Tijdens de gehele Democratische Conventie van 17 t/m 20 augustus, viel letterlijk niet één keer het woord ‘Russiagate’, terwijl de Democraten het de laatste 4 jaar wel 1.000 keer werd uitgespuugd door de hypocriete politici van die partij. Logisch dat men er nu maar mee is gestopt, immers het is bewezen flauwekul en alleen door de partij in stelling gebracht om Hillary Clinton uit de wind te houden, die op een smerige manier de voorverkiezingen van de Democraten in 2016 heeft gewonnen, ofwel: zij heeft destijds de voorverkiezingen gestolen ten koste van Bernie Sanders……
Een lid van Clintons verkiezingsteam, Seth Rich was zo pissig over de handelswijze van Clinton en de top van dat team, dat hij een enorme stapel mails van Clinton doorspeelde naar Wikileaks…… Een paar weken later werd Rich vermoord op straat gevonden, volgens de politie een roofmoord, hoe vreemd dan dat er werkelijk niets was gestolen van Rich, terwijl hij ook opzichtig dure sieraden droeg……. (bovendien waarom zou je iemand 2 maal in de rug schieten als je deze wilt ontdoen van diens kostbaarheden en geld??)
Nee, i.p.v. een Russische agent, bleek Trump de figuur die een enorme legermacht heeft samengetrokken langs delen van de Russische westgrens, waarbij hij nu ook nog de beschikking heeft over een raketschild ‘tegen Iran’ maar waarvan de raketten in een mum van tijd kunnen worden voorzien van meerdere kernkoppen en dat op raketten die tot 5.000 kilometer kunnen vliegen, waardoor steden als Moskou en Sint-Petersburg vanaf de voordeur van Rusland kunnen worden geraakt met kernraketten….
Met dat schild heeft de Trump administratie het INF-verdrag geschonden, iets waarvan de VS en haar oorlogshond NAVO Rusland volkomen ten onrechte beschuldigden……. (Rusland zou nieuwe raketten hebben die volgens de VS onder dat verdrag vallen, echter op meerdere uitnodigingen van het Kremlin om te komen inspecteren ging de VS niet in, daar de duivelse Trump administratie dondersgoed wist en weet dat Rusland de waarheid sprak……)
Lees het volgende artikel van Caitlin Johnstone die dieper op deze zaak ingaat en onder andere de stelling van Max Blumenthal steunt dat Russiagate een manier was om Trump zo onder druk te zetten dat hij wapens leverde aan Oekraïne (ben het daar deels mee eens, zeker daar ook wordt gesteld dat Obama Oekraïne niet wilde bewapenen, terwijl zijn minister van BuZa Joe Biden dat land onder druk zette het strafrechtelijk onderzoek tegen zijn corrupte zoon te stoppen, daar men anders een levering van wapens uit de VS kon vergeten):
Dem Convention Made No Mention Of Russiagate Or Impeachment, Because They Were Fake
Caitlin Johnstone
The only interesting thing about either of the conventions held by America’s two mainstream political parties this month was not anything that was said by the interminable parade of vapid speakers, but rather what those speakers did not say.
Despite their dominating mainstream news cycles for years on end, at no time during the four-day Democratic National Convention was the word “impeachment” ever uttered, nor was any mention made of the Mueller investigation into allegations of collusion between Trump and the Russian government.
Eight months after Democrats mounted a historic effort to remove Donald Trump from office, not a single speaker uttered the word “impeachment” during their four-day convention.
…
For Democrats to completely omit impeachment from their convention was once unthinkable. Democrats had mounted a case that Trump had abused his power to blackmail Ukraine into investigating his political adversaries, including Biden. And they made an existential argument that without removing him from office, Trump’s behavior would get worse and democracy itself would be at risk.
…
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia — which Democrats once thought could topple Trump for obstruction of justice — also went unmentioned, even as it was a defining feature of Trump’s nearly four years in office.
At DNC, “the word ‘impeachment’ [was] entirely left out over the course of the 4-night event. Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia… also went unmentioned, even as it was a defining feature of Trump’s nearly 4 years in office.” https://t.co/Dgt9WQ3LeApic.twitter.com/q8EvEthwZq
“The fact that Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to even mention Russiagate or Ukrainegate (the first-ever sequel to a flop?) at their convention should maybe hasten some reflection for those who made these issues the ‘defining feature of Trump’s nearly four years in office,'” quipped incisive Russiagate skeptic Aaron Maté of the omission on Twitter.
