SYRIA thread

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

Assad has traded ruins in the desert back to IS in order to break the largest remaining power center of the non-IS rebels who are the real threat to HIM.

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Are you sure it was a conscious trade and not a oversight of (Assad+Russia)'s intelligence?

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

Would he lose a few points? Sure, but not a major prestige hit....

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Given his control of the media any setback of his is not a tiny bit hurtful. But you should have heard all the uproar when Palmyra had been taken back in spring. You should have seen how much attention was paid to the classical music concert held in the picturesque ruins.

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Originally Posted by Crandar

Nice unverified deflection. Might have worked, but it kind of didn't.

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Originally Posted by Showtime

So you just linked an article showing Homs in 2013 passing it off as news. Try different outlets, you're letting your issues with Putin interfere with the facts in Syria.

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Different from UN officials?

Head of the UN's human rights office Rupert Colville said that six different sources had confirmed 82 non-combatants were shot in four different neighbourhoods overnight on Monday. The reports included 11 women and 13 children killed.

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Originally Posted by Husar

Maybe that's why Trump and others have a pro-global-warming-agenda? :sweatdrop:

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Oh, come on! Now you will tell me that the Starks are behind all of this.

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Originally Posted by Pannonian

Not by western standards they weren't secular. But then Israel is insanely religion-ruled by western standards, yet is by far the most secular state in the region. If you judge these countries by western standards, they'll always fall short. By the standards of the region though, is different. And experience after experience has shown that, when you topple these relatively secular (yet unsatisfactory to you) tyrants, Salafist nuts take over. However much you may wish for their people to see the sense of liberal democracy. In that region, liberalism is going to be hard pressed anyway. Introduce democracy, or upset the status quo so that the groundswell can decide their own destiny, and liberalism will die off altogether. It's how that region is, and neocons and their descendants should stop wishing otherwise in the face of all evidence.

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Unlike you I only don't apply relativistic definitions. None of the states in the Middle East are really Secular. Lebanon comes closest but it's really more "mult-confessional" so that the various groups are held in check by each other. Even so, it still remains the best hope for the region. Turkey used to be a forcibly Secular state but as those prohibitions have been relaxed so it has begun to slide towards popular Islamism, and like Lebanon it had to specifically recognise and demarcate the particular religious groups and give each defined rights to make it work (ish).

Israel is a real democracy, I'll give you that, and it has a very high development index but it's not remotely secular. In some ways it's less secular than the surrounding states. To enjoy all the benefits of Israel's democracy you have to be seen as both ethnically and confessionally Jewish (good luck being black).

Joradn might actually be Secular, but it's only the King that keeps it that way. King Hussain experimented with democracy in the 1980's but discovered that it led to Islamism so it's been rolled back somewhat since.

The first thing we need to do when dealing with the Middle East is accept the reality is presents - and that means not pretending nations are "Secular" or factions "Progressive" when they aren't.

Having said that, I have no problem dealing with a Shia Tyrant so long as he isn't murdering his own people. This is where Assad fell fowl of the West, after riots that were essentially sparked by economic problems.

Still, unlike you I don't have to pretend he's secular, or even tolerant.

Hey you know where else is quite Democratic and actually doesn't just treat women like chattel? Iran. It's not remotely secular either, though.

Something to reflect on, that.

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Originally Posted by Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

Unlike you I only don't apply relativistic definitions. None of the states in the Middle East are really Secular. Lebanon comes closest but it's really more "mult-confessional" so that the various groups are held in check by each other. Even so, it still remains the best hope for the region. Turkey used to be a forcibly Secular state but as those prohibitions have been relaxed so it has begun to slide towards popular Islamism, and like Lebanon it had to specifically recognise and demarcate the particular religious groups and give each defined rights to make it work (ish).

Israel is a real democracy, I'll give you that, and it has a very high development index but it's not remotely secular. In some ways it's less secular than the surrounding states. To enjoy all the benefits of Israel's democracy you have to be seen as both ethnically and confessionally Jewish (good luck being black).

Joradn might actually be Secular, but it's only the King that keeps it that way. King Hussain experimented with democracy in the 1980's but discovered that it led to Islamism so it's been rolled back somewhat since.

The first thing we need to do when dealing with the Middle East is accept the reality is presents - and that means not pretending nations are "Secular" or factions "Progressive" when they aren't.

Having said that, I have no problem dealing with a Shia Tyrant so long as he isn't murdering his own people. This is where Assad fell fowl of the West, after riots that were essentially sparked by economic problems.

Still, unlike you I don't have to pretend he's secular, or even tolerant.

Hey you know where else is quite Democratic and actually doesn't just treat women like chattel? Iran. It's not remotely secular either, though.

Something to reflect on, that.

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It is rather naive notion to assume that The Arab Spring, which also sparked the Syrian civil war was sparked essentially by economic problems.

