Chlorine ‘likely’ used in alleged Douma chemical attack, no nerve agent – OPCW‘s final report
RT | March 1, 2019
Chlorine was likely used in a chemical attack in Syria’s Douma last April, the OPCW said. The chemical arms watchdog refrained from identifying the party responsible for the incident, despite earlier being granted such powers.
There are “reasonable grounds” to believe that “the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon [took] place on 7 April 2018,” the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said.
“This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine,” according to the report.
The FMM also stated that it “did not observe any major key precursors for the synthesis of chemical weapons agents, particularly for nerve agents such as sarin, or vesicants such as sulphur or nitrogen mustard.”
The OPCW experts came to these conclusions after on-site visits to collect environmental samples, interviews with the witnesses, and analysis of other data.
The chemical incident in Douma just over a year ago was reported by the infamous Western-backed group, the White Helmets, which had been caught red-handed cooperating with terrorists on numerous occasions.
The activists blamed the Syrian government for the attack on its own people, as videos emerged online allegedly showing doctors trying to rescue those affected by toxic substances. Moscow had for weeks issued repeated warnings that the militants were preparing provocations with chemical weapons in the area.
The unverified claims were swiftly picked up by the mainstream media. The US, UK, and France used the alleged attack as a pretext to launch a large-scale missile attack on Syrian government targets, which they said were involved in the production of toxic agents.
They opted to act days before the OPCW was due to arrive in Douma for a fact-finding mission, just one week after the alleged chemical incident.
Chlorine containers from Germany that belonged to militants were later found by the Russian military in the liberated parts of Douma. This was followed by the discovery of a laboratory operated by terrorists, which contained all the equipment needed to produce deadly chemicals.
In Face of Yellow-Vest Critics, France Moves to Criminalize Anti-Zionism
Alain Finkielkraut being confronted by yellow-vest protesters.
By Guillaume Durocher • Unz Review • February 24, 2019
The French Jewish intellectual Alain Finkielkraut was recently profusely insulted by yellow-vests on the margins of a demonstration. This attack has been widely-portrayed as anti-Semitic, even though the yellow-vests in question explicitly attacked Finkielkraut as a Zionist. As Damien Viguier, the anti-Zionist intellectual Alain Soral’s lawyer, observed:
Alain Finkielkraut was called “a dirty Zionist shit (a Zionist two times again and “shit” perhaps three times more), a “fascist,” a “racist (two times), and “hateful.” He was asked to leave the demonstration in direct times: “get out of here” (twice), “piss off,” “go back home to Israel!” I can see in all this insults, or defamatory comments, I would even grant a light violence, but I find no trace of a discriminatory motivation. This shows well that the words “anti-Semite” and “anti-Semitic” are used in an absolutely arbitrary manner.
It is true that “Zionist” is often used as a euphemism for “Jew.” But it is also true that many anti-Zionists are happy to befriend genuinely anti-Zionist Jews such as Gilad Atzmon (himself an associate of Soral’s). Finkielkraut was likely attacked for his values rather than his ethnicity.
This subtlety did not prevent the incident from triggering a veritable pro-Semitic moral panic across the entire politico-media class. The media lamented the “anti-Semitic” attack on Finkielkraut and he was comforted by politicians from across the political spectrum, from the far-left to the far-right, including the bulk of prominent nationalist and identitarian figures.
Much of the foreign press (the London Times, The Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Telegraph Agency . . .) misrepresented things further, claiming that Finkielkraut had been called a “dirty Jew.” This is a genuine example of fake news.
Then a Jewish cemetery in the Alsatian village of Quatzenheim was desecrated, with over 90 tombstones being sprayed with with swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans. One tombstone was sprayed with the words: “Elsassisches Schwarzen Wolfe,” meaning “Alsatian Black Wolves,” an Alsatian nationalist group which has been inactive since 1981 . . . Of course, a hate hoax cannot be excluded: one thinks of the recent Jussie Smollett debacle or the Israeli-American who instigated 2000 supposed anti-Semitic bomb and shooter threats over the years.
For those whom anecdotal evidence was not sufficient, the regime also trotted out the usual “statistics” about, seemingly released every year of every decade, showing a massive increase in “anti-Semitic” acts. I will only say that such statistics are dubious in general, repetitive, and obviously ethnically and politically convenient. Grand old man Jean-Marie Le Pen commented:
There is no anti-Semitism in France which would justify a mobilization of public opinion. . . . Incidentally, we’re given a figure of a 74% increase in [anti-Semitic] attacks. Compared to what? I ask that we have the list of all these attacks committed against the Jews, in such a way that we can actually tell the difference between a graffiti, a murder, a telephone call, or a schoolyard scuffle. It is true that radical Islamism is extrapolating in a sense the Israeli-Arab conflict into France. It is much more a matter of anti-Zionism than anti-Semitism.
Regardless of whether the Quatzenheim incident is authentic, and it could well be, this event immediately prompted a solemn visit by the President of the Republic himself, Emmanuel Macron. This was followed by a national call to demonstrate against anti-Semitism, initiated by the Socialist Party but with virtually the entire political class following suite.
The response of both of the indigenous French people and the Africans/Muslims was lackluster however. According to the official media, some 20,000 people demonstrated in Paris and negligible amounts in the rest of the country. Actually, as the 20,000 figure was provided by the Socialist Party itself, we can be sure that this is an overstatement.
Serge Klarsfeld, one of the leading lights of the highly-profitable local holocaust industry, could not conceal his disappointment, telling the top journalist Jean-Pierre Elkabbach (a fellow Jew[1]) on television:
The masses were not there. The crowd was not there. The French on the whole were not there. There were demonstrations, but I was there, I was there with my entire family and I saw a lot of familiar faces. But the crowd did not come, and which is indignant, should have come. . . . In Lyon there were 1500 or 2000 people. That is not a lot for a big city like Lyon. The crowd was absent and those who were not Jewish were generally absent!
This is in stark contrast with the similar 1990 Carpentras Affair, during which a Jewish cemetery was also desecrated. The pro-Semitic demonstrators following this incident numbered over 200,000 in Paris alone. The event was skillfully exploited by the Socialist President François Mitterrand and by the politico-media class in general by abusively linking this event to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s rapidly-rising Front National (FN). This contributed to making the FN unhandshakeworthy and to preventing any alliance between Le Pen’s nationalists and the mainstream conservatives, which would have spelled doom for the Left. It was later shown that the FN had nothing to do with the incident, which had apparently been instigated by a handful of neonazis with no links to the party.
People should generally speculate less about the authenticity of an event (e.g. 9/11, the Reichstag Fire), which is often difficult to prove one way or the other, than on whether the event has been used as a pretext by the ruling elite to do something questionable or disproportionate (often something which it had been hankering to do for a long time), which is typically quite easy to demonstrate.
This time, as Klarsfeld complains, the gentiles were not so interested in these theatrics. However, the event is having significant political and legal effects. The Macron regime is exploiting the incident to implement measures which have long been demanded by the CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France), the country’s powerful official Jewish lobby. Macron himself appeared before the (very conveniently-timed, as it happens) CRIF annual dinner, where the crème de la crème of the French political class regularly appear, in a solemn ritual of solidarity and genuflection before the Lobby-That-Doesn’t-Exist.
French President Emmanuel Macron with CRIF President Francis Khalifat (himself the successor to the long-time present Roger Cuckierman, you can’t make some things up).
Macron made a number of promises to the CRIF:
- Three small “anti-Semitic” nationalist groups would be banned (Bastion Social, Blood & Honor Hexagone, and Combat 18).
- A new law strengthening the state’s already considerable ability to censor anything it deems to be “hate speech” on social media (the French government is among the world leaders in demanding and obtaining the suppression of content on Twitter, behind only Turkey and Russia).
- Most significantly, France would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition of anti-Semitism,” which ludicrously includes anti-Zionism as an integral part of anti-Semitism. Thus, Jewish organizations and the French government are moving to outright criminalize opposition to Jewish ethno-nationalism (the definition of Zionism) all the while criminalizing all Western ethno-nationalisms as being discriminatory, hateful, xenophobic, etc.
This was quickly followed by the European Union me-too-ers in Brussels making their own proposals for an “anti-Semitism pact,” notably aimed at punishing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s campaign raising awareness around international financial speculator George Soros’ multi-million dollar efforts to flood Europe with migrants and undermine traditional European culture and ethnic identity.
Surprisingly, Soral’s anti-Zionist and civic nationalist association Égalité & Réconciliation actually hailed Macron for resisting the CRIF’s demands, bowing to them only reticently, and in some cases only symbolically. After all E&R itself, the most prominent anti-Zionist organization in France, will not be banned. The social-media censorship legislation will only be presented in parliament in May. And, apparently, France’s redefinition of anti-Semitism to include anti-Zionism will not be legally-binding, but will be used to educate policemen and judges (go figure). All this, E&R surmises, left the CRIF’s audience underwhelmed. And, E&R notes that the CRIF’s demands are “extremely anti-popular and legally untenable . . . unless there is a complete shift to a communitarian [ethnic] dictatorship.”
Let us return to the original “victim” of all this, Alain Finkielkraut. Following the incident, an immediate “investigation” was launched of the various “perpetrators,” showing the absurd judicialization of French life. Finkielkraut, recently appointed as one of the forty “Immortals” of the Académie française, has been known to the younger generation primarily as an anti-racist Jew turned neoconservative once he realized Islamic immigration to France was bad for the Jews. He has become a popular Internet meme for his numerous televised hysterical outbursts: “Shut up! Shut up!”
