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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby JackRiddler » Sun May 27, 2018 3:27 pm

As these things usually go, in a year and a half it will be mentioned as a side story that it was definitively attributed to Assad's side.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Tue May 29, 2018 3:26 am

Another BBC example of pushing the chemical weapons theme—completely ignoring the poor quality of evidence ostensibly indicating their use by the Syrian government—yesterday on "News Hour," with Julian Marshall interviewing Hussan Edin Aala, the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

Don't Try to Confuse Me with the Facts!

Interview starts at 18:00 minutes.

Julian Marshall wrings his hands over Syrian presidency of the UN humnan rights council, asking why people shouldn't feel "dismayed and angry...given your government's record in deploying chemical weapons."

The Ambassador replies, "I do not agree... The Syrian government did not use any chemical weapons against its people, this has never happened..."

He points out Syria's commitments to a NBC-free ME, and referrs obliquely to Israel's nukes and chemical weapons.

Julian Marshall counters with commissions indicating Syrian government guilt, saying, "the evidence would appear to be overwhelming."

The Ambassador disagrees and points out the serious shortcomings of those inquiries and their outcomes, and their rejection by both the UN Security Council and OPCW for lack of professionalism.

Swallow your coffee before reading on. The BBC's Julian Marshall cuts the ambassador off, saying,

"Can I just put it to you that you're sort of getting bogged down in details here. The broad brush is that Syria has used chemical weapons."

:lol: Right—why waste our time examining a bunch of dreary details? The broad brush is what counts here!


The ambassador gets the last word, pointing out that "these accusations have been used as a pretext to justify a military aggression against Syria—even before awaiting the result of any serious investigation."
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby DrEvil » Tue May 29, 2018 6:09 pm

^^
The Ambassador disagrees and points out the serious shortcomings of those inquiries and their outcomes, and their rejection by both the UN Security Council and OPCW for lack of professionalism.


This isn't entirely true. The OPCW fact finding missions have concluded that barrel bombs with chlorine were deployed in Syria in earlier reports, the first one in this list for example:
https://www.opcw.org/special-sections/s ... g-mission/

And "rejection by the UN security council" is just a more legitimate sounding way of saying "our best friend Russia vetoed it".

I have no idea what the truth of things are, but the ambassador is spinning facts just as much as the US or Russia. If Syria actually used chemical weapons then it is the ambassador's job to deny that until he's blue in the face, regardless of what they did or didn't do.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Tue May 29, 2018 10:21 pm

Points taken, though the barrel bombs came with a lie—that the Syrian military was 'all out of jets' and were forced to use helicopters. The attachment of that transparent falsehood suggests it was part of a false flag plan: drop a chlorine on an occupied city (maybe in an Alawi neighborhood cuz they need to die anyway'), announce it as an attack by Assad's forces, adding that a helicopter was used because the Syrian air force is 'all out of jets' and spare parts.

DrEvil » Tue May 29, 2018 3:09 pm wrote:^^
The Ambassador disagrees and points out the serious shortcomings of those inquiries and their outcomes, and their rejection by both the UN Security Council and OPCW for lack of professionalism.


This isn't entirely true. The OPCW fact finding missions have concluded that barrel bombs with chlorine were deployed in Syria in earlier reports, the first one in this list for example:
https://www.opcw.org/special-sections/s ... g-mission/

And "rejection by the UN security council" is just a more legitimate sounding way of saying "our best friend Russia vetoed it".

I have no idea what the truth of things are, but the ambassador is spinning facts just as much as the US or Russia. If Syria actually used chemical weapons then it is the ambassador's job to deny that until he's blue in the face, regardless of what they did or didn't do.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 30, 2018 8:47 am

Legal? Despite Withdrawal Pledge, Trump’s Massive Mission Creep in Syria
JUAN COLE
05/27/2018

The US is warning Syria against attempting to recover lands lost to rebels south of Damascus.

Some of those rebels are ISIL or affiliated in some way to al-Qaeda. That is, the US is now doing the opposite of what it said it was going in to Syria to do.

It is often alleged that US military presence in Syria is illegal in international law, and that it is not even constitutional.

The Obama administration sent special operations forces into northeast Syria to help leftist Kurds take on ISIL. ISIL has largely been defeated, but the troops (some 2,000 plus a rumored further few thousand mercenaries) are still there.

Obama’s lawyers maintained that the US has a right to go into Syria in self-defense, to defeat ISIL, which was plotting attacks in the United States.

The standing congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force is looking pretty long in the tooth. That authorization spoke of hunting down the people responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks. ISIL was formed in 2012 and it is a little unlikely that virtually any of its members were involved in 9/11.

So the US has now helped create a very large eastern and northeastern Kurdish enclave in Syria (Kurds are about 10 percent of the national population).

Apparently, the US special forces and the US Air Force are committed to now protecting the territory taken by the Kurds (much of it inhabited by Sunni Arabs). To that end, they have fought Syrian government troops, and even a small Russian mercenary battalion.

But how is fighting Syrian government troops part of the US mission in Syria? Only by virtue of mission creep. You had to stand up the Kurdish force to fight ISIL, now you feel the need to defend newly Kurdish-dominated territory.

The Pentagon is saying that since the US was part of the negotiations leading to the deconfliction zone south of the capital, it has the right to intervene there to maintain the cease-fire.

Some observers suspect that the US is simply running interference for the Israelis, who have occupied part of the Golan Heights and the permanent annexation of which the US is preparing to recognize. The Israeli government does not want Syria going south because they don’t trust Damascus to keep the Lebanese Shiite militia, Hizbullah, away from the Israeli border. The de facto Syrian side of the Golan is largely held by the a group (formerly known as Nusra Front) with ties to al-Qaeda.

That doesn’t sound like self-defense.

So de facto, the US and Israel are protecting some al-Qaeda fighters (among a large number of non-extremists).

Mission creep can go very wrong very quickly, as the US discovered in Vietnam.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jun 06, 2018 8:38 am

Amnesty International says US-led strikes on Raqqa may amount to war crimes

US-led airstrikes in Syria could be war crimes

(CNN)Airstrikes by the US-led coalition in Raqqa, Syria, probably breached international humanitarian law and potentially amount to war crimes, according to a report by Amnesty International that is being hotly contested by the Pentagon.

The rights group accuses the coalition of killing and injuring thousands of civilians in attacks that were at times "disproportionate or indiscriminate," during its offensive to flush ISIS militants from their de facto capital.

"The coalition's claims that its precision air campaign allowed it to bomb (ISIS) out of Raqqa while causing very few civilian casualties do not stand up to scrutiny," said Amnesty's senior crisis response adviser, Donatella Rovera.

