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Originally posted by kpo:
Kiki, Signy's link is a good place to start to bring yourself up to speed:

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Nederland - The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) is convinced of having obtained irrefutable evidence to establish that on 17 July 2014, flight MH-17 was shot down by a BUK missile from the 9M38-series. According to the JIT there is also evidence identifying the launch location that involves an agricultural field near Pervomaiskyi which, at the time, was controlled by pro-Russian fighters.

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https://www.politie.nl/en/news/2016/september/28/jit-flight-mh17-was-s
hot-down-by-a-buk-missile-from-a-farmland-near-pervomaiskyi.html

At this stage, what do you think is the most likely explanation for the downing of MH17 kiki? Do you have any alternative theory that hasn't already been shot to pieces? Do you think, perhaps, that the Buk missile was shot from separatist territory by the Ukrainian army?

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"Objective truths are established by evidence. Personal truths by faith. Political truths by incessant repetition."

Russia's and Assad's War Crimes in Syria - http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=60278
Syrian regime collusion with ISIS - http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=60521

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Robert Fisk: "I Traced Al-Qaeda Missile Casings In Syria Back To Their Original Sellers"

... Veteran Middle East war correspondent Robert Fisk recently published a bombshell report entitled, I traced missile casings in Syria back to their original sellers

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so it’s time for the west to reveal who they sell arms to.

In it Fisk recalls a bit of detective sleuthing he's lately been engaged in after stumbling upon a batch of missile casings and shipment paperwork last year hidden in what he describes as "the basement of a bombed-out Islamist base in eastern Aleppo" with the words "Hughes Aircraft Co/Guided Missile Surface Attack" emblazoned on the side of the spent tubes.


Of course, the Syrian government recaptured the area from Islamist insurgents including al-Nusra terrorists and their allies in December 2016, and has made rapid gains throughout the country's east and south since; and Fisk has been trekking around the country to see what he can find. His "detective story" as he calls it actually seems to solicit the help of the public, and begins as follows:

Readers, a small detective story. Note down this number: MFG BGM-71E-1B. And this number: STOCK NO 1410-01-300-0254. And this code: DAA A01 C-0292.

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I found all these numerals printed on the side of a spent missile casing lying in the basement of a bombed-out Islamist base in eastern Aleppo last year. At the top were the words “Hughes Aircraft Co”, founded in California back in the 1930s by the infamous Howard Hughes and sold in 1997 to Raytheon, the massive US defence contractor whose profits last year came to $23.35bn (£18bn). Shareholders include the Bank of America and Deutsche Bank. Raytheon’s Middle East offices can be found in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Kuwait.

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There were dozens of other used-up identical missile casings in the same underground room in the ruins of eastern Aleppo, with sequential codings; in other words, these anti-armour missiles – known in the trade as TOWS, “Tube-launched, optically tracked and wire-guided missiles”...

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A prior spent missile tube in Syria with "Hughes Aircraft Company" listed as manufacturer which surfaced in 2014 (not part of the same batch of weapons analyzed in Fisk's report). Notice the attempt to scratch off the serial numbers. Via Armament Research Services

The past year especially has seen an uptick in such systematic attempts to trace foreign-supplied weapons on the Syrian battlefield, most of them recovered from internationally designated terrorists groups (even ISIS), back to their origination points. We've previously detailed a number of these reports, for example: Journalist Interrogated, Fired For Story Linking CIA And Syria Weapons Flights as well as Weapons Went From The CIA To ISIS In Less Than Two Months — the latter based on extensive arms tracking and field forensics research produced by Conflict Armament Research (CAR).

Robert Fisk, however, represents the rare instance of a prominent journalist on a lone mission to trace weapons serial numbers recovered from the foreign-backed Syrian insurgency back to their origins in the United States (worrisome for US intelligence and military leaders, as The Guardian has called him "one of the most famous journalists in the world" for his being unrelenting in his investigations).

Fisk continues by relating the moment he confronted a former Hughes Aircraft (now Raytheon) executive about finding their product in the hands of terrorists:

Some time ago, in the United States, I met an old Hughes Aircraft executive who laughed when I told him my story of finding his missiles in eastern Aleppo. When the company was sold, Hughes had been split up into eight components, he said. But assuredly, this batch of rockets had left from a US government base. Amateur sleuths may have already tracked down the first set of numbers above. The “01” in the stock number is a Nato coding for the US, and the BGM-71E is a Raytheon Systems Company product. There are videos of Islamist fighters using the BGM-71E-1B variety in Idlib province two years before I found the casings of other anti-tank missiles in neighbouring Aleppo. As for the code: DAA A01 C-0292, I am still trying to trace this number.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-missile-arms-deals-west-us-
uk-saudi-arabia-a8459731.html

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
... Veteran Middle East war correspondent Robert Fisk recently published a bombshell report entitled..."

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Fisk: "There's a whole entire world of military procurement that "everyone" knows about, except for you and me.

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Fisk: "There's a whole entire world of military procurement that "everyone" knows about, except for you and me.

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Hardly. Vice did a story about this a couple (?) years ago. US munitions and arms get bought and sold many times over - that's what war is. Soldiers even get bought and sold and flip sides from the am to the pm. Old as mankind.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Fisk: "There's a whole entire world of military procurement that "everyone" knows about, except for you and me.

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Mis-attribution. I said that, not Fisk.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Hardly. Vice did a story about this a couple (?) years ago. US munitions and arms get bought and sold many times over - that's what war is. Soldiers even get bought and sold and flip sides from the am to the pm. Old as mankind.

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That wasn't my point. My point was that the number that Fisk couldn't parse looks familiar to me. Having once dealt with military contract items, the number either looks like a DOD contract number (DAA) or a DOD part number. There is a giant online database of DOD part numbers that cover everything from missile launchers to office chairs to blood plasma to person-portable field equipment. If I could find that database again, I could compare the number format to the one on the missile casing. But mostly, it looks like a DOD contract number.

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The amount of military flotsam and jetsam out there with god only knows provenance could probably stretch to the moon. Just saying. Military purchasing is the wild west in many respects for all countries, and acquired with OPM (Other People's Money), so tracking is weak on purpose.

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Originally posted by kpo:

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Does the UN have observers on the ground personally verifying these items?