“Next on Unsolved Mysteries: Democrats and media allies accused Donald Trump of being a Russian agent for four years,” Maté added. “They chanted ‘All Roads Lead to Putin’ and ‘The Walls Are Closing In.’ But at their political convention, they forgot all about it. Did Russia give them amnesia?”
“I personally feel like if the President of the US seeking re-election is beholden to and controlled by an adversarial foreign power, the opposition party should find a few seconds to squeeze in a mention of it if, you know, it wasn’t utter bullshit,” tweetedThe Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald.
And, of course, it was utter bullshit. And that is indeed why the Democrats saw no need to mention it at their own four-day convention despite dominating news cycles with it for years. Russiagate and Ukrainegate were never the cataclysmic scandals that the Democrats and their allied media factions portrayed them as. They weren’t even actually about getting rid of Trump.
In an extremely strange and confounding development, the Democrats *never once* mentioned what this NYT columnist calls “the biggest lie in American politics” at their Convention.
Anyone with an ear to the ground knew that Russiagate would fizzle, and anyone capable of counting Senate seats knew impeachment would fail to remove Trump. The drivers of these attention-monopolizing narratives knew this also.
If there’d been any solid evidence to find that the Kremlin was blackmailing Trump, or that his campaign had conspired with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election, the US intelligence community would have found some of it and leaked it to The Washington Post long before Trump took office. The Russiagate narrative has been completely dismantled from the very beginning by journalists like the late Robert Parry, and then Maté after Parry’s death. There was never any real evidence for it, and the people pushing Russiagate from the beginning knew there was never any real evidence for it.
All you really need to know about Russiagate was that it was started by unsubstantiated claims by the US intelligence community, and in the end it facilitated pre-existing plans by the US intelligence community. Everything else in between those two points is just empty narrative fluff.
In 2017 Parry documented how the original assessment that Russia meddled in the US election in the first place was put forward without proof by just a couple dozen officers from three intelligence agencies hand-picked by the notoriously Russophobic then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Maté has documented that this allegation remains just as suspicious and porous as the day it was first made. Despite having sweeping investigative powers Mueller indicted not one single American for conspiracy with the Russian government. The recent evidence-free Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report did nothing to change the flimsy nature of the entire Russiagate narrative.
So the whole thing has been plainly bogus from the beginning, with the foundation laid by secretive and unaccountable intelligence agencies who have an extensive history of lying about exactly this sort of thing. And it just so happens to have paved the way for operations against a longtime geostrategic foe that were being unfolded well before Trump’s arrival in
the White House.
This is an excerpt from an article by legendary Australian journalist John Pilger from March 2016:
In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two — led by the United States — is taking place along Russia’s western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.
Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union – has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority.
This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.
In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — next door to Russia – the US military is deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the world’s second nuclear power is met with silence in the West.
This was all happening during the Obama administration. But he was still more doveish than the spooks and cold warriors who drive US foreign policy would prefer, resisting for example loud calls from the warmongers to arm Ukraine against Moscow and forcibly install a no-fly zone in Russia’s ally Syria.
We suddenly found ourselves bombarded with narratives from the US intelligence community and its mass media stenographers about Russian election meddling and Trump playing some mysterious role in it. These narratives were pushed with steadily increasing frequency and shrillness, with the help of a humiliated Democratic Party that stood everything to gain by participating, until those of us who expressed any skepticism of them at all were being accused on a daily basis by MSM-brainwashed dupes of running psyops for the Russian government.
We were never at any time presented with any proof of these claims which rose anywhere near the level required in a post-Iraq invasion world, but we were hammered with them anyway, day in and day out, year after year.
This ended up putting a lot of political pressure on Trump to keep existing sanctions and military tensions with Russia, and he ended up adding dozens more new cold war escalations including further sanctions, shredded nuclear treaties, NATO expansionism and more. He even armed Ukraine due to these pressures, just like the anointed queen was scheduled to do.
