UK professor wants would-be russian spy to snoop after journalists and syrian activists.

 A rather interesting story has been published by BBC: Edinburgh university professor Paul McKeigue has a careless e-mail conversation with a supposed russian spy; wanted information about  journalists and syrian anti-regime activists: 

A British professor corresponded for months with a man called only "Ivan", seeking assistance to discredit an organisation that helps bring Syrian war criminals to justice. He also asked "Ivan" to investigate other British academics and journalists. The email exchange, seen by the BBC, reveals how, a decade on from the start of the Syrian conflict, a battle is still being waged in the field of information and misinformation.

One chilly December morning there was a ping as an email from a professor at Edinburgh University dropped into Bill Wiley's inbox. The subject line read: Questions for William Wiley.

Wiley, who runs an organisation that salvages documents for use in war crimes trials from abandoned Syrian government buildings, recognised the sender's name.

Prof Paul McKeigue, an epidemiologist from Edinburgh University, had been in touch once before asking similar questions about Wiley's NGO - the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (Cija) - for a critical report he was writing with a professor from Bristol and a former professor who once taught at Sheffield.

Knowing what he did of McKeigue's view that Western-funded NGOs are acting on behalf of the CIA and MI6 to blacken the image of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, Wiley felt sure their report would accuse Cija of distorting the truth about torture and murder in Syrian jails.

Over the last decade Cija's undercover investigators have salvaged more than 1.3 million documents created by a bureaucratic regime that is obsessed with paperwork, even when it concerns the brutal killing of its own people. All that paperwork is being held in an archive at Cija's headquarters in a secret location in Europe.

McKeigue's email to Wiley repeated that he and his colleagues were investigating Cija, but he didn't ask questions about Cija's work. He only seemed to be interested in companies Wiley had registered in his name.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-56524550

Guardian: the balance of 10 years of war in Syria

The Guardian writes:

Ten years after it began, Syria’s horrific civil war has faded from the headlines. Reluctant to get involved, US and European politicians, and the western public, mostly look the other way. Russia plays a pivotal role, but on the wrong side. Interventionist regional states such as Turkey, Israel, and Iran prioritise selfish, short-term interests. The result is stalemate – a semi-chilled conflict characterised by sporadic violence, profound pain and strategic indifference.

Yet this epic failure to halt the war continues to have far-reaching, negative consequences for international security, democratic values and the rule of law, as well as for Syria’s citizens. Whether the issue is human suffering, refugees, war crimes, chemical weapons or Islamist terrorism, the war’s multiple, toxic legacies are global, pernicious – and ongoing.

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Syria is the world’s war. Here are 10 reasons why 10 years of unending misery and mayhem have harmed everyone:

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/07/ten-grim-lessons-the-world-has-learned-from-a-decade-of-war-in-syria