Fake News « Aletho News

Journalist Accuses Moscow of Alleged Meddling in Mexican Politics

Sputnik – April 13, 2017

Mexican journalist and columnist for the El Financiero newspaper Fernando Garcia Ramirez has accused Russia of meddling in Mexican politics. According to him, “the dark hand” of Russian President Vladimir Putin has already reached Mexico, with Moscow trying to influence the presidential election in the country that is to take place next year.

In his article titled “The Russian Threat to Mexico” (“La amenaza rusa en México”), the journalist accused the Kremlin of allegedly attempting “to appoint its man” as the head of the country, referring to the opposition leader Andres Manuel López Obrador whom he called “an authoritarian populist.”

According to the journalist, Moscow’s ability to “influence” politics in any corner of the planet has been demonstrated many times. The examples, according to Ramirez, are the victory of Donald Trump in the United States, Brexit in Britain, and the recent defeat of former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in a referendum on constitutional reform.

Explaining the reasons why it might be beneficial for Russia to influence the election in Mexico, the newspaper columnist wrote that it would be “convenient” for Moscow to have an “anti-American” politician on this post.

The journalist also believes that the Kremlin will use the RT TV channel as “its favorite weapon” as well as “a key instrument of Russian propaganda.” According to him, the media source already has its agent in Mexico, referring to Mexican analyst John Ackerman, who published several critical articles about the Mexican authorities on the RT website.

Meanwhile, the article caused a wave of ridicule in social networks.”I have not seen such a frightening title and such an empty content for long time,” a man named Hugo Ortega Romero wrote.

“Ha-ha-ha, of course, Russia is to blame for absolutely everything,” Leonardo Guzmán Vázquez continued.

Mexican journalist Gabriel Infante Carrillo confessed in an interview with Sputnik Mundo that he also “almost died of laughter” when he read the article.

According to him, the article is part of a slander campaign against Lopez Obrador, leader of the left opposition, whose support in the country is growing. However, this has nothing to do with “external factors” and Russian media, Carillo argued.

“The article in the El Financiero is directed not so much against Russia but rather against the opposition leader Lopez Obrador, a leftist candidate in the upcoming presidential election. The fact is that his popularity has been growing, which is why the probability that he will win is quite high. That is why the media supporting the authorities do everything to discredit him. And thus, they decided to follow the example of their American colleagues, who never stop talking about the alleged Russian contribution to the victory of Donald Trump. Thus, we see another example of how artificial anti-Russian hysteria has been used for political purposes,” the journalist stated.

April 14, 2017 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Russophobia | Fernando Garcia Ramirez, Mexico | Leave a comment

CNN uses anonymous source to push Syria/Russia ‘chemical attack’ conspiracy

RT | April 13, 2017

An anonymous senior US official told CNN that, while the US allegedly has proof that Damascus is responsible for the chemical incident in Idlib, Syria, it has uncovered no such evidence implicating Moscow, because Russia is wilier in scrambling its communications.

The anonymous official reportedly told the American news channel that the US intelligence community had intercepted communications “featuring Syrian military and chemical experts talking about preparations for the sarin attack in Idlib last week.” While the source failed to provide any concrete details about the alleged communication – such as when it was intercepted or what names or other information it contained – they did note that the US “did not know prior to the attack it was going to happen.”

CNN speculated that the communication had been sent prior to the incident, but was not processed until the US began investigating it.

The source added that “there are no intelligence intercepts that have been found directly confirming that Russian military or intelligence officials communicated about the attack,” but noted “the likelihood is the Russians are more careful in their communications to avoid being intercepted.”

The most specific proof the source could come up with was his observation that Russia has a surveillance drone, which he claimed “flew over the hospital that was treating people injured in the attack.”

CNN suggested that even if the US had evidence of Russia’s involvement, it might not go public with it, as “the US feels right now that it has made the case that Russian support for [Syrian President Bashar] Assad must end.”

The report is the latest in a long series based on anonymous sources – with undisclosed agendas citing vague evidence which is never submitted to public scrutiny – that the mainstream media has deployed to level accusations against Russia. The story that Russia allegedly meddled in the US election has become a dominant narrative for opponents of Donald Trump, who are still trying to explain his surprise victory.

The major media outlets’ eagerness to blame Russia for everything occasionally leads to embarrassment, however. A fairly spectacular example came in January, when the Washington Post was forced to backtrack on a story that falsely claimed Russia had hacked into Vermont’s power grid. The newspaper also sparked outrage in December by touting a list of “Russian propaganda” websites, which turned out to include many respected independent media sources.

The alarming trend is not limited to the US media, however. Last year, the Guardian failed to accurately report on an Italian newspaper’s interview with Julian Assange. The British newspaper falsely painted WikiLeaks’ founder as a Trump supporter who would not criticize Moscow because he was presumably in league with the Russian government.

Some examples go back years. In 2014, the New York Times published photos of armed men, claiming that they were Russian troops on a clandestine mission in Ukraine. The newspaper had taken the images from the US State Department, and both had failed to properly verify them.

April 13, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | CNN, Russia, Syria, United States | Leave a comment

Media’s Double Standards on Conspiracy Theories #NotNormal

By Nat Parry · Essential Opinion · April 11, 2017

After several months of pushing the “Russiagate” conspiracy theory – a wild-eyed, all-encompassing but somewhat nebulous narrative involving U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, WikiLeaks, the Russian mob, assassinations and certain indiscretions with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel – the U.S. mainstream media is now reverting to its traditional role of downplaying conspiracy theories, particularly those raising questions about the intelligence surrounding the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria last week.

On Monday, the New York Times published an article titled “Syria Conspiracy Theories Flourish, at Both Ends of the Spectrum,” which lamented the fact that websites on the left and the right have raised doubts about the casus belli for U.S. military action against Syria.

Noting that some alternative news sites have called the chemical attack a “false flag” operation and others have raised the question of whether Trump’s military action was a “wag the dog” diversion tactic, the Times pointedly attempts to “debunk” the internet memes that have been raising doubts about the chemical attack or calling into question the justification for the U.S. military action.

With an aggressiveness not seen at all when it comes to the unsubstantiated “Russian election-hacking” allegations, the Times fires back forcefully on matters such as whether President Bashar al-Assad had reason to use chemical weapons in the first place or whether anti-Assad forces may have had advance knowledge of the sarin attack. The Times article uses curt, all-caps responses to rebut these claims, such as flatly stating, “FALSE,” “NO EVIDENCE,” or “MISLEADING.”

The Times, for example, points out that Information Clearing House has argued that Assad lacked an obvious tactical or strategic reason to use chemical weapons, and therefore the attack may have actually been carried out by one of the terrorist groups operating in Syria such as Al-Nusra Front. As the Times responds, however, “THIS IS MISLEADING.”

Floating a few reasons that Assad’s forces might have conceivably been motivated to conduct a chemical attack, the Times argues that the attack was “consistent with Mr. Assad’s calculated strategy of attempting to drive out the civilian population in rebel strongholds through bombing neighborhoods and civilian targets.” The Syrian leader may have also “felt emboldened” by perceived shifts in U.S. foreign policies and priorities under Trump, the Times speculates.

Of course, this is simply guesswork on the part of the Times, which is not presenting any facts to counter doubts over the official story, but just responding to the doubts with more conjecture. The Times also seems to be cherry-picking some of the more easily “debunked” stories surrounding the Syria case, failing to address legitimate concerns over the lack of proof of Assad’s culpability. These include doubts raised by the former British ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, who told BBC Radio last week that there is “no proof that the cause of the explosion was what they said it was.”

It would not make sense for Assad to launch such an attack, Ford said, claiming that it would be “totally self-defeating.” He also objected to the veracity of claims made by eyewitnesses who claimed that they saw chemical bombs dropping from the air. “Well, you cannot see chemical weapons dropping from the air,” he said. “Such testimony is worthless.”

There are also serious doubts as to whether Syria even possesses the chemical weapons in question, with the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons noting that since 2013, “all of the chemical weapons declared by Syria were removed and destroyed outside of Syrian territory.”

While some governments have claimed that Syria’s declaration about its chemical weapons program may have been incomplete, the OPCW stresses that it has adapted itself “in unprecedented ways” in efforts “to remove, transport and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons stockpile in the midst of an active conflict zone.”

