Seems more or less accurate, though a source would be nice.
Word on the grapevine (take with a grain of salt) is that government forces are amassing outside the city preparing for a counterattack as more troops come from the Aleppo offensive. Russian airstrikes are ongoing. Also apparently this offensive by ISIS is one of the biggest ones, with many troops pouring in from Iraq.
Apparently heavy losses from ISIS but governor confirms that ISIS has the city. Some of the more amusing conspiracy theorists draw a connection between US leadership saying "Aleppo won't end the war" and ISIS attacking Palmyra,
On December 12 2016 23:58 LegalLord wrote: Did you just find anyone you could find who would instantly make the accusation against Assad without proof of involvement?
No credible news sources are reporting it as of yet. It's only reached the conspiracy mediaverse so far.
not just anyone. It's julian ropcke, who is 100% against the Syria gov.
On December 12 2016 23:58 LegalLord wrote: Did you just find anyone you could find who would instantly make the accusation against Assad without proof of involvement?
No credible news sources are reporting it as of yet. It's only reached the conspiracy mediaverse so far.
not just anyone. It's julian ropcke, who is 100% against the Syria gov.
Yeah, his Twitter feed borders on absurdity now that you brought it up. I just don't feel the need to bash people on a personal level who aren't relevant, and his account seems like the definition of irrelevant.
The Syrian army and its allied militias are pushing deeper into east Aleppo as rebel lines collapse and their last urban stronghold looks closer than ever to falling.
The fighters withdrew from at least six more east Aleppo neighbourhoods on Monday in the face of goverment advances, including al-Salheen, al-Firdous and Bustan al-Qasr, once one of the most fortified districts under opposition control.
Residents told Al Jazeera that government forces summarily executed dozens of civilians over alleged connections to opposition fighters. The figure could not be independently verified by Al Jazeera.
Aleppo operation in final stages, Syrian general says The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said at least 60 people were killed by gunfire or shelling on Monday as government forces pushed into the Aleppo's remaining opposition-held districts.
"The battle of Aleppo has reached its end. It is just a matter of a small period of time, no more, no less ... it's a total collapse," said Rami Abdel Rahman, the UK-based monitoring network's director.
Syrian refugees in the Turkish border city of Gaziantep and the capital Istanbul held solidarity protests on Monday night in support of the people in east Aleppo, as the government stepped up its bombardment.
Syrian state TV reported that pro-government forces were in control of 99 percent of what once was opposition-held Aleppo.
The pro-government TV network Alikbariyah Syria broadcast footage of celebrations in the streets of west Aleppo, as people handed out chocolates and congratulated each other on "the victory".
"The joy of the people and the army are one," said one driver, wearing military fatigues.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Clearly, Bana cannot speak very much English, surely nothing near her incisive, highly nuanced and politicized, and often cynical commentary on Twitter. For Western media outlets like NBC News, The Guardian, the London Telegraph and others to suggest Bana wrote any of her Tweets – shows the level of news fakery that these mainstream corporate media outlets normally operate on.]
there are many arguments in that article but that would be the accusation.
and who is this?. google is very cheap in searches into her biography("Eva Bartlett is a Canadian freelance journalist and activist who has lived in and written from the Gaza Strip, Syria, and Lebanon." and that's pretty much it). Edit: some words by herself for herself + Show Spoiler +
In the past few months I’ve been giving talks on Gaza, in eastern Canada and Western Can and the US. I’ve also done talks in Ontario, this year and in years past. I’m touring the US in February and March, giving talks from Chicago to NY to DC to LA.
I’m a Canadian activist and freelance journalist. Since Nov 2008, I’ve spent cumulatively 3 years in Gaza, volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting the various facets of life under siege. ...(etc)
The problem is not whether Bana is fake or not. The problem is that the world is letting a mass murder. Someone got to power because Daddy said so even when the people did not want him. Responsible for displacement for over half of the country's population. Record of over 40 years of Dictatorship and human rights violation with his father ruling period. Why? Because he is fighting few hundreds that were with AlQaeda and left it to merge with Syria's armed opposition.
With all that is going on, some people have some free time to dig up this trivial bullshit matter. OK, Bana IS FAKE. Next? Are the over half million that were killed by the regime fake too? Are we ignoring the fact that there is a demographic change going on by replacing people with Shiite militia from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq? Are we ignoring the fact that Syria is an occupied country by Russia at this moment and Assad is nothing more than puppet? All the talks are not even with regime anymore. They all go through Russia and maybe Iran sometimes.
