IMO the Battle of East Aleppo will be over soon. R+6 is carving up what is left of the pocket like a Christmas "Turkey" (Heh! Heh!). The Sheikh Sa'eed neighborhood at the south end of the kessel fell today, and a massive drive westward is underway from the area of Aleppo International Airport toward the citadel of Aleppo. At the same time the Tiger Forces and Palestinian militia are pressing south from the lines they held yesterday along the east-west highway at the "waist" of the former East Aleppo pocket. IMO the pocket will be gone in a few days.
At the same time civilians are fleeing to government lines en masse where they are transported to reception camps and provided food, water, shelter and medical care. The Russians have been moving mobile field hospitals into the Aleppo area to provide more capacity.
The lying US and European media are, of course, portraying the situation as something very different. In Mediaworld, the people of east Aleppo are fleeing from the government. I ask you, pilgrims, to what place would civilians be fleeing in trying to escape the government? The east Aleppo pocket is entirely surrounded by government allied force. Evidently a lot of media halfwits cannot read a map. The statement is also made in Mediaworld that there is a shortage of drinking water in east Aleppo. There is no mention in Mediaworld of the rebels' use of drinking water as an instrument for reward and punishment of civilians. There is also no mention of the SAA's capture of the city water works a couple of days ago and their ongoing efforts to turn the water back on.
Someone should explain to Madeleine Albright what the actual situation is in Syria. pl
Bravo, Colonel! Bravo! I’ve been driven nearly clean out of my mind during the past 24 hours of following Syria war news. Never in my lifetime have I witnessed so many deranged governments, ngos, reporters converge on one little country.
sir,
something tells me that reading this “map” isn’t a truth that they want to understand.
You know there is a saying that you can not wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.
Aka
It was an ironic statement on my part but I do think that a lot of these jerks can’t read a map. pl
Colonel,
As far as AFP is concerned, Aleppo is the opposition bastion near Damascus 🙂
Dear Colonel,
One wonders why Kerry is wasting his remaining weeks trying to convince the Russians to withdraw in the face of victory, rather than trying to accomplish something say in Latin America that he could cash in on after January. Not sure if it is possible to explain a map to him, either. Perhaps he could become a commentator on MSNBC?
All
Looks like the Idlib jihadis are going to have another go at breaking the siege from the Idlib side. Good!! pl
Bibi being the opportunist bombed the outskirts of Damascus this morning:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38155933
Mapreading skills? Surely you jest. Willful obdurate outrageous persistent evil. That is what the Borg has become. Good luck trying to cut off the head of that hydra and freeing your polity from its clutches. God knows you’re gonna need it.
Nuff Sed.
Persisting with the false narrative even when they know that it is widely known that is false is pretty amazing. I cannot quite work out why it is being done. I can see no prospect of jihadis prevailing in this. More and more people from east Aleppo are going to be telling it how it was. If I had been weeping for Bana and the White Helmets and sending them good wishes and presents I would be really quite angry to find out that I had been totally manipulated by the UK government and BBC. This emotion would be strengthened when I found out that this had been done for no respectable reason and realised there was no UK national interest at stake.
The media and the US government would consider this post part of the False News movement.
As to journalists and is it ignorance or …
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/30/the-cia-and-the-press-when-the-washington-post-ran-the-cias-propaganda-network/
Going, going, gone…
See https://twitter.com/A7_Mirza/status/803999817328394241
Some 500 local “rebels” went to the government side. 480 were allowed to go home after they promised to no longer fight.
In total some 15,000 people came out of half of east-Aleppo freed by the SAA. Not seen: the 270,000 the UN claimed to be there.
A new attack from outside is planned, allegedly on 7 axis! which would be the most stupid thing to do. They will be easy targets.
There are new pictures by the White Helmets of “dead people” with baggage in the street “fleeing people killed by Assad artillery” – pretty sure the pics are staged, the bags undamaged and the “dead” ready to get up again. Another fake.
