Syria Matters
First, and fascinatingly, is Eva Bartlett’s ‘Organ theft, staged attacks: UN panel details White Helmets’ criminal activities, media yawns’, RT Dec. 25, 2018
Some highlights:
“Utter silence. That is the sound of Western corporate media days after a more than one-hour-long panel on the White Helmets at the United Nations on December 20.
Journalists were present, so the silence isn’t due to lack of access. And in any case it was live streamed on the UNTV channel, and remains available on Youtube for keen observers to watch.
More likely, the silence is due to the irrefutable documentation presented on the faux-rescue group’s involvement in criminal activities, which include organ theft, working with terrorists — including as snipers — staging fake rescues, thieving from civilians, and other non-rescuer behaviour.
On the panel was one of corporate media’s favourite targets to smear, British journalist Vanessa Beeley, who gave a fact-based lecture on her years of research into the founding, funding and nefarious activities of the White Helmets, research which includes numerous visits to White Helmets centers, countless testimonies from Syrian civilians, and even an interview with a White Helmets leader in Dara’a al-Balad, Syria.
Maxim Grigoriev, the director of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy (a member of the UN’s Global Counter-Terrorism Research Network) spoke at length, detailing some of the over 100 eyewitnesses his foundation has conducted interviews with.
These include over 40 White Helmets members, 15 former terrorists, 50 people from areas where terrorists and WH operated, with another over 500 interviewed by survey in Aleppo and Daraa.” [long snip regarding organ theft, fake chemical attacks, (bellingcat and WaPo naming exposing the WH: russian disinformation.]
“Canadian journalist Cory Morningstar in September 2014 exposed the role of the New York based PR firm, Purpose Inc, in marketing campaigns for the White Helmets.
And as I wrote, “In April 2015, American independent journalist revealed that the White Helmets had been founded by Western powers and managed by a British ex-soldier, and noted the “rescuers” role in calling for Western intervention—a No Fly Zone on Syria.”
The April 2015 link above goes to Rick Sterling, including this outtake:
“White Helmets is the newly minted name for “Syrian Civil Defence”. Despite the name, Syria Civil Defence was not created by Syrians nor does it serve Syria. Rather it was created by the UK and USA in 2013. Civilians from rebel controlled territory were paid to go to Turkey to receive some training in rescue operations. The program was managed by James Le Mesurier, a former British soldier and private contractor whose company is based in Dubai.
The White Helmets work primarily with the rebel group Jabat al Nusra (Al Queda in Syria). Video of the recent alleged chlorine gas attacks starts with the White Helmet logo and continues with the logo of Nusra. In reality, White Helmets is a small rescue team for Nusra/Al Queda.”
“These, and the subsequent numerous investigations by Vanessa Beeley, including on the ground in Syria, taking countless testimonies of Syrian civilians on the matter of the White Helmets, far precede any Russian media reporting on the group.
That Russian media and bodies have since done their own investigations does not equate to a “disinformation campaign”, but rather doing the job corporate media are clearly incapable of, and unwilling to do.”
Zo. Boss Tweet claims he’ll bring the troops home from Syria because ‘we’ve beaten ISIS’. But of course that was never the reason Amerika was IN Syria: it was to putsch Diktator Assad, as well as a proxy war against Russia an Iran, as well Syria being ground zero for the Ultimate Pipelinestan War. (Pepe Escobar).
But western ‘leftist’ columnists were full of outrage akin to Patrick Cockburn’s ‘Trump’s Abrupt Withdrawal From Syria Might Provide Exactly the Anarchic Conditions in Which ISIS has Always Flourished’, December 21, 2018, CP.
Herr Trump’s later Tweet saying he’d bring a few thousand troops home from Afghanistan apparently pissed off Mad Dog (the only adult left in the administration) Mattis to resign. That resignation caused the chattering classes to explode, most notably the Cruise Missile Left.
