SouthFront — SYRIAN WAR REPORT – DEC. 10, 2018: U.S. OFFICIALLY ACCUSES ASSAD, RUSSIA OF STAGING CHEMICAL ATTACK IN ALEPPO

False false flag.  Neocons in charge in the US now. This means war.

The Vineyard of the Saker
U.S. Officially Accuses Assad, Russia Of Staging Chemical Attack In Aleppo
The Saker

See also

SourhFront
Ukrainian Air Force Deployed Combat Drones To Carry Out Chemical Provocation In Donbass: DPR Military

Jan Oberg — Aleppo’s Liberation one year ago – Anybody ashamed today?

Remember the flurry about Aleppo and its "fall" to the regime from the "moderate opposition"?

Here is an eye-witness report from a journalist who was there that debunks it. Did any Western media report this? 

So much for the free Western media – proving excellently their place as the second M in the MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – that is always ready to promote violence and omit or marginalise the voices of conflict understanding and peace....

TFF
Aleppo’s Liberation one year ago – Anybody ashamed today?
Jan Oberg

Pat Lang — Large numbers of Syrians are returning home

Putting Assad's alleged Aleppo massacre aided by Russia to bed. It was disinformation.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Large numbers of Syrians are returning home
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Zero Hedge — Photos Of Aleppo Rising: Swimsuits, Concerts And Rebuilding In First Jihadi-Free Summer

Life under the Assad government now that it's safe for journos to visit Aleppo again.

Now, during the first summer of relative calm Aleppo residents have seen in over four years of grinding conflict, the city commonly referred as "the jewel of Syria" is once again rising from the ashes. Foreign journalists are also accessing places like East Aleppo and the heart of the walled 'old city' for the first time. Some few honest correspondents, unable to deny the local population's spirit of hopefulness and zeal with which they undertake rebuilding projects, acknowledge that stability and normalcy have returned only after the last jihadists were expelled by the Syrian government and its allies.

Oh, the horror.

Zero Hedge
Photos Of Aleppo Rising: Swimsuits, Concerts And Rebuilding In First Jihadi-Free Summer

Tyler Durden

Steven Chovanec — Contrasting Tales of Two Besieged Cities

During the Syrian army’s offensive to retake the eastern part of Aleppo from the insurgent opposition, the Western media portrayed the assault as if Russia and Syria were carrying out a campaign primarily aimed at killing and harming civilians. The humanitarian crisis dominated headlines while key facts, such as Al Qaeda’s domination of the opposition forces and the way in which the militants had brutally conquered the city’s civilians, were marginalized or not reported at all.

A similar military offensive being carried out by the U.S. and its allies in the Iraqi city of Mosul reveals the hypocritical nature of Western news outlets, which portray their own countries’ actions as targeting only Islamic State terrorists and scrupulously avoiding harm to civilians.

There is no doubt that the siege in eastern Aleppo resulted in a humanitarian crisis for the civilian population trapped within the warzone. As the Washington Institute’s Fabrice Balanche described: “What the United Nations is describing [about] the humanitarian situation is correct: hospitals destroyed, people living in shelters, women and children trapped in the rubble, and so on.”

Yet in reality the destruction waged upon Aleppo was hardly different from what is now being done in Mosul as the U.S.-led coalition carries out a similar campaign of counterinsurgency and siege warfare.

Currently the Iraqi army, backed by U.S. airstrikes, is conducting a violent and brutal assault on the western parts of Mosul city in order to drive out the Islamic State. A whole population of civilians is trapped within an ongoing warzone and cut off from food supplies and basic necessities as the military offensive hits heavily populated areas killing civilians while destroying important infrastructure in the process, including hospitals.
Yet, while Western officials and media pundits vehemently condemned the Syrian assault on Aleppo, they are largely silent — or congratulatory and supportive — as the U.S. and its partners lay waste to the more heavily populated city of Mosul.

A senior Iraqi politician told veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn that “the Iraqi armed forces will eventually capture west Mosul … but the city itself will be destroyed in the fighting,” pointing to the massive destruction already inflicted upon eastern Mosul which was recently captured by the U.S.-backed forces.