I’m curious to find out how many actual civilians are still in east Aleppo. After liberating about half of the pocket it seems only around 15,000 civilians have escaped. It’s clear at this point that the actual number will turn out to be only a small fraction of the 150,000 – 200,000 number that was previously discussed.
In my opinion this was another coordinated lie by the vultures circling around Syria. The same lie was pushed regarding the Darriya pocket (and others) in Damascus that was finished off a while back, when it was revealed that the number of civilians was only a tiny fraction of what was claimed.
I see a pattern here. Are they doing this to ship in extra supplies for the terrorists?
Nuff Said
What I am saying is that the Borgists are militarily incompetent. pl
Antoine
FWIW I am indifferent to what the US Government, its external Borgist friends or anyone else may think of SST. pl
Colonel,
A good focus on the unfolding ‘reality on the ground’ at Allepo. But equally relevant is the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the Borg when faced with impending defeat.
Currently, large amounts on money and psuedo technology are being thrown at the proposition that its all due to Russia propaganda.
There is a list: http://www.propornot.com/p/the-list.html.
but SST has not (yet) been accorded a place on it. 😉
And this list does provide a starting point for POVs differing from the increasing non-sensical establishment media.
Yes. RT et al does do ‘propaganda’ on occasion,
but increasingly it is simply truthful.
Just like SST 🙂
Colonel,
A good focus on the unfolding ‘reality on the ground’ at Allepo. But equally relevant is the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the Borg when faced with impending defeat.
Currently, large amounts on money and psuedo technology are being thrown at the proposition that its all due to Russia propaganda.
There is a list: http://www.propornot.com/p/the-list.html.
but SST has not (yet) been accorded a place on it. 😉
And this list does provide a starting point for POVs differing from the increasing non-sensical establishment media.
Yes. RT et al does do ‘propaganda’ on occasion,
but increasingly it is simply truthful
Just like SST 🙂
The “white Helmet” pictures were probably produced to provide propaganda to western MSM counteract reports of rebels shooting at fleeing civilians such as this:
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/video-civilians-hit-rebel-gunfire-fleeing-eastern-aleppo/
They needn’t have bothered since I’ve seen no reports of this in the MSM.
DavidKNZ
I am increasingly bored with people who show up here and spout off without any knowledge of what has gone on here for 11 years. pl
Does anyone know who is behind this website:
http://www.propornot.com/p/home.html
Or has this topic already been discussed at SST? If so, where, please?
Thank you.
Couldn’t agree more with the colonel. It looks like being over shortly. B’s suggestion in his own blog of MoA that the jihadis could hold out in the old city doesn’t sound convincing for the moment. Things are are moving too fast, according to the latest map from Masdar. Lots of civilians evacuating, and 600 jihadis surrendering. It’s a movement. That kind of movement is hard to stop, though it can happen.
video of Syrian Army soldier reuniting with family
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/video-syrian-soldier-breaks-tears-upon-reunification-family-aleppo/
http://whois.domaintools.com/propornot.com
The site is registered to an “anonamizer” Company, often involved in scams,
http://800notes.com/forum/ta-63eff336cf62903/these-are-the-people-selling-your-info-to-the-fake-debt-scammers
As Emptywheel notes, the same questionable formulae and metrics the Propornot uses, outs the WaPo as a CIA Propaganda front controlled by Langley.
http://800notes.com/forum/ta-63eff336cf62903/these-are-the-people-selling-your-info-to-the-fake-debt-scammers
The Angry Arab reports that a western correspondent in the Middle East told him that there were about 50,000 Syrian fighters of all types in Aleppo and maybe a few thousand non-Syrians alongside them, although it’s not clear if that includes the SAA forces defending Aleppo to the west. Most reports suggest there are about 7,000 to 8,000 jihadists (who have now united under a single banner BTW). That’s a three to one, possibly seven to one advantage for the SAA. The rebels are going to be repeatedly hammered with the SAA hopefully being able to rotate units in and out of combat.
