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".
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:
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 otherwise have to expose the lies they published and told about the incident:
Senior US officials expressed confidence Saturday that both chlorine and sarin gas were used in Syria's alleged chemical weapons attack on the Damascus enclave of Douma last week -- a conclusion that went a step further than Vice President Mike Pence did in his remarks earlier Saturday.
They would further have to explain that the U.S., France and the UK illegally launched a large cruise missile attack on Syria without any reason.
---
Previous Moon of Alabama coverage of the Douma incident:
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?
July 6 - Syria - OPCW Issues First Report Of 'Chemical Weapon Attack' in Douma
Posted by b on July 7, 2018 at 02:48 PM | Permalink
No Evidence In Mueller's Indictment Of 12 Russians - Release Now May Sabotage Upcoming Summit
The Special counsel Robert Mueller issued an indictment (pdf, 29 pages) against 12 Russian people alleged to be officers or personal of the Russian Military Intelligence Service GRU. The people, claims the indictment, work for an operational (26165) and a technical (74455) subunit of the GRU.
A Grand Jury in Washington DC issued 11 charges which are described and annotated below. A short assessment follows.
The first charge is for a "Conspiracy to Commit an Offense Against the United States" by stealing emails and leaking them. The indictment claims that the GRU units sent spearfishing emails to the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party organizations DNC and DCCC. They used these to get access to email boxes of John Podesta and other people. They are also accused of installing spyware (X-agent) on DNC computers and of exfiltrating emails and other data from them. The emails were distributed and published by the online personas DCLeaks, Guccifer II and later through Wikileaks. The indictment claims that DCLeaks and Guccifer II were impersonations by the GRU. Wikileaks, "organization 1" in the indictment, is implicated but so far not accused.
Note: There is a different Grand Jury for the long brewing case against Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Assange has denied that the emails he published came from a Russian source. Craig Murray, a former British ambassador, said that he received the emails on a trip to Washington DC and transported them to Wikileaks.
The indictment describes in some detail how various rented computers and several domain names were used to access the DNC and DCCC computers. The description is broadly plausible but there is little if any supporting evidence.
Charge 2 to 9 of the indictment are about "Aggravated Identity Theft" for using usernames and passwords for the personal email accounts of others.
Charge 10 is about a "Conspiracy to Launder Money". This was allegedly done "through a web of transaction structured to capitalize on the perceived anonymity of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin". It is alleged that the accused mined bitcoins, channeled these through dozens of accounts and transactions and then used them to rent servers, virtual private network access and domain names used in the operation.
Note: The indictment reinforces the author's hunch that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are creations and playgrounds of secret services just like Tor and other 'cool' internet 'privacy' stuff are. Its the very reason why one should avoid their use.
Charge 11 of the indictment is a "Conspiracy to Commit an Offense Against the United States". It claims that some of the accused hacked into state boards of elections and into U.S. companies providing elections related software.
Note: Other reporting found that the alleged attack resulted in no changes to the election results or other damage.
The Unites States will seek forfeiture of the valuables the accused may have within the United States as part of any sentencing of the accused.
Assessment:
It is not by chance that this indictment was published now, a few days before the first summit between Donald Trump and the Russian President Vladimir Putin and shortly before the successful soccer world championship in Russia ends. The release intends to sabotage the talks.
The indictment describes a wide ranging operation but includes zero proof of anything it alleges.
Mueller likely hopes that the indictment will never come in front of a court. The alleged stuff would be extremely difficult to prove. Any decent lawyer would ask how the claimed information was gained and how much of it was based on illegal snooping by the NSA. Something the U.S. would hate to reveal.
It is unlikely that there will ever be a trial of these cases. The indicted persons are all Russians in Russia and none of them is likely to be stupid enough to follow an invitation to Las Vegas or to Disney World.
But who knows?
In February Mueller indicted the Russian Internet Research Agency, a clickbait farm run for commercial purpose, of influencing the U.S. election. The expectation then like now was that there would never be trial. In a surprise move one of the accused Russian companies, Concord Management, took up the challenge and demanded discovery. Mueller then tried to delay the hand over of evidence (which he probably does not have.) A judge rejected the attempt. The case is pending.
Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, who announced the indictment, also made three points that will likely get little coverage. He said (video) that there are no allegations in the indictment that:
any American knew that they were in contact with Russians or with a Russian operation,
any American committed a crime in relation to this,
that the operation changed or influenced the election.
The indictment, which may well be made up and is unlikely to ever be tested in court, will reinforce the "Russia is an enemy" campaign which was launched way before the 2016 election. It will reinforce the believe of some Democrats that Russia, and not the selection of a disgusting candidate, cost Hillary Clinton the presidency.
The detente with Russia which U.S. president Donald Trump tries to achieve will now be more difficult to implement and to sustain.
Posted by b on July 13, 2018 at 02:39 PM | Permalink
The latest allegations are so transparently propaganda that it boggles my mind that anyone would give them credence but given the atmosphere of partisanship which has usurped legitimate criticism of the prez one can only shake one's head. There is so much low-hanging fruit for the Trump critic to choose from why this tenuous gambit? Because it serves the purposes of imperialism and Democratic partisanship, that's why.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Played by the Mighty Wurlitzer
The Press, the CIA, and the Subversion of Truth
Brian Covert
A journalist in the US specializing in national security issues, Ken
Dilanian, found himself under the harsh glare of the media spotlight
in September 2014, when it was revealed that he had been collaborating
with press officers of the United States government’s Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the shaping and publishing of his news
stories for the Los Angeles Times, one of the most influential daily
newspapers in the nation.
An exposé by the Intercept online magazine showed how, in private
e-mail messages to CIA public affairs staff, Dilanian had not only
shared entire drafts of his stories with the agency prior to publication,
but had also offered to write up for the CIA on at least one occasion a
story on controversial US drone strikes overseas that would be “reassuring
to the public” and “a good opportunity” for the CIA to put its
spin on the issue.1
And Dilanian was not alone. Other e-mail messages, though
heavily redacted by the CIA, showed that reporters from other major
US news organizations likewise had cooperative relationships with
the agency.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic Ocean that same month, a veteran
journalist in Germany was blowing the whistle on his own profession.
Udo Ulfkotte, a former news editor with the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, one of the largest newspapers in Germany, revealed
how he had cooperated over the years with the German Federal Intelligence
Service and the CIA itself in the planting of false news stories
as a “non-official cover” and a media “propagandist.”2
252 CENSORED 2017
That cooperation, which he claimed was approved by his bosses
at the newspaper, included putting his own byline on news stories
that had originated with intelligence agencies (such as an article
about former Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi allegedly building
poison gas factories), and accepting free travel and other gifts.3
It was
understood by reporters for major news companies in other European
countries as well, Ulfkotte said, that cooperating with agencies
like the CIA could boost a reporter’s career: “You don’t bite the hand
that feeds you. That’s where corruption starts.”4
But that corruption is nothing new. The close ties between the institution
of the press and the premier spy agency of the USA date back
nearly seventy years to the time of the CIA’s establishment. Officially,
those ties were known from the late 1940s onward as the agency’s
“Propaganda Assets Inventory”—an institutional Rolodex of sorts, with
companies and individuals that could be counted on to cooperate with
the CIA. Within the agency, those propaganda assets were known more
casually as a part of a “Mighty Wurlitzer” network.5
This top-secret intelligence
version of the famous movie theater organ used academics, artists,
labor union members, students, and many others to be played at
will as part of the soundtrack for what the CIA saw as a cultural war
with America’s enemies abroad during the Cold War period.
Members of the US and foreign press, with their direct access to
mass audiences, were considered to be especially valuable tools and
allies in that cultural war. The CIA’s Mighty Wurlitzer, at its peak
years later, reportedly had hundreds of institutions and individuals of
the press being played at its fingertips, and could boast, in the words
of one CIA official, of having “at least one newspaper in every foreign
capital at any given time.”6
Relations between the news media and the CIA over the past
seven decades, in fact, have extended far deeper than have ever been
reported by the US news media, researched by academia, or admitted
to by the American government. This retrospective report attempts
to fill in some of the gaps of that obscured history, drawing on news
archives, public and private documents, and the author’s original
investigation—along with the work of the relatively few journalists
and scholars who have tried to bring the truth of the issue before the
public over the years.
CENSORED 2017 253
While not totally exhaustive in scope, this report does bring
together for the first time a number of the stories and events that have
escaped close scrutiny in the wide shadow of the CIA, and that have
long been shelved or shunned by the US news media.
“THE UBIQUITOUS HARRY KERN”
Among the CIA’s many Cold War–era assets in the US news media,
few have moved through the ranks of high governmental and corporate
power, both within the US and abroad, and still operated well
below the radar of the watchdog American press for decades, than
a top editor of Newsweek magazine by the name of Harry Frederick
Kern.
In the immediate postwar years following Japan’s defeat in World
War II, Kern, in his capacity as the foreign affairs editor for Newsweek,
played a leading role in reversing the official “reform” policies
for Japan that were being carried out by the occupation forces under
US General Douglas MacArthur—policies that included breaking up
Japan’s financial-industrial combines, the zaibatsu, that were closely
allied with the Japanese military during the Pacific war against the
US and its allies, and putting leading Japanese figures in prison as
suspected war criminals and accomplices in the war effort.
