Screencap from the video below
Hands Off Syria posted a video on YouTube:
Raw and beautiful. The liberation of East Ghouta up close. Syrian Army moves into Ayn Tarma, which was the key jihadist held town behind the Jobar-based attacks on Damascus. Watch the residents’ reactions. Main slogans: ‘Allah Mhai Jaysh’ – ‘God bless the Army’; ‘Allah, Souria, Bashar ou bas’ – ‘God, Syria and Bashar, that’s all’. Harasta is also liberated. Only Douma remains and that will be negotiated. Video: Wasim Essa.
Enlightenment is when you follow a simple rule of thumb. What’s is in the MSM are all misinformation and what they don’t publish are the facts.
There is NOTHING on the web page of today’s Guardian regarding East Ghouta. Too difficult to spin, I guess.
Whereas, Corbyn, as the chief proponent of all things antisemitic ………
Mailman here. Syrian Perspective’s analyst Canthama comments on the struggle (Syria + Allies vs US Axis) from a wider perspective:
“History is being made today, this is most likely one of the most important events for the next 50 years, geopolitically, economically and toward a true multipolar world. It is not expected to trigger an avalanche of deals, but it will slowly take shape and grow toward what it could be the largest future trading for oil in the world by 2019-2020. The Petro Yuan Is Here and Global Oil Markets Have Reacted Positively”
http://www.eurasiafuture.com/2018/03/26/the-petroyuan-is-here-and-global-oil-markets-have-reacted-positively/
And to think that only 5 weeks ago a BBC Arab Affairs editor, Mahmoud Ali-Hamed, brazenly informed listeners to the Jeremy Vine Radio 2 show that all the population of E Ghouta was anti-Assad and the civilians wouldn’t make use of the humanitarian corridors even if they had the chance because they were fearful for how they would be treated by the Assad ‘regime’. Do you think that man is still employed at the BBC? That’s a rhetorical question because I have no doubts that he is and is probably treated like a demi-God (unfortunate simile but you know what I mean).
As a newcomer to this website I hope I don’t make a habit of replying to my own posts. I am just so used to having to limit comments on another MSM website to one or two sentences because most of the other contributors are incapable of digesting more than that, but clearly that isn’t the case here so I shall have to retrain myself. I gave up with the other forum when responses regularly became two or three words in length and usually included the word ‘troll’ or, ironically, ‘brainwashed’, and seemed to be allowed by moderators no matter how puerile and abusive.
Anyway down to my point. I just wanted to add to my comment above that I am quite happy for alternative views to be expressed BUT what bothered me about giving this gentleman a platform was that we were promised a ‘discussion’ on Syria. In fact there was no one representing the official Syrian position and all we had was two people of the same view (the other one being Jonathan Freedland from the Guardian) effectively slapping each other on the back for their liberal views and not facing any intellectual challenge whatsoever.
I look forward to future debate and discussion on this refreshingly open website. It is reassuring to read comments from others of a similar mind – and sensible, substantive comments from people with an alternative viewpoint. We must truly avoid any threat of forums like this being closed down for failing to accept the common narrative without question.
@JudyJ. Welcome to the Free World! At least, to a part of the world where some people are trying to free themselves from “the Mind-forged manacles of Man”. Some of us can remember when foreigners would say “BBC” when they meant “credible”. Smashed by by Prime Minister Tony B.Liar for daring to question the Dodgy Dossier, and refashioned in the image of his master, the Father of Lies. Pity, a great public institution gone wrong.
@vexarb, thank you for your kind welcome. And your summary of the BBC of today is so true. I think more and more people are starting to see it for what it is but unfortunately there are still many (more?) who think they represent morality and integrity no matter how much we try to present them with REAL evidence to the contrary. To add to my anecdote about the JV show, Radio 2 also gave free rein to Samantha Power to indulge in self-promotion (she had an autobiography out) and propaganda on the Steve Wright Show (yes, that’s right!) back in January. They broadcast one snippet from her career and as soon as they led into it I knew what was coming – one of her tirades in the UN about the evilness of the Assad ‘regime’. She then proceeded to say self-righteously “I can’t imagine a world where the US doesn’t take the lead”. I have to say this patronising and deluded arrogance left me completely speechless but explained a lot. As you can judge, I rarely, for my sins, listen to ‘highbrow’ radio programmes (I have a very learned and analytical brother who fills me in on those) but there are the occasional gems to be found even within more lightweight broadcasts.
Welcome to OffG Judy.
