‘Evacuation of White Helmets Shows That It is Western Product’ – Military Expert

Sputnik – July 26, 2018
Hundreds of members of the so-called Syrian Civil Defense, the White Helmets, have been evacuated from southwestern Syria to Jordan, via the occupied Golan Heights by the Israelis. Sputnik discussed this operation with military experts Amin Hteit and Vladimir Fitin.
During the Syrian conflict, the activists of the White Helmets have been involved in “the most odious provocations” and their evacuation reveals their true nature and hypocrisy, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday.
A military expert, former Lebanese Army general Amin Hteit in an interview with Sputnik confirmed the Russian foreign ministry’s statements, saying that, “the evacuation of this group clearly shows that this is a Western product in the full sense of the word.”
According to Hteit, the White Helmets carried out the task of creating a given information background to justify any “aggression” by the United States, France and Britain against Syria.“What we are seeing now is how the creator has rescued its creation,” Hteit said.
“I say so, because there is some evidence for this. First of all, the group was created by the United Kingdom with US support; secondly, their training took place in the military camps of Israel, and then they were sent into Syria; thirdly, their alleged documentary reports were filmed at the behest of British and American intelligence. They were supporting the ongoing operations against Syria via their information campaign,” the retired general told Sputnik.
In an interview with Sputnik, an expert from the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Vladimir Fitin, said that the videos made by the White Helmets were created on the orders and with the money of the British and US intelligence services.
“Now they are being urgently taken out of Syria so that they do not fall into the hands of the rapidly advancing Syrian army,” Fitin said.He went on by saying that while only a part of the members of the White Helmets were removed, the rest continue to work in the terrorist-controlled territories.
“It is quite possible that they will release some provocative new video,” the expert said.
Earlier it was reported that the Israeli forces have evacuated several hundred White Helmets and their family members from southern Syria to Jordan at the request of several Western countries. The transfer has been labeled a “criminal operation” by Damascus, which believes the NGO’s members have cooperated with terrorists and plotted several false flag attacks.
Tel Aviv commented on the information regarding the militants’ extraction from Syria and their alleged work with Israeli intelligence agencies, saying that it is a humanitarian operation.
The White Helmets claim to be acting as a volunteer rescue group, but has been repeatedly accused of working with jihadists, such as al-Nusra Front and staging fake videos that they later use to accuse Damascus of being responsible for attacks against civilians.
The group was founded in Turkey by former MI5 officer James Le Mesurier and funded by several western countries. Despite their claims of helping citizens, the Russian Defense Ministry has uncovered evidence and found witnesses suggesting that one of their latest reports of an alleged chemical attack in Douma was a fake.
TRUDEAU TO ADMIT TERRORIST AUXILIARIES INTO CANADA
The Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War | July 23, 2018
The fact that Canada is admitting as refugees at least 250 White Helmets and their family members exposes the involvement of the Trudeau government, like the Harper government before it, in the illegal, US-led, regime-change operation in Syria.
These two federal governments are collectively responsible for setting up and continuing the international coalition that produced the proxy war against Syria, using terrorist mercenaries as its foot soldiers; leading the international regime of brutal economic sanctions against Syria which turned about four million Syrians into refugees – (the international sanctions regime was drawn up in a meeting in Ottawa in June 2013); demonizing the legitimate government of Syria, breaking off diplomatic relations with it, and trying to delegitimize it in international forums; supporting armed rebels against Syria, a member state of the United Nations, by bringing their leaders to Ottawa and giving them funds; overflying Syria on military missions without the express consent of its government; and supporting the propaganda arm of the regime change operation through the White Helmets.
Now that the Syrian government has liberated Deraa, where the western-sponsored regime-change operation began in 2011, the “rebels” and their auxiliaries have had to scramble to find places of refuge. Thus, the Trudeau government has felt obliged to admit as refugees to Canada some of their foreign policy assets, namely the White Helmets.
Who are the White Helmets? The White Helmets claim to be a “fiercely independent” organization of volunteer first responders in Syria helping Syrian civilians injured in the war.
In fact, the White Helmets are a fiercely partisan organization of relatively well-paid employees, set up by British and US intelligence services inside of Turkey (a belligerent in the war against Syria) in 2013. A Madison Avenue public relations firm was contracted to develop the concept of the White Helmets as a humanitarian agency for public consumption in the West – to provide a ‘sugar-coating’ to an ugly and illegal imperial war. John Lemesurier, a former British military intelligence officer and later “military contractor”, was hired to front the organization, which has been funded to the tune of about 150 million dollars by the governments of the USA, UK, France, Holland, Denmark, Japan, New Zealand, and Canada, among others. In 2016, Canada donated $4.5 million dollars to the White Helmets. Currently, a Freedom of Information request is seeking to determine if the Canadian government has made repeated donations of $4.5 million in 2017 and 2018. On top of the donations, the Canadian government has organized two cross-Canada publicity tours of White Helmet personnel in recent years in various cities. This past March, a delegation of White Helmets was welcomed to speak to the Canadian parliament’s Human Rights Committee. In addition, the New Democratic Party endorsed the White Helmets for the Nobel Peace Prize, which it failed to win.