Personally I haven’t followed Finkielkraut very closely and whenever I listen to him his discourse sounds like over-complicated pilpul. That said, he has objectively voiced a number of French identitarian concerns over the years. In 2005 he correctly and controversially told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “People say that the French national [football] team is admired because it is black-blanc-beur [black, white, Arab]. In reality, the national team is today black-black-black, which makes it the laughingstock of Europe.” There was clearly an element of rivalry in claiming the status of top ethnic victim. Finkielkraut also told Haaretz:
I was born in Paris and am the son of Polish immigrants, my father was deported from France, his parents were deported and murdered at Auschwitz, my father returned from Auschwitz to France. This country deserves our hatred. And what it did to my parents was far more brutal than what it did to the Africans. And what did it do to the Africans? Nothing but good. My father was forced to endure hell for five years. And I was never taught hatred. Today the blacks’ hatred is even stronger than the Arabs’.
In 2017, upon the death of the French rock singer Johnny Hallyday, Finkielkraut told the right-wing journalist Élisabeth Lévy (another fellow Jew, at once moderately anti-Muslim and hysterical on anti-Semitism): “the little people, the little whites went in to the streets to say adieu to Johnny. […] The non-natives[2] shone by their absence.”
Alain Finkelkraut’s biased & red-pilled critics
In the footage of his “assault” by the yellow-vests, Finkielkraut however played his role to perfection, bearing his grotesque attackers’ insults with calmness and dignity. He then appeared on the radio to discuss the incident and emphasized that the attackers were probably of Islamic origin:
When one hears this slogan, “France is ours” [pronounced by one of the yellow-vests], one could thinks this is a variant of “France for the French” of classical fascism. But in fact no: he is saying “France is ours, it belongs to us Islamists.” He therefore is a believer in the theory of the Great Replacement. I do not say this Great Replacement is taking place, but for him it should take place. And for him, the Jews should be the first to be kicked out.
One will appreciate the utter tartuffery of claiming an opponent is promoting the Great Replacement while denying that it is taking place.
I will take this opportunity to emphasize again the Soviet-style absurdity of the French politico-media class’s denial of the Great Replacement. The replacement of the indigenous French population by both European and non-European (overwhelmingly African/Muslim) allogenes is visible in every major French city and, increasingly, in towns and villages across the country. And yet, our treacherous ruling elite, media, and even Wikipedia claim that all talk of a Great Replacement is a mere “conspiracy theory.” I’m not sure even Pravda’s claims concerning the workers’ paradise were so bold.
As it happens, Finkielkraut’s attackers seem to have been Muslims and one, “Benjamin W.,” appears to be an indigenous French convert. It seems quite likely that they were indeed influenced by Soral or at least the multiracial “patriotic” anti-Zionist culture he has created.
All in all, these events are illustrative of the French and Franco-Jewish elites manias for anti-Semitism and the growing indifference of the French and Afro-Islamic populations to such theatrics. The Lobby-That-Doesn’t-Exist – denounced by French leaders as varied as Charles de Gaulle, Raymond Barre, and François Mitterrand – continues to play the victim. But their power is weakening; and they know it. Macron himself, a convinced high-globalist, is only moderately interested in these matters. Many leading Jews, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, have been extraordinarily alarmed by the uncontrolled and populist nature of the yellow-vest movement. Time will tell if this movement will participate in France’s liberation from globalism and the lobby’s distorting influence.
Notes
[1] Soral has observed that while Jews make up only 1% of the French population many French talk shows resemble “a little Jewish theater.” This disparate outcome and ethnic privilege should be noted.
[2] Actually, the non-souchiens, the non-French-by-blood. Souchien is a term coined by “anti-colonial” Arab-Berber racial activists. It is a homophone for sous-chien, “sub-dog.”
J’Accuse!
By Eugene Schulman | CounterPunch | February 22, 2019
A short essay on my thoughts about the Yellow Vest movement in France (now spreading to other parts of the world) and the coincidental (alleged) rise of anti-Semitism. I use the term ‘essay’ in its French meaning of the verb ‘essayer’: to try out, or try on, i.e., I am trying my theory on you.
I accuse the Macron government, in its frustration over failure to bring an end to the Yellow Vest uprising, of raising the issue of anti-Semitism in order to discredit the movement. By accusing the movement of stirring up anti-Semitism and blaming it for the recent desecration of Jewish cemeteries and shops and other iconic symbols suddenly appearing in Paris and other cities around France where the movement has been most active, the government hopes to instill fear in the public, who until now, polls show, has been by a large margin, favorable to the movement.
It seems not to be a coincidence that, until this moment, incidents and accusations of anti-Semitism in France have been barely noticeable or non-existant for quite some time. It would seem the Zionist community and its lobbies such as Crif, feel neglected, so they have sent out reconnaissance soldiers such as Daniel Cohen Bendit, Bernard Henry-Levy, and Alain Finkielkraut to stir up the masses. All of these soldiers, and many others of their ilk are solidly in line with the ruling elite represented by the new ‘Jupiter’, Emanuel Macron, and his cronies who are following the leadership of U.S. dictate to make the 1% even smaller. I don’t have to go into detail to justify this claim. There have been many articles in both mainstream and alternative (such as this site) media, explaining in detail this case. Thus, all the more reason for the Yellow Vests to protest. That this protest seems to be working is what has got the Macronistas so upset and induced them to begin to get dirty by playing the anti-Semitism card.
It is time to recognize that if anti-Semitism is increasing in our societies, the Zionist are as much to blame for its rise as Jew hatred. This latest incidence has been manufactured by the ruling powers, including the Jewish/Israel lobbies, themselves, to distract us from the real causes of today’s societal breakdown in France.
Jussie Smollett and Jewish Hoaxes
By Israel Shamir • Unz Review • February 22, 2019
The Jussie Smollett hoax and its debunking may yet change the trend of baseless accusations. God knows, the hoaxers went too far, and it’s high time for correction. The concise list of hoaxes would be too long for this essay, but here is a small list of very recent ones. They were met by public outrage and media indignation, for very little reason, and now we may expect a downward market correction, due to overpriced stock.
Some unlikely persons already attempt to capitalise on the expected reaction in order to channel it to the preferred direction – in a very unlikely medium. Mr Noah Rothman, an editor of Commentary magazine, condemned in The New York Times the imprudent haste of media falling for the hoax. Come on, really! The NY Times is a leading propagator of similar hoaxes. Whenever there is a story of a suffering diversity person, The New York Times usually takes it and plays it to its full extent. And when the hoax is revealed, usually the newspaper mentions it on page 46, at the bottom. So why is this night different, as the Jews ask on Passover night?
Mr Rothman is all against hoaxes by coloured and gay persons, that’s why. He mentions a few of them and adds his complaint: “There have been no similar national paroxysms amid a sharp uptick in violence targeting New York City’s Jewish population… The real tragedy … that hate crimes are, in fact, on the rise in the Trump era, particularly against Jews”. He does not mind hoaxes, he minds blacks arousing paroxysms of anguish at the expense of the Jews. The Americans and Europeans should feel sorry for Jews and anger for their adversaries, and every cry and tear for a black is a waste of a good cry and tear.
Among hoaxes he mentions, there is not a single one by a Jew, yet Jews are the leading perpetrators of hoaxes. Michael Kader of Ashkelon, Israel with over two thousand hoaxes to his account claiming attacks on Jewish community centres and synagogues is the shining example, but there are plenty of them. A Jewish woman had made a hoax bomb threat to a synagogue. A Jewish man spray-painted swastikas on his own house.
For Rothman, Jews are always innocent victims, as opposed to uppity blacks, who are guilty. This bias is a hallmark of Commentary Magazine, flagship of the Neocons, and the Neocon movement was established with a highly prejudiced attitude towards the blacks. Their open anti-black racism has been their entry card into white society.
The very word ‘racism’ has been grossly devalued, like the word ‘rape’. Nowadays having mutually consensual sex amounts to rape in case of buyers’ remorse, like in the case of Julian Assange, while standing still in front of a Native American drummer is defined as ‘racism’ (BTW, Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic student, is suing the perpetrator of this hoax, the Washington Post ). When everything is ‘racism’, nothing is. However, racism (and rape) could be a real thing. The most racist anti-black rant you can find on an American internet site is not on a KKK nor a Stormfront nor a Hollywood Nazi page, but on the Commentary site. It was written by Norman Podhoretz, its editor-in-chief, and published in 1963, that is, 55 years ago.
Norman Podhoretz
In the article My Negro Problem—And Ours the founder of the Neocon movement admits of “hating the Negroes with all my heart”. He tells of his mother who “in Yiddish cursed the goyim and the Schwartzes, the Schwartzes and the goyim.” All American whites are sick in their feelings about Negroes, he asserts. He admits that he “grew up fearing and envying and hating Negroes” and this feeling hasn’t gone. “Now do I fear them and envy them and hate them still? The answer is yes, but not in the same proportions and certainly not in the same way… I know it from the disgusting prurience that can stir in me at the sight of a mixed couple; If I were to be asked today whether I would like a daughter of mine ’to marry one,’ I would have to answer: ’No, I wouldn’t like it at all. I would rail and rave and rant and tear my hair.’”
Disgusting prurience – neither more, nor less! David Duke’s views are moderate compared to Norman Podhoretz’s, but Duke is ostracized while Podhoretz was a leading light of his generation. Podhoretz nursed a special hatred of Black Muslims, while Duke was friendly with them. Despite his admitted hate of the blacks, Podhoretz felt “the insane rage … at the thought of Negro anti-Semitism”. It is fine for him to hate them, but if they hate him, it is a reason for ‘insane rage’.
Podhoretz’s views, obnoxious as they were, derive from the traditional Jewish view as stated by Maimonides (Guide for the Perplexed, 3:51), namely “the Blacks are like dumb animals; they are not fully human; they are positioned below humans, but they are above monkeys for their appearance is like human and their mind is better than that of monkeys”.
With such views, you understand why some Jewish scribes like Mr Rothman hate Black hoaxes – and here they find an echo chamber within some White groups. They just do not mention Jewish hoaxes.
