Tell us again how the "mainstream media" are prejudiced against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad? Regime warplanes again hit Syria's divided largest city of Aleppo and neighboring rebel-controlled towns May 8. The Reuters headline is straight-up regime propaganda: "Syrian warplanes counter-attack rebels near Aleppo." First, these are populated towns that are being bombed, and we can assume that civilians and their homes are being hit at least as much as (if not more than) any "rebel" targets. Second, the word "counter-attack" is used, with the explanation that the strikes came "as the government tried to push back a [sic] insurgent advance in the area." How many things are wrong with this? First and foremost: the insurgents are advancing in the face of ongoing regime terror of precisely this nature. The word "counter-attack" makes it sound like the rebels started the fighting arbitrarily. This is like Israel framing each new bombardment of Gaza as a "counter-attack" to Palestinian rocket-fire. Second, while we know that Reuters has to maintain its "objectivity," it is a little late in the day to be flattering the outlaw regime of Bashar Assad with the label "government."  As we've said before: At this point, Assad controls only some 20% of the country. Assad is just Syria's most well-armed (and bloodiest) warlord, with powerful foreign patrons—but nothing more. Third (although it seems petty to mention it), Reuters could use a proof-reader.

An ISIS commander described by the Pentagon as the group's "minister of war" was announced to have been likely killed in a US air-strike in Syria on March 8. Abu Omar al-Shishani AKA "Omar the Chechen" ranked among the most-wanted militants under a US program that offered up to $5 million for information leading to his removal from the battlefield, Reuters reports. The conspiranoid website Levant Report responds to this development with the headline "ISIS Leader Omar al-Shishani Fought Under US Umbrella as Late as 2013." As is often the case with conspiranoid claims, there is a grain of truth here worthy of examination, but it hardly justifies the click-bait headline...

We've long noted that the Israeli security establishment and its neocon allies in Washington are divided between those who would give Bashar Assad a healthy shove and those who would prop him with up as the Devil they know. One faction views him as a bulwark against the jihadists; the other as an ally of Hezbollah even more dangerous to Israel's interests. This is reflected in Washington's "strategy of equivocation," which has over the past five years seen the White House tilt now the rebels, now to the dictatorship. This provides convenient quotes from Israeli officials whenever some conspiranoid wants to prove the "fairy tale" that Israel is backing ISIS and other jihadist factions. One such specimen appeared in the Washington Post Jan. 19, when Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, speaking at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told the audience that if he had to choose between ISIS and Iran as the new power in Syria, he'd "choose ISIS." 

A blog with the ostentatiously idiotic name of the AntiMedia (as if all blogs were not, by definition, part of "the media") unintentionally reveals how the current "leftist" (sic) vogue for monsterphilia—exalting dictators and war criminals as paragons of order and stability, if they affect even the most transparent anti-US posture—actually means an embrace of values utterly antithetical to everything the left has traditionally stood for... 

It is looking like the supposed diplomatic breakthrough on Syria could actually end up only escalating the war. US Secretary of State John Kerry met Russia's President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin last week to hash out a common position. (AFP, Dec. 15) This came just days after Kerry explicitly disavowed that the US is seeking "regime change" in Syria—making the US tilt to Assad clearer than ever, and vindicating Putin in his move to start bombing Syira. On Dec. 18, the UN Security Council adopted  a resolution establishing a six-month time-table for "credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance" in Syria. "Free and fair" elections are to be held within 18 months under UN supervision with all Syrians, including members of the diaspora, eligible to vote. However, the official press release on the resolution made no mention of dictator Bashar Assad—and the notion that he will preside over such a transition defies five years of horrific reality.

OK, here we go. Get ready for the tiresome semantic debate about whether the San Bernardino massacre was "terrorism," or not. As if that's the most important question we should be grappling with.... Was this yet another random "mass-shooting" motivated by some personal grudge and rooted in America's homegrown culture of vigilantism and personal revenge? (This kind of thing is so commonplace that the same day's shoot-up in Savannah, Ga., barely made the news because only four people were shot, one fatally, the WaPo says.) Or was it inspired or even directed by an extremist political tendency of one stripe or another? This question is pathologically politicized...

Internet partisans are at present avidly posting a story from conspiranoid website AntiMedia back in June noting reports that a former police commander from Tajikistan was featured in an ISIS video, where he "admitted" (boasted would be more like it) that he was trained by military contractor Blackwater under US State Department aegis. While AntiMedia says he was thusly trained "up until last year," the cited CNN report quotes him as saying the training was from 2003 to 2008. It apparently took place both in Tajikistan and at a Blackwater facility in North Carolina. (Blackwater, strictly speaking, has not existed since 2009, having twice reorganized and changed its name since then.) Gulmurod Khalimov, an ex-colonel of the Tajik Interior Ministry's OMON elite units, says in his ISIS promotional video: "Listen, you American pigs: I've been to America three times. I saw how you train soldiers to kill Muslims. You taught your soldiers how to surround and attack, in order to exterminate Islam and Muslims."

Well, we knew it was inevitable. And sure enough, the baseless and irreposnsible "false flag" theorizing about the Paris attacks is upon us. Sadly, the first entry is from the official Palestinian Authority  daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. This of course affords the Times of Israel and the right-wing Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) plenty of opportunity for gloating. The op-ed makes all the predictable noises: "The wise and correct thing is to look for who benefits... They need to search the last place reached by the octopus arms of the Mossad... It is clear that its 'Mossad' will burn Beirut and Paris in order to achieve Netanyahu's goals..." No evidence is offered, and the only stab at a motive is the fact that Europe is now moving to impose sanctions on "Israeli" imports in fact produced in the occupied West Bank. For good measure, it also blames "Israeli security services" for the bombing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai last month.