You Will Anyway: Who's Keeping Score?

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Who's Keeping Score?

Two US Air Force A-10 warplanes carried out airstrikes on Aleppo Wednesday, destroying nine facilities, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported. The same day, the Pentagon accused Moscow of bombing two hospitals, despite no Russian flights over the city.

“Yesterday, at 13:55 Moscow time (10:55 GMT), two American A-10 assault aircraft entered Syrian airspace from Turkey, flew right to the city of Aleppo and bombed targets there,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Thursday. Also on Wednesday, Konashenkov referenced, the Pentagon’s spokesman, Colonel Steven Warren claimed that Russian warplanes allegedly bombed two hospitals in Aleppo.

“In his words, some 50,000 Syrian have been allegedly deprived of vital services,” Konashenkov said, pointing out that Warren forgot to mention either hospitals’ coordinates, or the time of the airstrikes, or sources of information. “Absolutely nothing.”

“No Russian warplanes carried out airstrikes in Aleppo city area yesterday. The nearest target engaged was over 20km away from the city.”

RT

Haha. The Pentagon announces a nasty Russian attack without giving any details.

“I’m going to be honest with you: we did not have enough time to clarify what exactly those nine objects bombed out by US planes in Aleppo yesterday were,” Konashenkov said. “We will look more carefully."

Say what?

The Baghdad spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group refuted Russian claims that American planes bombed Aleppo hospitals, saying the incident is an example of the Russian "indiscriminate" use of force.

The Russian Ministry of Defense rejected the pentagon's claim Wednesday that Russian aircraft hit two hospitals in Aleppo saying that it was U.S. aircraft that operated over the city Wednesday.

[...]

Col. Steve Warren, the Baghdad-based spokesman, told the Associated Press that Russian aircraft in Syria are using "dumb" bombs, and "indiscriminately scattering those bombs across populated areas regardless of whether those populated areas have women and children, civilians or hospitals."

NYT

It's a war of propaganda. Syria is totally fucked.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.