OPCW put lid on key evidence in Douma chemical incident – watchdog whistleblower
RT | October 23, 2019
The international chemical weapons watchdog likely skewed its own investigation of the 2018 chemical weapons incident in Douma, Syria to come to a predetermined decision, a damning conclusion based on whistleblower testimony said.
The April 2018 incident in the Damascus suburb was quickly blamed on the Syrian government by the West. Within days, the US, the UK and France launched barrages of cruise missiles in retaliation. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international chemical weapons watchdog, later backed the justification, all but pointing the finger at Syria in its final report, which was released in March.
Now a panel of experts says the report was based on a flawed conclusion and likely deliberately steered toward the West-favored outcome. The accusation is based on evidence and testimony of an OPCW investigator, who came forward with damning evidence that his own organization had breached its mission.
After talking to the whistleblower and examining internal reports, text exchanges and other evidence, the panel was convinced that “key information about chemical analyses, toxicology consultations, ballistics studies, and witness testimonies was suppressed, ostensibly to favor a preordained conclusion,” it said in a statement.
The statement said the OPCW took effort to exclude dissenting investigators and silence their attempts to raise concerns about the report, which is “a right explicitly conferred on inspectors in the Chemical Weapons Convention.” The experts called on the organization to revisit its investigation and allow those not agreeing with the conclusion put in the final report to voice their concerns without fear of reprisal.
The panel convened by the Courage Foundation, which accepts donations for the legal defense of whistleblowers and journalists that report on leaks, includes several prominent specialists and public figures, including José Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat who served as the OPCW’s first Director General before being strong-armed from the office by US superhawk John Bolton.
Bustani said the whistleblower confirmed his doubts about the report, which “seemed incoherent at best” right from the start.
“My hope is that the concerns expressed publicly by the Panel, in its joint consensus statement, will catalyze a process by which the Organization can be resurrected to become the independent and non-discriminatory body it used to be.”
The panel did not make public the name of the whistleblower or any previously unpublished evidence of the OPCW’s alleged misconduct. WikiLeaks, whose editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson was a member of the panel, re-printed a draft engineering assessment penned by an OPCW investigator, which was leaked in May. The document rejects the claim that chlorine cylinders, which were used for delivery of the toxic gas in Douma, had been dropped from the air, which was used as a key argument in accusing the Syrian army for the attack.
The OPCW did not challenge the authenticity of the document, but stood by its conclusions on the Douma incident.
Ms. Pumpkin Head for President: A Nightmare
By Edward Curtin | Behind the Curtain | October 20, 2019
A few weeks ago I had a terrifying nightmare, so gruesome was it that I awoke screaming and had to run to the bathroom to vomit in the toilet. In this dark horror show, I was carving a pumpkin for Halloween. The cap came off easily and I disemboweled the slimy interior quickly, but as I did, I felt a strange sensation on my hand, as if a tongue were biting it. When I was finishing carving the face, however, the trouble really started. The pumpkin head came alive as the eyes and mouth moved and then it started speaking in a voice that was familiar but one I couldn’t place. Blond hair started sprouting from its head as it started shrieking and bouncing on the table in an hysterical manner. I jumped back in fear and trembling as it started cackling, “I running, I running.” Blood ran from between the carved teeth and the blue eyes pulsated with the mania of a serial killer in a horror movie.
I awoke with a scream when I realized it was Hillary Clinton.
So hideous was this night terror that I kept it to myself. But a week later when the next Democratic pseudo-debate was being promoted, I said to my wife that something told me that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee and the debates were a sideshow. She said she thought that would never happen and that Clinton was now hated and done for. I disagreed without recounting my nightmare because to describe it at that point would have induced more retching at the thought of the night monster.
Then this past week during the Democratic debate, the courageous Tulsi Gabbard put the lie to the murderous militarism of U.S. foreign policy and its regime change operations with its use of American supported terrorists in Syria and throughout the world. She calmly and eloquently denounced the militarist positions of the other candidates standing beside her, as they listened disquieted and disturbed to a patriotic American speaking truth that they dare not even think, so bought and sold are they.
She was a woman alone among a cast of sycophants denouncing the murderous policies carried out by presidents Democratic and Republican and foisted on the American people through a vast network of propaganda, appealing to their worst instincts. It was a stunning few minutes, for it is so rare, almost unheard of, for a politician to tell Americans the brutal truth about their government.
