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167 thoughts on “The 70,000 moderate rebels are mostly cavalry. On unicorns.”

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  • YouKnowMyName

    The ‘retired’ telecoms expert Alan Gross who allegedly tried to setup a (free – for a special COLOR definition of the word free) encrypted covert WiFi network along the island of Cuba, 5 years ago, who was arrested & imprisoned for fifteen years by the nasty regime, has just been released, thankfully.

    He seems to be suing his employers(?) USAID & State Department for multi-million $s for something they didn’t do? or was it something that they did?

    (I liked the covert WiFi antenna in surfboards idea)

  • fwl

    I approve of military action or the threat of generally ie without reference to any particular events. Even the Dalai Lama accepts its occasional use. I may approve of clever covert military action although needless to say my consent is not sought and facts are not disclosed for me to form a retrospective view on such events. I don’t agree with bombing Syria. There are better alternatives.

  • harry law

    Why would the US want to destroy, or in Obama’s word ‘contain’ Islamic state?
    US ex-intelligence chief on ISIS rise: It was ‘a willful Washington decision’
    Published time: 10 Aug, 2015

    The US didn’t interfere with the rise of anti-government jihadist groups in Syria that finally degenerated into Islamic State, claims the former head of America’s Defense Intelligence Agency, backing a secret 2012 memo predicting their rise.
    Trends
    Islamic State

    An interview with retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), given to Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan, confirms earlier suspicions that Washington was monitoring jihadist groups emerging as opposition in Syria.

    Flynn believes the US government didn’t listen to his agency on purpose. snip

    The document recently declassified through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), analyses the situation in Syria in the summer of 2012 and predicts: “If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria… and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

    The report warns of “dire consequences” of this scenario, because it would allow Al-Qaeda to regain its positions in Iraq and unify the jihadist Sunni forces in Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against all other Muslim minorities they consider dissenters.

    “ISI (the Islamic State of Iraq) could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards of unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory,” the DIA report correctly predicted at the time.
    Those groups eventually emerged as Islamic State (IS formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Nusra Front, an Islamic group loyal to Al-Qaeda.snip

    With the Al-Qaeda’s notorious founder killed in Pakistan in 2011, the former DIA head admitting the US sponsored Al-Qaeda-associated groups a year later in Syria should come as a shock to American media outlets, such as the Daily Beast, which criticized the DIA memo as unworthy.https://www.rt.com/usa/312050-dia-flynn-islamic-state/

  • Tom Welsh

    @Sixer:

    “Reducing the added/hidden sugars in 99p processed ready meals and value line baked beans would be much more helpful”.

    Except that would mean:

    1. The meals get much smaller;
    2. The meals cost much more than 99p;
    3. The meals are filled up with white flour instead.

    By the way, recently I purchased a tub of pea and ham soup from Sainsbury. As always, I carefully inspected the label to make sure the ingredients included no sugar, syrup, HFCS, etc. etc. etc. But when I ate it, the soup tasted suspiciously sweet. Hauling the tub out of the rubbish, I checked the nutrient breakdown: “…of which sugars 22%”. Huh? But there is no sugar in it! Then I realised: the super-sweet baby “petit pois” must have been over half sugar by weight, and that doesn’t have to be declared as an ingredient. So keep an eye out for super-sweet fruit and vegetables as ingredients… and check the “sugars” line in the Nutrients breakdown.

  • Tony M

    Free for some maybe, Corbyn’s and the Labour membership’s fury and betrayal won’t matter to the neo-conservative PLP infiltrators, or those compromised by blackmail, and where these groups overlap, who’ll already have been given their voting orders. Backstairs the Tory whips and the unofficial Labour ones from the Blairite faction will have an approximation of the any likely result, and pressure, arm-twisting will be rife, the smell of fear hangs over the Westminster Village People.

  • Tom Welsh

    It would be funny (if not so frightening) that Dave decides to go on a bombing rampage in Syria at exactly the moment when the American bombing stops completely. Not provably because of the S-400 battery and the “Moskva”, but it seems likely.

