Author: thefreeonline

Sources: sdf1 – sdf-press.com and South Front

Zalal Jager: With spirit of resistance of Sheikh Maqsoud, we can liberate all occupied territories

The Damascus government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have reached an agreement to de-escalate and end siege on several areas in northern and northeastern Syria.

Sheikh Maqsoud is a Kurdish enclave within Aleppo City which successfully resisted both the occupation of the city by western and Turkish backed Islamic Rebels, and the shelling, storming and recapture by the Damascus government.

The Russian brokered agreement to lift the new siege by the Syrian Arab Army (Damascus) is an excellent omen for an eventual peace agreement with the AANES autonomous multi-ethnic government of Rojava and NE Syria, defended by the SDF.

Syrian government forces lifted its siege of the SDF-held district of Sheikh Maqsoud in Aleppo city. On April 28, trucks loaded with wheat and other supplies entered the district coming through government-held areas without facing any problems.

The Syrian Arab Army besieged Sheikh Maqsoud exactly 46 days ago in response to an alleged attack by militants hiding in the district.

26 days into the government siege on Sheikh Maqsoud, the SDF besieged the government-held security zones in al-Hasakah city and the town of al-Qamishli.

Governor of al-Hasakah, Major General Ghassan Halim Khalil, confirmed to al-Watan newspaper on April 28 that the SDF had lifted its siege off the security zones, saying that the situation in al-Hasakah city and al-Qamishli will return to normal.

The Damascus-SDF agreement was reportedly brokered by Russia, which has been working nonstop to de-escalate tensions between the two sides.

The agreement came amid a Turkish escalation against Syrian government forces and the SDF.

In the last few weeks, the Turkish military and its proxies carried out many attacks in northern and northeastern Syria. Both government forces and the SDF are being targeted.

Two young girls cover their heads as they walk while drinking water in the scorching afternoon heat on April 25, 2022 in Mumbai, India. (Photo: Praful Gangurde/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

“The deadly heat this week in India and Pakistan should dominate the news everywhere,” said one environmentalist. “It’s a horrifying event in its own right—and a glimpse of what is likely to become routine.”

Kenny Stancil April 28, 2022

More than a billion people on the Indian subcontinent have been suffering for weeks amid a record-breaking heatwave, and with temperatures expected to approach 117ºF in the next few days, observers are warning that such deadly conditions are likely to become the norm in the absence of immediate and far-reaching climate action.

“Residents have described daily life as hellish, taps are starting to run dry, and soaring demand for electricity to power air conditioners has caused long and regular power cuts,” The Times reported Wednesday. “In northern India, forest fires are destroying agricultural land. Vulnerable people have been advised to stay indoors.”

Although heatwaves are common in India, especially in May and June, scorching temperatures arrived early this year, a clear manifestation of the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, according to Clare Nullis, an official at the World Meteorological Organization.

Last month was India’s hottest March in more than a century and one of its driest, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), and relief is nowhere in sight, with the region’s annual monsoon season still weeks away.

Extreme heat is expected to intensify over the weekend in India and neighboring Pakistan. Forecasters at the IMD said Thursday that temperatures in parts of central India surpassed 114ºF on Wednesday and are projected to approach 117ºF in the northwestern part of the country in the next two days with “no significant change thereafter.”

As the New York Times reported, “Heat-related watches were in effect on Thursday afternoon for all but a few of India’s 28 states, encompassing hundreds of millions of people and most of the country’s major cities. An alert—one notch up in severity—was in effect for the northwestern state of Rajasthan on Thursday, and would come into effect for other central and western states starting Saturday.”

“Pakistan’s Meteorological Department also warned that in regions dotted with glaciers, the heat could lead to so-called outburst floods, in which water spills from glacial lakes into populated areas,” the newspaper added. “In 2013, an outburst flood in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand led to flooding that destroyed villages and killed several thousand people.”

by Brett Wilkins April 28, 2022 at commondreams.org/

A gas flare is seen at an oil well site outside Williston, North Dakota. (Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)”From a public health perspective and a climate perspective, stopping fracking is imperative.”

