To Drone Or Not To Drone

So now we are told that the bodies of the two Turkish aircrew have been recovered from the wreckage of the F-4 that was shot down by Syrian air defenses on June 22.

Before I begin, please examine these two stories on the supposed finding of the bodies -

The story at Al Jazeera is here.

The story at PressTV is here.

Note that the AJE story says, "The military has been conducting a search operation since the jet was downed on June 22 and this week brought in a specialised ship to recover the wreckage, some 1,000 metres underwater."

On the same subject, the PressTV story says, "According to Turkish sources, the bodies of Captain Gokhan Ertan and Lieutenant Hasan Huseyin Aksoy were found on the Eastern Mediterranean sea bed by a US deep-sea exploration vessel on Wednesday. The bodies were located at a depth of 1,260 meters."

Interesting, no? The now-western-aligned Al Jazeera makes no mention of the fact that the deep-sea recovery vessel was an American ship. Let us bear in mind, dear reader, that AJE is owned and controlled by the Emir of Qatar, and Qatar is one of the main financiers of the "Syrian resistance".

Note that the AJE story denies that the Turkish military gave any information on where the bodies were found, while the PressTV story explicitly states the depth of water and general location.

Ah, the joys of being a citizen of the 21st century, sifting through all the different flavours of bullshit, attempting to triangulate some approximation of truth from the alignment of the lies.

It is worth noting that the Latakia Basin does closely approach the shore at that point. I am told that the water just off the beach plunges abruptly to 3000 feet or more (1000 meters). And yet, this all seems so very convenient, and I cannot help but be reminded of the equally-convenient "burial at sea" of Osama bin Laden, which neatly prevented any forensic examination of the body.

Honestly, I don't know enough about the specialized disciplines of diving and air crash investigation to comment on whether the bodies are likely to have remained intact under such circumstances, or whether it is reasonable for the location of the wreckage to have taken 12 days.

So, was I off-base in reporting that the F-4 was an unmanned drone? Possibly so. It wouldn't be the first time I have made a bad call, and I severely doubt it would be the last. Such are the perils of speculation, such are the perils of being a blogger, such are the perils of being human. And yet, I still have my doubts.

There is, in this current age, given the extent to which all information to which we have access has been massaged, edited, and manipulated, a very real need for a healthy level of skepticism. And yet, at what point does skepticism become paranoia? That, dear reader, is for you to decide.

It Was A Drone

I'm going to be very brief today, my friends. It was a Drone.

The Turkish F-4 Phantom apparently shot down over Syria 3 days ago, was in fact a QF-4, an unmanned, remotely controlled model used as a target drone. The reason they cannot find the pilot or the backseater is simply because there never were any humans aboard the aircraft.

Now, let's ask ourselves, what point was there to sending an unmanned target drone conversion of a usually-piloted aircraft into Syrian airspace? One could argue that perhaps it had been fitted with a reconnaissance package of some sort. But, in a day when the US and its allies regularly deploy swarms of purpose-built recon drones, with abilities far superior to anything that might be retrofitted to a badly-aging F-4 designed back in the 1950's, how would this make any practical sense?

The other possibility that suggests itself to the twisted, cunning and slightly-paranoid mind of your faithful correspondent is this - it was a setup. How would they have managed this? Well, they would have sent the drone in on what looked like an attack profile, and then when the Syrians launched a SAM at it, reversed course as fast as the airframe would allow and headed back out of Syrian airspace, back over the Mediterranean.

Listen to the rhetoric carefully, my friends. The key phrase being repeated is "where the plane was shot down", that's what they keep saying, over and over, in order to fix it in the minds of the media and the public.

But that's not what matters. What matters is where the drone/plane was at the time the SAM was launched at it.

One must give the powers-that-be full credit for a cleverly-managed media campaign. They're definitely not subtle, and they're not nearly as clever as they seem to think they are, but they do know how to manage public opinion, and they do know how to focus attention on the red herring.

Now they have their casus belli. And we all know what comes next.

Lies About Syria

Let's be blunt here. The entire media narrative we are being fed about Syria is a reeking crock of shit. The whole song and dance about -
Evil Assad is murdering his people and the Syrian resistance are a group of high-minded freedom fighters struggling to liberate their nation from tyranny and establish a democratic Syrian state with freedom and equality for all.

All of that is BS. The ugly truth of the matter is that the Syrian resistance are, in large part, foreign mercenaries backed by Qatar, Saudia Arabia, and the USA, and that said resistance are acting as agents provocateurs in an attempt to justify military intervention by NATO, in order to bring about regime change in Syria and install a puppet government.

As evidence of this, the Houla massacre is being distorted and exploited by a media campaign which was obviously prepared well in advance. The statement by the chief of the UN’s observer mission to the effect that the killers were unknown and further investigation needed was ignored. The UN resolution immediately submitted called upon the Syrian Army to stop using heavy weapons against inhabited areas, despite the Houla victims having been killed with small arms; the eye witnesses described the attackers as "men in plain clothes.”

Out of one side of their mouth the UN talking heads say that Houla was caused by heavy bombardment with tanks and artillery. Out of the other side of their mouth, they say that “the majority of the victims were killed execution-style”. Well, which is it? The hasbara isn’t even internally consistent, let alone consistent with external reality.

And yet nation after nation has booted its Syrian diplomats, under this pretext, even France, to my utter disappointment. (Then again, Hollande may not be completely in charge. DGSE has often seemed to act independently, regardless of the wishes of France’s civilian government).

The people who run the nations of the West are indescribably evil, yes, but they are not stupid. It is inconceivable that these European nations are actually deceived by the hasbara. They must know the truth. Therefore, it logically follows that they find it to be in their own best interests to pretend to believe.

Then again, one of the greats of early science-fiction (Asimov perhaps?) once said something like – “Never postulate conspiracy to explain that which could be explained equally well by incompetence”. And incompetence, dear reader, is a condition which can afflict even the most intelligent of men and women.

I’m really quite puzzled by the international reaction to all of this. I can usually sort out, at least roughly, what is going on behind the scenes, if only via a process of triangulating all the various lies. But the response to recent events in Syria leaves me standing here scratching my head and muttering, “Uhhh, whiskey tango foxtrot, over?”

Latest Developments in Syrian Farce

French Journalist Thierry Meyssan has another excellent article on what's really happening with Syria.

Reading this will give you a sense of deja vu, I can virtually guarantee. The contrast between the story as spun by mainstream media, (including, sadly, Al Jazeera), and Meyssan's account of what's really going on is almost surrealistic.

It's the same old, same old Zionist propaganda machine at work again, as abetted and enabled by their lackeys at the US State Department, but Meyssan shares with us a few little tidbits that the MSM are not covering, such as the following quote -

General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General James Mattis, commander of United States Central Command, finally admitted that the U.S. Air Force was not in a position to bomb Syria, if ordered to, considering that the country is now equipped with Russia’s most effective anti-aircraft system in the world.

Oh my.