However, black and gay hoaxes are annoying, that’s all. Jewish hoaxes are very dangerous and expensive. Michael Kader’s hoaxes cost the American taxpayer a great deal, for his bomb threats were translated into hundreds of millions of dollars of grants for Jewish NGOs. These funds were given by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “because the Jews are the most commonly targeted religious group in the United States.” Now we know that the Jews were targeted by their coreligionist from Ashkelon, but the funds have not been returned, with apologies. There are no statistics for the total Jewish share in the DHS’s $50 billion annual budget, but my guess it is a large one.
Presenting a frivolous remark of the freshman senator Ilhan Omar as an “antisemitic attack” is another kind of Jewish hoax, or “The Growing Anti-Semitism Scam”, in words of our colleague Philip Giraldi.
Similar scams were practiced this week in England and France with powerful results. In England, seven (now eight) Jewish and Judeophile MPs have stormed out of the Labour Party claiming Labour has been ‘infected’ with ‘anti-Jewish racism’. Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected to lead the party, it became the most numerous one in Western Europe. It became popular because it regained its ties with the British worker. And immediately its philosemitic Blairite wing began to campaign against the new leader.
Their campaign is based on the Jewish hoax of Corbyn’s alleged antisemitism and racism. This hoax is as baseless as that of Jussie Smollett’s but far more dangerous. You can watch the Al Jazeera film The Lobby Part 3 and see how an encounter between an elderly lady pro-Palestinian Labour-supporter and the head of Labour Friends of Israel was misrepresented as an “antisemitic onslaught”. Actually, Smollett is a rather innocent bloke; he bayed for sympathy, while Joan Ryan, an MP and the chair of Labour Friends of Israel has collected over million dollars from Israel Embassy’s slush fund.
The scammers want to sabotage the British people’s desire to throw off the shackles of Brussels. Their “Independent [from Brits, not from Israel] Group” is against Brexit, for NATO, for nuclear weapons, for wars overseas, for neoliberalism, and that is quite aside from the Jewish and Israeli issues. They are being joined by a few ex-Tories of similar persuasion. (My British friend heartily approved of this step, for “all the rotten apples should be in one basket”).
A Labour MP said it was “possible” that Israel is a financial backer of the breakaway Independent Group of MPs, but almost immediately recanted and apologised for the suggestion.
Many reviews of the British Labour split explain it by Corbyn’s pro-Palestinian views. Corbyn and his allies also prefer this explanation.
Another, more plausible explanation crosses the bounds of the permissible in civilised society. What the heck, let us cross it.
The British Jews overwhelmingly vote for Tories; the Jews are for Remain in the EU; Jews are for banks and international institutions. Corbyn’s Labour stands for its direct opposite. These are words of Jeremy Corbyn just before his election: They, the world’s bankers, International Monetary Fund, European Union, they are utterly united in what they want. Utterly united in deflation, suppressing the economy, and creating unemployment. The word “Jew” or “Israel” wasn’t mentioned even once, but British and American Jews think that ‘bankers’, ‘IMF’ and ‘EU’ are them. They are what they are, in the words of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The State of Israel is important for them, perhaps the Bible, Talmud and talith are precious, but only on Saturdays. While their identification with banks, globalism, neoliberal practice is their daily routine. Marx advised to pay attention to the Weekday Jew, rather than to the Saturday Jew. This advice is still valid.
Corbyn has no problem with Jews qua Jews; everybody in the Socialist movement is used to Jews. He is against Israeli anti-Palestinian policies, and there are Jews of such views, too (though we take a lot of beating). But being against Israeli policies AND against bankers, IMF and EU means threatening the Weekday Jew’s bread and butter.
Thirty years ago, in the formative years of Jeremy Corbyn, Jews were more to the left, and then such a policy had been possible. But now the Jews have moved to the right, or to the moneyed centre for bankers, and they would have a problem with Corbyn even if he were studying Talmud daily.
The struggle of the Seven against ‘antisemitism’ has nothing to do with their alleged anti-racism. Angela Smith, a UK MP who quit the Labour Party over alleged racism, next day was caught on live TV appearing to refer to people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds as having a “funny tinge”.
Our colleague and friend Jonathan Cook of Nazareth noticed that the departing MPs are united not only by their uncritical attitude to Israel, but also by “their enthusiasm for foreign wars, for the enrichment of a narrow neo-liberal elite; [they] are ambivalent about austerity policies, and are reticent at returning key utilities to public ownership”. In other words, they are for neo-liberalism, and complaints of antisemitism serve as a cover for it.
You can read my piece Love Labours Lost explaining this rightwards shift of Jews and dismay of British Labour at the loss of erstwhile allies.
In France, the Jews greatly improved on Smollett. A French Jewish scribe Alain Finkielkraut (let us call him f-Kraut for short) had been insulted by a kuffiyeh-wearing Palestinian who marched with other brave Gilets Jaunes along a Parisian street. It was a minor event; the scribe was not beaten or roughly handled in any way; he was called ‘a dirty Zionist’, not a big deal. He is a Zionist, no doubt. Other people in the street even invited f-Kraut to join them. Pretty much a non-event. If I was writing about every occasion I was called an ‘enemy of Israel’ or ‘enemy of the Jewish people’, I’d write of nothing else for lack of time. But the reaction in France was like a million Smolletts.
“A few insults directed against a certain essayist called “philosopher” by the media are infinitely more serious than the loss of an eye by a young student in philosophy of twenty years who had done absolutely nothing wrong” – acerbically commented our friend Jean Bricmont (a partner and co-author of the columnist Diana Johnstone).
Indeed, the same day Macron’s henchmen knocked out an eye of a young Gilet Jaune; they had left another one lacking an arm; thousands were attacked by gas in what was perhaps the biggest gas assault in Europe since Ypres. But the MSM took up the case of Finkielkraut and made a Kristallnacht out of it. They claimed f-Kraut was called a “dirty Jew” and that he was almost lynched, but saved by police. (Both claims are not true; though there were cases of journalists being roughed up at the demos, and calling someone a Jew is not an offence at all, but in this case it didn’t even happen).
While doing a full Smollett, the media and President Macron went after the Gilets Jaunes, describing them as antisemites and Nazis. Thus a non-event was turned into a huge affaire; and the first real popular movement in France since 1968 was besmirched. On the same occasion, Macron explicitly equalled anti-Zionism with antisemitism and made it a criminal offence.
In addition, some unknown Smolletts painted swastikas on the Jewish cemetery, as is their wont whenever Jews wish to show they are being persecuted. I have little doubt these swastikas are painted by persons hired by this or that Jewish organisation, or by Macron’s men who wanted to amplify the f-kraut non-event.
Tens of thousands of gullible French attended a rally for f-Kraut and against antisemitism. “The fawning eagerness of the political class rushing to demonstrate against something that hardly exists”, – noted a French writer. The French political class paid no attention when a church was desecrated. But for a Jew whom somebody dissed on a street – they all marched. Media published denunciations of Yellow Vests, and Macron made a lot of political capital out of it. In purely political terms, the fallout of the f-Kraut affair could be compared to Trump’s impeachment in the wake of the Smollett shenanigans.
Mind you, this f-kraut deserved to be insulted all right. He is a French Norman (“I hate Niggers!”) Podhoretz. He spoke of “Black hatred for France”, said that “Gaza has too many children, and they have no place in the world”; ridiculed Black football players of France for being black; he is an enemy of Palestinians and of Muslims, and he does not care much for the French people either. He is known for his claim “What is good for the Jews is good for France”, for his call for segregation between Jews and Palestinians. It is amazing that a Jew with such views is considered to be “on the left”, and he is invited to TV and newspaper interviews, though he is more racist than French nationalists like Le Pen or Soral. He also wrote a nasty piece against the Gilets Jaunes, but the GJs have insulted him far less than he deserves.
In England and in France, as well as in the US, the Jews became a symbol of the present neo-liberal regime, as the scams and hoaxes make it apparent. This is more important for people here than the issue of Palestine, and unavoidable reaction to neo-liberalism will cause collapse of this Jewish role and incidentally will bring equality of Jew and Gentile to Israel/Palestine.
Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net
Macron: anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism
MEMO | February 21, 2019
France is to recognise anti-Zionism, the denial of the state of Israel, as a form of anti-Semitism in response to a surge in acts against Jews not seen “since the Second World War”, reports The Telegraph.
French president, Emmanuel Macron, also promised new legislation in May to fight hate speech on the Internet, which could see platforms such as Facebook and Twitter fined for every minute they fail to take down racist or violent content.
Speaking at the annual meeting of France’s largest Jewish organization, CRIF, Macron said that France and other countries in Europe had recently witnessed “a resurgence of anti-Semitism that is probably unprecedented since World War II.”
We have denounced it a lot, adopted plans, passed laws sometimes. But we haven’t been able to act efficiently.
While stopping short of calling for new legislation, the President said the working definition of anti-Semitism drawn up by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance would help guide police forces, magistrates and teachers in their daily work.
That definition stipulates that anti-Semitism can take the form of “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”.
He added:
Anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-Semitism. Behind the negation of Israel’s existence, what is hiding is the hatred of Jews. Such guidelines in no way infringed on people’s right to criticise to the Israeli government and its policies.
Macron also said that his party would introduce a bill in parliament in May to force social media to withdraw hate speech posted online and use all available means to identify the authors “as quickly as possible.”
Digital minister Mounir Mahjoubi said: “There will be an obligation for results: if the content is not taken down then there will be a fine, and a large fine,” Mr Mahjoubi told France Info radio. “Each minute that content remains online, it increases the harm to society. Twenty-four hours is far too long.”
Macron’s speech came a day after thousands attended rallies across France to denounce a rise in anti-Semitic acts.
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The End of Truth as We Know It – Or Knew It
By Jeremy Salt | American Herald Tribune | February 21, 2019
The claim (or admission) by the BBC journalist Riam Dalati that the alleged sarin attack on Douma in April 2018, was staged was received by the Russian embassy in London with glee. “Remarkable that the British MSM chose to ignore it’, whoever it was at the embassy wrote. ‘No breaking news, no articles, nothing.’
