Westerse media vallen critici van de White Helmets aan

Posted on October 26, 2018June 14, 2024 by Willem Wachtmeester

Rick Sterling schreef een artikel op ‘Oriental Review‘ over de aanvallen van de reguliere (massa-) media op critici van de White Helmets, kritiek die de wel nadenkende alternatieve media ook in Nederland voor de kiezen kreeg…..

Sterling wijst op een artikel van Janine di Giovani op de NY Reviews of Books getiteld: ‘Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets’. Het artikel is een voorbeeld van hoe de westerse media propaganda maken voor de White Helmets en degenen aanvallen die de o.a. door die media geplugde mythe van de White Helmets bekritiseren………

Zo heeft di Giovanni een grote bek over de echte oorlogscorrespondent Vanessa Beeley, één van de weinigen die wel regelmatig in het strijdgebied van Syrië te vinden was en die uitentreuren heeft geschreven over wat er werkelijk gebeurde in Syrië en zich niet verliet op de rapporten van het Syrische Observatorium voor Mensenrechten (SOHR), geleid door een gewezen misdadiger die zijn terechte straf ontliep door te vluchten en te stellen dat hij een politieke vluchteling was. De informatie van het SOHR kwam en komt voor het overgrote deel van de ‘gematigde rebellen’, die o.a. door Nederland werden gesteund…..

‘Gematigde rebellen’ ofwel moordenaars, verkrachters en martelbeulen, die bovendien met medeweten van de westerse landen in het bezit zijn van de gifgassen die door hen werden gebruikt om vervolgens de schuld in de schoenen van het reguliere Syrische leger werden geschoven……

Je snapt werkelijk niet waar di Giovanni het gore lef vandaan haalt om een uitstekend journalist als Beeley aan te vallen…… (hoewel, dat is onzin, immers di Giovanni huilt gewoon mee in het koor van de ‘massamedia-terreurwolven…’)

Een andere uitstekende journalist moet het ook al ontgelden bij di Giovanni, t.w.: Eva Bartlett, die zelf jaren in het Midden-Oosten heeft gewoond en goed is ingevoerd over de situatie in o.a. Syrië (en niet op grond van leugens die terreurgroepen verspreiden)…..

Niet één keer gaat di Giovanni in op artikelen die deze twee journalisten schreven, nee zonder enige steekhoudende kritiek op geschreven artikelen, stelt di Giovanni domweg dat de 2 desinformatie verspreiden, waar ze Beeley zelfs durft af te schilderen als ‘hogepriesters van Syrische propaganda’, ofwel di Giovani draait de zaak volkomen om, immer zij maakt met dergelijke uitlatingen propaganda voor terreurgroepen, die voor het overgrote deel bestaan uit ‘mannen’ die niet eens Syriërs zijn……

Lees het uitstekende artikel van Sterling en geeft het door!

CHAOSISTAN, HYBRID WARS, INFORMATION WARFARE, ISRAEL, MIDDLE EAST, PHENOMENON

OF TERRORISM, SYRIA, UNITED KINGDOM, UNITED STATES

Western
Media Attacks Critics of the White Helmets

Written
by Rick
STERLING on 24/10/2018

The
October 16 issue of NY Review of Books has an article by Janine di
Giovanni titled “Why
Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets”.
The article exemplifies how western media promotes the White Helmets
uncritically and attacks those who challenge the myth.

Crude
& Disingenuous Attack

Giovanni’s
article attacks several journalists by name. She singles out Vanessa
Beeley and echoes the Guardian’s characterization of Beeley as the
“high priestess of Syria propaganda”. She does this without
challenging a single article or claim by the journalist. She might
have acknowledged that Vanessa Beeley has some familiarity with the
Middle East; she is the daughter of one of the foremost British
Arabists and diplomats including British Ambassador to Egypt.
Giovanni might have explored Beeley’s research in
Syria that revealed the White Helmets founder (British military
contractor James Le Mesurier) assigned the name Syria Civil Defence
despite the fact there is a real Syrian organization by that name
that has existed since the 1950’s. For the past several years,
Beeley has done many on-the-ground reports and investigations in
Syria. None of these are challenged by Giovanni. Just days ago Beeley
published a report on
her visit to the White Helmets headquarters in Deraa.

white-helmet-infographic-2

Giovanni
similarly dismisses another alternative journalist, Eva Bartlett.
Again, Giovanni ignores the fact that Bartlett has substantial Middle
East experience including having lived in Gaza for years. Instead of
objectively evaluating the journalistic work of these independent
journalists, Giovanni smears their work as “disinformation”.
Presumably that is because their work is published at alternative
sites such as 21st Century Wire and Russian media such as RT and
Sputnik. Beeley and Bartlett surely would have been happy to have
their reports published at the New York Review of Books, Newsweek or
other mainstream outlets. But it’s evident that such reporting is
not welcome there. Even Seymour Hersh had to go abroad to have his
investigations on Syria published.

The
New McCarthyism

Max
Blumenthal is another journalist singled out by Giovanni. Blumenthal
is the author of three books, including a NY Times bestseller and the
highly acclaimed “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel”.
Giovanni describes his transition from “anti-Assad” to
“pro-Assad” and suggests his change of perspective was due to
Russian influence. She says, “Blumenthal went to Moscow on a junket
to celebrate RT’s tenth anniversary. We don’t know what happened
during that visit, but afterwards, Blumenthal’s views completely
flipped.” Instead of examining the facts presented by Blumenthal in
articles such as “Inside
the Shadowy PR Firm that’s Lobyying for Regime Change in Syria”,
Giovanni engages in fact-free McCarthyism. Blumenthal explained the
transition in his thinking in a public interview. He also described
the threats he
experienced when he started to criticize the White Helmets and their
public relations firm, but this is ignored by Giovanni.

Contrary
to Giovanni’s assumptions, some western journalists and activists
were exposing the White Helmets long before the story was publicized
on Russian media. In spring 2015 the basic facts about the White
Helmets including their origins, funding and role in the information
war on Syria were exposed in my article “Seven
Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators”.
The article showed how the White Helmets were a key component in a
campaign pushing for a “No Fly Zone” in Syria. It confirmed that
the White Helmets is a political lobby force.

In
spring 2016, Vanessa Beeley launched a petition “Do
NOT give the Nobel Peace Prize to the White Helmets”.
That petition garnered more support than a contrary petition urging
the Nobel Prize committee to give the award to the White Helmets.
Perhaps because of that, the petition was abruptly removed without
explanation from the Change.org website. It was only at this time,
with publicity around the heavily promoted nomination of the White
Helmets for a Nobel Peace Prize that RT and other Russian media
started to publicize and expose the White Helmets. That is one and a
half years after they were first exposed in western alternative
media.

White
Helmets and Chemical Weapons Accusations

Giovanni
ignores the investigations and conclusions of some of the most
esteemed American journalists regarding the White Helmets and
chemical weapons incidents in Syria.

The
late Robert Parry published many articles exposing the White Helmets,
for example The
White Helmets Controversy and Syria
War Propaganda at the Oscars.
Parry wrote and published numerous investigations of the August 2013
chemical weapons attack and concluded the attacks were carried out by
an opposition faction with the goal of pressuring the US to intervene
militarily. Parry also challenged western conclusions regarding
incidents such as April 4, 2017 at Khan Shaykhun. Giovanni
breathlessly opens her article with this story while
Parry revealed the
impossibility of it being as described.

