RugbyRebels

morepork wrote:It's the cut and paste 'Lympics.

Gimme the highlights..?

Fecking 'ell,..I was watching a cripple fight between Malcom Rifkind and Piers Moron this morning.

If Susanna Reid is the voice of probity and common sense during times of international brinkmanship.
......she's been promoted quick. I never had much time for her when she was at the beeb, despite her being a Palace supporter, ...... but my heart sinks for the poor Mare every morning I accidentally click on to the tragically narcissistic Moron show.

kk67 wrote:

morepork wrote:It's the cut and paste 'Lympics.

Gimme the highlights..?

This is the key section that counters western claims that Syria used chemical weapons in Douma. It is testimony from a senior doctor in the clinic where the victims were treated:


“ There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night -- but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a ‘White Helmet’, shouted ‘Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”

Fisks adds that strangely no one he met in Douma appeared to know of a gas attack.

The US-led strikes would have been illegal even had there been a chemical weapons attack of unknown provenance. The strikes would have been illegal even had Assad personally ordered the use of chemical weapons. They were illegal without authorization from the UN Security Council. And that required an independent investigation. Until then, caution and restraint were needed. We now have a respected journalist saying there is good evidence chemical weapons weren't used.

rowan wrote:

canta_brian wrote:

Stones of granite wrote: Does he mention meeting the British Special Forces Amateur Dramtics Corps who were there to fabricate a CW attack?

Full report hasn't been released yet. But let's remember the permanent members of the UN security council (with NATO & EU members plus Kuwait amounting to almost half) voted down Russia's resolution to establish whether there had even been a chemical weapons attack. Now one of the foremost authorities on the region in the English language is casting serious doubt on the fact. Oops!

Russian resolution was voted down because they demanded editorial control.

Current investigation unable to enter Douma because the Assad regime and Russian forces are stopping them.

No, I believe they're underway already. They were delayed by the US-led strikes on the facilities they are apparently on their way to investigate, so I'm not sure what they'll find among the rubble.

That’s strange. The OPCW have stated they are to investigate claims of a CW attack, not the bombed facilities, which as you know, are a considerable distance from Douma. Apparently, British Special Forces and journalists like Peter Fisk have no problems accessing Douma, but OPCW nvestigators can’.

The investigations are not underway, they being obstructed by the Syrian authorities. From an update issued by the OPCW yesterday
https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/EC/ ... ate%20here

The Team has not yet deployed to Douma. The Syrian and the Russian officials who participated in the preparatory meetings in Damascus have informed the FFM Team that there were still pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place.
In the meantime the Team was offered by the Syrian authorities that they could interview 22 witnesses who could be brought to Damascus.

The Russian and Syrian authorities have previously claimed that Douma is completely pacified, but are using a claim of “ongoing security issues”to frustrate the investigation, and cause misdirection by offering “witnesses” under controlled access.

Peter Fisk has published a report on his visit to Douma, where he seems to wander around quite freely despite the “pending security issues”, in the Independent.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/sy ... 07726.html

Some interesting excerpts.

For the same 58-year old senior Syrian doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.

As Dr Assim Rahaibani announces this extraordinary conclusion, it is worth observing that he is by his own admission not an eyewitness himself.....

By bad luck, too, the doctors who were on duty that night on 7 April were all in Damascus giving evidence to a chemical weapons enquiry,

I think you'll find his name is actually Robert Fisk, and he is certainly one of the foremost authorities on the region in the English language:

Robert Fisk, (born July 12, 1946, Maidstone, Kent, Eng.), British journalist and best-selling author known for his coverage of the Middle East.

