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CNN reporter inhales deadly ‘chemical weapons’ on camera: ‘Yeah that stings’

The global Fake News leader’s Arwa Damon sampled a little sarin in the course of her humanitarian propaganda piece on Syria

By Ricky Twisdale | The Duran | April 20, 2018

CNN, the world leader in hard hitting, real news (do you sense any irony?), has produced this stupendous report from a refugee camp in Northern Syria, with people it says “survived” the “chemical attack” in Douma earlier this month.

The US, Britain and France alleged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad pointlessly attacked his own people in Douma with sarin nerve agent, prompting the three nations to launch air strikes on Syria on the night of April 13-14th.

CNN correspondent Arwa Damon was at the camp to interview the “survivors” – as well as sample a little sarin herself.

The report (below) shows Damon and others, handling backpacks, clothing and toys allegedly exposed to Syrian government chemical weapons.

Damon plunges her face into one backpack, reacting, “There’s definitely something that stings” after taking her first whiff of sarin.

Neither Damon nor anyone else in the video, uses gloves or any form of protection when handling the articles allegedly contaminated with deadly chemicals.

As a reminder, here are the effects of sarin exposure according to the US government’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC):

  • A person’s clothing can release sarin after it has come in contact with sarin vapor, which can lead to exposure of other people.
  • Sarin is the most volatile of the nerve agents…People can be exposed to the vapor even if they do not come in contact with the liquid form of sarin.
  • Symptoms likely will appear within a few seconds after exposure to the vapor form of sarin
  • People may not know that they were exposed because sarin has no odor.
  • Even a small drop of sarin on the skin can cause sweating and muscle twitching where sarin touched the skin
  • People exposed to a low or moderate dose of sarin by breathing contaminated air…or touching contaminated surfaces may experience some or all of the following symptoms within seconds to hours of exposure:
    • Runny nose
    • Watery eyes
    • Small, pinpoint pupils
    • Eye pain
    • Blurred vision
    • Drooling and excessive sweating
    • Cough
    • Chest tightness
    • Rapid breathing
    • Diarrhea
    • Nausea, vomiting, and/or abdominal pain
    • Increased urination
    • Confusion
    • Drowsiness
    • Weakness
    • Headache
    • Slow or fast heart rate
    • Low or high blood pressure

Those are the symptoms of a low to moderate dose. The CDC webpage goes on to note a large dose immediately leads to convulsions and death.

“There’s definitely something that stings” – yeah that about sums up the symptoms of exposure to the deadly nerve agent.

The CNN fake news report goes on to interview others in the camp, without any proof of where they in fact came from, or more importantly, the political allegiance of the alleged witnesses.

All in a day’s work for the network that now prides itself on promotion of salacious gossip, unverified atrocity claims, and warmongering hysteria.

April 20, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | , | Leave a comment

May Let off Lightly after Launching Air-Strike Without Parliament’s Permission

So will the UK Government make a habit of by-passing MPs when contemplating future military action?

By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | April 19, 2018

On Monday Theresa May came to the House of Commons to answer questions about the air-strikes she and her Cabinet authorised against Syrian targets last Saturday.

It’s a wonder she didn’t arrive by abseiling onto the roof of Parliament from a helicopter. Or, in the style of the Iron Lady, driving through the gates at the helm of a Challenger tank, chiffon scarf fluttering in the Westminster breeze.

Her party whips had been busy. An army of Conservative puppets danced to a rehearsed tune with plenty of carefully scripted questions. The situation was a minefield but nobody planted a truly high explosive charge in Mrs May’s path. Just a handful of harmless thunderflashes were lobbed. She was not held to account. And she came through it looking much more confident than when she faced the press on Saturday.

She started proceedings with this statement:

“Let me set this out in detail: we support strongly the work of the OPCW fact-finding mission that is currently in Damascus, but that mission is only able to make an assessment of whether chemical weapons were used. Even if the OPCW team is able to visit Douma to gather information to make that assessment—and it is currently being prevented from doing so by the regime and the Russians—it cannot attribute responsibility. This is because Russia vetoed, in November 2017, an extension of the joint investigatory mechanism set up to do this, and last week, in the wake of the Douma attack, it again vetoed a new UNSC resolution to re-establish such a mechanism…. For as long as Russia continued to veto the UN Security Council would still not be able to act. So we cannot wait to alleviate further humanitarian suffering caused by chemical weapons attacks.

“Secondly, were we not just following orders from America? Let me be absolutely clear: we have acted because it is in our national interest to do so. It is in our national interest to prevent the further use of chemical weapons in Syria and to uphold and defend the global consensus that these weapons should not be used, for we cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalised—within Syria, on the streets of the UK or elsewhere.

“So we have not done this because President Trump asked us to; we have done it because we believed it was the right thing to do. And we are not alone. Over the weekend I have spoken to a range of world leaders…. All have expressed their support for the actions that Britain, France and America have taken.

“Thirdly, why did we not recall Parliament? The speed with which we acted was essential in co-operating with our partners to alleviate further humanitarian suffering and to maintain the vital security of our operations. This was a limited, targeted strike on a legal basis that has been used before. And it was a decision that required the evaluation of intelligence and information, much of which was of a nature that could not be shared with Parliament. We have always been clear that the Government have the right to act quickly in the national interest. I am absolutely clear, Mr Speaker, that it is Parliament’s responsibility to hold me to account for such decisions, and Parliament will do so. But it is my responsibility as Prime Minster to make these decisions—and I will make them.”

She went on to assure MPs that the military action “was not about intervening in the civil war in Syria or about regime change”.

Legality questioned

In reply, Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “I believe that the action was legally questionable, and on Saturday the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, said as much, reiterating that all countries must act in line with the United Nations charter, which states that action must be in self-defence or be authorised by the United Nations Security Council. The Prime Minister has assured us that the Attorney General had given clear legal advice approving the action. I hope the Prime Minister will now publish this advice in full today.”

As regards the disputed humanitarian intervention doctrine he remarked: “The Foreign Secretary said yesterday that these strikes would have no bearing on the civil war. The Prime Minister has reiterated that today by saying that this is not what these military strikes were about. Does, for example, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen entitle other countries to arrogate to themselves the right to bomb Saudi airfields or its positions in Yemen, especially given its use of banned cluster bombs and white phosphorus? Three United Nations agencies said in January that Yemen was the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, so will the Prime Minister today commit to ending support to the Saudi bombing campaign and arms sales to Saudi Arabia?

“Given that neither the UN nor the OPCW has yet investigated the Douma attack, it is clear that diplomatic and non-military means have not been fully exhausted.”

May responded: “The problem [re Douma] is that the investigation is being stopped. The regime and the Russians are preventing the OPCW from investigating. Moreover, again, the regime has reportedly been attempting to conceal the evidence by searching evacuees from Douma to ensure that they are not taking out of the region samples that could be tested elsewhere, and a wider operation to conceal the facts of the attack is under way, supported by the Russians….

