By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 10.03.2018
The mysterious apparent murder bid on an ex-Russian spy in Britain has taken on a wider European dimension.
Predictably, the incident was used to whip up anti-Russian claims in the British media. But, in addition, the European Union soon came under pressure to show “solidarity” with Britain in the supposed Russian assault on its sovereignty.
Former British officials were reported bemoaning the lack of solidarity from EU states over the alleged Russian violation on British soil. The EU then responded with an obligatory statement of “solidarity” with Britain, with the tacit acceptance of Russian malfeasance at play.
The allegations of Russian state involvement in the apparent lethal poisoning of exiled Kremlin agent Sergei Skripal in England last Sunday have been leveled with deplorable disregard for due legal process.
Within hours of the incident – which saw 66-year-old Skripal and his adult daughter rushed to intensive hospital care – British media were speculating that Russian agents had carried out a revenge assassination attempt.
Skripal was exiled from Russia in 2010 after being convicted for treason as a double agent for Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6. He was living in the southern English town of Salisbury, where he was found paralyzed in a public park along with his 33-year-old daughter.
British counter-terrorism officers have disclosed that the pair were victims of a toxic nerve agent attack, without identifying the chemical used. They have claimed that the attacker or attackers must have been state-sponsored to carry out such a lethal operation. British police have not yet specified any particular agency for the attack, but as noted the British media quickly jumped to reckless speculation of Russian involvement. The speculation has been fueled by government ministers like Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson using innuendo.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the allegations of Moscow’s involvement as “more irresponsible Russophobia”.
The notion that Russia would carry out a risky operation on the eve of its presidential elections this month in order to avenge a disgraced former spy who had been living openly in England for the past eight years defies credibility. It’s frankly absurd given the already heightened anti-Russia hysteria in the Western media that the Kremlin would even contemplate such a scheme.
Nevertheless, the evidence does point to an assassination attempt on Skripal using a military-grade chemical weapon. Senior British toxicologist Dr Alistair Hay told Radio Free Europe this week that the chemical substance used in the attack was most likely one of the organophosphate poisons, such as soman or tabun, which are related to sarin and VX. These are nerve agents that can kill from exposure of human skin to a single droplet.
Hay, who is an advisor to the British government on chemical warfare agents, cautioned against rushing to accusations against Russia. “In my view, it’s much, much too early to point a finger at anybody at this stage,” said the expert.
All that the internationally respected toxicologist would venture to say is that the nature of the attack had “military capability” because of the extreme lethality of the substances involved.
If we assume that Russia was not involved – which is a fair assumption given the above reasoning – then the question is: what state agency could have carried it out? For what objective?
In particular, focus is drawn here to agencies which are seeking to sabotage Europe-wide relations with Russia. As noted above, one of the ramifications from the anti-Russian allegations over the poisoning incident was prompt pressure on the EU to show a tough response towards Moscow.
Former British ambassador to Russia, Sir Tony Brenton, reportedly accused the rest of Europe of lacking in support for Britain.
“The European Union will once again fail to help the UK in its fight against Russia after a former Russian spy was allegedly poisoned in Salisbury, according to former ambassador Sir Tony Brenton,” reported the Daily Express.
Another former British foreign office advisor claimed that because of the EU’s bitter wrangling with Britain over the Brexit “the Kremlin was taking advantage of the UK’s lack of allies in the US and EU, and its inability to do much about the Skripal case”.
This logic implicating Russia is unhinged. But the telling aspect is the seeming intended effect of embroiling Europe in a wider antagonistic response to Moscow.
Admittedly, the following discussion here is speculative. But it’s worth a posit.
Last week, the US-led political campaign to scupper the Russia-EU Nord Stream 2 project was given renewed impetus.
The $11 billion, 1,200-kilometer gas delivery pipeline is nearing completion next year.
Foreign ministers from Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia were in Washington DC to meet with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the specific subject of the Nord Stream 2, and how it might be cancelled, reported Voice of America.
Poland and the Baltic states are advocating for US supply of gas to replace the traditional European source from Russia. The issue is of huge strategic importance. US President Trump has been vocal in his support for the European states switching to American gas exports, even though that would work out much more expensive for European consumers.
The Nord Stream 2 project is a partnership between Russian state-owned Gazprom and five private energy companies from Britain, Germany, France and Netherlands.
But the project has been buffeted by the political repercussions over allegations against Russia concerning Ukraine, Crimea and purported “interference” in US and European elections.
The German and Austrian governments are strong backers of the new gas network with Russia. Last week, Austrian President Sebastian Kurz was in Moscow where he met with Vladimir Putin and expressed his support for the Nord Stream 2.
However, apart from Poland and the Baltic states which are marked by vehement anti-Russian ideological politics, there are also elements with the EU administration which are similarly opposed to the Nord Stream supply. It is claimed, they say, that such an arrangement will give too much leverage to Moscow over European affairs. Such advocates tend to be pro-NATO and pro-Washington.