Russia joined in for its own reasons (Something about gas pipeline. Don't have details) and Iran is trying to get access to the Mediterranean and Lebanon to surround KSA and the Gulf states. The regime is nothing but a joke at this moment. It sold the country and everything for the sake of staying in power and not face the same fate as Gaddafi (a bullet in the asshole)
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Clearly, Bana cannot speak very much English, surely nothing near her incisive, highly nuanced and politicized, and often cynical commentary on Twitter. For Western media outlets like NBC News, The Guardian, the London Telegraph and others to suggest Bana wrote any of her Tweets – shows the level of news fakery that these mainstream corporate media outlets normally operate on.]
there are many arguments in that article but that would be the accusation.
and who is this?. google is very cheap in searches into her biography("Eva Bartlett is a Canadian freelance journalist and activist who has lived in and written from the Gaza Strip, Syria, and Lebanon." and that's pretty much it). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ509Z8uk_A Edit: some words by herself for herself + Show Spoiler +
In the past few months I’ve been giving talks on Gaza, in eastern Canada and Western Can and the US. I’ve also done talks in Ontario, this year and in years past. I’m touring the US in February and March, giving talks from Chicago to NY to DC to LA.
I’m a Canadian activist and freelance journalist. Since Nov 2008, I’ve spent cumulatively 3 years in Gaza, volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting the various facets of life under siege. ...(etc)
Wtf did I just read?! I have read better "investigative journalism" in high school newspapers. I did some searching to figure out if Bana is real, and insofar as anyone can determine, there is indeed a 7yo girl called Bana who lives or lived in Aleppo. Is she really tweeting all that herself in perfect English? She's 7 years old, so duh, probably not, but her mother and school teacher helping her say what she wants to say on twitter seems normal to me?
While I agree that the whole piece about Bana by the Guardian was pretty bad, that doesn't mean the girl doesn't exist. It's just that 7yo sources are not good sources for news. And relying on a 7yo's twitter account for information about what living in Aleppo is like seems rather shoddy. But its pretty hard to get any info from inside Aleppo, so I guess a 7yo girl and her mother are better than nothing?
And a further edit now that the thread has moved on a bit: While I sympathize with the idea Wrath has, he seems to think there is a magic button somewhere that we can press that will kill all the nasty scumbags in Syria but leave all the innocent people alive and able to rebuild their nation. Unfortunately there is no magic unicorn dust that can do that. We can't just load a previous savegame and try something different. Syria is pretty fucked, and currently the best option for stability is actually to accept that evil fucking bastard of a dictator. The rebellion, while seemingly a just cause, (1) failed, and (2) got all mixed up with fundamentalist jihad, so best to accept that it's not viable.
I have no love for Assad and his criminal murderous ways. That said, I don't think he is responsible for the Jihadist insurgents moving into Syria from Iraq. There was another nation that destabilized the region and removed the warlord that those insurgents were following, and forced them to find other leaders in the sheiks of ISIS/AQ/Al'Nusra. This to me is the root cause of the problem, not Assads regime. Assads regime is responsible for forcing citizens who felt oppressed to start their moderate rebellion in attempt to overthrow Assad. But I believe those people are in a vast minority compared to the jihadists.
We agree that Raqqa is mostly violent jidahists using civilians as human shields don't we? And Mosul? Why would it be different for Aleppo, really? The US empowered those moderate rebels, while their one of their closest allies in the region (Saudi Arabia) armed the rest of them (AQ/AN). It is all utterly and mindboggingly retarded at this point, and the only way forward is through Russia. We have to exert what influence we can through Russia to allow some form of political opposition (as pathetic as it may be to begin with) so that the next generation of Syrians can hopefully get rid of Assad when he gets older and loses some of the very real support he's getting from a rather large portion of Syrian citizens through a peaceful democratic solution rather than violence.
If you do what the US did and give people weapons, they can only use those weapons for one thing: killing other people. Yes Assad was killing them with chemical weapons, but I think both sides have done this. You can go back to 2013 and find plenty of credible news that suggest rebels used chemical weapons, and now jihadists are using them if they can find them. In fact, you could say the same here: chemical weapons were available to people, and so they were used. Do we see a pattern here yet? The same is true for nuclear weapons, or some type of satellite laser city-destroyer, should that come into existence. Hell, the same is essentially true for US cops: they are given weapons, trained to use them, and so they shoot black people who run away from them. I feel like I went back to the 70s/80s when the US was giving weapons to and training Osama Bin Laden to fight another government that the US didn't like. Look how that turned out. It's not going to be any different this time.
