[cycloon]

Two aspects of their demographic I guess; people pivot one way on Russia, or another, but Corbyn will always be loathed, I suspect.

[cycloon]

If the first casualty of war is truth, perhaps the time has come to ask who's bullshitting who?

Make your own minds up...

which includes an interesting and seemingly impartial report from OAN (no, me neither).

This stuff is fascinating, looked at in the context of the current political discourse about truth.

I cannot help but be somewhat suspicious. Not of Fisk, necessarily (I haven't read anything on this by him), but more of the 'anti-warmonger' attitudes of those who seek news of Western duplicity. Primarily because the people offering that narrative are genuine warmongers, and have been bombing all over Syria for years, and have just taken selected journalists around the site in question (selective access is not new, but is it innocent in this case? If so, why?). None of that means in and of itself anything re: the veracity of the chemical weapon claims, but it does put the response of people here into an odd light, imo. The 'Stop the War' impulse is built on a rejection of perceived imperialist aggression, and to bolster itself, it draws succour from people who live by imperialist aggression - just they happen to be further away. Then there's the weird moral dimension: chemical attacks are faked (to justify a tokenistic gesture that has done nothing), but the barrel bombs fall [but this is Wiki and therefore editable by anyone and therefore it means nothing!] and eh, whatever.

Again, none of that means anything for the 'facts of the case', necessarily, but it does mean I am instantly more cautious. Am also curious as to the burden of proof - if the Russians say it was staged, they have to prove that via affirmation, not absence and inference built on mistrust.

Ramble: it strikes me that the performance of scepticism is VERY distinct from the act of scepticism. The pervasive doubt puts people into corners where they want to be sceptical, but often end up being cynical, or are less generous with their scepticism, or, when faced with a more conscious examination of the unknowability of the world, despair/realise their own inescapable ignorance, or flip the locus of their scepticism from one source of half-truth to a source of un-truth.

[visage]

We should ignore the MSM, but instead take the testimony of an anonymous doctor?

[Kreuzberger]

The unnamed doctor is named in the article as 58 year-old Dr Assim Rahaibani and it is difficult to think of anyone who more typifies the MSM than Robert Fisk. Presently, I believe that he is the only one who has managed to get through to Douma and report upon the situation in any real depth.

Fisk would, I am sure, be the first to point out that he is a journalist, not a chemical weapons expert.

Reading the article dispassionately, it strikes me that the only gas that that we can currently be certain of is the one they call the Fog of War.

[cycloon]

The comments are pretty much bang on for what you'd.expect. The stories were written long ago. 'Oil' (where?) vs 'mendacious journos'.

Also, is curious how the stories present themselves: there was a Syrian government gas attack on Douma; there was no gas attack on Douma; there was a British-inspired false flag gas attack on Douma.

[Daley Mayle]

I saw bits of May's performance in the HoC and thought she made a pretty good fist of it and wondered whether this might be her Maggie's Falklands Moment. However, if can't be proven to be a chemical attack then a Blair's Balls-up beckons.

I must be a bad person because I really hope it's the latter.

[D.C. Harrison]

I saw bits of May's performance in the HoC and thought she made a pretty good fist of it and wondered whether this might be her Maggie's Falklands Moment. However, if can't be proven to be a chemical attack then a Blair's Balls-up beckons.

I must be a bad person because I really hope it's the latter.

Eh, in the event it turns out this occasion wasn't a chemical attack, surely May can just turn around and say "well, they'd done it before, so..." and everyone carries on as normal.

[Safe_Timber_Man]

It would raise some serious question about all the photos the newspapers printed of children seemingly suffering the effects of a chemical attack, though.

[Kreuzberger]

There seem to be two types of people on Twitter. Those intimately familiar with the effects of chlorine poisoning and those who can spot a false flag vid when they see one.

There are one of two of us who haven't a fucking clue about either or, indeed, what the symptoms of hypoxia are.