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Originally Posted by Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

Unlike you I only don't apply relativistic definitions. None of the states in the Middle East are really Secular. Lebanon comes closest but it's really more "mult-confessional" so that the various groups are held in check by each other. Even so, it still remains the best hope for the region. Turkey used to be a forcibly Secular state but as those prohibitions have been relaxed so it has begun to slide towards popular Islamism, and like Lebanon it had to specifically recognise and demarcate the particular religious groups and give each defined rights to make it work (ish).

Israel is a real democracy, I'll give you that, and it has a very high development index but it's not remotely secular. In some ways it's less secular than the surrounding states. To enjoy all the benefits of Israel's democracy you have to be seen as both ethnically and confessionally Jewish (good luck being black).

Joradn might actually be Secular, but it's only the King that keeps it that way. King Hussain experimented with democracy in the 1980's but discovered that it led to Islamism so it's been rolled back somewhat since.

The first thing we need to do when dealing with the Middle East is accept the reality is presents - and that means not pretending nations are "Secular" or factions "Progressive" when they aren't.

Having said that, I have no problem dealing with a Shia Tyrant so long as he isn't murdering his own people. This is where Assad fell fowl of the West, after riots that were essentially sparked by economic problems.

Still, unlike you I don't have to pretend he's secular, or even tolerant.

Hey you know where else is quite Democratic and actually doesn't just treat women like chattel? Iran. It's not remotely secular either, though.

Something to reflect on, that.

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And I happen to think that Iran are among the lesser evils in the region. You probably think that's a bit too relativistic a view to take though. They're not perfect, ergo we must hate them and topple them. It's 2003 all over again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjHniRRgOao

I know it's 6 days old but I missed it till today. Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist, certainly doesn't pull any punches, when it comes to Syria and mainstream media.

Most interesting is how she discredits SOHR and White Helmets, two organizations on which western media rely the most.

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Originally Posted by Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

Well, first of all Syria is not a Secular Republic, it's a Tyranny where the current ruling Dynasty is not particularly concerned with the religion of its subjects so long as they're quiet. In such a circumstance religion tolerance is more a question of benign neglect that respect for Freedom of Conscience. Such tolerance is dispensed with as soon as it ceases to be expedient.

Such regimes are also inherently unstable - because there is no democratic way to change the regime economic misfortune usually leads to revolts and the regime responds with slaughter - as in Syria.

Absent a generally recognised Caliph or democratic states the Arab world will continue to move through circles of war, destruction, recrimination, and recovery dictated by the economic cycle.

My Uncle believes the Arabs are doomed so long as they continue to follow Islam because they will always look for "strongman" rulers, rejecting democratic reform or pluralism because it is seen as counter to Islam.

I'm not convinced he's right but on the other hand the only actual Secular Republic in the Middle East is Lebanon, and it's roughly 50% Christian with the largest Christian denomination being almost as large as the Sunni or Shia population.

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To draw the whole situation based on how its conceptualized in western thought is to look past the fact that this war is a result of outsiders further ripping apart an otherwise manageable internal struggle. We are better off applying international standards than who we think are tyrants.

I believe the strongman rulers are needed, or rather make themselves needed. Japanese sociologist Nobuaki Notohara published a book called “Arabs From A Japanese Perspective,” which is a bit racist but very much true. Its bulletpoints are actually very well-known in social media across the ME. They should make an English translation to give the world a sense of how deep-rooted and personal the problems are. Seeing the accuracy of her points alone make strongman seem like a necessary reality with the current climate.

Lebanon, we have just seen a reconciliation between Christianity and political Islam in the form of Aoun’s friendship with Nasrallah. Here we see that a form of Islamism was successfully integrated into an overarching social order. It was a unifying force rather than a divisive one, plus it has served Lebanese civil institutions rather than hinder them. So you can proceed with a basic hypothesis that Arab Muslims make up the problem for the most part, but the Arab social order is the bigger problem, especially when that social order is accomodated by the west as a function of deterrence for competing powers.

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Originally Posted by Gilrandir

Different from UN officials?

Head of the UN's human rights office Rupert Colville said that six different sources had confirmed 82 non-combatants were shot in four different neighbourhoods overnight on Monday. The reports included 11 women and 13 children killed.

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1. Not perpetrated by the Syrian Armed Forces
2. If we choose to evaluate the war crimes of militias to place the blame on their patrons, whom do you think outweighs the other in war crimes. Not the Syrian armed forces.

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Originally Posted by Kagemusha

It is rather naive notion to assume that The Arab Spring, which also sparked the Syrian civil war was sparked essentially by economic problems.

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The spark was quite literally economic - a Tunisian man set himself on fire because he was being harassed by tax inspectors over his fruit stall. That's approximately what happened, I may be fudging the details but the point is that the "Arab Spreing" came about because of the way the local Tyrants dealt with protests over economic conditions. Those protests were then hijacked by Liberals and Islamists.

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Originally Posted by Pannonian

And I happen to think that Iran are among the lesser evils in the region. You probably think that's a bit too relativistic a view to take though. They're not perfect, ergo we must hate them and topple them. It's 2003 all over again.

