To many of us who have been in conflict zones without a sanitised cordon around us, and actually seen the effects close-up (and that excludes almost all of the political class), it is astonishing that the neo-cons constantly seek to promote war, any war. They just cannot sit comfortably unless we are blowing somebody, somewhere, limb from limb.
Little Aylan Kurdi and his family were fleeing Kobani, a town the US Air Force have been bombing relentlessly for weeks. Bombs are entirely agnostic over who they kill, and have not made life notably better for the population.
Yet the news media are now insistently beating the drum for British bombing in Syria. Who should be bombed exactly – ISIL or Assad – appears unimportant, so long as there is bombing. Indeed, the Murdoch Sky News, the Mail and the Blairites are contriving to build a narrative that Jeremy Corbyn, the SNP and bleeding hearts like myself are responsible for the death of little Aylan and hundreds like him, by unreasonable and inhuman opposition to a bit more bombing.
It is very reminiscent of the entirely fake narrative of a (non-existent) tank column sweeping down to massacre every civilian in Benghazi, to halt which we had to murder, by bombing, many thousands of civilians in Sirte, several hundred miles away and containing no tank columns. The people of Benghazi went on to show their gratitude by killing the US Ambassador, while Libya disintegrated into a violent mess with no effective government that could control activities like drug and people smuggling.
That worked well, didn’t it? Of course we should try something similar in Syria.
ISIL is a bastard child of the Iraq War. A bastard child of Bush and Blair. Its weapons are almost entirely American. Some have been captured from Iraqi forces, others were gifted to it by the Saudi/CIA sponsors of its original constituent parts. The countless deaths of children we inflicted by bombing in the Iraq war will fuel it for another two generations.
Never mind old bean. Nothing a spot more bombing won’t sort out, eh?
3:18:52:39
Mary
7 Sep, 2015 – 12:34 pm
The “hyperbole” you speak of is aimed at diluting the impact of superlatives when used in their proper context.
The corruption of language plays an important part in psy-ops (neuro-linguistics).
In response to an appeal on Facebook, Syria Calling, 5000 families in Iceland have offered their willingness to take Syrian refugees into their homes.
In 2011, radical Israeli Zionist Jew, Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld declared Icelanders Israel haters.
In 2013, Israel-propaganda website, BlazingCatFur, criticized Iceland’s proposed ban on pornography. It called Icelandic prime minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, “a feminist lesbian”, though she is married twice. The fact that Dubai bans lap dancing for Islamic reasons and Iceland did it for feminist reasons describes the best way possible the synergy between two totalitarian ideologies. The end result is the same,” wrote the Zionist Jew idiot.
On August 4, 2013, The Jewish Daily Forward published Jenna Gottlieb’s article in which she claimed that the 100 Icelandic Jews are intermarried immigrants and there is no anti-Jewish (aka antisemitism) in the country of 325,000 people. However, many Icelanders hate Israel for insulting their Jewish First Lady, Israeli-born Dorrit Moussaieff at the Ben-Gurion airport in 2006. Her Icelandic passport was confiscated by a female security official and she was not allowed to leave the entity for three days.
http://rehmat1.com/2015/09/04/5000-icelanders-offer-to-take-in-syrian-refugees/
Rehmat
7 Sep, 2015 – 12:47 pm
“5000 families in Iceland have offered their willingness to take Syrian refugees into their homes.”
Iran has taken in 985,000 refugees (mainly from Afghanistan) and granted them free, ongoing medical care. Just confirms what an evil place Iran is 😉
“Its weapons are almost entirely American.”
I was talking to someone who told me there is a thriving cottage industry in the manufacture of AK47s in the area. Small workshops with all the equipment, parts readily available and children carving stocks where someone passing through Turkey could buy a rifle complete with two clips of ammunition for less than £1,000.
Hollande: “Time to Rock the Casbah”
It occurs to me that the extent to which a nation is willing to show compassion to others is positively related to the degree of their past suffering at the hands of others (Israel excepted, of course).
“ISIL is a bastard child of the Iraq War. A bastard child of Bush and Blair”
_________________
No, it is the result of 50 years of brutal, murderous, corrupt and vicious dictatorship by the Assad family and the failure of the West to finish off that bastard Assad Junior before the uprising against him got hijacked by Muslim fundamentalists.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/07/mother-of-palestinian-baby-killed-in-arson-attack-dies
O/T
Off topic perhaps but still a reminder of the sad news which greets us nearly every morning of middle eastern suffering and death . First their baby son , then the father and now the mother .
Add to that figure another two million Iraqi refugees too. the same Iraqi refugees whom were held in camps in the deserts of Saudi and were not allowed near any cities, included for any medical emergencies, as result of this “humane” policy hundreds of Iraqis lost their lives in the suffocating heat of the Saudi deserts.
There gain we know that the oligarch owned media have no stomach for truth and are pretty good at making up and sensationalising the trivia/lies that they pass on as “news”
Pan
Good to see you’ve been wheeled in again.
Just don’t get distracted into arguments with John Spenser-Davis about sign-offs though
Impossible to disagree with the sentiments you express, Craig. But.
Once in this situation, what do you do to end it? Can any consensus even be found on the objectives?
On one hand, there’s the hegemonistic neocon Grand Plan, which seems to survive all exposures of its inherent criminality, and continues to influence US and UK foreign policy. According to this, the Baathists must go, as a stepping-stone to Iran. (Going back a few years, it’s arguable that this visible intention, by increasing Assad’s sense of insecurity, shifted him markedly in the direction of tyranny, conveniently turning him into a villain.) ISIS is a means to this end, and damn the outcome. In the endgame, which involves installing a compliant regime, ‘merely’ bombing ISIS will not hold territory, even if it appears to take it. The neocons will sooner or later want soldiers on the ground in Syria – they can’t rely on their proxies – and these will have to be Westerners.
Or you might take the view that the Ba’athists, having run Syria for decades as a secular, pretty peaceful, if human-rights-phobic state, could, given half a chance, do so again. The US was once quite happy to take advantage of the relaxed attitude on torture shown by Damascus and send rendered prisoners there from Afghanistan for interrogation, after all. The same problem, pushing ISIS back, is present. While the US is still actively backing the ‘nice’ rebels, it won’t be their boots on the ground. Given half a chance, it will be Russian ones, and I wouldn’t blame Putin for that. US policy has kicked the prospect of Syria’s leaving the Russian sphere of influence into a distant sand-dune. Ironic or what?
Neither of the above bear the slightest relation to the real priorities, which are to end the killing and destruction as soon as possible. To get there, you’d have to start from somewhere else. With hindsight, that would have been to leave Assad to put down the Arab Spring revolt, while declining all support – even the implied support they thought they had initially – to the rebels. You might not like it, but far fewer people would have died.
We don’t need actively to seek the company or the cash of these people, and diplomatic pressure should be put on them to modify their antihumanitarian excesses, but the fact remains that strong Middle Eastern autocracies kill far fewer of their subjects than the wars undertaken to depose them. The Hobbesian solution: leave them alone.
Pan,
Of course there are false flag operations. There is masses of factual information to support that 9/11 and 7/7 were such operations. But to say Gaddafi’s attack on Benghazi has no substance. People from the towns and villages along the road to Benghazi can verify that they were his forces. Although the East of Libya was at boiling point I have no doubt the US instigated the revolution.
Pan,
I also should’ve added that the West didn’t attack Gaddafi’s troops bombarding Benghazi to save the citizens of the city but to save the revolution the West had organised. If Gaddafi had taken Benghazi, Gaddafi would still be in power now.
There is going to be millions of orphans seeking revenge when they grow up!
BBC Radio Four news at 14:01 reporting that USA has asked Greece to ban Russian overflights into Syrian airspace. . .
more popcorn needed
Yes President Assad had limited political opposition and voting was defined by government controlled areas simply because rebel held sectors were difficult for the Syrian government to guarantee protection. Anyway what choice did British voters have with blue Labour, cobbled LibDems and Neo-Conservatives?
It is known albeit difficult to prove British mercenary trained Syrian government opposition committed crimes against Syrian civilians in an attempt to demonise Assad – One of these mercenaries, a sub-contracted Aegis ex SAS named John who was wounded in the leg in Bosnia can confirm a vilifying mandate.
Slandering ‘Assad junior’ is rather obtuse and short-sighted peculiarly when based on clan.
Shut-up or expect us – in the hole.
The Syrian and refugees crises are so important that the first words heard from Crawler Bercow for seven weeks were to announce the postponement of Welsh questions on Wednesday to allow for loyal addresses on the occasion of the longest reign by a monarch, namely Her Maj. That was to remind us that we are serfs.
This was followed by questions to IDS fielded initially by Ms Patel with the hard heart and a very unPretti nature.
~~~~~
This is the old dear with the Lizard at Braemar, nicely wrapped up. Wonder what was under the rug? Answers on a PC to Balmoral Castle.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03430/breamer-games-01_3430472b.jpg
‘The Balmoral Estate has been added to by successive members of the royal family, and now covers an area of approximately 50,000 acres (20,000 ha).’
@Mary
“Is that the same Peter Hitchens who wrote this pro racial purity muck and the same Paul Dacre who published it?”
There isn’t a single sentence in Hitchens’ article that could possibly be interpreted as referring to “racial purity”. I can’t imagine where you got that from – perhaps it’s an association within your own mind. The article warns British people that they live in an exceptionally safe, sheltered country and that this has a lot to do with a culture that took centuries to evolve. If too many people from very different places come to Britain, it will be just as crowded and unsafe as the countries from which they came.
Try this for some context:
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/there-goes-europe/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+clusterfucknation+%28Clusterfuck+Nation%29
“ISIL is a bastard child of the Iraq War. A bastard child of Bush and Blair.”
Nope: ISIS/ISIL is bastard child of the US and Israel.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-23/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-us-created-isis-tool-overthrow-syrias-president-assad
That’s how you read it Tom Welsh. Carry on believing in what you say.
Ruth,
Thanks for fleshing-out your original comment.
Ba’al Zevul
7 Sep, 2015 – 1:36 pm
“the fact remains that strong Middle Eastern autocracies kill far fewer of their subjects than the wars undertaken to depose them.”
Valid point. (Usually overlooked).
Tom Welsh,
Peter Hitchen’s article (as linked-to by Mary) is repugnant on many levels.
Wish I had the time to do a Media Lens-style hatchet job on it. That would be fun.
Oh, but he didn’t use the words “racial purity”, so that’s alright then.
Hitchens is well at home at the Mail, though.
You bet Mary! It seems that compassion has died and there was a quiet service held for its burial.
My sympathies to you and your niece, I wish you all patience and fortitude.
Mary you know that I and most of the others around here really care for you and your efforts, don’t you?
Keep up the good work Mary.
As to the”west’s” motives only an idiot could doubt them. Today, for example, the Greek government confirmed that the US has urged it to deny Greek airspace to Russian aid flights to Syria.
There is not the slightest doubt that the real target in the propaganda campaign is the Assad government, whose legitimacy (it is a coalition of minorities as well as sunnis opposed to wahhabism) so much enrages the Saudi government and other minions of wahhabism such as the hasbarastnik called Habbakuk.
Hitchens may be unlikeable and reactionary but he often writes things that you would never see in The Guardian:
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/new-violence-kiev-time-nobody-cares/ri9579
Those who want peace and justice in the world have no more potent enemies than the sectarians in their own ranks.
Cheers Fedup and thanks for your condolences. The poor man was diagnosed with an aggressive bladder cancer 9 mths ago. Chemotherapy preceded surgery and afterwards he deteriorated and spent the last 10 weeks of his life in and out of consciousness in ICU undergoing many procedures. He was a nice guy and they were not married very long which makes it doubly sad for my niece.
:::::
Evil is all around. I have been listening to the snake oil salesman adept in speech that carries no meaning answering ‘questions’ from a mostly supine gathering on the green benches. It is not a democracy. It is theatre. All decisions are made by an executive representing the 1%.
Peter Hitchen’s article (as linked-to by Mary) is repugnant on many levels.
What is repugnant about asserting, as Hitchens does, the Burkean notion that a nation is held in trust on behalf of previous generations, and our successors yet unborn, and that it is not owned outright by the present generation, to do with it as it pleases ?
Hitchens gets plaudits from me from re-asserting this concept- and for giving Michel Houellebecq a well deserved plug.
Tom Welsh and OldMark
Excellent post (on the Peter Hitchens article), thank you.
What is repugnant about asserting, as Hitchens does, the Burkean notion that a nation is held in trust on behalf of previous generations, and our successors yet unborn, and that it is not owned outright by the present generation, to do with it as it pleases ?
Nothing wrong with that at all!
Hardly representative of the rest, though.