Mediaworld and the reality of East Aleppo

IMO the Battle of East Aleppo will be over soon.  R+6 is carving up what is left of the pocket like a Christmas "Turkey" (Heh! Heh!).  The Sheikh Sa'eed neighborhood at the south end of the kessel fell today, and a massive drive westward is underway from the area of Aleppo International Airport toward the citadel of Aleppo.  At the same time the Tiger Forces and Palestinian militia are pressing south from the lines they held yesterday along the east-west highway at the "waist" of the former East Aleppo pocket.  IMO the pocket will be gone in a few days.

At the same time civilians are fleeing to government lines en masse where they are transported to reception camps and provided food, water, shelter and medical care.  The Russians have been moving mobile field hospitals into the Aleppo area to provide more capacity.

The lying US and European media are, of course, portraying the situation as something very different.  In Mediaworld, the people of east Aleppo are fleeing from the government.  I ask you, pilgrims, to what place would civilians be fleeing in trying to escape the government?  The east Aleppo pocket is entirely surrounded by government allied force.  Evidently a lot of media halfwits cannot read a map.   The statement is also made in Mediaworld that there is a shortage of drinking water in east Aleppo.  There is no mention in Mediaworld of the rebels' use of drinking water as an instrument for reward and punishment of civilians.  There is also no mention of the SAA's capture of the city water works a couple of days ago and their ongoing efforts to turn the water back on.

Someone should explain to Madeleine Albright what the actual situation is in Syria.  pl

 

Comments

[Annem]

When the Russians decided to go into the Syrian war in a big way, including air power, they agreed with the Israelis that they would deconflict any operations in advance so there would be no accidental "encounters." Like the very occasional "dispensation" granted to the Turks to do something in or close to Russian ops, it might well have been worked out in advance. The Israeli target was supposedly a warehouse that housed [or had housed] arms destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israelis claim they also hit a shipment of stuff from that same source as it made its way to Lebanon.

[Annem]

Whatever you may choose to call them, their vision for a future Syria is not one that most Syrians of any ethnic or sectarian group would want to live under.

[Tom]

Ask any Indian living in the UAE who he would like to work for. Anybody will tell you a religious a truly religious Muslim is the best employer. - Read Osama Bin Laden. The man made a lot of sense. He knew his Chomsky. - No comparison to some street kids from Muslim countries striving after the mindless consumerist paradise who came to Cologne, full of pornographic fiction - No seriously. If there weren´t some truly great and good guys among the jihadists they wouldn´t attract such a following. - What does the West have to offer except material benefits? Democracy? No kidding. LBGT and the endless malleabilty of human nature? - Exactly because the West has no values except the $$$ is it helping the jihadists in Syria. If it were different there would be some respect for the West among the Muslim (and not only Muslim) masses. - I read up on the leader of the Lion brigade (Assads best soldier) lately. Not a bad poet (at least in the translation of Robert Fisk) and a man willing to lay down his life for something as intangible as religious tolerance. The very value that the West professes but doesn´t really believe in. It only believes in indifference.

[turcopolier]

Tom

"the West has no values except the $$$ is it helping the jihadists in Syria." Got your ticket to Syria yet? We have no values in the West? Yes, the multi-cultis and the Borgists have no values that you care about? I would agree with that. pl

[JamesT]

How do you know that the "overwhelming majority" of those that have taken up arms against the Syrian government are Syrian citizens? Where are you getting your information from?

[Babak Makkinejad]

Not the Communists; at least they had some structure and reason behind them - like the works of Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin and the Com-Intern.

I think the Jihadists are more similar to anarchists at the turn of the last century.

[Babak Makkinejad]

You may have noted a point that I had endeavored to make several times that so many in EU are dependent on US-produced news, analysis, intelligence etc. that they have lost the capacity to think for themselves.

So OMB was reading the works of Chomsky, an anarcho-syndicalist critique of the United States foreign policy, who all the while supports Israel.

What can I say, even enemies of the United States rely on her intellectual production, they themselves are incapable of thinking and analyzing things for themselves.

Had they done that, their estimation of US might have been different; that it is the country most closely upholding and conforming to the ideals of Islam.

But I guess that would be too much for a non-Seljuk Muslim to assimilate.

