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The Douma Hoax: Anatomy of a False Flag

Corbett • 12/07/2019

As whistleblowers and documents continue to destroy the narrative surrounding the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria last year, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this false flag event has been exposed. This week on The Corbett Report podcast, James goes through the remarkable timeline of the Douma hoax and breaks the spell that the propagandists have sought to cast on the public.

For those with limited bandwidth, CLICK HERE to download a smaller, lower file size version of this episode.

For those interested in audio quality, CLICK HERE for the highest-quality version of this episode (WARNING: very large download).

Watch this video on BitChute / Minds.com / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES
Colin Powell’s Presentation to the UN Security Council On Iraq’s WMD Program

Cutting through media propaganda on the battle for Syria’s Eastern Ghouta

Syria crisis: Saudi Arabia to spend millions to train Jaysh al-Islam terrorists

Young children treated in suspected chemical attack in Douma, Syria

Trump blames “animal Assad” for atrocity

United States Assessment of the Assad Regime’s Chemical Weapons Use

U.S. and allies warn Syria of more missile strikes if chemical attacks used again

Statement by President Trump on Syria

The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack

OPCW interim report (July 2018)

BBC producer: Footage of 2018 Douma chemical attack fabricated

OPCW final report (March 2019)

Leaked Engineering Assessment

Leaked OPCW Report Raises New Questions About 2018 Chemical Attack in Douma, Syria

OPCW internal communique on leak

Panel Criticizes ‘Unacceptable Practices’ in the OPCW’s investigation of the Alleged Chemical Attack in Douma, Syria on April 7th 2018

The OPCW and Douma: Chemical Weapons Watchdog Accused of Evidence-Tampering by Its Own Inspectors

Jonathan Steele on BBC

Leaked internal OPCW email

PETER HITCHENS: My secret meeting with mole at the heart of The Great Poison Gas Scandal

Theodore Postol on PushBack

Chemical weapons watchdog OPCW defends Syria report as whistleblower claims bias

7 (Bellingcat) Emails And Reading Comprehension: OPCW Douma Coverage Misses Crucial Facts

Narrative Managers Faceplant In Hilarious OPCW Scandal Spin Job

Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson

Bellingcat or Guard Dog for the Establishment?

Douma Videos and Photos analysis by Steven McItnyre

How the OPCW’s investigation of the Douma incident was nobbled

December 7, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Video | , , , | 1 Comment

Belgian Trade Delegation to Israel Cancelled

IMEMC & Agencies – December 7, 2019

The trade mission would have taken place from the 8th to the 11th of December, will not go forward, due to criticism from the political opposition and several activist organizations, leading to its discontinuation, the Palestine News Network (PNN) reported.

The delegation would have consisted of representatives from the Walloon and Brussels governments, which are separate political entities in Belgium, and numerous companies from the respective regions.

The Walloon government had already withdrawn from the delegation at an earlier stage, but now the Brussels government has done the same, effectively leaving the rest of the mission without political representation.

In the last couple of weeks, the general criticism towards the trade mission has grown. Specifically Israel’s disregard for international agreements concerning the blockade of the Gaza Strip, sparked the opposition’s distaste for the mission.

“We’re talking about participating in the Israeli colonization policy,”

said Stéphanie Koplowicz, member of the Flemish left-wing PVDA-party.

“The UN Human Rights Comittee has complained that over 200 companies do business in these illegal settlements. Does the government want to encourage Brussels’ companies to participate in this?”

December 7, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran scientist Soleimani arrives home after over one year behind bars in US

Press TV – December 7, 2019

Freed Iranian stem cell scientist Dr. Masoud Soleimani has arrived in Tehran after over one year of imprisonment in the United States.

Soleimani arrived at Tehran Mehrabad airport on Saturday evening after he was released by the US in a prisoner swap. He was welcomed by his family members and Iranian officials upon his arrival.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accompanied the released scientist from Zurich where the swap took place.

The Iranian foreign minister said in a tweet earlier in the day that the top scholar, along with Xiyue Wang — a Chinese-born US citizen who had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage in Iran in 2017 — had been delivered to the Swiss officials and would “be joining their families shortly.”

Back in October last year, Soleimani, 49, left Iran on sabbatical last year but was arrested upon arrival in Chicago and transferred to prison in Atlanta, Georgia for unspecified reasons.

When he left Tehran last fall, Soleimani, a professor and biomedical researcher at Tarbiat Modares University (TMU) in Tehran, planned to complete his research on treating stroke patients as a visiting scholar at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

Prosecutors in Atlanta had accused him and two of his former students of conspiring and attempting to export vials of human growth hormone from the US to Iran without authorization, in violation of US sanctions.