The White Helmets are embedded in the Al-Qaeda terrorist network and operate exclusively in terrorist-held areas of Syria. Though it also calls itself the Syrian Civil Defence, the government of Syria created the real Syrian Civil Defence in 1953 and was a founding member of the International Civil Defence Organization.
Once in place inside the terrorist-occupied enclaves inside of Syria, the true role of the White Helmets emerged. The group specialized in making videos of dramatically-staged rescues of children from among the rubble of part of cities which Al-Qaeda (and sometimes other terrorist groups) had managed to seize and occupy. Two notorious staged videos stand out: the staged rescues of Omran Daqneesh in Aleppo and Hassan Diab in Douma. Occasionally, however, the White Helmets joined in recreational video competitions, such as the Mannequin Challenge. The twofold principal purposes of the child-rescue videos was, first, to demonize the Syrian government as a brutal tyranny, even though it was lawfully defending its sovereign territory against foreign invasion, and, secondly, to promote the western regime change operation in Syria as a humanitarian intervention.
Specifically, the White Helmet videos were timed to promote calls by western governments for direct military intervention in Syria by such means as a no-fly zone (similar to the one imposed on Libya in 2011) or a “civilian corridor”. And, on at least two occasions, the tactic worked. In April 2017, the White Helmets staged a false flag chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun which prompted a US missile attack on the Sharyat Air Base in Syria. A recent outstanding example of the propaganda use of such videos was the staging of a fake nerve agent attack in Douma, Syria, on April 7 of this year. The incident, though later revealed as a hoax by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), nonetheless resulted in over one hundred missile strikes by the USA, UK, and France on Syria on April 13, 2018.
In addition, the White Helmets’ true role as an auxiliary to terrorism was captured on film on several occasions when they participated in Al-Qaeda summary executions and by Facebook postings by numerous White Helmets on their personal accounts showing themselves moonlighting as armed Al-Qaeda fighters and heaping praise on Al-Qaeda leaders. Contrarily, civilians inside the enclaves in Syrian cities liberated from Al-Qaeda and ISIS told many western reporters that the White Helmets provided no medical help or assistance to them, but rather only to the armed terrorists. Moreover, real Syrian Civil Defence workers testified that many of their comrades were killed by Al-Qaeda fighters and their equipment and vehicles given to the White Helmets.
The rescue of the White Helmet “rescuers” by Israel through the Golan Heights should not come as a surprise because Israel has been a major player in the illegal, failed, regime change operation in Syria. Israel has bombed Syria more than one hundred times during the war. Israel openly supported FSA fighters with arms, intelligence, and funding in southern Syria and routinely transferred wounded terrorists to hospitals inside Israel for medical treatment before returning them to the front. Israeli PM Netanyahu posed for photos in one of those hospitals at the bedside of wounded terrorists last year. Today (July 22, 2018), in a tweet, Netanyahu stated that both President Trump and Prime Minister Trudeau personally asked for his help in rescuing the White Helmets from Syria.
Syria is well rid of these White Helmets. But, if Canadians understood who these people really were, they would strongly object to the settling of terrorists in our midst. Last November in the House of Commons, Trudeau asserted that Canadians returning from terrorist activities in Syria and Iraq would not be charged with criminal offences. Rather, he asserted, “We also have methods of de-emphasizing or de-programming people who want to harm our society, and those are some things we have to move forward on.” At the end of the day, then, the Trudeau government in effect embraces terrorist fighters and their auxiliaries.
That the Canadian government is planning to admit White Helmets personnel to Canada as refugees should gravely concern Canadians. These civil defence poseurs are ideologically committed to terrorism, personally connected to Al Qaeda, and have the blood on their hands of many Syrians whose country they helped to invade and occupy. The potential for them to cause harm in Canada is high.
We urge Canadians immediately to contact their MP’s about this matter, to spread the alarm via social media, and to write letters to newspapers. We also urge the Canadian government to do the following:
- withdraw from the US-led military coalition in Syria and Iraq;
- end Canada’s punishing economic sanctions against Syria;
- re-establish diplomatic ties with the Syrian government;
- participate in the reconstruction of Syria through payments of reparation.
Published by the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War
hcsw.ca
hcsw@cogeco.ca
For further info, please contact Ken Stone at 289-382-9008 or at kenstone@cogeco.ca
The Official Fake News
By Serge Halimi | CounterPunch | July 3, 2018
Emmanuel Macron, who was comfortably elected to the presidency with the support of almost the entire French media, has demanded that his parliamentary majority provide him with a law against ‘fake news’ during election campaigns. Perhaps he’s preparing for the next one.