To many it was a sign of hope, but to the evil forces that run this country, Rep. Gabbard had gone too far and the knives came out in force, this time led by the pumpkin-headed Hillary Clinton and her accomplices at The New York Times and The Washington Post, who have consistently trashed Tulsi Gabbard in an effort to destroy her candidacy.
I felt my dream was prophetic when Clinton, in her slimy manner, attacked Tulsi Gabbard, without naming her, by saying,
I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve [The Russians] got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.
Well, I ain’t making any prediction either; I’m leaving that up to my nightmare to do my talking.
It tells me that Hillary-O-Lantern, spitting blood, is running and gunning again.
She’s the favorite of the CIA and the military industrial complex and all those who profit from war and live off the deaths of victims everywhere. They have bunches of sites and bots and fake news conspirators and all sorts of ways of supporting her, which they have been doing for many years, straight through their constructed Russia-gate and Ukraine-gate conspiracies and her barbaric support for wars everywhere, including the destruction of Libya and her joyful response to the fiendish death of Muammar Gaddafi, among so may atrocities.
Tulsi, never cowered, said it straight and true in response:
Great, Thank you. You the Queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.
She later said, “I stand against everything she represents.”
Halloween is the time for masks and dissembling. Hillary Clinton is a figure straight out of a grotesque Halloween party, as are her clones in the Democratic party. Tulsi Gabbard was not invited to their party but came anyway, and came to tell the truth about the masquerade.
She has torn off Clinton’s mask and asks the American people to see the true face of Clinton and all her minions, who represent the triumph of war and death, and the sick play we have been living through, an endless war on terror justified by endless lies.
Norman O. Brown so well describes our stage set:
Ancestral voices prophesying war; ancestral spirits in the danse macabre or war dance; Valhalla, ghostly warriors who kill each other and are reborn to fight again. All warfare is ghostly, every army an exercitus feralis (army of ghosts), every soldier a living corpse.
Lying is the leading cause of living death in the United States.
Tulsi Gabbard has told the truth.
Like me, I am sure you don’t want your nightmares to become reality. Let’s live in the truth.
The American Deep State Would Sooner Sacrifice the Republic Than Lose Again to Donald Trump
By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 20, 2019
You’d really think the American people would have caught on by now. No sooner did Russiagate fizzle out like a wet firecracker did the Democrats, completely indifferent to the dire consequences, toss another incendiary into the public square. Sooner or later something has got to blow, and maybe it already did.
As Americans experience the brutal whiplash of going from the Mueller probe to presidential impeachment in a matter of days, all pretensions of democratic procedure to guide the show trial have been tossed from the clown car. With the boot-licking media to back their every whim and fancy, the Democrats are dragging the Republic to the brink of destruction as they threaten to take down the 45th POTUS, and without a single witness in the dock.
Last month, Adam Schiff, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said the identity of the shady whistleblower who revealed second-hand details of a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be made public “very soon.” That claim looks set to be the fifth ‘Pinocchio’ awarded to Schiff in almost as many days.
On Sunday, the truth-impaired Senator said the whistleblower at the heart of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry might not testify in court over concerns about the individual’s safety. That pathetic excuse should incur the wrath of the mainstream media every bit as much as it has incurred the wrath of the Trump administration. Moreover, it cheapens the incalculable sacrifice that every whistleblower assumes when they attach their identities to explosive revelations; without their identity publicly known the claims do not carry the same weight. Unless the whistleblower is fully prepared to lose his career and risk jail time, much like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and numerous others, a cloud of doubt will forever hang over the claims, and even more so in the Ukrainegate affair since we are talking about nothing more than hearsay.
Schiff’s notorious shiftiness didn’t end there. He actually cited Trump’s candidness in releasing the full transcript of the conversation as another reason as to why the ‘courageous’ whistleblower should enjoy full anonymity. This almost makes Trump himself appear as the whistleblower.
“Given that we already have the call record, we don’t need the whistleblower who wasn’t on the call to tell us what took place during the call,” Schiff said in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation. In other words, Trump was doomed to be damned if he released the transcript or he didn’t.
The Democrat’s determination to bring down Trump was confirmed earlier when Schiff was caught in yet another lie.
On September 16, the Democratic Senator told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he did not know the identity of the whistleblower. He repeated the same claim the next day when he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that neither he nor his staff had “spoken directly with the whistleblower.” It is now known that his claims were bald-faced lies, and serious enough to bring the impeachment clown car to a screeching halt. Yet the rules of the game, as is proven time and time again, are always adjusted to suit the Democrats. In fact, the whistleblower may have committed a felony for failing to disclose in his or her official complaint that they had first brought the information to the attention of House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff.