Fisk earned a B.A. in English literature at Lancaster University in 1968 and a Ph.D. in political science from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1985. He began his journalism career in 1972 as the Belfast correspondent of The Times of London, covering political turmoil in Northern Ireland. As the paper’s Middle East correspondent from 1976 to 1987 he again reported on violent and tumultuous political events, such as the Lebanese civil war (1975–90), the Iranian Revolution (1978–79), and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). In 1989 Fisk moved to The Independent, where he continued to cover the Middle East from Beirut. He was known for his passionate reporting, his ability to secure access to frequently inaccessible people and places, and his willingness to brave danger to further his work. He was one of the few Western reporters to have interviewed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a feat he accomplished three times during the 1990s. He also provided extensive coverage of the Persian Gulf War (1990–91), the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan (2001), and the Iraq War (2003), priding himself on his eyewitness accounts while criticizing what he called the “hotel journalism” of some of his colleagues, which often relied heavily on official sources. Fisk received numerous awards, including the British Press Awards International Journalist of the Year and Foreign Reporter of the Year. He wrote several books, including The Point of No Return: The Strike Which Broke the British in Ulster (1975), In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939–1945 (1983), Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (2001), and The Great War for Civilisation—the Conquest of the Middle East (2005).

The Independent published his report, which is something, but within an article by their own editorial staff which has a predictably biased slant. The fact is, Fisk is there on the ground, an extremely experienced and highly respected journalist fluent in the local language, and the people he is talking to a clearly telling him there was no gas attack; that it was a false alarm triggered by a White Helmet.

As for the UN inspections, both sides are calling for them and I read a report in the local press last night which clearly implied they were underway already, while the BBC published this just 6 hours ago - Chemical weapons inspectors in Syria will be permitted to visit the site of an alleged chemical attack on Wednesday, Russia has said.

Meanwhile Fisk’s account has just been corroborated by another reporter there, Pearson Sharp of the conservative news network One America.

Israeli-based British journalist Jonathan Cook writes:

Fisk does not need to prove that his account is definitively true – just like a defendant in the dock does not need to prove their innocence. He has to show only that he reported accurately and honestly, and that the testimony he recounted was plausible and consistent with what he saw. Everything about Fisk’s record and about this particular report suggests there should be no doubt on that score.

Fisk’s report shows that there is a highly credible alternative explanation for what happened in Douma – one that needs to be investigated. Which means that an attack on Syria should never have taken place before inspectors were able to investigate and report their findings.

Instead, the US-UK-France launched air strikes hours before the UN inspectors were due to begin their work in Syria, thereby pre-empting it. At the time those air strikes took place, the aggressor states had neither legal nor evidential justification for their actions. They were were simply relying on the reports of parties, like the White Helmets, that have a vested interest in engineering the Syrian government’s downfall.

As is now known beyond doubt, our leaders lied to us about Iraq and about Libya. Some of us have been warning for some time that we should be highly sceptical of everything we are being told by our governments about Syria, until it is verified by independent evidence.

All of us have a moral responsibility to stop simply believing what our governments and their propagandists in the corporate media tell us, whether we do it out of a kneejerk authoritarian impulse or because we have some romantic notion that, despite the evidence, our leaders are always the good guys and their leaders are always the bad guys.

Just consider for a moment the UK’s support for, and involvement in, the horrifying Saudi war against Yemen, or US politicians’ blanket silence on Israel’s massacre of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza. Our leaders have no moral high ground to stand on. Their foreign policy decisions are about oil, defence contracts and geo-strategic interests, not about protecting civilians or fighting just wars.

However bad Assad is, and he is a dictator, he is responsible for far fewer deaths and much less suffering in the Middle East than either George W Bush or Tony Blair.

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018 ... r-strikes/

rowan wrote:
As for the UN inspections, both sides are calling for them and I read a report in the local press last night which clearly implied they were underway already, while the BBC published this just 6 hours ago - Chemical weapons inspectors in Syria will be permitted to visit the site of an alleged chemical attack on Wednesday, Russia has said.

Funny that the OPCW themselves say otherwise.

Yes, the BBC are indeed reporting that the inspectors will be allowed access on Wednesday. It's still not clear why they have to wait until Wednesday while the Syrian and Russian authorities are happy to shepherd reporters around now. How long does it take for chlorine to disperse?