"On the ground in Raqqa we witnessed a level of destruction comparable to anything we've seen in decades of covering the impact of wars."

Syrians move along a destroyed street in Raqqa on February 18.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting ISIS slammed the report, saying that Amnesty never approached the Pentagon about its findings and was out of line for suggesting the coalition has violated international law.

"They are literally judging us guilty until proven innocent, that's a bold rhetorical move by an organization that fails to check the public record or consult the accused," Col. Thomas Veale told reporters at the Pentagon via a video briefing from Baghdad.

"They never asked us for a comment, an interview, or a courtesy check of the draft, they also failed to check the public record thoroughly," Veale said.

He also criticized Amnesty for recommending that the coalition develop a process for canceling a strike if it's deemed indiscriminate or disproportionate, saying that the coalition already had this process in place.

Veale added that the number of civilian casualties can't ever be really known.

"As far as how do we know how many civilians were killed -- I'm just being honest, no one will ever know," Veale said. "Anyone who claims they will know is lying."

The report, "War of Annihilation," details the loss of civilian life in Raqqa, based on interviews with 112 civilians at the sites of 42 coalition airstrikes.

It illustrates the cases of four civilian families who, between them, lost 90 relatives and neighbors, including 39 from one family alone. Almost all were killed by coalition airstrikes, the report alleges.

"They are part of a wider pattern and provide a strong prima facie case that many coalition attacks that killed and injured civilians and destroyed homes and infrastructure violated international humanitarian law," the report states.

The report illustrates the difficult choice many civilians faced of either choosing to flee and be killed by ISIS snipers or risk being hit in coalition strikes.

The US-led coalition says it does everything it can to minimize harm to civlians in its airstrikes.

The Badran family, which lost 39 members and 10 neighbors in four separate coalition strikes, fled from place to place as front lines in the city rapidly shifted.

Rasha Badran, one of the survivors, told Amnesty that she thought the coalition forces would target only ISIS militants.

"We were naive. By the time we realized how dangerous it had become everywhere, it was too late; we were trapped," she told Amnesty.

Veale said that the coalition was willing to work with anyone to assess allegations of civilian casualties.

"I can tell you with confidence we are always willing to re-evaluate cases based on new or compelling evidence," Veale said, adding that, "as I speak people are looking at that article and trying to correlate those claims to the strike log and how the battle of Raqqa unfolded as our participation went in it."

"We are open to working with anyone," Veale said. "We are just as willing to work with Amnesty International, as I said I wish we had worked with them earlier but they didn't come to us, they just went ahead and published"

Coalition 'leveled' Raqqa


The coalition's offensive in Raqqa began a year ago, with US, British and French forces taking part.

Tens of thousands of airstrikes were carried out in the city, Amnesty said, adding that US forces "admitted to firing 30,000 artillery rounds during the offensive." It said US forces were responsible for 90% of coalition strikes.

Amnesty said that ISIS' four-year rule in Raqqa was "rife with war crimes," but that did not relieve the coalition of its obligation to minimize harm against civilians.

"What leveled the city and killed and injured so many civilians was the US-led coalition's repeated use of explosive weapons in populated areas where they knew civilians were trapped. Even precision weapons are only as precise as their choice of targets," Rovera said.

Responding to the report, the US-led mission to Syria said it made rigorous efforts to avoid civilian casualties.

"The coalition applies rigorous standards to our targeting process and takes extraordinary efforts to protect non-combatants," it said in a statement sent to CNN.

It added that it had been transparent about its strikes and routinely assessed any allegations of civilian casualties. It is committed to transparency "when civilian casualties unintentionally occur," the statement said.

Amnesty International is accusing the US-led coalition of flattening the city of Raqqa.

A British Ministry of Defense spokesperson said its mission in Syria fully complied with international humanitarian law, also adding it had been open and transparent throughout the offensive and detailed each of its nearly 1,700 strikes.

"We do everything we can to minimize the risk to civilian life through our rigorous targeting processes and the professionalism of the (Royal Air Force) crews but, given the ruthless and inhuman behavior of (ISIS), and the congested, complex urban environment in which we operate, we must accept that the risk of inadvertent civilian casualties is ever present," the spokesperson said in statement.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/05/middleea ... index.html


Exclusive: In Syria, a Russian move causes friction with Iran-backed forces - officials

Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Russian troop deployment in Syria near the Lebanese border this week caused friction with Iran-backed forces including Hezbollah which objected to the uncoordinated move, two non-Syrian officials in the regional alliance backing Damascus said.

Russian military vehicles are seen in eastern Ghouta near Douma, in Damascus, Syria April 23, 2018. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho
The situation was resolved on Tuesday when Syrian army soldiers took over three positions where the Russians had deployed near the town of Qusair in the Homs region on Monday, one of the officials, a military commander, told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

It appeared to be a rare case of Russia acting out of sync with President Bashar al-Assad’s Iran-backed allies in the war. Iranian and Russian support has been critical to Assad’s war effort.

“It was an uncoordinated step,” said the commander. “Now it is resolved. We rejected the step. The Syrian army - Division 11 - is deploying at the border,” said the commander, adding Hezbollah fighters were still located in the area.

Russian soldiers stand next to boxes of ammunition and weapons, that belonged to rebels from Eastern Qalamoun, after they handed them over, at the town of Dumayr, Damascus, Syria April 22, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
There was no comment from the Russian military about the incident. Russia has faced calls from Israel to rein in Iran in Syria, where Israel has mounted numerous attacks against Hezbollah and other targets it has described as Iran-backed.

“Perhaps it was to assure the Israelis,” said the commander, adding that the move could not be justified as part of the fight against the Nusra Front or Islamic State because Hezbollah and the Syrian army had defeated them at the Lebanese-Syrian border.

The second official said the “resistance axis” - a reference to Iran and its allies - was “studying the situation” after the uncoordinated Russian move.

Russia and Iran-backed forces such as Hezbollah have worked together against the insurgency. Hezbollah deployed to Syria in 2012. The Russian air force arrived in 2015 in support of Assad.

But their different agendas in Syria have become more apparent of late as Israel presses Russia to make sure Iran and its allies do not entrench their military sway in the country.

A Russian soldier holds his weapon at the city of Douma in Damascus, Syria, April 20, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
TURNING POINT

Israel wants Iranian and Iran-backed forces kept away from its border and, more broadly, removed from Syria entirely.

Last month, Israel said Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched a missile salvo from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said it marked a “new phase” of the war in Syria.