Kern did this through a barrage of negative coverage of the US
occupation of Japan in the pages of Newsweek, while serving at the
same time as chief organizer for the American Council on Japan
(ACJ), a New York–based lobby group made up of ultraconservative
elements within the US government and military and on Wall Street
that vowed to “safeguard and promote the best interests of the United
States” in Japan.7
The goal of Kern and the ACJ was nothing less than
to slam the brakes on Washington’s reform policies for Japan, which
they viewed as a socialistic revival of New Deal–type policies that
could potentially keep Wall Street from recouping its massive prewar
investment losses from Japan.
Working closely with the ACJ early on in getting its message out
was Wall Street attorney Frank Wisner, who would soon become the
chief architect of the CIA’s Mighty Wurlitzer network of media assets
and front companies.8
254 CENSORED 2017
Through persistent lobbying on both sides of the Pacific Ocean,
Kern and the ACJ managed in a short time to help change the direction
of the US occupation of Japan, and by the end of 1948 a “reverse
course” had overtaken the earlier reform plans as a cornerstone of the
Truman Doctrine under US president Harry Truman, putting Japan
squarely in the US politico-economic sphere of influence.9
Allen Dulles was named CIA director in 1953, and it was not
long before Kern and the new CIA chief were addressing each other
directly on a first-name basis on matters far beyond Japan. In one
exchange in 1955, Kern, writing on Newsweek letterhead, broached
with Dulles the idea of newly creating “a real crusading anti-Communist
paper in Arabic” as a way to counter Soviet propaganda in
the Middle East region.10 Kern closed the letter with a request to meet
Dulles personally in Washington to pass along to him “a most interesting
and provocative proposal” from the Saudi Arabian ambassador
in the US involving “questions of [foreign] policy.” The letter indicates
that Dulles and Kern were to meet a couple weeks later in the presence
of a “Mr. Roosevelt”—most likely Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a CIA
official who had played a key role two years before in a CIA-sponsored
coup that restored the former shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,
to power.11
In 1956, after a long and eventful career as a senior editor at
Newsweek, Kern shed his journalistic cover and went into business
on his own as a political fixer and economic broker, putting his old
contacts on Wall Street and in Washington to good use. He started a
New York–based consulting firm, Foreign Reports Inc., that focused
on governmental and corporate clients in Japan and the Middle East,
especially the oil-producing nations of Iran and Saudi Arabia.12
But Kern’s movements abroad were not going unnoticed. In 1966,
ten years after he had left Newsweek, the British embassy in Cairo,
Egypt, cabled its Foreign Office back in London that Kern “runs an
intelligence machinery for the oil companies in the [Middle East]
region and cooperates in this with the CIA,” noting Kern’s efforts in
helping to boost the image of King Faisal, the anticommunist monarch
of Saudi Arabia.13
The US government was also keeping track of the former journalist.
“The ubiquitous Harry Kern has appeared coming from Saudi
CENSORED 2017 255
Arabia where he has apparently sought to persuade King [Faisal] to
underwrite a major Arab public relations campaign in the US,” read a
confidential memo from the US embassy in Cairo to the Department
of State in Washington, DC, a few years later. Kern also discreetly
passed on to US officials at that time the concerns of the Japanese
government over severe oil restrictions on Japan due to Egypt’s closure
of the Suez Canal.14
Kern’s connections extended as far as the White House in Washington,
DC. In November 1976, shortly after Jimmy Carter’s election
as US president, Kern relayed to the president-elect a direct message
from the crown prince (and future king) of Saudi Arabia concerning
ongoing peace talks between Israel and Palestine.15
Kern eventually branched out from the international oil consulting
business to include the burgeoning US military aircraft industry overseas.
It was not uncommon at the time for Kern to be seen visiting
the posh Copacabana nightclub in Tokyo, where some of the most
famous American singers of the day performed.16 The VIP-only club
was reputed to be a hotbed of espionage in those days, attracting as it
did political leaders and corporate executives from around the globe,
including representatives of leading military aircraft manufacturers
from the United States seeking to secure ever more lucrative deals
with the government of Japan.17
One of those military aircraft makers, the New York–based
Grumman Corporation, became the focus of a major scandal in Japan
in 1979, and Harry Kern soon became a familiar figure to the Japanese
public as a parliamentary investigation unfolded and his role
in the scandal was revealed. News media in Japan reported that an
unusually high 40 percent commission was supposedly meant for
Kern by Grumman’s Tokyo agent, the Nissho Iwai trading firm, for
each Grumman Hawkeye E-2C plane sold to Japan’s military. That
commission, it was reported, was ostensibly to be passed on by Kern
to one or more Japanese government officials to help secure the
Grumman aircraft deals.
In March 1979, as the Grumman scandal continued breaking
wide open in Japan, Kern made a discreet overture to the White
House to have the official Japanese investigation shut down. Declassified
documents show that Kern contacted Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Donald Trump was Elected by Russia? Mass Dementia in the Western Establishment
July 21, 2018 Posted by Addison dePitt
By Diana Johnstone
Mainstream Media Reaction to Trump-Putin Meeting—
The infamous Trump Derangement Syndrome takes hold of millions
Massively ignorant, intellectually lazy, the US population makes an ideal disinformation target, and the rulers know it.
Careerist media vermin like CNN’s Chris Cuomo can be relied on to disseminate the Deep State’s propaganda line, no matter how silly or criminal. Idiots like these are only allowed to believe in zero-sum diplomacy.
Where to begin to analyze the madness of mainstream media in reaction to the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki? By focusing on the individual, psychology has neglected the problem of mass insanity, which has now overwhelmed the United States establishment, its mass media and most of its copycat European subsidiaries. The individuals may be sane, but as a herd they are ready to leap off the cliff.
For the past two years, a particular power group has sought to explain away its loss of power – or rather, its loss of the Presidency, as it still holds a predominance of institutional power – by creation of a myth. Mainstream media is known for its herd behavior, and in this case the editors, commentators, journalists have talked themselves into a story that initially they themselves could hardly take seriously.
Donald Trump was elected by Russia?
On the face of it, this is preposterous. Okay, the United States can manage to rig elections in Honduras, or Serbia, or even Ukraine, but the United States is a bit too big and complex to leave the choice of the Presidency to a barrage of electronic messages totally unread by most voters. If this were so, Russia wouldn’t need to try to “undermine our democracy”. It would mean that our democracy was already undermined, in tatters, dead. A standing corpse ready to be knocked over by a tweet.
Even if, as is alleged without evidence, an army of Russian bots (even bigger than the notorious Israeli army of bots) was besieging social media with its nefarious slanders against poor innocent Hillary Clinton, this could determine an election only in a vacuum, with no other influences in the field. But there was a lot of other stuff going on in the 2016 election, some for Trump and some for Hillary, and Hillary herself scored a crucial own goal by denigrating millions of Americans as “deplorables” because they didn’t fit into her identity politics constituencies.
The Russians could do nothing to build support for Trump, and there is not a hint of evidence that they tried. They might have done something to harm Hillary, because there was so much there: the private server emails, the Clinton foundation, the murder of Moammer Gaddafi, the call for a no-fly zone in Syria … they didn’t have to invent it. It was there. So was the hanky panky at the Democratic National Committee, on which the Clintonite accusations focus, perhaps to cause everyone to forget much worse things.
When you come to think of it, the DNC scandal focused on Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not on Hillary herself. Screaming about “Russian hacking the DNC” has been a distraction from much more serious accusations against Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders supporters didn’t need those “revelations” to make them stop loving Hillary or even to discover that the DNC was working against Bernie. It was always perfectly obvious.
So at worst, “the Russians” are accused of revealing some relatively minor facts concerning the Hillary Clinton campaign. Big deal.
But that is enough, after two years of fakery, to send the establishment into a frenzy of accusations of “treason” when Trump does what he said he would do while campaigning, try to normalize relations with Russia.
This screaming comes not only from the US mainstream, but also from that European elite which has been housebroken for seventy years as obedient poodles, dachshunds or corgis in the American menagerie, via intense vetting by US trans-Atlantic “cooperation” associations. They have based their careers on the illusion of sharing the world empire by following U.S. whims in the Middle East and transforming the mission of their armed forces from defense into foreign intervention units of NATO under U.S. command. Having not thought seriously about the implications of this for over half a century, they panic at the suggestion of being left to themselves.
The 2016 Elections: “The Bad Losers” and What They Fear Losing
The Western elite is now suffering from self-inflicted dementia.
Donald Trump is not particularly articulate, navigating through the language with a small repetitive vocabulary, but what he said at his Helsinki press conference was honest and even brave. As the hounds bay for his blood, he quite correctly refused to endorse the “findings” of US intelligence agencies, fourteen years after the same agencies “found” that Iraq was bursting with weapons of mass destruction. How in the world could anyone expect anything else?
But for the mainstream media, “the story” at the Helsinki summit, even the only story, was Trump’s reaction to the, er, trumped up charges of Russian interference in our democracy. Were you or were you not elected thanks to Russian hackers? All they wanted was a yes or no answer. Which could not possibly be yes. So they could write their reports in advance.
Anyone who has frequented mainstream journalists, especially those who cover the “big stories” on international affairs, is aware of their obligatory conformism, with few exceptions. To get the job, one must have important “sources”, meaning government spokesmen who are willing to tell you what “the story” is, often without being identified. Once they know what “the story” is, competition sets in: competition as to how to tell it. That leads to an escalation of rhetoric, variations on the theme: “The President has betrayed our great country to the Russian enemy. Treason!”