The cold warriors wanted their escalations, and they got them. From beginning to the end, that’s all this was ever about. They pushed the narratives, the media joined in because it was great for ratings, and the Democrats joined in because it took the focus off their 2016 scandals and gave them a kayfabe phantom to punch instead of pushing for actual progressive changes.
And now the slow motion third world war between the US-centralized power alliance and the loose collective of unabsorbed governments is right on schedule, with Biden all set and ready to carry the omnicidal torch forward. The 2016 scandals are well enough forgotten, no progressive changes have been made, and there is no need to talk about Russiagate or impeachment at the Democratic National Convention.
Because everyone already got what they wanted. Everyone except ordinary people, of course.
____________________
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
Je zou wellicht denken dat onze reguliere media bij tijd en wijle knettergek zijn met het herhalen van bijvoorbeeld aantoonbare VS leugens, maar zelfs dat kan men bij de makers van die leugens, dus de VS, altijd nog veel beter.
Het volgende uiterst humoristische en sarcastische artikel, geschreven door Caitlin Johnstone en afgelopen donderdag gepubliceerd, moet je lezen, maar let op: het gevaar bestaat dat je in een lachstuip blijft!
Whales, Crickets, And Other Fearsome Russian Doomsday Weapons
Caitlin Johnstone
Headlines were blaring the word “Russian” again the other day because the mass media narrative managers found yet another reason for westerners to feel terrified of the icy potato patch that we’d barely ever thought about prior to 2016. I’d like to talk about the Kremlin’s latest horrifying horrific addition to its fearsome doomsday artillery, and recap a few of the other incredibly frightening and terrifying tactics that those strange Cyrillic-scribbling demons of the East are employing to undermine truth, justice, and the American way. Just to make sure we’re all good and scared like we’re supposed to be.
Gather the kids, clutch your pearls and sign off on hundreds of billions of dollars of extra military spending, my patriotic brethren! Here are five super scary ways the Red Menace is trying to destroy you and everything you hold dear:
Headlines and TV news segments from virtually all mainstream outlets were falling all over themselves the other day to report the fact that some Norwegians found a tame beluga whale with a harness on it, and “experts” attest that the animal may have been part of a covert espionage program for the Russian navy.
While there is no indication that this spying cetacean has been trained in the arts of sonar election meddling or shooting novichok from its blowhole, the Guardian helpfully informs us that the harness was labeled “Equipment of St. Petersburg”, and was equipped to hold “a camera or weapon”.
“Marine experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white whale that was trained by the Russian navy as part of a programme to use underwater mammals as a special ops force,” the Guardian reports.
The Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang, which picked up on the discovery well before the breathless English headlines began gracing us with their presence, is a teensy bit less Ian Flemingesque in its reporting on the matter: the harness is equipped for a GoPro camera. The words “Equipment of St. Petersburg” are written in English.
Why is the Russian military writing “Equipment of St. Petersburg” in English on the garments of its aquatic special ops forces, you may ask? If there were indeed a secret beluga espionage squad assembled by Russian intelligence services, would they not perhaps avoid writing the home address of the whales on their harnesses altogether, and maybe, you know, not let them run free in the wild?
And to that I would say, stop asking so many questions. That’s just what Putin wants.
NBC and MSNBC Blamed Russia for Using “Sophisticated Microwaves” to Cause “Brain Injuries” in U.S….
We now have what might be the most vivid, reckless and dangerous illustration yet of how NBC functions.
theintercept.com
A report seeded throughout the mainstream media by anonymous intelligence officials last September claimed that US government workers in Cuba had suffered concussion-like brain damage after hearing strange noises in homes and hotels with the most likely culprit being “sophisticated microwaves or another type of electromagnetic weapon” from Russia. A recording of one such highly sophisticated attack was analyzed by scientists and turned out to be the mating call of the male indies short-tailed cricket. Neurologists and other brain specialists have challenged the claim that any US government workers suffered any neurological damage of any kind, saying test results on the alleged victims were
misinterpreted.
The actual story, when stripped of hyperventilating Russia panic, is that some government workers once heard some horny crickets in Cuba.
Ye gads, is is nothing sacred? Is there any weapon these monsters won’t use to transform the west into a giant, globe-spanning Mordor?