So, even though the current U.S.-led siege has resulted in a larger humanitarian crisis in purely quantitative terms, the outcry over it is largely nonexistent. The trauma is reported on, but selectively, while the full extent of the civilian catastrophe is hidden from view.…

Consortium News
Contrasting Tales of Two Besieged Cities 

Steven Chovanec

Moon of Alabama — Al-Qaeda Cut Leaves 5 Million Thirsty In Damascus - Western Media Unconcerned

There is a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Syria and the "western" media ignore it.
On December 22 al-Qaeda aligned Takfiris in the Wadi Barada valley shut down the main water supply for the Syrian capital Damascus. Since then the city and some 5-6 million living in and around it have to survive on emergency water distributions by the Syrian government. That is barely enough for people to drink - no washing, no showers and no water dependent production is possible.

This shut down is part of a wider, seemingly coordinated strategy to deprive all government held areas of utility supplies. Two days ago the Islamic State shut down a major water intake for Aleppo from the Euphrates. High voltage electricity masts on lines feeding Damascus have been destroyed and repair teams, unlike before, denied access. Gas supplies to parts of Damascus are also cut. A similar tactic was used by the Zionist terrorists of the Haganah who in 1947/48 poisoned and blew up the water mains and oil pipelines to Palestinian Haifa....

"Our guys" at work. Nothing to see here and not to worry, because "Assad must go."

Moon of Alabama
Al-Qaeda Cut Leaves 5 Million Thirsty In Damascus - Western Media Unconcerned
b

Jan Oberg — Humans In Liberated Aleppo

Photo journalism by a Swede on the scene at the time of the liberation of East Aleppo. Photographs and commentary that exposes the Western narrative and fake news based on it as propaganda.


Humans In Liberated AleppoDecember 11-12, 2016
Jan Oberg


See also

What happens when you fund terrorists as proxies and give them weapons.

This is hardly isolated but similar to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

The Destruction of Eastern Aleppo, Syria

Assad Abu Khalil — So were did all those Syrians in East Aleppo go?

Of 111,000 displaced fr east Aleppo, 74,951 or 2/3 went to Gov-controlled areas, & 36,086 to reb areas. v @aronlund https://t.co/TCBC0JxZUv(https://twitter.com/joshua_landis/status/814557370659569664?s=09)….

Angry Arab News Service
So were did all those Syrians in East Aleppo go?
Assad Abu Khalil | Professor of Political Science, California State University, Stanislaus

See also

"According to a poll by the Yuri Levada Analytical Center last December, just 14 percent of Russians saw the country’s first president as a positive figure. The Levada Center has published other polls that suggest that a majority of Russians regret the fall of the Soviet Union, think that it could have been avoided and feel as though the Yeltsin years brought more harm than good."

Meanwhile, the US believes that regime change in Russia would bring another Western puppet to power.

Stupid US media insist that Russians should consider their puppet Yeltsin as the era of freedom

Tom O'Connor — Syrian Christians Celebrate Christmas Festivities In Aleppo

Social media users this week shared pictures and videos of Christians celebrating Christmas festivities in western Aleppo for the first time in at least four years. The images emerged as the Syrian army asserted control over the city's last rebel-held eastern pockets.

Accounts, many of which belonged to supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad, posted photographs and footage of Syrians lighting Christmas trees in a square in western Aleppo. Celebrations were reportedly interrupted by a bombing in the city's Aziziyeh neighborhood. However, no injuries were reported. After years of conflict and continued reports of violence on both sides following an uneasy ceasefire reached between the Syrian government and the opposition, Christians expressed their hope that this holiday season would bring stability.

"Despite the harsh conditions the people of Aleppo are enduring, [for both] Christians and Muslims, Christmas brings the hope for peace that we have missed for the last five years. Although many churches have been destroyed in Aleppo, the bells of the other churches will sound and hope they bring us peace," Jesuit Father Ziad Hilal told Christian Post. "Christians are preparing themselves for Christmas in their churches and associations, along with our compatriots in Syria, so that the sound of violence overcomes the deep sound of faith that each believer enjoys — God is with us."...

Yahoo News
Syrian Christians Celebrate Christmas Festivities In Aleppo
Tom O'Connor, International Business Times

This year, many people in the liberated city of Aleppo are celebrating for the first time since the war began. RT’s Lizzie Phelan talked with residents of the war-ravaged city now recovering from its wounds.... 

Video and pictures.

RT

War-torn Aleppo celebrates Christmas, shares stories of joy & loss with RT (EXCLUSIVE

This morning, the local newspaper reported that Christmas was being celebrated in sections of Mosul liberated from ISIS, but there was no mention that Aleppo had been liberated from Al Qaeda and was celebrating Christmas for the first time in five years.

