UPDATE FOR CONTEXT:

Syria is all about Gas, not poison Sarin Gas but Gas Pipelines. It is also not about Hydro Carbons in themselves but the market for hydrocarbons and which currency contracts of supply are settled in otherwise known as, US petrodollar hegemony.

https://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/04/sand-box-for-carbon-based-currency-end.html

Legitimate question. Does Jared Kushner have any interests in the Leviathan Gas field or any of the Israeli-backed Pipeline projects? #MAGA #Drain The Swamp. Starting to dig around will report back.

https://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/04/the-bortherhood-of-gas-ring-quatar-gas.html

THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE GAS RING. QATARI GAS, OR SAUDI HEGENOMY, TRUMP BACKS THE SAUDIS? TANGLED WEB INDEED

Tangled Web, Syria and Gas. Trump meets Egyptian President, that is a rejection of the Moslem Brotherhood, siding against Qatar in Syria and With Saudi broadly and therefore the ISIL Wahabbist and Saudi funded Al Queda. There’s Gas in them there Golan Heights

Incitatus visits the Forum with due ‘Ungar’ (SIC)

How does one start to fathom where the Rhetoric starts, the Sophistry takes over and the mendacity overwhelms. How can anyone posture from a moral high ground that so long ago already opened up in a great chasm of incredulity and swallowed the US State department whole?

Watching the Un Security council live in session yesterday was cringeworthy. In a summer of consecutive low points, each time relieved that surely they had now done their worse. John Kerry and Boris Johnson yesterday stole the biscuit in a performance that surely would have made even Lucian, the great Roman satirist of the Roman Elite, Blush. Their performances could possibly mark Peak Mendacity, at least for 2016.

Yesterday I was musing on Political Karaoke and Politics idols all stepping up into the limelight to sing the same old neo-liberal standards and make them their own. This is a new form of Geo-Politics, a public broadcasting of truth stretched beyond even lying. I was unsure whether the idea was for the liars to look convinced by their own lies, by which measure they Both Failed miserably; or if the game was even intended to convince anyone that tuned in to listen, that what was being spoken was the truth. Upon reflection this is clearly not a show meant for live broadcast in full, it is a sort of stock of footage through which compliant media types are supposed to salvage the Sound Bites to splice into the talking heads and to give the impression of a convincing narrative. Even on that level, it failed.

So bad were the performances and so unconvincing both the lies and their delivery, correspondents have been reduced to quoting the performance of Kerry and Johnson to provide a coherent context to Mr Kerry´s ‘Stubborn Facts’. The always inconvenient rather more convincing performances of those really trying to get to the bottom of the mess that is Syria were always intended for the cutting room floor, only there to make up the numbers and keep up appearances. Good sports, though the Turks and the Ukrainians especially, agreeing(sic) to make a special appearance, Why?

Syria’s tragedy is, in short, A failed colour revolution provoked by and stoked by the USA, its regional stooges and assorted goons and a ragtag bag of ne’er-do-well’s in the best traditions of the CIA, Regime Changes r us, collective. Syria is not exactly a first, these guys have some serious form. Kerry said himself when he descended from his poetical rhetorical cloud, ´´This is serious Business´´, it seemed reasonable to them, then, I am sure to call upon accomplices from other Stings’ to come and help in the present set up, or re-pitch, of the Scam. Not least the emperor Caligula’s favourite trusty stead, Incitatus, out of Straw by Blair. Here is Johnson, Boris Jonson in the Britanniccolours, he trots well in the paddock, representative of the Britannic Vassal State, Owned by Washington (Consensus). Impeccable breeding and can be relied upon to stay the distance. Refused at its last outing or rather did not run due to industrial stoppages back at the stables, those green Benches of Westminster.

This is Channel Fours effort.
to string together the new narrative.

I was prompted by seeing Incitatus´s appalling form, to give the discussion a more detailed look, (to see if the race was being nobbled as it were) by a question on Quora, actually about the possibility of the Uk adopting the death penalty post-Brexit.

Now that the UK is leaving the EU, will the question of bringing back the death penalty be taken more seriously due to a lack of EU restrictions?

http://images.huffingtonpost.com…

Roger Glyndwr Lewis, Married to UK International Lawyer for 22 years

Written 6am

That’s a very good question. The Establishment is I think unlikely to reverse its position which is similar to the question on Brexit, broadly, not in favour of the death penalty. Offering a referendum to the British People one suspects is not a mistake the Establishment will repeat on this question. The abolition for murder predates EU membership by some time for the Martial offences of espionage and treason, I had not been aware that the Human Rights act also abolished those in 1998, courtesy of Wikipedia Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 . The intention of the present Government to abolish the Human Rights Act or its tenets is not something which would be popular with the UK public who´s conditioning against the EU as with other EU Skeptic member states is really against Curvature of Bananas, standardised weights and measures, for some decimalisation and clearly open border immigration policies within the union for many (52%).

