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Canada should support peace in Syria, not US missiles

By Yves Engler · April 14, 2018

The US has once again flagrantly violated international law. Without UN approval, they launched dozens of airstrikes on Syria.

Ottawa immediately supported the US bombing. In a statement Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “Canada supports the decision by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to take action to degrade the Assad regime’s ability to launch chemical weapons attacks against its own people.”

Over the past week the Trudeau government has helped lay the foundation for the US-led attack. Twenty-four hours after the alleged April 7 attack foreign minister Chrystia Freeland put out a statement claiming, “the repeated and morally reprehensible use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in the past has been confirmed by independent international investigators…. Canada condemns the Assad regime—and its backers, Russia and Iran—for its‎ repeated, gross violations of human rights and continued, deliberate targeting of civilians.” Without presenting any evidence of the alleged chemical weapons use in Douma, Freeland said on Friday “when it comes to this use of chemical weapons, it is clear to Canada that chemical weapons were used and that they were used by the Assad regime.”

In her initial statement Freeland expressed Canada’s “admiration for … the White Helmets.” Also known as the Syrian Civil Defence, the White Helmets produced the video purporting to show chemical weapons use in Douma.

On Friday Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed the White Helmets staged the video with help from the UK. Former British ambassador to Syria Peter Ford largely endorsed Moscow’s position.

Credited with rescuing people from bombed out buildings, the White Helmets have long fostered opposition to Assad and promoted western intervention. The White Helmets operated almost entirely in areas of Syria occupied by the Saudi Arabia–Washington backed Al Nusra/Al Qaeda rebels and other jihadist groups. They criticized the Syrian government and disseminated images of its violence while largely ignoring those targeted by the opposition. Their members were repeatedly photographed with Al Qaeda-linked Jihadists and reportedly enabled their executions.

Canada has provided significant support to the White Helmets. Two weeks ago Global Affairs Canada announced they “provided $12 million for groups in Syria, such as the White Helmets, that are saving lives by providing communities with emergency response services and removing explosives.” At that time White Helmet representatives were in Ottawa to meet with government officials and in late 2016 Global Affairs Canada sponsored a five-city White Helmets tour of Canada.

The White Helmets received at least $23 million US from USAID. The British, Dutch, German and French governments have also provided the group with tens of millions of dollars. The White Helmets are closely associated with the Syria Campaign, which was set up by a British billionaire of Syrian descent, Ayman Asfari, actively opposed to the Bashar al-Assad regime.

The conflict in Syria is multilayered and messy. Thousands of US and Turkish troops are in the country in contravention of the UN charter. Similarly, Israel has bombed Syria more than 100 times since the outbreak of the conflict and continues to illegally occupy part of its territory. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have plowed billions of dollars worth of weaponry and other forms of support to opposition rebels while the CIA spent a billion dollars backing anti-Assad groups.

On a number of occasions Ottawa has denounced Iran, Hezbollah and Russia’s substantial support of Assad, but they’ve ignored the significant role the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Israel have played in the conflict. In fact, Ottawa has ramped up arms sales to Saudi Arabia and deepened its ties to Israel and the US in recent years.

Syrians needs an end to fighting. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions more displaced over the past seven years of conflict. The US, which unleashed sectarian war in Iraq, bears significant responsibility for the horrors in that country. Syria requires political negotiation, the withdrawal of foreign troops and a real arms embargo, not more bombing and violations of international law.

Canadians should oppose the Trudeau government’s support for the recent US air strikes.

April 14, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

US, allies could stop Syrian conflict within 24 hours if they wanted to – Russian envoy

RT | April 14, 2018

Russia called the strikes that the US, the UK, and France carried out in Syria a “blatant disregard of international law.” Moscow’s envoy to UN said the three countries could have stopped the conflict in Syria within 24 hours.

By acting without any mandate from the UN Security Council, the US and its allies violated the norms and principles of international law, as well as undermining the authority of the UNSC, Russian Envoy to the UN Vassily Nebenzia said, denouncing the strikes against Syria as “an aggression against a sovereign state.”

Nebenzia also called the attack “hooliganism” in international relations, noting that it is not a small one, as nuclear powers are involved. He said that the countries used a well-tried pattern of “provocation-false accusations – false sentence – punishment.”

“Is this the way you want to conduct international affairs?” he said.

“The conflict in Syria could have been stopped within 24 hours. Washington, London and Paris should have told their pocket terrorists to stop fighting the legitimate government of their people,” Nebenzia said.

He said that the two research facilities that were targeted in the strike had been inspected by the OPCW, which didn’t find any traces of chemical weapons.

Just like they did a year ago, the US used a stagedchemical attack against civilians as a pretext for its strikes, Nebenzia said, adding that Russian military experts found no trace of any chemical agent at the scene of the alleged attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma. “In a sign of cynical disdain,” a group of Western countries decided to take military action without waiting for a group of OPCW experts to present the results of an investigation into the incident, according to Nebenzia.

Russia did “everything possible” to convince the US and its allies to refrain from their military plans, which could destabilize not only Syria but the whole Middle East. However, Washington, London, and Paris “preferred to disregard appeals to common sense,” he added.