[Serge]

It is with heavy heart that I announce, that the last clown of Aleppo is dead.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38167190

[Serge]

I noticed this "gay porno" angle being pushed heavily by certain MSM in a very suspicious manner, even with some headlines excluding or burying the fact that he was an ISIS sympathizer at all (""German spy suspect appeared in gay porn"" "mole in German spy agency had been gay porn actor","Arrested German spy was a onetime gay porn actor — and a secret Islamist")

Call me paranoid. Remember the Orlando attacks? Mention that to any american today and 95% of them will give you something about how homophobia and lack of gun control were the motivations for that. And the cultivation of that narrative was for sure not accidental given what we know after the fact

[Canon Fodder]

It is with heavy heart that I announce, that the last clown of Aleppo is dead.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38167190

Not true. His act may be flatlining,
but Secretary of State John Kerry is very much alive.

[rjj]

WRT the slightly off topic WaPo bullshit blacklist story and "Some of the slandered sites are preparing a legal counter. You could go to NakedCapitalism for some details on legal preparations."

unless the WaPo story was a provocation: the opening gambit in a Libel War. WaPo is a well lawyered up corporation. Its "adversaries" are not.

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to James 01 December 2016 at 05:55 PM

That would be my personal and direct knowledge of the country. Next.

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to Kenny 01 December 2016 at 03:59 PM

They didn't when they started their rebellion but they have them now. And don't even THINK of trying to pretend to the readership of SST that there's some other reason for them having those weapons other than because your government and its regional allies have been supplying those armaments to the Syrian rebels who are in a state of insurrection against their government.

Furthermore don't even THINK of trying to pretend to the readership here that people who've been fighting for years are incapable of learning how to use armaments that are designed specifically to be easy to use.

"They also cannot withstand a seige for weeks on end."

The experience of both the Spanish civil war and that Yugoslavian one gives the lie to that statement. There's the sieges of Mostar, and Srebenica both lasted for months. And that's before we start talking about the siege of Sarajejo which lasted for nearly 4 YEARS.

"cannot withstand a seige ((sic) for weeks on end" my ass.

"don't use residents as human shields" the wide spread use of civilian humans shields and hostages by participants in the Spanish, Lebanese, and Yugoslavian civil ware gives the lie to that statement.

"Most of all rebels don't continually and randomly mortar their neighbors just out of spite."

They do it to drive their neighbours from their homes. Ask the Lebanese, the Yugoslavs, and the Spanish.

"Why were people continually dying in west aleppo from mortars?"

Because the people shelling them with indirect fire were trying to drive them out.

I hope you won't take it amiss when I point out that your statements and arguments betray a wilful ignorance of the topic at hand.

PS: How's Barby?

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to Kenny 01 December 2016 at 04:12 PM

Just when I think your comments can't get any more self-absorbed, ridiculuous, not say to say false and the sort of thing that only an ignorant buffoon would say you go and prove me wrong.

Here let me make it easy for you:

Rebel (noun): a person who rises in opposition or armed resistance against an established government or leader.

synonyms: revolutionary, insurgent, revolutionist, mutineer, agitator, subversive, guerrilla, anarchist, terrorist;

Rebel (verb): rise in opposition or armed resistance to an established government or leader.

synonyms: revolt, mutiny, riot, rise up, rise up in arms, take up arms, stage/mount a rebellion, take to the streets, defy the authorities, refuse to obey orders, be insubordinate

You'll note that there's nothing in any of that to do with the defeated side in the American civil war. Nothing to do with the Obama government. It takes a really special form of pig-ignorant eff-wittedness to say that using the word correctly as our host does is and I quote you direct:

"cultural appropriation of the concept of what a "Rebel" is."

Has it occurred to you that our host published your remark for the admittedly slightly cruel entertainment of everyone else here?

[LeaNder]

Nobody ever died to hack off somebodies head.

Odd way to put it. Died for hacking off somebody's head?

But yes, it needs a bigger aim. And more coherent narratives.

But vaguely your choice reminds me of a humanities article (background of the author). That seemed to argue via Burke (wrongly, I think) that the atrocities were exactly the best of all recruitment techniques. ....

[DavidKNZ]

Thanks for the tip :-)
11 years ago I was an ex army officer who became quite profoundly disturbed by the gap between the 'code of honour' I had been taught and events unfolding in the middle east. Then came actual retirement, which gave me time to dig a little deeper via that wonderful American invention, the Internet. I found a number of sites, including SST, that posed an alternative view that actually made sense. And, in SSTs case, correspondents that I could relate to and respect. Simultaneously came an awareness of what is variously called 'The Borg', 'AngloZionist, 'the MSM' - various incarnations of the intent to prevail, dominate and ultimately destroy. For some years I lurked; but I now have grandchildren and an obligation to speak against insanity. I would hope my legacy to them is of a different kind than Mr Obama's $Trillion legacy of safer, more user friendly nuclear weapons :-)