Mary Scully Reports

Syrian rescuers are here helping a man they pulled out from the rubble of a building destroyed today by Syrian & Russian bombers on Maarat al-Numan, Idlib. Syria & Russia have been engaged in nearly three months of indiscriminate & intense bombing along with a fierce ground offensive on popular markets & residential neighborhoods, not in attacking nests of terrorist militias. Hundreds of civilians have been killed, critically injured, or massively displaced with no place to go since the border to Turkey is sealed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors injuries & fatalities reports that 2,443 people have been killed since April 30th: 629 civilians, including 159 children; 869 pro-government fighters & troops as well as 945 insurgents; countless others have been wounded, some critically; many towns have been destroyed. At least 330,000 have been displaced & since the borders are sealed, they now live in squalid overcrowded tents near the border.

In the airstrikes today on Maarat al-Numan, a White Helmet rescuer searching for bodies under the rubble told Reuters, “Bodies are lying in the streets. May God take revenge on Putin & Assad for their crimes.” Tariq Ali, Fisk, Cockburn, Pilger, & the corrupted antiwar movement remain silent on the slaughter.

Stop the bombing of Idlib. Stop the slaughter. All foreign military forces & mercenaries out of Syria.

(Photo by Abdulaziz Ketaz / AFP)

Idlib: in the densely populated town of Maarat al-Numan, at least 25 civilians were killed & many critically injured today by Russian airstrikes. The silence, actually complicity of the corrupted antiwar movement in supporting this slaughter as a fight against ‘Salafi-jihadi terrorism’ damns it to complete irrelevancy. Once they fell into the trap of the Islamophobic ‘war on terror’ & the anti-Semitism that accompanies it, they made a Mephistophelean deal that does not separate them from the military-industrial complex they pretend to denounce.

When the Stalinists & Assadists who have run the antiwar movement into the ground say Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians is not a concern to anyone but Syrians & that only US ‘regime-change operations’ should concern us, they betray every principle of human decency, let alone political solidarity.

Stop the bombing of Idlib. Stop the slaughter.

(Photo by Abdulaziz Ketaz/AFP/Getty Images)

The genocide in Idlib: will Assad propagandists & their corrupt guppies continue to call this scene from Syrian & Russian bombing ‘staged’ & this woman a ‘crisis actor’? Will most of the so-called left continue to ignore this savagery because the election of two-bit hustler Bernie Sanders matters more to them?

https://www.facebook.com/100006207079113/videos/2346179998932213/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTcwNDExMjM3MzMzNDM/

There is concern in Kashmir about the deteriorating health of 89-year-old independence leader Syed Ali Geelani. Those outside Kashmir may not be so familiar with this extraordinary figure since he was permanently banned from FB in July 2016 for posting a tribute to the young militant killed by the Indian occupying army. That young militant’s name & image cannot be posted on FB without suspension although his funeral prayers were attended by several shifts of over 600,000 people.

Supporters of the Kashmiri freedom struggle are asked to keep Syed Ali Geelani in your thoughts & prayers.

(Photo of Syed Ali Geelani from Greater Kashmir)

These are children from the Rukban refugee camp which lies in an isolated area within the demilitarized zone between Jordan & Syria. Since 2014, it has been inhabited by more than 60,000 refugees displaced by bombing in other areas of Syria. Starting in June 2018, the Assad regime began implementing a siege & blockade of the camp, including closing all roads leading to the camp to prevent the entry of medical & food supplies. There is almost no medical care & starvation prevails.

Russia & Syria have opened two corridors to force camp residents to relocate to their home towns in regime-controlled areas but most are refusing despite the dire & deteriorating conditions because of fear for their safety. The Assad regime is trying to force residents to regime-help areas by tightening the blockade but they continue to resist & want instead to go to the opposition bastion in Idlib now under aerial bombardment by Russian & Syrian warplanes. Imagine being forced to make the choice of a war zone over a dictatorship which arrests, tortures, disappears, murders. The few thousand who have left the camp have done so primarily because of concerns about their children’s health under the barbarous siege.

Covering for the Assad dictatorship, fascist propagandist Eva Bartlett & Mint Press have been publishing articles calling Rukban a US concentration camp. The US has considerable war crimes to account for in Syria but the blockade of the Rukban refugee camp is entirely the war crimes of the Assad dictatorship & Russia.

End the blockade of Rukban. Stop the bombing of Idlib. All foreign military forces & mercenaries out of Syria.

