Stunning Drone Footage Depicts Syria's Dying Capital
In late October, we brought you what we called “haunting” drone footage of the devastation in Syria, where five years of bloody conflict has cost the country both its population and its cultural heritage.
“The civil war has been going on four years. What is now left of Syria?,” Die Presse asked President Bashar al-Assad in a December interview.
“If they talk about the infrastructure, much of it is destroyed,” Assad responded.
“Every day you can hear the shelling, even here in Damascus, quite close to us,” Die Presse continued, underscoring the extent to which the country’s crumbling capital is still under siege from rebels.
Below, find new drone footage of the hollowed out city courtesy of RT followed by excerpts from “The Slow Death of Damascus,” as originally published in Foreign Policy.
* * *
From "The Slow Death of Damascus," by Thanassis Cambanis
Over the course of a recent 10-day visit, Damascus residents said they feel less embattled than they did a year ago, but the war is still an inescapable reality of everyday life. Every night, dozens of mortars still land in the city center, sending wounded and sometimes dead civilians to Damascus General Hospital. From the city’s still-busy cafés, clients can hear the thuds of outgoing government guns and the rolling explosions of the barrel bombs dropped on the rebel-held suburb of Daraya.
Army and militia checkpoints litter the city. In some central areas, cars are stopped and searched every two blocks. Still, rebels manage to smuggle car bombs into the city center. According to residents, explosions occur every two or three weeks, but are rarely reported in the state media.
Workplaces across the country have emptied out over the summer, as Syrians with a few thousand dollars to spare risked the trip to Europe via Turkey and a boat ride to Greece, taking advantage of a newly permissive Syrian government policy to issue passports quickly and without question.
Employees in government offices, international aid organizations, and private Syrian corporations estimated that anywhere between 20 and 50 percent of their coworkers left the country this summer.
“The government doesn’t care if people leave. It can’t stop them,” one middle-class Syrian, who has chosen so far to remain in Damascus, said of the exodus. “The war seems like it will go on forever. People see no future for their children. The only people who are staying are the ones who have it really good here or the ones who aren’t able to leave.”
(16 votes)
»
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
"If you live in the middle of tornado alley in a trailer guess what will eventually happen?"
If you live in the ME, guess what will eventually happen? Not seeing the difference, as lack of financial reosurces in both cases most likely preclude relocation.
Yep, mission accomplished.
Damascus has been one of the greatest cities built by man.
These opening verses paint a bleak picture. The city of Damascus will become a heap of ruins, utterly destroyed. Few, if any, buildings will be left standing. The once great city will be devoid of human life and will become home to all manner of wildlife in the absence of humans to chase them away.
According to these verses, the cities of Aroer, which are located on the northern bank of the Arnon River just east of the Dead Sea, will also be deserted. However, the passage doesn't say they will be destroyed in the same manner as Damascus, just that they will be deserted. It may be that people simply flee these cities out of fear.
In addition, many of the fortified cities in northern Israel will also be destroyed. The few who remain in Aram, thirty-eight miles south southeast of Damascus, will share the fate of these northern Israeli cities.
What kind of depraved animal would disagree with that sentence. I mean really.
.
It is empty rethoric. Lets say it is one the greatest cities... so what is gained by stating it? Like every "Fuck you bernanke" post on ZH. Just a mountain of white noise and a few nudgets of truth here and there.
It is also a lie. Where it not for the war and judaics involvement everyone would recognice Damascus as just another steaming hot shithole, like Baghdad or Cairo. But as soon as a neo-ziocon bomb falls in an arab slum its the greatest slum ever and we all loved Damascus since ever. Loved its neighborhoods, cafes and museums, its world class architecture. It was Paris, Rome and Neo-Tokyo rolled in one and her people's the noblest race to ever walk the earth. Except when they step into Europe, then they are rapefugees.
Krugman masturbation video porn
Rofl
Yes their wconomy should be booming with all that needs to be repaired.
Yes their wconomy should be booming with all that needs to be repaired.
So watch carefully to see who gets the contracts to rebuild.
