Give a Dog a Bad Name. Why is Russia Always Presumed Guilty?
I don’t think I’ve heard the old saying ‘Give a dog a bad name…’ for many years. The missing words were ‘…and hang him’. It used to be common, a caution against prejudice. Maybe it’s been driven out of use by the seemingly universal belief in the rival maxim that ‘there’s no smoke without fire’, which most people who’ve tried to light fires on a wet camping expedition will know to be downright untrue. I think the expression ‘They can’t do that here’ has gone the same way. These days they *can* do that here, and they do.
It’s all part of the general disappearance of the presumption of innocence, not just in law but in life, an increasing belief that, whether the subject is climate change, foreign policy or paedophiles, how you feel is far more important than what you know -and that the authorities must know what they’re doing.
For instance, I get attacked here for being sceptical of claims made by spy organisations, as if this is disrespectful and even irreverent. One of these days I really must review Graham Greene’s ‘Our Man in Havana’ here. If only more people had read this wonderful book, about the readiness of intelligent, serious people to be fooled when it suits them, we might have avoided British involvement in Iraq.
But people in politics and journalism need to be a bit more careful than that. Are we too inclined to act as if we know things we don’t know? Now, I don’t struggle to believe that Russian intelligence agencies may have hacked the US Democratic National Committee and leaked some of the results. Moscow cannot have been hoping for Hillary Clinton to win the Presidential Election.
But it is a long way from ‘they may very well have done it’ to ‘they did it’ and so far I have not seen anything resembling a *fact* . The CIA’s supposed findings are ‘still-classified’ according to the International New York Times of today (12th December) pages 1 and 6. So we cannot study them.
Mr Trump’s jibe that the CIA are the same people who found WMDs in Iraq seemed justified to me. I had the same thought. Could the CIA, and such supporters as the ever warmongering Senator John McCain, possibly have a motive? Likewise, could the Washington Post and New York Times, which leaked various versions of the claim , have motives (both papers are Clintonist rather than Trumpoid, and the Post has for years been an especially keen supporter of the Syrian intervention that lies at the core of the current tension between Washington and Moscow)?
But the Post did not publish the CIA’s actual evidence of Russian hacking. It reported that the CIA ‘believed’ this to be so(by the way, there is a disagreement between the CIA and the FBI over the nature and extent of the hacking, the FBI doubting that the Republican National Committee was also hacked).
The New York Times says at one point ‘tracking the origin of cyberattacks is complicated’, which I should say is understatement, especially if the hacker is any good. As for what is ‘known’, we learn that a hacking group ‘long associated’ with the Russian internal security agency FSB got into the DNC . Then in 2016 a group of Russian hackers ‘long associated’ with’ the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence organisation, got into the DNC again. Forgive me, but terms such as ‘a group of Russian hackers long associated with’ are a sign of the brakes being applied. Cut them out and see how much more confident the report would then be. I might add that the GRU and the FSB loathe each other as much as rival intelligence organisations always do.
How did the CIA know these things? Or rather, why did they *believe* them? ‘Malware used in the cyber-attack on the DNC matched tools previously used by hackers with proven ties to the Russian government’.
Well, let’s not be too difficult here, but wouldn’t sophisticated hackers be quite likely to put someone else’s signature on their activity, and be in a position to replicate it? Well, yes. In fact, I would imagine this is close to routine.
For it continued ‘That sort of “pattern analysis” is common in cyber-investigations, though it is not conclusive (my emphasis PH)’.
But the New York Times then said that the agencies had more, and had identified individuals from the GRU who oversaw the hacking efforts. This, we are told ’may have come from intercepted conversations, spying efforts or implants in computer systems that allow the tracking of emails and text messages’.
It also mentions a forgotten fact, that President Putin has long accused Hillary Clinton of interfering in Russia’s 2011 elections, which might be playing some part in all this.
Well, forgive me, but if they can reveal this much in unattributable briefings (which everyone knows came from them) what is stopping them giving a press conference or at least attending an open hearing of a Senate Committee, and, say, naming the GRU operatives?
