Syria

Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
DannyL said:
I think in some way the propaganda gains from this will benefit the regime and Russia more than enough to compensate for the loss of military assets.
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Unfortunately I fear you may be right. Just the other day I saw a guy I vaguely know on Facebook sharing a Jill Stein tweet arguing, predictably, against any anti-Assad action by appealing to the old "Israel does terrible things all the time and the West does nothing about that" line - which, leaving aside the vast difference in scale between the two situations, is true as far as it goes.

I was going to point out that Stein is a Russian agent who actively helped Trump get elected, but thought better of it. For one thing the guy in question is Palestinian, so he has skin in the game regarding Israel, so to speak, in a way that I don't.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Yeah, there's a lot of pro-Palestians who are pro-Assad. It's part of the traditional Left positioning. Assad kinda draped himself in the Palestinian flag at points, that's why Corbyn met him in 2008 IIRC - he was visiting Palestinian refugee camps. That fact Assad's bombed Palestinian since then doesn't seem to register. I had this distant dream that the same kind of mobilisation of activism that you see with the Palestinian cause might have happened for the Syrian uprising but it never materialised (due to active propaganda, outright racism, and kneejerk "anti-imperialism").
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The bloke in question is intelligent and thoughtful, so I would hope he didn't post it out of being pro-Assad as such, so much as having more reason than most to adopt a position of absolute cynicism towards Western intervention in Arab countries. But clearly even intelligent people can be suckered in by the likes of Stein, who strike a peacenik pose but are driven by entirely cynical motives themselves and are all in favour of Russian and Iranian intervention.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Here you go: https://english.alarabiya.net/en/Ne...f-Jaysh-al-Islam-fighters-evacuate-Douma.html

"After midnight, 85 buses left Eastern Ghouta carrying 4,000 people, both fighters and civilians," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring organization said.

A top Syrian rebel official told AFP on Thursday that his faction only agreed to abandon its battered enclave outside Damascus because of an alleged toxic gas attack.

“Of course, the chemical attack is what pushed us to agree” to a withdrawal from Douma, said Yasser Dalwan, a high-ranking member of Jaish al-Islam.

It was the first public acknowledgement by Jaish al-Islam of a deal reached for Douma, their last rebel holdout in the Eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus.

I've posted some other links upthread about the resilience of Ghouta against regime attacks, which isn't some kind of endorsement of JaI - they're weren't the only rebel force present - but they're worth reading, the Michael Karajdis piece in particular.

Decent reading list here: - can't remember if I've posted this already.

I'm also skeptical of all sides, but my skepticism towards the West is rooted in anger at the hypocrisy of allowing attacks via bunker buster bombs, napalm etc to continue, while drawing a red line over the use of nerve agents. It's because our governments continue to use these weapons themselves in Syria and elsewhere, indeed their use has markedly accelerated under Trump. I can't recall how many thousands of attacks the US has launched but it was up to about 8000 by the time of the last gas attacks.

The spectacle of anti-war activists getting exercised about the second attack against the regime in 7 years of murder, while turning a selective blind eye to these other attacks, is pretty grotesque.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Yeah, I getcha.

I'd just add that the Russia state is well aware of both our cynicism towards our own governments, the relative freedom of our press, and the anti-war sentiment that exist, and they weaponise that against us. In the short term it's used to weaken any consensus for action against them, and in the longer term to weaken our democracies. Peter Pomerantsev is really good on us, I've recommended his book "Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted" several times on here. Essential reading in my view.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
I've always the RT tagline "Question More" is telling in this regard. It suggests there's no objective reality, no truth. How can political decisions or moral be judgements be made in this vacuum?
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
DannyL said:
I'm also skeptical of all sides, but my skepticism towards the West is rooted in anger at the hypocrisy of allowing attacks via bunker buster bombs, napalm etc to continue, while drawing a red line over the use of nerve agents. It's because our governments continue to use these weapons themselves in Syria and elsewhere, indeed their use has markedly accelerated under Trump. I can't recall how many thousands of attacks the US has launched but it was up to about 8000 by the time of the last gas attacks.

The spectacle of anti-war activists getting exercised about the second attack against the regime in 7 years of murder, while turning a selective blind eye to these other attacks, is pretty grotesque.
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The US-led CJTF caused several times more civilian deaths in the first few months of Trump's presidency than in the whole of its involvement up till then. Some figures here which are no doubt severe underestimates but prove the point nonetheless:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...aq-syria-isis-coalition-bombing-a8180331.html

All of which gives the lie to John 'Fucking' Pilger saying before the election that Trump was the preferable option to Killary Bomb'em Clinton because he'd pursue a less belligerent foreign policy.

