How about that time Russian military used a video game pic as proof of US aiding ISIS? Earlier this week, the official Facebook and Twitter accounts of the Russian Ministry of Defense said it had "irrefutable evidence" the US was aiding ISIS in Syria – and revealed four grainy photos apparently backing up its claims. The images, apparently taken last week, were captioned as showing the American forces letting …
You would think that after the serious mocking that both North Korea and Iran have had for faked/doctored photos, Russia would realise that any pics like this would be discovered pretty damn quickly.
I can only imagine that they hoped the differences would not be found for a day or two, so they could get the domestic Headlines in Russia with their "evidence" and simply then when it was discovered later, just not have that reported widely in the state media. May be they should have followed Trump and just declared the reporting of the fake Images to be fake News.
Fake News, Fake Images, par for the course for 2017...
RussiaUSA would realise that any pics like this would be discovered pretty damn quickly.
...which are being made more DIFFICULT to follow to follow by the confused upstanding but 100% NAÏVE citizen (in need of Amber Rudd and her probing handwill) via MERCILESS RUSSIAN TWEETS!
(Which may actually be coming out of Glasgow, who knows nowadays!)
The cry of the terrified and insecure.
If the Brext Bullshitters were confident that they would win another Referendum they would be like "Bring it on. Name the time and place. We'll whip your sorry ass just like the last time!".
Apparently Democracy doesn't allow the public to change their minds as their knowledge evolves. Except for nearly everything else which depends on a public vote.
It's not inconceivable in the murky world. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is a modern version of Oliver North arming ISIS factions so that they can attack, for example, one of Al Assad's chemical weapons stores or an Iranian interest in the region that the Americans don't like.
Sadly it's not improbable. I vividly recall a documentary in the early 80's following a group of Afghanistan fighters. There were a number of groups engaged in a street battle in a small town. On one side there were some government forces with a number of pro Government groups of fighters and on the other side a number of groups of anti Government fighters. The battle raged fiercely till late afternoon at which point it suddenly petered out and both forces went away for the night! The next morning they came back and resumed the battle almost exactly where they left off. Fascinatingly one group of fighters had changed sides as a result of the bargaining process that went on overnight so was at the other end of the street. I remember being stunned, but apparently it was quite usual for groups to swap sides, fight for a bit then swap back.
With fighters changing allegiance (and this is happening in Syria) it's certain that some one time ISIS fighters are being redirected to work on behalf of American interests.
Anonymous postings of vivid personal recollections without any verifiable references don't really add any value in a discussion about misinformation campaigns, other than to confirm that whatever follows is as likely to be fabrication, misrepresentation or poor recollection as much as it could occasionally be partially or substantially accurate.
They do highlight the importance of adequate skepticism.
I was one of those Afghan fighters. American jets used to fly over dropping Big Macs and Fries for us to eat. I would get a phone call from the president of the USA every evening telling me which side I had to fight on the next day. Great times!!
I dont think I'll ever tire of hearing IS referred to as "medieval terror-bastards". I wish the rest of the media would start referring to them that way. It might (only might) reduce their appeal to some of the more susceptible weak minded fools that IS attract. And you know I always like to hear honesty in reporting!
Good work El reg on that one!
PS Daesh-bags is also pretty good...
I've just realised I dont know what ISIS stands for. The name "Islamic State" can be safely acronymed with only 2 letters. They seem to have said it twice . If they really want 4 letters I'd suggest SC because usually when I hear the name on the radio they are referred to as "So Called Islamic State"
so SCIS ?
I've just realised I dont know what ISIS stands for.
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Wikipedia).
This post has been deleted by its author
Desh. Derived from and having a vaguely similar pronunciation to "Daesh" which is in turn derived from the Arabic version of their name.
But "Desh" is *also* the name for the crappiest salvageable scrap metal crafting ingredient in Star Wars: the Old Republic (MMORPG). You can scrape it off of droids you gun down and piles of scrap metal in the criminal neighbourhoods of Coruscant.
I think it is fitting for people who give barbarism a bad name.
What happens when the remnants of ISIS merge with the remnants of SCO?
They won't be in Iraq or Syria anymore, so get shortened back to IS, then added to SCO. Giving us SCOIS. That doom-laden acronym that tells us SCO will be with us FOREVERRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......
"I've just realised I dont know what ISIS stands for."
It's a proprietary scanner driver. Almost as bad as those Daesh-bags.
Russia (and before it the Soviet Union) had a long tradition of blaming others for its own shenanigans. This had two purposes: it made accurate accusations od Russia's actions look like a revenge and spreaded the blame around ("Everybody is doing that").