With this in mind, Sacha Llorenti, the Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, last Friday blasted the United States for unilaterally attacking Syria, saying that it recalls the decision 14 years earlier to attack Iraq based on equally questionable intelligence. It is “vital to remember what history teaches us,” Llorenti said, citing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and holding up a photo of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell delivering false testimony to the UN Security Council on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

“Whereas an investigation would have allowed us to establish in an objective manner who is responsible for the [chemical] attacks [in Syria], this is an extreme, extreme violation of international law,” he said.

In addition to the doubts that have been raised at the United Nations, a number of the U.S.’s closest G7 allies have refused to implement additional sanctions against Syria without proof of Assad’s guilt.

As the BBC reported on Tuesday, “Sanctions against Russian and Syria will not be put in place until after an investigation into last week’s apparent chemical attack, British government sources said. Members of the G7 group of leading industrialised nations agreed to delay implementing sanctions until there was ‘hard and irrefutable evidence’ over the alleged chemical attack.”

Yet the New York Times and other mainstream U.S. outlets continue to report as undisputed fact that Assad’s government intentionally carried out this attack, and furthermore, that Moscow knew about it in advance.

The sorts of unequivocal retorts that the NYT uses against journalists and bloggers for raising doubts about the official stories could, of course, just as easily be applied to the official stories themselves. When the Associated Press, for example, reported on Tuesday that “The United States has made a preliminary conclusion that Russia knew in advance of Syria’s chemical weapons attack last week,” the Times could have responded with an emphatic all-caps retort such as “NO EVIDENCE.”

These retorts could also be used against the accusations of the Russian government engaging in a convoluted conspiracy to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances by hacking John Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails in order to expose the Democratic establishment’s undermining of Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign while simultaneously “elevating” Trump’s candidacy in the media through the so-called “pied piper” strategy, with the evil geniuses of the Kremlin somehow knowing beyond a doubt that this information would sway voters in favor of voting for the least popular major-party nominee in a generation.

Just as the NYT has denounced theories surrounding the Syria chemical attack as lacking evidence, so too could the entire Russiagate narrative be picked apart as lacking any foundation in fact. All that one needs to do is actually read the U.S. intelligence assessment that dubiously concluded that Russia “interfered” in the election without offering anything approaching hard proof of this claim – spending seven full pages instead bashing the Russian network RT for its perceived biases.

Going through the Director of National Intelligence report from last January, the reader is left with few details as to how the extraordinary conclusion was reached that Russia “hacked” the election, which Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others have called an “act of war.”

The closest thing to evidence that could be found in the DNI report was regarding so-called Russian fingerprints on the hacking attacks of Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails, including malware associated with Russian hackers, as well as some Cyrillic letters and the phrase “Felix Edmundovich,” a reference to the founder of the Soviet Union’s secret police.

However, as revealed in subsequent WikiLeaks’ disclosures of the so-called Vault 7 documents, the CIA has developed numerous tools, including a library of foreign malware, that can be used to falsely implicate a foreign intelligence service in a cyber-attack. These revelations called into question the entire basis for Washington’s case against Moscow for allegedly interfering in the U.S. election, but besides a few articles in the alternative press, including at Consortium News, the revelations received scant attention.

Apparently, the disclosures of CIA hacking activities – including new revelations of the CIA deploying malware in Samsung televisions as covert listening devices to spy on unwitting Americans – were not the sort of conspiracy theory considered worthy of sustained media coverage in the United States. In contrast to the months of wall-to-wall coverage of Russiagate, the Vault 7 leaks were largely treated as a one-day story by the mainstream press.

The disparity in coverage speaks to a longstanding aversion of the mainstream media to what it considers illegitimate “new media” encroaching on its territory and peddling conspiracy theories and what is today called “fake news.” This hostility can be traced to the earliest days of the internet.

Twenty years ago, responding to a proliferation of alternative news sites on the World Wide Web – or what was called back then the “information superhighway” – Newsweek magazine ran a 1,800-word article entitled “Conspiracy Mania Feeds Our Growing National Paranoia.” In the piece, Newsweek denounced what it called “conspiracy freaks.”

Explaining a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories as evidence of “mass psychosis,” the article warned that the “ranks of the darkly deluded may be growing” as “conspiracism has become a kind of para-religion.” It took particular aim at the African-American community, which it described as “a hotbed of this kind of suspicion and mistrust,” for believing that “the CIA had spread the crack epidemic by backing Nicaraguan drug dealers whose profits went to the contras.”

Newsweek also criticized Oliver Stone, director of “Platoon” and “JFK,” and Chris Carter, the creator of the popular “X-Files” television series, for promoting dangerous ideas that had the effect of eroding trust in the government. “On ‘The X-Files,’ everything from who killed JFK to why the Buffalo Bills lose so many Super Bowls is traceable to a single master plan,” Newsweek sneered.

Of course, Newsweek wasn’t alone in scoffing at popular conspiracy theories in the ‘90s. In fact, it was conventional wisdom among “respectable” media that government leaders simply do not cross certain lines, and that certain stories, for example, regarding CIA involvement in the cocaine trade – no matter how much evidence backed them up – were off-limits. Those who failed to get on board with this groupthink, for example Gary Webb who wrote a widely disseminated series for the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA-crack cocaine connection, had their careers destroyed.

This trend continued into the 2000s, with millions of angry Americans still seething over the stolen election in 2000 told to “get over it,” and then called crazy for doubting the basis for George W. Bush’s case for invading Iraq in 2003.

A couple years later, those who raised questions about the government’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina were accused by the Washington Post of “racial paranoia” and hawking “conspiracy theories,” such as the widespread belief that New Orleans’ levees may have been intentionally blown up to protect rich neighborhoods at the expense of poorer ones, or to drive low-income African Americans out of town.

But skip ahead a decade, and oddly, this same media that historically has been so hostile to conspiracy theories was seen eagerly pushing conspiracy theories surrounding Clinton’s loss to Trump. Headlines of “Russian election hacking” were freely used by the Washington Post, CNN and the New York Times, despite the fact that there is zero evidence that Russia manipulated any voting machines in any state to alter the outcome of the election, or even any substantial proof offered to support the claims that the Kremlin attempted to influence voters’ decisions by exposing private emails between DNC officials.

Nevertheless, the Democrats and the media have coalesced around the conventional wisdom that the election was lost due to a Russian plot, which conveniently absolves the national Democratic Party of any responsibility for losing the election – for example by writing off the white working class vote or nominating a deeply flawed establishment candidate during a decidedly anti-establishment year – while simultaneously calling into question the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency.

It also feeds into the rallying cry that the Democrats have embraced since losing the election, which has been variations of the theme “This is not normal,” expressed by the hashtag #NotNormal on social media. This theme laments the loss of a more “normal” time, presumably personified by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

Typically, the slogan refers to Trump’s controversial dealings with Russia, his unconventional communication style and his extensively documented conflicts of interests, as well as perceived misogyny, nepotism, racism and incompetence in his administration.

Clearly, there is very little that can be considered “normal” about this administration, including the strange role of Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who has moved into the White House while the First Lady, Melania Trump, lives in New York. The First Daughter reportedly was instrumental in convincing the President to carry out the unilateral attack on Syria. “Ivanka is a mother of three kids and she has influence. I’m sure she said: ‘Listen, this is horrible stuff,’” Ivanka’s brother Eric Trump told the Telegraph.

While that is certainly not normal, what the Democrats and the media are revealing through their #NotNormal campaign and the official conspiracy theories that they are promoting – while downplaying other theories or doubts about government claims – is how much they actually consider “normal.”

In today’s America, what is normal, according to the bipartisan consensus, are unilateral strikes against countries without evidence and in violation of international law. It is also apparently normal for televisions to spy on law-abiding citizens, and with drone strikes shooting up 432% under the Trump presidency so far, it is apparently quite normal to use flying robots to bomb suspected terrorists (and their eight-year old daughters) half-way around the world. Indefinite detention at the legal black hole of Guantanamo is also rather normal.

After all, these are all policies that have been in place for a decade and a half under both Democratic and Republican administrations, and hope seems to be dwindling for returning to a period of actual normalcy.

April 12, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | New York Times, Newsweek, Syria, United States, Washington Post | Leave a comment

Syrian attack: Trump’s Cuban Missile Moment

By Eric Walberg | American Herald Tribune | April 9, 2017

Claims that Assad is using chemical weapons are like a barometer: when the Syrian army is doing well, they surface, notably in 2013, 2015 and now, just as the Syria government looks close to some kind of ‘victory’. Both times in the past the intelligence came from Mossad and the claims fizzled out, though the propaganda that it was ‘likely’ by the Syrian Army stuck in western perception. The current chemical ‘attack’, instantly hailed by Israel, occurred just as peace talks were beginning in Geneva. The source of the claim is, again, most likely Israel, though that’s not part of the media fireworks. Tillerson might have checked with the Russians, as Russian military were stationed at the airport.

