misinformation give credibility to Russian criticisms that the system cannot be trusted and is vulnerable to misuse.
…
The groups give locations of their own choosing to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the agency that runs the system.A document prepared by the agency warned that participation in the system “does not guarantee” the safety of the sites or their personnel. The document also stated that the United Nations would not verify information provided by participating groups.
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While investigating an airstrike in November, The Times discovered that a relief group had provided coordinates for its health center that were around 240 meters away. When another hospital was bombed in May, The Times found that the coordinates submitted by its supporting organization pointed to an unrelated structure around 765 meters north.After questions from The Times prompted the organization to review its deconfliction list, a staff member discovered that it had provided the United Nations with incorrect locations for 14 of its 19 deconflicted sites. The original locations had been logged by a pharmacist. The list had been with the United Nations humanitarian agency for eight months, and no one had contacted the organization to correct the locations, a member of the organization’s staff said.
Use as open thread …