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how many days between Le Pen's and Spicer's holocaust revisionism?Spicer Says Hitler Didn’t Use Chemical Weapons 'In The Way Assad Used Them' (VIDEO)
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/s ... poison-gas
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.@POTUS @realDonaldTrump MUST FIRE SEAN SPICER NOW FOR ENGAGING IN HOLOCAUST DENIAL. OUR STATEMENT BELOW. #Antisemitism #NeverAgain
More at: https://louisproyect.org/2017/04/11/exp ... ds-rescue/“Experts” coming to Bashar al-Assad’s rescue
Scott Ritter
Finally we come to the guy who would seem most trustworthy—Scott Ritter, whose claim to fame was debunking WMD hysteria in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
The Huffington Post, a magazine generally free of conspiracy theorizing, allows Ritter to hold forth on Assad’s innocence in an article titled “Wag The Dog — How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media”.
Showing utter indifference to documenting his findings, Ritter states:
For a thorough dismantling of Ritter’s crude conspiracism, I recommend Stanley Heller’s New Politics article.International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.
In journalism school, you supposedly learn that reporting involves answering: who, when, where, why and how. So “who” are the groups conducting international investigations? RT.com? Press TV? Abby Martin? Alex Jones? Paul Antonopoulos? Fuck if I know.
But I would recommend the Wikipedia article on chemical attacks in Syria. A chart indicates that most of them take place in rebel-controlled (or formerly rebel-controlled) areas like Idlib or Homs. The only ones taking place in government-controlled areas are in Jobar, the very locale the UN admits could not be verified.
Ritter offers up the Russian narrative, namely that the jihadists controlling the town were involved in making crude land-mines laced with a mixture of chlorine and white phosphorus that were used in Aleppo. I invite my readers to find a reference to such a weapon ever being used in Aleppo or anywhere else on the planet. Other than Mintpress, RT.com and Sputnik News of course.
Ritter takes aim at the White Helmets, who he claims exploited the sarin gas fatalities to depict Assad as a war criminal. When you are writing this sort of propaganda, smearing these first responders as al-Qaeda operatives is de rigueur.
Moving right along, he refers to townspeople reports of “pungent odors” at the time of the attack. Since sarin gas is odorless, this falsifies the claim that it was used. However, speaking of falsehoods, there is no reference anywhere to odors except in a Wikipedia article that cited a Syria Deeply article to that effect. Apparently, Ritter did not bother to check the Syria Deeply article since it makes zero references to odors. Wikipedia evidently screwed up and Ritter failed to notice that.
Doubling down on his false reporting, Ritter claims that White Helmet first responders also referred to a pungent odor. Good luck trying to find a reference to this anywhere.
Lang, Wilkerson and Ritter loom large on the Assadist “left” because this is a milieu that has little interest in or background in Marxism. For them, everything is a conspiracy. History does not take place because of the class struggle but because secret agents plot to make things happen. If you want to read an article that encapsulates the mindset of these three nitwits, just go to Infowars and you’ll see them beaten by their own game. How we ended up in 2017 with a left mired in conspiracy theories about Syria is up to future historians to unravel. All I can say is that anybody with a functioning brain must break with this shit for the sake of their sanity and for the sake of revolutionary change.
https://louisproyect.org/2017/04/11/exp ... ds-rescue/
Lawrence Wilkerson
Moving right along, we meet Lawrence Wilkerson, another former government official who was Colin Powell’s chief aide during the war on Iraq. Wilkerson was interviewed by Abby Martin on Empire Files, a Telesur program that is in line with Venezuela’s tawdry support for the Assad dictatorship. This interview appeared on the Kremlin-supporting 21st Century Wire as vindicating Assad even though it was conducted in 2015. It has also appeared on Veterans Today, another Assadist outlet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgig1QVU2lY
Oddly enough, Wilkerson describes himself both as a Republican and a firm supporter of Thomas Piketty’s ideas. The first 6 minutes of the interview consists of him reeling off the standard denunciations of US foreign policy and plutocracy that makes him sound like a Green Party candidate but afterwards goes off the rails wehen Martin asks him how he could have written Powell’s infamous WMD speech to the UN.
At 15:00 in the Youtube clip, he directly addresses claims against Assad for using sarin gas. He says that he spoke to everybody he knew in the “intelligence community” if they could confirm Assad had ever used chemical weapons and they all said no. You think maybe Patrick Lang was the first guy he phoned?
While he is speaking, a still image of a Global Research article headlined Syria UN Mission Report Confirms that “Opposition” Rebels Used Chemical Weapons against Civilians and Government Forces appears during Wilkerson’s voice-over. This article claims that the UN documented rebel use of sarin gas just before the East Ghouta attack, which supposedly proves that they used it in there as well but this is falsified by a December 2013 UN report: “However, in the absence of primary information on the delivery system(s) and environmental samples collected and analysed under the chain of custody, the United Nations Mission could not establish the link between the victims, the alleged event and the alleged site.” [emphasis added]
It never fails to amaze me that Assadists can advance such easily falsifiable claims. Do they think that everybody operates within their Islamophobic comfort zone?
Mulligan » Tue Apr 11, 2017 12:32 pm wrote:Trump looking for a wartime ratings bump?WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday accused the Russian government of engaging in a cover-up of the chemical weapons attack last week by Syrian forces that prompted American airstrikes, saying that United States intelligence and numerous contemporaneous reports confirmed that the Syrians used sarin gas on their own people.
In a declassified four-page report that details United States intelligence on the chemical weapons attack, the White House asserted that the Syrian and Russian governments have sought to confuse the world community about the assault through disinformation and “false narratives.”
Senior White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the government’s view, said Russia’s goal was to cover up Syrian regime culpability.
The officials said they could not comment on the possibility that the Russian government knew in advance of Syria’s plan to carry out the chemical weapons attack, or of a subsequent attack on a hospital that was treating victims.
But one official said that, given the history of close cooperation between the Syrian and Russian militaries, Moscow must answer for the attacks. Pentagon officials have said that Russian personnel were at the Syrian base used to launch the chemical weapons attack.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/worl ... house.html
Charles M. BlowVerified account @CharlesMBlow 7h7 hours ago
So, if concentration camps were just "Holocaust centers," I guess slave ships were just transatlantic ferries…
Megan Amram @meganamram 6h6 hours ago
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Holocaust Centers? Sorry, I meant Murder Marts. Wait no, sorry, Ethnic Cleansing Playgrounds. Jew Pounds. Wait
Nah...Do as we say not as we do...tapitsbo » Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:47 am wrote:"We're not going into Syria"
nevermind the thousands of US troops already there
coming right up: erdogan's constitutional reform and the US leading the SDF into Raqqa, sure to be a popular move! (not)
The best President and the best cake. Amazing, incredible, brilliant, genius.“I was sitting at the table we had finished dinner we’re now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen,” Trump said, gesturing at how large the cake was (about the size of a biggish infant). “And President Xi was enjoying it. And I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded, what do you do? And we made a determination to do. So the missiles were on the way.”
“So I said, Mr. President, let me explain something to you—this is during —we’ve just fired 59 missiles, all of which hit by the way. Unbelievable, from hundreds of miles away, all of which hit, amazing, so incredible, it’s brilliant, it’s genius, our technology, our equipment is better than anybody by a factor of five...” he continues, becoming slightly distracted and embarking upon a tangent in which he praises our military equipment for functioning properly (though, to be fair, that’s quite unusual for things—missiles or otherwise—with the Trump name on it).
“So what happens is, I said, we just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq—”
“Heading towards Syria?” Bartiromo corrects him.
“Yes, heading toward Syria.”