I've also been disappointed by people I know posting crap by the likes of Frankie Boyle about "bombing Syria", as if Syria hasn't been bombing Syria for the last seven years.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Laila Alodaat: If you’re wondering why many Syrian’s are inexplicably silent in these dark days, remember that we spent the past 7 years trying to make the argument that no one should have to live under a genocidal war criminal who gases his people and bury them in masses under the rubble. We spoke, wrote, advocated, demonstrated, lobbied politicians and raised funds for victims, all while trying to stay sane and support each other. We did all what is humanly possibly to be moral but practical, passionate but balanced, to own our loss without being pitied, to seek help while maintaining dignity, to learn without being pushed around by orientalist neo-colonials, to remain hopeful but prepared for the imminent loss of yet another friend or family member, to be thankful to the communities that offered us protection but fight their government’s racist and abusive policy against refugees, to shed light on the horrors back home but still support the struggle of those suffering from occupation, tyranny and racism everywhere, to highlight the realities of women without being retweeted by a sad islamophobic troll, to own our voices and platforms without choking that reporter who would like to have “a Syrian preferably-not-headscarved-English-speaking-woman who is available in the studio in 26 minutes with a yes/no answer to whether the UK should militarily intervene in Syria” just because he realised a minute ago that all those analysing Syria are western men.
We did all that while trying - and more times than not failing - to deal with trauma, survival guilt and absolute disillusionment.
The Syrian people didn’t only offer many lives to the hope of freedom and dignity but also millions and millions of hours of dedicated work, none of which seems to have made any difference, the world still knows very little and civilians still die in every way imaginable.
We are now exhausted, traumatised and many of us are speechless and out of options (huge respect to those who aren’t) it is now your turn to make sure that stopping the mass killing of civilians is not a a radical demand but a baseline for a world we would all want to live in.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
version said:
Yeah, I'm aware of the Russian use of non-linear warfare and whatnot, but when I hear of something like that I can't help but feel that if it's that effective then they won't be the only ones doing it.
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Interesting question isn't it? What responses are going on to hybrid war? I'd welcome any links or sources. I think the most sophisticated defence I've seen seems to be out of Ukraine 'cos they've put up with it for so long - I posted some stuff in the Russia Surrounded thread. What is weird is how the Russian distortion is enacted at quite high levels of state i.e. the insane performance re. chemical weapons by the Russian ambassador at the UN, and the claim that they have evidence the UK launched the Douma attack. They clearly know this is a lie, yet continue to pump it out. it must be very weird to work for a government that has systematic distortion built in in such a way. (Not that our state officials aren't economically with the truth, but it's done in a very different way).
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah, and as you've pointed out before, Dan, it's a mistake to think the purpose of the exercise is to make people literally believe a bare-faced lie but to erode and degrade the very concept of truth.

I see this in a sense as the logical end point of 50+ years of postmodernist assaults on the ideas of objectivity and empiricism - a project begun by self-identified radicals which has ended up enabling illiberal populism (Trump, Brexit) as well as outright fascism.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
DannyL said:
it is now your turn to make sure that stopping the mass killing of civilians is not a a radical demand but a baseline for a world we would all want to live in.[/I]
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Such a demand may very well be impossible to satisfy. What then?
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Hearing reports of Syrian doctors held hostage in Douma and being forced to record testimony denying the attack happened. Fuck.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Can't really get into it this morning, due to work, I'm afraid but I'll look at that in a moment. Fisk is seen as pro-Assad by most of the Syria people I know. I did "enjoy", or find informative is perhaps a better way of putting it, his massive tome on the ME.

Just read this which is truly horrific but I think it's useful to get these stories out there, as lots of people on the Left who haven't given Syria a second thought for seven years have suddenly become overnight experts: https://louisproyect.org/2018/04/16/castrated-in-the-21st-century/

I don't know the source of the horrific story contained herein personally but it accords with other accounts that I've read.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Probably the most powerful verifier of that story would be the Cesar photographs which are the subject of the documentary "Syria's Disappeared" - I put a link to it upthread, it's on Vimeo currently, if you want to ruin your evening.
 
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