Syria's ship of state listing dangerously

Here's how we know this.

The Syrian Arab News Agency is more or less the official government propaganda outlet.

What's interesting about this story is that it appears that the Assad government is relying on Agence France-Presse for its intelligence on the rebels. Note the reference to AFP a few paragraphs in.

I'd read the story about that particular smuggler on AFP's English language service France 24 before I saw it at SANA.

This is a government that was so sure of itself that it offered to do the out-sourced torture for Britain and Canada and the USA. A police state so confident that it knew it had every possible source of opposition well in hand.

Now they rely on foreign media to find out what's going on in their country.

Is this a good thing?

If you listen to the official nonsense emanating from London and Paris and Washington you'd be tempted to think so. After all, Assad is an evil tyrant who slaughters his own people while he's not busy doing our out-sourced torture for us, and we've been telling him for a year and a half he has to go.

So good riddance.

But then what?

As the Doha debacle this week showed, there is no such thing as a unified Syrian opposition. They've come up with a Christian communist who is going to direct the Salafist rebels on the ground in Syria?

Good luck with that.

If the Assad government collapses, there will be 10 million Syrian refugees fleeing the country instead of half a million, and the country will be the proxy battlefield for the war between the US and Iran for the next twenty years.

Falling Downs crippled by CIA cyber terror attack!

Holy jumpin' catfish, we were off the net for days!

And I think I know who is behind this.

Mossad!

Yup, the Likud party bosses gave the orders to shut down this aggravating purveyor of anti-Likud truth that is read by at least three or four Israelis every month...

Oh all right then... Maybe not.

The CIA!

Yes, the CIA is behind the cyber attack! And we have proof! The proof is that we have no proof! That is how they operate on the dark side. When there is no evidence whatsoever, it was obviously the CIA!

That is just one of the known knowns in the world 'o spooks. When every other plausible explanation defies comprehension, it was obviously the CIA...

Wait a minute... it could have been CSIS, Canada's own wannabee CIA!...

Nah...

They pretty much stick to sending Arab Canadians to Libya and Syria for "interrogation", and now that the Nations of Virtue have put paid, or almost paid to the evil dictators who run those countries, that's pretty much out.

Oh, wait a minute... the repair dude is here... what's that? The modem?...

Seems the connector plugging into the modem had a broken wire...

Nevermind then.

UN report: Canada complicit in Syrian torture cases

In all the tough loud talk on Syria lately few have talked louder and tougher than the Canadians.

Foreign Minister John Baird's personal Rabbi Chaim Mendelsohn has had his hands full holding the Minister back from heading to Damascus himself and laying a good thrashing on the tyrant Assad.

And over at the Toronto Star the normally dovish Haroon Siddiqui is suggesting that we start raining 500 lb Paveways on the country, a strategy that worked so wonderfully for the people of Libya last year.

So it's a little embarrassing to see the UN Committee Against Torture release a report accusing the Canadian government of conniving with none other than that same tyrant Assad in the torture of Canadian citizens. It's a story making headlines around the world.

The government wasted no time in trotting out a junior spokes-person to give the busybodies at the UN a stern scolding.

Citing the disappointment of all Canadians that the UN would chose to pick on so trivial a matter as the torture of our citizens, Julie Carmichael reminded the world that "Canada is a nation of laws and the actions of  our Government uphold the highest standards in the protection of human rights".

The cup of hypocrisy overfloweth again!