Are the bastards lying to us again?

The British public is getting used to being lied to. Blair destroyed the credibility of the intelligence services, the BBC destroyed the credibility of national broadcasters and MPs by their venality and crookedness have virtually destroyed popular trust in Parliament. A whole host of national and international trusted figures have been caught telling lies in an effort to persuade the people not to vote for Brexit. So now many people - possibly even most people - treat whatever they're 'officially' told as suspect, with caution, and always subject to being proved. And increasingly that proof is sought through social media. 

What social media is saying about the latest Syrian 'atrocity' is that it's bollocks. They're saying there's no independent verification that a chemical incident took place, no UN observers, no news crews. People ask 'why would he?' when he's pretty well won and the US has announced it's giving up. And oh yes, they're asking, why do these alleged incidents happen just when the US is ready to withdraw?  They're laughing at pictures of a staged 'bomb' placed gently on a chipboard bed, at video showing rescuers with no masks and no protective gear entering a CW contaminated area, and they're asking why these alleged CW incidents only happen in places where the White Helmets are active. In other words, ordinary people on social media are asking all the questions that the MSM, parliament, analysts and observers should be asking. 

To we folk outside the establishment circle, it seems we're being asked to use massive military force against a sovereign nation on the basis of some short indistinct video clips showing a number of anonymous dead children who could be rebels, or their hostages, and who could have died from anything from Carbon Monoxide poisoning to EColi. No identification of the dead. No independent post-mortems, no chemical swabs, no testing of clothing. And yet within minutes of this footage and the allegations (Who made the allegations? The Al Qaeda rebels? Their white helmeted chums? ) it seemed the great and the good of the UK War faction were calling for Assad's blood, cruise missiles, reasons to keep the US in theatre.

And I could be wrong, but to my ear what most people are asking most of all is "Are the bastards lying to us again?"

Ignore fake Gouta 'outrage' - it's a smokescreen

With Agent COB revelations bubbling away as a foretaste of more news of Corbyn's past stupidity to come, as the deep establishment has now decided it's time to cut him off at the knees, it's a good time to take a look over to Syria. 

The manufactured horror in the Western media is peaking with 'humanitarian concern' over a rebel held pocket on the outskirts of Damascus. The press forgets that Russian-backed Syrian army re-taking of urban areas is brutal but thankfully rapid, with ground forces clearing house-to-house shortly after bone-numbing artillery and air attacks. Unlike US / Iraqi faffing about, with endless attritional bombardment including US White Phosphorus causing mass casualties because the ground forces won't risk themselves in combat. Not only is Syria's approach ultimately kinder, but the civilian population in the rebel area has already had every encouragement to move out into safety in the Assad-held areas but has chosen to remain. 

Media concern here is manufactured and is a smokescreen. Take a look at the current war map; ISIS have been all but vanquished, the Kurds have occupied territory from the Turkish border to the Euphrates, and the remaining US-backed Islamist rebel enclaves are shrinking. Assad must eliminate the rebel pockets around Damascus before a major offensive against the US / Turkish backed rebels holding land east of Latakia. We are now entering into the most dangerous stage of the war - in which Russian, Turkish, Iranian, Israeli and American ground and air forces are at high risk of direct conflict. 

 Der Spiegel has a good taste of the confusion now emerging on the ground;

What do a counterfeiter from Syria, an Iraqi-Afghan militia fighter under Iranian leadership and a Russian Cossack have in common? More than you might think. They all took part in a strange offensive involving around 300 men on Feb. 7 -- an attack force that was bombed by the U.S. as it crossed a pontoon bridge over the Euphrates River in an effort to capture one of largest natural gas fields in eastern Syria for the Assad regime. Located near the city of Deir ez-Zor, the so-called Conoco field had been wrested from Islamic State (IS) last September by Kurdish-led troops -- with the help of U.S. Special Forces who have been stationed in the area since then.