This demented chorus on “Russian hacking” prevented mainstream media from even doing their job. Not even mentioning, much less analyzing, any of the real issues at the summit. To find analysis, one must go online, away from the official fake news to independent reporting. For example, “the Moon of Alabama” site offers an intelligent interpretation of the Trump strategy, which sounds infinitely more plausible than “the story”. In short, Trump is trying to woo Russia away from China, in a reverse version of Kissinger’s strategy forty years ago to woo China away from Russia, thus avoiding a continental alliance against the United States. This may not work because the United States has proven so untrustworthy that the cautious Russians are highly unlikely to abandon their alliance with China for shadows. But it makes perfect sense as an explanation of Trump’s policy, unlike the caterwauling we’ve been hearing from Senators and talking heads on CNN.
Those people seem to have no idea of what diplomacy is about. They cannot conceive of agreements that would be beneficial to both sides. No, it’s got to be a zero sum game, winner take all. If they win, we lose, and vice versa.
They also have no idea of the harm to both sides if they do not agree. They have no project, no strategy. Just hate Trump.
He seems totally isolated, and every morning I look at the news to see if he has been assassinated yet.
It is unimaginable for our Manichean moralists that Putin might also be under fire at home for failing to chide the American president for U.S. violations of human rights in Guantanamo, murderous drone strikes against defenseless citizens throughout the Middle East, the destruction of Libya in violation of the UN mandate, interference in the elections of countless countries by government-financed “non-governmental organizations” (the National Endowment of Democracy), worldwide electronic spying, invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the world’s greatest prison population and regular massacres of school children. But the diplomatic Russians know how to be polite.
Still, if Trump actually makes a “deal”, there may be losers – neither the U.S. nor Russia but third parties. When two great powers reach agreement, it is often at somebody else’s expense. The West Europeans are afraid it will be them, but such fears are groundless. All Putin wants is normal relations with the West, which is not much to ask.
Rather, candidate number one for paying the price are the Palestinians, or even Iran, in marginal ways. At the press conference, asked about possible areas of cooperation between the two nuclear powers, Trump suggested that the two could agree on helping Israel:
“We both spoke with Bibi Netanyahu. They would like to do certain things with respect to Syria, having to do with the safety of Israel. In that respect, we absolutely would like to work in order to help Israel. Israel will be working with us. So both countries would work jointly.”
In political terms, Trump knows where political power lies, and is counting on the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, which recognizes the defeat in Syria and the rising influence of Russia, to save him from the liberal imperialists – a daring bet, but he does not have much choice.
On another subject, Trump said that “our militaries” get along with the Russians “better than our politicians”. This is another daring bet, on military realism that could somehow neutralize military industrial congressional complex lobbying for more and more weapons.
In short, the only chance to end the nuclear war threat may depend on support for Trump from Israel and the Pentagon!
The hysterical neoliberal globalists seem to have ruled out any other possibility – and perhaps this one too.
“Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia forwards the opportunity to open new pathways toward peace and stability in our world” Trump declared “I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.”
That is more than his political enemies can claim.
I do think that both Johnstone and 'b' give Trump too much credit for diplomatic savvy. This is the same guy who starts trade wars on twitter fer chrissake. Somewhere in that zoo he's got somebody working for him with half a brain. Whoever wrote that last quote, for instance.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
#Media #War - this picture of famished lions, was broadcast worldwide as a "symbol of the starvation caused by the Bolivarian Revolution". In fact, Helena Menendez, reveals, the zoo is in Yemen, & the poor creatures are among the victims of US/Saudis. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.news ... %3Famp%3D1 …
Courtesy Proletarian CPGB-ML @CPGBML.
I should like to add that back when I worked at the zoo surplus chickens, ducks & bunnies were fed to the carnivores after the children's zoo closed for the season. Whadda these gimps think those animals eat?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Martial Law By Other Means: Corporate Strangulation of Dissent
Glen Ford, BAR executive editor 09 Aug 2018
Martial Law By Other Means: Corporate Strangulation of Dissent
“The ‘hate speech’ trick, in practice, rewards Black people’s occupiers and abusers (the police) and renders voices of protest illegitimate and mute.”
The people that rule the United States are in the third year of a frenzy to blame Russia and its “trolls,” “dupes,” and witting or unwitting “colluders” – including a sitting president – for racial conflicts, eroding respect for public institutions and a general social breakdown in the nation. “We are at war!” they scream, incessantly, in a thousand well-placed voices. The relentless barrage of war-talk crowds out all other subjects in the corporate media -- the Omnipresent Voice of Oligarchy -- including the actual wars waged all across the globe by the U.S. and its shrinking gaggle of allies.
By now, 65 percent of Americans -- if asked -- tell pollsters they think Russia “interfered” in the 2016 elections. According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released late last month, 41 percent believe that whatever the Russians did had some effect on the election, and 30 percent think Hillary Clinton would be president if the Russians had not interfered.
“The relentless barrage of war-talk crowds out all other subjects in the corporate media -- including the actual wars.”
People don’t volunteer these opinions; the question is presented by the pollsters and respondents select an answer among the multiple choices offered. However, a Gallup poll , taken during the same period, that allowed respondents to offer their own list of problems besetting the nation showed that less than one percent thought “the ongoing situation with Russia was the top issue.” Immigration was the top problem on people’s minds (22 percent), followed by dissatisfaction with the U.S. government (19 percent), and racism (7 percent). Concerns over “unifying the country,” “lack of respect for each other,” “the economy in general,” “health care,” and the catch-all, “ethics/morality/religious/family decline” rank in the even lower single digits – but almost nobody considers Russia to be a top problem.
Apparently, Americans don’t yet believe that anything like a “Pearl Harbor” has occurred, despite the Herculean efforts of the corporate media, the Democratic Party, old school Republicans, and the National Security State (Spookland). Undeterred, these fevered fomenters of hysteria insist that Russia’s “war” against the United States -- aided by a “fifth column” composed of left-wing and right-wing web sites -- must be answered by putting the nation on martial footing, through further curbs on freedom of speech and association at home, and relentless pursuit of full spectrum military dominance over all potential adversaries and competitors abroad.
“Less than one percent thought ‘the ongoing situation with Russia was the top issue.’”
The oligarch-declared state of war requires that there be one set of “truths” and a common worldview to unite the nation at this time of peril -- whether the people perceive such a peril, or not. If there is insufficient public resolve to respond to the “threat” from Moscow and their partners in Beijing, then that is blamed on Kremlin-disseminated disinformation designed to confuse Americans or cause them to lose faith in U.S. institutions, and to fight among themselves – to “hate” each other -- thus requiring more censorship.
It is the ruling class that is in panic, and using Russia as an all-purpose foil. The U.S. is in terminal decline, and has already been economically surpassed by China, based on “purchasing power parity,” the standard of measurement preferred even by the U.S dominated International Monetary Fund. According to an analysis by business columnist Noah Smith in Bloomberg , “not only is China already the world’s largest economy, the gap between it and the U.S. can be expected to grow even wider.” Dean Baker , co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies, says “China’s economy is already 25 percent larger than the U.S. economy and is on a path to be almost twice as large in a decade.”
The era of U.S. economic dominance has already ended, and the Potemkin façade of American economic supremacy is only maintained by the U.S. dollar’s artificial status as the main international reserve currency – from which pedestal it will ultimately be toppled, and the imperial era will be over. But this is an historical verdict that the U.S. rulers cannot accept. Having lost the economic capacity to lord over the planet, they must now rely on their military -- a terror machine more expensive than most of the rest of the world’s militaries, combined -- in a “generational,” twilight battle to preserve the empire. The Lords of Capital cannot imagine a world in which they are not on top. They have chosen permanent, “infinite” war.
“Not only is China already the world’s largest economy, the gap between it and the U.S. can be expected to grow even wider.”
On the home front, the ruling class policy is eternal austerity, dictated by the requirements of capitalism at this stage in its decline. It is a horrifically destructive process of corporate consolidation (the big get bigger, devouring each other and everyone else) and the shrinking of the public sphere, through public sector starvation and privation. The job market is restructured, with more and more workers becoming “casual” or “contracted” -- the “gig” economy -- and millions of others (especially Blacks) made permanently redundant and disposable.
A regime of permanent war and austerity -- the fate that both corporate parties plan for us -- requires the manufacture and perpetual maintenance of war hysteria, and the methodical suppression of popular demands for economic rescue of the affected classes. It demands Russiagate and the snuffing out of radical dissent. This is not about Hillary Clinton, although she was the presidential choice of the great bulk of the ruling class because she could be trusted to pursue permanent war and austerity. It’s about preserving and serving the oligarchy under capitalism in terminal decline.
“A regime of permanent war and austerity requires the manufacture and perpetual maintenance of war hysteria, and the methodical suppression of popular demands for economic rescue of the affected classes.”
A similar process is underway in Europe, where the welfare state is besieged by the ruling bankers and corporate chiefs. Some leftish pundits describe the corporate parties’ lashing out at “the left and the right” as an offensive of “the center” -- but that’s nonsense. In both the U.S. and Europe, the corporate governments are to the right of the public; they don’t represent some political “center” -- they represent only their corporate selves. The corporate leaders of the Democratic Party are positioned way to the right of Democratic voters, and also rightward of the general American pubic on most key economic issues. They are carrying out their corporate duties to preserve and maintain austerity and war.
This compels them to make a spectacle of Russiagate, and to ensure that the show never ends, but takes on new forms of hysteria. And it requires that internet-based dissent be brought to heal, as Hillary would say -- even at the cost of billions to one of the top oligarchs, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who has been mercilessly bludgeoned by his fellow corporatists. Facebook’s political tampering with its algorithms to marginalize left-wing sites like BAR cannot help but suggest that the company also puts its fingers on the scales of the algorithms whose results Facebook sells to advertisers. But Zuckerberg no doubt understands that the purge of “left and right” sites is in the best interest of his class, and has accepted to forgo some profits.