That’s right, in 2017 puppies became one of the many, many things we’ve been instructed to fear in the hands of our vodka-swilling enemy to the east, with mass media outlets reporting that a Facebook group for animal lovers was one of the sinister, diabolical tactics employed by St. Petersburg’s notorious Internet Research Agency. As the Moon of Alabama blog has explained, the only evidence we’ve seen so far actually indicates that the Internet Research Agency’s operations in America served no purpose other than to attract eyeballs for money. As journalist Aaron Maté wrote of the highly publicized Russian Facebook meddling, “Far from being a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and mostly unrelated to the 2016 election.”
The late, great Robert Parry, one of the earliest and most outspoken critics of the Russiagate narrative, covered this one for Consortium Newsin an article he authored a few months before his untimely passing:
“As Mike Isaac and Scott Shane of The New York Times reported in Tuesday’s editions, “The Russians who posed as Americans on Facebook last year tried on quite an array of disguises. … There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads.”
Now, there are a lot of controversial issues in America, but I don’t think any of us would put puppies near the top of the list. Isaac and Shane reported that there were also supposedly Russia-linked groups advocating gay rights, gun rights and black civil rights, although precisely how these divergent groups were “linked” to Russia or the Kremlin was never fully explained. (Facebook declined to offer details.)
At this point, a professional journalist might begin to pose some very hard questions to the sources, who presumably include many partisan Democrats and their political allies hyping the evil-Russia narrative. It would be time for some lectures to the sources about the consequences for taking reporters on a wild ride in conspiracy land.
Yet, instead of starting to question the overall premise of this “scandal,” journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, etc. keep making excuses for the nuttiness. The explanation for the puppy ads was that the nefarious Russians might be probing to discover Americans who might later be susceptible to propaganda.
“The goal of the dog lovers’ page was more obscure,” Isaac and Shane acknowledged. “But some analysts suggested a possible motive: to build a large following before gradually introducing political content. Without viewing the entire feed from the page, now closed by Facebook, it is impossible to say whether the Russian operators tried such tactics.”
This Russia hysteria has been a long, wild ride, and sometimes it’s honestly felt like they’re just experimenting on us. Like they’ve been testing the limits of how ridiculous they can make this thing and still get mainstream Americans to swallow it. Like the establishment propagandists are all sitting around in a room smoking blunts and making bets with each other all,
“I’m telling you, we can sell a Pokémon Go Kremlin conspiracy.”
“Do it!”
“No way. There’s no way they’ll go for it.”
“Yeah well you said that about the puppy dogs!”
And then they release their latest experiment in social manipulation and place bets on how many disgruntled Hillary voters they can get retweeting it saying “God dammit, I knew that jigglypuff looked suspicious!”
The October 2017 CNN report which sparked off a full day of shrieking “OMG THEY’RE EVEN USING PIKACHU TO ATTACK OUR DEMOCRACY” headlines was titled “Exclusive: Even Pokémon Go used by extensive Russian-linked meddling effort”, and it reported that Russia had extended its “tentacles” into the popular video game for the purpose of election meddling. Apparently the Internet Research Agency attempted to hold a contest using the game to highlight police brutality against unarmed Black men, which of course is something that only an evil autocracy would ever do.
Not until the fifteenth paragraph of the article did we see the information which undercut all the frantic arm flailing about Russians destroying democracy and warping our children’s fragile little minds:
“CNN has not found any evidence that any Pokémon Go users attempted to enter the contest, or whether any of the Amazon Gift Cards that were promised were ever awarded — or, indeed, whether the people who designed the contest ever had any intention of awarding the prizes.”
Russia’s government wants people to have a laugh – as long as it’s at its opponents’ expense, and not Mr Putin’s.
bbc.co.uk
Late last year the BBC published an article titled “How Putin’s Russia turned humour into a weapon” about yet another addition to the Kremlin’s horrifying deadly hybrid warfare arsenal: comedy. The article’s author, ironically titled “Senior Journalist (Disinformation)” by the BBC, argues that Russia has suddenly discovered laughter as a way to “deliberately lower the level of discussion”.
“Russia’s move towards using humour to influence its campaigns is a relatively recent phenomenon,” the article explained, without speculating as to why Russians might have suddenly begun laughing at their western accusers.
Is it perhaps possible that Russian media have begun mocking the west a lot more because westerners have made themselves much easier to make fun of? Could it perhaps be the fact that western mass media have been doing absolutely insane things like constantly selling us the idea that the Kremlin could be lurking behind anything in our world, even really innocuous-looking things like puppy dogs, Pokémon and whales? Could we perhaps be finding ourselves at the butt end of jokes now because in 2016 our society went bat shit, pants-on-head, screaming-at-passing-motor-vehicles insane?
Nahhh. Couldn’t be. It’s the Russians who’ve gone mad.
Everyone has my unconditional permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me onFacebook, following my antics onTwitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon orPaypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
De enorme anti-Syrische en Russische propaganda n.a.v. de ‘gifgasaanval’ op Douma, is zonder meer hysterisch te noemen en is niets anders dan het bespelen van de publieke opinie voor een volledige oorlog tegen het democratisch gekozen Syrische bewind……… (je kan hier rustig van hersenspoelen spreken)
De schrijver van het volgende artikel heeft de zaken nog eens op een duidelijke rij gezet en kan dan ook niet anders dan tot de conclusie komen dat de VS en haar bondgenoten uit zijn op een oorlog met Rusland, ofwel WOIII……. Let wel: een oorlog die dan gevoerd zal worden op basis van leugens zoals dit het geval was met de illegale oorlogen van de VS en NAVO tegen: Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en uiteindelijk Syrië, waar de VS (gesteund door de rest van het westen) nu met leugens over een gifgasaanval zegt een aanval te moeten openen tegen het Syrische bewind…..*
Onder andere aandacht voor de ‘gifgasaanval’ op Khan Sheikhoun vorig jaar en de enorme leugens die later werden doorgeprikt…… Ondanks dat blijft men volhouden dat Syrië achter de aanval zat, hetzelfde geldt voor de gifgasaanval in 2013, deze werd in de schoenen van Assad geschoven, maar bewezen door de ‘gematigde rebellen’ uitgevoerd >> dagelijks hoor je de laatste dagen (sinds de ‘gifgasaanval’ op Douma) onder meer op de landelijke nieuws- en actualiteiten radiozenders Radio1, BNR, BBC World Service, Radio Nova Scotia en WDR de leugen herhaalt worden dat het reguliere Syrische leger verantwoordelijk was voor deze aanval……..
Voorts wordt nog eens aangegeven hoe blij de bewoners van door het Syrische leger bevrijdde gebieden zijn, blij van de vreselijke terreur af te zijn, waaronder zij moesten leven…..
Years of chemical weapons allegations, saber rattling and a desperate search for a casus belli have culminated in a situation which risks a serious conflict of world powers.
Western neoconservatives and hawks are driving the international situation to increase tension and danger. Not content with the destruction of Iraq and Libya based on false claims, they are now pressing for a direct U.S. attack on Syria As a dangerous prelude, Israeli jets flying over Lebanese airspace fired missiles against the T4/Tiyas Airbase west of Palmyra.
This was Predicted
As reported at Tass, the Chief of Russia’s General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, predicted the current events almost a month ago. The report from March 13 says:
Russia has hard facts about preparations for staging the use of chemical weapons against civilians by the government forces. After the provocation, the U.S. plans to accuse Syria’s government forces of using chemical weapons … furnish the so-called ‘evidence’ … and Washington plans to deliver a missile and bomb strike against Damascus’ government districts.”
Gerasimov noted that Russian military advisors are staying in the Syrian Defense Ministry’s facilities in Damascus and “in the event of a threat to our military servicemen’s lives, Russia’s Armed Forces will take retaliatory measures to target both the missiles and their delivery vehicles.”
The situation is clearly dangerous with risk of sliding into international conflict and even WW3. If that happens, it would mean the demise of civilization. All of this so that the West can continue supporting the sectarian armed groups seeking to overthrow the Assad government … in violation of international law and the UN Charter.
The most powerful country in the world is now led by a real estate, hotel and entertainment mogul without political experience. Behind the scenes, there is a powerful foreign policy establishment determined to maintain and reclaim U.S. unilateral “leadership” of the world. They don’t like the fact that the U.S. is losing influence, prestige and power around the world. Israel and Saudi Arabia are especially upset that their plans for regional domination are failing.
East Ghouta, Damascus
East Ghouta is a district of farms and towns on the north-east outskirts of Damascus. For the past six years, various armed factions controlled the area. On a nearly daily basis, they launched mortar and hell cannon missile attacks into Damascus, killing many thousands. This author personally witnessed two such mortar attacks in April 2014.
By the end of March, most of East Ghouta had been retaken by the government. With the peaceful evacuation of armed militants, civilians flooded into the humanitarian corridors and then government camps for the displaced. The campaign was proceeding quickly with minimal loss of life as the Russian Reconciliation officers negotiated agreements which allowed the militants to keep small weapons and be transported to Idlib in the north. Vanessa Beeley documented the situation including the happiness and relief of many civilians as they finally made it to safety. One described the feeling as “like being reborn”. Robert Fisk was on site and reported what he saw firsthand in stories titled Watching on as Islamist fighters are evacuated from war-torn Eastern Ghouta and Western howls of outrage over the Ghouta siege ring hollow.
Watch | Emotional Footage From East Ghouta Evacuation
As reported at the Russian Reconciliation Centre, by the end of March, 105,857 civilians had moved into government-controlled areas while 13,793 militants plus 23,433 family members had been transported north. Those who wanted to stay, including former fighters, were welcomed. They could rejoin Syrian society with the same rights and obligations as other Syrians.
The last remaining opposition stronghold was the town of Douma, controlled by the Saudi funded Jaish al Islam. Negotiations were prolonged because Jaish al Islam did not want to go to Idlib which is dominated by another militant opposition group, Jabhat al Nusra also known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
The Chemical Incident
On Saturday, April 7 video and stories claiming a chemical weapons attack in Douma were broadcast. The video showed dozens of dead children. On Sunday the story grabbed western mainstream media headlines. U.S. President Trump quickly came to a conclusion, President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay.”
Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price…
There has been no objective investigation. The media claims are based on statements and videos from members of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) and White Helmets. Both organizations receive significant funding from the U.S. government and call for Western intervention in Syria.
Chemical weapons have emerged as the quick and easy justification for aggression. One year ago, in April 2017, it was the incident at Khan Shaykoun. That resulted in a U.S. attack on a Syrian air base just days later. The subsequent investigation discovered that dozens of victims had shown up in hospitals in diverse locations and up to 100 kms away from the scene of crime BEFORE the event happened.
Strangely, and indicating the investigation team’s bias, this red flag pointing to fraud was not investigated further. If it was just a few victims or just one location, it might be a mistake in time record-keeping. However, in this case, there were dozens of discrepancies in multiple locations, clearly raising the possibility of fraud.
Now we have the incident in Douma, a town on the outskirts of Damascus. The armed opposition is in retreat. They have tried to pressure the US and NATO to intervene directly since 2012. They have access to chemical weapons in East Ghouta and a motive. They also have thousands of prisoners. This is the group which put hundreds of prisoners, primarily women, and children, in cages on the streets of Douma.
Who Benefits?
The timing of the chemical weapons incidents is also noteworthy. As documented here, one year ago on 30 March 2017 Ambassador Haley said the U.S. policy was no longer focused on getting Assad out. Five days later the chemical incident at Khan Sheikhoun happened, quickly followed by blaming the Syrian government, a U.S. attack and a restoration of the demand that “Assad must go”. On March 29 Trump said that U.S. forces will withdraw from Syria “very soon”. This was followed by outcries from the media and political establishment. Now, following the Saturday chemical weapons incident, the U.S. is again threatening to intervene directly. The chemical weapons incidents have consistently resulted in the reversal of a proposed change in hostility toward Syria.
Neoconservatives and the supporters of ‘regime change’ foreign policy have various theories why the Assad government would perpetrate a chemical weapons attack. Senator John McCain says the Syrian President was “emboldened” by the previous Trump statement.