Recent Russian calls for all non-Syrian forces to leave southern Syria have been seen aimed partly at Iran, in addition to U.S. forces based in the Tanf area at the Syrian-Iraqi border.

The town of Qusair was the scene of a major battle in the Syrian civil war in 2013, when Hezbollah fighters played a major part in turning the tide of the conflict in Assad’s favor by defeating rebels.

Some details of the Qusair incident were reported by the Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen, which is close to Damascus and its regional allies such as Hezbollah. It said the number of Russian forces was small.

A military air base in the same area came under missile attack on May 24. The Israeli military declined to comment on that attack.

Syrian rebel-held areas of southwestern Syria at the frontier with Israel have come into focus since Damascus and its allies crushed the last remaining besieged rebel pockets near the capital. Assad has vowed to recover all Syrian territory.

The United States wants to preserve a “de-escalation” zone that has contained the conflict in southwestern Syria. The zone, agreed last year with Russia and Jordan, has helped to contain fighting in areas near the Israeli frontier.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mide ... SKCN1J125S


Syria’s New Housing Law Will Displace Tens of Thousands of Refugees, But Even That Won’t Help the Regime Win the War



When wars end, the winners redraw the maps. That’s what the British and French did to the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. It’s what Hitler did in Eastern Europe when he thought he was winning. And what the Allies did after the Second World War. It’s what the Israelis did during the Palestinian Nakba (disaster). And what Saddam did to Kuwait after he invaded the UAE. But now a subtle twist. Even before it’s won back all of Syria, the Assad regime is doing a little redrawing of its own. Not of its national frontiers. But within its cities.

For the new Law No 10 calls for what looks like mass property expulsion in those areas of the country which rebelled against the Syrian government after 2011. Even inside their borders, many Syrians claim that it will strip tens of thousands of citizens of their homes – especially in those pulverised districts of the country’s big cities which have been turned into miniature Stalingrads and Dresdens by years of fighting. And it will benefit the regime – author of the law – since all unclaimed property will become the property of the state. Is this the way to bring about the “reconciliation” which the Russians, the Syrian state itself and its supporters talk about so emotionally?

“It’s true that Syria has lost the best of its youth and its infrastructure,” Bashar al-Assad said last year, “…but on the other hand it has gained a more healthy and more homogenous society.” Is this what Law No 10 is supposed to achieve? For it effectively deprives anyone who has opposed the regime or is thought to have opposed the regime or relatives of those who have opposed the regime or relatives of those who are thought to have opposed the regime, from regaining their property. The system of doing this – and the machinery of the law – has a special and sinister touch all of its own.

Here’s how it works. Destroyed areas of Syria are to be reorganised, developed and reconstructed. To prove your claim to property – damaged or destroyed – you must appear in person with your real estate documents within 30 days. Clearly, nobody outside Syria who opposes the government can do this – nor can those tens of thousands who live outside Syria’s frontiers to evade the military draft who, in theory and probably in practice, face arrest warrants if they go home.

I took this up with a senior figure in Syria’s Chamber of Trade. No problem, he said. Property holders may appoint others – relatives or lawyers – to prove their claim to property. And this is true. Fourth-degree relatives – second cousins, for example – can make this claim within the same 30 days. But proxy authorisation requires a security clearance which is unlikely to be given if those second cousins are representing relatives who are on a “wanted” list. All this is before we confront the hopelessness of millions of Syrians abroad whose documents of ownership were burned in their homes or in government buildings during the Syrian war. If you don’t have your papers, how do you prove you own your land?

Even Lebanon, whose government contains sympathisers of the Syrian regime – the president is one of them – has publicly expressed criticism of Law No 10 – mainly because their country hosts far more than a million Syrian refugees who, like the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967 who fled to Lebanon, may now never return home. Ghassan Hasbani, the Lebanese health minister (and deputy prime minister) bluntly told a Saudi television channel that many of the Syrians in Lebanon “have lost their identity papers and some are prevented – out of safety fears – from returning to the country they left, fearing persecution”.

The UN Refugee Agency says that more than 11 million Syrians have been displaced internally or to host countries during the war. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, more than 70 per cent of refugees lack basic identification papers. There are painful parallels here to the plight of the 1947/8 Palestinians refugees and their families, who are deprived of their homes under Israel’s 1950 Absentee Property law which effectively prevents any Arab returning to his land inside present-day Israel who was expelled, fled or who left the country after 29 November 1947.

Gebran Bassil, the Lebanese foreign minister, has received no reply to a letter he sent to his opposite number in Damascus, Walid Moalem, and to the UN Secretary General, expressing his own concern. “The inability of the displaced to prove their ownership within the given period,” he wrote, “may cause them to lose their property and sense…of national identity, which deprives them of one of the main incentives for their return to Syria.” Not that Lebanon is standing up for Syria’s refugees; it just wants them to leave – and regards Law No 10 as a severe disincentive since the legislation may deprive them of the homes they would go back to.

Hasbani’s objection is straightforward: the implementation of the new law and the time frame: why only 30 days to produce papers and claim ownership? For Assad’s opponents, it’s much simpler. For them, the regime is trying to dispossess its largely Sunni Muslim opponents, rebuild the devastated areas in which they lived and then sell them off at vast profit. This, they say, is a form of sectarian ethnic cleansing since the government will inevitably allow its Shia Muslim allies, including the Alawite minority, to live in the newly reconstructed areas.

As far back as 2012, a Syrian legislative decree (number 66) allowed the government in Damascus to “redevelop areas of unauthorised housing and informal settlements [slums].” In the same year, legislation 63 allowed the Syrian finance ministry to seize the assets of people who fell under the Counterterrorism Law (again of 2012). But this law itself embraces the regime’s interpretation of what “terrorism” means. An opponent of the government? A critic of the regime? A civilian who turned to armed warfare when his home was attacked?

One widespread claim is that the law enables Iranians to take over the property of exiled Syrians. By law, neither Iranians not any other foreigner can do so – but Iranian companies can own property if they join the reconstruction process, and so can Russian companies. There are repeated rumours in Syria itself that Iranian companies have bought hotels near the old city of Damascus, along with apartments near the Shiite Sayyida Zainab mosque in the city, a place of pilgrimage for Iranians and Iraqi Shia. In fact, Syrians are more concerned about Iran’s financial aspirations in Syria than they are about the Iranian revolutionary guard corps which so obsesses Israel and the US – and which may number fewer than 3,000 men in the whole of Syria.