“The time for talk ended last night,” the US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, said, referring to the coalition airstrikes in Syria. She then added that the US, the UK, and France “acted” not out of “revenge… punishment [or] a symbolic show of force but… to deter the future use of chemical weapons” by holding the Syrian government responsible for what she called “atrocities against humanity.”

She also claimed that the actions of the coalition were “justified, legitimate and proportionate.”

The British representative to the UN, Karen Pierce, called the coalition operation a success, claiming that “none of the British, French or US aircraft or missiles involved in this operation were successfully engaged by the Syrian air defenses.” Pierce also called the UK actions a “humanitarian intervention” aimed at “alleviating overwhelming humanitarian suffering” of the Syrian people.

April 14, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Skripal event and the Douma “gas attack” – two acts in the same drama?

OffGuardian | April 14, 2018

The illegal air strikes on Syria by the coalition of the guilty (US, France, UK) have happened, to no one’s great surprise. As such things go all current indications are that they were more token than anything else. The Russians are saying around 100 missiles were fired at an unclear number of targets, of which around 70% were intercepted. Syrian General Staff are reporting 3 injuries and no deaths. Mattis was at pains to say this was a one-off, though adding the reckless caveat that any further evidence of chemical weapons usage by Assad might change that (thus giving every lunatic or CIA/neocon-controlled cell in Syria a pure gold motive for a false fag).

Compared to how bad this might have been, this is a fairly harmless result for the present.

We’ve resisted the temptation to do any kind of analysis of things so far, preferring to let them play out and to document developments and opinions. But maybe this is a good time to offer a tentative overview of what seems to have been going on in the past weeks.

1) The Douma “gas attack” was likely faked

The only evidence we have for any “gas attack” in Douma on April 7 is the video released on April 7-8, showing piles of corpses, mostly children, some with foam around their mouths. When, where or how the video was made is not verifiable. Who killed the children shown or how they died is not verifiable. Additionally we have images of an alleged “gas canister”, again without any sourcing or verification, and which have been widely suggested to be implausible. And there is Bellingcat (Eliot Higgins), contributing his usual brand of “comparisons” of images and Google maps, adding nothing that could be described even loosely as verification of the salient claims.

In opposition to this the Russians are claiming the event was staged. They allege their armed forces entered Douma shortly after the alleged attack and claim to have found no evidence of chemical weapons usage, no witnesses and no victims.

They have also released video statements by two young men claiming to be doctors at the hospital. They describe people running in to the hospital screaming that there had been a chemical attack, inciting panic among the people there, and “unqualified” people administering to children, giving them “asthma inhalers.” However, he says, there were no victims of such a chemical treated there, only victims of smoke inhalation from recent shelling and subsequent fires.

There is also the notable reluctance by US Defense Secretary, James Mattis to fully endorse the reality of this narrative. Even on April 12, just hours before the air strikes were to be implemented, he was still publicly saying he had seen no evidence to show the gas attacks happened or who may have been responsible. Given his senior position on the Trump administration, and his previously gungho attitude to military adventurism, this is significant.

Of greatest potential significance is the claim by the Russian foreign ministry that they have evidence the UK government was directly involved in staging the fake attack or encouraging a false flag. So far they haven’t released this data, so we can’t comment further at this time.

2) Primarily UK initiative?

The fact (as stated above) that Mattis was apparently telegraphing his own private doubts a) about the verifiability of the attacks, and b) about the dangers of a military response, suggests he was a far from enthusiastic partaker in this adventure. Trump’s attitude is harder to gauge. His tweets veered wildly between unhinged threats and apparent efforts at conciliation. But he must have known he would lose (and seemingly has lost) a great part of his natural voter base (who elected him on a no-more-war mandate) by an act of open aggression that threatened confrontation with Russia on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Granted the US has been looking for excuses to intervene ever more overtly in Syria since 2013, and in that sense this Douma “initiative” is a continuation of their long term policy. It’s also true Russia was warning just such a false flag would be attempted in early March. But in the intervening month the situation on the ground has changed so radically that such an attempt no longer made any sense.

A false flag in early March, while pockets of the US proxy army were still holding ground in Ghouta would have enabled a possible offensive in their support which would prevent Ghouta falling entirely into government hands and thereby also maintain the pressure on Damascus. A false flag in early April is all but useless because the US proxy army in the region was completely vanquished and nothing would be gained by an offensive in that place at that time.

You can see why Mattis and others in the administration might be reluctant to take part in the false flag/punitive air strike narrative if they saw nothing currently to be gained to repay the risk. They may have preferred to wait for developments and plan for a more productive way of playing the R2P card in the future.

The US media has been similarly, and uncharacteristically divided and apparently unsure. Tucker Carlson railed against the stupidity of attacking Syria. Commentators on MSNBC were also expressing intense scepticism of the US intent and fear about possible escalation.

The UK govt and media on the other hand has been much more homogeneous in advocating for action. No doubts of the type expressed by Mattis have been heard from the lips of any UK government minister. Even May, a cowardly PM, has been (under how much pressure?) voicing sterling certitude in public that action HAD to be taken.

Couple this with the – as yet unverified – claims by Russia of direct UK involvement in arranging the Douma “attack” and a tentative story-line emerges.

