Mosul is being destroyed
Remember when Aleppo was an international crisis that had to be stopped?
At least that is what the American media said.
‘Aleppo is falling, Mosul liberated’
'Hell' in Aleppo, 'Collateral Losses' in Mosul
You would never know from the news media that things are much, much worse in Mosul today.
I could only find this information in foreign media sources. Our news media is almost completely silent on the issue.
Intensive bombardment and air raids by the Iraqi authorities and their foreign backers has led to mass civilian fatalities, the extensive destruction of infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the ongoing battle between the Iraqi regime and Daesh extremists in Mosul.
The Iraqi immigration ministry announced that the number of refugees and internally displaced persons, or IDPs as they are more commonly known as, who are fleeing Mosul has reached 300,000 people since the Mosul operation began on 17 October.
Al Jazeera cited the Iraqi ministry as saying that the daily number of refugees fleeing the violence has now reached a daily figure of 10,000 people. This is a marked increase in numbers, demonstrating that the violence in Mosul is getting worse and indicating that Iraqi civilians are increasingly bearing the brunt of the operation.
The refugee camps are already full, so Lawd only knows where these people will go.
Consider the recently 'liberated' Mosul neighborhood of Samood.
The colossal destruction bore out their claims. Samood is a hellish landscape. Every third house seems to either bear the scars of a fierce firefight or is completely levelled. Burned-out husks of cars and the rubble from razed houses block most of the neighbourhood’s streets...
That anyone still lives in the ruins is a measure of how desperate the situation has become. The Iraqi army says it has carried out 3,780 sorties against Isil in northern Iraq since the offensive to liberate Mosul began, which averages out to almost 30 a day. The US, which is supporting Iraqi forces, has conducted more than double that.
“They dropped leaflets over the city telling us not to worry about the strikes, saying that they were extremely precise and would not hurt the civilians,” says Mr Ahmed, 47. “Now it feels like the coalition is killing more people than Isil.”
He said he thought as many as 300 people had been killed in raids during the battle to liberate Samood and his late brother’s neighbourhood al-Mansour. It was difficult to immediately verify the claim. A recent report by Airwars, a UK-based organisation which monitors international air strikes against Isil, suggested as many as 370 civilian deaths could be attributed to coalition raids in the first week of March alone.
Let's put that into perspective.
According to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), 463 civilians, including 62 children, killed in eastern Aleppo during the final offensive. This was considered 'genocide'.
Now consider this.
The US-led coalition against the Islamic State (Isil) is for the first time killing more civilians with its airstrikes than Russia is with its own bombing campaign, according to a new analysis.
Coalition warplanes have dramatically stepped up their strikes against Isil in both Mosul and Raqqa, while Russia has scaled back its campaign in Syria after a patchy ceasefire went into effect in December.
While Russia has killed far more civilians in total than the coalition, it is currently killing fewer civilians than the allies, research by the Airwars monitoring group found.
I doubt even 1 American in a thousand knows this.
Just to give you an idea of the bias of our news media, consider the fate of Mosul's bridges.
On December 28, Fox News and Washington Post:
Terror setback: Airstrike takes out Mosul's last functioning bridge
As fight in Mosul slows, last bridge in the city is hit by an airstrike
Then on January 13, CNN and Express:
ISIS destroys Mosul bridges as troops advance
ISIS fighters destroy River Tigris bridges as Iraqi forces gain ground in war-torn Mosul
Ah, so it wasn't us that bombed all five bridges in Mosul (it was). It was ISIS that did the horrible deed.
Also, we've always been at war with Eastasia.
Meanwhile, Mosul is destroyed by plan and design.
In practice, the Shia-dominated Iraqi government wants to break the back of Sunni resistance to its rule so it will never be capable of rising again.
Comments
It's always the same.
Mosul was a shithole when I was there.
I can't even imagine how 10 years of nonstop war has changed it.
I imagine that the US occupied areas look pretty much the same. Tons of concrete barriers, filled earth ramparts, and no contact whatsoever outside. Probably the COB's look the same. Bombed buildings, (By the US, I point out) the occasional scared animal, and lots and lots of dust with the smell of nitrocellulose and gasoline in the air.
