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Filed under: Al Qaeda, EU, Europe, India, Qatar, Russia, Syria, UK, USA, Western Lies | Tagged: Aleppo, False flag chemical attacks, Humanitarian crisis, Latakia, OPCW scandal, Syrian Occupied Idlib, Tartus, Turkey-Syria Earthquake, US’ Caesar Sanctions Act on Syrian, Vanessa Beeley, White Helmets | Comments Off on Syria Earthquake: US & EU Refuse to Help Syrians
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360°
February، 2023
New York, SANA
Syria’s permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh, said that Syria has repeatedly warned that the incorrect and unprofessional track adopted by The OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in Syria on Douma alleged incident will lead to false and null conclusions.
Sabbagh was regretted that the fact-finding committee had not correct the method of its work despite all the demands addressed to it to commit to the rules included in the Chemical Weapons Convention.
“Syria took a strategic decision in 2013 to join the Chemical Weapons Convention and has eliminated all its stockpile in a record time despite difficult conditions the country has been passing through,” Sabbagh said at UN Security Council session on “the Chemical File in Syria.”
He added that Syria has persistently stressed its firm stance to condemn the use of chemical weapons by any one, at any time or place.
The Syrian diplomat recalled Washington’s scenario to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the false pretext to Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, saying that Washington’s crimes in Iraq are imprescriptible.
Mazen Eyon
Filed under: Syria, WMD, UNSC, WMD Hoax | Tagged: Chemical Weapons, Douma, OPCW, OPCW scandal, False flag chemical attacks, US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq | Comments Off on Ambassador Sabbagh: Syria Warned that Incorrect Track of OPCW on Alleged Douma Incident Will Lead to False Conclusions
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360°
In a new phase of a multi-year cover-up, the OPCW has accused Syria of a chemical attack in Douma. But to make the case, the OPCW breaks its own rules and offers an argument that its own findings undermine.
In the latest chapter of an international cover-up scandal, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has directly accused Syria of committing a deadly chemical attack in the town of Douma. A new report from the chemical watchdog’s Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) alleges that Syrian forces dropped two chlorine gas cylinders and killed 43 civilians on April 7, 2018.
The report received an immediate and unequivocal endorsement from the US Department of State, the British Foreign Office and French Foreign Ministry – the diplomatic branches of the countries that rushed to bomb Syria in response to the events in Douma.
The IIT’s conclusion follows years of refusal by OPCW leaders to account for the suppression of the Douma probe’s initial findings.
The OPCW’s first report, finalized in June 2018 by a separate Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), raised doubts that a chemical attack occurred in Douma. It also left open the possibility that the incident was staged, presumably by insurgents who controlled the area at the time. Leaked documents reveal that this original report was doctored, and, along with other critical material, concealed from public view. The following month, a delegation of US officials lobbied the FFM team to conclude that chlorine gas was used as a weapon in Douma and that the Syrian government was responsible. A follow-up report, released in March 2019, omitted the original’s key findings and endorsed the US-led narrative of a chlorine attack.
The manipulation of the Douma probe was challenged by OPCW inspectors who deployed to Syria for the mission. OPCW Director General Fernando Arias has refused to meet with them or address their concerns.
The US, UK, and France have declared that the IIT report “refutes the Russian claim” that insurgents faked the use of poison gas use in Douma to frame the Syrian government. They also touted what they called “the independent, unbiased, and expert work of the OPCW staff.”
Yet the IIT report fails to address the concerns of the dissenting OPCW staffers who originally investigated the Douma incident. It does not resolve the identified suppression, inconsistencies, and errors across key areas of the probe, including toxicology; chemical analysis; ballistics; and witness testimony. Instead, after burying the original findings and stonewalling calls for accountability, the OPCW has doubled down on the deception in Douma.
This first installment of The Grayzone’s review of the IIT Douma report focuses on the core investigative pillar of chemical analysis, which heavily factors in the IIT’s conclusions.
In Douma, OPCW discovers a Magic Marker
The IIT claims to have confirmed the 2019 Fact Finding Mission’s (FFM) conclusion — which was challenged by the dissenting inspectors — that chlorine gas was “likely” used in Douma, and that there is no evidence of chemical staging.
In Douma, the first gas cylinder was found at an apartment building identified as “Location 2,” where 43 dead bodies were filmed. The bodies were strewn about the floors below a gas cylinder that was positioned atop a crater on the roof. The cylinder, it is alleged, caused the crater and then remained poised over the hole as it dumped its chlorine payload into the rooms beneath. A second gas cylinder was found on a bed at a different apartment building identified as “Location 4”, where no fatalities were reported.
To assert that chlorine gas most definitely struck Location 2, the IIT relies on finding what it calls a “marker” chemical, tetrachlorophenol (TeCP), in a single sample of concrete debris. The presence of TeCP in that sample, the IIT states, “specifically points to the exposure to chlorine gas.”
But to make that case, the IIT violates the OPCW’s own evidentiary protocols, and makes an argument that its own findings undermine.
– The supposedly incriminating concrete sample has appeared out of the blue. The IIT claims that the sample was received and analyzed by an OPCW Designated Laboratory in July 2018. But the OPCW FFM’s March 2019 report – released more than seven months later – makes no mention of this sample’s existence. Nearly four years later, the Douma probe’s most consequential sample is therefore being disclosed for the first time.
– The TeCP-containing sample was not collected by OPCW inspectors. It was instead collected by an unidentified third party in direct violation of the organization’s chain of custody rules.
– The third party that collected the sample is in all likelihood the White Helmets. While claiming to be a neutral rescue organization, they are anything but. The White Helmets closely cooperate with anti-government insurgents in Syria and are funded by foreign states active in Syria’s post-2011 proxy war, including the United States and the UK. The White Helmets have also been credibly accused of staging a chemical decontamination scene in a nearby hospital at the time of the alleged Douma attack.
– In violation of its own protocols, the OPCW gave full evidentiary status to this externally collected sample of uncertain origin. By contrast, a similar sample collected at the same Douma location by the organization’s own inspectors was inexplicably disregarded and not even analyzed.
– The OPCW offers no explanation for these evidentiary breaches. And even if all of them are put to the side, the IIT’s assertion that the sample reveals a chemical weapons smoking gun is contradicted by the OPCW’s own findings. The IIT somehow overlooks that TeCP was also found in a sample from a different location, where no chlorine gas is reported to have been present.
In short, to reach its conclusion that a chlorine gas attack occurred in Douma, the OPCW is relying on a newly introduced, highly dubious sample, and a scientific argument that is fatally flawed.
“Concrete” Proof
The IIT claims that its Douma probe is “based on the findings” of the OPCW’s original Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), which released a final report in March 2019. That report concluded that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that a chemical weapon was used in Douma, which was “likely” chlorine gas. When it comes to the chemical analysis, the FFM based its claims “primarily on the detection of bornyl chloride and/or trichlorophenol” in wood samples, after it had excluded other possibilities like household bleach.
Although the FFM did not name the alleged perpetrator, it strongly suggested the Syrian army.
The FFM’s conclusions were challenged in a leaked letter sent to OPCW chief Fernando Arias in April 2019 by Dr. Brendan Whelan, a veteran OPCW inspector and Douma team member. Whelan was the chief author of the team’s original report and oversaw the scientific investigation that produced it. The letter criticized what Whelan called “unsubstantiated and scientifically irresponsible” findings, and “the way the facts have been misrepresented.”
Nearly four years later, in what amounts to a tacit acknowledgement of Whelan’s objections on the chemical analysis, the IIT has introduced a new line of argument.
The IIT report makes a new case for a chlorine gas attack primarily based on detecting what is described as a “marker” chemical called tetrachlorophenol, or TeCP. According to the IIT, “the presence of TeCP clearly points to chlorine gas as being the chlorinating agent present at the scene, and in very high concentrations.” The IIT additionally claims that the detection of TeCP helps determine that the chlorine gas came from the two cylinders found in Douma, and negates the possibility that the incident was staged.
These are very different justifications to those contained in the March 2019 FFM report. For example, the FFM in that report rejected any staging with bleach on the grounds that “there were no visible signs of a bleach agent or discoloration due to contact with a bleach agent.” One of the known OPCW whistleblowers has rejected this argument as “tenuous and unscientific.” By omitting it in its latest report, the IIT apparently agrees.
At Location 2, the apartment building where the 43 dead victims were filmed, the key TeCP chemical was identified in just one sample. According to the IIT, it comes from concrete debris collected on April 8 2018 “in the room under the crater and the cylinder.”
But the sample’s path from purported collection in April 2018 to purported smoking gun in January 2023 raises multiple red flags.
The sample now said to contain the incriminating TeCP is conspicuously absent in the OPCW’s March 2019 final report on Douma. A full list in that report of the “samples collected or received by the Fact-Finding Mission” makes no mention of the IIT’s newfound sample.
Yet according to the IIT, the TeCP sample was “first received and analysed by an OPCW designated laboratory on 24 July 2018.” Taking that timeline at face value, an obvious question arises: why was this critical sample not considered of interest – or even acknowledged — in the March 2019 final report? The IIT makes no effort to answer this question, or to explain how such a consequential sample was not disclosed until now.
The IIT’s supposed smoking gun becomes even more suspect when we learn how it was obtained.
The all-important TeCP sample is not only missing from the OPCW’s March 2019 final report; it was also not collected by the OPCW. The IIT states that the sample was “collected by a third party” on April 8th 2018, days before the OPCW inspectors even arrived in Syria.
The IIT claims that it was “able to reconstruct” the sample’s chain of custody “between the date it was collected and the date it was first received” in July 2018. But as The Grayzone has previously reported, the OPCW’s use of external actors to collect chemical samples in Syria violates its foundational rules, which require full control of the chain of custody from start to finish.
If a “sample was not under OPCW custody” at any point during a mission, OPCW policy states that it “will not be accepted for OPCW verification purposes.” As a spokesperson explained in 2013, the OPCW “would never get involved in testing samples that our own inspectors don’t gather in the field, because we need to maintain chain of custody of samples from the field to the lab to ensure their integrity.”
In Douma and other probes by the OPCW in Syria before it, that bedrock policy has been quietly discarded.
The IIT does not name the “third party” that collected the concrete sample, but it is undoubtedly a group known as the White Helmets. In a public statement on the IIT report, the White Helmets claimed that they “collected samples” in Douma “and submitted them to the OPCW.” As The Grayzone reported last year, the OPCW has used the White Helmets to collect samples and other purported evidence in multiple Syria chemical weapons probes.
In enlisting the White Helmets, the OPCW has not only flouted its own evidentiary protocol, but partnered with a non-neutral actor. The White Helmets extensively cooperate with armed anti-government insurgents, prompting one Syrian Al Qaeda leader to describe their members as “hidden soldiers.” The group is also funded by the same foreign state belligerents, including the US, that armed the insurgency and bombed Syria over the Douma allegations. According to witness testimony and several media sources, including a BBC journalist who conducted a lengthy investigation, the White Helmets staged a chemical decontamination scene in a Douma field hospital around the time of the alleged chemical attack.
The IIT’s reliance on a previously undisclosed sample provided by a third party is additionally called into question by yet another unexplained decision. The OPCW’s Douma team collected an almost identical sample from the exact same spot at Location 2, yet did not analyze it. The IIT describes the extraordinarily useful TeCP sample as having been taken from concrete located “in the room under the crater and the cylinder.” Yet the OPCW’s March 2019 final report shows that the watchdog’s own inspectors also collected concrete located “in the room under the cylinder.” (Entry #28, p. 90).
Whereas the OPCW did not analyze the concrete sample that it collected in Douma, it inexplicably did analyze the sample collected from the same place by an external source. That this previously unknown sample happened to produce the OPCW’s newfound smoking gun is either an extraordinary coincidence, or yet another deception.
The New Smoking Gun
The IIT’s inexplicable reliance on a previously undisclosed sample whose collection was outsourced to an external actor directly tied to armed insurgents is but one glaring aspect of a report shot through with flaws. Putting aside the sample’s suspicious timeline and compromised chain of custody, the significance of the analytical findings assigned to it does not pass muster.
The IIT authors report that chemicals they call “highly chlorinated phenols, namely trichlorophenol (TCP) and TeCP, were found in samples that were gathered close to the cylinder that had lodged on the roof of Location 2. Out on the street, three floors below, they found related chemicals which they describe as “low-chlorinated phenols” MCP and DCP. They did not find TeCP or TCP.
The IIT argues that these “highly chlorinated phenols”, TeCP and TCP can only be formed if samples originally containing a chemical called phenol had been exposed to a high concentration of chlorine gas. “The production of TCP, and in particular TeCP from phenolic precursors, requires the presence of a high concentration of chlorine gas,” the report states. (emphasis added)
According to the IIT’s rationale, because only the “low chlorinated phenols,” MCP and DCP, were found in samples taken from the street far from the cylinder on the roof, that means that the concentration of chlorine gas in the street just in front of Location 2 had to have been much lower. This in turn means that the gas release had to have originated on the roof, where the gas concentration would have been highest if the cylinder lodged there were the source:
The pattern of detected chlorinated phenols at the scene is consistent with the hypothesis that the cylinder on the roof was the source of the released gaseous chlorinating agent. This is indicated by the presence of highly chlorinated phenols TCP and TeCP at the sampling locations close to the cylinder (i.e. at the crater on the roof and in the room under the cylinder), as opposed to the least chlorinated phenols MCP and DCP on the street far away from the cylinder.
The finding also leads the IIT to conclude that the TeCP found in the concrete sample from the third-party allows them to “rule out the hypothesis that the incident may have been ‘staged’ using household bleach products or pesticides.” That is because, in their view, “to produce TeCP… [t]he high reactivity of chlorine gas is required.” In other words, bleach is not strong enough to make TeCP – leaving chlorine gas as the cause.
The IIT rules out pesticide as a possible source by considering a hypothesis whereby the TeCP might have originated in the sample because of contact with a pesticide called PCP, which, the IIT says, is normally contaminated with considerable amounts of TeCP. They eliminate that hypothesis, however, because “PCP was not detected in any sample from Location 2,” which they say “strongly indicates that the TeCP was produced in situ” — i.e. where it was detected in Location 2 — “due to the action of chlorine gas.”
In sum, the IIT’s findings regarding the TeCP in the concrete sample at Location 2 purport to resolve three main chemical issues: proving that chlorine gas was used; ruling out a staged event with household bleach; and even establishing that the yellow gas cylinder on the roof of Location 2 was the source of chlorine gas. TeCP, it would seem, is the veritable smoking gun needed to establish a chemical attack in Douma as fact.
All is not as it seems, however. In its attempt to rely on a “new” discovery, the IIT has overlooked what the OPCW already found.
Tunnel Vision
Upon scrutiny, it becomes clear that the Investigation and Identification Team has jumped to baseless conclusions about the TeCP’s significance. The IIT’s claim that the TeCP’s presence “clearly points to chlorine gas… and in very high concentrations” — and debunks any possibility of staging with household bleach — is scientifically unsupported. Moreover, the IIT has somehow missed that its claim to a smoking gun is explicitly contradicted by the OPCW’s own findings.
The report’s authors have also overlooked the fact that their new incriminating chemical TeCP (tetrachlorophenol), along with TCP (trichlorophenol), – what they describe as “the highly chlorinated phenols” — were also found in a Douma sample gathered far from any gas cylinder.
According to the FFM’s March 2019 report, those same chemicals, tetrachlorophenol (TeCP) and trichlorophenol (TCP) were detected in the tunnel deep underneath the field hospital in Douma, identified by the OPCW as “Location 1.” (Final Report, Annex 5, page 49, Entry #26).
When the White Helmets were not busy collecting game-changing samples on the OPCW’s behalf, they were using this same hospital to film dramatic scenes of themselves dousing civilians, including children, with water, claiming they were treating victims of a Syrian government chemical attack. (In February 2019, the BBC’s Riam Dalati claimed that he can “prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged.” He fell silent immediately after his astounding claim and has not released his reporting).
Recall that the IIT has just claimed that for TeCP and TCP to form “in situ,” it “requires the presence of a high concentration of chlorine gas.” Recall also, that the IIT dismissed the possibility that the TeCP found at Location 2 could have come from the pesticide PCP, because no PCP was found in the sample where TeCP was found. The same argument applies to the tunnel sample, where no PCP was found either.
There have been no reports of any chlorine attack or chlorine gas release in the tunnel beneath the hospital, let alone in “high concentration.” Because of the distance of the tunnel from the two gas cylinders — and contradicting the IIT’s own logic — the presence of TeCP and TCP in the tunnel sample cannot have been a result of exposure to chlorine gas, yet alone exposure to high concentrations of it, from an alleged chlorine gas attack on April 7 2018.
If the TeCP found in the tunnel did not come from pesticides, or did not result from exposure to high concentration of chlorine gas, what was its source? Chlorinated water or the natural environment are among several possibilities. TeCP clearly has other sources, and is not the unique “marker” of chlorine gas that the IIT has deemed it to be. As such, it cannot be used as a diagnostic tool for chlorine gas exposure in the Douma investigation, and the IIT’s argument collapses.
Engaging the experts
To reach its findings about the TeCP, the IIT claims that it “engaged a well-established chemist with specific expertise in the analysis of chlorine markers.” This supposed expert has only established a need for the IIT to engage in a little scientific curiosity – specifically to read the OPCW’s own lab results, which undermine the explosive conclusions that the IIT report has drawn.
The same need could be identified for an OPCW leadership that has refused to address the complaints of the original Douma team whistleblowers.