That is the background to the bombing of the air base April 6, in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians in rebel-held Idlib province two days before. National security adviser General Herbert McMaster solemnly declared, “We could trace this murderous attack back to that facility.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Russia of being either complicit or incompetent in failing to keep its 2013 promise of completely destroying Syria’s chemical weapons supply.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it “an act of aggression against a sovereign country violating the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that. Washington’s move substantially impairs Russian-US relations, which are in a deplorable state as it is.” Russia said it had suspended deconfliction channels with Washington, set up to avoid air collisions over Syria, though the Pentagon said it continued to use the channel.

Why would Assad launch chemical weapons when he was winning? The most plausible explanation was that the Syria air force hit a supply depot in rebel-held territory. That Assad would have ordered the use of chemical weapons was dismissed by Russian deputy UN ambassador, Vladimir Safronkov, who vetoed the usual US-sponsored Security Council resolution condemning Assad, suggesting it was altnews. “We have not yet any official or reliable confirmation” of what took place or who was responsible, said the UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, at a press conference after the incident. The EU echoed this, though European countries either supported the US strike or kept mum.

Safronkov warned the US, “If military action occurred, it will be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise. Look at Iraq, look at Libya.” Olof Skoog, Sweden’s ambassador to the United Nations, sounded a similar note. “I remember Hans Blix. Of course I’m concerned” about the possibility of a US attack in Syria.” Bolivia, a current member of the Security Council, requested an emergency session to address, and perhaps condemn, the US missile attack in Syria.

What makes the accusation doubly doubtful is the fact that Syria joined the international chemical weapons treaty in 2013, agreeing to renounce all use of chemical weapons, and through the mediation of Russia, to dispose of all that were in their hands. The deadline for destruction was 2014. Syria gave the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons an inventory of its chemical weapons arsenal and started its destruction in October 2013, two weeks before its formal entry into force. Idlib, the site of the current ‘attack’, has moved back and forth, and has been in rebel hands since 2015, and all the weapons were not yet removed.

As if scripted, ISIS stormed the Syrian army checkpoints in the nearby strategic town of Al-Furqalas.

Fate worse than death?

More civilians caught up in the Syrian conflict were killed by US-led coalitions than by ISIS or Russian-led forces in the last month, according to figures released by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. ISIS killed 119 civilians in Syria in March, with Russian forces believed to have killed 224 civilians in the same month. The SNHR found the international coalition forces, led by the US, killed 260 civilians.

At the same time as the US was loudly denouncing Syria’s supposed chemical attack, which killed 80, the US was responsible for killing 85 (an airstrike on a school west of Raqqa killed at least 33 people, just after a separate US strike on a mosque complex in the north-west of the country killed 52). But it is the chemical attack claim–hotly disputed by the Russians, who are the most privvy to Syrian affairs–that gets the headlines, though unless I’m mistaken, a wartime death is a wartime death. Each one a tragedy.

The upsurge in civilian deaths has been so sharp that it’s overwhelmed Airwars.org. The site had to scale back its monitoring of Russian airstrikes in Syria and focus instead on bombings carried out by the US and its allies. At its peak, ISIS controlled about 40% of Iraqi territory; now it controls about 10%. In both Iraq and Syria, the battles are now in cities, making bombing raids lethal to civilians. The easier part of the war, which involved targeted airstrikes in less densely populated areas, is over, and deaths are bound to increase with ‘boots on the ground’.

Trump confused

It is difficult to understand just what Trump has in mind to end the violence in Syria and Iraq. He promised not to increase US intervention abroad, but at the same time, vowed that as president he would “bomb the hell out of ISIS.” US-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria have already killed 1,500 civilians in just Iraq and Syria this month alone, more than three times the number killed in President Barack Obama’s final full month in office, according to Airwars.

Trump and his top aides had accepted in recent days the “reality” of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority, but the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. When asked if this signalled a change in US policy, McMaster demurred. “I think what it does communicate is a big shift … in Assad’s calculus … because this is … the first time that the United States has taken direct military action against that regime or the regime of his father.”

Trump insists that the mainstream media lies, but then buys into the mainstream version of the war against Syria. He is being manipulated by the very forces he claims to oppose. What should be a sign of decisiveness looks more like another Trump gaffe. While the mainstream political world and media approved of the sabre-rattling, Trump’s own followers are against his bombing.

According to vox.com, among them were:

*Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars/ @PrisonPlanet. “I guess Trump wasn’t ‘Putin’s puppet’ after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet. I’m officially OFF the Trump train. I’ll be focusing my efforts on Le Pen, who tried to warn Trump against this disaster.”
*Mike Cernovich, #NoMoreWars. ” Today over 500,000 people have watched my videos and streams. 90% are @realDonaldTrump supporters, none want war with Syria.”
*Radio host Laura Ingraham, @IngrahamAngle. “Missiles flying. Rubio’s happy. McCain ecstatic. Hillary’s on board. A complete policy change in 48 hrs.”
*Author Ann Coulter, @AnnCoulter. “The beloved rebels [sic] we’ll help by intervening in Syria: women forced into veils & posters of Osama hung on the walls.”
*Max Blumenthal. “US intervention would be the last hope for Syrian rebels, and a shot in the arm to al-Qaeda, which has grown to record size thanks to America’s military meddling across the Middle East. ”
*Even the readers at Breitbart, which is known as the home on the internet for pro-Trump coverage, rebelled against the attack.

Pacts made in hell

The parallel between the Russia-Syria anti-Trump campaigns by the establishment is obvious. The Russian spying hysteria (Obama expelled 35 diplomats in December 2016) and the support for lame-duck Ukraine was to prevent a new detente with Russia, and so far has worked. Trump doesn’t dare proceed with this key foreign policy objective. Originally, he tied relations with Russia with solving the crisis in Syria. “Let Russia do it.”

But in office, Trump instead strengthened ties with Saudi Arabia, signing a pact to work together in both Syria (Clinton’s “safe zones”) and Yemen. After a friendly White House meeting with Trump and Steve Bannon (the architect of Trump’s Muslim ban), Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman hailed Trump as “his Excellency,” describing him as a “true friend of Muslims who will serve the Muslim world in an unimaginable manner, opposite to the negative portrait of his Excellency that some have tried to promote.” The only real agreement with the Saudis is the obsession to attack Iran, a pact made in hell.

Historical parallels abound here. Just as Putin was understandably supportive of Trump’s campaign for the presidency, Soviet Russia in its time very much wanted to be friends with Hitler, the ultimate ‘pact made in hell’. Israel Shamir argues it was a good idea given the times; the problem was that Hitler had other priorities, and the Russian desire for peace and friendship did not fit in. Things today have reached a head, not quite Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa against Russia, although the economic sanctions against Russia are warfare by another name.

The current airstrike, which could have killed Russians, is more like the Cuban missile crisis. But there is no JFK (who was, in any case, assassinated for his desire for peace with the Soviet Union). What should have been a diplomatic triumph–the unfolding of peace with Russia and an end to the Syrian tragedy–has turned into renewed US support for ISIS and confrontation with Russia, both of which could spin out of control. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria’s, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. And then there’s Ukraine.

April 12, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

Will ‘Big Lies’ About Syria’s Chemical Weapons Spark a New US War?

«Sentence first, verdict afterwards», cries out the MSM Queen of Hearts: «Off with his head!»

By Michael Jabara CARLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 12.04.2017

In late February 2017, the Russian Federation and China vetoed a joint, US, French and British resolution to impose sanctions on Syria over allegations of chemical weapons use. I wondered at the time why this issue was coming back. In 2014, on Russian initiative the Syrian government agreed to give up its chemical weapons stocks under international observation and with international assistance. Subsequently, the UN confirmed, and the United States accepted, that the Syrian government had no further chemical weapons stocks or facilities for producing them. The Syrian government has always denied using chemical weapons in the proxy war being waged against it by the US-led western and regional coalition consisting most importantly of Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Apartheid Israel. The only entities using chemical weapons, sometimes as false flag operations, were and are the foreign backed Jihadist mercenaries operating in Syria.

