Author: Steven Sahiounie

Forty-seven police members were wounded in clashes with demonstrators outside the Iranian consulate building in Iraq’s southern city of Najaf, Luay Yasiri, the governor of the Najaf province, told Al Arabiya on Thursday. “Forty-seven Najaf police members were wounded during the developments close to the Iranian consulate”, Yasiri said. The governor emphasized that firefighters were still working to extinguish the fire at the consulate building. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry has condemned the attack on the Iranian consulate, adding that the assault sought to harm relations between the two states. The police have been instructed to avoid using live ammunition for…

Sarah Abed, independent journalist and analyst NATO is in a state of division and instability with the US, Turkey, and France at odds, providing President Trump with the perfect opportunity to pull out of both NATO and the UN. Next week NATO will be holding its 70th anniversary summit in London. Just days before, Turkey is renewing its demand for NATO support for its military operations in northern Syria as well as the formal recognition of the Kurdish YPG as a terrorist organization in exchange for its support. Without these concessions, Turkey is refusing to back a NATO defense plan…

BY MARJORIE COHN Once again, the United States is complicit in an illegal coup d’état in Latin America, this time in Bolivia. On November 10, a right-wing, anti-Indigenous group seized power after the Bolivian military’s removal of President Evo Morales, who had declared victory in the October 20 presidential election. The United States’ fingerprints are all over the coup. Advisers from the U.S. Southern Command have been stationed on Bolivia’s border with Argentina, Ivanka Trump made a surprising visit to an Argentine province near the Bolivian border in September, the pro-U.S. Organization of American States (OAS) cast unfounded doubt on Morales’s…

By Larry Romanoff Preparing For Civil War? US authorities have for decades become increasingly prepared for mass civil disturbances resulting from government and corporate attacks on American society. We can recall that in the early 1980s the Hidden State launched its open war on the middle class by the savage FED-induced recession and the unilateral revocation of the social contract that had existed since 1946. At that time, the US government had already anticipated widespread public unrest, fully expecting mass protests and riots, and had made preparations to deal with them in the form of internment camps. In a real sense,…

By Arabi Souri Oil tankers and oil makeshift refineries in northeast Syria were bombed by ‘mysterious’ planes yesterday morning, SANA later stated it was done by the Syrian Army regional command. The statement conveyed Syrian Arab News Agency SANA was brief but very meaningful: “SANA’s correspondent in al-Hasakah quoted a field source as saying: after verifying that some Kurdish organizations in the Syrian Jazira region smuggle Syrian oil through tanks through Jarablus and Erbil region in northern Iraq to the Turkish regime, which they claim to be their main enemy, Groups of these tanks and oil refining centers were destroyed this…

Steven Sahiounie, political commentator Note: this is part 2 of a 2 part investigation of the FSA, Turkey and their connection to the murder of a Syrian Priest and his father. In part 1 of this investigation, we learned about Father Hovsep Bedoyan, the head of the Armenian Catholic community in Qamishli, and the priest’s father, Abraham Bedoyan, who was killed November 11, on the road leading from Qamishli to Deir Ez Zor, were they were headed to check on the rebuilding of the Forty Martyr’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Deir Ezzor, which was destroyed in 2014 by terrorists who…

Protesters in the Iraqi city of Najaf have stormed the Iranian consulate and burned the building to the ground. The destruction comes after two months of continuous protests in Iraq, during which 350 people have died. A crowd of protesters lit the building ablaze on Wednesday. Diplomatic staff within managed to escape beforehand, Reuters reported. After attempting to disperse the crowd, authorities in Najaf issued a curfew. Video footage shared on social media shows protesters cheering as the building went up in flames, smoke spewing out of the walled compound housing the consulate. Among their many grievances, the protesters claim…

Nearly a dozen African refugees have lost their lives and many more sustained injuries when artillery shelling targeted an area in Yemen’s mountainous northwestern province of Sa’ada, as Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies press ahead with their military aggression against the crisis-hit Arab country. A local source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arabic-language al-Masirah television network that the Saudi-led military coalition carried out heavy artillery shelling on al-Raqou area in the Monabbih district of Sa’ada province on Wednesday evening. The source added that the artillery shelling killed at least ten African refugees and injured 22 others…

By Tim Anderson Palestinians are calling for people internationally to take action against the companies complicit in Israel’s systematic demolition of Palestinian homes. This article focuses on British university partnerships with JCB, Caterpillar, HSBC and Volvo – four companies which are complicit in the home demolition policy. We also focus on six British universities: Sheffield Hallam University’s partnerships with JCB, Caterpillar and VolvoWarwick University’s partnership with JCBNMITE Hereford’s link to JCBCambridge University’s links to CaterpillarLoughborough University’s partnerships with CaterpillarUniversity College London Centre for Ethics and Law’s sponsorship from HSBC In addition 27 UK universities hold investments in HSBC (either directly or indirectly), five invest in Caterpillar and four invest in Volvo. Some of the information in this article…

Protests broke out in several provinces earlier in November over the government’s decision to suddenly increase the price of gasoline, with some of the rallies turning violent and leading to casualties among protesters and security forces. At least 8 people with alleged links to the CIA were detained by Iranian authorities amid the ongoing protests in the Middle Eastern country. “These elements had received CIA-funded training in various countries under the cover of becoming citizen-journalists,” the Iranian Intelligence Ministry was quoted as saying by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). “Six were arrested while attending the riots and carrying out (CIA)…