Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Democrat Tulsi Gabbard fends off ‘fake news’ accusations of Russian support

RT | May 19, 2019

Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard’s anti-war stance has seen her slammed in the media for over-friendliness to Moscow. After this week’s hit piece the Hawaiian Congresswoman called these accusations “fake news.”

Speaking to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Gabbard repeated several of her core foreign policy messages: Regime change operations are “counterproductive and wasteful,” and escalating military tension with Russia and China is a “dangerous” game for the US.

A combat veteran and foreign-policy focused candidate, Gabbard launched her presidential campaign in January. From the outset she was lambasted by both parties and the mainstream media for meeting with Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad, and was branded a “Putin puppet” for suggesting that the US improve relations with Russia, at a time when most of her party was consumed with ‘Russiagate’ hysteria.

Stephanopoulos kept the theme going on Sunday, pressing Gabbard on a recent Daily Beast article accusing her campaign of taking a shocking THREE donations from “Putin apologists,” and one from actress Susan Sarandon – who committed the mortal sin of supporting the Green Party’s Jill Stein in her 2016 election bid, and not Hillary Clinton, as the Hollywood consensus demanded.

Save for one returned contribution from a businessman involved in some unlicensed transactions, no donation mentioned by the Daily Beast amounted to more than $1,000.

“It’s unfortunate you’re citing that article, George, because it’s a whole lot of fake news,” Gabbard responded. “What’s in the best interest of national security? Keeping American people safe.”

“And what I’m pointing out consistently, time and time again, is our continued wasteful regime change wars have been counterproductive to the interests of the American people.”

The latest debacle was ridiculed by commentators on Twitter. Independent journalist Ben Norton called the Daily Beast’s article “embarrassingly bad,” while The Hill’s Krystal Ball blasted the Daily Beast’s reporters for searching through 65,000 donors to find “3 with views that fit their pre-conceived narrative.”

Gabbard is currently polling at around one percent, in a crowded field of 24 Democratic candidates. As the mainstream media continues to fixate on her supposed sympathies for the Kremlin, the Hawaiian has stuck to her guns. On Thursday, Gabbard warned President Donald Trump against “launching a very stupid and costly war with Iran,” and called out “war hawks in his administration” like National Security Advisor John Bolton, for leading the US towards another conflict in the Middle East.

May 19, 2019 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

How Russiagate replaced Analysis of the 2016 Election

By Rick Sterling | Dissident Voice | May 19, 2019

An honest and accurate analysis of the 2016 election is not just an academic exercise. It is very relevant to the current election campaign. Yet over the past two years, Russiagate has dominated media and political debate and largely replaced a serious analysis of the factors leading to Trump’s victory. The public has been flooded with the various elements of the story that Russia intervened and Trump colluded with them. The latter accusation was negated by the Mueller Report but elements of the Democratic Party and media refuse to move on. Now it’s the lofty but vague accusations of “obstruction of justice” along with renewed dirt digging. To some it is a “constitutional crisis”, but to many it looks like more partisan fighting.

Russiagate has distracted from pressing issues

Russiagate has distracted attention and energy away from crucial and pressing issues such as income inequality, the housing and homeless crisis, inadequate healthcare, militarized police, over-priced college education, impossible student loans and deteriorating infrastructure. The tax structure was changed to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations with little opposition. The Trump administration has undermined environmental laws, civil rights, national parks and women’s equality while directing ever more money to military contractors. Working class Americans are struggling with rising living costs, low wages, student debt, and racism. They constitute the bulk of the military which is spread all over the world, sustaining continuing occupations in war zones including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa. While all this has been going on, the Democratic establishment and much of the media have been focused on Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and related issues.

Immediately after the 2016 Election

In the immediate wake of the 2016 election there was some forthright analysis. Bernie Sanders said, “What Trump did very effectively is tap the angst and the anger and the hurt and pain that millions of working class people are feeling. What he said is, ‘I Donald Trump am going to be a champion of the working class… I know you are working longer hours for lower wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can’t afford childcare, can’t afford to send your kids to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.’ … What you have is a guy who utilized the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that. But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from.”

Days after the election, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Hillary Clinton Lost. Bernie Sanders could have won. We chose the wrong candidate.” The author analyzed the results saying, “Donald Trump’s stunning victory is less surprising when we remember a simple fact: Hillary Clinton is a deeply unpopular politician.” The writer analyzed why Sanders would have prevailed against Trump and predicted “there will be years of recriminations.”

Russiagate replaced Recrimination

But instead of analysis, the media and Democrats have emphasized foreign interference. There is an element of self-interest in this narrative. As reported in “Russian Roulette” (p127), when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic National Party emails in June 2016, they “brought in outside consultants to plot a PR strategy for handling the news of the hack … the story would advance a narrative that benefited the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election, presumably to assist Trump.”

After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the communication team “to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up and up …. they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

This narrative has been remarkably effective in supplanting critical review of the election.

One Year After the Election

The Center for American Progress (CAP) was founded by John Podesta and is closely aligned with the Democratic Party. In November 2017 they produced an analysis titled  “Voter Trends in 2016: A Final Examination“. Interestingly, there is not a single reference to Russia. Key conclusions are that “it is critical for Democrats to attract more support from the white non-college-educated voting bloc” and “Democrats must go beyond the ‘identity politics’ versus ‘economic populism’ debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class coalition …” It suggests that Wall Street has the same interests as Main Street and the working class.

A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis. They did this because “the (Democratic) party’s national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of the key factors that led to electoral disaster.” The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. It includes recommendations to end the party’s undemocratic practices, expand voting rights and counter voter suppression. The report contains details and specific recommendations lacking in the CAP report. It includes an overall analysis which says “The Democratic Party should disentangle itself – ideologically and financially – from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests that put profits ahead of public needs.”

Two Years After the Election

In October 2018, the progressive team produced a follow-up report titled “Autopsy: One Year Later“.  It says, “The Democratic Party has implemented modest reforms, but corporate power continues to dominate the party.”

In a recent phone interview, the editor of that report, Norman Solomon, said it appears some in the Democratic Party establishment would rather lose the next election to Republicans than give up control of the party.

What really happened in 2016?

Beyond the initial critiques and “Autopsy” research, there has been little discussion, debate or lessons learned about the 2016 election. Politics has been dominated by Russiagate.

Why did so many working class voters switch from Obama to Trump? A major reason is because Hillary Clinton is associated with Wall Street and the economic policies of her husband President Bill Clinton. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), promoted by Bill Clinton, resulted in huge decline in manufacturing jobs in swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of course, this would influence their thinking and votes. Hillary Clinton’s support for the Trans Pacific Partnership was another indication of her policies.