Schiff has little to worry about, however, since the media does not react to Democratic transgressions with nearly the same amount of hysteria as it does with the Republicans, which explains why Trump is fighting a constant uphill battle.
This is where the push for impeachment is becoming a dangerous venture for the Democrats. The people are not stupid, and it does not require the shrewdest political tool to understand that the scales of justice are weighted heavily in favor of the Democrats. From Hillary Clinton escaping punishment for using her home computer to send classified government documents, to former Vice President Joe Biden bragging about arranging a billion-dollar quid pro quo with Kiev to sack Ukraine’s top prosecutor, who just happened to be investigating Biden’s son, Hunter, the Democrats rarely have anything to fear as far as justice is concerned. Yet this special status has certainly not gone unnoticed; with social media revolutionizing the ‘town square,’ the blatant hypocrisies and outright crimes are obvious to everyone.
Just as Russiagate was a conspicuous effort on the part of the Democrats and their lapdog media to deflect attention away from the contents of Clinton’s emails, not to mention the identity of the leaker (as opposed to the ‘Russian hackers,’ that is), Ukrainegate is a desperate attempt to focus attention on a harmless phone call between two state leaders so as to bury the news of corruption at the highest levels of the Obama administration, up to and including not only Joe Biden, but former Secretary of State John Kerry as well. In other words, we are talking about obstruction of justice on a mind-boggling scale, and which could only be pulled off with the full support of the mainstream media. A free-thinking, independent journalistic community would have called foul on such shenanigans long ago.
Lest anyone forget, the Democrats have been under investigation by Attorney General Bill Barr and federal prosecutor John Durham. These two are currently traveling the world in an effort to determine “the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec said in a statement on Sept. 25.
In fact, Barr and Durham’s ‘mission’ kicked off back in May, long before the smoke and mirrors of yet another Trump ‘transgression’ took front and center in living rooms across the country. Indeed, while every American has heard of the impeachment inquiry, few realize that the Democrats are under investigation for far greater crimes should they be found guilty, that is. Now, in the event that Barr and Durham attempt to present their findings to the public, the Democrats will scream in one persecuted voice that Trump is attempting to ‘obstruct justice,’ which will certainly be the greatest irony considering the source.
In other words, there are two vehicles – one filled with Democrats, the other Republicans – careening towards an intersection at a high rate of speed, and neither looks willing to yield to the other. This is the situation confronting America at the present time: a smashup of epic, deadly proportions, quite possibly on par with its first civil war. Such a seemingly inevitable event, however, would never have been remotely possible had the media been a fair and just provider of news and information as opposed to being an instigator and provocateur of the first order.
Now, should the Democrats get the impeachment they’ve been dreaming about ever since they lost the 2016 presidential election, at least 50 percent of the American public will understand full well that the scales of justice are tilted against them. That will be the moment when the United States is forced to confront its worst crisis in many years, simply because the Democrats have become so terrified of a longstanding political technology known as ‘free and fair elections.’
No Inquest for Dawn Sturgess
By Craig Murray | October 18, 2019
The killing of poor Dawn Sturgess was much the most serious of the events in Salisbury and Amesbury that attracted international attention. Yet nobody has been charged, no arrest warrant issued and no inquest held.
The inquest for Dawn Sturgess has today been yet again postponed, for the fourth time, and for the first time no new prospective date has been given for it to open. Alarmingly, the coroner’s office are referring press enquiries to Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command – which ought to have no role in an inquest process supposed to be independent of the police.
Congratulations to Rob Slane and to John Helmer for their excellent work in following this.
It appears very probable that the independent coroner’s inquiry process is going to be cancelled and, as in the case of David Kelly, replaced by a politically controlled “public inquiry” with a trusty or malleable judge in charge, like Lord Hutton of Kincora. This is because the truth of Dawn Sturgess’ death in itself destroys key elements of the government’s narrative on what happened in Salisbury.
Simply put, the chemical that killed Dawn Sturgess could not have been the same that allegedly poisoned the Skripals. Charlie Rowley is adamant that he found it in a packaged and fully sealed perfume bottle, in a charity bin. Furthermore he states that it was a charity bin he combed through regularly and it had not been there earlier, in the three months between the alleged attack on the Skripals and his taking it from the bin.