The draft legislation reveals both the blindness of those who govern when challenged and their inclination to invent new coercive countermeasures. You would have to be myopic indeed to believe that the victory of ‘anti-establishment’ candidates, parties and causes (Donald Trump, Brexit, the Catalan referendum, Italy’s Five Star Movement) could, even marginally, be the consequence of authoritarian regimes spreading fake news. The US press has been trying to demonstrate for a year, as yet without conclusive evidence, that Trump owes his election to fake news manufactured by Vladimir Putin.
Macron has a similar obsession, to the point of hoping to make fake news vanish with a law that is both useless and dangerous. Useless because France’s Council of State pointed out on 19 April that ‘French law already contains several measures intended to combat the dissemination of false information’: in particular the law of 29 July 1881 on the freedom of the press, which permits curbs on the dissemination of false information and the expression of views that are defamatory or abusive or incite hatred.
And dangerous because the bill about to go before parliament would require a judge to act within 48 hours to ‘stop the artificial and large-scale dissemination of news constituting false information.’ But, the Council of State’s response continued, ‘these are hard to determine legally, especially when the judge must give a judgement within a very short time.’ Macron’s law would also strengthen Internet service providers’ and hosts’ duty of cooperation with the authorities, since it extends to all false information restraints that were initially aimed at preventing ‘apologism for crimes against humanity, incitement to hatred and child pornography.’
Media ownership by the president’s billionaire friends, toxic advertising claims, and suppressing public television channels’ funding are not the subject of any draft law. And why limit this judicial apparatus to the campaign season? In the past few decades, in almost every war — in the Gulf, Kosovo, Iraq and Libya — there has been a proliferation of lies and news manipulation. Not by Russia, Facebook or social media, but by our beacons of democracy and journalism: the major western daily newspapers, with the New York Times in the vanguard, the White House and European capitals. Not to mention the Ukrainian government, which deliberately announced the false death of a journalist last month. If a judge needs to order the arrest of the people responsible for spreading this fake news, at least they’ll be easy to find…
Serge Halimi is president of Le Monde diplomatique
OPCW’s new power attempt to politicize its work: Syria
Press TV – June 29, 2018
The Syrian government has denounced a recent decision made by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the world’s chemical watchdog, to empower itself to assign blame for alleged chemical attacks.
“Syria expresses its deep concern at the methods of blackmail and threat used by Western countries, especially the ones involved in the tripartite aggression against Syria — the US, UK and France — to pass a resolution at the OPCW emergency session,” Syria’s official news agency, SANA, quoted a source at the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates as saying on Friday.
On Wednesday, the Hague-based organization passed by 82 votes to 24 a British-backed proposal, which enable the watchdog to hold responsible those who it thinks are behind alleged chemical attacks. Until then, the OPCW’s mandate was limited only to determining whether or not a chemical attack took place, not who was responsible.
Russia, which had strongly opposed granting extra powers to the OPCW, said it would not rule out leaving what it called a “sinking Titanic.”
The new decision would allow for the watchdog to be used as “vehicle to carry out violations against independent, sovereign states under the pretexts of chemical weapons use”, the source further said, adding, “The decision will only add new complications to the OPCW’s capacity to play its role, which will lead to its paralysis.”
Back in April, militants and activists linked to them, including the so-called civil defense group White Helmets, claimed that government forces on Saturday had dropped a barrel bomb containing poisonous chemicals in Douma, Eastern Ghouta’s largest town, killing and wounding dozens of civilians.
Damascus strongly rejected the allegation and said that the so-called Jaish al-Islam Takfiri terrorist group, which had dominant presence in the town at the time, was repeating the allegations of using chemical munitions “in order to accuse the Syrian Arab army, in a blatant attempt to hinder the Army’s advance.”
However, the US State Department issued a strongly-worded statement, blaming the Syrian government for purportedly conducting the attack.
The Hague-based OPCW is soon expected to publish the highly-anticipated results of its probe into the purported toxic gas attack in Douma.
The Syrian foreign ministry’s source further said that Wednesday’s decision “sets a dangerous precedent” by giving an “organization concerned with scientific and technical issues the authority to carry out criminal and legal investigations that are not its specialty.”
The source added that the Arab country reiterated its condemnation of the use of chemical munitions by “anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances.”
Militants belonging to a number of factions had held the Eastern Ghouta, an enclave in the vicinity of the capital Damascus, since 2012 and had practically held hostage its inhabitants, some 400,000 people.
Syrian troops and allied fighters from popular defense groups managed to fully liberate the enclave from the clutches of militants in April, after months of intense fighting with terror groups, which had used the area as a launch pad for deadly rocket attacks against residents and civilian infrastructure in the capital.
Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria in early 2011, the Western governments have on several occasions accused Syria of using chemical weapons against militants. Damascus has denied the allegation, saying it is meant to pile more pressure on government forces and delay their success in the fight against terrorists.