What about the low turnout from the African American community? Again, the lack of enthusiasm is rooted in objective reality. Hillary Clinton is associated with “welfare reform” promoted by her husband. According to this study from the University of Michigan, “As of the beginning of 2011, about 1.46 million U.S. households with about 2.8 million children were surviving on $2 or less in income per person per day in a given month… The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011. This growth has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare reform.”

Over the past several decades there has been a huge increase in prison incarceration due to increasingly strict punishments and mandatory prison sentences. Since the poor and working class have been the primary victims of welfare and criminal justice “reforms” initiated or sustained through the Clinton presidency, it’s understandable why they were not keen on Hillary Clinton. The notion that low turnout was due to African Americans being unduly influenced by Russian Facebook posts is seen as “bigoted paternalism” by blogger Teodrose Fikremanian who says, “The corporate recorders at the NY Times would have us believe that the reason African-Americans did not uniformly vote for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is because they were too dimwitted to think for themselves and were subsequently manipulated by foreign agents. This yellow press drivel is nothing more than propaganda that could have been written by George Wallace.”

How Clinton became the Nominee

Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It’s apparent she was pre-ordained by the Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and decisions.

Bernie Sanders would have been a much stronger candidate. He would have won the same party loyalists who voted for Clinton. His message attacking Wall Street would have resonated with significant sections of the working class and poor who were unenthusiastic (to say the least) about Clinton. An indication is that in critical swing states such as Wisconsin and Michigan Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race.

Clinton had no response for Trump’s attacks on multinational trade agreements and his false promises of serving the working class. Sanders would have had vastly more appeal to working class and minorities. His primary campaign showed his huge appeal to youth and third party voters. In short, it’s likely that Sanders would have trounced Trump. Where is the accountability for how Clinton ended up as the Democratic Party candidate?

The Relevance of 2016 to 2020

The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment bias and “horse race” journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased “electability” instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which groups.

Mainstream media and pundits are already promoting Joe Biden. Syndicated columnist EJ Dionne, a Democratic establishment favorite, is indicative. In his article “Can Biden be the helmsman who gets us past the storm?” Dionne speaks of the “strength he (Biden) brings” and the “comfort he creates”. In the same vein, Andrew Sullivan pushes Biden in his article “Why Joe Biden Might be the Best to Beat Trump“. Sullivan thinks that Biden has appeal in the working class because he joked about claims he is too ‘hands on’. But while Biden may be tight with AFL-CIO leadership, he is closely associated with highly unpopular neoliberal trade deals which have resulted in manufacturing decline.

The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US “regime change” foreign policy. She calls out media pundits like Fareed Zakaria for goading Trump to invade Venezuela. In contrast with Rachel Maddow taunting John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to be MORE aggressive, Tulsi Gabbard has been denouncing Trump’s collusion with Saudi Arabia and Israel’s Netanyahu, saying it’s not in US interests. Gabbard’s anti-interventionist anti-occupation perspective has significant support from US troops. A recent poll indicates that military families want complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and Syria. It seems conservatives have become more anti-war than liberals.

This points to another important yet under-discussed lesson from 2016: a factor in Trump’s victory was that he campaigned as an anti-war candidate against the hawkish Hillary Clinton. As pointed out here, “Donald Trump won more votes from communities with high military casualties than from similar communities which suffered fewer casualties.”

Instead of pointing out that Trump has betrayed his anti-war campaign promises, corporate media (and some Democratic Party outlets) seem to be undermining the candidate with the strongest anti-war message. An article at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) says, “Corporate media target Gabbard for her Anti-Interventionism, a word they can barely pronounce.”

Russiagate has distracted most Democrats from analyzing how they lost in 2016. It has given them the dubious belief that it was because of foreign interference. They have failed to analyze or take stock of the consequences of DNC bias, the preference for Wall Street over working class concerns, and the failure to challenge the military industrial complex and foreign policy based on ‘regime change’ interventions.

There needs to be more analysis and lessons learned from the 2016 election to avoid a repeat of that disaster. As indicated in the Autopsy, there needs to be a transparent and fair campaign for nominee based on more than establishment and Wall Street favoritism. There also needs to be consideration of which candidates reach beyond the partisan divide and can energize and advance the interests of the majority of Americans rather than the elite. The most crucial issues and especially US military and foreign policy need to be seriously debated.

Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It’s gone on far too long.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who grew up in Canada but currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com.

May 19, 2019 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Media Stenography Turns Beheaded Saudi Protesters Into ‘Terrorism’

By Esha Krishnaswamy | FAIR | May 15, 2019

Saudi Arabia executed 37 men on April 23, as it announced in a press release in its official gazette. The first line of the release read, “Saudi Arabia said it executed 37 citizens last Tuesday after they were convicted of terrorism.”

A cursory Google search would have shown that this assertion was completely false. But many in the US press dutifully stenographed this claim into a headline:

  • “37 Saudis Executed for Terrorism-Related Crimes”: Time (4/23/19)
  • “Saudi Arabia Executes 37 in One Day for Terrorism”: New York Times (4/23/19)
  • “Saudi Arabia Beheads 37 Prisoners for Terrorism Crimes”: PBS NewsHour (4/23/19)

In fact, by looking at court documents from the Saudi government, we know that of these 37 men, 11 of them were accused of being “Iranian spies,” and 22 were accused of participating in a demonstration during the Arab Spring. (These 33 belonged to the Shia minority; the others practiced Sunni Islam or could not be identified.)

Time‘s headline (4/23/19) accepts the reality of the Saudi government charges against the people it executed–which weren’t even the actual charges they were convicted under

Of the 22 men accused of protesting, six were juveniles at the time. Mujtaba Al Suweikat was on his way to study at Western Michigan University when the Saudi authorities arrested him and charged him with “inciting disloyalty to the king.”

Saeed Mohammed Al Skafi was 17 during the protests. One of the charges against him was “posting pictures of other detainees.” Most of the others were convicted of offenses like “chanting disloyal slogans about the king” and “using social media to incite demonstrations.”

Of the 11 convicted of being Iranian spies, they were also found guilty of farcical offenses such as “condemning the bloodshed” (in February 2012, Saudi forces in the Shia-majority Saudi governorate of Qatif had sprayed protesters with bullets) and saving images and documents of the protests (which are also available on YouTube) on their hard drives.

Among the other four people executed, Khaled Al Tuwairji, a Sunni, was accused of killing Maj. Gen. Nasser Othman. However, all three outlets repeated that he was a “Sunni extremist,” for which we have no other evidence. Al Tuwairji was tortured into a confession (Erem News, 4/23/19).  But all three outlets justified his execution and subsequent crucifixion by insisting that he was a convicted Sunni militant.