So I am worried that the Russians themselves are playing the ISIS douche bags against the foes of its client regime in Syria. The Tweet seems almost like admission if you know how their propaganda works.
That's sort of what they have done. Not that it's a formal alliance, or anything close to one. But Syria welcomed allowed Al Qaeda into the border territories with Iraq during the insurgency after the war in 2003. That was how they smuggled in fighters and suicide bombers - particularly as it borders the Sunni West of Iraq where AQ were strongest.
ISIS are a weird coalition of ex-AQ people and a bunch of Saddam's ex military guys, plus extra religious nutters.
So they quickly took Eastern Syria when the civil war started, because Assad concentrated all his fire on the "more moderate" rebels, who tended to be more associated with the Muslim Brotherhood (started in Egypt but now include groups like Hizbollah, Hamas).
So when Russia, Syria and Iran were trying to take back Aleppo for example, they concentrated all their air-strikes on the rebels holding the place, but also attacked them on the other side of the city, where the rebels were also fighting against ISIS - who were essentially a "third side" in the civil war.
Clearly this is a massive over-simplification because there are way more than 3 sides in that civil war, the lot that remained loyal to Al Qaeda for example eventually decided to renounce AQ and changed their name - but were always a part of the "moderate" rebels. Partly I suspect because we mostly didn't arm the rebels (and the Saudis only seriously began to do so later in the war), so AQ were the guys with the guns, the funding and the trained fighters.
Well, we don't need much evidence to know that the US and ISIS are not exactly mortal enemies as Hapless Kerry himself has gone the mic saying that the US let ISIS grow to implement a bit of regime change (on behalf of, apparently, aliens, because aliens celarly are interested in seeing Syrian regime change, who else could be?), thinking it could be controlled later.
"To date, the Syrian regime and Russian Federation have not demonstrated long-term success in ridding large pieces of terrain from ISIS influence, then establishing the conditions necessary to prevent terrorists' return."
The mind boggles. I don't remember a single town that the US has liberated (flattened, yes). Indeed they are actively opposed to any Syrian operations or Iranian aid (which is sadly often accompanied by cleaning operations, but then that's the local custom).
"The mind boggles. I don't remember a single town that the US has liberated (flattened, yes)."
Since the US, UK and assorted others have yet to deploy "troops" on the ground, that would be pretty much impossible. The special forces who are training and supporting the various factions that the US does support are part of groups recapturing settlements, but for obvious reasons their role is downplayed.
The Kurds and the Iraqis have had significant allied support, and have captured *and held* the majority of previously ISIS territory.
The Syrian regime is not that interested in fighting ISIS, at least until only ISIS and it's ilk are the remaining opposition. They'd rather crush literally every other opposing group, with extreme prejudice, then point at ISIS and say "it's us or them".
The enemy of my enemy is my ally.
American Nazi party at Nation of Islam meeting
Not sure who looks less comfortable ....
ISIS ie Al Queda in Iraq, are Saudi Arabia's new attempt to attack Iran after they lost control of the original Al Queda. So long they stick to attacking Iran, Iranian backed Lebanon and Russian regimes in the area they are tolerated by us. That's why you can be pretty sure that some teenage idiot in a transit van in a european capital isn't really an ISIS operation - whatever they claim.
Of course that was the pretty established facts before Russian fake news claimed it was true and US fake news claimed it wasn't - so now it must be ..... er ... confused.
+1 for Tacitus
To be fair though, there is a world of difference between limiting civilian deaths and suffering in a context like Afghanistan (or pre-ISIS/Al Quaeda Iraq), where the Taliban (at least the local ones) can be presumed to require local support and therefore will not themselves actively promote civilian deaths (or at least not those that they could be blamed for, coalition/ANA caused ones are probably goodies for them).
i.e. we don't like the Taliban, true, but they are rational and won't kill civs without reason. The coalition forces massively failed to limit civilian casualties early on after invading in 2001 - way too many "regrettable errors". Long term, it would have been better to do so, even though less airpower would have caused more short term coalition losses. Ditto the Fallujah battles - military successes, political disasters.
Also, the Talibs, being a normal guerilla force, generally don't find it productive to stand and fight, so most of the combat is out of the cities.
ISIS is a different beast. They are territorial and screw over the locals for their own reasons. Of course, any attempt to kick them out will have them use human shields - a big part of the buildup to the Mosul and Raqqa fights was them killing civilians trying to leave to keep them penned in.
Think of it differently - if you were ISIS, what's the way you could cause the most human suffering possible when defending your caliphate of whackos? Exactly what ended up happening, and yes, it looks like Stalingrad now.