Interesting report from an American journalist:

rowan wrote:

canta_brian wrote:

Stones of granite wrote: Does he mention meeting the British Special Forces Amateur Dramtics Corps who were there to fabricate a CW attack?

Full report hasn't been released yet. But let's remember the permanent members of the UN security council (with NATO & EU members plus Kuwait amounting to almost half) voted down Russia's resolution to establish whether there had even been a chemical weapons attack. Now one of the foremost authorities on the region in the English language is casting serious doubt on the fact. Oops!

Russian resolution was voted down because they demanded editorial control.

Current investigation unable to enter Douma because the Assad regime and Russian forces are stopping them.

No, I believe they're underway already. They were delayed by the US-led strikes on the facilities they are apparently on their way to investigate, so I'm not sure what they'll find among the rubble.

rowan wrote:

canta_brian wrote:

Stones of granite wrote: Does he mention meeting the British Special Forces Amateur Dramtics Corps who were there to fabricate a CW attack?

Full report hasn't been released yet. But let's remember the permanent members of the UN security council (with NATO & EU members plus Kuwait amounting to almost half) voted down Russia's resolution to establish whether there had even been a chemical weapons attack. Now one of the foremost authorities on the region in the English language is casting serious doubt on the fact. Oops!

Russian resolution was voted down because they demanded editorial control.

Current investigation unable to enter Douma because the Assad regime and Russian forces are stopping them.

No, I believe they're underway already. They were delayed by the US-led strikes on the facilities they are apparently on their way to investigate, so I'm not sure what they'll find among the rubble.

Oh look, all this time I've assumed you were an idiot. Turns out you're just a common garden troll.

Why would the OPCW's investigation into Douma by be delayed by US airstrikes that didn't target Douma?

To answer that, they wouldn't be. Controlling access to Douma can only ever encourage suspicion as to Assad's motives. If it's all down to the Nasty Americans and Brits then get the world in there to see.

Stones of granite wrote:

rowan wrote:
How long does it take for chlorine to disperse?

Chlorine gas is heavier than air so it doesn't disperse very quickly at all. Dumping it on a city that has already had the crap bombed out of it could leave pockets of the stuff for several days.

Interestingly First World War gunners used to mix the high explosives of their pre-attack artillery bombardments with gas in order to incapacitate, degrade and disorientate the defenders. Once they started to get a little more sophisticated in its use, Chlorine gas was only used to bombard those areas to the flanks on in depth of those being attacked as if it was fired on the objective it would hang around in the bottom of the trenches and poison the attackers as they came through. The even denser, but more lethal phosgene also used to hang around, but neither were nearly as persistent as Mustard Gas, which was in fact a liquid.

More rapidly dispersed, but not normally lethal tear gas was the poison of choice for dousing any objectives ahead of an attack.

I'd say that if Chlorine was dumped on Douma, the longer the inspectors are kept away, the better the chances of it dispersing. 10 days should do it.

There's a reason chlorine gas is useful in forcing out those in tunnels and basements

If it's all down to the Nasty Americans and Brits then get the world in there to see.

Amazing you would express sarcasm here. You're referring to the two nations which defied international law and world opinion and invaded Iraq on the basis of a pack of lies, resulting in up to 2.4 million deaths (according to latest estimates), during a war that lasted 15 years. These two nations followed that up by joining France in doing pretty much the same thing to Libya. Wikileaks has released cables proving this to also have been based on a pack of lies. No one questions the authenticity of those cables, btw, only the rights & wrongs of their being released at all. In addition to which these two nations are currently engaged in a 17-year long occupation of Afghanistan, a nation which was actually doing quite well under a socialist government, with equal rights for women among other things, until the usual suspects brought it down with the help of terrorist proxies (sound familiar). Meanwhile, they support the Saudi bombing of Yemen and Israel's ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians. & let's not even get into their past crimes because that would keep us busy for the next few months. Suffice to say they account for the two most murderous, evil, racist empires of the past few centuries. & it's extremely ironic that anyone could be sarcastic about their role in foreign wars and interventions. The problem is they have never been held accountable - as the Germans have for the Nazis, for example. But for me there is no difference at all in listening to Americans or Britons attempting to justify their nations' war crimes than there is in listening to some Neo Nazi skinhead defending Hitler.