None of the Western media (left, center, and right) bothered to show footage of X-mas celebrations in Aleppo. Why is that? Is that considered "pro-regime propaganda"? Why is that reality bothersome to Western media? What is about those scenes that Western media want to suppress? I mean the rigid propaganda line about Syria in Western media supersedes even the traditional sectarian Christian bias of Western media coverage of the Middle East.

Angry Arab News Service
X-mas scenes from Aleppo
Assad Abu Khalil | Professor of Political Science, California State University, Stanislaus

But even then the celebration in government-controlled West Aleppo was disrupted.

Orthodox Cognate Page

Explosion disrupts Christmas celebrations in Aleppo

UPDATE

Reuters reports on on Christmas in Aleppo, although Reuters apparently has no one on the ground there.

Christians in Aleppo celebrated under a giant Christmas tree lit up for the first time in five years, hailing what many described as the return of peace to a city that came back under full government control last week.

Reuters
Aleppo Christians celebrate holiday in hope peace has returned

Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman

RT — Red paint not blood: Photographer nabbed shooting fake images of ‘Aleppo suffering’ in Egypt

Some real fake news. Really fake, that is.

RT
Red paint not blood: Photographer nabbed shooting fake images of ‘Aleppo suffering’ in Egypt

Moon of Alabama — Syria - Killing Journos Enabled "Media Activist" Domination - Intended Effect?

As pointed out yesterday, a recent tweet series by Club des Cordeliers made some interesting observation about the #StandWithAleppo propaganda campaign:

The "Stand with Aleppo" campaign in the U.S. was started and is propelled by a Democratic party operative who is also CEO of a public relations company and "strategic affairs consultant" in Chicago, Becky Carroll.

The Cordeliere made some additional remarks on anti-Syria propaganda. These about the U.S. directed Information Warfare campaign from inside Syria. This leads me to the thoughts below about the U.S. waged Unconventional Warfare in Syria and how it may be responsible for the elimination of "neutral" journalists on the ground....

We have to see the killing and kidnapping of journalists as a (secret) part of the arsenal of the Unconventional Warfare and the U.S. created propaganda storm out of Syria.

The same applies to humanitarian Non-Government Organizations. Neither the United Nations, nor the Red Cross or any other neutral NGO had staff in east-Aleppo. Only the MI-6 propaganda outlet SOHR in Coventry provides numbers allegedly sourced from Syria. Only (U.S. trained) "media activists" on the Takfiri site report or tweet from inside east-Aleppo. Only these get interviewed. Only the U.S./UK created and directed "White Helmets" and the French government sponsored Takfiri "Aleppo Media Channel" produce pictures and videos from inside east-Aleppo. As this was the only available information source and sole available audio-visual material it was heavily used by news outlets around the world. It reflected solely the armed oppositions and its sponsors' views and warfare needs.

If one intends to give a maximum effect to the propaganda output of ones proxies in an Information Warfare operation, it makes great sense to eliminate all other potential sources of information from the wider warzone. Thus - the abduction and killing of neutral professional journalists is a conscious process that enables their replacement with ones own Information Warfare assets. I believe we have seen such a process in Syria....

Moon of Alabama

Syria - Killing Journos Enabled "Media Activist" Domination - Intended Effect?

b

See also

The sources for these reports are so-called ‘activists’. Who are they? As far as I know, there was not one single staff reporter for any Western news organisation in eastern Aleppo last week. Not one.

THIS is for the very good reason that they would have been kidnapped and probably murdered. The zone was ruled without mercy by heavily armed Osama Bin Laden sympathisers, who were bombarding the west of the city with powerful artillery (they frequently killed innocent civilians and struck hospitals, since you ask). That is why you never see pictures of armed males in eastern Aleppo, just beautifully composed photographs of handsome young unarmed men lifting wounded children from the rubble, with the light just right....

The Daily Mail
PETER HITCHENS: Amid the bombs of Aleppo, all you can hear are the lies

Patrick Cockburn — There's More Propaganda Than News Coming Out of Aleppo This Week

It has just become more dangerous to be a foreign correspondent reporting on the civil war in Syria. This is because the jihadis holding power in east Aleppo were able to exclude Western journalists, who would be abducted and very likely killed if they went there, and replace them as news sources with highly partisan “local activists” who cannot escape being under jihadi control.

