The development comes after Washington decided to withdraw US troops from northeastern Syria following the start of a Turkish military operation against Kurdish forces on October 9.
A column of US troops has returned to northeastern Syria’s al-Hasakah Province from Iraq, Syria TV reports.
The news outlet claimed that “the column of American occupation forces entered […] the province through the illegal al-Walid border crossing” and that the column, which includes “dozens of soldiers and military hardware” is covered by US combat helicopters.
Almost two weeks ago, Esper pledged that the US would withdraw all of its force of 1,000 soldiers from northeastern Syria, after Turkey launched its military operation in the area to drive Kurdish militias and remaining Daesh militants away from the border.
Russia Concerned Over US Military Returning to Northern Syria
Commenting on Esper’s statement that some US troops will remain in north-eastern Syria, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that the statement did not come as a surprise.
“What Washington does now – the capture and holding under its armed control of oil fields in Eastern Syria is, simply speaking, international state banditism,” he stressed, adding that Syrian oil reserves and other mineral resources belong solely to the Syrian Arab Republic, not to Daesh or to “American protectors from Daesh terrorists”.
He also said that “neither international law, nor the American legislation itself can justify the US troops’ goal to guard Syrian hydrocarbon reserves from Syria itself and its people.”
“We are very definitely worried that the signals from the White House may reflect the same attitude: to preserve the conditions for continuing multi-component pressure on the legitimate authorities in Damascus”, he pointed out, adding that “this is the moment we don’t agree and we can’t agree with the United States on the situation.”
He said that Moscow “would not like new complications” on the Syria issue, touting the work that “has been done at the level of the leadership of Russia and Turkey in recent days.”
“The results of the negotiations in Sochi should not tempt anyone to reformat or change something again,” Ryabkov emphasised. From Sputnik
The world as we know it is shaking with violence on a scale not seen in quite some time! It seems as if all of South America is erupting in violent protest with Ecuador and Chile being the latest cases. The same can be said for much of Africa and parts of Europe as well. The world at large is starting to wake up to all of the corruption and deception that surrounds them.
In essence people are sick and tired of the elites of the world telling us how we’re the ones killing the planet, as they travel in private jets and own mansions around the world. In tonight’s video I summarize the rising tide of rebellion and the state of the war in Syria.
I’m sharing this story from the Stamford Advocate with a heavy heart. Our President via the propaganda phrase “fake news” has brainwashed our civil servants into believing the press (and American public at large) are the enemy. We are to be harassed to no end and if we resist or protest then we are detained for hours and questioned about our patriotism. This won’t stay confined to the press. Soon your government profile will tell the agents not only who you are but what you believe in. If it goes against what the current narrative is YOU are in a lot of trouble.
It took a moment for Ben Watson to realize the officer was not joking.
Watson had just told the Customs and Border Protection staffer reviewing his passport that he works in journalism. Then, the seemingly routine Thursday encounter at Virginia’s Dulles International Airport got tense.
“So you write propaganda, right?” Watson recalled the CBP officer asking.
“No,” the news editor at national security site Defense One says he replied. He affirmed again that he was journalist.
The officer repeated his propaganda question, Watson said.
“With his tone, and he’s looking me in the eye – I very much realized this is not a joke,” Watson told The Washington Post on Friday. The exchange that ensued as Watson returned from reporting trip in Denmark – the editor says he got his passport back only after agreeing with the “propaganda” charge to move on – has sparked alarm about rising hostility to journalists as the Trump administration continues to attack the media as “fake news.”
Watson had heard a couple stories of similar encounters in the past, but says he did not realize until sharing his experience at Dulles just how many people in his field were reporting the same brand of harassment. U.S. airport border agents were at the center of several incidents that have raised reporters’s concerns this year.
“I’ve honestly never had a human attempt to provoke me like this before in my life,” Watson remembers telling his colleagues. “This behavior is totally normal now, I guess?”
Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that it is investigating the “alleged inappropriate conduct.”
“We hold our employees accountable to our core values of vigilance, integrity and service to country, and do not tolerate inappropriate comments or behavior by our employees,” the agency said.
Standards of conduct for the Department of Homeland Security, CBP’s parent agency, direct staff to “act impartially.”
An article from Defense One describes Watson’s full recollection of Thursday’s conversation. After the second alleged query by the CBP officer, Watson explained that he covers national security “with many of the same skills” he used as a public affairs officer in the Army.
“Some would argue that’s propaganda,” he added.
When the officer reiterated his question a third time, Watson says, he paused.
His wife had already circled the airport for 20 minutes. He figured he could get stuck for hours if he tried to call in the officer’s supervisor. So he gave in.
“For the purposes of expediting this conversation, yes,” he recalled telling the CBP officer.
The officer made Watson agree one more time before letting him through, Watson said. He says he’s filed a civil rights complaint with DHS.
“We are disappointed and concerned that any U.S. official would question a journalist, or any citizen, in this way,” Kevin Baron, Defense One’s executive editor, wrote to The Post.
Others in journalism circles and beyond were quick to point out chilling implications in the story.
Walter Shaub, an attorney who served as director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics until 2017, tweeted that incident should go to the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General office for review.
“A customs agent withholding the passport of a journalist until he agrees to say he writes “propaganda” is actionable misconduct, even in Trump’s America,” he said.
A growing list of journalists say they have been startled by government officials’s harassment in a country that prizes freedom of the press. The encounters are raising fears that hostile rhetoric led by President Donald Trump and his allies are damaging reporters’s ability to do their job unhindered.