The Skripal consideration

Probably the only thing we can all broadly agree on about the Skripal narrative is that it manifestly did not go according to plan. However it was intended to play out, it wasn’t this way. Since some time in mid to late March it’s been clear the entire thing has become little more than an exercise in damage-limitation, leak-plugging and general containment.

The official story is a hot mess of proven falsehoods, contradictions, implausible conspiracy theories, more falsehoods and inexplicable silences where cricket chirps tell us all we need to know.

The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect.

1) It lied again and again about the information Porton Down had given it

2) Its lawyers all but lied to Mr Justice Robinson about whether or not the Skripals had relatives in Russia in an unscrupulous attempt to maintain total control of them, or at least of the narrative.

3) It is not publishing the OPCW report on the chemical analyses, and the summary of that report reads like an exercise in allusion and weasel-wording. Even the name of the “toxic substance” found in the Skripals’ blood is omitted, and the only thing tying it to the UK government’s public claims of “novichok” is association by inference and proximity. Indeed if current claims by Russian FM Lavrov turn out to be true, “novichok” may indeed not have been found in those samples at all and the active substance was a compound called “BZ”, a non-lethal agent developed in Europe and America. (more about that later).

None of the alleged victims of this alleged attack has been seen in public even in passing since the event. There is no film or photographs of DS Bailey leaving the hospital, no film or photographs of his wife or family members doing the same. No interviews with Bailey, no interviews with his wife, family, distant relatives, work colleagues.

The Skripals themselves were announced to be alive and out of danger mere days after claims they were all but certain to die. Yulia, soon thereafter, apparently called her cousin Viktoria only to subsequently announce, indirectly through the helpful agency of the Metropolitan Police, that she didn’t want to talk to her cousin – or anyone else – at all. She is now allegedly discharged from hospital and has “specially trained officers… helping to take care of” her in an undisclosed location. A form or words so creepily sinister it’s hard to imagine how they were ever permitted the light of day.

Very little of this bizarre, self-defeating, embarrassing, hysterical story makes any sense other than as a random narrative, snaking wildly in response to events the narrative-makers can’t completely control.

Why? What went wrong? Why has the UK government got itself into this mess?

Is this what happened?

If a false flag chemical attack had taken place in Syria at the time Russia predicted, just a week or two after the Skripal poisoning, a lot of the attention that’s been paid to the Skripals over the last month would likely have been diverted. Many of the questions being asked by Russia and in the alt media may never have been asked as the focus of the world turned to a possible superpower stand-off in the Middle East.

So, could it be the Skripal event was never intended to last so long in the public eye? Could it be that it was indeed a false flag, as many have alleged, planned as a sketchy prelude to, or warm up act for a bigger chemical attack in Syria, scheduled for a week or so later in mid-March – just around the time Russia was warning of such a possibility?

Could it be this planned event was unexpectedly canceled by the leading players in the drama (the US) when the rapid and unexpected fall of Ghouta meant any such intervention became pointless at least for the moment?

Did this cancellation leave the UK swinging in the wind, with a fantastical story that was never intended to withstand close scrutiny, and no second act for distraction?

This would explain why the UK may have been pushing for the false flag to happen even after it could no longer serve much useful purpose on the ground, and why the Douma “attack” seems to have been so sketchily done by a gang on the run. It would explain why the US has been less than enthused by the idea of reprisals. Because while killing Syrians to further geo-strategic interests is not a problem, killing Syrians (and risking escalation with Russia) in order to rescue an embarrassed UK government is less appealing.

If this is true, Theresa May and her cabinet are currently way out on a limb even by cynical UK standards. Not only have they lied about the Skripal event, but in order to cover up that lie they have promoted a false flag in Syria, and “responded “ to it by a flagrant breach of international and domestic law.

This is very bad.

But even if some or all of our speculation proves false, and even if the Russian claims of UK collusion with terrorists in Syria prove unfounded, May is still guilty of multiple lies and has still waged war without parliamentary approval.

This is a major issue. She and her government should resign. But it’s unlikely that will happen. So what next? There is a sense this is a watershed for many of the parties involved and for the citizens of the countries drawn into this.

Will the usual suspects try to avoid paying for their crimes and misadventures by more rhetoric, more false flags, more “reprisals”? Or will this signal some other change in direction?

We’ll all know soon enough.

April 14, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Moscow questions French report claiming Syrian govt ‘retained chemical weapons since 2013’

RT | April 14, 2018

The Russian Foreign Ministry slammed a French intelligence report claiming that the Syrian government retained a chemical weapons program since 2013, asking why Paris decided “to remain silent on its findings” till now.

On Saturday, the French Ministry of Defense published a report compiled by the intelligence services regarding the possible use of chemical weapons in the Syrian city of Douma last week.

“French intelligence services estimate that Syria did not declare all of its chemical weapon stockpiles and capabilities with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in October 2013.”

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova asked why France did not come forward with it before the US-led strikes early Saturday.

“It [France] says that it is supposedly a secret report, according to which Damascus has been carrying out certain secret programs for the production of chemical weapons since 2013,” Zakharova said on the 60 Minutes program aired on Rossiya-1.

“So where was France? Where were the official representatives of the French Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Defense, the president? Where was France’s permanent representative to the UN Security Council? Why did they all remain silent all this time?” Zakharova said.