http://angryarab.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/new-york-times-on-bashshar-al-asad.html
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/besieged-aleppo-rebels-unite-new-jaish-halab-banner/
It’s not just the mainstream media that is spreading fake news, there are NGOs out there dong it as well.
http://angryarab.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/human-rights-watch-purposefully.html
And the UN seems to be supporting the use by the rebels of human shields:
“Stephen O’Brien told an emergency session of the UN security council that since Saturday 25,000 people had been forced from their homes in eastern Aleppo, more than half of them children, as the government offensive stormed into opposition districts.”
Fortunately Ms Powers seems to have been absent so it was left to the British and French representatives to fulfil her usual role of havng a hissy fit, but the Russian position was made clear.
“Churkin said Russia shared concern for the fate of the civilian population but argued their plight would not be eased by ceasing “counter-terrorist operations” against “bandits” that the UK and France had “coddled and fuelled”. He called the White Helmet civil defence organisation, which digs people out of bombed buildings, a “pseudo-humanitarian” group, and said UN resolutions calling for an end to the bloodshed were “a pointless tactic”.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/30/syria-aleppo-death-toll-united-nations-statistics
Oh my god… I just read this a minute ago: “Syria’s Aleppo loses clown who warmed war-torn hearts”. You can guess who did it. Lest you think I’m making this up, here’s a link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/syrias-aleppo-loses-clown-warmed-war-torn-hearts-184922980.html
This is either desperation, or trolling, or they’re conducting an experiment with how ridiculous they can get before people completely stop believing them…
Oops – the link to the very bad -naughty russian -deviant propagandermeisters actually works if you remove the last period from the link. 🙂
11 years ago. I was not aware of SST, so its been a learning curve, hopefully in the right direction. Even if I have been lurking awhile.
However, it does seem to me that Propornot is a new (cyberwar) development, and if you look at the site, one that has LARGE amounts of time, money and effort channelled in its direction.
“Follow the money” is not new advice, but I would be interested in the identity of the paymaster
Some of the slandered sites are preparing a legal counter. You could go to NakedCapitalism for some details on legal preparations. Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone has an excellent, contemptuous dismissal of this MSM charade.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/washington-post-blacklist-story-is-shameful-disgusting-w452543
In my view the Post story was so hamhanded that it will deservedly blow up in their faces.
You have to admire the efficiency of pro-Assad forces, especially the Russians.
All, The Beaver,
I am puzzled about how the Israeli airforce managed to fly airplanes to bomb near Damascus through the Russian umbrella. There are three possible explanations.
1. The news is false and SAA is covering for a more embarrassing explanation
2. Russia allowed Israel to fly a mission and bomb near Damascus
3. The Russian defense system is not as good as advertised.
I judge 1 most likely, though it raises the question what happened. Friendly Fire? If 3, then there are serious implications. if 2, it is very curious from a political point of view.
Calling them “Rebels” merely reinforces the borg narrative. Really they are not even terrorists, although they should be treated even worse than one. The majority are merely blood thirsty mercenaries, Hillary’s army.
All,
http://www.jta.org/2016/11/30/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/israeli-airstrikes-reportedly-hit-syrian-army-position-hezbollah-arms-convoy
Kenny
What would you like me to call them? what would the rest of you want me to call them? pl
DavidKNZ
I recommend the search function on SST to you. BTW I started SST 11 years ago in response to internet carriers’ objections to the number of addees to whom I was sending a newsletter. pl
From what I read (somewhere I cannot recall) they stayed in Lebanon air space and shot from there, that may explain why the Russians didn’t want to put them down.
Jihadists
@ ISL
From what I have read so far , it could be #2.
Looks like those living in Southern Lebanon saw the IAF planes.