Another of the Sunnis executed, Khaled Al Farraj, was convicted on the vague charge of being affiliated with an outlawed terrorist organization. But even according to Saudi state media, he didn’t engage in any acts of terrorism. He is the only one of the 37 people executed who seems to have been charged with a terrorism-related offense.

PBS NewsHour (4/23/19)

Having false information in the headlines is extremely prejudicial. Studies have repeatedly shown a large portion of readers do not read past the headlines–and those that do end up remembering the headline the most.

In its first version of the article, which has changed since then, the New York Times wrote of Saudi Arabia, “It listed the 37 men by name but provided little information about what specific crimes had been committed by whom or when.” Instead of relying on a Saudi press release, the Times could have tried a cursory web search–or even searched its own archives. In an article by the Times editorial board (8/3/17) nearly two years ago, it had a short biography of Mujtaba Al Suweikat, the “disloyal” Western Michigan student, and the specific crimes he had been charged with.

Though the Times article was edited after publication to include some information that didn’t come from the Saudi press release–citing a Human Rights Watch official’s concern that many of the cases “raised serious rights concerns,” for example–the revised article was still misleading. For example, in paragraph three, it stated, “Some men had been involved in bomb attacks on security headquarters that had killed officers, the [state news] agency said.” As far as we know, none of the 37 executed men had been involved in any bomb attacks, but the Times never challenged this Saudi government assertion.

Furthermore, the Times said that 14 of those killed had been arrested in relation to “sometimes violent protests.”  It failed to mention that that violence came from the Saudi government. This video, from July 2012, clearly shows Saudi police firing on unarmed protesters. In searching through the news archives, articles have repeatedly mentioned protesters being shot by the Saudi police. There appear to be no reports (outside Saudi propaganda statements) of violence emanating from the protesters.

The articles in the Times, Time magazine and the NewsHour all mentioned Saudi/Iranian relations, thereby amplifying longstanding Saudi propaganda that accuses Shia of being naturally loyal to Iran, which is blamed for  “stoking unrest” to justify brutal crackdowns of the religious minority.

All three outlets also added gratuitous details about the attack in Sri Lanka and/or other ISIS-related attacks–attacks that there’s no suggestion any of the defendants were connected to. In fact, most of these defendants were arrested before ISIS existed. And a majority of those killed, being Shiites, would be viewed by ISIS as heretics. To bring up these attacks seems like a distraction from the topic of the stories, which is the Saudi government beheading people who have for the most part been accused mainly of being dissidents.

May 18, 2019 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Russian Embassy Slams FT Over Using Unverifiable Data on Kerch Strait Traffic

Sputnik – 18.05.2019

The Russian embassy in the United Kingdom said that the Financial Times news outlet used isolated allegations and unverifiable information in its article claiming that the recently-built bridge over the Kerch Strait allegedly affected vessel traffic in the area.

“We were struck by the unusually low level of journalism demonstrated by your 17 May piece on the Crimea Bridge (‘Russian bridge throttles Ukraine ports’). The authors allowed themselves to be manipulated by isolated allegations and unverifiable figures provided by various Ukrainian interlocutors, while completely ignoring the official statistics of the Kerch Strait traffic. 25,521 ships crossed the Strait from April 2018 till April 2019, with only 8 percent of them having been inspected,” the embassy’s Press Office wrote in its “letter to the Editor of the Financial Times.”

The press service added that 43 percent of the inspected vessels sailed to or from Russian, not Ukrainian ports. An average inspection lasts less than an hour, while the majority of inspections are carried out while the vessels are waiting for caravans to be formed under the local pilotage rules, according to the letter.

“The construction of the Kerch Bridge, 35 meters [115 feet] high, has not resulted in any measurable deterioration of navigation conditions, as the Strait’s depth, at 9.5 meters, does not allow for taller (and thus heavier) ships to cross. The Kerch Strait has always been and remains open to traffic, including for Ukrainian military ships, provided they fulfil the notification procedure, unchanged since Soviet times,” the embassy argued.

The letter concluded by noting it was “regrettable that a paper like the FT should be used as a propaganda tool by those who seek pretexts for reckless military posturing around Crimea.”

In late April, the Ukrainian border service claimed that Russia voluntarily impeded the passage of ships to Ukrainian ports through the strait. The Ukrainian authorities claimed that almost all vessels faced inspections on their way to Ukrainian ports, noting that these checks were longer than usual and the vessels sometimes even were allowed to pass at the very end of the line.

The situation on the Sea of Azov escalated in spring 2018, when Ukrainian border service detained the Nord vessel sailing under the Russian flag. The crew was allowed to return to Russia only six months after the detention while the captain is still in Ukraine. Moreover, last August, another Russian vessel was detained in a Ukrainian port and has since been not allowed to leave.

The Russian authorities have blasted the actions of Ukraine as “naval terrorism” and responded to them by boosting checks at the part of the Sea of Azov under the Russian jurisdiction. The Crimean border service, which is a part of the Russian Federal Security Service, has insisted that it carried out checks in line with international law of the sea and had never received complaints from ship owners.

May 18, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

“Saving Syria’s Children”: Response to the HuffPo

Corrections and clarifications to “Keith Allen Thinks The BBC May Have Faked ‘Apocalyptic’ Attack In Syria”

Saving Syria’s Children: Did The BBC Lie? from Robert Stuart on Vimeo.

By Robert Stuart | OffGuardian | May 13, 2019

News and opinion website The Huffington Post has written about my campaign to crowdfund a documentary about the 2013 BBC Panorama programme Saving Syria’s Children.

Keith Allen Thinks The BBC May Have Faked ‘Apocalyptic’ Attack In Syria was published on May 4th 2019. Some notes in response follow.

Stuart says he has spent nearly six years compiling “a mountain of evidence” that shows the BBC’s footage was “faked”. He claims the national broadcaster worked “cheek by jowl with Isis” to produce the Panorama documentary, which was broadcast in September 2013.

Evidence that sequences in Saving Syria’s Children were fabricated is set out on my blog. Readers are free to make their own topographical analogies.

During the programme’s making BBC Panorama reporter Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway were embedded with then ISIS partner group Ahrar al-Sham – a group described elsewhere by the BBC as “hard-line Islamist”. Less than three weeks earlier Ahrar al-Sham, ISIS and other groups together killed over 190 civilians, including women, children and elderly men, and kidnapped over 200 mostly women and children.

In the programme’s climactic scenes of the aftermath of an alleged incendiary attack the BBC crew filmed at close quarters an ambulance prominently bearing the ISIS emblem and its militarily attired occupants, at least one of whom was armed.

In an interview with TalkRadio on Friday, Stuart claimed “the only source of [this attack] is the BBC”. However, the strike was also reported by NBC News who interviewed doctors who described the “apocalyptic” attack in detail, documented in painstaking detail by the Violations Documentation Centre in Syria (VDCS), and confirmed by Human Rights Watch.

