Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[blandy]

37 minutes ago, Awol said:

Troll level: Expert. 

Russia's not even trying to hide the smirk, is it?

[LondonLax]

7 minutes ago, blandy said:

Russia's not even trying to hide the smirk, is it?

They don't give a toss about the UK's response and why would they? They know there will be no repercussions.  

[tonyh29]

well if nothing else it should stop people believing Craig Murray any more

actually quite impressive they way the Police have pieced it altogether ..and also quite worrying for the rest of us from a Big Brother surveillance point of view

Edited September 13, 2018 by tonyh29
Craig murray ...jetlag

[blandy]

On 12/09/2018 at 12:01, peterms said:

The idea that something far less lethal than the bombs and bullets which are being used would be so terrifying to hardened fighters that they scarper is utter bollocks.

The UN doesn't think so

Quote

Syrian government forces fired chlorine, a banned chemical weapon, on a rebel-held Damascus suburb and on Idlib province this year, in attacks that constitute war crimes, United Nations human rights investigators said on Wednesday.

The three incidents bring to 39 the number of chemical attacks which the Commission of Inquiry on Syria has documented since 2013, including 33 attributed to the government, a U.N. official told Reuters. The perpetrators of the remaining six have not been sufficiently identified.

Weaponising chlorine is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by Syria, and under customary international humanitarian law, the investigators said in their latest report.

“To recapture eastern Ghouta in April, government forces launched numerous indiscriminate attacks in densely populated civilian areas, which included the use of chemical weapons,” it said, referring to incidents on Jan. 22 and Feb. 1 in a residential area of Douma, eastern Ghouta, outside the capital.

Women and children were injured in the attacks, suffering respiratory distress and requiring oxygen, it added.

“INDISCRIMINATE ATTACKS”

“The Commission concludes that, on these two occasions, government forces and or affiliated militias committed the war crimes of using prohibited weapons and launching indiscriminate attacks in civilian-populated areas in eastern Ghouta,” it said.

A surface-to-surface, improvised rocket-assisted munition had been used in the two Douma incidents, it said. “Specifically the munitions documented were built around industrially-produced Iranian artillery rockets known to have been supplied to forces commanded by the (Syrian) government,” the report added.

In the northwest province of Idlib - where the United Nations fears a major imminent assault by Syrian and Russian forces against the last rebel-held stronghold - chlorine was also used on February 4, the U.N. report said.

“Government helicopters dropped at least two barrels carrying chlorine payloads in the Taleel area of Saraqeb,” it said, adding that at least 11 men were injured....

And as an aside, seeing this is the Russia thread, it's now been analysed that 207,000 Civilians have been killed (never mind all those injured) in Syria. 94% of them by Syria Gov't/Iran/Russia forces. Further evidence of the nature of Iranian and Russian (and obviously Assad's) forces.

[Brumerican]

19 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

They don't give a toss about the UK's response and why would they? They know there will be no repercussions.  

I'm not sure about that . I haven't nested small tupperware tubs inside larger ones (Which are then stored in an even larger one) for months now.

Edited September 13, 2018 by Brumerican

[Brumerican]

Stopped jogging too so the neighbours know I'm anti-rushin.

[snowychap]

17 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

well if nothing else it should stop people believing Colin Murray any more

[Brumerican]

1 hour ago, tonyh29 said:

well if nothing else it should stop people believing Craig Murray any more

 

That ship sailed when he called the BDO tournament "World class darts"  

[Awol]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

Russia's not even trying to hide the smirk, is it?

No. The Tories won't touch the Oligarchs holding Putin's cash in London and the opposition leader has demonstrated he's onside regardless. We should seize the assets, accounts and holdings of everyone in London who is associated with Putin and use it it re-establish the disbanded CBRN regiment. That's trolling.   

[peterms]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

The UN doesn't think so

You replied to my comment that

Quote

The idea that something far less lethal than the bombs and bullets which are being used would be so terrifying to hardened fighters that they scarper is utter bollocks. 

by quoting a UN report about the use of chemical weapons.  It doesn't address the point I made at all.