In an April 2019 letter to the OPCW Director General Arias, Dr. Brendan Whelan, the FFM team’s scientific coordinator and chief author of the original report, flagged multiple issues that take on newfound significance in light of the recent IIT report.
The March 2019 final report, Whelan wrote, “altered” the “key conclusions” of the June 2018 original report, even though “no substantive or valid new information, particularly with respect to the sampling and analysis results, has been gathered since.” Additionally, the OPCW “prioritised the analysis of samples… for which no chain of custody could be assured,” thereby downgrading “samples which had been collected by the FFM team and therefore had full chain of custody.” Finally, Whelan argued that the OPCW’s conclusions about the samples are “unsubstantiated and scientifically irresponsible given the information the team possessed.”
Nearly four years later, the OPCW has responded to the scientific and ethical violations breaches that Whelan identified by committing even more. The result is an IIT report that offers a disqualifying chain of custody, conclusions contradicted by the OPCW’s own information, and a newfound smoking gun that backfires in spectacular fashion.
Aaron Maté is a journalist and producer. He hosts Pushback with Aaron Maté on The Grayzone. In 2019, Maté was awarded the Izzy Award (named after I.F. Stone) for outstanding achievement in independent media for his coverage of Russiagate in The Nation magazine. Previously, he was a host/producer for The Real News and Democracy Now!.
Filed under: Al Qaeda, France, Russia, Syria, USA | Tagged: Chemical Weapons, Douma, False flag chemical attacks, Global war on Syria, OPCW, OPCW scandal, US Proxy War on Syria, White Helmets | Comments Off on In Douma Cover-up, OPCW’s New Smoking Gun Backfires
December 16, 2022
By David Sant
During its rise to world domination, the City of Rome had one major competitor, which was its equal in every way. That city was Carthage, located 370 miles away, on the South side of the Mediterranean Sea.
Carthage had been planting colonies around the Mediterranean and Atlantic for over a century before Rome was even founded. As Rome rose to power, these two Mediterranean cities fought two wars for control over the Island of Sicily, called the Punic Wars. Despite an admirable performance by Hannibal who managed to invade Italy twice and inflicted a terrible defeat on the Romans at Cannae, Carthage still ended up losing both wars.
At the close of the second Punic War in 201 BC, Carthage was conquered by Rome and placed under a special administrative status that disallowed it from fielding a navy or overseas military without permission from the Roman Senate.
Carthage was one of only three powers that ever managed to directly threaten Rome during the days of the Republic, the others being the Gauls who sacked Rome in 390 BC, and the Macedonian Greeks, who were defeated in 197 BC.
The Roman attitude and behavior toward Carthage then was very similar to the Anglo-American attitude toward Russia, today. The main “sin” of Carthage in the eyes of the Romans was that it was equal in power and influence to Rome. And for that sin, it had to be destroyed.
Cato the Elder was a Roman soldier, who later became a Senator and famous orator who gave many speeches in the Senate even after his retirement. Over a period of forty years, he routinely ended his speeches on any subject with the statement, “And furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed!”
Cato repeatedly made this demand, despite the fact that Carthage was now a Roman client state bound by a peace treaty.
For fifty years after losing the Second Punic War, Carthage submitted to the terms of the treaty. However, after the death of Cato the Elder in 149 BC, a certain faction in Rome deliberately allowed the King of Numidia to pillage and conquer Carthagenian territories, in violation of the treaty.
This placed Carthage in a position where they had to defend themselves from predations by a neighboring Roman client state. Their appeals to the Roman Senate were ignored. So, they took action to defend their interests against Numidia without permission.
When they did so, the Roman Senate immediately interpreted this as a violation of the 201 BC peace treaty, and authorized the invasion and destruction of Carthage. This was not unlike the “rules based international order” of Washington, DC, where we make the rules (for you) but we don’t have to follow them ourselves.
Despite having surrendered their weapons at the outset of the Roman campaign, the walls of Carthage were so well made that it took the Romans nearly three years of siege to break through.
Finally in 146 BC, Carthage fell for the last time to the Roman Army, and was deliberately razed to the ground and burned. The Romans slew all of its population, men, women, and children, except for 50,000 who were taken back to Italy as slaves. According to Polybius, the wife of the last general of Carthage threw herself and her own children into the burning temple of the city rather than surrender to Rome.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not the result of losing a war. It was caused by the failed policies of a centralized economy, exacerbated by American manipulation of the oil markets, and a costly American-backed guerilla war in Afghanistan. The United States moved in with “shock therapy” economic advisors and took the opportunity to restructure a confused and gullible Russia, including writing a new constitution.
For Russia the collapse of the Soviet Union had many similarities to the loss of Carthage in the Second Punic War.
Despite making peace with their former adversary, and honoring their treaties, Russia found that she could never be accepted as a friend on equal terms by the Western world order. And this was for the very same reason that Carthage could never be tolerated by Rome. Russia was and is in every way an equal to the Anglo-American Empire.
Ever since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia, the chorus of the West has become louder and louder that Putin must go. While they cannot say it aloud yet, what they really mean is “Russia must be destroyed!”
If Russia had continued the policy of submission to Western control that was begun by Boris Yeltsin, we can be assured that Moscow would have eventually met the same fate as Carthage from the Anglo-American Empire.
However, the appointment of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia derailed their plans. Under his rule Russia has steadily reasserted her former leadership and strength against the machinations of the Anglo-American Empire.
While at first Mr. Putin made a genuine effort to be a “partner” with the West, by the year 2011 it was clear that the West would never accept Russia as a friend or an equal. The West had enjoyed two decades of bossing everyone else around and had learned to enjoy giving orders rather than negotiating. One might say that the West forgot the art of diplomacy.
After watching in horror the NATO-led destructions of Serbia, Libya, and Syria, the Kremlin began asserting itself with foreign policy problems that directly affected Russian security interests starting in 2013.
The Obama Administration was very busy from 2011 to 2013 planning the overthrow of the Assad Regime in Syria. Two major hacks of intelligence related companies shed some unexpected light on what was going on behind the scenes. These were the Stratfor hack in 2011, and the hack of a British private security company (ie. mercenaries), that shall not be named, in January of 2013.
I must note that the private security company (PSC for short) admitted that they were hacked, but claimed that two of the most damning emails released within the gigabytes of leaked files were “fabricated.”
The “fabricated” email as reported by the Oriental Review, purportedly from the business development officer to the company founder reads as follows:
Phil
We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.
We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have. They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.
Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?
Kind regards
David
The original story and its context can be found at The Oriental Review: https://orientalreview.org/2013/01/31/britamgate-staging-false-flag-attacks-in-syria/
Despite the file dump including personnel files containing copies of 58 real Ukrainian passports of employees of said PSC, the “fact checkers” at the time examined the email headers and noted that the email in question had a very similar time stamp, of three minutes before midnight, to another email in the release that was sent on a different date, also at three minutes before midnight. While this could be explained by a mail server or laptop setting which sent mail every day at the same time, it was accepted as proof of skullduggery and the entire affair was quickly dismissed and mostly forgotten.
Said PSC then sued The Daily Mail for libel for reporting the “obviously fake” email above as authentic, and was awarded damages and a partial retraction in January of 2022.
The supposedly fabricated email above happened to fall between several other breaches which revealed US and British intelligence were planning to release a video showing Russian-speaking soldiers as the operators of Syria’s chemical weapons depots.
I consider the aforementioned “hoax” to be one of the most amazing coincidences of the past two decades.
The PSC hack was shortly followed by claims of the Khan al-Assal chemical attack near Aleppo only three months later, and another at Ghouta five months after that, both of which were blamed by the West on the Assad Regime in the ramp up for an American invasion of Syria.
It is simply amazing that some unknown hacker managed to fabricate an email discussing the details of an event that hadn’t even happened yet. But the truth is often stranger than fiction.
Of course I know that the PSC referred to above couldn’t have had anything to do with either of the real chemical attacks which followed, because after their demonstrated incompetence of allowing all of their operations in the Middle East to be breached and published on the Internet, I seriously doubt they would be trusted to handle such an offer, had it been real.
The “fabricated” email shows us a picture of what was certainly going on in Syria as US and British intelligence farmed out projects to mercenary groups like Blackwater and other “private security companies.”
However, the invasion party was halted in its tracks in September of 2013, when Mr. Putin completely neutralized the Anglo-American casus belli against Syria by offering to help Syria destroy their chemical weapons stockpiles.
This was successfully completed and verified by the OPCW as being completed in late June of 2014. Thus Syria’s chemical stockpiles were completely removed before the American false flag plan could be convincingly executed. In poker this is known as calling the bluff.
Anyone who actually believed the Western propaganda about chemical weapons might have expected that President Vladimir Putin would be given some kind of international award for bringing Syria into the Chemical Weapons Convention and averting yet another major war in the Middle East.
However, rather than being pleased at the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, the Atlanticists were furious. This was the first major chess move by Mr. Putin that completely derailed the plans of the Atlanticists on the world stage. They shifted gears to the Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine, beginning in November 2013.
However, the chemical weapons saga in Syria was only getting started. The Assad Regime continued to be accused of chemical weapons attacks in 2015, 2016, 2017, and even up until 2022. Syria has suffered from multiple attempted chemical weapons attacks since 2012, culminating in a major one in Idlib on April 4, 2017. The Idlib attack was used by President Trump to justify a cruise missile strike on Syria, two days later, before any facts could be ascertained about the event. Since 2017, Russia has warned repeatedly that the White Helmets group were planning false flag chemical attacks to be blamed on the Assad Regime. This activity has continued all the way up to the present year.
The most important lesson to be learned from the chemical weapons saga in Syria is that the Atlanticist intelligence agencies have such complete control over global mainstream media outlets that they do not fear exposure of their false flag attack plans. And furthermore, if you want to anticipate their plans, all you have to do is listen to what they say.
On August 20, 2012, a few months before any of the false flag chemical attacks in Syria, President Obama made the following comments:
We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.
Obama started warning Syria that using or even moving chemical weapons was a red line, shortly before the American false flag attempts began.
Thus, we can see that the US regime will telegraph their plans by first naming a casus belli, and then secretly working to create the false appearance of violation of the casus belli by the intended victim.
Even when the plans are exposed in advance, they will still be carried out. The MSM will pretend that there was no prior warning, and fact checkers will claim the prior warning was part of the deception by the country that was in reality falsely accused.
This brings us to the likely culmination of the Western war against Russia. In Septemer of 2022, Biden officials suddenly started clucking about how Russia must not use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This refrain was repeated to the media multiple times by officials including the President, Secretary of State, and National Security Advisor, as well as several retired military officers.
Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that using nuclear weapons in Ukraine would go against every interest Russia has there, as well as breaking all the rules of Russian nuclear doctrine. The majority of Russian citizens have relatives in Ukraine, which would make such an action political suicide. Russia has never threatened to use such weapons in Ukraine. So, why would the USA give such warnings?
The ridiculous American warnings against nuclear weapons in Ukraine show the wise observer exactly what the US State Department is planning to do. They obviously intend to deploy a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb through their proxies in order to blame Russia for it.
We have already seen this beginning to play out. The Kremlin warned several major countries in October of 2022 that Ukraine was planning to detonate a dirty bomb to be blamed on Russia. US Defense Secretary Austin immediately spun the story to say Russia is fabricating that accusation to justify their own intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Then the topic seemed to die down for a spell.
It is unfortunately naive to think Mr. Shoigu’s warnings averted anything. In the past, exposing the planned chemical false flag did not prevent its eventual execution. We know from the Russian MOD that a radiological or nuclear false flag event has definitely been planned for Ukraine.
Since Russia announced this, it is possible that the Atlanticists may have upgraded the plot to use an actual tactical nuclear weapon, because Ukraine supposedly doesn’t have those, and it would be harder for Russia to deny. It will probably be saved for a moment where it looks like Russia is about to win a major victory in Ukraine.
In the larger context, Britain’s MI6 has run a series of false flag poisonings blamed on Russia, starting with Litvinenko in 2006, followed by the Skripal poisoning, and most recently the Nalvany poisoning. The purpose of these theatrical false flag campaigns has always been to reduce Russia’s influence in the international community, and attempt to isolate Russia as a “rogue regime.”
And going back to the “fabricated” email of the PSC quoted above, we see that the requirement to get video of Russian-speakers deploying a chemical weapon against innocent Syrian civilians fit right in with the British narrative that, “Russia poisons people, because Russia is a venomous serpent!”
The downing of MH-17 would also count as the same class of false flag incident, but with a somewhat more tactical purpose of trying to create enough international hysteria to turn the victory of the Donbass militia into a major defeat for Russia internationally through sanctions.
The downing of MH-17 succeeded in energizing Europe to apply the first round of sanctions against Russia. And even more so, it generated enough hysteria that Russia no longer is given the chance to defend her actions, to cross examine witnesses, or bring her own witnesses with regard to accusations against her. Russia and her citizens are now routinely accused of atrocities by the West and summarily punished by confiscation of property with no recourse in the international bodies that were created to adjudicate such disputes.
As the Ukraine War has stopped trending on Twitter, freezing Europeans are ready to take up pitchforks against their masters, and Russia’s presumed Winter offensive seems very likely to inflict some major losses on Ukraine and the NATO backers, the Atlanticist spin masters badly need a bigger shock to jolt the UN and EU into doing their bidding.
As in the case of MH-17, the Satanists running the Empire of Lies need a large sacrifice of human lives to generate enough shock and outrage to achieve their next big foreign policy coup.
The reader should recognize the same playbook as the warnings for Syria not to use chemical weapons in 2012, followed by years of false flag attempts.
After hearing the US warnings against Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, we should not have been surprised to learn from the Russian MOD that the Zelensky regime was planning to deploy a dirty bomb to be blamed on Russia as a tactical nuclear weapon. The American forewarnings, followed by exposure of such a plot, express the same pattern seen in Syria playing out again.
I expect that some version of this nuclear plot will eventually be carried out with the backing of Atlanticist intelligence agencies.
Russia’s position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power has been a thorn in the paw of the Atlanticist beast since the Cold War.
Russia’s willingness to use her military to defend allies in Syria, Ukraine, and Armenia presents an uncontrollable risk factor for Anglo-American hegemony. They cannot tolerate it.
Russia has used her veto on the Security Council multiple times to block American warmongering. If Russia cannot be destroyed literally, then at minimum, they must destroy Russia’s reputation to the point of revoking their seat on the Security Council.
If the Atlanticists cannot risk directly attacking Moscow itself, then they can achieve the next best thing by creating a provocation to justify kicking Russia off the United Nations Security Council.
The Atlanticist Axis is desperate to remove Russian leadership and influence on the rest of the world, because Russia keeps blocking their imperial plans, whether in Syria, Ukraine, Asia, Latin America, or Africa.
The purpose of such an overt false flag attack as a nuclear detonation, real or fake, would be to generate sufficient international horror and emotion to remove Russia from the UN Security Council, or expel her from the UN entirely. They will require a 9-11 level event to achieve that.
Rest assured that when the bomb is finally detonated, the paperwork to expel Russia will be presented to the UN General Assembly before the ashes have hit the ground.
It doesn’t make sense to view such an event as an attempt to stave off Russian advances in the Ukraine. A nuclear bomb might be tactical but its purpose is strategic – to excommunicate Russia from the UN and all other international bodies of which it is a member.
The long term campaign by the USA and UK intelligence services to frame Russia for provocations using weapons of mass destruction follows the dark parallel of Rome’s treatment of Carthage.
Cato and his faction demanded the destruction of Carthage, not because Carthage was involved in any current plots against Rome, but because Carthage was a near equal to Rome in wealth, in culture, and in potential military power. Carthage was a potential adversary that could block Rome’s path to Empire.
Cato made these speeches for decades prior to his death, and ended every one of them with the demand that Carthage must be destroyed. At first it was probably considered a joke. But eventually through repetition he succeeded in priming the minds of the Roman Senate to carry out his desire.
Rome could brook no competition, and therefore did not recognize Carthage as an equal. The existence of Carthage, to the Roman mind, required its destruction. And this is exactly how the think tanks in DC and London view Russia today. “Russia must be destroyed!”
Just as Rome used the peace treaty with Carthage to prevent Carthage from defending herself, while encouraging Numidia to go to war against Carthage, both Angela Merkel and Petro Poroshenko have now admitted that the Minsk Agreements were only used to buy time for Kiev to prepare for war against Russia.
Cato the Elder died at the old age of 85 years in 149 BC. Within a year of his death, the Roman Senate used their client kingdom, Numidia, to create the false pretext to go to war against Carthage. After an extended siege they burned the city to the ground and ensured that it was not rebuilt for generations.
The deliberate destruction of Carthage by Rome was completely irrational. They destroyed what would have been billions of 2020 Dollars worth of property. They destroyed a civilization that wasn’t even at war with them. The Roman Empire became poorer by the destruction of Carthage, not richer. The irrational destruction of Carthage was entirely driven by hatred and jealousy, both of which are irrational.
If Russia ever capitulates to the Atlanticist Axis she will meet the same fate. “Russia must be destroyed,” is the mantra that has been woven through all of the actions, plots, and strategies of the Atlanticists ever since Putin became President of Russia. We should have no doubt that Washington is willing to use nuclear weapons to achieve that objective, whether outright or by farce.
In the nearterm, we should expect the farce – a false flag nuclear attack on Ukraine. If Russia achieves a major breakthrough in Ukraine in the coming year, the nuclear false flag will probably be triggered, followed by hysterical condemnation and demands that Russia be immediately expelled from the United Nations.