In April last year, the US and allies in Europe said Syria and Russia, an ally of Damascus in the fight against terror, used chemical weapons against militants in Khan Shaykhun in the province of Idlib. Moscow and Damascus strongly rejected the allegation. However, US warships in the eastern Mediterranean launched a barrage of 59 Tomahawk missiles against Shayrat Airfield in Syria’s Homs province, which Washington alleged was the origin of the suspected chemical attack.
The Syrian government surrendered its stockpiles of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the UN and the OPCW.
Macron Embraces Liberal Authoritarianism by Attempting to Force French Children Into The Military
By Adam Garrie | EurasiaFuture | June 28, 2018
Emmanuel Macron was the first modern French President not to experience compulsory military service as prior to his eighteenth birthday, the French government abolished conscription. However, after benefiting from the fact that France is a country facing no traditional military threats, Macron has now put forward formal proposals which would force all 16 year old French girls and boys to serve in the military.
Macron’s proposals not only defy the pan-European trend of ending compulsory service but they also defy logic. It is well known that especially in the age of high-tech warfare, conscripted armies are simply not as efficient nor as effective as those comprised of volunteers. Countries that maintain compulsory military service are generally those that face major existential threats from traditional armed forces, countries with small populations or nations that simply have not got around to modifying old rules. In any case, many of the countries that still do enforce some kind of compulsory service are reducing the amount of years or months required while also offering a variety of exemptions.
Furthermore, while most countries that still conscript young people only begin the process when one has turned 18 and while furthermore, they generally only ever draft males – Macron has set the bar at the age of 16 and will require both males and females to forcibly join the armed forces if he gets his way.
Macron’s proposals represent a massive step backwards for the French people. France is a country that has enjoyed all the benefits of pan-European peace while its volunteer armed forces continue to inflect suffering upon the developing world along with their other NATO allies. There can be no justification for conscription during a time of unparalleled peace, but Macron has other things in mind.
While liberalism used to connote an idea of relaxed governmental controls on everything from the economy to public morality, today’s liberalism is increasingly embracing an atmosphere of classic authoritarianism which is used to enforce not patriotic nor moral values, but contemporary ultra-liberal ones. In other words, liberalism has pivoted from “do as you will do – no matter the consequences” to “do as we say or else be severely punished for not embracing our particular liberal set of social values”.
Macron’s attempt to militarise society by targeting children is the next logical progression of such a barbaric modus operandi and what is more worrying is that other liberal authoritarians in Europe may follow Macron in throwing away Europe’s peace by turning it into a needlessly more militarised region.
Without a doubt, the biggest problem that contemporary Europe faces is the migration crisis that was itself caused by Angela Merkel forcing a pan-EU open door policy down the throats of ordinary people who never got to have a formal say in the matter. As France has been one of the countries to most readily embrace Merkel’s open door policy, Macron bears his share of responsibility for the present crisis.
Macron has implied that his conscription policy is an attempt to use military service to create social solidarity where at present there is a great deal of discord. However, by militarising the youth, all it will do is propagate an atmosphere of violence that can only be tackled by tough policing when combined with an end to open door policies for economic migrants posing as refugees.
The problems in French society are due to a combination of lax enforcement of current drug laws, poor policing techniques against the proliferation of gangs, terror cells and weapons and an attitude of so-called political correctness which disallows police from following basic lines of logic in cracking down on criminal activities in society.
All Macron’s conscription plans will do is create more anger and violence among ordinary citizens who at the moment simply want professional police to do their job without the constraints they are currently under. Furthermore, Macron’s plan seeks to shift the blame for the migrant crisis onto an invisible foreign threat that a bulked-up, partially conscripted French military will now prepare to fight. This weapon of mass distraction seeks to point the finger at any given “foreign menace” as the cause of the current breakdown in French society when in reality it was France’s and the EU’s own policies which sowed the seeds of the current atmosphere of widespread discontent.
Macron’s liberal authoritarianism will simply punish French children for literally no reason at all, while simultaneously providing himself an excuse to deflect from the blame he has earned by his refusal to wake up to reality regarding Europe’s migrant crisis.
If there was ever a reason for French men and women to take to the streets and protest their government, this certainly is among the most important.
Ayatollah Khamenei slams West’s ‘shameless’ human rights posture
Press TV – June 27, 2018
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has strongly denounced the Western states for their pretense of advocating human rights while in reality supporting terrorist groups and acts of terror.
Addressing the staff of Iran’s Judiciary at a meeting in Tehran on Wednesday, Ayatollah Khamenei made reference to human rights violations committed by the United States in various parts of the world as well as France and Britain’s crimes of the past decades which took place in Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
The Leader added that the West’s support over the past years for the Daesh terror group in Syria and the atrocities being committed in Myanmar and elsewhere “is indicative of the repeated lies of the shameless fake human rights advocates.”