This spring, the World Freedom Press Index called journalists’s treatment in the U.S. “problematic” for the first time in its 17 years of assessments – and singled out “President Trump’s anti-press rhetoric and continuing threats to journalists” as driving the deteriorating conditions. The U.S.’s spot in the ranking has fallen for the last three years.
Journalists have been reporting run-ins with border agents for years, too.
In 2016, the detention of a Canadian’s photographer for more than six hours on his way to cover protests in the U.S. made headlines. Ed Ou said airport officers took his cellphones away for search after he refused to unlock them, saying he needed to protect his sources. When Ou got the devices back, he suspected tampering and potential data-copying.
As Andrea Peterson reported in The Post:
If Ou had already been inside the U.S. border, law enforcement officers would have needed a warrant to search his smartphones to comply with a 2014 Supreme Court ruling. But the journalist learned the hard way that the same rules don’t apply at the border, where the government claims the right to search electronic devices without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing.
Several other journalists have described difficulties getting through airports in 2019.
In February, CBP apologized to a BuzzFeed journalist questioned at a New York airport about their news organization’s coverage of Trump and Robert Mueller III’s special counsel investigation. A few months later, a freelancer said he was detained by CBP officials for hours at an airport in Texas.
Then, in August, British journalist James Dyer described an “unsettling experience” as he flew into California to cover a Disney event. The film and TV writer said a CBP officer at Los Angeles International Airport called him a member of the “fake news media” and asked if he’d worked for CNN or MSNBC, two frequent targets of Trump’s criticism.
“He aggressively told me that journalists are liars and are attacking their democracy,” Dyer wrote in a viral tweet-thread.
He said he was allowed to move on after explaining that he was just trying to write about Star Wars.
CBP’s response at the time was much like its statement on Thursday’s incident.
“Inappropriate comments or behavior are not tolerated, and do not reflect our values of vigilance, integrity and professionalism,” the agency said.
CBP did not address broader concerns about its officers’s treatment of journalists in its Friday statement on the Dulles Airport incident.
What makes anyone think that this impeachment process is going anywhere meaningful? This whole process is by design and it’s designed to keep everyone distracted and divided so the American people don’t see who their enemies truly are.
This fiasco is nothing more than criminals investigating criminals while wasting our tax dollars and resources. It will end up going nowhere just as the Mueller investigation went nowhere. That was nothing more than a smoke screen and another cover up operation to keep the real shenanigans from ever going public. Once again criminals investigating criminals.
Even after all of the corruption that has been thrown right in American’s faces, the comments I see on social media show me that for the most part no one has learned a darn thing. It’s amazing to me to see that but the delusion that the media has put up is stronger than I thought. Even born again believers are blind to what’s going on around them as I speak to them daily. If I bring it up I get the “here he goes again” look.
Everyone wants to believe that everything will go back to the way it was if we just elect the right people to office. People want to believe we can still fix everything from the top down. Where has trusting the next slick politician brought us? To the very brink of ruin. Psalm 146:3 says ” Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. ” That’s what the USA has done and now we reaping what we’ve sown. A nation that’s not even CLOSE to being under God.
As believers in Jesus Christ we must seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33) and His righteousness but then we must pray for wisdom and discernment as well. We must be “wise as serpents but harmless as doves” Matthew 10:16 as Jesus instructed the disciples. Those instructions apply to us in the same way, especially now as we enter the Great Tribulation.
So pray for one another and keep God’s word close at hand. Ignore this political theater as most of it is just more distraction and lies. Don’t let the world suck you into arguments with your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ! Don’t let these criminals divide us any further! God didn’t send Donald Trump to save America, Trump is here to finish it off! Trust in God and not men! ” It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.” Psalm 118:8.
The only one coming to save you is Jesus Christ. Ask Him to be your Lord and Savior today while you still can. for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:13
Folks if you haven’t done so already, the time to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior is NOW! The entire world sits on the brink of war not only in China but India/Pakistan, Ukraine/Russia and many wars raging in Yemen, Africa and on it goes. This will continue to increase in frequency and intensity quite a bit over the next few weeks. Please stay prayed up and Prepped up and if you don’t know Jesus NOW is the time!
Trade and currency wars can lead to a hot one fast!
From Zerohedge…Update 2: – China’s central bank has confirmed that it is, indeed, on, saying that it is able to keep the yuan exchange rate at a reasonable and balanced level – whatever that means – while acknowledging that the Yuan plunging beyond 7 per dollar is due to market supply and demand, trade protectionism and expectations on additional tariffs on Chinese goods.
Meanwhile, resorting to its old, tired and worn out tricks, Dow Jones reports that the PBOC will crack down on short-term Yuan speculation, and anchor market expectations.
Which is great… if only the PBOC didn’t say exactly the same back in May, when it warned currenct traders that those “shorting the yuan will inevitably suffer from a huge loss.“
Three months later, it’s currency traders 1 – Beijing 0.
* * *
Update 1 – China is firing all the big guns tonight, because just an hour after Beijing effectively devalued the yuan, when it launched the latest currency war with the US, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese government has asked its state-owned enterprises “to suspend imports of U.S. agricultural products after President Donald Trump ratcheted up trade tensions with the Asian nation last week.”
China’s state-run agricultural firms have now stopped buying American farm goods, and are waiting to see how trade talks progress.
Translation: trade talks, even the fake kind, is now over, dead and buried, and the only question is how Trump will react.
There are reports that I’m trying to confirm (or get a denial) on an American sub that was sunk off of the Alaskan coast. If this is true then both sides (USA and Russia) are downplaying the incident, quite possibly to avoid WW3. I will keep my eyes open to see what develops. Prayed up and prepped up, Revelation 3:3.