The Israelis, though not commenting on that strike, thought that they were bombarding Hizb’Allah building but it seemed that there were no casulaties
Sunni Muslim Illegal Fighters – Sunni Muslim Jihadists
My source for the statement is lost in a pile of reports but I think it’s within the last 24 hours I saw it, possibly in a Sputnik report on Aleppo. Anyhow, it said that terrorists were dug in among buildings/monuments of historical importance that are situated very close together. And that there are a lot of civilians packed into the area.
So I’d assume this is in the old city.
Can’t recall whether the report noted this point or I inferred it, but clearly fighting under those conditions could be slow work. In particular if SAA is concerned that the bad guys have set mines among the monuments.
As to whether these holdouts are the last significant number of terrorists in E. Aleppo, that wasn’t mentioned. As to a reliable estimate of how many holdouts are left in total, I haven’t seen one.
In reply to Kenny 01 December 2016 at 04:33 AM
Since March 6th 2011 and Daraa protests the slogan of the rebels has been “الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام” look it up.
The overwhelming majority of those in arms against the Syrian government are Syrian citizens. Yes they’re getting support from abroad yes that support includes foreign fighters neither of those two facts alters the fundamental reality that you cannot run either an insurrection or a civil war with anything other than an overwhelming majority of locals in your armed forces.
I repeat the overwhelming majority of those who have taken up arms against the Syrian government are Syrian citizens in armed rebellion against that government. It’s not all about you and the actions and factions of the American political class. Get used to it.
I don’t pretend to know what is true about the White Helmets, but assuming the worst suspicions of them is correct, I wouldn’t expect to find that out from the MSM. They have their story about Syria and they aren’t going to change it no matter what turns out to be true. The average person isn’t going to learn any different if they rely on the press. The fallback position will be that the heroic Syrian rebels were crushed because the US didn’t provide assistance. The NYT was basically pushing that narrative in a story a few days ago.
Col. Lang, their primary objective is the establishment of Sharia Law, which comes after wresting control from the regime who they refer to as unbelievers.
They are Jihadists.
I suppose #2 would be consistent with no reports of antimissiles being fired. Although I have ready impressive things about the S-400, they mostly were aimed at intercepting firing platforms and large missiles at distance, and I don’t recall if it also addresses near field airborne missiles, too. Certainly the response time from radar lock to firing on an incoming missile (but not the airplane) is going to be real quick.
The legal codes in many Muslim states are either based on Sharia or are partially incorporating them. That is not the issue with Jihadists.
Jihadists are motivated, as far as I can tell, in propagating their own specific ideas of what a Muslim dispensation should look like. Anyone opposed to them – be they Muslim or not – is considered to be an enemy.
They are not Traditionalists but Revolutionaries, in my opinion.
The jihadists remind me a lot of our Communists in the Twenties and Thirties. As much as I don´t like their aims and their ideology I have to admit that I admire their guts and fighting spirit. I also understand how their propaganda could be appealing to young people. Nobody ever died to hack off somebodies head. Those young Nazi soldiers fought for “Europe” for a classless society, for the betterment of mankind.Not to create Auschwitz. It were always lofty goals, peace and equality (and Islam is a very “political” religion) that people died for.
Looking at todays recipes for a good life to be lived that society offers young people in Europe – no sacrifice, no goals, just material gain and endless instant gratification – I very well understand how some of the very best headed to Syria. Revolutionary young people indeed being exploited by cynical older people.
Liver-eaters or head-choppers sounds about right.
Sorry Dub, but citizen rebels don’t have TOW’s, sidewinders and hellfires and don’t use residents as human shields. They also cannot withstand a seige for weeks on end. Most of all rebels don’t continually and randomly mortar their neighbors just out of spite. Why were people continually dying in west aleppo from mortars?
No way just Sharia. There was recently the case of the jihadist who had been making gay porn.