(para removed)ed.

With the Establishments apparent taste for Islamaphobia, it is not impossible that calls for the Death Penalty for Terrorist offences will be floated, rather than for commonal garden Murder. Treason and Espionage could be slipped back in on this ticket too. If in fact, a referendum promise for that was made It could prove a populist vote-winning strategy. The thought is gut-wrenchingly appalling but seeing Boris Johnson at the UN security council yesterday it is probably a referendum he might quite relish. It was joked at the time of his appointment that it was as bizarre an appointment as we have seen since Caligula appointed his horse consul ( he actually appointed it as a Priest). We should all know of Caligula’s greek love of his Consul(Priestly horse) and similarly, Secretary Kerry had clearly groomed the new Caligulan Equus ferus caballus to compliantly entertain the emperors will. Boris was clearly bent over and exposing his thinking parts.

Boris was not specific as to the outrages he was referring to in the general rhetorical flourishes of his introductory scene setting. White phosphorous lots of Slaughter, lots of ‘Únger’, had to look that one up for those who didn’t already know UNGA, ah the United Nations General Assembly. This UNGA this, this UNGA that, and there was me thinking the great Bullingdon Club classicist was earnestly entreating with polished Latin or greek for the Present dignitaries, some we were told even with ‘University degrees’, to seize the day, Carpe Diem with UNGA in our souls. But no it’s a bloody acronym. Boris, come on, bloody UNGA.

He was, though, not out-doing his Caligula, his emperor, his very stern and poetic Rider. No, our Incitatus was outshone on the flowery rhetorical sophistry by Kerry and his introductory remarks.

We were told how moved he had been looking up at the screen at that young Olympian (with the no doubt elysian scene captured so perfectly) ´´in a beautifully, Bono narrated video, that er really made us think…?” Yes, you heard that right, verbatim ‘err’ and dramatic… pauses all. Bono, Bloody Bono! Yes that Bono, U2 Bono, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bono. Who we now Know narrated a video of the Syrian(refugee) Olympic team who, with the aid of a Charity, for whom Bono no doubt donated his narration fee, Were able to join the rest of the free world in Rio, newly fumigated by Regime Changes R Us, with another CIA coup de tat.

The introductory remarks of each were so appalling they were clearly designed to elevate the ‘Evidence’ to come, for which no one would be entitled to have their own facts, those stubborn things. Facts! Like all the evidence that we had supposed to swallow before as readily as Dr David Kelly swallowed the Blood from a Throat slit by his own hand under a tree somewhere on a hill in rural Oxfordshire, all those years ago. The facts which somehow were in the possession of Kerry even before the dust had settled or the bodies were cold. Known to Caligula, possessed of divine right and shared with his consul, his Horse, Incitatus.

Epictetus might shriek from his Enchiridion.

´´42. When any person harms you, or speaks badly of you, remember that he acts or speaks from a supposition of its being his duty. Now, it is not possible that he should follow what appears right to you, but what appears so to himself. Therefore, if he judges from a wrong appearance, he is the person hurt, since he too is the person deceived. For if anyone should suppose a true proposition to be false, the proposition is not hurt, but he who is deceived about it. Setting out, then, from these principles, you will meekly bear a person who reviles you, for you will say upon every occasion, “It seemed so to him.”

Now we consult, THE RHETORICIAN’S VADE MECUM, and we should ask, ´´where are the Lucians in the fourth estate and their dead tree rags of apology, privilege and patronage´´?

”if you start with the Trojan War–you may if you like go right hack to the nuptials of Deucalion and Pyrrha–and thence trace your subject down to to-day. People of sense, remember, are rare, and they will probably hold their tongues out of charity; or if they do comment, it will be put down to jealousy. The rest are awed by your costume, your voice, gait, motions, falsetto, shoes, and sundry; when they see how you perspire and pant, they cannot admit a moment’s doubt of your being a very fine rhetorical performer. With them, your mere rapidity is a miracle quite sufficient to establish your character. Never prepare notes, then, nor think out a subject beforehand; that shows one up at once.21Your friends’ feet will be loud on the floor, in payment for the dinners you give them; if they observe you in difficulties, they will come to the rescue, and give you a chance, in the relief afforded by rounds of applause, of thinking how to go on. A devoted claque of your own, by the way, is among your requirements. Its use while you are performing I have given; and as you walk home afterwards, discussing the points you made, you should be absolutely surrounded by them as a bodyguard. If you meet acquaintances on the way, talk very big about yourself, put a good value on your merits, and never mind about their feelings. Ask them, Where is Demosthenes now? Or wonder which of the ancients comes nearest you.”