Remarkable? Not at all, given the endless track record of the media in ignoring news that does not suit its agenda. The real interest lies in the fact that an insider has owned up. His personal opinion only, according to the BBC, which along with the rest of the media, had taken the initial version of the alleged attack for granted, thus setting Syria up for the cruise missile strike by the US, Britain, and France which soon followed.
‘I can prove without a doubt that the Douma hospital scene was staged,’ Dalati wrote. Well, enough of the evidence has already been produced to prove that. As for the sarin, in July 2018, the OPCW (Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) put out an interim report indicating that whatever was used at Douma was not sarin, but most probably chlorine.
The next question is ‘used by whom?’ Again the evidence suggests that the yellow gas cylinders shown in the media propaganda blitz were not dropped from an aircraft but planted at the scene by the ‘activists’ who faked the whole episode.
The OPCW now seems to be reaching the point where it will release its full report. What it might contain opens the doors to endless speculation. It has already indicated that it found traces of chlorine and it may point an accusing finger at ‘the regime’ but without having the proof that it did it.
So expect something ultimately inconclusive, i.e. there is evidence of chlorine having been used, the Syrian regime might have used it but we really can’t say, leaving enough room for western governments to argue that they were right to bomb on the basis of the facts that were known at the time and for E. Higgins and company to argue that their version has not been disproved.
With Idlib, the last redoubt of the takfiris in Syria, now the focal point of political maneuvers and possibly military action, any credibility given by the OPCW to the accusations against the Syrian military might encourage the takfiris to try again, most likely in Idlib province, the location of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaikhun in April, 2017. Without having the proof, the US launched a missile strike against a Syrian air base by way of retaliation.
Another faked attack would give the US and its law-breaking friends the pretext needed to disrupt or forestall any Syrian military campaign to drive the takfiris out of Idlib, which, far from having quietened down following the ‘de-escalation’ agreement reached by Turkey, Iran and Russia, is now an even hotter hothouse of takfiri activity.
The main group, Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) basically still Jabhat al Nusra/Al Qaida in Syria despite the name change, and its allies have routed their ‘moderate’ enemies and taken control of between 70 to 90 per cent of the province, including Idlib city, which lives under a harsh form of sharia law.
The HTS collective has tens of thousands of armed fighters on call. So does the rival Turkish-supported National Liberation Front. The entire province is awash with arms and armed groups refusing to adhere to any agreements drawn up in Astana or Sochi and saying they will fight to the last.
Along with the fighting men are the civilians, the families of the takfiris and the normal civilian population of the province who are helpless in the face of the violence and intimidation all around them and the scheming of powerful actors far from the scene.
At present nothing is clear. The US is apparently planning to withdraw troops from northern Syria but has not withdrawn them. Erdogan and Putin have met to discuss what the US is up to, as well as the situation in Idlib and Turkey’s desire to set up a buffer zone running 460 kms and 32 kms deep along the Syrian border (on the Syrian side). Russia and Iran have so far refused to support the idea.
The buffer zone would be set up against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), aligned with Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and ‘terrorists’ in the view of the Turkish government but not in the eyes of the US, which, of course, has been using the Kurds in pursuit of its own strategic interests
Turkey has recently been committing itself to the territorial and political integrity of Syria, raising an obvious question: if this is the case, why did you make such strenuous attempts to destroy both over the past eight years?
The US is on the brink of defeat in Syria. Not just defeat but defeat by Russia, which is why Trump’s plan to withdraw is facing furious criticism at home by neocons who want more war, somewhere, anywhere, and ‘liberals’ who hate Trump and will buy into almost anything that brings him down. In their views on Syria, Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas and now Venezuela the two groups are indistinguishable, even if they also affect to hate each other.
Idlib will be liberated sooner or later. If the takfiris are insisting that they will fight to the last drop of their blood that is because they have nowhere else to go. The foreigners among them can’t go back to their own countries. Turkey does not want them on its side of the border although, as the Syrian Kurds claim, it might allow them to move into Afrin, occupied by the Turkish army in March 2018. As fighters or police, they would have their uses. What happens to them when Afrin is finally returned to the hands of the Syrian state is an issue for the future.
But back to Douma. Was the district being bombed at the time a chemical weapons attack was alleged? Of course, it was. It had been taken over by one of the most murderous takfiri groups in Syria, Jaysh al Islam, and the army was shelling Douma to drive them out. What government and what army would not be constitutionally bound to do the same?
Douma was not under siege by the Syrian army, as the corporate media kept telling the world. It was being held hostage by a murderous armed group, for which the presence of civilians, deterring the army from a full-on ground military assault, was a prized asset. Civilians died in the shelling but the most likely cause of the breathing difficulties suffered by those given genuine medical treatment was smoke and dust inhalation. Jaysh al Islam and the White Helmets converted their distress into a chemical weapons attack and then ran around a clinic spraying water over everyone to prove the point.
The arguments will continue over the provenance of the yellow cylinders that gave Eliot Higgins something else to do. These were normal industrial gas cylinders that had been filled with chlorine which could only be released if someone opened the valve with a monkey wrench or if the valve had opened on impact. That a Syrian military helicopter would drop these cylinders in the hope that somehow the valve would open or break on landing is surely nonsensical.
The valves were intact so how the chlorine could have got out of the cylinders without someone manually opening them remains unexplained by those making the claim that the cylinders were dropped from a helicopter. There was no evidence of anyone in the house where the cylinders were found having been affected and as someone has observed, even the chickens running around nearby were unharmed. In short, the whole scenario screams one word: fake.
One thing not to be forgotten is that when the takfiris finally were pushed out of Douma, a makeshift chemical weapons factory, complete with how-to-make instructions and receipts for the machinery and chemical compounds received, was found underground in an elaborate network of tunnels.
Neither the factory nor the tunnels, nor the brutal nature of the takfiris holding Douma, or their previous crimes, including their previous alleged use of chemical weapons were items for show or discussion in the media.
Neither was the story one of armed fanatics taking over a district close to a national capital and holding its citizens hostage. Neither was the story one of foreign governments and the armed groups they were supporting besieging an entire country. The facts were reversed so that it was the Syrian government and army laying siege to its own people and killing them with chemical weapons.
Over the past eight years, the propaganda onslaught by these governments and the corporate media has been total. No authoritarian state or dictatorship could have done a better hatchet job on public opinion but these arch manipulators of public opinion are self-described liberals.
Therein lies their advantage. The citizens of an authoritarian state don’t believe their government or their media in the first place but western media consumers still cling to the illusion of a free press guarding their interests and are thus sucked in all the time. ‘Free for whom?’ and ‘Whose interests is the media really guarding?’ are questions that are rarely asked except by seekers after truth pushed to the margins of public debate.
The worst excesses of the takfiris – Islamic State beheadings, the throwing of people off the roofs of high buildings, the drowning of caged captives in a swimming pool and the burning of a Syrian soldier – had to be reported because they were indescribably inhuman and could not be ignored but the mundane terrorism of groups just a cut below the Islamic State in barbarity was either underplayed, ignored or blamed where possible on the Syrian military.
In the eyes of the media these groups were not terrorists but rather the ‘opposition’ or ‘rebels’ standing up to the ‘regime,’ its barrel bombs and its chemical weapons attacks, all of them, the best evidence suggests, launched by the takfiris with the intent of incriminating the Syrian government and bringing on a US-led air war.
Roughly about the same time as Riam Dalati was uttering his truth on his tweet, a Berlin-based outfit calling itself the ‘Global Public Policy Institute’ was putting out a report on chemical weapon use in Syria entitled ‘Nowhere to Hide: The Logic of Chemical Weapons Use in Syria.’
This ‘institute’ counted the number of such attacks in Syria, 336, of which number it attributed 98 percent to the ‘Assad regime’ and the rest to the Islamic State. The fact that it uses the word ‘regime’ to describe the legitimate government of Syria is the first tell-tale sign of where this report is going to lead.
The next is the sources of information, ‘our friends and partners,’ as the GPPI calls them: the Syrian Archive, the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) Mayday Rescue, the White Helmets, the Syrian Network of Human Rights, the VDC (Violations Documentation Centre) and Human Rights Watch, every single one of them fully engaged in propaganda attacks on the Syrian government if not actually embedded (like the White Helmets) with the takfiri groups.
The 47 pages of this report are beautifully laid out. The graphics and maps are meticulously done. As a school project, the GPPI would get 10 marks for presentation but nothing for content. On the basis of ‘evidence’ coming from such tainted sources, what makes the authors think that any reasonably well-informed person could believe their claims, and how is it that well-established German charitable foundations can hand over money for the production of such garbage?
The Syrian crisis has spawned an industry of parasites, feeding off its agony. There is no shortage of money for anyone smart enough to harvest it by giving the media what it wants and setting themselves up as a conduit for government propaganda. There is a market for lies and deceit and the laws of supply and demand being what they are, the demand is being met.
There is a truth here about the media that needs to be said. It was never truly independent, never the watchdog of the people’s interests in all seasons but it was arguably a lot better than what it has become. The explanation for this state of affairs lies partly in the death of the independent proprietor and the monopoly corporatization of the media. The proprietor’s or the board’s interest is now immeasurably greater than those of the independent owner who used to wander around the editorial floor once a week to make sure everything was ok and the staff was happy.
The corporation is global, not local, with interests that the small independent owner would hardly be able to comprehend because the leading newspaper or the television station is usually just one small part, and mostly a lesser part, of an empire that spans communications in all its branches. Conflict of interest, affecting news presentation, is inbuilt.
If the newspaper has value, it lies in its use as a weapon against or for a government depending on what the government is willing to give in return. Rupert Murdoch is the past master in using the media this way. Even if they lose money, he will keep his flagship papers going.
In the past 20 years, we have seen an abrogation of journalistic integrity for which it is hard to find a parallel in modern history. The Vietnam war was launched and maintained on the basis of lies but it did not take long for journalists to emerge who challenged the official narrative and exposed it for what it was. Compare this with Iraq and the way the media ran with the official narrative on ‘weapons of mass destruction’ from the beginning until the very one, when not one could be found.