“Buried
deep inside a new U.N. report is evidence that could exonerate the
Syrian government in the April 4 sarin atrocity and make President
Trump look like an Al-Qaeda dupe.”

Legendary
American journalist, Seymour Hersh, researched and refuted the
assumptions of Giovanni and the media establishment regarding the
August 2013 chemical weapons attacks near Damascus. Hersh’s
investigation, titled The
Red Line and Rat Line,
provided evidence the atrocity was carried out by an armed opposition
group with active support from Turkey. A Turkish member of parliament
provided additional
evidence.
The fact that Hersh had to go across the Atlantic to have his
investigation published suggests American not Russian disinformation
and censorship.

In
addition to ignoring the findings of widely esteemed journalists with
proven track records, Giovanni plays loose with the truth. In her
article she implies that a UN investigation blamed the Syrian
government for the August 2013 attack. On the contrary, the head of
the UN investigation team, Ake Sellstrom, said they
did not determine who was responsible. “We
do not have the evidence to say who did what ….The conflict in
Syria is surrounded by a lot of rumors and a lot of propaganda,
particularly when comes to the sensitive issue of chemical weapons.”

First
Responders or Western Funded Propagandists?

Giovanni
says, “But the White Helmets’ financial backing is not the real
reason why the pro-Assad camp is so bent on defaming them. Since
2015, the year the Russians began fighting in Syria, the White
Helmets have been filming attacks on opposition-held areas with GoPro
cameras affixed to their helmets.”

In
reality, the ‘White Helmets” have a sophisticated media
production and distribution operation. They have much more than GoPro
cameras. In many of their movie segments one can see numerous people
with video and still cameras. Sometimes the same incident will be
shown with one segment with an Al-Qaeda logo blending into the same
scene with a White Helmets logo.

US cut funding of WH

Giovanni
claims “The Assad regime and the Russians are trying to neutralize
the White Helmets because they are potential witnesses to
war crimes.” However the claims of White Helmet “witnesses”
have little credibility. The White Helmet “volunteers” are paid
three times as much as Syrian soldiers. They are trained, supplied
and promoted by the same western states which have sought to regime
change in Syria since 2011. An example of misleading and false claims
by a White Helmets leader is exposed in Gareth Porter’s
investigation titled “How
a Syrian White Helmets Leader Played Western Media” .
His conclusion could be directed to Giovanni and the NYReview of
Books:

“The
uncritical reliance on claims by the White Helmets without any effort
to investigate their credibility is yet another telling example of
journalistic malpractice by media outlets with a long record of
skewing coverage of conflicts toward an interventionist narrative.”

When
the militants (mostly Nusra / Al-Qaeda) were expelled from East
Aleppo, civilians reported that the White Helmets were mostly
concerned with saving their own and performing publicity stunts. For
example the photo of the little boy in east Aleppo looking dazed and
confused in the back of a brand new White Helmet ambulance was
essentially a White Helmet media stunt eagerly promoted in the West.
It was later revealed the boy was not injured, he was grabbed without
his parent’s consent. Eva Bartlett interviewed and photographed the
father and family for her story “Mintpress
Meets the Father of Iconic Aleppo Boy and says Media Lied About his
Son”.

A
Brilliant Marketing Success

The
media and political impact of the White Helmets shows what money and
marketing can do. An organization that was founded by a military
contractor with funding from a western governments was awarded the
Rights Livelihood Award. The organization was seriously considered to
received the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize just three years after its
formation.

The
Netflix infomercial “The White Helmets” is an example of the
propaganda. The scripted propaganda piece, where the producers did
not set foot in Syria, won the Oscar award for best short
documentary. It’s clear that lots of money and professional
marketing can fool a lot of people. At $30 million per year, the
White Helmets budget for one year is more than a decade of funding
for the real Syrian Civil Defence which covers all of Syria not just
pockets controlled by armed insurgents.

Unsurprisingly,
it has been announced that White Helmets will receive the 2019 “Elie
Wiesel” award from the heavily politicized and pro-Israel Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington. This, plus the recent “rescue” of
White Helmets by the Israeli government, is more proof of the true
colors of the White Helmets. Vanessa Beeley’s recent interview with
a White Helmet leader in Deraa revealed that ISIS and Nusra
terrorists were part of the group “rescued” through Israel.

The
Collapsing White Helmets Fraud

Giovanni
is outraged that some journalists have successfully challenged and
put a big dent in the White Helmets aura. She complains, “The
damage the bloggers do is immense.”

Giovanni
and western propagandists are upset because the myth is deflating.
Increasing numbers of people – from a famous rock musician to a
former UK Ambassador – see and acknowledge the reality.

As
described in Blumenthal’s article, “How
the White Helmets Tried to Recruit Roger Waters with Saudi Money”,
rock legend Roger Waters says, “If
we were to listen to the propaganda of the White
Helmets and others, we would encourage our governments to start
dropping bombs on people in Syria. This would be a mistake
of monumental proportions…”

Peter
Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria, sums
it up like
this: “The
White Helmets are jihadi auxiliaries… They are not, as claimed by
themselves and by their supporters… simple rescuers. They are not
volunteers. They are paid professionals of disinformation.”

Giovanni
claims her article is a “forensic take down of the Russian
disinformation campaign to distort the truth in Syria.” In reality,
Giovanni’s article is an example of western disinformation using
subjective attacks on critics and evidence-free assertions aligned
with the regime change goals of the West.

Reposts
are welcomed with the reference to ORIENTAL REVIEW.

Zie ook:

‘White Helmets: naast gebruik van terreur ook schuldig aan orgaanhandel, vernietigende VN video presentatie‘

Syria: The White Helmets Are Terrorist Auxiliaries

‘White Helmets is een terreurorganisatie, zie de bewijzen op Facebook: foto’s van de W.H. leden‘

‘White Helmets terreurgroep wordt vandaag met open armen ontvangen in Tweede Kamer…..‘

‘Nederland financiert terrorisme in Syrië……..‘

EXPOSED: Syria’s White Helmets are Al Qaeda’s ‘Civil Defence’‘

‘WHO ARE THE ‘WHITE HELMETS?’ DO WE REALLY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING IN SYRIA?‘

‘SYRIA: The White Helmet Propaganda Heist – Vanessa Beeley Speaks to Rhymes Media Group‘

‘EXPOSED: The White Helmets – Al Qaeda with US funding‘

‘Westerse media vallen critici van de White Helmets aan‘

‘Gifgasaanval Idlib: de komende ‘kindslachtoffers’ worden getraind door terreurgroep White Helmets………‘

‘Voorbeeld BBC en AD propaganda inzake Idlib (Syrië)‘

‘Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) laat weten hoe White Helmets vips rekruteren met Saoedisch geld….‘

‘Gifgasaanval vooropgezet spel om VS actie te rechtvaardigen, waarbij GB de spelers opdracht gaf dit toneelspel snel uit te voeren…….. ‘False flag gelukt’: Syrië gebombardeerd zonder enig bewijs voor schuld…..‘

‘Van Helvert (CDA Tweede Kamer): wil dat er een tribunaal komt voor Syriëgangers, terwijl hij de terroristen in Ghouta wil beschermen…….‘

‘White Helmets nogmaals ontmaskert als terreurorganisatie: de oprichter is een Britse ex-huurling…….‘

‘White Helmets oorlogsporno geweerd van Oscarceremonie‘

‘White Helmets >> terreurorganisatie, opgezet door Brits ex-officier en o.a. betaald door Nederland………..‘

Voor meer berichten over/met de White Helmets, Vanessa Beeley of Eva Bartlett, klik op het betreffende label, direct onder dit bericht.