On the effectiveness of chlorine as a weapon against fighters, you might consider reported casualties, which seem to be almost exclusively women and children (without going into questions about whether these were people who had died from asphyxiation from non-chemical causes or something else and moved after death).

On the lethality of chlorine gas, the briefing note from the working group on Syria, propaganda and media quote this:

Quote

Brief update
A colleague expressed doubt about our statement that "For chlorine to be useful as a weapon, it would have to be released on an industrial scale", and pointed us to the Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers for 2016 (12 Mb download). Table 22(A) of this report shows that in that year 3845 cases of poisoning by chlorine gas were reported in the US, of which 1175 were treated in a health care facility and two were fatal. For one of the fatal cases the history is given: a farmworker (with pre-existing health problems) was exposed to a cloud of chlorine gas while cleaning a pipe, later collapsed while driving himself to a health care facility, and died in hospital the following day.
This report supports the points made in our briefing note: in real incidents of chlorine poisoning fatalities are rare except in industrial-scale accidents, victims do not generally drop dead on the spot, and non-fatal cases requiring hospital treatment far outnumber fatal cases.

The idea that small scale use of something which is much less lethal than conventional armaments, which forms a coloured and slow moving cloud of gas which can be seen, smelt and moved away from, would be so terrifying to Isis and AQ fighters that they would give up, seems nonsensical.

The idea that a group facing certain military defeat would stage such an incident, having been assured by the US that any use of CWs will trigger massive intervention, is plainly far more plausible.

[peterms]

Some good ones in this thread.  I like "The Spy Who Went Home Because It Was Too Cold".

 

[blandy]

Those two Russians could only troll more if they said they were "Present but not involved"

[snowychap]

8 minutes ago, peterms said:

Some good ones in this thread.  I like "The Spy Who Went Home Because It Was Too Cold".

 

I liked "From Russia with Glove" and "On Her Majesty's Secret Sunday Service".

[blandy]

26 minutes ago, peterms said:

You replied to my comment..

The reply was to point out that as you'd implied Syria wouldn't have used them and it's all staged by the White Helments ...and because they're ineffective that the UN has documented multiple occasions where Syria did use them including in recent months.

As I think Chindie said, the point of using chlorine gas, Sarin etc. is not to inflict so many casualties as to immediately "triumph", but simply to terrorise people into fleeing.

Apologies for not quoting the exact sentence that would have made that more obvious. 

[peterms]

17 minutes ago, blandy said:

simply to terrorise people into fleeing

But they didn't flee, did they?  And why would they, when the danger from that particular weapon was so small, and they were hardened fighters.

In the most recent case, the incident happened when they had already lost, and many of their fighters were either reconciling or negotiating getting bussed out.  The idea that it was the use of a small amount of chlorine that gave victory doesn't fit the widely reported facts.  A small staged incident, as a last-ditch attempt to secure outside intervention, does fit the situation rather better.  A large scale use would have been hard to stage, and consistent with military use.  But that's not what happened.

[blandy]

1 minute ago, peterms said:

But they didn't flee, did they?

Yes, they did Flee*. That's the reason Idlib, now, is "the last stronghold" with 3 million odd people there, many of whom have fled from elsewhere previously "liberated" by Assad forces and Iran/Russia.

 

*obviously the dead people didn't flee enough, sadly.

 

[peterms]

6 minutes ago, blandy said:

Yes, they did Flee*. That's the reason Idlib, now, is "the last stronghold" with 3 million odd people there, many of whom have fled from elsewhere previously "liberated" by Assad forces and Iran/Russia.

The fighters didn't flee from the supposed chemical weapons.  In fact, the extent to which they didn't flee was so much that the OPCW couldn't get to inspect the site of the attacks from which they steadfastly refused to flee.

They fled to Idlib when they were militarily defeated in other places.  There's a problem for other countries, by the way.  There are many "rebels" now in Idlib, who aren't rebels at all but nationals of other countries.  Are they to go back to France, Belgium, UK and other places?  Canada accepted some White Helmets, so maybe they will also accept their erstwhile hosts?  Or perhaps it's better to protect them in Idlib?  A bit hard to explain why Al-Qaeda should be protected, especially around the anniversary of 9/11, but I'm sure someone can think of something.