Ayatollah Khamenei said when it comes to the issue of human rights, it is actually the Islamic Republic that stands in the position of the true advocate of human rights as opposed to “the criminal Western pretenders.”
The Leader expressed satisfaction with the Judiciary’s work in restoring the Iranian nations’ rights in the face of bullying powers.
Separately, Ayatollah Khamenei advised the judicial officials to work closely with the government towards resolving the country’s economic problems.
‘Systemic corruption a lie’
The Leader criticized certain people who seek to create the impression among the public that there is “systemic corruption” within Iranian state institutions.
Corruption does exist in a number of governmental and commercial enterprises, “but the existence of systemic corruption is not true,” the Leader said. “This wrong impression should not be allowed to affect the public opinion.”
Ayatollah Khamenei further stated that foreign enemies and certain oblivious elements at home have made the Judiciary the target of the most severe propaganda and media pressure.
In order to effectively confront this massive propaganda campaign, the Leader suggested, the judicial system needs to develop a strong and skillful media arm.
Western Media Whitewash Yemen Genocide

By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 18.06.2018
With the United Nations warning that millions of civilians could die from violence or starvation from the ongoing military siege of the Yemeni port city of Hodeida, there is no other way to describe what is happening except as “genocide”.
The more than three-year war on Yemen waged by a Western-backed Saudi coalition has been arguably genocidal from the outset, with up to eight million people facing imminent starvation due to the years-long blockade on the Arabian country, as well as from indiscriminate air strikes.
But the latest offensive on the Red Sea city of Hodeida threatens to turn the world’s already worst humanitarian disaster into a mass extermination.
Hodeida is the entry point for 90 per cent of all food and medical aid into Yemen. If the city’s port stops functioning from the military offensive – as UN aid agencies are warning – then an entire country population of more than 20 million will, as a result, be on the brink of death.
The Saudi coalition which includes Emirati forces and foreign mercenaries as well as remnants from the previous regime (which the Western media mendaciously refer to as “government forces”) is fully backed by the US, Britain and France. This coalition says that by taking Hodeida it will hasten the defeat of Houthi rebels. But to use the cutting off of food and other vital aid to civilian populations as a weapon is a blatant war crime. It is absolutely inexcusable.
This past week an emergency session at the UN Security Council made the lily-livered call for the port city to remain open. But it stopped short of demanding an end to the offensive being led by Saudi and Emirati forces against Hodeida, which is the second biggest stronghold for Houthi rebels after the capital Sanaa. The port city’s population of 600,000 is at risk from the heavy fighting underway, including air strikes and naval bombardment, even before food, water and medicines supply is halted.
Since the Security Council meeting was a closed-door session, media reports did not indicate which members of the council voted down the Swedish call for an immediate end to hostilities. However, given that three permanent members of the council, the US, Britain and France, are militarily supporting the Saudi-led offensive on Hodeida, one can assume that these states blocked the call for a cessation.
As the horror of Hodeida unfolds, Western media are reporting with a strained effort to whitewash the criminal role of the American, British and French governments in supporting the offensive. Western media confine their focus narrowly on the humanitarian plight of Hodeida’s inhabitants and the wider Yemeni population. But the media are careful to omit the relevant context, which is that the offensive on Hodeida would not be possible without the crucial military support of Western governments. If the Western public were properly informed, the uproar would be an embarrassing problem for Western governments and their servile news media.
What is notable in the Western media reportage is the ubiquitous descriptor when referring to the Houthi rebels. Invariably, they are described as “Iran-backed”. That label is used to implicitly “justify” the Saudi and Emirati siege of Hodeida “because” the operation is said to be part of a “proxy war against Iran”. The BBC, France 24, CNN, Deutsche Welle, New York Times and Washington Post are among media outlets habitually practicing this misinformation on Yemen.
Both Iran and the Houthis have said that there is no military linkage. Granted, Iran politically and diplomatically supports the Houthis, and the Yemeni population generally, suffering from the war. The Houthis share a common Shia Muslim faith as Iran, but that is a far cry from military involvement. There is no evidence of Iran being militarily involved in Yemen. The claim of a linkage relies heavily on assertion by the Saudis and Emiratis which is peddled uncritically by Western media. Even the US government has shied away from making forthright accusations against Iran supporting the Houthis militarily. Washington’s diffidence is a tacit admission that the allegations are threadbare. Besides, how could a country which is subjected to an illegal Saudi blockade of its land, sea and air routes conceivably receive weapons supplied from Iran?
By contrast, while the Western media repeatedly refer to the Houthis as “Iran-backed”, what the same media repeatedly omit is the descriptor of “American-backed” or “British and French-backed” when referring to the Saudi and Emirati forces that have been pounding Yemen for over three years. Unlike the breathless claims of Iranian linkage to the Houthis, the Western military connection is verified by massive weapons exports, and indeed coy admissions by Western governments, when they are put to it, that they are supplying fuel and logistics to aid and abet the Saudi and Emirati war effort in Yemen.