Aleppo, de wraak van de VS: oorlog aan de alternatieve media, leve de staatspropaganda….!!

Posted on January 4, 2017June 14, 2024 by Willem Wachtmeester

Nadat de Obama regering Rusland heeft beschuldigd van het hacken van de verkiezingen, waar het overigens geen nanometer bewijs voor heeft, is het nu de beurt aan de alternatieve media…… De VS zag met lede ogen de val van Aleppo (wat betreft het verslaan van de door deze terreurentiteit gesteunde ‘gematigde’ terroristen) en geeft daarvoor nu ook de schuld aan de alternatieve media…….

De alternatieve media die niet braaf de door de VS aangeleverde leugenpropaganda herhaalden, maar met feiten aantoonden, dat de VS keer op keer heeft gelogen inzake Syrië!! Sterker nog, dat de VS de aanstichter is van de oorlog in Syrië, die intussen aan meer dan 700.000 mensen het leven heeft gekost…….

Het beschuldigen van de media, is een herhaling van zetten: toen het duidelijk werd, dat de VS de oorlog in Vietnam had verloren, waren het vooral de media ‘die voor het verlies hadden gezorgd……’ ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Hier het artikel over de oorlog tegen de alternatieve media, zoals gisteren door Information Clearing House gebracht (u kan onder dit artikel klikken voor een ‘Dutch vertaling’, dit neemt wel enige tijd in beslag):

The
War Against Alternative Information

By
Rick Sterling

The
U.S. government is creating a new $160 million bureaucracy to shut
down information that doesn’t conform to U.S. propaganda
narratives, building on the strategy that sold the bloody Syrian
“regime change”

January
02, 2017 “Information
Clearing House”
– “Consortium
News”
– The U.S. establishment is not content simply to have domination
over the media narratives on critical foreign policy issues, such as
Syria, Ukraine and Russia. It wants total domination. Thus we now
have the “Countering
Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” that President Obama
signed into law on Dec. 23 as part of theNational
Defense Authorization Act for 2017 (NDAA), setting aside $160 million to
combat any “propaganda” that challenges Official Washington’s
version of reality.

The
new law mandates the U.S. Secretary of State to collaborate with the
Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence and other
federal agencies to create a Global Engagement Center “to lead,
synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to
recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and
non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining
United States national security interests.” The law directs the
Center to be formed in 180 days and to share expertise among agencies
and to “coordinate with allied nations.”

The
legislation was initiated in March 2016, as the demonization of
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia was already underway and
was enacted amid the allegations of “Russian hacking” around the
U.S. presidential election and the mainstream media’s furor over
supposedly “fake news.” Defeated Democratic presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton voiced strong support for the bill: “It’s
imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public
sector step up to protect our democracy, and innocent lives.”

The
new law is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least because
it merges a
new McCarthyism about purported dissemination of Russian
“propaganda” on the Internet with a
new Orwellianism by creating a kind of Ministry of Truth –
or Global Engagement Center – to protect the American people from
“foreign propaganda and disinformation.”

As
part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwanted narratives,
the law authorizes the Center to: “Facilitate the use of a wide
range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among
Federal departments and agencies, seeking expertise from external
sources, and implementing best practices.” (This section is an
apparent reference to proposals that Google, Facebook and other
technology companies find ways to block or brand certain Internet
sites as purveyors
of “Russian propaganda” or “fake news.”)

Justifying
this new bureaucracy, the bill’s sponsors argued that the existing
agencies for “strategic
communications” and “public
diplomacy” were not enough, that the information threat
required “a whole-of-government approach leveraging all elements of
national power.”

The
law also is rife with irony since the U.S. government and related
agencies are among the world’s biggest purveyors of propaganda and
disinformation – or what you might call evidence-free claims, such
as the recent accusations of Russia hacking into Democratic emails to
“influence” the U.S. election.

Despite
these accusations — leaked by the Obama administration and embraced
as true by the mainstream U.S. news media — there is little
or no public evidence to support the charges. There is also
a contradictory analysis by
veteran U.S. intelligence professionals as well as statements
by Wikileaks
founder Julian Assange and an associate, former
British Ambassador Craig Murray, that the Russians were not the
source of the leaks. Yet, the mainstream U.S. media has virtually
ignored this counter-evidence, appearing eager to collaborate with
the new “Global Engagement Center” even before it is
officially formed.

Of
course, there is a long history of U.S. disinformation and
propaganda. Former CIA agents Philip Agee and John Stockwell
documented how it was done decades ago, secretly planting “black
propaganda” and covertly funding media outlets to influence events
around the world, with much of the fake news blowing back into the
American media.

In
more recent decades, the U.S. government has adopted an Internet-era
version of that formula with an emphasis on having the State
Department or the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy
supply, train and pay “activists” and “citizen journalists”
to create and distribute propaganda and false stories via “social
media” and via contacts with the mainstream media. The U.S.
government’s strategy also seeks to undermine and discredit
journalists who challenge this orthodoxy. The new legislation
escalates this information war by tossing another $160 million into
the pot.

Propaganda
and Disinformation on Syria

Syria
is a good case study in the modern application of information
warfare. In her memoir Hard
Choices,
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote that the U.S.
provided “support for (Syrian) civilian opposition groups,
including satellite-linked computers, telephones, cameras, and
training for more than a thousand activists, students and independent
journalists.”

Indeed,
a huge amount of money has gone to “activists” and “civil
society” groups in Syria and other countries that have been
targeted for “regime change.” A lot of the money also goes to
parent organizations that are based in the United States and Europe,
so these efforts do not only support on-the-ground efforts to
undermine the targeted countries, but perhaps even more importantly,
the money influences and manipulates public opinion in the West.

In
North America, representatives from the Syrian “Local
Coordination Committees”(LCC) were frequent guests on popular
media programs such as “DemocracyNow.” The message was clear:
there is a “revolution” in Syria against a “brutal regime”
personified in Bashar al-Assad. It was not mentioned that the “Local
Coordination Committees” have been primarily funded by the West,
specifically the Office for Syrian Opposition Support, which was
founded by the U.S. State Department and the U.K. Foreign and
Commonwealth Office.

More
recently, news and analysis about Syria has been conveyed through the
filter of the White Helmets, also known as Syrian Civil Defense. In
the Western news media, the White Helmets are described as neutral,
non-partisan, civilian volunteers courageously carrying out rescue
work in the war zone. In fact, the group is none
of the above. It was initiated by the U.S. and U.K. using a
British military contractor and Brooklyn-based marketing company.