Many civilians fled.  Others were prevented from fleeing, so the "rebels" could use them as human shields.  That remains the case.  It would be good to think the international community would put their heads together to see how Idlib can be liberated from the jihadists with minimum casualties, but that's not happening.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, peterms said:

The fighters didn't flee from the supposed chemical weapons.  In fact, the extent to which they didn't flee was so much that the OPCW couldn't get to inspect the site of the attacks from which they steadfastly refused to flee.

That's not so. The OPCW were held up by Syria and Russia, then when they initially gained access to the area, unidentified person(s) shot at them, hitting no-one.

If as you claim the whole thing was "staged by ant-Assad white helmets and rebels" to get the West to react and topple Assad , why would they then attempt to deny access to the clearly identified UN/OPCW personnel to the site?

Al jazeera summarises it thusly

Quote

Security fears

The OPCW team arrived in Damascus on Saturday but had not been able to travel to Douma, on the outskirts of the capital, due to security concerns following a reconnaissance mission by a United Nations team at two sites in the town on Tuesday.

The UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) officials had to withdraw from the first location as the presence of large crowd there raised security fears.

At the second site, they came under small arms fire and an explosive device was detonated nearby, the OPCW said in a statement.

WATCH: Chemical watchdog OPCW face obstacles on the road to Douma (2:30)

There were no injuries and the UN team returned to Damascus, but the watchdog had to postpone its visit.

In a statement on Saturday, Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, said the delays to the OPCW team were "unacceptable".

On Monday, during an emergency meeting at the OPCW's headquarters in The Hague, Western diplomats accused the Syrian government and Moscow of obstructing the team.

Russia denied the claims, saying parts of Douma still needed to be de-mined and said the watchdog's inspectors would enter on Wednesday.

and this

Quote

... the OPCW statement did not lay blame on anyone for the incident but ...[AJ Journo] added that both Syria and its main ally Russia "have been accused by Western powers of hampering the work" of the watchdog.

"What we understand is that Douma is under the control of the Russian military and the Syrian government. Both of them claimed just a few days ago that the area had been 'fully liberated from terrorists'," she said.

Syrian and Russian forces gained control over Douma on Saturday when rebels withdrew from the town

 

[peterms]

8 minutes ago, blandy said:

That's not so. The OPCW were held up by Syria and Russia

No.  That is how it was presented in the media.  Syria and Russia had advised they could not guarantee safety because of the likelihood of boobytraps and sleeper cells.  The UN team formed the same view, as the bit you quote says.

8 minutes ago, blandy said:

The OPCW team arrived in Damascus on Saturday but had not been able to travel to Douma, on the outskirts of the capital, due to security concerns following a reconnaissance mission by a United Nations team at two sites in the town on Tuesday.

Once safety measures were in place, all parties agreed it was then safe to enter.

At a previous incident, Khan Sheykoum, the OPCW could not visit because the area was controlled by one of the jihadi groups.  This meant that procedures about taking samples, chain of custody etc could not be observed.

Syria and Russia had been asking for OPCW to inspect, and to conduct proper procedures.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, peterms said:

No.  That is how it was presented in the media.  Syria and Russia had advised they could not guarantee safety because of the likelihood of boobytraps and sleeper cells.  The UN team formed the same view, as the bit you quote says.

Once safety measures were in place, all parties agreed it was then safe to enter.

At a previous incident, Khan Sheykoum, the OPCW could not visit because the area was controlled by one of the jihadi groups.  This meant that procedures about taking samples, chain of custody etc could not be observed.

Syria and Russia had been asking for OPCW to inspect, and to conduct proper procedures.

Cripes! That's an odd interpretation in my eyes. But as per you last night, I'll leave it there, we clearly have very different takes on it all and we're almost going round in circles. That's me done until the next use of the wretched weapons.