The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) smear campaign against the whistleblowers who questioned the watchdog’s Douma report has failed to achieve the desired effect, British observers say, stressing that the OPCW has yet to dispel suspicions triggered by its apparently doctored dossier.
On 6 February, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) issued what it called findings of possible breaches of confidentiality with regard to two whistleblowers’ exposure of the watchdog’s manipulation of facts concerning the April 2018 Douma chemical incident.
Having denied that it sexed up its Douma report, the OPCW lambasted the whistleblowers behind the disclosure, referring to them as “Inspector A” and “Inspector B”, and proposed certain measures to prevent future leaks. Inspector A is believed to be a former member of OPCW team on Douma, Ian Henderson, and Inspector B is presumably an investigator described as “Alex” and quoted by WikiLeaks.
Previously, the two specialists expressed concerns about the apparently doctored OPCW dossier describing the chemical incident in Douma. According to Ian Henderson, the watchdog wiped out evidence indicating that chemical canisters allegedly containing chlorine were “manually placed” in Douma instead of being airdropped. Henderson’s statement upends the US’ claim that the Syrian government forces were behind the supposed attack.
Why OPCW Review Fails to Discredit Whistleblowers
According to Piers Robinson, co-director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies (OPS) and former professor at the University of Sheffield, the centerpiece of the OPCW’s investigation is an attempt to discredit “brave and highly experienced inspectors who have evidently been trying to tell the truth to the world”.
“In doing so the OPCW is evading the compelling scientific evidence now in the public domain which indicates both that the cylinders were placed by hand and that the victims were not killed by chlorine from gas canisters dropped by helicopter. The OPCW is covering up the scientific truth and preventing justice and truth for the victims. But the truth will continue to come out and the OPCW management inevitably faced with having to get its house in order or otherwise lose credibility”, the scholar emphasises.
Peter Ford, former UK ambassador to Syria and an expert on Middle East affairs, echoes the non-profit’s co-director, by saying that “it is not the whistleblowers who lack credibility as claimed by the OPCW but the OPCW itself”.
Ford draws attention to the fact the OPCW “fail even to make any effort to answer the substance of the reservations expressed by the whistleblowers”.
“Any rebuttal of those reservations would have to explain away the signs of evidence tampering noted by inspectors (manual positioning of the chlorine canisters) and the inconsistency of the videoed symptoms of the alleged victims with the known effects of chlorine gas”, he elaborates.
According to him, “until these points are addressed the whistleblowers’ accounts will hold more credibility than bald assertions by the OPCW”. Additionally, one might ask to what extent any review can be ‘independent’ when it is commissioned and paid for by the OPCW itself, Ford adds.
OPCW’s Behaviour Prompts Further Suspicions
The former diplomat draws attention to the timing of the OPCW review release which coincided with the Syrian government forces advance on terrorist-held Idlib.
“It is ominous that the attempts by Western powers and the international organisation they control to restore some credibility to that organisation should be emerging just as Western corporate media attempts to whip up a frenzy of humanitarian concern about Idlib are reaching a climax and just as the Syrian and other forces attempting to remove Western-supported jihadis from Idlib are poised for victory”, Ford suggests.
According to him, the unfolding situation evokes strong memories of Douma, “where a fake chemical weapons attack was fabricated to enable the Western powers to make a last ditch attempt to save their proxies”.
“Are we about to see a new Oscar-winning production, as some alarming reports indicate?” the British diplomat asks rhetorically.
The Douma chemical incident took place on 7 April 2018 prompting an immediate backlash from the US and its British and French allies who initiated a series of strikes involving aircraft and ship-based missiles targeting multiple Syrian government sites on 14 April, before the inquiry into what happened in Douma was carried out.
In March 2019, the OPCW released a report describing the Douma incident and claiming that chlorine was “most likely” the chemical agent used in an alleged chemical attack. The dossier come under heavy criticism from the whistleblowers, while Russia’s OPCW Permanent Representative Alexander Shulgin told the United Nations Security Council gathering convened to discuss the OPCW report that Russian and Syrian military had been able to collect evidence on the ground indicating that the incident was nothing short of a provocation by jihadi militants to win international support.
February 8, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | OPCW |
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The initial major rationale and justification the US administration offered for the drone assassination of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani and commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was the Dec. 27 rocket attack on K1 camp in Kirkuk, which houses coalition forces.
That attack involving surface-to-surface missile strikes killed an American contractor and reportedly wounded several US troops. Washington immediately blamed the Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary group Khataib Hezbollah, with Mike Pompeo saying of the attack: “We will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy,” after he briefed President Trump. But top Iraqi military and intelligence officials are now calling this entire narrative into question.
A new lengthy New York Times investigative report cites multiple top Iraqi officials who go on record to say of their analysis of the Dec.27 Kirkuk incident: “These facts all point to the Islamic State, Iraqi officials say.”
The Pentagon says it has evidence decisively pinning it on Khataib Hezbollah, known for its closeness to Tehran; however, the paramilitary group itself has denied that it was behind the operation. US officials have from the start been scant on details and have not made public any evidence or intelligence.
This led some analysts in the days after the attack to question whether ISIS cells, still known to be active in the area, might have been behind it — given also it would be to the Sunni terrorist group’s benefit to sow a major rift between US and local Iraqi Shia forces, which is precisely what happened (Trump has recently gone so far as to threaten “very big sanctions” on Baghdad if US forces are kicked out). Alternately the White House perhaps appeared ready to manufacture a justification to take out Soleimani.
Further, as detailed in the Times report, the white Kia pick-up from which the rockets were launched was found near a known ISIS execution site, in a heavily Sunni area not known to have had a Shia paramilitary presence since 2014:
But Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started the spiral of events, saying they believe it is unlikely that the militia the United States blamed for the attack, Khataib Hezbollah, carried it out.
… Iraqi officials say their doubts are based on circumstantial evidence and long experience in the area where the attack took place.