The NBC News article cited features an interview with a single volunteer doctor named “Roula”. This is clearly Dr Rola Hallam. Dr Hallam and Dr Saleyha Ahsan were being followed by the BBC Panorama team of reporter Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway as they visited hospitals run by the UK charity Hand in Hand for Syria. As such Hallam was central to the BBC reports in question and cannot be considered an independent commentator. [1] [2] [3] [4]

The Violations Documentation Centre in Syria report cited gives the time of the alleged attack as follows:

On 26 Aug 2013, at 02:00 pm, the Syrian air forces shelled ‘Iqraa’ Institution in Orm Al Kubra in Aleppo, which had been under the Free Army’s control for several months then.

The VDCS report also quotes Mustapha Haid, “Head of ‘Doulati Organization/My State Organization’”:

At 3 in the afternoon, On 26 Aug 2013, I was in Al Atareb City and I heard rumours about a ‘chemical attack’ on Orm Al Kubra and that tens of casualties were brought to Al Atareb Hospital.

However the BBC has categorically stated in complaints correspondence that:

The attack happened on the 26th of August at around 5.30pm at the end of the school day.[5]

The VDCS report quotes a second witness, Issa Obeid, “Head of Nursing Department in Al Atareb Hospital”, who provides a first-hand account of his actions at Atareb Hospital:

We washed the casualties with water and serums after taking off their clothes. We used ‘Florasline’ liniment on the burnt areas and provided the casualties with fluids and some of them were given tranquilizers like Morphine.

However on 26 August 2013 Issa (or Iessa) Obied would appear not to have been present at Atareb but to have been attending a battle first aid training course in Antakia, Turkey. [6]

Iessa Obied has been photographed posing with an arsenal of weaponry including assault rifles, an anti-aircraft gun and a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile. [7] [8]

The Huffington Post reports that the strike was “confirmed by Human Rights Watch”. However Mary Wareham, Advocacy Director of HRW’s Arms Division, stated in a contemporary (August 2013) article that Human Rights Watch has “not investigated this incident“. [9]

HuffPost UK asked a team of ex-military and medical professionals who teach hostile environment training to view the full Panorama footage to comment on its authenticity.

Questions about Hostile Environment Awareness Training, the company cited by the Huffington Post, are raised by journalist Kit Klarenberg. “With the predictability of Chinese water torture, York’s once again written a propagandistic ad hominem hatchet job on an independent researcher, in this case @cerumol. Leaving aside his puerile insults, the ‘experts’ he apparently consulted are worthy of close investigation…”

They described it as “legitimate” and “consistent with chemical exposure”, adding the select footage in Stuart and Allen’s promotional video had been “cleverly” edited in a way to manipulate the viewer.

The BBC has been at pains to assert “that this was an attack using an incendiary device, rather than a chemical weapon.”

As noted on my blog a GMC registered doctor with burns experience has concluded that the scenes of alleged incendiary bomb victims arriving at Atareb Hospital in Saving Syria’s Children were “an act”. Further sceptical comment by medical professionals, including former UK and US military personnel, plus observations by lay people with experience of burns victims, is collated here. [10]

None of the BBC footage used in the crowdfunding video has been altered in any way, save for basic editing techniques such as freeze frame and fade.

Stuart also takes issue with the fact the documentary makers – reporter Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway – worked alongside the armed Islamist groups that controlled the Aleppo region where Atarib is situated.

When required, all major media organisations negotiate access with whoever controls the area in question. Numerous journalists have risked their lives to report on what is happening inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Hamas-controlled Gaza or Boko Haram-controlled Nigeria, for example.

It is clearly in the public interest for BBC audiences to be made aware that a portion of their license fee revenue has apparently been paid to a jihadist group co-founded by “one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted couriers”.

The BBC rebutted the claims made by Stuart and Allen in a statement to HuffPost UK, saying there is “absolutely no evidence that any part of the programme was fabricated”.

It added: “Any such suggestion is offensive to the victims, medics and reporters.”

This statement was published on Facebook by BBC Panorama editor Rachel Jupp over two years ago in response to challenges made by film, television and radio producer Victor Lewis-Smith.

An RT report based on Stuart’s work was found to be in breach of Ofcom broadcasting rules and described as “materially misleading”.

Some important caveats in Ofcom’s finding against the RT programme in question have been noted by OffGuardian :

To be clear, according to OfCom’s own description of its remit, in the dispute between RT and the BBC, OfCom did not look into the BBC’s accuracy or credibility. Nor did OfCom investigate whether RT’s allegations of fakery were true or false. In fact the Broadcast Bulletin makes it clear OfCom ruled in favour of the BBC based solely on two things:

A) a finding that RT had broken “Rule 7 of the Code”, which requires a broadcaster to allow sufficient right of reply to anyone accused.

B) a finding that RT had infringed “Rule 2.2 of the Code” which requires a broadcaster not to present facts in a way likely to “mislead the viewer” – based on the fact RT had referred to Robert Stuart’s ongoing investigation into the BBC’s Panorama program as a “massive public investigation”, when OfCom thought the size of his investigation did not merit such an epithet.

Anyone can visit Robert Stuart’s website and decide for themselves if his investigation can fairly be described as “massive”, but the extent to which OfCom’s findings are themselves factual inaccuracies I’ll leave for others to explore. The most significant point here is that OfCom has specifically not cleared the BBC of suspicion of wrongdoing, and is not claiming to have done so.

May 14, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Trump and Putin Hold a 90-Minute Telephone Call, US Liberals Go Ballistic

By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 8, 2019

Like a pit bull with its favorite chew toy, the Democrats refuse to abandon the debunked ‘Russian collusion’ script, to the point where a simple phone call between Moscow and Washington triggers rabid media hysterics.

When tasked to cover last week’s telephone conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the left-leaning mainstream media had a golden opportunity to prove it had moved beyond partisan politics, above intrigue, and above subjective bias. Predictably, it failed the test miserably. What the media did prove, however, came as no surprise: it is totally incapable of casting a gaze beyond the debris-strewn battlefield field known as Russiagate and report on US-Russia relations in a dispassionate and honest manner.

Instead, it obsessed over petty details, like the duration of the phone call and the fact that it was initiated by Donald Trump instead of the Russians. “Trump Initiated Putin Call, And It Was 90 Minutes, Not 60,” a snooty headline in the Huffington Post screamed, much like dozens of other unhinged outlets as if the world’s myriad problems can be sorted out in an afternoon over Twitter.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told the journalists that Trump and Putin discussed a number of global flash points, predominantly Venezuela, where the US, Russia and even China are jockeying for position as a showdown continues between Washington’s man in Caracas, Juan Guaido and the embattled but duly elected President Nicolás Maduro. Given that the US has long considered Latin America its private hunting grounds makes it all the more unacceptable for Washington policymakers and the media that Moscow and Beijing are nosing around in their backyard.