The government narrative that “Boshirov and Petrov” used that perfume bottle to attack the Skripals, then somehow resealed the cellophane, and disposed of it in the bin, depends on the Russians having a tiny plastic resealing technology concealed on them (and why bother?), on their taking a long detour to dispose of the “perfume” in a charity bin – the one method that guaranteed it being found and reused – and the “perfume” then achieving a lengthy period of invisibility in the bin before appearing again three months later.
Those are only some of a number of inconvenient facts. Perfume does not come as a gel; it cannot both have been applied as a gel to the Skripals’ doorknob and sprayed on to Dawn Sturgess’ wrists. Gels do not spray. Neither Porton Down nor the OPCW was able to state it was from the same batch as the chemical allegedly used on the Skripals’ house.
Then there is the fascinating fact that it took eleven days of intensive searching for a vial of liquid in a small modern home, for the police to find the perfume bottle sitting on the kitchen counter.
Nobody has been charged with the manslaughter or murder of Dawn Sturgess. There is still an international arrest warrant out for Boshirov and Petrov for the attack on the Skripals. Very interestingly indeed, this warrant has never been changed into the names of Chepiga and Mishkin.
From the moment I heard of the attack on Dawn Sturgess I worried that she – a person down on her luck and living in a hostel – was exactly the kind of person the powerful and wealthy would view as a disposable human being if her death fitted their narrative. The denial of an inquest for her, and the complete lack of interest by the mainstream media in the obvious nonsense of the official story that ties her to the Skripal poisoning, tends to confirm these fears. What Dawn Sturgess’ death tells us, beyond doubt, is that the government narrative is fake and the Skripal and Sturgess cases are two separate incidents. Which makes a local origin of the chemical very much more likely. No wonder the government is determined to avoid the inquest.
I was struck today that the tame neo-con warmongering “Chemical weapons expert” Hamish De Bretton Gordon, former head of the British Army’s chemical weapons unit, appeared on Sky News. He was being interviewed on use of white phosphorous by Turkey in Syria and repeatedly tried to deflect the narrative on to alleged chemical weapons use by Syrian government forces, arguing that the present crisis was the moral responsibility of those who opposed western military action against Assad. But what particularly struck me was that he appeared by Skype – from Salisbury. When you look at the British government’s own chemical weapons expertise, you are continually led back to Salisbury, perhaps not surprisingly given the location of Porton Down.
I am aiming to make a full documentary film on the Salisbury events entitled “Truth and the Skripals”, based around the questions raised on this blog. I shall be looking to launch crowdfunding for the documentary shortly, probably within the week.
Hillary Clinton Pitches Conspiracy Theory That Tulsi Gabbard, Jill Stein Are Russian Assets
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 10/18/2019
Hillary Clinton is still peddling election-related conspiracy theories, this time hinting that 2020 Democratic contender Tulsi Gabbard is being ‘groomed’ to split the Democratic vote as a third party candidate, thus handing the election to President Trump.
Speaking with former Obama 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe on his podcast, “Campaign HQ with David Plouffe,” Clinton said – without mentioning Gabbard by name: “I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians.”
Of course, that’s “assuming Jill Stein will give it up – because she’s also a Russian asset,” Clinton continued.
Earlier in the interview, Clinton hinted that the Trump 2020 campaign is still in “contact with the Russians,” and that “we have to assume that since it worked for them, why would they quit?”
“Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin’s dream,” Clinton added. “I don’t know what Putin has on him – whether its both personal and financial, I assume it is. But more than that, there’s this bizarre adulation Trump has for dictators.”
Clinton also insisted that Russia “did affect the outcome of the election” in 2016, despite the DOJ concluding otherwise.
Incredible!
Tulsi Nails it on National TV… US Regime-Change Wars
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 18, 2019
No wonder Democratic Party bosses and mainstream media are trying to bury presidential contender Tulsi Gabbard. She is the only candidate, perhaps the only politician in the US, who is telling the American public exactly what they need to know about what their government and military are really up to: fighting illegal regime-change wars, and to boot, sponsoring terrorists for that purpose.
It didn’t come much clearer nor more explicit than when Gabbard fired up the Democratic TV debate this week. It was billed as the biggest televised presidential debate ever, and the Hawaii Representative told some prime-time home-truths to the nation:
“Donald Trump has blood of the Kurds on his hands, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties who have supported this ongoing regime-change war in Syria that started in 2011… along with many in the mainstream media who have been championing and cheer-leading this regime-change war.”
