The transformation of a small, strategic wedge of land between the Syrian, Israeli, Jordanian and Iraqi borders is going forward apace without arousing much interest - even in Israel, where it should cause the most concern


On Wednesday, Aug. 8, two Russian army companies of Ingushet troops from the northern Caucasus set up a command post in the Syrian village of Tal al-Shahm, 13km from Israel’s Golan border. Its commander, Col. Alexei Kozin, has thus taken charge of Syria’s border with Israel. 

This border area was designated as one of four de-escalation zones agreed on between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at their meeting in Hamburg on July 7.

According to understandings reached between Washington, Moscow and Jerusalem, the UN separation force (UNDOF) will return to its Fawar base opposite Quneitra as a buffer between IDF and Russian forces. Its past history in this role between IDF and Syrian forces was never exactly impressive.


A piece of diplomacy consistent with this process was contributed by Russian foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday, Aug. 11. It was an assurance that Russia would take into account Israel’s interests in Jerusalem in the framework of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.


To see how these disparate elements fill out the whole picture, we turn 70km east from Quneitra on the Syria Golan to the battles ongoing at Sweida in southeastern Syria opposite the Jordanian and Iraqi borders. Russian troops moved into the key town of Daraa, abutting on the Jordanian border on July 13. Like in Quneitra, a month later, they set up command posts to monitor the first de-escalation or ceasefire zone to be set up under the Hamburg accord.





Russian troops moved into Quneitra, the Syrian army and Hizballah launched a major offensive in Sweida province. Three days later, by Saturday, they had forced the local rebel forces to retreat into Jordan and seized 57km of Syria’s southern frontier with the Hashemite Kingdom.

Neither the Russians nor the American interfered with the Syrian-Hizballah-led push...Local US-backed Syrian rebel groups disbanded without a shot, went over to the Syrian government side and handed in their US-supplied weapons to Syrian army and Hizballah fighters.

The Syrian rebel movement is disintegrating at an alarming rate following the “Jubeir earthquake,” as it has become known - another momentous event which Western and Israeli front pages have chosen to ignore.

Last week, Saudi Foreign Mniser Adel al-Jubeir reportedly informed a delegation of Syrian opposition leaders invited to Riyadh that his government was pulling its support from their fighting militias, in the wake of President Trump’s decision to reduce US military action in Syria solely to the war on ISIS - and therefore end US resistance to the Assad regime.

Saudi officials did not deny the report, only termed it “inaccurate.”
But meanwhile, the decisions by Riyadh and Washington to abandon the anti-Assad cause spread like wildfire among Syrian rebel groups. Many responded by laying down their arms and surrendering.


The fate of the rebel movement after six years of cruel warfare against the dictator Bashar Assad should be an object lesson to other recipients of American and Russian promises. 

Therefore, Lavrov’s pledge to take Israel’s interests in Jerusalem into account should be taken with a pinch of salt. He was most likely shooting a line to allay Israeli skepticism about the prospect of Russian troops keeping Syrian, Iranian and Hizballah troops at bay from its northern border - even through this pledge was underwritten by Washington.

Instead of taking the two powers at their word, Israel need only watch what is going on in the last few hours just across the border at Sweida, to appreciate the value of such promises.


Sooner or later, the Sweida model will be replicated in Quneitra. Neither the Russian troops nor UN peacekeepers will fight to stop it happening. By then, the Syrian rebel groups, in whose support Israel invested for years as a buffer against hostile Syrian, Iranian and Hizballah forces, are already falling apart. Disowned by their Saudi backers, they are being crushed by the US-Russian “de-escalation” steamroller. Israel like Jordan will soon find three hostile forces sitting pretty just across its border, far too close for safety.





‘Historic’ Baal arch condemned as ‘ancient evil manifesting itself’



It’s a replica of a Roman triumphal arch originally built in Palmyra, Syria. Destroyed by the terrorist group ISIS during the current Syrian Civil War, the Institute for Digital Archaeology used 3-D printing to rebuild the arch. Since then, the arch has been on a kind of world tour, appearing near global summits and in important cities.

But the arch isn’t just a Roman ruin. It was originally an arch for the Temple of Baal, a terrible pagan god repeatedly mentioned in the Old Testament. The rites of Baal were marked by child sacrifice and ritual prostitution. And many Christians find it strange that such a god keeps being honored or invoked repeatedly at global summits.