All countries, of course, try to clear away their war ruins. The reconstruction of Rotterdam – blitzed by the Luftwaffe in 1940 – began under German occupation. Tens of thousands of ruined homes in Syria cannot be repaired or “restored” because they are damaged beyond repair or, in some cases, unrecognisable to the owners who have returned to them. And the recapture of most major Syrian cities gives the regime a chance to bulldoze the tens of thousands of illegally-built squats which surround Damascus, Homs and Aleppo, the so-called “informal settlements” referred to in legislation 66. Many of these slum structures were built by the destitute rural poor who flooded to the cities before the war after massive drought in the countryside, and who joined the armed and later Islamist militias which tried to destroy Assad.

No legislation mentions why these young people were forced to build their slum homes – there was much wrong with the government’s rural policies before the war – nor how the buildings came to be constructed in the first place. Syrians know that bribes were paid. But then who were the bribes paid to? You can see why the laws choose not to go too deeply into the origins of these banlieues.

There are contradictions. At least one regional governor has tried to persuade citizens to stay in their ravaged homes – and not to leave with the busloads of rebel fighters to Idlib, the dustbin province of Syria which will surely suffer its own fire and death in the months to come (unless Russia persuades them to leave for Turkey). Talal al-Barazi, the governor of Homs, pleaded with its civilians not to travel away with the busloads of armed men escorted by the Russian army en route to Idlib or the Turkish border last year. He climbed onto one bus and promised its passengers that they could stay, that they would not be arrested or punished – until a Sunni cleric on the bus told al-Barazi quietly that the Islamist fighters had told the families they would be liquidated if they did not travel out of Homs. Al-Barazi, it’s said, may well be the next Syrian minister of reconciliation. But he will have a hard job after Law No 10.

So why the rush? Why now, when the war is still far from over, is it necessary to throw this legislation at the poor and the refugees and the displaced? True, there is likely to be a reorganisation of the internal security services, the mukhabarat, when the conflict is over – word has it that they will be placed under the control of the interior ministry in Damascus which might curb their often-freelance activities and brutality. And Bashar al-Assad knows that Syria’s continued existence comes only because of the Syrian army’s fighting abilities and the price it has paid – total military dead is now 87,000 – and with the help of the Russians. After this sacrifice, the army will have a major role in the rebuilding of Syria.

So what is the purpose of Law No 10? We’ve seen property confiscation in Syria before. When it was part of Nasser’s United Arab Republic (along with Egypt), farms and plantations were nationalised, along with 23 private banks and other companies. The Baathists did the same in 1963-65 on a bigger scale. Most of the companies taken during this period collapsed under corruption and bad management.

But this was small scale compared to Law No 10, which raises the all-important question of what kind of Syria Bashar al-Assad wants to see after the bloodletting is over and the Islamists are destroyed and all of Syria restored to central government control. Is this going to create the “more healthy society” of which he spoke last year? I guess it comes down to a simple equation: bad laws do not create “reconciliation”. And laws don’t win wars. They can restart them.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/04 ... n-the-war/
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Sun Jun 10, 2018 12:36 pm

It's been over a month since OPCW inspectors left Douma with samples, and still not a peep about test results. Zero, nada, zip, nothing.

Why? We were told that it takes 'up to three weeks' to do the tests.

The most recent Google News entry is Bellingcat's "What to Watch Out For in the Upcoming OPCW FFM Report on the Douma Chemical Attack" from May 30.

Watch out indeed.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Sun Jun 10, 2018 1:42 pm

The deafening OPCW silence on the Douma tests — assuming they were performed, which has not even been acknowledged — comes after hundreds of news reports in April and May about the OPCW collecting samples and returning home for tests.

https://www.google.com/search?num=50&ne ... p2LhY17G5w


"Wolf!" has been cried too many times.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:01 am

Very good article and story here exposing the “Syria Solidarity UK”/"syriauk" group as a pro-Western interventionist creation whose overlap with the White Helmets and other groups indicate funding and involvement by U.S. State Dept/CIA and parallel institutions in both the US and UK. Syriauk/SSUK's efforts consistently conform to regional US/UK/neocon strategies, and serve to rally support for military intervention and the illegal overthrow of Assad.


https://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-sol ... ch/5527476
“Syria Solidarity UK” Supporting Al Qaeda and Denying Free Speech
By Prof. Tim Anderson
Global Research, May 27, 2016

‘Syria Solidarity UK’ (SSUK), led by some British ‘leftists’, is strongly backing the US-led war on Syria and appears to support all the al Qaeda aligned armed groups. They use the pretence of concern for refugees while stoking a terrible war which drives those refugees.

Even after five years of proxy war, where it has become very clear that NATO states and the Gulf monarchies are using vicious extremist groups in an attempt to topple the Syrian Government, some small, deluded western ‘left’ groups still pretend this is a ‘revolution’.


I first became aware of the SSUK very recently when they lobbied a Greek academic conference (Crossing Borders) to have me removed as an invited keynote speaker. I had been invited to present on the relationship between the war on Syria and the European refugee crisis, after interest in my recent book, The Dirty War on Syria.

The SSUK is very different to the Syria Solidarity Movement SSM, which opposes the war on Syria. When I looked closer at the SSUK I saw it had been created in 2014 by members of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and/or splinter groups formed over 2013-2014, after a rape scandal within the SWP.

Spokesperson for the SSUK and SWP member Mark Boothroyd was joined by a number of his party comrades – including James Bloodworth, Razan Ghazzawi, Clay Claiborne, Kyle Orton and Paul Canning – in opposing my presentation at the conference. They had all backed the NATO bombing of Libya and now urge western arming of the al Qaeda linked groups and direct western intervention in Syria. I provide some detail of this below.

The SSUK split from the British Stop the War Coalition, which they criticised for ‘opposing any UK military involvement’ in Syria and for casting doubt on some of the claims against the Syrian Government, claiming (like the US Government) that Assad is ‘worse than ISIS … that most Syrian refugees are fleeing Assad’s violence’ (SSUK 2015). The SSUK also criticises Stop the War UK for casting doubt on the 2013 East Ghouta chemical weapons incident, which the armed Islamist groups had falsely blamed the Syrian Army (see Anderson 2015).

Mark Boothroyd (2015), makes it very clear that the SSUK backs the armed opposition, called ‘moderate rebels’ by Washington and several European states. This includes the Saudi-backed Jaysh al Islam, the Turkish coalition Jaysh al Fatah (led by the banned Jabhat al Nusra) and Ahrar as Sham. That latter group was reported in May 2016 as having killed 150 civilians in a series of car bombings along the Syrian coast (FARS News 2016).

All of the above groups have worked hand in glove, for many years, with the banned terrorist group Jabhat al Nusra, while the SSUK Facebook site opposes Iraqi Government and Syrian Government bombing of ISIS strongholds in Raqqa and Fallujah. According to the British SSUK, Arab Governments cannot fight banned terrorist organisations in their own countries. This is much the same line as Washington.