Welcome, JudyJ! There is nothing wrong with replying to one’s comments, adding information or correcting typos or other mistakes. 🙂
Even the pigeon was chanting “Allah, Suriya, Bashar, w bas”!
I can’t imagine what these poor people have been through: and for what? I don’t want to take away from their joy, but I feel that it is worthwhile contemplating the lengths my government (UK) would have gone to to prevent this liberation and to keep their beloved Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda factions in place. No less than start WW3. Had they been able to implement their CW false flag: and rain down cruise missiles on the government region of Damascus… but for the diplomacy of Lavrov and the unequivocal warning of Valery Gerasimov: and this same government tells me Russia is my enemy?
And what of our diplomacy?
“All of these groups [in East Ghouta] and countless others have well-designed flags and logos as well as quality videos. All of this communication material is manufactured by the United Kingdom. In 2007, it had a war propaganda unit, the Research Information and Communications Unit (RICU) headed by MI6 (Secret Service) officer Jonathan Allen. Starting from the chemical weapons case in the summer of 2013, the RICU financed an external company to assist the communication of combatants in Syria (and subsequently those of Yemen). It was initially Regester Larkin, then Innovative Communications & Strategies (InCoStrat). Both companies are headed by an MI6 officer, Colonel Paul Tilley.
Jonathan Allen, whose rank we do not know, has become number two in the UK permanent representation at the United Nations. He is currently leading the Security Council against Russia and Syria.”
http://www.voltairenet.org/article200163.html
I think that I can make up my own mind as to who the enemies of morality and humanity are.
A three year old boy on a Catholic estate I was temporarily living on in Belfast asked me if I was a Brit. I asked him what a Brit was.
He said, “Someone with a gun who tries to kill us.”
I said, “No, I’m not a Brit.”
Time for a new passport?
I still am a Brit even though I haven’t renewed my passport which expired some twenty or so years ago… I also carry a Swiss passport and am seriously contemplating asking for Russian citizenship in view of who my parents and ancestors were – if they accept dual citizenship with Switzerland where I live and grew up.
Many of the people in my part of the UK have Irish ancestors and are applying for passports there.
I was wondering whether the Russian Embassy would accept me as a refugee……
From Ann on Saker Vineyard: here’s a youtube made by Syrian Girl [before her site was closed down]
– The Victory of Aleppo –
–this video – now at 1:33 – shows what can be done in a country – if there is no theft of its assets – for instance – oil –
Video posted by Bundy on SyrPer 1hr ago: comment image
https://twitter.com/Ruswariors/status/978025527557619712
Very strange footage of civilians escaping Ghouta..
People waving at the drones filming.. Not hiding from Syrian Soldiers and running towards the regime.. Not even cautious of the Russians..
Westerners only need to watch a few events like this to realize the narrative they are fed does not match what their eyes are showing them.
I dunno, if I were an average Jo/Joe Blow living in Gouta, devoted to the survival of my family, I would either dance to the tunes of the Syrian Army when they entered, just as I danced to the headchoppers songs when they took over in 2011 or if I hadn’t danced the first time, would also stay home at the second opportunity.
Sure one side has more moral and ethical impetus pushing it, but in the end for normal humans, war of any sort, for any reason, is an horrific nightmare, the leaders of neither side are worth pissing on and the actual ‘fighters’, the cannon fodder, are the biggest mugs of the lot. We saw that in the recent twitter
https://twitter.com/walid970721/status/977941215130849280 from a bus to Idlib when the losing side conceded that all the “UN relief” supplies that fukUSi had been causing so much turmoil in the UN over a couple of weeks back, had ended up in the stashes of their leaders to be sold in order to keep ‘the struggle’ and their lifestyles engineered from the conflict in the manner to which they had become accustomed.
If you’ve actually fought in a revolution or a counter revolution you will know that as idealistic one or both sides kick off being, in a very short time even worse sociopaths than those the corrupted voting systems around this planet usually throws up, take over the running of the fight and it all turns to shit soon after.
So anyone out on the streets of east gouta is either cheering for peace rather than victory or they’re just more fools who are gonna end up having to undertake some extreme contortions to justify that cheering.
Wow, what an impressively wordy misread of the situation.
Mis read? If you imagine for one moment that only your ‘government’ and its friends has a monopoly on sociopathic leaders, you simply haven’t been paying attention. Perhaps you will when after the inevitable war coming and you manage to survive, you will get to witness the usual scene. The leaders of both or however many sides, will sit down and carve a deal which suits them the most.
Lookit all the gutless wonders hiding behind an anonymous down vote presumably because what I wrote gives them a cognitive dissonance and their heads hurt.