Moon dust... lots of it. You step in it and you'd sink up to your knees. If there had been any moisture, it sucked you down fast, making you look horrid.
I was there, and have nothing but bad memories of the area. The locals hated us, the temporary wires crisscrossed the streets, cobbled together power in the aftermath of destruction. People tried to pretend the war didn't occur, even as gunshots rang out every moment or two, and every once in a while the sound of an IED detonation would cascade through the streets.
And it's been going on now for 10 years, since I was there. I just feel tired. And old. And watching fools who are older than me, making the same damn mistakes because they couldn't be bothered to go and see what their decisions foment.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urtiyp-G6jY]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
How long do the scars of war take to heal
Here in Bretagne and Normandie the scars are still visible interspersed are the brilliant white crosses in beautifully maintained cemeteries, the scars are fading into the background just as those those that still remember fade away. The land and the people recover when given a chance.
Have a Look at Mosul...
It's a 360º Video use the arrows to pan the picture.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlG50jmcclo]
I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House."
~John F. Kennedy~
Economic: -9.13, Social: -7.28,
How Many Additional Refugees...
Would there be if we just left the entire Middle East with our military, taking all the weapons and equipment in our possession with us, never exporting arms to the area again?
How many years would the numbers of refugees continue to rise with what they have in their hands already?
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Osbub_iTZg]
I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House."
~John F. Kennedy~
Economic: -9.13, Social: -7.28,
how much longer
Almost none. The wars would come to a fairly swift end as soon as every US arms customer ran out of ammo for their US made weapons.
After that, the people could start coming back home.
Again, not many.
John Lennon missed a bet. He should have written a verse for "Imagine" about an America with a non-interventionist foreign policy.
That would bring about almost everything else Mr. Lennon asked us to "Imagine", especially now that Russia and China now have serious domestic issues on their plates (just like we do!).
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I agree except for the domestic issue projection
In a recent poll asking people if there country was on the right track the most happy country in the world in China. Number three is Russia. There is only one Western nation which is above 50% and that is Canada. France is second from the bottom.
The West is constantly claiming that China and Russia are in big trouble. This is nothing but psychological projection. From both on the ground personal experience and polling data they are the happiest people in the world, or at least the most satisfied with the direction that their country is going.
Now from the West's standpoint both economies are on the verge of collapse. Who's economy is on the verge of collapse? China is under the boot-heel of a totalitarian Communist regime and the people should be out in the square protesting for revolution. Russia is under the thumb of that brutal thug, Putin the Terrible. There is no free press and he rules by terror....or at least as you might believe from the Western Press. Total and utter bullshit! When will we wake up to the fact that we are not the model of the most successful country, and that China and Russia are reasonable alternatives.
It takes an enormous sum of money to fund a military, in this case ISIS, Al Nusra, etc. This comes from the US, directly or indirectly. Stop the funding from US and our surrogates and the war stops immediately.
Russia was threatened that if they helped Assad that the West would mount a marketing campaign to discredit Russia and project them as war criminals. The US is trying to carry through with this threat, but it's proving hard to do since the facts on the ground tell another story. The State Department/Pentagon is livid that the SAA with Russia's help was able to liberate Aleppo and now Palmyra. Their response is that the US can do it better in Iraq. Once again, it's a mess and local people are paying with their lives.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
China and Russia
That wasn't quite what I said. I said that these nations have problems of their own to face, which they do -- by their own admission. China, for example, is facing a population paradox: while the one-child policy has worked some wonders insofar as the elimination of desperate order poverty is concerned, it has the undesirable side effect of creating a seriously aging population. (The BBC has had no problems reporting about this particular problem in China, either; the government has made no efforts to suppress this information.) Russia faces significant problems with organized crime and it is showing troubling signs of heading down the same rabbit hole of oligarchical rule and military adventurism that we ourselves are such pioneers at. Again, these things are not disputed by the nations in question. And Russia, especially, is getting to the point where we were between World War II and Vietnam: needing to make choices between spending on guns or butter. Believe it or not, there was a time within living memory that the USA's military spending was more like that of other major nations.