In Joseph Kishore’s Dec. 24, 2018 column at wsws.org, ‘Trump administration in question as political warfare in Washington intensifies’, he writes:
“The year 2018 is coming to a close amidst a historic political crisis in the United States. In the past week, Washington has been convulsed by conflicts over Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria and reduce troop levels in Afghanistan, and the ensuing resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis. This has coincided with a sharp drop on the stock market and a partial government shutdown that could extend well into next year.
It is not Trump’s fascistic attack on immigrants, his war on the working class or his belligerence toward China that has triggered paroxysms of rage within the state and from the Democratic Party. It is, rather, his seeming intention to wind down the wars in Syria and Afghanistan, both of which are undeclared and illegal.”
He offers that the future of the administration is being called into question, and offers examples I’ll shorthand.
Chuck Todd, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, said on Sunday that the resignation of Mattis in protest over the troop withdrawals could be the “beginning of the functional end of this presidency.”
Democratic Senator Chris Coons declared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday that “President Trump is handing a great big Christmas gift to Vladimir Putin in Russia and to the Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran.”
Of the Butcher of Fallujah, Democratic Senator Chris Coons declared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday that “President Trump is handing a great big Christmas gift to Vladimir Putin in Russia and to the Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran.”
“Amidst the raging political warfare in Washington, there are certain voices notable by their silence. Socialist Worker, the publication of the International Socialist Organization, has said nothing. Jacobin magazine, aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, has said nothing. Socialist Alternative has said nothing. Nor have the Democratic Party politicians they have promoted—Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, incoming New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, etc.
They are silent because they support the line of the Democratic Party. They support war and they support American imperialism.
Their real political line is articulated by the Nation’s Joan Walsh, frequently cited by Socialist Worker and other pseudo-left publications. In “As Trump Rages, God Bless Us Every One,” Walsh bemoans Trump’s decision to neglect the counsel of “a lifelong military leader and public servant like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.”
Guess who steps in to defend @Ocasio2018’s failure to take a position on a critically important issue. https://t.co/kHFLjswzf9
— Club des Cordeliers (@cordeliers) December 24, 2018
Bibi has announced that Israel plans to fill the void in Syria, Danny Zaken at al monitor posts why that is: Iran, of course. And there’s this enigmatic ad in recoil Magazinr, Tweeted by defense news on Twitter:
‘We are coming’: Chilling Blackwater ad triggers fears of Trump seeking to privatize Mideast wars’, 26 Dec. 2018, RT
I dunno that it’s chilling, I’d long suspected that Trump had actually taken Erik’s offer to privatize the war in Afghanistan (Acadamei: ‘Managed support services’), so I reckon time will tell how his (ahem) ‘former company’ Blackwater fits into the mix.
The Institute for the Study of War’s tab on Syria, including the most recent: ‘The Looming Vacuum in Syria’ By the ISW Research Team, Dec. 21
“Key Takeaway: Russia and Iran are poised to exploit the U.S. withdrawal from Syria announced by U.S. President Donald Trump on December 19. They and their proxies hold positions along the Syrian-Iraqi Border surrounding areas that the U.S. Anti-ISIS Coalition and allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) currently hold. Russia and Iran will undoubtedly attempt to fill the security vacuum left behind by the U.S. in Eastern Syria. The Russo-Iranian Coalition is nonetheless stretched thin and likely cannot secure this new terrain without opening exploitable vulnerabilities for ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq. Turkey and other regional actors will also likely attempt to exploit this opening to compete for terrain and influence in Syria.”
You’ll also remember the agitprop from ‘the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights:
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – Official Site
The Wiki: One Sunni Syrian in the UK, but hilarious counter-narratives as well as accolades; In 2013 the New York Times reported that that Rami Abdulrahman had received small subsidies from the European Union and one European country. Medialens said that journalist Ian Sinclair confirmed “in communication with the Foreign Office” that “the UK funded a project worth £194,769.60 to provide the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights with communications equipment and cameras.
Online crowd-sourced #FakeNews bellingcat has a crowded tab on Syria, of course, but they sure loves ‘em some White Helmets!
