Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 2:54 pm
by JackRiddler
So much blah blah pretending to be authoritative. He doesn't fucking know if I've been paying attention or what I've thought of developments in Syria other than the missile strike last week, so he can fuck off with his assumptions. The dismissal of geopolitics is laughable. Whether or not the recent USFUK strike was ritual, the escalation of the U.S. geopolitics against Russia is long term, serious, and heading to ever-higher risks of disaster to outdo all others.
As I've noticed with the ongoing wave of moraline pieces attacking "the left" for ignoring the monster Assad and his Syrian victims, when he finally after 16 paragraphs or so gets to the Kurds and Rojava (at least he does), he evades mentioning who is murdering them today - it is of course his "not Jihadi" friends of the "Free Syrian Army," under Turkish command. To ask a question in his style, why doesn't this guy care about Kurdish lives?
Many pages ago you were posting this stuff with profiles of the great secular leftist revolutionaries in Aleppo - and by 2014 they were all assassinated by jihadis, not the SAA. Moderates don't get the Gulf or Western funds and arms, jihadis have. Nusra and its ilk came to be dominant long ago. The militias keep mutating, splitting, recombining, flying whatever flag works for the moment. If Nusra and all the post-Nusra neo-"moderates" are minor compared to Assad (not actually true), well at least there's that much good news.
The real civil society revolutionaries of 2011 sadly find themselves in refugee camps abroad.
Again, I'm fully aware of the ritual nature of the recent attack by USFUK. I don't fucking care. One doesn't play rituals with a mere 1% of chance of escalation into nuclear war. Fuck that. And it was illegal under U.S. constitutional law. And it was $250 million of my fucking money, so I have every right to be angry about it and angry about all of the Western strikes and the arms and money fed into this insane conflict in which the CIA-backed jihadis end up fighting the Pentagon-backed militias. That's fucking insane.
And this guy's making fun of how trivial the USFUK strike was! Implicitly, he'd have liked to have seen something like in Raqqa or Mosul done to Damascus and Homs? Or what does he want? As usual with these pretend-revolution rants, it's totally incoherent on that matter. What does he want? What would be this "leftist solidarity" he desires? Should we be marching for more bigger missile strikes? Boots on the ground? Or should we just shut up about Trump's strike and be more prominent about wringing our hands, pointlessly, about the monster Assad? Yeah, that's the ticket, just let the MIC decide. Don't allow any chance that an expert on Syria will falsely call you an ally of Assad, because that's bad for your virtue status and social media rating.
The most obvious concrete thing one can do from here is help the refugees, but this guy doesn't have much to say about their plight.
Finally, his defense of the long-ago defeated revolution is coupled with trivializing the situation in Yemen, which is now just as bad and far more clear-cut. Who's the denialist regarding that, or - to stay within Syria then - Rojava?
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 3:04 pm
by Elvis
Wow, thanks, liminal. Fascinating. It really says something that Assad drives right into Douma without a big security detail. He's known to walk about freely in Damascus. After all, he won the last election with 80% of the vote, as verified by international election monitors.
I love the viewer comment about how Scott Prewit has 10X the security.
Listen to what Assad is saying. He's already thinking about how to help children catch up with education they missed during the occupation, how to help people return, to shelter them and get their lives back on track.
liminalOyster » Sat Apr 21, 2018 11:29 am wrote:Offered with no commentary, endorsement, credulity, platforming opportunism or acerbic debunking. Did you know animals can drive?
I think his geopolitical analysis here is spot on.
Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 3:17 pm
by Elvis
Yesterday on BBC I heard the most egregious "report" which claimed to get to the bottom of the White Helmet controversy. I won't bother finding the story online to link here, because as news it's worthless except as a case study in propganda.
But its main feature, once again, is the usual and crafty omission of the most pertinent evidence: ongoing $100M US/UK primary funding of the White Helmets—ZERO mention of that KEY factor—and the documentary proof that the White Helmets are one with ISIS, given a BBC "conspiracy theory" gloss-over with no substance.
Along with the usual repetition of gas attack charges, the rest is mostly associational shaming—"but that's what Putin thinks!"
Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 3:21 pm
by Elvis
If this little boy is lying, he and his father [if that's his real father!] are both the definition of "crisis actor"—what say my fellow RI members?:
Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 3:23 pm
by Elvis
minime » Sat Apr 21, 2018 11:26 am wrote:Most of this military and political activity was outlined in broad strokes in white papers on the PNAC website as long ago as 1998-1999.
It can hardly be a surprise.
Yup. And not just PNAC. And why some people cannot put 2+2 together is bewildering.
Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?
minime » Sat Apr 21, 2018 11:26 am wrote:Most of this military and political activity was outlined in broad strokes in white papers on the PNAC website as long ago as 1998-1999.
It can hardly be a surprise.
Yup. And not just PNAC. And why some people cannot put 2+2 together is bewildering.
That's why my repeated unanswered question to you "Why ask who?" is especially appropriate.
Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 3:43 pm
by Elvis
Same boy and father:
'They gave dates & cookies to kids at Douma hospital' – father of ‘chem attack’ victim
Hospital doctor: "We didn't see any patients with symptoms of chemical attack."
Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 3:53 pm
by Elvis
Mark Crispin Miller hits the nail on the head regarding the "breathtaking" level of propaganda issued by MSM:
American media wrong on Syria coverage – NYU professor Published on Apr 13, 2018 As western media stirs the pot and pushes for strikes on Syria without evidence, NYU Media Studies Professor Mark Crispin Miller calls the coverage ’garbage’ and says it parallels the media narratives preceding the Iraq War.
Miller acknowledges RT's connection to the Russian government and compares it to BBC, but rightly points out,
What makes the American propaganda so much more compelling and persuasive to countless Americans—especially the best educated ones—is the myth that we have a free press.
Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 4:18 pm
by Elvis
My Lai and Abu Ghraib exposé reporter Seymore Hersh has weighed in at length on the questions surrounding past gas attacks in Syria. Here's a rare appearance on CNN; since then, for obvious reasons, Hersh has otherwise been shut out of U.S. media.
Did Syrian rebel group have sarin? Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports the Obama administration "cherry-picked" intelligence on Syria.
Tons more with Hersh on YouTube, just search 'seymore hersh gas attacks syria'.
Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 5:12 pm
by peartreed
It is increasingly evident that the identification of the sarin or gas attack chemical used can be determined by the chemical composition of the traces found at the site(s) of the bombing. The known type used by Assad forces differs from the types made by the opposition sub-groups like Nusra et al. So the chemical signature is the best determinant of the likely source responsible. What have the objective labs found? Have there been any independent, reliable reports of the trace analysis?
Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?