Reviving the ‘Chemical Weapons’ Lie: New US-UK Calls for Regime Change, Military Attack Against Syria
Here it comes again. As the enemies of peace continue to pressure a new US President into deeper war commitments overseas, and as Washington’s Deep State works relentlessly opposing Russian moves in Syria at every turn, the war drums have started again – beating harder than ever now, clamouring for a new US-led attack on Syria [...]
Here it comes again. As the enemies of peace continue to pressure a new US President into deeper war commitments overseas, and as Washington’s Deep State works relentlessly opposing Russian moves in Syria at every turn, the war drums have started again – beating harder than ever now, clamouring for a new US-led attack on Syria. This morning we saw the familiar theme emerge, and just in time to provide a convenient backdrop to this week’s Brussels’ ‘Peace Talks’ and conference on “Syria’s Future”.
The US-led ‘Coalition’ prepares to make its end-run into Syria to ‘Retake Raqqa,’ and impose its Safe Zonesin order to partition Syria, more media demonization of the Syrian government appears to be needed by the West.
On cue, the multi-billion dollar US and UK media machines sprung into overdrive this morning over reports based primarily from their own ‘activist’ media outlets. Aleppo Media Centerand others embedded in the Al Nusra-dominated terrorist stronghold of Idlib, Syria, alongside their media counterpart the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) funded by the UK and EU, are all now claiming that the Syrian and Russian Airforces have launched a chemical weapons airstrike killing civilians in Idlib.
The alleged “chemical airstrikes” are said to have taken place in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, about 50km south of the city of Idlib.
Predictably, the BBC and other similar reports by CNN, have triggered a wave of ‘consensus condemnation’ and indignation by the usual voices, the UN’s Staffan de Mistura, Francois Hollande, and, of course, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who said that President Bashar al-Assad “would be guilty of a war crime” if it somehow be proven that his ‘regime’ was responsible.
“Bombing your own civilians with chemical weapons is unquestionably a war crime and they must be held to account,” he said (reported by BBC).
But is the mainstream media’s version of events what actually happened?
The BBC claims in their article that, “Opposition activists said Syrian government or Russian warplanes carried out the strikes.” This claim should be checked against any Russian air sorties scheduled for the same period. As of this morning, Russia’s defence ministry has stated that it had not carried out any air strikes the area.
The problem here is that the BBC and others are not only taking ‘opposition activists’ reports of a chemical attack at face value, they are also elevating claims that the Syrian and Russian airforces were then later hitting the medical clinics who were treating the survivors:
“Later, aircraft fired rockets at local clinics treating survivors, medics and activists said.”
As with so many other previous reports on Syria, the BBC, CNN and AP’s reporting relies exclusively on “opposition activists” and “opposition media agencies,” including the ‘pro-opposition’ Step News agency’, the Edlib Media Center (EMC), and ‘opposition journalists’ like photographer Hussein Kayal, as well as an unnamed “AFP news agency journalist”.
The unnamed “AFP journalist” is particularly interesting, as it seems to be the source of a key portion of the BBC’s version of events:
“An AFP news agency journalist saw a young girl, a woman and two elderly people dead at a hospital, all with foam still visible around their mouths.”
The journalist also reported that the same facility was hit by a rocket on Tuesday afternoon, bringing down rubble on top of doctors treating the injured.”
However, as you read further down the BBC report, the story gets less certain, as the story becomes very loose:
“The source of the projectile was not clear, but the EMC and the opposition Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC) network said warplanes had targeted several clinics.”
After their source the SOHR refused to say which “chemical” was supposedly dropped, the BBC quickly moved in to fill in the blanks by framing the story that the Syrian-Russian Airforces had launched a “Sarin Attack”.
“The SOHR said it was unable to say what exactly was dropped. However, the EMC and LCC said it was believed to be the nerve agent Sarin, which is highly toxic and considered 20 times as deadly as cyanide.”
At no point in its reporting does the BBC ever express any skepticism that maybe their ‘activist’ sources could be providing false or misleading information. Ultimately, these reports can be used to trigger renewed calls by Western officials for military strikes against the ‘Syrian Regime’ – which was exactly what happened today after these news stories were circulated. Within a few hours after these reports circulated, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R, Illinois) came on CNN with Wolf Blitzer who asked Kinzinger point blank: What can be done to remove this regime? Kinzinger then replied bycalling outright for US airstrikes to “Take out the Assad Regime in Syria”, including “cratering their airstrips so no planes can take off” and creating a “No Fly Zone” over Syria.