With no loss of irony, which we’ll come to in a moment, the US pundit class assailed Trump for taking Vladimir Putin’s word at face value when he said that Russia, as quoted by Trump, “is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela.”

In one uniformed and very agitated voice, the media bloodhounds demanded to know how it was possible that Trump placed faith in Putin, when just days earlier his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that Maduro was preparing to flee to Cuba – but was discouraged by Russia.

“He had an airplane on the tarmac, he was ready to leave this morning as we understand it and the Russians indicated he should stay,” Pompeo told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer with a remarkably straight face. “He was headed for Havana.”

Trump himself probably didn’t know exactly who or what to believe since just last month Pompeo the pompous practically fell out of his chair laughing as he told an audience from Texas A&M University about his heyday as CIA chief.

“I was the CIA director,” he began with a smile. “We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

When glory moments involve the lowest examples of human behavior it is painful to imagine what a bad day looks like. But I digress.

Regrettably, the young and impressionable students and faculty welcomed the creepy confession as some kind of a big joke, chortling as Pompeo resembled a frat boy discussing last night’s drunken endeavors. It may speak volumes about the American state of mind that no audience member thought to inquire as to what use Mr. Secretary of State was putting those “entire training courses” especially as the United States continues to employ psychological warfare against Maduro. Those methods include suggesting that top officials in his inner circle have secretly betrayed him, while disseminating the ‘news’ that he is about to flee. Such tricks from the regime change handbook may be giving the Venezuelan leader many a sleepless nights, but thus far it has failed to dislodge him from power.

May 8, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Fake news alert: CNN says Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido ‘won election in January’

RT | May 6, 2019

CNN took the concept of “fake news” to a whole new level with a recent report on Venezuela, in which it claimed that citizens “chose” coup leader Juan Guaido over current president Nicolas Maduro in January “elections.”

In a report on Sunday’s deadly Venezuelan military helicopter crash, CNN wrote that “pressure is mounting” on Maduro to step down “following elections in January in which voters chose opposition leader Juan Guaido over him for president.”

The report was finally corrected on Monday after being published on Sunday afternoon and remaining unfixed overnight. It now reflects the fact that Guaido was not elected, but “declared himself interim president” in January.

A correction added to the bottom of the piece explains that the earlier version had “incorrectly described” the situation. Elections? Military coups? Really, who can keep up these days!?

Amazingly, the botched report which initially referenced these mysterious imaginary elections, was the product of work by no less than six journalists — two whose names appear on the main byline and four more listed as contributors at the bottom. Normal practice would see the piece run past a couple of editors too, before being published. That’s potentially eight pairs of eyes — and none of them managed to catch the glaring error.

A number of journalists and Twitter users called CNN out for the “blatant” lie and “shameful” and “terrible” reporting.

It wasn’t the first Venezuela-related embarrassment for CNN. Reporter Jake Tapper was called out on social media last week after he tweeted a link with a picture of opposition army defectors wielding guns to claim Maduro’s government “mows down citizens in streets.”

CNN likes to be known for its so-called adversarial journalism when it comes to the Trump administration, but so far, it seems fully on board with its regime change policies in Venezuela — although, even the White House hasn’t gone so far as to pretend fake elections took place in January.

May 6, 2019 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Terrorists: The White Helmets Receive an Award

By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | May 5, 2019

Increasingly, groups and even foreign governments have pandered to Israel and its supporters in the United States because they have come to understand that success in dealing with Washington can be dependent on Jewish support. Last week, Raed Saleh, the leader of the so-called White Helmets, also referred to as the Syrian Civil Defense, a terrorist-affiliated group operating in Syria, was in the United States to “… receive the Elie Wiesel Award from the Holocaust Memorial Museum for his organization’s work in Syria.” He was also dropping by to pick up a check for $5 million courtesy of the U.S. government that “… helps us with acquiring ambulances and helps us with search and rescue operations.”

During his visit, Saleh was treated to a nauseatingly obsequious interview courtesy of National Public Radio, which, inter alia, described how the Helmets “were the subjects of an Oscar-winning documentary two years ago, which captured images of them carrying broken and bloody Syrians from dust and rubble.”

Saleh claimed that the alleged victory of the Syrian regime in the yet to be completed war is an illusion as President Bashar al-Assad presides over a broken country, yet reports from inside Syria indicate that the return of the government to areas formerly controlled by terrorists has been welcomed and refugees from the fighting are now eager to return home. Saleh also claimed, falsely, that his organization has been “providing services to all Syrians and to providing support to all Syrians. Now after six years of war, we have saved more than 116,000 people from under the rubble. We have not asked any of these 116,000 people who did they belong to? Is he a Kurd? Is he a Christian? Is he a Muslim? Is he with Assad? Is he against Assad? Is he with the Kurds? Is he against the Kurds? We have never asked anyone these questions.”

Saleh, whose group has only operated in terrorist-controlled areas, could not, however, maintain his approved narrative. He fairly quickly abandoned his non-partisan quasi-humanitarian rhetoric when asked about how he sees the Syrian conflict developing, saying “We do not call this a civil war, but we rather call it a revolution against a dictatorship… the revolution still goes on. We have not lost.”

Those who are unfamiliar with the White Helmets should understand that the group has been praised by those who hate the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and want to see it removed, which includes the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. The White Helmets have played a leading role in the propaganda campaign that seeks to instigate violence or use fabricated information to depict the Damascus government as guilty of slaughtering its own citizens. The propaganda is intended to terrorize the civilian population, which is part of the definition of terrorism.

Favorable media coverage of the group has largely derived from the documentary The White Helmets, which was produced by the group itself and tells a very convincing tale promoted as “the story of real-life heroes and impossible hope.” It is a very impressive piece of propaganda, so much so that it has won numerous awards including the Oscar for Best Documentary Short two years ago and the White Helmets themselves were even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. More to the point, however, is the undeniable fact that the documentary has helped shape the public understanding of what is going on in Syria, describing the government in Damascus in purely negative terms.

Nine months ago, with the Syrian Army closing in on the last White Helmet affiliates still operating in the country, the Israeli government, assisted by the United States, staged an emergency “humanitarian” evacuation of the group’s members and their families to Israel and then on to Jordan. It was described in a BBC article that included “The IDF said they had ‘completed a humanitarian effort to rescue members of a Syrian civil organization and their families’, saying there was an ‘immediate threat to their lives.’ The transfer of the displaced Syrians through Israel was an exceptional humanitarian gesture. Although Israel is not directly involved in the Syria conflict, the two countries have been in a state of war for decades. Despite the intervention, the IDF said that ‘Israel continues to maintain a non-intervention policy regarding the Syrian conflict.’”