Last week, the New York Times affected to lament the infernal conditions in Yemen as a “complex war”, as if the conflict is an unfathomable, unstoppable mystery. Why doesn’t the New York Times publish bold editorials bluntly calling for an end to US government complicity in Yemen? Or perhaps that is too “complex” for the Times’ editorial board?
The Washington Post also wrung its hands last week, saying: “The world’s most dire humanitarian crisis may get even worse. Emirati-led [and Saudi] offensive underway against port city of Hodeida, which is controlled by Iran-backed [sic] Houthi rebels.”
In its report, the Post did not mention the fact that air strikes by Saudi and Emirati forces are carried out with American F-15 fighter jets, British Typhoons and French Dassault warplanes. Incongruously, the Post cites US officials claiming that their forces are not “directly involved” in the offensive on the port city. How is that credible when air strikes are being conducted day after day? The Washington Post doesn’t bother to ask further.
In a BBC report last week also lamented the “humanitarian crisis” in Hodeida, there was the usual evidence-free casual labelling of Houthi rebels as “Iran-backed”. But, incredibly, in the entire article (at least in early editions) there was not a single mention of the verifiable fact that the Saudi and Emirati military are supplied with billions-of-dollars-worth of British, American and French weapons.
In the final paragraph of its early edition of the report, the BBC editorializes: “In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and eight other mainly Sunni Muslim Arab states launched a military campaign to restore [exiled president] Hadi’s government after becoming alarmed by the rise of the Houthi group which they see as an Iranian Shia Muslim proxy.”
Note the BBC’s lame and unconvincing implication of Iran. This is a stupendous distortion of the Yemeni conflict by the British state-owned broadcaster which, astoundingly, or perhaps that should be audaciously, completely airbrushes out any mention of how Western governments have fueled the genocidal war on Yemen.
At the end of 2014, the American and Saudi puppet self-styled “president” Mansour Hadi was kicked out by a Yemeni popular revolt led by the Houthis, but not exclusive to these rebels. The Yemeni uprising involved Shia and Sunni. To portray Iran as sponsoring a Shia proxy is a vile distortion which the Saudis and their Western backers have used in order to justify attacking Yemen for the objective of re-installing their puppet, who has been living in exile in the Saudi capital Riyadh. In short, covering up a criminal war of aggression with lies.
In reality, the Yemen war is about Western powers and their Arab despot client regimes trying to reverse a successful popular revolt that aspired to bring a considerably more democratic government to the Arab region’s poorest country, overcoming the decades it languished as a Western, Saudi client kleptocracy.
For over three years, Saudi and Emirati forces, supported with Western warplanes, bombs, missiles, attack helicopters, naval power, and air refueling, as well as targeting logistics, have waged a non-stop bombing campaign on Yemeni civilians. Nothing has been off-limits. Hospitals, schools, markets, mosques, funerals, wedding halls, family homes, farms, water-treatment plants and power utilities, all have been mercilessly obliterated. Even graveyards have been bombed.
Even during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Saudi-led coalition – the supposed custodian of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina – has continued to massacre innocents from the air.
Elsewhere in the region, Western politicians and media have mounted hysterical protests against the Syrian government and its Russian ally when they have liberated cities from Western-backed terrorists, accusing Syria and Russia of “war crimes” and “inhuman sieges”. None of these hyperbolic Western media campaigns concerning Syria has ever been substantiated. Recall Aleppo? East Ghouta? The Syrian people have gladly returned to rebuild their lives now in peace under Syrian government protection after the Western terror proxies were routed. Western media claims about Syria have transpired to be outrageous lies, which have been hastily buried by the media as if they were never told in the first place.
Yet in Yemen there is an ongoing, veritable genocidal war fully supported by Western governments. The latest barbarity is the siege of Hodeida with the callous, murderous objective of finally starving a whole population into submitting to the Western, Saudi, Emirati writ for dominating the country. This is Nuremberg-standard capital crimes.
With no exaggeration, Western news media are a Goebbels-like propaganda ministry – par excellence – whose duty is to whitewash genocide conducted by their governments. The barefaced lies and sly omissions being told about Yemen is one more reason among many reasons why the Western media have forfeited any vestige of credibility. They are serving as they usually do – Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Syria among others – as accomplices in an epic war crime against Yemen.
Photo: Geopolitics Alert
Houthis say Saudi-led forces bogged down outside Hudaydah
Press TV – June 17, 2018
Yemen’s Houthi fighters have dismissed reports that Saudi-led forces have seized the airport in the port city of Hudaydah, saying the aggressors are on the retreat on all front lines.
Militants and foreign mercenaries armed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are attempting to capture the well-defended city and push the Houthis out of their sole Red Sea port in the biggest battle of the war.
“A battle of attrition awaits the Saudi alliance which it cannot withstand. The Saudi coalition will not win the battle in Hudaydah,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam told Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen TV.
