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...
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...
Will Congress ever hold the CIA to account for this and other crimes by ordering a Church Committee-type investigation? In August 2017, The New York Times reported on the Trump administration’s shutting down what it termed “one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the CIA”—the $1...
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,...
On March 4, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, made a surprise visit to U.S. troops stationed in northeast Syria to the chagrin of the Syrian government, which said the visit was “illegal" and a “flagrant violation of the country’s sovereignty.” The Syrian Foreign Ministry said...
How do you sell the idea of a moderate rebellion without alienating the extremists who will do the actual fighting? When foreign powers started supporting armed groups to overthrow the Ba’athist government in Syria after 2011, they were unsure about who could, or should, take...
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...
In late June, Syrians experienced the worst attack on a Christian church since 1860 On June 29, 2025, I attended a church service at St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. St. Moses is an Antiochian church, also known as the Church of St. Peter, and harkens...
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...
During her confirmation hearing for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard was grilled about having been a purveyor of “Putin’s talking points” about the U.S. supporting al-Qaeda in Syria.   Of course, Gabbard responded, there can be no doubt about the veracity of such claims.    Thus, Gabbard cited the fact...