The question to which I have no answer is, how can Russia defeat such a strategy?
The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is based on the assumption that two rational actors who understand that a certain action will destroy them both will avoid that action at all costs. This was the lynchpin of foreign policy during the Cold War.
The problem is that most humans are only rational some of the time. And some small percentage of us may reach a state of complete irrationality most of the time.
Furthermore, humans have a strange tendency on rare occasions to go mad together in crowds, not unlike lemmings who follow each other over the cliff into the sea. Nazi Germany in the 1930s comes to mind.
While Russia has recently been trying to protect herself from the acidic influence of Western imposed sodomy, the West has fully embraced it. And that, not merely as one of many valid options, but as a totalitarian state religion that children must be indoctrinated into. This is what Mr. Putin meant when he said that the West has become Satanic.
Sodomy is not merely an individual choice. It is a suicidal choice both for the individual and for human society. Consistent sodomites have no offspring, so they must recruit the offspring of normal people in order to grow in numbers. But in the end, a civilization that embraces sodomy as the preferred lifestyle will completely collapse morally, economically, and numerically.
The West has come under the spell of a death cult, currently led by the World Economic Forum. Their irrational desire to deindustrialize and depopulate the world in the name of environmentalism and technocracy can only be described as insanity. Ultimately both sodomy and Malthusian environmentalism are rejections of our Creator, and the mandate to be fruitful, multiply, and exercise dominion over the Earth and its living creatures. It is a rejection of the mission of transforming the Earth from wilderness and wasteland into a garden.
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate me love death. (Proverbs 8:36)
Such leaders cannot be counted on to act rationally under the MAD regime, because they may view a nuclear war as a shortcut to achieve their goals of deindustrialization and depopulation. Of course, they have their bunkers in Switzerland and irrationally believe they will survive the conflagration to become the new elite of a greener world controlled by technocrats.
The Heaven’s Gate cult members also believed that by committing mass suicide they would ascend into a higher and better state. As far as anyone knows, they were completely wrong. But that did not stop them from carrying out mass suicide.
Jesus said that you don’t pour new wine into an old wineskin. The reason is that the leather of a wineskin stretches under the pressure of fermentation. An old wineskin has lost its elasticity, and cannot contain the power of a second batch of fermenting wine. It will burst.
It appears to me that Mutual Assured Destruction is an old wineskin of the twentieth century that may not be able to contain the fermenting minds of the annihilationist “young leaders” whose hearts were trained by the World Economic Forum.
In the past year we have already seen the West demonstrate it has reached a state of chronic criminal insanity.
First, they blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline which will cause the deindustrialisation of Western Europe.
That is criminally insane!
Then, Ukraine, under western supervision and using western weapons, has spent the past six months shelling the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Station in an effort to cause a nuclear accident.
That is criminally insane!
Now, the Russian MOD already has said they have evidence that the NATO-backed Ukrainians are planning a false flag radiological or nuclear weapon detonation on their own soil!!!
That is criminally suicidally insane!
We have reached a point in world history where the West appears to be planning a nuclear false flag attack in Ukraine to be blamed on Russia in order to justify the next big change, whatever that is. And Russia stands in their way. The leaders of the West have gone certifiably mad. And this means that MAD is no longer a shield against nuclear war.
Any remaining sane powers in this world need to immediately take that into account, and start preparing and planning to survive and win a nuclear war against a diabolically insane and suicidal adversary who may not see a total nuclear war as a bad thing.
If Carthage waits for Rome to make their next move, trusting in the good faith of the parties to make rational decisions under international law, then it is quite likely that once more, Carthage shall be destroyed.
Kyrie eleison on us all!
Filed under: Bashar Al-Assad, Britain, Russia, Ukraine, USA, USSR, Western Hegemony, Western Lies | Tagged: AngloZionist Empire, Collapse of USSR, False flag chemical attacks, Global war on Syria, Obama, OPCW scandal, Roman empire, White Helmets | Comments Off on Carthage Must Be Destroyed!
Over the course of the western-sponsored war, false flag attacks have been a common tool used by the opposition to rally US military support
The Russian Defense Ministry revealed on 14 November that members of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) extremist group are planning to carry out a false flag operation in Syria’s northern Idlib governorate in coordination with the White Helmets, with the aim of pinning the blame on Syrian and Russian forces.
“The Russian military has received information that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorists, in cooperation with White Helmets representatives, intend to carry out provocations in the Idlib de-escalation zone,” Major General Oleg Yegorov, the head of the ministry’s Reconciliation Center, said.
Yegorov added that the operation is meant to target densely populated civilian areas within Idlib.
Since the start of the Syrian war, false flag operations and staged attacks have been a common method used by the US-backed opposition in order to push for regime change or attacks against Damascus.
These operations are commonly carried out in coordination with the White Helmets, a western-funded group posing as the Syrian Civil Defense.
The White Helmets – founded in 2014 by a former British intelligence officer – have taken part in street executions, have been spotted operating freely in ISIS-controlled territory, and have even been implicated in organ trafficking networks within Syria.
In April of 2018, Damascus was accused of a chemical attack against civilians in the city of Douma, resulting in illegal US military strikes against Syrian government positions. But just a year later, a report by MintPress News revealed that several journalists from a number of mainstream agencies had come to the conclusion that the Douma attack was staged with the help of the White Helmets.
Russian media also disclosed that year that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concealed the results of its own fact-finding mission that was deployed to Syria to investigate the purported attack in Douma. The report contained information that questioned the alleged attack, and was initially brought to light by an OPCW whistleblower.
In 2017, a deadly chemical attack in Idlib’s Khan Sheikhoun town was also blamed on the Syrian government. Resulting in at least 80 deaths, and taking place at a time when the Syrian army was in an offensive position and had liberated significant swathes of territory, experts suggested that Damascus had no motive in launching the attack.
“With their backs against the wall, they have next to no chance of opposing the regime militarily… such actions make it possible for anti-Assad groups to receive further support,” Günther Meyer, the director of the Research Center for the Arab World at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, said at the time.
Syria gave up all chemical weapons in 2013 and joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, after a sarin attack in the southwestern town of Ghouta left dozens dead. The attack was widely believed to be carried out by the Syrian government, who placed the blame on extremist opposition groups.
Coming one year after the announcement of former President Barrack Obama’s “Red Line” policy, which promised military action against Damascus in the event of a chemical attack, many believed that the opposition took advantage of this, carrying out the sarin attack and blaming it on Damascus.
In 2014, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article citing documents from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which claimed that the Nusra Front Al-Qaeda affiliate – the predecessor of HTS – was in possession of sarin gas at the time of the attack.
According to the Russian Reconciliation Center, HTS is not the only group with current plans to carry out false flag attacks.
On 18 September, Yegorov was quoted by Russian media as saying that the CIA-trained Maghawir al-Thawra (MaT) armed group is preparing to launch indiscriminate attacks on residential areas in order to pin them on the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
Filed under: Russia, Syria | Tagged: Chemical Weapons, Global war on Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, OPCW, OPCW scandal, Regime Change in Syria, SAA, White Helmets | Comments Off on HTS, White Helmets plot false-flag operation in northern Syria: Russia
https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1822333/
Published in Izvestia newspaper
Today, the Russian Armed Forces, together with the self-defence units of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, are delivering on the objectives of the special military operation with great resolve to put an end to the outrageous discrimination and genocide of the Russian people and eliminate direct threats to the security of the Russian Federation that the United States and its satellites have been creating on Ukrainian territory for years. While losing on the battlefield, the Ukrainian regime and its Western patrons have descended to staging bloody incidents to demonise our country in the eyes of the international community. We have already seen Bucha, Mariupol, Kramatorsk, and Kremenchug. The Russian Defence Ministry has been regularly issuing warnings, with facts in hand, about upcoming staged incidents and fakes.
There is a distinctive pattern that betrays the provocations staged by the West and its henchmen. In fact, they started long before the Ukrainian events.
Take 1999 – the village of Račak in Serbia’s Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija. A group of OSCE inspectors arrived at the site where several dozen corpses dressed in civilian clothes were discovered. Without any investigation, the mission head declared the incident an act of genocide, even though making a conclusion of this kind was not part of the mandate issued to this international official. NATO immediately launched a military aggression against Yugoslavia, during which it intentionally destroyed a television centre, bridges, passenger trains and other civilian targets. Later, it was proved with conclusive evidence that the dead bodies were not civilians, but militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army, an illegal armed group, dressed in civilian clothes. But by that time the staged incident has already taken its toll, offering a pretext for the first illegal use of force against an OSCE member state since the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. It is telling that the statement that triggered the bombings came from William Walker, a US citizen who headed the OSCE’s Kosovo Verification Mission. Separating Kosovo from Serbia by force and setting up Camp Bondsteel, the largest US military base in the Balkans, were the main outcomes of the aggression.
In 2003, there was the infamous performance by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in the UN Security Council with a vial containing white powder of some sort, which he said contained anthrax spores, alleging that it was produced in Iraq. Once again, the fake worked: the Anglo-Saxons and those who followed their lead went on to bomb Iraq, which has been struggling to fully recover its statehood ever since. Moreover, it did not take long before the fake was exposed with everyone admitting that Iraq did not have any biological weapons or any other kinds of WMDs. Later, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was one of the masterminds of the aggression, recognised that the whole affair was a fraud, saying that they “may have been wrong” or something like that. As for Colin Powell, he later tried to justify himself by claiming that he was misled by the underlying intelligence. Either way, this was yet another provocation that offered a pretext for delivering on the plan to destroy a sovereign nation.
There was also Libya in 2011. The drama had specifics of its own. The situation did not go as far as direct lies, like in Kosovo or Iraq, but NATO grossly distorted the UN Security Council resolution, which provided for a no-fly zone over Libya in order to “ground” Muammar Gaddafi’s air force. It did not fly to begin with. However, NATO started bombing the Libyan army units who were fighting terrorists. Muammar Gaddafi died a savage death, and nothing remains of the Libyan statehood. Efforts to put the country back together have yet to succeed, with a US representative once again in charge of the process, appointed by the UN Secretary General without any consultation with the UN Security Council. As part of this process, our Western colleagues have facilitated several intra-Libyan agreements on holding elections but none of them materialised. Illegal armed groups still reign supreme on Libyan territory, with most of them working closely with the West.
February 2014, Ukraine – the West, represented by the German, French, and Polish foreign ministers, de facto forced President Viktor Yanukovich into signing an agreement with the opposition to end the confrontation and promote a peaceful resolution of the intra-Ukrainian crisis by establishing a transitional national unity government and calling a snap election, to be held within a few months. This too turned out to be a fraud: the next morning, the opposition staged a coup guided as it was by anti-Russia, racist slogans. However, the Western guarantors did not even try to bring the opposition back to its senses. Furthermore, they switched immediately to encouraging the coup perpetrators in their policies against Russia and everything Russian, unleashing the war against their own people and bombing entire cities in the Donbass region just because people there refused to recognise the unconstitutional coup. For that, they labelled the people in Donbass terrorists, and once again the West was there to encourage them.
At this point, it is worth noting that, as it was soon revealed, the killing of protestors on the Maidan was also a staged incident, which the West blamed either on the Ukrainian security forces loyal to Viktor Yanukovich, or on the Russian special services. However, the radical members of the opposition were the ones who were behind this provocation, while working closely with the Western intelligence services. Once again, exposing these facts did not take long, but by that time they already did their job.
Efforts by Russia, Germany, and France paved the way to stopping the war between Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk in February 2015 with the signing of the Minsk Agreements. Berlin and Paris played a proactive role here as well, proudly calling themselves as the guarantor countries. However, during the seven long years that followed, they did absolutely nothing to force Kiev to launch a direct dialogue with Donbass representatives for agreeing on matters including the special status, amnesty, restoring economic ties, and holding elections, as required by the Minsk Agreements which were approved unanimously by the UN Security Council. The Western leaders remained silent when Kiev took steps which directly violated the Minsk Agreements under both Petr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky. Moreover, the German and the French leaders kept saying that Kiev cannot enter direct dialogue with the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and blamed everything on Russia, although Russia is not mentioned in the Minsk agreements even once, while remaining basically the only country that kept pushing for the agreements to be implemented.
If anyone doubted that the Minsk Package was anything but yet another fake, Petr Poroshenko dispelled this myth by saying on June 17, 2022: “The Minsk Agreements did not mean anything to us, and we had no intention to carry them out… our goal was to remove the threat we faced… and win time in order to restore economic growth and rebuild the armed forces. We achieved this goal. Mission accomplished for the Minsk Agreements.” The people of Ukraine are still paying the price of this fake. For many years now, the West has been forcing them to accept an anti-Russian neo-Nazi regime. What a waste of energy for Olaf Scholz with his calls to force Russia to agree to an agreement guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. There already had been an agreement to this effect, the Minsk Package, and Berlin with Paris were the ones who derailed it by shielding Kiev in its refusal to abide by the document. The fake has been exposed – finita la commedia.
By the way, Vladimir Zelensky has been a worthy successor to Petr Poroshenko. During a campaign rally in early 2019, he was ready to kneel before him for the sake of stopping the war.
In December 2019, Zelensky got a chance to carry out the Minsk Agreements following the Normandy format summit in Paris. In the outcome document adopted at the highest level, the Ukrainian President undertook to resolve matters related to the special status of Donbass. Of course, he did not do anything, while Berlin and Paris once again covered up for him. The document and all the publicity accompanying its adoption turned out to be no more than a fake narrative promoted by Ukraine and the West to win some time for supplying more weapons to the Kiev regime, which follows Petr Poroshenko’s logic to the letter.
There was also Syria, with the 2013 agreement on eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles in a stage-by-stage process verified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), for which it received the Nobel Peace Prize. After that, however, there were outrageous provocations in 2017 and 2018 staging the use of chemical weapons in Khan Shaykhun and Duma, a Damascus suburb. There was a video showing people calling themselves the White Helmets (a would-be humanitarian organisation which never showed up on territories controlled by the Syrian government) helping alleged poisoning victims, although no one had any protective clothing or gear. All attempts to force the OPCW Technical Secretariat to perform its duties in good faith and ensure a transparent investigation into these incidents, as required by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), failed. This, however, did not come as a surprise. The Western countries have long privatised the Technical Secretariat by having their representatives appointed to the key positions within this structure. They contributed to staging these incidents and used them as a pretext for US, British, and French airstrikes against Syria. Incidentally, they carried out these bombings just a day before a group of OPCW inspectors arrived there to investigate the incidents at Russia’s insistence, while the West did everything to prevent this deployment.
The West and the OPCW Technical Secretariat it controls demonstrated their ability to stage fake incidents with the would-be poisonings of the Skripals and Alexey Navalny. In both cases, Russia sent multiple requests to The Hague, London, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm, all left without a reply, even though they fully conformed with the CWC provisions and required a response.
Other pending questions have to do with the Pentagon’s covert activities in Ukraine carried out through its Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The traces that the forces engaged in the special military operation have discovered in military-biological laboratories in the liberated territories of Donbass and adjacent areas clearly indicate direct violations of the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons (BTWC). We have presented the documents to Washington and to the UN Security Council. The procedure has been initiated under BTWC to demand explanations. Contrary to the facts, the US administration is trying to justify its actions by saying that all biological research in Ukraine was exclusively peaceful and civilian in nature – with no evidence of any of this.
In fact, the Pentagon’s military-biological activities around the world, especially in the post-Soviet countries, require the closest attention in light of the multiplying evidence of criminal experiments with the most dangerous pathogens in order to create biological weapons conducted under the guise of peaceful research.
I have already mentioned the staged “crimes” of the Donbass militia and participants in the Russian special military operation. There is one simple fact that clearly shows how much these accusations mean: having shown the “Bucha tragedy” to the world in early April 2022 (we have suspicions that the Anglo-Saxons had a hand in setting the stage for the show), the West and Kiev have not yet answered the very basic questions about whether the names of the dead were established and what post-mortem examinations showed. Just as in the above-described Skripals and Navalny cases, the propaganda production has premiered in the Western media, and now it’s time to sweep it all under the rug, brazen it out, because they have nothing to say.
This is the essence of the well-worn Western political algorithm – to concoct a fake story and ratchet up the hype as if it’s a universal catastrophe for a couple of days while blocking people’s access to alternative information or assessments, and when any facts do break through, they are simply ignored – at best mentioned on last pages of the news in small print. It is important to understand that this is not a harmless game in the media war – such productions are used as pretexts for very material actions such as punishing the “guilty” countries with sanctions, unleashing barbaric aggressions against them with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, as it happened, in particular, in Iraq and Libya. Or – as in the case of Ukraine – for using the country as expendable material in the Western proxy war against Russia. Moreover, NATO instructors and MLRS aimers are, apparently, already directing the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and nationalist battalions on the ground.
I hope there are responsible politicians in Europe who are aware of the consequences. In this regard, it is noteworthy that no one in NATO or the EU tried to reprimand the German Air Force Commander, a general named Ingo Gerhartz, who got carried away higher than his rank and said NATO must be ready to use nuclear weapons. “Putin, do not try to compete with us,” he added. Europe’s silence suggests that it is complacently oblivious of Germany’s role in its history.
If we look at today’s events through a historical prism, the entire Ukrainian crisis appears as a “grand chess game” that follows a scenario earlier promoted by Zbigniew Brzezinski. All the good relations talk, the West’s proclaimed readiness to take into account the rights and interests of Russians who ended up in independent Ukraine or other post-Soviet countries after the collapse of the USSR turned out to be mere pretence. Even in the early 2000s, Washington and the European Union began to openly pressure Kiev to decide which side Ukraine was on, the West or Russia.
Ever since 2014, the West has been controlling, hands-on, the Russophobic regime it brought to power through a coup d’état. Putting Vladimir Zelensky in front of any international forum of any significance is also part of this travesty. He makes passionate speeches, but when he suddenly offers something reasonable, he gets a slap on the wrist, as it happened after the Istanbul round of Russian-Ukrainian talks. At the end of March, it seemed that light glimmered at the end of the tunnel, but Kiev was forced to back off, using, among other things, a frankly staged episode in Bucha. Washington, London and Brussels demanded that Kiev stopped negotiating with Russia until Ukraine achieved full military advantage (former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tried especially hard, and many other Western politicians did too, still incumbent, although they have already proved just as inept).
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s statement about this war having to be “won on the battlefield” by Ukraine suggests that even diplomacy has lost its value as a tool in the European Union’s staged performance.
In a broader sense, it is curious to see how Europe, lined up by Washington on the anti-Russian front, has been hardest hit by the thoughtless sanctions, emptying its arsenals to supply weapons to Kiev (without even asking for a report on who will control them or where they go), and freeing up its market only to subsequently buy US military products and expensive American LNG instead of available Russian gas. Such trends, coupled with the de facto merger between the EU and NATO, make the continued talk about Europe’s “strategic autonomy” nothing more than a show. Everyone has already understood that the collective West’s foreign policy is a “one-man theatre.” Moreover, it is consistently seeking ever new theaters of military operations.
One element of the geopolitical gambit against Russia is granting the status of an eternal EU candidate country to Ukraine and Moldova, which, it seems, will also face an unenviable fate. Meanwhile, a PR campaign has been initiated by President of France Emmanuel Macron to promote the “European political community,” which offers no financial or economic benefits, but demands full compliance with the EU’s anti-Russia actions. The principle behind it is not either/or but “who is not with us is against us.” Emmanuel Macron explained the gist of the “community”: the EU will invite all European countries – “from Iceland to Ukraine” – to join it, but not Russia. I would like to stress that we are not eager to join, but the statement itself showcases the essence of this obviously confrontational and divisive new undertaking.
Ukraine, Moldova and other countries being courted by the EU today are destined to be extras in the games of the West. The United States, as the main producer, calls the tune and devises the storyline based on which Europe writes the anti-Russia screenplay. The actors are ready and possess the skills acquired during their tenure at the Kvartal 95 Studio: they will provide a voice-over for dramatic texts no worse than the now forgotten Greta Thunberg and play musical instruments, if needed. The actors are good: remember how convincing Vladimir Zelensky was in his role as a democrat in the Servant of the People: fighter against corruption and discrimination against Russians and for all the right things in general. Remember and compare it with his immediate transformation in his role as president. It is perfect Stanislavsky Method acting: banning the Russian language, education, media and culture. “If you feel like Russians, then go to Russia for the sake of your children and grandchildren.” Good advice. He called Donbass residents “species” rather than people. And this is what he said about the Nazi Azov battalion: “They are what they are. There is plenty of such people around here.” Even CNN was ashamed to leave this phrase in the interview.
This prompts a question: what will be the outcome of all these storylines? Staged incidents based on blood and agony are by no means fun but a display of a cynical policy in creating a new reality where all principles of the UN Charter and all norms of international law are attempted to be replaced with their “rules-based order” in an aspiration to perpetuate their dwindling domination in global affairs.
The games undertaken by the West in the OSCE after from end of the Cold War, where it considered itself a winner, had the most devastating consequences for the modern international relations. Having quickly broken their promises to the Soviet and Russian leadership on the non-expansion of NATO to the east, the United States and its allies nevertheless declared their commitment to building a unified space of security and cooperation in the Euro-Atlantic region. They formalised it at the top level with all OSCE members in 1999 and 2010 within the framework of a political obligation to ensure equal and inseparable security where no country will strengthen its security at the expense of others and no organisation will claim a dominating role in Europe. It soon became evident that NATO members do no keep their word and that their goal is the supremacy of the North-Atlantic Alliance. Even then we continued our diplomatic efforts, proposing to formalise the principle of equal and inseparable security in a legally binding agreement. We proposed this a number of times, the last one in December 2021, but received a flat denial in response. They told us directly: there will be no legal guarantees outside NATO. Which means that the support of the political documents approved at the OSCE summits turned out to be a cheap fake. And now NATO, driven by the United States, has gone even further: they want to dominate over the entire Asia-Pacific region in addition to the Euro-Atlantic. NATO members make no effort to conceal the target of their threats, and China’s leadership has already publicly declared its position regarding such neo-colonial ambitions. Beijing has already responded by citing the principle of indivisible security, declaring its support for applying it on a global scale to prevent any country from claiming its exclusivity. This approach fully coincides with Russia’s position. We will make consistent efforts to defend it together with our allies, strategic partners and many other like-minded countries.
The collective West should come back to Earth from the world of illusions. The staged incidents, no matter how long they go on, will not work. It is time for fair play based on the international law rather than cheating. The sooner everyone realises that there are no alternatives to objective historical processes where a multipolar world is formed based on respect for the principle of sovereign equality of states, fundamental for the UN Charter and the entire world order, the better.
If members of the western alliance are unable to live according to this principle, are not ready to build a truly universal architecture of equal security and cooperation, they should leave everyone alone, stop using threats and blackmail to recruit those who want to live on their own wits and acknowledge the right to freedom of choice by independent self-respecting countries. This is what democracy is all about, the real democracy, not one played out on a shabbily built political stage.
Filed under: EU, Europe, France, Germany, NATO Alliance, Russia, Ukraine, UNSC, War on Syria | Tagged: Anti-Russian sanctions, Donbass, Donetsk, Duma, False flag chemical attacks, Khan Sheikhoun, Kiev Nazi Regime, Lavrov, Lugansk, Minsk Agreements, MOD, Navalny case, Nazi Ukrainian "Azov battalion", OPCW, OPCW scandal, OSCE, Skripal Case, UN Charter, US-run biolabs in Ukraine, White Helmets, Zelensky | Comments Off on Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s article «Staged incidents as the Western approach to doing politics»
Nov 23, 2021
By Al Mayadeen
Expert toxicologists concluded that chlorine gas was not what killed victims in the Douma attack, adding that OPCW officials censored explosive findings.
The Grayzone website published revealing a series of “leaks [that] expose how senior Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) officials censored this explosive finding” in the Syrian city of Douma.
In its investigation, the website stated that “in the early days of the OPCW’s investigation of an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria, expert toxicologists ruled out chlorine gas as the cause of death for more than 40 civilians reported at the scene.”
The investigation confirmed that “instead of publishing this finding, senior OPCW officials concealed it, and then launched an investigation of a veteran inspector who questioned the censorship.”
It added that “the suppression of the toxicologists is among a series of deceptions by the OPCW leadership to corrupt the Douma probe’s scientific process, as detailed in this new multi-part investigation by The Grayzone.”
According to the investigation, this report was concealed, undermining the attack as a public pretext for US-led airstrikes on Syria two months prior, and raising the possibility that the rebels launched the April 7, 2018 incident to frame the Syrian government.
It also revealed that during the mission of an OPCW team to meet with several toxicologists in Germany, the rapid onset of heavy foam shown in the videos, documenting what happened in Douma, was not compatible with the accusation of exposure to toxic chlorine.
The investigation added that the OPCW did not publish the findings in Germany but instead left the investigation open to many possibilities, and therefore did not allow for the completion of the investigation.
“I imagine you have similar concerns about how such pivotal information could have been omitted from the report – possibly biasing the outcome,” Whelan wrote his colleagues. He asked them to join him in raising this with the OPCW chief. Instead, the OPCW investigated him.
The Grayzone also accused the organization’s director-general, Fernando Arias, of suppressing the toxicologists’ critical findings: When Arias was asked about excluding the findings of the toxicologists from the final report, before the European Parliament, he made false excuses as to why he refused to address the alleged scientific fraud in the Douma investigation.
Filed under: American Aggression, Syria, War on Syria | Tagged: Douma, False flag chemical attacks, OPCW, OPCW scandal, Western MSM lies | Comments Off on The Grayzone: OPCW Tampered with Findings of Douma Attack Investigation
Another false flag chemical attack is brewing in the Levantine republic. Syrian intelligence sources have collected reports that NATO special operative terrorists from France and Belgium (a terrorist special forces operative from Morocco has also been assisting) have overseen modifications in “locally made rockets” to fit warheads loaded with “chlorine and sarin” chemical weapons. On 14 September 2013, Syria deposited its instrument of accession with the UN Secretary-General. Syria’s accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force on 14 October 2013.
In between, on 27 September, UNSCR 2118 (2013) was passed because the Council somehow declared there was an “extraordinary character” of “the situation posed Syrian chemical weapons.” Given the lack of caractère extraordinaire ever discovered in the US still owing the CWC 3,000 since April 1997, and given ANNEX 1 is a paste of the OPCW ‘Executive Council Decision’ included fraudulent concern that CW’s might have been used in the SAR sometime in March 2013.
The statement came with a malignant inference, and omitted all details: On 19 March 2013, terrorists exploded rockets with weapons-grade chlorine into Khan Al Asal, murdering mostly SAA soldiers. Syria immediately requested a UN-OPCW investigation — a request the stenography-hooker media helped sabotage via mass propagation of the criminal lie of a retired Israeli general. Itai Bruin was essentially the puppet run by NATO saboteurs Britain and France against Syria’s request; the F/UK machinations are detailed in a 60-minute press conference given by Dr. Jaafari, forty days after his country requested the investigation, and which no medium reported (statement included, here)
In that great vision called hindsight, it now seems like 20/20 vision to understand that the intention of the NATO junta of the SC getting 2118 passed was opening the door to the false flag phenomenon, whenever needed. The false flag is the raison d’être for the monthly Goebbels chemical hoax fetish, soon to break the 100th meeting, each one filled with the same lies ejaculated by the same P3 liars and their tap-dancing house servants.
Skilled wetworkers from the terror states of France and Belgium spent two weeks overseeing al Qaeda’s building of rockets and accurate placement of the chemical weapons-loaded warheads. JaN (Jabhat al-Nusra aka Al Qaeda Levant) then shipped the chemically tweaked rockets via two fake ambulances of the stethoscope-less CIA contra White Helmets.
On 30 September, eight rockets filled with chemical weapons were transported to Bdama village in Jisr al Shughur (Idlib), and where some were handed over to the savages of the ‘Turkistan Islamist [sic] Party,’ which dispatched two of the chemical weapons rockets to an unnamed village in the al Ghab Plain, and to Ahsam village in the Zawiya Mountain region of Hama governate, where they were delivered to the Nusra faction of al Qaeda terrorists.
Syria News reminds our readers that back in May 2013, American terrorist illegal in Aleppo exchanged emails with the pudgy little Brit unemployed ladies underwear salesman turned gamer stay at home day, Eliot Higgins, that were it not for the “foreign fighters” — terrorists, TERRORISTS, killers, armed insurrectionist foreign invaders — there would be no [NATO] revolution. He told Higgins that the terrorists had some chemical weapons and were prepared to use them in a false flag, to blame President Assad, who had no need of them, as he was winning the war against the foreign terrorists (soy boy Higgins received massive financial rewards for his criminal lies, including for time spent as a ‘fellow’ on warmongering think tank/fake charity — thank you, American taxpayers — Atlantic Council, Wetworker VanDyke not only got out of Syria with his head, but won awards from the fake left 5th columnists Hollywood and Sundance, praise from the utterly duped and fake religious conservatives who view the small animal bestialist as some Christian teetering on martyrdom, and bipartisan taxes for his fake Christian 501(c) militia doing the devil’s work in various hotspots around the world).
Let us also not forget that these terrorists were the ones who used chemical weapons as a false flag massacre in al Ghouta, 23 August 2013.
The author also reminds her fellow Americans that we are the ones who pay for murderous propaganda and murderous false flag operations, in addition to paying for the bombs, the aircraft, and the pilots who are then used by the piquerist scum who have made it to the NATO heads of state war criminal big time.
False flag preparations are uncovered every few months, in the Syrian Arab Republic. The tendency is to postpone them whenever they are discovered. The tedious monthly orgies on the ‘chemical files’ that do not exist are continued for the purpose of Nuremberg crimes against peace cover story for any false flag explosion.
This was also the reason that the NATO klan ruling the OPCW stripped Syria of its voting rights early this year; it is not enough for the NATO terror regimes to simply bomb sovereign countries in breach of the Geneva Agreement.
The “C” in MIC stands for Complex, and requires the organized sociopathic leaders, sociopathic weapons contractors, sociopathic ‘humanitarians,’ sociopathic diplomats, sociopathic politicians, sociopathic stenographers, sociopathic academia, and child pervs running dark web marketing under cover of charities that do not exist, to each get a nice taste of taxpayer monies.
Imagine how boring the world would be if the NATO regimes bombed, and the media dogs of war would simply report, Today NATO bombed… instead of interviewing countless criminal liars, instead of prominent universities having ‘labs’ in which to teach their students to be war criminals.
After the mid-August unique terror warnings first from the DHS and then from UNSC which sounded remarkably similar, the expectation was of one or more domestic terror operations in one or more NATO countries, on or around that September 11th anniversary.
However, late August and all of September showed an increase in Gestapo-like brutality against peaceful anti-lockdown, anti-Mengele mandated injections, pro- let our physicians prescribe what they think is best for us protesters in NATO countries, and countries that are NATO allies. Though the stenographer-reporters who were honest about the brutal George Floyd murder have tried to either defame or ignore these massive demonstrations and physical attacks by cops against peaceful assembly, the videos are getting out faster than YouTube can censor them.
Additionally, Mayor de Blasio got caught in a lie that showed the complicity of some UNGA diplomats to stand against the Nuremberg Code, against what Leo Alexander, M.D., described as the small beginnings of Nazi medicine. As if this were not shameless enough, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres provided massive evidence at UNGA that the bastion of peace and security is the cement now fusing the Military-Industrial Complex and the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex.
What may have been launched as controlled chaos within NATO countries by various fascist dictator wannabes, using the horrific COVID pandemic as cover story for mini-fiefdoms and midi- and upward-sized dictatorships may have lost its footing and gone into free-fall chaos.
The temporary NATO antidote for the NATO-induced chaotic hell might be a false flag NATO-supported chemical weapon attack against Syria, to give westerners a two-minute respite from domestic chaos, via another Two Minute Hate against the Syrian Arab Republic, in support of al Qaeda.
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Filed under: Al Qaeda, Britain, NATO Alliance, USA, War on Syria | Tagged: COVID-19 pandemic, Eastern Ghouta, False flag chemical attacks, Jisr Al-Shughour, OPCW, OPCW scandal, Syria’s Jaafari | Comments Off on False Flag Chemical Attack against Syria Brewing in Idlib and Hama, Again
UNSC Goebbels gang held its monthly anti-Syria chemical meeting on 2 September. Referred to as ‘the Syria files’ — though better described as the chemical hoax fetish –these painfully repetitive, filled with lies meetings are supposed to somehow fulfill the mandate of UNSCR 2118 (2013) which was fulfilled in June 2014.
As August’s anti-Syria fête fell two days before the anniversary of the US nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima, Japan, we used the occasion to remind the NATO clique of the UNSC of their countries many war crimes, uses of weapons of mass destruction, and point out the many domestic atrocities perpetrated by these liars, against their own population — Waco, MOVE, Edmund Pettis, DAPL — for which none has ever been held accountable (because a tenet of fascism is that might makes right).
Chemical hoax fetish is an accurate title, as the Syrian Arab Republic acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in September 2013, and turned over its arsenal in such record time that a couple of diplomats hinted at the expectation of a Nobel. In one of his final statements to the UNSC, Dr. Jaafari called for the closure of the phony Syria files, during its 90th meeting.
Please note the extensive ADDENDUM which details evidence of murder by poisoning of kidnapped Syrian children in Khan Sheikhoun, which the NATO junta at the UNSC continues to lie was a chemical weapons attack by Syria, against Syria.
Geir O. Pedersen usually keeps track of the meeting number, but he is busy in Rome, Italy (despite the challenges of COVID), meeting with the Foreign Ministry, there, and with various NATO think tanks, some of which used to be called banksters, to discuss the situation in Syria.
We provide a short geopolitical checklist, which is consistently ignored by the Goebbels gang, aka the NATO junta, aka the unindicted axis of evil.
Filed under: Bashar Al-Assad, NATO Alliance, UNSC, War on Syria | Tagged: False flag chemical attacks, OPCW, OPCW scandal, Western MSM lies | Comments Off on UNSC Goebbels Gang Holds Monthly Syria Chemical Hoax Fetish Meeting
August 05, 2021
https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4834791
1. The goal of the 76-th session of the UN General Assembly (GA) is to reaffirm the central and coordinating role of the Organization in international affairs. Owing to its representativeness and universality, the UN is rightfully viewed as a unique platform for an equitable dialogue aimed at reaching compromise solutions with due regard to different opinions. Attempts to undermine the authority and legitimacy of the UN are, in our view, extremely dangerous, as they can lead to the dismantlement of the multipolar system of international relations.
2. We have consistently advocated the strengthening of the genuine multilateral framework of international relations and world economy based on the norms of international law, including the UN Charter, with an emphasis on the unconditional respect for the sovereignty of States and non-interference in their internal affairs. We deem unacceptable the attempts of Western States to replace the universally recognized international legal principles with the so-called “rules-based world order” elaborated behind the scenes.