Like the youth on the entire planet, they are under a large degree of mind control. Only their mind control apparently often includes suicide, murder and torture. There has been talk of the type of speed or MDA that they are all on, and the type of drug people are taking certainly influences the type of mind control. And also consider how they behaved in Cologne on New Years 2016.
How about “CIA agents”? In any case certainly not Rebel, the Confederacy has been besmirched far too much by the Obama regime already. I think it is racist for the Obama regime to all any non-European’s rebels. It is cultural appropriation of the concept of what a “Rebel” is.
When the Russians decided to go into the Syrian war in a big way, including air power, they agreed with the Israelis that they would deconflict any operations in advance so there would be no accidental “encounters.” Like the very occasional “dispensation” granted to the Turks to do something in or close to Russian ops, it might well have been worked out in advance. The Israeli target was supposedly a warehouse that housed [or had housed] arms destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israelis claim they also hit a shipment of stuff from that same source as it made its way to Lebanon.
Whatever you may choose to call them, their vision for a future Syria is not one that most Syrians of any ethnic or sectarian group would want to live under.
Ask any Indian living in the UAE who he would like to work for. Anybody will tell you a religious a truly religious Muslim is the best employer. – Read Osama Bin Laden. The man made a lot of sense. He knew his Chomsky. – No comparison to some street kids from Muslim countries striving after the mindless consumerist paradise who came to Cologne, full of pornographic fiction – No seriously. If there weren´t some truly great and good guys among the jihadists they wouldn´t attract such a following. – What does the West have to offer except material benefits? Democracy? No kidding. LBGT and the endless malleabilty of human nature? – Exactly because the West has no values except the $$$ is it helping the jihadists in Syria. If it were different there would be some respect for the West among the Muslim (and not only Muslim) masses. – I read up on the leader of the Lion brigade (Assads best soldier) lately. Not a bad poet (at least in the translation of Robert Fisk) and a man willing to lay down his life for something as intangible as religious tolerance. The very value that the West professes but doesn´t really believe in. It only believes in indifference.
Tom
“the West has no values except the $$$ is it helping the jihadists in Syria.” Got your ticket to Syria yet? We have no values in the West? Yes, the multi-cultis and the Borgists have no values that you care about? I would agree with that. pl
Not the Communists; at least they had some structure and reason behind them – like the works of Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin and the Com-Intern.
I think the Jihadists are more similar to anarchists at the turn of the last century.
You may have noted a point that I had endeavored to make several times that so many in EU are dependent on US-produced news, analysis, intelligence etc. that they have lost the capacity to think for themselves.
So OMB was reading the works of Chomsky, an anarcho-syndicalist critique of the United States foreign policy, who all the while supports Israel.
What can I say, even enemies of the United States rely on her intellectual production, they themselves are incapable of thinking and analyzing things for themselves.
Had they done that, their estimation of US might have been different; that it is the country most closely upholding and conforming to the ideals of Islam.
But I guess that would be too much for a non-Seljuk Muslim to assimilate.
It is with heavy heart that I announce, that the last clown of Aleppo is dead.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38167190
I noticed this “gay porno” angle being pushed heavily by certain MSM in a very suspicious manner, even with some headlines excluding or burying the fact that he was an ISIS sympathizer at all (“”German spy suspect appeared in gay porn”” “mole in German spy agency had been gay porn actor”,”Arrested German spy was a onetime gay porn actor — and a secret Islamist”)
Call me paranoid. Remember the Orlando attacks? Mention that to any american today and 95% of them will give you something about how homophobia and lack of gun control were the motivations for that. And the cultivation of that narrative was for sure not accidental given what we know after the fact
It is with heavy heart that I announce, that the last clown of Aleppo is dead.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38167190
Not true. His act may be flatlining,
but Secretary of State John Kerry is very much alive.
WRT the slightly off topic WaPo bullshit blacklist story and “Some of the slandered sites are preparing a legal counter. You could go to NakedCapitalism for some details on legal preparations.”
unless the WaPo story was a provocation: the opening gambit in a Libel War. WaPo is a well lawyered up corporation. Its “adversaries” are not.
