Aleppo is Syria’s biggest city, and more facts you aren’t hearing in main media

If the US was concerned about democracy it wouldn’t be selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, now making war on Yemen and killing thousands of civilians in air attacks. It would have built on the positive moves being made by the Syrian government instead of trying to overthrow it. And why did it want to do that? Because it wanted to destroy Iran’s main ally in the Middle East and, in the process, fatally weaken the strategic alliance between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah in Lebanon. A second motive was oil, and the need for a Qatari pipeline to cross Syria, not one from Iran.

Failing to secure UN Security Council support for another aerial onslaught, on the Iraqi and Libyan models, the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar threw their financial and armed support behind the takfiri groups who have devastated Syria.

The word “takfiri” is more accurate than the commonly used “jihadist”. It describes people who regard everyone who does not agree with them – including Muslims – as non-believers ripe for the slaughter. All the fighting groups are takfiri. There are no “moderates” being backed against “extremists”, as even the US Vice President, Joe Biden, finally had to admit. They all operate from the same ideological base.

Since late last year the Syrian army, backed by Russian air power, has been steadily rolling back these groups. Late last year Russia intervened with the permission of the Syrian government. All other governments taking part in military action inside Syria are operating in serious standing violation of international law. They include Australia, which was involved in the recent US-led air near the eastern city of Deir al Zor. Scores of Syrian soldiers were killed and many more wounded. Australia apologized for the bombing, calling it a mistake, which the best evidence suggests that it was not, and that was the end of it.

The present epicentre of the war is Aleppo, so here are some more facts, which the media is not passing on to you. Aleppo is Syria’s biggest city. It is multi-ethnic, with a large Christian population, and managed to keep out of this conflict until it was infiltrated by takfiri groups in 2012. Their victims included two Orthodox bishops kidnapped by Chechens in 2013. There are reports they are still alive, or that one is alive, and also reports they have been murdered. (Click on map to enlarge it.)

The kidnapping of these men is part of a general assault on Christians and Christian churches in Syria, against all the teachings of Islam. The armed men who commit such deeds cannot be called Muslims.

The takfiris do not hold all of the city, only some districts in the east. Many civilians fled when they arrived but 200,000-250,000 are still there, effectively trapped and held hostage. The most powerful armed group in Aleppo is Jabhat al Nusra, the Al Qaida franchise in Syria, which recently rebranded itself as Jabhat Fath al Sham (Front for the Conquest of Syria) in an attempt to distance itself in the public mind from its origins and its ideology while remaining the same bloodthirsty group it always was.

The Syrian army has now encircled Aleppo and is trying to drive these people out. This is an army, by the way, and not the “Assad loyalists” or the “regime forces” to which the media regularly refers. It is fighting for the country, for a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional secular republic, against attempts to replace it with a regime that would make the Taliban or the Saudis look like softies. While the media is concentrating on Russian or Syrian attacks, it completely ignores the shelling of the government-held quarters by the “rebels” virtually every day. While the media focus on the alleged victims of the Russian or Syrian attacks it shows none of the victims of mortar shells or “hell bombs” – gas cylinders filled with metal fragments, glass and other deadly material – fired by the “rebels” into the government-held suburbs.

For all the attention given by the media to the bombing of hospitals, it ignores the destruction of Aleppo’s biggest hospital, Al Kindi, by these armed groups. They drove a truck packed with explosives into the main entrance, blew it up then took over the hospital and set it up as a military post. It has now been regained by the Syrian army, but is nothing but rubble.

Many of the videos and photographs coming out of the “rebel”-held quarters of city are staged. Fabrications through photo manipulating or staged events have been integral to the propaganda war. Those with the time to look can find plenty of examples on the internet. This is not to say civilians are not being killed. This is a war, after all, and civilians are being killed – but on both sides. You the media consumer would hardly know that.

Readers will have seen the photo of the bewildered, blood-smeared five-year-old boy sitting in an ambulance in Aleppo. It flashed around the world, dominating news pages and TV screens.

This seems to have been another setup. No paramedic would leave a small child alone in the back of an ambulance without even wiping off the blood to check the wound. Further, the “activist” who recorded this scene was linked to one of the most murderous takfiri contingents, the Nur al Din Zinki Brigade, which had only recently beheaded a 12 or 13-year-old Palestinian boy in the back of a pickup truck.

The “White Helmets” are another part of the propaganda war. They are regularly seen carrying children (and only children) from the rubble of destroyed buildings. This “aid” group, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but thankfully not receiving it, is embedded with the takfiri groups. It operates only in the areas held by these groups and is not independent, as it claims, but is funded by outside governments, including the US, the UK and the Dutch. It has a particularly close relationship with the British Foreign Office. It has no standing whatsoever with the International Civil Defence Organization (ICDO), not even that of an affiliated member.

Many of its “volunteer” members flaunt their admiration for the Islamic State or other takfiri groups on their Facebook pages. Many have been photographed standing with the armed groups, holding weapons and giving the single finger “takbir” (God is great) jihadist salute. Syria has had an authentic civil defence society since the 1950s. Our media tell us nothing of its work in rescuing civilians, rushing to the site of suicide bombings and the sites of other atrocities committed by takfiri groups supported by outside governments.

(Bandicoot strongly urges you to watch https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/361887-white-helmets-aid-pr/ for more information on the “white helmets”. It will shock you. Western media, including Australia’s, are far from properly informed, or informative, on the Syrian conflict. For another revealing discussion, go to /362204-syria-russia-us-relations/)

The recent bombing of an aid convoy outside Aleppo was blamed on Russia by the US and its allies. There is not a jot of evidence for this. There is no evidence even that it was an air attack. It seems to have been a provocation launched by the “rebels”, partly to take the heat off the Americans after their attack on the Syrian army position. In taking these events at face value, without asking the questions that need to be asked, the media are acting again (after Iraq and Libya) as propagandist stenographers: more dangerously, they are playing their part in priming people for war.

There is a mountain of inconvenient facts and alternative interpretations that the media are not passing on to you, in favour of perpetuating a distorted narrative about a civil war and the “moderates” these outside governments are said to be supporting. In fact they are the groups (or their clones) against which we were supposed to be aligned in the “war on terror”. In any case this is no longer just a Syrian war but an existential contest between the US and Russia. The US is losing but is determined to win. Vladimir Putin, having committed Russian forces, cannot back off, either.

So be on your guard. Whether here or in the US or the UK, the mainstream media are parroting the government line. Look for alternative sources on the net and come to your own conclusions. For your sake, for the sake of Syria and its people, and for the sake of avoiding what Putin has described as America’s “irreversible course” towards war – a war that could be nuclear – do not allow yourselves to be played for fools again.”

What will it take for the American public to wake up and realise they are being sucked right into the latest (and possibly the final) geopolitical act from the horror theatre that is the Project for a New American Century?

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“No Longer Just a Syrian War but an Existential Contest Between the US and Russia”