While
they may have performed some genuine rescue operations, the White
Helmets are primarily a media organization with a political goal: to
promote NATO intervention in Syria. (The manipulation of public
opinion using the White Helmets and promoted by the New York Times
and Avaaz petition for a “No Fly Zone” in Syria is
documentedhere.)

The
White Helmets hoax continues to be widely believed and receives
uncritical promotion though it has increasingly been exposed at
alternative media outlets as the creation of a “shady
PR firm.” During critical times in the conflict in Aleppo,
White Helmet individuals have been used as the source for important
news stories despite a track record of deception.

Recent
Propaganda: Blatant Lies?

As
the armed groups in east Aleppo recently lost ground and then
collapsed, Western governments and allied media went into a frenzy of
accusations against Syria and Russia based on reports from sources
connected with the armed opposition. CNN host Wolf Blitzer described
Aleppo as “falling” in a “slaughter of these women and
children” while CNN host Jake Tapper referred to “genocide by
another name.”

The
Daily Beast published the claims of the Aleppo Siege Media Center
under the title“Doomsday
is held in Aleppo” and amid accusations that the Syrian
army was executing civilians, burning them alive and “20 women
committed suicide in order not to be raped.” These sensational
claims were widely broadcast without verification. However, this
“news” on CNN and throughout Western media came from highly
biased sources and many of the claims – lacking anything
approaching independent corroboration – could be accurately
described as propaganda and disinformation.

Ironically,
some of the supposedly “Russian propaganda” sites, such as RT,
have provided first-hand on-the-ground reporting from the war zones
with verifiable information that contradicts the Western narrative
and thus has received almost no attention in the U.S. news media. For
instance, some of these non-Western outlets have shown videos of
popular celebrations over the “liberation of Aleppo.”

There
has been further corroboration of these realities from peace
activists, such as Jan Oberg of Transnational Foundation for Peace
and Future Research who published aphoto
essay of his eyewitness observations in Aleppo including the
happiness of civilians from east Aleppo reaching the
government-controlled areas of west Aleppo, finally freed from areas
that had been controlled by Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and its
jihadist allies in Ahrar al-Sham.

Dr.
Nabil Antaki, a medical doctor from Aleppo, described the liberation
of Aleppo in an interview titled “Aleppo
is Celebrating, Free from Terrorists, the Western Media
Misinformed.” The first Christmas celebrations in Aleppo
in four years are shown here,replete
with marching band members in Santa Claus outfits. Journalist Vanessa
Beeley has published testimonies of
civilians from east Aleppo. The happiness of civilians at their
liberation is clear.

Whether
or not you wish to accept these depictions of the reality in Aleppo,
at a minimum, they reflect another side of the story that you have
been denied while being persistently force-fed the version favored by
the U.S. State Department. The goal of the new Global Engagement
Center to counter “foreign propaganda” is to ensure that you
never get to hear this alternative narrative to the Western
propaganda line.

Even
much earlier, contrary to the Western mythology of rebel “liberated
zones,” there was strong evidence that the armed groups were never
popular in Aleppo. American journalist James Foley described the
situation in 2012 like this:

“Aleppo,
a city of about 3 million people, was once the financial heart of
Syria. As it continues to deteriorate, many civilians here are losing
patience with the increasingly violent and unrecognizable opposition
— one that is hampered by infighting and a lack of structure, and
deeply infiltrated by both foreign fighters and terrorist groups. The
rebels in Aleppo are predominantly from the countryside, further
alienating them from the urban crowd that once lived here peacefully,
in relative economic comfort and with little interference from the
authoritarian government of President Bashar al-Assad.”

On
Nov. 22, 2012, Foley was kidnapped in northwestern Syria and held by
Islamic State terrorists before his beheading in August 2014.

The
Overall Narrative on Syria

Analysis
of the Syrian conflict boils down to two competing narratives. One
narrative is that the conflict is a fight for freedom and democracy
against a brutal regime, a storyline promoted in the West and the
Gulf states, which have been fueling
the conflict from the start. This narrative is also favored by
some self-styled “anti-imperialists” who want a “Syrian
revolution.”

The
other narrative is that the conflict is essentially a war of
aggression against a sovereign state, with the aggressors including
NATO countries, Gulf monarchies, Israel and Jordan. Domination of the
Western media by these powerful interests is so thorough that one
almost never gets access to this second narrative, which is
essentially banned from not only the mainstream but also much of the
liberal and progressive media.

For
example, listeners and viewers of the generally progressive TV and
radio program “DemocracyNow” have rarely if ever heard the second
narrative described in any detail. Instead, the program frequently
broadcasts the statements of Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations Samantha Power and others associated with the U.S.
position. Rarely do you hear the viewpoint of the Syrian Ambassador
to the United Nations, the Syrian Foreign Minister or analysts inside
Syria and around the world who have written about and follow events
there closely.

“DemocracyNow”
also has done repeated interviews with proponents of the “Syrian
revolution” while ignoring analysts who call the conflict a war of
aggression sponsored by the West and the Gulf monarchies. This
blackout of the second narrative continues despite the fact that many
prominent international figures see it as such. For example, the
former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua and former President of the UN
General Assembly, Father Miguel D’Escoto, has said, “What the
U.S. government is doing in Syria is tantamount to a war of
aggression, which, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, is the worst
possible crime a State can commit against another State.”

In
many areas of politics, “DemocracyNow” is excellent and
challenges mainstream media. However in this area, coverage of the
Syrian conflict, the broadcast is biased, one-sided and echoes the
news and analysis of mainstream Western corporate media, showing the
extent of control over foreign policy news that already exists in the
United States and Europe.

Suppressing
and Censoring Challenges

Despite
the widespread censorship of alternative analyses on Syria and other
foreign hotspots that already exists in the West, the U.S.
government’s new “Global Engagement Center” will seek to ensure
that the censorship is even more complete with its goal to “counter
foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation.” We can
expect even more aggressive and better-financed assaults on the few
voices daring to challenge the West’s “group thinks” – smear
campaigns that are already quite extensive.

In
an article titled “Controlling
the Narrative on Syria”, Louis Allday describes the criticisms
and attacks on journalists Rania Khalek and Max Blumenthal for
straying from the “approved” Western narrative on Syria. Some of
the bullying and abuse has come from precisely those people, such as
Robin Yassin-Kassab, who have been frequent guests in liberal Western
media.

Reporters
who have returned from Syria with accounts that challenge the
propaganda themes that have permeated the Western media also have
come under attack. For instance, Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett
recently returned to North America after being in Syria and Aleppo,
conveying a very different image and critical of the West’s biased
media coverage. Bartlett appeared at a United Nations press
conference and then did numerous interviews across the
country during a speaking tour. During the course of her talks and
presentation, Bartlett criticized the White Helmets and questioned
whether it was true that Al Quds Hospital in opposition-held East
Aleppo was attacked and destroyed as claimed.