A lot of intelligence is about not letting the enemy know what you know about him. Well, that’s not an issue here any more, is it? Next comes the vital need to conceal your methods and protect your agents. The highest classifications in intelligence briefings are given to the material which reveals the *sources*. This newspaper briefing pretty much reveals those sources. So what is there to lose in making a specific allegation against specific individuals. I’m not saying I don’t believe it. I am inclined to do so. I just think we should stop treating it as fact until we know it is one
But there’s a much more serious charge being levelled against Russia, that of being guilty of deliberate atrocities and war-crimes in Syria.
In Foreign Secretary Alexander ‘Boris’ Johnson’s recent (Friday 9 November) speech at the ‘Manama Dialogue’ in Bahrain: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/foreign-secretary-speech-britain-is-back-east-of-suez
... the following words appear (Note the pedantic Foreign Office spelling of ‘Assad’,as everyone else calls him): ‘It may very well be true that after months of barbaric bombing Bashar al-Asad and his Russian and Iranian sponsors are on the point of capturing the last of rebel-held Aleppo – perhaps within a matter of days, we can’t know. But if and when that happens it will assuredly be a victory that turns to ashes, it is but a Pyrrhic victory.
‘Remember that two thirds of Syria is currently outside Asad’s control, and that he is still besieging 30 other areas containing 571,000 tormented inhabitants. Surely to goodness, there can be no lasting peace in Syria, if that peace is simply re-imposed by a man who has engendered such hatred among millions of his own people.’
Well, first of all, let’s just mention some undoubted barbarism about which Mr Johnson, speaking in Bahrain, was tactfully silent. Dialogue is not always welcome in Bahrain, it would seem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahraini_protests_of_2011
And then let’s ask: Why does he describe this particular bombing, of Aleppo by Russia and Syria, as ‘barbaric’? Is our Foreign Secretary a pacifist? I do not think so. In what important way does Russian bombing of Aleppo differ from the bombings of Fallujah and Mosul, where Islamist fanatics have been bombed by Western planes (ours included, I believe), and where our one-time ally, Nouri el-Maliki of Iraq, used ‘barrel bombs’ (why are these so much worse than any other kinds of bomb? No bomb is nice) on ‘his own people’ in Fallujah? I hesitate even to mention the British bombing of Libya, in which civilians died as a result of our crazed decision to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi and replace him with flaming anarchy, which still persists.
But I will
The point is that aerial warfare can be relied upon to produce some horrible effects. Unless we can *prove* that Russia and Syria *deliberately* targeted aid convoys schools and hospitals (and I have seen no such proof) how can we say this this was so?
As for the allegations that Assad ( or 'Asad')has used gas against ‘his own people’ , they remain just that -vallegations. I sought very hard for details of the charges, and evidence of gas use, and have never found anything which establishes that Assad did this thing. It has always seemed to me that it would have been raving mad for him to do so, since it gained nothing significant but it was the one action which would have licensed the USA to unleash air power against him, and that was the one thing that could, at that stage of the war, have ensured his defeat.
Mr Johnson got something of a pasting from Andrew Marr on Sunday 4th December, on Britain’s undoubted involvement in Saudi Arabia’s very bloody little war in Yemen, in which there have been a number of rather unfortunate civilian casualties, though nobody says the Saudis are doing this deliberately.
And interestingly it is generally assumed that it is this rather poorly-reported Yemen conflict that he was referring to in his now-famous contribution to the Med2 Group, in Rome, which you may watch in a rather poorly synchronised film here http://rome-med.org/speeches/med-shared-security-mediterraneans-path-to-a-new-order-the-helsinki-experience/
Mr Johnson first begins speaking at about 19 minutes in. He then starts again (this is the important bit about proxy wars) at about 46 minutes (though you can’t see him to begin with) I have tried and so far failed to obtain a text of this, which seems to have been off the cuff rather than scripted. The Guardian, which broke the story, reported it thus (it has its own video)
But Mr Johnson cannot have been referring to Yemen. Yemen is not a ‘proxy’ war by Saudi Arabia. Saudi forces are directly involved, and this is not disputed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention_in_Yemen
The proxy war is in Syria. If Mr Johnson thinks it barbaric in general, he knows who to talk to. If he has specific allegations against Russia, I should be interested to hear them.
