NP: Striving for clarity in Syria. (Needed copyedited. I almost missed it.)

Thu Nov 7 22:06:06 UTC 2019

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 5:02 PM Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
wrote:

> Love the word count...
>
> I can not aspire to DM's levels of "pithiness" but have tried to keep
> links and sources at a minimum. If you need any corroboration for my
> claims, please say so.
>
> > Fabrication of WMD data to support 2nd Iraq War
> > Depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, profiteering, civil
> unrest, rise of ISIL
> > (Deeply ashamed as an American)
> > (Zoom in)
>
> One might add: babies taken from incubators and left to die on the
> floor; imminent genocide in Benghazi; Viagra handed out to Gaddafi's
> troops in order to commit mass rape as a weapon of war.
>
> Atrocity propaganda in order to generate public support for regime
> change. Nicolas Sarkozy's stepfather's father's "Mighty Wurlitzer" at work.
>
> After these conscious and coordinated lies which have cost the lives of
> hundreds of thousands people and led to the destabilisation of the whole
> region, including the emergence of slave markets in Libya, anybody who
> *unquestioningly* believes claims about atrocities committed by a head
> of state targeted for regime change is quite obviously a complete and
> utter idiot.
>
> George Orwell's Oceania and Gore Vidal's "United States of Amnesia" come
> to mind as well as various quotes from H. L. Mencken, although this
> peculiar forgetfulness is by no means restricted to the US.
>
> > Syria - militarized ISIL sweeps into Syria, challenging Assad, who is
> already unpopular.
>
> We let ISIL/Daesh grew, said Kerry and Obama, the one about Syria, the
> other about Iraq, in order to put pressure on Assad and al-Maliki,
> respectively.
>
> Then there is the DIA memo:
>
> "There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared
> Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is
> exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to
> isolate the Syrian regime (...)"
>
> The "supporting powers to the opposition" are "The West, the Gulf
> countries and Turkey".
>
> See also:
>
>
> https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-email-isis-saudi-arabia-qatar-us-allies-funding-barack-obama-knew-all-a7362071.html
>
> The West saw ISIL and al-Qaeda not as the enemy but as a strategic asset.
>
> > Also, Douma was one of 3 contested areas. In the other 2, rebels were
> not slaughtered, but evacuated to the north - this is a surprisingly humane
> move.
>
> Indeed. With tedious regularity it was announced that there would be a
> mass slaughter if Assad's troops would win this or that battle,
> particularly with regard to Aleppo. It never happened. It was nothing
> but atrocity propaganda.
>
> See also Bana Alabed, the seven-year-old girl from Aleppo tweeting in
> perfect colloquial English, which neither she nor her mother could
> remotely reproduce when interviewed, about #holocaustaleppo.
>
> I think that never before children have been as cynically exploited for
> propaganda purposes as in this conflict.
>
> > If the chemical assaults were faked by the rebels, it was a truly
> desperate act that bespeaks a lack of strategic thinking, wasn’t it? Since
> the rebels still lost the territory?
> >
> > If the chemical assaults were faked by unknown parties (French
> Intelligence, Mossad, MI-6, CIA) ostensibly on behalf of the rebels (if the
> rebels participated) or simply on spec -
> >
> > Who? Why? How?
>
> I deem it "highly likely", to coin a phrase, that the following is the
> case:
>
> Who and how? James Le Mesurier's White Helmets staged the hospital
> scene, they or someone else transported the dead bodies to the apartment
> building from somewhere or, in the worst case scenario, killed the
> victims themselves in order to use them as stage props, put the dead
> babies on top for better effect and placed the gas cylinders on the bed
> in the apartment upstairs.
>
> BBC Syria producer Riam Dalati:
>
> "Sick and tired of activists and rebels using corpses of dead children
> to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption. Then they wonder why
> some serious journos are questioning part of the narrative."
>
>
> https://www.mintpressnews.com/bbc-producer-says-syria-douma-chemical-attack-footage-was-staged/255152/
>
> The Syrian American Medical Society, the Violations Documentations
> Center and the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations (UOSSM)
> informed the world that Assad had once again used CW against civilians
> mere hours before his troops won the battle. Besides chlorine gas, these
> organisations suggested the much more deadly Sarin or a similar poison
> gas had been used. This particular claim was later debunked by the OPCW
> but, of course, the US, the UK and France didn't need no stinkin'
> evidence to attack Syria.
>
> Why? Again, to generate public support for military intervention. This
> has been the modus operandi ever since opposition forces performed the
> false flag CW attack in Ghouta and the BBC produced the fake documentary
> "Saving Syria's Children" in the run-up to the vote in the House of
> Commons on military action against Syria. Which was when all of this
> started in earnest.
>
> Thanks to the House of Commons and Barack Obama, who was told that the
> CW attack in Ghouta was "not a slam-dunk" and rightfully, in my view,
> prided himself on not having given in to the pressure of the
> "foreign-policy establishment" (aka the MIMC) by deciding not to attack
> Syria, it did not work in 2013. But the opposition forces and their
> handlers have been at it ever since. And they have gotten at least a few
> illegal air strikes and, after Khan Sheikoun, four dead children out of it.
>
> Grounds for impeachment, I'd say, if an American President could be
> impeached for breaking international law...
>
> Instead the media called Trump "presidential" and quoted Leonard Cohen
> on "the beauty of our weapons".
>
> Generally speaking, I am with Patrick Cockburn, when he says:
>
> "All wars always produce phony atrocity stories – along with real
> atrocities. But in the Syrian case fabricated news and one-sided
> reporting have taken over the news agenda to a degree probably not seen
> since the First World War. The ease with which propaganda can now be
> disseminated is frequently attributed to modern information technology:
> YouTube, smartphones, Facebook, Twitter. But this is to let mainstream
> media off the hook: it’s hardly surprising that in a civil war each side
> will use whatever means are available to publicise and exaggerate the
> crimes of the other, while denying or concealing similar actions by
> their own forces. The real reason that reporting of the Syrian conflict
> has been so inadequate is that Western news organisations have almost
> entirely outsourced their coverage to the rebel side."
>
> https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n03/patrick-cockburn/who-supplies-the-news
>
> What he doesn't mention is that the activists, media centers, first-aid
> organisations etc. that the Western news organisations receive their
> information from, are, without exception as far as I can tell, funded by
> Western governments.
>
> To end on a, err, lighter note, here is a CNN reporter sniffing on a
> child's backpack in order to find out whether it is contaminated with a
> poisonous gas:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQoTWhwoPoo
>
> “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without
> laughing.”
>
> An educated moron (courtesy of Mark Kohut)
>
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> --
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