“The corporate leaders of the Democratic Party are positioned way to the right of Democratic voters, and also rightward of the general American pubic on most key economic issues.”
Facebook, Apple, Google, YouTube and Spotify all came down on right-winger Alex Jones and his Infowars, this week, in what appeared to be a coordinated purge. Although the corporate media have long accused Jones of spreading “disinformation,” he was not purged for telling non-truths. Apple announced that “it does not tolerate hate speech.” Facebook said “false news” was not the issue, but that Jones had violated its policies by “glorifying violence” and “using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants.”
When it comes to “hate,” the high tech oligarchs rely heavily on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Morris Dees - Richard Cohen legal outfit in Montgomery, Alabama. The Center has a special animus towards Black nationalists, to whom it dedicates a whole page on its web site. “Most forms of black nationalism are strongly anti-white and anti-Semitic,” the SPLC declares, as if its white, Jewish leadership are expert in the Black American polity. In addition to naming Min. Louis Farrakhan and every Nation of Islam mosque, the site lists a slew of “Black Nationalist Hate Groups,” including book stores, the Black Riders Liberation Party and all its affiliates, various Black Israelites, both halves of the split New Black Panther Party, and the Revolutionary Black Panther Party, as well as the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors. We can assume that these groups’ internet sites and Facebook presence are marked for special attention and future purging.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center has a special animus towards Black nationalists.”
But, many more Blacks will be caught up in the “hate speech” net that the high tech monopolists have deployed. Anyone that has gone to protests against killer cops has shouted words that could be deemed hate speech -- because we do hate killer cops, and we do hate their armed occupation of our communities, and we have every right to say so among ourselves or to shout it to the world. Black people -- and especially Black activists -- must be most zealous in defense of free speech, knowing that our speech will be the first to be curtailed and outlawed.
We can expect no defense of Black speech rights from the Black misleadership class, which has always opted to cut off Black lips in order to silence a few white racists’ mouths. In the early Seventies, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Atlanta NAACP tried to get the Federal Communications Commission to ban campaign ads by J.B. Stoner, the arch-racist candidate for one of Georgia’s seats in the U.S. Senate. I argued loudly against attempting to create a “hate speech” standard for the public airwaves, warning that among the first victims of such a standard would be Min. Farrakhan, whose weekly radio program was aired on over 100 Black-oriented radio programs.
“Black people -- and especially Black activists -- must be most zealous in defense of free speech, knowing that our speech will be the first to be curtailed and outlawed.”
The FCC ruled in J.B. Stoner’s favor in 1972, but it was a good day for Black political speech, too. In the same way, the high tech monopolists’ assault on right-winger Alex Jones under a “hate speech” standard is bad news for Black political speech, and for radical speech. “Hate speech” is a trap. A few months ago, all but eleven members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted to make any assault on police a “hate crime,” thereby giving police the status of a protected class. The “hate speech” trick, in practice, rewards Black people’s occupiers and abusers (the police) and renders voices of protest illegitimate and mute.
We will need every energizing expletive in our vocabularies to mobilize our folks against the racist repression that must accompany the rulers’ plans for permanent austerity and war. We need to hate them very deeply for what they are trying to do to humanity, and to express that hatred at the top of our lungs and in every forum possible.
Syria - Pentagon Plants High ISIS Numbers To Justify Occupation
The U.S. aim in Syria is still 'regime change'. The Pentagon has made it clear that it wants to stay in the country even after the Islamic State vanished. A little propaganda trick is now used to create a justification for its continuing occupation.
The report by the UN Security Council's Sanctions Monitoring Team on ISIS, in parts discussed here, includes a number that smells of bullshit and manipulation:
3. Some Member States estimate the total current ISIL membership in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic to be between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals, roughly equally distributed between the two countries. Among these is still a significant component of the many thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters.2
Footnote 2 gives as source:
2 Member State information.
The high number given by a "Member State" exceed all prior assessments. The original strength of ISIS was estimated as a few thousand and it swelled as it took more land and incorporated local auxiliary forces and newly arriving foreign fighters. In September 2014, when ISIS was near its peak, the CIA estimated a total of 31,000 ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq. The number shrank as ISIS was kicked out of more places it earlier occupied while it lost ten thousands of its fighters to Russian, Syrian, Iraqi and U.S. bombs, artillery and other military means. In July 2017 the commanding general of U.S. Special Forces said that 60 to 70,000 ISIS fighters had been killed.
The numbers in the UN Sanctions Monitor report simply make no logical sense. It is also contradicted by earlier estimates that put the number of current ISIS fighters in the low thousands. In December 2017 President Trump claimed that only "1,000 or so" fighters remained in Iraq and Syria. In a June 5 Pentagon press conference the spokesman was asked about the number of ISIS fighters left in Syria. He responded:
As far as the numbers, there's -- there's been some numbers thrown out there over the past few months. You've heard the previous spokesmen range from 1,000 to 3,000. You've seen a lot of subject matter experts say something like that. I have nothing to add to that. What I will say is one ISIS fighter is one too many, and that's what we're pursuing. We're pursuing their defeat.
But there must of course be a reason why "some Member States" would give the UN Monitor team such an absurdly high number.
The U.S. is justifying its occupation of north-east Syria by claiming to fight ISIS under the legal cover of two UN Security Council resolutions. Now, as ISIS in Syria has shrunk to a few dozens of fighters, that justification is wearing thin. It is immensely important for the Pentagon to present a high number, as ISIS is its only legal justification to stay in Syria. It is doubtful that Congress would agree to a prolonged occupation if ISIS vanished.
To publicize a high number the Pentagon used an old propaganda trick, fake "multi-sourcing".
This trick was extensively used in the run up to the war on Iraq. Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, would call up pliant journalists, Judith Miller of the New York Times comes to mind, and tell them about a "top secret" assessment that Iraq bought aluminum tubes to build centrifuges for Uranium enrichment. (Experts knew that Iraq bought these tubes to make military mortars.) But the New York Times printed the 'nuclear' nonsense on page one of its Sunday edition. A few hours later Dick Cheney and other Bush administration members appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows and confirmed the story they had planted.
The tale of the 'nuclear' aluminum tubes was then perceived to have come from two independent entities and sources, the New York Times, and Vice President Cheney and other members of the Bush administration. It was thus widely believed.
We now see a similar scheme. A dubious fact, coming from a single source, is depicted as being multi-sourced. Another pliant journalist, this time Liz Sly of the Washington Post, is used to spread the fake news:
The Islamic State may still have in excess of 30,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq and appears to have rebounded from some of its worst setbacks, according to two new reports that call into question whether the militants are as close to defeat as the U.S. military has suggested.
...
The U.S. government report attributed its numbers to the Defense Department but acknowledged that such estimates “have varied sharply among sources and over time.” The report was delivered to Congress by the Lead Inspector General, an office created in 2013 to oversee the U.S. military’s operations overseas against the Islamic State. Quoting Defense Department officials, the report put the number of fighters in Iraq at between 15,500 and 17,100 and in Syria at 14,000.
The second report was written by the U.N. Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, which monitors the impact of U.N. sanctions, and offered a similar figure. Quoting unnamed member states, it said there are believed to be between 20,000 and 30,000 Islamic State fighters across Iraq and Syria, divided roughly equally between the two countries.
The Lead Inspector General report (pdf) says:
The DoD estimated that 15,500 to 17,100 ISIS fighters remained in Iraq, although estimates of the numbers of ISIS fighters have varied sharply among sources and over time. ... 5
... y the end of the [2nd] quarter, ISIS was estimated to still control about 5 percent of Syria and to have roughly 14,000 fighters in the country, although estimates of ISIS force strength vary greatly depending on the source. 38
The footnote gives as sources:
5 DoD response to DoD OIG request for information, 7/11/2018.
...
38 DoD, response to DoD OIG request for information, 7/5/2018
The Inspector General is just repeating numbers the Department of Defense claims. A writeup on the IG report by AL-Monitor says that these numbers come from the Defense Intelligence Agency. It does not give any source for that claim.
The numbers in the UN Sanction Monitor team report are sourced to a "Member State" which is most likely the United States. It is the only one that operates against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The numbers in its report are astonishing similar to the numbers the Department of Defense gave to the Lead Inspector General. Both reports were published in the same week.
It is extremely likely that these numbers comes from the very same source, the Defense Intelligence Agency or someone else in the Pentagon who pulled it from Secretary Mattis' ass. It is well known that Mattis wants the U.S. to stay in Syria as long as possible to eventually achieve regime change by 'diplomatic' pressure means:
In Syria, "We do not want to simply pull out before the diplomats have won the peace," Mattis said. "You win the fight, and then you win the peace.”
The Washington Post now sells these numbers, which contradict all numbers the Pentagon has previously given, as coming from "two new reports", when it is pretty obvious that they come from a single source.
Some Post readers will see it as 'confirmed' information even though it is likely a wild ass guestimate which is based more on Mattis' wishes and intent than on logical thought or analytical rigor.
The U.S. is expanding its military infrastructure and personal in Syria despite the ever shrinking ground ISIS holds:
[T]he last hours witnessed the entry of more than 250 trucks carrying weapons, equipment, armored vehicles and machinery to areas controlled by the Syria Democratic Forces, where these shipments came from the Syrian-Iraqi border and headed to the military bases of the United States and the western forces in several areas east of Euphrates River, and the entry of more arms shipments comes after entering large quantities of similar shipments to the same areas during the past days and weeks, in addition to expanding the Coalition’s military bases in the area.