“I think it important that this was a joint international effort. The strikes were carefully targeted, and proper analysis was carried out to ensure that they were targeted at sites that were relevant to the chemical weapons capability of the regime. We did this to alleviate further human suffering….”

MPs from all sides then piled in, as called by the Speaker.

Parliament “emasculated”?

Hostile questioning was generally too polite, causing May little discomfort. I missed many of the contributions while yawning, but there were some that I thought worth passing on.

Sir Nicholas Soames, Churchill’s grandson, asked: “My right hon. Friend will agree that the use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances, is illegal, contrary to all the laws of war and utterly reprehensible. Will she therefore confirm that the Government will at a later date seek the arraignment at an international court of those who instigate these vile acts, whoever they may be?”

Soames is Pro-Palestinian and a sharp critic of Israel, so the thrust was obvious. But she sidestepped it, replying: “My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the illegality of the use of chemical weapons and the impact of their use. We believe that those who are responsible should be held to account.”

But, clearly, her Government would be doing no such thing.

There are many Conservatives and Labourites in the House who voted for the Iraq war and are still too dim to repent or learn the simple lesson. They and many newcomers queued up to express support for the bombing. Among them was glamorous Priti Patel (Witham) (Con) who, only six months ago as former International Development Secretary, had numerous meetings with Israeli politicians (including prime minister Netanyahu and his security minister) during a family holiday in Israel without telling the Foreign Office, her civil servants or her boss Theresa May, and without government officials present – a gross breach of security.

She now seems anxious to rehabilititate herself in the corridors of power. “There are no words to describe the appalling nature of the humanitarian disaster that confronts Syria,” she told May, “which is why I commend my right hon. Friend for the strong action that she has taken and the support she is giving to the Syrian people. Will she assure the House that in the face of the abhorrent abuses perpetrated by the Assad regime, hers will continue to be a strong voice in favour of the international rules-based system, and will she show that Britain will not stand idly by when cruel weapons are used to murder innocent children and families?”

Patel had toured the Golan Heights (Syrian territory stolen in 1967 by the Israelis and illegally occupied ever since) with the thieving occupation army – another monumental diplomatic blunder. So this avid Israel stooge has little concern for international rules. Fellow stooge May managed to leave open the option to continue idly ignoring Israel’s crimes. “We will ensure that our voice is heard. It is absolutely right that it was the right thing to do and was in our national interest, but it is also important that we are standing up for that international rules-based order and continue to do so.” Words are cheap; we never see action.

Other MPs were suspicious of May’s I-did-it-my-way act. Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) challenged her on the point that the legal basis relies on there having been no practicable alternative. She enquired whether the UK had asked the OPCW to inspect the Him Shinsar and Barzeh sites. The Prime Minister responded: “We have been very clear that we would like it to be possible for the OPCW to investigate sites in Syria, for there to be proper identification of the chemical weapons and for there to be proper accountability for the use of those chemical weapons.”

Caroline Lucas: “Did you ask?”

May: “Last Tuesday at the United Nations Security Council, there was going to be a proposal and resolution that would have enabled a proper investigative mechanism to be re-introduced to look at the use of chemical weapons and at what chemical weapons were available in Syria and held by the regime and at their capabilities and to be able to ascertain accountability for those chemical weapons? That draft resolution was vetoed by Russia.”

That’s not quite how I read the UN’s own account of the situation. However….

Laura Pidcock (North West Durham) (Lab) wanted to know whether the Prime Minister was planning to use Executive powers again with regard to military action in Syria—in breach of the commonly understood parliamentary protocol that would have given the House a say in a matter of war. “There is clear opposition from British people to airstrikes, and I think the public are right to be sceptical, so will the Prime Minister also explain how airstrikes have improved the safety and security of Syrian people practically, when we are aware that the bombing and violence is continuing unabated throughout the region?”

May replied: “The strikes that took place were about degrading the chemical weapons capability of the Syrian regime…. the assessment we have made is that the strikes were successful…. It is by degrading its chemical weapons capability that we can have an impact and ensure that we are reducing the likelihood of the humanitarian suffering in the future.”

Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP): “The policy paper on the UK Government’s legal position says the UK is permitted under international law, on an exceptional basis, to take measures in order to alleviate overwhelming humanitarian suffering. It does not, however, cite any authority for that proposition: it does not quote the UN charter, and it does not refer to any Security Council resolution nor any international treaty of any kind. Will the Prime Minister tell us why that proposition is unvouched for in the policy paper?”

May replied: “The basis on which we undertook this action is one that has been accepted by Governments previously and one under which previous action has been taken. I believe that it continues to be the right basis for ensuring that we can act to alleviate humanitarian suffering, and I would have thought the alleviation of humanitarian suffering was something that should gain support from across the whole House.”

Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab) quoted the Prime Minister from her statement that she was ‘confident in our own assessment that the Syrian regime was highly likely responsible’. Surely, she asked, “the burden of proof should be beyond reasonable doubt, as opposed to being ‘highly likely’? “In addition,” she said, “I would be interested to know who ‘we’ are, given that Parliament was not consulted.”

May replied: “The Government made their assessments. Those were not just the view of the UK Government; they were shared by our allies and on that basis we acted.”

Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP) was quite bold: “So far today the Prime Minister has ducked out of questions about Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world—Yemen—and she has not answered why she did not wait until the outcome of the OPCW inspections. She has not explained why a parliamentary recall would jeopardise the action that President Trump had already tweeted about. She has not answered about providing further humanitarian assistance and additional support for refugees, and yet she talks about parliamentary scrutiny. How is a statement after the event parliamentary scrutiny when she will not answer any hard questions?”

To which the Prime Minister replied: “The hon. Gentleman talks about me not answering questions on refugees, but I have done so, or on the OPCW, but I have done so. I have answered many questions…. ”

David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con) gave her a friendly lob: “Can my right hon. Friend reassure the House that, contrary to claims over the weekend, there is no evidence that any British defence export products have ended up in the wrong hands in Syria?”

The Prime Minister: “I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance.”

But is it true?

Attempt to rein in wayward prime ministers

For the record, the policy paper published by May’s Government setting out the case for military intervention states:

The UK is permitted under international law, on an exceptional basis, to take measures in order to alleviate overwhelming humanitarian suffering. The legal basis for the use of force is humanitarian intervention, which requires three conditions to be met:

(i) there is convincing evidence, generally accepted by the international community as a whole, of extreme humanitarian distress on a large scale, requiring immediate and urgent relief;

(ii) it must be objectively clear that there is no practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved; and

(iii) the proposed use of force must be necessary and proportionate to the aim of relief of humanitarian suffering and must be strictly limited in time and in scope to this aim (i.e. the minimum necessary to achieve that end and for no other purpose).