The 38-year-old military veteran went on to denounce how the US has sponsored Al Qaeda terrorists for its objective of overthrowing the government in Damascus.
It was a remarkably damning assessment of US policy in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. And it was by no means the first time that Gabbard has leveled with the American people on the brutality and criminality of Washington’s so-called “interventions”.
The other 11 Democratic candidates on the stage during the TV debate looked agog after Gabbard’s devastating and calmly delivered statement. All the others have proffered the false narrative that US forces are in Syria to “fight terrorism”. They deplore Trump’s announcement last week to pull back US troops from northeast Syria because, they say, it will undermine the fight against Islamic State (IS or ISIS) and other Al Qaeda affiliates. They also condemn Trump for “betraying Kurdish allies” by his partial troop withdrawal.
President Donald Trump talks about “ending endless wars” and “bringing our troops home”. But he still premises his views on a credulous belief that the US under his watch “defeated ISIS 100 per cent”. In that way, he essentially shares the same corny view as the Democrats and media that America is a force for good, that it is the “good guys wearing white hats riding into the sunset”.
On the other hand, Gabbard stands alone in telling the American people the plain and awful truth. US policy is the fundamental problem. Ending its regime-change war in Syria and elsewhere and ending its diabolical collusion with terror groups is the way to bring peace to the Middle East and to spare ordinary Americans from the economic disaster of spiraling war debts. American citizens need to know the truth about the horror their government, military, media and politicians have inflicted not just on countries in the Middle East, but also from the horrendous boomerang consequences of this criminal policy on the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Americans, including millions of veterans destroyed by injuries, trauma, suicide, and drug abuse.
Following the TV debate this week, it seems that Gabbard won the popular vote with her truth-telling. A major online poll by the Drudge Report found that she stole a march on all the other candidates, winning approval from nearly 40 per cent of voters. Top ticket candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden were trailing behind with 7 per cent or less.
Gabbard has clearly struck a deep chord with the US public in her honest depiction of American wars.
Despite her shattering exposé and seeming appreciation by the public, most mainstream media tried to bury her after the TV debate. Outlets like Vox and CNN declared that Warren was the winner of the debate, whose talking points were mainly about domestic policy issues. Like the other candidates, Warren plies the propaganda narrative of US forces “fighting terrorism”. Vox even slated Gabbard as “a loser” in the debate and claimed she had made “blatantly false” statements about the US’ role in Syria.
Other mainstream news outlets chose to ignore reporting on Gabbard’s demolishing of the official propaganda about American wars. Earlier this week, CNN and the New York Times smeared her as a “Russian asset” and an “apologist for Assad”, referencing a visit she made to Syria in 2017 when she held talks with President Assad.
The Democratic National Committee is claiming that Gabbard does not have sufficient support in polls it deems worthy for her to qualify for appearing in the next TV debate in November.
International events, however, are proving the Hawaii Representative right. US troops, as with other NATO forces, have been occupying Syrian territory illegally. They have no mandate from the United Nations Security Council. The pullback of US troops by Trump has created a vacuum in northeast Syria into which the Syrian Arab Army is quickly moving to reclaim the territory which US-backed Kurdish fighters had de facto annexed for the past five years. Several reports show the local people are joyfully welcoming the arrival of the Syrian army. The scenes are reminiscent of when Syrian and Russian forces liberated Aleppo and other cities previously besieged by terror groups.
America’s war machine must get out of Syria for the sake of restoring peace to that war-torn country. Not because “they have defeated ISIS 100 per cent”, as Trump would conceitedly claim, nor because “we are betraying Kurds in the fight against terrorism”, as most Democrats and US media preposterously claim.
Peace will come to Syria and the Middle East when Washington finally ends its criminal regime-change wars and its support for terrorist proxies. Tulsi Gabbard seems to be the only politician with the intelligence and integrity to tell Americans the truth.
EVEN CNN hosts gasp at guest’s claim that Tulsi Gabbard is ‘a Russian puppet’
RT | October 15, 2019
Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is no stranger to mainstream media smears, but even a panel of CNN hosts and analysts audibly gasped when one guest outright accused the Hawaii congresswoman of working for Russia.