Bartlett’s
recounting of this information made her a target of Snopes, which has
been a mostly useful website exposing urban legends and false rumors
but has come under criticism itself for some internal challenges and
has been inconsistent in its investigations. In one report entitled
“White
Helmet Hearsay,” Snopes’ writer Bethania Palmer says
claims the White Helmets are “linked to terrorists” is
“unproven,” but she overlooks numerous videos,
photos, and other reports showing White Helmet members celebrating a
Nusra/Al Qaeda battle victory, picking up the bodies of civilians
executed by a Nusra executioner, and having a member who
alternatively appears as a rebel/terrorist fighter with a weapon and
later wearing a White Helmet uniform. The “fact check” barely
scrapes the surface of public evidence.

The
same writer did another shallow “investigation” titled “victim
blaming” regarding Bartlett’s critique of White Helmet
videos and what happened at the Al Quds Hospital in Aleppo. Bartlett
suggests that some White Helmet videos may be fabricated and may
feature the same child at different times, i.e., photographs that
appear to show the same girl being rescued by White Helmet workers at
different places and times. While it is uncertain whether this
is the same girl, the similarity is clear.

The
Snopes writer goes on to criticize Bartlett for her comments about
the reported bombing of Al Quds Hospital in east Aleppo in April
2016. A statement at the websiteof
Doctors Without Borders says the building was “destroyed and
reduced to rubble,” but this was clearly false since photos show
the building with unclear damage. Five months later, the September
2016 report by
Doctors Without Borders says the top two floors of the building were
destroyed and the ground floor Emergency Room damaged yet they
re-opened in two weeks.

The
many inconsistencies and contradictions in the statements of Doctors
Without Borders resulted in an open
letter to them. In their last report, Doctors Without
Borders (known by its French initials, MSF) acknowledges that “MSF
staff did not directly witness the attack and has not visited Al Quds
Hospital since 2014.”

Bartlett
referenced satellite images taken before and after the reported
attack on the hospital. The images do not show severe damage and it
is unclear whether or not there is any damage to the roof, the basis
for Bartlett’s statement. In the past week, independent journalists
have visited the scene of Al Quds Hospital and report that that the
top floors of the building are still there and damage is unclear.

The
Snopes’ investigation criticizing Bartlett was superficial and
ignored the broader issues of accuracy and integrity in the Western
media’s depiction of the Syrian conflict. Instead the article
appeared to be an effort to discredit the eyewitness observations and
analysis of a journalist who dared challenge the mainstream
narrative.

U.S.
propaganda and disinformation on Syria has been extremely effective
in misleading much of the American population. Thus, most Americans
are unaware how many billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on
yet another “regime change” project. The propaganda campaign –
having learned from the successful demonizations of Iraq’s Saddam
Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and other targeted leaders – has
been so masterful regarding

Syria
that many liberal and progressive news outlets were pulled in. It has
been left to RT and some Internet outlets to challenge the U.S.
government and the mainstream media.

But
the U.S. government’s near total control of the message doesn’t
appear to be enough. Apparently even a few voices of dissent are a
few voices too many.

The
enactment of HR5181, “Countering Foreign Propaganda and
Disinformation,” suggests that the ruling powers seek to escalate
suppression of news and analyses that run counter to the official
narrative. Backed by a new infusion of $160 million, the plan is to
further squelch skeptical voices with operation for “countering”
and “refuting” what the U.S. government deems to be propaganda
and disinformation.

As
part of the $160 million package, funds can be used to hire or reward
“civil society groups, media content providers, nongovernmental
organizations, federally funded research and development centers,
private companies, or academic institutions.”

Among
the tasks that these private entities can be hired to perform is to
identify and investigate both print and online sources of news that
are deemed to be distributing “disinformation, misinformation, and
propaganda directed at the United States and its allies and
partners.”

In
other words, we are about to see an escalation of the information
war.

Rick
Sterling is an independent investigative journalist. He lives in the
San Francisco Bay Area and can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com

Click
for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French,
translation- Note- Translation
may take a moment to load.

Klik voor meer berichten n.a.v. het bovenstaande, op één van de labels, die u onder dit bericht terug kan vinden, dit geldt niet voor de labels: Agee, M. Blumenthal en Kassab,

White Helmets >> terreurorganisatie, opgezet door Brits ex-officier en o.a. betaald door Nederland…………

Posted on December 22, 2016June 14, 2024 by Willem Wachtmeester

De anti-Russische / Assad propaganda i.z. Syrië en Aleppo in het bijzonder, kent intussen geen grenzen meer, een zaak waar ik al veel over heb geschreven en waarover ik berichten overnam. De ‘White Helmets’ duiken telkens weer op in voornoemde propaganda als de grote helden en bron van betrouwbare informatie.

De volgende berichtgeving, o.a. van Counterpunch, gaat uitvoerig in op deze organisatie en na het lezen van nog veel meer stukken, kan ik echt geen andere conclusie trekken, dan dat deze organisatie in feite een terreurorganisatie is. Een organisatie die werd opgezet door een ex-officier van het Britse leger en o.a. betaald door de VS, Groot-Brittannië, Nederland en Denemarken…….. Overigens moet ik hier wel bij vermelden, dat ik door eerdere berichtgeving die ik tegenkwam, al tot dezelfde conclusie was gekomen, vandaar de woorden: ‘echt geen andere conclusie’.

Vanessa Beeley (journalist en mensenrechtenactivist) over de Witte Helmen:

The
White Helmets is not a charity, and neither are they ‘the good
guys’ despite their white helmets. The White Helmets is the
military propaganda arm of the Allies attempt at regime change by
destabilising Syria – and this is exactly what is causing the
refugee component of Europe’s migrant crisis in the first place.

The White Helmets was formed by a British military veteran, not Syrians, one James Le Mesurie. Vanessa Beeley describes as:

A
British “security” specialist and ex-British military
intelligence officer, with an impressive track record in some of the
most dubious NATO intervention theatres including Bosnia and Kosovo,
as well as Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Vanessa Beeley
identifies Farouq Al Habib as one of them:

At
least three other members of the team were a part of the Syrian
“revolution” including Farouq al Habib, one of the 3 most
prominent White Helmet leaders who was also a leader of the Homs
uprising against the Syrian government and according to his
testimony, was tortured by the Syrian “regime” security forces in
2012 for smuggling a journalist into Syria to “cover” the
“peaceful protests”. Habib was a founder member of the ‘Homs
Revolutionary Council’ (the CIA have been linked to nearly all
‘Revolutionary Councils in Syria) before fleeing to Turkey in 2013

=========

Hier een artikel dat op 4 november jl. werd geplaatst op Counterpunch, het is geschreven door JAN
OBERG:

Just
How Gray Are the White Helmets of Syria?

While
thousands of humanitarian organisations around the world are
struggling fiercely with diminishing support from governments and the
public, one has achieved a surprising amount of support from Western
governments in a surprisingly short period of time and gained a
surprising attention from mainstream media and ditto political
elites: The Syrian Civil Defence or White Helmets.

Their
name of course makes you think of the UN’s Blue Helmet and white is
the colour of those who should be protected in harm’s way – and
the colour of innocence. However, for many years there has been an
Argentinian relief organisation with the same name.

The
SCD or White Helmets counts nearly 3.000 rescue workers who operate
in very dangerous areas in rebel-held territories in Syria and claims
that it has, in three years, rescued about 70.000 lives according to
its Twitter account (or 65 per day).

