Interview With the PFLP Political Relations Abdullah Al-Danan — “Resistance Lives in the Hearts of the Palestinian People”After all the dramatic events from October 7, 2023, up to the ceasefire, how do you assess the situation in Gaza? Do you believe Israel will abide by the ceasefire and the other agreed-upon terms?
The situation in Gaza is, of course, dire. There are more than 70,000 martyrs, over 10,000 missing persons, and more than 100,000 wounded — many of them amputees. As for adherence to the ceasefire, we do not trust this Zionist entity or this enemy. We have no faith in its promises, nor in those who have guaranteed this agreement. (Israel, editors note) has already violated the deal. Today, three martyrs were killed in Gaza. This morning, the ceasefire was breached in the eastern part of the Strip — just as it has been in Lebanon, where the number of violations has now exceeded 6,000. We have no confidence in this agreement. As some officials noted today, even the American president declared that he would give the green light for renewed bombings if Hamas failed to return the bodies of dead Zionist captives. This agreement is not guaranteed — unfortunately. But there are also factors preventing this entity from continuing the war in Gaza as before. Israel has not achieved any of the goals it set out at the beginning of its aggression. Not a single one. As Netanyahu himself admitted in the Knesset, he paid a heavy price in Gaza for attempting to free the Zionist captives. At first, the aggression began with the occupation of Gaza. Then came economic projects aimed at turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” followed by divisions between Arab and international forces.
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/22978/The BBC ‘coup’: A ruling class at war with itselfIn the 1940s, the BBC lied about the extent of anti-colonial sentiment in India to justify British rule. And then, in the 1950s, it whitewashed British atrocities in Kenya. In the 1970s, the BBC explicitly ramped up its pro-Tory bias in the face of industrial unrest, reaching a pinnacle in the 1980s, when it doctored footage of the Miners’ Strike to cover up police violence. In the 2000s, the BBC was weaponised by the ruling class to whip up support for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And in the 2010s, it repeatedly and systematically attacked Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader and urged support for the Tories, including editing in fake applause for Boris Johnson’s speeches during the 2019 general election. The BBC has always been a consistently reliable prop for the British ruling class. This is what culture secretary Lisa Nandy means when she says the BBC is a “national institution” and a “vital” part of “our national story and our democracy”. For this, you can safely read “a vital institution for maintaining the rule of the British establishment”. Nancy even went as far to label the BBC’s World Service as “a light on the hill for people in places of darkness”! We can only assume that those “places of darkness” are the countries plundered, exploited, and bombed by British and western imperialism – all crimes which this proverbial “light on the hill” continues to cover up and defend. Like the majority of their counterparts in the USA, the British ruling class saw Trump as a threat to the stability of their system. So – true to form, and like any good state institution in a bourgeois democracy – the BBC acted to mitigate that threat.
https://communist.red/the-bbc-coup-a-ruling-class-at-war-with-itself/Euphrates River Becomes the Last Battle Line in Syria’s Civil WarOn a late October evening in Syria’s eastern city of Deir Ez-Zour, a group of men clad in camouflage military uniforms rushed, yelling, into the waters of the Euphrates river. From the river bank, a masked sergeant holding a Kalashnikov rifle shouted, “Come back! Let’s go again!” This was a training exercise, the officer from the new Syrian government’s Ministry of Defense explained, though what they were training for was left unsaid. Next to them, a group of young students laughed as they observed the scene. Fathers swam nearby with their children, while a lone man fished from a small wooden boat. Further down the river a series of iconic bridges crossing the Euphrates were destroyed during the grinding decade-long war; only a few rickety pontoon bridges now connect the two banks. The Euphrates, which runs for 700 miles across Syria, has become a physical dividing line between two forces now contesting the future of the fragile country. The near bank is the limit of control by the Syrian government led from Damascus, while on the far bank are the positions of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF, a Kurdish-led force that emerged during Syria’s civil war in opposition to the Bashar al-Assad regime, played a key role in the fight against the Islamic State. During the conflict, they captured large expanses of territory predominantly populated by Arabs on the far bank of the Euphrates. While the new Damascus-based government has asserted control over most Syrian territory, the SDF still controls the country’s northeast, as well as Kurdish neighborhoods of Aleppo, and is seeking greater autonomy inside a future Syrian state. While the new Damascus-based government has asserted control over most Syrian territory, the SDF still controls the country’s northeast, as well as Kurdish neighborhoods of Aleppo, and is seeking greater autonomy inside a future Syrian state. The river that divides the SDF statelet from government-led Syria has now become the last front line of the Syrian war. Although a tense ceasefire holds for the moment, over the last year the Euphrates has been the site of sniper fire and periodic armed clashes. The violence has continued intermittently up until the present. Alongside this confrontation, a separate threat from Islamic State cells also haunts the region. In late October, a roadside bomb exploded on the road between Deir Ez-Zour and Al-Mayadin killing five members of the security services, in an attack that was blamed on the group.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/euphrates-river-becomes-the-last