Author: Steven Sahiounie

By Sarah Abed A new law passed on Monday in California and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom now allows police officers to only use lethal force when it is “necessary” in response to a threat instead of the existing “reasonable” standard. Assembly bill 392 is being dubbed as one of the most restrictive laws in the country and will take effect in January. Under the stricter standards, according to the abstract of law published online, officers can only use lethal force as a last resort to “defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or another person”. The…

Several explosions were heard in the sky over the Syrian Capital of Damascus on Saturday night, a correspondent reported. Several explosions over Damascus were reported by a correspondent around 11:20 pm (8:20 pm Saturday GMT) local time. Minutes later SANA agency reported that Syrian air defences were repelling ‘enemy targets’ over the city. This is not the first such instance. In July, a correspondent from the scene also reported that a series of powerful blasts had rocked the skies over Damascus. Back then, a Syrian military source reported that the missile attacks were carried out by the “Israeli occupation Air Force” .…

Jihadist dress code used by CNN Steven Sahiounie, Middle East observer Senior international correspondents for CNN, Arwa Damon, and Clarissa Ward have both been inside the territory in Syria under the occupation of terrorists, such as Al Qaeda following Radical Islam, which is a political ideology and is not a religion or sect. Damon and Ward dress-up for their part in the drama, and choose to wear headscarves and clothing which are the fashion statement of Radical Islam. Dressing up like the terrorists are not required, and can only mean they do this costuming to move the audience of CNN…

Social media is rife with claims the writers of ‘The Simpsons’ have once again predicted the political future, this time with a suspiciously far-sighted storyline of Donald Trump attempting to buy Greenland. But, is it true? Fans proudly boast about the program’s spooky ability to predict the future, notably forecasting Trump’s presidency, the Obama voting machine controversy, and the Syrian opposition flag. But as any Simpsons viewer (or regular human) will tell you, remembering every storyline in the show’s 662 episode history is nigh impossible. So when rumors start swirling that Matt Groening and gang have done it again, this time with an astoundingly prescientstoryline of Trump…

By Andrew Korybko There have been wild reports over the past few weeks about Russia’s activities in the Iranian port of Chabahar, with some sources even alleging that Moscow plans to open up a naval base there. An interesting sequence of events has recently taken place that makes many wonder what Russia’s up to in the Iranian port of Chabahar. It’s widely known that Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and India are cooperating on the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) project to integrate each of their economies more closely together, with Chabahar being this initiative’s terminal port in connecting India to the other three…

An ammunition depot at Iraq’s al-Saqr military base was hit by an explosion on 12 August, killing one person and leaving 13 injured. Weeks earlier, a similar blast took place at Amerli base. Iraqi paramilitary force Hashd al-Shaabi has stated that the United States and Israel are responsible for the attacks on the country’s military bases, according to AFP. “We announce that the first and last entity responsible for what happened are American forces, and we will hold them responsible for whatever happens from today onwards,” the paramilitary group said in a statement. Earlier, a member of the Security and Defence Committee in…

The Syrian army has surrounded terrorists in settlements in the north of the Hama province south of the city of Khan Sheikhoun, a local military source said on Wednesday. “Army units moving from Sukayk met with troops entrenched north of the city of Khan Sheikhoun in the south of Idlib province, thereby closing the encirclement ring around the towns of Latmenah, Kafr Zita, Latmeen and Morek in the north of Hama,” the source said. Last Sunday Syrian forces entered the town of Khan Sheikhoun amid fierce fighting with Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists, the SANA news agency reported. adding that the militants had suffered…

Yury Veselov, military observer More details about the military incident involving a Turkish convoy on August 19 are becoming available. Jet fighters of the Syrian Air Forces and the Russian Aerospace Forces delivered a preventive air strike near the Turkish convoy on the outskirts of the town of Maarat al-Numan, 15 kilometers northwards Khan Shaikhoun. The convoy consisted of more than 50 wheeled armored vehicles and trucks which carried up to 10 tanks and a large quantity of ammunition. According to the Turkish Ministry of Defense, before the convoy was dispatched the Russian side had been notified that the military…

By Andrew Korybko The Mainstream Media reported earlier this month on an intelligence bulletin released by the FBI’s Phoenix office back in May alleging that a connection exists between so-called “conspiracy theories” and domestic terrorism, and while there have veritably been some people who hold such controversially defined beliefs and then ended up killing others, it’s anti-American to suspect that people who don’t believe the official narrative about various events automatically qualify as potential terrorists. The de-facto criminalization of free speech is an ongoing trend in American society that’s already pressured a lot of people to self-censor their beliefs in public in order to…

BY PEPE ESCOBAR Complex doesn’t even begin to describe the positioning of Iran-Russia in the geopolitical chessboard. What’s clear in our current, volatile moment is that they’re partners, as I previously reported. Although not strategic partners, as in the Russia-China tie-up, Russia-China-Iran remain the crucial triad in the ongoing, multi-layered, long-term Eurasia integration process. A few days after our Asia Times report, an article – based on “senior sources close to the Iranian regime” and crammed with fear-mongering, baseless accusations of corruption and outright ignorance about key military issues – claimed that Russia would turn the Iranian ports of Bandar Abbas and Chabahar into forward…