L. Porter: "Eva Barlett, a hard left pro-Gaza activist, who accuses Israel of geocidal (sic) and sadistic policies towards Palestinians."
Very characteristically, no attempt to rebut Mr Sullivan's point, merely an ad hominem attack (and a question-begging one at that) on the source he quotes.
Your deprecation of those who criticise elites is the usual sterile attempt to atttribute concrete meanings to abstract terms. Most people, when referrring pejoratively to "elites" or "establishments", are not condemning elitism or the idea of legitimate hierarchy and authority as such, they're merely using these terms to denote those who have attained power in a particular institution, government, cultural milieu, etc.. Self-evidently there are good elites and bad elites. For example elites exist in the world of organised crime, terrorism, prostitution, street gangs etc. And of course cultural revolutionaries, no matter how extreme, are not above appealing to conservative, elitist and "establishmentarian" sentiments when it suits their purpose, since any revolutionary movement which fails to do so is destined to fail. The current left liberal attack on "anti-American fake news sites" is a classic example of this technique.
Posted by: Colm J | 14 December 2016 at 03:34 PM
Semi-hysterical recitations of Al-nusra / IS propaganda lies in parliament ... how dare the Syrians rescue their own country from foreign inflicted jihadist mercenaries and murderous sectarian fanatics!
Why aren't the same politicians attacking the UK sale of cluster-bombs to the Saudis for use against the public in Yemen -- many thousands have already been killed.
Likewise, direct (though seldom mentioned) UK military involvement in that war, on the Saudi side.
These hyper-emotive politicians of all parties at Westminster might even find time to agree with UN condemnation of government persecution of the disabled and ill in their own country....
Or is that all Russia's fault too?
Posted by: C. Morrison | 14 December 2016 at 02:57 PM
@Mike B
The FBI disagrees with the assessment that the RNC was hacked. Also, why is the CIA even opining on domestic hacking? This is squarely FBI/NSA responsibility.
Posted by: Joel | 14 December 2016 at 02:56 PM
There's a sensible article by Peter Oborne in his blog at 'The Spectator', titled :
" It’s time to judge Assad’s Aleppo campaign by the standards that we set ourselves in Mosul "
Along with Peter Hitchens, one of the few mainstream journalists in this country who will retain their credibility once the present deluge of Neocon / Al-Nusra propaganda lies and fake "news" has been exposed and discredited by (real) reality.
Posted by: C. Morrison | 14 December 2016 at 02:13 PM
Mr Michael Wood writes:
"If Trump is pushed aside in favour of the war-hawks it is becoming increasingly apparent to all that the first casualties would be the Eastern Europeans who have foolishly allowed the US to base its front line attack forces on their borders and who will be annihilated instantly."
So let me think - Russia has hundreds of thousands of soldiers on Poland's and the Baltic states borders; it has been blocking the freedom of navigation at the Vistula Spit (in breach of the agreement it signed); it has - since 1999 - been repeatedly calling snap exercises including more than 100,000 troops (in breach of the Vienna Document that Russia signed), in which Russia simulated nuclear attacks not only on NATO members like Poland (Zapad-09), but also on neutral Sweden (in March 2013); it has forced Poland to pay the highest gas prices in Europe - and Russia's main strategist, Mr Dugin (President Putin's adviser), says that Poland should not exist.
And the Eastern Europeans are foolish to protect themselves?!
I think that it is precisely that kind of a pacifistic mindset that made parts of England ruled by the Sharia law.
Posted by: Grzegorz Kolodziej | 14 December 2016 at 01:11 PM
Mr Roy Robinson writes:
"What we could be seeing instead is the start of a new prolonged confontation between America and China for the dominion of the world.Trump has rightly identified China as being the far bigger threat in the long run.Interestingly the anti-Russian hawks have generally been the biggest kow-towers to China over the years".
