SYRIA UPDATE

Once again, Aleppo castle opens doors, becomes destination for visitors

On the 2nd anniversary of the liberation of Aleppo city from terrorism and the restoration of security and stability to it, the castle opens its doors to visitors, and once again become a destination for the people of the city and other cities.

https://www.sana.sy/en/?p=154046

Seminar at UN on activities of White Helmets in Syria

Al-Jaafari said that Syria sent a total of 750 letters to the UN Secretary General , Head of the UN Security Council, the Security Council subcommittees on counter-terrorism and other international bodies since 2011, all of which are related with the activities and crimes of terrorist groups.

Al-Jaafari pointed out to the negative role of the Western media outlets in misleading the Western public opinion by presenting the White Helmets as a humanitarian organization which carries out civil defense work, while the truth is it represents the media arm for Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist organization.

For his part, Nebenzia said that the Western media outlets present the White Helmets terrorist members as humanitarian heroes, poiting out to the Western media outlets’ attempts to cover up the reality of this terrorist organization supported by some Western countries.

https://www.sana.sy/en/?p=154005

Syria’s Elite Tiger Forces To Be Deployed In Euphrates Valley

According to pro-government activists, the Tiger Forces’ new mission will be countering the threat of the remaining ISIS fighters in the Homs desert, which lays between the western bank of the Euphrates River and the eastern Homs countryside. The force may launch a military operation in the desert in the upcoming few weeks.

https://southfront.org/syrias-elite-tiger-forces-to-be-deployed-in-euphrates-valley/

SDF Spokesperson: We Don’t Mind If Assad Government Returns To Manbij

“We are a part of Syria and we don’t call for separatism, but we want agreement on self-administration as part of free Syria to be reached,” Ahmad said, when asked by the Russian news agency if Manbij could be handed over to Damascus. “Today our efforts are aimed at protecting the region and warding danger away from it,” Ahmad said.

https://southfront.org/sdf-spokesperson-we-dont-mind-assad-government-return-to-manbij/

ISIS Launches Counter-Attack In Hajin Amid Supposed U.S. Forces Withdrawal

“Heavy clashes are taking place there, only 35% percent from Hajin is liberated by our forces,” Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the SDF, said on Twitter.

Bali blamed the U.S. decision to withdraw its forces from Syria for the high morale of ISIS fighters. However, he said later that US-led coalition warplanes are supporting the SDF and targeting the terrorist group’s forces.

“We think that ISIS will keep launching attacks in the future, everybody should be aware that ISIS is still strong,” the SDF spokesman added.

NOTE: Headline should be Cabal engineers ISIS attack with SDF proxy to claim they are still relevant

https://southfront.org/isis-launches-counter-attack-in-hajin-amid-supposed-u-s-forces-withdrawal/

Turkey To Delay Operation Against YPG East Of Euphrates: Erdogan

The phone call we made with [US President] Trump, as well as the contacts of our diplomatic and security units, and the statements made by the American side led us to wait for a while [for an operation],” Erdogan stated, according to the state-run media. “Of course this is not an open ended waiting process.”

Erdogan added that Ankara does have “no eyes” on Syria’s territory, but noted that Turkey’s “position against terrorist attacks targeting us from Syria is clear.”

https://southfront.org/turkey-to-delay-operation-against-ypg-east-of-euphrates-syria/

China Leapfrogs the U.S. in 5G Internet

In a Dec. 14 op-ed for the Washington Post, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell declared that our present tangle with China is not a trade war but a tech war. If China's flagship telecom equipment company Huawei gets the jump on the rollout of 5G internet, Morell said, China will have the capacity to monitor communications, sabotage industrial systems, and "will have a significant head start economically, in cybersecurity and in signals intelligence – i.e., in promoting its economy, protecting its secrets and stealing those of its rivals."

That's the least of our problems.