Seymour Hersh was the leading example of journalistic integrity in Vietnam (which is not to minimize the reporting of others in the small group exposing the official lies) and, amazingly enough, is still the leading example half a century later.
For his audacity in challenging the accusation that the Syrian government was responsible for the apparent chemical weapons on the outskirts of Damascus in August 2013, and showing that it was the so-called rebels, supported by outside governments, who were most probably responsible for this atrocity, Hersh was pushed to the margins of mainstream journalism in his own country and eventually out of it altogether.
*(Seymour Hersh)
Syria is only part of a broad mosaic of ill intent, however. It was attacked in the first place because it was a strategic ally of Iran. Russia’s twin successes, in deflecting US penetration of Ukraine and making the Americans look stupid in Syria, was followed by allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. There was no proof then and there is no proof now but the same empty accusations are being repeated by the same columnists, anchors and talk show hosts all the time.
We are now facing a multi-pronged assault on truth in which governments and the corporate media are partners. On both sides of the Atlantic, they have lined up against the renewed primary enemy, Russia, wherever it is and whatever it does.
Russia lost the Democrats the US elections. Russia stole Crimea from Ukraine.
Russia saved the Syrian dictator from defeat. Russia is supporting the dictator Maduro. Russia trades with Iran. Russia does not regard Hizbullah and Hamas as terrorists as we do. Russia does not give open-ended support to Israel but rather regards it as a primary fomenter of disorder in the Middle East.
Russia poisoned the Skripals, of course. Skripal senior was a former double agent, double-crossing Russia while working for British intelligence. There is no obvious reason why Russia would want a washed-out former spy dead but of course, it had to be Russia that daubed the door handle of his house with Novichok. There was no proof, but who else could it be but Russia, and if you say ‘British intelligence,’ setting up a new round of Russia-bashing, then wash your mouth out with soap.
Mysterious Russian figures turn up in Salisbury. The British government says they are agents, stopping off at the Skripals’ house to put a few drops of Novichok on the door handle before sauntering off down the main street to look into the window of a shop selling collectibles and rare stamps.
They seemed to be enjoying themselves. They seemed in no hurry at all to get away from the scene of the crime and take the first plane back to Moscow, but isn’t that exactly the way well-trained Russian agents would behave?
Somewhere along the way they dropped what was left of their Novichok into a rubbish bin, cunningly concealed in a hi-tech perfume bottle, Nina Ricci, ‘Premier Jour.’ Enough still left to kill 4000 people, said the newspapers, but failing to kill the Skripals and killing only poor Dawn Burgess, who pulled it out of the bin and apparently sprayed or dabbed herself with some.
We don’t really know who these Russians were and what they were doing in Salisbury but we need proof, not accusations and suppositions, and the British government does not have it. We can reach conclusions on the basis of what we know or think we know but the lies told by the British government over the attack on Iraq in 2003, plus the death/murder of the UN weapons inspector David Kelly five months after the war was launched, are sufficient reasons not to believe or trust anything this government says.
This new cold war is drifting steadily towards the brink of a hot one. The US is confronting Russia through missile bases, economic sanctions and interference in the politics of states around Russia’s borders.
Trump has just announced the withdrawal of the US from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, accusing Russia of breaching it and saying ‘we will move forward with developing our own military response options.’
In fact, Russia had already accused the US of violating the treaty. In May, 2018, the US/NATO opened a missile base in Romania where, Russia claimed, the US had simply transferred the launchpad for the Aegis integrated naval weapons system, which utilizes Tomahawk cruise and intermediate range missile banned by the INF treaty, from sea to land.
These missiles have a range of 300-3400 miles and their apparent positioning in Romania was naturally regarded as a direct threat by Russia.
The withdrawal of the US from the INF and Trump’s threat that the US will ‘move forward’ by developing its own options raises the apprehension in Russia that the US will station other cruise and intermediate range missiles in Europe once it finds willing partners.
In his state of the union address, Putin said that such missiles could reach Russia in 10 to 12 minutes and warned of a symmetrical response, if the US deployed them in Europe, directed not just at the US but at the states hosting its missiles.
To those contemplating such measures, he said: ‘Let them count the speed and range of our missiles. That is all I ask.’
It is not just Russia that the US is threatening, however, but China. If China held naval exercises off the US or British coasts the world would quickly be facing another 1962 Cuba crisis, only much more dangerous, but the US and Britain give themselves the right to hold such exercises off the Chinese coast in the South China Sea.
As for Venezuela, the US has reverted to the crude gunboat imperialism of the late 19th century (not that gunboat imperialism ever went away). ‘Do what we want or else’ is the message sent to Maduro and the Venezuelan people. What the US wants is the resurrection of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, and the complete domination of Latin America, including open access to its resources.
In essence, the imperialism of the 21st century is the same as the imperialism of the 20th or the 19th centuries. In the 1940s and 1950s the people of Asia, the Middle East and Africa struggled to lift the yoke of occupation, economic domination and the plundering of their natural resources off their necks. In the third millennium, they are still struggling, especially in the Middle East and Latin America.
The members of the ‘western’ collective fight among themselves but always fall into line when the alpha dog barks at them. Considerations of right and wrong, law, ethics, morality and justice are irrelevant. The alpha dog has barked and the pack must obey. Riam Dalati’s exposure of media deceit is interesting but still a mere detail on a very large and dirty canvas as the ‘west’, its governments and its media, tries to maintain control of a world fast slipping from its hands.
Jeremy Salt has taught at the University of Melbourne, Bosporus University (Istanbul) and Bilkent University (Ankara), specialising in the modern history of the Middle East. His most recent book is “The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.)
As Mainstream Journalists acknowledge Douma Attacks were “Staged,” Syria Regime-Change Network tries to Save Sinking Ship
“Humanitarian” regime-change network increasingly desperate to protect its influence and the power of its narratives, not just in Syria but in future conflicts.
By Whitney Webb and Vanessa Beeley | MintPress News | February 18, 2019
LONDON — Over the past few days, notable journalists and other figures in mainstream media have acknowledged that the alleged chemical weapons attack that occurred last April in the Damascus suburb of Douma, Syria was likely “staged” by “activist” groups such as the White Helmets. Their comments and investigations have largely vindicated the many journalists and academics who cast aspersions on the precipitous Western media campaign to blame that alleged attack on the Syrian government. Many of the dissenting voices were derided as “conspiracy theorists” or ignored entirely by mainstream sources.
Yet, now that these revelations are being voiced by acceptable figures in mainstream media, those who have built their careers on promoting the White Helmets and regime change in Syria are working to discredit these new dissenting voices. Among those on the counter-attack are individuals connected to the oligarch-funded “humanitarian” regime-change network that was the subject of a recent MintPress exposé.
The alleged Douma attack — notably used as the justification for a military attack launched against Syria by the U.S., the U.K. and France — returned to the news cycle earlier this month following a report from James Harkin, a journalist who has written for The Guardian, Harper’s and the Financial Times, and is currently the director of the Center for Investigative Journalism. Harkin’s report, which was published in The Intercept, cast doubt on the prevailing mainstream narrative surrounding the events that occurred in Douma last April.
Harkin, in visiting Douma and the surrounding area, confirmed past reporting by other independent journalists that no sarin gas had been used — which was also confirmed by the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) interim report — and claimed that the scenes filmed at the Medical Point in Douma, which were widely circulated by the mainstream media as evidence that a chemical weapons attack had occurred, had likely been staged. Harkin lamented the staging of the hospital scenes as a casualty of “Syria’s propaganda war.”
Elements of Harkin’s rather rambling report were rapidly corroborated by BBC producer Riam Dalati, who revealed on Twitter that he had proof, after a six-month investigation, that those same hospital scenes had been staged.
Dalati had previously been the cause of some consternation among the pro-regime-change pundits when he had tweeted, immediately after the alleged Douma chemical attack, that he was “sick and tired of activists and rebels using the corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption.” Dalati was referring to the image of two children wrapped in a “last hug” that went viral on social media, eliciting sympathy for the “chemical attack” narrative.
Dalati pointed out that the two children had been photographed on separate floors in the building before being artfully arranged into the “last hug” position by the producers of this scene, which was picked up by the majority of corporate media and used to give the impression that the Syrian Arab Army had used chemical weapons against their own civilians as they were concluding final amnesty negotiations with Jaish Al Islam, the extremist group then occupying Douma.
Shortly after deleting the aforementioned tweet, Dalati protected his Twitter account before reiterating his observations in a less inflammatory tweet, while explaining that his first tweet had been “correctly deemed in breach of [BBC] editorial policy thru [sic] use of ‘sick/tired’ and by not providing context…”
Dalati had notably been a member of the production team of the notorious September 2013 BBC Panorama documentary “Saving Syria’s Children” — a report that was forensically investigated by independent researcher Robert Stuart, who concluded that “sequences filmed by BBC personnel and others at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013 purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack on a nearby school are largely, if not entirely, staged.”
So, Dalati, no stranger to controversy, appears to have once more broken with the ranks of mainstream media by admitting that the White Helmet “chemical attack” scenes in Douma Medical Point were “without a doubt” staged. One might ask why it took Dalati six months of investigation to arrive at the same conclusion as acclaimed journalist Robert Fisk and other on-the-ground journalists did just days after the attack occurred. At the time, those journalists had been labeled by Dalati and others as “conspiracy theorists.”
However, the recent statements made by Dalati and Harkin’s recent report have hardly created a consensus regarding the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma within the mainstream media. Instead, much the opposite has happened, with journalists and “experts” who have linked their professional reputations to the credibility of groups like the US/UK incubated and financed White Helmets now going on the offensive in an effort to trivialize the recent revelations regarding the events of April 7, 2018.
Following the renewed interest in the Douma incident as a result of Harkin’s report and Dalati’s subsequent tweets, Tobias Schneider — a research fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPI) — accused people like Harkin and Dalati of “squabbling over the intricacies” of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, later calling these independent investigations and statements “madness.”