Not what we could be seeing, but what we have been seing for the last 20 years, since China has been pumping up their military within a framework of their A2/AD strategy (hence the JAM-GC counter-strategy developed by Pentagon's J-7 Directoriat). Bear in mind that Chinese military potential is in many areas superior to the one of the US, i.e. Chinese DF-21D is the only ASBM in the world to have terminal homing capability.
Not only President Trump has rightly identified China as being the far bigger threat in the long run, but President Obama also - hence his pivot to Pacific. The problem that the US and Europe face (and the UK too, but UK does not any have politicians capable of envisaging it - like Ms Thatcher did - or any journalists capable of doing a proper research on it: I can spot the only oasis of strategic thinking in the UK within the British Army) is that Russia has strongly allied with China, and these two have been implementing Mr Dugin's Eurasian project, thus rejecting Mr Brzezinski's strategy from his 2012 "Strategic Vision" of cooperating with Russia (Obama's reset) and Turkey against China: "will call for a sustained effort over the next several decades to connect, in transformative ways, through institutions like the EU and NATO, both Russia and Turkey with a West that already embraces both the EU and the United States."
Mr Robinson poses a question: "Perhaps the Russians greatest sin is that they are a white European Christian culture thus ringing all the bells on the liberal scale of what is bad".
This is an idealised view of western readers that they believe in, thanks to propaganda outlets such as RT - but the Russian elites don't actually see themselves that way; i.e., Mr Alexander Dugin, President Putin's mentor and adviser, the main ideologist of the current Russia, writes: "I am a supporter of Blacks. White civilisation, their cultural values, false dehumanising model of the world built by them did not pay off. Russia is saved only by the fact that we are not pure white. So I am for Reds, Yellows, Greens, Blacks, but not for Whites. I am wholeheartedly on the side of the people of Zimbabwe".
P.S. I agree with Mr Hitchen’s thorough analysis of Mrs Clinton’s so called hacking scandal. But why do we even need to talk about Mrs Clinton and her corrupt media? Since she has deservedly lost, even discussing the difference between the Irish and the English breakfast would be time less wasted.
Posted by: Grzegorz Kolodziej | 14 December 2016 at 12:49 PM
I expect that if we had bombed Syria in 2013, not a single civilian would have been killed.
Posted by: Persephone | 14 December 2016 at 12:31 PM
I hope those who continue to deny that the Russians manipulated the American elections realise how dangerously loopy and extremist their views sound to mainstream respectable opinion. The CIA have stated that such manipulation took place, and the New York Time, the Guardian and the BBC all agree, so, really, what more evidence do the professional contrarians need? What kind of conpiracy loons could continue to deny that Putin's minions secretly control the internet, the American Republican Party, the Brexit campaign and the voting process throughout the west?
Some Kremlin apologists have pointed to the fact that Trump's rallies were much bigger than Clinton's - as evidence against the overwhelming popularity of the Democratic candidate, but they conveniently ignore the possibility that many of the Trump rally attendees were in fact Russian agents who swapped their furry hats for red baseball caps, and thanks to crash courses in American demotic speech patterns, effortlessly assumed the role of disenchanted middle Americans. As for the paucity of attendees at Clinton rallies, that too can be easily explained. Who's to say that Putin moles in the traffic departments of the cities and towns concerned did not deliberately engineer traffic congestion problems in order to prevent tens of thousands of Hillary fans from making it to the rally venues?
Posted by: Colm J | 14 December 2016 at 12:26 PM
Peter Sullivan;
*** "Eva Bartlett" ***
A hard-"Left", pro gaza activist, who accuses Israel of geocidal and sadistic policies towards Palestinians.
Posted by: L Porter | 14 December 2016 at 12:04 PM
@ Joel 13/12/16 @ 04:12PM
"Why wasn't the RNC hacked?"
It was, but no leaks followed.
