More on Syria

[rowan]

The UN Department of Safety and Security is continuing to block the OPCW team of investigators from reaching the site of the alleged gas attack, citing "safety concerns,” and has offered no timetable regarding when the inspectors will be allowed into the site. When the UNDSS team visited the sites, they claimed the presence of a large crowd threatened the group’s safety at the first of the two sites, while they reported an explosion near the second site as well as reports of gunfire, though no UN workers were injured.

[kk67]

No one gives a toss about the UN.
They're tragic corporate apologists at best.

[rowan]

& that was reported in Al Jazeera, among other sources. They are the state-sponsored mouthpiece of Qatar, which has been right to the fore of the anti-Assad brigade throughout this proxy war.

[rowan]

The 17 witnesses presented so far have all stated there was no gas attack in Douma and that the incident was staged. This includes 12-year-old Hassan Diab, who was supposed to have been one of the victims. The western media has so far either ignored this, or simply dismissed it as a charade.

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018 ... testimony/

[Zhivago]

The 17 witnesses presented so far have all stated there was no gas attack in Douma and that the incident was staged. This includes 12-year-old Hassan Diab, who was supposed to have been one of the victims. The western media has so far either ignored this, or simply dismissed it as a charade.

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018 ... testimony/

Uli Geck of ZDF also reported (from Syria) that witnesses were saying it was staged.

So not all of the western media is compromised. I guess the Germans are staying out of this campaign against Russia, so their news should be less biased than UK,FRANCE,USA...

[rowan]

The West has been humiliated by this. They've either ignored it entirely, or tried to present it as a conspiracy theory. One reporter - Australian, I think - basically accused them of being dragged to the Hague by the Russians, though they all denied that, including a 12-year-old boy who looked entirely bewildered by the assertion. Aside from the fact making completely baseless accusations is not a journalists job (and was obviously staged for the cameras, just like the chemical attack itself), there is no reason the witnesses would have continued to lie for the Russians while sitting in the heart of NATO territory at the Hague. So America, Britain & France have been exposed as blatant liars yet again. That's why they dropped their bombs before the inspection, to make a face-saving exit while it was still possible to do so.

& we have to go to RT here, because mainstream doesn't seem interested all of a sudden:

[Digby]

Russia and Syria not coming off well on the international scene with their staged press conferences. There's pretty much nobody lining up to believe a word they're putting out which is impressive in some regards even if not useful to them

[fivepointer]

View from the OPCW.

https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/EC/ ... 8nat05.pdf

and this...

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/26/rus ... tack-fake/

[rowan]

Russia and Syria not coming off well on the international scene with their staged press conferences. There's pretty much nobody lining up to believe a word they're putting out which is impressive in some regards even if not useful to them

Right, so if the witnesses, including doctors and a 12-year-old boy, are not saying what you want to hear, even though they are in the Hague in the heart of NATO territory and could not possibly be safer, then it must be because they are just natural born liars.

Fact: They have unanimously stated there was no chemical attack, and that event was staged by the White Helmets, who we know to be US funded and British trained and embedded with the rebels/terrorists. That is the testimony of the numerous witnesses involved in this trial.

America, Britain and France have been exposed as liars and war criminals once again. The apologists for these war crimes will never accept the evidence against them, no matter how clear and how damning, and that is because the apologists themselves are very much a part of the problem.

How Britain engaged in a covert operation to overthrow Assad

Starting just months after the 2011 uprising, UK policy has helped to prolong and radicalise Syria’s devastating war


Some commentators in the British mainstream media believe the UK has "done nothing" in the war in Syria and lament the failure to help stop it.

In fact, Britain has engaged in a covert operation with allies to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad for more than six years, and this policy has helped prolong and radicalise the terrible war. It is British action, not inaction, that is the biggest problem with government policy towards Syria. The full story of this covert operation may take years to emerge, but some elements of it can already be pieced together.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/ho ... 1437573498

[Digby]

Reports of similarities to earlier chemical weapons attacks in Syria by the Assad dictatorship

[rowan]

The simple fact is that you have got witnesses there, in the Hague, completely safe from the Russian bogeymen, stating quite clearly and categorically that there was no chemical attack. This backs up the findings of world-renowned Middle Eastern expert Robert Fisk and other journalists who visited the scene soon after the US, UK and France had carried out their illegal bombing of the joint. Naturally the mainstream media and other warmongering propagandists are going to try and distort this:

UK corporate media are under a curious kind of military occupation. Almost all print and broadcast media now employ a number of reporters and commentators who are relentless and determined warmongers. Despite the long, unarguable history of US-UK lying on war, and the catastrophic results, these journalists instantly confirm the veracity of atrocity claims made against Official Enemies, while having little or nothing to say about the proven crimes of the US, UK, Israel and their allies. They shriek with a level of moral outrage from which their own government is forever spared. They laud even the most obviously biased, tinpot sources blaming the 'Enemy', while dismissing out of hand the best scientific researchers, investigative journalists and academic sceptics who disagree.


http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/a ... art-1.html

[fivepointer]

The OPCW see it differently as outlined in the above link.

