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By David McIlwain

Russia Insider
The ‘regime’ has already changed in Syria – without any help from Western ‘democracies’. But the propaganda war on Syria will continue…

While the Western powers pursue their illicit project to replace Syria’s government with some cabal of tired terrorists and aging exiles, the Syrian people have quietly continued with their own plan for a new and representative government, which this week held its inaugural session.

Following the national elections held in April, and the democratic selection of 258 representatives for the Parliament, this new government promises much, not just in terms of a undivided front to fight the foreign-backed insurgency, but as a model for peaceful ‘regime change’.

Although the new parliament still has a majority of representatives affiliated with the former ruling party, we may expect to see substantial debate around areas formerly beyond discussion, under the eye of the newly elected and female speaker, Hadiyah Abbas.

In his opening speech to the parliament, President Bashar al Assad, who himself was re-elected by a majority of Syrians two years ago, spoke forcefully of the need to unite against the foreign enemy and rid the whole country of these terrorist armies – whatever it might take.

And it may take a lot. Not only are insurgents well-embedded in parts of some cities, where all the choices to expel them are difficult, but they are still being resupplied and reinforced from over Syria’s borders.

This is well illustrated by the deterioration that has occurred since the Russian air support to the Syrian Army was ‘relaxed’ in March. In an act of betrayal and deceit by the US and its Gulf partners, the charade of Geneva ‘peace talks’ was exploited to deflect attention from a multi-faceted ‘surge’ in assistance to the mercenary armies, supported directly by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, and indirectly by Washington and its NATO allies.

Thanks to this ‘surge’, thousands more Syrians have died from terrorist mortar and car-bomb attacks, rocket and sniper fire, while the sacrifice of many loyal soldiers’ lives – lost in liberating areas from ‘rebel’ control – is now squandered as the foot soldiers of Syria’s fake ‘Revolution’ seize them back.

This is the current reality, but if it sounds a little strange to some readers it would be no surprise. What is happening to Syria now, and what has been happening for the last five years, simply would not have been possible without the ‘misinformation support’ from trusted Western media. It might be argued – and is of course – that those media are merely presenting what their government leaders are saying, and that they are the true deceivers and dissemblers.

But this can no longer be an excuse, with the most recent developments in Syria being a watershed of credibility.

At the same time as President Assad was defining Syria’s fight against his and Syria’s enemies, that trusted ‘liberal’ mouthpiece for those enemies – the Guardian – produced an astoundingly bigoted and mendacious ‘report’ about the latest fighting in Syria. It demonstrated that not only have the Guardian and its correspondents learnt nothing about the war on Syria, but their comprehension of it is now so corrupted with false information as to be irredeemable. (This is barring the alternative reason – that the Guardian is now a close ally of the UK government and its allies in this war, and that its journalists cooperate to support them).

While it is hardly exceptional, Kareem Shaheen’s report from Beirut last week contains many of the elements of deceit that pervade the ‘Guardian narrative’ on Syria and its President.

(Though this is the same false narrative promoted by the BBC and other Western mainstream media, the Guardian’s influence on the particular demographic who might question and then volubly dissent from this narrative transforms its ‘news reports’ into influential propaganda.)

Shaheen’s report is actually a crude reconstruction of Assad’s speech to the new parliament, but begins by reinforcing the enduring and completely false narrative about attacks on hospitals:

“A hospital in rebel-held east Aleppo in Syria has been put out of service after government airstrikes in the vicinity killed at least 10 people, a day after the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, vowed to reclaim “every inch of Syria” no matter the bloodshed that caused.”

Framing the latest attempts by the Syrian army and Russian airforce to kill or drive out the – mostly Al Nusra – terrorists from East Aleppo as just more in “a systematic campaign against medical facilities.” Shaheen immediately colours the Guardian reader’s perceptions of the conflict, reversing the legitimacy of the proponents.

The terrorists – whose numbers include the notorious ‘Syrian Civil Defence’ -, are presented as victims of attacks on civilian targets and even as ‘surviving on aid’ from Turkey, while their story is mediated through foreign Opposition agents like the SOHR and the ‘Syrian American Medical Society’. Conversely, and perversely, President Assad’s determined and inspiring speech before ‘a newly installed loyalist parliament’ is ‘defiant’ and ‘strident’.

Although Shaheen quotes his speech directly she first gives US spokesman Mark Toner the megaphone: “This was vintage Assad….”

This is ‘vintage Assad’ – judge for yourself:-

“Our war against terrorism will continue, not because we love war, for they are the ones who imposed the war on us,” Assad said. “But the bloodletting will continue until we uproot terrorism wherever it is and whatever its masks are.”

It turns out that Assad did not threaten a ‘bloodbath’ to ‘retake all of Syria’ from the terrorist army. Rather he warned that the terrible bloodshed caused by the terrorists would continue if the whole country didn’t unite to kill or arrest all of those fighting in or supporting the violent insurgency.

There is only a single sentence in Shaheen’s report that suggests the truth of what is happening in the fight to liberate Aleppo from the insurgents’ grip:

“The opposition in Aleppo has also bombed hospitals in government territory with indiscriminate shells and damaged a maternity hospital last month.”

– a sentence however that merely adds to the whole deception, failing to mention the hundreds of real civilians killed by the barrage of mortars and missiles launched by the terrorist forces in a combined and coordinated assault on Aleppo’s centre last month. Readers would have no idea that the supposed strikes on hospitals and civilians by Syrian forces were actually targeting those terrorists and their support networks. Neither the Syrian army nor the Russian air-force has actually targeted real hospitals that provide normal civilian services. The much touted ‘Al Quds’ hospital and its paediatrician for instance, allegedly destroyed in March by airstrikes has proved unknown amongst Aleppo residents.

As I write this, news comes in from Syrian friends:

“an isis car bomb attacked us today my cousin captain Ali was hit so bad it and lost his left leg so far, I was mildly wounded and thrown in the air for almost 10 meters. We are at the hospital now, waiting for Ali to wake up.”(NB – for Syrians all terrorists are ‘ISIS’ or ‘Al Qaeda’, as these groups work together to fight the Syrian army)

This news highlights an aspect of Syria’s suffering which gets little attention; the hundreds of thousands, even millions of Syrians who have suffered life-changing injuries as a direct result of the West’s dirty war on their country. Who will be held to account for this devastation and who will pay for the care and rehabilitation of so many traumatised people? What chance is there that justice will prevail, and that the criminals who started this war and still support it will be forced to pay for the consequences?

After all we know who they are, don’t we? (Kareem Shaheen just told us!)