All of the Israeli assertions are nonsense, including its claimed “humanitarianism” and “non-intervention” in the Syrian war, where it has been bombing almost daily. The carefully edited scenes of heroism under fire that have been filmed and released worldwide conceal the White Helmets’ relationship with the al-Qaeda affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra and its participation in the torture and execution of “rebel” opponents. Indeed, the White Helmets only operate in terrorist-held territory, which enables them to shape the narrative both regarding who they are and what is occurring on the ground.

The White Helmets were accustomed to traveling to bombing sites with their film crews trailing behind them. Once at the sites, with no independent observers, they are able to arrange or even stage what is filmed to conform to their selected narrative. Exploiting their access to the western media, the White Helmets thereby de facto became a major source of “eyewitness” news regarding what was going on in those many parts of Syria where European and American journalists were quite rightly afraid to go, all part of a broader largely successful “rebel” effort to manufacture fake news that depicts the Damascus government as engaging in war crimes directed against civilians, an effort that has led to several attacks on government forces and facilities by the U.S. military. This is precisely the propaganda that has been supported both by Tel Aviv and Washington.

Perhaps the most serious charge against the White Helmets consists of the evidence that they actively participated in the atrocities, to include torture and murder, carried out by their al-Nusra hosts. There have been numerous photos of the White Helmets operating directly with armed terrorists and also celebrating over the bodies of execution victims and murdered Iraqi soldiers. The group’s jihadi associates regard the White Helmets as fellow “mujahideen” and “soldiers of the revolution.”

For those interested in further details, White Helmet activities have been thoroughly exposed by Maxim Grigoriev of the Russian NGO Foundation for the Study of Democracy. Grigoriev presented his findings at a special meeting of the United Nations just before Christmas 2018. A video prepared based on the U.N. meeting includes interviews with actual witnesses of White Helmet atrocities and participants in the staged chemical attacks that were blamed on the government.

So Raed Saleh was in Washington to pick up his award and his multi-million dollar check on top of the tens of millions that his organization has already received from Congress and the White House. He also met with a number of Congressmen who support his initiatives and was praised by New Jersey’s own seriously corrupt Israel-firster Senator Robert Menendez of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who observed “that Saleh’s group of about 3,000 volunteers has ‘saved almost 100,000 lives’ doing ‘courageous work on the ground in Syria, while being targeted by Russia.’” Yes, Russiagate is alive and well.

There is considerable irony in the fact that the National Holocaust Museum, which is taxpayer funded, has given an apparently prestigious award to a terrorist group, something which could have been discerned with even a little fact checking. And the museum also might have been sensitive to how the White Helmets have been used in support of Israeli propaganda vis-à-vis Syria. Perhaps, while they are at it, the museum’s board just might also want to check out Elie Wiesel, for whom the award is named. Wiesel, who was a chronicler of Jewish victimhood while persistently refusing to acknowledge what Israel was doing to the Palestinians, notoriously mixed fact and fiction in his best-selling Holocaust memoir Night. Ironically, the award and recipient are well matched in this case as mixing fact and fiction is what both Elie Wiesel and the White Helmets are all about.

May 5, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

After Venezuela coup failure, officials & mainstream media desperately spinning explanations

RT | May 4, 2019

Months of insistence in Washington that the people of Venezuela stood by the US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido basically went up in smoke when his ‘Operation Liberty’ fizzled. The question now is whom to blame.

Senior US officials like National Security Advisor John Bolton and special envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams expressed confidence in “regime change” in Caracas on Tuesday, named top Venezuelan officials ready to defect, and even spoke of signed documents to that effect.

Yet literally none of this happened, and by the early evening on Tuesday, the handful of Guaido’s armed supporters were seeking sanctuary in foreign embassies.

Then came the spin. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went on CNN and Fox News to claim that Maduro was getting ready to flee to Cuba, but “the Russians” talked him out of it. Bolton claimed Maduro was “hiding in a bunker” even as video evidence from Caracas showed him addressing supporters numbering in the thousands on May Day. The truth was inescapable, though: Guaido had failed.

“The opposition took a step backward with the military,” Rocio San Miguel, president of the Colombian NGO Control Ciudadano, told Bloomberg on Thursday. “Guaido appearing with [his mentor Leopoldo] Lopez at a single point in the city with a few dozen soldiers and no major firepower showed their weakness.”

So what happened? Several US media outlets have since sought to explain, citing anonymous sources allegedly privy to US government plots. These sources told Bloomberg they believe Maduro got wind of the coup on April 29, and Guaido rushed it ahead of schedule “or it would all collapse.”

Lopez was released from house arrest because the head of the Venezuelan intelligence agency SEBIN, General Manuel Christopher Figuera, had defected to Guaido, the anonymous and entirely unverifiable sources claimed, adding that it was Lopez resurfacing that might have spooked other senior officials – defense minister Vladimir Padrino, Supreme Court Chief Justice Maikel Moreno, and military intelligence and presidential guard head General Ivan Hernandez.

According to these sources, Figuera’s wife left Venezuela on Sunday for the safety of the US, and the general left the country as well after he was sacked on Tuesday night, though his whereabouts are unknown.

Meanwhile, AP published a long speculative piece about missed opportunities to turn senior Venezuelan officials, from Hernandez being denied a visa in 2017 for his 3-year-old son’s brain surgery, to Padrino reaching out to the US government in early 2016, after a troubled Venezuelan election.

Padrino in particular has been seen as “a potential white knight,” being a graduate of the School of the Americas. Apparently, very little US influence in the Venezuelan army had survived what the AP described as “thorough scrubbing” by Former President Hugo Chavez.

“There’s a theory that’s gaining ground, and I think there’s some credence to it, that it was all part of a big ‘rope-a-dope’ operation, whereby the Maduro officials pretended to go along with this coup to smoke out the opposition,” Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, told RT.

“That’s one possibility, the other is that Pompeo’s lying” about Maduro’s attempted flight to Cuba, McAdams said, adding that neither reflects well on the US.

Whatever the truth, there is no escaping the fact that Washington has pushing for regime change in Caracas for months with sanctions and other forms of pressure, and openly since “recognizing” Guaido in January, to absolutely no avail. All the hot air coming from Bolton, Pompeo, Abrams and other high officials pushing the regime change narrative has had far more effect in the US than in Venezuela.

May 4, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Poynter retracts list of ‘unreliable news sources’ after listed sites prove it to be unreliable

By Helen Buyniski | RT | May 3, 2019

Journalism nonprofit Poynter has retracted a long list of supposedly unreliable news websites, admitting the list itself was unreliable – a fact ironically brought to its attention by several of the outlets it calls untrustworthy.