"The authenticity of the information gathered to date on the chemical attacks that occurred in
Douma on 7 April 2018, through numerous testimonies, is unassailable. Medical NGOs have
found traces of chemical agents on the victims. Photographs and videos, numerous and
mutually reinforcing, have been authenticated. The symptoms of more than 500 patients who
presented on the same day of the attack at healthcare facilities undoubtedly corresponded to
gas intoxication. The World Health Organization has expressed its concern at reports from
its partners of patients exhibiting signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic
chemicals. We expect this information to be tested and verified by the FFM through its
independent examination"

[rowan]

& you are repeatedly ignoring this:

THE OPCW heard from #Eye witness accounts of the alleged Douma chemical weapons attack last week. The event that garnered very little media attention in the west and boycotted by the US, UK and France [VIDEO], was filled with eye witness testimonies that underlined that the alleged chemical weapons attack was likely to be faked.

The witnesses included an 11-year old boy who can be seen in the video of the aftermath of the alleged attacked being doused with water.

https://uk.blastingnews.com/world/2018/ ... 36507.html

I can't believe that 15 years, millions of deaths and several more invasions after Iraq was destroyed over WMD lies, there are still idiots out there who believe that the US & UK are bombing Middle East nations (in violation of international law) for peace & democracy . That goes way beyond stupid. It requires a certain degree of evil.

[fivepointer]

Some interesting and it seems fairly extensive research undertaken here -

https://syrianarchive.org/en/collection ... al-weapons

[morepork]

I can't believe that 15 years, millions of deaths and several more invasions after Iraq was destroyed over WMD lies, there are still idiots out there who believe that the US & UK are bombing Middle East nations (in violation of international law) for peace & democracy . That goes way beyond stupid. It requires a certain degree of evil.

Who specifically on this thread has advanced that assumption?

[rowan]

I can imagine you would have been sharing lots of propaganda videos in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq as well.

Britain became involved in the "rat line" of weapons delivered from Libya to Syria via southern Turkey, which was authorised in early 2012 following a secret agreement between the US and Turkey. Revealed by journalist Seymour Hersh, the project was funded by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar while "the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria".

The operation was not disclosed to US congressional intelligence committees as required by US law, and "the involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation".

Hersh noted that "many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists", some affiliated with al-Qaeda. Indeed, it is believed that Qatar – which was the UK's key ally in overthrowing Gaddafi and was now repeating its role in Syria – was pouring weapons and cash into Nusra. The Telegraph reported on a Middle Eastern diplomat saying that Qatar is responsible for Nusra "having money and weapons and everything they need".



http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/ho ... 1437573498

But surely after Iraq - when UN weapons inspectors under Hans Blix were prevented from completing the work that would have shown that Saddam Hussein possessed no WMD – 'we' should wait for the intergovernmental Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons inspectors to investigate. After all, as journalist Peter Oborne noted of Trump's air raids:

'When the bombing started the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was actually in Damascus and preparing to travel to the area where the alleged chemical attacks took place.'

http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/a ... art-1.html

[morepork]

Sorry, but was that leveled at me? Why would you assume I would do such a thing?

[rowan]

According to this story, Bashar al-Assad, an uncooperative brutal dictator whom the corporatocracy has been trying to replace with a more cooperative brutal dictator, dropped a lot of chlorine gas bombs (and possibly sarin, the deadly nerve agent), onto a house full of innocent babies. He did this on the eve of victory over those moderate jihadist militias the “international community” has been supporting in their eight-year attempt to take over his country, slaughter him and his entire family, mount their severed heads on spikes, implement nationwide Sharia law, and then go out hunting homosexuals and heretics to gruesomely behead on YouTube. The evacuation of these freedom fighters was already being negotiated, but Assad didn’t want to miss his last chance to sadistically gas a lot of women and children and have the Western corporate media broadcast his war crimes throughout the world, or something more or less along those lines.

This gratuitous baby-gassing massacre could not be allowed to go unpunished, so Emmanuel Macron and other senior members of the “international community” hauled Trump in off a golf course somewhere (or wrestled him away from the Gorilla Channel) and ordered him to order a completely pointless one hundred fifty million dollar series of “retaliatory” missile strikes on assorted uninhabited buildings containing zero chemical weapons and of absolutely no strategic value. The corporate media and their paid menagerie of military experts and other talking heads took to the airwaves to celebrate this demonstration of international “resolve,” as did investors in Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics.

