In this week’s episode of London Calling, James and I talk about James’s health (not good), his freezer debacle which left his wife very cross, my failure to make it across London in time for the beginning of the podcast using public transport (which James thinks is all part of the plan to keep us locked up in our homes), the Gary Lineker scandal (which James thinks was cooked up to distract people from the Great Reset and other, equally important things taking place under our very noses), the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the Free Speech Union’s recent victory on non-crime hate incidents and, in culture corner, Finding Michael, Fleischman is in Trouble, Welcome to Wrexham and QPR’s first win in 13 games.
You can listen to the podcast here and subscribe on iTunes here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The Mail article is apparently a poorly updated version of one originally dealing with Homs.
Well let’s give them a chance, take them at their word. All the Syrians who fled to England to escape their civil war can now go home.
That way they can escape ours.
“Rebels”??????
Foreign Islamist terrorists used by Israel, the US and it’s Nato vassals to destabilise the region for a more compliant government for US interests.
You’re really GlassHalfEmpty, admit it.
And youre clueless on whats really going on in the world..admit it….
Not for US interests, but to fulfil the Isaiah Prophecy for Israel, and satisfy the insatiable Hebrew need for revenge, even for things that happened centuries ago, when Assyrians defeated them.
President Assad, the only world leader who was also a fully-trained physician, healing people’s eyesight, is a good man, and so is his wife, who is battling against leukaemia.
Who are the ‘insurgents’ exactly? ISIS?
Christians are being Christocided in Aleppo for eg. So I assume that the usual Muslim elements are at work and leading this rebellion. https://stream.org/syrian-christians-face-new-threat-of-genocide-from-muslim-jihadists/
Of course this article never mentions the Christocide. Doesn’t exist for the bien pensant and the ‘sceptics’. ‘Stop the press’ cries about the ‘Alawites’ and their potential destruction. Before 2010 Christians were 10% of the pop. Now they are 5%. Christian Lives Matter.
ISIS et al funded by the CIA ?
I will be interested to know the extent of the involvement of the CIA in this deeply unwelcome development.
Stinks to me of yet another poison pill left behind by the failed Biden administration.
After careful observation of the politics and global situation my analysis of the situation is this:
Someone’s proxy agreed with someone else’s proxy that someone’s proxy troops had to proximally withdraw.
“the end of a dark era and the beginning of a new one.”
oops
Unintentionally prophetic…
Speccie asks “Will Syria’s new rulers restrain their followers from massacring the Alawites who have lorded it over them for so long?”
I would have ythought it more relevant to ask if the remaining Christians in Syria and Lebanon will be safe. I don’t like to say the Alawites should not be able to live and remain but they have a lot to answer for, Christians there do not.
A friend who lives on the Golan tells me this morning Israel’s security agencies are treating this with a great deal of caution.
These are essentially Al Quada.
Israeli media reports Hezbollah pulling out of Syria.
Iran next for an uprising?
Frying pan or fire?
‘As rebels entered Aleppo, video showed (the rebel leader) issuing orders by phone, forbidding fighters from entering homes and reminding them to protect citizens.
Aron Lund, a fellow at think-tank Century International, said Mr Jolani and HTS have clearly changed, while adding they remain “pretty hardline”.
“It’s PR, but the fact they are engaging in this effort at all shows they are no longer as rigid as they once were,” he said.
“Old-school al Qaeda or the Islamic State would never have done that.”
‘Abu Muhammed Jolani, himself designated a terrorist by the US in 2013, has tried to reassure Syrian minorities who fear jihadists.
In 2023, he allowed the first Christian mass in years in the northwestern city of Idlib, and on Wednesday insisted he would protect residents of a Christian town south of Aleppo.’
No-one is entirely sure what to expect.
Can Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) really be worse than Assad? Yes. Will they be? Probably not.
“… it was the end of a dark era and the beginning of a new one.”
New but different dark era?
13 years of civil war? The terrorists (not opposition fighters or rebels) had been pushed back into Idlib but unfortunately not eradicated. They are the remnants of ISIS and Al-Qaeda (anyone remember 9/11?), and were presumably funded and kept in training by Western intelligence. There are apparently already videos of Syrian soldiers beheaded by the advancing forces. They may be putting on a kind face and talking about freeing Syrian citizens, but that is only for propaganda purposes. Interesting how terrorists are now able to acquire tanks and armoured troop carriers: where did they get those from?!
Israel announced a cease-fire with Lebanon and one day later the forces now known as HTS started their break-out of Idlib and attempt to take over Syria. Turkey was apparently not planning this attack until March but Israel told them now is the best time: Hezbollah is weakened, Lebanon and Syria were also weakened by Israel whose attacks continued despite the ‘cease-fire’, and Russia has its hands full with Ukraine.
Israel wants to stop arms shipments to Hezbollah from Iran via Syria, and the Turks want to wipe out the Kurds, so everyone is happy to attack Bashar al-Assad, probably the only world leader who is able to walk freely around his cities without the need of a bodyguard, and who always had time to talk to his citizens and allow them to take selfies with him. His wife was also born and raised in London.
And, of course, US troops continue to occupy the oil fields in the east of the country.
Israel is happy so the West is happy.
Well done for daring to speak a word in defence of President Assad. May I quote one of your crucial points:
“…Everyone is happy to attack Bashar al-Assad, probably the only world leader who is able to walk freely around his cities without the need of a bodyguard, and who always had time to talk to his citizens and allow them to take selfies with him.”