When U.S. intelligence officials argue against the use of Huawei equipment on security grounds, they are in effect asking our allies to buy substitutes from Nokia, in neutral Finland. Just how secure do they expect that to be? No American company still competes in that market. Cisco used to, but abandoned manufacturing in favor of more profitable, less capital-intensive software businesses.

For the past seven years, Huawei executives have traveled the world preaching the benefits of a broadband "ecosystem" – high-speed connectivity for commerce, finance, as well as manufacturing and transportation. They put on trade show extravaganzas to showcase their plans and loaded their website with details. Fifth-generation Internet, or 5G, will let you download a movie in a few seconds. It will also allow manufacturers to turn every machine, appliance, and vehicle into a "smart" tool through the so-called "Internet of things."

At the beginning of 2018, a National Security Council memo warned: “We are losing. Whoever leads in technology and market share for 5G deployment will have a tremendous advantage towards [ . . .] commanding the heights of the information domain,” the Financial Times reported. That is correct, but it's six years behind the curve. The U.S. revved up a campaign to dissuade its allies from using Huawei equipment well after the Chinese firm positioned itself as the dominant equipment supplier. The U.S. nearly shut down the Chinese handset maker ZTE by banning export of the Qualcomm chips that power its smartphones, in retaliation for ZTE's violation of sanctions against Iran (eventually ZTE paid a multi-billion dollar fine and accepted tight controls). We can't do that to Huawei. After the ZTE business, Huawei started a crash program to make itself self-sufficient in high-performance chipsets. Its Kirin chipset designed by its design subsidiary Isilicon and manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor can do whatever Qualcomm can do.

American officials were in Berlin last week insisting that Germany keep Huawei equipment out of its networks. Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, which have close intelligence ties to the U.S., acceded to the American request. So far, Germany has brushed off American demands. Earlier today, China Daily reported that Huawei was conducting business as usual in Europe:

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/china-leapfrogs-the-us-in-5g-internet/

Deep State Never Stops – Mueller’s Office Will Not Be Affected by Govt Shutdown

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/12/deep-state-never-stops-muellers-office-will-not-be-affected-by-govt-shutdown/

SHUTDOWN THE GOV

ARREST THEM ALL

Israeli Gov’t Pressures US Company Via Third Party to Ban BDS From Fundraising

The Israeli government used a third-party law firm to pressure an American fundraising site to freeze a number of accounts used by leaders of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The US-based fundraising platform DonorBox received a complaint from Shurat HaDin, an "Israeli advocacy group that files lawsuits around the world against Israel's foes," Al Jazeera reports.

The complaint included information provided by Israel's anti-BDS team in the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. In response, DonorBox temporarily banned a string of accounts associated with the international campaign.

"This decision does not mean that we consider BDS to be a nefarious organization. We are merely reviewing evidence following this complaint. Their donation forms were closed as a precautionary measure," DonorBox said in a statement.

The subject of the complaint was the BDS activists' link to terrorist organizations, noting that the BDS coalition includes the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine — a group comprising all major Palestinian factions. Three of its members, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), are designated as terrorist groups by the United States.

Islamic Jihad was started in 1981 and considers militancy the only solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, although it also runs civil institutions. PFLP is a Marxist-Leninist organization that seeks a one-state, Arab-run government in Israel and Palestine with equal rights for Jews. Hamas is the ruling party in the Gaza strip.

Due to political differences between the many Palestinian political and religious factions, the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine rarely meets, according to Al Jazeera.

"We have no intention to allow terrorist organizations and their accomplices to raise money online without interference," Shurat HaDin President Nitsana Darshan-Leitner said Friday. "Fundraising is oxygen to terrorists; we will use every legal way possible to choke off every platform they use to raise funds. We hope that our successful action against DonorBox will send a clear warning to all online fundraising platforms on the internet and will ensure that these funds are not used to finance terrorism."

