Bombs explode in Syria. Effect on the terrorists: None.

On the 23rd of October, the UK press reported that Russian and US planes had completely “obliterated” the Omar oil field in Syria which is under the control of Daesh:

“The terrorists’ oil field in eastern Syria was obliterated in a day of bombing conducted by both Russia and the US-led coalition. US operations officer Major Michael Filanowski told reporters in Baghdad the Omar oil field was blitzed, heavily damaging the lucrative funding source for ISIS.”

But today the same press is reporting the same “obliterated” oil field was hit by UK airstrikes:

“Four Tornados took off from RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus just an hour after MPs voted in favour of launching airstrikes in the war-torn country. The jets struck targets in the Omar oil field in Eastern Syria, dealing a “real blow” to the death cult, also known as Daesh.”

The first casualty of war is always the truth…

Source: War propaganda begins: UK airstrikes hit Syrian oil field already “obliterated” | Pride’s Purge

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Back in the day, when he was a mere Parliamentary candidate, Rochdale’s nominally Labour MP Simon Danczuk was aghast at the way in which some serving and former politicians had no problem advocating for military action, without regard for the inevitable death and destruction visited upon civilian populations. But now he has the opportunity to put the boot into Jeremy Corbyn, and so all is miraculously changed.

When Israel launched strikes against Gaza in early 2009, Danczuk was unequivocal in condemning his Labour predecessor: “Mr Danczuk … criticised Rochdale’s former Labour MP, Lorna Fitzsimmons, who, in her capacity as chief executive of Britain Israel Research and Communications Centre, has been a vociferous advocate for the Israeli invasion … ‘Her comments on television are not helpful,’ he said. ‘She sounds nothing more than a feverish warmonger’”. He could not have put that more plainly.

But that was then, and now Danczuk, who readily concedes he voted against the last proposed bombing excursion in 2013, has decided that he is going to vote with the Government in favour of raining high explosive on mainly civilian areas of Syria, because the inhabitants are unfortunate enough to find themselves in areas controlled by ISIS, or whatever they’re called this week.

This is a most interesting decision – because my information is that Rochdale’s Constituency Labour Party has recommended that its MP should vote with Corbyn and most of Labour’s MPs, and oppose air strikes. There is, I am told, increasing unease among those who have stuck with Danczuk through all the machinations, dirty tricks and smear campaigns, at his inability to listen.

Source: Zelo Street: Simon Danczuk – Warmongering Hypocrite

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Senior Conservative Party officials received a memo in August which warned the activist at the centre of the Tory bullying scandal was “sociopathic” and “dangerous”.

It urged officials to keep Mark Clarke away from the party’s youth wing and warned failure could be “devastating”.

The memo, obtained by BBC Newsnight, was produced by a then-party staffer.

Mr Clarke has vigorously denied all allegations.

The document suggested that party staff had been aware that Mr Clarke had been “badly behaved” before the May 2015 election, and led Tory chairman Lord Feldman to launch an internal investigation.

Newsnight understands the memo was produced as an aide memoire for a meeting with a party official in which the former staffer made a verbal complaint about Mr Clarke.

In it, the author writes that Mark Clarke’s “bullying tactics are well-known… it would literally be impossible to list all his crimes here”.

The document does not directly contradict the insistence of party chairman Lord Feldman that he was unaware of Mr Clarke’s alleged bullying before August.

However it suggests that numerous complaints about Mr Clarke’s behaviour had been made in the months before the young activist Elliott Johnson himself complained about being bullied by Mr Clarke.

Source: Memo said activist was ‘sociopathic, dangerous and a bully’

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Protest against work capability assessments in London, 2013. Baroness Hollins, Baroness Manzoor, Lord Ramsbotham and Rev Paul Nicolson say ministers must answer growing concerns about the link between debt and ill health [Image: Peter Marshall/Demotix/Corbis].

To the fully justified concerns that the work capability assessment process is severely damaging mental health, provided by the peer review study from the University of Liverpool (Letters, 24 November), can be added the profound concerns about the link between debt and mental illness highlighted by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, along with the poor maternal nutrition, low birth weight and developmental brain disorders in children highlighted by the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition. It is also important to provide minimum incomes needed for healthy living, in both work and unemployment, and to address the 17-year gap in expectation of life between the most deprived areas of the UK and the richest (Opinion, 30 November).

Ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions will have an opportunity to answer all these concerns when responding on Monday to Lord Ramsbotham’s amendments to the welfare reform and work bill, which require the secretary of state to report to parliament on the impact of benefit sanctions on the mental and physical health of men, women and children in workless households, and in working households of incomes below the national minimum wage.
Baroness Hollins, Baroness Manzoor, Lord Ramsbotham, Rev Paul Nicolson

Source: Trapped in a cycle of debt and poor health | Letters | Politics | The Guardian

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A Labour MP called in the police tonight after receiving an apparent death threat on Twitter

Neil Coyle, MP for Bermondsey & Old Southwark, was hounded with a stream of abuse on the social network after voting in favour of air strikes in the Commons.

The threatening tweet read: “u voted for air strikes, If I see u round ends…”.

The message ends with a string of ’emoji’ pictures of knives.

Mr Coyle reported the sender to the police, prompting him to delete the message.

Source: Labour MP calls in police over Twitter ‘death threat’ – Mirror Online

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This Writer is no fan of Simon Jenkins, but he makes some good points in this article. And we know Cameron is keen to perpetuate the cycle of terrorism, don’t we?