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You need to do that thing where you read other people's posts instead of just arguing against a Straw Man, if you had done so you would know I have no particular problem with Iran - in fact just a few months ago I was arguing we would be better off supporting them than the Saudis. However, trying to make nice with someone who regularly refers to you as the "Great Stan and the Little Satan" is pointless which is why I have generally been opposed to most Iranian government prior to the current one, which is more conciliatory.

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Originally Posted by Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

You need to do that thing where you read other people's posts instead of just arguing against a Straw Man, if you had done so you would know I have no particular problem with Iran - in fact just a few months ago I was arguing we would be better off supporting them than the Saudis. However, trying to make nice with someone who regularly refers to you as the "Great Stan and the Little Satan" is pointless which is why I have generally been opposed to most Iranian government prior to the current one, which is more conciliatory.

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Very one sided view. I wouldn't say that being included in the Axis of Evil is better than being called "Satan". Or having one of the most senior statesman for foreign policy sing "bomb Iran"... With they way Iran has been called by western politicians and mainstream western media, "Great Satan and Little Satan" is actually show a great restraint on Iran's part.

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Originally Posted by Pannonian

You've forgotten the first step. Flatten the country with ordnance and starve the people into submission so you can carry out your subsequent plans on your terms. If you can't be bothered to do that, then the above won't work. In some ways, the Russian plan for Syria is more conducive to creating a stable, secular, democratic republic based on gender equality and the rule of law, as they're at least doing the first step I describe.

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point

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Originally Posted by Sarmatian

Very one sided view. I wouldn't say that being included in the Axis of Evil is better than being called "Satan". Or having one of the most senior statesman for foreign policy sing "bomb Iran"... With they way Iran has been called by western politicians and mainstream western media, "Great Satan and Little Satan" is actually show a great restraint on Iran's part.

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Uh huh.

The "Axis of Evil" was specifically a Bush thing - the "Great Satan" thing was going for decades before that, as was "Death to America" alongside "Death to Israel". Iran spent decades trolling everyone, they consequently garnered a lot of bad press. It should also be noted that it has only been in the last decade that Iran has even started to open up to the outside world.

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Originally Posted by Sarmatian

I know it's 6 days old but I missed it till today. Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist, certainly doesn't pull any punches, when it comes to Syria and mainstream media.

Most interesting is how she discredits SOHR and White Helmets, two organizations on which western media rely the most.

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Just another opinion of a journalist with a pro-Syrian agenda.

https://zeroanthropology.net/eva-bartlett/
Why does her opinion weigh more than the ones she denounces?

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Originally Posted by Showtime

1. Not perpetrated by the Syrian Armed Forces

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... but by those they are allied with? "I didn't do it I just stood and watched them doing it"?
And SAF are angels who never do anything like that?

Any war is a dirty business, especially so complicated as the Syrian one.

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Originally Posted by Showtime

2. If we choose to evaluate the war crimes of militias to place the blame on their patrons, whom do you think outweighs the other in war crimes. Not the Syrian armed forces.

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I see. Measuring atrocities. Never mind bombing Hiroshima or Dresden - Auschwitz and Japan's atrocities were more terrible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_D..._crimes_trials

His sentence on unrestricted submarine warfare was not assessed, because of similar actions by the Allies: in particular, the British Admiralty on 8 May 1940 had ordered all vessels in the Skagerrak sunk on sight; and Admiral Chester Nimitz, wartime commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, stated the U.S. Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the day the U.S. entered the war. Thus, although Dönitz was found guilty of waging unrestricted submarine warfare against unarmed neutral shipping by ordering all ships in designated areas in international waters to be sunk without warning, no additional prison time was added to his sentence for this crime.

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Originally Posted by Sarmatian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjHniRRgOao

I know it's 6 days old but I missed it till today. Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist, certainly doesn't pull any punches, when it comes to Syria and mainstream media.

Most interesting is how she discredits SOHR and White Helmets, two organizations on which western media rely the most.

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A little research suggests a connection to Russia Today and an Anti-Israeli bias.

If you look at what she says, she talks about how the "mainstream media" has no verifiable sources on the ground, but presents no verifiable sources herself. She says the SOHR is "one man" when in reality it is "one man" in the UK and a whole network of contacts in Syria. Her Attacks of the White Helmets sound very convincing but difficult to check.

This appears to be the story about "Aya" appearing in multiple videos:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrias-...ves-it/5552367

Scenes two and three are clearly the same girl but its extremely difficult to tell in the other instances because small children tend not to have many identifying features. Personally I don't think the Aya in the first scene has the same shape face as in later scenes. The boy is so filthy it's completely impossible to tell anything reliably. One thing that IS notable is that the one screencap has had its colour balance altered, making the girl's complexion pinker and the blood "glossier". The article says "trust your eyes" and my eyes tell me that screencap has been doctored, and there's only one clear high-res shot of each child.

Now, lets look at her other points.

We can pretty much dismiss her quoting the Syrian election as the results would be reported as supporting Assad even if they didn't, rubber stamping a Tyrant with a falsely reported election is a practice that goes back to Napoleon at least. Likewise, her vague anecdotes about Syrians saying they support their government may be true, but likewise may be the result of being "liberated" by the Syrian army and now being under their auspices. It has been remarked before that if you ask someone in an IS controlled area what they think of IS they will tell you how great they are.

