Media

TFF’s first four photo series from Aleppo have been seen by 95,000 people so far and been featured in online magazines from Vietnam to California, among them a German site with a million visitors daily. Above is the fifth story. It’s about the terrible, systematic destruction of this UNESCO World Heritage site but also about an Aleppo businessman who turned his damaged factory into a school for 1500 children. It had been damaged by the Free Syrian Army and al-Nushra who looted it and then used it as HQ. It’s situated in the Sheikh Najjar Industrial City outside Aleppo that – before the militant/terrorist occupation – represented no less than 50% of Syria’s total industrial production. During two years, these children received no education. Now they do. And hope is slowly coming back. This photo story ends with some “civilisational questions” by Jan Oberg who also took the photos. This...


 Unique photos from Eastern Aleppo in Syria when it was finally liberated on December 11-12, 2016. 
 The people you see here have just come out to freedom from 4,5 years of the occupation by what can be called RIOTs – Rebels-Insurgents-Opposition-Terrorists – mostly the latter. 
 And most of them with some kind of support by NATO countries.  
 Western media, politics and humanitarian organisations focus on the victims from Eastern Aleppo who left to RIOT territories elsewhere, such as Idlib, after the liberation – family members and supporters of the occupiers.  
 That’s not the whole truth about Aleppo. 
 They conveniently ignore the thousands of other Aleppians: Those who were happy beyond words to see all of Aleppo back under the control of the Syrian government. 
 These are the people in this photo story. They are among the 13 million Syrians who, according to the UN in...

A moment of world history missed by quite a few I was in Aleppo December 10-14, 2016 and the Eastern part was finally liberated on the 12th. Beyond any doubt, this was a world historic moment: because of Aleppo’s importance as city in Syria and the Middle East, its status as UNESCO World Heritage site, as turning point in the soon 6 year long war in and on Syria. And because of the almost 100.000 people who came out of 4,5 years of hell-like occupation and because of the sheer proportions of the destruction. Remarkably, there were no leading Western media present, also not those who were in Damascus and thus had a media visa. Most reported from very far away or from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon, Istanbul or Berlin. I happened to be the only one from Scandinavia and among the first dozen of people – mostly media people...

Of course you have seen media images of the destruction in Syria. But not these taken in mid-December when Eastern Aleppo was liberated. We live in a time when images – real and fake – influence perceptions more than ever. My photos are real. Documentary. They reflect my role as witness on the spot at a time when only a handful of Westerners were present. At a time, too, when all the mainstream media were conspicuously absent – as were the dual-purpose White Helmets who have delivered quite a few of the theatrical images from this war. As a conflict and peace researcher and photographer I take pride in using not only analytical texts but also the medium of photography. I am anyhow unable to describe just in words what I have seen. Thanks to modern technology the small, smart, independent and truthful of this world can compete, to some extent, with...

TFF Conflict and Peace Report Syria # 2 I’ve only passed through Damascus once before, in 2002 on my way to Baghdad. What meets you today is a beautiful city with checkpoints all over the place, your car trunk will be opened and papers checked. Seemingly useless explosives detectors are used – useless because they don’t catch that many drivers here today have a revolver or hand-grenade under their seat. But you’d probably be surprised, like I was, at how normal it otherwise feels. At the surface. Traffic is intense, pollution thick, shops are filled with goods, I see fewer beggars here than in Lund, Sweden. People enjoy excellent food (I haven’t had such good meals for long) at restaurants with live music and entertain themselves at the omnipresent cafés. As everywhere else in war zones, people whose lives have been shattered in many ways – and there are few...


 
 I’m writing to you from war-torn Syria where the suffering of the people is beyond comprehension, heart-breaking. 
 The war in and on Syria has been started in spring 2011 – the underlying conflicts much much earlier. 
 What our media have shown us is snipers, bombings, killings, ruins, dead bodies and press conferences with Western politicians. 
 But did you “see” the underlying conflicts? 
 Get an understanding of what the problems standing between the parties are? 

Did you get the impression that weapons is the only thing “they” understand? 
 Did you feel hopeless about it all? Confused? Depressed because of all the human suffering? 
 That peace is impossible? 
 If so it’s because we are missing a huge part of the picture. We need something else. 
 We need to switch from – repetitive and depressive – war and violence reporting to conflict and...

Ole Petter Ottersen and you can write him at rektor@uio.no These two experts on warfare and interventionism will – Orwellian style – speak about “The United States and World Peace After The Presidential Election”. This is the country that, since 1980, has intervened violently in Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosova/Serbia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, i.e. 14 Muslim countries. It has some 630 base facilities in 130+ countries. It has its US Special Forces (SOF) in 133 countries. It has used nuclear weapons without apology and owns the second largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. The US stands for about 40% of the world’s military expenditures, is the world’s leading arms exporter and has killed more people than anybody else since 1945. It’s the master of (imprecise) drone strikes. It presently supports Saudi Arabia’s bestial war on Yemen and conducts a military build-up in Asia and the Pacific...

By Farhang Jahanpour TEHRAN – Professor Farhang Jahanpour, a former senior research fellow at Harvard University, is of the opinion that many American voters viewed Donald Trump “as an outsider standing up against the establishment.” In an interview with the Tehran Times, Jahanpour also says, “Trump made use of some sensational and often contradictory slogans as a way of winning popular support.” Following is the text of the interview

Trotsky, the one-time close comrade of Lenin, reportedly said, “You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you”. This is how it seems to have been with President Barack Obama when it comes to his policy towards Russia. Having come to power with President Vladimir Putin open to a closer relationship after the aggressive pushing forward of Nato’s frontier during the time of presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Obama will leave the presidency with a state of hostility between the Russia and the US that most thought had evaporated once the Cold War ended in 1991. Now, instead of a life time of peace and cooperation ahead of us, as was widely thought, we have Russia engaged in nuclear sabre rattling and the US expanding the frontier of Nato even further right up to Russia’s border and trying to put the heat on over...

Participant on board Zaytoouna-Oliva boat A few weeks ago, the US Government agreed to give Israel $38 billion dollars, the largest military funding package the U.S. has given any Nation. This $38 billion in military and other type of Aid, will be used to imprison the Palestinians of Gaza, and continue Israel’s military occupation, and imposition of an apartheid state, upon the Palestinian people. This money will be used in the training fields of Israeli military which are in Gaza, where military experiments are done, using US military weaponry, by the Israeli Occupation Forces. The U.S. military and Government is complicit in the crimes against the people of Gaza and the Palestinian occupied territory by the use of military hardware given by USA and the training that the Israelis give USA and USA gives to them. It is also estimated that some 70% of European humanitarian aid to Palestine ends...

By Gareth Porter The Russian-Syrian bombing campaign in eastern Aleppo, which has ended at least for the time being, has been described in press reports and op-eds as though it were unique in modern military history in its indiscriminateness. In an usual move for a senior US official, Secretary of State John Kerry called for an investigation of war crimes in Aleppo. As terrible as that toll of civilian lives is, the United States should drop the stance of moral superiority. The discussion has been lacking in historical context, however. Certainly the civilian death toll from the bombing and shelling in Aleppo has been high, but many of the strikes may not be all that dissimilar from the major US bombing campaign in Iraq in 2003, nor as indiscriminate as Israel’s recent campaigns in densely populated cities. The impression that the bombing in Aleppo was uniquely indiscriminate was a result...