(I don't claim to be above all this kind of hullabaloo. Just a bit confused.)

[Safe_Timber_Man]

I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibility that a fairly non-lethal show of force was agreed between Trump/Putin to please the masses, on that occasion.

It wouldnt surprise me if the same thing happens here. Tell Putin that we're going to attack, and he cant stop us, but it would great if you made sure your troops werent in area X so we dont accidentally start WW3.

Putin then tells Assad, so we end up not really acheiving anything at all.

IF Russia are to be believed:


Russia: We told US where in Syria they could not bomb
https://news.sky.com/story/russia-we-to ... b-11338625

[The Weeping Angel]

Scum, utter scum

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ ... 9b0a3c4b10

Academics at some of the UK’s top universities pushing pro-Assad propaganda have been accused by parts of the Syrian community of “peddling conspiracy theories” and “whitewashing” war crimes.

The Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WG) has been set up by a number of left-wing professors to examine the “role of both media and propaganda” and provide “reliable, informed and timely analysis for journalists, publics and policymakers”.

Although in its infancy, the group’s published material as well as public posts by its members have already drawn accusations of circulating Islamophobic tropes and “wilfully ignoring the depravity of the regime”.

Two of the academics in particular, Professor Tim Hayward of Edinburgh University and Professor Piers Robinson of the University of Sheffield, promote the work of a fringe group of bloggers and activists who have been accused of spreading false information about the Syrian civil war, which is now in its eighth year.

I cannot begin to express my hatred and loathing for these people, how dare they live here enjoy the benefits of living in a free society and seek to deny to others those same benefits they take for granted.

[Andy McDandy]

Are you motivated entirely by hatred?

Just asking, because your entire raison d'etre seems to be establishing your moral superiority over people out of punching range.

For me, one of the benefits of a free society is plurality of opinions. Not just what's socially acceptable. After all, one can always disagree.

[The Weeping Angel]

Are you motivated entirely by hatred?

No what a ridiculous question

Just asking, because your entire raison d'etre seems to be establishing your moral superiority over people out of punching range.

Really and no one else does that on here

For me, one of the benefits of a free society is plurality of opinions. Not just what's socially acceptable. After all, one can always disagree.

Andy my problem is they're are denying Syrians the benefits of a free society by their support of Assad.

[D.C. Harrison]

Andy my problem is they're are denying Syrians the benefits of a free society by their support of Assad.

Do you honestly see them having such a thing, in the event Assad is binned off? Some kind of "third times the charm!" thinking after Iraq and Libya?

[Philip Marlow]

From the latest LRB

The War in Five Sieges
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n14/patrick-c ... ive-sieges

Reading the quoted paragraph again, I find myself wondering when this excitable spunking over 'high precision' ordnance started in earnest. My young and rickety memory dates it to the first Gulf war, although I'm willing to be corrected.

Raqqa is one example of the prolonged siege warfare that has dominated the wars in Syria and Iraq. The opposing forces have varied from city to city but they include the Syrian and Iraqi armies, the Kurdish SDF, IS, the Syrian non-IS opposition, Iraqi Shia paramilitaries and Hizbullah. In every case, ground troops have only been able to win with the backing of airpower, artillery and advisers most usually supplied by the US-led coalition or Russia. Whether the fighting was in Ramadi and Mosul in Iraq or Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, the way the sieges were conducted was similar. Few combat troops were used: no side could afford heavy losses in street battles with a well-trained enemy. The attackers relied heavily on shelling and bombing to clear the way or to batter the defenders into submission. It was a strategy that always succeeded in the end, but it had the inevitable cost – a cost that governments on all sides invariably lied about – of causing great destruction and civilian loss of life. Air forces were in denial or deliberately misleading, pretending that modern high-precision targeting had transformed the nature of bombing. But the ruins of East Aleppo, Raqqa, Mosul and Eastern Ghouta look very much like pictures of Hue in 1968 or Hamburg in 1945