One trick in national electioneering is to portrait the likely though narrow incumbents as the underdog in the run up to election day. Those doing the pools and the media who favor the likely winner will then propagandize a head to head race in which the opposition is slightly in front.

This helps the incumbents in two regards. It mobilizes their own marginal voters who now fear a victory of the demonized opposition. FUD – fear, uncertainty, doubt is their election tool. It also lets opposition leaders feel somewhat secure and to let them soften their campaign promises and announced policies. This then turns off their marginal voters.

We have seen this scheme over and over again. The German election in 1965 was a prime example. The poll institutions in favor of the conservatives published numbers that showed a possible and even likely opposition win. The conservative press and the conservative voters were mobilized by this and the opposition was distracted from more radical and popular policies it should have promoted. The outcome was defying the false polls and a conservative win by a wide margin ensued.

The recent elections in Israel saw the use the same trick. The likely outcome, so was said, was a loss for Netanyahoo to the (slightly) more liberal opposition. This helped Netanyahoo to mobilize the more radical parts of his base by warning of the “great dangers” a opposition win would lead to. He won.

The Conservatives in Britain, their supporting pollsters and the conservative supporting press (most of British media) also used this tactic. Even the final polls showed Labour and Conservatives being head to head but the election was a wide win for the Conservatives. While party leaders will resign over the “unexpected” losses no pollster will be disqualified, even when they should be, and they will therefore use the same trick again in the next elections. Instead of going for a more social policy, as it should have done during the campaign, Labour will continue to move to the right. This will marginalize it further just like several such moves by the social-democratic SPD in Germany which are leading to its demise.

Next time you see a head to head prognosis by this or that pollster be aware that the real numbers may well differ and that the published polls are just one trick of the campaign trade.

2020 may see a not-so-great-anymore Britain without Scotland and outside of the EU. I can’t think of anyone who would lose tears over that turn of history.

The propaganda against Syria is milking the capture of Idlib city by Jabhat al-Nusra and assorted other Islamist groups. The general tone is "Assad is losing" illogically combined with a demand that the U.S. should now bomb the Syrian government troops. Why would that be necessary if the Syrian government were really losing control?

A prime example comes via Foreign Policy from Charles Lister, an analyst from Brooking Doha, which is  paid with Qatari money but often cooperating with the Obama administration. That headline declares that Assad is losing and the assault on Idlib is lauded in the highest tone. Then the piece admits that this small victory against retreating Syrian troops was only possible because AlQaeda was leading in the assault.

The piece admits that the U.S. which wants to balance between AlQaeda and the Syrian government forces prolonging the conflict in the hope that both sides will lose, was behind that move:

The involvement of FSA groups, in fact, reveals how the factions’ backers have changed their tune regarding coordination with Islamists. Several commanders involved in leading recent Idlib operations confirmed to this author that the U.S.-led operations room in southern Turkey, which coordinates the provision of lethal and non-lethal support to vetted opposition groups, was instrumental in facilitating their involvement in the operation from early April onwards. That operations room — along with another in Jordan, which covers Syria’s south — also appears to have dramatically increased its level of assistance and provision of intelligence to vetted groups in recent weeks.

Whereas these multinational operations rooms have previously demanded that recipients of military assistance cease direct coordination with groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, recent dynamics in Idlib appear to have demonstrated something different. Not only were weapons shipments increased to the so-called “vetted groups,” but the operations room specifically encouraged a closer cooperation with Islamists commanding frontline operations.

The U.S. led operations room encouraged cooperation between the Islamists of the so called Fee Syrian Army and AlQaeda. A U.S. drone, shot down over Latakia in March, was gathering intelligence for the AlQaeda attack on Idlib. More that 600 TOW U.S. anti-tank missiles have been used against Syrian troops in north Syria. These are part of the 14,000 the Saudis had ordered from the U.S. producer.

Even if the U.S., as now admitted, would not officially urge its mercenaries to cooperate with Jabhat al-Nusra such cooperation was always obvious to anyone who dared to look:

In southern Syria [..] factions that vowed to distance themselves from extremists like Jabhat al-Nusra in mid-April were seen cooperating with the group in Deraa only days later.