The foreign media has allowed – through naivety or self-interest – people who could only operate with the permission of al-Qaeda-type groups such as Jabhat al-Nusraand Ahrar al-Sham to dominate the news agenda.

The precedent set in Aleppo means that participants in any future conflict will have an interest in deterring foreign journalists who might report objectively. By kidnapping and killing them, it is easy to create a vacuum of information that is in great demand and will, in future, be supplied by informants sympathetic to or at the mercy of the very same people (in this case the jihadi rulers of east Aleppo) who have kept out the foreign journalists.

Killing or abducting the latter turns out to have been a smart move by the jihadis because it enabled them to establish substantial control of news reaching the outside world. This is bad news for any independent journalist entering their territory and threatening their monopoly of information.

There was always a glaring contradiction at the heart of the position of the international media: on the one hand it was impossibly dangerous for foreign journalists to enter opposition-held areas of Syria, but at the same time independent activists were apparently allowed to operate freely by some of the most violent and merciless movements on earth....

Why everything in the Western media about Aleppo is fake news created by jihadis and jihadi sympathizers. "Jihadi sympathizers" includes the Western mainstream including the MSM.

But what about the moderates, you say?

There was a period in 2011 and 2012 when there were genuinely independent opposition activists operating inside Syria, but as the jihadis took over these brave people were forced to flee abroad, fell silent or were dead.

Probably most in the West have no idea that their governments are allied with al Qaeda, its affiliates and other jihadis because they believe what they are told. The Big Lie depends on being so big that most people don't doubt it. In the West, most people are still taken in by propaganda, even through they known that they have been taken in the past. The saying, 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you," doesn't always hold. Publics are extremely gullible and politicians, PR people, and advertisers know this and take advantage of it.

Propagandists should read the Aesop fable, "The Boy Cried Wolf." This tactic of controlling the narrative with fake news will end up backfiring.

The social fabric underling functional society is based on trust. When trust breaks down, so do societies. As the social fabric frays, social dysfunction increases.

I would also remind people that post 9/11, constitutional liberties were suspended by the Patriot Act and other legislation, domestic security was militarize, posse comitatus was suspended for the military to operate domestically, intelligence services were provided with unlimited surveillance, effectively transforming a liberal democracy in to a police state, a national security state, and a surveillance state, in which the chief executive has the power of indefinite detention and even summary assassination (read execution).

The Unz Review
There's More Propaganda Than News Coming Out of Aleppo This Week
Patrick Cockburn

Moon of Alabama Sabotage Of East-Aleppo Evacuation Is Part Of A Plan

I doubt that this is a solely al-Qaeda induced incident. It seems to me that the certain U.S. forces (aka the CIA) are trying to prolong the removal of al-Qaeda from east-Aleppo for their own purpose.
Just yesterday the Washington Post (again) reported on the years long collusion between the CIA and al-Qaeda in Syria:

The CIA meanwhile continued to push a program that targeted Russia and its Syrian and Iranian allies — and helped shield Jabhat al-Nusra.

There are several "western" groups that want to keep the evacuation stalled to continue their anti-Syrian, anti-Russian and anti-Iran agenda.

The U.S. administration is miffed that it was kept out of the recent negotiations. It wants to demonstrate that any negotiations without its participation will not have any positive result.

The hundreds of "last video from Aleppo" of "Bana" and other propaganda creatures claiming to be there look like a highly coordinated Information Warfare campaign. The "Stand with Aleppo" campaign in the U.S. was started and is propelled by a Democratic party operative who is also CEO of a public relations company and "strategic affairs consultant" in Chicago, Becky Carroll. Its aim is to escalated the situation in Syria.

Meanwhile members of the Syrian opposition, or rather their "western" controllers in the CIA, are now emphasizing Iran, not Russia, as alleged spoiler in Syria. They claim, without any evidence, that Iran or its operatives held up the evacuations. This is part of a plan to preempt announced Trump policies of negotiating an end of the Syria conflict.

Meanwhile, Western propaganda and fake outrage that "Assad," aided by Russia, Iran, and Hizbullah, is murdering the populace strengthens the liberal narrative of R2P.

The Syrian army should tell al-Qaeda in Aleppo that there will be no longer be any ceasefire. It must make clear that they will now either be interned or killed.