This, of course, is where the rubber hits the road. The problem here exists with the Saudis; if we stopped the funding, would they go along? Recent developments suggest otherwise....
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
@thanatokephaloides
If US currency went off the petrodollar and the need for the favour of Arab princes and the world went greener (ASAP!!!), I'm guessing there'd be far fewer problems in that area, if only from there being less oil money to splatter around on weaponry for terrorists and not the same urgency of 'fossil fuel wealth'-theft issues driving the 'need' to manipulate/take over other people's countries?
The oil barons and their political/financial lackeys seem to me to have just about everything to answer for.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I agree with
and appreciate what you and thanatokephaloides have said.
I want to add only that the polls you describe are about people who are,
That's different from being satisfied with the way things are. In other words, compared to what was happening before Putin began to nationalize resources in order to protect social well-being, and before Putin stood up to the Nazification of Ukraine and Crimea, things are going in the right direction. In China, perhaps there is slightly more freedom of expression and slightly more attention paid to the environment.
I wouldn't need a poll to tell me that the American people are REALLY REALLY NOT satisfied with the direction that their country is going.
@The Wizard "This [weapons] comes
"This [weapons] comes from the US, directly or indirectly". I don't believe that is true. Weapons are coming from the Turks, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar Libya, Israel, Pakistan and black market sources. These are a hodgepodge of weapons manufactured all over the world and bought and sold in multiple markets with funds from multiple sources. That doesn't count the fact that much of the weaponry is manufactured by Daesh (homemade Hell Canons with propane and water heater missles, mines, car and truck suicide bombs to mention three). One also has to investigate who bought all those white Toyotas and how they were transported and by whom.
You can confirm this by watching twitter feeds of weapons captured by the SAA (Syrian Arab Army) and the SDF (Syrian Democratic Force). Twitter does seem to EXPLODE with tweets every time a USA weapon is found.
From the Light House.
It's worth noting
that Russia has paid off its national debt. Quite a feat for a "failing economy", projection indeed.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Really?
That seems pretty unheard of. I would like to know more about it. Thanks for bringing it up.
Who do we thank now?
First it was "Thanks Bush". Now he's a living martyr.
"Thanks Obama". He declared his mission accomplished on 10/21/2011.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/10/21/president-obama-has...
Can we now thank the Donald?
We are living in a clusterhump.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Trump will have his "mission accomplished" moment
He won't be able to stop himself.
Nothing about this on the 6 o'clock news.
Just nonsense about rappers and Trump tweets. The only useful part is the weather report. Even the traffic report is worthless. Boils down to "the traffic in and out of Chicago sucks". So? It always has and I dare say it always will.
Oh! Yes. Once in a while a cute animal photo that they make you wait 30 minutes for and then show for 10 seconds. MUCH more time spent on some brainless twit. Not just Trump, another brainless twit. On Fox the brainless twit is usually blond with overflowing cleavage, but I don't suppose the viewers are actually listening.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
The silence is deafening
It's almost as if they are covering up a crime.
Can't comment
to you or to detroitmechworks. It's past the point of unspeakable.
I've always Loved the
term, "liberated." As in, "we just Liberated the $h!t out of that town!"
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Two words at least, blow back.
I can't, I just can't. I can't even find words to describe my horror, so I go straight to cynical snarcasm.
Your children, their children, grand children, ad infinitum, there will be disgusting blow back and all the talking heads will ask why? Why? As if they didn't know.
Peace & Love
There will be unending war in the mideast
until we stop coddling Israel but the Jesus freaks in America needs a big war there so Israel can be destroyed so Jesus can beam down and turn the world into cloudy heaven or something like that. It sounds idiotic but it's painfully true.
The real SparkyGump has passed. It was an honor being your human.
yep. Obama was too
chicken to pull all troops, bring 'em home. We'll be in the M.E. until somebody with a backbone says enough, war over, we're going home.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
There is something you all
There is something you all have forgotten about Aleppo. And that is that the headchopping mercenaries jihadi occupiers, with support from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait were daily shelling West Aleppo and indiscriminately killing thousands of civilians (school children, old people, women). Much of their weaponry was homemade "hellfire canons" and suicide truck bombs.