...a ruinous heap...
appears they have plenty of available space; room for refugees
The refugees are just going back to the hand that feeds them. Their master.
"'In that day the glory of Israel will be very dim, for poverty will stalk the land. Israel will be abandoned like the grain fields in the valley of Rephaim after the harvest. Only a few of its people will be left, like the stray olives left on the tree after the harvest. Only two or three remain in the highest branches, four or five out on the tips of the limbs. Yes, Israel will be stripped bare of people,' says the Lord, the God of Israel"
The devastation that overshadows Israel will come about because Israel has "turned from the God who can save them." All the hard work performed prior to this event will be lost. Those who have been distracted by the things of this world will be disappointed, for they have forgotten God, and by putting faith in the things of this world, they will ultimately be disappointed. Their only harvest will be "a load of grief and incurable pain." This grief will be brought to a climax when, in the midst of their suffering, the nation of Israel faces an imminent invasion:
"Look! The armies rush forward like waves thundering toward the shore. But though they roar like breakers on a beach, God will silence them. They will flee like chaff scattered by the wind or like dust whirling before a storm. In the evening Israel waits in terror, but by dawn its enemies are dead. This is the just reward of those who plunder and destroy the people of God"
"Israel" and "the people of God" are true Christians.
Not the Synagogue of Satan (Revelation 2:9; 3:9) that was bequeathed by the Balfour Declaration at the behest of the Rothschilds, who seized power by deception- just like their father- Satan (John 8:44).
Context is everything.
both of you are wrong and part, really, of the problem.
silly children who believe in fairy tales, magic, and the absurd notion that a Supreme Be-ing was at all responsible for the heap of nonsense, barbarity, and ignorance enshrined in the sundry books of the Jewish and Christian religious texts.
Satan and Lucifer are nothing but proxies for Humanity's own capacity for evil. At some point homo sapiens grew capable of discarding animism and myth, but sadly only some of them managed to do so.
We now wait and see if the myths of the pre-scientifics serve to kill great numbers of us to fulfill self-fulfilling prophecy, or if Reason can prevail over Faerie Stories.
Ah! You're back!
"Counterpunch", "Johnny Horsec***k, etc."
You are an infection on humanity.
You sold your soul to the devil.
Somewhere in your life you betrayed yourself, all of humanity, your family, and yourself.
You will have what is coming to you.
Map of Syria, showing its location west of Iraq
Former Iraqi general Georges Sada claimed that in late 2002, Saddam had ordered all of his stockpiles to be moved to Syria. He appeared on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes in January 2006 to discuss his book, Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein. Anticipating the arrival of weapon inspectors on November 1, Sada said Saddam took advantage of the June 4 Zeyzoun Dam disaster in Syria by forming an "air bridge", loading them onto cargo aircraft and flying them out of the country.
In January 2004, Nizar Nayuf, a Syrian journalist who moved to Western Europe, said in a letter to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that he knows the three sites where Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are kept inside Syria. According to Nayuf's witness, described as a senior source inside Syrian military intelligence he had known for two years,[16] Iraq's WMD are in tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria, in the village of Tal Snan, north of the town of Salamija, where there is a big Syrian air force camp, and in the city of Sjinsjar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of Homs city. Nayouf also wrote that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Republican Guard, including General Shalish, with the help of Assef Shawkat, Bashar Assad's cousin. Shoakat is the CEO of Bhaha, an import/export company owned by the Assad family.[17] U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responded to this accusation by saying "I don't think we are at the point that we can make a judgment on this issue. There hasn't been any hard evidence that such a thing happened. But obviously we're going to follow up every lead, and it would be a serious problem if that, in fact, did happen."[16]
A similar claim was made by Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon, a former Israeli officer who served as chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from July 2002 to June 2005. In April 2004, he was quoted as saying that "perhaps they transferred them to another country, such as Syria."[18] General Ya'alon told the New York Sun more firmly in December 2005 that "He [Saddam] transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."[19] The Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly also reported Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as having said in a December, 2002 appearance on Israel's Channel 2, "... chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria."[20]
In February 2006, Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a former Iraqi general who defected shortly before the Gulf War in 1991, gave an interview to Ryan Mauro, author of Death to America: The Unreported Battle of Iraq and founder of WorldThreats. In the interview, al-Tikriti, who was once known as the "Butcher of Basra", told Mauro:
Al-Tikriti's interview was featured prominently on conservative web sites such as FrontPageMag and WorldNetDaily, but did not receive main stream press attention. Salon magazine editor Alex Koppelman doubts both Sada's and al-Tikriti's story, arguing that Syria's decision to side with the coalition against Iraq in 1990 would have nullified any previous military deals.[22][23]
The Iraq Survey Group was told that Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards from the Syrian border and replaced them with his intelligence agents who then supervised the movement of banned materials between Syria and Iraq, according to two unnamed defense sources that spoke with The Washington Times. They reported heavy traffic in large trucks on the border before the United States invasion.[24] Earlier, in a telephone interview with The Daily Telegraph, the former head of the Iraqi Survey Group, David Kay, said: "[W]e know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD program. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."[25] Satellite imagery also picked up activity on the Iraq-Syria border before and during the invasion. James R. Clapper, who headed the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in 2003, has said U.S. intelligence tracked a large number of vehicles, mostly civilian trucks, moving from Iraq into Syria. Clapper suggested the trucks may have contained materiel related to Iraq's WMD programs.[26]
ISG formed a special working group to investigate and consider these claims. Charles Duelfer, head of inspectorate at time of publication, summarized the group's conclusion: "Based on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials."[27][28][29]
JordanIn April 2004, Jordanian officials announced that they had thwarted a planned chemical attack on Jordan's intelligence headquarters by Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists that could have killed 20,000 people.[30][31] Acting under the orders of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, self-professed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, officials said the plotters entered Jordan from Syria with trucks filled with 20 tons of explosives.[32] Syrian officials denied the claims.[32] U.S. officials stated there was debate within the CIA and other U.S. agencies about whether the intent was to create a chemical weapon or conventional explosive bomb: a large quantity of sulfuric acid was seized, which can be used as a blister agent, but is more commonly used to increase the size of conventional explosions.[33] Former Iraqi National Security Advisor Georges Sada claimed that the chemicals seized by the Jordanian authorities were smuggled out of the Iraq to Syria before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and that the Syrian government had given the chemical weapons to Al-Qaeda,[34] however the Syrian government was strongly anti-Islamist, having previously defeated the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria in the Islamic uprising in Syria, and in the Syrian civil war Islamists (including al-Qaeda in Iraq) fought against the Syrian government.[35][36]
In February 2006, a Jordanian military court sentenced nine men, including Iraq's al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to death for plotting the attack.[37] Lawyers for the men had argued that confessions had been obtained during two weeks of torture.[38] Zarqawi admitted his group was behind the plot, but denied that chemical weapons were to be used.[37] Two men were jailed for up to 3 years, and two men were acquitted.[37]
LebanonA road through the Bekaa Valley
American Internet newspaper World Tribune reported in August 2003 that Iraq's WMD may have been moved to Lebanon's heavily fortified Bekaa Valley. According to the story, United States intelligence identified "a stream of tractor-trailer trucks" moving from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon in the weeks before invasion.[39] WorldNetDaily followed up the same story in May 2004 adding affirmatively "much, if not all, of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons assets are being protected by Syria, with Iranian help, in the Bekaa Valley."[40]
Former United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw also alleged that the Russians played an extensive role in transporting materials into both Syria and Lebanon, "to prevent the United States from discovering them." Shaw claimed trucks were transporting materials to Syria and returning empty. In addition, containers with warnings painted on them were moved to a Beirut hospital basement. "They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) units out of uniform, that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence". The People's Republic of China is also alleged to have helped remove WMD equipment.[41][42] Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Lawrence Di Rita called Shaw's charges "absurd and without any foundation." DiRita noted that Shaw "has been directed on several occasions to produce evidence of his wide-ranging and fantastic charges and provide it to the DoD inspector general. To my knowledge, he has not done so."[43] In reply to official denials, Shaw claimed that the Bush administration had made efforts to cover up the intelligence data that he had revealed. "Larry DiRita made sure that this story would never grow legs," he said, insisting the Russian "clean-up" operation "was a masterpiece of military camouflage and deception."[44] Former Russian Foreign Intelligence director Evgeny Primakov rejected the story, telling Kommersant that "all of Shaw's sensational revelations are complete nonsense."[45]
Yeah. Old News, but not common knowledge.
bullshit
You actually read it? lol.
no way lol
What I was looking for was the caravan from Iraq that was led by a BIO genius woman that went to Syria.