The rockets were launched from a Sunni Muslim part of Kirkuk Province notorious for attacks by the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, which would have made the area hostile territory for a Shiite militia like Khataib Hezbollah.
Khataib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk Province since 2014.
The Islamic State, however, had carried out three attacks relatively close to the base in the 10 days before the attack on K-1. Iraqi intelligence officials sent reports to the Americans in November and December warning that ISIS intended to target K-1, an Iraqi air base in Kirkuk Province that is also used by American forces.
And the abandoned Kia pickup was found was less than 1,000 feet from the site of an ISIS execution in September of five Shiite buffalo herders.
The NYT further says this single event set off “a chain of events that brought the United States and Iran to the brink of war” which President Trump confided at a private luncheon this week was “closer than you thought”.
Brig. General Ahmed Adnan, the Iraqi chief of intelligence for the federal police at K-1, told the NYT : “All the indications are that it was Daesh.” He said further: “I told you about the three incidents in the days just before in the area — we know Daesh’s movements.”
“We as Iraqi forces cannot even come to this area unless we have a large force because it is not secure. How could it be that someone who doesn’t know the area could come here and find that firing position and launch an attack?” he questioned.
Anonymous US officials, however, claim that evidence from within the Kia pickup points to Khataib Hezbollah, and also cited “multiple strains of intelligence” though without making it known.
Interestingly, amid a general breakdown in trust between Baghdad and Washington, a top Iraqi general has said the US side hasn’t even shared its claimed evidence that Khataib Hezbollah was behind the Kirkuk attack:
“We have requested the American side to share with us any information, any evidence, but they have not sent us any information,” Lt. Gen. Muhammad al-Bayati, the chief of staff for former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, said in an interview.
The director general of Iraqi Intelligence and Counterterrorism, Abu Ali al-Basri, said the United States did not consult Iraq before carrying out the Dec. 29 counterattacks on Khataib Hezbollah.
“They did not ask for my analysis of what happened in Kirkuk and neither did they share any of their information,” he said. “Usually, they would do both.”
The bombshell NYT report further collects eyewitness accounts and other Iraqi official statements, all of which strongly suggests the chain of events which led to Soleimani’s Jan. 3 killing, which in turn led to an Iranian ‘revenge’ attack with ballistic missiles on Ain al-Asad Air Base, wounding scores of troops (we later found out as part of an ever growing number of solders with ‘Traumatic Brain Injury’ from the blasts), was a possible ‘false flag’ event undertaken by ISIS meant to be pinned on the Islamic State’s Shia enemies backed by Iran.
February 7, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Iraq, ISIS, United States |
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Truth has broken through for those confused about how a publisher ended up in a maximum security prison in London with a one-way extradition ticket to court in the U.S. and the rest of his life behind bars.
One of the main German TV channels (ZDF) ran two prime-time segments on Wednesday night exposing authorities in Sweden for having “made up” the story about Julian Assange being a rapist.
Until last night most Germans, as well as other consumers of “major media” in Europe, had no idea of the trickery that enmeshed Assange in a spider-web almost certainly designed by the U.S. and woven by accomplices in vassal states like Sweden, Britain and, eventually, Ecuador.
ZDF punctured that web by interviewing UN Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer. One ZDF “Heute Sendung” segment (in German) is especially telling from minute 13:00 to 15:30. The second is ZDF “Heute Journal” (minute 25:49 to 30:19.)
Both ZDF programs show Melzer being interviewed, with minimal interruption or commentary, letting his findings speak for themselves about how allegations against Assange were “made up” and manipulated to hold him captive.
The particularly scurrilous allegation that led many, including initially Melzer, to believe Assange was a rapist — a tried and tested smear technique of covert action — was especially effective. The Swedes never formally charged him with rape — or with any crime, for that matter. ZDF exhibited some of the documents Melzer uncovered that show the sexual allegations were just as “invented” as the evidence for WMD before the attack on Iraq.
Melzer had previously admitted to having been so misled by media portrayals of Assange that he was initially reluctant to investigate Assange’s case. Here is what Melzer wrote last year in an op-ed marking the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, June 26.
No major media would print or post it. Medium.com posted it under the title “Demasking the Torture of Julian Assange.”
Excerpts:
“But surely, I found myself pleading, Assange must be a selfish narcissist, skateboarding through the Ecuadorian Embassy and smearing feces on the walls? Well, all I heard from Embassy staff is that the inevitable inconveniences of his accommodation at their offices were handled with mutual respect and consideration.
This changed only after the election of President Moreno, when they were suddenly instructed to find smears against Assange and, when they didn’t, they were soon replaced. The President even took it upon himself to bless the world with his gossip, and to personally strip Assange of his asylum and citizenship without any due process of law.
In the end it finally dawned on me that I had been blinded by propaganda, and that Assange had been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed.” (Emphasis added.)
Melzer ended his op-ed with this somber warning:
“… This is not only about protecting Assange, but about preventing a precedent likely to seal the fate of Western democracy. For once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, it will be too late to correct the course. We will have surrendered our voice to censorship and our fate to unrestrained tyranny.” (Emphasis added.)
Melzer’s indefatigable efforts to expose what Assange has gone through, including “psychological torture,” met with some modest success in the days before the German ZDF aired their stories. Embedded in the linked article is by far the best interview of Melzer on Assange.
Opposition to extraditing Assange to the U.S. is becoming more widespread. Another straw in an Assange-favorable wind came last week when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) called for Assange’s immediate release, ending years of silence by such European institutions.
It remains, nonetheless, an uphill struggle to prompt the British to think back 800 years to the courage of the nobles who wrested the Magna Carta from King John.
February 7, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | Human rights, UK, United States |
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Much of the new Senate report about ‘Russian meddling’ in the 2016 election consists of Obama administration officials covering their posteriors – but is also unwittingly revealing about its (false) premises, sources and methods.