The celebrations were short-lived, however, as the corporate media needed to immediately turn their attention to aggressively countering the malicious disinformation campaign being waged by the infamous International Putin-Nazi Propaganda Network (i.e., anyone capable of critical thinking). Reports by journalists actually in Syria, like Robert Fisk of The Independent, casting doubt on the official story needed to be strenuously ignored, ridiculed, and delegitimized. Fisk, a respected, award-winning journalist who has covered the Middle East for over four decades, had clearly been duped by his Putin-Nazi minders into publishing pro-Assad propaganda. Just as clearly, any actual Syrians contradicting the official story (which the corporate media had scrupulously fact-checked with the US military and intelligence agencies) had been intimidated into doing so by Putin-Nazi-Assadist death squads.

But Fisk and the Syrians are small potatoes compared to the discord-sowing threat posed by the International League of Assad-Loving Twitter Conspiracy Theorists, a decentralized network of “anti-Western,” “pro-Assad,” extremist traitors led by people like Sarah Abdallah, a shadowy figure whose current whereabouts the BBC is still trying to pinpoint (and presumably report to MI6), and Vanessa Beeley, an independent journalist who writes about Syria for an “extreme right” website, speaks to “fringe groups,” and has appeared on RT, which the BBC is at pains to remind us is a “state-owned” media organization.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/26 ... theorists/

[morepork]

That hardly substitutes for an answer to my question.

[rowan]

[morepork]

Ron Paul. The luminary that gave rise to intellectual titans such as Sarah Palin. The dude that advocated abolishing the department of education, the champion of the Austrian school of economic thought. Fuck the poor, says Ron, it's their own fault. Great point of reference there champ.

[rowan]

More excellent points made. While America's allies are bombing weddings in Yemen and mowing down unarmed Palestinian youths like a turkey shoot - with American-supplied weaponry, all evidence of chemical attacks in Syria repeatedly point to the US-backed rebels and terrorists. The US lied about Iraq, it lied about Libya, it lied about Syria. & it will keep using the same formula as long as enough idiots are buying it.

[canta_brian]

You never threaten individuals. You threaten their families. Much more effective. They aren't safe in the Hague.

The simple fact is that you have got witnesses there, in the Hague, completely safe from the Russian bogeymen, stating quite clearly and categorically that there was no chemical attack. This backs up the findings of world-renowned Middle Eastern expert Robert Fisk and other journalists who visited the scene soon after the US, UK and France had carried out their illegal bombing of the joint. Naturally the mainstream media and other warmongering propagandists are going to try and distort this:

UK corporate media are under a curious kind of military occupation. Almost all print and broadcast media now employ a number of reporters and commentators who are relentless and determined warmongers. Despite the long, unarguable history of US-UK lying on war, and the catastrophic results, these journalists instantly confirm the veracity of atrocity claims made against Official Enemies, while having little or nothing to say about the proven crimes of the US, UK, Israel and their allies. They shriek with a level of moral outrage from which their own government is forever spared. They laud even the most obviously biased, tinpot sources blaming the 'Enemy', while dismissing out of hand the best scientific researchers, investigative journalists and academic sceptics who disagree.


http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/a ... art-1.html

[rowan]

Sure, and no doubt you are lapping up the Sunday Times' ridiculous assertions that the dastardly Russians are interfering with the British elections too

Meanwhile in reality . . .

Weapons Inspector Refutes U.S. Syria Chemical Claims

In the 1980’s, Scott Ritter was a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps, specializing in intelligence. In 1987, Ritter was assigned to the On-Site Inspection Agency, which was put together to go into the Soviet Union and oversee the implementation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. This was the first time that on-site inspection had been used as part of a disarmament verification process.

Ritter was one of the groundbreakers in developing on-site inspection techniques and methodologies. With this unique experience behind him, Ritter was asked in 1991, at the end of the Gulf War, to join the United Nations Special Commission, which was tasked by the Security Council to oversee the disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. From 1991 to 1998, Ritter served as a chief weapons inspector and led a number of teams into Iraq.

According to Ritter, in the following Flashpoints Radio interview with Dennis Bernstein conducted on April 23rd, US, British and French claims that the Syrian Government used chemical weapons against civilians last month appear to be totally bogus.

Government forces were prevailing and by April 6 it looked as if the militants were preparing to surrender. Suddenly the allegations come out that there was this chemical weapons attack. It wasn’t a massive chemical weapons attack, it was dropping one or two so-called “barrel bombs,” improvised devices that contained chlorine gas canisters. According to the militants, between 40 and 70 people were killed and up to 500 people were made ill. The United States and other nations picked up on this, saying that this was proof positive that Syria has been lying about its chemical weapons program and that Russia has been behind Syria’s retention of chemical weapons. This is the case the US made to launch its missile strike [on April 14].