“We regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the confusion and agitation caused by its publication,” Poynter’s managing director Barbara Allen wrote after removing the list from its website. Allen notably didn’t apologize for compiling the list in the first place, and it is unlikely we’ve heard the last of Poynter’s unreliability index, given that mainstream media gatekeepers have been trying to convince the public it needs an exalted class of media-whisperers to interpret the news for years.

Before deleting entirely, Poynter apologized to the Washington Examiner and FirstPost, two of several sites included on the blacklist who politely inquired as to why they’d been included. Baybars Orsek even told the Examiner that “the total number of complaints is less than 2 percent of the whole database.” By Thursday night, however, the page had vanished, and “inconsistencies between the findings of the original databases… and our own rendering” were blamed, with a promise that a “more consistent and rigorous set of criteria” was on its way. We can hardly wait!

RT made the “unreliable” list, hardly a surprise given the notable bias of neocon-affiliated “fact-checkers” like the folks at NewsGuard, but the other 515 sites held a few surprises. In addition to about 30 well-known conservative outlets like the Daily Caller (“bias,” “clickbait”) and Drudge Report (“bias”), popular progressive pages like Common Dreams (“clickbait”) and Activist Post (“conspiracy,” “unreliable”) are listed side by side with apolitical platforms like Liveleak (“fake”) among the obvious fakes (including joke sites like Clickhole and Reductress ). The list thus appears to be a PropOrNot-style “wrongthink”-tracker designed to tar legitimate dissent and other inconvenient voices with the ‘fake news’ brush.

Poynter apparently doesn’t think much of its audience’s intelligence, as the list included “satire” among the otherwise somewhat interchangeable terms it used to smear included sites – “bias,” “unreliable,” “fake,” “clickbait,” and “conspiracy.” Never mind that some conspiracies are real – Watergate, anyone? – or that their definition of “clickbait” would condemn most of the internet (“sources that provide generally credible content, but use exaggerated, misleading, or questionable headlines, social media descriptions, and/or images”). Blacklisting “satire” because you assume readers are too dim to “get it” enshrines the lowest common denominator in the driver’s seat.

The blacklist was supposedly “built from pre-existing databases compiled by journalists, fact-checkers and researchers around the country,” though Poynter admits that more than half the domains in those databases were no longer active as of November 2018. Most of the data came from OpenSources, a database run by Merrimack University’s Melissa Zimdars, whose academic work, as Breitbart (“bias, unreliable”) noted, centers almost exclusively on obesity (“Watching Our Weights: The Consequences and Contradictions of Televising Fatness in the ‘Obesity Epidemic’”), despite her self-styled credentials as a ‘fake news’ analyst.

The absence of any mainstream voices from the list despite numerous instances of fake stories parading across their pages just in recent months – Covington Catholic students harassing peaceful protesters, the hate crime against Jussie Smollett, Maduro’s government burning humanitarian aid, Donald Trump’s campaign colluding with the Russians – says all that is necessary about the real purpose of Poynter’s list, which is less about protecting readers from fake news than protecting readers from dissenting views.

May 3, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Big Lie Day

By Leonid SAVIN – ORIENTAL REVIEW – 03/05/2019

2 May has gone down in modern history as the day that terrorist number one, Osama bin Laden, was killed. The official version states that, in 2011, he was shot dead by US special forces in the house where he was living with his wives and children. The house itself was in a city in Pakistan, where he had been hiding undetected ever since the senior members of al-Qaeda (a terrorist organisation banned in Russia) had fled Afghanistan following the defeat of the government of Mullah Omar, who had been sheltering them. Under cover of night, US helicopters carrying two groups of special forces flew to the operation location from Afghanistan, which was a violation of Pakistan’s state sovereignty.

Recalling the incident in his book Pakistan: A Personal History, which was published in the same year as Osama bin Laden’s official assassination, the current prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, noted: “It was bad enough that the world’s most wanted man was not found in some cave but in a city only 50 kilometres from Islamabad, and a mile from Pakistan’s Military Academy. What made it worse was that the news was broken to us Pakistanis, and the rest of the world, by President Obama”.

“It was several hours later when a statement came from our government congratulating the US and taking credit for providing the US with all the information about Osama’s location. This begged the obvious question for all Pakistanis: if we knew about his whereabouts, then why did we not capture him ourselves? The media in India and the rest of the world went wild, blaming Pakistan’s ISI (in other words, the army) for having kept Osama in a safe house for the past six years. […]

“Three days later, the army chief denied all knowledge of the operation and announced that any such violation of our sovereignty would not be violated again. A week later the PM only added to the confusion when he finally gave a statement, suggesting ‘a matching response’ to any attack against ‘Pakistan’s strategic assets’. For Pakistanis, especially those living abroad, this was one of the most humiliating and painful times. The CIA chief Panetta further rubbed salt in our wounds by bluntly saying that the Pakistan government was either incompetent or complicit.”

The US propaganda machine, meanwhile, was continuing its work around the world and few now dispute the widely held view, or rather myth, that bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad. Films have been made, and books published, that back up America’s official version with an additional narrative. The Russian-language Wikipedia page on Operation Neptune Spear goes into great detail. What’s more, all of the links are to US resources or reprints of them.

The fact that everyone who took part in the raid on bin Laden’s house is now dead seems a little strange, however. Just as suspicious is the fact that Dr Shakil Afridi – who, according to official legend, obtained evidence of bin Laden’s whereabouts by running a fake vaccination programme – was arrested almost as soon as the operation was over and sentenced to 33 years for treason. Something else that gives pause for thought is the official story that bin Laden’s body was buried at sea on the same day. There had apparently been enough time for examination and identification at the US military base in Afghanistan and the Americans had got everything they needed to know.

The author of this article recently got the opportunity to go to Abbottabad and used the visit to see where bin Laden was killed and glean any details that were not published in the world’s press.

The city of Abbottabad is located in a valley surrounded by mountains and the Karakoram Highway passes close by. As well as the Military Academy in Abbottabad itself, there are a number of military bases and installations located around the city. The fence of an ordnance factory that produces a variety of weapons stretches for many kilometres along both sides of the Karakoram Highway. In other words, it is a place with a pretty high level of security requirements. In 2011, when the operation was carried out, the security measures in and around the city were probably just as strict and serious.

Almost immediately before entering the territory of the Academy, there is a single right turn that leads to the suburb of Bilal Town. We stopped alongside a small group of men outside a shop and asked for directions to bin Laden’s house. After a few seconds’ pause, one of them told us how to get there and where to turn. We stopped again outside another shop further along to clarify exactly where we were going and arrived a few minutes later.

The first person we met was an elderly gentlemen and we asked him about the house, to which he replied: “Yes, that’s the house where the Americans carried out their operation and killed people, only bin Laden wasn’t there. It’s a lie.”