Prime minister David Cameron’s argument in the Commons for permission to bomb Syria was not based on any new or coherent strategy. As he himself pointed out, it merely follows the logic of a previous vote to bomb Iraq. Even so, like Tony Blair before the Iraq invasion of 2003, he had to rely on abusing his opponents, scaring the public and disseminating dubious intelligence.

Nothing so undermined the prime minister’s plausibility yesterday as his refusal simply and briskly to withdraw the smear that his opponents were “terrorist sympathisers”. It suggested a man so nervous of his case as to be unable to give any quarter. It also opened him to the counter-smear, that his own relentless deployment of the politics of fear makes him terrorism’s “useful idiot”.

…

The trouble for Cameron in Syria is that the only ground troops worth the name belong not to the joint intelligence committee’s phantom army but to President Assad, whom Cameron wants to topple. In support of Assad are Iran and Russia, from whom Cameron does everything to distance himself.

In other words, the key component of British strategy lies with three potential allies who are anathema. In the light of this we are surely entitled to ask: just how serious is Cameron in wanting to defeat Isis and remove the “existential” threat to Britain? Cameron emerges not as a terrorist sympathiser, but certainly as a terrorist appeaser.

Source: It’s Cameron, not Corbyn, who is the terrorist appeaser | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian

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By killing civilians – innocent men, women and children, who just happen to live in the enclaves taken over by the Islamist State – we will just increase radicalisation by seeming to bear out ISIS’ claim that they are really the defenders of Muslims and Islam against Western aggression, while everything is the complete opposite.Cameron has been so desperate to join the ten other countries in bombing Syria, that he libelled Corbyn, and the rest of the opponents of bombing, as ‘terrorist sympathisers’. This also includes the 65 or so members of his own party, who held fast to their opposition to Blairite wars and voted against it.

Source: Cameron Wins Vote to Bomb Syria | Beastrabban\’s Weblog

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A more accurate estimate of civilian casualties in Iraq is around 400, I’m told. Fallon was covering himself by saying his “estimate” was that there hadn’t been any.

Mr Fallon said he has to personally approve any target selected for air strikes, and intelligence allows him to distinguish between terrorists and “people in headscarves selling shoes.”

He then made an astonishing claim about the accuracy of RAF strikes.

“The RAF have been striking with the permission of Parliament in Iraq for over a year now,” he said. “And our estimate is that there hasn’t yet been a single civilian casualty because of the precision of their strikes.

“They’ve been carefully targeted at ISIL command posts, ISIL supplies, ISIL supply routes.”

Mr Marr replied: “With the greatest respect, that reminds me of Robin Cooke’s notorious comment about going into Afghanistan and “not a shot being fired” at the beginning of that war.”

Mirror Online contacted the Ministry of Defence to ask what evidence there was to back up Mr Fallon’s claim, but they had not responded at the time of publication.

Source: Michael Fallon claims there have been ZERO civilian casualties from air strikes in Iraq – Mirror Online

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The decision of the UK government yesterday evening (December 2) to extend its war on terror into Syria with no coordinated strategy in place to defeat ISIS, will almost certainly be as catastrophic as Tony Blair’s decision in 2003 to commit British troops to Iraq. The notion that MPs could have genuinely been persuaded by Cameron’s line of reasoning for another illegal war is as inconceivable as MPs during Blair’s reign being unaware of either Scott Ritter’s findings stating that by 1998 Saddam had effectively been disarmed, or the subsequent public pronouncements of Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice that were made on the back of them that preceded the infamous 45 minute claim.

The Prime Minister’s justification for sending more of our troops into harms way – which, significantly, was rejected by the Foreign Affairs Committee – was predicated on the dubious and frankly laughable claim of the existence of 70,000 “moderate rebels”. On Sunday’s (November 29) edition of the BBCs Marr programme, Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, when pressed by presenter Andrew Marr to clarify who these rebels were, replied that were comprised solely of anti-Assad, Free Syrian Army forces.

However, early on December 1, Lt Gen Gordon Messenger, the deputy chief of the defence staff, appeared to have contradicted Fallon by refusing to confirm whether any of the alleged 70,000 fighters were members of more extremist groups such as the Islamic Front and Ahrar al-Sham. The fact that no clarification by Cameron was given to MPs regarding the source for the 70,000 figure or its composition, is not a sufficient enough basis for MPs to be able to make an informed decision about such an important life and death issue.

Source: Brimstone & bloodied hands | Road To Somewhere Else

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The Canary is currently investigating claims that Labour MP Graham Jones, who voted in favour of airstrikes against Syria, has engaged in an expletive-laden exchange with a constituent who criticised his support for the war.

Apparently, Mr Jones believes he is the one who is under attack, rather than the constituent who appears to have been sworn at simply for sending along respectful criticism to his elected representative.

Once we are in a position to verify the claims absolutely, we will. If that happens, it is another hammer blow for the discredited Blairite wing of the Labour party. By voting to bomb Syria – against the will of their party membership, and over half the electorate – they displayed a remarkable level of contempt. But to issue such a disgraceful response to this civil enquiry suggests the contempt runs even deeper than we thought.

Source: ‘B*llocks’: Pro-war Labour MP responds to email from concerned constituent with utter contempt (IMAGE) | The Canary

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