Of course this could just as easily apply to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where nearly 2 million starving people have been under the cosh of Israel’s vicious blockade and bombardments for more than 10 years. Or in Yemen. But UK parliamentarians and US Congressmen would wet themselves at any thought of air strikes against the despicable regimes they are in bed with.

May denied that she took orders from Trump yet had seemed desperate to fit in with Trump’s timetable and jump the gun on the OPCW inspectors’ reports. And she could easily have recalled Parliament during the week leading up to the strike had she wanted to.

The next day, Tuesday, in an emergency debate secured by Corbyn, MPs discussed Parliament’s role in (and exclusion from) approving military action in Syria. Corbyn used the occasion to accuse the PM of by-passing Parliament saying she had “tossed aside” the precedent set by the 2003 Iraq War vote because it was “inconvenient”, and it was now time for Parliament to “assert its authority” over UK military action and take back control. Otherwise, he said, authorising air strikes without Parliament’s approval, if it became the norm, could lead to more dangerous action in the future.

Corbyn called for a new War Powers Act that would require Parliament to be consulted on military intervention. Mrs May reacted angrily to suggestions that Donald Trump had been given more say in Britain’s part in the air-strike than the UK Parliament.

At the end of the debate, MPs voted in favour of a woolly motion that they had “considered Parliament’s rights in relation to the approval of military action by British forces overseas”, which of course moves us no further forward.

May was buffeted by the Syrian bombing affair but escaped the severe mauling she deserved. Within the Westminster bubble she emerges unscathed. Only time and the truth about Douma and Salisbury (when it is eventually known) will tell whether she can get away with it in the outside world.

April 19, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The Neocons Are Selling Koolaid Again!

By W. Patrick Lang • Unz Review • April 19, 2018

In 2004 I published an article in the journal, Middle East Policy that was entitled “Drinking the Koolaid.” The article reviewed the process by which the neocon element in the Bush Administration seized control of the process of policy formation and drove the United States in the direction of invasion of Iraq and the destruction of the apparatus of the Iraqi state. They did this through manipulation of the collective mental image Americans had of Iraq and the supposed menace posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Not all the people who participated in this process were neocon in their allegiance but there were enough of them in the Bush Administration to dominate the process. Neoconism as it has evolved in American politics is a close approximation of the imperialist political faction that existed in the time of President William McKinley and the Spanish-American War. Barbara Tuchman described this faction well in “The Proud Tower.”

Such people, then and now, fervently believe in the Manifest Destiny of the United States as mankind’s best hope of a utopian future and concomitantly in the responsibility of the United States to lead mankind toward that future. Neocons believe that inside every Iraqi, Filipino or Syrian there is an American waiting to be freed from the bonds of tradition, local culture and general backwardness. For people with this mindset the explanation for the continuance of old ways lies in the oppressive and exploitative nature of rulers who block the “progress” that is needed. The solution for the imperialists and neocons is simple. Local rulers must be removed as the principal obstacle to popular emulation of Western and especially American culture and political forms. In the run up to the invasion of Iraq I was often told by leading neocon figures that the Muslims and particularly the Iraqis had no culture worth keeping and that once we had created new facts, (a Karl Rove quote) these people would quickly abandon their old ways and beliefs as they sought to become something like Americans. This notion has one major flaw. It is not necessarily correct. Often the natives are willing to fight you long and hard to retain their own ways. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War the US acquired the Philippine Islands and sought to make the islands American in all things. The result was a terrible war against Filipino nationalists who did not want to follow the example of the “shining city on a hill.” No, the “poor fools” wanted to go their own way in their own way. The same thing happened in Iraq after 2003. The Iraqis rejected occupation and American “reform” of their country and a long and bloody war ensued.

The neocons believe so strongly that America must lead the world and mankind forward that they accept the idea that the achievement of human progress justifies any means needed to advance that goal. In the case of the Iraq invasion the American people were lectured endlessly about the bestialities of Saddam’s government. The bestialities were impressive but the constant media display of these horrors was not enough to persuade the American people to accept war. From the bestialities meme the neocons moved on to the WMD meme. The Iraqi government had a nuclear weapons program before the First Gulf War but that program had been thoroughly destroyed in the inspection regime that followed Iraq’s defeat and surrender. This was widely known in the US government because US intelligence agencies had cooperated fully with the international inspectors in Iraq and in fact had sent the inspectors to a long list of locations at which the inspectors destroyed the program. I was instrumental in that process.

After 9/11 the US government knew without any doubt that the Iraqi government did not have a nuclear weapons program, but that mattered not at all to the neocons. As Paul Wolfowitz infamously told the US Senate “we chose to use the fear of nuclear weapons because we knew that would sell.” Once that decision was made an endless parade of administration shills appeared on television hyping the supposed menace of Iraqi nuclear weapons. Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were merely the most elevated in position of the many vendors of the image of the “mushroom shaped cloud.”

And now we have the case of Syria and its supposed chemical weapons and attacks. After the putative East Gouta chemical attack of 2013, an OPCW program removed all the chemical weapons to be found in Syria and stated its belief that there were no more in the country. In April of 2017 the US-Russian de-confliction process was used to reach agreement on a Syrian Air Force strike in the area of Khan Sheikoon in southern Idlib Province. This was a conventional weapons attack and the USAF had an unarmed reconnaissance drone in the area to watch the strike go in against a storage area. The rebel run media in the area then claimed the government had attacked with the nerve gas Sarin, but no proof was ever offered except film clips broadcast on social media. Some of the film clips from the scene were ludicrous. Municipal public health people were filmed at the supposed scene standing around what was said to be a bomb crater from the “sarin attack.” Two public health men were filmed sitting on the lip of the crater with their feet in the hole. If there had been sarin residue in the hole they would have quickly succumbed to the gas. No impartial inspection of the site was ever done, but the Khan Sheikoon “gas attack” has become through endless repetition a “given” in the lore of the “constant Syrian government gas attacks against their own civilians.”

On the 4th of April it is claimed that the Syrian Government, then in the process of capturing the town of Douma caused chlorine gas to be dropped on the town killing and wounding many. Chlorine is not much of a war gas. It is usually thought of as an industrial chemical, so evidently to make the story more potent it is now suggested that perhaps sarin was also used.

No proof that such an attack occurred has been made public. None! The Syrian and Russian governments state that they want the site inspected. On the 15th of April US Senator Angus King (I) of Maine told Jake Tapper on SOTU that as of that date the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had not been given any proof by the IC or Trump Administration that such an attack had occurred. “They have asserted that it did” he said.