And a further edit now that the thread has moved on a bit: While I sympathize with the idea Wrath has, he seems to think there is a magic button somewhere that we can press that will kill all the nasty scumbags in Syria but leave all the innocent people alive and able to rebuild their nation. Unfortunately there is no magic unicorn dust that can do that. We can't just load a previous savegame and try something different. Syria is pretty fucked, and currently the best option for stability is actually to accept that evil fucking bastard of a dictator. The rebellion, while seemingly a just cause, (1) failed, and (2) got all mixed up with fundamentalist jihad, so best to accept that it's not viable.
Thank you. I just want to clear that I do not believe there is a magic button to fix everything. In fact, I believe this whole Syrian issue did not even cross 50% of its life time. It will last for like more 10 years. Just like Iraq was and still.
my point is that people started to ignore the major issue and go for the minor one. An analogy would be this: everyone ignoring the cancer tumor that got spread and started to pay attention to a tooth problem.
How much Al-Qaeda form of the Syrian Rebel? Like heck, UN can have years of talk if they like about AL-Qaeda once they get rid of Assad, you are talking about few hundreds out of millions. Why ISIS is completely ignored from Regime and Russians and Iranians and left to be fighting FSA with Turkish help until ISIS launched another operation to Palmyra? In fact I also blame Turkey that bought FSA soldiers for $200 to secure its borders from PKK calling it a safe zone for Syrians while in fact it is a secure zone to isolate the Kurds and prevent them from reaching to the Kurds in Turkey.
Everyone is fighting for his own benefits and the only one is getting fucked in all of this is the people that decided to rebel against the butcher in 2011 because of the school boy incident.
Syrian people started to accuse all those "FSA" traitors as they see Aleppo being burned down to the last human there while they don't do shit in their own territories at all. Heck, over social media they started to root for ISIS because it is the only one fighting the regime at this moment and they are calling FSA as "CHEAPER THAN PIGS" as a pig costs about $500 while they were bought by Turkey for $200.
I only hope is that FSA can regroup, end the existence of ALL other militias and work as one unity under one fucking leader that knows what he is doing and turn this into a gang war. Holding territories will be suicide when it comes to air superiority that the Regime has.
When you accept the idea of "moderate opposition" you miss the entire point of what the Russian position is on the issue. There's no such thing as a moderate rebel, they're just another faction that has a tendency to fold into ISIS, and no, it's not "different this time" because "it's Syria not Afghanistan or Chechnya" despite the fact that there is no good reason to think it's different. And no, Saudi Arabia and Turkey aren't going to "keep them in line" because that's just absurd.
The FSA are terrorists like anyone else. ISIS just happens to be in Raqqa and Mosul, further from the center of Syrian government power, than the "moderate rebels" in Aleppo. And you can be happy about the bombings in Palmyra if you want ISIS to be targeted.
The reason Russia even got a chance to do what they're doing now is because the US and their involvement here basically showed that they had no real idea what they wanted to do "the day after" Assad is gone and so without a follow-up they lost credibility.
On December 14 2016 01:04 LegalLord wrote: When you accept the idea of "moderate opposition" you miss the entire point of what the Russian position is on the issue. There's no such thing as a moderate rebel, they're just another faction that has a tendency to fold into ISIS, and no, it's not "different this time" because "it's Syria not Afghanistan or Chechnya" despite the fact that there is no good reason to think it's different. And no, Saudi Arabia and Turkey aren't going to "keep them in line" because that's just absurd.
The FSA are terrorists like anyone else. ISIS just happens to be in Raqqa and Mosul, further from the center of Syrian government power, than the "moderate rebels" in Aleppo. And you can be happy about the bombings in Palmyra if you want ISIS to be targeted.
The reason Russia even got a chance to do what they're doing now is because the US and their involvement here basically showed that they had no real idea what they wanted to do "the day after" Assad is gone and so without a follow-up they lost credibility.
That position is as much bullshit as any other. Assad and by extension Russia is in turn in bed with Hisbollah - terrorists like anyone else. Everyone in Syria has their own "acceptable" jihadists on their side.
