The Free

Israel won’t allow Syria military forces south of Damascus: Netanyahu

Netanyahu has demanded the ‘full demilitarisation’ of southern Syria, where Israel has illegally expanded its forces.

from Al Jazeera via https://wp.me/pIJl9-Gar at https://wp.me/pIJl9-Gar on 24th Feb 2025

Israel expands Gaza ground invasion,

Published On 23 Feb 202523 Feb 2025

Israel will not allow the new Syrian government’s military forces to operate in territory south of Syria’s capital Damascus, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned.

Addressing a military ceremony in Israel on Sunday, Netanyahu demanded the “full demilitarisation of southern Syria from troops of the new Syrian regime in the Quneitra, Daraa and Suweyda provinces”.

Syria’s leader, Russia’s Putin make first contact since al-Assad’s fall

“We will not allow forces from the HTS organisation or the new Syrian army to enter the area south of Damascus,” Netanyahu said, referring to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, which spearheaded the offensive that toppled longtime Syrian leader President Bashar al-Assad last December.

Israeli soldiers take up positions near the Gaza Strip border, in southern Israel, Friday, Dec. 29, 2023. The army is battling Palestinian militants across Gaza in the war ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

He also warned that Israel would not accept any threats to the Druze community in Syria, who live in the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel, and other parts of southwestern Syria.

Israel has taken advantage of al-Assad’s fall to expand into a buffer zone between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and southern Syria, breaching a United Nations agreement brokered in 1974.

The Druze are a religious minority found across several countries in the region. In Syria, many have expressed their opposition to Israeli expansion into the southwest of the country, and thousands living in the occupied Golan Heights have refused to take Israeli citizenship.

Thousands attend funeral for slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah

Israel occupies approximately two-thirds of the Golan Heights, with the UN-administered buffer zone spanning a narrow, 400-square-kilometre (154-sq-mile) area. The rest has been controlled by Syria.

In 1974, Israel and Syria struck a ceasefire agreement that determined the Golan Heights would be a demilitarised buffer zone.

But shortly after the fall of al-Assad last December, the Israeli military moved within the buffer zone and has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian military assets.

Border Clashes: Israel-Syria Violence |

Israel has justified its attacks on Syria for years by claiming it is eliminating Iranian military targets. However, Iran has said none of its forces are currently in Syria, and the new Syrian government has indicated it has no desire to fight Israel.

Israeli forces have currently established two posts on Syria’s Mount Hermon and seven others in the buffer zone, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said.

On Sunday, Netanyahu said that Israeli forces would remain on Mount Hermon and in a buffer zone in the occupied Golan Heights for “for an indefinite period to protect our communities and thwart any threat”.

Catalan Countries: The Earth Revolts Movement is born

from Red Latina sin fronteras By Guille Larios at La Directa /Alasbarricadas. 02/10/2025 at thefreeonline

Catalonia: The Earth Revolts movement is born to promote large ecological mobilizations

Fifty organizations in defense of the territory in the Catalan Countries participated in the presentation of the new confluence of struggles to confront the ecosocial collapse.

The meeting took place on January 25 at the La Llavor Occupied Social Center in Prat de Llobregat., Barcelona.

(note.. the phrase Catalán Countries is used to include Catalán áreas in Baleares, France, Aragón, Valencia… But doesn’t imply any Statist claim)

******

It is Saturday, January 25 in Prat de Llobregat and it is nine in the morning.

There is little traffic and most of the buildings in the Fondo del Peixo Industrial Estate are closed.

Only one of the shutters is up. It is the old Centro de Estudios Llobregat, a huge abandoned building that was renamed the La Llavor Self-Managed Occupied Centre ten years ago.

There is a sense of expectation from the first hour. A constant buzz and a growing murmur fill the corridors of the squatted centre.

“La Llavor (‘the Seed’) works for those who fight,” says a graffiti (in Catalan) in the kitchen-café.

Today, within these walls, the phrase takes on its full meaning.

More than one hundred people from fifty organisations and groups have signed up to attend a presentation that is as mysterious as it is expected.

Revoltes de la Terra is the result of more than two itinerant years of meetings, encounters, debates, strategies and accumulation of forces between people and groups of environmentalists and those in defence of the territory.

Manifestación contra la ampliación del aeropuerto del Prat de Llobregat | Àngel Monlleó

In front of a crowd, one of the spokespersons explained that in recent years, “the eco-social situation has worsened and capitalist plunder is relentless,” adding that “if the system is totalizing, so must be the response.”

This ecological movement presents itself as a new “dynamic of struggle” to “unite forces,” following the impulse of climate movements that have emerged in recent years such as Rebellion or Extinction or Soulèvements de la Terre.

Revoltes de la Terra aims to organize meetings throughout the territory in alliance with local groups, where reflection and proposals can be combined with action against “ecocidal projects.”

At the same time, a spokesperson specifies, the meetings serve to “exemplify and denounce the same problems that exist on a global scale.”

Punk Rock and Revolution- A Message to Persons Unknown – Margaret Killjoy

‘A revolution cannot be one thing for one group of people. It’s got to be woven together with many strands’.

by Margaret Killjoy at BirdsBeforetheStorm / Substack 11 comments on 23rd Feb 2025 via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-G82 Telegram https://t.me/thefreeonline/2364

When I was nineteen, I spent awhile squatting in the suburbs of Baltimore, in a town called Towson (now famous as the birthplace of Luigi). This isn’t where I’m from… I had met some crustpunks in philly and started traveling with them.

We wound up in Towson, living in abandoned buildings or crawl spaces or bushes. We organized against war and we dumpstered and we shoplifted and we got run off by the cops several times a day.

You Do Not Flee a Storm- . or: morale as a terrain of struggle

There’s this moment I remember clearly, despite the large quantity of malt liquor I’d likely consumed: I remember being in a basement in Baltimore itself, probably one of the Food Not Bombs houses, while punk bands played.

Everyone was wearing all black with white-ink patches on their clothes, sewn together with dental floss. Floor joists were perilously perched above our heads. We did ourselves some permanent hearing damage in that basement.

The punk band had two singers, both women. It was called 2AM Revolution. During the chorus, everyone sang along as the singer screamed about how if she saw a Nazi she would “break my fucking 40 on his motherfucking face!”

And just like that, in that basement screaming along, I understood punk.

Because the thing is, those of us in that basement meant what we said about revolution. Our venues were collective houses that doubled as mutual aid kitchens. The singers of the band marched alongside us at antiwar and alterglobalization protests.

When a bus load of Nazis passed through town, the local punks working with Anti-Racist Action partnered with local gangs to ambush the fascists, smashing out the bus windows, pepperspraying inside, and jumping every nazi as they emerged.

Then everyone disappeared back through the alleys into the Maryland night.

A car full of antifascists showed up late and were carted off to jail, and the punk scene raised the money for their criminal defense. We meant what we said in our lyrics.

But one band and their fans isn’t a movement.