Facts are the components of truth and they are evinced from evidence, I was once asked to entertain the notion of political Facts. and had this to say.

”I could follow your argument more readily were you to define such items as Political Truths. Facts are not dependent upon belief or interpretation once they have come to pass, the Truth however of an interpretation of events that results in the fact is rather different especially if you wish to argue that if action a, had been taken instead of action b, then the result, fact c, would have been less. The Isis example I can see how the motivation is political or by some other argument Religious or financial once done the killing is a fact. The motivation could be many things or a combination of many things. Its an interesting choice of words. I like my Facts to be empirical stand alone no nonsense measured certainties. If you are using the term Political Fact as a state of art or convention from some discipline or other I would very much like to study the accepted formal usage set out in its agreed form, do you have that?”

Oh, the evidence?

The Aleppo Convoy.

It is far too early to say what happened to the Aid Convoy just outside Aleppo at the centre of the current row. If it were a genuine and terrible mistake a preliminary acknowledgement of mea culpa might reasonably have been expected. Already the present hiatus and intrigue, claim and counterclaim cannot rule out and indeed suggests intrigue and skullduggery, quite apart from the appalling murder of innocents. We can though justify a high degree of Skepticism regarding the holier than though affirmations of the Arch imperialists rich in Rhetoric and Sophistry, Kerry and Johnson. Those stubborn things facts, tend only to emerge after a thorough investigation, rigorous checking and this requires a passage of time it is a Stubborn and strict taskmaster scientific rigour. So facts stubborn or not, are by definition in short supply early on, however stubborn they may or may not be and how universally owned they may be is not a question until said facts can be sensibly assembled.

Boris almost had me at the start I thought he was being sincere but fresh off the 350 million quid a week for the NHS wheeze, post-Brexit &; plastered all over the side of a Bus. And given the scant acquaintance old Bozzer seems to have with telling the truth, I remained unhooked but admit almost lured. But then ‘the tell’, the giveaway, everything was,´´ especially the blame of the Assad regime´´, who could possibly see them as the part of any solution? They alone responsible for the ´´greater part of the 400,000 deaths in Syria” and on and on he went with his own curious set of facts, and with an awed equine mastication of the acronym UNGA, after all, Caligula had done much the same and a borrowed fact here and there, who could possibly notice? So there dear reader we must depart the scene in the marbled atria of the Colonnades of the United Nations and its most lauded Security Council with UNGA foremost in our hearts and minds. Let us envision bent over braced and head firmly in the sand Boris again, in position, to Expose his thinking parts. As Caligula Whips his Incitatus onwards. Gimp masks instead of Blinkers and much feasting on a porcine fare, in best Bullingdon and Skull and Bones style. Perhaps they have both had a late night down the temple playing the biscuit game, beloved of posh Lads in posh schools and posher clubs. They had taken the seasons biscuit for scraping the bottom of the barrel after all.

Wikipedia does facts its an encyclopaedia. So far this.

On 19 September, an aid convoy from the United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent consisting of more than 18 trucks was reportedly hit by air-to-surface missiles as they headed for eastern Aleppo from the town of Urum al-Kubra, killing 12 people and severely injuring several more.^[211] At the same time, Russia and Syria restarted heavy bombing raids on rebels in the city.^[212]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Aleppo_campaign

Heres the Full UN security Council Hearing, the Channel Four report above is seen for the biased mash up it really is if you watch the whole thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/04/28/seymour-hersh-hillary-approved-sending-libya-sarin-syrian-rebels.html

The great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in two previous articles in the London Review of Books («Whose Sarin?» and «The Red Line and the Rat Line») has reported that the Obama Administration falsely blamed the government of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for the sarin gas attack that Obama was trying to use as an excuse to invade Syria; and Hersh pointed to a report from British intelligence saying that the sarin that was used didn’t come from Assad’s stockpiles.