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201812211070910485-Israeli-Govt-Pressures-Ban-BDS-Fundraising/

Proposing a Code of Ethics for K-12 public school teachers.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center has completed a comprehensive update and reorganization of StopK12Indoctrination.org, a website devoted to halting indoctrination in America’s public schools. The site exposes instances of classroom and curricular indoctrination across the United States and seeks to work with parents and legislators to enact a Code of Ethics for K-12 Public School Teachers in their states.

Our public schools have traditionally been the cornerstone of our country's democratic values, but no longer. As recent events documented on StopK12Indoctrination.org reveal, no age group and no corner of our K-12 classrooms are immune from the left's ideological aggression.

• At the Edina School District in Edina, Minnesota, all employees, even bus drivers, must take "Equity and Racial Justice Training" instructing them that "dismantling white privilege" is at the core of the district's mission. They must acknowledge their racial guilt, and embrace the district's "equity" ideology.

• To enhance "cultural diversity," students at Maryland's La Plata High School were ordered to copy the Islamic creed "Shahada" which states in part, "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." One worksheet distributed by the school stated, "Most Muslims' faith is stronger than the average Christian."

• An Ohio middle school teacher assigned his students to rank 12 individuals, described by race, profession, gender, religion and sexuality, by who is most deserving to survive an apocalypse on Earth. The potential survivors included “a racist armed police officer who is accused of using excessive force”; “a militant African-American medical student”; “a 21-year-old female Muslim international student”; and “a homosexual male professional athlete.”

• Public high schools in Newton, Massachusetts were sued by a coalition of parents after they discovered that their children had been given lessons from the Arab World Studies Notebook, a textbook which is funded by a Saudi Arabian oil company which also funds the terrorist groups Hamas and Al-Qaeda. This textbook falsely claims that there is a “Hollywood Jewish conspiracy” to portray Arabs negatively in film and that Jerusalem is “Palestine’s capital.”

• Maurice Sendak Community School, a public school located in Brooklyn, New York, hosted a “Drag Queen Story Hour” for first grade students during which adult males dressed as women read books to students. A teacher at the school commented, “During our debrief …students were preaching the incredible lessons they had learned, like ‘it’s OK to be different,’ and ‘there’s no such thing as “boy” and “girl” things.’”

These are just a few of the outrageous instances of indoctrination—affecting students as young as five years old—which are documented on StopK12Indoctrination.org.

The centerpiece of the website is the Code of Ethics for K-12 Teachers, a legislative proposal that would forbid public school teachers from using their classrooms for political, ideological, or religious advocacy. Teachers in violation of the Code would be subject to penalties such as probation, suspension and loss of their teaching licenses.

A new feature of the website solicits volunteers to call or email their state legislators to encourage them to introduce legislation adopting the Code of Ethics in their states. Legislators in Virginia have already taken up this challenge, and we expect many more to follow.

The site also includes three recent pamphlets published by the Freedom Center and devoted to the crisis in our nation’s schools: Leftist Indoctrination in Our K-12 Public Schools, Shame of the Schools: How the Democrats Have Destroyed Public Education in the Inner Cities, and Readin’, Writin’, and Jihadin’: The Islamization of American Public Schools.

Visitors to the site may also sign-up to receive weekly email newsletters highlighting the latest examples of the left’s incursion into our children’s classrooms or report instances of indoctrination in their own schools.

“Our public schools have been transformed into indoctrination and recruitment centers for the political left,” explained David Horowitz, founder of the Freedom Center. “It is long past time that we addressed this perversion of our educational system. It is a violation of the trust we have traditionally placed in the hands of the nation’s teachers, and it needs to be remedied by a Code of Ethics that restores traditional non-partisan attitudes to our classrooms.”

Horowitz continued: “The Code of Ethics for K-12 Teachers enforces and restores the traditional approach to a democratic education, which is that children are in school to be taught how to think, not – as in authoritarian and totalitarian societies – to be told what to think.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272306/campaign-halt-classroom-indoctrination-gets-boost-sara-dogan

“The War on Terrorism” is “Fake”: On the Need for Mass Social Mobilizations and Transformative Changes

Myriad agencies, funded by Western governments, foundations, and NATO, continue to erect o barriers to freedoms of thought and expression in the West’s post-democratic, New Fascist, societies.