Saudi Arabia on Sunday conducted airstrikes on the airport, to support forces attempting to seize it. The official SABA news agency said warplanes carried out five strikes on Hudaydah – a lifeline to millions of Yemenis.
Ground troops including Emiratis, Sudanese and Yemenis have surrounded the main airport compound.
Mohammed al-Sharif, deputy head of Yemen’s civil aviation, said images circulated online about the airport had been taken in October 2016.
A fence shown as proof of the airport’s capture is actually situated near the al-Durayhimi district, on a piece of land belonging to a Yemeni lawmaker, the official SABA news agency quoted him as saying.
Ahmed Taresh, the head of Hudaydah airport, also denied news of the airport’s capture, but said that it has been completely destroyed in airstrikes conducted by the Saudi-led coalition.
Abdulsalam warned that the Saudi-UAE offensive against the port city would undermine chances for a peaceful settlement of the Yemen crisis.
The rebuttals came after the media office of the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces loyal to ex-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi said on Twitter that they had “freed Hudaydah international airport from the grip of” the Houthis.
Reports on Sunday said Saudi-backed forces had been surrounded in the al-Durayhimi Bayt al-Faqih district and at least 40 Saudi mercenaries killed by Yemeni sniper fire over the past two days.
Al-Mayadeen, meanwhile, cited informed sources as saying that the invading forces had retreated from all fronts in Hudaydah’s west.
A Yemeni military source said clashes had left 50 Saudi-backed forces dead and destroyed 13 of their armored vehicles in southern Hudaydah.
Yemeni forces have also managed to confiscate a French or American ship off Hudaydah’s coast, president of the Houthi Revolutionary Committee Mohammed Ali al-Houthi tweeted.
The UAE, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition waging the war on Yemen, launched the Hudaydah assault on Wednesday despite warnings that it would compound the impoverished nation’s humanitarian crisis.
Le Figaro newspaper on Saturday reported that French special forces were present on the ground in Yemen supporting the operation.
According to the Houthis, British and French warships were also on standby on Yemen’s western coast to launch missile and aerial attacks on Hudaydah.
Fighting on Saturday closed off the city’s northern exit, blocking a key route east to Sana’a and making it harder to transport goods from Yemen’s biggest port to mountainous regions.
The UN World Food Program and the World Health Organization have both expressed concern over the situation.
More than 70 percent of Yemeni imports pass through Hudaydah’s docks and the fighting has raised fears of a humanitarian catastrophe in a country already teetering on the brink of famine.
On Saturday, the UN envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths arrived in Sana’a to hold emergency talks on Hudaydah. He was believed to be pushing a deal for the Houthi fighters to cede control of the Red Sea port to a UN-supervised committee.
Iranian President Suggests Pullout of Advisors, Foreign Military From Syria
Sputnik – 13.06.2018
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has discussed the situation in Syria, as well as prospects of Iran deal with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a telephone call, the official website of the Iranian president reported.
Hassan Rouhani noted that Tehran had sent its military advisers to the Arab republic at the request request of its legitimate government in order to help Damascus fight terrorism. He expressed hope that no “foreign military presence” would be needed after the terrorist threat had been eradicated.
Israel accuses Iran of sending the country’s troops to Syria in order to attack it from Syrian territory. Tel Aviv has already conducted several airstrikes against Syrian bases under a pretext of Iranian Revolutionary Guards being stationed there. Tehran and Damascus deny these accusations.
The two presidents also discussed the current state of the JCPOA. Rouhani praised the stance that Europe took to keep the deal alive after the US withdrawal, but noted that, so far, statements had not been “accompanied by practical and tangible measures and solutions.”
“If Iran cannot benefit from the privileges of this agreement, remaining in it will not be possible,” the Iranian president said.
Emmanuel Macron confirmed commitment to the JCPOA and assured Rouhani that France is working on “a series of measures and practical solutions” to make the deal work.
The US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, with President Donald Trump claiming the deal was “flawed” at its core. Other parties to the agreement have confirmed their readiness to stick with the deal and work out solutions against possible US sanctions.
French Thought Police and the Creeping Dictatorship of Virtue
By Jean Bricmont | Consortium News | June 11, 2018
The French government of Emmanuel Macron has introduced a new law to protect the French from “fake news” during election periods. This vaguely drafted amendment to existing press law seems to have been inspired by Macron’s resentment at rumors circulated against him during last year’s presidential election – which didn’t prevent him from winning. Widely opposed by opposition parties from left to right, and by most journalists, this amendment fits in all too well with the growing establishment campaign to censor dissident opinion by one means or another. The main pretext is the copycat Clintonite accusation of Russian “interference in Western elections.”
Applying initially only to election periods, to protect “our democracy”, this attempt to legislate the difference between true and false is a dangerous step in the door toward official censorship. Similar plans to ban “fake news” are brewing on the European level.