I wonder who the most murderous regimes of the last two centuries would be,the Soviet Union (under Stalin) would be one perhaps with the other being China under Zedong? It's not going to be the UK and the USA even if one doesn't like the imperial past of the UK and their current foreign policies, not even close, it's probably not even Hitler's Third Reich, nor the supposed Commies in North Korea, Cambodia or Ethiopia

Digby wrote:I wonder who the most murderous regimes of the last two centuries would be,the Soviet Union (under Stalin) would be one perhaps with the other being China under Zedong? It's not going to be the UK and the USA even if one doesn't like the imperial past of the UK and their current foreign policies, not even close, it's probably not even Hitler's Third Reich, nor the supposed Commies in North Korea, Cambodia or Ethiopia

Well, Stalin was Georgian, and I've met plenty of Russians who have a different view of it. But even if we accept the Western narrative, the crimes against humanity in the USSR and China were committed mostly against their own people by tyrannical dictators, obviously backed by the army. But the victims were the Soviet & Chinese people themselves. So is that the same thing as nations like the US & UK waging wars around the world and plundering nations of every continent of their resources? I'm not sure. Both America and the UK have undisputed genocides to their credit on more than one count, and these continued right up until fairly recent times. Whether Iraq II constituted a genocide depends on your interpretation of the term, but the body count is certainly on that scale.

Telling it like it is:

Russia and/or the Soviet Union would easily join in with us on the genocide front, and I'm not sure what the point was of noting Stalin is Georgian. Further, no, I wouldn't consider Iraq a war of genocide, whereas I would consider the Amritsar massacre a genocide

Russia and/or the Soviet Union would easily join in with us on the genocide

I'd disagree with that, but either way the constant finger-pointing at Russia is primarily a smoke-screening and self-justification tactic.

rowan wrote:

Digby wrote:I wonder who the most murderous regimes of the last two centuries would be,the Soviet Union (under Stalin) would be one perhaps with the other being China under Zedong? It's not going to be the UK and the USA even if one doesn't like the imperial past of the UK and their current foreign policies, not even close, it's probably not even Hitler's Third Reich, nor the supposed Commies in North Korea, Cambodia or Ethiopia

But even if we accept the Western narrative, the crimes against humanity in the USSR and China were committed mostly against their own people by tyrannical dictators, obviously backed by the army. But the victims were the Soviet & Chinese people themselves. So is that the same thing as nations like the US & UK waging wars around the world and plundering nations of every continent of their resources?

Well that certainly explains your support of Assad. Seems you don't consider the killing of a countries own citizens as an issue.

rowan wrote:Both America and the UK have undisputed genocides to their credit on more than one count

No they don't. The UK may have by your definition, but that is far from undisputed. The Americans might, by modern definition, have need to check the small print over their 19th Century behaviour towards some of the indigenous American peoples, but try to peg anything else with a genocide label and you will fall foul of the Internationally accepted definition of the term as writ under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Hads to get my head around it before going looking for Genocidaires in eastern Congo).

"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Digby wrote:... I would consider the Amritsar massacre a genocide

Amritsar was an atrocity; it wasn't genocide.

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:

Amritsar was an atrocity; it wasn't genocide.

It's certainly an atrocity, and I've no issue with anyone wanting to call it genocide. I've also no issue with anyone not happy calling it a genocide as there was no wider starting intent to kill/main , there was an unhealthy desire to rule over India but wanting rule over clearly isn't the same as wanting to kill them all

If you want a British genocide, look no further than how the English behaved during famines in Ireland and India. Not fundamentally different to how the USSR commited genocide in Ukraine.

Zhivago wrote:If you want a British genocide, look no further than how the English behaved during famines in Ireland and India. Not fundamentally different to how the USSR commited genocide in Ukraine.

Straight up it's the case that in both instances Britain should have done more, but India was a mess of its own making or at least far from being able to put it all on the Brits. And Ireland had enough food not to have a famine, but many Irish landowners chose to sell their produce to the growing USA and ignore the problem in Ireland, and if Irish controllers of food production/distribution are going to ignore the problem it's more than a little perverse to then try to but more blame on the Brits than the Irish, and barking mad to call it a genocide.

The British carried out genocide in Australia and New Zealand, reducing the native populations to a fraction of their original numbers. US author Jared Diamond estimates the figure got as low as 15,000 in NZ from a pre-European population of two or three hundred thousand, while John Pilger's documentaries tell us all about the Aborigines and similar declines, as the natives were hunted down for sport, castrated and murdered for amusement, and were actually classified as flora & fauna until the previous century. Oh course, the British like to point out many of these atrocities were carried out after the national governments were established, but the perpetrators were British in all but name, many born in the UK, of course. A similar argument could be made about the extermination of the North Americans, while Britain's atrocities in Ireland, Bengal and Kenya (where they operated brutal concentration camps) certainly were genocidal in scale. Americas wars in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia were also genocidal in scale, and we know that they have certainly supported genocidal dictatorships in Central America, Indonesia, Africa, and elsewhere, along with Israel's ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians..

Digby wrote:

Zhivago wrote:If you want a British genocide, look no further than how the English behaved during famines in Ireland and India. Not fundamentally different to how the USSR commited genocide in Ukraine.

Straight up it's the case that in both instances Britain should have done more, but India was a mess of its own makingor at least far from being able to put it all on the Brits. And Ireland had enough food not to have a famine, but many people ce to the growing USA and ignore the problem in Ireland, and if Irish controllers of food production/distribution are going to ignore the problem it's more than a little perverse to then try to but more blame on the Brits than the Irish, and barking mad to call it a genocide.

The reality is that there were deliberate government policies prioritising food supplies for one group over another group resulting in millions of deaths. In this sense it is not unreasonable to compare them to similar atrocities caused by deliberate resource allocation and prioritisation policies, such as those by Maoist China and Leninist/Stalinist USSR.

The main difference is that you're a British imperialist apologist. Not really different to any other imperialist apologist. Your victim blaming, highlighted in red is disgusting.

Zhivago wrote:

Digby wrote:

Zhivago wrote:If you want a British genocide, look no further than how the English behaved during famines in Ireland and India. Not fundamentally different to how the USSR commited genocide in Ukraine.

Straight up it's the case that in both instances Britain should have done more, but India was a mess of its own makingor at least far from being able to put it all on the Brits. And Ireland had enough food not to have a famine, but many people ce to the growing USA and ignore the problem in Ireland, and if Irish controllers of food production/distribution are going to ignore the problem it's more than a little perverse to then try to but more blame on the Brits than the Irish, and barking mad to call it a genocide.

The reality is that there were deliberate government policies prioritising food supplies for one group over another group resulting in millions of deaths. In this sense it is not unreasonable to compare them to similar atrocities caused by deliberate resource allocation and prioritisation policies, such as those by Maoist China and Leninist/Stalinist USSR.

The main difference is that you're a British imperialist apologist. Not really different to any other imperialist apologist. Your victim blaming, highlighted in red is disgusting.

I'm not apologising for Britain with regards to these situations, in both instances I think our actions deplorable. But, and it's a big but, it's not like India and Ireland couldn't have solved the problem without even vaguely needing us, and that shifts it away from being anything akin to a genocide.