The reality is that the directly U.S. supported, equipped and paid "moderate" Fee Syrian Army Jihadi mercenaries are just as hostile to other sects as the AlQaeda derivative Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State. They may not behead those who they declare to be unbelievers but they will kill them just as much.

While the U.S. is nurturing AlQaeda in Syria, Turkey is taking care of the Islamic State. Tons of Ammonium Sulfate, used to make road side bombs, is "smuggled" from Turkey to the Islamic State under official eyes. Turkish recruiters incite Muslims from the Turkman Uighur people in west China and from Tajikistan to emigrate to the Islamic State. They give away Turkish passports to allow those people to travel to Turkey from where they reach Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile the Saudis bomb everyone and everything in Yemen except the cities and areas captured by AlQaeda in the Arab Peninsula.

The U.S. and its allies are now in full support of violent Sunni Jihadists throughout the Middle East. At the same time they use the "threat of AlQaeda" to fearmonger and suppress opposition within their countries.

Charles Lister and the other Brooking propagandists want the U.S. to bomb Syria to bring the Assad government to the table to negotiate. But who is the Syrian government to negotiate with? AlQaeda?

Who would win should the Syrian government really lose the war or capitulate? The U.S. supported "moderate rebels" Islamist, who could not win against the Syrian government, would then take over and defeat AlQaeda and the Islamic State?

Who comes up with such phantasies?

News & views …

Anne Barnard is the New York Times’s Beirut bureau chief covering Syria, Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East region. Like her Washington Post's colleague Liz Sly she reports along the established Washington propaganda lines emphasizing Arab sectarianism and "U.S. does good" claims.

Here she writes on the killing of at least 52 civilians in Fridays bombing of Bir Mahli, in Aleppo Province by a U.S. led "coalition" air attack. The last sentence of her short report reads:

The Observatory said that members of at least six families were killed, along with some Islamic State fighters, and that 13 were missing.

Now compare that with the AFP report on the issue:

"Not a single IS fighter" was killed in the strikes on Birmahle, said Abdel Rahman, adding that the village is inhabited by civilians only with no IS presence.

The Associated Press report of the incident:

On Saturday, the Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman said the strikes hit only civilians in their homes in Bir Mhali, a mixed Kurdish and Arab village, killing 52, including seven children and nine women.

How can Barnard claim the Observatory said the civilians were killed "along with some Islamic State fighters" when the Observatory, according to AFP and AP, said the opposite?

What Barnard wrote is not some fudging or misunderstanding. It is a clear lie.

That lie lets her readers believe that the murdered families were "collateral damage" of a well intended,  legitimate strike. But that is clearly not the case. No IS fighters were killed and none were even nearby.  The killing of these civilians may even have been intended from nefarious reasons.

McClatchy, with its own reporting and a historically much better record than the NYT, finds no IS fighters killed but suggests that the airstrikes and killing was part of an ethnic cleansing campaign by Kurds, supported by the U.S. "coalition", against the Arab population in the area:

The reported deaths of the villagers also embroiled the United States in Syria’s fierce ethnic rivalries, with activists pointing out that the fishing and farming village of about 4,000 Arabs has had tense relations with Kurds living nearby – especially with the Kurdish “People’s Protection Units” or YPG.
…
The activist, who spoke to McClatchy by Skype on condition of anonymity out of fear of both the YPG and the Islamic State, said the coalition may have received flawed intelligence about the target from its allies on the ground, a reference to YPG forces. “ Kurdish hostility towards Arabs in the area has been pretty clear for a long time,” the activist said. “Otherwise, how would you explain the Kurds burning Arab houses under their own control?”

He added that the coalition had bombed a bridge at the town of Karakozak some months ago that he said was the only crossing over the Euphrates River in the area. The bridge’s destruction had “put the whole area under siege.”

If the U.S. relies solely on YPG information about targets we can expect a lot more bombing of Arab civilians in the areas next to YPG positions. We can also expect that Anne Barnard will then again claim that all those murdered in such strikes were killed "along with some Islamic State fighters".