3. We support the coordinated efforts of the international community to curb the spread of the new coronavirus infection as well as to mitigate its consequences in the political, health care, social and economic sectors. In this regard, we consider it unacceptable to politicize the issue of COVID-19 dissemination. We also stress the importance of showing unity and solidarity among all Member States and organizations of the United Nations system in the face of a common challenge. Russia stands for a gradual return to the face-to-face format of events at the UN as the epidemiological situation in the world improves.
4. Preventing conflicts and addressing their consequences is our first priority. However, effective international assistance in this sphere, including from the UN, is only possible with the consent of the States concerned and in line with the UN Charter. This applies equally to good offices, preventive diplomacy and mediation, which should be conducted impartially and with respect for the sovereignty of States. It is crucial that there should be no universal “conflict indicators”: each situation calls for a delicate and unbiased approach as well as a thorough search for a tailored solution that would take into account the roots and history of the conflict.
5. We believe that the goal of the UN Security Council reform is to increase the representation of developing States from Africa, Asia and Latin America in the Council without prejudice to its effectiveness and operational efficiency. Efforts to identify the best reform model, which would enjoy consensus or at least the support of the overwhelming majority of Member States, should continue in the current format of Intergovernmental Negotiations. The prerogatives of the UNSC permanent members shall not be subject to revision. The veto power is a unique tool that encourages the necessary compromises and allows the Council to reach well-considered and balanced decisions.
6. We support realistic initiatives to revitalize the work of the UN General Assembly within the relevant Ad Hoc Working Group. We attach particular importance to fine-tuning the UNGA working methods, streamlining its overloaded agenda and strengthening multilingualism. Any innovation should be reasonable and correspond to the current needs. Any redistribution of the powers of other statutory bodies, especially the Security Council, in favour of the General Assembly is unacceptable.
7. We support increased cooperation between the UN and regional and sub-regional organizations in line with the UN Charter, first and foremost, its Chapter VIII. The activities of regional associations, according to the UN Charter, should be in conformity with their objectives and principles. It is essential to further enhance partnership between the UN and such organizations as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the BRICS and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The biennial resolutions on cooperation between the UN and the CIS, the CSTO and the SCO, uunanimously adopted at the previous 75th UNGA Session, prove the relevance of this task.
8. The distortion of history and revision of the outcomes of World War II are unacceptable. We attach particular importance to the annual UNGA draft resolution on Combating Glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and Other Practices that Contribute to Fuelling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. This document has traditionally enjoyed the support of the majority of UN Member States. We call on the delegations that abstained or voted against this initiative last year to reconsider their position.
9. The destructive policies of certain extra-regional players in the Middle East and North Africa are clearly part of a global strategy to destroy the UN‑centric architecture established after World War II and replace it with a completely illegitimate “rules-based world order”.
We support the international legal parameters for resolving conflicts in this region agreed upon at the UN and implemented solely through political and diplomatic means. Our proposal to create a regional security architecture in the Persian Gulf and, in the longer term, throughout the whole Middle East remains on the table.
10. One of the top priorities in the Middle East is the Syrian settlement. Achieving lasting and long-term stabilisation and security in the country is only possible through the full restoration of the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over its national territory. The continuation of the fight against international terrorist groups recognized as such by the UN Security Council remains critical.
On the political track, we support the promotion of a Syrian-led settlement process implemented by the Syrian people themselves with the UN assistance, as provided for in UNSC resolution 2254. We have consistently supported the relevant work of the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Syria, Geir Pedersen, but also stressed that his efforts should not go beyond the mandate defined by the Security Council.
There is growing concern about the significant deterioration of the humanitarian and socio-economic situation in the Syrian Arab Republic against the backdrop of tougher unilateral sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic. We call on responsible members of the international community to refrain from politicising purely humanitarian issues and render assistance to all Syrians in coordination with Damascus, provide for sanctions exemptions for reconstruction projects and facilitate the return of refugees and IDPs.
11. We are convinced that one of the foundations for establishing peace and security in the Middle East is the revival of the Middle East settlement process with the resolution of the Palestinian problem at its core.
We attach key importance to preventing an escalation of violence between Palestinians and Israelis and to providing extensive humanitarian assistance to those affected and in need in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At the same time, we advocate for the restart of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on all issues concerning the final status on the universally recognized international legal basis, including a two-State solution. We call on the parties to show restraint, to refrain from unilateral steps and provocative actions (forced evictions, expropriation of houses and land, settlement construction, arbitrary arrests and any forms of violence) as well as to respect the special status and integrity of the Holy Sites of Jerusalem.
We consider it imperative to step up efforts within the framework of the Middle East Quartet, including its interaction with regional actors. We support the arrangement of a Quartet meeting at the ministerial level.
12. We believe that there is no alternative to a political settlement in Libya. We highlight the need to take into account the views of all Libyan sides, including while planning for international assistance aimed at putting an end to the conflict. We engage with all parties and call for an early cessation of hostilities and the restoration of sustainable and integrated state institutions, including security agencies.
We support the observance of the ceasefire and a political and diplomatic settlement in Libya. All influential political forces should be heard and involved in the political life of the country. We welcome the formation of the Government of National Unity aimed at making arrangements for the national elections scheduled for December 2021. We encourage Libyan actors to seek compromise and to establish strong and effective unified authorities. We support the activities of Special Envoy Ján Kubiš.
13. We advocate for the cessation of hostilities in Yemen, which exacerbate the dire humanitarian situation in the country. We urge the States involved to engage in the dialogue with a view to reaching a comprehensive settlement which would be accepted by all stakeholders in Yemen.
14. We support the Iraqi leadership’s efforts to stabilize security situation and implement long-term social and economic reforms. We emphasize the significance of the forthcoming parliamentary elections. It is important that they contribute to bridging the divide between various ethnic and religious groups and political forces. We welcome the dialogue between Baghdad and Erbil. We believe that Iraq should not be subject to external interference and become an arena for regional rivalries.
15. We consistently pursue the policy aimed at facilitating the process of national reconciliation in Afghanistan. We provide assistance in building a country free from terrorism and drug-related crime. We are seriously concerned about the continuing influence of ISIS in the north and north east of the country as well as the threat of the spillover of terrorist activities into Central Asia and the use of a deteriorating domestic political environment to undermine the peace process. Together with our partners within the “Troika Plus” and with the participation of both Afghan negotiating teams we are working to advance national reconciliation in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. We attach particular importance to regional co-operation, primarily through the SCO and the CSTO. We note the continuing relevance of the Moscow format of consultations on Afghanistan. We support the work of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
16. There is no alternative to the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, enshrined in UNSC resolution 2202, as a framework for the internal settlement in Ukraine. Effective international assistance, including through the UN, should be aimed at implementing this decision and supporting the current settlement format, which includes the Contact Group in Minsk and the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission.
Sustainable political and diplomatic settlement of the internal crisis in Ukraine can only be achieved through a direct dialogue between Kiev and Donbass, while taking into account the legitimate demands of all the regions of Ukraine and its linguistic, ethnic and sectarian groups at the constitutional level. We will continue to actively assist in addressing the acute humanitarian situation in eastern Ukraine, which has persisted for many years and was brought about by the actions of the authorities in Kiev.
We insist on a full, thorough and independent international investigation of the MH17 plane crash over the Ukrainian territory based on irrefutable facts and in line with UNSC resolution 2166. Neither the technical investigation into the causes of the Malaysian Boeing crash conducted by the Dutch Safety Board nor the criminal investigation by the Joint Investigation Team meet these criteria.
We expect that all cases of violence against civilians and journalists that have occurred since the beginning of the internal crisis in Ukraine will be investigated fairly and impartially, and that all those responsible will be brought to justice.
17. The territorial status of Crimea was definitively determined by the Crimean population itself during a referendum in March 2014. Any discussions on the situation in this Russian region that do not involve its residents bear no relation to reality. This issue as well as the situation around the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, which lies within the scope of the Russian-Ukrainian bilateral relations, cannot be part of the UN-led discussion on the developments in Ukraine.
We condemn the efforts of the Ukrainian delegation to introduce the Crimean issue in the UNGA through a politicized resolution on the “militarization” of the peninsula as well as parts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The resolution is built on groundless, unacceptable accusations against Russia and is intended to put the blame for all of Ukraine’s internal problems on the mythical “Russian aggression”. The document contains Kiev’s twisted interpretation of the provocation it carried out on 25 November 2018, when three Ukrainian vessels attempted to enter the Kerch Strait without first notifying the Russian side. The allegations on the alleged militarization of Crimea and parts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov contained in the aforementioned resolution also contradict the truth.
In case this odious draft resolution is again introduced in the UNGA, we call on all States to vote firmly against its adoption.
18. The implementation of the trilateral statements of 9 November 2020 and 11 January 2021 is a priority for normalizing the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict area. We consider it useful to involve UN agencies and in particular the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in humanitarian activities in the Russian peacekeeping operation area. The parameters for their possible work should be agreed upon in direct coordination with Baku and Yerevan.
19. The problem of the Korean Peninsula should be resolved by political and diplomatic means. Building up sanctions pressure is counterproductive. The creation of a new security architecture in North-East Asia that would take into account the legitimate interests of all States in the region, including the DPRK itself, is key to achieving the settlement of this issue. Various Russian-Chinese initiatives, including the relevant “Roadmap’, the “Action Plan” and a UNSC political resolution are all important tools in this regard.
20. The early restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) aimed at settling the situation with the Iranian nuclear program is a priority task. We call on the US to return as soon as possible to full compliance with UNSC resolution 2231 and to implement the JCPOA, including through lifting the unilateral anti-Iranian sanctions imposed after the withdrawal of Washington from the “nuclear deal”.
21. The solution to the Cyprus issue should be elaborated by the Cypriot communities themselves without any external pressure. Russia is guided by relevant UNSC resolutions which call for the formation of a bicommunal, bizonal federation with a single international legal personality, sovereignty and citizenship. The existing security guarantee system has become obsolete, is no longer able to alleviate the concerns of the parties involved and should be replaced with the guarantees from the UN Security Council.
22. Russia fully supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the principle of equality of the three state-constituting peoples and the two entities with broad constitutional powers in full compliance with the 1995 Dayton Accords. In this context, we strongly disagree with the so-called appointment of a new High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council. Without the UNSC approval this decision has no executive force. Moreover, the abolition of the Office of the High Representative is long overdue.
23. The settlement of the Kosovo issue should be based on international law, first and foremost on UNSC resolution 1244. Belgrade and Pristina should come to an agreement themselves, while the task of the international community is to help the parties find mutually acceptable solutions without external pressure. The EU, as a mediator in the dialogue in accordance with UNGA resolution 64/298 of 9 September 2010, should seek to ensure that the parties implement the agreed decisions, primarily, the establishment of the Community of Serb municipalities in Kosovo (the CSMK; the agreement reached in 2013 has still not been implemented). We support the work of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).
24. Internal disputes in Venezuela can only be resolved by the Venezuelans themselves, through a broad and direct dialogue and with full respect for the country’s Constitution. Effective international cooperation is possible only if it is aimed at supporting such a dialogue.
The illegal unilateral coercive measures imposed against Venezuela undermine the efforts of the Venezuelan authorities to effectively combat the pandemic, as well as impede the normalization of the humanitarian situation in the country and the improvement of the migration situation in the region. Humanitarian assistance should be provided without politicisation and in accordance with the UN guiding principles enshrined in UNGA resolution 46/182.
We will continue to oppose any attempts to question the mandates of Venezuela’s official delegations at various international organizations.
25. We learned with deep sorrow the news of the assassination of the President of Haiti Jovenel Moïse. We have been closely following the investigation into this crime. We are seriously concerned about information regarding the involvement of foreign nationals, including from the US and Colombia, in this brutal murder. This indicates that once again external forces are trying to exploit the purely internal conflict to promote their destructive interests.
We are convinced that the only way to normalize the situation in the country is to reach broad internal political consensus in strict conformity with the universally recognized norms and principles of international law. It is important that all decisions should be taken through peaceful political means by the Haitians themselves, with international support but without destructive external interference in order to elaborate solutions acceptable to the opposing parties.
26. The Final Peace Agreement is the international legal basis for the settlement in Colombia. This document made it possible for the UNSC and the UN Secretary-General to support the peace process. Unilateral attempts to alter the substance of its provisions are unacceptable. Comprehensive sustainable settlement in Colombia is impossible without involving the National Liberation Army (ELN) in the peace process.
27. We call on all parties to the conflict in Myanmar to put an end to violence and launch a constructive dialogue in order to move towards national reconciliation. International community should avoid politicising the issue, refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign State and abandon sanctions threats. We emphasize the ASEAN special role in the peace process. The current situation in Myanmar does not pose any threat to international peace and security, thus the only issue on the UNSC agenda in this context should be the situation in the Rakhine State.
28. We support the aspiration of India and Pakistan to normalize relations in the context of the situation in the Kashmir region. We hope that a new escalation along the line of control will be prevented. Only direct negotiations between New Delhi and Islamabad can form the basis for a long-term settlement of this sensitive issue.
29. We believe that conflict settlement in Africa should be based on a leading role of the countries of the African continent and supported by the international community. We call for the strengthening of cooperation between the UN and the African Union as well as the continent’s sub-regional organizations. As a permanent member of the UNSC, we will continue to facilitate a political resolution of the crises in the CAR, the DRC, South Sudan, Somalia, Mali and the Sahara-Sahel region as a whole.
We are firmly committed to actively supporting the efforts of the CAR authorities to improve governance and provide security on the basis of the 2019 peace agreement. At the same time, we will keep engaging constructively with all responsible stakeholders that support stabilisation in the country.
In cooperation with like-minded partners, it is important to assist Sudan in implementing the tasks of the transition period. We insist that the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) should always take into account the views of the authorities in Khartoum.
We stand for in an early normalization of the situation in the Ethiopian region of Tigray. Restoring stability in Ethiopia is certain to have a positive effect on the entire Horn of Africa. We consider the decision of the Federal Government of Ethiopia to establish a ceasefire in the region a step in the right direction. We call on all those involved to support this initiative of the authorities in order to stop the bloodshed and improve the humanitarian and social and economic situation.
30. The UNGA Special Committee on Decolonization (C-24) will remain relevant until a definitive solution to the issue of all 17 Non-Self-Governing Territories is reached. We will continue to actively participate in the work of this body.
31. UN peacekeeping should fully comply with the basic principles of the UN work in this area (consent of the parties, impartiality and non-use of force, except for self-defence and defence of the mandate) as well as with the UN Charter. The primary task is to promote political settlement of conflicts and national reconciliation. The adaptation of UN peacekeeping operations to contemporary realities should be implemented in strict accordance with the decisions agreed upon in the intergovernmental format. This includes, inter alia, the issues of “peacekeeping intelligence” and the use of new technologies, which should serve the sole purpose of ensuring peacekeepers’ safety and protection of civilians. Vesting peacekeeping operations with additional powers, including with respect to the use of force, is only possible upon a UNSC decision that takes into account the specific situation in each country.
The UNGA Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (C-34) should be responsible for defining the further development of UN peacekeeping activities. Peacebuilding and peacekeeping are inextricably linked and based on the principle of national ownership in prioritising post-conflict reconstruction and development. International support should only be provided upon request of the host government and be aimed at enhancing the States’ own capacity.
32. The UNSC sanctions, as one of the strongest instruments of ‘targeted action’ to tackle threats to international peace and security, should not be abused. As a measure of last resort in the area of conflict resolution, they cannot be applied without first taking into account the full range of their possible humanitarian, social and economic and human rights consequences. It is unacceptable to use them as a means of unfair competition and pressure on “undesirable regimes”. The functions of the existing institution of the Ombudsperson should be expanded to protect the interests of all the entities on the Security Council sanctions list. It is unacceptable to supplement Security Council sanctions with unilateral restrictions, especially those of an extraterritorial nature.
33. We believe that all Member States should join efforts in the fight against terrorism, with the UN playing a central coordinating role. We firmly reject any double standards or hidden agendas in this area. We are convinced that the issue of terrorism should be addressed through the implementation of the relevant universal conventions and protocols, the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and relevant UNSC and UNGA resolutions.
Support for the counter-terrorism bodies of the United Nations system, first and foremost the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT), remains a priority. We advocate for the expansion of the UNOCT financing from the UN regular budget. We also intend to increase our voluntary contributions to the Office and call on other Member States to do the same. We believe that law enforcement and prevention-oriented initiatives should remain at the core of the UNOCT programme and project activities.
We consider it critical to make greater use of the tools of the specialized subsidiary UNSC bodies, primarily its Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), the sanctions committees on ISIL, Al-Qaida and the Taliban Movement. We are committed to a constructive dialogue with regard to the review of the mandate of the CTC Executive Directorate.
We call for ensuring full compliance with UNSC resolutions against the financing of terrorism, as well as with the standards of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
We intend to step up efforts to cut off weapons, financial and material support for terrorists, to stop the spread of terrorist propaganda, including through the use of modern information and communication technologies, and to eliminate links between terrorist groups and drug trafficking and other organized crime groups. It is necessary to strengthen cooperation between countries in countering foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) and bringing them to justice more quickly.
We oppose the dilution of the international legal framework by non-consensual concepts, such as “countering violent extremism“, which allow for the interference in the internal affairs of States and the reorientation of international cooperation on counter-terrorism towards secondary gender and human rights issues. We believe it necessary to enhance efforts to combat various manifestations of extremism, including right-wing radicalism, while countering attempts to use this issue for political purposes and as an excuse to increase anti-Russian sanctions pressure.
34. We strongly oppose the revision and weakening of the current international drug control system, including by legalising all recreational (non-medical) drug use, as well as imposing questionable drug treatment practices as a “universal standard” and promoting drug use as a socially acceptable norm.
We advocate the strengthening of the policy-making role of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in the area of drug control. We intend to further continue to actively oppose efforts aimed at creating and institutionalising mechanisms that duplicate the CND work, and at imposing an alternative strategy for addressing the world drug problem bypassing the CND. We emphasize the need for States to strictly comply with the international anti-drug conventions. In view of the re-election to the CND for the period of 2022-2025, the Russian Federation will continue to promote a consistent line on the Commission’s platform as well as in negotiating the resolutions and decisions of the 76th UNGA Session.
We are concerned about the drastic deterioration of the drug situation in Afghanistan and its possible projection into increased smuggling of opiates into Russia and Central Asian countries. In the context of the withdrawal of NATO troops from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, international and regional anti-drug efforts, such as the Paris Pact, the SCO, the CIS, and the CARICC, are of particular importance. We believe that consistent, effective anti-drug efforts by the Afghan leadership based on the principle of common and shared responsibility of States, are essential for achieving security in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
35. We support the key role of the United Nations in consolidating international efforts to combat transnational organised crime. We note the importance of an impartial Mechanism for the Review of the Implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. We advocate strengthening the legal framework of international cooperation, including the development of new international legal instruments in a number of areas, including cybercrime, asset recovery, extradition and mutual legal assistance.
36. We facilitate the development of the international anti-corruption cooperation, with the UN playing the central and coordinating role, based on the unique universal agreement, the UN Convention against Corruption (CAC). We support the effective functioning of the Mechanism for the Review of the Convention Implementation. We welcome the results of the first UNGA Special Session against Corruption which took place in June 2021. We consider it important that the political declaration of the UNGA Special Session confirmed the existence of gaps in international law governing the return from abroad of assets obtained as a result of corruption offences. We emphasise the need to develop an international legal instrument on asset recovery under the auspices of the UN to complement the UN Convention against Corruption.
37. We support the key role of the UN in consolidating joint efforts to ensure international information security (IIS). They should result in the elaboration and adoption under the UN auspices of universal and comprehensive rules of responsible behaviour of States in information space aimed at preventing conflicts therein and promoting the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for peaceful purposes.
We welcome the adoption of the consensus reports of the UN Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) and the UN Group of Governmental Experts on IIS. We note the unique spirit of the constructive dialogue at these platforms.
During the 76th UNGA Session, we intend to introduce in its First Committee an updated draft resolution on “Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security” welcoming the successful conclusion of the work of both groups as well as the launch of a new Russia-initiated OEWG on Security in the Use of ICTs and ICTs themselves 2021-2025 (in accordance with UNGA resolution 75/240).
We assume that the new Group will ensure the continuity and consistency of an inclusive and truly democratic negotiation process on IIS under the UN auspices within a single mechanism. We call on all States to take an active part in the work of the OEWG 2021-2025 and contribute to building a fair and equitable IIS system.
In line with the relevant UNGA resolutions adopted at the initiative of the Russian Federation, we advocate for an early drafting, under the auspices of the UN, of an international convention countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes. The consensus modalities set out while preparing for the negotiation process in the relevant UNGA Ad Hoc Committee enable us to count on constructive and comprehensive participation of the entire international community in developing a universal and effective instrument to counter digital crime.
We call on our partners to support our First Committee draft resolution as well as to unequivocally endorse full implementation of the mandates of the new OEWG and the Ad Hoc Committee.
38. We have consistently advocated strengthening the existing treaty regimes and developing, through consensus, new arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation (ACDNP) regimes. The UN and its multilateral disarmament mechanism should play a central role in this process. We are committed to ensuring the coherence and improving the performance of its three key elements – the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, the Conference on Disarmament and the UN Disarmament Commission – while unconditionally respecting the mandates of these forums.
We deem it necessary to counter any attempts to revise the existing disarmament architecture by means of unilateral coercive measures that bypass the UN Security Council.
The main focus of multilateral efforts and fundamentally new approaches to address the whole range of problems in the field of the ACDNP may be considered at a summit of the permanent members of the UN Security Council which Russia has proposed to hold.
39. We strictly comply with our obligations under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and advocate for its early entry into force. We call on the eight states on which the launch of the Treaty depends to sign and/or ratify it without delay. We believe that the key destructive factor here is the position of the United States which is the only state to have officially refused to ratify the Treaty. We expect Washington to reconsider its approach to the CTBT.
40. We support the noble cause of shaping a world free of nuclear weapons. We make a substantial practical contribution to achieving this goal. However, we are convinced there is a need for a balanced approach that takes into account all factors affecting strategic stability, including disruptive US steps aimed at undermining the existing ACDNP architecture. We do not support radical initiatives on introducing an early nuclear weapons ban (namely, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, TPNW).
41. We consider the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to be the most important international legal instrument for ensuring international security and one of the pillars of the modern world order. Our common task is to prevent the final collapse of the system of international disarmament and arms control agreements that has been developed over decades and the regimes based upon them.
In this regard, we attach primary importance to the viability of the NPT. We call on all States Parties to make every effort at the 10th Review Conference postponed until 2022 because of the new coronavirus pandemic to strengthen the Treaty and to help achieve its goals rather than cause more controversy around it. The ultimate goal is to draft a document that would reaffirm the viability of the Treaty and the willingness of the States Parties to strictly abide by their commitments.
We fully support the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as an international organisation that possesses the necessary authority and competence to monitor the observance of the non-proliferation obligations under the NPT through the application of Agency safeguards, which, in its turn, is an important condition for the States to exercise their right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
We believe that further development of the IAEA safeguards system serves to strengthen the non-proliferation regime, provided that it keeps intact the basic principles of verification – impartiality, technical feasibility, and transparency.
We are concerned about the recent tendency to politicise the IAEA safeguards system. As a result, claims are being made against States based on the ‘very likely/highly likely’ approach while deployment of nuclear weapons belonging to some countries in the territory of other formally non-nuclear States is being ignored.
The IAEA should not be turned into a nuclear disarmament verification tool, as this is neither a statutory purpose nor a function of the Agency. We believe that the participation of the IAEA Secretariat staff in the January 2022 Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in Vienna is inappropriate.
42. We regard the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction held in New York on 18-22 November 2019 as a landmark event both in terms of ensuring stability and sustainability in the region and in the context of global efforts towards WMD non-proliferation. We intend to further support the idea of such conferences. We believe that efforts to elaborate a legally binding agreement on creating a WMD-free zone in the Middle East serve the interests of all states in the region.
We hope that the second Conference on the establishment of a WMD-free zone due to be held in New York in November 2020 but postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic will take place this year, which would allow to kick start a somewhat stagnant process.
43. We are confident that there is still potential for political and diplomatic settlement of the situation arising from the termination of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) based on Russia’s initiative to ensure predictability and restraint in the missile sphere.
We intend to maintain a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of land-based intermediate-range or shorter-range missiles in regions where no similar US-made weapons would appear. Despite the absence of a constructive response to this initiative on the part of NATO, we still consider a moratorium to be a promising idea that would make it possible to avoid new ‘missile crises’. We propose that the US and their NATO allies take on a similar commitment.
We reaffirm our commitment to the strict compliance with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (the New START) and welcome its extension for five years without any preconditions – something that the Russian Federation has long and consistently called for. The extension of this Treaty set the stage for resuming a comprehensive dialogue with the United States on future arms control and the maintenance of strategic stability. At the Russian-US summit in Geneva on June 16, 2021 it was agreed to launch such a dialogue in the near future, as reflected in the Joint Statement by the Presidents at the meeting.
We believe that the goal of this engagement is to develop a new ‘security formula’ that takes into account all major factors of strategic stability, covers offensive and defensive nuclear and non-nuclear weapons capable of meeting strategic challenges, as well as the emergence of new technologies and new weapons.
44. We highly commend efforts of the UN Security Council and its ad-hoc 1540 Committee on the WMD non-proliferation. We are determined to engage in a substantive and constructive dialogue in the framework of the comprehensive review of the implementation of UNSC Resolution 1540. We expect that the procedure will result in the confirmation of the 1540 Committee’s current mandate.
45. Russia has initiated the development of important multilateral agreements in the ACDNP area, such as the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space Treaty (PAROS) and the International Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Chemical and Biological Terrorism. We believe that a constructive dialogue on these issues will provide an opportunity to engage in substantive work (including negotiations) at the UN platform.
The imperative of preserving space for peaceful purposes and taking cooperative practical measures to this end is shared by the vast majority of States. We consider the globalisation of the no-first placement of weapons in outer space initiative to be an important but only interim step on the way towards the conclusion of an international treaty on the prevention of placement of weapons in outer space on the basis of a relevant Chinese-Russian draft treaty on the prevention of the placement of weapons in outer space and the threat or use of force against outer space objects.
At the 76th session of the General Assembly, we will traditionally submit to the First Committee draft resolutions on no first placement of weapons in outer space, transparency and confidence-building measures in space activities and further practical measures to prevent an arms race in outer space.
46. We consider it necessary to continue strengthening the central and coordinating role of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). We are against the practice of addressing issues that fall within the competence of the Committee at other non-specialised international fora. We are concerned about the trend towards the consolidation of unilateral approaches in the policies of certain States aimed at establishing of a regime for the research, development and use of space resources, which carries serious risks for international cooperation, including with respect to outer space.
We continue to actively engage in the work of COPUOS to improve the security regime for space operations. We have succeeded in establishing the Working Group on the Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities. The Group’s mandate is to implement the existing and develop new guidelines on long-term sustainability of outer space activities, which is of particular importance against the background of the rapidly changing environment in which space activities take place.
We are against moving the issues traditionally on the COPUOS agenda to parallel platforms, including the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, as part of the concept of the so-called ‘responsible behaviours in outer space’. Neglecting the Committee’s key role with regard to space debris and space traffic management may negatively affect the adoption of balanced consensus decisions in these areas.
We are in favour of the successful completion of efforts to develop the Space-2030 agenda and its implementation plan, with a view to presenting this document at the current session of the General Assembly.
47. We are in favour of strengthening the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, the 1925 Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, as well as the Secretary-General’s Mechanism for Investigation of Alleged Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons.
In order to ensure the effective operation of this UN Secretary-General’s Mechanism, at the 76th session of the General Assembly we will submit a relevant draft resolution to the First Committee.
We come out against attempts by Western states to politicise the work of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in violation of the norms set in the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). We regard as illegitimate their actions aimed at vesting the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW with the function of ‘identifying those responsible’ for the use of chemical weapons (attribution), including the creation of an illegitimate Investigation and Identification Team (IIT). We strongly disagree with its biased conclusions. We also have a whole range of complaints about the work of other OPCW inspection missions in the Syrian Arab Republic which violate the methods of investigation set out in the CWC. We urge the OPCW leadership to take action as soon as possible to rectify this deplorable situation.
We support impartial and highly professional investigations into chemical provocations by anti-government forces in Syria and all manifestations of ‘chemical terrorism’ in the Middle East in strict accordance with the high standards of the CWC.
48. We note the negative impact on international security of yet another destructive step by the United States – the decision to withdraw from the Treaty on Open Skies (OST) under the pretext of alleged violations of the Treaty by Russia. Alongside the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty, as a consequence of which the Treaty ceased to have effect, this step is fully in line with Washington’s policy of destroying the whole range of arms control agreements and causes real damage to the European security system. The United States have upset the balance of rights and obligations of the States Parties to the OST, that is why Russia was forced to take measures to protect its national security interests and begin the procedure of withdrawal from the Treaty (to be completed by 18 December this year).
49. We continue to underline the unique role of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as a universal instrument creating a comprehensive legal regime for international cooperation of States in the World Ocean. We highly appreciate the work of such conventional mechanisms as the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the International Seabed Authority. We believe it is vital that they work strictly within their mandates under the Convention avoiding any broad interpretation of the competence granted to them or politicising their decisions.
50. The Russian Federation supports the work of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as the main judicial body of the United Nations and is ready to assist the creation of conditions enabling its effective and unbiased functioning.
We closely follow the situation around the implementation of the provisions of the UNGA resolution of May 22, 2019 concerning the Chagos Archipelago, adopted in accordance with the relevant advisory opinion of the ICJ. We view the above-mentioned General Assembly decision in the context of the completion of the decolonisation processes.
Elections to the ICJ are planned for the autumn of 2023 at the Security Council and the 78th session of the UNGA. The Russian group in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) decided to nominate sitting judge K.Gevorgyan for re-election to the ICJ for the period 2024-2033. We are counting on the support of our candidate by the Member States of the Organisation in the forthcoming elections.
51. The Russian Federation facilitates the work of the International Law Commission (ILC) which contributes significantly to the codification and progressive development of international law. We believe that the UN should further build on its most valuable outputs.
In the autumn of 2021, during the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, elections to the ILC are scheduled to take place. The Russian Federation nominated the current member of the Commission, Director of the Legal Department of the MFA of Russia E.Zagaynov, for re-election to the Commission for the period 2023–2027. We hope that the UN Member States will support our candidate in the upcoming elections.
52. The credibility of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is steadily declining. It is becoming more politically biased and one-sided. We note the low quality of its work and the lack of any tangible contribution to conflict settlement.
53. We underline that the mandate of the Residual Mechanism is strictly limited, and it is necessary to complete its activity as soon as possible. We have to acknowledge yet again that the Mechanism inherited the worst practices from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which is demonstrated by its consistent anti-Serbian attitudes. We monitor respect for the rights of persons accused and convicted by the Residual Mechanism. We do not consider it expedient at this point to establish new judicial bodies of this kind.
54. We continue to assume the legal nullity of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to Assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of Persons Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes under International Law Committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011 established by the UN General Assembly acting beyond its authority. We object to the funding of the Mechanism from the UN regular budget and to the Mechanism gaining access to the archives of the OPCW-UN Joint Mechanism.
55. We continue to regard the issue of “the rule of law” with an emphasis on its international dimension, i.e. the primacy of international law, particularly the UN Charter. We continue to oppose attempts to use it to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign States under the pretext of strengthening the “rule of law” at the national level.
Given the confrontational incorporation of the permanent item “responsibility to protect” (R2P) in the UNGA agenda, we underline the loss of the consensual nature of this concept. We will continue to block attempts to legitimise it.
56. It is States that bear the primary responsibility for promoting and protecting human rights, while the UN executive structures are to play a supporting role. We believe that equal cooperation between States based on the rule of international law, respect for sovereignty and equality of States should be the main principle in the work of the United Nations to promote and protect human rights. It is inadmissible to duplicate the work of the main bodies of the United Nations through unjustified integration of the human rights agenda into all areas of the UN activities. We are against strengthening the link between the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) and the UN Security Council. We oppose attempts to reform the HRC in order to turn it into a quasi-judicial monitoring mechanism.
We consider it unacceptable to include politicised country-specific resolutions and topics outside the scope of their mandate in the agenda of United Nations human rights mechanisms. We condemn the use of human rights issues as a pretext for interfering in the internal affairs of States and undermining the principles of international law. It is in this light that we regard the resolution on the situation of human rights in Crimea, which, since 2016, has been regularly submitted to the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly by the Ukrainian delegation. This document has nothing to do with the actual situation in this region of the Russian Federation. We will vote against this resolution during the 76th session of the UNGA, and we call on our partners to do the same.
The work of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) should become more transparent and accountable to the UN Member States in order to avoid politically motivated approaches to assessing human rights situations in different countries.
We will continue to promote intercivilisational, intercultural and interreligious dialogue and due respect for the diversity of cultures, civilisations, traditions and historical developments in the promotion and protection of human rights.
57. We strongly condemn all forms and manifestations of discrimination. The ban on discrimination enshrined in international human rights instruments is universal and applies to all persons without exception. We see no value added in defining new vulnerable groups (such as members of the LGBT community, human rights activists, bloggers) that allegedly require a special legal protection regime or new categories of rights. Such steps by a number of countries only lead to de-universalization of legal protection regimes and increased politicisation and confrontation within the UN human rights mechanisms.
58. Active practical work in the area of social development aimed at eradicating poverty, promoting social integration, ensuring full employment and decent work for all will facilitate effective implementation of the decisions adopted at the World Summit for Social Development and the 24th special session of the UN General Assembly.
We consider the UN Commission for Social Development to be the main UN coordinating body that develops framework for harmonised actions on general issues of social protection, ensuring equal opportunities for persons with disabilities, problems of ageing population, improving the situation of young people and strengthening the role of the traditional family. We resolutely oppose any initiatives that undermine its role, as well as the calls for its dissolution.
59. The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) remains the main intergovernmental platform for discussion of a broad range of issues relating to improvement of the status of women and achieving gender equality in particular. We believe it is important to avoid politicization of these issues or their automatic inclusion into the UN documents focusing on other topics. Special attention in documents on improving the status of women should be devoted to social and economic rights, as well as social protection and support for women and their families.
We believe that gender equality issues should be taken into account in the work of the UN system in a balanced manner, without absolute prioritisation or selective use.
We commend the work of UN Women which should render assistance only within the framework of its mandate, upon request and with the consent of the States concerned. We will continue to interact actively with it within the framework of the Executive Board.