Hersh was asked about the then-US-Secretary-of-State’s role in the Benghazi Libya US consulate’s operation to collect weapons from Libyan stockpiles and send them through Turkey into Syria for a set-up sarin-gas attack, to be blamed on Assad in order to ‘justify’ the US invading Syria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh

Syrian Civil War[edit]

During the Syrian Civil War US President Obama argued in a 2012 speech that a chemical attack in Syria would constitute crossing a “red line” and that this would trigger a US military interventionagainst the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.^[49] After this speech, and prior to the chemical attacks in Ghouta, chemical weapons were suspected to have been used in at least four attacks in the country.^[50] On 23 March 2013, the Syrian government requested the UN to send inspectors in order to investigate an incident in the town of Khan al-Assal, where it said opposition forces had used chlorine-filled rockets.^[51] However, on 25 April US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel stated that US intelligence showed the Assad government was likely to have used chemical weapons – specifically sarin gas.^[52]

On 8 December 2013, the London Review of Books published an online article by Hersh alleging that President Obama had “omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts” in his assertion during his televised speech of 10 September that Bashar Al-Assad’s regime had been responsible for the use of sarin in the Ghouta chemical attack of 21 August 2013 against a rebel-held district of Damascus.^[53] In particular, Hersh wrote of anonymous intelligence sources telling him that the Syrian army was not the only agency with access to sarin, referring to the Al-Nusra Front Jihadist group, and that, during the period before the Ghouta attack, secretly implanted sensors at the country’s known bases had not detected suspicious movements suggesting a forthcoming chemical attack in the period.^[53] The New Yorker and The Washington Post had both decided against publishing this account.^[54]

On 22 December 2015, the London Review of Books published Hersh’s article ″Military to Military″^[55] in which he exposed the divide between the US top brass and the politicians in the White House when it came to dealing with Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq. Hersh reports the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States Department of Defense has indirectly supported Syria’s PresidentBashar al-Assad with quality intelligence in an effort to help him defeat jihadist groups and provided – via Germany, Israel and Russia – to help Assad push back Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State. Hersh also writes the military even undermined a US effort to arm Syrian rebels in a bid to prove it was serious about helping Assad fight their common enemies. Hersh says the Joint Chiefs’ maneuvering was rooted in several concerns, including the US arming of unvetted Syrian rebels with jihadist ties, a belief the administration was overly focused on confronting Assad’s ally Russia, and anger the White House was unwilling to challenge Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey over their support of extremist groups in Syria. These countries had armed extremists with modern weapons – which gave them the upper hand in subduing the Syrian Army – and resulted in huge territorial losses by 2013. Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish government supported Jabhat al-Nusra. The US JCS reported the Erdogan government were “doing the same for Islamic State” in order to disrupt the balance in the Middle East. The Turkish government refused to halt the flow of foreign militants going through Turkey.^[56]^[57]

From the Movie 1984, Eurythmics Sex Crime.

Substitute War Crime and how silent the fourth Estate has fallen on Chilcott and adventures back in yesteryear in Babylonian Lands, Iraq. On Facts on wisdom

and on knowledge Kerry’s Aphorism borrowed from John Adams and Senator Patrick Moynihan, was stated thus

´´So let’s just review the bidding a bit. I was privileged to serve in the United States Senate with a fellow who spent a lot of time here. He was the ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. And he would famously remind us that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. And as President John Adams once said, facts are stubborn things.´´

Indeed stubborn things, as mule like as compliant consuls are Horse-like. And as

the little boy declared in the old fairy tale, where are the emperor’s clothes?

He is surely not clothed in truth, woven from threads of facts and tended with

wisdom and care.

The Mad Philosopher

The flabby wine-skin of his brain
Yields to some pathologic strain,
And voids from its unstored abysm
The driblet of an aphorism.

Ambrose Bierce.

In Closing Philosophy is a love of truth, Literally! So I give you two quotes to contrast with Caligula’s Aphorism.

“I constantly sought knowledge and truth, and it became my belief that for gaining access to the effulgence and closeness to God, there is no better way than that of searching for truth and knowledge.” Ibn al-Haytham
CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE: ”In order to reason well …. it is absolutely necessary to possess … such virtues as intellectual honesty and sincerity and a real love of truth (2.82). The cause [of the success of scientific inquirers] has been that the motive which has carried them to the laboratory and the field has been a craving to know how things really were … (1-34). [Genuine inquiry consists I in diligent inquiry into truth for truth’s sake (1.44), … in actually drawing the bow upon truth with intentness in the eye, with energy in the arm (1.235). [When] it is no longer the reasoning which determines what the conclusion shall be, but … the conclusion which determines what the reasoning shall be … this is sham reasoning…. The effect of this shamming is that men come to look upon reasoning as mainly decorative…”.from We Pragmatists