fahrenheit451:248

For the record it should be stated that:-
Robert Fisk is an English writer and journalist. He has been Middle East correspondent intermittently since 1976 for various media; since 1989 he has been correspondent for The Independent.
He is  widely respected ,hence his report a couple of days ago of his visit to Douma-where a chemical weapons attack against civilians was allegedly perpetrated-has caused such widespread alarm and despondency across  the Corporate MSM and social media platforms.
This is not what,for instance, the 630 itinerant Westminster benchwarmers were expecting to be so graphically revealed to them in the wake of their pathetic,mewling faux-debate - post fact of the UK's involvement in the incident of international lawbreaking ( i.e. criminality ) where the US ,UK and France launched a massive air and missile attack against various  government establishments inside Syria.These establishments having been " identified " as critical infrastructure in the Syrian government's alleged chemical and biological  weapons program.
In the absolute realm of historic Realpolitik it is for the strongest to govern.And powerful nation states as a matter of praxis in the end do actually do whatever the hell they want to whenever and wherever. That in itself isn't problematic;what is problematic is the faux-insistence that everyone maintain a polite fiction that nation states are somehow accountable to another polite fiction which they refer to as " International Law".
Once a generalised consensus and modus vivendi arises around such a priori notions as International Law,then by and large it behoves the sponsors and beneficiaries of this to acknowledge and adhere to the bloody thing.Which of course the US and its EUNATO lackeys singularly fail to do whenever somebody cries " wolf ! " as they did In Yugoslavia,Afganistan,Iraq and Libya to name a few.
it is always the other side,those who contest the US global hegemony,who are the ones needing to adhere to International Law or are the ones circumventing International Law or in breach of it. This is in fact deeply Freudian.
Law and Order presumes generally matters such as :- due process, evidence,verifiable witness statements and the archaic concept habeas corpus . The alternative is vigilantism.Which of course is what the US and its band of outlaws are all about.
Otiose pseudo-moralistic cant,vacuous platitudes,egregious rhetoric and non sequiturs dreamed up by p.r . and marketing gurus that pass themselves off as philosophical/ideological expressions of some gravitas.One needs only ,if one has the intestinal fortitude,to listen again to the blather issuing itself from May's facial orifice as she  " justified " ordering the bombardment of the territory of another sovereign nation state with which the UK is not at war nor has ever been existentially threatened by.
And then along came Robert Fisk and his frontline report from Douma.Which the itinerant Westminster benchwarmers then chose not to refer to at all.
And meanwhile in Idlib,the Mad Dog Erdogan Turkish invaders' backed Free Syrian army is engaged in a brutal no holds barred turf war with the Al Qaeda rebranded Al Nusra Front rebranded HTS.Which is causing unnecessary widespread humanitarian suffering which could be alleviated and or prevented by timely intervetion;say by a series of airstrikes for example?

Only no-one in the West has cried "Wolf! ".

fahrenheit451:247

The Western powers aka the United States and its kowtowing,toadying satrapies with the UK to the fore,insist that other nations,for example the likes of North Korea,Iran ,China and Russia,et al abide by what they assert are the generally accepted precepts of the so-called international rules based order,or " Westphalian System ".
Rules based. International order.Supposedly brought into being by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that brought to a close what has since be called  " The Thirty Years War ",it established the legal fiction of territorial integrity and the sovereignty of individual nation states.
Hasn't actually ever really bloody worked out in practice,but it's a convenient comfort blanket.
This rules -based Order presumably applies to its most vociferous proponents; the likes of the US,UK and France for example,no? Just to be entirely consistent and thereby avoiding the charge of outright hypocrisy.
Here's what Oona Hathaway, Professor of International Law at Yale Law School reiterated in a as part of a recent article for the Just Security website.
2. The coming air strike will violate international law. The United Nations Charter prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” This most important of international laws has three exceptions, none of which are implicated here: First, Syria has not consented to the strikes; second, the U.N. Security Council has not authorized the strikes; and third, the United States is not acting in self-defense.
And that is as unequivocal as it gets.
There might or might not have been a breach of an international prohibition on the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian city of Douma.
Even in the wake of President Trump's bull in a china shop tweet about Russia having to get ready for a massive missile strike from the US against targets in Syria, Defence Sec. Mattis restated the all too obvious, " We don't have any hard evidence ".
Evidence or not, hard or otherwise, the US and its miscreant lackeys in London and Paris shall be breaking the Rules based International Law by carrying out any military actions whatsoever against Syria.

I rest my case, m'lud.

fahrenheit451:246

Marking the occasion of the anniversary of Trump's ordered missile strike on Syrian airbases in 2017,Israeli aircraft launched their own missile strike against a Syrian airbase. As per their protocols for such incidents,the Israeli high command refused to confirm or deny any such event.But it was Israel.
There are several previous recorded and verified incidents of Israeli airstrikes against Syrian airbases,their excuse being that they were targeting Iranian military facilities at those bases.Well,that makes it all hunky dory then.A country that is officially not at war with another country can pop across the border and do a bit of bombing,run off back home and thumb their noses at International Law.
The world just took once huge irrevocable step toward triggering a Nuclear 1914.Apparently the Israeli regime was incentivised ( or thought it was jolly good idea ) to strike at Syria prior to the US doing so because it seems that Herr Trump is once again hugely aggrieved at reports emerging from the imbroglio that is the foreign-engineered Syrian civil war,of poison gas being used against civilians.
Erdogan's blitzkrieg and the meticulous ethnic cleansing of Kurdish populated regions bordering Turkey are not so much of a concern to the pseudo-moralistic posturing on Syria by the US and its NATO satrapies with,of course dutiful bootlicking lackey Tory UK austerity regime to the fore with its otiose cant.
Turkey is a NATO member,Erdogan's original wheeze of a scenario was to try and persuade the US that the Kurdish Syrian militias-part of the US backed SDF anti-Assad coalition- were themselves posing an outside existential threat to the Turkish state,which if it were actually true would oblige all NATO members to come to Turkey's ( Erdogan's ) immediate aid and declare all out war on the Kurds. Who,darn it from Ankara'a point of view are not a state actor;which is why NATO legally can't act.
And on and on.The Saudis and Qatar continue to ply Syrian based Al Qaeda affiliates,who've undergone dozens of changes in nomenclature to try and fool the CIA ( not all that difficult) with vast amounts of money,arms and intel support.This Wahabi ultra extremist strategy marries up nicely with the super scale atrocities the KSA is perpetrating in Yemen even as NATO member states including the UK has military advisors on the ground witnessing and sanctioning this unspeakable barbarism being carried out with a knowing nod and wink from Washington.

Head for the hills,is I fear no longer a viable survival strategy.