The US, France and the UK struck Syria with over a hundred cruise missiles in retaliation for this supposed attack but the Administration has not yet provided any proof that the Syrian attack took place.

I am told that the old neocon crew argued as hard as possible for a disabling massive air and missile campaign intended to destroy the Syrian government’s ability to fight the mostly jihadi rebels. John Bolton, General (ret.) Jack Keane and many other neocons argued strongly for this campaign as a way to reverse the outcome of the civil war. James Mattis managed to obtain President Trump’s approval for a much more limited and largely symbolic strike but Trump was clearly inclined to the neocon side of the argument. What will happen next time?

Colonel W. Patrick Lang is a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces (The Green Berets). He served in the Department of Defense both as a serving officer and then as a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service for many years

April 19, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Out of 26 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Zero Opposed

By Adam Johnson | FAIR | April 18, 2018

A survey by FAIR of the top 100 papers in the US by circulation found not a single editorial board opposed to Trump’s April 13 airstrikes on Syria. Twenty supported the strikes, while six were ambiguous as to whether or not the bombing was advisable. The remaining 74 issued no opinion about Trump’s latest escalation of the Syrian war.

This is fairly consistent with editorial support for Trump’s April 2017 airstrikes against the Syrian government, which saw only one editorial out of 47 oppose the bombing (FAIR.org, 4/11/17). The single paper of dissent from last year, the Houston Chronicle, didn’t publish an editorial on last week’s bombing.

Seven of the top 10 newspapers by circulation—USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Newsday and Washington Post—supported the airstrikes. The New York Daily News and San Jose Mercury News offered no opinion, while the New York Times (4/13/18) was ambiguous—mostly lamenting the lack of congressional approval, but not saying that this meant the strikes were illegal or unwise. “Legislation should…set limits on a president’s ability to wage war against states like Syria,” is the Times’ conclusion. A complete list of editorials on the airstrikes can be viewed here.

Almost every editorial spoke in the same Official, Serious tone that demanded “action” be taken and “international norms” be “enforced.” Some, such as the Wall Street Journal (4/16/18), went further, insisting on a wider war against the Syrian regime, Iran and/or Russia in vague but menacing terms.

“Barack Obama dealt Mr. Trump a bad hand by letting Russia, Iran and China believe they could advance their goals of regional domination without US resistance,” the Journal insisted. “In Syria as elsewhere, Mr. Trump has to decide if he wants to ratify that American retreat or develop a strategy to stop it.”

The mid-market Toledo Blade (4/15/18) punched above its weight class and delivered the most bellicose and jingoistic editorial of them all with “The West Stands Up”:

Make no mistake, this was a warning to Vladimir Putin as well as Bashar al-Assad.

The United States and its two longtime allies redrew the red line that had been obliterated by a failure of nerve by the US and the West generally: There will be cost for your barbarities….

But in the larger sense, the West did what it should have done a long time ago. It stood up for decency and international law. It stood up for those who are defenseless. It stood up for itself, and for simple humanity, and redeemed some self-respect.

If Assad regime officials find themselves catching up on news from the greater Northwest Ohio region, they will surely take heed.

None of the top 100 newspapers questioned the US’s legal or moral right to bomb Syria, and all accepted US government claims to be neutral arbiters of “international law.” Many editorials handwrung about  a “lack of strategy” or absence of congressional approval, but none so much that they opposed the bombing. Strategy and legal sanction are add-on features—nice but, by all accounts, not essential.

The total lack of editorial board dissent is consistent with major papers’ tradition of uniform acceptance of US military action. The most influential paper in the country, the New York Times, has not opposed a single US war—from the Persian Gulf to Bosnia, to Kosovo to Iraq to Libya to the forever war on ISIS—in the past 30 years.

The scope of debate among major editorial boards is not if Trump should bomb the Syrian regime, but how much bombing he should undertake—and when, roughly speaking, he should maybe get around to letting Congress know.

April 19, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Lebanese Journalist Names Washington’s Goal Number One in Syria

Sputnik – April 19, 2018

Sputnik spoke to Lebanese journalist and commentator Sharmine Narwani to find out more about situation in Syria and Washington’s goals and actions there.

It has been revealed that US Secretary of Defence, James Mattis, tried to urge US President Donald Trump to obtain congressional approval before launching airstrikes on targets in Syria last weekend. According to reports, President Trump was however set on the use of military force, and overruled the Pentagon chief’s advice. In other developments, Saudi Arabia is reportedly holding talks with the United States and Egypt about sending an Arab coalition force into Syria.

Sputnik: We’re hearing news that the US is in talks with Saudi Arabia to build an Arab force and send it to Syria. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has said that he is in talks with US National Security Advisor John Bolton to plan building this force – what do you make of this, what do you think its purpose is?

Sharmine Narwani: Look Trump wants to clear exit the debacle in  Syria and eliminate the need to spend billions of dollars a year in maintaining US forces there and participating in the war. The recent chemical weapons allegations came shortly after Trump vocalised this desire; but the likelihood of an Arab force to physically base themselves in Syria on the Syrian-Iraqi border is virtually nil. We must view this new tactic with some suspicion. The US has always trumpeted ISIS as its main goal in Syria or the elimination of ISIS. If ISIS is gone, then what’s the need to have foreign forces based on that border? It seemed clear all along that containing Iran’s access from Iran to the borders of Palestine has always been the goal. It’s not as though Saudi Arabia and Egypt have stellar or significant nation-building expertise anyway. And they have many differences – the Saudis and the UEA for instance are heavily involved militarily in Yemen and are overextended there. Egypt has shown reluctance to participate in that Arab conflict, let alone another one with a government that it has actually sort of ideologically supported in the Syrian conflict. So it’s not likely to become a reality.

Sputnik: Of course in the lead up to the Western bombing campaign on Syria the US was saying that President Bashar al-Assad had used sarin gas, but we’ve now found out that they did not have sufficient evidence of this at the time. Also, the New York Times has revealed that Defence Secretary Jim Mattis urged Trump to get congressional approval for the strikes, but the president overruled him on that – what does this all tell you about the lead up to the events of last weekend?

Sharmine Narwani: If we look at the recent events leading up to the alleged chemical weapons incident, it took place under cover of two important developments: one was Trump’s declaration of exiting Syria, and removing US troops from there soon. The second would be the Syrian army’s very rapid defeat of terrorists in Eastern Ghouta and the reclamation of that strategically vital territory around Damascus. I think the sort of bringing up Sarin, the nerve gas sarin, it’s always kind of utilised as an emotional trigger, as is the mention of chemical weapons by itself and the general assumption if we’re talking about sarin would be that only states would have access to that particular substance, and not terrorist groups and non-state actors, unlike say with a substance like chlorine that is readily available. So I think it was very deliberately invoked, meaning sarin, to create an emotional response globally.