Adding to the avalanche of disinformation on Syria is (tada!) The Integrity Initiative: Defending Against Disinformation. Well, okay, a search for Syria on their site kicks up Russia as well, and includes one mentioning ‘talking to Eliot Higgins.’ They’re not in chronological order, so I won’t choose one to feature. Ain’t you glad o' that?
(cross-posted from Café Babylon)
Comments
closing time for me.
g' night.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2hkH_DkJ28]
i'd been looking for more on the CIA and syria,
as i'd seen a few crumbs along the way. but i just found ‘Obama, ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood’, F. Wm. Engdahl, Dec. 25, 2018, journal-neo.org
there's more of course.
'DECISION BRIEF: President Trump Must Declassify Obama’s Secret PSD-11 Strategy to Support the Muslim Brotherhood' November 26, 2018, Center for Security Policy
the 'what we know' bullet points came from hoekstra, but well said. their conclusion? i dunno...
Funny how Hillary is not mentioned in any of this.
It bloomed in her State Department in the first eight months she was there. I hear she was never even given her own State Department email address. To my way of thinking, Benghazi blew the wheels off of everything. Nothing worked right after that, not that it ever worked well. Across time, everything the US has touched in the Middle East has turned to shit and has directly harmed the American People and further corrupted the Federal government. Every moment the US is engaged in the Middle East, the economic harm to the American People deepens. The current state of the union makes perfect sense.
Carry a flame and share the light.
.
nice catch.
especially as the other 'two harpies' were involved. oddly enough (or is it?) his link to the task force (before 'headed by, yada, yada) won't load.
but the pdf hotlink in the word 'process' just above 'A Grandiose Task Force' (as it turns out) from hoekstra notes:
the International Implications section i can't embed, oddly, but some of i don't agree with (the gadaffi section, esp.), myownself.
having seen your comment, and wonder about Her Nibs and the committee, i'd found 'Directive 11: Obama's Secret Islamist Plan; Behind the rise of ISIS and the Middle East’s civil wars is Directive 11', June 7, 2015 Daniel Greenfield
and dagnabya, pluto, i read nine feet of text at the New Yawker to find hillary's part. (not what greendfield had seemed to promise, though). whew. hope i got all these durned links fit together.
i blew the hyperlinks; i'm trying to fix them. later, i'll answer some of the rest of your comment.
part II
"To my way of thinking, Benghazi blew the wheels off of everything. Nothing worked right after that, not that it ever worked well."
now i'm not sure if you're pinging her state dept. approving sales of weapons to jihadists in libya (wikileaks), as being the progenitor of islamists spreading to syria, back to iraq, anywhere the cia believes they're useful to be (say, africom destabilizations ready to rescue/plunder for resources) or what.
but what i do remeember is that the clintons and gadaffi'd been bff's early on, but when he'd decided to trade libya's oil in gold dinars...he had to go. there was that other exposé taibbi'd done somehow related to goldman sachs and some screw job, but that's rather immaterial. just bingled, hit this from washington's blog, but we knew that long before the emails. but...there it is. dunno about the sunni/shia divide, but to the Imperium: shia bad, sunni good.
it's long bothered me that the first (second) thing hillary did when she arrived in libya was to set up a central bank. where is all of gadaffi's gold? in that central bank? yeah, my cynicism runs deep...
I never really stopped deconstructing benghazi
Most of the serious investigators mucked around in there for quite awhile, like Sy Hersh, who can no longer publish in the US and lives in exhile. It seems to me that this was the point where gov-media fused for good. Most journalists became faithful believers in invisible evidence. Some retired. The rest were marginalized. The concept of "Fake News" was invented and the news was sorted via government doctrine.
It was probably the last time we had real-time reportage from the Middle East. NBC was in Benghazi the nest day, with cameras. ABC, too. I saw and read things I shouldn't have. And then the reports were gone. That was the first time I witnessed the Internet being sanitized. Scared me but good. At the time, US media had been in the ME following the Last Great News Fiasco before the White Helmets fiasco, many years later. It was the case of the made in America film, "The Innocence of Muslims."