Contrary
to what you might think, it isn’t a Syrian organisation because
Syria has its own organisation, incidentally also called Syria Civil
Defence, which was established in 1953 and is registered with ICDO,
the International
Civil Defence Organisation,
since 1972.

The
White Helmets seems to have an annual budget of US$ 30 million and
has raised a total support of well over US$ 100 million. And it seems
that they operate exclusively in war zones in which the fighting
against the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army takes place,
i.e. in ‘liberated’ areas where hundreds of groups and some 80
countries, mainly NATO members, Gulf states and Saudi-Arabia,
operate.

On
the White Helmets’ briefing
page it
is stated that “funding for their humanitarian relief work is
received from the aid budgets of Japan, Denmark, the Netherlands, the
United Kingdom and the United States.”

Here
is how the Foreign
Ministry in Copenhagen explains the
roughly US$ 9 million to the White helmets from Denmark, a country
that bombs in both Iraq and Syria.

Other
civil society and humanitarian organisations inside Syria have not
been so fortunate. You’ve probably not heard that much about
the Syrian
Arab Red Crescent and its work?
How much/little support have they received from Western
humanitarian-concerned governments? And in general, civil society
organisations in Syria – women, peace, human rights, culture, etc.
– have received nothing like US$ 100 million in a few years and no
one has such a flashy media appearance as the White Helmets.

The
White Helmets was started in 2013 by James
Le Mesurier who
seems to have tried a little of everything everywhere, including the
grey zones of special forces and intelligence in virtually all NATO
wars, Yugoslavia in particular. He later set up a foundation in
Holland to gather the funds. Here is a
recent account by Scott Ritter,
former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and weapons inspector in
Iraq with tremendous knowledge of things Middle East:

“The
organizational underpinnings of the White Helmets can be sourced to a
March 2013 meeting in Istanbul between a retired British military
officer, James Le Mesurier—who had experience in the murky world of
private security companies and the shadowy confluence between
national security and intelligence operations and international
organizations—and representatives of the Syrian National Council
(SNC) and the Qatari Red Crescent Society. Earlier that month, the
SNC was given Syria’s seat in the Arab League at a meeting of the
league held in Qatar.

At
that meeting, the SNC assumed Syria’s seat, and the Arab League
authorized member states to actively provide support, including arms
and ammunition, to the Syrian rebels. The Qataris, working through
the SNC, helped assemble for Le Mesurier $300,000 in seed money from
Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom for a seven-day
course designed to train and equip a 25-person rescue team, recruited
by the SNC, for duty in so-called “liberated areas” of Syria. The
SNC made available a pair of Syrian activists—Raed Saleh and Farouq
Habib—to assist Le Mesurier in this work.

The
group is – as will be seen below – treated as uncontroversial in
virtually all Western mainstream media. However, there is enough
material with documentation to merit caution.

If
you read media reports about the White Helmets and do not see the
author mention that this group’s real identity is disputed and
functions controversial you can be sure that you are wasting your
time with somebody who is politically incredibly naive, or gullible;
someone who has not done his or her research or is knowingly part of
a deceptive effort serving a one-sided political agenda.

The
White Helmets definitely is an controversial NGO – at the same time
as it is (made) difficult to understand clearly what it really is.

And
until the whole picture has been developed, anyone ought to be
cautious with taking information about them at face value. So much
must be clear given the links below.

Dual
purpose?

That
said, this author has not been on the ground but has studied both the
pro- et contra links provided below.

Some
observers draw the conclusion that the White Helmets – Syrian Civil
Defence – is purely good guys rescuing lots of people, children in
particular. The opposite advocacy claims that, all told, they are
part of the terrorist groups, serve Western governments with
intelligence and that their backers run political propaganda in their
name and that they are simply executioners – murderers with a human
face.

But
does it have to be either/or?

An
alternative hypothesis could be that the White Helmets is a
dual-purpose organisation. They claim to be ordinary Syrian
volunteers who came together around the idea of saving lives and are
truly altruistic “bakers, tailors, engineers, pharmacists,
painters, carpenters, students and many more, the White Helmets are
volunteers from all walks of life.” It could well be that some of
them actually are, even a majority.

That
doesn’t preclude that other elements – not the least those
operating outside Syria such as foundations, PR and marketing firms,
change organisations, NATO government and NGOs are in it with less
noble, war-promoting purposes.

Link
collection pro et contra

Find
below a link collection – long but fascinating in its wealth of
information. We bring it as a help to those seriously interested in
Syria’s fate and in studying how opinions are being built by means
of connected actors in a rather opaque networking structure, in how
NGOs have increasingly become Near-governmental organisations and for
those who do not want to sound foolish when they discuss these
matters.

First
some links to how the the White Helmets presents themselves. Second,
some mainstream media articles in their favour of and praising it –
including some that argue that the White Helmets ought to receive the
Nobel Peace Prize (which happens to be nonsense, since they don’t
even remotely qualify according to the criteria in Alfred Nobel’s
very clear will and the prize is not a general do-good-prize. In
addition, it must be doubted that the Nobel Committee will get more
persuaded by the White Helmets’ – quite immodest – campaign in
favour of their own candidacy).

Third
some links to the comprehensive network of organisations, including
governments, that the White Helmets seem to be part of – and it is
quite a confusing lot with absolutely no transparency – but quite a
few investigations have been carried out.

And
fourth and final – the main links to investigative reports and
other stuff that are sceptical in various degrees to the first three.

The
White Helmets present themselves:

The
Syrian Civil Defence – The White Helmets

The
White Helmet Homepage

On
the front page you are asked to sign an appeal for establishing a
No-Fly Zone (which would be a violation of international law).

Wikipedia’s
entry about the White Helmets

The
White Helmets’ media FAQs

Syria
Civil Defence on Facebook

The
White Helmets on Twitter

Netflix

Official
Trailer about White Helmets

The
Atlantic

The
makers of the Netflix movie give their background

Mayday
Rescue

Dutch
foundation supporting the White Helmets

According
to its website it channels government funds to the White Helmets:
“Syria Civil Defence receives funding (through Mayday Rescue and
Chemonics) from the governments of the UK, Holland, Denmark, Germany,
Japan, and the USA.”

Chemonics

A
US global development corporation through which government funds for
the White Helmets are channelled (according to Mayday Rescue).

White
Helmets themselves campaigning for the 2016 or 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

Sources
that promote the White Helmets without questioning

Time

How
the White Helmets are being hunted in a devastated Aleppo

Time

The
White Helmets of Syria

The
Economist

The
rise of Syria’s White Helmets

Syria’s
White Helmets

A
film by Danish journalist Nagieb Khaja shown on Al-Jazeera (30 secs
into the film one learns that they have saved more than 56.000 lives
“since the war began in 2011″ although the White Helmets were
formed in 2013).

Nominated
for an Oscar

The
Nobel Peace Prize must go to the White Helmets

The
Guardian view on the Nobel peace prize: give it to Syria’s White
Helmets – Editorial

Syria’s
White Helmets nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

The
White Helmets get the Right Livelihood Award

The
Right Livelihood’s motivation – almost a copy of the White
Helmets’ own story

Organisations
in the network around the White Helmets

Purpose

A
social movement creation and PR company that allegedly wants to
change the world, co-founded by Jeremy Heimans – whose mainstream,
politically correct background you see here.
Jeremy – of course – began his career with the strategy
consultants McKinsey & Company. He also happens to be a
co-founder of

Avaaz

Avaaz
means voice or song in several languages and the organisation is
known by millions as a petition platform for many good/progressive
causes. Avaaz has some 43 million members around the world and is
thus easily the largest NGO in the world.

