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And next, Syria?

Geri said:
Maybe you would care to explain, if regime change is the agenda, why the imperialist west have done fuck all to realise it?
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This should be a big fucking neon sign to people who think assad is just a poor hapless fellow defending his country from the evil forces of Nato. I mean it's not as if the west have been shy about actually wanting regime change and openly persuing it in the past is it? If that was the goal then it would've been persued the moment chemical weapons were used, that's an even easier sell to the public than weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was.
 
teqniq said:
I have not been solely using western MSM to base my opinions on but reports from Medicins sans Frontiers, Syria Direct and activists on Twitter, who guess what? Are actually there. Also whether you like it or no I suspect my critical faculties are a tad more incisive than yours. The evidence is overwhelming.
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MSF is the most compelling I admit, but like HRW these organisations are not immune to being used or represented in different ways. Syria Direct and activists... fuck knows what those consist of. Its a function of your opinion that you take what they show and tell you at face value and that's fair enough, it's a complex issue.
 
Geri said:
Maybe you would care to explain, if regime change is the agenda, why the imperialist west have done fuck all to realise it?
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There has been rather a large if unsuccessful covert intervention in Syria it just hasn't involved directly obliterating the Syrian state with US airpower. The US did lead the charge in insisting Assad must go but rapidly lost the taste for it. It being (another) rather fuck witted enterprise in which US interests were not at all salient.

The Syrian state did help get a couple of thousand US troops killed in Anbar but it's not really personal. Elements in Foggy Bottom before the Arab Spring tried to split Assad from their old Iranian allies. Bashar has never shown much sign of tangling with the Israelis. As a deeply cynical crazily neoliberal somewhat anglophile despot he did look like a fair Inner Beltway punt. Now it's more a matter of being tangled up with Muslim allies with irreconcilable interests as the US fixates on IS.
 
teqniq said:
I have not been solely using western MSM to base my opinions on but reports from Medicins sans Frontiers, Syria Direct and activists on Twitter, who guess what? Are actually there. Also whether you like it or no I suspect my critical faculties are a tad more incisive than yours. The evidence is overwhelming.
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Bana the indestructible ? White helmets..sponsored by mi5 , killer squads posing as humanitarians ? Activists.....as in people who will make up any old shit in the hope of getting the foreign intervention they require to win ? Such as poor wee Bana threatening to die on us every few days if world war 3 isn't started ? And then dying..respawning and resurrecting herself when WW3 wasn't announced upon her demise . And that bloke in the semi in Coventry ?

Your sources are pure shite . Needs said .
 
camouflage said:
MSF is the most compelling I admit, but like HRW these organisations are not immune to being used or represented in different ways. Syria Direct and activists... fuck knows what those consist of. Its a function of your opinion that you take what they show and tell you at face value and that's fair enough, it's a complex issue.
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Msf are a chancy shower of bastards in this conflict . Tip of the iceberg here

About Bias and Propaganda on Syria | Dissident Voice

The White Helmets Controversy

Remember MSF have absolutely no staff in Syria . Because, like western journalists, theres a very real risk "moderate rebels " will kidnap them and sell them to head hackers . They merely parrot what " activists " on the ground tell them .




Remember too this is the same MSF that stayed silent when a Palestinian child was dragged from his hospital bed in Eastern Allepo and decapitated for the cameras by grinning western sponsored moderates . A child with his medical drips still attached .
 
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camouflage said:
MSF is the most compelling I admit, but like HRW these organisations are not immune to being used or represented in different ways. Syria Direct and activists... fuck knows what those consist of. Its a function of your opinion that you take what they show and tell you at face value and that's fair enough, it's a complex issue.
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Check out the guy with the beard on the far right corner during this staged hospital carnage video . Much weeping, much wailing, much screaming for the cameras ..and then..he gives the entire fucking game away . The David Brent of of Syrian hospital massacres .



Al jazeera ripping the piss as usual .
 
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camouflage said:
Hell-cannons and mortars fired at civilian areas on the other hand are given a pass.
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War, its what happens mainly because the enemy, for whatever reason has embedded itself in the civilian population. However, just as the heat is turned up on our little war with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, Aleppo hits our headlines, excuse me while grimance at my cynism and coincidence.
 
camouflage said:
MSF is the most compelling I admit, but like HRW these organisations are not immune to being used or represented in different ways. Syria Direct and activists... fuck knows what those consist of. Its a function of your opinion that you take what they show and tell you at face value and that's fair enough, it's a complex issue.
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If only there were fairly large numbers of Syrians current residing in the U.K. that could tell us what has been going on there for the past 4 years.
IMG_0209.PNGWhat motivated this Doctor(pictured here in Edinburgh back in April) to send a template letter to Refugee action groups in Scotland to ask our MP's to call to stop the aerial bombardment and allow safe passage for people to leave Aleppo, yesterday? IMG_0208.JPG
 