That left me in a quandary where the only way to save lives, make it possible to for people to return to normal was to squash lunatic mercenary madmen through military means. Look at Aleppo now: no more daily hell cannon attacks on Aleppans, the city being cleaned and rebuilt, schools, roads, hospitals being reopened. . .
In Mosul one mustn't forget the very well documented fact that Daesh are war criminals of the worst sort. These are same mercenary bunch who invaded and murdered thousands of Yezidis, Christians and even other Muslims. And yes, they are still using deadly homemade artillery and hundreds of suicide truck bombs. And yes, there are still thousands of Yezidis and Christians held in slavery. And yes, they still chop off heads and hands and torture prisoners daily, often in mass. Not from western bullshit mass media and NGO's, but well documented from many local sources of all stripes and colors.
In Syria, the Syrian people want Daesh and Al Qaedah mercenaries and their sick religious ideology ground into dog shit, and I venture to guess that most Iraqis feel the same way. There are essentially, IMO, four legitimate government entities (in reality anyway): Syria Arab Republic, Northern Syrian Alliance, Iraqi government and the Kurdish Regional Government who represent Iraqi and Syrian people of all ethnicities and religions. Its essentially up to the people to decide their fate. If part of that fate is to invite Russia, Iran, the USA to provide support well, that is their right. And it will be their right when and where to tell them to fuck off.
The sooner Iraqi and Syrian people get rid of mercenary headchopping jihadis, the more lives will be saved on many levels. The sooner these jihadi lunatics are ground to dust,the sooner the people can return home, rebuild, and start living a normal life. And the sooner they can tell foreign powers that support them to leave.
Presently a call for a cease fire, or for a stop to bombing of Mosul or wherever is just a call to help the jihadi headchoppers to regroup, rearm, and an extension of the daily massacres long long into the foreseeable future.
And also, it doesn't address an overriding fact. . . The corporate, nation-state capitalist system is in an advanced state of putrification. Much of the world is effected with decay and mass psychosis.
There will still be hundreds of suicide bombers, at least for awhile, but even this will end. It will take truth and conciliation and a lot of people being sent to prison or ??? and a different sort of liberation governance.
There are kind, people-centered revolutionary solutions.
From the Light House.
Thank you
for everything that you bring here and for everything you have said. I am a pacifist who believes what you have said is true.
I am also a person who has grown up just after WWII aware that most Americans believed that what won WWII was allied cremation of hundreds of thousands of German civilians and the pulverization of German cities. I don't believe that, and I think what gjohnsit is describing is our current distrust in our political leadership to do anything that makes sense or that liberates anyone from endless suffering.
But from the start of this, from right after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I have seen American military pointing out, as whistleblowers talking on camera to journalists, the counter-productive actions of our political leadership, and for this reason I have held out hope that at some point that part of our military that actually wants to destroy ISIS will do it. I think this is part of what Gen. Flynn was saying.
So, just to repeat myself, I believe everything you say here is true, and I believe everything gjohnsit says is also true.
USA carpet bombing softened by Kurdish chess?
And that is exactly the kind of thinking we need to be doing. Today, for example, I saw an image from inside Mosul or Raqqa (I forget) showing a large defensive berm built at a street corner with a little boy in the foreground shoveling sand. So, they question becomes, how does a military force breach that defense without killing the little boy and also keep their own men and women from getting slaughtered in an assault.
One fairly effective means is to create "humanitarian corridors" for civilians and deserters to escape from (the Russian/SAA method in Aleppo). When the enemy is using civilians as human shields, slaughtering escaping civilians and blaming it on the Russians and SAA as Al Nusra did in Aleppo that becomes more complicated.
One problem I see with USA is that they tend to play rugby where what is needed is a good game of chess. They talk about carpet bombing, pretend to use "surgical" strikes and are incapable of a siege without massive casualties. That is one reason I prefer the northern Syrians ("Kurds"). They have a proven record on the battle field of minimal civilian causalities fighting with light weapons and SEEMINGLY use USA air power to hit military targets. Even the bridges were only disabled over a single span, not the whole damn thing.