Posted by: Mike B | 14 December 2016 at 11:50 AM
Russia and Europe are only a heartbeat away from uniting to face the threat of global war coming out of America.
If Trump is pushed aside in favour of the war-hawks it is becoming increasingly apparent to all that the first casualties would be the Eastern Europeans who have foolishly allowed the US to base its front line attack forces on their borders and who will be annihilated instantly.
Those war-hawks, by their actions in the Middle East and Africa, have shown that they don't care one iota what the cost in lives on both sides will be and would happily destroy half the world to get their own way.
They deal only in lies and violence to terrorise anyone who dares defy them.
Diabolical in every deed!
Posted by: Michael Wood | 14 December 2016 at 11:30 AM
David;
*** “The elites propaganda narrative across the main stream media is no longer working since the internet ended their control of information manipulation” ***
Railing against “the elites” is just a different kind of propaganda though; the kind typically perpetrated and perpetuated by websites and bloggers who are at least as guilty of “information manipulation” as the MSM against whom they rail.
The current crop of anti-elitism, for example, especially the disdain for 'experts', should seriously concern all reasonable people; because it continues the relativist delusion at the root of Democracy – namely that knowledge is not superior to ignorance. Such a position being part of the Radical attack on truth seen in western society for at least the last 150 years; the result being a slide towards a “post-truth” society in which all opinions are equal, where reality is defined by how you feel rather than what is true, and where morality is reduced to consent.
Several things in our society are part of this war-on-truth. The list is quite long but here are four to be going on with...
Democracy – where the opinion of the ignorant is equal to that of the informed. Undermining education in an act of supreme idiocy.
Social media – where a voice is no longer earned through education and experience but is instead available for all if they say something popular enough with the rabble.
Social pluralism – which says that there are no superior or inferior societies, just different ones, and that to claim otherwise is “colonialist” or (horror of horrors) “racist”.
Modern Schooling – where teachers cease to be authoritative sources of wisdom to whom deference is owed, but are instead 'facilitators' of 'child-led' learning (and criticised as “authoritarian” if they dare to depart from such).
All of which are (amongst others) an attack on truth and authority by an agenda that embraces chaos and fantasy as a way of living.
Where does this war on truth come from? Well, it comes from human nature actually, because it is the attitude with which we are all born. What we are seeing is a revolution in which the juvenile seek to wrest the reins from the mature (and have largely succeeded – not least through the “Long March” having infiltrated the Establishment and turned it into a Disestablishment). Which means that, yes, the ruling hierarchs of society today are also infected with this mindset, but to use this as an excuse to clumsily rail against “elites” and “experts” is to be cut from the same cloth as those who currently hold the reins.
So what I am saying is that people should beware those who claim to oppose “the MSM” or “experts” or “the elite” or “the 1%”, as the agenda these revolutionaries are pushing, usually hiding behind the flag of “Liberty” is just as unhealthy as anything infecting those the oppose.
The solution is more complex and more subtle than is dreamed of in tabloid political fantasies.
Posted by: L Porter | 14 December 2016 at 11:13 AM
One final comment from me on this. I listened to Alison McGovern and Crispin Blunt on BBC Radio 4's Today programme (14 Dec, just after 8.30am, available on the BBC website). They are, I believe, both members of the parliamentary committee on Syria. To listen to them the only enemy they seem to identify in Syria is the Syrian government. The Islamist fighters have dropped out of their 'analysis' completely. They are reinforcing the lie, and not even a very sophisticated lie, that Assad's men are fighting their way across the country killing, with no care in the world, and for reasons neither of these MPs ever provide, the country's civilians. They are incredibly naive and irresponsible people to pump out this nonsense, effectively colluding with people who have bombed civilians, who hate homosexuals, who want a caliphate and who treat women little better than dogs. Why don't they actually study what is happening, instead of indulging in the pathetic narrative of the evil madman against his people? Why don't they talk about the real situation?