The point is that the campaign to undermine the Russian-EU gas partnership has come with renewed impetus – as seen in the delegation last week to Washington by the Polish and Baltic government ministers. Of course, they are pushing at an open door. American state interests are wedded to the objective of knocking out Russia as Europe’s gas supplier.
Now then, the timing of an assassination bid in England which is framed on Russia comes at a convenient moment in the strategic tussle over Europe’s global energy market. It seems significant that pressure is being brought to bear on the EU “to get tough” on Moscow over the alleged attempted murder of the exiled Russian spy. The “get tough” response being sought could be cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 gas project.
If that stands up as a motive for the latest attempt to cleave EU-Russian relations, then our focus on the likely perpetrators shifts to the following: American state agents, possibly working with British and Eastern European accomplices, in trying to kill Sergei Skripal and his daughter, with the purpose of blackballing Moscow.
Sputnik – 09.03.2018
The former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in critical, but stable condition after having been exposed to an unnamed ‘nerve agent’. Tom Secker is a Sputnik contributor and author of the SpyCulture website – he explains his take on the situation.
Sputnik: If this incident were at the hands of the Russians — why now, with the upcoming elections and the world cup on the way? Where is the logic there?
Tom Secker: There doesn’t seem to be much logic there. We never really know what the intelligence services are getting up to. So it’s certainly not something we can rule out. The only logic I can see is that this would have been some kind of revenge move, or potentially a warning to other people who might do the same thing, you know, cross over to the other side — sell out their colleagues, coworkers, and the other people that they might know. Even with that scenario, you’d have to wonder, why now?
Sputnik: It would be very easy to make a death ‘untraceable’ — in fact the CIA assassination manual explains exactly how to make a homicide look like suicide. Why would that not have been the case here?
Tom Secker: I guess the question is what is the primary motive here? If the primary motive is simply to kill the guy then no, you wouldn’t do it this way. You’d kill him any way you like, and then make sure no one ever found the body. If the point was to send a message, again, you wouldn’t necessarily do it in this way. You would make it appear as though it was an accident, suicide or accidental overdose or something like that. The message would still be sent, because the people watching would still understand what had happened in reality, but it would make it so that it could never be chased back to you in a legal sense.
This sounds like something that was a rush job, it sounds like something that was carried out possibly on the fly, with fear of being caught. And that’s why it was at least somewhat botched.
Sputnik: How often do these sorts of cover-up homicides occur?
Tom Secker: If you think of cover-ups in a broader sense, there are a lot of examples. Back in 2010, a bunch of Israeli Government Agents, (we assume Mossad), went to Dubai and killed that senior Hamas figure in a Dubai hotel. They did the whole thing travelling on forged British passports and as far as we know, the British Government hasn’t done anything about this. Which begs the question, how many secret agents are there? Running around with fake British passports, and our government is just letting this happen. So in that sense, while it seems that Israel never really denied that they carried out this assassination, the British Government, to some extent participated in a cover-up of exactly how that was done- by not pursuing this passport issue. So honestly, cover-ups are kind of standard.
Sputnik: The blame has quickly jumped to Russia — despite Amber Rudd asking people not to jump to conclusions before the evidence is out- what’s happened there?
Tom Secker: Well on the one hand you have the Home Secretary saying that in public, but you also seem to have quite a number of officials anonymously briefing the media — saying that they think it was Russia, and they keep being quoted. So there is clearly the official stance, which is ‘Oh no, we’re not making any assumptions until we have the evidence in hand’, and then there is the quiet, unofficial stance of ‘Yes this was Russia, put out the story that it was Russia’.
Sputnik: And is there any evidence to suggest that Russia did it?
Tom Secker: Why use such an exotic poison — unless the aim is to try and remind everyone of the Litven Yenko murder. Which obviously, most people believe was carried out by the Russian State. That is the obvious connection that everyone is making. So why would Russia do it like that? Why would they do something that would instantly bring to mind this previous murder that had been pinned on them? The only reason to use such an exotic poison would be to remind everyone of that, and therefore plant the seed of ‘oh this is the Russian State killing one of their own’. Whereas, if you look at this guy’s biography, at least what we know of it, there are all sorts of people who’d have a motive for killing him. He betrayed quite a lot of people, and not just in terms of governments, not just in terms of government agents or intelligence agencies, but potentially private criminal organizations. They too could have a motive for trying to pin the whole thing on Russia.
Let’s not forget- and this is a detail I haven’t yet seen anywhere, at least in the mainstream media coverage — this guy was found only a few miles from Porton Down. That is the British ministry of Defenses lab for developing exotic weaponry — bio and chemical weapons. Why has no one drawn attention to this? I mean literally, we are talking eight to ten miles down the road. That’s a fact you would have thought was worth mentioning at the very least. Even if it’s some crack-pot rogue scientist from that lab, who smuggled something out, or sold it to someone, who then carried out the hit. Even if it would be a scenario like that, it’s worth exploring. It’s certainly a lot more worth exploring than waving a big flag saying ‘Russia did it.’
Press TV – March 6, 2018
Russia has rejected allegations that the Syrian government is using chemical weapons, stressing that only an international body can rule on the issue based on an “impartial” probe.
“The provocations are continuing that spawn such insinuations and unfounded accusations against the Syrian leadership,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.
Last week, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is sympathetic to the militants operating against the Damascus government, claimed a suspected chlorine attack had taken place in the militant-held al-Shifuniyah village of the Eastern Ghouta region on February 25.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the alleged chemical attack as “bogus stories in the media.”
Prior to the Observatory’s report, the Russian Defense Ministry had warned that militant groups in Eastern Ghouta were preparing a false flag attack in a bid to blame the Damascus government for using chemical weapons against civilians.
On Monday, The Washington Post quoted US officials as saying that the government was considering new military action against the Syrian government in response to reports of suspected chemical weapons use.
The United Nations Human Rights Council also ordered investigators to examine what it called “the alleged use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta.”
Peskov said, “In Syria the chemical weapons were destroyed. That was verified not only by the Russian side but by the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons).”
He further noted that for Russia, such accusations against the Syrian government need to be based on “the findings of an international commission, an international working group, only the result of an impartial investigation.”
“In the absence of such an investigation, all accusations are nothing but insinuations,” the Kremlin spokesman added.
Syria turned over its entire chemical stockpile under a deal negotiated by Russia and the United States back in 2013.
On April 7, the US launched a missile attack against Shayrat Airbase in Syria’s Homs Province. Washington claimed that the air field targeted in the missile raid was the origin of the April 4, 2017, purported chemical attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria’s Idlib Province.
Damascus denied the accusation of being behind the alleged gas attack and described it as a “fabrication” to justify the subsequent US missile strike.
Strategic Culture Foundation | 02.03.2018
In more than seven years of war in Syria, we have seen many times how Western governments and news media shamelessly invert reality.
The same was seen this week over the grim fighting around Eastern Ghouta, the suburb near the capital, Damascus, where 400,000 people are said to be trapped.
But who is trapping who?
US and European media breathlessly claim that Eastern Ghouta is under siege from Syrian “regime forces” allied with Russia. This description is posing things upside down.
The district was taken over nearly six years ago by foreign-backed extremists, like Jaysh al Islam, Ahrar al Sham, and Al Nusra Front. The latter is an internationally outlawed terror group, but they all share the same murderous ideology, as well as the same Western covert sponsors in the American CIA, British MI6, French DGSE, and lavish Gulf Arab funding. It is these illegally armed insurgents who are holding the civilian population under siege in a reign of terror.
The same situation, and Western inversion of reality, has been seen before, most notably regarding Syria’s second city of Aleppo. The Syrian and Russian forces liberated that city at the end of 2016, and since then life for the residents there has fortunately returned to the normal peaceful, pluralist coexistence which prevailed before the foreign-backed terror goons took over.
Yet, Western media and officials continually confabulate about “rebels” and civilians being besieged by Syrian state forces. This inversion of reality is of course necessary in order to push the Western false narrative that has underpinned the covert Western war for regime change in Syria, including the clandestine support for terror groups as proxies.
Further twisting the situation in Eastern Ghouta this week, the Western media blamed the Syrian “regime” and Russia for not implementing a ceasefire plan to enable evacuation of civilians.
Russia proposed a daily five-hour truce, and the Syrian government established humanitarian corridors exiting from the conflict zone. The proposal from Moscow was a reasonable counter to what the US, Britain and France had wanted, which involved a 30-day cessation of all military operations.
The Western powers had tried the same proposal during the liberation of Aleppo. Syria and its legally mandated Russian ally are within their sovereign right to take back remaining territory that has been illegally occupied by foreign-backed militants.
What the Western powers would like to impose is a No-Fly Zone over parts of Syria to enable their residual proxies time and space to regroup. Why should the Syrian government forfeit its sovereign rights by accommodating foreign enemies?
The reason why the Russian humanitarian relief plan proposed this week for Eastern Ghouta did not gain traction was simply because the militants continually shelled the designated corridors for escaping civilians. Video footage clearly showed buses and aid workers organized by the Syrian government waiting to receive the civilians. But none were permitted from the area because of sniper and mortar fire from the militants.
Evidently, the militants are holding the civilian population as hostages and human shields. The same criminal tactics were deployed in Aleppo and other towns and cities where the terrorist gangs ruled with their death-cult barbarity.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva this week, rightly pointed out that the humanitarian relief plan for Eastern Ghouta can only be made to work if the militants commit to upholding a ceasefire. But these foreign-backed mercenaries have done nothing of the sort. They have not only cut off evacuation corridors under fire; they continue to launch rockets and mortars at nearby government-controlled Damascus inflicting dozens of civilian deaths in recent weeks.
Reliable figures cited by the Syrian Free Press network, indicate that some 85 per cent of the Syrian population live in areas under the control of President Bashar Assad’s state forces. Only a small minority – 15 per cent – live in areas controlled by insurgents. And many of those people are being held in these dwindling areas against their will in a state of fear imposed by the so-called jihadists.
The brazen Western media propaganda war – misnamed as “news” – reports totally from the minority areas, which are exalted as “rebel bastions”.
In all the so-called “reporting” by France 24, BBC, CNN, and others, the information is either sourced from the CIA-sponsored and terrorist-affiliated White Helmets media operation; or anonymous “residents” and “activists”; or it is sourced from “a UK-based monitor” who is an exiled Syrian furniture salesman who has not been in Syria for 15 years.
This pathetic Western mainstream media “journalism” has been going on for the past seven years in relation to Syria.
Significantly, when do you ever hear a Syrian government official or diplomat being aired directly and at length in these media? Or Russian officials? Never. It’s all a one-way street of lies and fabrication.
The preposterous inversion of reality that the Western governments and media have perpetrated over Syria can only be sustained through systematic distortion.
Russia’s humanitarian relief plan for Eastern Ghouta has so far been sabotaged by terror groups firing on civilians. But Western officials and media have the brass neck to claim that the long-suffering population is under siege from the very forces who are trying to liberate them from terror.
When Eastern Ghouta is eventually liberated one thing is sure. The Western media will never follow-up to ask residents what their lives were really like. Just as these same vile propaganda outlets did not follow-up on liberated Aleppo.
As if the distortion couldn’t get any worse, this week the New York Times and other Western media reported claims that North Korea had secretly supplied materials for chemical weapons to Syria. The reported claims seemed unconvincing, as usual, and the Syrian government denied the latest allegations.
Alongside that, the British government asserted this week that it would order air strikes on the Syrian “regime” if it found proof that chemical weapons were used.
Adding up the Western distortion it is obvious what the objective is: to find a pretext for overt military aggression on Syria. The covert proxy war using terrorist mercenaries has failed. Now the Western terror sponsors need to take the distortion to an even more demonic level.
In truth, there is indeed a siege in Syria. The entire Syrian nation is under siege – by criminal Western regimes and their equally criminal propaganda media, justifying war and aggression.
Sputnik – February 26, 2108
An infamous NGO that was repeatedly accused of falsifying information about its operations and essentially working as a propaganda outlet for anti-government militants in Syria, now claims that Damascus deployed chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta.
The notorious White Helmets group claims that the Syrian government deployed chlorine gas against the town of Al-Shifoniya town in Eastern Ghouta, killing one child and causing “widespread suffocation” among the local civilians, Anadolu Agency reports.
The White Helmets, a group that styles itself as an NGO seeking to ease the plight of civilians in Syria suffering from the ongoing conflict in the country, has previously been accused of falsifying information about its work in Syria and staging “rescue” attempts in its propaganda videos.
Earlier the Russian Defense Ministry warned that militant groups in Eastern Ghouta were preparing a false flag attack in an attempt to blame Damascus for using chemical weapons against civilians.
“Evidence has shown that the leaders of illegal armed formations in Eastern Ghouta are preparing a provocation using poisonous agents in order to accuse the government forces of using chemical weapons against its civilians,” a statement issued by the ministry said.
The Arabic-language news channel al-Manar, citing al-Ikhbariya, has also reported that White Helmets were distributing protective masks in Eastern Ghouta in preparation for a new plot to blame another chemical attack on the Syrian government, while the Russian center for Syrian Reconciliation’s representative said they were tipped by a resident of Idlib province about Nusra Front militants delivering “more than 20 bottles of chlorine and personal protective equipment in three cars” for an upcoming provocation.
As Syria’s Information Minister Imad Sarah told Sputnik, while Syrian armed forces and their allies battle terrorist groups in the field, it is equally important to counter the efforts of groups seeking to distort facts and to mislead the international community about the real state of affairs in the country — “to refute endless fake reports that mangle the actual state of affairs in the country and play with terms,” as he put it.
The minister also remarked that members of the White Helmets have been awarded for their exceptional action, which says a lot about the scale of the conspiracy against Syria and its people.
Syria has repeatedly denied allegations of chemical weapons use, underscoring that it had no weapons of mass destruction, which was confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
On April 4, 2017, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, supported by the United States, accused Damascus of the Khan Sheikhoun incident in Idlib province, which that left 80 people dead and 200 injured. Western governments blamed Bashar al-Assad for being responsible for the use of Sarin gas, an allegation he has firmly denied.
Moscow, in turn, also demanded a thorough investigation of the incident.
READ MORE:
French President Macron Threatens to Strike Syria if Chemical Attacks Proven
UN Can’t Verify Claims of Chemical Attacks in Syria ‘Independently’ – De Mistura
Press TV – February 26, 2018
A suspected new chemical attack has reportedly hit the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta just after Russia warned that militants were planning a gas attack there to pin it on the Syrian government.
Militant sources were quoted as saying that several people suffered symptoms consistent with exposure to chlorine gas in the al-Shayfouniya area on Sunday, and one child was killed.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is sympathetic to militants, said 14 civilians had suffered breathing difficulties after a Syrian warplane struck the village in the Eastern Ghouta region.
The London-based center quoted victims, ambulance drivers and others as saying that they had smelt chlorine after “an enormous explosion” in the area.
“At least 18 victims were treated with oxygen nebulizing sessions,” Reuters news agency quoted an unidentified militant source as saying.
The Syrian government has consistently denied using chemical weapons in the war that will soon enter its eighth year.
For years, foreign-backed militants have appeared to release chemical substances in the areas close to the site of government airstrikes and capture the aftermath on videos.
On Sunday, videos released by militants depicted a child’s corpse wrapped in a blue shroud, and several bare chested men and young boys appearing to struggle for breath, with some holding nebulizers to their mouths and noses.
The suspected gas attack came just after the Russian Defense Ministry warned Sunday that militants were preparing to use toxic agents in Eastern Ghouta so they could later accuse Damascus of employing chemical weapons.
Last April, the United States fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria in response to what it claimed was a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 100 people.
The Syrian army is currently in the midst of an operation to drive violent Takfiri militants out of Eastern Ghouta from where they launch mortar attacks on Damascus.
A ceasefire announced by the UN Security Council on Saturday does not apply to the areas held by Daesh, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra Front along with “individuals, groups, undertakings and entities” associated with the terrorist groups.
On Sunday, Iran’s Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Baqeri said that the architects of the ceasefire had it passed at the UN in order to forestall the Syrian army’s eradication of terrorists in the Damascus suburbs.
“The West and supporters of the terrorists insisted that this ceasefire be put in place,” he said of the resolution which demands a 30-day ceasefire across Syria to allow for humanitarian aid deliveries and medical evacuations.
“We will adhere to the ceasefire resolution; Syria will also adhere,” Baqeri said, while noting that parts of the suburbs of Damascus, which are held by the terrorists, are not covered by the ceasefire and clean-up operations will continue there.
The Syrian government surrendered its stockpiles of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry.
Western governments and their allies however have never stopped pointing the finger at Damascus whenever an apparent chemical attack has taken place.
In April, a suspected sarin gas attack hit the town of Khan Shaykhun in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, taking at least 80 lives. Accusing Damascus, the US then launched several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base.
Earlier in February, French President Emmanuel Macron said if the use of chemical weapons against civilians were proven in Syria, “France will strike.”
By Matt Agorist | Free Thought Project | February 15, 2018
Parkland, FL — Multiple students have since come forward after the tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday with details that raise some serious questions. These students have reported that a mass casualty drill was scheduled that day as well as at least one other student reporting multiple shooters.
It is important to point out that we are not claiming what these students are saying is true, however, we feel that their points of view are certainly newsworthy.
In one chilling account, a high school student not only told reporters that she witnessed multiple shooters, but she also explained how she was talking to the suspect, Nikolas Cruz, as she heard rounds being fired down the hall.
Alexa Miednik told KHOU-TV journalist Matt Musil:”The fire alarm went off and the principal came on the speaker saying ‘everybody needs to evacuate right now,’ so that’s what I did.”
“As I was going down the stairs I heard a couple of shots fired, everybody was freaking out saying that it was a gun,” explained Miednik.
“As we were walking, the whole class together, I actually was speaking to the suspect Nikolas Cruz,” said Miednik, as she made quotes with her fingers when saying ‘suspect’.
“And as I was speaking to him he seemed very – I don’t know what the word is – he was trouble in high school. So I actually joked to him about and said, ‘I’m surprised you weren’t the one who did it.’ And he just gave me a ‘huh?’,” Miednik said.
After this incredible account, Miednik went on to explain that she was absolutely sure there were multiple shooters.
“So, you were walking down the hall with him?” asks the reporter. “Weren’t you scared?”
“In the moment I wasn’t,” replied Miednik. “because there was obviously…definitely another shooter involved.”
“Oh, you think he was not the only one?” asks the surprised reporter.
“No, definitely not,” replied Miednik.
“Why do you say that?” the reporter asked.
“Because when shots were fired, I saw him after the fact. The shots were coming from the other part of the building. So, there definitely had to be two shooters involved,” she explained.
According to police, there was only one shooter—Cruz—who is currently in custody.
On top of the report of multiple shooters, there were multiple reports of active shooter drills happening the same day.
It has not been confirmed that a drill was planned—other than a fire drill that morning—but students said they’d heard a ‘rumor’ that they would have to take part in a ‘code red’ practice exercise.
“I thought, ‘I don’t know if this is real or fake,’” Kelsey Friend explained to CNN.
“We had rumors going around the school that police would do a fake code red with fake guns but sounding real,” Friend explained to reporters. “I thought, at the beginning that this was all a drill… until I saw my teacher dead on the floor.”
Another student, Will Gilroy, reportedly said that students at the high school in were told there would be an active shooter drill at their school this week. He said that’s why students thought they were participating in a drill when they were evacuating.
Again, it is important to point out that we are merely reporting on eyewitness testimony and not drawing any conclusions from their statements. However, the reason it is important to report this—outside of the obvious one that the mainstream media is not—is the fact that it is highly suspicious and raises questions like, did Cruz know there were be an active shooter drill that day?
Were the second shots as described by Miednik part of that drill?
If Cruz did know about the rumored drill, who told him?
All these questions and more need to be asked in order to get a clear image of why so many innocent people were killed. There is nothing “tinfoily” or “fake news” about them, it is simply important to leave no stone unturned.
By Robert BRIDGE | Strategic Culture Foundation | 31.01.2018
Last week, the US said it was working to create “alternative government authorities” on Syrian territory. This latest move, aside from demonstrating once again that the US has no respect for Syria’s territorial integrity, indicates we may be seeing more from that group of mercenaries known as Islamic State.
Thus, it seems to be an appropriate time to reflect upon a set of very strange circumstances that led to the rise of this loathsome terrorist group. Here are the top 10 reasons, in no particular order, as to why we should be very suspicious about this group.
10. Convenient Timing
In late August 2013, the United States was on the verge of initiating a massive attack on the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad over a deadly chemical attack that had occurred in the town of Ghouta just days earlier. Although it would have made no sense for Assad to have resorted to such dirty tactics, Washington had found its casus belli. It should be noted that at this time the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was largely unknown. That would change soon enough.
Meanwhile, a terrible thing happened on the way to this jolly little war. UK Prime Minister David Cameron suffered a stunning defeat in the House of Commons, voting down his effort to join the Americans in Syria. Apparently the British were America’s obedient poodle no longer.
The setback had an apparent sobering effect on Barack Obama, who suddenly – in a feigned nod to democratic procedure and all that – called for Congress to decide whether or not to use military force against Syrian. Tellingly, that vote never materialized.
What did materialize, however, and with alarming speed and viciousness, was a terrorist group that rose up like a phoenix from the ashes of Iraq known as Islamic State (ISIS), with evil designs to create an Islamic caliphate across a wide swath of Iraq and Syria.
In other words, the perfect casus belli for the US in Syria that would require no need for a vote from Congress.
9. Journalist Killings
As if to draw gratuitous attention to itself more than anything else, the Sunni terrorist group ISIS, under the leadership of one Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, began to grab world headlines not by its battlefield exploits, but by carrying out videotaped executions of Western journalists, as well as destroying cultural heritage sites. I still can’t help wondering: Why didn’t the group just let its fighting skills speak for itself? Why the apparent need for such outrageous publicity stunts? Was this compensation for something the group was desperately lacking?
In any case, starting in August 2014, almost one year to the day that Obama was forced to put the brakes on his Syrian attack, the beheadings began in earnest.
On August 19, US journalist James Foley, seen kneeling on the ground in some undetermined location next to his apparent executioner, ‘Jihadi John,’ reads out a short statement before being beheaded by his captor. However, Islamic State spared its audience the gore by not showing the moment of the actual beheading; the video only shows a head lying on a body following the purported act.
Even Western mainstream publications admitted that something didn’t seem quite right.
Under the headline, ‘Foley murder video may have been staged’ the Telegraph, a reputable British newspaper, interviewed forensic experts who called into question the moment in the video when Foley is allegedly being beheaded by his captor.
“After enhancements, the knife can be seen to be drawn across the upper neck at least six times, with no blood evidence to the point the picture fades to black,” the expert said.
Another expert who examined the video for the newspaper said: “I think it has been staged. My feeling is that the execution may have happened after the camera was stopped.”
Incredibly, every subsequent beheading video put out by Islamic State attracted the same amount of scepticism – not just from alternative websites, who were also noticing the many irregularities contained in the videos, but from mainstream media news sources.
Following the release of the video purported to show the beheading of Steve Sotloff, a journalist who worked with the Jerusalem Post, The Australian newspaper reported that “the apparent beheading on camera of a second US hostage by a man with a British accent was again staged, according to forensic analysis.”
Then there was the video of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians, dressed in impeccably clean orange jumpsuits, being led along a Libyan beach by black-clad members of ISIS, all of whom appear to be members of some NBA basketball team.
Veryan Khan, editorial director of the Florida-based Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium, told Fox News that “the speaker, “Jihad Joseph” is much larger than the sea in both the close up and wide shots, and his head is bizarrely out of proportion, meaning he was filmed indoors and the sea added behind him… In addition, the jihadists featured in the film look to be more than 7 feet tall, towering as much as two feet above their victims…”
In July 2015, yet another strange report emerged, CyberBerkut, a Ukrainian group of hackers, said it hacked John McCain’s laptop while he was on an official visit to Kiev around the first week of June 2015. In a report by TechWorm, what they purported to find was a fully staged production of an ISIS execution video, with an actor portraying an executioner who is holding a knife in preparation to behead the prisoner.
The authenticity of this video has not been independently verified.
None of this proves that the individuals in all of the ISIS beheading videos did not go on to meet some grisly fate. However, it seems worth noting that so many forensic experts have spoken out on the “staged” nature of these videos, and that the actual moment of execution during these film productions is never actually shown. Why would such a barbarous group of villains like ISIS need to script and censor their videos?
8. ISIS freedom of movement
Despite employing state-of-the-art fighter jets, like the F-16 Fighting Falcon and A-10 Warthog, the US campaign to destroy Islamic State was largely an exercise in utter futility. There is no other way to explain it. In June 2014, a convoy of hundreds of ISIS fighters drove through 200 km of the Syro-Arabian Desert in fresh-off-the-lot Toyota pickup trucks on the way to Syria. For any modern military, eliminating such a target would have been the equivalent of a lazy afternoon at the shooting range, or shooting fish in a barrel. The fact that these terrorists made it to Syria unmolested tells us everything we need to know about America’s real agenda.
“With state of the art jet fighter aircraft … it would have been – from a military standpoint – ‘a piece of cake’, a rapid and expedient surgical operation, which would have decimated the Islamic State convoys in a matter of hours,” Michel Chossudovsky wrote in Global Research.
“Instead what we have witnessed is an ongoing drawn out six months of relentless air raids and bombings, and the terrorist enemy is apparently still intact.”
“And we are led to believe that the Islamic State cannot be defeated by a powerful US led military coalition of 19 countries,” he added.
The only reasonable conclusion to make from all of this is that the air campaign was not designed to eliminate Islamic State.
In 2002, Rita Katz and Josh Devon founded Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute (SITE), which, according to its website, is “the world’s leading non-governmental counterterrorism organization specializing in tracking and analyzing online activity of the global extremist community.”
In 2006, in a New Yorker article entitled, “Private Jihad: How Rita Katz got into the spying business,” it was mentioned how SITE spoke directly with jihadists via various message boards:
“Katz has a testy relationship with the government, sometimes acting as a consultant and sometimes as an antagonist. About a year ago, a SITE staffer, under an alias, managed to join an exclusive jihadist message board that, among other things, served as a debarkation point for many would-be suicide bombers.
For months, the staffer pretended to be one of the jihadis, joining in chats and watching as other members posted the chilling messages known as “wills,” the final sign-offs before martyrdom. The staffer also passed along technical advice on how to keep the message board going.
When Katz called officials in Washington, she was reportedly met with resistance: ‘Oh, Rita, I’m not sure you should even be communicating with them—you might be providing material support!,” they told her.
In an interview with CNN, Katz admitted that her group was able to “beat [ISIS] with a release” of a video before it had even been disseminated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=68&v=5aNUm0Z_lXs
In 2007, SITE came under fire for obtaining an alleged Bin Laden video a month prior to its formal release.
Some have raised questions as to how this small group is able to do what the government has not been able to: track ISIS and other terrorist groups with uncanny efficiency.
6. Toyota Trucks
Watching mainstream media reports detail the adventures of Islamic State as they speed carefree across wide-open desert, beards blowing in the wind, one would be forgiven for thinking they were watching a Toyota commercial.
The Times of Israel went so far as to ridicule the leaders of the West for expressing such fear over these militants in their Toyotas like hell raising teenagers speeding around the parking lot of McDonald’s on a Friday night to impress their friends.
“It’s almost unbelievable,” Avi Issacharoff wrote. “They used to say in the IDF that ‘the man in the tank will win,’ justifying the preference for armor over infantry. Now we hear that, from a US source no less, ‘the man in the Toyota’ will defeat the West.”
Somehow we are expected to believe that these shiny new trucks, along with over 2,000 Humvee vehicles, fell into the terrorists’ control by winning some battles in Iraq, like in Mosul and Palmyra. That absurd explanation falls very wide of the mark and needs far more inquiry.
5. Drone attack on Russia
On New Year’s Eve and on January 6, 2018, Russia’s Khmeimim Airbase in Syria was attacked. The first incident involved militants armed with mortars that resulted in the death of two Russian soldiers and damage to several aircraft. The second attack involved a swarm of 13 drones armed with bomblets, which Russian forces countered by means of electronic warfare and air-defense systems. Around half of the drones were electronically hijacked by Russian forces, while the others were shot down without incident. Nevertheless, the attack required a high level of expertise from a “technologically advanced country,” according to Russia.
The United States countered the claim, suggesting that such technology can be easily purchased. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankin-Galloway said the “devices and technologies can easily be obtained in the open market.”
Meanwhile, however, President Putin never mentioned Islamic State when he discussed the incident with the media.
“Those aircraft were only camouflaged – I want to emphasize this – to look like handicraft production. In fact, it is quite obvious that there were elements of high-tech nature there,” the Russian leader said.
So are we expected to believe that Islamic State terrorists were able to buy these UAV drones, or is it more realistic to believe, along with the Russians, that some outside major power was needed to provide the know-how?
4. Never attacked mainland Israel
In March 2016, the warriors of Islamic State picked up their pens in an effort to explain away a question that has been perplexing many observers: why don’t they ever attack Israel?
In the article, translated by a group called MEMRI, the group said it holds to the position that the Palestinian cause does not take precedence over any other jihadi struggle.
“If we look at the reality of the world today, we will find that it is completely ruled by polytheism and its laws, except for the regions where Allah made it possible for the Islamic State to establish the religion…. Therefore, jihad in Palestine is equal to jihad elsewhere,” the article said.
“The apostate [tyrants] who rule the lands of Islam are graver infidels than [the Jews], and war against them takes precedence over war against the original infidels,” the article said, as reported in the Times of Israel.
Whatever the case may be, this seems to be the first time in modern history that a radical jihadist group has had no reason to quarrel with Israel.
3. Oil Export Business
After Islamic State managed to make it across the vast desert between Iraq and Syria without attracting so much as a damaged fender, it managed to do the unthinkable: it set up a very lucrative oil-export business practically overnight in the north of the country. And this was not some small-time operation.
According to one estimate, the motley crew of mercenaries was generating profits of more than £320million a year from oil exports, or about 40,000 barrels of crude every single day.
Are we really expected to believe that a 19-member military organization led by the United States was powerless to put this rag-tag operation out of business?
The reason why the story is so utterly preposterous is that Russia, in a matter of several days, was able to do what this multinational outfit could not do in over a year. In mid-November 2015, Russia had announced that it had destroyed in a matter of days some 500 fuel trucks – and there is plenty of videotape of the Russian attacks for the naysayers who doubt the Kremlin’s claim.
According to Russian General Staff spokesman Colonel General Andrey Kartapolov: “In just the first few days, our aviation has destroyed 500 fuel tanker trucks, which greatly reduced illegal oil export capabilities of the militants and, accordingly, their income from oil smuggling.”
2. Islamic State’s Israeli medical plan
In March 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported a rather stunning revelation that Israel was treating “Al-Qaeda fighters wounded in the Syria civil war.”
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Israel has provided medical assistance to nearly 2,000 Syrians.
The Wall Street Journal quoted “an Israeli military official” who said no questions were asked of the patients.
“We don’t ask who they are, we don’t do any screening,” the official said. “Once the treatment is done, we take them back to the border and they go on their way.”
Amos Yadlin, the former military intelligence chief, told the Journal that Hezbollah and Iran “are the major threat to Israel, much more than the radical Sunni Islamists, who are also an enemy.”
“Those Sunni elements who control some two-thirds to 90% of the border on the Golan aren’t attacking Israel. This gives you some basis to think that they understand who is their real enemy – maybe it isn’t Israel.”
The Jerusalem Post repeated a joke allegedly told by Syrian President Bashar Assad to Foreign Affairs, ‘How can you say that al-Qaida doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force… They are supporting the rebels in Syria. It is very clear.”
1. The Pentagon report that speak volumes
In May 2015, a declassified Pentagon document provided shocking evidence that the US-led campaign in Syria not only contributed directly to the rise of the Islamic State (IS), but that Washington was perfectly satisfied with such an outcome.
The US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, obtained by Judicial Watch, dated August 2012, states that the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” comprise “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq].”
Furthermore, it states, these forces are being supported by a Western-led coalition – “The West, Gulf countries and Turkey support the opposition.”
It went on to predict that the takeover of Hasaka and Deir Ezzor would possibly create a militant Islamist political entity in eastern Syria:
“If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasak and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
According to Nafeed Ahmez from Middle East Eye, “This extraordinary passage confirms that at least three years ago, the Pentagon anticipated the rise of a ‘Salafist Principality’ as a direct consequence of its Syria strategy – and that the ‘supporting powers’ behind the rebels ‘wanted’ this outcome ‘to isolate the Syrian regime,’ and weaken Shiite influence via Iraq and Iran.”
Let that sink in for a moment. The US-backed coalition, which seemed so inexplicably lacklustre in its fight against Islamic State, to the point where this group was actually able to open an oil export business, not to mention drive its Toyota trucks across wide-open desert unmolested, was more content to let a band of terrorists occupy Syria than the legitimate government in Damascus.
It seems safe to say, based on the findings of this incredible document, that such a rationale is exactly what guided Washington’s hand not only in Syria, but in other regime-change war zones, like Iraq and Libya. Democracy building was not the desired result in these fated places, but absolute chaos.
Al-Manar | January 24, 2018
Damascus condemned as lies on Wednesday allegations made by US State Secretary and French Foreign Minister about the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
In remarks carried by Syria’s State news agency, SANA, an official source at the Syrian foreign ministry said the US-French allegations are part of a policy adopted by Washington and Paris which has been aimed at systematically targeting Damascus.
The source asserted that Syria has always been fully cooperative and provided all that is necessary to conduct an unbiased, objective, and professional investigation into the use of chemical weapons.
The Syrian cooperation was met on the other side by Western obstruction of the probe, the source said, adding that the West has exercised various types of pressure on investigation teams to politicize it.
“A transparent and objective investigation would not serve the West’s agenda in Syria; rather it will reveal its confirmed collusion with terrorist groups by covering up those groups’ use of chemical weapons in order to accuse the Syrian government of their use,” SANA quoted the Syrian official as saying.
“The history of the US and its Western cohorts is rife with such lies and fabrications, and what happened in Iraq hasn’t been forgotten.”
Meanwhile, the source stressed that “those who fabricate such lies and overstep the jurisdiction of the relevant international organizations and pressure them to serve their own agenda have no credibility or any moral and legal criteria to appoint themselves judges.”
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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