    Fact is though, if a British plane gets shot down over Syria while on a bombing (or other) mission without the explicit permission of the Syrian government, legally everything will be kosher and Dave will have absolutely no one to blame but himself. In comparison with the shooting down of the Su-24 (which was inside Syria where it had a legal right to be, was carrying out a mission on behalf of the legal government, and was actually heading away from Turkey which it had never entered) a foreign plane flying into Syrian airspace to carry out acts of war would be entirely in the wrong.

  • Tony M

    Yeah it seems setting up social networking sites and apps is the latest craze of the security services, with numerous attempts made in Cuba. Prior to 2001-09-11 Odigo was used for some covert purposes.

  • RobG

    The Canadians have been bombing in Syria since October 2014, following the American lead.

    The Canadians are now pulling out of military action in Syria…

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34589250

    There’s also rumours, so far unsubstantiated, that the Australians are also going to end their military action in Syria.

    Anyone wonder why the feck the Australians have been bombing Syria for the last year?!

    Five eyes need glasses.

  • Tony M

    It still seems as if one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing, as all the now mainstream social media sites are utterly compromised from the outset, from the inside and they have total take of the traffic in addition to that, it hardly seems necessary to create their own, the lemmings can always be steered wherever while maintaining an illusion of choice. ICQ is so yesterday!

  • Sixer

    Tom Welsh – 4:11 pm

    Yes, exactly. Like I say, properly funded public health information would help most. As would proper labelling of food.

    But I think we both feel the same. The problem is the muck of processed food, not fizzy drinks. Everyone knows that fizzy drinks are “bad for you”. And the particularly atrocious state of the cheap processed food that is all poor people can afford to buy. You can buy a bagful of high sugar, high salt Tesco value cack for £5 but the same bag of meat and fruit and veg will cost you £20. That’s the real problem. If you want to cut down consumption of salt and sugar, you have to persuade the shit manufacturers to hide less of it in their products.

  • glenn_uk

    I wonder if our chickenhawk armchair warrior Phil would like to see an air bombing campaign in France, the UK and Belgium? After all, that’s where these terrorists hang out. We surely have far better “intelligence” on the location of terrorists in our own countries, and these bombings are total precision jobs, right?

    Therefore, bombing them from the air right here at home will be far more successful than bombing dubious targets in far-away places, and they are way more dangerous here after all. Right, Phil?

  • Mary

    O/T The true face of Tsipras. Serpentine.

    The True Face of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras: Meets up with Netanyahu, Endorses Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital

    By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

    Global Research, November 28, 2015

    Alexis Tsipras who led the “left wing” SYRIZA movement against neoliberalism has revealed his true face in his recent visit to Israel.

    He has joined the pro-Israeli EU political bandwagon, which pays lip service to Netanyahu.

    As we recall Syriza confirmed as part of its election platform its endorsement of the rights of Palestinians against the State of Israel.

    “About-turn” in Greece’s foreign policy in relation to Israel?

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-true-face-of-greek-prime-minister-alexis-tsipras-meets-up-with-netanyahu/5492063

  • Alcyone

    ” The 70,000 moderate rebels are mostly cavalry. On unicorns. ”

    Ok Craig, so they are not moderate, they are part of the extremists group.

    But, are they the same ones you would wish to ignore in the hope that they will leave us alone?

  • bevin

    Living under the Unicorn’s heel:
    “””In Libya, where a NATO bombing campaign helped overthrow Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi four years ago, there is no functional government.” “The fighters and guards in Surt all bowed to a Saudi administrator, or “wali,” who had been sent by the Islamic State to preside over the city. (A former Surt City Council member now in exile in Misurata said the Islamic State periodically rotates in new administrators, who typically are from the Persian Gulf.)”
    From The Angry Arab

  • CanSpeccy

    So as long as I don’t chop heads, eat human flesh, or burn people alive, I could, as a British citizen, take up arms against the government of the United Kingdom and be described as only a “moderate” rebel?

