RugbyRebels

Zhivago wrote:It only happened once, no matter how many times you post it.

Just updating it as the news leaks out . . .

rowan wrote:Latest . . .

Reports emerged Wednesday that U.S. planes bombed a school sheltering displaced civilians just west of the Syrian town of Raqqa, killing an estimated 33 civilians.

According to a local group called Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, the school was sheltering around 50 families fleeing violence in the face of mounting U.S. backed coalition attacks on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, reported The Independent.

"There were only two survivors from this," said one witness, according to The Guardian. "And they have still been buried. Most of these people, maybe all of them, had taken shelter in this building from the fighting and the planes. They were hiding for their lives."

While U.S. officials did not confirm the attack on the shelter, they did acknowledge carrying out airstrikes in the area ahead of Wednesday's deployment of Kurdish ground forces as part of the offensive against Raqqa.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/U ... -0002.html

Some perspective from the Guardian, at least. News of the hundreds slaughtered in American attacks over the past two weeks appears to have been completely buried in the US, unsurprisingly, but what's really interesting is the complete black-out in Turkey on two of the three attacks. I've never seen them just completely ignore such major international news stories before, and this can only add to widely-held suspicion the tough-talking sultan wannabe is no more than a US puppet . . .

“An airstrike by the US-led coalition against Islamic State on a school west of the Syrian city of Raqqa has killed at least 33 people, many of whom had fled nearby fighting, sparking further concerns that new rules of engagements may be causing an increase in civilian casualties.

“The attack follows a separate US strike on a mosque complex in the north-west of the country last Saturday that killed at least 52 people. The incident triggered fears that a White House-ordered review of rules governing the use of drones had already given military planners more flexibility on ordering strikes.”

A thank you to the Guardian for covering this extraordinary story.

But the reaction by most of the Western media, including the New York Times?

Meh.

The reaction to the London attack Wednesday in which, not counting the attacker, left three people dead?

Banner headlines and constant updates.

The death of civilians is a crime which should never be tolerated.

But apparently more for some than others.

I’ve spent 30 years in journalism, so I know the closer a story gets — and “closer” includes the same type of people as opposed to foreigners in a supposedly distant land — the greater and longer the treatment.

And some may say that because the London attack happened outside Parliament, it merits even more outrage.

But why is Parliament more sacred than a haven for refugees or a mosque?

And where are all the world leaders offering condolences to the dead Syrian children and other civilians killed by their very own governments?

Sadly, as we all know, this is really nothing new.

But this disproportionate coverage of Europeans versus Arabs — pretty much inversely proportional to the actual death counts — hides a crucial lesson that we just can’t seem to learn.

These attacks are not unrelated.

I have no idea — and I suspect the Western experts don’t either yet — if the London attack was a direct response to the recent civilian slaughters by the West in its battle against the Islamic State.

But regardless of the direct motivation, the mass murders of innocents in the Middle East by the West go at least as far back as the first “Gulf War.”

(They go much further back, but let’s start with the battle against an Iraqi dictator we helped put in and then keep in power.)

Would there have been this most recent attack in London — or even an Islamic State for that matter — without all the endless Western war crimes against Muslims for almost three decades?

Until we — and that includes the media we in the West rely upon — mourn the deaths of the innocents our governments kill as much as the deaths of innocents killed by our enemies, the bloodshed will never end.

And all too likely only get worse.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/24/ ... ont-count/

More here (on the mosque attack, which the Turkish news did cover):

We committed a quiet little war crime the other day. Forty-plus people are dead, taken out with Hellfire missiles while they were praying.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/24/ ... sappeared/

Another 130 civvies killed by US
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... obody-came

Zhivago wrote:Another 130 civvies killed by US
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... obody-came

Mosul's in Iraq. Pretty sure this is the same attack that involved a total of 230 civilian casualties on Thursday. I've already run this report, among others, on the aptly titled USA & CIA War Criminals thread.

rowan wrote:

Zhivago wrote:Another 130 civvies killed by US
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... obody-came

Mosul's in Iraq. Pretty sure this is the same attack that involved a total of 230 civilian casualties on Thursday. I've already run this report, among others, on the aptly titled USA & CIA War Criminals thread.

True true. Guess I just associate this thread with the war against ISIS in general.

ISIS, so-named by Western media (among other things) amounts to Saudi-backed Jihadists and nothing more than a Trojan horse to justify American military operations all around the world, wherever they please, along with those of their allies. Their only mission in Syria is to destroy yet another Middle Eastern nation not yet under Washington's control, no matter how much carnage they have to create in the process. Everybody knows this, those who try to claim otherwise and point the finger elsewhere are only insulting our intelligence, and in this manner we come to perceive just how racist, hypocritical and thoroughly brainwashed America and its close allies really are (as if we hadn't already)

Disaster looming?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... apse-fears

Thought I read something similar a month or two back. Yes, very worrying, but given the horrific devastation America has wrought upon these countries it's not surprising nobody takes notice any more. The US has done to the Middle East this century exactly what it did to South East Asia in the previous one (not to mention Latin America and parts of Africa). It's going to take another generation before Westerners begin to accept this as fact, and by that time American and British bombs will be falling on some other region of the world. That's one thing we can be sure of.