We must presume that Schneider’s Twitter accusation would also be directed at genuinely independent journalists and academics who presented evidence to counter the dominant Douma narratives produced by the usual suspects in corporate media and groups like the White Helmets affiliated to Jaish Al Islam, the brutal armed group in control of Douma. Among those are journalists who actually visited Douma immediately after the attack — Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, Robert Fisk of the Independent, Uli Gack from ZDF, Germany and Pearson Sharp of OAN (One America News Network). Also, potentially in Schneider’s crosshairs are the members of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda Media (WGSPM) established by Professor Piers Robinson who produced an extensive briefing scrutinizing the media anomalies in the Douma attack.
Unwilling to stop there, Schneider also announced that the GPPI would be publishing the first analytical study “on the logic underpinning the Syrian regime’s systematic use of improvised chlorine bombs in particular” that would use “the broadest dataset compilable and break down tactical, operational, strategic patterns” in order to claim that, despite a lack of evidence for chemical weapons use in Douma last year, other separate incidents form a pattern that would incriminate the Syrian government in the events alleged to have taken place last April. The report has now been published and has been picked up by the usual purveyors and promoters of the “chemical attack” narratives that are designed to criminalize the Syrian government.
A look into Schneider’s background and the organization that employs him hardly paints a picture of an objective observer of the evidence surrounding this hot-button issue. Quite the contrary, Schneider and the GPPI are directly connected to the “humanitarian” regime-change network that was exposed in a recent MintPress series for its efforts to exploit the death of the late MP Jo Cox in order to manufacture consent for regime change in Syria and whitewash both the U.K.-government connections to the White Helmets and the White Helmets’ own troubling track record in facilitating and even directly committing war crimes.
Who is Tobias Schneider?
According to his bio at the GPPI website, Tobias Schneider is a research fellow at GPPI who focuses on “insurgency and counterinsurgency in the contemporary Middle East,” among other related issues. Prior to working with GPPI, Schneider worked as a consultant on Syria and Yemen for the World Bank, an influential financial institution that a WikiLeaks document recently confirmed; is used as a “financial weapon” by the United States military.
He has also worked at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a pro-NATO think tank located in Washington. CEPA’s stated mission is “to promote an economically vibrant, strategically secure, and politically free Europe with close and enduring ties to the United States.” Its international advisory board includes former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who once stated that the death of half a million Iraqi children from U.S. sanctions was “worth it;” and Brian Hook, current Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department and Senior Policy Advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Zbigniew Brzeziński — former National Security Adviser in the Carter administration who is best known for his role in arming and creating the terror group Al Qaeda — was also a board member up until his death in 2017.
Currently, however, Schneider — in addition to serving as a GPPI research fellow — is an expert for the Atlantic Council’s “Rebuilding Syria” initiative. The Atlantic Council is a Washington-based think tank with strong ties to the U.S. military and NATO, and receives significant amounts of funding from American arms manufacturers, U.S. intelligence agencies, and foreign governments. This think tank, and its “Rebuilding Syria” initiative in particular have been particularly zealous in promoting regime change in Syria and in marketing hybrid groups like the White Helmets. This is hardly surprising given that the U.S. and U.K. governments have given millions of dollars to both groups and were instrumental in the creation of the White Helmets as a refined “propaganda construct”, their description by journalist, John Pilger.
Schneider also has made appearances at events hosted by “Friends of Syria”APPG (All Party Parliamentary Groups) the U.K. group that includes several MPs — including Jo Cox prior to her death — and has extensively promoted U.K. military intervention in Syria, with a particular emphasis on emotional appeals largely based on White Helmet testimony and footage. Chair of Schneider’s panel was Andrew Mitchell, Conservative MP, former UK secretary of state for international development 2010-2012 and alongside Jo Cox, a fervent supporter of regime change in Syria and an unquestioning White Helmet acolyte.
Global Public Policy Institute’s place in regime-change network
Beyond Schneider’s conflicts of interests by virtue of his work history and current associations, the organization that employs him — the Global Public Policy Institute — is directly connected to an oligarch-directed and oligarch-funded regime-change network that specializes in manufacturing “humanitarian” justifications for Western military adventurism abroad. The main oligarchs who drive this network, as detailed in a recent articles series at MintPress, include Jeffrey Skoll, George Soros, Pierre Omidyar, and Ted Turner — philanthrocapitalists aligned with the neoliberal, globalist agendas of the U.S/U.K alliance.
In addition to its stated mission of “improving global governance,” in line with globalist designs, the GPPI is funded by the German and U.K. governments as well as the Open Society Foundations of controversial Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, whose many organizations have been intimately involved in promoting the White Helmets and related narratives that push for increased Western military intervention in Syria. Soros’ influence in the GPPI is demonstrated by the position his son, Alexander Soros, holds on the GPPI’s advisory board.
Another notable member of the GPPI advisory board is Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of the New America Foundation, which is funded by the Omidyar Network, the Skoll Global Threats Fund, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and the U.S. State Department, among others.
However, the most damning connection between the GPPI and the “humanitarian” regime-change network used by Western governments and oligarchs is the GPPI’s director, Thorsten Benner. Benner. According to Benner’s GPPI bio, he previously worked with the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, the UN Development Programme in New York, and the Global Public Policy Project in Washington, before co-founding GPPI.
Most notably, however, Benner is a director at More in Common, the international initiative founded, after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, by members of the Jo Cox Four — exposed by the authors of this present article to be at the center of the aforementioned “humanitarian” regime-change network — to exploit Cox’s death to push for Western military intervention in Syria.
Other directors of More in Common include Sally Osberg, former president of the Skoll Foundation; Will Somerville, former member of the U.K. Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit under Tony Blair and current U.K. program director of Unbound Philanthropy. Somerville is also a Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, which is funded by the Open Society Foundations, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, Walmart, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.K. government.
In addition, two other directors of More In Common, who also co-founded the group, are Tim Dixon and Gemma Mortensen. Both Mortensen and Dixon have been directly connected to regime-change efforts in Syria and elsewhere. Interested readers can find much more information about Dixon, Mortensen, More in Common and the “humanitarian” regime-change network to which they are connected here, here and here.
Our narrative and we’re sticking with it
As the Syria conflict appears to be winding down with the regime-change effort having failed in its effort to overturn Syria’s current government, perhaps more critical attention by those in mainstream and independent media has come to focus on the manufactured narratives used by powerful interests and governments to make a case for military intervention to the public.
With these efforts having failed, we have perhaps begun to see several mainstream journalists break from the pack, perhaps as these individual journalists have little personal investment in backing the push for regime change in Syria. However, those journalists and “experts” who have staked their professional reputations on these narratives — such as the ubiquitous chemical weapon attacks blamed on the Syrian government — and who systematically protect the White Helmets as serial “do-gooders” — are scrambling to keep those narratives together lest they be revealed for the hollow manipulation of cherry-picked facts, images and videos that they are.
Schneider’s report is unlikely to impress the far more independent and qualified experts and journalists who have consistently questioned the Syria “chemical weapons” narrative — which has taken on the mantle of “weapons of mass destruction,” a previously debunked government and media canard that took us to war in Iraq. Schneider’s GPPI initiative, however, may just be a stitch in time to suture the leaks that are now emanating from the mainstream media and in particular from the BBC, a traditional bastion of protection for U.K. government foreign policy directives on Syria.
Dalati may genuinely be a rogue maverick, sickened by what he has seen. He may also be working at the behest of the BBC directors — to limit the damage to the BBC’s reputation were the OPCW to release its final report any time soon. Imagine that the OPCW final report errs toward a conclusion that no chemical attack took place in Douma: where would that leave the BBC and colonial media establishment? The trust gap would widen exponentially. Time will tell, but one thing is for sure, Schneider’s report is indicative of the distress signals being emitted by the “humanitarian” regime-change network floundering on the rocks of its own failed campaign to destabilize Syria and overthrow the majority-elected Syrian government.
When Professor Piers Robinson of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM) heard of Schneider’s intention to produce the report, he told MintPress News:
It is extraordinary that, on the one hand, careful analysis of evidence in the case of Douma is being trivialized as ‘madness,’ while on the other, Schneider is suggesting that his think tank is about to publish careful and rigorous analysis regarding alleged chemical weapon attacks. He seems to be saying, in effect, that careful and detailed analysis and discussion regarding individual attacks is irrelevant to knowledge and understanding. This reflects very poorly both on him as a researcher and on the think tank that he works for.”
In his tweets, Schneider did indeed appear to trivialize serious research into the alleged Douma chemical attacks. This is extraordinary when one considers that the rush to judgment of corporate media, NATO-aligned think tanks and France/UK/US (FUKUS) government spokespersons led to the unlawful bombing of Syria only one week after the staged hospital scenes had appeared. Russia was accused of producing an “obscene masquerade” by bringing actual Syrian civilians to the OPCW headquarters in the Hague — to testify that no chemical weapons attack had taken place. The “obscene masquerade” had already taken place in Douma and had been marketed as truth by the media outlets invested in their governments’ destructive Syria campaign.
Schneider is very probably just another in a long line of willing instruments of the billionaire industrial complex, deployed to extinguish the failing “chemical weapons” narrative fire that threatens to consume their credibility for years to come. Douma and the exposure of all those who built and financed the edifice of lies surrounding this event may just be what brings the entire war machine grinding to a halt in Syria and beyond.
As much as Schneider and his backers continue to protect the propaganda producers — the White Helmets — the evidence building against this multi-million funded construct is overwhelming. The White Helmet concept will surely go down in history as one of the most elaborate propaganda heists that failed, thanks to the concerted efforts of very few to expose the true agenda of the group — an agenda which is driven by the same government agencies and predatory capitalists that have sponsored Schneider’s report.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and has contributed to several other independent, alternative outlets. Her work has appeared on sites such as Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire among others. She also makes guest appearances to discuss politics on radio and television. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer and associate editor at 21st Century Wire. Vanessa was a finalist for one of the most prestigious journalism awards – the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism – whose winners have included the likes of Robert Parry in 2017, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Nick Davies and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism team. You can support Vanessa’s journalism through her Patreon Page.