Finally, she picks out the BBC and the Guardian as "lying" about what is going on in Syria. That's really interesting, because pretty much every British source says the same thing about Syria, but she picks the Guardian and the BBC as opposed to, say, the Guardian and the Telegraph and brands them "liars". What is it that makes these two particular targets? If the only voices in Britain's "Establishment Media" are anti-Assad, why these two? It might be that both are Anti-Russian and the guardian in particular is strongly anti-Putin. Anybody familiar with the journalistic culture within these two organisations would know that neither would consciously "lie". The BBC in particular is pathalogically opposed to miss-information, people lose their jobs over it. That's not to say there's no bias, or that they can't be fed miss-information but what she says repeatedly is "they're lying" and she picks out these two anti-Putin outlets several times.

Finally, with regards to the Russians having satellite imagery of as not-bombed hospital, we know the Russian military has a whole doctrine of military diss-information and that the policy, if caught, is to double down. We also know they supplied fake satellite imagery of empty bases on the Russian-Ukraine border a few years ago.

So - whilst I doubt the situation is as clear cut as the "evil Assad" that is sometimes peddled I am even less inclined to believe, as she says, that "the opposite is true" given that she looks like a Russian mouthpiece.

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Originally Posted by Showtime

To draw the whole situation based on how its conceptualized in western thought is to look past the fact that this war is a result of outsiders further ripping apart an otherwise manageable internal struggle. We are better off applying international standards than who we think are tyrants.

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Whilst Syria has certainly become a battleground for international forces it would be disingenuous to describe the initial protests as anything other than domestic.

As regards labelling Assad a Tyrant, I can't speak for others but personally I am applying Aristotle's standards. Assad is neither an elected leader not a king, ergo he occupied an anomalous position within the Syrian Constitution. He is, therefore, bad in so far as his Tyranny disrupts the normal functions of Constitutional Government and thereby harms the state. Furthermore, as he is not Constitutionally Legitimate he has to use force to hang onto power - which is why he had to violently suppress the ongoing protests.

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I believe the strongman rulers are needed, or rather make themselves needed. Japanese sociologist Nobuaki Notohara published a book called “Arabs From A Japanese Perspective,” which is a bit racist but very much true. Its bulletpoints are actually very well-known in social media across the ME. They should make an English translation to give the world a sense of how deep-rooted and personal the problems are. Seeing the accuracy of her points alone make strongman seem like a necessary reality with the current climate.

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This is an incredibly complex topic deserving its own thread. Clearly a lot of Arabs right now want Tyrants in preference to Islamists. Equally clearly when Arabs vote they often tend to vote for Islamists, despite not apparently wanting their policies to be enacted. Witness Egypt. It seems to me that when Arabs have been given a democratic vote, in various places, throughout the last few years there have been a tendencey for a significant percentage to vote for the most pious voice as opposed to the most practical. I don't think it's a majority but it's a large enough majority who seem to vote this way that Islamists can end up holding the balance of power.

Lebanon, we have just seen a reconciliation between Christianity and political Islam in the form of Aoun’s friendship with Nasrallah. Here we see that a form of Islamism was successfully integrated into an overarching social order. It was a unifying force rather than a divisive one, plus it has served Lebanese civil institutions rather than hinder them. So you can proceed with a basic hypothesis that Arab Muslims make up the problem for the most part, but the Arab social order is the bigger problem, especially when that social order is accomodated by the west as a function of deterrence for competing powers.[/QUOTE]

Just in case that helps (one of the top stories in Google when I look for Eva Bartlett): http://www.snopes.com/syrian-war-vic...-never-bombed/

Seems to agree with PVC.

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Originally Posted by Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

A little research suggests a connection to Russia Today and an Anti-Israeli bias.

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Being anti Israeli isn't necessarily the same as having anti Israeli bias, and it doesn't have much to with Syrian civil war.

A connection to RT isn't proof of lies. Furthermore, a freelance journalist generally selling her stories to media agencies is the what freelance journalists do. I'm sure you'd find that connection to many other media organizations around the world.

Now, if you have a good story about how she is actually employed exclusively by RT, and sent to Syria with an agenda, all the while pretending to be a freelance journalist, that would actually be discrediting.

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If you look at what she says, she talks about how the "mainstream media" has no verifiable sources on the ground, but presents no verifiable sources herself. She says the SOHR is "one man" when in reality it is "one man" in the UK and a whole network of contacts in Syria. Her Attacks of the White Helmets sound very convincing but difficult to check.

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Of course, she might be lying, but, with her being rather forthcoming with exact dates, times, places it would be easy to pick her story apart. So far, she was supposedly caught lying about Al Quds hospital, while in fact, she didn't lie. Almost all western media reported that the hospital was attacked and damaged. When pressed now (in Husar's post) MSF said that a "building across the road from the hospital and another building even further away". Hospital wasn't damaged and continue operating.