To make a long story short, the CIA deliberately conflated the movie protests with the Attack on Benghazi. It was an open secret that the abandoned consulate in Benghazi was a key meet-up for the gun-running operation where CIA-supplied arms used to topple Libya were being transported to Syria (through Turkey) to arm al qaeda there to take down the Syrian government. Chris Stephens had flown into Benghanzi and met with his Turkish counterpart the day of the attack. All three State Department harpies, Rice, Powers, and Nuland were involved, under Hillary. They were all very exposed. Then Snowden came along. Since that time, everything in US news finds its roots in cover-ups and little else.
Carry a flame and share the light.
.
i appreiate your further
amplification, amigo, and it's a lot of food for thought. i'm trying to remember where i'd read what at the time, but not watching teevee news hampers my memory re: abc, nbc news.
i'm glad you've added 'hollywood' into the media mix, and i'm pinging netflix video of the white helmets, waiting for superman (charter schools), a host of others i've read about and not seen (wakanda), django unchained, syriania, and teevee programs approved by the cia, homeland security that sell: sometimes torture is required'.
but it's all key to why i try to take on media-brand busting (even when it's the sainted intercept and its heroes of the 'leftist' realm), compromised NGOs and fauxlanthropic foundations, plus all the new-fangled ones claiming to bust: disinformation. see this diary's contents, for instance.
but it's another reason that many hollywood stars, beatty, cheadle, clooney, et.al. have lifetime sinecures on the council of foreign relations, isn't it? but i just dig up one piece of sy's:
'Seymour Hersh: Benghazi Attack A Consequence Of Weapons “Rat-Line” To Syria
; A veteran journalist presents a damning timeline of the lead up to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and alarming details of how the U.S. was feeding weapons to Syria', by Frederick Reese, mintpressnews.
and yes, yo know and remember a hella lot about benghazi, and good on ya.
Just read an interesting article about how Freud thought
that Wilson was insane and how most presidents since him have probably also been insane. Insane, sociopathic, psychopathic, and other ics. How else can you explain them ordering the invasions of countries that they knowingly know will cause misery and death to the people who live there? Obama definitely fits the diagnosis in my opinion. And here I thought that no one could ever be worse than Bush. Ugh!
Here's one on how charitable organizations can use their foundations to encourage war. Just think of the tax breaks that they get. Hillary also told us that Gaddafi had ordered his troops to rape women and that he had provided them with viagra. Guess what? This didn't happen. Nope! But people are still saying that it did.
Just read on ToP how people are free to discuss Obama's foreign policies compared to Trump's. Funny how no one did. I thought about posting this article there, but I'm tired of being called a Russian bot or Putin's puppet. Still seeing "Obama ended two wars and he didn't start any new ones." How people can be so damned
stupidignorant is beyond my comprehension.Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
i'd seen sieff's title
at strategic culture, but hadn't stopped to read it; i will soon. awesome photo, too. ; ) oddly, i'd read a few tweets lately about freud having been homophobic, which affected his diagnoses...i can't remember whose was/were featured, though. maybe a cigar sometimes...ain't just a cigar. ; )
yes, that link was in eva bartlett's piece in the OP concerning the UN panel on the white helmets. that it happened was eye-popping for me. a lot of my series about corrupt NGOs came from cory morningstar, wrong kind of green, etc. their pieces are often far too long and unwieldy for linking, but i did make a stab at it. non-profit industrial complex was one of their terms. (foundations that pretend to be philanthropic.)
as far as sociopathic, psychotic...and bombing mutilating starving war by other means (sanctions) torturing R2P-ing drone assassinating...i guess i can't think of a prez since wwI that hadn't committed war crimes. i guess it just becomes part of the FP Imperial bubble they live in, although to me, as the old aw goes...anyone's desire to be president of should immediately disqualify them.
but yeah, i'd been thinking about pluto's comment about clinton, benghazi being when the wheels came off. so thanks for that reminder of the woman who'd dashed into the press pool and told that 'story' about gadaffi making his troops carry condoms so they could rape women at will....then disappeared into the fog forever. jayzus, what rubbish. wot? the condoms were clean, the pockets were filthy?
so add in as well: compromised human rights organizations, arrrggh.