The Americans are using the Kurds to promote their own interests and the Turks, in addition to their own soldiers, are using anti-Assad rebels to fight on their behalf. Iran, meanwhile, has a diverse mixture of Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani recruits under its command, in addition to its own people. Since 2013, the tens of thousands of troops under Iranian control have been propping up the regime of Bashar Assad. They are commanded, trained and financed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which wants to keep its Syrian ally in power at any price. One of these multinational Shiite militias was also involved in the attack on the Conoco gas field -- a collection of fighters straight out of a dystopian catastrophe film. 

Two local tribal militias also took part in the attack, including one controlled by counterfeiter Torki Albo Hamad. Once wanted in Qatar for murder and document forgery in Saudi Arabia, he was known in Syria for being the leader of a gang of highway robbers. In 2013, Damascus offered him money and impunity if he and his men would place themselves at the service of the regime.

This is the real story; the big boys are now playing out the end game for land, gas and oil, and our sucker media is just too easily distracted by planted fake news intended to turn our focus away from the important stuff. With the BBC still soundly smarting from the spanking it got over its wholly fake White Helmets reporting from Aleppo (there weren't any) they've fallen straight into this one. Perhaps when Czech intelligence officers branded Agent COB 'stupid' they didn't know he was representative of a whole cabal of 'stupid' at the heart of the British establishment.

Peace in Syria?

When I write 'peace in Syria' I don't of course mean the sort of peace that the West gifted to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Libya, or indeed anywhere we've interfered in the past decade or so, where we've left a legacy of death, terrorism, economic collapse and failed governance. Only the most reality-challenged drug-addled FCO PR person could term those conditions 'peace'. So let's define our terms - what must peace mean for Syria?

No Entry to Salafism - No opportunity can be given to Salafist Islamists, the West's mortal enemies, to increase their power or influence in the region. This includes Turkey, Sunni Iraq, KSA, Kuwait, the gulf states and the various barbarian head-choppers.

Non-sectarian and tolerant society -  A future Syria must allow Shia and Sunni, Christian and Kurd, Alawite and Jew, to live in peace and freedom with no sectarian discrimination. Much as the country worked under Assad before the 'Salafist Spring', which saw deluded fools in Western government mistake Islamist uprisings for democratic urges. 

Russian influence preserved - Any settlement must preserve Russian influence and port / military facilities if the settlement is not to lead to wider causes of conflict

Self-determination - Allow the Syrian people to choose their own leaders and form of government - which may not be the same as Western forms of government and self-determination

Safe return for refugees - A safe place to which refugees currently in Jordan, Palestine and Turkey (as well as Europe) can safely return and rebuild. 

Now it might be that President Assad actually offers the best opportunity to meet these objectives. I don't know. 

However, I am sure that if the US and our own blundering, inept, mistaken FCO conspire to give us yet another Salafist-dominated failed state exporting Islamist terrorism and from which millions of refugees flee, all for the sake of global corporate oil or gas pipes, that we will hang the bastards from the lamp columns in Parliament Square. They're drinking in the Last Chance Saloon over Syria.

Oh Good. They've forgotten about the 'unspeakable' slaughter in Mosul.

I have no illusions about Bashir Assad's ruthlessness, and none about his commitment to regain control of Syria. His success in Aleppo, the recapture of Palmyra and even his quick reaction to the assault by the West's 'friendly' Islamist jihadis on Damascus have all given him the advantage. Meanwhile, the US-led blundering in taking Mosul, with its massive civilian casualties, makes Trump look a dick against Putin's effective siege of Aleppo. 

So I don't rule out Assad being responsible for a chemical attack in Idlib that has killed 70. But it's so / too convenient for the US led side, and such an unnecessary action for Assad, that I cannot rush to the same immediate verdict as the entire Western media seems to have done, at least without evidence. It's just too bloody convenient, particularly in silencing  the growing outrage against child and civilian casualties in Mosul, most recently as the 230 (as the Telegraph reported) child and mothers corpses were pulled from the rubble of a single Iraqi / US strike last week.

Whilst the slaughter of seventy in Idlib by poison gas is 'unspeakable', the slaughter of three times that number in Mosul by good, clean US missiles seems to be OK. Good. Glad that's clear.