From The Washington Institute The Aleppo Betrayal
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The Syrian revolution was indeed betrayed; by petty interest and myopic vision for sure, but first and foremost by Islamism in all of its expressions. The desire of the Syrian population to assert its dignity, freedom, and longing for political justice was hijacked by the stealth effort of local ideological Islamists, stemming from the Muslim Brothers, aiming to settle scores with the despotic regime for its repression of their movement in past decades. But, by many more orders of magnitude, the betrayal came in the form of an international jihadism claiming to come to the rescue of victimized Muslims, only to inflict upon all Syrians its own alien and brutal vision of religious regimentation and depraved punishment. Young men from Chinese Xin Jiang, Russian Dagestan, or the Parisian banlieues competing in their suicide attacks to eradicate rival radical factions on Syrian soil cannot be ignored as a primary factor in the Syrian revolution's derailing and Syrian society's suffering. Any hope of recovery for the Syrian revolution is premised on the re-Syrianization of its goals, actions, and participants. It is a hope that is still awaiting a vehicle for its expression; it is nonetheless clear, in light of the indelible history of brutalization and rampant factionalism, that there can be no lasting rehabilitation of the regime. The Syrian revolution will continue to metastasize. The direction of its transformation will be shaped by lessons learned -- or not -- from the current failures.
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You can't separate highly reactionary political Islam from the rising in Syria. With these thing the unthreatening sea goes out and a tsunami comes in. The Arab Spring upheavals in Syria had essentially failed by 2012 and increasingly they became something new. Like the Bolsheviks in 1916 Political Islam may not have represented the messy will of a popular call for an end to practical serfdom but they had force and direction. It was a major mode of opposition organisation (or disorganisation) with many rival strands. Unusually it was a diverse revolt of the provinces not so popular in Syria's great cities. It faced considerable resistance from regime supporters cheering on Baathist brutality and a wider urban society simply not much liking the look of the often rural rebels. Something the usual policy establishment narrative has ignored.

Regime propaganda has the revolt as foreign terrorists much as our Information Operations often portrayed a 150K strong largely Iraqi Baathist insurgency as the work of foreign fighters. Meddling foreigners have made it much worse but it's at heart an ugly indigenous matter of Syrians killing other Syrians in large numbers for political reasons. Like a lot of Civil Wars the popular causes do not stop at the borders. Tribal territories span countries. Historically Syria has a rather central place in the Muslim imagination and toppling the obviously brutal and corrupt Baathist regime provided a magnetic good cause. Defending a newly constructed regional sectarian identity based on Sunni Arab victimhood.

It's often rather overlooked that Shia Jihadis rushed to defend their Syrian shrines as well. Iraqi's highly motivated by an earlier bloody sectarian insurgency to stop a hostile Salafi Emirate emerging next door. HA fighting them over there but also defending their supply lines for the war with the Joos. Of course that's also Iran's revolutionary hand weaponising a new Shia international to defend the Syrian status quo but it's more than that. This lot are perhaps rather more focused on retaking al Quds than the Beards we obsess on.
 

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An initial deal that would have seen thousands of civilians and opposition fighters granted safe passage out of the city stalled on Wednesday, and the planned evacuation failed to happen.

Iran, one of Mr Assad's main backers, imposed new conditions, saying it wanted the simultaneous evacuation of wounded from two villages besieged by rebels, according to rebel and United Nations sources.

But Abdul Salam Abdul Razak, a military spokesman for the Nour al-Din al Zinki rebel group, said a new agreement had been reached which included those villages in Idlib province.

"Within the coming hours its implementation will begin," he said.

An official in the Jabha Shamiya rebel group said implementation would begin about 3:00pm (AEDT) today.

An official in the pro-Damascus military alliance confirmed the truce deal was on, and said about 15,000 people would be evacuated from the majority Shi'ite villages, Foua and Kefraya, in return for the evacuation from Aleppo of "militants and their families and whoever wants to leave among civilians".

He said those leaving Aleppo would head for the Idlib province, west of the city.

The Jabha Shamiya official however denied that 15,000 people would leave the two villages and said only the wounded would be evacuated.

It was not immediately clear how the deal had been reached.
...
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Iranians haggling as usual.
 
On Syria Comment Usud Al-Cherubim: A Pro-Assad Christian Militia
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In short, the case of Usud al-Cherubim provides an interesting case of evolution from a local initiative to an affiliate of a wider militia conglomeration attached to the air intelligence. The existence of Usud al-Cherubim also illustrates that notions of defence of holy sites as rallying calls are by no means limited to the Shi’a alone. Indeed, as the case of the Syriac Military Council demonstrates, the idea of defending churches and other holy sites from desecration and destruction has been an important talking point among Christians in the east of the country as well.