(Photo from Simona Jeger on Twitter)

We should take a moment to honor “Anas Al-dyab” (a nom de guerre), a volunteer & media activist with the White Helmet rescue workers who was hit in three Russian air strikes this morning while documenting the bombing of Khan Shaikhoun. Anas had been injured several times previously in his years of work with the White Helmets documenting Syrian & Russian war crimes & was one of three witnesses who testified about the chemical attack on the city of Khan Shaikhoun in April 2017.

May he Rest In Peace. Our sincere condolences to his family, friends, & the White Helmets who are mourning his loss.

(Photos of Anas from White Helmets)

Idlib today under Syrian & Russian aerial bombardment, including with barrel bombs & incendiary weapons: or what the corrupted antiwar movement calls a just fight to defend the ‘self-determination of the Assad dictatorship’.

https://www.facebook.com/396145427809819/videos/1569415013193508/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTcwMzQxODg2Mzk5NzA/

I’m alone, walking among the atrocities,
guillotines blood-scorched,
gods stabbed at their altars,
dry wells piled up with bones,
a curfew on ghosts.
Who were these people?

~ Agha Shahid Ali

I still remember when i was in middle school and wrote my first story. My English teacher told me to throw it away. Not because of the language, but because of the content. The story was about Kashmir, because after all what could i write about if not my distorted home. Even now, when i think of something to write; a poem, a story, a random line, there’s Kashmir in it.

I grew up like others did; under the shadow of corpses, bullets and violence. In between all the blood and tears, there was a childhood, astute and frivolous, but worthy to cherish; even now when we still live under the malice of darkness, filled with more dead bodies, more bullets and more violence. Like Shahid, there lives a life inside everyone that craves to be expressed, with sentiments and emotions. And what better way to live and speak in a war zone other than to write?

Cover Photo credits; Adil Abass

PS; Only the cover photo is out yet.

A truly beautiful song for Palestine titled ‘Naci en Palestina’ by Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi, known as the voice of the Tunisian Arab Spring:

She said, “It’s a song derived from the Spanish “Naci en Alamo,” a lament of loss of home, of basic human rights, that I adapted to pay homage to the brave Palestinians, who for decades have endured every kind of deprivation while the world powers only look on from a one-sided stance.

“I hope to one day be able to play it in a free Palestine.”

Naci en Palestina

I have no place
I have no landscape
I have no homeland

With my finger I make fire
and with my heart I sing for you
my heart strings weep

I was born in Palestine
I was born in Palestine

I have no place
I have no landscape
I have no homeland

I have no place
I have no now
I have no country

With my finger I make fire
and with my heart I sing for you
my heart strings weep

I was born in Palestine
I was born in Palestine

I have no place
I have no now
I have no homeland

https://www.facebook.com/GenerationFreePalestine/videos/1759071324368221/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTcwMjk1ODEzNjQ3OTE/

Over the past nearly five years, Turkey has sealed off its border with Syria & ordered its border guards to do massive pushbacks against refugees, injuring & killing many Syrians trying to cross. Between 2011 & May 2018, Turkey had registered nearly four million Syrian refugees, most of whom were attempting to cross from Turkey into Greece for asylum in other European countries. In 2016, Angela Merkel, as delegate for the European Union, brokered a €6 billion deal with Erdogan to prevent refugees from moving on to Europe. As part of that unsavory pact, the EU accepted Turkey sealing its borders with Syria to prevent refugees from crossing.

In July 2018, Turkey stopped registering Syrian asylum seekers, making thousands more undocumented & subjecting them to arrest, incarceration, & deportation back to a war zone. Turkish police increased checkpoints & raids, arresting Syrians without documents or permits to travel outside cities where they are registered. Turkish interior minister Süleyman Soylu told reporters, “We will not take responsibility for a wave of migration that may follow attacks in Idlib.” This is a serious violation of clearly spelled out international law prohibiting refoulement–forcibly deporting refugees back to war zones.

Now it’s reported that thousands of Syrian refugees deported back to Syria are being surveilled, arrested, falsely accused of connections to opposition militias, incarcerated, tortured, or disappeared by the Assad regime. Assad promised reconciliation to returning refugees but according to human rights activists, at least a thousand returnees who thought they’d reconciled with the regime have disappeared out of the estimated 4,000 who returned.

Photo is Syrian refugees in Istanbul from 2014 since there is almost no published photojournalism from the current crisis.

(Photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)