The human growth hormone is not banned in the US or Iran and was being used “exclusively for medical research,” which is still considered largely exempt from US sanctions, according to his Atlanta attorney Leonard Franco.

The two students were charged in a court and released after posting bail because they held US citizenship.

December 7, 2019 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , , | 1 Comment

Contrast Of Climate And Energy Policies, And Economic Results, In The U.S. And Germany

By Francis Menton – Manhattan Contrarian – December 6, 2019

If you are reading your normal diet of “mainstream” press, you are getting hit with a constant barrage of climate alarm, together with a near total boycott on any good economic news for as long as Trump remains President. As a result, it is very easy to lose track of the widening chasm in the climate and energy policies, and also in the economic results, between the U.S. and its major European competitors. When you put some easily-available numbers together in one place, the contrast becomes very striking. For today, I will collect a smattering of relevant statistics, focusing on the U.S. and Germany.

And then there are the positions on these subjects of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for President. I find those positions beyond belief.

You probably know that the so-called “fracking” revolution in oil and gas production has led to a large increase in U.S. production of those fuels over the last ten or so years. The actual numbers are quite remarkable. On the oil side, according to data from the government’s Energy Information Agency, in 2008 U.S. production of crude oil from all sources averaged 5 million barrels per day. By 2018, that figure had well more than doubled to 10.99 million bbl/dy. By contrast, crude oil production in Saudi Arabia in 2018 was 10.445 million bbl/dy (up from 9.261 bbl/dy in 2008), and in Russia was 10.759 bbl/dy (up from 9.357 bbl/dy in 2008). Of today’s U.S. production, some 59% — representing essentially all of the increase since 2008 — comes from so-called “tight” resources, meaning those that are produced by fracking.

The large increase in U.S. production has been accompanied by a correspondingly large decline in the price of oil and natural gas. Oil of the WTI (West Texas Intermediate) grade that traded at $110 per barrel in 2013 closed today at $59.12. U.S. prices for a gallon of regular grade gasoline, which reached a high of $3.90 in 2012, fell as low as $2.25 earlier this year, and are currently around $2.60. Natural gas prices are quite volatile, but were in the range of $4 to $6 per thousand cubic feet in 2014, and most recently $2.29.

In September, the U.S. became a net exporter of oil for the first time since the 1940s. The EIA expects that status to continue for the foreseeable future.

Over in the economic news category, the U.S. continues to thrive. Today, the Labor Department reported an increase in jobs of 266,000 during November, the unemployment rate down to 3.5% (lowest since 1969), and wages up 3.1% over a year ago. All of those must be considered excellent results.

And then there’s Germany. According to CleanEnergyWire, Germany in 2018 imported 98% of its oil needs, and 95% of its gas. But doesn’t Germany have at least one good shale formation that could be developed? The answer is that Germany pretty much banned all fracking in 2017. They are still caught up in the Energiewende, or, in other words, the delusional idea that wind and solar power can replace fossil fuels within a few years. Nearly ten years into this, their carbon emissions have barely decreased at all, while emissions increases in places like China and India make any marginal decreases that Germany can achieve completely irrelevant. Meanwhile, they depend for their oil and natural gas on places like Russia and the Middle East.

GlobalPetrolPrices gives the most recent price of consumer gasoline in Germany as 1.385 euros per liter, equivalent to $5.807 per gallon. Admittedly, this cannot be blamed solely on supply restrictions; embedded taxes are also substantially at fault. But those embedded taxes are also part of the ongoing war against fossil fuels. German consumer electricity prices are also about triple the U.S. average.

And the economic news from Germany? It seems that the industrial sector is in the midst of a slump, in substantial part caused by the mad drive to force energy conversion without consideration of the costs. From the Daily Express, December 3:

THE GERMAN car industry is facing disaster with up to 50,000 jobs under threat or expected to be lost before the end of the year in what has been described as the “biggest crisis since the invention of the automobile”. Last week the owner of Mercedes-Benz announced plans to axe at least 10,000 employees globally, taking the number of jobs losses by German carmakers to almost 40,000 this year as the industry sinks under a massive sales slump. Daimler wants to save £1.2billion in staff costs as it prepares to invest billions in the electric cars boom. Audi, which is owned by Volkswagen, has also said it would be shedding almost 10,000 people – around around 10 percent of its global workforce.