That, that I posted seemed much more interesting.
Should I high light some stuff for you slow readers?
It would take me 2 mins 3 seconds with Sprintreader. I generally run it at 800wpm. I didn't use it to read the article, as it would have slowed me down, knew most of it. Thanks for the refresher tho.
I took a speed reading class years ago, highly recommend that. You don't use it for everything but when things are painful to get through and you want to accurately get to the point and notice inconsistencies it's handy. Not referring to above comment.
Hey, we've heard all this before from you neocons.
Wherever you tread you leave death and destruction.
Go away and take the damned neoliberals with you.
Someone name the Neocons for me and show me their armies. I get the general idea of what everyone wants them to be but I rarely see a name and a link to this stuff.
I think the term has simply become a straw man or political snipe.
Did the Arabs have anything to do with this or did the neocons do it all?
Neoliberal is not a term I have seen before. Who are they or what do they believe?
+1zillion
You DO realize you're posting this on ZH, right? This isn't an MSNBC/Faux Noise forum. Fuck off government troll and peddle that garbage elsewhere.
Yeah, well I am not, bot.
If Assad had WMD's, I guess we can trust him by now not to use them on an enemy?
WTF do you think he is still keeping them hidden for?
Is this just a club for conspiracy theorists, MSNBC or what? I did not see any specifications or requirements for posting.
Try posting an actual counterpoint, argument or set of contrary facts.
Sure;
“We shall unleash the nihilists and the atheists and we shall provoke a great social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to all nations the effect of absolute atheism; the origins of savagery and of most bloody turmoil."
Go fuck yourself, dumbass.
Seriously stupid. Who wrote that, a neocon?
You first, dipshit.
almost, but not entirely, complete nonsense.
The original wiki article, conveniently, lists the allegations of several Zionist Israel Firster neocons, first. Strangely, the article leaves out the fabrications done by Zionist Israel Firster neocons in the Office of Special Plans - men who had zero expertise, but still didn't like CIA assessments.....
And of course, both Syria and Iraq were targets of Jewish Zionists for decades
purely a coincidence, of course, that ISIS seems to be doing what such men long called for, eh?
Stopped reading at Fox "News"
You see this - and everywhere else the U.S. has been on it's missions of 'Freedom & Democracy', and one can't help but get a very sinking, sobering feeling that it may come back around.
Thanks America.
How do you ever rebuild a city like that?
By tearing down each piece of rubble, recycling what you can, and rebuilding one building at a time.
Let's face it, it took millenia to build that city and in a historical moment it has been wiped out. It will take many years to rebuild again.
I talked to a WWII veteran who thought it would take a least a century to rebuild Europe and Japan from what he saw of both of them when he was there, and that was the general consensus of the time.
He was surprised at how quickly they were rebuilt.
However, those who were left, didn't leave.
Well said FTW
Yeah. I sure remember my visit to Stuttgart and the amazing giant man made hills that stretched more than 100 yards from top to bottom in the center with the "old city" still underneath!
I bet that American WWII Vet conveniently forgot much of what he left behind which has been the American MIC tradition ever since!
Wonder if Steven Spielberg will ever make a movie out of Keeling's "notes" as the other book end to "Saving Private Ryan"?!!!
It depends on how much energy, supplies, effort, and money the government is willing to put into rebuilding.
Which, in turn, tells you something about Camden, Detroit,, New Orleans, and some other cities here.
Marshall Plan.
You cannot rebuild before the fighting stops.
+1
us taxpayer money.