Nevertheless, Jihadist use of chemical weapons has been largely ignored, or the responsibility for using them, in an Orwellian turnabout, has been foisted upon the Syrian government in Damascus. The issue keeps coming up, and is used by the United States and its European and regional vassals as an implicit threat or means of pressure against the Damascus government. In fact, according to Seymour Hersh, the muckraking American journalist, the US State Department and the CIA facilitated, or were complicit in the shipping of chemical weapons from Libya to Syria through Turkey for the use of their Salafist allies.

If you search Google, you will find numerous stories in the western Mainstream Media (MSM) about alleged Syrian war crimes or chemical weapons use intended, apparently, to set up that Anglo-French-US sponsored resolution at the end of February. In early February, for example, the MSM published dramatic stories about the Syrian government hanging 13,000 victims in a prison «slaughterhouse». The story originated with Amnesty International, a well-known NGO and propaganda agency in the service of the US State Department. This US inspired canard nevertheless did not gain traction. On 10 February, Global Research in Canada, amongst others, dismissed the Syrian «slaughterhouse» story as bogus American propaganda intended to justify US military intervention in Syria.

Within a week this «fake news» gave way to renewed accusations against the Syrian government of chemical weapons use. On 13 February Human Rights Watch, another well-known US propaganda agency, accused the Syrian government of «chemical attacks in opposition-controlled parts of Aleppo during the final month of the battle for the city». It called on the UN Security Council to impose sanctions. Tass and Sputnik responded on the following day dismissing the allegations. «Such reports prepared by laymen with reference to the data of social networks and stories by unknown anonymous witnesses over the phone are destroying further the already ambiguous reputation of Human Rights Watch», said the Russian defence department spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov. Sputnik also quoted Konashenkov’s statement. Predictably, as if by cue the MSM immediately ran with the new allegations, accepting them as a given. Amongst these western sources were the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Voice of America and various other US overt and covert propaganda outlets.

A competing story about the US use of depleted uranium bombs in Syria was pushed into the background and disappeared. On 14 February the French government without any attempt at verification of the new accusations immediately demanded a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the imposition of sanctions on the Syrian government. «Syrian artists call for Assad’s prosecution for war crimes» ran another headline. Already, in mid-February the MSM was whipping up hysteria about Syrian chemical weapons. The big story in the last week of February was the Russian and Chinese veto of the Security Council resolution calling for sanctions on the Syrian government. «Russia breaks with Trump in the UN», said the LA Times. Russia was the real spoiler; China received less attention. Seven times, complained BBC, Russia «has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to protect the Syrian government». China only six times, added BBC. The British and French were indignant, forgetting how many times the United States has used its veto to block resolutions condemning Apartheid Israel or Apartheid South Africa. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault declared that Russia bore a «heavy responsibility towards the Syrian people and humanity as a whole». Oh my, «humanity», he said. Does that mean that the Jihadist terrorists rampaging in Syria, backed by France, are on the side of «humanity»?

The west’s indignation did not end with the Sino-Russian veto at the end of February. As if mysteriously directed, the MSM campaign of «false news» mounted in intensity during March. All the while, the Russian government was working to get peace talks moving toward a negotiated end of the war. The Turkish and Syrian presidents were supposed to meet in Moscow. Was the MSM campaign intended to block a negotiated settlement to the US-led proxy war against Syria? «Russia sides with chemical weapons», accused the New York Times on 1 March. «Ignoring UN», Fox News declared on 6 March, «Russia and Assad continue Syrian chemical weapons and bombing attacks labeled war crimes». Even lowly, US compliant Sweden jumped on Russia’s back. «France will go on fighting chemical weapons use», declared the French foreign minister. Oh, how brave of France.

Aliens from another planet deciphering MSM headlines in March might logically conclude that the Jihadist terrorists and mercenaries destroying Syria were the real heroes of the conflict. In March, accusation after accusation was hurled at Syria and especially against President Bashar al Assad, but as far as I can see, no credible evidence was ever presented which could indict the Syrian government. There is of course evidence of the western-backed Salafists using chemical weapons, though the MSM almost never notices it. On 20 March the EU sanctioned four Syrian military officials for alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians.

Underlining western double standards, this headline on 17 March went almost unnoticed: «US Military Bombs Syrian Mosque during Evening Prayers, Killing Dozens». That’s the way it is in the western MSM, Pot calls Kettle black. One set of rules for the west and one set of rules for everyone else. The US-led sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s caused the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children. «We think the price was worth it», declared the sententious former Secretary of State Albright. How many Iraqi civilians died in the Anglo-American war of aggression of 2003? The estimates are more than a million dead.

If actions speak louder than words, one would have to reckon that the United States doesn’t give a damn about dead civilians—you know, «collateral damage» — except as bad publicity. And Washington can always count on the MSM to bury stories that tarnish the US image. Just look at the coverage of «collateral damage» around Mosul in Iraq.

And still the MSM’s invective spewed out against Assad and the Syrian government and against Russia, as though the Jihadist terrorists represent the most noble of causes. It’s true that Assad and Syria have fought back denying any use of chemical weapons. So did the dignified Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the MID spox, the eloquent Maria Zakharova, with her rapier-like sallies against US and western hypocrisy and double standards. And of course the truth-telling Vladimir Putin has repeatedly attempted to talk common sense and reason to the stone deaf west, only to be vilified for his efforts. Reason, logic and truth make little headway in the west against the cyclone of MSM invective and unsubstantiated accusations against Assad.

«Sentence first, verdict afterwards», cries out the MSM Queen of Hearts: «Off with his head!»

Then, on Tuesday, 4 April, Salafists in the Syrian town of Khan Shaykoun, long an Al Qaeda stronghold in north-western Syria, claimed that more than 50 people had been killed by a Syrian gas attack. The Syrian Arab Army denied any use of chemical weapons, though it confirmed an air raid on a Salafist arms dump where, unbeknownst to them, chemical weapons may have been stored. Outside of Khan Shaykoun, no one knows what really happened on 4 April, or whether the Salafists had launched yet another false flag attack to lay blame on the Syrian government, or indeed whether the alleged attack was staged by Al Qaeda and its «white helmets», subsidised by the United States and Britain. In the west no one wants to know. The United States did a U-turn after declaring only a day or two before that the Syrian people could decide who would govern them. Oh, how very decent of the United States, but then the Americans suddenly changed their minds.

The Khan Shaykoun gassing, or whatever it was, changed everything. The MSM cyclone, as if by cue, erupted once again to blow down Russian suggestions of a UN directed investigation. «Bashar el-Assad just gassed his own people», blared one typical headline. «Syria’s ‘barbaric’ regime» has to go, opined the British Foreign Secretary. The US ambassador at the UN, Nikki Haley, threatened US unilateral action, if the Security Council did not comply with American wishes. Khan Shaykoun looks like a set-up, the deus ex machina, the providential event, of a US orchestrated campaign to sabotage Russian-led peace talks and to justify US military aggression. Already some of Trump’s advisors are calling for a «full-scale war» against Syria.

There are a few voices of prudence in the United States, like former Congressman Ron Paul. «It makes no sense, even if you were totally separate from this and take no sides… and you were just an analyst, it doesn’t make sense for Assad under these conditions to all of the sudden use poison gasses», Paul commented: «I think it’s a zero chance that he would have done this deliberately». But no one in the US government was listening to people like Ron Paul, least of all President Donald Trump, who approved an attack in the early morning of 6 April on a Syrian airbase used in the fight against Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Fifty-nine cruise missiles were launched and 23 hit the airbase doing little damage apparently. What happened to the other 36 missiles? No one is saying for certain. The base was returned to operations within 24 hours, but the damage to the Russian-US relations is far more severe. How can Putin, Lavrov, or any Russian government official trust anything US «partners» say? They can’t. Dealing, negotiating, accepting the United States at its word is like trusting a rattlesnake. But the rattlesnake at least warns when it is about to strike.

After the sneak attack on Syria, President Putin was scathing, and accused the US of aggression, which of course it was, unless you believe the United States has special rights to attack any state it wants, if only it decides to do so. The accusations against the Syrian government, Putin said plainly, are «bullshit» or less colloquially, «utter nonsense» (дурь несусветная). Like the Tonkin Gulf, the Kosovo «genocide», the Kuwaiti incubator babies, the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Libyan government «mass rapes» and «massacres», the US accusations against Assad are canards to justify military aggression. «Will we ever learn?» the brave Bolivian ambassador asked in so many words in the Security Council: «When is enough going to be enough?» When will Europeans wake up and say enough is enough? The European powers, most importantly France, Germany, Italy and Spain, are the only ones capable of saying to the United States, we won’t support your wars any more, stop. Stop before you drag us into World War III. Stop. Only the European powers, if they have the courage and determination to reassert their national independence, can restrain the United States without war. I dare to hope that they will take their courage in their two hands and act before it is too late. Time is running out.