Now whoever ‘wins’ and remember oftentimes winning is more about perception than anything else, but whichever side is eventually credited with that will get a bigger share than the arseholes on the losing side, sure but one thing will happen the same thing that always happens Jo/Joe Blow who took all the risks and paid all the consequences will get SFA.
There has never been a war that hasn’t ended that way. I spent some time in Hanoi 20 years ago and I saw for myself how my heroes who had kicked american arse day in and day out were living in shit – and remember that these men & women who survived that made it through from go to whoa were only a tiny percentage of the fighters. The amerikan pricks waged a war of attrition which caused casualty rates among the NVA & PLF similar to that of all sides on the Western Front in the first part of the 20th century euro war – another bunch of humans who got stiffed.
They still get shit since the friends I made while there tell me that the new breed of ‘socialist entrepreneur’ is doing well, but they don’t do trickle down in Vietnam either.
Just as a few fall guys are selected for punishment Nuremburg style most often the narcissists who are stupid enough to try and bask in their evil get taken out at the end while the string pullers behind em count their cash, a few types on the winning side are selected to be heroes while all the rest of us who also fought hard, get shit.
The Syrian destruction is no different to any other conflict.
Of course anyone with half a brain wants to see the zionists, american imperialists and their euro poodles go down the drain, but that doesn’t automatically make the other side, the Ba’athists, wonderful human beings.
Quite the reverse in fact. Many people here likely come from states where their pseudo-socialist alleged left wing parties have morphed into greedy, cruel and corrupt neoliberals – well that was exactly the same as what happened in Syria. When people began kicking up over subsidies being taken off food cos the corrupt thugs in charge of each Syrian region (principality really) had screwed up and decided they wanted to keep earning as they had, while the ordinary people went without, Syrians kicked up.
Unfortunately israel had been waiting for just such an opportunity so they got their puppets in DC to do their bidding, Saudi arseholes decided they would better export their unhappy types to Syria than have them causing trouble at home so they also joined in.
Syrians have to sort this shit out, I dunno how they will if the same middle-level thugs and off stage manipulators stay around because nothing will change and even if it is at a low level insurrection against the political structure will continue.
I realise this is heresy, that we are meant to view all this as a win for humans, but in truth, lapping up that pile of dogshit, is just a mirror of what the humans disparagingly referred to as ‘sheeple’ around here (shitting on the ordinary humans by using deplorable tags – that is so fucked up) do, they blindly follow a selected political brand and won’t hear any objective criticism.
The lazy and cowardly dismissals of the post above are just the same. Wake up and realise that following ‘leaders’ is just asking for a royal arse fucking, no matter what the leaders spout. Organise yourself in small enough groups that everyone knows each other then do what you wilt – mass movements only mimic the enemy by creating vast groups in the thrall of out of touch, greed driven, power hungry pricks.
LOL! So, those who give up votes are, according to your standards, also gutless wonders hiding behind an anonymous vote! LOL!
Yep if u agree or disagree say so, provide reasons instead of ad hominems or mindless me toos. I am so sick of armchair revolutionaries who have always run from a bar fight leading on the brainwashed for their own self gratification. If you think war is good, join in it. I did, by resisting the empire on its outer fringes as a young man trying to stop the spread and that helped me to wake the fuck up.
What ad hominems or mindless me toos have I ever written?
@Ure Kismet. I can see what you are saying…that if you don’t expect anyone to live up to hopes and aspirations you won’t be disappointed. Certainly if our hopes and aspirations rely on the Western concept of ‘democracy’ I very much agree with you. In the UK we purportedly have a ‘democratic’ system of rule and society but in reality neither is true: a Govt ‘democratically’ elected through a voting system which got them in with the support of something like 25% of the population but we’re now supposed to accept everything they do without question; and a society where freedom of speech and action is becoming non-existent.
As an aside, I think the fact that a Western country can have a ruling Govt with such little political support among the electorate is the reason why the majority of our population cannot accept that Putin and Assad, to name but two, can be elected with such winning margins and it not be ‘fixed’. And, of course, this perception is constantly endorsed and encouraged by the mainstream media. This level of support just doesn’t happen in the UK. They cannot accept that it’s simply because we do not have any outstanding candidates for leadership who are qualified to engender such support.