Trading Economics states that German GDP “rebounded” to a growth of 0.1% in the third quarter, after a decline of 0.2% in the second quarter of 2019. Congratulations!

Meanwhile, among the Democratic candidates for President, the contest is between those who would ban fracking immediately, and those who advocate some period of “transition” to some fanciful alternative. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have vowed to ban fracking immediately. It’s not clear how they would do that, other than that they view the presidency in their hands as a dictatorship of unlimited powers. Then there’s the “moderate” Joe Biden, who said (yesterday) “I’d love to make sure we can’t use any oil or gas, period,” but then hedged that we would need some period to “transition away” from those fuels.

“Transitioning” away from fossil fuels — that’s what Germany is doing.

December 7, 2019 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine was the Origin of the Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax

By Lawrence Sellin | American Thinker | December 6, 2019

December 2015 was a pivotal month in many respects.

During the first week of December 2015, Donald Trump began to establish a substantial lead over his Republican primary opponents.

Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Ukraine to announce, on December 7th, a $190 million program to “fight corruption in law enforcement and reform the justice sector,” but behind the scenes explicitly linked a $1 billion loan guarantee to the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had been investigating the energy company Burisma, which employed Biden’s son Hunter.

On December 9, 2015, the reported whistleblower Eric Ciaramella held a meeting in Room 236 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center, which was 59%-funded by Barack Obama’s State Department and the International Renaissance Foundation, a George Soros organization.

Also attending that meeting was Catherine Newcombe, attorney in the Criminal Division, Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, with the U.S. Department of Justice, where, among other duties, she oversaw the Department’s legal assistance programs to Ukraine.

By December 2015, Paul Manafort was undoubtedly considering approaching the Trump campaign to rejuvenate his U.S. political bona fides and mitigate the legal and financial difficulties he was experiencing at the time.

From the beginning of his association with the Trump campaign, Roger Stone, a long-time Manafort partner, made a strong case to Trump to bring in Manafort, who would officially connect to the campaign immediately after the February 1, 2016 Iowa caucuses.

Based on events occurring during the same period, were Obama Deep State operatives aware of Manafort’s intent and already intending to use his past questionable practices and links to Russia against Trump?

Such awareness of Manafort’s plans could have been obtained either through FBI surveillance, which began in 2014 and ended in early 2016, or through information provided by Manafort associates, for example, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Manafort and was a FBI and Department of State asset, not a Russian agent as later painted by the Mueller investigation.

According to White House visitor logs, on January 19, 2016, Eric Ciaramella chaired a meeting of FBI, Department of Justice and Department of State personnel, which had two main objectives:

 1)  To coerce the Ukrainians to drop the Burisma probe, which involved Vice President Joseph Biden’s son Hunter, and allow the FBI to take it over the investigation.

 2)  To reopen a closed 2014 FBI investigation that focused heavily on GOP lobbyist Paul Manafort, whose firm long had been tied to Trump through his partner and Trump pal, Roger Stone.

That is, contain the investigation of Biden’s son and ramp up the investigation of Paul Manafort.

Again, according to White House logs, the attendees at the January 19, 2016 meeting in Room 230A of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building were:

Eric Ciaramella – National Security Council Director for Ukraine

Liz Zentos – National Security Council Director for Eastern Europe

David G. Sakvarelidze – Deputy General Prosecutor of Ukraine

Anna E. Iemelianova (Yemelianova) – Legal Specialist, US Embassy Kyiv and US Department of Justice’s Anti-Corruption Program.

Nazar A. Kholodnitsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor

Catherine L. Newcombe – attorney in the Criminal Division, Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, with the U.S. Department of Justice

Svitlana V. Pardus – Operations, Department of Justice, U.S. Embassy, Ukraine.

Artem S. Sytnyk  – Director of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine

Andriy G. Telizhenko, political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington DC

Jeffrey W. Cole – Resident Legal Advisor at U.S. Embassy Ukraine, presumed to be FBI

Just two weeks after that meeting, on February 2, 2016, according to White House logs, Eric Ciaramella chaired a meeting in Room 374 of the Eisenhower Executive Office, which seems to be a planning session to re-open an investigation of Paul Manafort (Note: one of the crimes of which Manafort was accused was money laundering, an area covered by the Department of the Treasury). The attendees were:

Jose Borrayo – Acting Section Chief, Office of Special Measures, U.S. Department of the Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network

Julia Friedlander – Senior Policy Advisor for Europe, Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, U.S. Department of the Treasury

Michael Lieberman – Deputy Assistant Secretary, Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, U.S. Department of the Treasury

Scott Rembrandt – Anti-Money Laundering Task Force, Assistant Director/Director, Office of Strategic Policy, Department of the Treasury

Justin Rowland – Special Agent (financial crimes), Federal Bureau of Investigation

Photo credit: Alexandria, VA Sheriff

It appears that Paul Manafort became a vehicle by which the Obama Deep State operatives could link Trump to nefarious activities involving Russians, which eventually evolved into the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.  Remember, the key claim of the follow-up Steele dossier, the centerpiece of the Mueller investigation, was that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was the focal point of a “well-developed conspiracy between them [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership.”

