Dutch Lies Over Putin’s ‘Aggression’ Expose NATO War Agenda
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 15.02.2018
Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte was this week forced to bear a parliamentary vote of no confidence after his foreign minister finally came clean over a dangerous lie he has been telling for two years concerning Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Halbe Zijlstra quit in shame on Monday as the country’s foreign minister after admitting that a story he had peddled about personally hearing Putin plotting to create a “greater Russia” was false. That then forced premier Rutte to endure a “no confidence” motion from parliamentarians. In the end, Rutte survived the vote. If a majority had voted against his leadership, his coalition government may have collapsed.
But the deep damage done to the Dutch authorities will not be so easily repaired by Rutte’s survival as premier. What has been exposed this week is a senior member of government recklessly telling bare-faced lies in an attempt to slander Russia, poison international relations, and ratchet up already dangerous geopolitical tensions.
Zijlstra had claimed two years ago, in 2016, that he had personally witnessed Russian leader Vladimir Putin boasting about creating a “greater Russia” which, it is claimed, would incorporate Ukraine, the Baltic states, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The newly resigned Dutch top diplomat claimed he heard Putin making the remarks while present with others at the Russian leader’s dacha (summer house) back in 2006.
This week, Zijlstra finally came clean and admitted before parliament that he hadn’t in fact been present at the alleged gathering. He still maintains, however, that a confidant who was among the guests at Putin’s dacha informed him of the alleged “greater Russia” plan. But how can we now trust the word of a self-confessed liar?
Zijlstra’s boss, Prime Minister Rutte, also sought to downplay the debacle, claiming that his foreign minister had made “a big mistake” – but that “lying was not a deadly sin”.
Rutte is in for a rude awakening due to his complacent thinking. For indeed his government has been caught telling a very grave lie whose ramifications concern issues of war and peace in Europe.
Disgraced former minister Zijlstra stands accused of gross distortion of Russia’s foreign policy.
Since the US and European-backed illegal coup in Ukraine in early 2014, geopolitical reality has been turned upside-down. American and European corporate media have peddled relentless anti-Russia propaganda accusing Moscow of “aggression” and “expansionism” in Europe.
This torrent of Russophobia spewed out by Washington, the Pentagon, NATO and the European Union has created the worst crisis in relations with Russia since the Cold War ended nearly three decades ago. There are real fears that the mounting crisis could escalate into an all-out war involving nuclear powers.
Zijlstra’s offense therefore is not merely a “mistaken” lie. His flagrant public distortion has contributed directly to the grave deterioration in geopolitical relations. One could even argue such reprehensible remarks amount to incitement of war, which is a cardinal crime under Nuremberg legal principles.
Lamentably, the mendacious senior Dutch politician is not an isolated case. Recall how former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski was caught out telling similar defamatory lies about Russia in 2014.
Sikorski, who has been an ardent supporter of NATO force build-up against Russia, reportedly claimed that he personally overheard Vladimir Putin in 2008 plotting to annex Ukrainian territory in a covert plot. Sikorski claimed that he heard Putin propositioning then Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk with a carve-up deal of Ukraine between Poland and Russia.
Sikorski was obliged to swiftly retract the claims published in US media, and awkwardly admit that he was not present at the alleged meeting with Putin, and that his quoted remarks were meant as a “surreal joke”.
But, again, this is no joke or mistake. It is deadly serious disinformation by senior government officials, which is recklessly inciting war tensions with Russia. Sikorski is prominently associated with pro-NATO think-tanks like the hawkish American Enterprise Institute. He is married to Anne Applebaum who makes a living from writing anti-Russian screeds for news outlets like the Washington Post.
Zijlstra and Sikorski join the ranks of Russophobia regurgitated by other European foreign ministers like Britain’s Boris Johnson who issued the outlandish claim earlier this year that Russia is “targeting” British infrastructure; or French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian who has impugned Russia for chemical weapons use in Syria – only for the French President Emmanuel Macron to admit this week that his government has actually no evidence about the use of such weapons in Syria.
Macron has made his own contribution to Russophobia by leveling unsubstantiated allegations that his presidential election campaign last year was “hacked” by Kremlin agents. He has since banned Russian news media from attending his press conferences.