Of course, Usud al-Cherubim goes beyond mere defence of the Deir al-Cherubim monastery, and has been actively fighting for the regime elsewhere in western Syria. The developments surrounding Guardians of the Dawn also point to wider trends among pro-Assad militias: namely, a desire to assert political influence (while not threatening Assad’s position as president of Syria) and competition for power on the ground (which, in the case of the various intelligence agencies in particular, also represents continuity with the past).
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UsudalCherubimAdraDamascus.jpg

“Lions of the Cherubim”. Is that a Trinity gesture on the left or has he just got a sore thumb?
 
On CSM As Aleppo falls, Russia and Iran see Mideast influence surge at US expense
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Iran's challenges

Iran faces its own challenges, not least because of uncertainty about how a new US administration under Donald Trump may improve ties with Russia at Iran’s expense. So it, too, is inclined to seek a political solution.

“The perception in Tehran is there is no military ending in Syria,” says Nasser Hadian-Jazy, a political scientist at Tehran University.

“In other words, it is a good time to go for a negotiated solution, because from a position of strength it is easier to convince Assad to give concessions, rather than a position of weakness,” says Mr. Hadian-Jazy.

Though some conservative factions in Iran revel in the Aleppo victory of “resistance,” that view “is not going to be shared … universally,” he says.

“Our forces are overstretched. We know there is no light at the end of the tunnel,” says Hadian-Jazy. “Any tactical closeness of Russia and the US may hurt Iran, [so] our preference would be to quickly turn that victory into a negotiated solution.”
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That Iranian revolutionary urge to keep the imperial powers at arms length.

Assad may be stuck with a demanding IRGC presence in Syria but the Iranians will also want the Russians out of their hair once they've served their purpose in Syria.
 

...
Having admitted 3 million Syrian refugees and spent close to $15 billion for relief efforts since 2011, Turkey responded to the humanitarian crisis in eastern Aleppo by taking initiative and working with Moscow to find a middle ground. Negotiations held by the Turkish intelligence and the Russian military were intended to prevent the next Srebrenica, while Washington and Brussels opted to watch a bloodthirsty regime massacre innocent people and destroy one of the world heritage cities – as they did in places like former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Meanwhile, thousands of people gathered outside the diplomatic missions of Russia, Syria and Iran to protest what looked like a 21st century "final solution."

The collapse of the cease-fire agreement should be studied carefully by the Russian leadership. The simple lesson from the past 48 hours is that Assad is not a reliable ally for Moscow. Having bowed to the Kremlin's pressure to abide by the agreement, the Syrian regime played Iran against Russia to continue killing innocent people. To make matters worse, the Russians should also face the fact that they cannot keep a lid on Iran's influence on Syria anymore. At the end of the day, Assad and Tehran made Russian President Vladimir Putin look like a weak leader who cannot deliver his promises – under the watchful eyes of the entire world. It is time for the Kremlin to reconsider their support for the murderer in Damascus.

If you happen to dislike Russia's Middle East policy, you should be really worried about U.S. President Barack Obama's legacy – at least the Russians have courage to talk straight. For years, the Obama administration appeased the Iranian regime and created an echo chamber to present a disastrous foreign policy as a successful initiative. Mistaking PR stunts for actual policy, the White House allowed Tehran get away with a rogue nuclear program. At the same time, Mr. Obama outsourced part of the counterterrorism effort in Syria to Iranian-backed Shiite militias – who now want to exterminate the civilian population of Aleppo because they happen to be Sunni Muslims. Moving forward, Washington's only choice is to acknowledge Mr. Obama's mistakes and support efforts to broker a cease-fire in Syria.
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Turkish state media presenting a sectarian face that might play well with Trump.

You do have to ask why the Turks were talking to the Russians rather than the Iranians who have far more control on the ground? They have diplomatic links to both and the Iranian reaction was predictable.
 
In The WSJ Assad’s Choice: Fight Rebels but Give Way to ISIS
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With the Syrian army depleted by losses and a shrinking draft base, and with the Syrian campaign proving increasingly costly for both Russia and Iran, the setback in Palmyra shows the fundamental weakness of the regime and its allies, some Arab officials say. That weakness, in turn, offers a glimmer of hope that another escalation of the war against the opposition could be prevented, they add.

“The only thing that would help in putting an end to the war is that the ability of Russia and Iran—and of the regime itself—to continue the war is not unlimited because of economic reasons,” said Fouad Siniora, the former prime minister of Lebanon and the head of the Sunni Future bloc in the Lebanese parliament.

Critics of the Syrian regime, however, suggest that more sinister motives may have been in play in Palmyra.

At a time when the world’s attention is focused on the brutality of government troops in Aleppo, they say, the sudden reappearance of bearded Islamic State militants in the storied town served as a convenient reminder that, in the greater scheme of things, Mr. Assad is meant to represent the lesser evil.