But Sarin has been used in Iraq by insurgents since at least 2004, in the form of IEDs. Turkey for instance, in May 2013, way later during the Syrian conflict, captured 12 Nusra members, Nusra is the Al-Qaida arm in Syria, they captured 12 Nusra members with significant amounts of Sarin and that was believed to be heading toward Syria. And major US-UK risk analysis firm IHS Conflict Monitor, in 2016, told us in a report that ISIS has used chemical weapons more than 52 times in both Syria and Iraq.

Sputnik: We’ve heard today that US senators are increasingly becoming concerned at the absence of a coherent US strategy in Syria, where do you see things from here?

Sharmine Narwani: Even during Obama’s term, we talked about there being a lack of coherent strategy. I would say that there is maybe a lack of a coherent verbalised strategy, one that was disseminated to the American public and an international one. There was certainly a strategy behind the scenes, one that was not vocalised and actions speak louder than words, so when we look at the arming, training and financing of terrorists when it was clear that there wasn’t enough Syrian support to topple Assad in the way leaders had been toppled in Tunisia and Egypt. We had the arming, training & financing but there was a very clear strategy, and the goal was number one, regime change, and two, to weaken the most important Iranian Arab state ally. So that was the strategy. When people say there wasn’t a coherent one they probably mean there wasn’t a coherent vocalised one. US actions have certainly shown us that regime change and weakening Iran were in fact the strategy in Syria and this is apparent today because the escalation still continues.

April 19, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Each US President Ends Up As Ruthless Interventionist These Days

By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 19.04.2018

In the wake of last week’s cruise missile attack on Syria, there was a joke going around the internet saying that it doesn’t matter who Americans vote for, they always wind up getting John McCain as President of the United States. The humor derives from the fact that the past three presidents all ran for office committed to reducing America’s interventionism overseas but once in office they reversed course and expanded US military commitments worldwide, turning them into facsimiles of John McCain, who has never seen a war he didn’t like.

President Donald Trump’s explicit pledges to avoid expanded engagement in Asia and the Middle East while also fixing the relationship with Russia are by now lost down the memory hole as he has increased troop levels in Afghanistan while, by his own admission, the relationship with Moscow is now even worse than it was during the Cold War. And regarding Syria, his Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Halley has confirmed that the US military will not be going anywhere because certain goals have to be met first. One objective, monitoring developments relating to Iran, is open-ended, implying that it will be impossible to leave for the foreseeable future and suggesting that another Afghanistan-style quagmire is in the making.

Pundits see the process whereby all new presidents turn into hawks as evidence of the pervasiveness of the Deep State in US foreign policy, but as the Deep State operates largely in the open in the United States, it might also be referred to as the Establishment consensus. The persistence of the Establishment view in what has become increasingly a national security state is largely due to the fact that there is little pushback against it. The media is fully on board and Congress, which should be serving as a brake on presumed presidential prerogatives to go to war, benefits substantially from the bloated budgets and other emoluments that derive from American imperialism. Defense and related budgets grow in spite of the lack of any real threat and the public is fed a steady diet of fear by the media and government regarding fabricated threats to US national security.

The combination of government and media lies renders most Americans completely ignorant about what is going in in Syria. First of all, the United States and its allies, who are occupying nearly one quarter of the country, are in Syria illegally. Under international law, attacking and occupying a country that is not directly threatening you without any justifying United Nations Security Council resolution is illegal. It is also a war crime as defined by the Nuremberg Trials that followed after the Second World War, which ruled that a war of aggression is the “ultimate war crime” as it inevitably leads to many other crimes. So the United States is undeniably an unindicted war criminal.

That the United States has not been indicted or brought to justice for its crimes is largely due to its political and military power, which few nations choose to challenge, but also because it is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and is able to veto resolutions criticizing it. There have been numerous motions condemning American behavior, but none of them have made it out of the Security Council. This is not a confirmation of US innocence but rather a result of the politics that operate at the United Nations.

The United States is also in violation of international law because it remains in Syria without the permission of the recognized and legitimate Syrian government. Iranian forces and those of Russia are present on the invitation of Damascus. The United States is not. The US has also been illegally working to overthrow the legitimate Syrian government, acting in collusion with groups of so-called rebels, some of whom are actually drawn from internationally recognized terrorist groups, violating its own laws regarding providing material assistance to terrorism.

Establishment politics has meant that the United States is now a rogue nation defined by its propensity to go to war. America’s bombing of Syria is illegal, immoral, ineffective and dishonest. It is past time for the United States to pull out its troops and leave the Syrians alone. Americans killing Syrians while hypocritically claiming that it is done to stop Syrians from killing each other is a recipe for disaster.

April 19, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

BBC presenter declares ‘info war against Russia’ after ex-navy chief questions Syria ‘evidence’

Britain’s Admiral Lord West. © Neil Hall / Reuters
RT | April 18, 2018

During a live interview, a BBC news presenter declared “we’re in an information war with Russia” after a former Royal Navy chief questioned the “extraordinary” claims surrounding an alleged chemical attack in Syria.

Former Navy Admiral Lord West’s questioning of the mainstream narrative surrounding the alleged chemical weapons attack in the town of Douma led the BBC’s Annita McVeigh to suggest that truthfully stating his position and posing questions risked “muddying the waters” in an ongoing “information war with Russia.”

Lord West had described how in his view the claim that Bashar Assad ordered the attack “doesn’t ring true,” asking “what benefit is there for his military?” He went on to say “we know that in the past some of the Islamic groups have used chemicals, and of course there would be huge benefit in them labelling an attack as coming from Assad.”

West went on to question the ‘evidence’ provided by groups like the White Helmets and the World Health Organization, both of which he described as “not neutral.”

The former First Sea Lord then described how in the past he had been put under pressure to support politically motivated narratives: “I had huge pressure put on me politically to try and say that our bombing campaign in Bosnia was achieving all sorts of things which it wasn’t. I was put under huge pressure, so I know the things that can happen.”

At that point the BBC’s McVeigh appeared to question whether he should actually be expressing his opinion truthfully, asking: “Given that we’re in an information war with Russia on so many fronts, do you think perhaps it’s inadvisable to be stating this so publicly given your position and profile, isn’t there a danger that you’re muddying the waters?”

West replied: “I think the answer is, if there’s a real concern, let’s face it, if [Assad] hasn’t done it then that is extremely bad news. If Assad hasn’t carried out the attack, I think it’s just worth making that clear. I think our government’s policy towards Assad has not been clever since 2013.”

April 18, 2018 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Western media cover tracks of Trump, May and Macron’s war crime in Syria

By Finian Cunningham | RT | April 17, 2018

With astounding double-think, the US and Britain accuse Russia of “tampering” with the alleged chemical-weapon attack site in Syria’s Douma – just days after the US, UK and France barraged the county with over 100 missiles.

If anyone is guilty of tampering with the alleged crime scene, it is the NATO trio who rushed to bomb Syria just as inspectors belonging to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in Syria – invited there by the Syrian and Russian governments.

The frenzied Western media campaign to find Syria and Russia guilty of a war crime involving alleged chemical weapons is further highlighted by the reporting this week by award-winning British journalist Robert Fisk.

Fisk, who has been covering Middle East war zones for nearly 40 years, went to Douma city to file his report for The Independent. Credit goes to The Independent for publishing Fisk’s investigative work.

In the aftermath of the weekend’s airstrikes, what he found from interviewing local people and medics is arresting, if not shocking. From Fisk’s witness-gathering report, there was no gas attack carried out on April 7 – in stark contradiction to what the US, British and French governments have been declaring in hysterical tones for the past two weeks.

Those declarations culminated in the US-led bombing of Syria at the weekend. What’s more, the US, British and French leaders are reserving the right to carry out further strikes on Syria – if “the regime repeats its chemical-weapons attacks on civilians.”

What Robert Fisk reports from inside Douma corroborates what the Syrian government and its Russian ally have been saying consistently since the alleged incident on April 7. The incident, they say, was staged by the so-called “first responder” group known as the White Helmets, who work hand-in-glove with notorious terrorist outfits like Jaysh al-Islam and Al-Nusra Front. The White Helmets are also on the pay roll of the American CIA, as well as British and French intelligence agencies.

Similar to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s earlier claim, Fisk reports that on April 7, a panic scene was engendered in Douma’s hospital by White Helmets activists who shouted that “chemical weapons” were being deployed. These activists began dousing people with water hoses and conveniently had video cameras on hand to capture the chaotic scenes acted out by unwitting civilians. A doctor in the hospital confirmed this to Fisk.

As for the supposed dozens of dead that Western governments and media blamed on “animal Assad” and Russian complicity, there is no evidence of the alleged victims. Video footage of dead people in a war zone is hardly proof.

This means that US President Trump and his British and French counterparts, Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron, just launched a criminal aggression on Syria in grave violation of international law and the country’s sovereignty. This is exactly what many independent observers were decrying at the time of the missile barrage, warning that the presumed evidence for a chemical attack was far from substantiated.

Indeed, the suspicion is that Trump, May and Macron knew that their evidential ground for attacking Syria was impossibly thin, and that is why they rushed to bomb the country. It was a decision hastened by the arrival of the OPCW inspectors heading to Douma. The inspectors are due to start their investigative work on Wednesday – delayed apparently by security concerns.

In all probability, the Douma incident was a propaganda stunt orchestrated by Western-backed anti-government militants and their White Helmets media agents, precisely in order to provoke an external military attack on Syria by the US, Britain and France.

Several things stand out about Robert Fisk’s latest reporting. This is exactly the kind of critical journalism that other Western media outlets should have been engaged in following the alleged chemical weapon attack on April 7. Credit goes to Fisk and The Independent. But it is a shameful case of “too little, too late.”

Also, it is notable how Fisk’s reportage is being roundly ignored – at least so far – by other mainstream Western media outlets. That’s an impressive feat of self-censorship at a crucial time when the US, British and French governments should be open to accusations of committing a war crime on Syria over their latest blitzkrieg.

This is especially so, given their warnings of more to come, over “further” chemical-weapons use. The urgent concern is that these governments are giving themselves a license to act on more false flags. They should be held rigorously to account for their claims.

This disregard for international law is made possible because of the appalling willingness of Western mainstream media to regurgitate self-serving claims made by terrorist-affiliated groups in Syria and their propaganda outlets.

American, British and French mainstream media have given saturated coverage to the White Helmets and the Syrian American Medical Society, and the dodgy one-man-band operation in Coventry known as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. CNN, the BBC and France 24 cite these groups as if they are “authoritative” and impartial, when in fact they are all part of the regime-change campaign in Syria sponsored by the US and its British and French allies.

It is telling, too, how Robert Fisk is being assailed as a “Syrian, Russian stooge” on social media. The one Western mainstream journalist who has had the integrity to delve into Syria’s Douma to uncover a very different critical perspective – one that disproves the claims peddled by the US, British and French leaders and other mainstream media – is being vilified for principled journalism.

Western corporate media are a grotesque mockery of public information and critical, independent accounting of government power.

Apart from Robert Fisk, the few other Western journalists to have ventured into Syria to report on what is really happening are independent, “alternative” sources like Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley and Patrick Henningsen. They have exposed the “Oscar-winning” White Helmets group, which is actually complicit in staging atrocities against civilians living under a reign of terror imposed by their terrorist affiliates. It is understood the White Helmets activists behind the Douma provocation on April 7 have since fled the city along with the terrorist gangs under the cover of an evacuation deal with the liberating Syrian and Russian forces, who are now in control of most of the Eastern Ghouta suburbs near Damascus.

Western media journalists, if they were really committed to principles of accuracy and critical investigation, should be poring over the rubble in Douma, interviewing local people and finding out what really happened. But they are not.

That is why, one suspects, they are not there. That is why the US and Britain are now accusing Russia of “tampering” with the site in Douma – because there is no evidence of a chemical-weapons attack, as Robert Fisk reports.

That means the US, British and French governments just committed a brazen war crime.

This would also explain why Western mainstream media have now quickly moved their focus to allegations of “Russian cyberattacks” on American and British infrastructure. This is a classic case of “keeping ahead of the story.” Western governments and their dutiful media do not have a “story” – at least not the one they claim – in Syria, so the imperative is to change to another subject as quickly as possible.

April 18, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Syria’s Raqqa devastated, ‘de-facto occupied & run by a gang of incompetents’ – Russia’s UN envoy

RT | April 18, 2018

The US and its allies are doing practically nothing to help rebuild Raqqa, which is de-facto occupied, Russia’s UN Ambassador told the UNSC, after a UN representative reported on the mass-scale devastation of the Syrian city.

On average, an estimated 50 people a week are being killed in Raqqa, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator told members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), noting that virtually nothing is being done for some 100,000 repatriates who have returned to the destroyed city.

“Conditions are not conducive for return, due to a high level of unexploded ordnance and improvised explosive device (IED) contamination, and widespread and severe infrastructural damage and the lack of basic services,” Mark Lowcock said, reporting on the UN team’s findings after its April 1 visit to the Syrian city. “Up to 95 percent of households who have returned to Raqqa are food-insecure. Health services are lacking or severely limited.”

Noting that between 70-80 percent of buildings in Raqqa are “destroyed or damaged,” Lowcock called on the countries to act and help the residents of the city once proclaimed as the unofficial capital of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorist caliphate and later “liberated” by the US-led international coalition.