From the Light House.
The more I have read
about actual happenings on the ground, from persons like you and others I have read, the more certain I am that we have 2 American military efforts in the Middle East in opposition to each other. I try to read Rudaw as often as possible, and what I learn there is consistent with what you have said about the Kurdish forces and those working with them.
Drooling maniacs like Hillary Clinton
The whole thing is so complex that even the world's leading experts are confused. Then we have USA "intelligence" and "humanitarian" NGO's depending on such al Qaedah operatives like the "White Helmets", expats with agendas for making their military and political decisions (i.e. supporting regime change, the new world order or whatever the latest neocon game in town is).
Spend a day reading twitter and news feeds from all sides and watch the "news" get spun every which way, and flat out falsified. Add the fact that there is practically zero understanding of the different cultures from the actors' own. So you get drooling maniacs like, for example, Hillary Clinton who thinks she is going to bring "democracy" and "women's rights" or 'an end to child marriage" to a place like Afghanistan or Libya and myopically (viciously) she attaches to the bullshit propaganda that fits her agenda and that becomes the public meme. There is no basis in reality. WTF do USians know about tribal politics or history in Afghanistan or Yemen? Do they know one of the kings, Amanullah Khan, of Afghanistan tries to westernize the country in the early 20's going so far as to wear bowler hats in the palace and fighting for women's rights, an end to traditional women' dress, co-ed shools etc. LOL, one of the few kings who didn't get hung in the public square.
The whole fucking thing is a mess and I have some very small miniscule hope that Trump's focus on Daesh, willingness to work with the Russians and forget this regime change shit will allow the USA to falsely claim they wiped out ISIS (hooray for US) and get the hell out of the Middle East ASAP.
SO? WTF does the USA need 51 Billion more war tools for?
From the Light House.
I hate to think
what they need it for.
The CIA is working for fascism, as it has since its beginning under Allen Dulles. Just as it was in the 1930's, fascism is simply Big Oil married to psychopathic killers.
What the Saudis can't stand about Assad and the Iranian government is that they're too democratic. Women are voting, there is healthcare and education, progress is being made. And where progress leads to is Norway, where oil companies have to take a salary from drilling oil instead of ownership. They can only have a sailboat instead of a yacht.
I also hope the CIA keeps drilling at Trump and that he successfully does what Kennedy threatened to do and just destroys them.
Instead of 51bn on weapons. . .
If they really wanted to spend 51 bn for actual defense they would be better off paying to reconstruct places they have destroyed. One of the overriding reasons that Afghanistan has been an abject failure is that, not only did they not understand the structure of Afganistan's culture/society/political culture, but they were never interested in bringing water, electrification, irrigation and other projects to the level where the people in their own culture can understand and enjoy them and be employed building them.
In Syria and Rojava instead of supplying weapons and troops they need to, after immediately ending the embargo and blockade, spend the money on repairing infrastructure and developing local economies all while understanding how things work locally. Instead of al-Qaedah affiliated White Helmets they should be funding the Syrian Red Crescent (orange suits), instead of supplying heavy artillery (which is of limited use in urban warfare anyway) they should be supplying parts for the ruined water plants, power stations, construction materials (cement plants), tractors, bakeries and other food processing equipment. I guess you get the idea.
Another valuable defense would be to pay full scholarships for USian students to study a year at the national universities of the countries they shouldn't have invaded in the first place, and should extract themselves ASAP from now. My caveat on this is that I don't trust USian students to not be thouroughly brainwashed in capitalism and/or spies.
And of course, maybe they should be spending what is needed to provide free tuition for USian students inside the USA and maybe require some decent reality based world history and language skills in non-western languages.
From the Light House.
Amen.
I totally agree with you. It seems our warmongers don't do the Marshall Plan part of war and destruction at this time. Afghanistan appears to be built to last, never to be "won," never to be over. We have been building power plants in Afghanistan and roads to the power plants as well as to nowhere, spending uncounted billions on private construction projects. But as you say, it doesn't seem to go with ending the war or benefiting the people.
@Alex Ocana Indeed, thank you!
Indeed, thank you!
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.