What started off as a standard panel discussion on Tuesday’s upcoming Democratic debate quickly took a dark turn, as CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers accused Gabbard of foreign allegiances. As soon as Gabbard’s name was mentioned, Sellers took the opportunity to claim that there “is a chance that Tulsi’s not just working for the United States of America.”
The dramatic accusation prompted uncomfortable shuffling from the rest of the panel, with CNN contributor April Ryan asking “ohh, wait a minute, what?” Sitting opposite Sellers, commentator Angela Rye jumped in to stress that any accusations of Gabbard working for a foreign power are just “an allegation.”
Sellers was not content to quit, however, adding that it was “not just an allegation” — despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Gabbard is compromised by any foreign country.
Then Sellers got into the specifics.
“There’s no question, there is no question that Tulsi Gabbard, of all the 12 [debate participants], is a puppet for the Russian government.”
“How is there no question?” host Alisyn Camerota asked, seemingly taken aback by the seriousness of the claim. Sellers instantly cited Gabbard’s position on the war in Syria as proof.
Indeed, the unapologetically anti-war candidate has faced similar smears of being an “Assad apologist” and a “Putin puppet” multiple times due to her criticisms of US foreign policy in Syria, where she believes Washington should never have backed and funded jihadist rebels fighting President Bashar Assad.
As for Sellers himself, he has endorsed California Senator Kamala Harris for president, so his distaste for Gabbard is not entirely surprising. Gabbard won broad praise for expertly taking Harris to task on her record as a prosecutor during an earlier debate — so much so that the hashtag #KamalaHarrisDestroyed even trended on Twitter (but that was apparently Russia’s fault, too).
While Sellers did face some mild pushback from the CNN panel, none of the participants rushed to wholeheartedly defend Gabbard, either. The analyst did experience the wrath of Twitter, however.
Journalist Max Blumenthal tweeted that Sellers comment was somewhat ironic since he is “an actual puppet for corporate America and AIPAC.” Sellers is an activist for the pro-Israel AIPAC lobbying organization, which is accused of waging outsized influence in US domestic politics and foreign policy.
Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald called Sellers’ comments “repugnant, McCarthyite accusations of treason” and noted that the CNN panel moved quickly on and would surely allow him back to repeat the same smears on another occasion.
“If there were a shred of proof that she is working for the Russian government she would be in a whole world of trouble,” another user wrote, noting that Gabbard is a major in the National Guard and a member of congress with top secret security clearance.
The anti-Gabbard smears have been bubbling in mainstream media since before she even announced her candidacy, but they went into overdrive after she entered the race for president.
NBC has accused her of being supported by Russian trolls on Twitter, while the New York Times recently published a hit piece in the ‘news’ section, headlined: “What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?” The piece speculated that Gabbard’s anti-interventionist stances might somehow make her a Russian stooge, even citing coverage of her campaign by RT of all news organizations as some kind of proof.
Gabbard also won no friends within the Democratic Party in 2016 after she stepped down as DNC vice chair, endorsed Bernie Sanders and accused the party of bias in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Gabbard has continued her criticism of her party during this election cycle, too — so it’s no wonder that the mainstream media and Democratic establishment haven’t exactly warmed to her candidacy.
The New York Times’ Preemptive Reporting on James Comey
By Ray McGovern • Consortium News • October 13, 2019
James Comey Would Like to Help: The former F.B.I. director wants an end to the Trump presidency. And yes, he knows you might think he caused it” is the headline atop an instructive article on Sunday by Matt Flegenheimer of The New York Times. His article makes clear the Times remains determined to support former FBI Director James Comey and sustain the discredited Russiagate narrative they share to the point of helping Comey and his partners avoid possible time in prison.
In late August, the Department of Justice decided to let Comey off with a slap on the wrist for leaking to the Times, through an intermediary, highly sensitive information from his talks with President Donald Trump. At that juncture, it was already a no-brainer to warn that the victory lap Comey chose to run was clearly premature.
Consequential leaks to the media by a former FBI director are serious enough. Now, however, we are talking about possible felonies. Comey is standing in such deep kimchi that he may drown — despite how tall he is, and despite preemptive puff pieces protesting a purity of the caliber of Caesar’s wife. This time, even with the Establishment media and Comey’s accomplices offering fulsome praise for him, there’s serious doubt whether he can wangle a Stay-Out-Of-Jail Card.
Why do they appear to be running so scared?
