Information Clearing House

Another humanitarian catastrophe may be just hours away at Kobani. The latter is the Syrian Kurdish town on the border with Turkey that is now surrounded by ISIS tanks and is being pounded day after day by ISIS heavy artillery. Already this lethal phalanx, which fuses 21st century American technology and equipment with 12th century religious fanaticism, has rolled through dozens of Kurdish villages and towns in the region around Kobani, sending 180,000 refugees fleeing for their lives across the border. In Almaya, a suburb north of Damascus, controlling the road to Lebanon, ISIS just penetrated deep enough to OSS the road, stabilized their positions, then withdrew, leaving about 250 fighters kobani, behind. It took 4 Syrian Battalions 4 months to clear the suburb and reopen the road. Suicide tactics will likely continue, but they become less effective when they are known and anticipated. On Syria he came close to ruling out Labour backing for air strikes. The situation in Syria is somewhat different,” he said. Miliband pointed out that unlike Iraq, Syria is not asking for intervention. He said he would be calling for a UN resolution on air strikes in Syria. Air strikes alone will not defeat Isis,” Miliband said. We're doing some maintenance right now. You can still read comments, but please come back later to add your own. I wonder if someone promised them they would go to some women's heaven where they would not have to be one of some Muslim man's forty virgins, if they did this? One man's Heaven is another woman's Hell. I believe that is a large kobani part of what this war is about - human slavery, slavery of women. And, money, of course. But, then, slavery is money. I have great sympathy and support for those men and women who are resisting ISIS. May they find success. The brief letter did not mention the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which rested on erroneous claims of weapons of mass destruction and arguably contributed to its current instability, but stresses instead the country's right to self-defence in the face of this new threat. Just as in Washington, the president has ducked the trickier task of winning a resolution for war in favour of a more palatable vote to contain the Islamic State through indirect means. America is not the World's Police. That is the thought and/or wish of the conservative mindset. Let NATO handle it. We cannot afford to fight their Wars. The huge War for Profit Machine that Bush built is still War Mongering. kobani It wants constant Wars to feed our War Machine. All the conservative private security firms want to keep making their millions. The YPG is the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish PYD, not the Syrian Turkish PKK. There have been precious few sources of information about this critical fight anywhere in the US. I recently listened to Vijay Prashad being interviewed on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now' where he spoke of this struggle that has largely been ignored. The left and broader progressive movement in the US needs to get its act together and make the shift from helpless observer to active solidarity. What the hell is really going on in Syria? What are we not hearing? There are shady forces at play here and I'll warrant that the darkest part is us - or at least is being done in our name, paid for by us. Hence all the propaganda. About all I know for sure is that ISIS is something recently made up and that the only time the truth about such life-and-death struggles is kept from us is when we are the bad guys. changing now that a rightwing Russia has replaced the Soviet Union, China is more nationalist/capitalist/imperialist than communist, and the very rightwing Islamic extremists are playing such a kobani big role in many parts of the world. The Cold War has been over for a quarter century now and many of the dogmatic Cold Warriors in our Govt. apparatus have retired or are retiring, as well.