When they did find those boxes of viagra
They were sitting on tanks and other stuff which were drenched, but the boxes were bone dry. The photos had been staged to prove what Herheinous said was true.
This article goes into a bit more detail about the WHs. Just one more example of how the PTB can look away from heinous events as long as their agendas are met.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
arrrgh; viagra...
not condoms, how goofy of me. thanks for the extra link. vanessa beeley (on the white helmets tab) had made a 'best of' tweet not long ago, demonstrating that if you watched those video and were STILL convinced that they're good guy heroes, it's down to willful ignorance. i'd sent it to an old blogging companion who still writes and comments at a librul-clinton-obomba-loving site to use...they all scoffed and called it: agitprop.
also, above re: war criminal sociopaths, psychopaths as presidents (and how about sec defs?), the shorthand i was trying to come up with would have been to ask: is it innate, or is it acquired? given that all wars are 1% elite wars, and the chattering class supports them, it was (iirc) when the Great Orange One dropped the MOAB on afghanistan that fareed zakaria had pronounced so veddy weightily: 'today trump became the President'.
more on operation sycamore:
operation timber sycamore on wikipedia
at mintpressnews, martin berger, dec. 1, 2016
but of course..it's not a civil war; it may have begun as one, but the 'war' was astroturfed globally.
lol; sorry to be hogging the comment section. ; )
Great essay, Wendy. Thanks for writing it. n/t
welcome, edg.
even though it's pretty much copy/paste. there will be a pop quiz on it at midnight; sharpen your No. 2 pencils, please. ; )
it's closing time for me.
when i woke up this morning this is the song that was playing in my mind. what i imagine may have provoked it was the knowledge that a) amerika/nato (which is essentially amerika) is the largest purveyor of military violence on the planet, and b) also has the largest carbon footprint; and c) many other global military carbon footprints are down to protecting their allies from amerika's foregin incursions and occupations, and c) that the military's endless wars are key ingredients to the planet's burning.
God send a fire, not a flood next time.
God said fire comin' judgement day,
He said all mankind gonna pass away.
Brothers and sisters don't you know?
You're gonna reap just what you sow.
World's not waitin' for the Lord's command,
Buildin' a fire that'll sweep the land.
Thunder out of heaven, comin' Gabriel's call;
And the sea's gonna boil and the sky's gonna fall.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS2MzoQwsiY]
good night, all. oh, and i've canceled the pop quiz. ; )
Here's the sad part
If I were to tell any of my family that Al Queada and ISIS were both Obama creations they would call me a conspiracy theorist... even though the information comes from congressional testimony. If I were to tell them that both were our allies... same thing... no matter what hard evidence I offered up.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Isn't this disgusting?
I posted a link or two in the EBs about how Obama and our Saudi allies created them and sat back and watched their carnage. Israel let the White Helmets into its country after they were kicked out of Syria and has been giving them medical treatments. The one I posted here is a great read too.
So send them to your family anyway and if they can't accept the truth then that's on them. People who stay blind to what any leader does are just willfully stupid. Or ignorant if stupid is too harsh.
.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
it's slightly more
nuanced than that, as france, the uae, and qatar provided the weapons approved by the Obomba administration. i dug up this piece by john glaser at antiwar.com; he narrates it pretty darned well, and includes who's arming the anti-assadists in syria. what do they call themselves?
but it's another quasi-litmus test for the putative left: counterpunch fails the test repeatedly, imo. like this one i just found trying to recall what the anti-assadist forces named themselves.
HOLY COW that article is a shitstorm!
Yeah, I "failed the test" all right. I failed the test of being naive enough to absorb all that twaddle uncritically. I failed to understand why Assad is so awful when he's killed WAY, WAY fewer people than either Obama or Trump. I fail to understand the distinction between "brutal dictator" and "democratically elected president".
Counterpunch was right. I failed their test. Just as they have failed mine.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
'a shit storm', lol
couldn'tta said it better myself. ; ) can't remember which issues i'd been vexxed about, but i wrote up a thing 'counterpunch is pulling their punches'. remember the old acronym PEP? progressive except palestine? now it's assad, putin, russia, gawd knows what all.
glad ya failed the test, amigo. #MeeeeToo.
If your family did not vote
...would you still bother to press upon them indigestible information that causes them severe discomfort and reactions?
Awareness of our dismal fate at the end of this forced march — when there exists no political mechanism for change — is a rather haunting gift, when their own beliefs give them comfort.
Carry a flame and share the light.
.
I don't think it matters either way if they vote
In my experience, you cannot just tell someone any of this. It's like learning what the matrix is. You have to go part of the way by yourself or you'll never accept the incredible reality being portrayed for you. You have to have already understood that there's some sizable cracks in the establishment's narrative and you have to at least partly made the determination to find what's in those cracks.
I think I could talk to a matrix person till I was blue in the face. I could show them any documentation. I could show them any live witnesses or filmed activity. Literally, if I showed them a video of Hillary gunning down a black kid in a street, they'd tell me it was faked.
They deny reality with the same sort of fervor climate denialists do.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
okay, this addition is a bit beyond
my ken, as i'd grown rather hopeless about ever having an actual opinion on the YPG given the many claims and counter-narratives. to say the truth, 'us and israeli funded' were a cautionary tale, as were those glurging over 'those sexy anarchist women with weapons leading their miltary', or close to that. but i read this from elijah mangier this morning just after i'd seen the next news at rt this morning. i'll only excerpt a few key bits (she sayed hopefully) so you can decide whether to read the rest.
‘Kurds Negotiating With Syria To Avoid War With Turkey’, Ejmagnier.com, December 27, 2018
"For some time now, the Kurds in al-Hasaka have been protecting the US forces- no more than 4000/5000 men in a region of some 5000 square km- from attacks by ISIS, Arab tribes, and allies of the Syrian state. The same Kurds now seem willing to allow the local Syrian army contingent to take over al-Hasaka and for their militants to become Damascus’s “loyal subjects”. They may have finally learned the lesson, that the US establishment is neither a reliable nor trustworthy strategic partner. Up to now the Kurds had been prepared to rely on any foreign country, including Israel, to provide them with independence, rather than remaining loyal to Syria, the country that has hosted them for decades. The Kurds have no friends but the mountains- and no loyalty to Syria."
the rest is here.
From RT this morning, dec. 28: 'Moscow welcomes Syrian Army entry to Manbij, will ‘synchronize expectations’ with Ankara’
also this morning at RT: Syrian Army ‘raises flag’ in country’s Kurdish province for 1st time since start of civil war'
Assad has the patience of a saint.
Did he just rescue the Kurds? Or did I read this wrong?
It is so hard to pretend that all these years of proxy bullshit is not entirely about which of two proposed pipelines gets to cross Syria while blocking the other. Everything else is a distraction for idiots and the ignorant to discuss.
I fear my understanding has become too deep in some areas for Netizen small talk.
[edit=typo]
Carry a flame and share the light.
.
at least you can still
posit the right Qs. as to an answer, note the caveats above. headlines at the asia times says that the US says: 'oh, no they did-dunt enter manjib!'.
but RT has it that the uae and (ptui) bahrain re-opened their embassies after some coon's age. the report says that given bahrain's close ties to riyadh, it signals that syria has won the war. (?) i can't even quite make out what berhard at MoA is saying, but something about restarting projects they'd invested in in syria.
yeah, the iran-iraq-syria pipeline: geopolitics. wonder if the construction has started? but break the ties with those three and...russia.
is it impolite to ask your take on the YPG?
dayum, it’s all moving so fast,
so many opinions. here’s Dmitry Minin at strategic culture today, so many moves/counter-moves on the chessboard:
small wonder, but i swear i’d never even heard of this fellah before:
Have you read these two?