  • Mary

    O/T Panorama tonight. 20.30

    The Secret Bribes of Big Tobacco

    British American Tobacco

    Panorama exposes corruption at one of Britain’s biggest companies. Reporter Richard Bilton uncovers evidence that employees bribed civil servants and politicians across Africa – undermining a United Nations campaign to save lives. He challenges the officials who took the cash and asks whether the company will now be prosecuted for the crimes.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06rfrrr

    The bribes were apparently massive.

    ~~~
    This is Gallagher etc (Japan Tobacco International) in 2011.

    Tobacco firm gave thousands of pounds worth of hospitality to nine MPs who opposed smoking bill
    Japan Tobacco International spent £23,000 entertaining 20 MPs in six months
    Almost half of them voted against a bill banning smoking in cars
    23 November 2011
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2064483/Car-smoking-ban-Japan-Tobacco-International-spent-thousands-MPs-opposed-bill.html#

    Quite often you see donations from Japan Tobacco recorded on MPs’ Registers of Interests.

    eg Philip Hammond Foreign Sec. They paid for him and wife to attend the Chelsea Flower Show (more than once), a dinner at the Berkeley Hotel and another at the Carlton Club. (£thousands)

    I also noticed that he was given a £1,950 watch by the Saudis in July this year. How revolting.

    http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=10257

  • RobG

    “You may be confused about why we are bombing Iraq and Syria. So we will make ourselves very clear.

    We support the Iraqi government in the fight against ISIS.

    We don’t like ISIS, but ISIS has been supported by Saudi Arabia, whom we do like, and Saudi Arabia is now supporting us in bombing ISIS.

    We don’t like President Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but not ISIS, which is also fighting against him.

    We don’t like Iran, but Iran supports the Iraqi government against ISIS.

    So some of our friends support our enemies and some of our enemies are our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies whom we want to lose, but we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.

    If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less.

    And all this was started by us invading Iraq to drive out terrorists who weren’t there until we went to drive them out.

    We hope you now understand”.

    http://stopwar.org.uk/news/obama-and-cameron-clear-up-any-confusion-about-why-they-are-bombing-iraq-and-syria

  • Macky

    Rather nice cutting end to the Fisk pîece that Bevin linked to earlier;

    “Amid all this, PR Dave raves on. And why not? Having Photoshopped a fake poppy on to his lapel to honour Britain’s war dead, why shouldn’t he get away with Photoshopping 70,000 fake “moderates” on to a map of Syria?”

  • Anon1

    It’s clearly a huge exaggeration in numbers, but no more so than the thousands, nay millions, of civilian casualties that will be reported by Craig from the moment our two rusty Tornados begin bombing, under such strict rules of engagement that they will be able to achieve virtually nothing at all.

    On the other hand our Russian friends have quite a serious bombing campaign underway and the civilian casualties appear to be be of no concern to our Eminences and Original Trolls here.

  • Anon1

    A relatively quiet weekend for the RoP, with just two women blowing themselves up, killing 5, in Cameroon on Saturday, and a rocket attack against a UN compound killing 3 also on that day. On Sunday Boko Haram Jihadists slaughtered 4 in a village in Nigeria and rounded up a number of girls for rape.

  • Beth

    Canspeccy….The moderate rebels have been doing all those things.

    We soon won’t be allowed to gather in a public place never mind rebel.

  • RobG

    Anon1, Russia started bombing rebel forces at the end of September. The Russians did this at the invitation of the Assad government; ie, Russian military intervention was within international law.

    The Americans, and their ‘coalition of the willing’, started bombing in Syria in September 2014, totally against international law. In the last year, America and its allies have ‘apparently’ been unable to defeat ISIS.

    In the last month or so, Russian bombing in support of Syrian ground troops has decimated ISIS. Pre-arranged Syrian peace talks in Vienna, on 14th November, set out a road map to peace in Syria, including free and fair elections.

    One day before the Vienna talks we had the ‘terror attacks’ in Paris.

    Now we have the unedifying spectacle of yet another British prime minister prostituting themselves to Washington, by attempting to drag the UK into another idiotic war, all based on lies and fairytales.

    There is a big difference now with Iraq in 2003: now we are being carried into a direct war with Russia.

    All these traitorous politicians, and all the media whores, and all the vermin in the security services are going to be put on trial for this.

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