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Err, yes:

"“UNICEF welcomes the access granted to trapped children this week and can confirm that cases of severe malnutrition were found among children in the besieged Syrian town of Madaya following our participation in the second joint UN/Syrian Arab Red Crescent/ICRC humanitarian mission to the area on Thursday*.

“UNICEF is particularly saddened and shocked to have witnessed the death of Ali, a severely malnourished 16-year-old boy who passed away in the town’s clinic in front of our eyes.

“At the make-shift hospital UNICEF visited, there were only two doctors and two health professionals working under overwhelming conditions. The UNICEF team and staff of the World Health Organisation were able to screen 25 children under five for malnutrition using the Mid-Upper Arm Circumference measurement. Twenty-two (22) of the children showed signs of moderate to severe malnutrition. All of these children are now receiving treatment at the health facility using specialized medical and nutrition supplies that the UN and ICRC delivered on Monday."

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/media_89820.html

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Is there an official repository of evidence?

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Is the UN's first hand account of starving children not enough? What do you want the UN to do, publish photos of the starving children and their mid-upper arm circumference measurements...??

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Otherwise, it's just gossip (or propaganda), wearing an official facade. Like a lot of things we're supposed to accept because some authority said so.

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Right, rather believe that the UN's humanitarian offices are spewing gossip and propaganda than accept that Russia is doing anything wrong!

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Today about a thousand 'rebels' tried to cross through the Al-Bab border station into Turkey. Videos show a long line of cars of fleeing people. At the front several hundred men managed to enter Turkish ground. They were pushed back by Turkish army forces with water cannon trucks, tear gas and finally with gunfire. At least two 'rebels' were killed.

People shouted "Traitor traitor traitor, Turkish army is traitor". They burned pictures of Erdogan while screaming takbir and allahu akbar.

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Israeli Attacks On Syria Halted After Russia Threatened To Shoot Down Jets

According to reports in both Israeli and Arabic regional media, Israel this past week was preparing to expand major airstrikes against "Iran-backed" targets in Syria, but Moscow imposed its red line. The Independent has published a story describing that Russia's military in Syria threatened to shoot down any invading Israeli warplanes using fighter jets or their S-400 system.

The Jerusalem Post, citing sources in the UK Independent (Arabia), writes just after the latest meeting in Sochi between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin:

According to the report, Moscow has prevented three Israeli airstrikes on three Syrian outposts recently, and even threatened that any jets attempting such a thing would be shot down, either by Russian jets or by the S400 Anti-aircraft missiles. The source cited in the report claims a similar situation has happened twice, and that during August, Moscow stopped an airstrike on a Syrian outpost in Qasioun, where a S300 missile battery is placed.

Netanyahu's hasty trip to meet with Putin on Thursday - even in the final days before Tuesday's key election - was reportedly with a goal to press the Russian president on essentially ignoring Israel's attacks in Syria.
Image via The Jerusalem Post

Citing further sources in the British-Arabic Independent Arabia, The Jerusalem Post continues:

According to the Russian source, Putin let Netanyahu know that his country will not allow any damage to be done to the Syrian regime's army, or any of the weapons being given to it...

Israel sources cited by the Arabic newspaper described Netanyahu's attempts to persuade Putin as "a failure". This in spite of Netanyahu telling reporters after the meeting that his relations with Moscow were stronger than ever.

Moscow is said to be particularly resistant given the Israeli military's recent spate of attacks on targets in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria.

??? — Independent ????? (@IndyArabia) September 14, 2019

Sources in the report claimed further that Putin in a somewhat unprecedented moment raised the issue of Lebanon:

The Russian source said: "Putin has expressed his dissatisfaction from Israel's latest actions in Lebanon" and even emphasized to Netanyahu that he "Rejects the aggression towards Lebanon's sovereignty" something which has never been heard from him. Putin further stated that someone is cheating him in regards to Syria and Lebanon and that he will not let it go without a response. According to him, Netanyahu was warned not to strike such targets in the future.

It could also be simply that Putin understands that Netanyahu, now desperate to extend his political career to a record fifth term as prime minister as next week's elections loom, could be ready to risk a major and very unnecessary Middle East conflagration in order to continue to appeal to Israeli right wing and nationalist voters.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Israeli Attacks On Syria Halted After Russia Threatened To Shoot Down Jets

According to reports in both Israeli and Arabic regional media, Israel this past week was preparing to expand major airstrikes against "Iran-backed" targets in Syria, but Moscow imposed its red line. The Independent has published a story describing that Russia's military in Syria threatened to shoot down any invading Israeli warplanes using fighter jets or their S-400 system.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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According to the Russian source, Putin let Netanyahu know that his country will not allow any damage to be done to the Syrian regime's army, or any of the weapons being given to it...

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Moscow is said to be particularly resistant given the Israeli military's recent spate of attacks on targets in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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??? — Independent ????? (@IndyArabia) September 14, 2019
The Russian source said: "Putin has expressed his dissatisfaction from Israel's latest actions in Lebanon" and even emphasized to Netanyahu that he "Rejects the aggression towards Lebanon's sovereignty" something which has never been heard from him. Putin further stated that someone is cheating him in regards to Syria and Lebanon and that he will not let it go without a response. According to him, Netanyahu was warned not to strike such targets in the future.

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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/israeli-attacks-syria-halted-af
ter-russia-threatened-shoot-down-jets-report

So what do recent events tell me?

Well, this could just be Netanyahu electioneering. If he doesn't get re-elected, he'll be going to jail (literally) for corruption.

But what this ALSO tells me is that Netanyahu can no longer count on Saudi Arabia, or the USA, to do its dirty work for it. Israel is going to have to do its own "Assad must go/ death to Iran/ Greater Israel" campaign.

What I have been told (but haven't looked up) is that when Pompeo spoke with Putin about a month ago, he offered Putin some sort of ME deal, but left the meeting looking pale.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY

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Trump pulls troops from northern Syria as Turkey readies offensive
Missy Ryan,
Kareem Fahim,
Sarah Dadouch and
Karen DeYoung
October 7, 2019 at 8:45 AM EDT

The United States began withdrawing American troops from Syria’s border with Turkey early Monday, in the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration was washing its hands of an explosive situation between the Turkish military and U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters.

President Trump, in a series of Twitter messages Monday, suggested that the United States was shouldering too much of the burden — and the cost — of fighting the Islamic State. He rebuked European nations for not repatriating citizens who had joined the extremist group, claiming that the United States was being played for a “sucker.” And he chided his own Kurdish allies, who he said were “paid massive amounts of money and equipment” to fight the militants.

“It is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home. WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN,” he tweeted.

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The withdrawal followed a late Sunday statement by the White House that the United States would not intervene in a long-threatened Turkish offensive into northern Syria. The announcement, which signaled an abrupt end to a months-long American effort to broker peace between two important allies, [Turkay and the Kuds] came after a call between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan said in a speech Monday that the withdrawal began soon after their phone call.

A U.S. official confirmed to The Washington Post that American troops left observation posts in the border villages of Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn at 6:30 a.m. local time.

Pentagon chief says a solo incursion by Turkey into Syria is ‘unacceptable,’ but doesn’t pledge to stop it

In an initial reaction to the pullout, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a strong Trump supporter, indicated on Twitter that he was seeking more information on the president’s decision. But he added, “If press reports are accurate this is a disaster in the making.”

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Hillary Clinton calls Trump's Syria pullout a 'sickening betrayal' of allies

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Senator Bernie Sanders, who seeks the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination, tweeted that while he supports ending US military intervention in the Middle East, Trump's "extremely irresponsible" announcement is "likely to result in more suffering and instability."

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Senator Mitt Romney called the withdrawal "a betrayal" that facilitates a jihadist resurgence. [OH BALONEY!!!- SIGNY]

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"Withdrawing US forces from Northern Syria is a catastrophic mistake that puts our gains against ISIS at risk and threatens US security," tweeted Liz Cheney, the number three House Republican.

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The fast-moving developments threatened a fresh military conflagration in a large swath of northern Syria, stretching from east of the Euphrates River to the border with Iraq. Syrian Kurds had established an autonomous zone in the area during more than eight years of Syria’s civil war.

Ankara, however, has been increasingly unnerved by the Kurdish presence, and by the close ties between U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a militant group that has fought a long insurgency against the Turkish state.

For months, Erdogan has been threatening an imminent invasion, as Trump administration officials attempted to work out an accommodation that would satisfy Turkish demands for border security while providing a measure of protection for the U.S.-allied Syrian-Kurdish force.


But on Sunday, the United States appeared to throw up its hands. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the Turkish leader would “soon be moving forward” with dispatching troops to battle the Kurdish forces, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. Ankara views the group as a terrorist-linked entity, but the SDF has fought closely alongside the U.S. military as a primary partner against the Islamic State.

“The United States armed forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘caliphate,’ will no longer be in the immediate area,” Grisham said in a statement. ISIS is another name for the Islamic State, the militant group whose rise drew the U.S. military into Syria.

The SDF, in a statement critical of the United States, said the American troops have begun pulling out.


“The United States forces have not fulfilled their obligations and withdrew their forces from the border area with Turkey,” the statement said. “This Turkish military operation in north and east Syria will have a big negative impact on our war against Daesh and will destroy all stability that was reached in the last few years.” Daesh is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

It added that the group reserves the right to defend itself against Turkish aggression.

Erdogan, who has portrayed a Turkish incursion as necessary to protect his country’s borders, has spoken in recent weeks of resettling millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey in a “safe zone” in northern Syria, a plan that has been criticized by refugee advocates as well as local Syrian Kurds who could be displaced by such a proposal.


On Saturday, Erdogan said the invasion, dubbed Operation Peace Fountain, could begin “as soon as today or maybe tomorrow.”

U.S. officials depicted the impending offensive, and the U.S. troop withdrawal, as a dramatic turn after their prolonged attempt to hammer out an arrangement that would allay the Turks’ concerns about Syrian Kurdish forces close to their border, while also averting a battle they fear will be bloody for Kurdish fighters whom the Pentagon sees as stalwart allies.

Military officials point out that Kurdish assistance is still required to avoid a return of the Islamic State in Syria and to guard facilities where Islamic State militants and their families are being held.

A senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an evolving situation, said the U.S. government “has no idea” what the Turkish operation would look like, whether it would be a small, symbolic incursion or a major offensive intended to push as far as 25 miles into Syria.

The White House announcement comes only two days after the Pentagon completed its most recent joint patrol with Turkish forces, a central element of the U.S. effort to build trust in northern Syria. But similar patrols and other measures overseen from a joint U.S.-Turkish military hub in southern Turkey have not reduced Ankara’s impatience to establish the buffer zone it has envisioned.
AD

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper described ongoing U.S.-Turkish cooperation in northern Syria, saying that his Turkish counterpart had agreed in a call last week “that we need to make the security mechanism work.”

In negotiations, the United States had said it would agree to a strip along the border to be cleared of Syrian Kurdish fighters and jointly patrolled by the United States and Turkey on the ground and in the air. That strip is about five miles wide, only about a quarter of what the Turks have demanded.

Syria camp is at risk of falling under ISIS control, Kurdish general says

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The joint patrols are taking place in only about a third of the border length, with the idea of gradually expanding them. In addition to not liking U.S. terms for the agreement, Erdogan believes the United States is dragging its feet in implementing it.


“Mr. Trump gave the order; he ordered to pull out. But this came late,” Erdogan told reporters in Ankara on Monday. “We cannot accept the threats of terrorist organizations.”

Erdogan’s plan to send up to 3 million Syrian refugees into the 140-mile-long strip also runs counter to what the United States says was part of the agreement they had reached to allow only the 700,000 to 800,000 refugees who originally fled the area to resettle there. Turkey currently hosts more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees, but the government has recently begun deporting hundreds back to Syria as public sentiment turns against the migrants.

Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Erdogan, wrote on Twitter that Turkey has no interest in occupying or changing the demographics in northeastern Syria and that the “safe zone” would serve two purposes: secure Turkey’s borders and allow refugees to return home.


After months of warning about the turmoil such a move could create, U.S. officials said they are now watching Turkey’s actions closely to inform their own decisions about how quickly they must move the hundreds of troops expected to be affected.

“We're going to get out of the way,” another U.S. official said.

There are about 1,000 U.S. troops in northeastern Syria.

The SDF also predicted that Islamic State fighters would break out of prison camps the SDF manages in different areas of Syria.

The potential for greater risk to Islamic State prisons and camps comes after months of unsuccessful efforts by the Trump administration to persuade countries in Europe and elsewhere to repatriate their citizens.

The White House statement said that “Turkey will now be responsible for all ISIS fighters” in that area. “The United States will not hold them for what could be many years and great cost to the United States taxpayer,” Grisham said.

Erdogan said Monday that Turkey has “an approach to this issue” of ISIS, without specifying what it was.

The United Nations is also concerned about the impact that any Turkish operation would have on the protection of civilians in northeastern Syria, Panos Moumtzis, U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, said in a telephone interview.

“We want our message to all governments and actors on the ground to be to make sure that this latest development does not have an impact first of all on a new displacement of people,” he said.

The United Nations already provides services to approximately 700,000 people every month in the northeast. Moumtzis emphasized the importance of freedom of movement of civilians and ensuring the continuation of access to humanitarian groups. He stressed that any movement of Syrians must be done voluntarily and with safety and dignity.

“We have not had any specific instructions on” the safe zone, he said, adding that the United Nations has a contingency plan depending on how wide and deep the safe zone would be.

The planned offensive comes amid already heightened U.S. tensions with its NATO ally Turkey, over Ankara’s plans to operate a sophisticated Russian air defense system.

Fahim reported from Istanbul. Sarah Dadouch and Asser Khatab in Beirut and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.

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Syrian Government Regains Control Over Country's Northeastern Parts

Eight days ago U.S. President Donald Trump gave a green light for another Turkish invasion of Syria. We explained why that move made it inevitable for the Kurds to submit to Damascus and to let the Syrian Arab Army back into northeast Syria:

While the YPG might want to fight off a Turkish invasion they have little chance to succeed. The land is flat and the YPG forces only have light arms.

There is only one solution for them. They will have to call up the Syrian government and ask it to come back into the north east. That would remove the Turkish concerns and would likely prevent further Turkish moves.

After Trump had spoken with the Turkish president Erdogan, the U.S. military removed a few of its forces from some areas near the Turkish border. The Pentagon was still under the false impression that Turkey would limit its invasion to some 5 kilometer in depth. It was obvious, as we wrote, that Turkey wanted far more:

A major goal is to interrupt the M4 highway that runs parallel to the border and allows for troop movements between the east and the west of the Kurdish majority areas. The highway is about 20-30 kilometers from the border.

The M4 road is also one of the major logistical routes for the U.S. troops stationed in the western part.

The Kurds could do little to resist the Turkish onslaught. On Saturday Turkish supported "Syrian rebels" reached the M4 highway and captured and killed several Kurdish troops and civilians who were passing by. The Pentagon finally took notice of the imminent danger:

“This is total chaos,” a senior administration official said at midday, speaking on the condition of anonymity about the confusing situation in Syria.

Although “the Turks gave guarantees to us” that U.S. forces would not be harmed, the official said, Syrian militias allied with them “are running up and down roads, ambushing and attacking vehicles,” putting American ­forces — as well as civilians — in danger even as they withdraw. The militias, known as the Free Syrian Army, “are crazy and not reliable.”

Ahhhh. The "Free Syrian Army", which the U.S. built and supplied with an immense amount of weapons to fight the Syrian government, is "crazy and not reliable". How come that all the think tankers and 'journalists' who for years lauded that 'army' never noticed that?

The Pentagon finally recognized that it was not possible to hold onto the area without starting a war with its NATO partner Turkey. On Saturday evening Trump gave the order that all U.S. troops shall leave northeast Syria within 30 days. The Secretary of Defense did not resign as his predecessor did over a similar decision but defended the move.

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Originally posted by THG:
Hillary Clinton calls Trump's Syria pullout a 'sickening betrayal' of allies

"Let us be clear: The president has sided with authoritarian leaders of Turkey and Russia over our loyal allies and America's own interests," Clinton, a former secretary of State and senator and President Trump's Democratic rival in 2016, tweeted.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/hillary-clinton-calls-trumps-s
yria-pullout-a-sickening-betrayal-of-allies/ar-AAIp18A?ocid=spartanntp

T

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The OPCW and Douma: Chemical Weapons Watchdog Accused of Evidence-Tampering by Its Own Inspectors
by Jonathan Steele


Claims that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons are almost as old as the Syrian civil war itself. They have produced strong reactions, and none more so than in the case of the alleged attack in April last year on the opposition-controlled area of Douma near Damascus in which 43 people are said to have been killed by chlorine gas. The United States, Britain and France responded by launching airstrikes on targets in the Syrian capital.

Were the strikes justified? An inspector from the eight-member team sent to Douma has just come forward with disturbing allegations about the international watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which was tasked with obtaining and examining evidence.

Involved in collecting samples as well as drafting the OPCW’s interim report, he claims his evidence was suppressed and a new report was written by senior managers with assertions that contradicted his findings.

The inspector went public with his allegations at a recent all-day briefing in Brussels for people from several countries working in disarmament, international law, military operations, medicine and intelligence. They included Richard Falk, former UN special rapporteur on Palestine and Major-General John Holmes, a distinguished former commander of Britain’s special forces. The session was organised by the Courage Foundation, a New York-based fund which supports whistle-blowers. I attended as an independent reporter.

The whistle-blower gave us his name but prefers to go under the pseudonym Alex out of concern, he says, for his safety.

He is the second member of the Douma Fact-Finding Mission to have alleged that scientific evidence was suppressed. In May this year an unpublished report by Ian Henderson, a South African ballistics expert who was in charge of the mission’s engineering sub-team was leaked. The team examined two suspicious cylinders which rebels said were filled with chlorine gas. One cylinder was found on the roof of a damaged building where over two dozen bodies were photographed. The other lay on a bed on the upper floor of a nearby house below a hole in the roof. The inspectors were able to check the scene because Syrian troops drove rebel fighters out of the area a few days after the alleged gas attack.

Assessing the damage to the cylinder casings and to the roofs, the inspectors considered the hypothesis that the cylinders had been dropped from Syrian government helicopters, as the rebels claimed. All but one member of the team concurred with Henderson in concluding that there was a higher probability that the cylinders had been placed manually. Henderson did not go so far as to suggest that opposition activists on the ground had staged the incident, but this inference could be drawn. Nevertheless Henderson’s findings were not mentioned in the published OPCW report.

The staging scenario has long been promoted by the Syrian government and its Russian protectors, though without producing evidence. By contrast Henderson and the new whistleblower appear to be completely non-political scientists who worked for the OPCW for many years and would not have been sent to Douma if they had strong political views. They feel dismayed that professional conclusions have been set aside so as to favour the agenda of certain states.

Alex, the new whistleblower, said his aim in going public was not to undermine the OPCW, most of whose investigators are objective scientists, but to persuade the organisation’s leadership to allow the Douma team to put forward their findings and answer questions at the week-long annual conference of member states which starts on November 25. “Most of the Douma team felt the two reports on the incident, the Interim Report and the Final Report, were scientifically impoverished, procedurally irregular and possibly fraudulent”, he said. Behind his call for the Douma inspectors to address the next OPCW conference was the hope that thereby the watchdog would “demonstrate transparency, impartiality and independence”.

He told me “Ian and I wanted to have this issue investigated and hopefully resolved internally, rather than exposing the failings of the Organisation in public, so we exhausted every internal avenue possible including submission of all the evidence of irregular behaviour to the Office of Internal Oversight. The request for an internal investigation was refused and every other attempt to raise our concerns was stone walled. Our failed efforts to get management to listen went on over a period of nearly nine months. It was only after we realised the internal route was impossible that we decided to go public”.

Within days of rebel-supplied videos of dead children and adults in the aftermath of the alleged attack in Douma Francois DeLattre, France’s representative at the UN Security Council, said the videos and photos showed victims with “symptoms of a potent nerve agent combined with chlorine gas”.

The Douma fact-finding team quickly discovered this was wrong. Blood and other biological samples taken from alleged victims examined in Turkey (where some had fled after government forces regained control of Douma in mid-April) showed no evidence of nerve agents. Nor was there any in the surrounding buildings or vegetation in Douma. As the Interim Report, published on July 6 2018, put it: “No organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties”.

The next sentence said “Various chlorinated organic chemicals were found”. The indirect reference to chlorine was reported in many media as proof of the use of lethal gas. According to Alex there were huge internal arguments at the OPCW before the Interim report was released. Chlorinated organic chemicals (COCs) are present in the natural environment so one crucial point in discovering what actually happened at Douma was to measure the amount in the locations where the two cylinders were found and in the other parts of the two buildings and the street outside.

As Alex put it, “if the finding of these chemicals at the alleged site is to be used as an indicator that chlorine gas was present in the atmosphere, they should at least be shown to be present at levels significantly higher than what is present in the environment already”.

But when the analysis of these key levels came back from the laboratories the results were kept with Sami Barrek, a Tunisian who was the Duma fact-finding mission’s leader. Against normal expectations they were not passed on to the inspector who was drafting the OPCW’s interim report on Douma.

The inspector did, however, have the analysis from the samples of blood, hair, and other biological data from eleven alleged victims who had gone from Douma to Turkey. In no case did the samples reveal any relevant chemicals. On this basis he wrote in his report that the signs and symptoms of victims were not consistent with poisoning from chlorine. Instead of an attack producing multiple fatalities there had been “a non chemical-related event”, it said.

The language was low-key, in part, as Alex put it, because of the tension and anxiety involved when evidence doesn’t match what it is thought that management wants to hear. But the implications of implying a non-chemical event were dramatic. Like the engineering report, it hinted that the Douma incident may have been staged by opposition activists. Alex described it as “the elephant in the room which no-one dared mention explicitly”.

When the inspector’s report was submitted to senior management, silence ensued. A few weeks later on the eve of the expected publication the inspector who had drafted the report discovered that management was going to issue a redacted version on June 22 2018 without the knowledge of most of the Douma Fact-Finding Mission. Its conclusions contradicted the inspector’s version. By then the inspector had learnt that the results of the quantitative analysis of the samples from the allegedly attacked buildings had been delivered to management from the test laboratories but not passed on to the inspectors. He got sight of the results which indicated that the levels of COCs were much lower than what would be expected in environmental samples. They were comparable to and even lower than those given in the World Health Organisation’s guidelines on recommended permitted levels of trichlorophenol and other COCs in drinking water. The redacted version of the report made no mention of the findings.

Alex described this omission as “deliberate and irregular”. “Had they been included, the public would have seen that the levels of COCs found were no higher than you would expect in any household environment”, he said.

The inspector who drafted the original report was furious when he realised it was to be replaced by a doctored management version. He wrote an email of complaint to the OPCW’s director general. The DG was Ahmet Uzumcu, a Turkish diplomat but his chef de cabinet, the man considered to have the most power in the OPCW on day-to-day issues was Bob Fairweather, a British career diplomat. (He has since been succeeded by Sebastien Braha, a diplomat from another anti-Assad government, France). In his email the inspector complained that it was wrong for the new report to describe the levels of COCs as high. He insisted that his original 105-page report be published.

This request was rejected but Sami Barrek, the team leader, was put in charge of replacing the doctored version with what turned out to be a toned-down but still misleading report. During the editing four of the Douma inspectors, including Ian Henderson, the engineering expert, had managed to get Barrek to agree that the low levels of COCs should be mentioned. On the day before the new publication date, July 6, they found that the levels were again being omitted.

On July 4 there was another intervention. Fairweather, the chef de cabinet, invited several members of the drafting team to his office. There they found three US officials who were cursorily introduced without making clear which US agencies they represented. The Americans told them emphatically that the Syrian regime had conducted a gas attack, and that the two cylinders found on the roof and upper floor of the

building contained 170 kilograms of chlorine. The inspectors left Fairweather’s office, feeling that the invitation to the Americans to address them was unacceptable pressure and a violation of the OPCW’s declared principles of independence and impartiality.

Two days later the interim report was released. That morning, Alex recalled, “a senior colleague told us: ‘First floor [management] says that for the OPCW’s credibility we have to have a smoking gun”. Meanwhile, Fairweather asked the inspectors if he could get back the emails of complaint, including any which had been put into the trash folder. They complied.

After Alex’s briefing I emailed Fairweather with a request that he explain why he had facilitated the US officials’ meeting with the inspectors as well as why he had recalled emails. He did not reply.

The final Douma report which was published in March this year also failed to give any quantitative analysis of the COC samples. But its thrust went much further than the interim report. It stated that the OPCW concluded that the evidence from the Douma investigation provides “reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place”.

Alex argued that the concept of “reasonable grounds” was undefined. What should have been done in the report, he said, was to set out alternative hypotheses for what had occurred in Douma and then assess the balance of probabilities of the various options and conclude which was the most likely.

This is what was done in Henderson’s report on the provenance of the two cylinders.

I asked the OPCW’s media office to explain why the COC levels were excluded from the interim and final reports but they did not respond. Asked whether the inspectors would be permitted to address the conference of member states, they also did not respond.

An open letter to every delegate at the forthcoming OPCW conference calling for the inspectors to be heard has been signed by

Jose Bustani, first Director General of the OPCW
Hans von Sponeck, former UN Humanitarian Coordinator (Iraq)
George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury
Scott Ritter, UNSCOM Weapons Inspector 1991-1998.
Noam Chomsky, Emeritus Professor, MIT.
John Pilger, Journalist and documentary film maker
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
Oliver Stone, Film Director, Producer and Writer.

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Senior OPCW official ordered deletion of ‘all traces’ of dissenting report on ‘Douma chemical attack’ – WikiLeaks’ new leak

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THUGR: Sig, you're a despicable person. Someone deserving of hatred and contempt. A complete failure as a human being.

You make it next to impossible to feel anything but contempt for Russians in general and that's no small achievement.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You might believe that Assad and Putin are evil dictators, but they're not STUPID. They wouldn't launch counterproductive (and potentially disastrous) chemical attacks with no upside whatsoever for shits and giggles. Put your brain in gear and start thinking.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You might believe that Assad and Putin are evil dictators, but they're not STUPID. They wouldn't launch counterproductive (and potentially disastrous) chemical attacks with no upside whatsoever for shits and giggles. Put your brain in gear and start thinking.

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Uh- huh. Your turn. So if that's true then *it follows like day follows night* that Putin would try and f*ck with our elections to make sure that THAT WOMAN had no chance of being president, and THAT EASILY MANIPULATED DUMB ASS MUPPET WOULD BE, right?

Until you can be honest with that I can never take you seriously (I know, you don't care - duh).

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SIGNY: You might believe that Assad and Putin are evil dictators, but they're not STUPID. They wouldn't launch counterproductive (and potentially disastrous) chemical attacks with no upside whatsoever for shits and giggles. Put your brain in gear and start thinking.

CAPTAIN MUSH: Uh- huh. Your turn. So if that's true then *it follows like day follows night* that Putin would try and f*ck with our elections to make sure that THAT WOMAN had no chance of being president, and THAT EASILY MANIPULATED DUMB ASS MUPPET WOULD BE, right?

Until you can be honest with that I can never take you seriously (I know, you don't care - duh).

KIKI: Are you saying that Putin manipulated the primaries too!!!??? ... especially the republican primaries where Trump made his way to the top of a heap of 16 total, that included such luminaries as Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, and Rick Perry ... because if they DIDN'T do that, then they couldn't guarantee THAT EASILY MANIPULATED DUMB ASS MUPPET would be president ... ???

I bet each and every candidate from both parties (but especially Hillary), and each party would LOVE to know the Russian secret to total election control!! ... FROM PRIMARY TO PRESIDENT!

And boy ... are you dumb for posting in effect the Russians actually did that.

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Senior OPCW Official Busted: Leaked Email Exposes Orders To "Delete All Traces" Of Dissent On Douma
Wikileaks has released their fourth set of leaks from the OPCW’s Douma investigation, revealing new details about the alleged deletion of important information regarding the fact-finding mission.

RELEASE: OPCW-Douma Docs 4. Four leaked documents from the OPCW reveal that toxicologists ruled out deaths from chlorine exposure and a senior official ordered the deletion of the dissenting engineering report from OPCW’s internal repository of documents. https://t.co/ndK4sRikNk
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 27, 2019

“One of the documents is an e-mail exchange dated 27 and 28 February between members of the fact finding mission (FFM) deployed to Douma and the senior officials of the OPCW. It includes an e-mail from Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW, where he instructs that an engineering report from Ian Henderson should be removed from the secure registry of the organisation,” WikiLeaks writes. Included in the email is the following directive:

“Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive]… And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA.'” According to Wikileaks, the main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma, was that two of the cylinders were most likely manually placed at the site, rather than dropped...

Another document released Friday is minutes from a meeting on 6 June 2018 where four staff members of the OPCW had discussions with “three Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists, one bioanalytical and toxicological chemist” (all specialists in chemical weapons, according to the minutes).

Minutes from an OPCW meeting with toxicologists specialized in chemical weapons: “the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was
no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure”. https://t.co/j5Jgjiz8UY pic.twitter.com/vgPaTtsdQN
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 27, 2019
... According to the minutes, the OPCW team was advised by the experts that there would be little use in conducting exhumations. ...
See full details at Wikileaks.org

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No one can predict what Russia will do next
Nov 28, 2018

US set to accuse Iran of violating chemical weapons treaty
Nov 19, 2018
If the US fails to prepare for chemical attacks, it will be bitten

Nov 5, 2018
In March 2018, the Novichok attack in Salisbury, England, saw chemical weapons used on UK soil for the first time in history.

Welcome to the era of impunity
Oct 16, 2018

Netherlands officials say they caught Russian spies targeting chemical weapons body
Oct 4, 2018

Experts want to exhume alleged Syria chemical attack victims for testing
May 3, 2018

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Inspectors visit site of suspected chemical attack in Syria after delays
Apr 21, 2018

White House talking points on Syria before Haley's interview cite intended Russia sanctions
Apr 20, 2018

The message that Russia should take from our actions is that it cannot pretend to be a responsible member of the international community while supporting this odious regime.
CNN 10 - April 20, 2018

April 20, 2018 Cuba names a new leader, following a retirement announcement by President Raul Castro.

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President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their daughter Malia meet with Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by the Taliban a year ago, in the Oval Office, Oct. 11, 2013.

UN chemical weapons inspectors arrive in Lebanon from Syria
Chemical weapons inspectors arrive in Syria

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani
When crises become opportunities
The Rachel Maddow Show - 10:53 AM 9/20/2013

Free Syrian Army fighters smoke cigarettes as they rest in Aleppo's Qastal al-Harami neighbourhood
Syria talks inch forward
Update: Sept. 14, 2013, 8:01 a.m.

UN chemical weapons team set to deploy to Syria
An advance team of U.N.-mandated experts has gone to Cyprus and is awaiting permission from the Syrian government to investigate allegations of chemical weapons
Anthony Deutsch - 10:39 AM 4/08/2013

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Chemical weapons watchdog OPCW defends Syria report as whistleblower claims bias
Nov 25

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Chemical weapons watchdog defends Syria report after leaks
This article is more than 1 month old

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Newsweek Journo Quits After Editors Kill Report On Syric Chemical Attack Scandal

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THUGR: Poor comrade sig. She undoubtedly continues to sincerely believe others read or even typically see her lengthy posts as impressive, instead of for what they truly are; lengthy lies and deflections. Sorry comrade, in reality those are rabbit holes no one cares to go down.

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Media’s Deafening Silence On Latest WikiLeaks Drops Is Its Own Scandal

This is getting really, really, really weird.

WikiLeaks has published yet another set of leaked internal documents from within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) adding even more material to the mountain of evidence that we’ve been lied to about an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria last year which resulted in airstrikes upon that nation from the US, UK and France.

This new WikiLeaks drop includes an email from the OPCW Chief of Cabinet Sebastien Braha (who is reportedly so detested by organisation inspectors that they code named him “Voldemort”) throwing a fit over the Ian Henderson Engineering Assessment which found that the Douma incident was likely a staged event. Braha is seen ordering OPCW staff to “remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever” from the organisation’s secure registry.

Minutes from an OPCW meeting with toxicologists specialized in chemical weapons: “the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure” . https://t.co/j5Jgjiz8UY pic.twitter.com/vgPaTtsdQN — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 27, 2019

The drop also includes the minutes from an OPCW toxicology meeting with “three Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists, one bioanalytical and toxicological chemist”, all four of whom are specialists in chemical weapons analysis.

“With respect to the consistency of the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims with possible exposure to chlorine gas or similar, the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure,” the document reads.

According to the leaked minutes from the toxicology meeting, the chief expert offered “the possibility of the event being a propaganda exercise” as one potential explanation for the Douma incident.

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The other OPCW experts agreed that the key “take-away message” from the meeting was “that the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified”.

Like all the other many, many, many, many different leaks which have been hemorrhaging from the OPCW about the Douma incident, none of the important information contained in these publications was included in any of the OPCW’s public reports on the matter. According to the OPCW’s Final Report published in March 2019, the investigative team found “reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”

We now know that these “reasonable grounds” contain more holes than a spaghetti strainer executed by firing squad. This is extremely important information about an unsolved war crime which resulted in dozens of civilian deaths and led to an act of war which cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and had many far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

Yet the mass media, freakishly, has had absolutely nothing to say about this extremely newsworthy story.

As of this writing, a Google News search for this story brings up an article by RT, another by Al-Masdar News, and some entries by alternative outlets you’ve almost certainly never heard of like UrduPoint News and People’s Pundit Daily.

Make no mistake about it: this is insane. The fact that an extremely important news story of immense geopolitical consequence is not getting any mainstream news media coverage, at all, is absolutely stark raving insane.

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Up until the OPCW leaks, WikiLeaks drops always made mainstream news headlines. Everyone remembers how the 2016 news cycle was largely dominated by leaked Democratic Party emails emerging from the outlet. Even the relatively minor ICE agents publication by WikiLeaks last year, containing information that was already public, garnered headlines from top US outlets like The Washington Post , Newsweek, and USA Today. Now, on this exponentially more important story, zero coverage.

The mass media’s stone-dead silence on the OPCW scandal is becoming its own scandal, of equal or perhaps even greater significance than the OPCW scandal itself. It opens up a whole litany of questions which have tremendous importance for every citizen of the western world; questions like, how are people supposed to participate in democracy if all the outlets they normally turn to to make informed voting decisions adamantly refuse to tell them about the existence of massive news stories like the OPCW scandal? How are people meant to address such conspiracies of silence when there is no mechanism in place to hold the entire mass media to account for its complicity in it? And by what mechanism are all these outlets unifying in that conspiracy of silence?

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We can at least gain some insight into that last question with the internal Newsweek emails which were published by journalist Tareq Haddad two weeks ago. The emails feature multiple Newsweek editors telling Haddad that they would not publish a word about the OPCW leaks for two reasons: (1) because no other outlets were reporting on them, and (2) because the US government-funded narrative management firm Bellingcat had published a laughably bogus article explaining why the leaks weren’t newsworthy. Haddad has since resigned from Newsweek.

We may be certain that this story is being killed in news rooms all around the world in similar fashion, and possibly using those very same excuses. As long as no other “respectable” (i.e. establishment) outlets are covering this story, it can be treated as a non-story, using a deceitful US government-funded narrative management operation as justification as needed. If one journalist threw his life into chaos and uncertainty by resigning and blowing the whistle on this conspiracy of silence, we may be certain that the same is happening to countless others who don’t have to courage and/or ability to do the same.

Many alternative media commentators are highlighting this news media blackout on social media today.

“Our fearless media watchdogs still maintaining complete blackout on OPCW whistleblower leaks debunking WMD attack in Douma. The leaks show that Trump—like Dubya— used fake WMDs to bomb Arab country—then strong-armed OPCW to cover up the lies,” tweeted journalist Mark Ames.

“The US attacked Syria for a chemical attack by Assad last year. But official OPCW scientists who investigated the event didn’t find evidence the Syrian military used chemical weapons. The media has chosen to ignore this story and fire its own journalists who try to report on it,” tweeted author and analyst Max Abrahms.

“This is the FOURTH leak showing how the OPCW fabricated a report on a supposed Syrian ‘chemical’ attack,” tweeted journalist Ben Norton. “And mainstream Western corporate media outlets are still silent, showing how authoritarian these ‘democracies’ are and how tightly they control info.”

“Media silence on this story is its own scandal,” tweeted journalist Aaron Maté.

But this spin machine is twirling off its axis trying to normalize this silence.

Bellingcat

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narrative jockeys such as “senior investigator” Nick Waters are already scrambling to perception manage everyone into believing their own eyes are lying to them. Waters has a thread on Twitter that’s being shared around by all the usual Syria spinmeisters claiming, based on no evidence whatsoever, that WikiLeaks is selectively publishing the documents it has to create a false impression of events in the OPCW. Waters falsely claims that an email by Sebastien “Voldemort” Braha?—?the guy at the center of the scandal?—?proves that Ian Henderson was not a part of the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) in Douma, in contradiction to the claims made by the anonymous second OPCW whistleblower who goes by the pseudonym of “Alex”.

As Waters is one hundred percent aware, Henderson absolutely was part of the Douma Fact-Finding Mission, and one of the FFM members who actually went to Douma no less. I’ve put together a Twitter thread refuting Waters’ ridiculous claims which you can read by clicking here, but in short an arbitrary distinction seems to have been made between the FFM and the “FFM core team”, or what is labeled the “FFM Alpha team” in a newly leaked email trying to marginalize Henderson’s assessment. Henderson actually went to Douma as part of the FFM, unlike almost all members of the so-called “core team” who except for one paramedic operated solely in another nation (probably Turkey).

Of course, the distinction of whether Henderson was or was not “in the FFM” is also itself irrelevant and arbitrary, since we know for a fact that he is a longtime OPCW inspector who went to Douma and contributed an assessment which was hidden from the public by the OPCW.

So this narrative being spun by the US government-funded propagandists at Bellingcat is bogus from top to bottom, but what’s infuriating is that we already know who editors in news rooms are going to listen to.

It’s absolutely amazing how tightly interlaced Bellingcat is with the upper echelons of mainstream news media and the public framing of what’s going on in Syria. Mere hours after the latest WikiLeaks drop, CNN pundit Brian Stelter shared an article about Bellingcat founder and former Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Eliot Higgins, who warns of the dangers posed by alternative media reporters who cover underreported stories like the OPCW scandal.

“We have this alternative media ecosystem that is driving a lot of disinformation.

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It is not understood by journalists or anyone really beyond a very small group of people who are really engaged with it,” reads the ironic Higgins quote in the excerpt shared by Stelter.

We’ve been seeing a mad rush from mass media pundits to give this US government-funded narrative management operation unearned and undeserved legitimacy, churning out tweets like Stelter’s and fawning puff pieces by The New York Times, The Guardian and The New Yorker. This unearned and undeserved legitimacy is then used by editors to justify looking to Bellingcat for instructions on how to think about important information on Syria rather than doing their own basic investigation and analysis. It’s a self-validating feedback loop which just so happens to work out very conveniently for the government which funds Bellingcat.

It remains unknown exactly what’s transpiring in news rooms around the world to maintain the conspiracy of silence on the OPCW scandal, but what is known is that by itself this scandalous silence is enough to fully discredit the mass media forever. WikiLeaks has exposed these outlets for the monolithic propaganda engine that they really are, and they did it just by publishing extremely newsworthy leak after extremely newsworthy leak.

In order to perception manage us any harder, these freaks are going to have to go around literally confiscating our ears and eyeballs.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, Madcow disavows that anything she says is fact. According to her, it's all "rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false."

That's her defense in a libel lawsuit brought against her by OAN TV Network when she claimed that “In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America is really literally is paid Russian propaganda ... Their on-air politics reporter [Kristian Rouz] is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”

Well, that sounds pretty much like it is a "statement of fact" to me, and certainly capable of being proved true or false.

Madcow is hoist on her own petard. She's either going to be judged as a blowhard or as a defamer.

> pic that blows out the frame - see above <

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, Madcow disavows that anything she says is fact. According to her, it's all "rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false."

That's her defense in a libel lawsuit brought against her by OAN TV Network when she claimed that “In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America is really literally is paid Russian propaganda ... Their on-air politics reporter [Kristian Rouz] is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”

Well, that sounds pretty much like it is a "statement of fact" to me, and certainly capable of being proved true or false.

Madcow is hoist on her own petard. She's either going to be judged as a blowhard or as a defamer.

> pic that blows out the frame - see above <

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It's a bit surprising to me that it's taken this long for the Trumptards and Putin loyalists to make a concerted attack on Maddow's rep and person (nice pic, junior). Like, what's taken y'all so long? There was that stupid "crying" video that made the rounds, but it was such a bad fake that I think it just made the people who posted look the worst.
I was confident it would come though, so thanks for not disappointing! (btw she's a lesbian, shhhhh.....)

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The U.N. Tried to Save "Hospitals" [my quotation marks] in Syria. It Didn’t Work.

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Russian and Syrian forces have bombed sites on a flawed U.N. no-strike list with impunity. Relief groups are giving up hope.

By Evan Hill and Whitney Hurst

Dec. 29, 2019
Updated 11:10 a.m. ET

A United Nations system to prevent attacks on hospitals and other humanitarian sites in insurgent-held areas of Syria has been ignored by Russian and Syrian forces and marred by internal errors, a New York Times investigation has found.

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The repeated bombing and shelling of these sites

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has led relief group leaders to openly criticize the United Nations over the system

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, which is meant to provide warring parties with the precise locations of humanitarian sites that under international law are exempt from attack. Some of these groups have described the system of identifying and sharing sites, known as the “humanitarian deconfliction mechanism,” as effectively useless.

A new offensive by Syrian and Russian forces that began in late December has devastated what remains of several towns in northwestern Syria and caused tens of thousands of civilians to flee.

United Nations officials only recently created a unit to verify locations provided by relief groups that managed the exempt sites, some of which had been submitted incorrectly, The Times found.

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Such instances of misinformation give credibility to Russian criticisms that the system cannot be trusted and is vulnerable to misuse.

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“The level and scale of attacks has not really decreased,” said Dr. Mufaddal Hamadeh, the president of the Syrian American Medical Society, which supports more than 40 hospitals and other sites in insurgent-held areas

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of northwestern Syria. “We can say categorically that in terms of accountability, in terms of deterrence, that doesn’t work.”

The Times compiled a list of 182 no-strike sites by using data provided by five relief groups and compiling public statements from others. Of those facilities, 27 were damaged by Russian or Syrian attacks since April. All were hospitals or clinics.

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Such a list is likely to represent only a small portion of the exempt sites struck during the Syrian war, now almost nine years old.

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Originally posted by THGRRI:

Russia can not afford a protracted campaign in Syria. Especially since they are expending resources in the Ukraine as well. Their strategy is to inflict as much pain as quickly as they can, to influence their position in negotiations.

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