Combining findings from more than 2,000 scientific and government studies, a report published Thursday details how hydraulic fracturing has “dire impacts on public health and the climate.”

“Fracking swings a wrecking ball at our climate.”

Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York (CHPNY) released the eighth edition of their Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking, a comprehensive examination of the state of the hydraulic fracturing industry and its impacts.

“The scientific evidence reveals conclusively that fracking causes widespread and severe harm to people and the climate,” Sandra Steingraber, CHPNY co-founder and compendium co-author, said in a statement.

A first-hand look at the location where Kiev claims trenches hold thousands of bodies © Eva Bartlett By Eva Bartlett | Samizdat | April 28, 2022 According to recent Western media, Russian forces have buried up to 9,000 Mariupol civilians in “mass graves” in a town just west of the Ukrainian city. These reports use satellite […]

Here’s what I found at the reported ‘mass grave’ near Mariupol — Aletho News

Freedom Features, Apr 28th https://freedomnews.org

Easter weekend I was transported to a vision of the future. Not in some vague, William Morris, utopian way (although, all power to that!.. we definitely need more utopian visions to counter the pathological cynicism of dystopian fun-sponges), but in a very real, practical and inspiring way.

The host for our latest DIY Alliance (DIYA) meeting was the remarkable, multi award winning, Lancaster Cohousing at Halton, just outside Lancaster. As I have previously mentioned, DIYA meetings are designed to bring grassroots, self-organising, anarchist-friendly, community-focused projects together so that we can learn from each other and maximise our impact through solidarity and mutual aid.

The original plan had been to unite projects across the north of England, but the idea has gathered an unpredicted momentum which saw people from as far afield as Northampton join us for the weekend.

Among them were our old friends from Bolton Diggers, the 0161 Anti-Fascist festival in Manchester and members of A Commune in the North (ACitN) — who I shall write about more thoroughly in a future article — to name but a few. It was Cath from ACitN who invited Natalia from Anna’s House Education to give a talk about the Kurdistan Freedom Movement. More on that in a moment.

The venue itself was something of a paradise. Built on the banks of the salmon-rich River Lune, on ex-industrial land, Lancaster Cohousing is a long street of cosy homes which meet Passivhaus and Code for Sustainable Homes (level 6) standards. No cars are allowed in the residential area, so neighbours must pass each other in the street and the kitchen windows of each house face into the street so that every resident sees everyone else on a regular basis, reinforcing the sense of community.

mpr21 EstrategiaEditorial officeApril 28, 2022 translation thefreeonline

The Spanish government is subjected to pressure from the United States on the Sahara and shows clear signs of submission, which compromises the supply of Algerian gas.

Algeria meets 40 percent of Spain’s gas needs and in August it broke diplomatic relations with Morocco, so it cannot admit that the PSOE and Podemos government fraudulently resells Algerian gas to Morocco. In Madrid they go from betrayal to betrayal and show no scruples of any kind.

Yesterday the Algerian Ministry of Energy threatened to break the gas supply contract with Spain if it sends it “to a third destination”, amid diplomatic tensions with Madrid and Morocco over the Sahara.

Most of the Algerian gas reaches Spain through the Medgaz submarine gas pipeline, of 10,000 million cubic meters per year. Until October, another part of the Algerian gas arrived through the Maghreb-Europe Gas Pipeline (GME), which passes through Morocco.

But Algiers closed it after the rupture of diplomatic relations with Rabat, depriving Morocco of the Algerian gas that transited through its territory.

According to a press release from the Algerian government, the Spanish Minister Teresa Ribera has announced that Spain authorizes the exploitation, in “reverse flow”, of the Maghreb-Europe oil pipeline and that this exploitation will take place today or tomorrow.