These statements, as bombastic as they may sound, are serious and should not be taken casually. The problem is they are based on a series of lies. Of course, Kinzinger was followed on-air by John McCain protesting against US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent comments this week that, “The Syrian people should be able to choose their own (political) future” – effectively holding the overwhelming majority of Syrian in contempt for supporting their government.
CNN Senior Middle East correspondent Arwa Damon also chimed in with Blitzer from New York, and without any real evidence presented as to what has happened and who is to blame, she swiftly concluded that the Idlib “chemical attack” was the work of ‘the regime’ and that America cannot stand back idly and do nothing, and how this would show a “lack of humanity,”
The BBC does briefly mention an alternative report, but carefully tried to discredit it in the court of political opinion by labelling it as from “Pro-Government journalists,” stated here:
“Pro-government journalists later cited military sources as saying there had been an explosion at an al-Qaeda chemical weapons factory in Khan Sheikhoun that was caused either by an air strike or an accident.”
This story of Syria striking a munitions facility is just as likely, if not more so, than the current conspiracy making the rounds in the Western mainstream and Gulf media, and was actually reported by TASS news agency out of Moscow on April 4th, but rather than follow-up on this, the BBC, CNN and the mainstream chorus have immediately written it off and opted instead to pursue the narrative which will allow them to expedite the military escalation which they have expressed on record since at least 2013. If this were a criminal prosecution, the rebel-terrorist-coalition axis has the overwhelming primary motive, as well as expressed intent to escalate – documented on countless occasions. So why is their no rational line of inquiry here?
As expected, the UN affiliated chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, quickly announced they were “seriously concerned” about the alleged chemical attack, and that they were now “gathering and analysing information from all available sources”. One hopes that this will entail more than just looking at ‘activist’ or White Helmets material being circulated on the US and western media.
Incredibly, Kinzinger also said on national TV with CNN that people should ignore any stories which DO NOT implicate the Syrian government waged chemical attacks against its own people in East Ghouta in 2013 – and that these should be dismissed as “fake news” put out by ‘the Russians and the FSB.’ By this statement, Kinzinger is essentially saying that award-winning American journalists Seymour Hersh and Robert Parry are akin to being Russian agents. Many in Official Washington pose the fallacious argument that “Obama failed to enforce the Red Line in Syria, and let Assad get away with it (in 2013)”. If we go by the actual facts (see research bibliography below) of the 2013 Ghouta incident, then Assad never crossed the ‘Red Line,’ but the US and Gulf-backed ‘rebels’ absolutely did.
These are the same ‘rebels which Adam Kinzinger himself travelled to northern Syria circa 2013-2014 to provide his personal assurances that these terrorist fighters would be receiving US weapons and TOW missiles which arguably, is responsible for extended the life of this needless proxy war in Syria.
So based on the facts of the Ghouta chemical incident, Rep. Kinzinger is actually wrong and lying in his capacity as a high-ranking House Committee member – and doing so with no accountability from CNN whilst broadcasting to a national audience in the United States. The result of this is millions of Americans and politicians are left misinformed of important events – once again, led by misinformation into another war. This is the fundament problem with mainstream media’s own fake news – it leads to wars, many of them illegal, and always waged on false pretences.
In 2013, the US and UK went on an all-out propaganda blitz to try and implicate the Syrian Government in advance of war votes in both Washington and London. The campaign failed.
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
“If you have nukes, never give them up–If you don’t have them, get them”Dan Coats, Director of National IntelligenceThose were the words of President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, about the lessons taught from the U.S. destruction of Libya and the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi.That is why North Korea is a nuclear power. That is the reality and eventually the U.S. will have to accept “Mutually Assured Madness“. The U.S. has nobody to blame for its self-inflected wounds. It is called Blowback.The propaganda mill and the mainstream media greatly exaggerate the US national security risk to the American people, and ...
A good tradition of the British and the West European colonialismOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Join the debate on our Twitter feed: @OvsishteRead our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Belgian Congo
Berlin Olympic Stadium (14-05- 1938). England's national team is in white kitsIt’s that time of year again – when Britain’s “poppy fascism” dominates public life. Television presenters are perhaps the most conspicuous exponents, whereby the paper facsimile of the little red flower must be donned on all lapels.Now weeks ahead of the official commemoration day, more and more Britons, including TV personalties, are pinning the poppy in public.It may seem innocuous, but there is a disturbing authoritarianism to the increasing custom. Those who don’t wear the symbol commemorating Britain’s war dead are liable to be castigated and abused for being ...
