{"id":175703,"date":"2018-09-03T05:53:22","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T05:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=175703"},"modified":"2018-09-06T05:56:33","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T05:56:33","slug":"russia-softens-up-west-for-bloodbath-it-is-planning-in-syrias-idlib-province","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=175703","title":{"rendered":"Russia softens up west for bloodbath it is planning in Syria\u2019s Idlib province"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction — Sept 2, 2018<\/h1>\n
\"What<\/a>

What the NYT describes as “Syrian rebel fighters” preparing last week in anticipation of an attack by government forces on Idlib. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

The following article illustrates how the Western media is working hand-in-glove with western intelligence. In effect the Western mainstream media now functions as the Ministry of Truth did in Orwell’s 1984<\/a>.<\/span> Thus, Simon Tisdall writing in the Guardian recently claimed that:<\/h5>\n
“A distracted Donald Trump has shown no interest in toppling Assad”.<\/h5>\n
Of course, this subtly obscures the fact that toppling Assad was part of Washington’s long-term agenda before Trump even entered the White House. Indeed the U.S. was well on the way to achieving this goal using Saudi-funded militant proxies; or it was until Sept 2015, when Russia’s military intervention in Syria thwarted the plan.<\/h5>\n
However, the West still hasn’t given-up on the plan as Tisdall’s article clearly shows. Why else would he try to portray the Russian campaign so negatively if the West was not still intent on ousting Assad? After all this is a long term scheme so if at first you don’t succeed try, try again.<\/h5>\n
In fact former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas is on record<\/a><\/span> as saying he was first informed of plans to oust Assad in 2009:<\/h5>\n
“I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate. Naturally, I refused, I said I\u2019m French, that doesn\u2019t interest me.\u2019\u2019<\/h5>\n
\u2018\u2019This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned,\u201d Dumas added.<\/h5>\n
So the West isn’t about to give up on a project it “prepared” and “planned” for more than a decade.<\/h5>\n
Meanwhile, the U.S. is currently setting up a network of radars and air-defence weapons<\/a><\/span> in an area of northern Syria controlled by a Syrian affiliate of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which is also listed by the U.S. State Dept<\/a><\/span>. as “foreign terrorist organisation”.<\/h5>\n
This begs two questions:<\/h5>\n
1) Why does the West need a network of radars and air defence weapons in the area\u00a0\u00a0 when ISIS is on the verge of defeat?<\/h5>\n
2) And why does it need these weapons when ISIS doesn’t have an air force to speak of anyway?<\/h5>\n
Could it be that the weapons are intended to be used against Russian and Syrian planes instead? Could the West actually be preparing a safe haven for its proxies in Syria where they will be safe from Russian or Syrian air strikes?<\/h5>\n
Whatever the intended use it appears that the U.S. and its allies still haven’t abandoned their plans to oust Syria President Assad. The following article needs to be seen in the light of that. It is not about informing the reader with facts about the situation on the ground. It is about portraying the assault on the last militant stronghold in Syria in as negative light as possible.<\/h5>\n
Simon Tisdall embodies John Swinton’s famed quote<\/a><\/span> about journalists being “intellectual prostitutes”. Only the crimes that Simon Tisdall and his like commit are far more execrable than those of any working girl. For Tisdall and his kind sell their services to promote foreign policy lies and the wars, death and destruction that follow.<\/h5>\n
Simon Tisdall is not a journalist, he is no more than an artful liar. He doesn’t even formally identify those militants in Idlib as Islamic State fighters, or al Qaeda or al Nusra. Instead, Tisdall characterises them as … “rebel groups”, which sounds more neutral, less abrasive than terrorists, which is what they really are.<\/h5>\n
Finally, readers will note that the false flag that Russian commentators and many in the alternative media had feared — a chemical weapons false flag that was to have been carried out with the help of the Syrian White Helmets, blamed on Assad and used to justify wider Western military intervention — has not materialised. Extensive publicity about the proposed false flag here<\/a><\/span>, here<\/a><\/span>, here<\/a><\/span>, here<\/a><\/span> and here<\/a><\/span>, meant that the plan had to be abandoned.<\/h5>\n
However, intellectual whore that he is, instead of acknowledging this Tisdall characterises the dumping of the plan as “disinformation”. Ed.<\/h5>\n

Russia softens up west for bloodbath it is planning in Syria\u2019s Idlib province<\/h1>\n

Disinformation is rife about US plots and rebels\u2019 supposed use of chemical weapons as Putin prepares for final victory<\/em><\/h4>\n

Simon Tisdall — The Guardian Sept 1, 2018<\/h2>\n
\"Simon<\/a>

Simon Tisdall<\/p><\/div>\n

Russia is going to extraordinary lengths to justify in advance the murderous onslaught that observers fear is about to descend on Idlib, a province in north-west Syria that is home to nearly two million internally displaced people. Idlib is the last large populated area outside the control of Bashar al-Assad, Syria\u2019s dictator. And Assad, backed by his Russian and Iranian allies, is determined to get it back \u2013 whatever the human cost<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a series of coordinated moves last week, Russian government officials and military spokesmen tried to pre-empt or deflect western opposition to the expected air and ground offensive. Partly it was pure propaganda. Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, accused the US of plotting forcible regime change in Damascus. \u201cAgain, we are witnessing a serious escalation of the situation,\u201d he claimed<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, perhaps, this is disingenuous fantasy. A distracted Donald Trump has shown no interest in toppling Assad. He has ended support for rebel groups and given Vladimir Putin, Russia\u2019s president, a\u00a0virtual free hand. Airstrikes<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>by the US, France and the UK after Assad\u2019s chemical weapons attack on Douma in AprilWEBLINK proved to be an ineffective one-off. Trump has turned his back on Syria and plans to pull out<\/a><\/strong><\/span> the remaining US special forces fighting Islamic State as soon as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

The escalation is all on Russia\u2019s side. It is assembling a naval armada off the Syrian coast, comprising 25 ships, combat aircraft and the missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov \u2013 the biggest show of force since Putin intervened in Syria in 2015. The fleet is ostensibly engaged in exercises. But Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin\u2019s spokesman, admitted the drills were directly linked to Idlib, which he termed a \u201cterrorist hotbed<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u201d that must be tackled soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Russia-Syria axis is stepping up its diplomatic offensive, too. Sergei Lavrov, Russia\u2019s foreign minister, warned last week that \u201cmilitants\u201d in Idlib (he did not say who) must be liquidated, describing them as \u201ca festering abscess\u201d. Walid al-Moualem, Syria\u2019s foreign minister, who met Lavrov in Moscow the following day, was blunt: \u201cWe are at the final stage of solving the crisis in Syria<\/a> and liberating our whole territory from terrorism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Russian and Syrian regimes claimed to be solely concerned with fighting terrorism when defending their previous, indiscriminate missile, barrel bomb and artillery attacks on civilian residential areas, hospitals and schools, notably in Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta, which caused mass casualties. Yet according to the UN, of the three million people in the line of fire in Idlib, only about 10,000 are armed jihadists. In total, about 70,000 anti-regime rebels are cornered there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Continues … <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is the West readying a safe-haven for its proxies in northern Syria? Where they can rest, recuperate and regroup while protected from Russian air strikes?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":175709,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,83,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-syria","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175703"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175710,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175703\/revisions\/175710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/175709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}