The situation in Raqqa, destroyed during a four-month battle that ended in October 2017, remains “disastrous,” Ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia said on Tuesday, after Moscow requested holding an open UN Security Council briefing on the humanitarian situation in Raqqa and the Rukban refugee camp on the border with Jordan.

“Rebuilding the city that was destroyed by airstrikes is not taking place. People have been returning at their own risk and are often being killed by mines and IEDs,” Nebenzya noted, reaffirming the observations voiced by Lowcock.

“American occupation hasn’t brought anything positive to the inhabitants. The only effective solution to the current situation is to reestablish state structures in Raqqa,” the envoy added, noting that people in the “de-facto occupied territory” have started to protest against the US presence there.

The city, recaptured by the Syrian Democratic Forces, is now under the loose control of the US-supported militias. Reconstruction of Raqqa and its suburbs is being carried out through a network of local councils, which Nebenzia called a gang of “completely incompetent people.”

“How can we entrust them with people’s safety and security?” he asked. “Raqqa is in ruins. Literally, there isn’t a building left standing. Thousands of bodies are still buried under the ruins.”

The Russian ambassador condemned the American-led intervention in Syria, noting that the April 14 strikes by the US-France-UK “troika” only set back the reconciliation process in a country ravished by a seven-year-old war. Moscow believes that there is no military solution to the Syrian conflict and that countries must work together to aid the peace process.

“By their acts of aggression, the troika, and those who supported or welcomed their actions considerably set back Geneva negotiations,” the diplomat said. “If the goal is to force the Syrian President under a hail of bombs to sit at the negotiation table, presented as a victory over him… such a task is not feasible… there should be no illusions.”

‘Go back to Raqqa & bury bodies’: Putin calls for investigation into strikes on civilians in Syria

The Russian ambassador urged all states to stop attempts to create “new realities” in Syria that undermine its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Nebenzia also demanded that the US and its allies stop “aggressive hatred rhetoric” addressed at Syria and Russia, and to cut out requests calling for regime change in Damascus. Militants, for their part, must refrain from provocations, including the use of chemical weapons, and drop attempts to provoke further “external aggression,” he added.

Meanwhile, the US called the UN meeting a farce, orchestrated by Moscow in an attempt to “distract” the international community from Bashar Assad’s crimes.

“Russia has called us here as part of a messaging campaign to try to distract from the atrocities committed by the regime,” deputy US Ambassador to the UN, Kelley Currie, said. “In order to do that, Russia has asked this council to focus its attention on the one part of Syria where the Assad regime isn’t pummeling civilians to death with barrel bombs or banned chemical weapons.”

April 18, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

‘Russia’ Instead of ‘US’: Swedish TV Caught Peddling Fake News on Syria

Sputnik – April 18, 2018

Swedish TV-channel TV4 has sparked outrage by offering its viewers a skewed picture of reality by substituting “the US” with “Russia” in a critical news report on the US-backed attacks against the war-torn middle-Eastern country.

In a news report about the conflict in Syria by TV4, a Syrian woman was speaking about the US, which, oddly enough, was rendered as “Russia, Iran and the regime” in the accompanying subtitles. After a public outcry on social media, TV4 recognized its “mistake” while translating the woman’s outspoken message from Arabic into Swedish.

“The attack did not get enough effect, so we want to see more. We want them to avenge us. Russia, Iran and the regime must back off from here because they have stolen our country and our land,” a woman living in Douma was quoted as saying on TV4.

In reality, however, she didn’t mention “Russia” at all, not even once, which was eagerly pointed out on TV4’s Facebook page by Arab-speaking Swedish viewers.

“Why do you cheat your viewers by means of translating errors? The lady said the United States, you wrote ‘Russia, Iran and the regime,'” Katja Jakoub, an Arabic-speaking woman from Gothenburg pointed out in her post.

This post has been shared by thousands of people, including many people of Arab descent who pointed out that the woman clearly said “Amrika,” Arabic for the United States.

They also pointed out that the Syrian woman actually said that “not everything is dependent on the US” and claimed that she “once again felt hope.” It is not clear from the excerpt whether she was referring to the US-backed missile attack against the Syrian government or something else.

In response to the public uproar, TV4 acknowledged that the translation was “incorrect.”

“During yesterday morning’s broadcast, we sent out a feature from Syria in which the footage unfortunately was accompanied by the wrong text. Thus, the translation did not match what was actually said in the footage regarding this particular broadcast. This was discovered shortly afterwards and we rectified this immediately,” TV4 wrote in its reply, stressing that subsequent broadcasts featured a more consistent translation.

“Was this really a mistake from TV4? One translates the US as ‘Russia, Iran and the regime’ and lets it go on air during peak time to hundreds of thousands of viewers. Then one apologizes on TV4’s Facebook page which is only read by several hundred… Looks more like TV4 owners would like get a world war started,” user Christian Christensen wrote.

On April 14, the US, Britain and France launched 103 cruise and air-to-surface missiles at a number of government facilities in Syria, in response to the alleged April 7 chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma. The airstrikes came even before the results of an ongoing investigation into the case by experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were announced. Most of the missiles were intercepted by Syrian air defenses.

The Stockholm-headquartered TV4 is one of Sweden’s largest channels. It is fully owned by the Bonnier Group, which, in turn, is managed by the powerful media tycoon family the Bonniers [see link below], who run a network of about 170 companies in 15 countries, including Sweden’s foremost dailies such as Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Sydsvenskan.

READ MORE:

Jewish Media Influence in Scandinavia

Sweden Starts Anti-‘Fake News’ Body for Mental Defense Against ‘Russian Threat’

‘Source Critical’ Swedish Daily Draws Ridicule by Posting Fake PM Tweet

April 18, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Even western mainstream media is reporting that no chemical attack took place in Douma

Medical personnel on the ground in Syria give testimony that those videos show people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning

By Frank Sellers | The Duran | April 18, 2018

On April 7th, an attack was carried out in the town of Douma, just a few kilometers out of Syria’s capital, Damascus, which was occupied by radical terrorist forces. The attack was peddled as a chemical weapons attack using chlorine gas, and it was additionally reported to have included some unknown nerve agent (which apparently the White Helmet guys who were filming the incident were somehow immune to), which was then said to have killed at least 75 people, and, according to the UK Prime Minister Theresa May, also resulted in the deaths of 500 more, all based on social media postings, based on what is being revealed to the public anyway, by groups that have known links and coincidental interests with the very radical terrorists that Western governments are claiming to be fighting.

Additionally, these media outlets and governments have been quick to thrust blame in the direction of Syrian government forces, particularly on the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, before any independent organization has conducted an investigation to determine whether the attack was of a chemical nature or who carried out the attack in the first place.