The report says the “French [intelligence] services began to analyze testimonies, photos and videos that appeared spontaneously on special websites, in the media and on social networks in the hours and days that followed the attack. The testimonies obtained by the services were also analyzed.”

The “spontaneous nature of the release” of the alleged chemical attack victims’ images on social media “confirmed that the data was not fabricated or reused.” After studying the photos, French experts determined that the victims of the attack had “identifiable symptoms,” as “some of the entities that published this information are recognized as usually reliable,” the report stated.

On Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry presented what it says is proof that the reported chemical weapon attack in Douma was staged. During a briefing, the ministry showed interviews with two people, who, it said, are medical professionals working in the only hospital operating in Douma, near the Syrian capital. In the interviews released to the media, the two men reported how footage was shot of people dousing each other with water and treating children, which was claimed to show the aftermath of the April 7 chemical weapon attack.

According to the ministry, the patients shown in the video suffered from smoke poisoning and the water was poured on them by their relatives after a false claim that chemical weapons were used. “Please, notice. These people do not hide their names. These are not some faceless claims on social media by anonymous activists. They took part in taking that footage,” the ministry spokesman noted.

Moscow also accused the British government of pressuring the perpetrators to speed up the “provocation.”

“The Russian Defense Ministry also has evidence that Britain had direct involvement in arranging this provocation in Eastern Ghouta,” Major-General Igor Konashenkov added, referring to the neighborhood of which Douma is a part. “We know for certain that between April 3 and April 6 the so-called White Helmets were seriously pressured from London to speed up the provocation that they were preparing.”

The UK rejected the accusations. The reported chemical weapons attack escalated tensions over Syria, just as Damascus was about to seize full control of Eastern Ghouta. Last week, rebel-linked activists, including the White Helmets group (which has been plagued by allegations of ties to terrorist organizations), accused the Syrian government of carrying out a chemical attack that allegedly affected dozens of civilians in Douma. Damascus, which regards the White Helmets as a foreign-funded terrorist propaganda mouthpiece, rejected these allegations as “fabrications.”

Read more:

Macron blames Assad for Douma ‘chemical attack’ before OPCW visits site

Syria ‘chemical attack’ staged to provoke US airstrike, London pushed perpetrators – Russian MoD

April 14, 2018 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , , , | Leave a comment

Syria airstrikes will not deter chemical weapons inspectors – OPCW

RT | April 14, 2018

A fact-finding mission by the UN’s chemical weapons watchdog will continue in Syria despite airstrikes carried out on the country hours earlier by the US, UK, and France.

Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are in the country to investigate the circumstances surrounding reports of a gas attack in the Syrian city of Douma, where at least 70 people are reported to have died from chemical exposure. Syria and Russia called for an OPCW inquiry into the claims.

The agency, set up to ensure the destruction of chemical armaments, is due to assess the scene and take samples from alleged attack victims to determine the cause and potentially uncover the perpetrators.

The OPCW, whose members include Syria, Russia, the UK, France, and Russia, issued a statement on Saturday saying the investigation into the alleged use of illegal chemical weapons will continue.

The statement comes after a night of bombing, which saw US, French, and British forces launch missiles at sites including a military facility outside Homs and a suspected research center in the capital, Damascus. Both Russia and Syria have condemned the airstrikes as a breach of international law, and insist that Assad forces did not deploy chemical weapons.

OPCW officials have carried out similar chemical checks in Syria. In 2017, the organization found that sarin or a sarin-like substance was used in the town of Khan Shaykhun, but did not undertake an on-the-ground inspection of the site.

Evidence put forward in the agency’s report revealed the gas was most likely released to the north of the settlement. However, it did not attribute blame to the April 2017 attack, which was carried out in an area not controlled by the government of the Syrian Arab Republic at the time.

April 14, 2018 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , | Leave a comment

Winners and losers in Trump’s Syria attack

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | April 14, 2018

The US President Donald Trump’s mind took a fourth U-turn in almost as many days on Friday since he began speaking about his decision to withdraw the American forces from Syria and leave it to “others” to handle the endgame in the conflict. He swung to the extreme threatening a rain of missiles on Syria, only to back-track a day later to hint there might not be any attack at all, and finally to announce a joint US-UK-France attack on Friday.

If the former US Deputy Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, an experienced career diplomat, got the impression that POTUS was playing a video game, it comes as no surprise. Indeed, the most striking thing about the US strike on Syria is its futility of purpose beyond a symbolic value to impress the domestic constituency that POTUS is a forceful decision-maker, who unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, lays down ‘red lines’ and follows up.

Actually, it is a cowardly stance. Trump hastened to strike just hours before the investigation by the team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was due to begin in Douma – as if time was running out to act with impunity. Clearly, Trump felt the compulsion to be seen acting. He had no authorization from the Congress nor did he secure a mandate from the UN Security Council to launch aggression against a UN member country.

The indignation and outrage in the statement by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will be widely shared by the world community:

“There’s an obligation, particularly when dealing with matters of peace and security, to act consistently with the Charter of the United Nations and with international law in general. The UN Charter is very clear on these issues.

“The Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. I call on the members of the Security Council to unite and exercise that responsibility. I urge all Member States to show restraint in these dangerous circumstances and to avoid any acts that could escalate the situation and worsen the suffering of the Syrian people.”

Both the constitutionality of Trump’s decision and the legality of the US attack under international law is highly questionable. However, the extenuating fact is that historically, the domestic public opinion rallies behind the POTUS when the US is at war abroad. For Trump’s crumbling presidency, that is an over-riding consideration today.

On the other hand, the attack on Syria was carefully choreographed. Paris has disclosed that Moscow was informed in advance. Indeed, “deconfliction” procedures were under discussion between the Pentagon and Russian Defence Ministry for the past 2-3 days. The attack clinically targeted alleged chemical weapon [sic] sites in three cities in Syria – Damascus, Hom and Hama. No military bases or assets were attacked. The missiles scrupulously avoided locations where there could be Russian personnel. Care was taken to avoid “collateral damage”. In fact, there has been no reported casualty. On the whole, it is as if a riveting fireworks show has been conducted.

The Syrians claim they shot down a number of incoming missiles. But like in the Sherlock Holmes story, the dog didn’t bark – not a single move has been reported by Russia to intercept the incoming missiles. Moscow simply watched a brawl unfold between the US, UK and France on one side and the Syrian regime on the other. Moscow instead turned on its propaganda apparatus to take the maximum advantage of the senseless, almost bizarre missile attack. If the OPCW team turns in a ‘Nil’ report from Douma shortly, Russian propaganda can be trusted to go for Trump’s jugular veins.

The US attack will not create any new facts on the ground. The comprehensive victory of the Syrian regime of President Bashar Al-Assad in the 7-year conflict is becoming an irreversible reality. Arguably, this could be the last waltz of the western interventionist powers in Syria who had hoped to overthrow the regime and failed miserably. In the absence of a coherent US strategy toward Syria, this latest attack may even stoke the fires of Syrian nationalism.

Russia has spoken of “serious consequences”, without elaborating. Will Russia escalate the situation? Seems unlikely. It is hard to see a Russian reaction on the ground – although Moscow is watchful that the western strategy ultimately threatens the Russian presence in Syria. Much depends on the next western move. The NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is expected in Ankara on Monday.

In a strongly-worded statement, President Vladimir Putin has warned that the “escalation in Syria is destructive for the entire system of international relations. History will set things right, and Washington already bears the heavy responsibility for the bloody outrage in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Syria.” Russia proposes to convene an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council “to discuss the aggressive actions by the US and its allies,” Putin said.

Of course, new regional alignments will become inevitable. Turkey and Israel have backed the US attack. (here) The Turks’ bazaari instincts are legion and President Recep Erdogan senses an historic opportunity to project Turkish power into Syria and realize his “neo-Ottoman” dream. Trust him to overreach.

Israel is a bit down due to the messy confrontation at the Gaza border; or else, it would have jumped into the fray. Israel’s best bet will be that the US keeps an open-ended military presence in a Syria that is balkanized and weak and is in no position to reclaim the lost territory in the Golan Heights that are under Israeli occupation since 1967.

All eyes are on Iran. But Tehran will not speak its mind. Tehran’s eyes are cast on the May 12 deadline when Trump must decide on the sanctions waiver to the July 2015 nuclear deal. The big question now is whether Trump would tear up the Iran nuclear deal in the present circumstances when the US needs the support of its European allies.

Syria constitutes Iran’s defence line. Significantly, even as Trump was ratcheting up rhetoric against Syria, the powerful Iranian statesman Ali Akbar Velayati, advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei landed in Damascus on Wednesday, met President Assad and toured Douma, the alleged site of the chemical attack. It was a defiant gesture and act of solidarity with Assad.

Tehran has hinted at “regional consequences.” But Iran’s style will be to avoid direct conflict with the US and opt instead to intensify its political work and consolidate its wide networking with various groups on the ground, which systematically keep undermining the US presence in Syria and Iraq. No doubt, Iran will intensify the politics of “resistance” against Israel.

The Russia-Iran partnership in Syria is steadily morphing into an alliance, which is in mutual interests. The defeat of the US-Israeli-Saudi containment strategy against Iran may turn out to be the most significant and enduring outcome of this US attack on Syria.

April 14, 2018 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

5 Decades of Lies and War — when will Americans wake up?

Carey Wedler | April 12, 2018

From Vietnam to Syria, if they aren’t lying, they’re grossly incompetent (they’re both). Neither deserves your support.

Find me on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/CareyWedler/
Instagram & Twitter: @CareyWedler

April 13, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

State Dept claims US has proof Damascus was behind Douma ‘attack,’ but it’s classified

RT | April 14, 2018

The US State Department has claimed to have proof that the Syrian government was the perpetrator of an alleged chemical attack in Douma. It refused to make the evidence public, as the intelligence is “classified.”

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said on Friday that the US has “a very high level of confidence” that it was the Syrian government that launched an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma on April 7. Asked by AP’s Matt Lee if the US can say that it has clear evidence of the Syrian government’s culpability, Nauert responded that while she cannot speak for other nations, “it’s the assessment of the British government, the US government, the French government” that Syria was the culprit.

“I cannot speak on their behalf, but we’ve all have been having conversations and sharing information, intelligence included, and we can say that the Syrian government was behind the attack,” Nauert said. The US assertion relies on “different kind of sources,” including those of its own, she said.

It’s unclear if the strongest-worded attribution of blame by the US so far is based on some newly uncovered evidence. Pressed on whether Washington had obtained some new proof that explicitly points at Damascus’ role in the incident, Nauert did not provide any new details, saying that she is not in a position to divulge the intelligence data.

She went on to criticize “some TV shows” that are calling on the White House to offer some facts in support of the accusations: “a lot of this stuff is classified at this point. We are unable to provide all of this publicly at this moment,” she said.

At the same time, Nauert admitted that the US has, so far, failed to independently determine what substance was used in the alleged chemical attack.

“On Tuesday, when we last met, I talked how we know that it was a chemical weapon that was used in Syria. The exact kind or the mix of that [chemical weapon] we are still looking into.”

At a briefing on Tuesday, Nauert said: “we do know that some sort of a substance was used.”

She also dismissed the statement by the Russian Defense Ministry that the UK government could have pressured the rebel-linked White Helmets group, which was the primary source of the photos and videos from the site of the supposed attack, to stage a provocation in Douma.

On Thursday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said that Moscow has “evidence that Britain had a direct involvement in arranging this provocation in Eastern Ghouta.” The UK rebuffed the accusations, calling them “grotesque.”

Nauert echoed an earlier statement by White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said on Friday that Washington has “a very high confidence that Syria was responsible,” while accusing Russia of a “failure” to head off the alleged attack.

April 13, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Trump Unhappy With Military Options on Syria, Seeks Broader Offensive – Reports

Sputnik – 14.04.2018

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump is pushing for a broader military offensive in Syria but Defense Secretary James Mattis has resisted for fear of sparking a clash with Russia, media reported citing White House officials.

Trump in meetings with Mattis has pushed for an attack that would also hurt Russia and Iran in addition to the Syrian government in response to an alleged chemical attack in Duma, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters earlier that the National Security Council would be meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss plans for responding to the incident in Syria.

Earlier on Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry said during a press briefing that Moscow has substantial evidence confirming that the alleged chemical attack in the Syrian town of Duma on April 7 was a provocation staged with direct involvement of the United Kingdom. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that Russia should get ready for new and “smart” missiles that would be coming to Syria.

April 13, 2018 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

From Skripal to Syria – The Empire’s “New Realities” Are Reaching The End of the Road

By Rob Slane | The Blogmire | April 12, 2018

“That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Thus spake Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff in the Government of George W. Bush.

I do wish people would study Rove’s words more carefully. Judiciously study them. If they did, then whenever the next alleged atrocity occurs and the United States, together with its coalition of supine vassals, starts yelling and hollering 10 minutes later for action to be taken, on the basis of a test-tube full of washing powder, or pictures of injured women and children in a war zone, and the entire media of dutiful stenographers shrieks that “something must be done”, then perhaps we might pause and wonder if we are being played. Instead of falling into an emotional spasm, maybe we would instead reject the deafening drumbeats of war – wars that have a habit of killing immeasurably more women and children than the alleged incidents on which they are based, by the way — and ask ourselves whether “Rove’s Law” has come into play.

As an aside, the West’s interventionist wars remind me of that wonderfully cynical exchange in the film, The Man With Two Brains:

Dr. Hfuhruhurr: “The only time we doctors should accept death is when it’s caused by our own incompetence!”

Dr. Necessiter: “Nonsense! If the murder of twelve innocent people can help save one human life, it will have been worth it!”

Here’s Dr. Necessiter selling us into war in Iraq: “Nonsense! If it costs us the deaths of 500,000 people to topple the evil dictator Saddam Hussein, it will have been worth it!”

Here he is selling us bombs on Libya: “Nonsense! If turning Libya into a failed state, a terrorist’s playground, and causing a mass exodus of refugees is the price for getting rid of Gaddafi, it will have been worth it.”

And here’s Dr Necessiter again, this time trying to sell us into bombing Syria: “Nonsense! Risking a catastrophic clash with a country armed with thousands of nuclear weapons is worth it in order to respond to the alleged deaths of less than a hundred people in a totally unproven chemical weapons attack.”

Behold, the “logic” of the interventionists!

But back to Rove. What was he saying? Three things:

Number one: We – that is the Globalist Deep State, centred in Washington DC – are sovereign over the entire globe and we will do as we please.

Number two: That we don’t follow reality, we create it.

Number three: That we are prepared to do things that will make your jaws drop, your hair stand on end, and your eyes boggle as you wonder what is going on, and while your jaws, your hair and your eyes are busy doing their thing, we will have moved on to create our next reality.

In other words – we are God – and not a kind and merciful God, but a God who lords it over all peoples’, nations and tongues, who tells lies, and then tells more lies to cover up those lies and – when you poor saps are trying to work out what it is we’re really up to – before you know what has happened, those lies and those lies to cover up lies will have become the new reality. We’ll have moved on and the world with it, and the narrative we have created will have been written in the history books, which we ourselves shall write.

The cases of Sergei Skripal and the alleged chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta seem somehow to represent the zenith of this ideology.