The U.S. military and intelligence groups involved with Central Command in the Middle East celebrated May 1 with a little competition and two terrific target selections:

US-led air strikes targeting the Islamic State group killed at least 52 civilians in a village in northern Syria, a monitoring group said on Saturday.

"Air strikes by the coalition early on Friday on the village of Birmahle in Aleppo province killed 52 civilians," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"Seven children were killed, and 13 people are still trapped in the rubble," he said.

Abdel Rahman told AFP that Kurdish militiamen and Syrian rebel fighters were clashing with IS in a town roughly two kilometres (1 mile) away.

"But Birmahle is only civilians, with no IS positions and no clashes," he said.

Abdel Rahman said "not a single IS fighter" was killed in the strikes on the village,…

Well done. But the CentCom military intelligence group supporting the Saudi war on Yemen showed that it could do better:

A series of Saudi airstrikes hit a hospital and medical camp in southwestern Yemen on Friday, killing at least 58 civilians and injuring at least 67, two local Yemeni government officials said.

Most of the dead and injured were medics and patients, they said.

Raheda Hospital is one of the largest and busiest in the area. The medical camp is part of the hospital.
…
Three local Yemeni government officials said the hospital was not being used by Houthi rebels and that none of the dead was a rebel fighter.

Seems like the war on Yemen targeting group won the sixpack.

The best overall briefing on the war of Yemen comes in today's Independent. It is a bit speculative on the Saudi motive though when it suggest that King Salman and his son saw the war on Yemen "as a way of securing their power and removing rival factions in the royal family from power." That may be a side motive but the real is more likely the one suggested by Hillary Mann Leverett:

[W]hat we’re seeing is a product of Saudi disorientation and terror at a region that could become more representative in terms of its governance, more independent in terms of its foreign policy. The Saudis are trying to prevent that kind of independence in foreign policy from emerging in Yemen, and they have yet again gone down this road with the United States to a war that has no end.

That description fits the fact that the Saudis started the bombing just in the moment a UN brokered power sharing deal in Yemen was about to be signed. As the Independent piece describes it:

[T]he beginning of the Saudi air war five weeks ago put a stop to negotiations which were about to succeed in establishing a power sharing government in the capital Sanaa according to the UN envoy Jamal Benomar. He told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that “when this campaign started, one thing that was significant but went unnoticed is that the Yemenis were close to a deal that would institute power-sharing with all sides, including the Houthis.”

The U.S. supported the bombing from the very beginning by giving the Saudis the necessary intelligence. This stopped the peaceful solution of the political competition in Yemen. No wonder that the UN envoy resigned in protest. From March 26:

Saudi Arabia told the Obama administration and Persian Gulf allies early this week that it was preparing a military operation in neighboring Yemen, and relied heavily on U.S. surveillance ­images and targeting information to carry it out, according to senior American and Persian Gulf officials.

Since than the U.S. intelligence support for the Saudis has increased. From April 10:

The United States is expanding its intelligence-sharing with Saudi Arabia to provide more information about potential targets in the kingdom's air campaign against Houthi militias in Yemen, U.S. officials told Reuters.
…
The U.S. officials said the expanded assistance includes sensitive intelligence data that will allow the Saudis to better review the kingdom's targets in fighting that has killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands since March.

What will those Yemenis who's relatives were killed in the hospital strike yesterday think about such U.S. targeting support?

The Independence piece linked above also includes this sentence which is I believe as a first in the main stream media:

[King Salman] has not only started an air war in Yemen but has given stronger backing to Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qa’ida affiliate, and other jihadi groups in Syria. These have recently won several victories in Idlib province over the Syrian army and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

The Saudis are also supporting Al Qaeda in Yemen and are even pushing others to join them:

Haykal Bafana @BaFana3
Journalists need to wake up & write about the pressure being applied by Saudi Arabia on tribes & leaders in Hadhramaut to accept AQ rule.

The Saudis rush more support to Al Qaeda and U.S. intelligence is selecting civilian targets to be bombed.

Is there anyone who believes that this will end well?