Invitation to “Crossing Borders” Conference

My invitation to the ‘Crossing Borders’ conference had come in February from a Greek academic:

GA: “We are having a conference on the refugee crisis in Lesvos. Please consider coming as keynote speaker … Maybe if you could speak about Syria and what you describe in your book [that] would be interesting to the audience.”

I responded: ‘The link between the wars of the New Middle East and the refugee crisis?’

GA: “Yes…exactly. That would be perfect since we want to give an anti-war tone to the conference. Just to be clear from the beginning CITS is only launching and so you will need to arrange expenses with your university.”

Three months later, after I had booked my flights to Greece, I received this message:

GA: “Unfortunately there has been some very negative feedback about your participation … Some other speakers have threatened not to come.”

The conference committee had received a petition from the SSUK, signed by 66 people, then a series of emails. The committee caved in very quickly, after being emailed by the anti-Syrian group.

GA: “They have connected your name with anti-left alliances [and] with for Assad people … many people from our list have been sending messages complaining and asking to be removed as speakers.”

Of course, it had always been clear that I supported the Syrian Government and opposed the war, based on the principle of self-determination for the Syrian people. More importantly, my book documented in detail the various myths created about the war.

It was an impressive achievement on the part of the SSUK to get 66 people to lobby the conference to remove one of its speakers. But why so much effort? Especially when the history of attempts to gag public speakers and ban books tend to attract much more attention. And why would any ‘left’ group so vehemently back yet another US-led Middle East war?

Who are the SSUK?

The SSUK (2016) proclaims its support for ‘the popular revolution against the Assad regime’. Boothroyd (2015) says the group does not support the Kurdish YPG as they are “not in conflict with the Assad regime, so don’t constitute part of the armed rebellion.” He cites with approval the ‘Free Syrian Army’, Jaysh al Fatah, Ahrar as Sham and Jaysh al Islam – all groups the US, Turkey and the Saudis openly back.

SSUK social media sites link up to western front organisations like the Syria Campaign and the White Helmets’, two of several ‘human rights’ front groups used to create ‘propaganda storms’ with distorted and fake information, helping escalate and prolong the war (Beeley 2016; Bartlett 2015).

The SSUK petition against me included Bissan Fakih, campaigner with The Syria Campaign, and Rafif Jouejati, director of the US-based charity the ‘FREE-Syria Foundation’. The latter was a spokesperson for the Local Coordinating Committees (LCC), which by late 2012 had aligned itself with the ‘Free Syrian Army’ (FSA) and Jabhat al Nusra. In 2013 Jouejati objected to the small scale of proposed US missile attacks on Syria, saying: “The LCC does not support a limited strike [on Syria]. As John Kerry said, this would be ‘unbelievably small’(Democracy Now 2013).

The petition included Australian Michael Karadjis, who has openly backed the official al Qaeda group in Syria, saying that ‘despite the jihadist [Jabhat al] Nusra leadership, much of its ranks are decent revolutionaries’ (Karadjis 2013). He also posted on his Facebook site his support for what would be an illegal and criminal Turkish-Saudi invasion of Syria:

“I know this won’t win points with 90% of my friends … but I would be in favour of a Turkish-Saudi action to drive Assad out. At very least it would be the lesser evil … I support providing the Free Syrian Army with massive supplies of anti-aircraft weaponry. I’m not sure how anyone can look at this and disagree. Short of that a regional action is, unfortunately, next best.”


Michael Karadjis was joined on the petition by Australian freelance journalist Antony Loewenstein who, in turn, was joined by the pro-Israel British journalist Nick Cohen and British journalist and SWP member James Bloodworth. The latter backs western intervention in Syria and has demanded ‘free speech’ when his own SWP is under attack (Bloodworth 2014). They all wanted to block my views on the conflict and its implications for refugees.

Under banners of ‘Protect civilians’ and ‘Listen to Syrians’, the SSUK FB site reproduces pro-ISIS propaganda. They cite with approval posts in ‘Solidarity with the peoples of Fallujah and Raqqa’, which complain about Iraqi, US, Kurdish, Iranian and Syrian attacks on ISIS in Raqqa and Fallujah, arguing: “Will Stop the War Coalition [UK] oppose the US-backed Iranian and Kurdish YPG blitzkriegs of Raqqa and Fallujah?” The SSUK links to a video from another British group which claims Iraqi Army attacks on ISIS in Fallujah represent “the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis”.

Peter Tatchell, a British gay activist, was one of those who emailed the conference organisers. He is a person who, even after the disaster in Libya, called for a no-fly zone in Syria. He disingenuously claimed that his ‘Don’t bomb Syria … no bomb zone’ placard did not mean ‘UK bombing of Syria’. But, after the NATO destruction of Libya, all intelligent people should understand what a ‘no fly zone’ means. Even conservative US academic reports, after the event, have demonstrated that more than ten times as many people died in Libya after the NATO intervention, on the ‘no fly zone’ pretext (Kuperman 2015).

Another signatory to the petition, British man Oz Katerji, supported the NATO ‘no fly’ intervention in Libya, and tries to justify it even after the disaster. He supports the armed groups in Syria. Further, he is a project coordinator for ‘Help Refugees UK’, and takes aid to the refugee flooded but Jabhat al Nusra-dominated town of Gaziantep in Turkey (Help Refugees UK 2016).

This highlights a dilemma with these ‘humanitarian’ al Qaeda supporters. They proclaim political support for the al Qaeda groups then, in the name of helping refugees, deliver aid to camps controlled by those same internationally banned terrorist organisations. This is a short step away from providing material support to terrorist groups.

Dr Rola Hallam, another of the signatories on the petition to gag me, is a doctor involved with the UK-based NGO ‘Hand in Hand for Syria’ (HHS). She supports US military intervention in Syria. HHS, backed by the BBC, was exposed by British investigator Robert Stuart for fabricating evidence over an alleged Syrian attack on a Syrian school in August 2013. The aim was clearly to create a scandal which would attract western military intervention.

Building a catalogue of evidence, Robert Stuart (2016) found the BBC sequences of the alleged school attack, ‘purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack … are largely, if not entirely, staged.’ Fabrications included the filmed commentaries from Dr Rola Hallam.

Amongst the other signatories on the SSUK petition were academic Thomas Pierret, who backed the NATO intervention in Libya and has since commented ‘Why should we be scared of statelessness in Syria? Libya is so much better than Syria without a state’. Razan Ghazzawi quotes with approval an article which says ‘the Western left should reject knee-jerk anti-imperialism’. Kyle Orton (2015) argues ‘NATO Was Right to Intervene in Libya’.