Avaaz
has also created Purpose.com. Here Jeremy Heimans, co-founder of
Avaaz too, speaks to Forbes about
his background and what the two companies do.

Avaaz
is very active in promoting a No-Fly Zone in Syria which
it explains in a petition text with these words: “Let’s build a
resounding global call to Obama and other leaders to stand up to
Putin and Assad’s terror. This might be our last, best chance to
help end this mass murder of defenceless children. Add your name.”

The
sad thing is that it has learnt nothing from its own campaign for a
No-Fly Zone in Libya. John Hanrahan is a former executive director of
The Fund for Investigative Journalism and reporter for The Washington
Post, The Washington Star, UPI and other news organisations has
made this
extremely interesting analysis about
how odd it is that Avaaz maintains an interventionist war-agenda in
spite of earlier experiences and resistance even by high-ranking
militaries.

Hanrahan
quotes Avaaz’s campaign director, former State Department official
John Tye, “that Avaaz shows 54,000 members in Syria in a population
of 23 million – which means that even if every Avaaz member
supported a no-fly zone, this would still mean that only one of every
426 Syrians had “voted” for one.

Avaaz
spearheads – at least in this matter – an extreme militarist
policy while “Avaaz is a global web movement to bring
people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere”. Which
people want a No-Fly Zone in Syria? Do they know it’s a violation
of a sovereign state’s airspace, of international law? That it
would embolden every terrorist on Syrian soil because they would get
rid of the Syrian Airforce as their enemy? That it continued into
regime change in both Iraq and Libya?

Many
questions unanswered by this peculiar “people power”
organisation, more militarist than governments!

But
back to Purpose.com and one of its important clients: The
Syria Campaign – home

They
maintain on their
website that
“The Syria Campaign is fiercely independent and has accepted no
money from governments, corporations or anyone directly involved in
the Syrian conflict. This allows us full autonomy to advocate for
whatever is needed to save lives.” But they also say that they have
accepted funds from the Asfari Foundation and the Rockefeller
Brothers Foundation and other anonymous donors.

The
Syria Campaign also states that it is only pro-human rights and
pro-freedom and takes no side. But they explain the conflict in these
words:

“The
regime of Bashar al-Assad is responsible for crushing a peaceful
uprising that has led to the deaths of over 450,000 people, the
displacement of over 12 million – half the country – and the
emergence of violent, extremist groups like Isis.

Today
the fighting in Syria has given way to a world war with more than
eighty countries involved on all sides.

The
majority of Syrians want neither Assad nor Isis. They want an end to
the violence and a democratic Syria.

What
is happening in Syria could be happening to any of us. No one is free
until we’re all free.”

I
would characterise such a presentation as side-taking wrapped in
substance-free marketing jargon; a very politicised statement wearing
only black-and-white.

About
the Syria Campaign

What
the Syria Campaign is proud of: Impact page

The
Syria Campaign seeks all-stars senior campaigner and “You don’t
need to know anything about Syria”

The
Syria Campaign on Facebook

The
Syria Campaign on Twitter

Analysis,
Research and Knowledge (Ark)

A
private company, headquartered in Dubai, that describes itself as “a
research, conflict transformation and stabilisation consultancy”.

In
Syria “Ark has been at the forefront of the response to the
conflict … for the past five years”. One
of its two team members, Alistair Harris is described here advocating
two years ago that “moderates” should be armed to fight ISIS and
not only in Iraq but also in Syria.

The
British-based Asfari
Foundation for
change

White
Helmets, according to their website, received seed funding came from
the Asfari Foundation – trustees
of which are
heavily related to the oil industry and corporate finance. The Asfari
Foundation’s bonds with the Syria Campaign is dealt with here.

Sources
raising investigation-based questions about the White Helmets

Vanessa
Beeley

Syria’s
White Helmets: War by Way of Deception – Part I

Scott
Ritter at TruthDig

The
‘White Helmets’ and the Inherent Contradiction of America’s
Syria Policy

Hands
off Syria

The
White Helmets – al-Qaeda with a facelift (video)

Rick
Sterling

The
“White Helmets” Controversy

Vanessa
Beeley

Who
are Syria’s White Helmets?

Vanessa
Beeley

The
real Syrian Civil Defence

Christina
Lin, Asia Times

White
Helmets: Instrument of regime change in Syria?

Jonathan
Gornell

Newsmaker:
The White Helmets

Syria
Solidarity Movement

Its
list of humanitarian/human rights organisation that are pushing for
war on Syria and its government

Open
Letter from The Hamilton Coalition To Stop War

White
Helmets should NOT be Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Max
Blumenthal

Inside
the shadowy public relation firm that is lobbying for regime change
in Syria (I)

Max
Blumenthal

How
the White Helmets Became International Heroes While Pushing U.S.
Military Intervention and Regime Change in Syria (II)

Rick
Sterling

Seven
steps of highly effective manipulators

21st
Century Wire

CrossTalk:
‘White Helmets, Really?’ with Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett &
Patrick Henningsen (video)

Russia
Today

Multi-million
funded – can’t be independent

General
reasons for concern about the real identity of the White Helmets

Here
are some of the reasons – numbers not indicative of priority:

+
Huge funding by NATO/EU countries which are militarily involved.

+ A
degree of political lobbying – a very specific explanation of the
conflict and how it started which points to a no-fly zone,
weaponization of human rights issues and speaks strongly against the
Syrian government and Russia and very critically of the UN – that
is extremely unusual for a purely humanitarian organisation.

+
Incredibly advanced public relation in terms of very professional
websites, videos and PR strategy dropping the right stories and
images at the right time – quite unique for a group of “bakers,
tailors and students” etc..

+
Too professional wordings and images, too much playing to
(exploitation of) emotions, too catchy smart formulations again and
again; in short, lacking every sense of genuine local quality. Too
many children – and cats –
in the images speaking to an audience with little politically
consciousness but surely a good heart. In short, populist marketing
also in the sense of conveying the message: Look how good we are and
how evil everybody else are.

+
Guilt by association: If the White Helmets is a 100% humanitarian
first responder organisation it must be extremely naive in ignoring
that its integrity, credibility and noble purposes is put at risk
with the specific network of organisations and governments that it
has chosen to seek support from.

+
Substance versus public relation: how does a humanitarian
organisation justify that millions of dollars are spent on
self-promoting public relation rather than on saving more lives in
such a horrific war? And taking so many photos and shoot films of its
own work in the midst of massacres and bombing raids?

+
It’s very difficult to discern who actually manages the White
Helmets in general and in terms of day-to-day operations. One looks
in vain for something like an organisational chart secretary-general,
board, executive director (although one is mentioned, Raed Saleh,
whom the US has on one occasion actually denied entry into the US).

+
How come that such an innovative organisation seems to have been
started in circles that have to do with oil interests, British
intelligence, mercenary/military operations and
interventionist/bombing countries?

+
How come it works only in rebel/terrorist/liberated areas? Could it
do that without co-operation or co-ordination with some of these
groups? It has been stated – naively – by the Right Livelihood
Award Foundation that their vision is to operate also on
government-controlled territory and later be a leader in re-building
a new democratic post-war Syria. However, why should the sovereign
state of Syria’s legitimate government accept a foreign-based and
-financed civil defence territory there when it has had its own since
1953?

Afbeeldingsresultaat voor white helmets with guns

Perhaps
we should not be that surprised?

Should
we be surprised that humanitarian workers are involved in “something
else” and are not exclusively devoted to doing no harm and doing
good for humanity?

Not
really. I’ve met that sort of people and organisations during the
dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, among other places at the US
Embassy in Zagreb where the humanitarian section people, most likely
CIA operatives, after some talk with me about helping the people
switched to talk about how good it would be if president Milosevic
was killed.

Are
humanitarian organisations – like most other NGOs today – highly
or completely dependent on governments? Yes, most are. And they
should therefore always be checked for possible moral corruption and
co-optation. Many are no longer Non- but Near-governmental and
behave, at minimum, politically correct or serve/promote the
interests of their governments one way or the other.

Wasn’t Doctors
Without Borders started
by Bernard Kouchner who advocated military humanitarian intervention
as an idea, did the dirty job for NATO in Kosovo and
morally advocated the
bombing of Libya as a “peace guarantee”? Here an
interesting video
debate with
him at Oxford by Mehdi Hasan.

Should
it be so surprising that – even liberal, democratic – governments
propagandise, construct concrete stories to appeal to the human heart
in us all (for a good cause) and that they regularly lie, do
fear-mongering, use stereotyping and demonisation, present
black-and-white narratives – all of which serve their elites’
interests and may not always be that noble in reality?

Think
of the ugly
shadow world of the global arms trade in
which virtually all governments take part in?

Of
course not. No wars would be possible without one of more of these
ingredients.

Think
of the – invented – story about the Iraqi soldiers who kicked out
babies of incubators in Kuwait city – all
invented as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations
campaign which was run by American Hill & Knowlton for the
Kuwaiti government.

Or,
remember James
Harf of the US public relations firm, Ruder and Finn,
who in 1991 was hired by the Croatian and Bosnian governments as well
as by the Kosovo-Albanians to create and promote an anti-Serb
attitude in the Western media?

Says
Harf “We were able to equate Serbs to Nazis in public opinion…”
Some kind of balance or truth didn’t interest him: “We are
professionals. We have got a job to do and we do it.”

If
there is anything new in this field since the early 1990s it is the
spectrum, the depth, the money and the intensity with which public
opinion is being deceived about war and peace – that war today is
peace and peace is preserved by violence. And the de facto
replacement of knowledge and texts by purpose-driven, mediatized and
emotionalised “narratives” and images and films – right down on
you phone and into your mind.

In
summary: Illusions about our goodness that feed social narcissism and
the MIMAC

I
do not believe that I know exactly what the whole story and the truth
is about the White Helmets. But I know that quite a few things don’t
feel right.

As
a sociologist and peace researcher with four decades of academic and
practical experience of global affairs and work in conflict zones,
the word spoken by the guard Marcellus in Shakespeare’s Hamlet at
Kronborg Castle in my native Denmark come to mind: “There is
something rotten in the state…” not only in the bombing state of
Denmark (that supports the White Helmets) but also in the state of
the – free – media coverage of conflicts and wars.

If,
thus, you are generally sceptical of Western media coverage of wars
fought by the West and specifically of the story of the White Helmets
as a purely brave humanitarian organisation – are you then
automatically pro-Assad, pro-Russia or pro-bombing? If you are
critical to A, must you automatically endorse everything B or C does?

Given
the “Zeitgeist” of these times, my hunch is that the
anti-intellectual’s, the propagandist’s and the blamegamer’s
answer is a roaring “Yes!” Personally, I couldn’t care less but
there is reason to worry about the fact that our media are not free
to take up the issues dealt with here.

Pulitzer
prize winner, Chris Hedges, talks about “the
incessant manufacturing of illusions that feed social
narcissism.” The
– unwinnable – wars the West fights with the illusory ideology of
spreading goodness, democracy, freedom and peace as well as the
alleged good role of the White Helmets in it is little else but an
expression of such an incessant manufacturing of illusions that feed
social narcissism of the many while filling the pockets of the few in
the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex (MIMAC).

It’s
time to give reality show politics and media a reality check. But who
can and who will? And who dares now everything will get worse after
November 8?

Join
the debate on Facebook

Jan
Oberg is
director of the Transnational
Foundation for Peace & Future Research in
Lund, Sweden.

===============

Hier een ‘reclame Tweet’ van de Witte Helmen:

Al-Nusra en White Helmets werken samen: Muawiya Hassan Agha, die bovenop een Al Nusra tank staat met een wapen in z’n hand:

screenshot-429

Rick Sterling, a member of the steering committee of the Syrian Solidarity Movement, posted in 2015 five articles to CounterPunch on the White Helmets.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/31/humanitarians-for-war-on-syria/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/03/about-those-chlorine-gas-attacks-in-syria/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/20/biased-reporting-on-syria-in-the-service-of-war/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/14/eight-problems-with-amnestys-report-on-aleppo-syria/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/18/what-has-changed-since-aylan-kurdis-death/

===============

Eén van de manieren waarop u wordt besodemieterd over de situatie in Aleppo, kwam ik vandaag tegen op Information Clearing House: 5 Arrested After Egyptian Police Bust Staged Photo Shoot Of “Wounded Aleppo Children”: Police arrested five people for making staged “wounded children” photos, which they were planning to use to misrepresent on social media as photos of destruction and injured people in Syria’s Aleppo >> lees verder

Zie ook: ‘White Helmets: naast gebruik van terreur ook schuldig aan orgaanhandel, vernietigende VN video presentatie‘

en: Syria: The White Helmets Are Terrorist Auxiliaries

en: ‘VS vermoordt 40 burgers in de Syrische provincie Deir ez-Zor‘

en: ‘White Helmets is een terreurorganisatie, zie de bewijzen op Facebook: foto’s van de W.H. leden‘

en: ‘White Helmets terreurgroep wordt vandaag met open armen ontvangen in Tweede Kamer…..‘ (zie ook de andere links over de White Helmets in dat bericht)

en: ‘White Helmets oorlogsporno geweerd van Oscarceremonie‘

en: ‘Nederland financiert terrorisme in Syrië……..‘

en: ‘Extracting
Aleppo from the Propaganda:Interviewwith Eva Bartlett, an independent western journalists covering thehorrific conflict in Syria‘. (van Information Clearing House, met mogelijkheid tot vertaling)

en: ‘Russische troepen hebben massagraven in Oost-Aleppo gevonden………‘

en: ‘Oost-Aleppo: de leugens van de reguliere media, Rutte 2, de Tweede Kamer en ‘deskundigen’ doorgeprikt middels een VN missie!!‘

en: ‘Ruslandfobie: anti-Russische propaganda, waarvoor Goebbels zich niet zou hebben geschaamd!‘

en: ‘Nep-nieuws de norm bij NOS en Volkskrant‘