On the more specific issue of ‘leadership’ which ultimately lets its people down in any type of ruling system, I don’t want to share your degree of cynicism in spite of being sorely tested by ‘real life’. To accept this outcome would be to concede to all that is wrong with such Governments. Rightly or wrongly, it is hope for better things to come, and leaders who do rule with morality and integrity, that sustain many of us in our endeavours to show up immoral and unethical Govts for what they are. If we weren’t so minded then the lunatics really would take over the asylum with impunity or at the very least without challenge. Then we really would all be in the sh*t!
“On the more specific issue of ‘leadership’ which ultimately lets its people down in any type of ruling system, I don’t want to share your degree of cynicism in spite of being sorely tested by ‘real life’. To accept this outcome would be to concede to all that is wrong with such Governments. Rightly or wrongly, it is hope for better things to come, and leaders who do rule with morality and integrity, that sustain many of us in our endeavours to show up immoral and unethical Govts for what they are.”
I can agree pretty much with what you say up until this point. We shouldn’t confuse the archaic and mostly self-interested insistence of the need for leaders, with those who are selected to make a decisions because of the practical impossibility of getting every citizen to comprehend then decide on issues.
Look, as wonderful as it sounds voting doesn’t work because the wonderfully varied types of humans who populate the planet includes a chunk of people who will say and do whatever it takes to get the votes, not because they want to do good but because for whatever reason, they crave POWER.
I have more than enough fingers on one hand to count the MPs at Westminster who are not of that ilk.
There are alternative ways to select decent citizens, institute 1 term limits and force informed objectivity on the bureaucrats, but I don’t want to get into them here because it may cause a lot of heat as various methods are mooted, but very little light.
How about just considering for a moment to ask yourself if the current beauty contest method actually works for us humans living our lives.
Indeed!
What if:
a) in 2011, in Syria, a popular uprising really had been brewing . . .
b) the neo-liberal Assad regime really did start to ‘crack down’ hard on that unrest . . .
c) in the context of the general mass uprisings in the Middle East, of what has been called the ‘Arab Spring,’ all of the ruling capitalist cliques with interests in the Middle East were suddenly confronted by one single, much more concerning common interest . . .
Then:
Could it be that the priority of “all” the regional and international state players — ostensibly at odds with one another — was to tamp down a general and widespread revolt?
Have any of you seen this:
The greatest radicalisation since 1979 as Iran explodes
My prediction: if Iran really does explode, and not on account of anything “instigated” the so-called West, expect the U.S. to “invade” Iran. The scenario that many (not to say “most”) will buy into, is that the U.S. will finally be getting down to the business of toppling yet another regime on which it has had its guns trained for a long, long time. The reality, however, will be otherwise: there will be collusion between the ruling capitalist cliques of Iran and those of the U.S. and whomever else plays the role the latter’s allies. The real reason for the invasion, — one that many seem to overlook, if only as a possibility — will be to drown popular unrest in blood.
Here is a piece that to my mind raises interesting questions about who might be allied with whom in the Middle East, and against whom this alliance might truly stand: Michael Karadjis
edited by Admin to fix link
This is what I’m talking about and yes Fisk can be dodgy when reporting on Lebanon since he seems to move in a circle of US supported Leb pols, but as an actual reporter (remember that now nearly extinct craft?) writing down what people say as they said it, he is pretty honest. Fisk’s recent work in Syria esp Afrin has been mostly decent objective reporting.
In the article linked he gets among the Syrians civilians coming outta Gouta and apart from a couple of editorialising lapses where he makes unsubstantiated judgements about why these Syrians don’t talk about being bombed, he does convey the horror of being stuck in the middle of a war that is being fought for motives entirely foreign to, and 100% removed from most of the humans getting killed and maimed.
Humans – not statistics, just like the rest of us trying to live their 3 score and ten as best as they can manage. Totally undeserving of the shit that is being visited on them from all sides of this protean conflict.
These are the humans I care about, I couldn’t give a fuck about any of the bosses on any side, or the 3rd parties they proxy for. It is human beings who matter, status or popularity, or the size of a human’s sexual apparatus should never figure in our feelings about other humans who are being oppressed. The moment we allow ourselves to be swayed by the power of a silver tongue is the moment when we stop objective empathy and replace it with a weird points system of judgement, excusing some horrors as being ‘inevitable’ while cursing the same act by a different gang – ie becoming hypocrites. Vicarious hypocrites lapping up war porn.
If anyone does stumble across this post in a de-trending thread and feels obliged to give it the thumbs down on principle because it doesn’t appear to sync with accepted lore at off-graun, at least try to reflect on this and instead of an easy anonymous ‘dis-like’ or ‘like’ summarise your view on it. Yep I’m pissing into the wind I know, but only because exp has taught me to be wary of anyone who for whatever reason wants to treat human misery like a sporting contest as in “go team go” or the obverse “that mob of crooks take it up the arse from coach every training session”.