This is also the view of other US military veterans writing elsewhere. Evacuating an enemy to fight them elsewhere after they have regrouped and been rearmed makes no sense militarily. Once the kettle is covered, they should be terminated.

All the protestation of the West is to save their jihadi proxies to fight another day to remove Assad and replace him with a Saudi/Qatari Sunni regime that would end secularism and liberalism in Syria.

It is time to end such sorry play. Clean up Aleppo already. Hollande, Samantha Power and other stooges will howl anyway - no matter how the final scene is done.

Moon of Alabama
Sabotage Of East-Aleppo Evacuation Is Part Of A Plan

b

Also

NEO
Aleppo Proves Western Media Sources Wrong

Jean Perier

Idlib is the city/region to which the evacuees from Aleppo are being taken. It is controlled by various jihadi groups.

Idlib is to US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization Jabhat Al Nusra (also known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or Al Qaeda in Syria) as the eastern Syrian city of Al Raqqa is to the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (IS).

It is also home to a wide range of other militant groups cooperating with the terrorist organization, as well as a myriad of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) funded and directed by the US, Europe, Turkey and the Gulf states.

These are the people that the "coalition" plans to replace Assad.

Welcome to Idlib: America’s Model Syrian City
Ulson Gunnar

Pat Lang — Syria/Iraq Roundup

Col. Lang mentions the involvement of the UK at the end. Some may be wondering what's up with that, as well as why France is so interested in Syria, too. Britain and France were the colonial powers in the region and can't beyond it. Of course, this pertains to much more than in the Middle East and Africa.

Sic Semper Tyrannis 

Syria/Iraq Roundup - 17 December 2016

Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Paul Robinson — The peaceful city

Countering incredible Western naiveté.

Western propaganda has convinced most people in the West that the "reblels" were liberals fighting against the "dictatorial" Assad and his "repressive" regime rather than Sunni Islamists trying to impose their strict version of Islamic custom and law, similar to the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.

BTW, life in Damascus is reported to be similar to that described in the post about Aleppo prior to Western and Saudi/Qatari arming and funding of the "opposition."

Irrussianality
The peaceful city
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Pat Lang on Aleppo

On MJ today Mika [Brzezinski] bleated "but where are they going, all these poor families?" Ayman Mohy ad-Din told her that they were going to Idlib. "Where is that" she stammered. Ayman replied that this is a city and province still held by the jihadis. She stared blankly at him. It appears that she is as stupid and uninformed as Hollande.

The Borgist press carefully avoids describing the civilians voluntarily leaving East Aleppo by Green Bus (Assad Transport, Inc.) as the dependent families of jihadis as well as civilian jihadi cadres themselves.…

Well, well, well. You heard that this would happen first here and at MoA. It seems that "b" and SSTers can read a map and comprehend what happens when forces meet on a battlefield or in a campaign area.…

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Hollande - "A Day Late and a Dollar Short," as usual.
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Vanessa Beeley — Report from East Aleppo on Dec 14, 2016

I will be writing up all testimonies and uploading all video interviews… but please don’t fall for the corporate media lies based on spurious sources, the majority of whom are now in Turkey, fake photos and evil propaganda that works only to ensure the perpetual misery of the Syrian people....

New Cold War
Report from East Aleppo on Dec 14, 2016

Vanessa Beeley, published on her Facebook page 14 Dec 2016

Vanessa Beeley is a writer and contributor at 21st Century Wire; a steering committee member at The Syria Solidarity Movement International; and a contributor/writer at The Global Campaign to Return to Palestine.

Sic Semper Tyrannis — " ... in response to a reproach." English Outsider

The actual situation in Aleppo.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
" ... in response to a reproach." English Outsider
Guest Post

Assad Abu Khalil — Coverage of Aleppo on social media

Report on the "news" in English and Arabic from both sides.

Angry Arab News Service
Coverage of Aleppo on social media
Assad Abu Khalil | Professor of Political Science, California State University, Stanislaus

Tony Cartalucci — Unverified Aleppo "On the Spot" Executions

Western mainstream media fake news on Aleppo. All unverified, much rumor and some obviously manufactured. No credible sourcing. No evidence on the ground. Basically BS and faux outrage.

This is either incredible incompetence, lack of professionalism and absence of journalistic standards, or an intentional disinformation campaign on the eve of the defeat of Western and Takfiri backed jidahis.

And this is from papers of record.

Land Destroyer
Unverified Aleppo "On the Spot" Executions
Tony Cartalucci