The UK Parliament just confirmed what the alternative media has been saying for years.Specifically, a new report from the bipartisan House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee – based on interviews with all of the key British decision-makers, review of documents, and on-the-ground investigations in Africa – found that the Libyan war was based on lies, that it destroyed the country, and that it spread terrorism far and wide.The War Based On Bogus Intelligence … Like the Iraq WarInitially, the report finds that the threat to civilians from Libyan government forces was dramatically overstated:Former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, who introduced ...
US foreign policy has for decades been predicated on achieving and maintaining global peace, security and stability. In reality, it has for over a century constituted an overreaching desire to achieve and maintain global hegemony.And where US efforts focus on achieving hegemony, division and destruction follow. From the Middle East to Eastern Europe, and from Southeast Asia to the Korean Peninsula, US intervention politically or militarily all but guarantee escalating tensions, uncertain futures, socioeconomic instability and even armed conflict.The Middle East and North Africa US efforts in the Middle East since the conclusion of the first World War have focused ...
Professor David Ray Griffin is a tenacious person. He has written a number of carefully researched books that demonstrate the extraordinary shortcomings in the official account of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the subsequent anthrax attack. He has provided the mountains of evidence completely ignored by the US government’s account and the presstitute media.In his recently published latest book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World , Professor Griffin demonstrates how 9/11 was used by the Zionist Neoconservatives, the Cheney/Bush regime, and the military/security complex with the complicity of Congress and ...
SINCHON COUNTY, North Korea–Over the past few years the Korean people have been able to expose the truth about a number of atrocities by Washington’s military forces during the 1950–53 Korean War. Many others, however, remain covered up and receive virtually no mention outside the Korean peninsula. One such massacre took place in Sinchon, a city located in what is today North Korea.During the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists leadership delegation’s visit to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), we toured the Sinchon Museum, which documents what north Koreans consider the worst atrocity to have taken place in ...
On December 19, 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the appointment of Ambassador Frank G. Wisner as the Special Representative of the US Secretary of State to the Kosovo Status Talks.Who is Frank G. Wisner, Jr.?If his name sounds familiar that is because he is the son of Frank Gardiner Wisner, Sr., the CIA agent most responsible for the recruitment of Nazis by the US government after World War II. A former member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II precursor to the CIA, Frank G. Wisner, Sr., was one of the most infamous ...
Recapitulation of the Facts of the Korean WarNovember 7, 1950: “Just when there was a lull in the fighting and it looked as if peace were possible, MacArthur staged a gigantic and murderous raid directly across from the Chinese frontier, destroying most of a city in an area where bombings had been forbidden to prevent border violations.” “There were reports,” The New York Times said October 15, that General MacArthur had ordered the first bombings of North Korean cities without authorization from Washington.” “General Stratemeyer, commander of the Far East Air Forces described the attack: ‘when fighter planes swept the ...
The worst mistake in U.S. history was the conversion after World War II of the U.S. government from a constitutional, limited-government republic to a national-security state. Nothing has done more to warp and distort the conscience, principles, and values of the American people, including those who serve in the U.S. military.A good example of how the national-security state has adversely affected the thinking of U.S. soldiers was reflected in an op-ed entitled “What We’re Fighting For” that appeared in the February 10, 2017, issue of the New York Times. Authored by an Iraq War veteran named Phil Klay, the article ...
The United States is killing entire families in Raqqa, Syria, and enabling Saudi Arabia to do the same in Yemen.In June of this year, the U.S. led a campaign to retake the city of Raqqa from ISIS fighters while the Russian and Syrian militaries were also attempting to do the same thing. In the first week of fighting, U.N. war crimes investigators warned that the U.S. had already killed 300 civilians from air strikes alone in that seven day period.Rather than heed that warning, the U.S. has continued the same strategy of pounding Raqqa into the ground despite the likelihood of civilian casualties. Pentagon ...