It will only take days until the freshly planted, confirmed but fake ISIS number will be cited as justification for these moves.
Posted by b on August 16, 2018 at 01:21 PM | Permalink
Facebook Kills "Inauthentic" Foreign News Accounts - U.S. Propaganda Stays Alive
The creation of digital content led to the re-establishment of claqueurs:
By 1830 the claque had become an institution. The manager of a theatre or opera house was able to send an order for any number of claqueurs. These were usually under a chef de claque (leader of applause), who judged where the efforts of the claqueurs were needed and to initiate the demonstration of approval. This could take several forms. There would be commissaires ("officers/commissioner") who learned the piece by heart and called the attention of their neighbors to its good points between the acts. Rieurs (laughers) laughed loudly at the jokes. Pleureurs (criers), generally women, feigned tears, by holding their handkerchiefs to their eyes. Chatouilleurs (ticklers) kept the audience in a good humor, while bisseurs (encore-ers) simply clapped and cried "Bis! Bis!" to request encores.
Today anyone can create content and rent or buy virtual claqueurs in from of "likes" on Facebook or "followers" on Twitter to increase its distribution.
An alternative is to create artificial social media personas who then promote ones content. That is what the Internet Research Agency, the Russian "troll factory" from St. Petersburg, did. The fake personas it established on Facebook promoted IRA created clickbait content like puppy picture pages that was then marketed to sell advertisements.
The profit orientated social media giants do not like such third party promotions. They prefer that people pay THEM to promote their content. Selling advertisements is Facebook's business. Promotional accounts on its own platform are competition.
The anti-Russian mania in U.S. politics gives social media companies a welcome excuse to clamp down on promotional schemes for sites like Liberty Front Press by claiming that these are disinformation campaigns run by the U.S. enemy of the day.
Yesterday Facebook announced that it deleted a number of user accounts for "inauthentic behavior":
We’ve removed 652 Pages, groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior that originated in Iran and targeted people across multiple internet services in the Middle East, Latin America, UK and US. FireEye, a cybersecurity firm, gave us a tip in July about “Liberty Front Press,” a network of Facebook Pages as well as accounts on other online services.
...
We are able to link this network to Iranian state media through publicly available website registration information, as well as the use of related IP addresses and Facebook Pages sharing the same admins. For example, one part of the network, “Quest 4 Truth,” claims to be an independent Iranian media organization, but is in fact linked to Press TV, an English-language news network affiliated with Iranian state media.
The FireEye report Facebook acted on notes:
FireEye has identified a suspected influence operation that appears to originate from Iran aimed at audiences in the U.S., U.K., Latin America, and the Middle East. This operation is leveraging a network of inauthentic news sites and clusters of associated accounts across multiple social media platforms to promote political narratives in line with Iranian interests. These narratives include anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes, as well as support for specific U.S. policies favorable to Iran, such as the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA).
...
Based on an investigation by FireEye Intelligence’s Information Operations analysis team, we assess with moderate confidence that this activity originates from Iranian actors.
The evidence FireEye presents is quite thin. The purpose of its inquest and report is obviously self-promotion.
Moon of Alabama is also promoting anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes. It supports the JCPOA deal. This is, according to FireEye, "in line with Iranian interests". It may well be. But does that make Moon of Alabama a "suspected influence operation"? Is it an "inauthentic news site"?
Is the @MoonofA Twitter account showing "coordinated inauthentic behavior" when it promotes the pieces presented on this site? We, by the way, assess with high confidence that that this activity originates from a German actor. Is that a reason to shut it down?
Here is another high confidence tip for FireEye. There is proof, and even an admission of guilt, that a hostile government financed broadcasting organization is creating inauthentic Facebook accounts to disseminate disinformation. These narratives include anti-Russian, anti-Syrian, and pro-Saudi views, as well as support for specific U.S. policies favorable to Israel, such as its financing of the anti-Iranian headscarf campaign.
This year the U.S. government run Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) will spend more than $23 million for its Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB). OCB administers Radio and Television (TV) Martí programs directed at the Cuban public. In its 2019 budget request to Congress (pdf) the BBG admits that it creates inauthentic Facebook accounts to increase the distribution of its dreck:
In FY 2018, OCB is establishing on island digital teams to create non-branded local Facebook accounts to disseminate information. Native pages increase the chances of appearing on Cuban Facebook users newsfeeds. The same strategy will be replicated on other preferred social media networks.
How is this different from what the PressTV may have done? When will Facebook shut those inauthentic BBG accounts down?
All I know is foreign news links are drying up at twitter. You can find it if you know where to go but between this and Google monkeying with 'search' this amounts to censorship. Anything to protect our pristine, beautiful electoral system......
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Inside the “Humanitarian” Regime-Change Network Exploiting Jo Cox’s Death
From the Kosovo Protection Corps in the Balkans to the White Helmets of Syria, a group of well- connected people with the fundings of governments and elite billionaires have sought to wage a war on public opinion and have recently exploited Jo Cox’s death to do so.
by Vanessa Beeley and Whitney Webb
August 27th, 2018
By Vanessa Beeley and
Whitney Webb Whitney Webb
LONDON — The Jo Cox Fund, set up in memory of the slain MP soon after her death in 2016, was established by a cadre of pro-interventionist “humanitarians” with a history of involvement in past regime-change operations and whose connections to some of the world’s most ardent imperialists, as well as the Not for Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC), are legion. For that reason, as well as the past of Cox herself, it is hardly surprising that the fund designated among its causes the U.S. coalition-financed White Helmets, whose primary purpose has been to escalate unlawful NATO state-proxy and direct military intervention in Syria.
However, the fund’s efforts in promoting the White Helmets goes far beyond merely filling the organization’s coffers. Using lessons learned in past NATO interventions, the founders of the Jo Cox Fund — along with their financiers and associates — have used the fund’s association with the White Helmets in order to protect that group from criticism, largely by exploiting Jo Cox’s posthumous status as a modern-day saint in British politics, now known more for her “compassion” than her support of pro-interventionist policies that are hardly “humanitarian” in practice.
Thus, the Jo Cox Fund — and those behind it — not only have exploited the fund to promote the White Helmets “humanitarian” image but have also profited from their combined expertise to develop a sophisticated “public relations” machine that effectively promotes the destruction of the Syrian state.
This is Part II of a four-part series on the life and legacy of Jo Cox. Read part 1 here. In this part, we focus on how the people behind the Jo Cox Fund have applied strategies intended to promote foreign military intervention that was first perfected in the NATO intervention in the Balkans to the current conflict in Syria. Additionally, we examine how these players have helped develop the massive public-relations machine with the White Helmets at its center and how that machine has sought to use Cox’s death to sanctify the controversial group and shield it from scrutiny.
Perfecting the blueprint for “humanitarian” regime change: from the Balkans to Syria
It all began in the Balkans. The blueprint for the Syrian regime change, multi-spectrum war, and the roadmap for partitioning a sovereign nation along sectarian lines, was inaugurated in what was once known as Yugoslavia. Corporate media in the West, during the conflict and after, have diligently followed the NATO script, namely that the Bosnian Serbs were “motivated by a hatred of Muslims.” It was largely ignored that the Serbs wanted to protect the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia and that, in Bosnia, they opposed the concept of an Islamic fundamentalist government, which the authorities of Alija Izetbegovic were attempting to introduce.
The fact that many Bosnian Muslims — including Fikret Abdic, who was actually the true winner of the 1990 elections for the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina — were in agreement with the Bosnian Serbs over those two key issues was largely disregarded. While Western media labelled the Bosnian Serbs as “the new Nazis,” NATO-friendly Bosnian Muslims were euphemistically labelled “rebels,” and, in Kosovo, the NATO-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an organized crime group with Islamic fundamentalist leanings and connections, was labelled as “moderate” and “democrats.”
Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos, an expert on former Yugoslavia and a frequent traveller to the region, told Mint Press News:
Yugoslavia and the Serbs were the first victims of the American-led unipolar world that emerged in 1991. Because it was in Yugoslavia — namely, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo — where the U.S. and its principal ally, Britain, together with Germany, destroyed the sanctity of internationally recognized borders; disregarded the authority of the United Nations Security Council; dealt irrevocable damage to the United Nations Charter by having undermined legitimate state authorities and having supported, with arms, training, money, logistics and intelligence information, armed secessionist movements (which comprised fascist, Islamist and organised crime groups); facilitated the arrival of Mujahideen and jihadist fighters to the region; employed their respective media outlets to demonize the people standing in the way of their objectives — the Serbs — accusing them of mass murder and genocide, thus justifying the West’s policy in the Balkans; and then directly intervened with military force to guarantee the accomplishment of their objectives. In short, Yugoslavia was the template for Iraq, Libya and Syria.”
Acclaimed historian Mark Curtis has written extensively about the British government’s collaboration with the “pro-Jihadist forces in Kosovo” under the leadership of Iraq war-hawk, Tony Blair. In his book Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, Curtis concludes:
[T]he NATO bombing that began in March 1999 had the effect of deepening, not preventing, the humanitarian disaster that Milosevic’s forces inflicted on Kosovo.”