April 12, 2017 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | France, New York Times, Syria, United States | Leave a comment

The Gassing Game in Syria

By Chandra Muzaffar | CounterPunch | April 11, 2017

The use of chemical weapons in Sheikhun, in the Idlib province of Syria on 4th April 2017 was a heinous act. The world has rightly condemned it.

Because it was so cruel and callous, it is vital that the truth about the attack is established as soon as possible. The United States of America and a number of its allies are certain that the attack was planned and executed by the Syrian government. 86 people, including 27 children, were killed in the carnage. The US Ambassador to the UN has shown some heart-rending images of some of the children who died from the chemical gas attack.

The Syrian authorities have denied categorically that they were responsible for the tragedy. They claim that a warehouse containing toxic materials may have been hit in the course of the Syrian army’s operations in the area thus releasing lethal gas and causing so many deaths.

Given these conflicting accounts, an independent international inquiry should be conducted to determine what really happened on the 4th of April. The members of the panel should comprise credible experts who are not citizens of any of the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council. The UN Secretary-General should appoint the panel.

It is only after the panel’s findings are made public that action should be taken under the provisions of the UN Charter. By firing a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase on the 7th of April, the US has not only violated international law but has also committed aggression against a sovereign state. The US’s unilateral action has worsened the conflict in Syria.

Establishing the truth about the chemical gas episode is far more important than flexing one’s military muscle. To start with, how could the Syrian army have deployed chemical weapons when a UN affiliated body, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed in June 2014 that Syria had complied with a Security Council resolution to destroy its entire stockpile of chemical weapons ?

Besides, it defies logic that the Syrian government that has regained control over almost all the major cities in the country and is clearly winning the war against the militants who are being backed by regional and Western actors should deliberately choose to gas innocent children — an action which it knows would provoke the wrath of the whole world.

A brief survey of gas attacks in Syria in the last five years would convince us that it just does not make sense for the government to consciously plan the 4th April episode. Take the infamous Ghouta sarin gas attack of August 2013. The centres of power in the West and in West Asia North Africa (WANA) opposed to Bashar al-Assad through their media channels immediately labelled the Syrian authorities as the culprit and crucified them. But the highly respected American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, through meticulous analysis revealed that the attack was actually the work of a militant group carried out with the connivance of elements in the Turkish power structure.

The Houla massacre of 25 May 2012 was another example of a gas attack that finger-pointed the Bashar government. A picture of a large number of dead children “wrapped in white shrouds with a child jumping over one of them” was offered as proof of Bashar’s brutality. The picture was actually from the war in Iraq in 2003. The photographer himself, Marco Di Lauro, came out in the open to expose the fabrication. In fact according to the German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the massacre was “committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were members of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad.” There was also the case of militants gathering Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in the Khalidya neighbourhood in Homs, blowing it up with dynamite and then putting the blame upon the Syrian army. Numerous other instances of militants committing terrible atrocities but giving the impression that the Syrian army or its allies — Iranian revolutionary guards or Hezbollah fighters or Russian soldiers — were responsible have been documented by journalists and commentators.

Of all the lies and deceptions of this sort in recent memory the most outrageous would the Anglo-American allegation about Saddam Hussein’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” which was the fig-leaf used to camouflage their invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. The Bolivian Ambassador to the UN, Sacha Llorenti, reminded the Security Council of this monstrous lie at its meeting on the 7th of April and warned the world that “After this (Iraqi) invasion there were 1 million deaths and it launched a series of atrocities in that region. Could we talk about ISIS if that invasion had not taken place? Could we be talking about the series of horrendous attacks in various parts of the world had that invasion, this illegal invasion not taken place?”

Lies, manipulation of facts and false-flag operations all serve an overriding goal which is to protect and perpetuate US hegemonic power and the interests of its allies. In Iraq and Syria it is only too obvious that the aim is to secure hegemony through regime-change. Indeed, the US elite, at the behest of Israel, have been seeking to oust Bashar al-Assad for the good part of the last 15 years. For different reasons, the rulers of London and Paris, and those at the helm in Riyadh, Doha and Ankara also want to get rid of Bashar. A convergence of motives explains why these elites have been funding, training, arming and channeling intelligence to militants in Syria from various parts of the world who have sometimes resorted to the most barbaric methods in pursuit of their zealous drive to seize power.

There is perhaps yet another reason — apart from regime change — why some vested interests in Washington have decided to exploit the 4th April gas attack. These interests in the military, the intelligence community, the media, think-tanks, within lobbies and among legislators, are opposed to any rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. Perpetuating an adversarial relationship between the two is integral to their agenda of ensuring that the US remains the world’s sole dominant power. They sense that the new US President, Donald Trump, may try to build a bridge to Russia’s Vladimir Putin which is why they are manipulating the issue of the latter’s alleged attempt to influence the recent US Presidential Election. The suspicion and distrust engendered by this issue has now been aggravated by the US missile attack.

US-Russia ties are not the only issue adversely impacted by the US’s 7th April bombardment. If the US escalates its military involvement, it will have far-reaching consequences for the on-going conflict in Syria, politics in WANA and global peace in general.

April 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | ISIS, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UK, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Fake News AP article claims “anonymous” source says Russia “knew in advance about Syria chemical attack”

By Alex Christoforou | The Duran | April 11, 2017

More fake news from the AP. Easy to spot, meant to push the war in Syria agenda further.

The recipe for this AP fake news propaganda is simple to call out…

First paragraph says US made a “preliminary conclusion”…but has no proof.
Fourth paragraph says “the official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on intelligence matters.”
The official “demanded anonymity.”
The official could not provide details for the military and intelligence information.
The article makes the claim, as fact, that Syria or Russia is behind the chemical attack, with no investigation ever taking place. Judge and jury….and sentence is already handed down.
Last paragraphs bring in the military official to add weight to the story (Col. John J. Thomas).

Classic AP propaganda, and complete fake news.

The AP story has already been dismissed by the White House. Via The Hill…

The Associated Press reported Monday that the United States determined that Russia knew about last week’s chemical attack on a town in Syria beforehand.

But in a Monday evening statement, a senior administration official disputed that report.

“At this time, there is no U.S. Intelligence Community consensus that Russia had foreknowledge of the Syrian chemical attack,” the official said.

This has not stopped all major western mainstream media outlets from disseminating this AP fake news post.

Via Google News Search…

John McCain, itching for war with Syria and Russia was also quick to jump on the AP fake news (perhaps he was tipped off in advance, given the speed of his response). Via ABC news…

U.S. Senator John McCain accused Russia on Monday of having cooperated with Syrian government forces in a chemical weapons attack that has killed more than 80 people, including more than a dozen children.

The Republican senator said at a press conference in Belgrade that he believes “the Russians knew about chemical weapons because they were operating exactly from the same base.”

He said the U.S. launched cruise missile strikes last week against the Syrian base “in a response of a chemical attack.”

“I hope that this behavior by Syria, in what clearly is cooperation with Russia and Syria together, will never happen again,” he said.

McCain said the U.S. should take out Syria’s air force as part of stopping Syrian President Bashar Assad from repeating such attacks in the future.

“I would prevent Bashar Assad from flying from his airfields if he doesn’t renounce the use of these weapons,” the former American airman said. “The United States should first tell Russia that this kind of a war crime is unacceptable in the world today.”

Here is the dangerous propaganda piece published by the AP…

The United States has made a preliminary conclusion that Russia knew in advance of Syria’s chemical weapons attack last week, but has no proof of Moscow’s involvement, a senior U.S. official said Monday.

The official said that a drone operated by Russians was flying over a hospital as victims of the attack were rushing to get treatment. Hours after the drone left, a Russian-made fighter jet bombed the hospital in what American officials believe was an attempt to cover up the usage of chemical weapons.

The U.S. official said the presence of the surveillance drone over the hospital couldn’t have been a coincidence, and that Russia must have known the chemical weapons attack was coming and that victims were seeking treatment.

The official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on intelligence matters and demanded anonymity, didn’t give precise timing for when the drone was in the area, where more than 80 people were killed. The official also didn’t provide details for the military and intelligence information that form the basis of what the Pentagon now believes.