Similarly, Clay Clairborne regards the NATO-bombed catastrophe of Libya ‘a revolutionary success story’, arguing that Assad is behind al Qaeda (Clairborne 2015), even as the al Qaeda groups slaughter Syrian soldiers as well as civilians. Louis Proyect (2012), who calls himself ‘The Unrepentant Marxist’, attacks ‘the Islamophobic left’ for not supporting the campaigns to arm Islamist groups against Libya and Syria. He says he is ‘inspired by’ the Islamist attacks on Libya and Syria.

There is no extremist armed group in Syria that the SSUK and its allies have not backed, while they claim to support refugees that flee from war and the head choppers. Most displaced people within Syria seek refuge in government controlled areas, in Sweida, Damascus, Lattakia and Aleppo. They are clearly not ‘fleeing Assad’.

The SSUK never uses the sort of detailed evidence that I have applied in my book, yet their online campaign seemed to carry more weight with the ‘Crossing Borders’ committee. I simply ask my academic colleagues: what is wrong with reasonable public debate?

Sources

Anderson, Tim (2015) ‘The Dirty War on Syria: Chemical Fabrications, The East Ghouta Incident, Global Research, 12 December, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty- ... nt/5493698

Anderson, Tim (2016) The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance, Global Research, e-book available online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty- ... ce/5504372

Bartlett, Eva (2015) ‘“Human Rights” front groups (“Humanitarian Interventionalists”) Warring on Syria’, Fall, online: http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/tag/the-syria-campaign/

Beeley, Vanessa (2016) ‘George Soros: Anti-Syria Campaign Impresario’, 21st Century Wire, 22 April, online: http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/04/22/g ... mpresario/

Boothroyd, Mark (2015) ‘Who are the Syrians rebels?’ Syrian Solidarity UK, 19 December, online: http://www.syriauk.org/2015/12/who-are- ... ebels.html

Bloodworth, James (2014) ‘Shutting down abortion debates and banning the SWP – what a terrible week for free speech’, 21 November, online: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/com ... 75022.html

Clairborne, Clay (2014) ‘Why I consider Libya a revolutionary success story’, Linux Beach, 4 March, online: http://claysbeach.blogspot.com.au/2014/ ... onary.html

Cohen, Nick (2015) ‘Future generations will despise our ‘realism’ on Syria’, The Guardian, 13 September, online: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -and-assad

Democracy Now (2013) ‘As Assad Regime Accepts Russian Plan on Chemical Weapons, A Debate on Syria’s Path Forward’, 10 September, online: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/a ... ssian_plan

FARS News (2016) ‘Ahrar Al-Sham, Not ISIL, Responsible for Monday Blasts in Lattakia’, 24 may, online: http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13950304001226

Ghazzawi, Razzan (2012) ‘Libya and Syria: When anti-imperialism goes wrong | Pham Binh’, 5 July, online: https://razanghazzawi.org/2012/07/05/li ... pham-binh/

Ghazzawi, Razzan (2016) ‘Revolt and war in Syria five years on’, Socialist Worker, 8 March, online: https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/42301 ... e+years+on

Help Refugees UK (2016) ‘Turkey’, online: http://www.helprefugees.org.uk/tag/turkey/

Karadjis, Michael (2013) ‘Syrian rebels overwhelmingly condemn US bombing as an attack on revolution’, online: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/09 ... evolution/

Kuperman, Alan J. (2015) Obama’s Libya Debacle’, Foreign Affairs, 16 April, online: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles ... ya-debacle

Orton, Kyle (2015) ‘Why NATO Was Right To Intervene In Libya’, 21 October, online: https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/201 ... -in-libya/

Proyect, Louis (2012) ‘Libya, Syria, and left Islamophobia’, The Unrepentant Marxist, online: https://louisproyect.org/2012/07/23/lib ... amophobia/

Sinclair, Ian (2016) ‘Countering Peter Tatchell’s pro-war anti-war arguments on Syria’, Open Democracy, 15 January, online: https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/ian-si ... s-on-syria

SSUK (2015) Why Stop the war don’t want to listen to Syrians’, 12 November, online: http://leftfootforward.org/2015/11/why- ... o-syrians/

SSUK (2016) Syria Solidarity UK’, online: http://www.syriauk.org/p/about-us.html

SSUK FB (2016) Facebook Posts, online:

https://www.facebook.com/SyriaUKorg/

https://eternispring.wordpress.com/2016 ... tzkrieged/

https://www.facebook.com/doammuslims/vi ... 390090994/

Stuart, Robert (2013-2016) ‘Fabrication in BBC Panorama ‘Saving Syria’s Children’’, online: https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof. Tim Anderson, Global Research, 2016



I see more from Tim Anderson worth digging into.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:21 am

Typical:

Image
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Sat Jul 07, 2018 5:17 am

Well, it's all old hat now anyway. The Beeb World Service is now pretty much saying that the Syrian opposition terrorist proxy armies invading Syria are beaten and this particular stab at regime change is over. I went looking for the segment online but this was the nearest thing, it 'updates' us on the dragged-out OPCW findings:

This article is so dishonest, as is the "ongoing" OPCW "investigation" it reports on; emphasis added:

Syria war: 'Possible chlorine' at Douma attack site - watchdog

8 hours ago [July 6, 2017]

A chemical weapons watchdog says chlorine may have been used in April's attack on the Syrian city of Douma.

The interim report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said "various chlorinated organic chemicals" had been found but there was no evidence of nerve agents.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halogenation#Chlorination

Chlorination

See also: Photochlorination

Chlorination is generally highly exothermic. Both saturated and unsaturated compounds react directly with chlorine, the former usually requiring UV light to initiate homolysis of chlorine. Chlorination is conducted on a large scale industrially; major processes include routes to 1,2-dichloroethane (a precursor to PVC), as well as various chlorinated ethanes, as solvents.



"Chlorinated" chemicals are found everywhere.

I bet ten drachmas that the big delay with the OCPW report is intramural haggling over the truth and how much should or should not be included.

Once again, the only source of accounts on the ground are the usual USAID/CIA-backed "medics" and "rescue workers"—including a still of a kid getting hosed down, from the clearly staged (and debunked) video the White Helmets issued.

Medics in Douma reported on 7 April that more than 500 patients had been brought to medical facilities with symptoms suggesting exposure to a chemical agent.

Rescue workers also reported a strong smell of chlorine in the air following an air strike that targeted two locations in Douma.