Nellie Ohr, Fusion GPS employee and wife of Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, not only worked with Christopher Steele on the so-called Trump dossier, but, in May 2016, was the conduit of information to her husband and two Department of Justice prosecutors of the existence of the “black ledger” documents that contributed to Manafort’s prosecution.

Bruce Ohr and Steele attempted to get dirt on Manafort from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, efforts that eventually led to a September 2016 meeting in which the FBI asked Deripaska if he could provide information to prove that Manafort was helping Trump collude with Russia.

The surveillance and entrapment attempts of Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and others were designed to collect evidence about Trump without formally documenting that Trump was the target.

After the election, to cover their tracks, James Comey, representing the FBI and the Department of Justice, misleadingly told Trump that the investigation was about Russia and a few stray people in his campaign, but they assured him he personally was not under investigation.

They lied.

Donald Trump always was, and still is, the target of the Deep State, the left-wing media and their Democrat Party collaborators.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired US Army Reserve colonel, an IT command and control and cyber security subject matter expert and a veteran of Afghanistan, Iraq and a humanitarian mission to West Africa. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com

December 7, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Mexico makes its biggest oil discovery in more than three decades

RT | December 7, 2019

Mexican state oil company Pemex has announced the biggest oil discovery in the country since 1987. The deposit in the southeast of the country may have reserves of 500 million barrels of crude.

The giant Quesqui site in the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco was discovered several months ago, with the first well, which is now producing 4,500 barrels per day, drilled in June. However, after studying the potential of the field, the company announced that the deposit is one of the most important discoveries in 30 years.

“With the analysis of information provided by this well and seismic data in the area, we can confirm today the existence of a giant deposit equivalent to 500 million barrels of crude oil in a 3P reserve,” Pemex Chief Executive Octavio Romero Oropeza said in a statement on Friday.

The so-called 3P reserve means that it has deposits considered proven, probable and possible.

The head of Pemex also revealed development plans for the 34-square-kilometer field. Up to 11 wells are set to be drilled at the site to reach daily production of 69,000 barrels of oil and 300 million cubic feet of gas next year. By 2021, output is set to reach 110,000 barrels per day (bpd) and 410 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

December 7, 2019 Posted by | Economics | | 1 Comment

Venezuela: Guaido Embattled as Opposition Splits over New Corruption Scandal

Deputy Jose Brito and self-proclaimed “interim president” have traded corruption accusations this week. (Archive)
By Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz – Venezuelanalysis – December 5, 2019

Caracas – Venezuela’s right-wing opposition has been beset by internecine strife in recent days following new corruption allegations involving senior anti-government figures.

On Sunday, pro-opposition website Armando.info published an investigative report alleging illicit ties between nine National Assembly (AN) deputies and a Colombian businessman reportedly involved in the Maduro government’s CLAP subsidized food distribution program.

The report named First Justice party deputies Jose Brito, Luis Parra, and Conrado Perez Linares, Richard Arteaga and Guillermo Luces of Popular Will, A New Era’s Chaim Bucaram and William Barrientos, Progressive Advance Deputy Hector Vargas, and Adolfo Superlano, recently expelled from Cambiemos. The majority of the legislators sit on the opposition-led AN’s own comptroller commission.

According to documents obtained by the news site, the lawmakers used their positions to lobby US and Colombian authorities to shield Colombian entrepreneur Carlos Lizcano from sanctions in return for kickbacks.

Lizcano is the owner of Salva Foods, which manages the network of so-called “CLAP Stores” in Venezuela. He has been linked to fellow Colombian businessmen Alex Saab and Alvaro Pulido, who have both been sanctioned by Washington for their alleged ties to the CLAP program.

The revelations have been widely regarded as an embarrassment for National Assembly President Juan Guaido, who proclaimed himself “interim president” of Venezuela in January and is recognized by the United States, Colombia, and several dozen other countries.