Real ‘obscene masquerade’: How BBC depicted staged hospital scenes as proof of Douma chemical attack
By Vanessa Beeley | RT | February 16, 2019
In an extraordinary turn of events, corporate media appears to have been exposed again as an extension of state foreign policy, by a member of the establishment media cabal, manufacturing consent for regime change in Syria.
Riam Dalati is on the BBC production team based in Beirut and describes himself, on his Twitter page, as an “esteemed colleague” of Quentin Sommerville, the BBC’s Middle East correspondent. Dalati broke ranks with his UK Government-aligned media, on Twitter, to announce that “after almost 6 months of investigation, I can prove, without a doubt, that the Douma hospital scene was staged.”
The scenes in question are those manufactured by the White Helmet pseudo-humanitarian group and activists affiliated to Jaish al-Islam, the extremist armed group in charge of Douma at the time of the alleged chemical weapon attack on April 7, 2018. The scenes of children being hosed down, following a “chemical attack” were immediately accepted as credible and appeared alongside sensationalist headlines in most Western media outlets, including the BBC, CNN and Channel 4. Simon Tisdall of the Guardian wrote an opinion piece, with the headline ‘After Douma the West’s response to Syria regime must be military’ – only two days after Douma, effectively calling for all out war.
While Dalati’s tweets have clearly distressed some notables in the establishment camp, Dalati is no stranger to such controversy. Almost immediately after the alleged incident in Douma, he tweeted out his frustration that “activists and rebels” had used “corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption.” The emotive wording of Dalati’s tweet, he was “sick and tired” of such manipulation of events, suggested that this was not the first time children had been used as props in a macabre war theatre designed to elicit public sympathy for escalated military intervention in Syria disguised as a necessary “humanitarian” crack down on “Assad’s gassing of his own people.”
Dalati had been referring to the arranging of two children’s corpses into a “last hug” still life composition, a photo that went viral, rocketed into the social media sphere by activists who had collaborated with the brutal Jaish al-Islam regime while it tortured and abused the Syrian civilians under its control.
Perhaps Dalati’s apparent outburst could be explained by his participation in the production of the controversial September 2013 BBC Panorama documentary, ‘Saving Syria’s Children’. An independent researcher, Robert Stuart, has made it his life’s work to present a compelling argument that “sequences filmed by BBC personnel and others at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on August 26, 2013 purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack on a nearby school are largely, if not entirely, staged.” Perhaps Dalati had witnessed one too many stagings of events that would precipitate the potential for war in Syria between the US and Russia.
Whatever the reason for Dalati’s exasperation, the tweet was deleted before a watered down version appeared. Dalati claimed that a “breach of editorial policy” and lack of context was behind this alteration. Apparently BBC employees are not allowed to be “sick and tired” of the exploitation of children to promote a war that will inevitably kill more children. Simultaneously, Dalati’s account was protected, making tweets visible only to approved followers.
On two significant occasions to date, Dalati appears to deviate from the BBC narrative road map in Syria. However, Dalati had participated in the corporate media lynching of journalists and academics who had dared to question the dominant “chemical attack” narrative, at the time of the alleged incident in Douma, dismissing them as conspiracy theorists. These “conspiracy theorists” included acclaimed journalist, Robert Fisk and Uli Gack, an experienced war correspondent with ZDF, a German public media outlet. Independent journalist, Eva Bartlett, and Pearson Sharpe of One American News Network also reported evidence of staging and mainstream media distortion of events in Douma.
I visited Douma shortly after the alleged attack. I interviewed medical staff and civilians who were adamant that a chemical attack had not taken place. Doctors and nurses, some of whom were on duty on the night in question, told me that adults and children were suffering the effects of smoke inhalation. They described the panic generated by the activists and White Helmet operatives who arrived crying “chemical attack” before they hosed down the traumatised patients.
20-year-old Suleiman Saour told me: “At 7pm we had been receiving wounded people all day long. At 7pm someone came in carrying a little boy, he laid him on a bed and said he had been hit with chemical weapons. Basically I checked the boy […] he was suffering from smoke inhalation […] we washed his face, used a spray and Ventolin. Later on we found out the child had asthma and it got worse because of the smoke.”
Academics, Professors Piers Robinson and Tim Hayward, came under concerted attack as did other members of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media when they analysed the events and questioned the veracity of it being a chemical attack. In the UK, the Times published no less than four articles labeling myself and the “rogue” academics as “Assad’s useful idiots,” timed to perfection on the day that the UK, US and France launched their unlawful bombing campaign against Syria. A bombing campaign that was fully enabled by the ignominious rush to judgement by corporate media in the West.
It has taken Dalati six months to arrive at the same conclusion as those he condemned as compromised “conspiracy theorists,” therefore we must question his motives for suddenly releasing these conclusions. Peter Ford, former UK Ambassador to Syria, gave me his opinion on Dalati’s revelations.
“The UK joined Trump and Macron in illegally bombing Syria largely on the basis of a video clip shown ad nauseam on the BBC, which a BBC Syria producer has now said he has evidence was staged. The BBC in their statement are not denying the claim. The implications are shattering: firstly that the state broadcaster effectively connived at a manipulation of public opinion, and secondly that the British government launched its attack on Syria on a false and fabricated premise. This demands a public enquiry.”
Ford’s statement highlights the seriousness of Dalati’s statement which must surely raise questions about the possibility of previous “chemical attack” narratives also being manipulated, staged or fabricated. Swedish Doctors for Human Rights investigated the alleged chlorine gas attack in Sarmin, March 2015 and found the medical procedures conducted by doctors at the scene to be extremely questionable.
Dr Leif Elinder, a Swedish medical doctor and paediatric specialist, found that “after examination of the video material, I found that the measures inflicted upon those children, some of them lifeless, are bizarre, non-medical, non-lifesaving, and even counterproductive in terms of life-saving purposes of children.” This video, produced and presented by the White Helmets and their colleagues at the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), was shown during a UN Security Council “closed door” session to promote a no-fly zone which translates to protection for the US coalition-backed terrorist forces on the ground in Syria.
As BBC producer has stated publicly that the hospital scenes during the Douma “attack” are staged, the BBC has distanced itself by stating that these are the personal claims of an employee which do not mean an attack did not take place. The July 2018 OPCW interim report has already discredited the early sensationalism of western media reporting. “No organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties,” it stated. No Sarin.
The OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) has not yet reached a conclusion that a chemical attack of any kind took place in Douma. The environmental samples were reported to contain chlorinated organic molecules such as trichloroacetic acid and chloral hydrate, which could be attributed to something as basic as chlorinated drinking water. Despite this ambiguity, the BBC initially ran with the headline that ‘Chlorine was used’ in the Douma attack before altering to ‘Possible Chlorine at Douma Attack Site’. Another mistake? Or another deliberate attempt to mislead and shore up the UK FCO regime change storyline in Syria?
Dalati’s revelations must also be viewed in context. They follow similar conclusions arrived at by corporate media colleague and journalist, James Harkin, a Guardian contributor who published a long-winded Douma investigation in the Intercept. Harkin also conceded that the Douma hospital scenes were likely staged and that the Sarin canard was a non-starter.
It is very unlikely, despite the BBC protestation, that Dalati would risk publishing his claims without approval from BBC hierarchy. Timing is always crucial when examining events that have the potential to expose colonial media, particularly the BBC, as the refined state PR agencies they are in reality.
Based on an informed and intelligent interpretation of events with historical context, we could speculate that the OPCW is about to release its final findings on the Douma attack. A report which has the potential to lay bare the full extent of the BBC’s deception and falsification of facts in Douma. A report which could raise unpleasant questions about corporate media reporting, particularly on alleged chemical weapon use by the Syrian government, throughout the 8 year conflict in Syria. Was Dalati’s shock information release nothing more than a damage limitation tactic by the BBC or is Dalati genuinely a rogue truth-teller? Only time will tell.
What Dalati has done is highlight the hypocrisy and bias of Western media and government officials. The BBC report on the Russian “production” of Douma-chemical-attack-denying witnesses at the HQ of the OPCW in the Hague emphasises the dismissal of the event as a “despicable stunt” by the UK, US and France who boycotted the proceedings. French ambassador to the Netherlands described the Syrian civilian testimonies as an “obscene masquerade.” The Guardian ran with this statement as its headline, reducing Russia’s attempt to bring some clarity to the Douma attack to the unveiling of “supposed witnesses” in order to discredit such attempts to derail their preferred narrative.
Now, it appears that the real obscene masquerade took place in the Medical Point in Douma, was constructed by the UK FCO-financed White Helmets, and was adopted by the BBC and other state stenographers as gospel in order to further criminalise the Syrian Arab Army just as the final liberation of Douma from Jaish al-Islam brutal rule was fast approaching. This obscene masquerade resulted in the unlawful bombing of Syria by the US, France and the UK. As Peter Ford stated, “this demands a public enquiry.”
BBC Says Its Producer Expressed ‘Personal Opinions’ on Douma Incident
Sputnik – February 14, 2019
BBC Syria producer Riam Dalati, who wrote on Twitter that he could prove the video of the victims of the alleged chemical attack in Douma being treated in hospital was staged, was expressing his own opinion and did not deny the fact of the attack itself, the broadcaster’s spokesperson told Sputnik on Thursday.
“The producer was expressing his personal opinions about some of the video footage that emerged after the attack but has not claimed that the attack did not happen”, the BBC spokesperson said.
On Wednesday, the journalist tweeted that he could “prove without a doubt” that the Douma hospital footage had been staged and no fatalities had occurred in the hospital. He said the attack did take place but without the use of sarin gas and that the nature of any chemical used would have to be verified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Previously, the RT broadcaster reported that Dalati had already expressed his scepticism about the Douma hospital video in a Twitter post. However, the journalist subsequently deleted his tweet, citing a breach of editorial policy.