60. We reaffirm the need for strengthening international cooperation in the promotion and protection of the rights of the child on the basis of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the outcome document of the 27th special session of the United Nations General Assembly entitled “A World Fit for Children”. We consider unacceptable attempts by a number of countries to deprive parents and legal guardians of their role in the upbringing of children and the development of their potential, including by granting young children autonomy in their decision-making. Programmes to support the family in its traditional sense, to ensure access to education and healthcare are important for the successful upbringing of children.
We devote close attention to the problem of children in armed conflict. We support the mandate of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict and develop cooperation with her, including as part of the programme for repatriation of Russian children from Syria and Iraq.
61. We support discussion at the United Nations General Assembly of the problems of interreligious and intercultural interaction and the development of intercivilisational dialogue, especially within the framework of the Alliance of Civilisations (AoC). We regard the establishment of a culture of peace as an essential prerequisite for peaceful co-existence and global cooperation for the sake of peace and development.
We are actively preparing for holding the World Conference on Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue (St Petersburg, May 2022).
62. We are ready for the cooperation on the UN agenda issues with all interested relevant non-governmental organizations. Their involvement in the work of the United Nations should take place within the framework of the established practice, which requires the obligatory consent of Member States. We encourage the adequate representation of the Russian non-governmental corps in the activities of the relevant segments, bodies and structures of the United Nations.
63. To overcome the consequences of migration crises affecting individual countries and regions of the world, global efforts are required under the central coordinating role of the United Nations.
We commend the work of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on ensuring more effective international protection for refugees and other categories of persons under its responsibility. We consider the work of the UNHCR particularly important in situations of major humanitarian crises.
Russia makes a significant contribution to international efforts to improve the situation of refugees, including by accepting forcibly displaced persons from Ukraine and also through programmes for the return of Syrian refugees to their homeland. Each year our country voluntarily contributes some $2 million to the UNHCR budget.
We reaffirm our commitment to the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which should form the basis of comprehensive long-term cooperation aimed at creating legal channels for migration and countering irregular flows.
Russia took an active part in the first meeting of the Global Refugee Forum. We expect that this platform will help to attract the attention of the international community to the problems of refugees and to consolidate efforts to implement the GCR.
We welcome the strengthening of the UN migration pillar under the coordinating role of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). We support a comprehensive approach of the UNHCR and IOM to the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 among persons of concern. We are convinced that one of the effective measures to combat the pandemic should be large-scale vaccination of the population, including forcibly displaced persons.
We note the effectiveness of the UNHCR’s work with Syrian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). We look forward to the world community pursuing a non-politicized approach in dealing with this issue and providing greater assistance in rebuilding infrastructure and ensuring conditions for their early return.
We appreciate and contribute, including financially, to the UNHCR’s efforts to address the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the internal Ukrainian crisis. We support the UNHCR programmes aimed at eliminating statelessness, in particular in European countries.
We are interested in the UNHCR facilitating the return of IDPs and refugees to Nagorny Karabakh and the surrounding areas.
64. We consider the Georgian UNGA resolution on the status of internally displaced persons and refugees from Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be counter-productive and to entail the risk of aggravating the situation “on the ground” and further stalling the Geneva discussions, which remain the only negotiation platform enabling direct dialogue between the representatives of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Georgia. We also note that at a time when the Abkhaz and South Ossetian representatives are deprived of the opportunity to convey their position to the General Assembly because of the systematic refusal of the United States authorities to grant them entry visas, discussions in New York on the topic of “refugees from Abkhazia and South Ossetia” without their direct participation are meaningless.
65. We consistently advocate for the strengthening of UNESCO‘s international standing. We believe that the adaptation of UNESCO’s working methods to the emerging challenges, including in the context of the new coronavirus pandemic, should be in line with the intergovernmental nature of the Organisation and be based on unconditional compliance with the provisions of the UNESCO Constitution, rules of procedure and directives of the decision-making bodies.
We oppose to the artificial integration of human rights issues in UNESCO’s activities in order to avoid duplication of functions of other UN specialised agencies. We aim to increase the effectiveness of the Organisation by depoliticising it and removing from its agenda issues of territorial integrity and sovereignty that do not belong to it.
Russia contributes significantly to UNESCO activities. In 2022, Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, will host one of the largest and most significant UNESCO events – the 45th Anniversary Session of the World Heritage Committee, which will coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.
66. We view cooperation in sports and the promotion of sport ideals worldwide as effective ways to foster respect and mutual understanding among nations.
We believe that politicisation of sports and discrimination of athletes, including Paralympians, in the form of collective punishment are unacceptable. We advocate the development of a universal system of international sports cooperation based on the principles of independence and autonomy of sports.
67. In the context of international cooperation to address social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, we support intensified efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the 2030 Agenda) as a holistic and balanced strategy to guide the work of the UN in the social, economic, environmental and related fields. We underline the integrated, non-politicised and indivisible nature of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with poverty eradication being the key objective.
We support stronger coordination between the UNGA and ECOSOC, including through the dialogue platform of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). The HLPF is designed to serve as a forum that brings together all stakeholders, including members of the business community (not only NGOs), to review the progress made in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda at the global level. Russia’s first Voluntary National Review on the implementation of the SDGs presented in 2020 has been a significant contribution to these efforts.
We promote a balanced approach in the energy sector with a focus on ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy sources in line with SDG 7. We recognise the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while believing that it should be fulfilled not only through the transition to renewable energy sources but also through the introduction of advanced low-carbon technologies in the use of all types of energy sources, including fossil fuels. In this context, we advocate increased use of natural gas as the most environmentally acceptable fossil fuel, as well as the recognition of nuclear power and hydropower as clean energy sources due to the absence of a carbon footprint. In this spirit, we intend to ensure Russia’s participation in the High-Level Dialogue on Energy in September 2021.
68. We will continue to uphold the basic parameters for international humanitarian assistance outlined in UNGA resolution 46/182 and other decisions of the General Assembly and ECOSOC. We will oppose revision of fundamental principles, in particular the respect for the sovereignty of an affected state and the need to obtain its consent for assistance. We will continue to urge UN humanitarian agencies to act as “honest brokers” and base their work on carefully verified data about the humanitarian situation “on the ground”.
We are concerned about the worsening of humanitarian crises triggered by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. As humanitarian needs grow considerably, we believe it crucial to avoid politicising humanitarian assistance.
69. We condemn individual countries’ practice of imposing unilateral coercive measures contrary to the United Nations Charter and international law. We therefore support the idea of joining efforts of sanctioned countries in line with the Russian President’s initiative to create sanctions-free “green corridors” to provide countries with access to medicines and essential goods.
70. We call for accelerated implementation of the Addis-Ababa Action Agenda decisions on financing for development in order to mobilise and make effective use of resources to achieve the SDGs.
We support the principle of prioritising the interests of international development assistance recipients. We offer assistance to interested countries based on a de-politicised approach, promoting domestic innovation and expertise.
We recognise the importance of reaching international consensus on global taxation, in particular in the fight against tax evasion. We support the increased intergovernmental cooperation in curbing illicit financial flows and repatriation of income generated from illegal activities.
71. We oppose attempts by individual countries to reduce socio-economic development solely to the achievement of environmental protection goals, namely climate change. We see such a one-sided position as an indication of unfair competition and trade protectionism, which are inconsistent with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) principles of a universal, open, non-discriminatory multilateral trading system.
72. We welcome the further strengthening of the work of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) to achieve sustainable development of the United Nations.
We support the consolidation of UNEP’s role as the key universal intergovernmental platform establishing the integrated global environmental agenda.
We advocate greater efficiency and stronger financial discipline within UN-Habitat as part of the Programme’s structural reform implemented in accordance with resolution 73/239 of the General Assembly.
We stress the need for strict adherence to the principle of equitable geographical representation in the staffing of UNEP and UN-Habitat and the inadmissibility of politicisation of these programmes’ mandates.
73. We stand for the continued leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in coordinating international efforts to eliminate hunger, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. We will encourage these Rome-based organisations to engage in a closer inter-agency cooperation within the UN system in addressing these issues.
In practical terms, we are actively involved in preparations for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit. We expect it to deliver a comprehensive analysis of optimal agri-food chain models to help eradicate hunger and improve food security, including the provision of healthy food for the population. We believe that commonly agreed and universally supported sectoral approaches and proposals should be reflected in the Summit outcome documents in a balanced way. We hope that the upcoming event will set the course for the transformation of global food systems, particularly in the context of overcoming the consequences of the new coronavirus pandemic, and give further impetus to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
We pay careful attention to preventing the risk of a food crisis, namely in view of the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We will continue to provide humanitarian food aid to countries most in need, first of all to those of the former Soviet Union, as well as in Africa and Latin America.
74. We attach great importance to the work carried out by the UNGA to support the multilateral efforts in combating the COVID-19 pandemic and overcoming its impact. We advocate a universal, equitable, fair and unhindered access to medical technologies as well as safe, high-quality, effective and affordable vaccines and medicines for the new coronavirus infection.
We consider increasing global preparedness and response capacity for health emergencies to be a priority task. We are ready for a constructive dialogue with all partners in the framework of the relevant formats. Yet we believe that the World Health Organisation (WHO) should continue to be the main forum for discussing global health issues.
We consistently support WHO as the focal point for the international human health cooperation. We call for enhancing the efficiency of its work through increased transparency and accountability to Member States.
75. We will further strengthen the multi-stakeholder partnership for disaster risk reduction under the Sendai Framework 2015–2030. Amid the ongoing pandemic, we believe that special attention should be paid to building States’ capacity to respond to emergencies, including in health care.
76. We seek to keep down the growth of the UN regular programme budget for 2022, as well as estimates for peacekeeping operations and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. We propose targeted and justified reductions in requested resources. Any requests for additional funding should first undergo careful internal scrutiny. At the same time, the Secretariat should step up its efforts to improve the efficiency of its working methods in order to minimise the associated costs of achieving UN’s objectives. We insist on stronger accountability, strict budgetary discipline and improved transparency in the Secretariat’s work.
77. Ensuring parity among the six official UN languages in conference services and information and communication activities remains one of the priorities in our interaction with the Organisation’s Secretariat. The principle of multilingualism should be given primary consideration when implementing all media projects and information campaigns as well as allocating financial and human resources to the language services of the UN Secretariat.
Filed under: NATO Alliance, Putin, Racial discrimination, Russia, UN, UNESCO, UNSC, War on Syria, WMD | Tagged: Climate Change, COVID-19 pandemic, FAO, IAEA, ICC, International Law, Karabakh, OPCW scandal, Open Skies Treaty, Syrian refugees, Terrorism, UN Charter, UN General Assembly, UNHCR, WHO | Comments Off on Russia’s position at the seventy-sixth session of the UN General Assembly
July 28, 2021
Ben Norton
Militarily occupying Iraq and Syria is a thoroughly bipartisan policy in the United States. And bombing West Asia has become a favorite pastime that unites both Democrat and Republican presidents.
The United States believes it has the right to bomb, militarily occupy, and economically strangulate any country, anywhere, without consequence. But the world’s peoples are standing up more and more to the global dictatorship of US hegemony.
On June 27, Washington launched airstrikes against forces in both Iraq and Syria, two sovereign countries illegally occupied by the US military, which have repeatedly called for American troops to leave.
The US attack proved to be a gift to the genocidal extremists in ISIS: it helped provide cover as remnants of the so-called “Islamic State” launched a terror attack on a power grid in northern Iraq. Similarly, the US bombing killed several members of Iraqi government-backed units who had been protecting their nation from ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
It is far from the first time Washington has clearly been on the same side as far-right Takfiri fanatics. For example, current US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan admitted in an email to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012 that “AQ is on our side in Syria.” And the US government supported al-Qaeda extremists in its wars on Yemen and Libya.
In addition to aiding notorious terrorist groups, these US strikes on Iraq and Syria were glaringly illegal under international law. Moreover, they constitute a clear act of aggression against the peoples of West Asia, who for decades have struggled for self-determination and control over their own, plentiful natural resources – resources that the US government and its all-powerful corporations seek to control and exploit.
The Pentagon tried to justify its attack claiming it was an act of “self-defense.” Absurdly, the US Department of Defense – the world champion in violating international law – even cited international law to try to legitimize the airstrikes.
In reality, the US military’s presence in Iraq and Syria is illegal. And under international law, a military power that is illegally occupying a territory does not have the right to self-defense. That is true just as much for apartheid “Israel” in its settler-colonial aggression against Palestine as it is for the United States in its imperial wars on the peoples of Iraq and Syria.
Iraq’s prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, made that clear. He condemned the US strikes as a “blatant and unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty and Iraqi national security.”
In January 2020, in response to Washington’s assassination of top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis – a criminal act of war against both Iraq and Iran – the democratically elected parliament in Baghdad voted 170 to 0 to expel the thousands of US troops occupying Iraq.
Washington simply ignored the vote, silencing the voices of the Iraqi people – while threatening more economic sanctions on their government. In addition, the Pentagon stressed that the vote was nonbinding. Still, even the US government-backed RAND Corporation acknowledged that there “is no treaty or status of forces agreement (SOFA) authorizing the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.”
Likewise, the United States is illegally occupying one-third of Syrian sovereign territory. The internationally recognized government in Damascus has repeatedly called on the US military occupiers to leave, but they have refused, in a flagrant violation of Syrian sovereignty.
“The presence of Americans in Syria is a sign of occupation, and we believe that all nations and governments must stand up to their unlawful presence in the region,” Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis declared in 2020, after the US assassinations of the top Iraqi and Iranian military leaders.
While former Republican President Donald Trump radiated a kind of neocolonial arrogance, boasting that US troops would illegally remain in Syria because “we want to keep the oil,” the Democratic Joe Biden administration has not acted much differently.
President Biden appointed hardline neoconservative operative Dana Stroul as the top Pentagon official for Middle East policy. In 2019, Stroul bragged that Washington “owned” one-third of Syrian territory, including its “economic powerhouse,” which includes the vast majority of its oil and wheat reserves.
Stroul’s promotion was an unambiguous sign that the Democrats are endorsing the same sadistic Trumpian strategy, to militarily occupy Syria, steal its natural resources, starve its government of revenue, deny its people bread and gasoline, and prevent reconstruction of what Stroul snidely referred to as the widespread “rubble.”
The reality is that militarily occupying Iraq and Syria is a thoroughly bipartisan policy in the United States. And bombing West Asia has become a favorite pastime that unites both Democrat and Republican presidents.
Trump launched airstrikes against Syria in April 2018 on totally unsubstantiated accusations that Damascus had carried out “gas attacks,” claims that have since been proven false by multiple whistleblowers from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Then in December 2019, the Trump administration bombed anti-ISIS militias in both Syria and Iraq.
Biden carried out a similar, illegal attack on these same fighters in eastern Syria in February 2021. Another example of Washington serving as the de facto air force for the remnants of the so-called “Islamic State.”
The December 2019, February 2021, and June 2021 US airstrikes targeted the Iraqi government-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMFs), known in Arabic as the al-Hashd al-Sha’abi. In its official statement on the June bombing, the Pentagon stated unequivocally that it was attacking Kata’ib Hezbollah and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, two prominent Iraqi armed groups in the Hashd.
The Department of Defense misleadingly referred to these units as “Iran-backed militia groups.” The US government and the corporate media outlets that act as its obedient mouthpiece always describe the Hashd as “Iran-backed” to try to downplay their role as indigenous protectors of Iraqi sovereignty and deceptively portray them as foreign proxies of Washington’s favorite bogeyman.
In reality, the PMFs are Iraqi units supported by the elected, internationally recognized government in Baghdad. The Hashd played a leading role in the fight against ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other extremist Takfiri groups in both Iraq and Syria – while the United States, apartheid “Israel”, and NATO allies spent billions of dollars backing Salafi-jihadist death squads in their genocidal war on the people of Syria.
The Hashd do indeed receive assistance from Tehran, and they have every right to do so. After all, Iran is Iraq’s neighbor, whereas the United States is on the other side of the planet. But Washington, NATO, and their de facto stenographers in the corporate press corps seek to discredit all resistance to criminal US aggression in West Asia by erasing its organic, indigenous roots and lazily depicting it as a vast conspiracy controlled by an omnipresent Iranian controller.
The PMFs made it clear that they will not tolerate Washington’s assault on their nation’s sovereignty. “We reserve the legal right to respond to these attacks and hold the perpetrators accountable on Iraqi soil,” the Hashd declared.
Unlike the US military occupiers, the people of Iraq and Syria do have a right to exercise self-defense in response to strikes by foreign aggressors. They can legally resist American military occupation and neocolonialism, just as the people of Palestine have the right to resist Israeli military occupation and Zionist settler-colonialism. It is a right enshrined in international law – and an inalienable right that any nation would defend.
If Washington wants to stop attacks on its troops, there is an easy way to do that: withdraw them from the region where they are not wanted. American soldiers will be much safer at home.The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
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Filed under: American crimes, American Hegemony, IRAQ, Syria, USA, War on Iraq, War on Syria | Tagged: Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Biden's Foreign Policy, Iraqi resistance, OPCW scandal, Suleimani’s Assassination, Syrian Resistance, Syrian sovereignty | Comments Off on US bombing of Iraq and Syria is illegal aggression – Occupiers have no right to ‘self-defense’
Al Qaeda in Idlib and Hama are plotting a new false flag chemical attack. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates announced yesterday confirmation that the White Helmets terrorists, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS aka Nusra Front aka Al Qaeda Levant), and other related terrorists have brought “tankers loaded with raw chlorine through the Bab al Hawa crossing from Turkey.”
