For the first time, Britain has produced an utterly clueless Foreign Secretary.
Maybe, Boris was OK as Mayor of London.
Not surprisingly, he concurs with what Kerry tells him, and is now calling for a more ‘kinetic’ approach to the Syrian conflict – i.e., to threaten war with Russia.
Its all so exciting isn’t it Boris?
This is a golden opportunity for Our Jeremy. The Lion-hearted Jeremy. All those years we’ve heard his roar on the anti-war demos…. but now, is he entrapped by his own party? We are hurt by his terrible silence.
Boris Johnson has called for demonstrations outside the Russian embassy. Is that how a Foreign Secretary should behave? Where does this leave Russian diplomats in London? That is encouraging race hate – Russians are Slavs. Isn’t that a crime? Jeremy, speak up!
As Wikileaks has revealed, for years the US has aggressively pursued regime change in Syria, which has ignited the present bloodbath.
Here is a fine summary of the crisis over Aleppo, as reported in the Boston Globe:
‘For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it.
This month, people in Aleppo have finally seen glimmers of hope. The Syrian army and its allies have been pushing militants out of the city. Last week they reclaimed the main power plant. Regular electricity may soon be restored. The militants’ hold on the city could be ending.
Militants, true to form, are wreaking havoc as they are pushed out of the city by Russian and Syrian Army forces. “Turkish-Saudi backed ‘moderate rebels’ showered the residential neighborhoods of Aleppo with unguided rockets and gas jars,” one Aleppo resident wrote on social media. The Beirut-based analyst Marwa Osma asked, “The Syrian Arab Army, which is led by President Bashar Assad, is the only force on the ground, along with their allies, who are fighting ISIS — so you want to weaken the only system that is fighting ISIS?”
This does not fit with Washington’s narrative. As a result, much of the American press is reporting the opposite of what is actually happening. Many news reports suggest that Aleppo has been a “liberated zone” for three years but is now being pulled back into misery.
Americans are being told that the virtuous course in Syria is to fight the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian partners. We are supposed to hope that a righteous coalition of Americans, Turks, Saudis, Kurds, and the “moderate opposition” will win.
This is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it. We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media.
Under intense financial pressure, most American newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks have drastically reduced their corps of foreign correspondents. Much important news about the world now comes from reporters based in Washington. In that environment, access and credibility depend on acceptance of official paradigms. Reporters who cover Syria check with the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and think tank “experts.” After a spin on that soiled carousel, they feel they have covered all sides of the story. This form of stenography produces the pabulum that passes for news about Syria.
Astonishingly brave correspondents in the war zone, including Americans, seek to counteract Washington-based reporting. At great risk to their own safety, these reporters are pushing to find the truth about the Syrian war. Their reporting often illuminates the darkness of groupthink. Yet for many consumers of news, their voices are lost in the cacophony. Reporting from the ground is often overwhelmed by the Washington consensus.
Washington-based reporters tell us that one potent force in Syria, al-Nusra, is made up of “rebels” or “moderates,” not that it is the local al-Qaeda franchise. Saudi Arabia is portrayed as aiding freedom fighters when in fact it is a prime sponsor of ISIS. Turkey has for years been running a “rat line” for foreign fighters wanting to join terror groups in Syria, but because the United States wants to stay on Turkey’s good side, we hear little about it. Nor are we often reminded that although we want to support the secular and battle-hardened Kurds, Turkey wants to kill them. Everything Russia and Iran do in Syria is described as negative and destabilizing, simply because it is they who are doing it — and because that is the official line in Washington.
UK citizens are being given a wholly untruthful storyline here, as if trying to stimulate WW3. What a golden opportunity for Jeremy to speak out, against the war-hawks!
But wait, The hard-left group ‘Momentum’ are trying to pressure Jeremy to speak out – condemning Putin and Assad! They, it claims, have caused ‘the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths.’ Their letter to him spoke of the ‘horrific crimes’ of Assad.
Erm, no.
The letter to Corbyn from Momentum is totally Blairite! A ‘hands off Syria’ policy, it says, will only give Assad carte blanche to continue slaughtering his own people. We heard that crap from Blair when he was starting the Iraq war – Saddam Hussein is so evil, he even gasses his own people. Then we heard it about Ghadaffy – he keeps bombing his own people, we’ve got to stop it. So Libya was destroyed. Now its Assad’s turn.
Stop the War loonies
Lest Weekend Our Jeremy was heckled at a Stop the War, for failing to call for regime change! But, did not Assad just recently win a fair election with around 70% of the vote? Why do Britons believe they have a right to call for other countries’ ‘regime change’?
Here are some comments on the Mail’s article about this Stop the War meeting, the ‘best rated’:
There would be no war in Syrian if America and UK never went in with the bombs, and protected, funded, supported, trained and supplied….I* S* I* S rebels!
Do they want to see Assad suffer the same fate as Iraqi and Libyan leaders. Assad is still the Syrian President, world leaders should be talking to him, not trying to kill him.
Syria regime change is for the Syrians to decide. You don’t arm rebels and mercenaries from all over the world and send them to Syria to change the regime.
Peace activists! What kind of peace activist would demand regime change after catastrophes in Iraq and Libya? These are infiltrators and that was so obvious.
The sort who are bankrolled by Globalist Billionaires, intent on flooding Europe with migrants.
C’mon Jeremy, speak for the Peace Movement – not the Other Side.
Alas, Jeremy has now thrown Red Ken to the wolves, chuckled him off Labour’s NEC because of some whining Jews, after Ken had made a totally historically-correct statement about the Hasbara agreement between Jews and Nazis in the 1930s. (Ken also added, ‘The creation of the State of Israel was a great catastrophe’) Jeremy and Red Ken had been together for decades, always part of the same anti-war struggle. This is a moment when Jeremy would really need advice, guidance and support from his old friend Ken Livingstone.
Labor needs a policy in accord with international law – not piracy.
The Voice of Reason
And this – every Labour MP needs to view this:
To see through the diabolical lies of the British news media, this one is helpful –
RAF in Syria
What the hell are RAF planes doing, flying over Syria? Its a sovereign state and they have no right under international law to do this. The RAF calls this ‘Operation Shader’ and say its for ‘anti-ISIS work in Iraq and Syria.’ Will they attack Russian planes? A pilot may do so: “if a pilot is fired on or believes he is about to be fired on, he can defend himself. ” So RAF Tornado pilots illegally flying over Syria can now start WW3.
Presumably this is the ‘kinetic’ approach to the crisis that Boris Johnson has called for.
For evil depths of UK Syria policy, see Felicity Arbuthnot (also here).
Entrapment of Russia via Syria