Also, there is an assumption in the BBC's reporting that there is now an "exodus" of civilians out of east Aleppo, yet when you click their link to photos apparently showing this, all you see are small groups, hardly even that. There is no exodus. The city has a vast population. Yet all we are shown are relatively few people. And why would they wish to leave? And evidence that there is a bloodbath, or at least that there are deaths of civilians at the hands of government forces in the streets and in their homes, does not exist.
The BBC have also included high up their news reports, 'testimony' from isolated anonymous sources in east Aleppo, as if such information can be assumed to be true. This isn't reporting, it's largely fiction. The liberal media and our governments care not a bit for life, but only their own easily dreamt-up, indulgent fantasies. The Left spout a childish narrative of good against evil; the government follow this as it works in their favour in helping their ally, Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: Peter Sullivan | 14 December 2016 at 10:54 AM
The truth about Aleppo
Mr Hitchens, if he does not already know about it, may be interested in searching for 'Western media lies about Syria exposed' on Youtube. For 18 minutes Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett gives her account of several recent visits to Aleppo, speaking, among other things, about media lies from the BBC, The Guardian and other media organisations. She backs up her allegations with evidence. It's a very calmly-delivered and sober delivery from her and well worth watching.
Posted by: Peter Sullivan | 13 December 2016 at 11:00 PM
@ C Morrison.
Forget it, you are wasting your time. Robert Godfrey is the Ayatollah of angry atheism, the Grand Mufti of manic Merkelism, the Imam of immoderate ... Oh, I'm sure by now you've caught my drift.
'
Posted by: Kevin 1 | 13 December 2016 at 09:35 PM
Speaking on LBC tonight, former Tory MP and Foreign Minister David Mellor tore Vladimir Putin's name to shreds ; he also suggested that the Kremlin influenced the outcome of the recent US Presidential Election, so to Mr Mellor, it wasn't purely the US voters' choice.
Posted by: TERENCE COURTNADGE | 13 December 2016 at 09:07 PM
It's surely now beyond doubt, that Cromwell was right about parliament.
Posted by: C. Morrison | 13 December 2016 at 07:21 PM
The whole case against the Russian government rests on on the unspoken assumption that Russia prefered Trump to Hillary. Does the Russian government prefer an unknown outsider, whose foreign policy will either be a) unpredictable or b) at the mercy of "focus groups", with a hands off approach from the president (e.g. Obama), or would they prefer an experienced political candidate, with whom Russia already has established official and unofficial (How much did Bill Clinton earn in Moscow - $500k?) relationships, and who would be more predictable in her foreign policy.
I cannot see prudent Russia preferring Trump. They were always realists.
Posted by: Marian Devers | 13 December 2016 at 05:36 PM
Remember, Obama agreed to allow the neocons to run his foreign policy. Trump has appointed General Flynn who hated Obamas policy in Syria. So the neocons are running out of time to start a war with Russia.
"Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." Rev 12:12
Expect a major false flag before Trump takes over that is intended to lead us further into war.
Posted by: WeLiveInATyranny | 13 December 2016 at 04:29 PM
Why does anyone think ISIS would be bombing us here at home when we have been in a covenant of protection with them in Syria. Go take a look on twitter they are still all using advanced American supplied TOW missiles against Assads tanks.
Posted by: WeLiveInATyranny | 13 December 2016 at 04:13 PM
The forensic evidence presented has been that a Russian language speaker was behind the attack. That much is convincing. I can't leave an insecure server on my network for a week without it getting hacked by Russians. (This is literally the case. We sent off a very nice bug bounty to a Russian-speaker in Eastern Europe the other day because of a third-party security goof. The vulnerability was only in existence 4 days before he found it.) But only a fool would see Putin's hand behind every server that gets hacked in the world.
CNN reported in July that the DNC servers were insecure for months, and that the Feds had warned the DNC, with no action being taken. That sounds more like incompetent security than state action to me. Why wasn't the RNC hacked? Maybe they updated their servers once in a while.
Why are McConnell and Ryan so concerned about the "cybersecurity measures of our nation being breached"? (I doubt they know how stupid that phrase sounds.) 1) They are insane warmongers, of course. 2) They hate Trump and want to keep him to 4 years. Even better if Trump/Pence can be impeached, of course, because Ryan/McConnell would simply replace him then.