The law is superfluous to start with, since the existing 1881 French press law already sanctions insults, defamation and the artificial creation of panic, such as shouting fire in a crowded theater. But Macron’s government wants to go much farther, outlawing the spread of “false information”, obscurely defined as “alleging or lending credibility to a fact lacking verifiable elements of a nature to make it believable”. (…“une allégation ou imputation d’un fait dépourvue d’éléments vérifiables de nature à la rendre vraisemblable”.)
This definition is both unclear and potentially far-reaching.
To start with, a skeptic could ask what are the “verifiable elements” proving the existence of God, of life after death or of the effectiveness of prayer. There goes religion. How about the “verifiable elements” proving the effectiveness of astrology? There go some popular daily newspaper features. Numerous scientists have raised questions as to the “verifiable elements” justifying psychoanalysis without receiving satisfactory answers. Should psychobabble be banned in the name of combatting fake news?
And what should be done with post-modern French philosophy, whose most famous names take psychoanalysis very seriously and pride themselves on leaping to subjective conclusions? No one proliferates more fact-free assertions than Bernard-Henri Lévy, which so far has not interfered with his position on the board of major media from Le Monde to the cultural channel Arte.
But that’s only the beginning. What do we do with scientific theories that have been advanced without experimental confirmation? For example, string theory in physics and various hypotheses in cosmology.
In fact, many scientific discoveries begin with unproven hypotheses. Better not mention them!
And what about mainstream media? In one recent news report after another (Skripal poisoning, chemical weapons attacks in Syria, the falsified murder in Ukraine of an anti-Putin journalist, not to mention the responsibility for firing a missile that shot down a Malaysian airliner in July 2014), there is a big difference between the Western version of the facts and that which prevails in Russia, Malaysia, Syria and much of the non-Western world.
A Mental Border with Russia
Instead of Pascal’s “truth on this side of the Pyrenees, and error on the other side”, we would be establishing “truth on one side of the Mediterranean, error on the other”. Or rather, truth exists up to the Eastern border of NATO, with error on the other side. This is no way to advance toward universal understanding. The only way to resolve our differences with the rest of the world is free discussion. Inasmuch as the law against fake news seems to be designed mainly to counter what Western governments describe as Russian propaganda, there is a strong likelihood that it can only enforce the mental border between us and the Russians.
When the independent journalist André Bercoff simply raised a couple of questions concerning anomalies in reports of the amazing rescue by Mamoudou Gassama of a child hanging from a Paris balcony, his own colleagues instantly condemned him for “provoking doubts” and engaging in “conspiracy theories”. The official regulatory agency, the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel, hastened to open an investigation… of Bercoff. President Macron had invited Gassama to the Elysee Palace, offering him French citizenship and making the event an exemplary national legend. Thus sacred.
It is an odd sign of the times to reproach a journalist for asking questions. Leaving aside the rescue incident, raising questions used to be considered a primary function of journalism. If it is better to let ten guilty persons go free than to imprison one innocent man, in terms of rational scientific method, it is better to have ten extravagant doubts than one unchallengeable dogma.
It is true that what the dominant media call “conspiracy theories”, going everywhere from legitimate questioning of their own narratives and of official assertions to the wildest fantasies, do indeed proliferate on social media. But can anyone believe that describing Bercoff’s doubts as “conspiracy theorizing” will in any way stem that proliferation?
The French Minister of culture, Françoise Nyssen, has decided that public radio and television, financed by taxpayers, should be devoted to combatting French people’s “highly reactionary” ideas, notably concerning “diversity”. Note that Macron’s ruling party, Republic in Movement, considers “reactionary” exactly what was considered progressive only a few decades ago: defense of public services and national sovereignty. Is it legitimate to oblige adults to pay for their own ideological re-education?
I by no means suggest that the current government is consciously intent on installing a totalitarian regime. The problem stems rather from the overwhelming subjectivism of contemporary culture in which talk of “values” leaves little space for concern for facts or objectivity. This is increasingly true even in discussions of scientific or technical progress. Of course, legislation cannot be fully objective, but since the Enlightenment reflection on freedom, the ideal has been to seek to establish reasonable rules to protect the individual from arbitrary power. This rule applies particularly to freedom of expression.
Those who speak endlessly of their values are merely trying to show off their own moral superiority. That is the basis of the corruption of the legal system in the matter of “fake news”, the reaction to Bercoff’s doubts, and the crusade of Madame Nyssen against what she considers “reactionary ideas”. Once a group of people convince themselves that they embody Virtue itself thanks to their “values”, they become unable to perceive any legitimate grounds for limiting their own power. That could be called the totalitarianism of the naïve.
This article originally appeared on RT’s French-language site. It was translated and adapted by Diana Johnstone.
Jean Bricmont is professor of theoretical physics at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), and author of numerous articles and books, including Humanitarian Imperialism, La République des Censeurs,and Fashionable Nonsense (with Alan Sokal).