On December 14 2016 01:04 LegalLord wrote: When you accept the idea of "moderate opposition" you miss the entire point of what the Russian position is on the issue. There's no such thing as a moderate rebel, they're just another faction that has a tendency to fold into ISIS, and no, it's not "different this time" because "it's Syria not Afghanistan or Chechnya" despite the fact that there is no good reason to think it's different. And no, Saudi Arabia and Turkey aren't going to "keep them in line" because that's just absurd.
The FSA are terrorists like anyone else. ISIS just happens to be in Raqqa and Mosul, further from the center of Syrian government power, than the "moderate rebels" in Aleppo. And you can be happy about the bombings in Palmyra if you want ISIS to be targeted.
The reason Russia even got a chance to do what they're doing now is because the US and their involvement here basically showed that they had no real idea what they wanted to do "the day after" Assad is gone and so without a follow-up they lost credibility.
That position is as much bullshit as any other. Assad and by extension Russia is in turn in bed with Hisbollah - terrorists like anyone else. Everyone in Syria has their own "acceptable" jihadists on their side.
Well I'm glad you gave such deep reasoning for saying that it's bullshit that isn't just a one-liner.
Sure, there are no "good guys" in this conflict, and yes, there are problems with Hezbollah and even Assad that would be unacceptable if it weren't true that everyone is a shitty actor. And yet I'm not the screaming "omg rusha is bombing THE GOOD GUYS not the ISIS OMG WTF ABUSE." The "moderate rebels" are just another problematic faction like any other, and they just happen to have a tendency to fold into Islamist groups as they have in the past.
Calling Hezbollah a terrorist group is definitely contentious though. I won't make the case either way here.
Basically sell what the regime is selling. Everyone is terrorist so it is better to have him. Because you are scared in Europe / US you just approve of having a mass murder continue ruling the people as they are mindless sheep they need someone like Assad to rule them.
Russia sure is an angel coming to save the day since US doesn't know what to do. Not at all that it is trying to protect its interests at all.
Assad is a secular dictator, and no one else has made a suggestion for the leadership of Syria that is better than that. There is little more to it than that.
If anyone were to give a non-stupid suggestion for what would follow after Assad then he would have been gone before the Russians even considered their intervention. The fact that they haven't been able to is why Russia had a chance here.
Assad is a "secular" dictator that belongs to a minority that allied itself with Shiite and having their support to fight with him as long as he swear loyalty to Khaminai. The so called "Secular Syrian Arabian Army" is not secular, not Syrian and not Arabian. It is formed mostly of Iranian and the refugee Afghan and Pakistan there and Yemen and Lebanon Shiia. This "Secular" army is a pure sectarian army in fact.
On December 14 2016 01:38 Wrath wrote: Basically sell what the regime is selling. Everyone is terrorist so it is better to have him. Because you are scared in Europe / US you just approve of having a mass murder continue ruling the people as they are mindless sheep they need someone like Assad to rule them.
Russia sure is an angel coming to save the day since US doesn't know what to do. Not at all that it is trying to protect its interests at all.
No one is approving of a mass murderer, but attempting to violently remove him with the use of weapons may not be the right way to move forward. I mean, can you look at it like this: Saddam Hussein was considered a murderer in a similar way. I remember the arguments that he was killing his own people with chemical weapons and so forth. He was convicted to death for the murder of like 50 Iraqis. I think the invasion cost many more lives than that, and we are still seeing the horrible ripple effects in ISIS and continued instability. It is undeniable that Assad continues to have the support of many Syrians, who will fight for their leader. I don't think these people are sheep, just like I don't think the jidahists are sheep to the propaganda of ISIS, nor do I think the Russians are sheep to the propaganda of Putin. People make decisions based on their own situation, and people get incredibly stupid when they are hungry so they decide to start killing each other.
Russia is not an angel. I condemn the bombings by Russian forces just as I condemn the bombings and drone attacks of US forces whenever either of them hit civilians. I heard the US bombed a hospital in Mosul the other day. Just like the Russians bombed hospitals in Aleppo, the Israelis bombed a hospital in Gaza and the US bombed a hospital in Afghanistan. This is what happens when terrorists use civilians as human shields. People get bombed to death because of bad intel, bad aiming, or whatever. The end result is the same: orphans, starvation, etc.
Three things came together in Syria: oppression from Assad, hunger from the drought and the influx of warriors from ending the regime in Iraq. In a "well, I give up" kind of way, maybe Trumps solution of just throwing a few nukes in the region isn't a particularly bad one. If you're thorough enough, it would stop people from starving at least, right?
EPT