Another U.S. official cautioned that no final American determination has been made that Russia knew ahead of time that chemical weapons would be used. That official wasn’t authorized to speak about internal administration deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The allegation of Russian foreknowledge is grave, even by the standards of the currently dismal U.S.-Russian relations.

Although Russia has steadfastly supported Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, and they’ve coordinated military attacks together, Washington has never previously asserted that Moscow was complicit in any attack that involved the gassing of innocent civilians, including children. The former Cold War foes even worked together in 2013 to remove and destroy more than 1,300 tons of Syrian chemical weapons and agents.

Until Monday, U.S. officials had said they weren’t sure whether Russia or Syria operated the drone. The official said the U.S. is now convinced Russia controlled the drone. The official said it still isn’t clear who was flying the jet that bombed the hospital, because the Syrians also fly Russian-made aircraft.

U.S. officials previously have said Russians routinely work with Syrians at the Shayrat air base where the attack is supposed to have originated. U.S. officials say the chemical weapons were stored there and that those elements add to the conclusion that Russia was involved.

Last Thursday 59 Tomahawk missiles were fired on the government-controlled base in the United States’ first direct military action against Assad’s forces.

The U.S. has been focusing its military action in Syria on defeating the Islamic State group.

On Monday, Col. John J. Thomas, a U.S. military spokesman, said the U.S. has taken extra defensive precautions in Syria in case of possible retaliation against American forces for the cruise missile attack.

Thomas told reporters at the Pentagon that the increased emphasis on defensive measures to protect U.S. troops on the ground in Syria led to a slight and temporary decline in offensive U.S. airstrikes against IS in Syria.

There has been no Syrian retaliation so far for the cruise missile attack, which destroyed or rendered inoperable more than 20 Syria air force planes, he said.

Thomas said the U.S. intends to return to full offensive air operations against IS as soon as possible.

April 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Russia, Syria, United States | Leave a comment

Neocons Have Trump on His Knees

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | April 10, 2017

After slapping Donald Trump around for several months to make him surrender his hopes for a more cooperative relationship with Russia, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist allies are now telling the battered President what he must do next: escalate war in the Middle East and ratchet up tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.

Star neocon Robert Kagan spelled out Trump’s future assignments in a column on Sunday in The Washington Post, starting out by patting the chastened President on the head for his decision to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles at an airstrip in Syria supposedly in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack blamed on the Syrian government (although no serious investigation was even conducted).

Trump earned widespread plaudits for his decisive action and his heart-on-the-sleeve humanitarianism as his voice filled with emotion citing the chemical-weapons deaths on April 4 of “small children and even beautiful little babies.” The U.S. media then helpfully played down reports from Syria that Trump’s April 6 retaliatory missile strike had killed about 15 people, including nine civilians, four of whom were children.

However, for Kagan, the missile strike was only a good start. An advocate for “regime change” in Syria and a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century which pushed for the Iraq War, Kagan praised Trump “for doing what the Obama administration refused to do,” i.e. involve the U.S. military directly in attacks on the Syrian government.

“But,” Kagan added, “Thursday’s action needs to be just the opening salvo in a broader campaign not only to protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the Bashar al-Assad regime but also to reverse the downward spiral of U.S. power and influence in the Middle East and throughout the world. A single missile strike unfortunately cannot undo the damage done by the Obama administration’s policies over the past six years.”

Kagan continued: “Trump was not wrong to blame the dire situation in Syria on President Barack Obama. The world would be a different place today if Obama had carried out his threat to attack Syria when Assad crossed the famous ‘red line’ in the summer of 2013. The bad agreement that then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry struck with Russia not only failed to get rid of Syria’s stock of chemical weapons and allowed the Assad regime to drop barrel bombs and employ widespread torture against civilian men, women and children. It also invited a full-scale Russian intervention in the fall of 2015, which saved the Assad regime from possible collapse.”

A Seasoned Propagandist

Kagan, who cut his teeth in the Reagan administration running a State Department propaganda shop on Central America, has never been particularly interested in nuance or truth, so he wouldn’t care that Obama pulled back from attacking Syria in summer 2013, in part, because his intelligence advisers told him they lacked proof that Assad was responsible for a mysterious sarin attack. (Since then, the evidence has indicated that the attack was likely a provocation by Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate with help from Turkish intelligence.)

But groupthinks die hard – and pretty much every Important Person in Official Washington just knows that Assad did carry out that sarin attack, just like they all knew that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was hiding WMDs in 2003. So, it follows in a kind of twisted logical way that they would build off the fake history regarding the 2013 Syria-sarin case and apply it to the new groupthink that Assad has carried out this latest attack, too. Serious fact-finding investigations are not needed; everyone just “knows.”

But Kagan is already looking ahead. Having pocketed Trump’s capitulation last week on Syria, Kagan has shifted his sights onto the much juicier targets of Russia and Iran.

“Russia has … greatly expanded its military presence in the eastern Mediterranean,” Kagan wrote. “Obama and Kerry spent four years panting after this partnership, but Russia has been a partner the way the mafia is when it presses in on your sporting goods business. Thanks to Obama’s policies, Russia has increasingly supplanted the United States as a major power broker in the region. Even U.S. allies such as Turkey, Egypt and Israel look increasingly to Moscow as a significant regional player.

“Obama’s policies also made possible an unprecedented expansion of Iran’s power and influence. … If you add the devastating impact of massive Syrian refugee flows on European democracies, Obama’s policies have not only allowed the deaths of almost a half-million Syrians but also have significantly weakened America’s global position and the health and coherence of the West.”

Trump’s Probation

Yes, all that was Obama’s fault for not invading Syria with a couple of hundred thousand U.S. troops because that’s what would have been required to achieve Kagan’s “regime change” goal in Syria. And there’s no reason to think that the Syrian invasion would have been any less bloody than the bloody Kagan-advocated invasion of Iraq. But Kagan and the neocons never take responsibility for their various bloodbaths. It’s always someone else’s fault.

And now Kagan is telling Trump that there is still much he must do to earn his way back into the good graces of the neocons.

Kagan continued, “Trump, of course, greatly exacerbated these problems during his campaign, with all the strong rhetoric aimed at allies. Now he has taken an important first step in repairing the damage, but this will not be the end of the story. America’s adversaries are not going to be convinced by one missile strike that the United States is back in the business of projecting power to defend its interests and the world order. …

“The testing of Trump’s resolve actually begins now. If the United States backs down in the face of these challenges, the missile strike, though a worthy action in itself, may end up reinforcing the world’s impression that the United States does not have the stomach for confrontation.”

And confrontation is surely what Kagan has in mind, adding:

“Instead of being a one-time event, the missile strike needs to be the opening move in a comprehensive political, diplomatic and military strategy to rebalance the situation in Syria in America’s favor. That means reviving some of those proposals that Obama rejected over the past four years: a no-fly zone to protect Syrian civilians, the grounding of the Syrian air force, and the effective arming and training of the moderate opposition, all aimed at an eventual political settlement that can bring the Syrian civil war, and therefore the Assad regime, to an end.

“The United States’ commitment to such a course will have to be clear enough to deter the Russians from attempting to disrupt it. This in turn will require moving sufficient military assets to the region so that neither Russia nor Iran will be tempted to escalate the conflict to a crisis, and to be sure that American forces will be ready if they do. …

“Let’s hope that the Trump administration is prepared for the next move. If it is, then there is a real chance of reversing the course of global retreat that Obama began. A strong U.S. response in Syria would make it clear to the likes of Putin, Xi Jinping, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Kim Jong Un that the days of American passivity are over.”

On His Knees

To put this message in the crude terms that President Trump might understand, now that the neocons have forced him to his knees, they are demanding that he open his mouth. They will not be satisfied with anything short of a massive U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and a full-scale confrontation with Russia (and perhaps China).

This sort of belligerence is what the neocons and liberal hawks had expected from Hillary Clinton, whom Kagan had endorsed. Some sources claim that a President Hillary Clinton planned to appoint Kagan’s neocon wife, Victoria Nuland, as Secretary of State.

As Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs under Obama, Nuland oversaw the U.S.-backed putsch that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, replacing him with a fiercely anti-Russian regime, the move that touched off civil war in Ukraine and sparked the New Cold War between the U.S. and Russia. [For more on Kagan clan, see Consortiumnews.com’s “A Family Business of Perpetual War.”]

Clinton’s defeat was a stunning setback but the neocons never give up. They are both well-organized and well-funded, dominating Official Washington’s think tanks and media outlets, sharing some power with their junior partners, the liberal interventionists, who differ mostly in the rationales cited for invading other countries. (The neocons mostly talk about global power and democracy promotion, while the liberal hawks emphasize “human rights.”)

