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And next, Syria?

Alongside the impending attack on Idlib is an ongoing disinformation campaign involving the Russians and assisted by the likes of Vanessa Beeley that there will be a false flag chemical weapons attack involving the White Helmets. This is most likely preparatory to an actual attack by the regime. The trouble is with this is that the likes of Beeley can't get their story straight most probably because of insufficient knowledge of the regime's plans. Proper deluded shit anyway.

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Major new interview - well timed i suppose as the vultures gather - samples below:

Dissidents of the left: In conversation with Yassin al-Haj Saleh

Heintz: Can you talk about the need to see the situation in Syria (and the Middle East in general) in a political and historical context, as opposed to a cultural one?

Al-Haj Saleh: I see Culturalism (or cultural determinism) as a plague that struck the studies of politics and societies of the Middle East; the Arab countries in particular. It offers a lazy explanation to the social and political dynamics of our societies by resorting to supposedly clear notions like Islam, Islamic civilization, fundamentalism, Sunni, Shia, and the like. In a mysterious way, it is thought that we can be defined, and our practices analyzed, by reducing them to “culture” the way economistic determinism explained these very phenomena a few decades ago. In Syria and the Arab world, the culturalist approach was prosperous before the revolutions and its proponents are now optimistic again after the debacle the revolutions suffered from. But while economism was translated politically into populist or developmentarian nationalism, the political translation of culturalism is elitism and neo-fascism, à la the Bashar al-Assad model.

That's very good, 'culturalism/cultural determinism' - identity politics scaled up. Prompted me to dig out a piece I linked to a couple of years ago about regional imperial cartography, which I think also refers to an orientalism that suggests pluralism is ok for 'us' but impossible for 'them'. A suggestion that now seems to be in retreat - cultural determinism being applied to Fortress Europe & the US.
 
idrees ahmad in the NYRB

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/09/07/how-assad-made-truth-a-casualty-of-war/

The incident was a turning point. It signaled the regime’s willingness to use deadly violence to thwart independent witness to its slaughter. Baba Amr would be the last time that the foreign press was able to infiltrate a siege and refute the regime’s propaganda claims. By eliminating independent reporting, the regime would successfully turn subsequent atrocities into cases of “he said, she said”—the regime’s word against the opposition’s, with audiences inclined to accept or reject them based on their political predilections. The regime’s (and later Russia’s) use of the “war on terror” tropes would resonate well with Western audiences, especially policy-makers and think-tankers. All Assad’s opponents would be declared “terrorists.”
 
Ankara captures chief suspect in 2013 Turkey border bombing

Ankara has said its intelligence agents have captured the key suspect in a bombing of a Turkish border town in 2013, which left at least 50 people dead. Yusuf Nazik was captured by Turkish intelligence in the Syrian regime stronghold of Latakia, with the suspect brought back to Turkey by agents, media reported on Wednesday. He is accused of masterminding a bomb attack on the town of Reyhanli in May 2013, which left at least 50 civilians dead including Syrian refugees and Turkish locals. Turkey suspects Syrian intelligence were behind the attack with the aim of destabilising the country and in revenge at Ankara's support for anti-regime rebel groups during Syria's war.
 
UN FINDS ASSAD REGIME RESPONSIBLE FOR 3 MORE CHEMICAL ATTACKS

The UN has now attributed responsibility to the Assad regime for 33 chemical attacks since the regime’s August 2013 sarin assault on East and West Ghouta, killing more than 1,400 people. The Islamic State has been blamed for six others.

...

“To recapture eastern Ghouta in April, government forces launched numerous indiscriminate attacks in densely populated civilian areas, which included the use of chemical weapons,” it said, referring to incidents on Jan. 22 and Feb. 1 in a residential area of Douma, eastern Ghouta, outside the capital.
 
Watch the shit start flying from the Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah, Syrians and their useful idiots outside of the country now:

Chemical weapons team to begin assigning blame for Syrian attacks

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The global chemical weapons watchdog will in February begin to assign blame for attacks with banned munitions in Syria’s war, using new powers approved by member states but opposed by Damascus and its key allies Russia and Iran.

The agency was handed the new task in response to an upsurge in the use of chemical weapons in recent years, notably in the Syrian conflict, where scores of attacks with sarin and chlorine have been carried out by Syrian forces and rebel groups, according to a joint United Nations-OPCW investigation.

A core team of 10 experts charged with apportioning blame for poison gas attacks in Syria will be hired soon, Fernando Arias, the new head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), told the Foreign Press Association of the Netherlands on Tuesday.

The Syria team will be able to look into all attacks previously investigated by the OPCW, dating back to 2014.
 
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