“HTS said it will be a “new Syria” where “everyone lives in peace and justice prevails”. …
Let me translate this for you, as I’m an expert on muslimo-speak: “We will treat all of our political and religious enemies with the same brutality as the Assad regime treated us.”
“Peace and justice if you pay the dhimmi tax and submit to sharia,”
Yes I’d rather see a mass exodus from European countries than a surge of yet more inappropriate and unsuitable Syrian incomers, thanks. I would make exception for the Christians being released from prison over there though. We’d have to deport Muslims ( start with the criminals/illegals ) to make room for them, mind;
”Sometimes revolutions and uprisings play out as extended battles. Other times the collapse is near instantaneous because the army simply won’t fight. That’s what happened during the original ISIS onslaught, the fall of Afghanistan and now the fall of Syria.
Regime loyalists insist that the Syrian army was bought off. Perhaps the Turks and whatever other interests were behind this ‘uprising’ spread some money around.
But more likely there wasn’t much of a Syrian army left.
The Syrian army had been notorious for its cruelty and ruthlessness. While the Egyptians had larger troop numbers and the Jordanians had better professionalism, Israeli soldiers of a certain era tended to remember the viciousness of the Syrians. The Assad family had withstood multiple Sunni Islamist rebellions through sheer brutality. But by 2024, there was not much of that army left.
The Syrian Civil War had turned Syria into a puppet regime controlled by Iran and Russia. Neither side wanted much of a Syrian military. Assad Jr was, like many nepo baby dictators in the region, a weak leader with no real idea of how to rebuild Syria. Hezbollah and the Russians had saved him during the civil war. But it took a lot of bleeding to do it. And after Hezbollah’s war with Israel, it lacked the momentum or manpower to do it. Iran seemed hesitant and indecisive. And the Russians tried to bring some airpower in but not enough to make a significant difference.
Trump may have been the X factor hanging over this as well. While he indicated that he didn’t want America involved in the civil war, some of the pro-Assad players may have hesitated to get involved in a long-term conflict with an unpredictable administration coming into office.
Either way, the Assad family seems to be done. What happens to Syria may however prove more complicated. Post-fall, Syria is likely to follow demographic trends and that means the Alawite minority isn’t likely to run the place ever again. But there will be multiple factions in play.
Turkey would love to dominate Syria, but right now every state in the region is likely to back different factions and Istanbul is more obsessed with wiping out the Kurds than trying to herd all the goats.
Some sort of coalition may form or it may devolve into a full-on civil war or quite possibly some combination of the two. The one thing the Middle East isn’t known for is stability.
Chaos is the one thing you can bet on in the Middle East.”
https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/syria-falls-chaos-wins-again-in-the-middle-east
Its all about the oil and gas. How soon can Syria get it up to 400,000 barrels a day?
I can’t believe that no one here is familiar with Vanessa Beeley (Damascus) and her work, as well as UK Column. The MSM is telling lies, as is ever its wont. Why do people believe them now after all the lies of the last four or five years (and far far longer, of course)? I can’t go into it all here, but if you all think Assad is evil wait till you see what replaces him (if he has truly gone). Under Assad, Christians and other minorities were always fairly treated. It is not at all what it seems. Assad will be a tragic loss.
I was financially supporting Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett for many years whilst they conveyed the truth from Syria.
That’s excellent. I ‘liked’ your comment above, the only one (at least that I saw) that seemed to see where this is all going.
Spot on!
Which tribe is supposedly in charge now? I have read these tribes have been fighting each other since the 4th century.
This is terrible news for Syria. President Assad and his wife and children are good people, and were respected and popular with real Syrians, including Syrian Christians. Here are a few comments from wide-awake members of the public:
—“Assad was actually doing just fine managing things in his country until Barack Hussein Obama undermined the balance and armed the “moderates” who turned out to be extremists. Barack Obama unleashed the Syrian scourge upon Europe. This is truth.”
—“The propaganda machine is in overdrive again. Trying to justify the West’s deep state backed coup using radical Islamists.”
—“Remember the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” stories?” [And the Ripping Babies from Incubators stories? And now the Iron Press to Crush Prisoners stories?]
—“IF Assad is indeed the bad guy the western media make him out to be, then there will be NO Syrian refugees coming to Europe now Syria is free.
Unfortunately, like Gaddafi and Saddam, the “bad guys” have all been better than what succeeds them after the West and Israel meddlers have destabilised their government to destruction.”
—“lies lies lies – it’s ok Assad we know they are lying”
Oh, I so agree. I have been so upset by the news but am still hoping that UKC today will say it is all lies (ie that Assad hasn’t gone and that Syria hasn’t fallen). If it’s all true, it is indeed terrible news for Syria, beyond tragic.
You’re right, but maybe it will be better for President Assad and his family, in a way, because he and the Real Syrian Army must be exhausted after battling the terrorists for so many years, and the President’s wife is also fighting against leukaemia. I hope they can rest and recover, even under Putin’s regime, for evil as Putin is, he was the only one who offered them a safe haven.
I feel sorry for the captured Real Syrian Army officers now being “questioned” about President Assad’s whereabouts.
Yes, maybe it will be better for them, as you say (I didn’t know about Mrs Assad’s battle with leukaemia). But I can’t bear to think of the captured ones and what they will have to undergo. The poor Syrian people too. I don’t think Putin is nearly as evil as our lot, he sometimes seems like the only adult in the room.
Chemically induced leukemia in humans – PMC
Makes you wonder to what lengths President Assad’s enemies would go…
Nothing would surprise me, though it is horribly evil.