White Helmets are Helping Syrian Militants Prepare ‘False Flag’ Chemical Attack – Idlib Residents

Yes, this is a Russian report so proceed with caution.

I am convinced, however, that the White Helmets are complicit in false flag operations that facilitate western militaries with excuses to bomb Syria. See any of several reports on this blog involving White Helmets. Also, when rebels were evacuated from Douma, the White Helmets left with them.

What I don't understand is why Europe is so determined to continue the war on Assad when it has already lost? Their insanity is preventing the war from ending completely and delaying Syria rebuilding. If the west expedited the end of fighting in Syria, many a Syrian migrant would return from Europe easing the craziness that the migration of 2015-16 began.

FILE PHOTO © Hosam Katan / Reuters

The notorious White Helmets have brought chemicals, protective gear and cameras to militant-controlled Idlib in Syria, in an apparent preparation of yet another false-flag attack, locals told the Russian Reconciliation Center.

A convoy of six vehicles, bearing the emblems of the White Helmets, reportedly arrived in the capital of Idlib province over the weekend, the head of the Russian Reconciliation Center, major general Aleksey Tsygankov, told journalists on Wednesday.

One of the trucks was loaded with missiles and canisters containing unknown substances, as well as protective gear and filming equipment. Local residents reported seeing four persons, wearing hazmat protection gear, filling the warheads with this liquid and some unknown powder. The convoy then reportedly left for the small town of Maarat al-Numaan, south of the city of Idlib, and, coincidentally, just north of Khan Shaykhun.

White Helmets have on several occasions become the first to provide footage of alleged chemical attack sites in Syria and the aftermath scenes, including the Khan Shaykhun and Douma incidents. Their photos and videos served as solid-enough proof for the US and its allies to immediately conduct ‘retaliatory’ strikes against the Syrian government forces in April 2017 and in April 2018.

The self-styled volunteer first-responders have also been mired in controversy by their links to al-Qaeda terrorists and other extremist groups in Syria. The group operates exclusively in militant-held areas of Syria, and its members have repeatedly been photographed and filmed fraternizing with jihadists.

Despite all the controversy, the group is praised as heroic by the mainstream media and receives funding from Western governments. While Washington briefly stopped financing the group, it apparently soon realized their usefulness and released $6.6 million for the “vital, life-saving operations” of the so-called Syrian Civil Defense activists. London also vowed to keep financing the group, while the British Prime Minister Theresa May even pledged to increase their funding.

It's probably just me, but I can't help but think that Theresa May always does exactly the wrong thing. I despised her as Home Secretary and I think she's even worse as PM.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry repeatedly warned that it had credible intelligence that militants in Syria are involved in orchestrating false flag chemical attacks to justify Western airstrikes on Syrian government forces – and even accused US Special Forces of helping to stage such provocations.

UK's Claims Questioned: Doubts Voiced About Source of Salisbury Novichok

Former British Ambassador questions his government's

and NATO's actions

Porton Down scientists revealed it cannot confirm Russia was behind the attack

on ex-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia

Ewen MacAskill Defence correspondent
The Guardian

Theresa May with Wiltshire police’s chief constable, Kier Pritchard, in Salisbury on Thursday. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Russia's chemical weapons destroyed

It was a historic moment largely ignored at the time by most of the world’s media and might have remained so but for the attack in Salisbury. At a ceremony last November at the headquarters of the world body responsible for the elimination of chemical weapons in The Hague, a plaque was unveiled to commemorate the destruction of the last of Russia’s stockpiles.

Gen Ahmet Üzümcü, the director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which works closely with the UN, was fulsome in his praise. “This is a major achievement,” he said. The 192-member body had seemingly overseen and verified the destruction of Russia’s entire stock of chemical weapons, all 39,967 metric tons.

Where did novichok come from?

The question now is whether all of Russia’s chemical weapons were destroyed and accounted for. Theresa May – having identified the nerve agent used in the Salisbury attack as novichok, developed in Russia – told the Commons on Wednesday that Russia had offered no explanation as to why it had “an undeclared chemical weapons programme in contravention of international law”. Jeremy Corbyn introduced a sceptical note, questioning whether there was any evidence as to the location of its production.

The exchanges provoked a debate echoing the one that preceded the 2003 invasion of Iraq over whether UN weapons inspectors had overseen the destruction of all the weapons of mass destruction in the country or whether Saddam Hussein had retained secret hidden caches.

On social media, there were arguments that the novichok could have come from some part of the former Soviet Union other than Russia, such as Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan or Ukraine, or some non-state group, maybe criminals.

The years following the fall of the Berlin Wall were chaotic, with chemical weapons laboratories and storage sites across the Soviet Union abandoned by staff who were no longer being paid. Security was almost non-existent, leaving the sites at the mercy of criminal gangs or disenchanted staff looking to supplement their income.

“Could somebody have smuggled something out?” Amy Smithson, a US-based biological and chemical weapons expert, said to Reuters. “I certainly wouldn’t rule that possibility out, especially a small amount and particularly in view of how lax the security was at Russian chemical facilities in the early 1990s.”

It took almost a decade before order was restored, in part through stockpiles being transferred to Russia from other parts of the former Soviet Union and in part through help from US and other western experts.

Novichok was developed at a laboratory complex in Shikhany, in central Russia, according to a British weapons expert, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, and a Russian chemist involved in the chemical weapons programme, Vil Mirzayanov, who later defected to the US. Mirzayanov said the novichok was tested at Nukus, in Uzbekistan.

British Diplomat questions premature blaming of Russia

The former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who visited the site at Nukus, said it had been dismantled with US help. He is among those advocating scepticism about the UK placing blame on Russia.

In a blog post, he wrote: “The same people who assured you Saddam Hussein had WMDs now assure you Russian ‘novichok’ nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil.”

A Russian lawyer, Boris Kuznetsov, told Reuters he was offering to pass to the British authorities a file he said might be relevant to the Salisbury case. It details an incident when poison hidden in a phone receiver killed a Russian banker and his secretary in 1995. The poison came from an employee at the state chemical facility who sold it through intermediaries – in an ampule placed in a presentation case – to help reduce his debts.

The UK government case rests not just on its argument that novichok was developed in Russia, but what it says is past form, a record of Russian state-sponsored assassination of former spies.

Murray, in a phone interview, is undeterred, determined to challenge the government line, in spite of having been subjected to a level of abuse on social media he had not experienced before.

“There is no evidence it was Russia. I am not ruling out that it could be Russia, though I don’t see the motive. I want to see where the evidence lies,” Murray said. “Anyone who expresses scepticism is seen as an enemy of the state.”

"Your either with us or your against us!" Remember that line as the US martialled support for the invasion of Iraq. When you are trying to propagandize something, dissenters are treated as enemies, even though those perpetrating the propaganda know very well the dissenters are right to question the lies and the premature conclusions.

Murray went on to say, (admittedly to RT):

“a fortnight ago sources inside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told him they were 'under pressure' to say it was made in Russia" but they knew they were unable to do so.

He said: "What we have seen today is news management because the Government had to get over the hurdle the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will shortly be telling people there is no evidence this came from Russia.

"The Government decided for damage limitation it was best Porton Down came out and said that first. We will see careful news management over the next day or two.”

Porton Down scientists said “a state” was likely to be behind the attack, because of the complexity of the agent. However, Murray said there is evidence to the contrary.

He said: “The probably in the statement is very important, there are many people including David Colum, professor of organic chemistry at Cornell University, who says it’s just not true it has to be a state and any of his senior students could make it.”

“If you watch the interview, the sentence where he says it would probably need a state to make it is tacked on to the end. If you look closely, not only has the shot changed, the camera and tripod have actually moved. I strongly suspect government handlers who would have been in that room watching him were unhappy with his interview and wanted something which implicated Russia more, so added a bit onto the end.”

Murray said a minimum of a couple of dozen states could make it. He also said this “ought to be an investigation into a serious crime” investigated appropriately to find proof.

He said: “We are told probably this and likely that, well that is not the way criminal verdicts are found.

“This quite simply feeds into a desire by NATO members in particular to step up the cold war and enhance confrontation with Russia. This has to be seen in a wider geopolitical context. Within that context the last thing the politicians care about is the truth about what happened in Salisbury.”

'The UK and its NATO friends have attempted to

“step up the Cold War” with Russia and have failed'

In 21st Century Hyperbolic Politics, Brits Have Forgotten How to Lose Gracefully

Within hours of a national referendum and a national election,

Brits have frantically attempted to change their minds.

In the hyperbolic politics and extreme impatience of the 21st century,

there is no such thing as a stiff upper lip anymore.

Petition to stop Tory/DUP ‘coalition of chaos’ reaches

540k signatures in 24hrs

© Toby Melville / Reuters

A petition launched Friday urging British Prime Minister Theresa May not to form a ‘coalition of chaos’ with the Democratic Unionist Party has already gained over half a million signatures and counting.

The author of the ‘Stop the DUP & TORIES forming a Minority Government!’ petition, writing under the pen name Winston Churchill, called the proposed alliance “a disgusting, desperate attempt to stay in power.”

Unlike previous online petitions filed through the UK government website, this petition is non-binding and will not trigger an official response from the government nor has the potential to force debate in the House of Commons.

The official petitions website is currently down until a new Petitions Committee is set up by the House of Commons.

The change.org petition criticizes several highly contentious stances held by various members of the DUP at one point including belief in creationism, anti-abortion and anti-gay rights advocacy.

The petition ends with a call for May to resign.

British conservatives have expressed unease with the proposed alliance with the DUP online.

Former New Labour ‘sultan of spin’ Alastair Campbell also weighed in describing the proposal as a “dangerous disgrace.” 

Obviously, 'the left' would like for Theresa May to resign and refuse to form a government. Why she would do that 10 days before Brexit negotiations begin and put the country in a position where they are still vetting cabinet ministers, many of whom don't want Brexit, and hence, don't represent the will of the people who voted for it last year - well, that's just not going to happen, nor should it.

Over the past few years I have been perhaps Theresa Mays biggest overseas critic having watched her botch the child sex abuse inquiry time after time after time. Her election call just confirms that she makes very questionable decisions, even downright stupid and arrogant decisions, but to have Labour negotiating with Brussels on Brexit would be virtually suicidal.

Most of the angst on the left is not so much about losing as to the notion that the party the Conservatives will be supported by are basically evangelical Christians. The left has no tolerance for the right! There will be all sorts of accusations made against what they believe but it boils down to this: Christians believe in God, the left does not! And the left thinks anyone who does is either evil, or insane, or insanely stupid. But, at the same time, they welcome Muslims into the UK with open arms and expressions of love and tolerance.

and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. 1 John 4:3

Blowback or Extremism? Uneasy Debate in UK on Causes of Terrorist Attacks

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May (L), Jeremy Corbyn,

the leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party (R). © Reuters

In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks, Theresa May called for a crackdown on extremist ideology, Jeremy Corbyn called on Arab countries to stop promoting it, while John Pilger told RT he believes the attacks are the “product” of UK foreign policy.

Speaking on how to fight terrorism in the aftermath of the London Bridge attack on Sunday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that stamping out radical Islamist ideology is the number one priority, adding that “we cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are.”

Terrorism, she said, “will only be defeated when we turn people’s mind away from this violence and make them understand that our values – pluralistic, British values – are superior” to that harbored by jihadists.

In addition to eradicating terrorist propaganda, military action “to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria” will be needed, as well as showing less tolerance to the manifestations of extremism at home, she said.

May’s Labour rival Corbyn, who has resumed his election campaign – briefly put on hold in the aftermath of the London carnage – pledged to empower police, granting them “full authority… to use whatever force is necessary to protect and save life,” and boost their numbers with 10,000 additional recruits, while taking aim at May for extensive cuts to the police force.

Echoing May’s concerns over radicalization, Corbyn said that the UK needs to have “some difficult conversations, starting with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states,” who he blamed for “funding and fueling extremist ideology.”

Referring to a recent admission by the Home Office that it may never make public an inquiry delving into foreign funding of Islamist groups, which reportedly implicates Saudi Arabia, Corbyn blasted May for “suppressing the report.” 

Speaking at a campaign rally on Friday, the Labour leader, known for his staunch anti-war stance, stated that by getting mired in military conflicts outside its borders, such as in Iraq and Libya, Britain invites blowback.

“Many experts… have pointed to the connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home,” Corbyn said. He added that merely pointing out the apparent link between the UK’s policy of meddling and terrorism on its own soil should in no way be interpreted as a justification for terrorism.

According to a YouGov poll, Corbyn’s explanation for the surge in terrorist attacks on British soil seems to strike a chord with people. Around 53 percent of the 7,134 UK citizens who were surveyed said they believe that the wars are at least in part responsible for terrorist attacks against the UK. Only 24 percent said that they do not see any connection, while another 23 percent said that they did not know.

Pilger: Terrorist attacks ‘product of UK foreign policy, 

of being where it shouldn’t be’

Author and documentary filmmaker John Pilger told RT’s Afshin Rattansi he believes that the interventionist British foreign policy of recent decades has backfired. Pilger spoke on RT’s ‘Going Underground’ ahead of the Saturday attack in London.

What terrorist attacks on British soil “have in common is that they are the product of the British foreign policy, of being where we shouldn’t be,” Pilger said.

He believes that the deadliest terrorist attacks in the UK in the 21st century, in particular the recent Manchester Arena attack and the 2005 London Underground bombings, demonstrate “that the rock of British foreign policy is briefly lifted and we see the cause and effect.”

Members of the ‘Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’ (LIFG), who claim to have played a key role in overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe when Theresa May was UK Home Secretary.

“When Libya, Africa’s largest producer of oil, was invaded, these salafists and wahhabists in Manchester, known as the Manchester boys, were told they could go to Libya… May was the country’s interior minister, responsible for control orders which were lifted by MI5. One of them talked about going to Heathrow Airport where he is stopped by counterterrorism police, and he gives them a name and a number in MI5, they call it and he sits there and waits, and they say, ‘Oh it’s fine, fine, off you go to battle,’” Pilger said, adding:

“They wanted to overthrow Gaddafi and these people were used.”

Once Gaddafi was removed in Libya, the “next stop” for those fighters, who were by then “at the very least Al-Qaeda affiliated,” was Syria.

“So many of the Manchester boys ended up in Syria fighting the West’s war or efforts to overthrow the government of Assad,” Pilger told Rattansi.

“It is a complicated story most certainly, but it has strands running through it, and the strongest strand is the support of powerful Western governments like the British government, the US government and the French government for what they call assets… This web of collaboration, proxy power in the Middle East invariably will produce this kind of violence and what we’ve seen since 9/11 is that the violence has come home, not only to the US but also to this country,” he said.

“We have to take responsibility for that, it has to be discussed, we can’t walk around with their hands over our eyes and their fingers in our ears, it’s absurd. The people who died in Manchester, and in the London Underground, and the people who died in the Twin Towers, and all those children in Yemen and Afghanistan deserve better.”

American Hypocrisy over Israel May have been Out-Done by UK

If you have been reading this blog for a couple of years you will know I am not a fan of Theresa May. Her third attempt to start an inquiry into child sex abuse is sputtering along barely moving. Her obscene remarks in parliament in an attempt at humour have not helped to endear her to me. Now, after the UK played a critical role in the writing of the most recent antisemitic UNSC resolution, she has the nerve to complain about John Kerry's antisemitic complaints about Benjamin Netanyahu. It's too late P.M. T.M.; you blew it!

British Prime Minister Theresa May rebukes U.S.

over Israel criticism

By Eric DuVall, UPI

British Prime Minister Theresa May condemned a speech by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday, during which Kerry harshly criticized the Israeli government's policy on Palestine. May said the United States should refrain from critiquing the domestic political process of an ally. File Photo by Monika Graff/UPI | License Photo

LONDON, -- British Prime Minister Theresa May offered a rare rebuke of the United States, condemning a speech by Secretary of State John Kerry attacking Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

The statement, released by 10 Downing St. on Thursday night, comes as the Obama administration's final days tick down and after President-elect Donald Trump criticized the U.S. decision not to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.

The U.N. resolution, which Israel has accused the United States of brokering, calls the settlements a "flagrant violation" of international law that endangers the increasingly distant possibility the Israelis and Palestinians will be able to reach a lasting two-state peace deal. Great Britain acted as a go-between in crafting the resolution, which Israel deeply opposed, making Thursday's rebuke all the more surprising, The Washington Post reported.

In a speech Wednesday, Kerry labeled the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "the most right-wing in Israel's history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements."

May, who leads a conservative British government, responded Thursday, saying through a spokesman the United States should refrain from critiquing the domestic politics of an allied government.

May does "not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally," a spokesman for the prime minister said. "The government believes that negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between the two parties, supported by the international community."

It is not appropriate to attack... Isn't that exactly what the UK did in the UN? So what she's really saying is that it is not appropriate to be seen to attack.... You should be more subtle, more sneaky, like a snake!

T.M. should have kept her mouth shut rather than joining Obama and Kerry in their last minute slide from any semblance of decency and good character into a desperate pettiness.

The comments come as U.S. allies prepare to rewrite the diplomatic playbook once Trump assumes the presidency. Trump was publicly outraged by the U.S. decision not to veto the U.N.'s Israeli settlement resolution and has said he supports the Israeli government's claims to land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Why Israel must control the West Bank and Golan Heights... 

video 5:03

To do otherwise would be just suicidal. The USA knows that and, surely, the UK does too. So stop the BS and tell the world you want Israel to be destroyed so Muslims can live in peace. Oh, wait, there are no Muslim countries living in peace. Must be the Jews fault! Surely, once all the Jews are dead, the Muslims will be happy and stop killing each other and raping little English girls.