Recipient of the Serena Shim Award for uncompromised integrity in journalism, Vanessa Beeley gained an excellent reputation for first-hand reporting during the Syrian War (2011-2024) that challenged dominant media narratives. In December 2024, Beeley was forced to flee Syria after the overthrow of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who was replaced...
U.S. media accounts of the fall of the Assad dynasty in Syria failed to disclose that the U.S. had engaged in a thirteen-year-long operation that started with the Arab Spring and continued with the launching of Operation Timber Sycamore by the Obama administration, the largest covert operation...
As It Did with Castro in Cuba and Noriega in Panama, the “Mighty Wurlitzer” of U.S. Propaganda Defused Antiwar Sentiment by Painting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a Brutal Animal Who Had to Be Removed. In 1991, famed MIT linguist Noam Chomsky published a political pamphlet called Media Control: The...
Alawites to the grave; Christians to Beirut.-- War slogan of anti-Assad militants As this article was written, Syria experienced the worst days of violence since Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—formerly the al-Nusra Front of al-Qaeda—took power from President Bashar al-Assad. Friday, March 7, 2025, is the date it may be said a...
On Friday July 9 the UN Security Council unanimously agreed to a conditional one-year extension of the Turkey/Syria border crossing at Bab al Hawa. As part of the agreement, the UN Secretary General needs to report regularly on what is happening with the aid going into the Al Qaeda dominated...
United States warmakers have become so skilled at propaganda that not only can they wage a war of aggression without arousing protest; they can also compel liberals to denounce peace activists using language reminiscent of the McCarthy era. Take the case of Syria. The people and groups one would normally...
It may be no surprise that the “mainstream” corporate news media have turned into advertising agencies for U.S. government policy. But it still surprises that what the CIA called a compatible left—those on the left it deemed compatible with maintaining imperialist rule—celebrates another successful U.S. “regime change,” this time,...
Dirty war in Syria continues as media attention focuses elsewhere The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Israel secretly coordinates with the U.S, on many of the airstrikes it carries out in eastern Syria near the al-Tanf military base, a U.S. outpost near the Syria-Jordan border. Since 2017, the Israeli Air...
How Her Visit to War-Torn Syria Led a Dutch Socialist Reporter to Lose Her Faith in the West The picture below is a frame from a smug Western documentary on the Syrian War. I wrote the caption in 2020, after viewing the documentary, which was a piece of propaganda filled...
At the end of November, groups aligned with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) or the “Levant Liberation Committee” and previously known as the Al-Nusra Front, launched significant attacks on the Syrian government in the Idlib and Aleppo regions, taking part of the city of Aleppo. The Syrian Arab Army has mobilized to push back against HTS...