Fifty shades of obfuscation

What's new with our Syrian freedom fighters this morning? Depends a lot on where you read about it.

Here's a random selection from the "breaking news" page of various major news websites.

At the NYT there's no news from Syria, but they've got a couple of scary stories from Iran.

At the Washington Post the only news from Syria is a story about the story behind the recent defection of the Prime Minister.

When we get to USA Today we learn that there's action on the ground in Aleppo. "Clashes rage in rebel bastions." The Toronto Star has the same headline.

At the BBC the fight is not so much raging as over. "Rebels lose key district of Aleppo."

The French site France 24 has the rebels "withdraw" from key district, which I gather is not the same as losing the key district.

At Deutsche Welle there's nothing to report on Syria beyond that "Syrian's suffer from lack of food, safety, medicine." Oh, and they want you to know that the German development minister is in Africa touting a peace plan for Mali that will by-pass both the rebels and the Islamists.

The Beirut Star has no news from Aleppo but is the only site so far to inform me that a boatload of Syrian refugees has arrived in Italy.

Jazeera informs us that the rebels have retreated from parts of Aleppo under heavy fire, but it was a strategic retreat. They have a plan to regroup and counter-attack. Jazeera has its bills paid by the same paymasters as the Syrian Free Army, so one can safely assume that this is putting the best possible spin on some unpleasant realities on the ground.

In Israel all eyes seem to be on the Sinai at the moment.

And from Iran Press TV wants us to know that the Syrian army is killing more insurgents. We are not told if the insurgents are killing more soldiers.

When we throw all that in a pot, what can we figure out? When some of the bigger war cheerleaders don't mention Aleppo at all, after having spent days telling us that the decisive battle of the war was about to unfold, we can assume it's not going well for "our" side.

Ditto for the "clashes rage" angle coming from some others.

When the BBC and AJE tell us the rebels are losing ground, you can be sure that they're suffering severe setbacks.

I'll predict that the next wave of stories from our mainstream news rebel cheerleaders will focus on atrocities comitted by the Syrian army in Aleppo.