#1801
or, as WaPo puts it:

Washington Post posted:

Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow



Moscow aaaaand...?

#1802
it seems the pentagon had more discretion for the last few months as trump settled in.
#1803
the guy said he was going to "take out their families" so im not sure why you're giving him the benefit of the doubt here

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-terrorists-families/index.html
#1804

Panopticon posted:

you're giving him the benefit of the doubt



please clarify what you mean by "you," "him," and "giving ... the benefit of the doubt"

#1805


I haven't checked but far as I know all those statistics came from fake rebel ngo Observatories which spent the last four years whining that the US wouldn't bomb their country... Now as US has abandoned them in favour of SDF they have gone all out to brand America Enemy number one
(They have also been dropped by western media since then)

Also it's only been with in the last few months of this three year bombing campaign that they have actually targeted terrorists and terrorist held cities (and it's possible that the civilians killed in Mosul will dwarf what we've seen so far... Comparable to Grozny 1996?)

A comprehensive and fair minded study of the battles of Aleppo Raqqa and Mosul is needed I think and would hilight how the Syrian Army was able to liberate urban areas while minimising casualties

Edited by xipe ()

#1806

Petrol posted:

wow. Im starting to get suspicious of this 7 year old who desperately and very articulately wants us to destroy the Assad regime.



Oh, so u think you're smarter than the UN and Google who just a months ago launched their flagship website explaining what is happening in Syria, describing Bana as the voice of millions of Syrian children

https://searchingforsyria.org/en/

#1807
ironically i am using the most up to date version of google chrome and that page fails to load with the message "It looks like you're using an older device or web browser. Please update your browser or visit on a newer device." surely not just because i block google analytics?? lol
#1808

Constantignoble posted:

please clarify what you mean by "you," "him," and "giving ... the benefit of the doubt"



i mean saying "given discretion" implies a disinterest on the part of trump regarding civilian casualties but he seemed to be pretty eager for more civilian casualties from the get go

#1809

xipe posted:

Petrol posted:


wow. Im starting to get suspicious of this 7 year old who desperately and very articulately wants us to destroy the Assad regime.



Oh, so u think you're smarter than the UN and Google who just a months ago launched their flagship website explaining what is happening in Syria, describing Bana as the voice of millions of Syrian children

https://searchingforsyria.org/en/



i like how that website uses these kind of humanizing facts to push the regime change narrative (syrians are people too, but evil assad attacked them for wanting democracy in 2011!), while obfuscating the fact that for instance the reason so many syrians have high levels of education is for the same reason the US is trying to overthrow their government

Edited by marlax78 ()

#1810
For organisations that have supported regime change chaos in Syria like the UN and Google, to have rolled back so far shows they have lost.
I think it's important to keep winning the information war even as the military war on Syria concludes... The ghouls who destroyed Iraq and Libya have successfully shaped those narratives to this day and are trying the same thing on Venezuela
#1811
While the US drops bombs, China invests $2 billion in rebuilding Syria


Do I understand that according to hoxhaists and maoists (both of whom are present in YPJ/G), this investment by China is 'imperialist' but the US activities, which has only given $$billions in guns and drugs to psychopaths, is not?

I'm sure I'm missing something in ML theory
#1812
Hoxhaists don't exist as an organized force in the US tbh, and certainly don't rep mainline ML.

Edited by JohnBeige ()

#1813
[account deactivated]
#1814
I meant in the way USSR/China in this case is described as 'social imperialist' for exporting capital according to Lenin's definition.

Whereas since the US hasn't exported any capital its not imperialist in this situation.

I'm sure I'm missing something big here, and I would appreciate being pointed in right direction
#1815
Lenin argued that mechanical implementation of his criteria in Imperialism was stupid, but exporting capital does not make you imperialist. it also requires dominance of finance capital over other monopolies, colonialism, etc
#1816
not sure how the billions poured into the "rebel" groups by US and its allies don't count as exporting capital
#1817
It doesn't count!!, *mumbles something about gross national product instead of gross domestic*
#1818
Well if you could show how the CIA and pentagon are able to convert their terrorist commodities back into profits that would be interesting.