I do not know who poisoned Sergei Skripal or for what reason. It could be that the Russian Government was behind it, although this would mean accepting the highly improbable thesis that they decided to target a has-been MI6 spy, who they released from prison eight years ago, using perhaps the dumbest assassination method in the history of the world – an ineffective, slow-operating, “military-grade” nerve agent, which could be traced back to them, and which they smeared on a door handle in rainy Salisbury –, a week or so before a Presidential election, and less than 100 days before they are due to host the World Cup. In other words, the official narrative does not rest on accepting that the Russian state is the epitome of pure evil; it rests on accepting that it is the epitome of insanity and bumbling incompetence.

I do not know what happened in Eastern Ghouta. It could be that the Syrian Government was behind what is alleged to have happened (if it indeed did happen), but this would mean having to accept the thesis that just 24 hours away from completely liberating the last pocket of resistance in Damascus, after the US, the UK and France had all warned that they would attack if chemical weapons were used, just a week or so after the US President, Donald J. Swamp, announced that the US would be pulling out of Syria (which they occupied illegally, by the way), they made the decision to use a weapon that gave them no military advantage whatsoever, but which was practically guaranteed to be used as a pretext for airstrikes against them. In other words, like the Skripal case, the theory does not stand on accepting that the Syrian state is the epitome of pure evil; it stands on accepting that it is the epitome of self-defeating stupidity on an epic scale.

But you see what I’ve done? I’ve fallen right into Karl Rove’s trap, haven’t I? I’m asking questions about whether the narratives in these cases stack up. In the Skripal case, I’ve been judiciously studying reality by asking lots of questions that ought to have occurred to anyone with a keen interest in arriving at the truth (here and here, for instance). I could do the same with the Syrian case, if I had the time.

Yet while I’m doing so, the narrative is moving on. I’m falling into exactly the trap that Karl and his disciples have laid. They want two sorts of people: those who just blindly accept that it was the Russians wot did it, or that it was Assad wot did it; and those who spend their time asking questions about the official explanations. The first group call the second group conspiracy theorists and nutters. The second group call the first group dumb sheeple. And the Globalist Deep State laughs and laughs and laughs as the two groups battle it out to make sense of what has happened, leaving it free to march on to create the next reality. Truly I tell you, these Bolsheviks have learnt their Hegelian Dialectics well.

Now, this is not to rule out that in the Salisbury and Eastern Ghouta cases the official narratives might – just might – be the correct ones. That both Vladimir Putin and Bashar Assad might be the Laurel and Hardy of Geopolitics. Yet it has to be said that whatever else you think about them, neither of them tends to come across in interviews as being what you might call dumb or inept. Nor do either of them give the impression that they have sudden insane impulses to do things which have absolutely no benefit to them, but which hand their enemies massive PR victories.

But this is beside the point. The point is not whether these particular incidents are what the official narrative says they are, or whether they are provocations. It suffices for the “new reality creators” to create their realities on occasion, or perhaps to distort occurrences which they didn’t create, and before you know it you have your two groups battling over events which may be real or fake: the conspiracists – who are studying every event to try to work out the details and the inconsistencies – and the sheeple – who believe that their Government is full of good hearted, white hatted chaps and lasses who would never, ever do anything bad – unlike those orcs over in Mordor.

Rove and Co have basically created a “reality” where truth is no longer discernible, where assertions of guilt are taken as fact, and where holes in these kinds of incidents only serve to divide the people further, so that the Globalist Deep State can move on to create their next reality.

But let’s not get gloomy. The good news is that although they clearly think they can get away with it indefinitely, they can’t. No kingdom or empire built on a mountain of lies can stand indefinitely. They all fall. And can’t you start to sense the signs that the empire’s “new realities” – or what are known as lies in laymen’s terms – are reaching boiling point? Don’t you sense that they have just got too confident and in doing so have begun to get careless? They are making mistakes. And as they do, they are having to resort to bigger and bigger lies to cover up the ones they’ve already told.

Sadly for Rove and Co, but happily for the rest of us, the world doesn’t actually work the way they think it does. Reality — I mean real reality, rather than the phony reality they have created — will catch up sooner or later. I sense that it’s on its way even now. And when it finally comes, the whole rotten edifice that these “history’s actors” have tried to create will crash and burn. Bringing much rejoicing.

April 13, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

‘Thousands of rotting corpses’ under ruins of Raqqa a public health crisis – Russian MoD

RT | April 13, 2018

The Russian Defense Ministry has criticized the Western-led coalition for creating a sanitation emergency in Raqqa after it took the Syrian city from Islamic State, but failed to organize a clean-up or rebuild.

“The epidemiological situation in Raqqa remains very grave. There are still thousands of corpses rotting underneath the debris,” said Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov, during a press briefing in Moscow.

The official outlined the difference between the reconstruction efforts in cities taken back by government forces, such as Aleppo, where “schools, hospitals and markets have reopened” and those like Raqqa, which have largely been left to their own devices.

Over two-thirds of Raqqa, the city Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) once designated its unofficial capital, was destroyed during a four-month battle that ended in October 2017. The majority of the damage, according to Konashenkov,  was inflicted by US airstrikes on the city, which was previously home to around 300,000 people and is now under the loose control of Kurdish militias.

Members of the first UN Humanitarian Mission sent to the city in recent weeks wrote that they “were shocked by the level of destruction, which exceeded anything they had ever seen before.” Noting that “public services barely exist and there is no safe water or electricity,” the mission was alarmed by “widespread presence of explosive hazards, including unexploded ordnance, landmines and improvised explosive devices,” abandoned by Islamic State, and a cause of over 130 deaths between October 2017 and February 2018.

A location report from AP, published last week, said that only one bulldozer was available for excavating bodies, and that “the stench of death rises from crushed buildings” as insects swarm the streets. Locals also told the newspaper that violent crime goes unchecked, and that former IS militants are allowed to live freely among the population.

April 13, 2018 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

World Pushed to the Brink by Western Criminals and Lies

Strategic Culture Foundation | 13.04.2018

The world is being pushed to the brink of catastrophic war. US President Trump and his French and British counterparts are threatening to launch military strikes on Syria in the coming days.

Donald Trump has bragged about “smart” missiles coming. French President Emmanuel Macron says “we will strike at a time of our choosing”. Who are these madmen? What right have they to threaten world peace?

It could be all just bravado, but even the mere use of threat is completely intolerable and criminal.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned that any such action will precipitate a region-wide war. With Saudi Arabia and Israel saying that they will join in the actions of the above NATO trio to attack Syria, Assad’s warning of mayhem is a grimly accurate prognosis.

Iran has said it will defend its ally Syria if it comes under attack. Russia has also given notice that any US-led intervention will be responded to with force. We are thus on the cusp of an explosive war if the US and its allies proceed with their threats to launch military strikes. The risk of a devastating escalation is a clear and present danger.

American, French and British warships and warplanes are converging in the East Mediterranean within striking distance of Syria.

Russia has beseeched the NATO powers to come to their senses and back off from their war plans.

France’s President Macron says that he does not want an escalation of violence. Macron is either cynical or deluded. If the NATO powers follow through with their threats to launch strikes on Syria, then escalation is almost inevitable.

Lest we forget, the US, France and Britain are already acting illegally by their past four years of “low-level” bombing of Syria. A case can be made that the governments of these three NATO powers are already in breach of international law from their aerial bombing campaigns in Syria. Regardless of their hollow claims of fighting terrorism in that country, they stand accused of war crimes. The American destruction of the Syrian city of Raqqa last year with thousands of casualties is sufficient evidence of massive criminality.

Then there is the incontrovertible evidence that the US, Britain and France have for the past seven years covertly ransacked Syria with their clandestine support of terrorist proxies – the very groups whom they mendaciously claim to be fighting against.

The Syrian war has been all about a criminal covert war for regime change, orchestrated and fomented by the US and its allies. The fact that the terror proxies for regime change have been defeated by the Syrian army along with its allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah is being distorted by Western media propaganda. Instead of acknowledging this historic victory, Western governments are rushing to create a pretext for direct intervention.

This week sees the Syrian army and Russia finally recapturing the last bastion of the Western-backed terror proxies in the Eastern Ghouta suburb near the capital Damascus. The war is over, or should be over. But the US and its allies are pushing for a last-ditch excuse to launch a full-on war against Syria.

And if these powers do proceed with their strike plan, it is on the back of an outrageous false-flag provocation involving alleged chemical weapons.

The UN inspectors have not even begun to carry out their investigation into what happened last weekend in Eastern Ghouta where the last-remaining terrorist groups claimed that Syrian government forces carried out a chemical weapons attack on civilians. There is no evidence of such an attack, except for videos of very dubious provenance sourced from the terror groups.

Syrian and Russian forces say there is no evidence of a chemical attack. Red Crescent medics on the ground have also said there is no evidence. The entire episode is a dubious claim sourced from dubious sources and given the usual Western media saturated, unverified coverage.

France’s Macron upped the ante this week, stating that he has “proof” that chemical weapons were used by the Syrian “regime”. Macron is recklessly raising the stakes for a joint military attack on Syria by the US, Britain and France.

But where is Macron’s “proof”. He doesn’t show any. This is typical of the illegal conduct of Western governments who make sensational claims without any substantiation. If the Syrian and Russian authorities are correct in their assessment, then Macon is a deluded liar.

The French leader – who has plenty of political woes at home with nationwide industrial strikes – is said to be goading Trump to take military action.

For the past two decades, the US, British and French have been on a bombing spree around the world, killing millions of innocents in their Neo-imperialist intrigues. The Middle East and Africa has been devastated from their illegal wars.

Yemen, to mention just one country, is being subjected to a genocidal war in which millions of children are starving from a barbaric blockade of that country by Saudi Arabia, armed and fuelled by the US, Britain and France. Yemen is a monumental war crime. And yet, grotesquely, the world is told by the war-criminal governments of the US, Britain and France that they are going to bomb Syria to “protect civilians” on the back of a lie.

World peace is being threatened by despicable rogue regimes that are telling lies with sanctimonious smirks.

Russia is right to hold firm. The rogue regimes of the US, Britain and France must not be allowed to hold the world hostage with their rampant state-sponsored terrorism. The Western powers like to talk about “red lines”. They have crossed many red lines already with the blood of millions splattered over the globe. Bombing Syria is a final red line.

Facing down Western aggression in Syria is only the beginning. The Western public must follow up by bringing their war criminals in high office to justice.

April 13, 2018 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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