Immediately responding to the allegations, Guaido denounced “corruption” on the part of his fellow lawmakers and announced an overhaul of the comptroller commission.

“I will not allow corruption to endanger all we have sacrificed for freedom,” he tweeted Sunday.

The AN head’s comments provoked a backlash, with First Justice’s Jose Brito telling reporters on Tuesday that Guaido “does not have moral, ethical or judicial capabilities, because he’s corrupt.”

He also challenged Guaido to prove any wrongdoing on his part, while alleging that people close to the “interim president” were behind the purchase of a night club in Madrid with ill-gotten funds.

“There is a rebellion inside the National Assembly against Guaido, because he’s corrupt,” Brito concluded, adding that 70 deputies have penned a letter to Guaido demanding he render accounts of the February humanitarian aid funds – another scandal implicating the opposition leadership.

On February 23, Washington and the Guaido-led opposition attempted to force “humanitarian aid” across the Venezuelan-Colombian border in a failed bid to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

In June, reports emerged that Guaido’s representatives in Colombia had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked for soldiers who had heeded the opposition call to desert on February 23.

Months later, it was revealed that Guaido had crossed into Colombia, ahead of the “humanitarian aid” effort, with the help of infamous paramilitary outfit Los Rastrojos. The opposition leader was seen in videos and pictures with members of the group, which has been accused of drug smuggling, assassinations and extortion.

Both scandals were dragged back into the limelight last week following the announcement that Guaido’s “ambassador” to Bogota, Humberto Calderon Berti, was being replaced.

Calderon, a former minister and president of state oil company PDVSA in the 1980s and ‘90s, later gave an interview to Miami-based anti-government outlet PanamPost in which he blamed hard-right Popular Will leader Leopoldo Lopez for the opposition’s “biggest mistakes.” Lopez was serving a 14-year sentence under house arrest for his responsibility in the violent 2014 opposition protests when he was freed by rogue intelligence personnel during April 30’s failed putsch attempt. He then fled to the Spanish embassy where he has resided since.

The former minister highlighted his “ethical differences” with respect to Juan Guaido and his mentor, Lopez, while also pointing the finger at leading opposition figures for the embezzlement of humanitarian aid funds.

Calderon also commented on another scandal brewing at chemical company Monomeros, Colombian subsidiary of Venezuelan state petrochemical company Pequiven. Monomeros was taken over by the opposition earlier this year, and Calderon accused the main opposition parties of appointing ill-prepared board members and engaging in corrupt practices.

The latest opposition infighting has also garnered a reaction from Maduro government officials. Comptroller General Elvis Amoroso announced that this office is opening an investigation into Guaido and his associates over the alleged misappropriation of state funds.

Meanwhile, National Constituent Assembly President Diosdado Cabello commented that the corruption scandals evidence the opposition’s “lack of morals and ethics.”

“Nobody should be surprised that they are trading accusations of corruption, of taking bribes, they even stole humanitarian aid,” Cabello said in a press conference on Monday.

December 7, 2019 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | 1 Comment

Sound familiar? Reddit says US-UK trade deal leaks may be tied to Russia, citing speculation from… of course, Atlantic Council

RT | December 7, 2019

A trove of secret papers cited by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in attacking the Tories may have links to Moscow, Reddit has announced. The proof? The US-UK-NATO-funded Atlantic Council says it isn’t sure but it might be true.

The leaked documents, which were shared on the discussion site several weeks ago, point to evidence that the United States would demand a market share in the UK’s National Health Service in any trade talks after Brexit. In a statement, Reddit said that it believed that the accounts that had shared the documents were “part of a campaign that has been reported as originating from Russia.”

The vague wording is further muddled by the source that Reddit cites: The Atlantic Council. Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow at the think tank, said that the leaks “closely resemble techniques” allegedly employed by Russia. He noted, however, that “we do not have all the data that allows us to make a final determination in this case.”

While media outlets rushed to hype the “findings” as definitive proof of Russia’s involvement, some journalists noted obvious holes in the story.

Aside from the Atlantic Council’s clear conflict of interest in the story (it’s a US and UK-funded think tank, allegedly investigating leaks that damage both governments), Nimmo’s prominence in this saga of alleged Russian meddling is also cause for concern. The self-professed disinformation fighter has links to the now-exposed Integrity Initiative, a shadowy group funded by the British Foreign Office that masquerades as an independent disinformation-busting ‘charity.’ In fact, Integrity Initiative even used its platform to spread talking points aimed at linking Corbyn to the Kremlin.

December 7, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , | 1 Comment