Posted by: Joel | 13 December 2016 at 04:12 PM
If someone from CIA leaked a confidential document to the Press then that person would be arrested and locked up
Remember the CIA is also a misinformation network
Posted by: OWEN MARTIN | 13 December 2016 at 03:25 PM
Peter Sullivan | 13 December 2016 at 12:08 AM :
*** ... prior to reading this blog post I saw that the UN has now accused Russia and Assad's forces of atrocities in Aleppo ****
Note they repeat assertions, however absurd and extreme, made by jihadi propagandists -- even admitting at the same time that there is absolutely no verification -- but they recite the propaganda anyway.
That's corruption on a massive scale -- and collusion in jihadist war-crimes.
It is now obvious beyond any doubt that these UN officials and the -- utterly perverted 'things' -- which presently infest the ever more cesspit-like UK House of Commons, want IS / al-Nusra to win the war they've inflicted upon Syria.
In other words, unquestioning US-neocon puppets who have no true concern for the population of Syria at all.
Posted by: C. Morrison | 13 December 2016 at 02:57 PM
Obama claimed to want to close the US prison / torture facility at Guantanamo.
But he didn't. It is still there, and in use.
Strange thing, though -- despite all this time the US has claimed to be at war (officially in Iraq, and illegally in Syria) against IS and other closely associated terrorist groups, there has *not* been the increase that one might expect in the number of detainees at Guantanamo.
Nor do these terrorists seem to have suffered much damage from all the USAF's whooshes and bangs, or hundreds (thousands?) of US special forces having been deployed to that conflict zone.
One might almost suspect that the USAF has only been pretending to bomb them -- knocking off just enough cannon-fodder jihadists to make the cover story plausible -- while covertly assisting them. If they weren't so thoroughly dead, one particular squad of Syrian soldiers (ex-defenders of a key location) would certainly be thinking that.
The terrorist army attacking (perhaps by now destroying) Palmyra could escape from Mosul because the latter city was being assaulted from three sides, leaving a gap which conveniently steered the jihadists towards Palmyra.
Lavrov had warned about that weeks ago, but the USA weren't bothered....
US Vice President Biden has confirmed there are no "moderates" fighting on the anti-government side in Syria. So the US and UK politicians want (or rather, intend) to supply what must therefore be non-moderate jihadi terrorists with provisions and more powerful weapons....
While passing ever more draconian laws and inflicting ever more surveillance upon their own countries and populations -- supposedly to combat terrorism.
You really couldn't invent it --- but no need anyway, because they already did.
Posted by: C. Morrison | 13 December 2016 at 01:05 PM
I think that in regard to Russia the parade has already moved on with the Trump Presidency.What we could be seeing instead is the start of a new prolonged confontation between America and China for the dominion of the world.Trump has rightly identified China as being the far bigger threat in the long run.Interestingly the anti-Russian hawks have generally been the biggest kow-towers to China over the years.Perhaps the Russians greatest sin is that they are a white European Christian culture thus ringing all the bells on the liberal scale of what is bad.The people who accuse their opponents of taking Russian money are also the one who see no problem with lucrative Chinese trade deals.Which brings us to the British government.Ever since the Hong Kong deal thirty years ago Britain has also been among the keenest kow-towers with XI Jinping staying at Buck House etc.Now they could find themselves between a rock and a hard place forced to choose between America and China.Economics may suggest China but continuation of Trident and Britains nuclear status makes us totally dependent on the US.Britain has however been there before on this one.Just after the Great War Britain still had a treaty of alliance with Japan our ally in that war.However our other ally America made it plain in the bluntest of terms that they would be very displeased if we continued the alliance.So in the end we dropped it turning Japan from our ally to our enemy.How May and Johnson deal with the curent situation will be interesting to watch.So far they are keeping their heads down regarding China.
Posted by: Roy Robinson | 13 December 2016 at 12:37 PM