“Daesh was always a boon for the Syrian government,” said Abdelaziz Aluwaisheg, assistant secretary-general for political affairs at the Gulf Cooperation Council, which unites Saudi Arabia and five other Gulf monarchies. “They are using Daesh to change the terms of the conflict, from the fight of the people against a despotic, fascist regime to a fight against terrorism.”
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Obviously Assad just loves IS massacring a few hundred of his hapless soldiers hung out to dry by retreating Russians and making him look like a pussy after losing Palmyra twice.

Or it could be all that GCC backing for the rebels and subsequent drastic attrition of 100K+ of regime forces has rather enabled not just IS and AQ in Syria but the IRGC. The latter finally invited in the Russians completely upsetting the balance of power. In retrospect it's hard to see how poorly coordinated Gulfie actions resulted in much more than fragmenting the revolt and enhancing its sectarian tendencies. It looks even dafter with the pivotal Turks wandering off in pursuit of the PKK as Aleppo falls.
 
Casually Red said:
Bana the indestructible ?
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Indeed, even the NYT has reported "skepticism".
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/w...edCoverage&region=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article

There is some precedent for such cynicism, and a notable example also had a Syrian connection. In 2011, a woman who described herself as a lesbian blogger using the pseudonym Amina Arraf wrote about political persecution in Damascus, the capital, and suddenly disappeared.

The “gay girl in Damascus,” as the blogger came to be known, turned out to be a 40-year-old American man from Georgia.
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International aid advocates have expressed mixed feelings about Bana’s fame — satisfaction that she has increased global sympathy for child victims in Syria, but concern that her story, as presented on Twitter, may not be entirely accurate
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Or lack of skepticism, in some cases
Kathleen Bartzen Culver, the director for the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said some news outlets, including morning network news shows in the United States, seemed to have “suspended skepticism.”
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Butchersapron is very fond of reminding us how little we know about what is really happening in Syria, but the implication is that he/she does. Which, of course, he/she has not proved.

Southpark nails it yet again.

 
So we've got videos direct from a conspiracy YouTube channel, interviews with the head of a state whose words we should just take at face value because he's a head of state of course and they never lie, and Southpark clips... Great stuff.
 
Is this the sort of thing that anti-MSM media types like the above quintet of time-wasters want to see more of?

Finding Bana – Proving the Existence of a 7-Year-Old Girl in Eastern Aleppo

As they won't bother to read the piece i shall post the conclusion:

Using the open source information available to us we can draw several conclusions about Bana and her Twitter account:

Bana Al-Abed is a real 7 year-old child who resides in East Aleppo.
Her Twitter and Periscope accounts have consistently posted videos from the same locations in East Aleppo.
Her accounts are run by her mother, Fatimah.
Fatimah has experience of journalism and appears to be very social-media savvy.
Bana and her mother have come under sustained attack from critics using lies, misinformation and deliberate misunderstanding in order to delegitimise them.
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By far the most likely scenario is that @AlabedBana is an account run by Fatemah which tells the story of her daughter, a young child in East Aleppo. This story cannot be told without including the daily horrors which affect the residents of that city. This in itself does not make @AlabedBana some kind of Jihadi plot, nor a propaganda account seeking to spread a false narrative: due to the events occurring in Aleppo, any account of daily life becomes inherently political. The account has posted more obvious political messages, as well as occasional frustrated outbursts, but for the majority of its existence it has posted the simple hopes and fears of a young girl and her mother. Bombs are falling on East Aleppo and young children are suffering, and Bana represents a microcosm of that suffering.
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In the same way, the fact that Fatemah, who clearly and openly runs this account, is adept at using social-media, and posts from a particular viewpoint, does not necessarily discredit this account either: being adroit at informing the world about the plight of those in East Aleppo does nothing to detract from that suffering. Some have argued that Fatemah has used Bana in an exploitative manner, and while the mix of political statements and simplistic messages could certainly be criticised, it appears to be an entirely rational approach for a family attempting to raise awareness of the dire situation in East Aleppo.
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Unless one lacks any kind of empathy, it is clear that @AlabedBana is an attempt to show the world an aspect of the suffering of real people in a real situation, including their fear of death and frustrated outbursts. Putting aside political affiliations and partisan politics, it is impossible to reject the truth that there is a small girl called Bana suffering under the fear of death because of the conflict in Aleppo, an existence shared by many other children on all sides across this conflict.
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Next up from them will be a link to the ready made - since the MH17 downing at least - smears of bellingcat as simple NATO tools, western tools - whatever phrase they feel happiest uncritically parroting. Smears produced by exactly the sort of people these clowns think they're warning others of and are that they are the few with the ability to see through the machinations of.
 
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