Author and academic John Laughland wrote a book detailing the travesty of justice that was the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, entitled: Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice. In an opinion piece written for The Guardian in 2008, under the title “Lies of the Vigilantes,” Laughland wrote:
Slobodan Milosevic was posthumously exonerated on Monday when the international court of justice ruled that Serbia was not responsible for the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica […] The new ICC, created by Britain, also seems to operate on the basis that white men do not commit war crimes: its prosecutors are currently investigating two local wars in Africa while turning a blind eye to Iraq. Only when that hideous strength which flows from the hypocrisy of interventionism is sapped, will the world stand any chance of returning to lawfulness and peace.”
Dr. Papadopoulos also spoke to Mint Press News about the role played by Bernard Kouchner, high-profile founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders), and former French Foreign Minister, in Kosovo:
Like Paddy Ashdown in Bosnia, Bernard Kouchner acted like a colonial-style governor in Kosovo. Mr. Kouchner played a lead role in the Western colonization of the Serbian province by, for instance, dismantling the Yugoslav civil service there and replacing it with a pro-U.S., pro-NATO and pro-EU one, and ensuring that NATO would have supervisory offices in key institutions in Kosovo.”
In a recent article published at Global Research, Dr. Papadopoulos highlights how in the summer of 1995, the Bosnian Serb army was presented with an opportunity to conquer Srebrenica and thereby end the massacres of Serb villagers in the area. According to Dr. Papadopoulos, “it was a trap set by Bill Clinton and Bosnian Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegovic, who were both looking for ‘genocide’ so that NATO would have the justification to extensively intervene in Bosnia.”
Dr. Papadopoulos then describes how even Kouchner, the “colonial–style governor” in Kosovo, admitted the lies that permeated Western media accounts of events in Bosnia.
In 2003, Kouchner interviewed Izetbegovic when the Bosnian Muslim leader was on his deathbed. “They [the camps in Bosnia] were horrible places, but people were not systematically exterminated. Did you know that?” asked Kouchner. To which Izetbegovic replied, “Yes. I thought that my revelations could precipitate bombings. Yes, I tried, but the assertion was false. There were no extermination camps…” (excerpted from Les Guerriers de la Paix: Du Kosovo a l’Iraq, Editions Grasset, 2004; published in English as The Warriors of Peace).
Even now, after analyses and counter narratives abound to challenge the NATO-aligned media versions of events in the former Yugoslavia, those who question the “official” accounts are still attacked, maligned and slandered as “genocide deniers.”
In Part 1 of this series, we outlined the role played by Mabel van Oranje in manufacturing consent for the NATO bombing campaign in the Balkans through her founding of the European Action Council for Peace in the Balkans. That “council for peace,” with van Oranje at the helm, went on to promote a bombing campaign that pounded Yugoslavia into sectarian division and chaos, from which the region has never recovered.
Another intelligence cog in the Syrian-regime-change-war apparatus was also present in Kosovo during the NATO intervention there. James Le Mesurier, who would go on to found the White Helmets in Turkey in 2013, served as intelligence coordinator for Pristina City in Kosovo soon after the NATO intervention that led to NATO being accused of war crimes for its targeting of thousands of civilians and media.
Years later, in 2015, Le Mesurier was interviewed for a Georgetown Security Studies Review, a publication for the Center of Security Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Services. The review examined the Le Mesurier-proposed “framework for demobilization and reconstruction in post-conflict Syria.” The parallels with the Kosovo operation reviewed by Le Mesurier and Georgetown Security are blatant:
These teams [White Helmets] possess many of the factors that made past demobilization efforts successful, such as the transition of the Kosovo Liberation Army to the Kosovo Protection Corps.”
In Syria, the Yugoslavia blueprint has since evolved, as the forces that destroyed Yugoslavia seek to perfect their practice of rehabilitating terrorists for the purpose of justifying foreign military intervention. In Kosovo, the KLA, a terrorist group, was rebranded as a “protection corps.” In Syria, the same “protection corps” myth was incubated with immediate effect, working in lock-step with the various terrorist and sectarian gangs that were armed, trained and financed by the U.S/U.K.-led interventionist coalition.
Screenshot from a promotional video for the “moderate opposition” in Syria.
The Georgetown study argues that the White Helmets must be an integral part of the transitional process in post-conflict Syria. Despite claims of being an apolitical organization, the White Helmets would be involved in an external “reconciliation” process managed by NATO member-states, their allies in the Gulf, and Israel, per Georgetown’s recommendations. Internal Syrian/Russian-led reconciliation processes are not even acknowledged, despite their many successes in achieving reintegration of many of the armed factions back into the fabric of Syrian secular society.
The study then claims that the Kosovo model shows that such proposed reintegration programs can succeed if they are managed by groups like the White Helmets and similar local actors aligned with the U.S coalition policy of toppling the Syrian government. The lofty claims of promoting “stability on multiple fronts” should ring hollow considering the role of the NATO member-states in fomenting instability and chaos in a recalcitrant sovereign nation to force compliance with their supremacist geo-strategic objectives in the region. Effectively, the White Helmets are the entry point of the shadow-state wedge that has been plunged deep into the heart of Syrian society and culture.
The Balkans, the Jo Cox Foundation and James Le Mesurier
Unsurprisingly, the Jo Cox Foundation retrospectively endorses the NATO intervention in 1999 and upholds the narratives that manufactured consent for this NATO-state unlawful aggression that was never legitimized by a UN mandate.
Jo Cox named her first child Lejla, in memory of a “Bosniak genocide victim she met at Srebrenica.” Cox based much of her argumentation for military intervention in Syria upon the dubious and deadly case for military interference in the Balkans.
In February 2018, Brendan Cox resigned from both the Jo Cox Foundation and More In Common after sensationally admitting to being a repeat-offending “sex-pest” during his time working for Save the Children (STC). This followed new allegations that Cox drunkenly grabbed a woman by the throat, forced her against the wall of a London bar, and told her “I want to f**k you.” Cox had resigned from STC in 2015 after accusations of harassment and indecent behavior had forced his ignominious departure.
Brendan Cox had started working with orphans and children in Sarajevo when he was just 18 years old. In a speech given in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, in March 2017, under the auspices of the Jo Cox Foundation, Cox stated that he had been “working to counter extremism and hatred long before it attacked his own family.” Cox’s journey began in the former Yugoslavia, where he worked with “survivors of the siege of Sarajevo” and continued for the “next ten years.” Cox claims to have spent every summer and Christmas running “holiday camps, volunteering in orphanages and teaching in schools.” Cox worked with “children from Moster, Vukovar and Srebrenica”
James Le Mesurier’s Balkans career path is a little more intricate than previously revealed. After speaking to sources in Serbia, his role has been clarified in greater detail.
In 1998 Le Mesurier was seconded to the Office of the High Representative (OHR) for Bosnia and Herzegovina, under Carlos Westendorp, before being sent to Kosovo in summer of 1999 after the deployment of KFOR (Kosovo Force) to the province.
From July 1999 – 2000, Le Mesurier was appointed Intelligence Coordinator for Pristina City, acting as liaison officer between Intel officers of different national contingents in KFOR. Le Mesurier left the British Army in 2000.
From January 2001 – February 2002, Le Mesurier was Deputy Head of the Advisory Unit on Security and Justice and the Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) Hans Haekkerup’s security policy body within the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). In this position, Le Mesurier acted as political advisor to the UN Police Commissioner and represented the SRSG on civil-military-police coordination bodies. He led interdepartmental working groups, developing regulatory regimes for private security companies and weapon possession and control.
From February 2002 – July 2003, Le Mesurier was advisor on economic crime with the EU Mission in Kosovo, supporting units countering money laundering, terrorism, smuggling, anti-corruption and financial disclosure.
The Bernard Kouchner connection
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Bernard Kouchner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, Sept. 27, 2010 David Karp | AP
In 1999, MSF was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Bernard Kouchner was one of the original co-founders of MSF and in 1999 he arrived in Pristina as the UN Special Representative to Kosovo, elected by Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General at the time. Kouchner served as head of UNMIK from July 1999 until January 2001. Kouchner also has a history of high-level involvement in interventionist campaigns from Romania in 1989 and including Haiti, Sudan, Iraq, Libya and the more recent, ongoing Syrian and Ukrainian NATO-led regime change projects.
According to the Serbian sources who described Le Mesurier’s role in greater detail, Le Mesurier would have been under the direction of Kouchner in Pristina:
Bernard Kouchner was UN Special Representative until mid-January 2001. Le Mesurier left the British Army (where he served as an intel coordinator for City of Pristina) in mid-2000. Therefore, it is clear that he was given a job by Kouchner.”
Kouchner’s tenure in Kosovo was plagued by controversy and accusations of involvement in human and organ trafficking masterminded by the Albanian mafia gangs within the KLA. We will examine this element in greater detail in the final part of this series, which will outline the possibility of a far more nefarious role played by the White Helmets as an integral part of the global human-trafficking schemes that benefit from the chaos of conflict and war.
In this video, Kouchner responds to questions about the “yellow houses” that were the suspected center of the organ-trafficking trade. Victims, the majority of whom were Serbs, had been taken from Kosovo to Albania where their organs were brutally removed. Kouchner responds with laughter and calls the reporter “stupid, insane.”
Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor for war crimes in former Yugoslavia, detailed these crimes in her book The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals, which was published in 2008 just after Kosovo declared its independence. In 2010 an interim report by the Council of Europe vindicated Del Ponte’s claims, which had garnered skepticism and criticism from the NATO-aligned media and spokespeople. Del Ponte persistently complained, at the time, that UN authorities in Kosovo were systematically blocking her investigations into crimes committed by the Kosovan Albanians in the KLA and the rebranded Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC):
The allegations are macabre and shocking. In the closing days of the Kosovo conflict, hundreds of civilians were allegedly kidnapped by Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) guerrillas and transported to neighboring Albania. There, dozens were killed and their organs “harvested” to be sold abroad. The victims included Serbs, Russians, and at least one Albanian.” (Allegations of Organ Trafficking in Del Ponte Memoir Spark Scandal)
So, in Kosovo we saw the early interconnecting links that would later expand into Syria and into the establishment of soft-power structures that would infiltrate Syrian society and provide justification for the criminalization of the Syrian government and its allies. We witnessed the curiously coincidental positioning of actors such as Kouchner, Le Mesurier and even Cox — all of whom would move on to take a pivotal role in the Syrian regime-change war.
Kouchner parted company with MSF in 1979 but subsequently founded Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World). His has been one of the most strident anti-Syrian government voices in Western media and among the ruling elite organizations that have driven the narratives on Syria in the West. In 2013, Kouchner accompanied John McCain on a clandestine tour of Syria, smuggled in illegally by armed extremist factions. In 2012, Huffington Post published an article co-authored by French war-orchestrator Bernard-Henri Levy and Bernard Kouchner, Jacques Beres, Mario Bettati and Andre Glucksmann. It was entitled “Enough Evasion, We Must Intervene in Syria!”
Did Brendan Cox cross paths with Le Mesurier and Kouchner or both? Was it a coincidence that they all operated in the same interventionist theatre at the same time? Why have Cox and Le Mesurier never emphasized the crimes committed by the Kosovar Albanians against the Serbs? Why have they been silent (to our knowledge) on the organ trade and human trafficking that would have potentially preyed on the very orphanages where Cox worked during his summer holidays?
Probably the most telling element in the updated description of James Le Mesurier’s role is that he was instrumental in the conversion of the KLA, consisting of Al Qaeda elements alongside the Kosovar Albanian warlords, into the rebranded Kosovo ‘Protection’ Corps. This blueprint has clearly been carried forward into Syria with the creation of the White Helmets to merge with and offer protection for the extremist groups, including Al Qaeda. We have also seen similar rebranding exercises for Al Qaeda in Syria: Al Nusra Front has been given a number of new identities in an effort to disassociate it from its terrorist origins.
The White Helmets PR machine and the Jo Cox Fund
Having perfected the blueprint of “humanitarian” regime change in the Balkans, many of the same players, along with their proteges and the reincarnations of certain pro-intervention NGOs, have since been sought to apply this model to other “rogue” states deemed regime-change targets, such as Syria.
In Syria, the White Helmets have been crucial to these efforts aimed at disguising the destruction and plundering of the Syrian state as an exercise in “humanitarianism.” Unsurprisingly, the White Helmets’ reputation as “humanitarians” and “good-doers” has been promoted by a highly sophisticated and interconnected nexus of NGOs that have consistently perpetuated falsehoods about the Syrian conflict in service to reviving this blueprint — first developed in Kosovo — once more in Syria. Many of the NGOs at the heart of this nexus count among their most influential members the same four individuals who formed the Jo Cox Fund in 2016.
Of the organizations most deeply involved in this effort, several stand out for their capacity to shift public opinion, their creation and co-opting of popular movements, and their ability to manipulate popular sentiment through the use of petitions, social media campaigns and other related strategies. Groups like Purpose, Avaaz and Change.org are arguably the most notable of these organizations and two of the founders of the Jo Cox Fund are intimately involved in their leadership.
For instance, Tim Dixon, once a speechwriter for Australian prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, is an experienced corporate and political strategist who shifted his focus to “humanitarian” NGOs after 2010 — co-founding Purpose Europe after joining Purpose New York in 2011, and subsequently the pro-intervention Syria campaign. Dixon also shares deep connections to Avaaz, which helped create Purpose, through Dixon’s collaboration with his “professional associate” Jeremy Heimans, who helped found Avaaz and co-founded Purpose.
Screenshot supplied by Cory Morningstar’s website, The Art of Annihilation – Angels and Demons: Otherwise Known as the Conquerors and the Conquered – Revisionist Linguistics.
Dixon has also collaborated with Brendan Cox for years, as together they have been “instrumental” in reshaping the “refugee” narrative “through opinion research, message development, popular movement-building and campaigning to reach mainstream audiences.” Then, after Jo Cox’s death, Dixon, Brendan Cox and Gemma Mortensen — another Jo Cox Fund co-founder — created the organization More In Common, which claims to work “to build stronger and more inclusive democratic societies that are resilient to the threats of populism and division.”
People hold signs during a Jo Cox memorial in Trafalgar Square, London, June 22, 2016. Alastair Grant | AP
However, as will be shown in a moment, the connections among these three significantly pre-date More In Common, as all three were intimately involved in the pro-intervention “humanitarian” group Crisis Action Network.
Avaaz and Purpose often focus the campaigns they develop at “rogue” nations that challenge U.S. empire. As journalist and researcher Jay Taber wrote for Cory Morningstar’s Wrong Kind of Green: “When challenges to U.S. hegemony arise — such as in Bolivia, Libya, Syria, Burundi and Congo — Avaaz and Purpose create campaigns to discredit and destabilize these independent governments.” By dressing up these campaigns that are American empire-driven in the illusion that they are entirely “people driven” by local communities, these groups are capable of falsifying narratives about a country’s political climate on a massive scale.
‘Activist’ group Avaaz demands former U.S President Barack Obama impose a No Fly Zone in Syria – June 2015.
Avaaz and Purpose have used campaigns they have created to great effect within Syria, particularly through campaigns that sprang up early on in the Syrian conflict in support of the so-called “revolution,” as well as through their creation of the Bambuser platform that allowed Syrian opposition “activists” to upload video footage that on several occasions was later shown to be falsified. Eventually, in 2018, the platform was closed down but not before a number of the falsified videos had been downloaded by watchful researchers and journalists.
Shortly after the creation of Bambuser, Avaaz campaign manager Pascal Vollenweider had bragged that Avaaz had helped “kickstart” the Syrian “revolution” by equipping these “citizen journalists” and giving them the tools to produce multimedia used to further false narratives about the reality of the Syrian conflict.
One of those Avaaz-sponsored campaigns, “Smuggle Hope into Syria,” was initially highly effective in promoting the false narrative of a people-driven revolution waged by heroic “rebels” and centered around “Danny” Abdul Dayem’s efforts to raise $2.5 million for communication equipment needed by “citizen journalists” who were promoting the “rebel” cause. However, one of “Danny’s” videos that had aired on CNN was exposed as fake soon after, as were similar Avaaz and Purpose-backed videos produced by other “citizen journalists” like Khalid Abu Salah.
Since then, Avaaz and Purpose have heavily promoted a NATO-imposed “no fly zone” in Syria, without ever mentioning the dangers such a policy would pose to the Syrian civilians or the fact that such measures are historically precursors to large-scale military action. Furthermore, without ever providing proof, Avaaz has routinely accused Russia and the Syrian government of committing “coordinated atrocities” against media personnel and journalists in rebel-held areas of Syria. In addition, Avaaz has directly raised more than $2 million for the White Helmets.
Avaaz stages a protest with fake corpses and actors masked as Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad on June 7, 2012 near the United Nations in New York. Bebeto Matthews | AP
Another organization that has operated in Syria and elsewhere among similar lines is Change.org, whose Chief Global Officer from 2016 to 2017 was Gemma Mortensen, another co-founder of the Jo Cox Fund. Change.org has been found to deliberately manipulate petitions on its page when they challenge the Western narrative on Syria, such as their removal — during Mortensen’s tenure — of a petition campaigning against the White Helmets’ nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, despite the fact that the petition garnered more than double the number of signatures than had the petition calling for the group to be given the prize. At the time, Change.org claimed the petition rejecting the White Helmets’ nomination for the prize had “violated community standards.”
However, the most influential of this type, at least where Syria is considered, has been the Syria Campaign. The group was co-founded by Dixon and Mortensen in 2014 with funding from Ayman Asfari, the Syrian-in-exile oil baron living in England, who has donated almost £700,000 since 2009 to the U.K. Conservative Party. As was noted in Part I of this series, Asfari has been very influential in driving the false narratives about the Syrian conflict that are promoted by Western governments.
With Asfari’s funding, the Syria Campaign has officially sought to amplify “moderate” and “democratic” voices in the Syrian opposition. In practice, the Syria Campaign, along with its progenitor Purpose, have managed public relations for the White Helmets, creating high-quality multimedia content and even the group’s website, in order to promote the White Helmets in the mainstream media and on social media — essentially directing the group’s branding thousands of miles away from Syria, in their New York office.
Most notably, however, the Syria Campaign has led the lion’s share of White Helmet fundraising efforts from individual donations in the West in order to secure the “funding that they [the White Helmets] so desperately deserve.” Even though the White Helmets have received millions of dollars from NATO member states and Gulf states, the Syria Campaign urges would-be donors to “give generously.”
In addition, just like Avaaz, Purpose and the White Helmets themselves, the Syria campaign has actively pushed for a “no fly zone” in Syria, one that would require the deployment of 70,000 U.S. soldiers to enforce and would risk embroiling the U.S. in a full-scale war against the Syrian state and Russia. More recently, it promoted the hashtag #Act4Daraa, which sought to pressure the UN Security Council to prevent the Syrian government’s now-successful effort to eliminate Western sponsored extremist and ISIS pockets in Syria’s south.