Meanwhile: 72 hours after the end of the CIA weapons program for moderate rebels is announced, Al-Qaeda crushes the largest moderate rebel group, declares the FSA never existed and takes full control of Idlib City.
#1819

xipe posted:

I meant in the way USSR/China in this case is described as 'social imperialist' for exporting capital according to Lenin's definition.

Whereas since the US hasn't exported any capital its not imperialist in this situation.

I'm sure I'm missing something big here, and I would appreciate being pointed in right direction


Petrol posted:

not sure how the billions poured into the "rebel" groups by US and its allies don't count as exporting capital

The money and materiel poured into the rebel groups in Syria are not exported capital. That value is destroyed and destroys value in Syria at the same time - think of it as a violent, rapid underdevelopment, or reversal of development, of Syria. That creates inroads for imperialist capital (usually managed by NGOs). I don't think the ISIS caliphate was ever intended to be a permanent government that would then attempt to develop Syria in a way that included US interests.

China and Russia can invest money in the reconstruction of Syria in ways that we may find classically imperialist (I'd like to know more details first) but if they don't get up to the real shit we do, like grooming some countries as narcostates and requiring others to legalize slavery, I am justifiably going to sleep through their behavior

#1820

xipe posted:

Well if you could show how the CIA and pentagon are able to convert their terrorist commodities back into profits that would be interesting.

Meanwhile: 72 hours after the end of the CIA weapons program for moderate rebels is announced, Al-Qaeda crushes the largest moderate rebel group, declares the FSA never existed and takes full control of Idlib City.







OR



Edited by JohnBeige ()

#1821
littlefinger_chaos_is_a_ladder_speach.wav
#1822

xipe posted:

Well if you could show how the CIA and pentagon are able to convert their terrorist commodities back into profits that would be interesting.

they trucked out like a trillion gallons of oil before russia stepped in

#1823
there's all that stolen syrian oil isis sold to israeli business interests & others on the cheap (there were links to this somewhere upthread,) winds up being a bit like old school East India Company pillage & profit. "little" transactions like this happen a lot during these conflicts, always to the benefit of imperialist powers. see also libya's gold reserves, etc
#1824

swampman posted:

The money and materiel poured into the rebel groups in Syria are not exported capital. That value is destroyed and destroys value in Syria at the same time


Sure but I'm not talking about traditional investment obviously. It's more along the lines of when an organised crime figure does you a favor.

#1825
Jacobin just released a piece on the chemical weapons attack. You can guess what it says.
#1826
did brown moses get the byline
#1827
haha yeah

As Elliot Higgins first pointed out,



Elliot Higgins and other analysts have noted



As Higgins notes,

Edited by aerdil ()

#1828
it took jakkkobin a real long time to roll out what is essentially a rehash of the same old shit peppered with guardian and hrw links
#1829
it's an embarrassingly bad effort for a supposed professor. ohh so seymour hersh said it wasnt THE ASSAD REGIME that dunnit, but have you considered.... WHAT THE NYT SAID???? take THAT, hipster leftists!!!!!
#1830
jacobin used to be like the lovely old dog who is a sweetheart even though it's incontinent and its eyesight is going. but now that it barks at nothing all night and bites at anything that gets near in a blind fury, maybe it's time to consider compassionate euthanasia before it mauls a child.
#1831

Petrol posted:

it took jakkkobin a real long time to roll out what is essentially a rehash of the same old shit peppered with guardian and hrw links



 the complete list of bourgeois publications and think tanks in this piece, by order of appearance:


Die Welt
The New York Times
Press Secretary of the White House
The New York Times [2]
Reuters
The New York Times [3]
The Washington Post
The USA Today
The Telegraph
The Century Foundation
Human Rights Watch
CNN
Reuters [2]
The New York Times [4]
The Guardian
Human Rights Watch [2]
The Guardian [2]
Just Security
The New York Times [5]
Just Security [2]
CNN [2]
The New York Times [6]
Die Welt [2]
The New York Times [7]
The New York Times [8]
Press Secretary of the White House [2]
U.S. Department of Defense (this one is specially funny because it is Jacobin saying that Defense Secretary James Mattis cannot tell a lie)
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs [2]
The Guardian [3]
#1832
toss it in the jaco-bin
#1833
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-isis-russia-kurdish-ypg-happening-in-secret-a7857471.html