For me, attack on SOHR was actually more convincing. We actually don't really know anything about it. How many informants they have, who they are, where they are, how often do they send news, how they verify them etc... Being a journalist, she actually had training and experience to do that.

And after all those information reach UK, a single guy in Coventry decides what gets published.

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This appears to be the story about "Aya" appearing in multiple videos:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrias-...ves-it/5552367

Scenes two and three are clearly the same girl but its extremely difficult to tell in the other instances because small children tend not to have many identifying features. Personally I don't think the Aya in the first scene has the same shape face as in later scenes. The boy is so filthy it's completely impossible to tell anything reliably. One thing that IS notable is that the one screencap has had its colour balance altered, making the girl's complexion pinker and the blood "glossier". The article says "trust your eyes" and my eyes tell me that screencap has been doctored, and there's only one clear high-res shot of each child.

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For me, that is the least important. Media tends to pick the photo that's easiest to empathize with. Even if it was the same girl, it's irrelevant. Certainly many children have suffered, no need to prove that each individual child suffered.

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Now, lets look at her other points.

We can pretty much dismiss her quoting the Syrian election as the results would be reported as supporting Assad even if they didn't, rubber stamping a Tyrant with a falsely reported election is a practice that goes back to Napoleon at least. Likewise, her vague anecdotes about Syrians saying they support their government may be true, but likewise may be the result of being "liberated" by the Syrian army and now being under their auspices. It has been remarked before that if you ask someone in an IS controlled area what they think of IS they will tell you how great they are.

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This is arguably true, and I have no problem thinking that the support for Assad is actually lower than elections show. At the same time, I'd also think it's higher than western politicians are trying to portray.

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Finally, she picks out the BBC and the Guardian as "lying" about what is going on in Syria. That's really interesting, because pretty much every British source says the same thing about Syria, but she picks the Guardian and the BBC as opposed to, say, the Guardian and the Telegraph and brands them "liars". What is it that makes these two particular targets? If the only voices in Britain's "Establishment Media" are anti-Assad, why these two? It might be that both are Anti-Russian and the guardian in particular is strongly anti-Putin. Anybody familiar with the journalistic culture within these two organisations would know that neither would consciously "lie". The BBC in particular is pathalogically opposed to miss-information, people lose their jobs over it. That's not to say there's no bias, or that they can't be fed miss-information but what she says repeatedly is "they're lying" and she picks out these two anti-Putin outlets several times.

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I definitely don't agree with this. She mentioned several times that she means all western corporate media. She also mentioned LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post and others. She mentioned Guardian and BBC specifically because she was talking about a concrete article, and had to say the source of the article, otherwise it wouldn't be a serious report.

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Finally, with regards to the Russians having satellite imagery of as not-bombed hospital, we know the Russian military has a whole doctrine of military diss-information and that the policy, if caught, is to double down. We also know they supplied fake satellite imagery of empty bases on the Russian-Ukraine border a few years ago.

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Possibly, but in the case of Al Quds hospital, they were obviously correct.

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Originally Posted by Sarmatian

Being anti Israeli isn't necessarily the same as having anti Israeli bias, and it doesn't have much to with Syrian civil war.

A connection to RT isn't proof of lies. Furthermore, a freelance journalist generally selling her stories to media agencies is the what freelance journalists do. I'm sure you'd find that connection to many other media organizations around the world.

Now, if you have a good story about how she is actually employed exclusively by RT, and sent to Syria with an agenda, all the while pretending to be a freelance journalist, that would actually be discrediting.

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None of this discredits her exactly, but it speaks to her worldview - there is a certain anti-Western sentiment within the West. The most famous current example is Jeremy Coirbyn who in addition to having an anti-Israeli bias has vocally supported Russia Today as a n alternative preferable to the BBC. The BBC has, of course, exposed Corbyn lying on camera, sharing a platform with terrorist sympathisers and quite literally embracing anti-Semites.

Russia Today, on the other hand, is quite obviously the mouthpiece of the Kremlin and only reports accurately when it doesn't hurt their masters' political agenda.

If she's so pro-Arab and so well embedded why isn't she working for Al Jazeera? Possibly because she's too biased and prejudiced.

I also found this: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forum...d.php?t=145637

Forum thread at Arm Chair General started by a now banned user, either she has an unashamed anti-Israeli bias or he set out to character assassinate her. Doesn't seem like she was famous enough for that, though. Interesting find none the less - have a skim.

Here's Eva Bartlett apparently responding to someone from Buzzfeed:

https://off-guardian.org/2016/12/16/...g-to-buzzfeed/

Whether Mr Dara actually contacted her or not I do not know, however by pre-empting his interview she's likely dissuaded him from publishing unless he wants to get into a flame war (not this is different to letting him publish and then responding to the article as-published.

Here she is for Russia Today on the UN: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/229215-un...ia-ambassador/

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Of course, she might be lying, but, with her being rather forthcoming with exact dates, times, places it would be easy to pick her story apart. So far, she was supposedly caught lying about Al Quds hospital, while in fact, she didn't lie. Almost all western media reported that the hospital was attacked and damaged. When pressed now (in Husar's post) MSF said that a "building across the road from the hospital and another building even further away". Hospital wasn't damaged and continue operating.