The US, UK, and France are, however, continuing to insist that the attack was chemical in nature, and that Assad conducted the attack, of course, without having any of their own assets on the ground to conduct any observations or investigations in Douma, citing “intelligence”, which, of course, is classified, and will not be released to the public in order to bolster their “confidence” that Assad ordered a chemical attack on his own citizens “including young children” at a time when his forces were retaking the town already anyway.

In fact, the US and France have even insisted that they have “proof” that they are “highly confident that they believe in” that Assad did, in fact, conduct a chemical weapons attack on his own civilian population in Douma, once again, including women and young children. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has been warning for months that provocateurs were preparing to launch a chemical attack in Syria in order to blame their opposition, the Syrian government, and provoke a Western military response to help them in their conflict against Assad’s forces.

On the basis of this alleged chemical attack, that the West says that it is highly confident that Assad ordered, a military “precision strike” was conducted by a coalition of US, British, and French forces on the Syrian capital of Damascus, for the purpose of destroying or significantly disrupting the Syrian government’s capability to manufacture, store and employ chemical weapons, as well as to serve as a deterrent against any future chemical weapons attack, which the US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley says will actually happen again, and which recurrence will be met with yet another coordinated response by the US and its allies.

The strike took place just hours before the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons expert investigators were due to arrive at the scene of the alleged chemical attack to determine if reports about the suspected attack were, or are, in fact, true.

We are being told that the coordinated missile strike, included over 100 missiles, including American Tomahawks, struck chemical weapons research and manufacturing facilities in Damascus, which apparently didn’t result in any dangerous banned chemicals or nerve agents being released into the surrounding area, which would have been utterly devastating to hundreds of people in the area, if not more.

Now, all of the sudden, after conducting a few interviews with witnesses from the site of the attack, even some mainstream Western invesigative journalists are questioning the narrative that has been published about a chemical gas attack in Douma.

The world’s third largest news agency, Agence France-Presse (AFP), and a major British online newspaper, the Independent, are publishing stories which are casting doubt on the whole chemical gas attack narrative that we have been being fed since the date of the attack, and which Western governments are claiming “proof” for, which, of course, they are “highly confident” in, and which was used as a justification for a military intervention in Syria against the capital city of a government that is fighting the same bad guys that these very Western governments say they have spent, and continue to throw money at, billions on.

The AFP spoke with Marwan Jaber, a medical student who witnessed the aftermath of the alleged chemical attack, who said “Some of [the victims] suffered from asthma and pulmonary inflammation. They received routine treatment and some were even sent home, they showed no symptoms of a chemical attack. But some foreigners entered while we were in a state of chaos and sprinkled people with water, and some of them were even filming it.”:

The Syrian regime on Monday (April 16th) organized a press visit to the city of Duma in Eastern Ghouta, where an alleged chemical attack on April 7 killed at least 40 people, shortly before the regime’s forces took over the city, then held by the rebels. The team of the International Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had still not been able to enter the city on Monday.

The Independent’s Robert Fisk travelled to the site in Douma, and spoke with medical personnel on the ground in the Syrian town:

It was a short walk to Dr Rahaibani. From the door of his subterranean clinic – “Point 200”, it is called, in the weird geology of this partly-underground city – is a corridor leading downhill where he showed me his lowly hospital and the few beds where a small girl was crying as nurses treated a cut above her eye.

“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”

But, just like the story with Saddam Hussein went, when these very Western governments wanted so bad to follow the American’s blood lust for war in Iraq, this government, so they say, has weapons of mass destruction, and is lead by not just any old tyrannical dictator, but a “monster” who is using these banned WMDs on his own population (apparently for the sheer sadistic pleasure of it), for no good reason. And, of course, without any verifiable intelligence resulting from any on the ground investigation by anyone trained to look for the stuff.

In fact, here we are seeing reports from journalists, western ones, I might add, that report the opposite of what we have been told for the past ten days. No use of WMDs being used in Douma, or at least, no evidence of it anyway. And, based on the fact that the US led strike on Syria’s alleged chemical weapons labs and storehouses didn’t release any of these agents into the area when the strike should have spread the stuff all over the place, it looks like Syria doesn’t have those WMDs, or, at least the West doesn’t know where they’re at, and just randomly shot off a couple of missiles to make it look like they were doing something about those WMDs.

April 18, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Trump’s Syria withdrawal plan: Arab occupational force and Arabs will pay for it – report

RT | April 17, 2018

Washington reportedly wants Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar to replace the US in terms of troop deployments and funding in “stabilizing northeastern Syria,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

The US currently has two major points of military presence on the ground in Syria: one on the border with Jordan in the south and one in northeastern Syria in an area controlled by the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Force (SDF). President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw American troops from Syria, apparently dismayed by the cost of the operation. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration wants to shift the burden of occupying northeastern Syria – which is touted as an effort to stabilize the area by the newspaper – to Arab countries.

The WSJ says John Bolton, Trump’s new national security adviser, called Abbas Kamel, Egypt’s acting intelligence chief, to see if the Arab nation with the largest standing army was willing to contribute to the planned changing of guard. Washington also asked Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to contribute billions of dollars into a buildup in northern Syria and asked to send troops as well.

“The mission of the regional force would be to work with the local Kurdish and Arab fighters the US has been supporting to ensure Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS] cannot make a comeback and preclude Iranian-backed forces from moving into former Islamic State territory, US officials say,” according to the newspaper.

The plan is apparently meant as an easy way out for America, which found itself in a perilous situation in Syria, having troops there with no legal ground and balancing amid countering goals and interests. For instance, Washington’s NATO partner Turkey sees America’s Syrian Kurd allies as terrorists and a legitimate target for military action.

However, having the Americans replaced with other foreign troops would entail challenges, too. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are otherwise preoccupied with their stalled military involvement in Yemen and may find it politically awkward to deploy troops alongside Qatar, a nation they accuse of supporting terrorism and of being close to Iran.

Egypt’s troops are busy fighting against jihadist groups in the Sinai Peninsula in the east and securing the lengthy desert border with Libya in the west. Both regions became major security threats after the events of the Arab Spring, during which Libya was reduced with the help of NATO to a patchwork of warring militant groups. Egypt suffered several years of political turmoil and a military coup, after which the supporters of Muslim Brotherhood found themselves under government pressure again.

The willingness of the Kurds to accept foreign Arab troops is far from certain. With some Syrian Kurds already feeling betrayed by the US over Washington’s failure to protect them from Turkey, getting a foreign Arab force deployed near their lands may be too much to swallow. Especially since some of the Islamist groups that the Kurds fought against during the seven-year war were funded and armed by the same Arab countries.

The WSJ also points out that cost reduction expected by the replacement may not be as big as the Trump administration hopes. The Arab expeditionary force would still require air support, logistical supply and possibly at least some presence of US troops among their ranks.

April 17, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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