Furthermore, the Syria Campaign has been intimately involved in attempting to silence critics of the White Helmets. In its report titled “Killing the Truth: How Russia is fuelling a disinformation campaign to cover up war crimes in Syria,” the Syria Campaign calls for technology and social media companies to block criticism of the White Helmets and pro-intervention narratives as they are “polluting the public debate central to any healthy democracy.” The report — which mentions Vanessa Beeley, co-author of this article series, by name — further urges news organizations to “not give conspiracy theorists a platform in the name of balance,” as alternative narratives “cloud the truth.” In effect, the Syria Campaign has been at the forefront of attempts to silence those who are exposing the murkier aspects of the White Helmets and the billionaire network pulling their strings.
Ayman Asfari extends influence in Syria
In May 2016, the Asfari Foundation (covered in part 1 of this series) teamed up with the Said Foundation to raise money for the Hands Up for Syria Appeal. The Asfari and Said Foundations matched the £ 3.997 million that was raised for “millions of young children” deprived of an education during the seven-year conflict in Syria. Speakers at the event included then-British Prime Minister David Cameron; David Miliband — President and CEO of International Rescue Committee; and actress Cate Blanchett, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. Prince Charles sent a video message emphasizing the importance of education to the rebuilding of Syria.
Ayman Asfari at The Hands Up for Syria Appeal, May 2016, has raised £3,997,928 from ‘generous donors’. Photo | Hands Up Foundation
Again there was no mention of the root cause of the issues being highlighted. Money was effectively raised to treat the symptoms of the British imperialist project inside Syria that violates international law on many counts. Why would the British monarch-in-waiting have any involvement in the “rebuilding” of a sovereign nation that his successive Tory governments have, alongside their allies in the U.S. coalition of proxy terror, systematically destabilized and weakened?
The money raised will be funneled into Idlib via the Hands Up Foundation, which claims to raise money for “vital health services” in North West Syria, a region infested with all manner of extremist and terrorist groups. Many of those groups have been evacuated to Idlib from liberated areas of Syria such as East Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta, increasing the numbers of armed, hostile groups in the area. It is worth remembering that OPCW refused to enter this area after the alleged chemical attacks in Khan Sheikhoun April 2017 because the risk of beheading or kidnapping was too high.
Hands Up Foundation operates in partnership with SAMS (Syrian American Medical Society), which works with the White Helmets alongside the controlling extremist factions where they are based. SAMS is a predominantly Chicago based, Muslim Brotherhood organization that receives copious funding from USAID, the U.S. State Department outreach agent for CIA clandestine operations against target nations. USAID has also donated $31 million to the White Helmets via Chemonics, one of its many subcontractors.
While 85 percent of inhabited Syria under Syrian government protection and control suffers under the weight of U.S./U.K./EU imposed sanctions that have targeted the Syrian state health sector, Hands Up Foundation is raising money for “medical salaries” of $150,000 per year at a health clinic “south of Aleppo.” Another project claims to be raising $105,000 for “medical training” in Idlib City, which was invaded by Nusra Front (Al Qaeda) in March 2015 — an invasion that resulted in the summary executions of civilians who were deemed “Shabiha,” a term that designates loyalty to the Syrian government, state and Syrian Arab Army. The White Helmets were filmed alongside the terrorist fighters, celebrating and participating in brutality against civilians.
According to Hands Up Foundation accounts for 2017, it has received a three year organizational development grant of £150,000 from the Asfari and SAID Foundations, “central” to achieving its aims in Idlib. While HUF makes claims of transparency and a document trail to recipients of its funding, there is nothing available to that effect on the website. Money is raised through its Syrian Supper Club, Marmalaid, and Singing for Syrians projects.
HUF focuses on three medical clinics, one in Reyhanli on the Turkish border and two inside northern Syria, in partnership with SAMS, which also operates in these areas. The placement of these clinics is important and will be examined in greater depth in Part 4.
In the Year of the Pig: The Real Vietnam War Heroes
2018/09/03 · by moorbey
by Ann Garrison
In the Year of the Pig: The Real Vietnam War Heroes
John McCain’s death triggered mass media regurgitations of Vietnam-era imperial racism and just plain idiocy, but also reminded us of those who risked everything to stop the war.
“There’s no doubt that the pig in the film is the US in Vietnam.”
I’ll be glad if I never hear John McCain’s name again, but his death made me look back and try once more to understand the US War with the Vietnamese People’s Army, whose anti-aircraft gunners shot him out of the sky during his 23 bombing raids over North Vietnam. On the “KPFA Radio “Sunday Show,” Kevin Alexander Gray said, “The national mourning for John McCain is almost a referendum or a recasting of the Vietnam War, where every soldier is a hero even though they were fighting in wars they had no business fighting in. Everybody’s a hero.”
I don’t think “everybody’s a hero,” least of all the son of Admiral John S. McCain, Sr., but I hugely admire the soldiers who ended the Vietnam War by refusing to fight and even fragging—shooting or throwing grenades at the commanders urging them on. The antiwar movement at home supported those heroes, but they were the ones who made it impossible to continue the war. They told their story in the documentary film Sir, No Sir.
“I hugely admire the soldiers who ended the Vietnam War by refusing to fight and even fragging—shooting or throwing grenades at their commanders.”
I felt for the wounded foot soldiers writhing in agony in the final moments of Emile de Antonio’s brilliant Vietnam War documentary In the Year of the Pig,and I felt angry at the politicians and anti-communist ruling class who sent them off to suffer and die. I hadn’t watched In the Year of the Pigfor nearly 20 years, but it’s one of the most profound films I’ve seen about the USA’s Vietnam War, so I watched it again, and I recommend it to anyone reading this. Emile de Antonio doesn’t narrate the film; it’s simply his composition of documentary footage. It’s also one of the few documentaries made while the war was still going on.
In the Year of the Pigwas released in 1968, though the 20thCentury “Years of the Pig” in the Zodiac Calendar were 1935, 1959, 1971, 1983, and 1995, so there’s no doubt that the pig in the film is the US in Vietnam.
Most of the footage exposes the presidents, military officers and congressmen—and they were all men—who championed the war until the foot soldiers refused to fight. Its other subjects are the Vietnamese they knew next to nothing about.
“Whether we like Ho Chi Minh or not, he is indeed considered by many as the George Washington of his country.”
Articulate opponents of the war also appear—an Oregon senator, Father Daniel Berrigan, a University of Missouri college professor of Southeast Asian Studies, and a few more. The most remarkable, to my mind, is Senator Thruston Ballard Morton, a Republican from Kentucky whom I’d never heard of before. His first words in the film, spoken with a southern drawl, are:
“Now, the thing that I think we fail to recognize is that Ho Chi Minh, communist or what not, is considered by the people of Vietnam, and I’m speaking now of millions in South Vietnam, as the George Washington of his country. He’s the man that they think threw off the French, the colonialists. Just as we had our 1776, they had theirs in the 1940s. He also led an underground movement against the Japanese who had occupied Vietnam and the whole Indochina Peninsula during World War II.
And whether we like him or not, whether we like the particular economic system or social system that he might develop or not, we must remember that he is indeed considered by many—the peasants, the small people, the little people in South Vietnam and North Vietnam—as the George Washington of his country.”
From one empire to another
The film includes footage of British Major General Douglas Gracy sent to oversee the Japanese surrender in French Indochina south of the 16thparallel. When he went to Saigon, he realized that the French lacked the means to recapture it, so he transferred all the weaponry taken from the Japanese to the French. This enabled them to remain and fight the First Indochina War that ended in French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
In mid-60s footage of President Lyndon Johnson, he says, “Every day someone jumps up and shouts and says, ‘Tell us what is happening in Vietnam, and why are we in Vietnam, and how did you get us into Vietnam?’ Well, I didn’t get you into Vietnam. You’ve been in Vietnam 10 years [since the French defeat].”
“Those who run the war machine know that they can’t reinstitute the draft or put American troops on the ground without backlash at home, so they fight drone wars and proxy wars.”
More footage is full of the bloodlust, racism, jingoism, ignorance, and imperial arrogance behind the Vietnam War. It had me asking myself what has changed, and I had to conclude not much, not the imperial essentials. The weaponry is more deadly, the racism less overt, and the press far more obedient.
Most significantly, those who run the war machine know that they can’t reinstitute the draft or put American troops on the ground without backlash at home, so they fight drone wars and proxy wars—including jihadist wars—with the help of US equipment, financing, and Special Forces.
The US elites who were so intent on destroying the will of the Vietnamese seemed to have no idea who they were. Again, Senator Thruston Bundy was a rare exception:
“We’ve put about three million of ‘em into what I would call a concentration camp. They call it a refugee center. It’s got barbed wire around it. You can’t get out of it. We’ve taken these people from the graves of their ancestors, from their rice paddies. And we say, ‘Oh well, we’ve pacified X million people.’ Yeah, we pacified some more people by puttin’ em in these camps.”
The greatest Vietnam War heroes
The greatest Vietnam War heroes were of course the Vietnamese people and their leader Ho Chi Minh—Uncle Ho—the lifelong nationalist, anti-colonialist, and communist who wore cheap cotton clothing and lived in humble circumstances as they did. The North Vietnamese told Western visitors that the revolution meant they finally had enough to eat despite the empire’s best efforts to destroy them.
They were armed, men and women, in cities and in the countryside. Many of those handling the anti-aircraft weapons used to shoot down John McCain’s plane were women. The revolutionary government had consciously armed them so well that they could have taken it down in a day. That, they said, was the greatest testament to their belief that the government spoke for them.
Listen to Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pigis available in its entirety on the Internet Archive.