The 24-year-old Kurdish YPG representative, a veteran of the Isis siege of Kobani on the Turkish border, said that just over two weeks ago – after the latest Syrian offensive took Isis forces west of Raqqa by surprise – a Russian air strike had mistakenly targeted a Kurdish position. “That is why we set up our centre here 10 days ago,” he said. “We talk everyday and we already have another centre at Afrin to coordinate the campaign. We have to make one force that fights together.” The presence of these men at this remote desert outpost shows just how seriously Moscow views the strategy of the Syrian war and the need to monitor the largely Kurdish “Syrian Democratic Forces” who are already inside Raqqa with the support of US air strikes.



When I left the area, 29 families – cartloads of children and black-shrouded women and upturned sofas – had just arrived in Rasafeh from Deir ez-Zour to seek the Raqqa governor’s assistance. Another 50 had arrived the previous day. It seemed perfectly obvious that if the Syrian army lets America’s largely Kurdish friends occupy Raqqa, it is going to help the Syrian government civilian administration take over the city by the force of bureaucracy. How would that be for a bloodless victory?



Yet already, Syrian engineers are restoring electricity capacity from the desert generating stations which have only recently been hideouts for Isis leaders, a power system intimately connected to the Syrian oil fields, slowly being recovered from the Isis enemy, which remain – modest though they are in comparison with the great Gulf, Iraqi and Iranian oil resources – Syria’s “pearl in the desert”. Who controls these wealth machines – how their product will be shared now it has been freed from the Isis mafia – will determine part of Syria’s future political history.


#1834

xipe posted:

For organisations that have supported regime change chaos in Syria like the UN and Google, to have rolled back so far shows they have lost.
I think it's important to keep winning the information war even as the military war on Syria concludes... The ghouls who destroyed Iraq and Libya have successfully shaped those narratives to this day and are trying the same thing on Venezuela



And cuz they "lost," or at least didn't outright win, they're pushing hard:

Will Syria's war criminals be let off the hook?

They even worked the Khmer Rouge into the article lol

#1835
" Villages destroyed, crops burnt, wells poisoned, torture, rape, starvation sieges, mass bombing of civilians, and what only a decade ago might have been unthinkable - chemical weapons. " enough about israel though

e: lmfao "Ms Del Ponte, as a former prosecutor at the tribunal for Yugoslavia, and the woman who put Slobodan Milosevic in the dock, knows how to bring war criminals to book."

Edited by chickeon ()

#1836
*Spinning the scroll wheel increesingly frantically looking for a nuremburg reference* ah there it is, fiiiinally *wiping away sweat in relief*
#1837
Sebastian Gorka was asked by Charlie Rose if Syria has conducted 'another chemical attack on its people' after the 50 cruise missiles, and Gorka said "If we stay in the unclassified domain, no".

What the fuck does that mean? We "know" about another attack but its classified? haha.

It just sounds like they know who is really behind these chemicals being stored and released (my moderate rebels!) but it is "classified".

#1838
So now that the dust has somewhat settled, what are the different narratives regarding the chemical that caused the deaths?

I recall at one point it being suggested it was clorine, which would be consistent with visible cloud and burning eyes lungs in some witness reports at the time,yet the Washington narrative is that it was sarin (odourless and invisible). My understanding is that sarin has to be weaponized shortly prior to being used or it is ineffective. This means that stored sarin that was not ready for immediate use would not have caused such deaths. And as such this reaffirms (within that narrative) that its use was intentional and not side effect of bombing a storage facility.
#1839
[account deactivated]
#1840
Hey gsssh

Here is the raw footage the White Helmets recorded for 4 April, which trump and OPCW accepted as evidence.

It features the same scene shot multiple times with the same characters playing many roles

https://youtu.be/8LnVHw96jFs

E: also this weird guy has been spending ages going thru material on 4th April incident.
Its possible lots of it is nonsense (I haven't looked) but I'm sure some tidbits too
http://bd8.com/syria/opcwfraud/

E2: also sofa expert brown moses is running the investigation like so

Edited by xipe ()