In reply to James 01 December 2016 at 05:55 PM
That would be my personal and direct knowledge of the country. Next.
In reply to Kenny 01 December 2016 at 03:59 PM
They didn’t when they started their rebellion but they have them now. And don’t even THINK of trying to pretend to the readership of SST that there’s some other reason for them having those weapons other than because your government and its regional allies have been supplying those armaments to the Syrian rebels who are in a state of insurrection against their government.
Furthermore don’t even THINK of trying to pretend to the readership here that people who’ve been fighting for years are incapable of learning how to use armaments that are designed specifically to be easy to use.
“They also cannot withstand a seige for weeks on end.”
The experience of both the Spanish civil war and that Yugoslavian one gives the lie to that statement. There’s the sieges of Mostar, and Srebenica both lasted for months. And that’s before we start talking about the siege of Sarajejo which lasted for nearly 4 YEARS.
“cannot withstand a seige ((sic) for weeks on end” my ass.
“don’t use residents as human shields” the wide spread use of civilian humans shields and hostages by participants in the Spanish, Lebanese, and Yugoslavian civil ware gives the lie to that statement.
“Most of all rebels don’t continually and randomly mortar their neighbors just out of spite.”
They do it to drive their neighbours from their homes. Ask the Lebanese, the Yugoslavs, and the Spanish.
“Why were people continually dying in west aleppo from mortars?”
Because the people shelling them with indirect fire were trying to drive them out.
I hope you won’t take it amiss when I point out that your statements and arguments betray a wilful ignorance of the topic at hand.
PS: How’s Barby?
In reply to Kenny 01 December 2016 at 04:12 PM
Just when I think your comments can’t get any more self-absorbed, ridiculuous, not say to say false and the sort of thing that only an ignorant buffoon would say you go and prove me wrong.
Here let me make it easy for you:
Rebel (noun): a person who rises in opposition or armed resistance against an established government or leader.
synonyms: revolutionary, insurgent, revolutionist, mutineer, agitator, subversive, guerrilla, anarchist, terrorist;
Rebel (verb): rise in opposition or armed resistance to an established government or leader.
synonyms: revolt, mutiny, riot, rise up, rise up in arms, take up arms, stage/mount a rebellion, take to the streets, defy the authorities, refuse to obey orders, be insubordinate
You’ll note that there’s nothing in any of that to do with the defeated side in the American civil war. Nothing to do with the Obama government. It takes a really special form of pig-ignorant eff-wittedness to say that using the word correctly as our host does is and I quote you direct:
“cultural appropriation of the concept of what a “Rebel” is.”
Has it occurred to you that our host published your remark for the admittedly slightly cruel entertainment of everyone else here?
Nobody ever died to hack off somebodies head.
Odd way to put it. Died for hacking off somebody’s head?
But yes, it needs a bigger aim. And more coherent narratives.
But vaguely your choice reminds me of a humanities article (background of the author). That seemed to argue via Burke (wrongly, I think) that the atrocities were exactly the best of all recruitment techniques. ….
Thanks for the tip 🙂
11 years ago I was an ex army officer who became quite profoundly disturbed by the gap between the ‘code of honour’ I had been taught and events unfolding in the middle east. Then came actual retirement, which gave me time to dig a little deeper via that wonderful American invention, the Internet. I found a number of sites, including SST, that posed an alternative view that actually made sense. And, in SSTs case, correspondents that I could relate to and respect. Simultaneously came an awareness of what is variously called ‘The Borg’, ‘AngloZionist, ‘the MSM’ – various incarnations of the intent to prevail, dominate and ultimately destroy. For some years I lurked; but I now have grandchildren and an obligation to speak against insanity. I would hope my legacy to them is of a different kind than Mr Obama’s $Trillion legacy of safer, more user friendly nuclear weapons 🙂