In Horror of Horowitz
Over the last year and a half, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been investigating how Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, and three deputy attorneys general (Rod Rosenstein, Sally Yates, and Dana Boente) thought they could get away with signing applications for surveillance of former Trump associate Carter Page without disclosing that, as McCabe later testified, the application was based largely on the shabby, unverified “Steele dossier” paid for by the Democrats.
Providing incomplete, misleading information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a felony.
No problem, these top law enforcement officials probably thought at the time. Who would find out about their misconduct after Hillary Clinton — the odds-on favorite — became president? There would be encomia and promotions for help rendered, not indictments.
But now all of the above are squirming, and there is a paper trail. Only one of the FISA application signers is still in a key position to help from the inside — Boente. He was not demoted to working in the file room. He is the FBI general counsel, that is, its top attorney.
Is it About to Hit the Fan?
According Horowitz, Attorney General William Barr has had his draft IG report for over a month. Horowitz has said that his team “reviewed over one million records and conducted over 100 interviews, including several of witnesses who only recently agreed to be interviewed.” The team is “finalizing” the report prior to releasing it publicly.
Some pundits are now suggesting that the DOJ IG report may be published as early as this Friday.
Hold onto your hats.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
US Working With Russia to Handover Patrols Between Turkish and Syrian Armies in Manbij
By Patrick Henningsen | 21st Century Wire | October 15, 2019
This morning, Russian military officials announced they are now patrolling the region surrounding Syria’s northern town of Manbij, specifically in the areas which separate Turkish troops and the Syrian Arab Army soldiers.
According to a Russian Defense Ministry statement issued Tuesday, Russian military police are being positioned as a ‘buffer’ around the area northwest of Manbij, “along the line of contact between the Syrian Arab Republic and Turkey.” Officials also indicated that they are in communication with the Turkish military leadership to ensure that patrols are observing necessary deconfliction protocols.
More interestingly, US reports suggest that the Pentagon has been working together with Moscow in order engineer a seamless handover to Russian military police of positions previously held by US forces.
According to one senior Pentagon official who spoke to Newsweek, some US personnel have stayed to behind to assist Russian forces, noting that US special forces “having been in the area for longer, has been assisting the Russian forces to navigate through previously unsafe areas quickly.”
“It is essentially a handover,” said the official. “However, it’s a quick out, not something that will include walk-throughs, etc., everything is about making out with as much as possible of our things while destroying any sensitive equipment that cannot be moved.”
This latest move by Moscow to install a security buffer should allay any international concerns that Trump’s sudden withdrawal of US forces would create a power vacuum that might lead to some sort of Turkish ‘massacre’ of ethnic Kurds in northern Syria. The sheer volume of alarmist western propaganda promoting that scenario has been incessant over the last week. The UK’s Guardian newspaper even went so far as to promote the idea that a US withdrawal would result in “genocide” of Syrian Kurds.
Also helping to promulgate the idea of an impending Turkish-led massacre was America’s ABC News, who used old footage from a Kentucky gun range – claiming it was Turkey firing on the Kurdish population in Syria.
This latest news comes immediately on the heels of a new deal struck yesterday between Kurdish officials in northeastern Syria and the government in Damascus allowing the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to takeover key strategic positions along Syria’s northern border with Turkey. The new security agreement also includes disbanding and abolishing the previously US-backed SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), and with remaining militias to be incorporated into the Syrian Republic’s Armed Forces including “all the current Kurdish forces and military groups joining the 5th Corps (Assault Legion) under Russian control.”
As a newly unified SAA and Russian military police establish positions around Manbij, the threat still remains of advancing platoons of Turkish-backed former FSA (Free Syrian Army) ‘opposition’ fighters who are now rebranded as ‘Syrian National Army.’ These opposition militants could still cause problems in maintaining peace and stability along proscribed battle lines.
***
Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting in the Middle East including work in Syria and Iraq.
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Book Review
In 2007, Michael Parenti Called Out The Greater Israel Project
The Dissident | January 28, 2026
In my last article, I covered the left-wing scholar Michael Parenti- who passed away at the age of 92 this week- and his prophetic writings on the Ukraine proxy war in 2014.
Parenti’s writings on the Israel lobby and the greater Israel project were equally prophetic.
In his 2007 book “Contrary Notions” Parenti called out “Israel First” Neo-cons and Israel’s role in the Iraq war, and predicted to a tee the future Israeli/American wars in the Middle East in service of Greater Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
In a section of the book aptly titled “Israel First”, Parenti wrote… continue
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