All these senior government figures are irresponsibly fueling a climate of demonization against Russia which is compounding other unhinged claims made by politicians in Washington and the Baltic states. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, for example, recently claimed that Russian Iskander missiles based on Russian sovereign territory of Kaliningrad were targeting half of Europe, an alarmist claim which has been amplified by US secretary of defense James Mattis in the Pentagon’s recent Nuclear Posture Review.
The climate of hysteria – based on false, fevered official claims – is militating against normal political and diplomatic relations, which is, in turn, exacerbating the war in Ukraine and leading to wider war tensions with Russia across Europe.
A good question is why the ousted Dutch minister decided to own up this week to his lies about Putin.
The answer may be related to the bigger credibility crisis of the Dutch government and its NATO allies with regard to the whole Russophobia propaganda war.
Next month, the Netherlands is to hold a national referendum on extending powers of Dutch state intelligence to monitor public electronic communications. To convince the Dutch public to vote for more snooping powers, the authorities are relying on the hackneyed claims about Russian “meddling” and “interference”.
It seems significant that Dutch media reported last month that the country’s secret services allegedly “hacked into” Russian state hackers who were allegedly penetrating the American Democratic party’s databases during the US presidential elections back in 2015-2016. As usual, no evidence was provided to support the claims. We know from other credible reports that the Democratic party was quite possibly not hacked at all, but rather was leaked from inside by a Democrat staffer. So the Dutch intel story smearing Russia is highly dubious.
But it seems that the purported “good deed” performed by the Dutch intelligence services was pitched in the media as a way to ingratiate bona fides with the Netherlands public. The aim being to dispose the public toward voting in the referendum next month to give the Dutch state more intrusive powers over citizens to “protect” them from “nefarious Russians”.
Now, if the Dutch minister had held on to his office any longer there was a risk that his lies may have become public embarrassingly close to the March referendum, which could have resulted in the public rejecting the authorities’ desire for more snooping powers.
Perhaps then the decision was taken in high office for the minister to take the fall now in order to get rid sooner of an embarrassing story concerning his lies over Russia.
Whatever the explanation about the timing, the admission of Dutch government lying about Russian aggression in Europe is nevertheless an illuminating and appalling insight into how Russophobia and war is being fomented by the US and its European NATO allies.
Abominably, European government officials are willing to risk plunging millions of citizens into a war with Russia based on lies and warped, self-serving prejudices.
Iran or US? Who is behind instability in Syria?
Press TV – February 14, 2018
As Syria is effectively emerging from more than seven years of conflict by successfully purging its territory of militants, the United States and allies are becoming increasingly vocal in their criticism of the governments who helped Syria clear the mess.
In comments dealing with a recent escalation of events in Syria’s border with the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has blamed Iran for the continued bloodshed in Syria, saying Tehran should end its “destabilizing” presence in Syria and allow peace to be restored to the Arab country.
However, many wonder who is really destabilizing Syria. Is it Iran, a country that has gone to any length to protect the legitimate government of Syria, or was it the US, which from the onset of war in March 2011 began to designate the heavily-armed militants and military defectors as the so-called moderate opposition of Syria and continued to generously support them through providing weapons, funding and training.
Washington cannot hide its anger at Iran and Russia becoming the saviors of Syria after an all-out war, which in the beginning was to change the political and security equations in the Middle East. For a long time, Syria was a major front in regional confrontation with Israel. It openly supported governments and fighters that countered Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its violation of the sovereignty of countries such as Lebanon.
The fall of Syria, as it was envisaged in the West, could mean an end to Damascus’ anti-Israeli policies and could create a sense of relief for the regime in Tel Aviv. That dream actually failed to materialize and after more than seven years, Israel and the US, as its main ally, feel more insecure than ever as Syria is regaining control over many parts of its territories. Moreover, Syria has established stronger military and political ties with Iran and Russia, the two countries that backed it in the war on terror, and it has become more engaged with the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, an arch enemy of Israel.
Now, US officials are becoming more fearful about Israel’s grim future and what could happen to it in adjacency of a revitalized Syria. To offset those concerns, they now try to highlight Iran’s continued presence in Syria as a threat, pretending that Tehran is fueling the violence.
Tillerson said on Wednesday that Iran should withdraw from Syria, saying Tehran was responsible for a recent escalation on Syria’s borders with the occupied territories. He even accused Iran of hampering the United Nations’ efforts to restore peace in Syria.
“We are quite concerned about the recent incident involving Israel and Iranian assets inside of Syria. And I think this again illustrates why Iran’s presence in Syria is only destabilizing to the region,” Tillerson said, adding “Iran needs to withdraw its military, its militia from Syria, and allow a hope for the peace process to take hold in Geneva.”
Tillerson made the comments in Amman, the capital of Jordan, a kingdom which borders Syria’s province of Dayr al-Zawr, where government forces have managed to liberate key cities and towns relying on Iranian and Russian support. Russia, which unlike Iran, has a direct military presence in Syria, has repeatedly accused the United States of trying to hamper Syria’s full victory against the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group. Moscow has released evidence showing that US forces stationed in Dayr al-Zawr’s border regions and in Jordan have been collaborating with Daesh and other militants through providing intelligence about Syrian and Russian forces.
Tillerson’s comments came just days after the US military admitted it had carried out heavy bombardments on Syrian pro-government forces in Dayr al-Zawr, an attack that reportedly killed more than 200 people, including private Russian military contractors.
Russia is in Syria based on an official request by the government. Iran also helps Syria through its military advisors based on similar demands by Damascus. Lacking such a mandate and authorization, the US has operated around and inside Syria’s borders over the past years and reports show that it is increasing its deployment in the Jordanian border, a clear sign it is wary of the turn of events in the region.
So, the question is who is really behind the protracted violence in Syria and who is really destabilizing the country now that it is back on its feet?’
Syria has on several occasions called on the UN to force Washington to stop its aggression against on the Arab country’s sovereignty. It has designated as a violation of Syria’s territorial integrity the US airstrikes that are as part of a so-called campaign against Daesh, which began four years ago in neighboring Iraq and then expanded into Syria. US warplanes have targeted civilians in hospitals and schools as part of their alleged fight against Daesh. They are now becoming increasingly involved in attacks against government forces and allies in Dayr al-Zawr, where Iran played a huge role in bringing Daesh to its last legs.
Iran has officially called on the US to end its military adventures in Syria and allow the country to re-establish authority on its territories. Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister and a senior foreign policy adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said on Wednesday that it was Washington, in fact, that was an unwelcome guest and a destabilizing force in Syria.
“Those should leave Syria who are there without the permission of the legal Syrian government,” said Velayati while reacting to Tillerson’s latest comments.
Lifting of US Propaganda Ban Gives New Meaning to Old Song
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan discuss allegations of Russian influence in presidential elections (CNN Screenshot)
By Whitney Webb – Mint Press News – February 12, 2018
Though its ostensible purpose is to fund the US military over a one year period, the National Defense Authorization Act, better known as the NDAA, has had numerous provisions tucked into it over the years that have targeted American civil liberties. The most well-known of these include allowing the government to wiretap American citizens without a warrant and, even more disturbingly, indefinitely imprison an American citizen without charge in the name of “national security.”
One of the lesser-known provisions that have snuck their way into the NDAA over the years was a small piece of legislation tacked onto the NDAA for fiscal year 2013, signed into law in that same year by then-President Barack Obama. Named “The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012,” it completely lifted the long-existing ban on the domestic dissemination of US government-produced propaganda.
For decades, the US government had been allowed to produce and disseminate propaganda abroad in order to drum up support for its foreign wars but had been banned from distributing it domestically after the passage of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. However, the Modernization Act’s co-authors, Reps. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) and Adam Smith (D-WA, no relation to the Smith of the 1948 act), asserted that removing the domestic ban was necessary in order to combat “al-Qaeda’s and other violent extremists’ influence among populations.”
Thornberry stated that removing the ban was necessary because it had tied “the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others, by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.” Yet, given that Thornberry is one of the greatest beneficiaries of weapon manufacturers’ campaign contributions, the real intent — to skeptics at least — seemed more likely related to an effort to ramp up domestic support for US military adventurism abroad following the disastrous invasions of Iraq and Libya.
Five years later, the effects of the lifting of the ban have turned what was once covert manipulation of the media by the government into a transparent “revolving door” between the media and the government. Robbie Martin — documentary filmmaker and media analyst whose documentary series, “A Very Heavy Agenda,” explores the relationships between neoconservative think tanks and media — told MintPress, that this revolving door “has never been more clear than it is right now” as a result of the ban’s absence.
In the age of legal, weaponized propaganda directed at the American people, false narratives have become so commonplace in the mainstream and even alternative media that these falsehoods have essentially become normalized, leading to the era of “fake news” and “alternative facts.”
Those who create such news, regardless of the damage it causes or the demonstrably false nature of its claims, face little to no accountability, as long as those lies are of service to US interests. Meanwhile, media outlets that provide dissenting perspectives are being silenced at an alarming rate.
The effects of lifting the ban examined
Since 2013, newsrooms across the country, of both the mainstream and “alternative” variety, have been notably skewed towards the official government narrative, with few outside a handful of independently-funded media outlets bothering to question those narratives’ veracity. While this has long been a reality for the Western media (see John Pilger’s 2011 documentary “The War You Don’t See”), the use of government-approved narratives and sources from government-funded groups have become much more overt than in years past.
From Syria to Ukraine, US-backed coups and US-driven conflicts have been painted as locally driven movements that desperately need US support in order to “help” the citizens of those countries — even though that “help” has led to the near destruction of those countries and, in the case of Ukraine, an attempted genocide. In these cases, many of the sources were organizations funded directly by the US government or allied governments, such as the White Helmets and Aleppo Media Centre (largely funded by the US and U.K. governments) in the case of Syria, and pro-Kiev journalists with Nazi ties (including Bogdan Boutkevitch, who called for the “extermination” of Ukrainians of Russian descent on live TV) in the case of Ukraine, among other examples. Such glaring conflicts of interests are, however, rarely — if ever — disclosed when referenced in these reports.
More recently, North Korea has been painted as presenting an imminent threat to the United States. Recent reports on this “threat” have been based on classified intelligence reports that claim that North Korea can produce a new nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks, including a recent article from the New York Times. However, those same reports have admitted that this claim is purely speculative, as it is “impossible to verify until experts get beyond the limited access to North Korean facilities that ended years ago.” In other words, the article was based entirely on unverified claims from the US intelligence community that were treated as compelling.
As Martin told MintPress, many of these government-friendly narratives first began at US-funded media organizations overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) — an extension of the US state department.
Martin noted that US-funded media, like Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE), were among the first to use a State Department-influenced narrative aimed at “inflaming hostilities with Russia before it soaked into mainstream reporting.” Of course, now, this narrative — with its origins in the US State Department and US intelligence community — has come to dominate headlines in the corporate media and even some “alternative” media outlets in the wake of the 2016 US election.
This is no coincidence. As Martin noted, “after the ban was lifted, things changed drastically here in the United States,” resulting in what was tantamount to a “propaganda media coup” where the State Department, and other government agencies that had earlier shaped the narrative at the BBG, used their influence on mainstream media outlets to shape those narratives as well.
A key example of this, as Martin pointed out, was the influence of the new think-tank “The Alliance for Securing Democracy,” whose advisory council and staff are loaded with neocons, such as the National Review’s Bill Kristol, and former US intelligence and State Department officials like former CIA Director Michael Morell. The Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Russia-focused offshoot, “Hamilton 68,” is frequently cited by media outlets — mainstream and alternative — as an impartial, reliable tracker of Russian “meddling” efforts on social media.
Martin remarked that he had “never seen a think tank before have such a great influence over the media so quickly,” noting that it “would have been hard to see [such influence on reporters] without the lifting of the ban,” especially given the fact that media organizations that cite Hamilton 68 do not mention its ties to former government officials and neoconservatives.
In addition, using VOA or other BBG-funded media has become much more common than it was prior to the ban, an indication that state-crafted information originally intended for a foreign audience is now being used domestically. Martin noted that this has become particularly common at some “pseudo-alternative” media organizations — i.e., formerly independent media outlets that now enjoy corporate funding. Among these, Martin made the case that VICE News stands out.
After the propaganda ban was lifted, Martin noticed that VICE’s citations of BBG sources “spiked.” He continued:
One of the things I immediately noticed was that they [VICE news ] were so quick to call out other countries’ media outlets, but yet — in every instance I looked up of them citing BBG sources — they never mentioned where the funding came from or what it was and they would very briefly mention it [information from BBG sources] like these were any other media outlets.”
He added that, in many of these cases, journalists at VICE were unaware that references to VOA or other BBG sources appeared in their articles. This was an indication that “there is some editorial staff [at VICE News ] that is putting this in from the top down.”
Furthermore, Martin noted that, soon after the ban was lifted, “VICE’s coverage mirrored the type of coverage that BBG was doing across the world in general,” which in Martin’s view indicated “there was definitely some coordination between the State Department and VICE.” This coordination was also intimated by BBG’s overwhelmingly positive opinion of VICE in their auditing reports, in which the BBG “seemed more excited about VICE than any other media outlet” — especially since VICE was able to use BBG organizations as sources while maintaining its reputation as a “rebel” media outlet.
Martin notes that these troubling trends have been greatly enabled by the lifting of the ban. He opined that the ban was likely lifted “in case someone’s cover [in spreading government propaganda disguised as journalism] was blown,” in which case “it wouldn’t be seen as illegal.” He continued:
For example, if a CIA agent at the Washington Post is directly piping in US government propaganda or a reporter is working the US government to pipe in propaganda, it wouldn’t be seen as a violation of the law. Even though it could have happened before the ban, it’s under more legal protection now.
Under normal circumstances, failing to disclose conflicts of interests of key sources and failing to question government narratives would be considered acts of journalistic malpractice. However, in the age of legal propaganda, this dereliction matters much less. Propaganda is not intended to be factual or impartial — it is intended to serve a specific purpose, namely influencing public opinion in a way that serves US government interests. As Karl Rove, the former advisor and deputy chief of staff to George W. Bush, once said, the US “is an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” This “reality” is defined not by facts but by its service to empire.
Meanwhile, counter-narratives, however fact-based they may be, are simultaneously derided as conspiracy theories or “fake news,” especially if they question or go against government narratives.
The revolving door
Another major consequence of the ban being lifted goes a step further than merely influencing narratives. In recent years, there has been the growing trend of hiring former government officials, including former US intelligence directors and other psyops veterans, in positions once reserved for journalists. In their new capacity as talking heads on mainstream media reports, they repeat the stance of the US intelligence community to millions of Americans, with their statements and views unchallenged.
For instance, last year, CNN hired former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Clapper, a key architect of RussiaGate, has committed perjury by lying to Congress and more recently lied about the Trump campaign being wiretapped through a FISA request. He has also made racist, Russophobic comments on national television. Now, however, he is an expert analyst for “the most trusted name in news.” CNN last year also hired Michael Hayden, who is a former Director of both the CIA and the NSA, and former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence.
CNN isn’t alone. NBC/MSNBC recently hired former CIA director John Brennan — another key architect of RussiaGate and the man who greenlighted (and lied about) CIA spying on Congress — as a contributor and “senior national security and intelligence analyst.” NBC also employs Jeremy Bash, former CIA and DoD Chief of Staff, as a national security analyst, as well as reporter Ken Dilanian, who is known for his “collaborative relationship” with the CIA.
This “revolving door” doesn’t stop there. After the BBG was restructured by the 2016 NDAA, the “board” for which the organization was named was dissolved, making BBG’s CEO — a presidential appointee — all powerful. BBG’s current CEO is John Lansing, who – prior to taking the top post at the BBG – was the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), a marketing association comprised of 90 of the top US and Canadian cable companies and television programmers. Lansing’s connection to US cable news companies is just one example of how this revolving door opens both ways.
Media-government coordination out of the shadows
Such collusion between mainstream media and the US government is hardly new. It has only become more overt since the Smith-Mundt ban was lifted.
For instance, the CIA, through Operation Mockingbird, started recruiting mainstream journalists and media outlets as far back as the 1960s in order to covertly influence the American public by disguising propaganda as news. The CIA even worked with top journalism schools to change their curricula in order to produce a new generation of journalists that would better suit the US government’s interests. Yet the CIA effort to manipulate the media was born out of the longstanding view in government that influencing the American public through propaganda was not only useful, but necessary.
Indeed, Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, who also worked closely with the government in the creation and dissemination of propaganda, once wrote:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
While this was once an “invisible” phenomenon, it is quickly becoming more obvious. Now, Silicon Valley oligarchs with ties to the US government have bought mainstream and pseudo-alternative media outlets and former CIA directors are given prominent analyst positions on cable news programs. The goal is to manufacture support at home for the US’ numerous conflicts around the world, which are only likely to grow as the Pentagon takes aim at “competing states” like Russia and China in an increasingly desperate protection of American hegemony.
With the propaganda ban now a relic, the once-covert propaganda machine long used to justify war after war is now operating out in the open and out of control.
Putin Smeared Himself to Undermine Democrats — MSM Has a New Russiagate Theory
It’s now Russia’s fault Democrats needlessly polarized American society by advancing feeble-minded smears from the Clinton dossier
What can you do when Putin plays 7-dimensional chess
Russia Insider | February 6, 2108
US invaded Iraq in 2003 because Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction”. Except Iraq didn’t have them. Once the lie had served its purpose the US admitted as much, but dodged responsibility by redacting the story: Iraq had been pretending it had WMDs! No way was the US smearing and invading the country based on that smear actually America’s fault.
Well neither is falsely accusing Russia of getting its Manchurian candidate into the White House. Because while KGB doesn’t actually have tons of blackmail material on him Russia pretended it did. Take it over Wall Street Journal :
There is a third possibility, namely that the dossier was part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot targeting both parties and America’s political process. This is what seems most likely to me, having spent much of my 30-year government career, including with the CIA, observing Soviet and then Russian intelligence operations. If there is one thing I have learned, it’s that Vladimir Putin continues in the Soviet tradition of using disinformation and espionage as foreign-policy tools.
…
The pattern of such Russian operations is to sprinkle false information, designed to degrade the enemy’s social and political infrastructure, among true statements that enhance the veracity of the overall report.
Oh those Russkies! While they actually did not do the things the Hillary dossier says, they wanted Americans to believe they did, so of course insane Russiagaters can not be blamed for advancing the lie Russia was actually secretly controlling their President.
So we’ve gone from Russia being responsible for Russiagate to Russia being responsible for Americans falsely believing Russia was responsible for Russiagate.
Also it’s now Russia’s fault Democrats needlessly polarized American society by advancing feeble-minded smears from the Clinton dossier.
Oh well, whatever keeps you from having to take responsibility I guess.
Nice round-about way of admitting the Steele Dossier was idiotic and that advancing it hurt Democrats, however.
Who Is James Le Mesurier? – The Former British Army Officer Who Founded The White Helmets
By John Wight | American Herald Tribune | February 6, 2018
Who is James Le Mesurier, the former British army officer and military contractor who founded the White Helmets, the civil defence organisation which operates exclusively in opposition-held parts of Syria? It is a question more and more people are asking as their role and function comes under increasing scrutiny.
Le Mesurier carries about him the inescapable whiff of Britain’s malign legacy and history of dirty wars, waged in Kenya, Aden, Ireland, Iraq, Libya, in other words wherever London’s blood-soaked imperialist foot has tread around the world. A product of Britain’s prestigious Royal Military Academy of officer training at Sandhurst, he served in various UK military/NATO military deployments over the past three decades, specifically Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Lebanon.
In a short bio describing Le Mesurier’s work with the White Helmets, we are informed, “In addition to the White Helmets in Syria, Mayday is active in Mogadishu, developing the city’s emergency services network, and exploring the development of similar community-based resilience initiatives in other fragile and failing states (my emphasis).”
The question of why a given state becomes fragile and failing is of course neither asked nor explored, for doing so would dredge up the subject of imperialism, which for Western ideologues such as Mr Le Mesurier would be akin to a vampire being exposed to daylight.
In a wide ranging 2016 article, former US marine and UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, provides a forensic account of Le Mesurier’s background, including the time he spent in and around the murky world of private military contractors, who exist in the cracks of Western military deployments, able to operate beyond the inconvenient glare of public scrutiny and accountability.
Ritter writes:
“the organizational underpinnings of the White Helmets can be sourced to a March 2013 meeting in Istanbul between a retired British military officer, James Le Mesurier—who had experience in the murky world of private security companies and the shadowy confluence between national security and intelligence operations and international organizations—and representatives of the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the Qatari Red Crescent Society. Earlier that month, the SNC was given Syria’s seat in the Arab League at a meeting of the league held in Qatar.”
So here we have a civil defence organisation being established in Syria by an ex-British army officer, a man with a background in the shadowy world of private security, in conjunction with a Syrian opposition group in exile. This civil defence organization, the White Helmets, receives funding from an array of states with a clear agenda of regime change in Syria, evidenced in the material, financial and political support they have given various armed opposition groups involved in the conflict.
In a 2015 speech Le Mesurier provides a précis of the roots of the conflict in Syria, starting with in 2011 a “volunteer uprising against the ruthless dictator, Bashar al-Assad,” before going on the assert that in 2012 the Syrian state turned its weapons on its “own people.”
Glaringly absent from this Manichean narrative is the fact that by 2012 various Salafi-jihadi groups, their ranks filled by thousands of extremists from outwith Syria, were rampaging across the country slaughtering and raping and terrorizing the very “own people” the Syrian army and its allies have been fighting to protect, save and liberate from the clutches of this latter day Khmer Rouge. And lest anyone has forgotten, the Syrian Arab Army is indistinguishable from the Syrian people, considering that its soldiers are drawn from the non-sectarian and multi-religious mosaic that makes up Syrian society.
Returning to Scott Ritter: “In this day of social media, it didn’t take long for photographs and video clips of known White Helmet members, in their distinctive uniform, openly celebrating with Al Nusra fighters in the aftermath of Syrian government defeats, and even carrying weapons, something their status as neutral first responders strictly prohibits.”
From the White Helmets’ own website, the lack of neutrality Ritter asserts is unambiguously expressed with the statement posted on its front page by Raed Saleh, the operational head of the organisation and himself a figure of some controversy. Saleh writes, “the UN Security Council must follow on its demand to stop the barrel bombs, by introducing a ‘no-fly zone’ if necessary.”
The barrel bombs referred to by Saleh, and emphasised by Le Mesurier as emblematic of the brutality of the ‘Assad regime,’ are inarguably indiscriminate and illegal under international law. But if we are judging the merits or demerits of a given side in a given conflict based on the use of indiscriminate weapons alone then regime change in Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh is long overdue.
The brutality of the conflict in Syria is a reflection of the monumental stakes involved in the outcome. The conflict is in itself is a crime, but are we seriously suggesting that Libya is better, safer and more stable seven years on from the toppling and murder of its leader Muammar Gaddafi, courtesy of NATO aligning with various Libyan opposition factions, prime among them Islamists, in 2011? And are we seriously arguing that Syria’s fate would not be Libya’s fate in the event of the toppling of Bashar al-Assad? And, too, is anybody able to maintain with a straight face that Bashar al-Assad does not enjoy the solid support of the majority of the Syrian people, who understand that the conflict is not about saving their government but saving their country?
Scott Ritter again:
“the White Helmets function as an effective propaganda arm of the anti-Assad movement…With their training, equipment and logistical sustainment underwritten exclusively by donations from Western governments (primarily the U.S. and U.K.), the White Helmets serve as a virtual echo chamber for American and British politicians and officials.”
Given Le Mesurier’s background, along with the evidence of how the White Helmets operate, it is reasonable to assume that what we have is the cultivation of the very Third Force Washington and London have been extending themselves in trying to locate and sell as the ‘good guys’ since the conflict began, doing so with the objective of enlisting domestic public support for intervention and regime change in Damascus.
Of course, there is always the possibility that Mr Le Mesurier is sincere in his desire to alleviate the undoubted suffering of the Syrian people – though in his case clearly not all the Syrian people, what with White Helmets only functioning and operating in opposition controlled territory, places where neither he nor any Western supporter of the White Helmets would dare set foot, knowing the moment they did they would be abducted, tortured, and brutally murdered.
But if so, if Mr Le Mesurier is sincere, then he is Britain’s answer to Pyle, the idealistic and naïve American interventionist in French-occupied Vietnam created by Graham Greene in his classic novel The Quiet American. To wit:
“He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved. He had no more of a notion than any of you what the whole affair’s about, and you gave him money and York Harding’s books on the East and said, ‘Go ahead. Win the East for democracy.’ He never saw anything he hadn’t heard in a lecture hall, and his writers and his lecturers made a fool of him.”
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Are There 50,000 ‘Israeli-born’ Individuals Living in the UK?
By Professor David Miller | August 18, 2026
Recent disclosures by the Zionist regime show that some 2,069 British nationals were serving in the IDF as of March 2025, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to the occupation forces (1,686 dual British-Israeli, plus 383 multinational). We cannot tell from the figures how many of these were already settler colonists and intend to stay in the colony, and how many will return or have returned to the UK. Presumably, those returning to the UK will number far fewer than 2,000, since many are known to have become permanently residents of the colony.
Additionally, the IDF figures only provide a snapshot, and do not tell us how many have served in the Jewish supremacist military either before or after March 2025. One way into the question of how many genocidaires are living in Britain is to ask how many current British residents were born in the Zionist colony. There is data on that, as we shall see. … continue
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