The man hurried on his way and we didn’t question him further. All that remains of the house are the foundations (the building was demolished some time after the operation – another strange fact), and the territory is surrounded by a fairly low concrete wall with a few openings. We saw two men within the walls of the compound itself and decided to talk to them. One of them willingly told us what he knew.

He lives close by and, on the night in question, he and his family heard the sound of helicopters. The sound was so loud that his father climbed up onto the roof, afraid that a helicopter might fall onto their house. A flash then lit up the sky, and explosions and gunfire rang out.

The house itself, where the operation took place, was located away from other structures. There are a few other buildings in the neighbourhood today but, in 2011, only a single-storey building stood opposite. Nevertheless, all the neighbours went up onto their roofs or outside to see what was going on.

They all knew who was living in the house. According to one of the men we spoke to, it was the family of a businessman from Peshawar. All the neighbours respected him because he regularly helped the local community. The fence around his house was quite high and it’s possible that this was the deciding factor for those who had planned the operation.

“What happened next was like an Indian action movie from the 1990s,” recalls an eyewitness. One of the helicopters fell and burst into flames.

The police arrived about an hour after the first explosions and cordoned off the area, preventing anyone from getting in.

“It’s strange, because when there’s a wedding or a celebration, people often fire into the air and the police arrive in minutes, but this time it took them almost an hour,” said a neighbour.

Another helicopter arrived some time later, picked up the US special forces and flew away. While telling us about it, a young man stated several times that it was like a well-played drama, especially when you take into account what happened next.

“The elderly gentleman you met on the road back there was arrested by the Pakistani intelligence agency and then released,” added the neighbour.

He also believes that bin Laden wasn’t there, and it was innocent people who suffered. Since the land was purchased from the state for residential development, it is legally private property. The deceased owner probably has family somewhere, but nobody has claimed it as yet. And it could be that the target was chosen intentionally so that there would be as few leads and witnesses as possible.

An interesting fate befell the wreckage of the US helicopter that crashed. The Pakistani military handed it over to China and, following relevant research, the country developed its own version of the US helicopter. So Operation Neptune Spear resulted in a leak of military technology. Such things aren’t talked about in America, however.

It should be added that, during America’s war on terror following 9/11, 36,000 people have been killed in Pakistan, including 6,000 soldiers; the country has lost approximately $68 billion; and nearly half a million people have been displaced. While it costs $1 million per year to keep an American soldier in Pakistan, the cost of one Pakistani soldier is $900 per year. And, until very recently, US combat drones repeatedly violated the airspace over Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan – often attacking civilians in the tribal area rather than militants.

However, media outlets under the control of the US State Department continue to report on the US Army’s successes in its war on terror. One needs only to recall Donald Trump’s recent statements regarding America’s victory over ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Fabricating lies and demonising America’s geopolitical opponents, as well as anyone who disagrees with the country’s global agenda, is all in a day’s work for the media lackeys of the US establishment.

May 3, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Accused ‘spy’ Maria Butina wouldn’t be in jail if she ‘wasn’t Russian’ – attorney

RT | April 26, 2019

After gun activist Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in jail for failing to register as a foreign agent, her lawyer stated that things would be completely different if she wasn’t guilty of the crime of being Russian.

“Anyone who thinks that someone who wasn’t Russian would be in this situation is fooling themselves,” attorney Robert Driscoll told reporters on Friday. Butina had just been sentenced to 18 months in prison, with nine served already, and will be deported to Russia after serving her time.

From the moment of her arrest, right up to her sentencing, Butina’s treatment at the hands of the US justice system and in the court of public opinion has been tainted by the cloud of Russian hysteria hanging over Washington DC.

A gun rights activist who wanted to make Russia’s restrictive gun laws more like the US’, Butina landed in the US in 2016 on a student visa. As the founder of a pro-gun group in Russia, Butina hobnobbed with National Rifle Association and Republican figures in America.

However, Butina was arrested last year for failing to register as a foreign agent, a requirement that the 30-year-old didn’t even know she had to meet. Curiously, as she was unaware of the requirement, Butina was charged with a more serious offense that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who knew the law but didn’t follow it.

Given the timing of Butina’s arrest, the media and prosecution went into overdrive. Here, at long last, was a Russian agent caught meddling in American affairs. Assistant US Attorney Erik M. Kenerson claimed she was offering an individual “sex in exchange for a position within a special interest organization.”

Kenerson later backtracked his statement, which he said was based on a “mistaken” understanding of text messages between Butina and a romantic partner.

The media took the bait though. “Sex and schmoozing are common Russian spy tactics. Publicity makes Maria Butina different,” read a USA Today headline. Butina, Time Magazine wrote at the same time, “lived a double life by using sex and a love of guns to infiltrate American political organizations…in order to advance Moscow’s agenda.” Journalists didn’t question Butina’s operation in the open, with USA Today concluding her transparency about her agenda is “evidence the Russians have grown bolder in their spy efforts.”

Would the same low-grade Cold War spy erotica have graced the pages of national news outlets if Butina were, say, a French gun activist?

With the outrage machine at full steam, Butina spent much of the past nine months stewing in a Virginia jail. There, she was allegedly subjected to conditions described by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as “normally reserved for dangerous repeat offenders.”

The Russian embassy in Washington DC, which sent staff to meet with Butina frequently, described the conditions of her detention as “borderline torture,” and detailed a litany of abuses against the Russian activist. Butina was strip searched, denied medication and hygiene items, kept in solitary confinement, and regularly had her sleep disrupted, the embassy claimed.

Lavrov stated that such treatment was designed to poke Butina into accepting a plea deal with prosecutors, which she eventually did in December.

But why were American authorities so desperate to prove sinister Russian activity?

“There’s no allegation of espionage, there’s no allegation of classified information, there’s no allegation she was paying anyone off, there’s no allegation she was recruiting spies. None of the things you would typically see in an espionage case,” Driscoll told RT last year.

“I think this was a political gambit to deal with bigger geopolitical issues to try to ruin the outcome of the summit between Trump and Putin,” human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik told RT at the time, noting that Butina was arrested one day before Presidents Trump and Putin met in Helsinki. As long as the case against Butina dragged on, the US government had human proof that the specter of ‘Russian meddling’ in US politics was alive and well.

In court on Friday, prosecutors did their best to keep the narrative alive. Prosecutor Erik Kenerson told the judge that Butina was concocting a plan to establish communications between the Trump White House and Russia, an issue he said was ‘of extreme importance to the Russian Federation.”

“Her conduct shows how easy it can be for a foreign government to target Americans in the US,” he added.

Butina’s treatment, meanwhile, shows how easy it can be for an innocent student to be targeted by a justice system bent on finding Russians meddling in everything.

April 27, 2019 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »