“Because they (the Maute group) threatened to go down from the mountains to burn down Marawi? Go ahead, be my guest. We will wait for you there. No problem.” -Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, 2 December 2016 On May 23rd, 2017, at around 2:00 PM local-time, clashes broke out in the Philippine city of Marawi, located […]
background The Republic of The Gambia is the smallest country in mainland Africa, with a population just shy of two million living in an area slightly less than twice the size of the US state of Delaware (about 11,300 sq km). Surrounded by Senegal and the Atlantic Ocean, the Gambia’s location along the Gambia river made […]
On Tuesday President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Donald Trump met at the White House to conduct talks concerning Syria and a press conference (video here) laden with mutually congratulatory statements. Trump’s opening bit was noticeably shorter than his guest’s and perhaps less rehearsed. But what got the most attention online was the bloody […]
On April 27th, 2017, Al-Masdar News made an announcement through their Twitter account that they had become aware that one of their contributing writers “may have engaged in abusive behavior on a public forum prior to joining AMN”, and that the unnamed journalist in question was as of that date “suspended with pay”. The individual […]
On April 29th, 2017, the Syrian Civil Defense (henceforth White Helmets) center in Kafr Zeita, near Hama, Syria, came under sustained aerial bombardment from Russian and Syrian government aircraft. The precision with which the facility was struck, plus the use of bunker-busting munitions, strongly points to Russian aircraft as being the primary aggressors in this […]
This article will be updated periodically as information comes in. Check back for more details. On April 23rd, 2017, members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (OSCE SMM) were traveling along an unpaved secondary road near Pryshyb, in Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR)-held territory when their armored vehicle […]
The war in Syria is six years old now, and as the April 4th gas attack demonstrated, the use of prohibited weapons has not slowed or halted since the conflict began. To better understand the international legal implications of the war and what the world can and should be doing about it, we must first […]
Author’s Note: The Fulda Gap was granted the privilege to interview a Serbian participant in the events described below. Some of what is described below is informed by the testimony of our source, whose identity we have kept confidential for their safety. On April 3rd, 2017, thousands of people amassed in the streets of the […]
Recently the Russian Ministry of Defense released a statement regarding the 4/4 Khan Sheikhoun sarin attacks. Below is a refutation of almost every point they made. As always, but especially with the Russian MoD, verify every statement they make. More often than not, they’re fabricating their own reality. russian ministry of defense: Russian Defence Ministry comments […]
Warning: This post contains some disturbing images. Consider all video links from the aftermath of the bombing to be similarly disturbing and incredibly graphic. On Saturday, April 15th, 2017, a large bomb blast ripped through a line of parked buses in Rashidin, west of Aleppo, Syria. The buses contained thousands of civilians being forcibly evacuated […]