Who needs to watch slick Hollywood-style productions for uplifting displays of Human triumph? Either that, or there is a massive pool of highly talented crisis actors in Syria. What a budget these people must then have!
As the pocket of terrorists gets smaller it is likely that dozens of French, Israeli, American and British mercenaries, arms specialists, tacticians, trainers and information warriors are being pushed back into the last strongholds.
My guess is that most of them will, by direct government to government negotiation, be allowed to slip away, back to their bases in Jordan and, thence, to their homes in, among other places, Britain.
Some of them, no doubt, thwarted by the sudden success of the SAA, were employed to deploy chemical weapons- to serve as false flag excuses for NATO to bomb Damascus and to hold off the advancing Syrians. They will soon be back on Salisbury Plain.
We simply do not know. Britain has been supporting terrorist operations in Syria and throughout the region for decades. But the deeds for which the taxes are paying remain hidden from review. Occasionally, as in the Manchester bombing, we discover that those we trained to blow up targets in Libya and kill Libyans, have not lost their skills-brought back into the country they simply carry on as before terrorising the population, as they have been taught to do.
But that was a rare exception. On the whole as Thatcher replaces Callaghan, Blair replaces Major, Cameron takes over from Brown the secrets just become older and their details more obscure. The only lesson ever learned is that hiding the records always works: the guys who ordered the killing of Pat Finucane are OK today. The guys who set up the sarin labs in East Ghoutta will likely get the OBE. They only play these games on condition of impunity.
There is however one tiny cloud on the horizon, a cloud which has been getting larger during the past year and refuses to disappear: the fear, in The Establishment and in the Embassies of ‘allies’, is that come the next election Labour will form a government in which those Blairites with blood on their hands-the enthusiasts for bouncing into Baghdad, unafraid to kill a million Iraqi innocents (but non voters), the same set that demanded that Ghaddafi be killed and have been calling for Damascus to be bombed and Al Qaeda installed in its government -these sad sorts, cuckoos in the well appointed nests they have made out of socialist seats will not be able to prevent the truth from being learned about exactly what has been done, in the name of the British people and at a vast expense chalked up to Debt to be paid later by working stiffs.
And that is why as the war in Syria reaches another climax, in London tonight the media is calling for Jeremy Corbyn’s head on the grounds that he is an anti-semite.
And that is because it is being established, from The Guardian to The Telegraph, from The Times to the BBC that those who oppose Israel’s government, in its foreign adventures, like the one in Syria, or its mistreatment of Palestinians, the daily killings, the torture of children, the detention of a girl, her cousin just
shot in the face, for slapping the face of a soldier who has broken into her home in the night. The inexorable eating away of Palestine’s land, the erosion of rights, the collapsing of aquifers, the burning of orchards… to oppose these things is defined as anti-semitism.
And, as a favour, of the sort traditional among fascists, to the imperialists and capitalists who avert their eyes from Israel’s evil doing also defined as antisemitic are portrayals, in the agitprop tradition, of financiers exploiting workers.
It is a moral duty, after all that we have seen being done to the people of the middle east in this new century, to insist on discovering what has actually happened, what the nine tenths of the iceberg obscured from our view actually looks like.
In the meantime we should brace ourselves for story after story, promoted by The Establishment and most particularly by the Blairites-who in my view should have the whip taken from them- designed to smear Corbyn, and the mildly socialist reforms that he proposes for the good of the many.
Those with blood on their hands are very happy to dip their elbows deep into the shit they throw as servants of imperialism and capitalism.
I think large numbers have been bused out from pocket, probably these agents went with them…
I am sure that BEVIN, and other visitors to this website will be aware of this current Government being blackmailed by the ‘ Murdoch Mass Media Combine ‘ which has threatened: that if its latest Mass media takeover plans are either questioned, or disallowed by the Mde T May government?
And then the SKY TV NEWS channel would cease to exist ?
And the consequence of that threat would be a grave disability to any Conservative and Unionist Political Party’s Government, before or during a National General Election if as is most likely to happen shortly ?
Corbyn needs to stand forward and name the powers.
My grandfather used to call that ‘putting your head above the parapet’ and he highly recommended that we never do that.
How heartening it is to see the joy and smiles of these exhausted people after the years of horrors and hardships they had to endure at the hands of the “rebels” and terrorists (they are one and the same…).