But, what would have been the alternatives? Leaving them alone? Sending in Western ground troops? With or without air support? Negotiation - about what? The closest you get to damage limitation is the recent news reports that a partial escape route for them was brokered. Was that a good idea? Will we, and the people in the Middle East, come to regret it? I believe we will.
Truth is greyscale, not monochrome, and the threshold is manipulated by the filters we apply or are applied for us...ISIS serves some purpose for the US and Saudi Arabia. and this fake news may also have (non-fakeish) truth behind it..http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/raqqas_dirty_secret
Would it be too conspiratorial to mention how nice it is to see the comments section provide several useful examples illustrating how the substance of the main article could be applied in the real world?
(Paris would see straight through all of this of course.)
how long has it taken a 19 country 'coalition' to remove the Talibahn from Afghanistan?
A question that can only be answered when they have done that, and that won't be any time soon.
Some influential voices are calling for the US to completely withdraw its attentions from Afghanistan, and let the locals sort out their differences, obviously the history of US involvement makes that difficult. However, we should remember that the US left Vietnam, so there is a precedent.
Although there is an impression that the regular ground forces have mostly gone, there's about 15,000 US troops in the country, plus maybe a third as many from other countries; there's still regular air activity and combat operations by special forces and trainers, to the extent that the US are losing one serviceman a month in combat in Afghanistan this year. The more pressing form of withdrawal would be stopping the US funding of Afghanistan's government "security" operations. In 2017, the budgeted cost of that is almost $6bn, some for air operations and ground forces, perhaps half paying the salaries, weapons and operating costs of the Afghan police & army plus operating costs and theft by the Afghan government. There's no stable civil economy or tax base, so if US money is stopped, the government economy grinds to a halt, the money to keep the formalised fighting dries up, and Afghanistan will drift back to blood feuds, drug cultivation, banditry, and other traditional forms of economic activity (to the extent that it hasn't already).
these days you're never quite sure if this "group of watchers" was a group of watchers, a group of anti-Russian trolls, or a group of anti-anti-Russian trolls (all sponsored by Moscow and / or Washington). And I'm not trying to support Russian "efforts" by the classic Russian diversion (everybody is doing that, and on top of that you stink). I merely acknowledge that the Russian "tactic" (strategy?) of seeding confusion works - these days you can't believe anything in the media, because you never know if it's genuine, a fake, or faked fake (and then, who faked the fake, etc.). So, it already works to some extent (FUD), and when the time comes to believe that it's YOUR people talking to you, you will have doubts. And that moment of hesitation, on a wider scale, might tip the balance (every little helps, said the old woman...)
p.s. I wonder if the Russians are really that stupid as to post that image to be exposed and branded as stupid, or was it their intention to make us believe they're that stupid? Ah, that moment of hesitation again!
I wish to point out that being accused of Putin troll is another success of Russian policy, because it provides ready (and easy to fire) ammunition to shoot down any debate, any doubt. You have doubts (comrade), therefore your arguments are dismissed as you're a Putin troll (this is not a problem for the Russians, because they generally do not argue, widely, problems. Just obey the orders ;)
I would disbelieve rt by default, because their propaganda is vulgar. As to the bbc, well, in general I believe them, but I have my doubts (trust, but verify). They might claim to be impartial, they might even strive to be, but they have their own agenda too (as every human does). Remember the case when they fought right to the court against revealing who their climate "experts" were?
The Russian press release was so obviously faked that it could be immediately discounted from a factual basis and the opinion it supported discarded. But what was going through the minds of those who controlled that press release?
Difficult to credit that anyone would be so utterly stupid as to believe the subterfuge would succeed especially if they work in the release of official information relating to military activity and political agenda. The conclusion would be that its purpose was to be exposed easily and quickly.
Discussion forums like these plus mainstream media can then debate the effectiveness of any Russian misinformation campaigns, keeping the issue live and building up the shadow of the bogey man, or maybe the image that the 'enemy' is incompetent (not sure which is likely or more usable). This outcome seems much more constructive and useful (for a foreign policy agenda) than trying to support an implausible assertion with amateur fakery.
As a side note, the best audience for this type of activity would be the relatively small but significant percentage of people who are both actively receiving their information from the media (social, MSM, fake, etc) but are basically gullible i.e. incapable of segregating junk like this from anything with actual meaning. It wouldn't be aimed at anyone who thinks they have the capacity and willingness to assess content.
Even my observation here is utterly irrelevant and can be co-opted to support the original purpose. Ingenious.
Never mind the photos, the real issue is the assistance - or lack of hindrance - offered to ISIS by the Coalition. That essential issue was covered in an exposé by the BBC (of all people), so the basic allegation shouldn't really be in question.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/raqqas_dirty_secret
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