A day after its members voted along party lines in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee joined forces to publish yet another fan-fiction in the ‘Russian meddling in 2016 US presidential election’ saga, this time focusing on the Obama administration’s responses.
The problem obvious right from the start is that the committee presupposes the existence of said meddling, citing the intelligence community assessment commissioned by Obama and Mueller indictments as evidence rather than unproven assertions. The “geopolitical context” of events in the report is a perfect example of how rotten assumptions and circular reasoning lead to garbage conclusions.
That said, there are a few revelations in the report that deserve attention. First of all, even while the entire section on page 11 is redacted, a footnote left up reveals that the first to raise the alarm about “Russian meddling” was John Brennan, CIA director at the time. In what must be a remarkable coincidence, he has since become an outspoken TV and Twitter pundit, specializing in accusing President Trump and Republican senators of treason.
Brennan is the one that briefed the congressional “Gang of Eight” over the course of August 2016 – starting with House Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The Republicans were all briefed “individually” on September 6, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) who sat on the Intel Committee. No notes about any of the meetings exist, of course.
Three weeks later, on September 22, Feinstein and Schiff issued a statement that they both “concluded that Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the US election” (p. 33). The report does not record the administration’s reaction to Schiff and Feinstein getting ahead of the White House, which was supposedly still hoping to address the whole thing with a bipartisan statement.
Schiff then went on to become the leading figure in the Democrats’ efforts to impeach Trump – first citing “Russian collusion” then latching on to the Ukraine phone call.
The report also reveals that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) colluded with the Washington Post to publish the story on June 14, 2016 about the “hacking” of their network (p.5). That is supposedly the first time anyone in the Obama administration found out about the DNC “hack.” This DNC behavior – running to the media before informing the government, which was run by Democrats! – ought to raise eyebrows, but the committee just moves on.
Here is another gem: The official ODNI-DHS statement about “Russian interference” was published at 3:30 PM on October 7, 2016 – a Friday, when news tends to get buried. Exactly 33 minutes later, the Post (them again!) publishes the Access Hollywood tape, intended to be the “October surprise” that sinks Trump’s candidacy. About half an hour later, WikiLeaks drops the first batch of emails from Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta. The rest is history.
Speaking of WikiLeaks, the section pertaining to them is entirely redacted in the Senate report. Earlier, the committee concluded that WikiLeaks was a “Russian cutout” – again, an assertion without evidence.
Keep in mind that this is the same committee whose understanding of “Russia’s social media-predicated attack against our democracy” was “significantly informed” by, among others, New Knowledge – the very outfit that masterminded an entirely fake ‘Russian meddling’ disinformation campaign during the 2017 special election for the US Senate in Alabama.
Another thing that stands out in the report is how the Obama administration perceived the whole affair. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and UN Ambassador Samantha Power both compared it to secret meetings prior to the raid on Osama bin Laden, while Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates described it as “very cloak and dagger” (p.13).
Secretary of State John Kerry even wrote a memo proposing a sequel to the Warren Commission (which investigated the JFK assassination) to tackle Russian “attempts” at interference (p.42). Instead, Obama chose to create the handpicked working group that would produce the infamous Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).
Curiously, the report does not mention at all the FBI’s efforts to spy on the Trump campaign, using FISA warrants predicated on the Clinton-commissioned dossier compiled by British spy Christopher Steele. One would think it ought to, given that it’s a very specific “response” to alleged Russian meddling. Perhaps that’s somewhere in the redacted parts?
In all seriousness, by now it should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that “Russian meddling” has been a lie all along, foisted on the American people by political operatives and hyper-partisan spies, and that its use in an attempt to de-legitimize a presidency may have done more actual harm to US institutions and the political system than anything any external actor could have hoped to achieve.
That the Senate Intel Committee insists on flogging this particular dead horse even after the impeachment hoax fell on its face suggests that the phantom “Russian” menace is still being used to pursue some other sinister political objective.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
February 7, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | CIA, DNC, Obama, United States |
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Despite leaking credibility like a sieve, chemical weapons watchdog doubles down on Douma narrative
The OPCW has released a briefing note summarising the recent “independent investigation” into their recent Titanic-sized leaks. (You can read the summary at the link above, or the full “independent” report here).
It’s a fairly narrow statement, focusing entirely on the two unnamed inspectors (Inspector A and Inspector B) who worked with the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media to leak the censored reports. (There is not a word about the e-mails later released by WikiLeaks).
You won’t be surprised to know that the report finds the two leakers, Ian Henderson and “Alex”, were wrong to leak the confidential information.
In that sense, it’s entirely self-contradictory. Attempting to tell us the information is at once “sensitive”, and also incomplete, incorrect and easily refuted.
Of course, none of that refutation is present here, because that wasn’t the remit of this report. This is just an investigation into the “Possible Breaches of Confidentiality” and not the veracity of the leaks, or the pertinence of the information therein.
Sometimes an incredibly narrow purview is a sound defence against an undesirable reality.
There’s really no new information here, just six pages of waffle telling us very little we didn’t already know. It’s not a report that really means anything at all. It’s just something that the OPCW literally had to say. Institutions have immune responses, they simply must attack their critics. It’s automatic.
If a CIA whistleblower were to announce the sky was blue, the CIA would release a memo claiming to have no official records concerning the visual appearance of our atmosphere and detailing the leaker’s history of alcohol abuse.
Attacking whistleblowers is just a reflex of self-defence, the most base instinct of every lifeform.
In its content and tone, this report is a clear example of that behaviour. Far more a smear and hit piece than a refutation or investigation (at one point it even straight-up lies about Ian Henderson’s career at the OPCW).
Essentially, it’s just a series of attacks on the competence and motivations of the whistleblowers, even to the point of attempting to deny them that status:
“spectors A and B are not whistle-blowers”
The head of OPCW bafflingly declares, before going on to explain:
“They are individuals who could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence. When their views could not gain traction, they took matters into their own hands and breached their obligations to the Organisation. Their behaviour is even more egregious as they had manifestly incomplete information about the Douma investigation.”