The totalitarianism implicit in these restrictions means that colonial media is monochromatic, tightly framed, and ubiquitous. There is no “free exchange” of ideas, a necessary foundation of democratic societies. Hence, messaging that promotes wars of aggression, and dysfunctional economic ideologies remains ascendant in the public sphere.

The public is led to believe that never-ending criminal wars and vast outflows of public monies to the military industrial complex are normal and necessary. Similarly, publicly bailed-out, predatory, diseconomies are presented as the only viable economic models. Socially-oriented, (democratic) political economies, we are told, “do not work”. The public remains unaware that Empire wages criminal economic and “kinetic”, terrorist-supporting warfare, against societies that seek to determine their own political economies. Socially-oriented political-economies in countries such as Libya, Iraq, Syria, Nicaragua, Venezuela and on and on, are constantly under attack, and not allowed to thrive. Empire targets these countries criminally, aggressively, and perpetually.

The covert barriers which create bounded, framed restrictions on freedoms of expression create a “chilling effect” that promotes self-censorship, and disappears evidence-based truths which would otherwise counter-balance narratives from media conglomerates, all of which are unduly impacted, and subservient to “establishment” pressures from Big Oil, Banking, Military Industrial Complex, Big Pharmaceutical, and other monopolies.

Thought leaders who step outside of the confines of Establishment narratives are targeted. The University of Sydney’s warrantless suspension of best-selling author and Senior lecturer, Prof. Tim Anderson[1], from his teaching duties, is a case in point. Not only does his suspension create a “chilling effect”, and a culture of academic self-censorship, but it also restricts the amount of evidence-based research that reaches the public arena.

Military/Intelligence fronts, such as the Integrity Initiative[2]– well-funded by state agencies and even NATO[3]– add to the oppression, not only by targeting individuals for smear campaigns, but also by guaranteeing a non-stop flow of war propaganda.

Time and again, policymakers use Private Intelligence Contractors (PICS) as sources of fake intelligence that they wrap around previously planned policies, to give an air of credibility to war propaganda. Have we forgotten already the lies used to justify the West’s supremely criminal destruction of Iraq? All of the post-9/11 wars (and beyond) were sold to gullible domestic populations by means of well-planned strategies of deception.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/on-the-need-for-social-unrest-mass-mobilizations-and-transformative-changes/5663550

Dozens wounded as Sudan protests reach Khartoum

ozens of protesters have been wounded in demonstrations across Sudan, including the capital Khartoum, over rising food prices and economic mismanagement.

Thousands of people across the country took to the streets after Friday prayers to demonstrate against the government’s economic policies and called for President Omar Al-Bashir to step down. Today’s protests, organised under the hashtag “The cities of Sudan rise”, are the culmination of numerous rallies that have taken place throughout the week, resulting in a state of emergency being declared in several cities and schools closing until further notice.

In a bid to break up demonstrations, the military has been deployed in several neighbourhoods, with security forces firing tear gas and bullets to disperse protesters. Yesterday, some eight civilians were killed – six in eastern city of Al-Qadarif and two more in the northern Nile River state – most of whom were students.

However there have also been reports of soldiers refusing to fire on civilians, instead standing down and allowing protests to continue.

A curfew has been implemented in various provinces, with restrictions on social media in some cities forcing users to turn to virtual private networks to share news on Twitter and Facebook.

In Khartoum today, protesters burned tyres and chanted slogans calling for the “fall of the regime”, a mantra associated with the Arab Spring in 2011. In a show of transnational unity, some demonstrators yesterday also carried the Syrian revolutionary flag, condemning the visit of Al-Bashir to Damascus earlier this week.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20181221-dozens-wounded-as-sudan-protests-reach-khartoum/

>>4412640

Hoping no, shut it down