John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ROBERT FISK IN THE INDEPENDENT
“The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack
“Exclusive: Robert Fisk visits the Syria clinic at the centre of a global”
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-chemical-attack-gas-douma-robert-fisk-ghouta-damascus-a8307726.html
Thank you, Robert Fisk.
It is always nice to have additional evidence to support one's strong and logical suspicions, strong suspicions concerning all the past claims of gas attacks and strong suspicions based on the records of the US and UK governments in the run-ups to past wars and conflicts.
The White Helmets, it has been shown by both independent reporters – a couple of them who have actually spent time in Syria and observed first-hand as well as spoken with large random samples of people about the matter - and some Russian sources, are little more than a film-production company which uses resources supplied by both the US and UK governments to generate such propaganda material. Many of them are actually al Qaeda affiliates, as they have been photographed with guns in areas they could not be located otherwise.
Hollywood, too, undoubtedly plays a consultation role for the film production since the White Helmets are treated in Hollywood as though they were genuine heroes, humanitarian royalty, as it were. But, if you give that a moment’s thought, you will know that it is Hollywood which holds an annual fund-raising dinner each year to honor and give millions of dollars to the Israeli Army, that outfit Netanyahu always describes as ‘the world’s most moral army,’ even when, as now, they ambush and shoot literally hundreds of unarmed Palestinians protesting the ugly conditions in which they have been kept for long years.
Mr. Fisk does not go that far, but he simply does what reporters are supposed to do before they write a story. Go visit and observe and ask informed people on location about their insights. Such a simple approach to classical journalism, but it is one completely ignored by “the West’s” corporate and state press. He sees the nasty tunnels why people stayed, the tunnels which produced oxygen deprivation and produced the stressed people photographed by the White Helmets, and he talks to a local doctor treating people, a doctor who doubts any stories of gas attack.
And we have a rich history of the US and UK preparing the public dishonestly for a coming war the establishments have settled on starting. Everyone still remembers Tony Blair’s faked-up dossier about Iraq’s weapons capabilities and his countless lies at the time, all to justify an invasion which would lead to the deaths of a million people, make refugees of several million, and destroy for a generation the most advanced society in the Arab world at that time.
And many surely recall the baritone voice of General Colin Powell at the UN, a voice used by the Bush government along with some faked-up photos and diagrams about thing like mobile chemical weapons labs, to instill public confidence in totally fraudulent claims, claims intended only to set the stage for invasion.
Some will, remember, too, the intensely acted and seemingly sincere claims which preceded the First Gulf War at the time Iraq had invaded Kuwait about baby cribs and respirators being ripped from the birth wards of Kuwaiti hospitals by savage Iraqi troops to send back for use in Iraq. In highly emotionally-acted testimony to the American Congress a young woman named Nayirah told the story, treated then by the press and politicians, as an authentic atrocity. Trouble is Nayirah proved later to be the daughter of Kuwait’s Ambassador to the United States and she was coached, and her words scripted, by the American high-end public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton.
By the way, that whole fraud was later investigated and revealed by a CBC program. That is unlikely to happen today because today’s CBC, much like today’s BBC and corporate press, never stops generating articles and broadcasts supporting the White Helmet claims from Syria. Images of the dusty children on respirators taken from the White Helmet video are repeated countless times, in the classic style of a propaganda campaign. They repeated, too, in British papers like The Guardian.
It is interesting to note that the images from the White Helmet in Syria include foam around the mouths of children. Some ideas never die, being used over and over again with a little rework. It was often said by critics that the Hill and Knowlton fraud of the early 1990s was itself just a rework of the widely repeated sensational claim from the start of WWI that German soldiers (“the Bosch” as Churchill was so fond of calling them) were bayoneting babies as they marched across Europe.
Virtually every story I’ve seen in the corporate press is based on the White Helmets claims. Often included, too, are the claims of a British organization, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, cited over and over as expert in Syrian affairs, which consists pretty much of a man in a bed-sit somewhere in Britain with a bank of telephones. He offers no first-hand information and consistently supports the anti-government narrative.
The missile attack took place exactly as the investigators of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons (OPCW) – an arm of the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997 - were arriving to offer a first-hand and authoritative investigation of events. They are the true experts and have pretty well kept their reputation for honest analysis.
But the bombing happened before they could look at anything. So, even, if they are able to confirm what both Syria and Russia say, “the West” will have had the satisfaction of once more bombing Assad and will undoubtedly claim the site has been disturbed. It is very much like the invasion of Iraq, a far larger enterprise, before international experts, including Sweden’s Hans Blix, former UN Chief Weapons Inspector, working feverishly in Iraq, were able to complete their work. They completed about 700 inspections to find nothing, but their efforts were cut short by American and British bombing.
Well, as the French say, “Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose.”
When powerful people are intent on destroying someone or something, facts will never be allowed to stand in their way, and that’s just what has been going on in Syria with all the cutthroat mercenaries posing as jihadis, paid and supported by “the West” and its Middle Eastern allies, to de-stabilize Syria and destroy its popular and legitimate government.