See – they’re not “whistleblowers”, they’re just individuals who believed that some documents being kept secret should be made public, and “took matters into their own hands”.
Apparently, that’s different from being a whistleblower. Somehow.
As with so much else in the current political sphere, it’s not so much an argument as an exercise in semantics.
Just as Julian Assange’s arrest became a debate over whether or not he was “really a journalist”, and “antisemitism” is redefined to increasingly ludicrous vagueness, here we are confronted by a memo essentially saying “ignore these leaks, these people are not real whistleblowers”.
It’s really not a report designed to make a case or prove a point. It won’t convert anybody or change a single mind. It’s just there to be at the other end of a link. To supply gate-keeping “journalists” with soundbites to bounce back and forth across twitter and blockquote in their articles.
A final redoubt to provide mainstream attack-dogs like Chris York or Scott Lucas some cover as they make a hasty retreat.
In that sense, it’s already doing its job:
A more obvious example of papering over the cracks, you will not see.
February 6, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | OPCW |
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Increasingly glaring irregularities in the Iowa caucus have forced DNC chair Tom Perez to call for a recanvass, as new revelations about those who funded the fiasco suggest a campaign to steal not just the election, but the party.
Just when it looked like the Iowa caucus nightmare was over, with 97 percent of precincts reporting and so many “inconsistencies” glossed over to reach that point that the most corrupt banana republic would raise an eyebrow, Perez has called for a do-over. “In light of the problems that have emerged” and “to assure public confidence in the results,” the party leader ordered its Iowa chapter to “immediately begin a recanvass” on Thursday, adding that a recanvass is not a recount per se but “a review of the worksheets from each caucus site.”
South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg’s brazen caucus-night declaration of victory had been hanging by a thread – Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, clearly the favorite by the popular vote, was gaining on his younger rival in delegate count as well before Perez suggested they restart the process.
Shell-shocked voters had sat patiently through three days of revelations that the corruption and malfeasance infecting the party made 2016’s efforts to rig the primary for Hillary Clinton look like milk and cookies. And now they had to do it again?
The straw that broke the camel’s back might have been the Iowa Democrats’ sheepish walk-back of a set of phony results for Black Hawk County on Wednesday night, which had mysteriously handed a large chunk of Sanders votes to billionaire Tom Steyer and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. When the county supervisor published the actual results, the party dutifully updated their totals to reflect reality after promising a “minor correction.”
But this nonchalant correction of yet another supposedly innocent mistake – all of which, some noticed, had penalized Sanders – wasn’t enough for voters who had lost patience with the process. “How many other counties are having their results falsely reported by the IDP?” one group tweeted, giving voice to the suspicions shared by many.
Nor did Perez’s call for a recanvass pacify the angry mob. Instead, it merely sparked calls for him to resign. The establishment stalwart has been in the crosshairs of the party’s progressive wing since last week’s announcement that the 2020 convention would be packed to the brim with corporate lobbyists, Clinton and Obama administration alumni, and former Clinton campaign director John Podesta himself – whose hacked emails, along with those of the DNC itself, revealed the extent of the primary-rigging scheme against Sanders in 2016.
Monday’s caucus was marred almost immediately by a glitch in the app precincts were supposed to use to report vote totals. When the nature of the glitch became public – vote totals input one way came out differently – angry voters began looking into how and why the Iowa Democrats had used an untested app built by supposedly well-meaning but technologically-inept former Clinton staffers (at a company absurdly called Shadow). Warnings the app didn’t work had been ignored for over a week. The Buttigieg campaign had donated $40,000 to Shadow, whose app seemed to be handing him first place in spite of polls, and Shadow’s parent company Acronym’s founder Tara McGowan was married to a Buttigieg staffer herself. Despite MSM attempts to blame Trump supporters for flooding the hotline set up to report caucus vote totals in the event of a software malfunction, CNN caught line operators deliberately hanging up on precinct supervisors, indicating the problem went far beyond a simple software glitch.
Acronym has now been traced to another notorious figure in Democratic election-meddling circles. Reid Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn founder who bankrolled the Shadow-like New Knowledge’s rigging of the 2017 Alabama Senate race using fake “Russian bots” and social media disinformation campaigns, also provided the seed money for Acronym. CEO McGowan personally credited Hoffman for setting her up with the startup capital for her company, which in addition to Shadow runs fake news pages on Facebook remarkably similar to some of New Knowledge’s Alabama propaganda.
Acronym also gave rise to a lucrative political action committee that has sucked up millions of dollars in donations from hardline right-wing Jewish lobbyists, including Times of Israel founder Seth Klarman, who somehow came around from backing Trump and neocon Florida Senator Marco Rubio to embracing Buttigieg and a handful of other centrist Democrats. Klarman financed the Israel Project, which until it closed last year operated fake news pages on Facebook exactly like those run by New Knowledge and Shadow. A pattern appears to be emerging here…
Nor do Acronym’s ambitions end with the 2020 election. Shadow alone is involved in building a system called Lightrail, which will reportedly “help” the Democratic Party centralize its data – and hand the dodgy firm the levers of power within the party.
Sanders, meanwhile, appears to have decided not to wait for the recanvass, claiming victory with a 6,000-vote margin over Buttigieg, though he acknowledged that there was still mathematical correction to be done.
February 6, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Deception | DNC, United States |
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After a 2016 presidential primary race riddled with scandals, all of which worked against Bernie Sanders to the advantage of anointed establishment favorite Hillary Clinton, the 2020 Democratic presidential primary elections officially began with a massive scandal working against Bernie Sanders to the advantage of an establishment favorite.
The 2020 Iowa caucuses turned out to have been designed to depend on the use of a new, untested app with extensive ties to establishment insiders and to the Pete Buttigeig campaign, and because of problems using this app as of this writing we are still waiting on the full results of the election. The Iowa Democratic Party has bizarrely released a partial result with 62 percent of 99 counties reporting, which just so happens to have favored the campaign of a Mr. Peter Buttigeig, who in the sample came out on top in delegates despite coming in second in votes. [After 71 percent of the vote counted Buttigieg was still ahead on Wednesday morning.]