PrefaceThe article deals with relations between on the one hand the supporters of pan-European identity, which has to take the place of the particular national ones, and on the other hand the proponents of maintaining specific national identities as the top priority within the European Union (the EU). Certainly, the European Union continues to expand its borders, individual national currencies are becoming unified into the common EU currency - Euro (€), and the political and economic climates are gravitating towards pan-continental unification. However, what does this unification process mean in terms of identity? The crucial question is: Will the success ...
How can it be that in virtually all of the Presidential-candidate head-to-head Democratic versus Republican polling that was done of both Democratic and Republican candidates during the primaries, the preferred Democratic candidate against any one of the Republican candidates was Bernie Sanders, but he almost certainly won’t be that Party’s nominee (and there’s more on that here); and the preferred Republican candidate against either one of the Democratic candidates was John Kasich, but he certainly won’t be the Republican nominee?Sanders and Kasich also scored the highest in his respective Party for net favorability rating, but almost certainly neither candidate will ...
American capitalism is based on plunder. With the continental USA plundered, American capitalism hoped to continue enriching itself by plundering Russia as it did under Yeltsin, carefully including the Russian “Atlanticist Integrationists” in the spoils in order to have support from the liberal, progressive forces in Russia for stripping Russia of its assets. But Putin more or less put a halt to the American/Israeli rape of Russia, although it still continues through the neoliberal economics that Harvard brainwashed into the Russian central bank and economics profession. Brainwashed Russian economists are the main reason Washington is able to punish a powerful ...
On July 11, 1995, two NATO warplanes bombed Serbian forces, advancing on Srebrenica. But due to the bad weather and the fact that Serbian forces were holding French and Dutch prisoners of war, NATO called off what was to be a massive bombing campaign. Late in the afternoon, Serbian general Mladic and other commanders entered into Srebrenica. They had won, for the moment. This loss by NATO could not accept and through indirect manipulation and false representation of the facts, US and NATO slandered the Serbs and successfully changed the presentation of a legal military operation. Radio Voice of Russia ...
The chronic want of food and water, the lack of sanitation and medical help, the neglect of means of communication, the poverty of educational provision, the all-pervading spirit of depression that I have myself seen to prevail in our villages after over a hundred years of British rule make me despair of its beneficence. — Rabindranath TagoreIf the history of British rule in India were to be condensed to a single fact, it is this: there was no increase in India’s per-capita income from 1757 to 1947.[1]Churchill, explaining why he defended the stockpiling of food within Britain, while millions died ...
There was a speech that the smug Harvard neoconservative Graham Allison presented at the US aristocracy’s TED Talks on 20 November 2018, and which is titled on youtube as “Is war between China and the US inevitable?” It currently has 1,217,326 views. The transcript is here. His speech said that the US must continue being the world’s #1 power, or else persuade China’s Government to cooperate more with what America’s billionaires demand. He said that the model for the US regime’s supposed goodness in international affairs is The Marshall Plan after the end of World War II. He ended his ...
Lest anyone be tempted to believe that President Trump and other U.S. interventionists are intervening in Venezuela because of some purported concern for the Venezuelan people, let’s examine just a few examples that will bring a dose of reality to the situation. This latest intervention is nothing more than another interventionist power play, one intended to replace one dictatorial regime with another.Egypt comes to mind. It is ruled by one of the most brutal and tyrannical military dictatorships in the world. The U.S. government loves it, supports it, and partners with it. There is no concern for the Egyptian citizenry, ...
The U.S. public loves fascists; they elect them, constantly. Donald Trump, who “says he would raise the minimum wage and stop the endless efforts at regime change,” is called a fascist by some. But Hillary Clinton “is happy to bomb Libya or Syria or any other country,” and played a major role in mass Black incarceration. Barack Obama is the war-maker and deporter-in-chief. “All of the major party candidates fit the F word description in some way.”“No one comes into office with any intention of undoing America’s leadership as the world’s worst jailer.”Donald Trump is the ill spoken, boorish, graceless ...
Michigan-based filmmaker Michael Moore makes the connection between Kosovo and the Columbine shooting in his Academy Award-winning documentary Bowling for Columbine (2002). Moore puts Kosovo in the context of a broader U.S. foreign policy agenda and a domestic culture of violence. Moore asks: “Are we a nation of gun nuts or are we just nuts?”In the first scene, Moore walks into the North Country Bank in Michigan to open an account. He saw an ad in the newspaper that the bank would give out free guns to those who open accounts there. Moore walks into the bank and tells the ...