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You means this:

"On 27 April 2016, amidst the Syrian government-led coalition’s offensive on East Aleppo, Basel Aslan (Al Quds) hospital was attacked and severely damaged by two airstrikes. According to interviews with staff present at Al Quds hospital during the attack, at exactly 9.37pm, a building across from the hospital, identified as Ain Jalout school, was struck by an airstrike. Following the first strike, Al Quds medical staff retrieved the wounded to transfer them to the hospital for medical care. Soon after, the Al Quds staff residence, located a few buildings down from the hospital, was hit by a second strike."

Missiles cause widespread damage when they bit a building, the building itself becomes a grenade, hurling out concrete and rebar whilst the shockwave alone can know out Windows. Bartlett claimed the hospital was not attacked and that the Russians have footage of it being in "exactly" the same state as before the attack. She neglects to mentioned the crater of the road where the school used to be. Given her attitude to slack reporting in the Mainstream media being "lies" we could saying she is lying by omission.

Here's the footage: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/syria-ai...or-cease-fire/

Also - note the White Helmets in the video.

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For me, attack on SOHR was actually more convincing. We actually don't really know anything about it. How many informants they have, who they are, where they are, how often do they send news, how they verify them etc... Being a journalist, she actually had training and experience to do that.

And after all those information reach UK, a single guy in Coventry decides what gets published.

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There's some mileage in this, but plenty of people have met this "one man" and found him to be genuine, I understand people have watched him work. So it's not as though we know "nothing".

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For me, that is the least important. Media tends to pick the photo that's easiest to empathize with. Even if it was the same girl, it's irrelevant. Certainly many children have suffered, no need to prove that each individual child suffered.

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The claim is, in essence, that these are child actors - I posted a link explaining this in detail. Essentially, there are no White Helmets - it's all staged. Highly unlikely given the huge amounts of money invested, there are probably Europeans embedded with the White Helmets, ex forces. That's another thing Bartlett never mentions, you would think with all her talk of "Regime Change" etc. that she would mention the American, British and French forces embedded with opposition groups, we're pretty sure they're there (especially with the Kurds) but not a mention.

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This is arguably true, and I have no problem thinking that the support for Assad is actually lower than elections show. At the same time, I'd also think it's higher than western politicians are trying to portray.

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Given the protracted nature of the Civil War and the evidenced lack of morale among the armed forces I would hazard well under 50%.

On the topic of the Civil War - a list of Defectors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_defectors

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I definitely don't agree with this. She mentioned several times that she means all western corporate media. She also mentioned LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post and others. She mentioned Guardian and BBC specifically because she was talking about a concrete article, and had to say the source of the article, otherwise it wouldn't be a serious report.

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The examples she gave were the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times - then she got into specifics - but those three were the three emblematic examples of Western Media corruption.

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Possibly, but in the case of Al Quds hospital, they were obviously correct.

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Obviously not, because the school over the road would be a ruin and the hospital would have been somewhat damaged by that - even if it was just blown out windows.

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Originally Posted by Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

If she's so pro-Arab and so well embedded why isn't she working for Al Jazeera? Possibly because she's too biased and prejudiced.

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There are many possible reasons and picking one that suits your narrative is unfair, at least.

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I also found this: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forum...d.php?t=145637

Forum thread at Arm Chair General started by a now banned user, either she has an unashamed anti-Israeli bias or he set out to character assassinate her. Doesn't seem like she was famous enough for that, though. Interesting find none the less - have a skim.

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I wouldn't say it's either. They guy posted about his personal experience on a forum he frequents. I shared my experiences about a visit to a ruins of a Roman palace/fort in Serbia in the Monastery a few years back. That doesn't mean I have a special agenda, or that I'm paid by Tourist Organization of Serbia to promote possible sights in the country.

From what I've read of the discussion, she dislikes the acts of the Israeli government, but nothing in there that shows a bias.

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Here's Eva Bartlett apparently responding to someone from Buzzfeed:

https://off-guardian.org/2016/12/16/...g-to-buzzfeed/

Whether Mr Dara actually contacted her or not I do not know, however by pre-empting his interview she's likely dissuaded him from publishing unless he wants to get into a flame war (not this is different to letting him publish and then responding to the article as-published.

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I'm not familiar with journalist practice so intimately to gauge whether that was a breach of some protocol or not. In any case, it certainly didn't look like an interview, just a few questions by email.

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Here she is for Russia Today on the UN: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/229215-un...ia-ambassador/

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Again, writing an article for RT isn't proof that she is their propaganda mouthpiece, nor is an article published by RT automatically a hoax.