I don't think the architects and managers of the invasion and overall regime change effort in Syria are going to give up that easily. So, besides some angry last-minute Israeli bombing of Damascus suburbs, and a fresh PR approach, I wonder what comes next?

- Assassination?

- Direct military action, enabled by some 'defining' event?

- Acceptance and recalibration of strategy to work with/around Assad?

- other?
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:10 pm

The BBC was actually forced by outcry to correct the original headline on that story, in which they didn't bother with the "may have" part. OPCW claims no certainty at all. For the obvious reasons you're saying.

Related, everyone's missing the latest Skripal development.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby conniption » Sat Jul 07, 2018 6:57 pm

Moon of Alabama came out with articles yesterday and today about the "chemical weapon attack" in Douma...

MoA
(embedded links + comments)

July 06, 2018

Syria - OPCW Issues First Report Of 'Chemical Weapon Attack' in Douma

On April 7 2018 Syrian 'rebels' claimed that the Syrian government used chlorine gas and Sarin in an attack on the besieged Douma suburb near the Syrian capital Damascus. They published a series of videos which showed the dead bodies of mainly women and children.

During the night the incident allegedly happened Douma was hit with artillery and air strikes in retaliation for earlier deadly attacks by some 'rebels' splinter groups on Damascus city. Jaish al-Islam, the main 'rebel' group in Douma, had already agreed to leave towards Idleb governorate.

The claim of the 'chemical attack' was made shortly after U.S. President Trump had announced that he wanted U.S. troops to leave Syria. It was designed to "pull him back in" which it indeed did.

Moon of Alabama published several pieces on the issue:
April 8 - Syria - Timelines Of 'Gas Attacks' Follow A Similar Scheme (Update II)
April 9 - Syria - Any U.S. Strike Will Lead to Escalation
April 11 - Syria - A U.S. Attack Would Be Futile - But Serve A Purpose - by M. K. Bhadrakumar
April 11 - Trump Asks Russia To Roll Over - It Won't
April 12 - Syria - Threat Of Large War Recedes But May Come Back
April 13 - Syria - Manipulated Videos Fail To Launch World War III - Updated
April 14 - F.U.K.U.S. Strikes Syria - Who Won?
April 16 - Syria - Pentagon Hides Attack Failure - 70+ Cruise Missiles Shot Down
April 19 - Syria - Who Is Stalling The OPCW Investigation In Douma?


It seemed obvious from the very first claims of the 'gas attack' that it did not happen at all. The Syrian government had no motive to use any chemical weapon or an irritant like chlorine in Douma. It had already won. The incident was obviously staged, like others before it, to drag the U.S. into a new attack on Syria.

Even a prominent opposition outlet said that no 'chemical attack' had taken place. As noted on April 9:


Interestingly the MI6 outlet in Coventry, the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights (SOHR), does not confirm a 'gas' incident. In its version of events some 40 people died after their shelter collapsed:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights issued a higher death toll, saying at least 80 people were killed in Douma, including around 40 who died from suffocation. But it said the suffocations were the result of shelters collapsing on people inside them.


Main stream media, which have quoted SOHR for years, now ignore it and report of a 'chemical attack' as if it were a proven reality.


The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) send a Fact Finding Mission (FFM) to Douma and investigated the incident. Today it published an interim report and some technical results:

OPCW designated labs conducted analysis of prioritised samples. The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.


The "Sarin" organophosphate use the 'rebels' claimed is thereby debunked. No degradation products of such chemicals were found. The "various chlorinated organic chemicals" are unsurprising. Chlorine is widely used for water purification and cleaning and "chlorinated organic chemicals" will be found in any household.

In the technical notes of the OPCW report note that one of its laboratory found "dichloroacetic acid", "trichloroacetic acid", "chloral hydrate", "trichlorophenol" and "chlorphenol" in some of the samples its fact finding mission took at the claimed incident sites. These are all substances that are no surprise in any upbuild environment and especially within any home. Dichloroacetic acid" is for example "a trace product of the chlorination of drinking water". Chloral hydrate is likewise "a minor side-product of the chlorination of water when organic residues such as humic acids are present". The other substances are also not uncommon and of various household uses.

The other OPCW laboratory found only "No CWC-scheduled chemicals" and "2,4,6-trinitrotoluene" residues in the samples. Trinitrotoluene, also known as TNT, is an explosive widely used in military ammunition. The second laboratory does not report the chlorinated organic chemicals the other laboratory found.

The preliminary OPCW report says nothing about the concentrations in which these substances were found. Without knowing the concentrations, which may may be extremely low, one can not come to further conclusion. The report includes none of the witness statements the fact finding mission took. In various TV reports the medical personal of the one hospital involved in the stunt said that none of their patients were affected by chlorine or chemical weapons.

After the 'rebels' claimed the 'chemical attack' and published their staged videos of stacked bodies U.S. President Trump tweeted that he would retaliate for the strike. Politically he could not pull back from that even when Secretary of Defense Mattis voiced his doubts about the 'rebel' claims. Trump attacked Syria with a series of cruise missiles most of which were shot down by the Syrian air defense. A civil chemical laboratory was destroyed during the attack but no one was hurt.

The now published preliminary OPCW report reinforces the doubts about the 'rebel' claims. There was no 'chemical attack' in Douma. The incident was staged.

One hopes that Trump has learned from this episode and will in future refrain from violent threats over incidents for which no plausible and vetted evidence is provided.