In dealing with the narcissistic and insecure Trump, the neocons and liberal hawks conducted what amounted to a clever psychological operation. They rallied mainstream media personalities and Democrats horrified at Trump’s victory. In particular, Democrats and their angry base were looking for any reason to hold out hope for Trump’s impeachment. Hyping alleged Russian “meddling” in the election became the argument of choice.

Night after night, MSNBC and other networks competed in their Russia-bashing to boost ratings among Trump-hating Democrats. Meanwhile, Democratic politicians, such as Rep. Adam Schiff of California, saw the Russia-gate hearings as a ticket to national glory. And professional Democratic strategists could evade their responsibility for running a dismal presidential campaign by shifting the blame to the Russians.

However, besides creating a convenient excuse for Clinton’s defeat, the anti-Russian hysteria blocked Trump and his team from any move that they might try to make regarding avoidance of a costly and dangerous New Cold War. The Russia-hating frenzy reached such extremes that it paralyzed the formulation of any coherent Trump foreign policy.

Now, with the neocons regaining influence on the National Security Council via NSC adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster, a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus, the neocon holding action against the New Détente has shifted into an offensive to expand the hot war in Syria and intensify the Cold War with Russia. As Kagan recognized, Trump’s hasty decision to fire off missiles was a key turning point in the reassertion of neocon/liberal-hawk dominance over U.S. foreign policy.

It’s also suddenly clear how thoroughly liberal Democrats were taken for a ride on the war train by getting them to blame Russia for Hillary Clinton’s defeat. The liberals (and even many progressives) hated Trump so much that they let themselves be used in the service of neocon/liberal-hawk endless war policies. Now, it may be too late to turn the train around.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

April 10, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | Iran, Middle East, Robert Kagan, Russia, Syria, United States, Washington Post | Leave a comment

WaPo Urges Aggression and Regime Change in Syria

By Stephen Lendman | April 9, 2017

The neocon Washington Post is a virtual CIA house organ. Its reporting and opinions reflect Langley’s diabolical agenda.

Extremist Robert Kagan co-founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) – now called the Foreign Policy Institute (FPI), its sinister agenda unchanged, promoting endless wars of aggression for unchallenged US global dominance.

In a WaPo opinion piece, he called for more aggression on Syria as part of US “military strategy to rebalance the situation in (the country) in America’s favor.”

He urged establishing a no-fly zone, grounding Syria’s air force, arming anti-government terrorists more than already, and ousting Assad – a virtual declaration of war on Russia if these policies are instituted.

Kagan: “The United States’ commitment to such a course will have to be clear enough to deter the Russians from attempting to disrupt it.”

“This in turn will require moving sufficient military assets to the region so that neither Russia nor Iran will be tempted to escalate the conflict to a crisis, and to be sure that American forces will be ready if they do.”

His worldview reflects madness. He urged escalated war on Syria to show Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang “that the days of American passivity are over.”

He called Trump’s Friday aggression “a critical first step,” an “opening salvo in a broader campaign” to oust Assad and reassert “US power and influence in the Middle East and throughout the world.”

“A single missile strike” only matters if followed by escalated war, he maintains.

He lied claiming “thousands of Russian forces operate throughout Syria, not (against ISIS), against the civilian population and the US-backed moderate opposition.”

“… Russia has increasingly supplanted the United States as a major power broker in the region.”

Fact: All anti-government forces are US-supported terrorists. No moderates exist.

Fact: Limited numbers of Russian personnel are in Syria, mostly related to its anti-terrorist military operations – greatly helping, not harming civilians.

Fact: America and Israel remain the dominant regional powers. Russia has cooperative relations with various Middle East nations.

Kagan is part of Washington’s lunatic fringe. His wife, Victoria Nuland, orchestrated regime change in Ukraine, replacing democratic governance with illegitimate Nazi putschists.

WaPo editors called Trump’s aggression “right as a matter of morality.”

They urged him to assert US leadership forcefully – wanting greater aggression than already.

Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.

April 10, 2017 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | CIA, Robert Kagan, Syria, United States, Washington Post | Leave a comment

Media Promote Baseless Assertions By Government Officials Of Russian Interference As Facts

By Matt Peppe | Just the Facts | April 9, 2017

The headline of a New York Times article published April 6, “C.I.A. Had Evidence of Russian Effort to Help Trump Earlier Than Believed,” misleadingly implies not only that there was an effort by the Russian government to help Donald Trump win the American presidential election but that it is a settled fact that the CIA was in possession of hard evidence to that effect. The text of the piece does nothing to substantiate either claim. There is not one mention in the 33 paragraphs that follow about the purported evidence. As has been true for months, no evidence of any actual Russian actions is presented – only unfounded assertions that such evidence exists. But the allegations have been repeated over and over so many times over the course of so many months that they have become established fact, as saying something often enough apparently makes it true.

Eric Lichtblau, the reporter whose byline appears on the piece, received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on illegal and unconstitutional warrantless surveillance of Americans inside the United States by intelligence agencies during the George W. Bush administration. One would expect a journalist with such a history to be extra skeptical of government sources, but that is not the case. Lichtblau appears not to have done any due diligence at all. The article does little more than transcribe anonymous rumors, turning the New York Times into a conduit for intelligence officials to disseminate their narrative to the public.

The Times’ reports on Bush’s illegal spying campaign, first released in December 2005, are often presented as an example of the mainstream media practicing its intended role as the Fourth Estate in American society by acting in the public interest to hold government accountable for overreach and abuse. In reality, the warrantless spying story fits perfectly within the propaganda model of media developed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. The propaganda model recognizes that media organizations will – with varying degrees of frequency – produce critical coverage of government actions. But their criticisms are framed as examples of rogue actors or misguided policies that are part of a political system that is fundamentally benevolent, despite mistakes and abuses that represent exceptions to the rule.

This overarching worldview is evidenced by Lichtblau’s deference to the fact-free rumors spread by anonymous intelligence officials. Having reported first hand about the CIA’s flagrant disregard for the constitution, Lichtblau would logically be expected to reflexively question the motives of Agency officials when they feed him information off the record. Instead, he takes for granted that they are being honest.

“The briefings indicate that intelligence officials had evidence of Russia’s intentions to help Mr. Trump much earlier in the presidential campaign than previously thought,” Lichtblau writes.

This logical fallacy assumes that if members of the CIA told something to Congress, then it must be true. Alternatively, the briefings could indicate that intelligence officials stirred up wild fantasies about foreign interference in the elections as a way of themselves intervening in the election much earlier in the campaign than previously thought.

A journalist wouldn’t take his sources at face value unless he internalized the belief that they had benevolent motives and were only interested in ensuring the public learned the truth. It doesn’t even occur to him that they might have their own agenda, and were manipulating him by leaking information selectively to advance that agenda. Naturally, these are the motives of foreign intelligence agents – like the Russians – but not ours. Because U.S. intelligence agents are different, naturally; they have only noble motives.

This type of thinking requires a special penchant for ignoring and apologizing for the CIA’s long history of misdeeds, from playing an indispensable role in overthrowing the elected governments of Guatemala, Iran and Chile; to meddling in the elections of more than 30 sovereign nations; organizing and operating death squads and torture chambers in South Vietnam; creating and sponsoring a terrorist army led by former security officials from the ousted military dictatorship in Nicaragua, looking the other way as the terrorists obtained funding for weapons by flooding the streets of Los Angeles and other American cities with crack cocaine.

Even leaving aside the CIA’s history from more than a few decades ago, during the last 15 years alone the CIA has carried out illegal programs of kidnapping, torture and assassination. The CIA even went as far as hacking into the computers of Senate investigators – who nominally oversee them – while they were investigating the crimes. This was widely reported and even acknowledged by the Agency themselves.

When describing Trump’s assertion that he was wiretapped by Obama, Lichtblau notes that Trump made the claim “with no evidence.” One has to wonder why, then, he chooses to report completely unsubstantiated assertions from the CIA without qualifying them with the same caveat.

One could speculate that the CIA, in the absence of any real evidence of any Russian activities relating to the U.S. election, is using Lichtblau and the Times to launder their unfounded rumors. Instead of producing evidence, officials merely assert (off the record, of course, without explanation of why they refuse to attach their names to their assertions) that they have evidence. The press accepts these claims at face value without questioning their veracity, and gives them credibility by printing them as if there could be no doubt they are true.