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You means this:

"On 27 April 2016, amidst the Syrian government-led coalition’s offensive on East Aleppo, Basel Aslan (Al Quds) hospital was attacked and severely damaged by two airstrikes. According to interviews with staff present at Al Quds hospital during the attack, at exactly 9.37pm, a building across from the hospital, identified as Ain Jalout school, was struck by an airstrike. Following the first strike, Al Quds medical staff retrieved the wounded to transfer them to the hospital for medical care. Soon after, the Al Quds staff residence, located a few buildings down from the hospital, was hit by a second strike."

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That would be fine and dandy if MSF didn't publish this about the strike two days after it happened (April 29th):

"The attack on Al Quds hospital has destroyed one of the last remaining places in Aleppo in which you could still find humanity." - That statement identifies hospital as the target of the attack and concludes that the hospital was destroyed.

On May 4th, they issued a following statement:

"The airstrikes first hit buildings neighboring the hospital, then the hospital itself as the wounded were transferred there." - this one concludes that at least two buildings were hit, before the hospital itself was hit.

And lastly, the bit you quoted:

"...a building across from the hospital, identified as Ain Jalout school, was struck by an airstrike. Following the first strike, Al Quds medical staff retrieved the wounded to transfer them to the hospital for medical care. Soon after, the Al Quds staff residence, located a few buildings down from the hospital, was hit by a second strike." - and this one says that only two buildings were hit, one across and one further away from the hospital, were hit.

I'm the only one seeing inconsistencies here?

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Missiles cause widespread damage when they bit a building, the building itself becomes a grenade, hurling out concrete and rebar whilst the shockwave alone can know out Windows. Bartlett claimed the hospital was not attacked and that the Russians have footage of it being in "exactly" the same state as before the attack. She neglects to mentioned the crater of the road where the school used to be. Given her attitude to slack reporting in the Mainstream media being "lies" we could saying she is lying by omission.

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Obfuscation. The narrative was and is that Russians/Syrian army are purposefully targeting hospitals and thus committing war crimes. Thus, the difference between a direct attack and collateral damage is huge.

To put it in perspective, Chinese government wouldn't have been nearly as angry with NATO in 1999, if the NATO bombed something a few buildings away from the Chinese embassy, resulting in shattered windows.

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Here's the footage: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/syria-ai...or-cease-fire/

Also - note the White Helmets in the video.

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I'm not overly familiar with White Helmets, so I won't make a case either way, but in her statement, she didn't deny their existence, just questioned whether they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, especially with a huge funding they have at their disposal.

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There's some mileage in this, but plenty of people have met this "one man" and found him to be genuine, I understand people have watched him work. So it's not as though we know "nothing".

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Possibly. But why should he be trusted? Merely because the organization has Human Rights in the title, or because it suits the current narrative?

Let's compare him with Eva Bartlett -

1) One person - check
2) network of contacts - check
3) possible bias - check
4) first hand knowledge - only Bartlett
5) journalist training and experience - only Bartlett

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The claim is, in essence, that these are child actors - I posted a link explaining this in detail. Essentially, there are no White Helmets - it's all staged. Highly unlikely given the huge amounts of money invested, there are probably Europeans embedded with the White Helmets, ex forces. That's another thing Bartlett never mentions, you would think with all her talk of "Regime Change" etc. that she would mention the American, British and French forces embedded with opposition groups, we're pretty sure they're there (especially with the Kurds) but not a mention.

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American, British and French Involved directly in fighting? I doubt that.

She mentioned support and training for rebels provided by western countries.

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Given the protracted nature of the Civil War and the evidenced lack of morale among the armed forces I would hazard well under 50%.

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Your guess is as good as mine.

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The examples she gave were the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times - then she got into specifics - but those three were the three emblematic examples of Western Media corruption.

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I got a different understanding, but the two of you are native speakers, so I'll leave it at that.

White Helmets is the medical service of the rebels. Many of them help civilians, some punch captives and others are so unbelievably stupid that they participate in the mannequin challenge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgl271A6LgQ

I feel sorry for the guy who thought of it, hoping to appeal to the western audience and instead giving a field day to Russia Today. No more paychecks from the Qatar National Bank, I guess. Truth is that some of them are as nice as the guys sent to the mukhabarat for interrogation by the Americans in Iraq. But yes, the west is totally concerned for human rights. Like really.
However I can't describe all of them collectively as fascists, that will be unjust.

Funny thing is that the jihadists and their twitter brigades use the same tactics to discredit the Red Crescent, because they help civilians bombed by them. How dare they, I say!
Not much hope for the public opinion though, when so many (even excluding the Saudi bots) believe that a 7-year old and her mother daily update their twitter status calling for WW3 and crying about genocidde.
Oh, the gullibility...

Looks like the Rightist French Newspapers Le Figaro agreed with RT.
Probably paid by Putin as well.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/201...ralisateur.php

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Originally Posted by Brenus

Looks like the Rightist French Newspapers Le Figaro agreed with RT.
Probably paid by Putin as well.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/201...ralisateur.php

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Google Translate went a bit spotty toward the end, but her comments on political morality/ethics were the more promising part of the article.

I agree that Manicheanism toward the conflict serves very few political ends today other than inertia.

I raise that when she points out that IS is a scapegoat, she must also recognize that the same holds for every other concrete organization of Islamist violence, indeed short of the contemporary theme itself. A given organization is never the center of the question but rather a body which the state can directly defend itself against with its armed assemblage, and in this regard the task of "empty[ing] the jihadist abscess" runs only parallel to targeting whatever other groups fighting in Syria (and elsewhere) that the author dislikes.

It is false to suggest that the conflict is largely driven by foreign occupiers holding the Syrian people "hostage".

I reject the bromide that US-Russian cooperation can resolve either the Syrian conflict or conflicts of Islam at large, not least for the fact that these questions have very little to do with either cooperation or animosity between Russia and the US. The trend of this attitude is something you should have noticed, the fact that rightist organizations across Europe (except for those in Poland and the Baltic states, by the by) tend to look upon Putin with sympathy at the very least. This is so because, just as rightist groups despised Russia under a leftist regime, so they admire it as the seat of a rightist regime. Leaving aside questions of "fifth column" this has most to do with Russia being locked by (mind my choice of words now) one of the most successful rightist governments of modern history. I believe ideological resonance (across numerous principles) accounts for Euro right-wing attitudes toward Russia today than any specific instances of patronage, indoctrination, or other forms of compromise.

(One may take my thoughts further and compare rightist praise of Putin to, say, leftist praise of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez with concomitant implications, but I wouldn't take that step - yet)

I wanted just to underline that written media are changing a bit the narrative.
Google is awful at translation, unfortunately...
What she is saying is the media reading of the crisis is based on only 2 uniques sources, both of them nor reliable nor objective and news-agencies repeating eachothers.
She is saying that in Syria, the most urgent task of Europe and US was not to deal with Islamist Extremist but to bring Assad down, at what ever cost, and expel Russia from the region.
So, they legitimised islamic terrorists groups under the label of "rebels, forgetting about children enrolment in their ranks, massacres, tortures and extortions.
She said there is no more moderate opposition in Syria and we went from a Civil War in Syria to a war against Syria (invasion of turkish troops, and finances from Arabs Monarchies)
At no moment she said that IS was made a scapegoat. She said that the most of the opposition is like IS. And she finishes on the duty to go back to the "realpolitik" and need to respect borders as they are a good tools/frame for resolving crisis than moralism (that she qualifies as cynical) pretending working for democracy...
Acknowledgment of different interest by various parties....

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Originally Posted by Brenus

I wanted just to underline that written media are changing a bit the narrative.
Google is awful at translation, unfortunately...
What she is saying is the media reading of the crisis is based on only 2 uniques sources, both of them nor reliable nor objective and news-agencies repeating eachothers.
She is saying that in Syria, the most urgent task of Europe and US was not to deal with Islamist Extremist but to bring Assad down, at what ever cost, and expel Russia from the region.
So, they legitimised islamic terrorists groups under the label of "rebels, forgetting about children enrolment in their ranks, massacres, tortures and extortions.
She said there is no more moderate opposition in Syria and we went from a Civil War in Syria to a war against Syria (invasion of turkish troops, and finances from Arabs Monarchies)
At no moment she said that IS was made a scapegoat. She said that the most of the opposition is like IS. And she finishes on the duty to go back to the "realpolitik" and need to respect borders as they are a good tools/frame for resolving crisis than moralism (that she qualifies as cynical) pretending working for democracy...
Acknowledgment of different interest by various parties....

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The translation was enough to get all that.

As for "scapegoat":

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pas seulement celle de Daech, bouc-émissaire spectaculaire

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She calls it scapegoat by comparison to the other groups, to which I raised my complaint on her goal of countering the " l'abcès djihadiste" and "péril commun", namely that scapegoating the other evil awful groups is wrongfooted.

She still not qualifies Daesh as scapegoat, she is saying it was an easy target to divert attention of the others similars movements with exactly the same methods and ideology. And these groups were the ones financed by Saudis and allies, including us.

While for some reason news dont speak about it much, Kurdish peshmerga of YPG and YPJ have achieved a major breakthrough West of Raqqa and are advancing towards the Isis capital alongside river Euphrates.

Assad claimed victory over Aleppo.
Agreement between Turkey, Russia and Iran apparently? A new alliance?

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Originally Posted by Brenus

Assad claimed victory over Aleppo.
Agreement between Turkey, Russia and Iran apparently? A new alliance?

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Alliance? Not likely with those three states. Fellow-travelers for a particular short term agenda? Definite possibility.

"Definite possibility." Bad news for the Kurds...

When was there any good news for the Kurds after the coming of Islam?

The West's refusal to actually back the Kurds with ammo and heavy weapons ensures that Iraq, Syria and Turkey will eventually be able to impose a return to the previous status quo.

Maybe someone should tell Trump a lot of the Kurds aren't Muslims but actually closet Zorastrians?

He would probably say - Zorro is not Austrian, he's Mexican, and I don't like them either.

It seems that Assad is likely to lose one more (after Palmyra) city to ISIS. Or is it included into the Aleppo-Palmyra swap?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrian-...ghting/5569224