The same month, Hassan Diab, 11, who was featured in the White Helmets video, in an interview with a Russian media outlet alongside his father, gave a detailed description of how the footage of people treated in the hospital was filmed. Diab said, among other things, that children were given food for participating in the video.
Moreover, Douma residents, interviewed by Sputnik, were unable to confirm that the attack had taken place there. They said they knew nothing about it and were not aware of anybody having been affected by toxic chemicals.
The reports about the attack and the publication of the footage by the White Helmets were followed by missile strikes carried out by France, the United Kingdom and the United States targeting alleged chemical weapons production facilities in Damascus.
Western states have repeatedly accused the Syrian authorities of having carried out the Douma attack, while Damascus denied any involvement in the incident. The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that the claims about the alleged use of toxic chemicals by the Syrian government were aimed at justifying external military action.
READ MORE: German Journalist Federation Calls on Regulators to Deny Broadcast License to RT
Germany Pulls Rank on Macron and American Energy Blackmail
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 13.02.2019
It was billed politely as a Franco-German “compromise” when the EU balked at adopting a Gas Directive which would have undermined the Nord Stream 2 project with Russia.
Nevertheless, diplomatic rhetoric aside, Berlin’s blocking last week of a bid by French President Emmanuel Macron to impose tougher regulations on the Nord Stream 2 gas project was without doubt a firm rebuff to Paris.
Macron wanted to give the EU administration in Brussels greater control over the new pipeline running from Russia to Germany. But in the end the so-called “compromise” was a rejection of Macron’s proposal, reaffirming Germany in the lead role of implementing the Nord Stream 2 route, along with Russia.
The $11-billion, 1,200 kilometer pipeline is due to become operational at the end of this year. Stretching from Russian mainland under the Baltic Sea, it will double the natural gas supply from Russia to Germany. The Berlin government and German industry view the project as a vital boost to the country’s ever-robust economy. Gas supplies will also be distributed from Germany to other European states. Consumers stand to gain from lower prices for heating homes and businesses.
Thus Macron’s belated bizarre meddling was rebuffed by Berlin. A rebuff was given too to the stepped-up pressure from Washington for the Nord Stream 2 project to be cancelled. Last week, US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell and two other American envoys wrote an op-ed for Deutsche Welle in which they accused Russia of trying to use “energy blackmail” over Europe’s geopolitics.
Why France’s Macron, at the last minute, attempted to undermine the project by placing stiffer regulations is a curious question. Those extra regulations if they had been imposed would have potentially made the Russian gas supply more expensive. As it turns out, the project will now go-ahead without onerous restrictions.
In short, Macron and the spoiling tactics of Washington, along with EU states hostile to Russia, Poland and the Baltic countries, have been put in their place by Germany and its assertion of national interests of securing economical and abundant gas supply from Russia. Other EU member states that backed Berlin over Nord Stream 2 were Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece and the Netherlands.
Washington’s claims that Nord Stream 2 would give Russia leverage of Europe’s security have been echoed by Poland and the Baltic states. Poland, and non-EU Ukraine, stand to lose out billions of dollars-worth of transit fees. Such a move, however, is the prerogative of Germany and Russia to find a more economical mode of supply. Besides, what right has Ukraine to make demands on a bilateral matter that is none of its business? Kiev’s previous bad faith over not paying gas bills to Russia disbars it from reasonable opinion.
Another factor is the inherent Russophobia of Polish and Baltic politicians who view everything concerning Russia through a prism of paranoia.
For the Americans, it is obviously a blatant case of seeking to sell their own much more expensive natural gas to Europe’s giant energy market – in place of Russia’s product. Based on objective market figures, Russia is the most competitive supplier to Europe. The Americans are therefore trying to snatch a strategic business through foul means of propaganda and political pressure. Ironically, the US German ambassador Richard Grenell and the other American envoys wrote in their recent oped: “Europe must retain control of its energy security.”
Last month, Grenell threatened German and European firms involved in the construction of Nord Stream 2 that they could face punitive American sanctions in the future. Evidently, it is the US side that is using “blackmail” to coerce others into submission, not Russia.
Back to Macron. What was he up to in his belated spoiling tactics over Nord Stream 2 and in particular the attempted problems being leveled for Germany if the extra regulations had been imposed?
It seems implausible that Macron was suddenly finding a concern for Poland and the Baltic states in their paranoia over alleged Russian invasion.
Was Macron trying to garner favors from the Trump administration? His initial obsequious rapport with Trump has since faded from the early days of Macron’s presidency in 2017. By doing Washington’s bidding to undermine the Nord Stream 2 project was Macron trying to ingratiate himself again?
The contradictions regarding Macron are replete. He is supposed to be a champion of “ecological causes”. A major factor in Germany’s desire for the Nord Stream 2 project is that the increased gas supply will reduce the European powerhouse’s dependence on dirty fuels of coal, oil and nuclear power. By throwing up regulatory barriers, Macron is making it harder for Germany and Europe to move to cleaner sources of energy that the Russian natural gas represents.
Also, if Macron had succeeded in imposing tougher regulations on the Nord Stream 2 project it would have inevitably increased the costs to consumers for gas bills. This is at a time when his government is being assailed by nationwide Yellow Vest protests over soaring living costs, in particular fuel-price hikes.
A possible factor in Macron’s sabotage bid in Germany’s Nord Stream 2 plans was his chagrin over Berlin’s rejection of his much-vaunted reform agenda for the Eurozone bloc within the EU. Despite Macron’s very public amity with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Berlin has continually knocked back the French leader’s ambitions for reform.
It’s hard to discern what are the real objectives of Macron’s reforms. But they seem to constitute a “banker’s charter”. Many eminent German economists have lambasted his plans, which they say will give more taxpayer-funded bailouts to insolvent banks. They say Macron is trying to move the EU further away from the social-market economy than the bloc already has moved.
What Macron, an ex-Rothschild banker, appears to be striving for is a replication of his pro-rich, anti-worker policies that he is imposing on France, and for these policies to be extended across the Eurozone. Berlin is not buying it, realizing such policies will further erode the social fabric. This could be the main reason why Macron tried to use the Nord Stream 2 project as leverage over Berlin.
In the end, Macron and Washington – albeit working for different objectives – were defeated in their attempts to sabotage the emerging energy trade between Germany, Europe and Russia. Nord Stream 2, as with Russia’s Turk Stream to the south of Europe, seems inevitable by sheer force of natural partnership.
On this note, the Hungarian government’s comments this week were apt. Budapest accused some European leaders and the US of “huge hypocrisy” in decrying association with Russia over energy trade. Macron has previously attended an economics forum in St Petersburg, and yet lately has sought to “blackmail” and disrupt Germany over its trade plans with Russia.
As for the Americans, their arrant hypocrisy is beyond words. As well as trying to dictate to Europe about “market principles” and “energy security”, it was reported this week that Washington is similarly demanding Iraq to end its import of natural gas from neighboring Iran.
Iraq is crippled by electricity and power shortages because of the criminal war that the US waged on that country from 2003-2011 which destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure. Iraq critically needs Iranian gas supplies to keep the lights and fans running. Yet, here we have the US now dictating to Iraq to end its lifeline import of Iranian fuel in order to comply with the Trump administration’s sanctions against Tehran. Iraq is furious at the latest bullying interference by Washington in its sovereign affairs.
The hypocrisy of Washington and elitist politicians like Emmanuel Macron has become too much to stomach. Maybe Germany and others are finally realizing who the charlatans are.
German Campaigners Defame Russian Media as Opinions Differ – Envoy to Berlin
Sputnik – 12.02.2019
MOSCOW – Russian media in Germany are being “persecuted” because their opponents do not have arguments to challenge their positions, Russian Ambassador to Berlin Sergei Nechayev told Sputnik, adding that proponents of such an approach were revealing who they really were.
“All those involved in this, to put it mildly, ugly media campaign against Russian and Russian-language media, are exposing themselves. After all, the course for defamation is adopted when arguments finish. One can only regret that opinions that differ from those expressed by local mainstream media do not give rise to a professional debate, but become a target for dishonest attacks. It is much easier to accuse your opponent of propaganda and deny him the opportunity to freely deliver his opinion to the local public rather than to hold a professional, fact-based discussion on controversial issues,” Nechayev said.
The ambassador added that Russian authorities did not target German media working in Russia, despite the fact that Moscow did not always like their content, which, he said, was often far from being objective.
“All we are striving for is providing our journalists with the opportunity to freely fulfill their professional duty in Germany, exactly the same way as many more numerous media representatives of Germany do in our country,” Nechayev stressed.
The comments come after on January 11, the German Federation of Journalists issued a statement calling on German regulators supervising media activities to not issue a broadcasting license for RT Deutsch, claiming that it was a “tool for Kremlin propaganda.” The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that Russia is not ruling out the possibility of taking retaliatory measures against countries where Russian media have their rights violated.
The situation with Russian media in the West has become increasingly difficult in recent years. A number of Western politicians, including those in the United Kingdom, the United States and France, have accused RT and Sputnik of interfering in elections and spreading propaganda, albeit without providing any evidence.
Russian officials have repeatedly stressed that Moscow does not meddle in other countries’ affairs. They, in particular, emphasize that the Western states’ policy toward Russian media reflected the fear of alternative coverage of global events and deterioration of the freedom of speech there.
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Major rabbi says non-Jews are donkeys, created to serve Jews
By Khalid Amayreh, in occupied East Jerusalem | The People’s Voice | October 18, 2010
A major Jewish religious figure in Israel has likened non-Jews to donkeys and beasts of burden, saying the main reason for their very existence is to serve Jews.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the religious fundamentalist party, Shas, which represents Middle Eastern Jews, reportedly said during a Sabbath homily earlier this week that “the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews.”
Yosef is considered a major religious leader in Israel who enjoys the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of followers. … continue
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