Only slightly more subtle than 'WOMDs' . . .

Syria’s current conflict, beginning in 2011, was the culmination of decades of effort by the United States to subvert and overthrow the government in Damascus. From training leaders of opposition fronts years before “spontaneous” protests erupted across Syria, to covertly building a multinational mercenary force to both trigger and leverage violence thereafter, the United States engineered, executed, and perpetuated virtually every aspect of Syria’s destructive conflict.

Enlisting or coercing aid from regional allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel, Syria found itself surrounded at its borders and buried within them by chaos.

“Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria”

But recently revealed CIA documents drawn from the US National Archives portrays recent efforts to undermine and overthrow the Syrian government and the Syrian conflict’s relationship with neighboring Lebanon and its ally Iran as merely the most recent leg in a decades-long campaign to destabilize and overturn regional governments obstructing US interests.

A 1983 document signed by former CIA officer Graham Fuller titled, “Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria” (PDF), states (their emphasis):

Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey.

The report also states:

If Israel were to increase tensions against Syria simultaneously with an Iraqi initiative, the pressures on Assad would escalate rapidly. A Turkish move would psychologically press him further.

The document exposes both then and now, the amount of influence the US exerts across the Middle East and North Africa. It also undermines the perceived agency of states including Israel and NATO-member Turkey, revealing their subordination to US interests and that actions taken by these states are often done on behalf of Wall Street and Washington rather than on behalf of their own national interests.

Also mentioned in the document are a variety of manufactured pretexts listed to justify a unilateral military strike on northern Syria by Turkey. The document explains:

Turkey has considered undertaking a unilateral military strike against terrorist camps in northern Syria and would not hesitate from using menacing diplomatic language against Syria on these issues.

Comparing this signed and dated 1983 US CIA document to more recent US policy papers reveals a very overt continuity of agenda.

Decades-Spanning Continuity of Agenda contiues here:

http://journal-neo.org/2017/02/20/conti ... ince-1983/

A couple more thought-provoking articles on the issue:

The recent strike launched by the US-led coalition some 20 miles to the west of al-Raqqah resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths, as the bombs hit a former school that served as shelter for refugees, as it’s been announced by the Turkish Anadolu news agency. It was added that the bombardment targeted more than 50 families who fled the towns of Hamas, Homs and al-Raqqah in a bid to save their lives. Local sources of the same agency have also reported yet another air strike launched in the in the area of Tabqa city, which has claimed at least 40 lives.

Additionally, the US military command confirmed last week that the air strikes it launched in the Syrian province of Aleppo resulted in the death of at least 49 people, which is hardly surprising since the strikes targeted a local mosque in the Al-Jin village during evening prayers. According to local sources, at this time of the day there’s usually around 300 locals praying in the mosque. The Syrian Human Rights Observatory has already stated that the better part of those deceased were civilians. In turn, Le Monde would describe this strike as one of the bloodiest mistakes of the Pentagon since the beginning of its operations in Syrian skies.

It is noteworthy that initially the blame for this strike was pushed on Russian and Syrian air forces, in tune with the Russophobic media campaign that is being pushed upon us all by Washington and a number of European interests. A number Western and Middle Eastern sources were quick to allocate the blame without the slightest piece of evidence to back up their claims.

And the list goes on, with the US-led coalition launching a series of strikes in the southern outskirts of the Syrian city of al-Raqqa on March 12, which resulted in at least 19 civilians being killed, with the air raid being executed during the night hours. Syrian news agency SANA announced that the death toll caused by these air strikes could grew significantly, since a large number of its victims remain in critical condition.


Continues here: http://journal-neo.org/2017/03/24/washi ... ddle-east/

he double standards of the western media are clearly demonstrated in the different treatment accorded the liberation of Aleppo by Syrian and Russian forces and the ongoing battle for the liberation of Mosul by ‘coalition’ (i.e. US) forces in northern Iraq.

Both cities were occupied by ISIS, Mosul from June 2014 and East Aleppo from July 2012. Both cities were part of a range of battlefield successes by terrorist groups, which at different stages have occupied large swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory. Among their successes was the occupation, ongoing, of their self-styled ‘capital’ of Raqqa.

Aleppo at the time was the largest city of Syria, with a population of around 2.5 million, of whom approximately one-third lived in the eastern sector occupied by ISIS. Precise numbers are hard to ascertain with any great accuracy, but the number remaining in east Aleppo appears to be in the vicinity of 400,000 at the time of liberation in December 2016.

Of the balance of approximately 400,000 original inhabitants in the eastern sector, the vast majority either fled the city entirely, or were able to move into the government controlled sector. The most reliable estimates of the number of civilians killed over more than six years of fighting appear to be in the vicinity of 30,000-40,000.

It is in the apportioning of responsibility for that civilian death toll that the western media have been at their most one-sided. The prime responsibility for the death toll must lie with the terrorist groups, of which there were many. If they had not occupied the eastern sector of the city, waged continuous warfare against the legitimate sovereign government of Syria, and shown complete indifference to civilian lives there would have been no loss of life.

Continues here: http://journal-neo.org/2017/03/24/a-tal ... and-mosul/

MIT assessment
http://www.unz.com/article/the-nerve-ag ... hun-syria/

It's a nice sentiment that civilians should not be impacted, but to have influence as an idea they'd need to specify how?

Digby wrote:It's a nice sentiment that civilians should not be impacted, but to have influence as an idea they'd need to specify how?

Impacted? Why the euphemism? Innocent civilians were brutally murdered. More than 300 from just this incident.

Zhivago wrote:

Digby wrote:It's a nice sentiment that civilians should not be impacted, but to have influence as an idea they'd need to specify how?

Impacted? Why the euphemism? Innocent civilians were brutally murdered. More than 300 from just this incident.

They're also brutally impacted by other forces active in the region, and if all foreign forces pulled out they'd be brutally impacted domestically.

Without knowing much more about the circumstances of the ops I wouldn't say murdered, killed fine, but it should be a hallmark of our ops that we try to minimise civilian casualties

Digby wrote:

Zhivago wrote:

Digby wrote:It's a nice sentiment that civilians should not be impacted, but to have influence as an idea they'd need to specify how?

Impacted? Why the euphemism? Innocent civilians were brutally murdered. More than 300 from just this incident.

They're also brutally impacted by other forces active in the region, and if all foreign forces pulled out they'd be brutally impacted domestically.

Without knowing much more about the circumstances of the ops I wouldn't say murdered, killed fine, but it should be a hallmark of our ops that we try to minimise civilian casualties

We do. You cant avoid all civilian casualties, but there is a legal requirement to take all reasonable steps to avoid them unless there is no other means to conduct the operation.

What's the point of being liberated if you are killed in the process. You guys are not recognising the dramatic rise since Trump entered office.

Zhivago wrote:What's the point of being liberated if you are killed in the process. You guys are not recognising the dramatic rise since Trump entered office.

The people killed aren't the only people in the world, and clearly the decision is to not accept the status quo.

Sandydragon wrote:

Digby wrote:

Zhivago wrote:
Impacted? Why the euphemism? Innocent civilians were brutally murdered. More than 300 from just this incident.

They're also brutally impacted by other forces active in the region, and if all foreign forces pulled out they'd be brutally impacted domestically.

Without knowing much more about the circumstances of the ops I wouldn't say murdered, killed fine, but it should be a hallmark of our ops that we try to minimise civilian casualties

We do. You cant avoid all civilian casualties, but there is a legal requirement to take all reasonable steps to avoid them unless there is no other means to conduct the operation.

We're certainly supposed to, whether we do is less clear. There have been a lot of seemingly bad decisions, and the record for the armed forces being honest in these situations has too many failures for their assurances to be taken at face value.

I suspect we mostly try, and we mostly make the best decisions possible in a horrible situation

The operational planning cycle at an air component HQ, for example, reviews all potential targets for the likelihood of civilian casualties and if the risks to non combatants outweigh the operational requirement then the strike doesn't happen. An air strike during the Libyan campaign was aborted due to unexpected civilian presence near the targets.

I'm not going to suggest that mistakes don't happen. Battlefields are confusing and non combatants aren't always visible until too late. But western forces do try and avoid non combatant casualties.

Digby wrote:

Zhivago wrote:What's the point of being liberated if you are killed in the process. You guys are not recognising the dramatic rise since Trump entered office.

The people killed aren't the only people in the world, and clearly the decision is to not accept the status quo.

Not the only people. That'll be a massive relief to all of us.

kk67 wrote:

Digby wrote:

Zhivago wrote:What's the point of being liberated if you are killed in the process. You guys are not recognising the dramatic rise since Trump entered office.

The people killed aren't the only people in the world, and clearly the decision is to not accept the status quo.

Not the only people. That'll be a massive relief to all of us.

Which is a request to do what? Vet ops more carefully, withdraw and leave the killings just to the Syrians and Russians?

Digby wrote:

kk67 wrote:

Digby wrote:
The people killed aren't the only people in the world, and clearly the decision is to not accept the status quo.

Not the only people. That'll be a massive relief to all of us.

Which is a request to do what? Vet ops more carefully, withdraw and leave the killings just to the Syrians and Russians?

How about starting by actually feeling outage instead of expressing platitudes...

Zhivago wrote:

Digby wrote:

kk67 wrote:
Not the only people. That'll be a massive relief to all of us.

Which is a request to do what? Vet ops more carefully, withdraw and leave the killings just to the Syrians and Russians?

How about starting by actually feeling outage instead of expressing platitudes...

Probably accomplish a similar amount. Not that I'd care to assume that other people don't feel outrage at the loss of life, not even if they mayn't feel the need to automatically deride the establishment and send for the sackcloth and ashes

So the truth has been revealed. It was the Assad government who was using chemical weapons on civilians. 27 confirmed instances by the UN investigation team with another 6 incidents where blame cannot be attributed.

Remember all that alt news reporting about how the fault possibly lay with the rebels, how it was just a huge disinformation campaign? Turns out that was just bollocks and the main stream media had it right.