There are a lot of problems with this scenario. Again, why would the Syrian government, at the moment of victory, use a pinprick chemical attack with zero military value? It added nothing to the military campaign and invited the wrath of the West at a critical time, when the rebels were begging for Western intervention.

Many, including the Russian government, believe that this was a staged event. There has been no hard evidence put forward by anyone that an attack took place. Shortly after allegations of the attack came out, the entire town of Douma was taken over by the Syrian Army while the rebels were evacuated.

The places that were alleged to have been attacked were inspected by Russian chemical weapons specialists, who found zero trace of any chemicals weapons activity. The same inspectors who oversaw the disarmament of Syria were mobilized to return to Syria and do an investigation. They were supposed to start their work this past weekend [April 21-22]. They arrived in Damascus the day after the missile strikes occurred but they still haven’t been out to the sites. The United States, France and Great Britain have all admitted that the only evidence they have used to justify this attack were the photographs and videotapes sent to them by the rebel forces.

I have great concern about the United States carrying out an attack on a sovereign nation based on no hard evidence. The longer we wait, the longer it takes to get inspectors onto the site, the more claims we are going to get that the Russians have sanitized it. I believe that the last thing the United States wanted was inspectors to get on-site and carry out a forensic investigation that would have found that a chemical attack did not in fact take place.

The United States didn’t actually bomb the site that was attacked. They bombed three other facilities. One was in the suburbs of Damascus, a major metropolitan area. The generals said that they believed there were quantities of nerve agent there. So, in a building in a densely populated area where we believe nerve agent is stored, what do we do? We blow it up! If there had in fact been nerve agent there, it would have resulted in hundreds or even thousands of deaths. That fact that nobody died is the clearest evidence yet that there was no nerve agent there. The United States is just winging it, making it up.

One of the tragedies is that we can no longer trust our military, our intelligence services, our politicians. They will manufacture whatever narrative they need to justify an action that they deem to be politically expedient.

I was a participant in the Gulf War and we spent the bulk of that war conducting a massive aerial campaign against Iraq. I was one of the people who helped come up with the target list that was used to attack. Each target had to have a purpose.

Let’s look what happened in Syria [on April 14]. We bombed three targets, a research facility in Damascus and two bunker facilities in western Syria. It was claimed that all three targets were involved with a Syrian chemical weapons program. But the Syria weapons program was verified to be disarmed. So what chemical weapons program are we talking about? Then US officials said that one of these sites stored sarin nerve agent and chemical production equipment. That is a very specific statement. Now, if Syria was verified to be disarmed last year, with all this material eliminated, what are they talking about? What evidence do they have that any of this material exists? They just make it up.


If I had been a member of that inspections team, I would have been able to tell you with 100% certainty what took place at that site. It wasn’t that long ago that the allegations took place, there are very good forensic techniques that can be applied. We would be able to reverse engineer that site and tell you exactly what happened when. Let’s say an inspection team had gone in and we found that there was sarin nerve agent. Now, the US government can say, there is not supposed to be any sarin nerve agent in Syria, therefore we can state that the Syrians have a covert sarin nerve agent capability. But still you don’t know where it is, so now you have to say we assess that it could be in this bunker.

We bombed empty buildings. We didn’t degrade Syria’s chemical weapons capability. They got rid of it. We were among the nations that certified that they had been disarmed. We just created this phantom threat out of nothing so that we could attack Syria and our president could be seen as being presidential, as being the commander in chief at a time when his credibility was being attacked on the home front.

As an American citizen who happens to be empowered with knowledge about how weapons inspections work, how decisions are made regarding war, I am disillusioned beyond belief.

This isn’t the first time we have been lied to by the president. But we have been lied to by military officers who are supposed to be above that. Three top Marine Corps officers stood before the American people and told bald-faced lies about what was going on. We have been lied to by Congress, who are supposed to be the people’s representatives who provide a check against executive overreach. And we have been lied to by the corporate media, a bunch of paid mouthpieces who repeat what the government tells them without question.

So Donald Trump can say there are chemical weapons in Syria, the generals parrot his words, the Congress nods its head dumbly, and the mass media repeats it over and over again to the American public.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/04/27/w ... al-claims/

[morepork]

Why don't you lobby somewhere you can actually make a difference rather than scouring the web for cherry picked articles that you can post on RR?. Who are you trying to convince with this all out cut and paste assault? Again, who on here has expressed support for western jollies in the Middle East over the past 20 years?