According to an Iowa precinct chair, the problems using the app (developed by the aptly named Shadow, Inc) included literally switching the numbers entered into it on the final step of reporting results.
“A precinct chair in Iowa said the app got stuck on the last step when reporting results,” CNN reports. “It was uploading a picture of the precinct’s results. The chair said they were finally able to upload, so they took a screenshot. The app then showed different numbers than what they had submitted as captured in their screenshot.”
It doesn’t actually matter anymore who really won Iowa at this point; the damage is already done. Iowa is a sparsely populated state with an insignificant number of delegates; nobody campaigns there for the delegates, they campaign to make headlines and generate excitement and favorable press for themselves in the first electoral contest of the presidential primary race. This has already happened, and with Buttigeig first declaring victory before any results were in, followed by his delegate count lead announced hours later, the favorable press has predominantly gone his way.
Even if Sanders turns out to have won the delegate count as well, this will already have happened. He will have already lost the opportunity to start off the primary contest with a win and a rousing victory speech. In every way that matters, he has already been robbed, by extremely shady establishment dealings, in the very first electoral contest of the race.
The very first. Berners are already as outraged as they were at the height of the 2016 DNC scandal, which was still months out from this point in the race. They’re already getting screwed over, and it’s just getting started.
I see many people blaming this on incompetence, some in bad faith and some in good, but in either case there is no legitimate reason to do that anymore. It has been my experience that if someone seems to be totally incompetent but every “oopsie” they make just happens to end up benefiting them, it’s manipulation you’re dealing with, not incompetence. Some people are happy to look dumb if they can get what they want. If you watch their actions and ignore their words, a very revealing pattern shows up immediately.
This is all extremely blatant, and the feelings it brings up in people are completely legitimate. Yet narrative managers like Neera Tanden and Shannon Watts are telling everyone they’re just like Trump if they suspect the Democratic establishment is again doing the thing it did just four years ago.
If such extremely shady shenanigans had occurred in Russia or Venezuela, within minutes Mike Pompeo would have been holding a press conference demanding a new election under UN supervision and an international coalition of sanctions. It’s hilarious how America is constantly staging coups, implementing sanctions and arming violent militias on the basis that their government has an illegitimate democratic process, yet its own most important electoral proceedings would make any third world tin pot dictator blush.
And don’t give me that crap about how Democratic Party primaries are separate from the U.S. electoral system and therefore don’t undermine American democracy; of course they do. If your country has a rigidly enforced two-party system and one of those parties has bogus internal elections, then you do not have any degree of democracy in your country. Saying “Well if you don’t like our rigged primary process you can vote for the other corrupt warmongering pro-establishment party” is not democracy.
The difference between a true totalitarian dictatorship and America is that the totalitarian dictatorship enforces one political belief system which supports the status quo, whereas in America you get the freedom of choice between two political belief systems which support the status quo. The entire system is stacked to ensure the continued rule of the oligarchs, spooks and warmongers who really run things behind the two-handed sock puppet show of the official elected government.
The U.S. doesn’t attack and undermine nations when they lack “freedom” or “democracy”, they attack and undermine them when they refuse to bow to the demands of the power establishment which controls the U.S. government and its allies.
The sooner people wake up to this, the better. In Iowa, things couldn’t have gone worse for those responsible for keeping people asleep.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Follow her work on Facebook, Twitter, or her website.
February 5, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | CNN, Democratic Party (United States), United States |
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It’s amazing to think how the entire American media and political Establishment has been banging on ad nauseum for the last four years running, telling the public that the biggest threat to the integrity of their fragile western democracy and fleeting freedoms – was the Russians.
We’re now told that the Democratic Party’s opening act for the 2020 Presidential Elections – the Iowa Caucuses, has descended into chaos after the release of voting results from the state’s precincts was delayed due to “inconsistencies in voter data” which was meant to be reported accurately via a new digital mobile app commissioned by esteemed members of the party’s elite high committee.
Normally, Iowa results are released a few hours after the polls close, but this year that didn’t happen.
Numerous internal party arguments have now broken out, with opposing camps attacking different people, all but guaranteeing more in-fighting and controversy in what is already turning out to be the ultimate internecine war.
The biggest loser here, clearly, is front-runner Bernie Sanders, who has been deprived of the certain momentum he would have had with the announcement of a resounding victory in Iowa.
As a result of the chaos, more marginal candidates like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg are now claiming to have ‘won’ the state, although it will be hard to tell who is speaking truth and who is trying to take advantage of the chaos in order to artificially inflated their performance.
As of this morning, voters are still waiting for Final results, and even then, those may be contested now that confidence in the system has been shaken.
The ‘glitch’ came about after Democratic Party activists manning some 1,700 precincts had downloaded the new app on their smart phones in order to submit voter data from the caucus sites, over to the party’s central headquarters. It’s still unknown exactly how the app distorted the voting results, and will no doubt be the subject of much argument and speculation in the coming days and weeks.
The firm behind the shady app is called Shadow Inc, owned by the Democratic Party nonprofit group Acronym. As it turns out, many of the people behind this new election technology are former Hillary Clinton staffers.
This may just be a coincidence, but it is certain to fuel existing distrust and skepticism among Democrat voters, especially in light of the previous exposure of how the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign had colluded with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) operatives to prevent candidate Bernie Sanders from winning his party’s nomination.
None of this should come as any surprise to voters who have been raising the alarm about voting fraud and voting irregularities for decades. But this situation is unprecedented.
Many suspected a scandal was afoot on Sunday, after it was announced that the traditional benchmark Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa Democratic caucus goers – would not be released as per normal on Saturday night. Apparently, the poll was shelved due to the efforts the Pete Buttigieg’s campaign who claimed the poll was ‘unfair.’ Buttigieg was seen to be in discussions with operatives at CNN at this time. Their operation to submerge polling results damaged front-runner Bernie Sanders who was expecting to capitalize on announcements of a wide lead going into the Caucuses.
For Sanders campaigners, it seemed that the fix was in. Only, they never imagined how bad things would get on Monday evening.
Just days before this, Hillary Clinton, still reeling from her 2016 epic loss, took to national media to attack the Sanders campaign in a move which many believe is part of a wider DNC establishment level effort to undermine front-runner Bernie sanders – who Clinton and Biden operatives believe is too far left for the Democratic Party and has ‘no chance’ to beat Donald Trump’s re-election bid come November.
Make no mistake about it: as of this morning, public confidence in the Democratic Party has hit an all-time low.
February 4, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | Democratic Party (United States), United States |
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Iran has dismissed as insufficient a Swiss-US “humanitarian” channel set up to enable medicine transfers to the country, arguing that the United States is originally banned by the International Court of Justice from subjecting Iran’s much-needed medical supplies to sanctions.
“We do not recognize any such so-called humanitarian channel,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi told a press conference on Monday. “We do not recognize sanctions [for that matter]. Medicine and foodstuffs were never subject to sanctions in the first place so they can now create a channel [for their transfer] with much publicity,” he added.
The US returned its sanctions against Iran after leaving a historic nuclear accord with the country and others in 2018. The measures defied the agreement’s multilateral nature and the fact that it had been ratified by the United Nations Security Council.
Washington then began forcing others to toe its sanctions line. Britain, France, and Germany have stopped their transactions with the Islamic Republic, bowing under the pressure.
On Thursday, Switzerland launched the so-called Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), claiming it was aimed at facilitating the medicine trade, reportedly using the Central Bank of Iran’s credits. Swiss officials have, however, refused to clairfy how such transactions would continue if the CBI ran out of credit with Swiss banks.
On October 3, 2018, the Hague-based International Court of Justice, the UN’s principal judicial organ, issued a ruling ordering the US to halt its unilateral sanctions on “humanitarian” supplies to Iran. The verdict came following a lawsuit lodged by Iran in July of the same year.
Mousavi said Washington is well aware that as per the ruling, it bears an obligation not to block such transactions, adding that these “conditional waivers” from the sanctions will not result in the US war crimes passing into oblivion.
The medicine supplies, he added, were bound to enter the country a year and a half ago, but their imports were blocked by US obstructionism.
The Swiss company tasked with facilitating the transactions “has been paid to do so,” he said, noting, “Our expectations far exceed such measures. And their obligations are hundreds of times more than what they are offering.”
He noted that the Islamic Republic welcomes all efforts that are aimed at reducing the pressure faced by the country, but still Switzerland’s initiation of the SHTA, falls short of the expectations.
Also on Monday, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif dismissed the efficiency of the Swiss channel and drew attention to the ICJ ruling in this regard.
The top diplomat noted that the US keeps pursuing the policy of “maximum pressure” and denying Iran the financial channels that enable it to import medicine.
“This is a small step and we thank the Swiss government for its efforts … but this channel is not a sign of America’s goodwill at all,” he said.
Last October, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that the US’s harsh sanctions against Iran posed a serious threat to the Iranian people’s right to health, urging Washington to adopt swift measures aimed at facilitating trade of humanitarian goods with the Islamic Republic.
The sanctions are compromising Iranians “access to essential medicines—and has almost certainly contributed to documented shortages— ranging from a lack of critical drugs for epilepsy patients to limited chemotherapy medications for Iranians with cancer,” it said.
Though the US government has supposedly built exemptions for humanitarian imports into its sanctions regime, “broad US sanctions against Iranian banks, coupled with aggressive rhetoric from US officials, have drastically constrained Iran’s ability to finance such humanitarian imports,” the rights organization added.
A month later, an NGO said Iranian children suffering from a rare skin condition known as EB were losing their lives as US economic sanctions hampered the flow of vital medical products.
Hamid Reza Hashemi-Golayegani, the head of the NGO that helps such patients, said that at least 15 Iranian children with epidermolysis bullosa (EB) had died since the US restored the sanctions.
February 3, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Sanctions against Iran, United States |
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Viewers of my recent #PropagandaWatch episode on The CIA’s Global Propaganda Network will know all about the interesting 1977 article from the good ol’ New York Times, “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the CIA.”
If you haven’t watched my video yet, you should definitely do so. And then you should go read that New York Times article for yourself. (But read it at this link to avoid giving the Old Grey Presstitute your click.)
When you do read the article, you’ll see that it is an obvious limited hangout—that is, the deliberate revelation of some information in order to prevent the discovery of other, more important information. This observation tells us two things:
- That there is novel and compelling information about the CIA’s covert propaganda programs contained in the article; and
- that that novel and compelling information is not the whole story.
In order to understand the hangout the Times is attempting here, we first have to examine the article itself and the information that the article does contain.
The report concerns the so-called “Mighty Wurlitzer,” the propaganda network of “800 news and public information organizations and individuals,” including “newspapers, news services, magazines, publishing houses, broadcasting stations and other entities” that the CIA either owned outright or exerted editorial control over.
That the article is indeed a limited hangout is evident right from the start. Within the first few paragraphs of this extensive investigation, the author is quick to reassure readers that the incredibly vast, incredibly powerful CIA propaganda network that he is documenting was never actually used to forward propaganda.
“Although the C.I.A. has employed dozens of American journalists working abroad, a three-month inquiry by a team of reporters and researchers for The New York Times has determined that, with a few notable exceptions, they were not used by the agency to further its world-wide propaganda campaign.”
This claim is not just disingenuous, it’s downright ridiculous. Indeed, the remainder of the article serves as one giant rebuke of that preposterous lie. But only a tiny percentage of the population makes it more than a few paragraphs into a story, so placing such a claim up front makes sure to placate the majority of readers and convince them that this propaganda network must not be so bad after all.
The report then goes on to detail a number of media entities that the CIA owned or controlled during the period in question (primarily the 1950s and ’60s), including:
- Radio stations like Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Free Cuba Radio;
- Newspapers like The Rome Daily American, The Okinawa Morning Star, The Manila Times, The Bangkok World and The Tokyo Evening News;
- Magazines and journals like Quest, East Europe and Paris Match.
- Book publishers like Allied Pacific Printing in India and the Asia Research Centre in Hong Kong.
Perhaps more important to the CIA than its control over these media organs, however, were the journalists and editors who were willing to aid the agency in publishing its propaganda. Some were on the CIA payroll directly, others worked on contract. Names dropped in the article range from the familiar—like Tom Braden and William F. Buckley, Jr.—to the long-forgotten. Readers are left with the impression that the agency’s propaganda efforts were (emphasis on past tense) more extensive and far-reaching than anyone had imagined to that point.
The article must have been a bombshell for the relatively information-deprived New York Times readers of 1977. Given how difficult it was to discover any reliable information about the CIA and its operations in that pre-internet era, finding such a treasure trove of information in no less a publication than the USA’s “newspaper of record” must have been incredible.
This, of course, poses the question: Why, then, was this article published? Surely the details of this report had been known to journalists for some time previously. So why was the Times publishing it at that precise moment?
To answer that, we have to look at the context of what was happening in 1977. The issue of the intelligence agencies and what they were really doing under the cover of national security had been blown wide open in the Church Committee hearings of 1975. The Committee, set up after a series of revelations about US military and intelligence agency abuses of Americans’ rights, released reports on a wide variety of issues that had hitherto been under wraps, from the existence and operations of the National Security Agency to the workings of covert assassination programs (including the infamous heart attack gun).
One of the issues to arise during the committee’s hearing was that of the intelligence agencies’ relationship with the media. One journalist who was working to document these ties was Carl Bernstein, who, in October of 1977, published his own report on the subject, “The CIA and the Media,” in Rolling Stone magazine. Bernstein’s extensive article revealed a number of long-suspected links between the agency and leading publishers, including the fact that Arthur Sulzberger Sr. (then publisher of The New York Times) worked hand-in-hand with the CIA.
I’ll allow you a moment to recover from your shock.
In fact, Bernstein not only identified Sulzberger (along with Henry Luce of Time Inc., William Paley of CBS and numerous other media moguls) as working directly with the CIA, but he revealed that there were ten CIA operatives working at the New York Times in the 50s and 60s alone.
Perhaps you’re starting to see why the Times was suddenly motivated to publish a report exposing the CIA’s “worldwide propaganda network,” but conveniently omitting its own role in that network. Neither will you be surprised to learn that the Times “forgot” to note the fact that its American media brethren (Time, CBS, NBC, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, The Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek and many others) were named by Bernstein as “organizations which cooperated with the CIA.”
In fact, the Times article goes out of its way to stress that the “Mighty Wurlitzer” was only directed abroad, not at the American public. In a section with the prominent subhead “Agency Charter Bars Propaganda in U.S.” (emphasized in italics and bold, unlike any of the article’s other sections), the report is at pains to stress that the CIA has been legislatively prohibited from propagandizing American citizens directly. It then presents a limited hangout argument that some of the agency’s foreign propaganda may have been “accidentally” relayed back to American media by “unwitting” correspondents abroad, thus propagandizing the American public (which totally wasn’t the CIA’s intention, guys!).
As Bernstein had already shown, however, the agency was actively involved with spreading propaganda to the American public via American media organs like the New York Times. For some reason, this fact was left out of the Times’ report.
In the end, the entire Times article serves as a case study in the art of the limited hangout. It shows us exactly how and why these types of “bombshell revelations” are dropped on the public in the pages of mainstream publications. These revelations—containing true and verifiable information, including information of real importance—can help to obscure other, more embarrassing facts and shift the public debate from matters of vital importance to peripheral issues.
To be sure, the article is still worth reading. It does contain true and verifiable information about the CIA’s propaganda activities. But, like all such limited hangouts, it can only be properly understood when one understands what has been left out of the story.
The propagandists never do make it easy to get to the bottom of their lies, do they?
February 2, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | CIA, New York Times, United States |
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Job seekers wait outside the Amanda travel agency in order to get their money back in Khartoum. (Photo by MEE)
Sudanese youths have revealed that the UAE pledged them jobs with high salaries in the Persian Gulf small country, but instead took them to Libya which is embroiled in a war between rival groups.
The United Arab Emirates is the key supporter of renegade general Khalifa Haftar which is leading a grueling military offensive against the government in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Several Sudanese youths have told the Middle East Eye that they were promised to work as security guards in the UAE on a salary of around $2,175 per month, but were instead sent to hostile areas in Libya.
Abdul Rahman Alzaki, a 34-year-old IT engineer, went to visit the Amanda travel agency in the center of the Sudanese capital that had placed the advertisement.
He was told the work was for the Emirati security firm Black Shields and would be located in Abu Dhabi or another UAE city.
Following several job interviews, Alzaki paid around 80,000 Sudanese pounds ($950) to Amanda after he was told the salary had been confirmed and that the travel agency would transport him to the UAE.
He traveled to the Emirates, but his dream soon turned into a nightmare after he discovered that he would in fact be receiving three months of military training and then be sent to Libya or Yemen.
The UAE wanted him and other Sudanese youths to protect oil refineries and strategic locations in the area held by Haftar, he told the MEE.
The UAE is among several countries supporting Haftar in his campaign to oust the UN-recognized government in Tripoli. The Arab country is also a key party to a Saudi-led coalition waging war on Yemen.
Around 3,000 Sudanese are believed to have been deceived by Black Shields, which sub-contracted companies such as Amanda advertising for the Emirati company.
“When we reached the Emirates we realized that we had been cheated, as the company had taken our passports, mobile phones and everything, and sent us to a military training camp called Zayed Military City” in Abu Dhabi, Alzaki said.
The MEE said it visited the Amanda travel agency in downtown Khartoum on Wednesday, but the agency was closed and phone calls to the manager and other employees of the agency went unanswered.
Dozens of job seekers were waiting outside the agency in order to try to get their money back, the online website said.
Boraey Mohamed Ahmed said he and other Sudanese youths had been subjected to extensive cheating by mafia companies working between the UAE and Sudan.
Circulation of the story on social media has ignited protests against the UAE and its policies in Sudan and in the region.
Thousands of Sudanese protesters have waged a wide campaign on social media against UAE policies, calling on the government to maintain the dignity of the Sudanese.
On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside the UAE embassy and the Sudanese Foreign Ministry in Khartoum, demanding the return of the Sudanese youths.
Chanting anti-Emirate slogans, the protesters also called for the return of Sudanese soldiers from the war in Yemen.
Protester Marwa Hassan criticized the policies of the UAE on Sudan and the region as whole.
“Why do they want to use our people as mercenaries in Yemen and Libya, we have nothing to do with their interests in these countries, why are they exploiting the poverty of our youth to use them badly like this,” she shouted.
February 2, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism | Africa, Libya, UAE, Yemen |
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The dubious legal proceedings at the Guantanomo Bay (Gitmo) prison camp continue to promote the idea of justice for victims of 9/11. Unfortunately, these proceedings do not represent an administration of law but an unstated claim that the Global War on Terror is above the law. More importantly, the Gitmo antics have one obvious objective—to perpetuate willful ignorance of the 9/11 crimes.
There is a dangerous elephant in the Gitmo courtroom, however, and if it ever gets reported it could bring down the terror-torture house of cards.
Reporters covering Gitmo continue to call it a trial but it is not a trial, it is a “military tribunal.” They continue to call the site “Camp Justice” when justice is as far from the prison camp as it has ever been from any human endeavor. What they don’t do is think critically about the information they are parroting from court sources.
The history is profoundly absurd. The suspects were brutally tortured and held without charges for up to 18 years. The alleged evidence obtained from the torture was made secret. Then the records of the secret torture evidence were illegally destroyed. Then the secret evidence simply turned out to be completely false. FBI and CIA officers then began to make a mockery of the whole thing, secretly bugging defense team discussion rooms and covertly inserting themselves as translators and defense team members.
This is not just a matter of an extreme violation of human rights and an utter disrespect for the law. Within this sequence of stupidity looms the mother of all oversights. That is, the secret evidence that turned out to be false was used as the basis for The 9/11 Commission Report.
At the center of the media’s willful ignorance is “forever prisoner” Abu Zubaydah, the first alleged al Qaeda leader captured and tortured. In 2009, the U.S. government began correcting the record by admitting, in habeus corpus proceedings, that Zubaydah was never associated with al Qaeda and that he had no role in, or knowledge of, the 9/11 attacks. That Zubaydah was never associated with al Qaeda is no longer challenged by anyone and is regularly repeated in the mainstream press. What is not mentioned is the astounding implication of that admission.
Abu Zubaydah’s “torture testimony” was used to construct the official narrative of 9/11 that is still accepted as fact today.
Check for yourself. Do a quick search for the word “Zubaydah” in The 9/11 Commission Report. You’ll find it 52 times. As you read these references and claims, ask yourself—how could a man who the government now says had nothing to do with al Qaeda have known any of these things? How could he be a key travel facilitator for al Qaeda operatives when he wasn’t associated in any way with al Qaeda? How could Zubaydah give detailed accounts of Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM)’s plans for 9/11 when he had no knowledge of those plans?
Disassociating Zubaydah from al Qaeda causes so many problems for the official narrative of al Qaeda and 9/11 that people like Lee Hamilton, the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, simply develop amnesia when asked about him.
As seen in the 9/11 Commission Report, the official account begins with linking “Mukhtar” (KSM) to “al Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaydah,” who we now know was never associated with al Qaeda. Both FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, in a 2009 New York Times opinion piece, and Vice President Dick Cheney, in his 2011 book, claimed that Zubaydah (who never had any knowledge or connection to 9/11) identified KSM as the “mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.” The official account of 9/11, and the ongoing fake trial at Gitmo, all proceeded from there.
But none of it was true.
The latest crime of 9/11 is that this fact is not being reported. The media admits that Zubaydah was never associated with al Qaeda but entirely ignores the devastating consequences of that admission. The false official account for 9/11 is the root cause and ongoing justification for greater crimes—1) wars of aggression in multiple countries that have destroyed millions of lives, 2) the public’s acceptance of torture and indefinite detention, and 3) mass surveillance and an overall attack on freedom.
Instead of reporting that the basis for those greater crimes has been obliterated, the media reduces the subject to a discussion of how torture is bad but perhaps still justified by the gain. Of course, torture is bad but mass murder is much worse and the justification for both the wars and the torture is now indefensible! Until the media reports this fact there will be no justice for victims of 9/11 or for the victims of the resulting wars and torture.
We know that there are many striking anomalies and inexplicable facts about 9/11 that have yet to be resolved. But the fake Gitmo trial stands as a final absurd crime in the history of 9/11 as it is represented as an attempt at justice yet includes more farcical elements every day.
For example, the CIA-driven architect of the torture program recently claimed that he was acting on behalf of the 9/11 families and that he would do it again.
The final proceedings have been set to officially begin in January 2021, aligning with the 20th anniversary news cycle and re-emphasizing that propaganda is the primary goal. The propaganda narrative focuses on setting the false official account in stone and further normalizing torture.
Sadly, reporters and editors covering these events don’t seem to have an interest in challenging any substantial part of the story. Let’s hope that one or more of them comes to their senses and proves that suspicion wrong.
February 1, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | 9/11, CIA, Human rights, United States |
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