Juan Cole, an academic who promoted the assaults on Libya in 2011, has a different theory. He says:,“Chemical weapons are used by desperate regimes that are either outnumbered by the enemy or are reluctant to take casualties in their militaries. Barrel-bombing Douma with chem seems to have appealed to the regime as a tactic for this reason. It had potential of frightening the Douma population into deserting the Army of Islam.” In contrast with his theory, chemical weapons were used extensively by the U.S. in Vietnam and Iraq when they were far from desperate. As evidenced in the flow of civilians into government-held areas, most of the civilian population are happy to get away from the sectarian and violent Army of Islam (“Jaish al Islam”). Cole seems to be basing his theories on inaccurate western media coverage just as he did regarding Libya where sensational claims about a looming massacre in Benghazi were later shown to be fraudulent.
It’s clear who benefits from sensational media coverage about a chemical weapons incident: those who seek to demonize the Syrian government and President and want the U.S. government to intervene militarily. Every time there is an incident, it is quickly accepted and used by the governments and organizations who have been seeking ‘regime change’ in Syria for many years.
Manipulating Public Opinion
Nikki Haley, United States’ Ambassador United Nations, shows pictures of Syrian victims of alleged chemical weapons attacks as she addresses a meeting of the Security Council on Syria at U.N. headquarters, April 5, 2017. (AP/Bebeto Matthews)
The manipulation of western opinion about the Syrian conflict using fake events is not theory; it has been proven. A good example is the fake kidnapping of NBC reporter Richard Engel in December 2012. Engel and his media team were reportedly kidnapped and threatened with death by “Shabiha” supporters of the Syrian president. After days in captivity, the American team was supposedly rescued by Free Syrian Army “rebels” after a shootout. In 2015 it was confirmed this was a hoax perpetrated by the FSA and their American supporters. The entire charade was carried out by the “rebels”. The goal was to demonize the Assad government and its supporters and to romanticize and increase support for the armed opposition. Neither Engel nor NBC confessed to the reality until it was about to be exposed years later, pointing to duplicity and collusion in the deception.
Four and half years ago, on 21 August 2013, the most famous chemical weapons incident occurred. The Syrian government was immediately accused of launching a sarin attack which killed hundreds of children and civilians. Over the next six months, investigations were carried out. The conclusions of Seymour Hersh, Robert Parry and the research site whoghouta.com concluded that the attack was almost certainly NOT from the government but actually from one of the ‘rebel’ factions with support from Turkish intelligence services. Two Turkish parliamentary deputies held a press conference and publicly revealed some of the evidence. The intent then, as now, was to provide justification and provocation for the U.S. and NATO to intervene directly.
An Imminent Attack
Today there is the imminent possibility of a major attack based on the allegations of a clearly biased source. Whatever happened to international law and legal due process? Why is violence being threatened before there is a serious objective investigation of the chemical incident? If the accusations against Syria are true, why not have a serious investigation, especially now that the area has been liberated today (9 April) and safe access can be provided?
The drums of war are pounding. After over one year of incessant Russia bashing and disinformation, is the public ready to go to war with Russia over Syria? Neoconservative hawks and their Israeli and Saudi allies seem to want this. Their plans and predictions for Iraq, Libya and Yemen were delusional fantasies with the price paid in blood by the people of those countries and in treasure by Americans as well. Sadly, there has not been any accountability for the media and political establishment that promoted and launched these wars. Now they want to escalate the aggression by attacking Syria, causing vastly more blood to flow and risking a confrontation with a country which can fight back.
Top Photo | National security adviser John Bolton listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, April 9, 2018, in Washington. (AP/Evan Vucci)
Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be contacted at rsterling1@gmail.com
======================================== * De door de VS en een paar andere landen georganiseerde opstand in Syrië, al voorbereid vanaf 2006, moest tot een coup tegen Assad leiden, echter een oorlog was het gevolg…… Daarna stelden de VS en andere landen dat men wel moest vechten in Syrië vanwege de aanwezigheid van IS en andere terreurgroepen, die NB voor een groot deel werden aangevoerd door de VS en Saoedi-Arabië…. Met andere woorden: de VS en de NAVO vochten zogenaamd niet tegen het reguliere Syrische leger…… Nu wil de VS dan een volledige oorlogvoeren tegen het Syrische bewind en daarmee tegen Rusland en Iran……… Over de laatste gesproken, Iran: Israël is van zins om bij een vermoeden van agressie van Iran vanuit Syrië (tegen Israël), Syrië van de kaart te vegen, uiteraard een opmaat voor een aanval tegen Iran….. Later meer daarover.