In this way, intelligence officials are able to create a narrative stamped by the paper of record as historical fact based on nothing more than their own word. When government officials can shape the political discourse by substituting their own alternate reality for objective facts, there is no way a democracy can function. The media serve merely as an extension of government while simultaneously providing the facade of independence and oversight.

The picture that corporate media paints of the world would indeed be much different if journalists demonstrated the same skepticism toward their own government that they do without fail towards official enemies. And it would be much more difficult for the government to carry out their perilous game of demonizing foreign adversaries and leading the public towards a reckless, needless and possibly apocalyptic military confrontation based on grievances that have been manufactured out of whole cloth.

April 10, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | CIA, Eric Lichtblau, New York Times, United States | Leave a comment

Turkey’s role in the Idlib chemical attack needs to be probed

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | April 10, 2017

Turkey is, in principle, uniquely placed to call for an independent investigation into the chemical attack in the north-western Syrian province of Idlib on April 4. Idlib borders Turkey and it is well-known that extremist groups (Al-Qaeda affiliates) controlling the province have enjoyed covert support from Turkish intelligence, which has trained them, equipped them and guided them in the past in a joint enterprise with the CIA and the US’ Gulf Arab allies.

Yet, curiously, President Recep Erdogan shies away from demanding an independent inquiry. Instead, he insists, “We have the radar information and we have the forensic reports. Some say Syria does not have chemical weapons. Of course it does. It’s clear which planes dropped it.” Erdogan wants to close the file and move on. He lost no time to extend enthusiastic support for the US missile attack in Syria on April 6 and is beseeching President Donald Trump to revive the “regime change” agenda in Syria. Why such bizarre behavior?

Erdogan’s proactivism in real time has only one explanation – the chemical attack in Idlib was in reality planned with the knowledge of Turkish intelligence. Erdogan has everything to lose if this truth comes out.

Turkey stood to gain by precipitating a situation in Syria that would willy-nilly lead to some form of American intervention. (Indeed, CIA input was the basis of Trump’s decision to order the missile attack in Syria, which of course has severely impacted US-Russia relations.) On the other hand, the Idlib attack was just what suited Trump too to generate a new conversation in Washington that took the heat off him over his alleged links to Russia.

All three protagonists gained out of this cynical game – Erdogan, the “cold warriors” in the CIA and the Russophobes in the Washington establishment, and the beleagured American president himself.

But Erdogan stands most to gain. He overnight hyped up the Syrian situation to burnish his image as the tallest Sunni Islamist leader in Muslim Middle East – Idlib is a Sunni province – just a week ahead of the crucial Turkish referendum on April 16 that votes on the creation of a presidency with executive powers.

Two, Erdogan has brought about a discord between US and Russia, which creates space for Turkey to carry on with its military operations in northern Syria and consolidate its occupation of large tracts of Syrian territory.

Three, Russia and Iran may come under pressure to postpone the planned military offensive on Idlib to liberate the region from al-Qaeda. (Idlib is the only Syrian province remaining still under the control of extremist groups.)

And, four, Erdogan’s persistent demand for creation of “safe zones” inside territory as well as “no-fly zone” – both of which would boost a permanent Turkish military presence inside Syria – has gained a fresh lease of life. Indeed, that would also be the kiss of death for Kurdish ambitions to create an autonomous homeland (“Rojava”) in northern Syria.

Suffice it to say, Turkey’s territorial ambitions over Syria (to reclaim Ottoman territories which it lost in the 1922 settlement) took a leap forward this past week.

An international investigation will help uncover Turkey’s role in the chemical attacks in Idlib. However, alas, the CIA is unlikely to let that happen because what happened in Idlib also happens to be a back-to-back enterprise with Turkish intelligence. Erdogan and the folks in Langley are swimming in the very same river of blood. So long as such cynical games continue, the prospects of Syrian settlement will remain bleak.

Turkish policies threaten regional security in the Middle East as well as Europe. By Erdogan’s reckoning, Europe is inhabited by Nazis, and the Middle East’s future lies with political Islam. Sadly enough, Turkey has once again become the “sick man of Europe”.

Read a chilling Reuters report, here, detailing that the suicide bomber involved in the recent subway terrorist attack in St Petersburg had travelled to Turkey and Syria.

April 10, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | CIA, Middle East, Syria, Turkey, United States | Leave a comment

Fake news story in mainstream AND alt-media slanders Russia and Iran

By Adam Garrie | The Duran | April 9, 2017

A fake news story has been circulating on both mainstream media and alt-media saying that Russia and Iran have issued a joint threat to ‘use force’ in the event of the US targeting Syrian forces again. It was also reported that the issue was quoted as being a ‘red line’, a term generally used by the United States.

This blatantly false story was picked up by the following media outlets

The Sunday Express and Zero Hedge both cite something called Ilam al Harbi media as the source of information for the story.

A quick English language Google search for ‘Ilam al Harbi’ comes up with several articles from Yemen Press, none of which lead to a story about the Putin/Rouhani phone call or anything else concerning Russia/Iranian responses to the US attack on Syria.

Additionally there is a Saudi based telecom company called al-Harbi whose website can be found here. It is not a news website in any way shape or form.

A report from the usually reliable Al-Masdar news has produced an Arabic language document purportedly from a joint military command centre used by Russia, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. Although, Iran, Russia and Syria do share intelligence and cooperate in the Syrian war against terrorism, the existence of the specific ‘joint command centre’ in question, seems to be inaccurate if not entirely fabricated in this context.

In all likelihood, the document is a forgery produced by those who seek to spread false stories about the strategy of Russia, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. The second most likely scenario is that the document was produced by middle or low ranking military personnel who do not speak for any of the aforementioned parties.

Because the document is in Arabic, it is unlikely to have originated in either Russia or Iran.

The actual content of the well documented phone call between the Russian and Iranian Presidents entirely contradicts the dubious document and is totally in line with official and de-facto Russian and Iranian policy.

Vladimir Putin and Hassan Rouhani pledged to continue support for the Syrian government in its war against terrorism. The two leaders additionally pledged to cooperate further on issues of regional stability.

They also called for an investigation into the chemical attack which America used as the proximate cause of the missile strike on Syria.

Further information on the phone conversation can be found in the original report from The Duran.

Whoever has spread this fake news clearly wants to paint Russia and Iran as violent, unhinged and destabilising as the United States.

The reality is in fact almost the complete opposite of what is being reported.

Fake news is being used to try to increase tensions, this is not only irresponsible but it is dangerous, as dangerous as the lies upon which the US attack was based.

April 9, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, Syria | Leave a comment

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The Fiction of the Jewish History in Palestine

By Hasan Afif El-Hasan | The Palestine Chronicle | April 8, 2011

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told NNC Pierce Morgan on March 18, 2011 that he might agree to a Palestinian state through negotiations. And he added, “We will make territorial concessions although it is very painful to do that in our ancestral land.” Netanyahu was not talking about Poland where his ancestors lived. He was talking about Palestine where generations of its indigenous population ancestors lived, cultivated the land and are buried.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Zionism created a new Jewish identity of blood and soil. To mobilize their followers and supporters and appeal to their emotions, the Zionists created myths. Zionism started as a tribal religion without god, but in order to fulfill its function as a unifying force, Zionism required external religious and race symbols, not inner content. Its leaders regarded metaphysical religious belief and purity of race as having value in itself. They created a divine paradisiacal state of merger with the gods. Despite his non-religious ideology, Herzl’s writings were replete with religious references. The Jews should settle in Palestine because, in his words, “the Temple will be visible from long distance, for it is only our ancient faith that has kept us together”.

The Zionists and their supporters have invested tremendous financial and scholarly resources to work within the Hebrew Bible historical narratives to affirm the links between the intrusive Zionist population and the ancient Israelite past, and by doing so assert the right of that population to the land. The political end-game shaped the investigation and the outcome. Tracing the roots of Israel’s ethnic state in biblical antiquity is effectively to silence the indigenous Palestinian claim to the past and therefore to the land. The Biblical scholarship employs a bewildering array of terms for the region: “the Holy Land”, “the Land of the Bible”, “Eretz Israel”, “the Land of Israel”, or “Judah and Samaria.” To the casual reader these names appear interchangeable, but they all imply connection to ancient Israel.

Biblical narratives or poems that cannot be supported by archeology and common sense are treated by the Zionists and their supporters as historical language. … continue

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By Eric Walberg | American Herald Tribune | April 9, 2017

«Sentence first, verdict afterwards», cries out the MSM Queen of Hearts: «Off with his head!»

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