Posted by b on July 6, 2018 at 03:23 PM | Permalink

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/07/sy ... douma.html


~~~

MoA
(embedded links & comments)

July 07, 2018

Syria - Mainstream Media Lie About Watchdog Report On The 'Chemical Attack' In Douma

Some mainstream media are outright lying about the OPCW report on the alleged 'chemical attack' in Douma.

The Washington Post writes:

[A] global watchdog concluded that chlorine was indeed used in the city of Douma a day before rebel forces surrendered there.
...
In an interim report released Friday, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said its inspectors had discovered traces of “various chlorinated organic chemicals” across two sites it inspected.


The OPCW did not conclude at all that "chlorine was indeed used". It found some chemical compounds which have chlorine, carbon and hydrogen in various configurations as their main elements. There are hundreds if not thousands of "chlorinated organic chemicals". A plastic pipe made from polyvenylchlorid (PVC = (C2H3Cl)n) is made of the same elements. One could call it a "chlorinated organic chemical". Burning something made of PVC will releases various compounds many of which will themselves be "chlorinated organic chemicals". But finding residues of a burned plastic pipe or isolation in a home does not mean that chlorine gas was used in that place. Several of the compounds the OPCW found result from using chlorine to disinfect water. They can be found within the chlorinated water and about anywhere where chlorinated water was used.

The BBC made a similar 'mistake'. It headlined "Syria war: Douma attack was chlorine gas - watchdog".

Image
bigger

It took extensive social-media outrage and several hours for the BBC to correct its 'mistake'. It now headlines: Syria war: 'Possible chlorine' at Douma attack site - watchdog. That is better but still a lie. Nowhere do the OPCW report or its Technical Statement (pdf) use the expression 'possible chlorine'. No editorial note was added by the BBC to reveal that the original dispatch was changed.

The Daily Beast headlines: Watchdog: Chlorine Was Used in Syria’s Chemical Attack

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons determined that chlorine was used in the chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma, but found no evidence that nerve agents were involved.


That is an outright lie. The OPCW report does not say that chlorine was used. It mentions chlorine only twice and only in relation to previous incidents.

The Independent, AlJazeerah, the Australian ABC News and others offer the same lie to their readers.

A possible reason why so many outlets made this 'mistake' is the British news agency Reuters which first distributed this false claim:

Image
bigger

Reuters has since changed the headline and text of that item from "chlorine" to "chlorinated chemicals" but attached no note of that change. Moreover it does not explain that "chlorinated chemicals" will be found about anywhere.

It is doubtful that these 'mistakes' were made out of sloppiness. The writers likely intend to create the false impression that Syria was responsible for a 'chemical attack' that did not happen. They would further have to explain that the U.S., France and the UK launched a large cruise missile attack on Syria without any reason.

Posted by b on July 7, 2018 at 02:48 PM | Permalink

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/07/sy ... douma.html


~~~

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5ata4jDyk
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Sat Jul 07, 2018 7:20 pm

conniption wrote:Moon of Alabama came out with articles yesterday and today


Excellent updates and summaries, thanks. :thumbsup
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby chump » Mon Jul 09, 2018 2:01 pm


OPCW Interim Report on Douma Attack: Here are the FACTS
Posted on July 9, 2018 by willyloman
by Scott Creighton

(video found at end of article)

As good as most of the researchers doing REAL work on this story are… MOST of them are MISSING THE POINT of what the new report actually says and more importantly, how it differs from the June 13, 2018 OPCW FFM report covering three incidents that took place in 2017.

Yes. The report states that they found no evidence of the use of Sarin gas at any of the locations they checked. That is true. But what most focus on now is the fact that the MSM is reporting the report clearly states that chlorine gas WAS DEFINITELY used at a number of the sites, which they mistakenly claim gives proof that Assad did in fact use chlorine gas as a weapon on those civilians and by extension the White Helmets were right to do that little scene in the hospital washing off kids and terrorizing them.

Though the MSM is clearly misrepresenting the study’s findings to a large degree, the average alternative “news” presenters are doing something very similar. They aren’t telling you the full story and instead are focusing on how chlorinated organic chemicals are commonplace and could have been the result of many other sources OTHER THAN a chemical attack by the Syrian government forces.

Take a look at what the report actually says:

“The results of the analysis of the prioritised samples submitted to OPCW designated laboratories were received by the FFM team on 22 May 2018. No organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties.”

“Various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from Locations 2 and 4, along with residues of explosive. These results are reported in Annex 3. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is ongoing.”


As you can see, they found no evidence Sarin gas was used. For all intents and purposes, that is important, but even the BS statement issued by the White House days after the attack downplayed the possibility of the use of Sarin gas. It was always about chlorine primarily.

But then notice that second part where they claim they found the chlorinated organic chemicals in JUST locations 2 and 4. On RT and places like Moon of Alabama and The Last American Vagabond and others (Vanessa Beeley for one) you will find folks trying to explain the presence of those compounds away in a variety of ways:

“The OPCW did not conclude at all that “chlorine was indeed used”. It found some chemical compounds which have chlorine, carbon and hydrogen in various configurations as their main elements. There are hundreds if not thousands of “chlorinated organic chemicals”. A plastic pipe made from polyvenylchlorid (PVC = (C2H3Cl)n) is made of the same elements. One could call it a “chlorinated organic chemical”. Burning something made of PVC will releases various compounds many of which will themselves be “chlorinated organic chemicals”. But finding residues of a burned plastic pipe or isolation in a home does not mean that chlorine gas was used in that place. Several of the compounds the OPCW found result from using chlorine to disinfect water. They can be found within the chlorinated water and about anywhere where chlorinated water was used. ”Moon of Alabama


Though technically true… the fact that these compounds were NOT found in ALL the other locations undermines this argument. If this stuff was so readily available in occupied places like Douma, would you not expect to find them everywhere you looked? If you can create a positive test result from the burning of PVC plumbing from buildings, wouldn’t it turn up in all of the locations? Of course it would.

Their argument undermines itself.

So what does that mean?

All you have to do is read the actual report and it’s accompanying statements and you will find the answer to that question.

The very next paragraph from my quote above EXPLAINS LOCATIONS 2 AND 4 to the point where you don’t even have to SPECULATE or try to assume PVC burning or chlorinated water tablets or ANY of that stuff… the OPCW tells you everything you need too know:

“The FFM team visited Locations 2 and 4, where it observed the presence of an industrial gas cylinder on a top floor patio at Location 2, and the presence of a similar cylinder lying on the bed of a top floor apartment at Location 4. Close to the location of each cylinder there were crater-like openings in the respective reinforced concrete roofs. Work is ongoing to assess the association of these cylinders with the incident, the relative damage to the cylinders and the roofs, and how the cylinders arrived at their respective locations.”


The ONLY locations where they found chlorinated organic chemical traces were at the locations where they found those HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS-LOOKING yellow cylinders lying on an unbroken bed and sitting neatly on a balcony.

That’s it.

But notice what they said in that SAME paragraph:

“Work is ongoing to assess the association of these cylinders with the incident, the relative damage to the cylinders and the roofs, and how the cylinders arrived at their respective locations.“


No PVC or water treatment pills speculation needed. They ONLY found these compounds in the locations where these STAGED-LOOKING cylinders were found and they themselves seem to suggest they might suspect they were PUT THERE for dramatic effect.

Ergo… nope. It wasn’t Assad and even OPCW seems to suspect this line of “evidence”

Two important aspects of the newly released OPCW FFM report on Douma are being overlooked. 1. They state they cannot determine how canisters arrived at location where chlorinated organic chemicals were found and 2. they were attacked by “sleeper cells” in Douma while trying to conduct their investigation.



https://americaneveryman.com/2018/07/09 ... the-facts/
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