“When looking at this phenomenon, we have to understand the nature of the god involved,” he explained. “Baal was the god that Israel turned to after it turned away from the God of Scripture. He was the substitute god, the replacement god, the anti-God god – the god of their turning away, their fall. Baal was the god of the apostasy.”

“We are now witnessing a massive apostasy taking place all over Western civilization, a large scale falling away from the God of Scripture,” he said. “So to see the sign of Baal manifesting throughout the modern world is stunning. It is the sign of a civilization rapidly turning away from its faith and falling away from the knowledge of God.”

Indeed, some see the return of the arch of Baal not just as a harbinger or as a sign but as something with a deliberately sinister purpose. Rabbi Daniel Asore, a member of the nascent Sanhedrin, told Breaking Israel News he believes the arch of Baal is part of a sinister agenda to draw people away from the God of the Bible.

“The arch is the first step in that process, awakening an interest in people to paganism and as a focal point for world leaders to gather around,” he claimed in the publication.
Pastor Carl Gallups, author of the end times examination “When The Lion Roars,” also sees significance in the arch’s “victory tour.”

“I believe there is a definite spiritual pattern developing before our eyes and there is a connection here that much of the world may be missing,” he told WND. “There is no coincidence in the specific locations chosen for the Baal symbol to make its appearances. 
“The spirit of Antichrist and the coming one-world government concept is stronger than at any other time in history,” the pastor said. “We are on the edge of the days of Noah and Lot that Jesus proclaimed would accompany the time of His return.
To some, the whole episode may seem overblown. After all, it’s not a literal temple to Baal but merely a reconstruction. However, Jan Markell of Olive Tree Ministries believes the arch should be taken seriously. More importantly, she argues there are indeed powerful forces knowingly using occult symbolism.
“I see the Arch of Palmyra as a harbinger of defiance and I am concerned that it is not a harbinger of anything good,” she told WND. “Ancient Israel turned to Baal and paganism and drove God out of its midst. There is increasing defiance and God-hatred all around the world. There is a rise of the dark side – of blatant occultism.” 







In the United States «conspiracy theory» is the name given to explanations that differ from those that serve the ruling oligarchy, the establishment or whatever we want to call those who set and control the agendas and the explanations that support the agendas.
The explanations imposed on us by the ruling class are themselves conspiracy theories. Moreover, they are conspiracy theories designed to hide the real conspiracy that our rulers are operating.
The CIA introduced the term «conspiracy theory» into public discourse as part of its action plan to discredit skeptics of the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Any explanation other than the one handed down was debunked as a conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy theories are the backbone of US foreign policy. For example, the George W. Bush regime was active in a conspiracy against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. The Bush regime created fake evidence of Iraqi «weapons of mass destruction», sold the false story to a gullible world and used it to destroy Iraq and murder its leader. Similarly, Gaddafi was a victim of an Obama/Hillary conspiracy to destroy Libya and murder Gaddafi. Assad of Syria and Iran were slated for the same treatment until the Russians intervened.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NPR, and the rest of the presstitutes are quick to debunk as conspiracy theories all explanations that differ from the explanations of the ruling interests that they serve.

Yet, as I write and for some nine months to date, the presstitute media has been promoting the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was involved in a conspiracy with the president of Russia and Russian intelligence services to hack the US presidential election and place Trump, a Russian agent, in the White House. 
This conspiracy theory has no evidence whatsoever. It doesn’t need evidence, because it serves the interests of the military/security complex, the Democratic Party, the neoconservatives, and permits the presstitutes to show lavish devotion to their masters. By endless repetition a lie becomes truth.
There is a conspiracy, and it is against the American people. Their jobs have been offshored in order to enrich the already rich. They have been forced into debt in a futile effort to maintain their living standards. Their effort to stem their decline by electing a president who spoke for them is being subverted before their eyes by an utterly corrupt media and ruling class.
Sooner or later it will dawn on them that there is nothing they can do but violently revolt. Most likely, by the time they reach this conclusion it will be too late.
For the gullible and naive who have been brainwashed into believing that any explanation that differs from the officially-blessed one is a conspiracy theory, there are available online long lists of government conspiracies that succeeded in deceiving the people in order that the governments could achieve agendas that the people would have rejected.
If liberty continues to exist on earth, it will not be in the Western world. It will be in Russia and China, countries that emerged out of the opposite and know the value of liberty, and it will be in those South American countries, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia that fight for their sovereignty against American oppression.
Indeed, as historians unconcerned with their careers are beginning to write, the primary lesson in history is that governments deceive their peoples.
Everywhere in the Western world, government is a conspiracy against the people.