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/search/label/Syria
https://gowans.wordpress.com/
A few others I've collected also, was thinking about an essay on this issue but don't want to spend much time. People like the headlines, not the details.
This is what I was trying to say when the news first came out
and some here were proclaiming that "Trump was pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan"!
"Unless we are to believe the US has abandoned its wider hegemonic ambitions - and there is no evidence to suggest that it has - it is irrational and ill-advised to believe the US is truly walking away from Syria without plans to dangerously escalate the conflict while minimizing its own culpability." (Land Destroyer Report)
I'd add the Zionist quest for Greater Israel in there too.
Land Destroyer reads like a propaganda lasagna
Twisted premise stacked upon twisted premise, unable to factor in changing realities and alliances already on the ground. I don't recall it being so fuzzy-headed in the past.
Russia is clearing the way for the people of Syria to determine their own destiny. They intend to protect the Kurds rather than see them exterminated. Turkey looks to Russia to contain the peace. Things seem to be returning to exactly what they were before the US attempt to overthrow Syria's democratically elected government. Except for all the rubble and grief and destroyed lives caused by US Neocon/former Nazi ambitions.
Carry a flame and share the light.
.
part the impetus for creating
this diary, you may have seen, was some rebuttal to the many anti-syrian disinformation sites and themes, and the more due diligence i'd done had yielded many golden nuggets.
so yes, many of us aware of 'pulling out of afghanistan' was a misdirection given: mercenaries, cia/special ops, and actual numbers of US troops 'coming home'. kinda half of obamba's 'dithering surge', wasn't it? but by now, as things are breaking in syria big-time, cartalucci's mile long piece is too much to read, and yes, i'd read the gowan's piece, thank you for both though.
i give up; wth?.
dinnae see this coming so soon. ‘US helicopters spotted over Manbij as Turkish forces enter Syria (VIDEOS)’, RT, 29 Dec, 2018
"Later in the day, the Turkish military crossed into Syrian territory at the border town of Jarablus in the province of Aleppo."
mr. w looked it up; jarabulus is 20 miles from manjib.
closing time for me; tomorrow's a new day, they say. for no particular reason save it's awesome:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT-SFgkVlno]
from elijah magnier on twitter:
from press tv (and sputnik)
'US troops pullout to shed light on coalition's war crimes in Syria’, dec.29
Sputnik version.
now i'm not anymore comfortable with unnamed sources in russia than i am anywhere else, and the speculation caveat is kinda creepy.
but sputnik is also reporting
Doesn't "US troop pullout" itself admit to US war crimes?
It's funny how the world just ignores the big picture. Except Russia and Iran, they've consistently stated the obvious. The entire war has been a war crime. Obama and Trump should both be arrested at this point along with their friends.
no, no; ya got it
all wrong! the US and Israel were there fight isis!
but yes, seriously, to part of the world The empire and lackey states), their entrance into 'the (not) civil war against the butcher assad' was noble; the rest know that as they were not invited into syria, their being there was yes, a war rime under international law. as are sanctions against VZ, iran, russia, north korea, wherever the fuck they get no argument from the duopoly, the EU (well, some EU nations seem to be skirting them on gas deliveries by pipeline), and so on.
hence, the quotes of the cruise missile left, and featured parallel disinformation by media orgs claiming to 'debunk disinformation'.
but nice catch. interesting news from the summit from elijah magnier though, eh? will it turn out being so? that the turks were so close to manbij made the next move up to...russia. wish we could have heard lavrov, assuming it was his gig.
a bit off-topic, but it was zero here at first light. brrrr-d-brrrrr.
for posterity:
an interesting piece from gareth porter: