Corruption is Everywhere - Even in the White Helmets

White Helmets co-founder stole aid money destined for Syria – report

FILE PHOTO: White Helmets members at work in Idlib province, February 2, 2020 © AFP / Omar Haj Kadour

As Western governments opened their checkbooks for the White Helmets – a controversial ‘rescue organization’ in Syria – their co-founder used the cash to top up his wage and even finance his wedding, according to a Dutch report.

Days before he plunged from a window in Istanbul to his death last year, White Helmets co-founder and British mercenary James Le Mesurier admitted to defrauding Mayday Rescue, an organization that fundraised for the anti-government rescue group in Syria.

According to documents seen by Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, Le Mesurier told an accountant sent to audit the charity’s books that he forged receipts for $50,000, pretending that it was sent to finance an evacuation operation in Syria. Instead, the money was paid to Le Mesurier himself. In addition to paying himself a salary of €24,000 ($27,414) per month, Le Mesurier dipped into company cash to finance a lavish wedding in Istanbul in 2018, and to issue loans to his new wife, former diplomat Emma Winberg, the report claims.

The accountant sent to investigate Mayday found that “tens of thousands of dollars in cash” were withdrawn to pay for the “fairytale wedding.”

Meanwhile, governments across the Western world were lining up to support Mayday, and channel money to the White Helmets. According to a 2018 report by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the organization took in $127 million between 2014 and 2018, with only $19 million of this haul coming from non-state donors. The government of the Netherlands paid out almost $11.5 million in this period, while similar donations flowed in from Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Qatar, and others.

Despite being hailed as fearless rescue workers, the White Helmets have been accused of partnering with Al-Qaeda. Operating exclusively in rebel-held territory, the group’s members have been photographed posing with jihadists and have been accused of staging chemical weapons attacks to draw in Western forces against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Search this blog for 'White Helmets' for several articles on this.

Le Mesurier’s death was deemed a suicide by Turkish authorities. Shortly afterwards, a number of countries that had donated to Mayday demanded an accountant have another look over the organization’s books. According to De Volkskrant, this probe found that most of Mayday’s financial records are “missing.” Donations were not just handed to the organization in Amsterdam and forwarded to Syria, but distributed through a network of commercial organizations in Turkey and Dubai. 

Disappearing money kept secret by governments

In a letter to donors, Le Mesurier admitted to swindling them out of their cash, but maintained the fraud wasn’t committed on purpose. After these donors discovered their cash had disappeared, they kept the inquiry into Mayday secret, De Volkskrant reported.

Even though the cat is out of the bag, mainstream media in the west will not report this in any meaningful way as it counters the acceptable narrative.

The Dutch government pulled its funding from Mayday Rescue almost a year before Le Mesurier admitted the fraud and killed himself. The government in The Hague will not transfer a final subsidy of more than €57,000 ($65,200) to the organization, while Germany is attempting to claim nearly €50,000 ($57,200) back. Cor Vrieswijk, Mayday’s new administrator, told De Volkskrant that the charity will be dissolved in the coming months.

President Assad claimed last November that Le Mesurier’s death was no accident, stating in an interview that the former soldier and mercenary may have been killed because he “knew major secrets.” What Le Mesurier may or may not have known is anyone’s guess, but his death and the subsequent investigation into Mayday has not dried up the White Helmets’ funding.

The group is reportedly receiving subsidies from Western governments through other organizations. At present its members are occupied with fighting the coronavirus outbreak in Syria. However, that hasn’t stopped its leadership from lobbying the US government against Assad and pressing for the maintenance of sanctions, even amid the pandemic.

OPCW Report Behind Syria Bombings was Altered, Whistle-blower Tells UNSC

Worst lie since fake claim sparked Iraq war? 

A former inspector with the OPCW has accused the chemical weapons watchdog of issuing a sanitized report on the alleged 2018 attack in Douma, Syria, arguing it ignored serious reservations of its own fact-finding team.

The OPCW’s final report on the Douma incident, released last March, omitted key findings of its own inspection team which would have cast serious doubt on whether a chemical attack took place at all, a now former OPCW specialist, Ian Henderson, told members of the United Nations Security Council in a recorded video address – after his visa application to attend the meeting in person was rejected.

“The findings in the final [Fact Finding Mission] report were contradictory, were a complete turnaround with what the team had understood collectively during and after the Douma deployments,” Henderson said.

Max Blumenthal✔
@MaxBlumenthal
Ian Henderson, member of OPCW team on Douma, spoke today at the UN. 

He re-stated his belief that no chemical attack occurred & called the final OPCW report a "complete turnaround in the situation from what was understood by the majority of the team and the entire Douma team." https://twitter.com/LennyZuber/status/1219372375764021249 …

Even though several members of the fact finding team “had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred” as early as July 2018, the organization’s final report – compiled by another group that never even visited the incident site – nonetheless concluded there were “reasonable grounds” to all but pin the blame for the attack on Damascus.

Sanitized of any dissenting opinion, the report ignored “findings, facts, information, data or analysis” gathered by the team in the areas of witness testimony, toxicology studies, chemical analysis, as well as ballistics, the retired inspector said.

Ian Henderson, OPCW whistle-blower

Washington and its allies blamed the Syrian government for the Douma incident, with the US, France, and the UK launching joint strikes against Syria a week later, well before any official investigation could even start, and even delaying it. Western politicians and media claimed at the time – based purely on visual materials and witness accounts provided by the notorious White Helmets and other militant-linked sources – that the Syrian government forces had ‘highly likely’ dropped two poisonous gas cylinders, killing scores of civilians.

Henderson carried out a closer analysis of that pair of cylinders mysteriously found in a residential area of Douma. His ‘Engineering Assessment’ was initially leaked last May, laying out a number of hypotheses for how the cylinders wound up at the site in Douma. Most significantly, it noted a “higher probability” that they were “manually placed” instead of being “delivered from aircraft,” suggesting a party other than the Syrian government may have planted them there.

In my case, I had followed up with a further six months of engineering and ballistics studies into the cylinders, the result of which had provided further support for the view that there had not been a chemical attack.

Subsequent WikiLeaks publications would reveal that a senior OPCW official ordered “all traces” of Henderson’s assessment to be scrubbed from its archives. But despite the internal battle undermining the OPCW’s credibility, Henderson insisted the dispute should not be a matter of “political debate,” urging for any discrepancies to be “properly resolved… through the rigors of science and engineering.”

On 27 December 2019, Wikileaks released a new batch of internal documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). [1] An email among them reveals that Inspector Ian Henderson’s report was pulled by order of the OPCW’s chief of cabinet Sébastien Braha. [2]

The French diplomat is an "officer of the Orient" (high ranking official of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry) who was seconded to the OPCW three months after the alleged chemical attack on Douma in order to oversee the organization’s investigation.

In the email, Sébastien Braha (photo) demands: “Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive]... And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA”.  - Voltaire Network

The informal UNSC meeting to assess the situation and inconsistencies around the FMM’s report was convened at the request of Moscow on Monday. The US and its allies accused Russia of trying to “discredit the well-respected OPCW and its staff,” even though Moscow insists that the goal, on the contrary, was to restore trust in the organization.

“The chemical incident in Syrian Douma. Why is it so important? Because it was a justification of missile strikes by the US, France and the UK in April 2018, who immediately named the Syrian Government guilty,” said Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, who accused the US and allies of “crying wolf.”

Since not so long... ago, some of our colleagues invented a new paradigm, the world of 'highly likely'.

Besides listening to Henderson’s testimony, the UNSC was addressed by Russia’s OPCW representative, Alexander Shulgin, and the chief of a NGO (Foundation for the Study of Democracy) that had previously interviewed over 300 residents of Douma, shattering the official Western narrative.

Remarks by Mr. Maxim Grigoriev, Head of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy, at an Arria-formula meeting of UNSC member states "Implementation of UNSCR 2118: OPCW FFM Report on Douma

Individual responses by people living in the apartment building allegedly affected by the chlorine canisters can be found at the link immediately above.

NGO “The Foundation for the Study of Democracy” conducted an independent evaluation of the Douma incident on 7 April, 2018. 

We have interviewed:

•       Fifteen witnesses in the Douma Hospital;

•      10 residents of a house in Douma where human bodies were found;

•       300 residents of houses, situated within one kilometer from the building where the bodies were found.

The testimony of witnesses is an undisputable proof that the chemical attack in Douma was falsified. 

Those witnesses to the falsification tell how exactly it all happened: 

•       The fighters who came with the White Helmets, brought dead bodies, intimidated locals, shot at windows, forcing some people to leave their homes and isolating the rest in their apartments. Then, they brought the bodies outside and filmed the footage.  

•       One body the fighters left outside was identified by a witness. It was his brother who had earlier been killed in an artillery shelling and taken by fighters from hospital. The remaining bodies, as the witnesses supposed, were brought from the Al Thoba prison where fighters kept the people they captured, including women and children.  

•       Taking into account that other bodies had no injuries, the witnesses are confident that the people featured in the video recordings were killed just to organize the falsification.

The testimony presented above unequivocally proves that the chemical attack on 7 April, 2018, was falsified.

When preparing the report:

OPCW abstained from inquiring the above-mentioned witnesses who were permanently residing at the place of incident and were ready to testify. By all means, this is the first thing to be done to investigate the accident. The fact that OPCW Mission did not do this proves their low level of competence or lack of willingness to reveal the truth;

OPCW used data provided by people who may not have been present at the scene of incident, and who were inquired in Idlib Governorate and in other countries;

OPCW deliberately used falsified materials provided by the “White Helmets” as the main basis for their conclusions. 

On 11 March 2019,  a briefing was held at OPCW. I presented our report ”White Helmets: fact checking by eyewitnesses  and former volunteers”. It contains numerous proofs that falsification of chemical attacks was an essential part of the work of White Helmets and they can not be considered as a credible source of information. 

Officials of OPCW concealed conclusions made by its experts, deleted a number of vital facts from the report, and falsified the report itself.

For the first time over 23 years of its existence, Officials of the OPCW take part in falsification of a report. This is an unprecedented blow to the reputation of the OPCW.

Secretary-General of the United Nations is depositary of the Chemical Weapons Convention. OPCW works based on this CWC. 

NGO “The Foundation for the Study of Democracy” prepared a letter addressed to the Secretary-General (показать) that contains testimonies of above mentioned witnesses. I kindly request to circulate it among Security Council members in order to reveal the truth about the falsification of chemical attack in Douma on 7 April, 2018.

Search this blog for Douma, for many more posts on the appalling story.

British Intelligence Planning Fake Chemical Attack in Syria - US Senator

So, it appears Senator Black got his information from Assad, and therefore has questionable validity.

On the other hand, it makes no sense for Russia or Syria to warn the world in advance if it was they who were going to perpetrate a chemical attack. 

Remember, Douma was a false-flag operation and Ghouta was most likely as well.

U.S. Senator Richard Black walks with Syrian government negotiator Bashar Ja'afari (C), Damascus, Syria April 28, 2016. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

Virginia State Senator Richard Black has claimed UK intelligence was planning a chemical attack in Syria, which they would then blame on the Syrian government. Black made the claim after a meeting with President Bashar Assad.

“Around four weeks ago, we knew that British intelligence was working towards a chemical attack in order to blame the Syrian government, to hold Syria responsible,” Black said on the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen news channel.

Black later clarified that he meant the British were not planning to carry out the attack themselves, rather they intended to direct rebel forces to do so or stage a fake attack, with actors playing victims.

Russia, for over a month, has been warning that the surrounded rebels in Idlib province are preparing a false-flag attack to frame Damascus and trigger a US led-coalition intervention.

In turn, US Marine General Joseph Dunford says he's involved in “routine dialogue” with Donald Trump to keep him informed about “military options” for retaliation in case “chemical weapons are used.” In April, the US led a series of strikes against the Syrian government, avowedly in response to the Douma chemical attack which they blamed on Assad.

According to Black, previous alleged chemical attacks on the Syrian rebel-held area were also fakes concocted by the UK alongside the so-called ‘White Helmets,’ a group of first-responders who face numerous accusations of being linked to Syria’s Jihadist opposition.

There is a good probability that the White Helmets involved in the false-flag chemical attacks were actually impostors. On the other hand, they clearly are anti-Assad.

“From what I can tell, they have been planning a fake attack, not a genuine one, but one where they actually move people out of a town and they have trained people to portray victims of a gas attack,” Black told The Washington Post.

“And the plan is to use the White Helmets who have always been involved in these notorious deceptions, to portray an attack.”

Black’s assertion of British plotting, flies in the face of both the Obama and Trump administration’s claims that Assad has used chemical weapons against the Syrian people.

Respective claims from Russia and the US about planned chemical attacks, the latter accusing Assad of planning to use chlorine, come as Syrian forces are preparing to retake Idlib province, the last rebel-held stronghold. Three million people are thought to live in the area, which is controlled by various rebel groups, including Al-Qaeda linked Jabhat Al-Nusra, and remnants of Islamic State cells.

Despite Russia's warnings for more than a month, no Mainstream Media outlet has run the story. Nor are they interested in covering the Douma false-flag operation. MSM is clearly aligned with the war-mongers of the west.

The comments came after Black’s second visit to Syria. Explaining his visit in 2016, Black praised Assad for protecting Syria against Islamic fundamentalists.

As bad as Assad is, he is a thousand times better than IS, al-Nusra, or al-Qaeda. The west doesn't seem to realize this and appears determined to turn Syria into another Libya. 

On his recent visit, Black said of Assad: “There was sort of a spring in his step and a sense of joy and optimism, and looking out to the future and bringing the nation together.”

Russia Submitted Proof of False-Flag Chemical-Weapons Plot to OPCW & UN – Lavrov

FILE PHOTO. © Hummam Sheikh Ali / Global Look Press

There is “no doubt” that militants are plotting a false-flag chemical-weapons attack in Syria’s Idlib province, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that Moscow has provided proof of the plot to the UN and OPCW.

“We have presented concrete facts obtained from various sources both to the UN and to The Hague, where the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) headquarters is located,” Lavrov said, while speaking about the risk of a false-flag attack involving the use of chemical weapons in Syria, adding that “these facts are congruent.”

Lavrov said that “there is no doubt that such provocations are being prepared.” He explained that terrorist groups entrenched in Syria’s northwestern province, including Al-Nusra Front (now known as Tahrir al-Sham), are trying to derail the separation of terrorists from other armed groups “in every possible way.”

The foreign minister also said that Russia would continue to support Damascus in its fight against terrorists and is open about its actions. “We have no plans to conceal what we do to back the Syrian government, which is liberating its land from terrorists to [allow] the Syrian citizens to return to… normal life as soon as possible,” Lavrov told journalists during a joint press conference with Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed in Sochi.

No-one in the west has ever mentioned any concern about getting Syrian migrants back to Syria and resuming a normal life. This would seem an obvious strategy to reduce the number of migrants in Europe and ease the financial and political struggles caused by their presence. It's mystifying why Europe seems so disinterested in that.

Earlier, Russia’s representative to the OPCW, Aleksandr Shulgin, told journalists that Moscow had handed evidence of the planned false-flag attack to the OPCW Director General Fernando Arias. The Syrian government also sent its own data to the OPCW, he added, while warning that the attack could be staged “at any moment.”

Moscow has previously accused Washington of helping militants with a false-flag plot with a view to blaming the Syrian authorities for the attack and thus justify new airstrikes against Syria. The planned airstrike is allegedly a lot larger in scale than the one carried out by the US, the UK and France in April.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has said that the chemicals needed for the fake attack have been already delivered to the area, citing sources on the ground. It accused the White Helmets group of assisting the terrorists with the delivery.

In an earlier report it suggested that terrorists would dress-up as White Helmets while assisting with the delivery of chemical weapons.

Idlib Province, Syria

US, UK & France Plotting Another False Flag Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria

This is pretext for another assault. Are they determined to remove Assad,
or do they just want to use up some missiles approaching their expiry date?

Whatever it is, they seem determined to make sure peace doesn't break out in that beleaguered country. Why do France and the UK seem so determined to keep Syrian refugees in Europe rather than allowing them to go home?
It's very curious.

Terrorists readying chemical attack to frame Damascus & provide pretext for US strikes – Russian MoD

FILE PHOTO A US Air Force B-1B Lancer / AFP

The US and its allies are preparing new airstrikes on Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that militants are poised to stage a chemical weapons attack in order to frame Damascus and provide a pretext for the strikes.

The attack would be used as a pretext for US, UK and French airstrikes on Syrian targets, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov said. USS ‘The Sullivans,’ an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer, was already deployed to the Persian Gulf a couple of days ago, he added.

The destroyer has 56 cruise missiles on board, according to data from the Russian Defence Ministry. A US Rockwell B-1 Lancer, a supersonic bomber equipped with 24 cruise missiles, has also been deployed at the Qatari Al Udeid Airbase. 

The provocations are being prepared by militants from Al-Nusra Front (now known as Tahrir al-Sham) in Idlib province, northwestern Syria.

In order to stage the attack, some eight canisters of chlorine were delivered in to village near Jisr al-Shughur city for the terrorists’ use, he added. A separate group of militants, prepped by private British security company Olive, have also arrived in the area. The group will be disguised as volunteers from the White Helmets group and will simulate a rescue operation involving locals purportedly injured in the attack, according to the military official.

According to the Defense Ministry spokesman, recent statements by US National Security Advisor John Bolton – in which he threatened to bomb Syria – could be interpreted as an implicit confirmation of such airstrikes. On August 22, Bolton stated that “... if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons, we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned Washington against new reckless moves in Syria, RIA Novosti reported. “We hear ultimatums from Washington, including those made in public,” the top official said, apparently referring to Bolton’s recent remarks.

According to Ryabkov, the US is aiming to destabilize Syria and create new pretexts for regime change in Damascus. “Again, we are witnessing serious escalation of the situation [in Syria],” he added.

In April, the US, UK and France unleashed a bombing campaign on Syria. The airstrikes were carried out in response to an alleged gas attack in Douma on April 7, which the West blamed on Bashar Assad’s government. The operation started hours before a team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was due to reach the city.

Back then, Syrian defenses were scrambled to repel some 103 cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles launched at civilian and military targets by the Western trio. It managed to intercept at least 71 of them, the Russian Defense Ministry said at the time.

See also:

Tucker Carlson slams US foreign policy in no-holds-barred monologue on Syria, social media explodes

Is Assad to Blame for the Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria?

US Ready to Turn Syria into Another Libya

Lies, Hypocrisy, Intrigue, and 'Whataboutism' Surround Douma CW Investigation

Hysteria Over Alleged Syrian Chemical Attack Will Result in Disaster

Khan Sheikhun Sarin Gas Attack was a False Flag Operation

UK Reporter Astounded By What He Found in Douma

German Reporter Says Douma was Completely Staged - MSM Won't Report It

'Propaganda Organization': White Helmets 'Engage in Anti-Assad Activities' – Author Sy Hersh

Seymour (Sy) Hersh is an American who has won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism.

He has also won two National Magazine Awards and five George Polk Awards.

In 2004, he received the George Orwell Award.

White Helmets member walks on the rubble of destroyed buildings in Eastern Ghouta

© Abdulmonam Eassa / AFP

Although some members of the Western-supported White Helmets may be in the business of saving lives, the group is also a "propaganda organization," author Sy Hersh has told RT's 'Going Underground.'

"Too many times we've seen the same child in photographs, year after year, always covered in dust," Hersh said, adding that the White Helmets "do engage in anti-Assad [activities]." He added that such a tactic is "very easy" because Assad is "hated" by so many.

Hersh went on to explain that, when a chemical attack took place in Syria under the Obama administration in 2013, it was well known then that Damascus had sophisticated chemical weapons. Because of this, it was clear that the substance used in the attack "was not the same as in the Syrian military."

He explained that, in June 2013, there was a "very important" intelligence report put out by the US government. That report said there was "tremendous concern" in the intelligence community because Saudi Arabia and Turkey were providing chemicals to Al Nusra in Syria that, when mixed together, make a nerve agent referred to as "kitchen sarin."

"The government knew from this very important intelligence report...that there were two suspects – Al Nusra had the stuff and Syria had the stuff. Forget about having it analyzed – they knew right away and they only talked about one," Hersh said.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist also spoke to RT about reporting in the United States and how it changed under the Obama administration, as well as the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, UK.

Watch Hersh's full interview here:

The interview that follows may be very disturbing to some as Hersh levels the truth and it is often not pretty. It's about 28 minutes long but flies by in a hurry. He touches on My Lai, Viet Nam, and many stories including very enlightening stories about chemical weapons in Syria, and touches on the Skripal poisoning. It's fascinating stuff.

UK Reporter Astounded By What He Found in Douma

The search for truth in the rubble of Douma –

and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack

Exclusive to the Independent: 

Robert Fisk visits the Syria clinic at the centre of a global crisis

This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks – and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world’s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There’s even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clinic, cheerfully tells me that the “gas” videotape which horrified the world – despite all the doubters – is perfectly genuine.

War stories, however, have a habit of growing darker. For the same 58-year old senior Syrian doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.

The next day, it appears, firefighters are working amidst the dust without any kind of masks on

As Dr Assim Rahaibani announces this extraordinary conclusion, it is worth observing that he is by his own admission not an eyewitness himself and, as he speaks good English, he refers twice to the jihadi gunmen of Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] in Douma as “terrorists” – the regime’s word for their enemies, and a term used by many people across Syria. Am I hearing this right? Which version of events are we to believe?

By bad luck, too, the doctors who were on duty that night on 7 April were all in Damascus giving evidence to a chemical weapons enquiry, which will be attempting to provide a definitive answer to that question in the coming weeks.

Can one conclude that the Doctor got his information from the other 7 doctors? Not for certain, but it will be interesting to know what those 7 doctors told the OPCW. It will also be interesting if we ever hear the truth about their testimony, because if it matches Dr. Rahaibani's, the the US, UK and France may be guilty of war crimes for the knee-jerk, extremely premature, bombing of Syria.

France, meanwhile, has said it has “proof” chemical weapons were used, and US media have quoted sources saying urine and blood tests showed this too. The WHO has said its partners on the ground treated 500 patients “exhibiting signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals”.

At the same time, inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are currently blocked from coming here to the site of the alleged gas attack themselves, ostensibly because they lacked the correct UN permits.

Before we go any further, readers should be aware that this is not the only story in Douma. There are the many people I talked to amid the ruins of the town who said they had “never believed in” gas stories – which were usually put about, they claimed, by the armed Islamist groups. These particular jihadis survived under a blizzard of shellfire by living in other’s people’s homes and in vast, wide tunnels with underground roads carved through the living rock by prisoners with pick-axes on three levels beneath the town. I walked through three of them yesterday, vast corridors of living rock which still contained Russian – yes, Russian – rockets and burned-out cars.

So the story of Douma is thus not just a story of gas – or no gas, as the case may be. It’s about thousands of people who did not opt for evacuation from Douma on buses that left last week, alongside the gunmen with whom they had to live like troglodytes for months in order to survive. I walked across this town quite freely yesterday without soldier, policeman or minder to haunt my footsteps, just two Syrian friends, a camera and a notebook. I sometimes had to clamber across 20-foot-high ramparts, up and down almost sheer walls of earth. Happy to see foreigners among them, happier still that the siege is finally over, they are mostly smiling; those whose faces you can see, of course, because a surprising number of Douma’s women wear full-length black hijab.

Rubble fills a street in Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus (AP)

I first drove into Douma as part of an escorted convoy of journalists. But once a boring general had announced outside a wrecked council house “I have no information” – that most helpful rubbish-dump of Arab officialdom – I just walked away. Several other reporters, mostly Syrian, did the same. Even a group of Russian journalists – all in military attire – drifted off.

It's my understanding that chlorine gas poisoning will often produce skin irritation or chemical burns on the flesh. I see no signs of blotching on any of the victims in any of the pictures.

It was a short walk to Dr Rahaibani. From the door of his subterranean clinic – “Point 200”, it is called, in the weird geology of this partly-underground city – is a corridor leading downhill where he showed me his lowly hospital and the few beds where a small girl was crying as nurses treated a cut above her eye.

“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”

Independent Middle East Correspondent Robert Fisk in one of the miles of tunnels hacked beneath Douma by prisoners of Syrian rebels (Yara Ismail)

Oddly, after chatting to more than 20 people, I couldn’t find one who showed the slightest interest in Douma’s role in bringing about the Western air attacks. Two actually told me they didn’t know about the connection.

But it was a strange world I walked into. Two men, Hussam and Nazir Abu Aishe, said they were unaware how many people had been killed in Douma, although the latter admitted he had a cousin “executed by Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] for allegedly being “close to the regime”. They shrugged when I asked about the 43 people said to have died in the infamous Douma attack.

The White Helmets – the medical first responders already legendary in the West but with some interesting corners to their own story – played a familiar role during the battles. They are partly funded by the Foreign Office and most of the local offices were staffed by Douma men. I found their wrecked offices not far from Dr Rahaibani’s clinic. A gas mask had been left outside a food container with one eye-piece pierced and a pile of dirty military camouflage uniforms lay inside one room. Planted, I asked myself? I doubt it. The place was heaped with capsules, broken medical equipment and files, bedding and mattresses.

Of course we must hear their side of the story, but it will not happen here: a woman told us that every member of the White Helmets in Douma abandoned their main headquarters and chose to take the government-organised and Russian-protected buses to the rebel province of Idlib with the armed groups when the final truce was agreed.

There were food stalls open and a patrol of Russian military policemen – a now optional extra for every Syrian ceasefire – and no-one had even bothered to storm into the forbidding Islamist prison near Martyr’s Square where victims were supposedly beheaded in the basements. The town’s complement of Syrian interior ministry civilian police – who eerily wear military clothes – are watched over by the Russians who may or may not be watched by the civilians. Again, my earnest questions about gas were met with what seemed genuine perplexity.

How could it be that Douma refugees who had reached camps in Turkey were already describing a gas attack which no-one in Douma today seemed to recall? It did occur to me, once I was walking for more than a mile through these wretched prisoner-groined tunnels, that the citizens of Douma lived so isolated from each other for so long that “news” in our sense of the word simply had no meaning to them. Syria doesn’t cut it as Jeffersonian democracy – as I cynically like to tell my Arab colleagues – and it is indeed a ruthless dictatorship, but that couldn’t cow these people, happy to see foreigners among them, from reacting with a few words of truth. So what were they telling me?

They talked about the Islamists under whom they had lived. They talked about how the armed groups had stolen civilian homes to avoid the Syrian government and Russian bombing. The Jaish el-Islam had burned their offices before they left, but the massive buildings inside the security zones they created had almost all been sandwiched to the ground by air strikes. A Syrian colonel I came across behind one of these buildings asked if I wanted to see how deep the tunnels were. I stopped after well over a mile when he cryptically observed that “this tunnel might reach as far as Britain”. Ah yes, Ms May, I remembered, whose air strikes had been so intimately connected to this place of tunnels and dust. And gas?

I wonder where all the dead bodies are? I wonder how much money Theresa May's husband made when his stocks in BAE jumped the day after the bombing? I wonder why it was so critical to respond before anyone had a chance to actually investigate the 'attack'? If this story turns out to be accurate, someone(s) need to be held accountable. This was an illegal attack under all legal systems, and, now, would appear to be completely immoral as well.

US Will Act Against ‘Monster’ Assad With or Without UN ‒ Haley

USA - Sucked-in Again?

United States envoy to the United Nations Nikki Haley addresses the Security Council, April 9, 2018. © Brendan McDermid / Reuters

The US will act against the Syrian government with or without a UN blessing, US envoy Nikki Haley told the Security Council, blaming Russian “obstructionism” for allowing the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria and beyond.

“We are beyond showing pictures of dead babies. We are beyond appeals to conscience. We have reached the moment when the world must see justice done,” Haley declared to the Security Council on Monday, accusing Russia of backing the “monster” [Bashar] Assad, who was murdering children with chemical weapons.

“The Russian regime, whose hands are all covered with the blood of Syrian children, cannot be ashamed by pictures of its victims. We’ve tried that before,” Haley said, adding that “no civilized government would have anything to do with Assad’s murderous regime.”

Moscow has challenged claims, made by the Western-backed NGO ‘White Helmets’ and Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam) militants, that the Syrian government conducted a chemical attack against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Douma. Russia’s envoy to the UN Vassily Nebenzia called it “fake news,” noting that no traces of the alleged attack were found in the area after Syrian troops liberated it from the militants.

Haley, however, spoke of the attack as if it and the Syrian government’s culpability were proven facts. If the UN refused to follow Washington’s lead and intervene in Syria due to “Russia’s obstructionism,” Haley said, the US will go it alone.

“History will record this as the moment when the Security Council either discharged its duty or demonstrated its utter and complete failure to protect the people of Syria. Either way, the United States will respond​​​,” she said.

Nobody has vested you with the power to act 

like the world’s policeman, or to act 

like the prosecutor, judge, and executioner 

Earlier in the meeting, Nebenzia had warned the US and its allies of the possible “grave consequences” of unauthorized military action against Syria, where Russian troops have been legally deployed at the invitation of the country’s internationally recognized government.

“What [the] military misadventures of the West bring about is well known, as shown by the examples of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Nobody has vested you with the power to act like the world’s policeman, or to act like the prosecutor, judge, and executioner either,” he said.

The US cited humanitarian concerns to launch NATO attacks on Yugoslavia in 1999 and in Libya in 2011. The latter began as the UN mandate to establish a no-fly zone and, within days, turned into a “regime change” operation. In 2003, the US invaded Iraq without UN authority, claiming the threat of Iraqi nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD). No such weapons were ever found.

It is so blatantly obvious that every time Trump starts musing about pulling out of Syria, there is a chemical attack on civilians. 

Analysis of the 2013 attack in Ghouta revealed that it was not of the same chemical composition as that used by Syria at the time. 

No-one has investigated the Khan Sheikoun attack at ground level and taken samples for themselves. All samples were taken from NGOs like the White Helmets which are decidedly anti-Assad. Those samples could never have been verified as genuine. Will anyone from the OPCW actually enter Douma and take samples? We have documented White Helmets complicity in producing fake news in Syria.

Who benefits from the use of chemical weapons in Syria? Certainly not Assad! Only those who do not want the USA to pull out; that would be any of the rebel groups and Saudi Arabia. But the USA has no business in Syria - ISIS is routed and they should depart and stop using false flag excuses to remain. 

Without proof of complicity by Assad, there is no moral imperative to attack, just because you can. In fact, the moral imperative is to wait for proof and to do everything possible to verify the findings. Otherwise, you are being played for fools.

Reporters Without Borders Seeks to Cancel Press Event Critical of White Helmets

© Ammar Abdullah / Reuters

A press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, has asked the Swiss Press Club to cancel a panel discussion on the “true agenda” of the controversial White Helmets group. But the club’s director won’t budge, noting that such demands are typically made by oppressive regimes.

Oppressive regimes who don't want the truth to come out.

Guy Mettan, executive director of the Swiss Press Club, says he was asked by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Switzerland to cancel the conference. The press freedom organization, which is a member of the Swiss Press Club, said it did not want to be associated with the event.

"I have never seen such a thing," Mettan told Tribune de Geneve. “Now an organization that defends freedom of information is asking me to censor a press conference".

"Usually the pressure to cancel press conferences comes from countries that are known to be dictatorships. RSF's approach stunned me. It's taking journalists for fools. As if they were not able to form an opinion for themselves!”

Independent journalist Vanessa Beeley, who has done extensive reporting from inside Syria, will speak at Tuesday’s event alongside French journalist Richard Labeviere, an expert on the Middle East and international terrorism, and Marcello Ferrada de Noli, chair of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR).

The conference, which will also include a multimedia presentation, is billed as offering “a clear view on what is the real agenda of these Hollywood so-called ‘first responders’ who received an Oscar for their performance.”

tim anderson

@timand2037

The Wall Street creation "The #Syria Campaign" is trying to sabotage a Swiss Press Club event, set to expose the US-UK funded, #alQaeda PR group #The_White_Helmets. Fakes supporting fakes. @VanessaBeeley @EvaKBartlett

2:10 AM - Nov 23, 2017

 6 6 Replies   133 133 Retweets   146 146 likes

In a letter to Mettan published by Tribune de Geneve, Gérard Tschopp and Christiane Dubois, president and director of RSF in Switzerland, dismissed Beeley as a “so-called” journalist cited only by “Russian media propaganda.” They also claimed Swedish Doctors for Human Rights acts as “a tool of Russian propaganda.”

Noting that perhaps Mettan was unaware of this “information,” the letter urged the Swiss Press Club to “abandon” the event or risk tarnishing the club’s image. Mettan wrote back, denying the organization’s request and expressing disbelief that a group dedicated to protecting press freedom would advocate censorship.

“For the 20 years I have been working at the Swiss Press Club, I have always been under pressure to prevent people from expressing themselves. But so far these pressures have always come from authoritarian or dictatorial regimes, such as China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Bahrain,” wrote Mettan.

“This is the first time that a defense organization for journalists from a democratic country has sent me such a request. It goes without saying that I cannot act on it. It would dishonor a job that, I hope, is still yours.” Mettan called on RSF to participate in the event and present their point of view, rather than attempt censorship.

A documentary praising Syria’s White Helmets as heroes and saviors in Syria won an Oscar in February. Witnesses have meanwhile accused them of collaborating with terrorist groups, filming staged reports about their rescue work, engaging in looting and other misdeeds. Members of the group have been caught on camera several times performing dubious acts, including assisting with an apparent execution of a prisoner.

Report on Idlib Chemical Attack Based on Questionable Evidence – Russian OPCW Rep

Some of you will not read this post or watch the video because it is from RT and they are interviewing a Russian representative to the Organisation for Prohibited Chemical Weapons. If you don't, you will deny yourself the opportunity to learn a great deal about the chemical weapon attack and its aftermath. 

It is not the easiest interview to listen to, Mr. Shulgin's English is quite broken, but it is certainly worth the effort. A few excerpts are below, but the there is much, much more in the interview video.

FILE PHOTO: Civil defense members inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Syria April 5, 2017 © Ammar Abdullah / Reuters

The latest OPCW report on the April Idlib chemical incident lacks sufficient evidence and is based on data provided mostly by only one side of the Syrian conflict without necessary verification, the Russian OPCW representative, Aleksandr Shulgin, told RT.

“The conclusions of this report are based on questionable data provided primarily by all kinds of the Syrian armed opposition groups and NGOs, including the infamous White Helmets,” Shulgin said, referring to the report of the fact-finding mission (FFM) reviewed by the UN’s chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), on Thursday.

This blog has shown where the White Helmets have faked news stories on several occasions, always in an effort to demonize the Syrian Army.

The Russian representative drew attention to the fact that the report itself repeatedly says that the FFM investigative team decided not to visit the incident scene due to “security factors” and was thus unable to gather the necessary material evidence directly on the spot.

The team then had to rely on evidence provided by “various NGOs” that were working on the scene and testimonies of the alleged attack victims as well as those of the medical specialists, who treated the victims in “one of the neighboring countries.”

The report further says that the team was unable to implement the chain of custody for the samples they obtained from third parties, despite the fact that it is a standard basic procedure for such types of investigation, Shulgin noted.

The FFM report seen by RT indeed says that “the team was unable to implement a complete chain of custody, by the team, for samples from source.” Shulgin explained that the lack of the full chain of custody makes such evidence questionable, as its source cannot be verified with certainty.

‘Lies are Their Agenda’: Canadian Journalist Blasts MSM Syria Coverage at UN Event

MSM - Main Stream Media has been called to task in the biased reporting of the American election. Here, they are chastised for their pro-western, anti-Assad coverage in Syria, based on lies and little more than 'gossip journalism'. This is a serious charge and it is not the first time it has been made, but this time it is made by a Canadian who has been there for years.

Boys stand amid the damage in the government-held al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria December 13, 2016. © Omar Sanadiki / Reuters

Western mainstream media’s coverage of the Syrian war is “compromised” as their local sources are “not credible” and, in the case of Aleppo, not even there, a Canadian journalist said in an emotional speech at the UN.

Syrians support Assad

“I’ve been many times to Homs, to Maaloula, to Latakia and Tartus [in Syria] and again, Aleppo, four times. And people’s support of their government is absolutely true. Whatever you hear in the corporate media is completely opposite,” Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist and rights activist, told a press conference arranged by the Syrian mission to the UN.

video 3:45

“And, on that note, what you hear in the corporate media, and I will name them – BBC, Guardian, the New York Times etc. – on Aleppo is also the opposite of reality,” she added. The mainstream media narrative, she argued, is meant to mislead the public about what is really happening in Syria by demonizing President Bashar Assad’s government and altering the facts on Russia’s support for Damascus.

Bartlett’s statements did not seemingly play well with everyone in the room. A reporter from Aftenposten, Norway’s largest print newspaper, challenged her and demanded Bartlett explain what she thought was the “agenda” of Western mainstream media. “Why should we lie, why the international organizations on the ground should lie? How can you justify calling all of us liars?” he said.

Sources not credible

Bartlett, who has been covering Syrian events for several years since the outbreak of the civil war, noted that while there are “certainly honest journalists among the very compromised establishment media,” many respected media agencies simply seem to avoid doing a fact-check.

She then asked her Norwegian colleague to name humanitarian organizations operating in eastern Aleppo. As the Aftenposten reporter stayed silent, Bartlett added that “there are none.”

“These organizations are relying on the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights [SOHR], which is based in Coventry, UK, which is one man. They're relying on compromised groups like the White Helmets. Let's talk about the White Helmets,” she went on.

White Helmets

Members of the controversial group “purport to be rescuing civilians in eastern Aleppo and Idlib … no one in eastern Aleppo has heard of them.” Meanwhile, she noted, “their video footage actually contains children that have been ‘recycled’ in different reports; so you can find a girl named Aya who turns up in a report in say August, and she turns up in the next month in two different locations.”

White Helmets keep rescuing the same girl

“So they [the White Helmets] are not credible. The SOHR are not credible. 'Unnamed activists' are not credible. Once or twice maybe, but every time? Not credible. So your sources on the ground – you don't have them,” Bartlett concluded.

A journalist from Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera took a more measured tone and asked Bartlett to explain the difference between the Western and Russian media coverage, saying that Russian television channels report on humanitarian efforts and reconciliation instead of overt naming and blaming.

“You ask why we aren't seeing this,” Bartlett said. “This relates to the other gentleman's question about why most of the corporate media are telling lies about Syria. It's because this is the agenda; if they had told the truth about Syria from the beginning, we wouldn't be here now. We wouldn't have seen so many people killed.”

And if people aren't being killed, arms merchants aren't moving their inventory! Isn't it ironic that left-leaning media are totally supporting war mongers!