A lab in Atimah has been prepared for the terrorists to fill shells, fire the chemicals into civilian areas and again blame the Syrian government for the degenerate atrocities.
Terrorist organizations including the White Helmets and those who support them in the field and in some international platforms have not stopped preparing for terrorist acts by preparing for plays using chemical weapons in some areas of Idlib and Hama governorates. to accuse the Syrian Arab Army of it.
The Ministry “pointed out that Syria calls on the countries that support these terrorists to stop these games, whose victims were only innocent Syrian civilians, and not to carry out this new bloody crime. The Syrian Arab Republic will hold the countries supporting these terrorists, especially the United States, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkey, responsible for using these games, toxic substances and the killing of civilians.”
The Ministry “called on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) not to ignore this information and the need to take it very seriously and deal with it within the framework of its mandate set out in the Chemical Weapons Convention instead of turning it into a vehicle for false accusations against Syria by the United States of America and its allies.”
“The Syrian Arab Republic has repeatedly confirmed its categorical refusal to use chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere and under any circumstances, and that it has not used these weapons before and cannot use them now because it does not possess them, and at the same time stresses the Such open and repeated crimes will not discourage it from continuing its war against terrorism until it restores security and safety to its people on the entire soil of Syria.“
Thus ends the pristinely diplomatic portion of this report, announced by the Ministry on 22 June; now we take off the gloves to provide another in-depth look at the spawns of Satan, from the low-level criminally and violently insane, to the pristinely coiffed rabid NATO dogs of war, the hideously corrupt and Syrian blood-saturated liars running the NATO Degeneracy and Immorality League of the UN and of the OPCW.
The OPCW recently stripped Syria of its voting rights. According to its own reports, this is the same NATO klan that never entered Khan Sheikhoun, nor Ltamenah, nor Saraqib. OPCW reported no investigators could enter these areas because the terrorists caused safety problems.
Nonetheless, the ignoble club had no problem accepting the lies and the sexed-up forensics from the terrorists.
The gaggle of affluent scum is all here, neatly awaiting the criminal al Qaeda cover story to demonstrate its altruism by bombing Syria — humanitarianly, of course — because of the failure of the NATO Spring. The assemblage of blood-lusting, ravenous vultures masquerading as human beings are in a near-sexual frenzy over the possibility that China and/or Russia will vote against the extension of the UNSCR 2533 (2020) to keep open the Bab al Hawa lifeline from Turkey to al Qaeda in Idlib, and continue in rage state — a barb coma might be useful — over the re-election of President Bashar al Assad, and the subsequent interview with Dr. Bashar al Jaafari who defined Dr. Assad’s victory as the victory of the Syrian people against the unprecedented war of terror waged against them by NATO.
As another false flag chemical attack is being plotted, to be blamed on Syria’s obviously beloved president, let the unindicted war criminal miscreants of the UN and the unindicated mass murderers of the countries they represent, the last time any NATO head of state was surrounded by fellow citizens, and not by locked and loaded security forces; let the rabid dogs of war watch hundreds of Syrians storm the stage to hug and pet and kiss their president, after his speech at the Damascus Opera House, and let the vultures eat out their own hearts and each other’s livers, in dirty envy, instead of circling to devour Syrian flesh and blood.
The false flag chemical attack atrocities have been the foundation of war crimes against Syria, beginning in late 2012, when intelligence operatives skilled in the handling of chemical weapons and poisons, demonstrated the deadly skills on rabbits, in an alleged makeshift lab in Gaziantep, Turkey; the 5 December video appeared to show the terminal use of VX:
On 21 December, the skilled human garbage provided a second threat of a chemical attack. Claiming the perverse name of Screaming Wind Chemical Battalion, that degenerate reported on the newly developed, quick-acting poison that would be used to pollute Alsinn Spring, the main water source for Lattakia; he also explained other efficient uses, to slaughter Syrians who dared to be patriots:
https://videopress.com/embed/0fSZ7JM1?preloadContent=metadata&hd=1
Diplomatic requests by the Syrian Mission for a UN-OPCW investigations of the threats were ignored; the efficient poison was later used in heinous snuff porn, showing agonizing deaths of kidnapped Syrian children, on 4 April 2017, in Khan Sheikhoun. The children had recently been kidnapped, and were also stripped half-naked for the sadistic enjoyment of all of the degenerates — from the lowly perverts, to the classy dogs of war.
In May 2013 — months before the criminally degenerate FSA launched the chemical attack in al Ghouta, with weapons provided by ”Prince Bandar” who neglected to teach his vermin in proper use — American illegal embedded with takfiri in Aleppo, Matthew Vandyke told unemployed ladies underwear salesboy cum Brit intelligence operative that the “rebels” had chemical weapons, were prepared to use them and blame on the government, and that President Assad was ‘winning’ and had no need to use them (Vandyke has been rewarded with a 501(c) fake charity, and an award for a 15-minute ‘fraudumentary‘, and Higgins with lots of money, war pimp media stenographers beating a path to his door, and a personal trainer).
Post the heinous chemical attack in al Ghouta, August 2013, President Obama and other NATO accomplices prepared to ‘punish’ Syria with massive bombings for the attack by the takfiri vermin supported by NATO, but this plot was sabotaged when Syria joined the CWC and turned over its chemical weapons, in record time (the US, by the way, still holds approximately 3,000 tons of CWs, despite having joined CWC-OPCW in early 1997. Oddly, the filthy NATO junta ruling the UN does not hold monthly meetings against the US, as it does to Syria.). As with every yield to the demands of NATO tyrants (e.g., Iraq, Libya), said tyrants always create the loophole, used for destruction. In September 2014, Obama and accomplices used the convenient executions of British, US, and Japanese special operatives illegally in the SAR as slimy cover story to ignore Syrian sovereignty, and bomb it by fake targeting the US-created ISIS, though, in fact, the plot was to obliterate Syria while helping ISIS and other al Qaeda beasts with two legs.
Filed under: Al Qaeda, Bashar Al-Assad, Britain, Germany, NATO Alliance, Syria, Takfiris, Turkey, USA, War on Syria | Tagged: Dr. Bashar Al-Ja’afari, OPCW, OPCW scandal, White Helmets | Comments Off on GRAPHIC: Al Qaeda in Idlib Plots New False Flag Chemical Attack
Fantastic endorsement by the esteemed John Pilger. I’m humbled.
“This outstanding report from Syria by Eva Bartlett penetrates the ‘iron dome’ of Western propaganda, also known as news.
It is about a chemical attack that never happened in a country attacked, subverted and blockaded in your name.“
The article in question was published at Off Guardian, May 25, 2021
May 20 marked the start of the 2021 Syrian presidential elections. Syrians around the world outside of Syria will cast their votes—if their embassies haven’t been closed, or voting prohibited, in the countries they reside in that is.
As I wrote last week,
Western leaders hypocritically claimed concern for Syrians and wanted to ensure they live democratically – by funding and arming terrorists from around the world to slaughter them and destroy their homes, governmental buildings, and historic and cultural places–but continue to do everything in their power to make it difficult-to-impossible for Syrians to exercise their rights to vote for their president.
In closing Syrian embassies around the world, the regime-change alliance made very clear that they do not want the Syrian people to exercise their democratic right to vote in presidential elections past and future. They know that Syrians would come out in masses to vote for their president.
Otherwise, Syrians will, on May 26, vote in Syria. This is a historic moment: after 10 years of would-be regime change in Syria, ten bloody years of unnecessary war on Syria, Syrians voting, whether for Assad or not, are voting in defiance of the West’s attempts to install a puppet government.
In their attempts to overthrow President Assad, the West and allies have concocted accusation after accusation about alleged atrocities committed by Syria. Among the many fabrications, the more recent and perhaps notable was that of the April 2018, Douma “chemical attack” allegations.
Three years ago on April 7, France, the UK and the US (FUKUS) and their allies, along with the entirety of Western corporate media, alleged that the Syrian army had used chemical weapons on civilians in Douma, just northeast of Damascus.
The allegation was that a chemical agent airdropped onto the town had killed dozens of civilians.
As I wrote at the time, the West’s claims to have evidence to back these allegations was a transparent lie: what they had were dubious, unverified, video clips and photos shared on social media, provided by the Western-funded White Helmets and other partial and non-credible sources with affiliations to, and admiration for, Jaysh al-Islam and co-terrorist groups in eastern Ghouta.
One week later, the night before Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors were due to visit Douma (at the request of the Syrian government), FUKUS launched 103 missiles at Syria. Bombing within Damascus itself and putting the lives of Syrian civilians at risk.
They carried out this attack without waiting for any evidence at all, much less a full investigation by the OPCW. Far from a concern for the truth, or wanting to “protect” Syrian lives, FUKUS’ response was clearly about applying both political and military pressure to the government they had been trying to change for almost a decade.
Indeed, the immediate attribution of guilt to the Syrian government, alongside the promptness of the retaliation, suggests at least foreknowledge of the “attack”, if not outright responsibility for it.
In contrast to the propaganda put forth from outside of Syria – by dubious propaganda outlets like Bellingcat, as well as most of Western media – a number of journalists actually went to the area in question and spoke with medical personnel and residents.
These include Russian and Syrian media, followed by foreign journalists including One America News Network, Vanessa Beeley, Robert Fisk, Germany’s ZDF, and myself.
We learned: there was no indication that any of the people brought in to the medical point had been exposed to a chemical agent; they were, instead, treated for normal shelling injuries, as well as for breathing difficulties due to the combination of smoke, dust, and their having taken refuge for extended periods in basements; they were all sent home after treatment, no one died in the makeshift hospital.
We also heard of the horrific suffering of civilians in eastern Ghouta, under the savage rule of Jaysh al-Islam, Faylaq al-Rahman, and the other terrorist factions occupying the region. In fact, most residents I spoke with were more desperate to emphasize how awful life had been under their rule than talk about what they clearly viewed as lies, the chemical allegations.
In one particularly notable early report, RT interviewed the 11-year-old boy, Hassan Diab, starring in the clip that went around the world: a clip showing Diab being hosed down in a chaotic hospital room, allegedly being treated for exposure to a chemical agent.
The boy told RT:
We were outside, and they told all of us to go into the hospital. I was immediately taken upstairs, and they started pouring water on me. The doctors started filming us here [in the hospital], they were pouring water and taking videos.
Diab and sixteen others — including a resuscitator, a paramedic who was working in emergency care, an emergency paramedic with the Syrian Red Crescent, a doctor with the emergency department — then spoke at The Hague.
Their testimonies dismantled the claims about a chemical attack in Douma.
But, as I recently wrote, instead of considering these Syrian sources, pundits and media sneered at the “obscene masquerade” regarding the testimonies.
Yes, the same media which uncritically endorsed the Twitter account of a seven-year-old English-illiterate Aleppo girl as gospel in the lead up to the liberation of Aleppo refused to consider the testimonies of seventeen civilians from Douma.
The same media refused the revelations of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) whistleblowers who spoke out, damning the final OPCW report for its glaring omissions – omissions that completely changed the narrative around Douma.
In October 2020, the UN Security Council itself refused to allow Jose Bustani, former general director of the OPCW, to speak. I urge people to read Bustani’s words on the cover up of OPCW expert findings around the Douma allegations.
It should be noted that it was largely due to the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media that OPCW whistle-blowers spoke out, and thus that the report has been questioned. You can read some of their diligent research here.
As for Jose Bustani, for the sake of brevity, I will include just some of his words below, again encouraging readers to read his words fully.
[S]erious questions are now being raised over whether the independence, impartiality, and professionalism of some of the Organisation’s work is being severely compromised, possibly under pressure from some Member States.
Of particular concern are the circumstances surrounding the OPCW’s investigation of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria, on 7 April 2018. These concerns are emanating from the very heart of the Organisation, from the very scientists and engineers involved in the Douma investigation.
[…]
If the OPCW is confident in the robustness of its scientific work on Douma and in the integrity of the investigation, then it has little to fear in hearing out its inspectors.
If, however, the claims of evidence suppression, selective use of data, and exclusion of key investigators, among other allegations, are not unfounded, then it is even more imperative that the issue be dealt with openly and urgently.
For more nuance and details on the OPCW scandal, the suppressing of critical evidence in order to suit the regime changers’ narrative of a chemical attack having occurred in Douma, read Kit Klarenberg’s April 2021 article, in which notes:
The report released to the public was trimmed to just 34 pages, with all ballistic, forensic and witness evidence gathered by the Douma FFM, which completely dispelled the notion of a chemical attack, and pointed directly or indirectly to a staged incident, removed […] the West and allies continue to push the official, and incorrect, OPCW story, now going as far as ensuring Syria no longer has a seat at the OPCW table.
Clearly, no matter how much evidence against, and testimonies that counter, the West’s claims about a chemical attack in Douma, FUKUS is hell-bent on cramming this narrative down our throats. All in the name, of course, of concern for Syrian civilians. The same civilians the West is strangling under increasingly brutal sanctions against the Syrian people.
While much is being made of the official OPCW report and the ensuing OPCW leaks which contradicted the chemical claims, it is important to also consider the many testimonies of Syrian civilians and medical personnel, not only on the issue of a chemical attack or not, but also on the details of their lives under the savage rule of terrorist groups.
Vanessa Beeley went to Douma in April 2018, going to the makeshift hospital where the dousing scene was filmed. “All said it was not a chemical attack. Civilians in area confirmed this also. Shops hve re-opened, rebuilding has started, nobody presented any symptoms of CW attack,” she tweeted at the time.
Her subsequent article included testimonies of medical personnel and civilians, including Dr Hassan Ouyoun, who noted that he had not issued any death certificates for the April 7 “chemical attack victims,” and raised a number of important points:
I didn’t give any death certificate as a result of a chemical poisoning incident. This is a point against the White Helmets. How was the death “evaluation” carried out? Who did the examination? Who identified the cause of death? How was the burial carried out without a certificate from a doctor?
Valid concerns. And yet, Western media and talking heads instead ran with the dubious footage and narratives supplied by the White Helmets and terrorist-affiliated allies.
I myself went by taxi to Douma in late April, 2018, also going to the by then infamous hospital room in question. I returned to the district in early May to visit neighbouring towns.
As I wrote after my visit, the man I spoke with, Marwan Jaber, said that while hospital staff were treating normal bombing injuries and breathing cases, “strangers” entered screaming about a chemical attack and started hosing people with water.
Patients’ symptoms were “not in line with the symptoms of a chemical attack. There wasn’t pupil constriction or Broncho-constrictions leading to death,” Jaber recalled. “The symptoms we received were all symptoms of choking, patients affected by the smoke and regular war injuries. They came here, we treated them, and dispatched them home,” Jaber said, noting that none, not one, had died.
Nor were any of the hospital staff affected, as one might expect they would be had a chemical agent been used. The staff, as seen in the video produced by the White Helmets, wore no protective clothing, as would have been necessary when dealing with a toxic chemical.
In Marwan Jaber’s opinion, the unfamiliar men who barged into the hospital screaming weren’t trained in medicine. He went so far as to doubt whether they’d finished high school.
Before walking around Douma and speaking with residents, I walked down some of the wide and very long, well-reinforced tunnels which Jaysh al-Islam terrorists used to move below ground, including in vehicles, to avoid detection from the Syrian army and allies.
From my article:
As I walked around Douma, I asked residents about life there and especially about whether they believed there was a chemical attack in their town. Some replied they had no idea about an attack. But most replied decisively no, there hadn’t been any.
At a stand selling vegetables and fruits, Tawfeeq Zahran replied that he believed Jaysh al-Islam had spoken of a chemical attack to frighten them, to make them fear the Syrian army and government. Men around him nodded their agreement. They spoke more about their starvation under Jaysh al-Islam and about the public executions by sword that the terror group had routinely carried out.
A group of young men selling baked goods waved me over, handing me one. They also replied that they knew nothing of an attack. They were more concerned about the fact that, under Jaysh al-Islam, they couldn’t get the flour needed for their baked goods, much less food to live. This was a constant among every civilian I met: Their hunger and terror under Jaysh al-Islam’s rule.
Since most people I met in Douma and neighbouring villages wanted to speak about life under terrorist rule, I wrote a follow-up article focusing on that.
The chemical story was to them largely unimportant. But the terror they endured still haunted them, and likely will the rest of their lives.
Mahmoud Al Khaled, who spoke to Vanessa Beeley about the White Helmets’ involvement in organ theft, wasn’t the only Syrian civilian to speak about this. In December 2018, I wrote about a more than one-hour-long panel on the White Helmets at the United Nations on December 20.
That panel, along with the countless testimonies Vanessa Beeley and Maxim Grigoriev respectively collected, are essential listening and reading for those who want to understand the true nature of the White Helmets.
How any sensible person, much less any credible journalist or body, could rely on the White Helmets’ narratives regarding chemical attacks in Syria is truly baffling.
“Concern for Syrian civilians” has been the disingenuous rallying cry for all those pushing the Western war on Syria, from politicians to the press. But this “concern” only applies when it suits.
The Western media don’t actually care what civilians witnesses have to say about the so-called “chemical attacks”, the Western media don’t investigate what life is like for Syrian civilians living under terrorist occupation, or having their organs trafficked by Western-backed White Helmets.
And the Western media didn’t write about civilians kidnapped — used as slave labour, tortured, killed, and some freed when eastern Ghouta was liberated — because their scripts didn’t tell them to, or because they didn’t know: they weren’t in Syria, nor following Syrian media carefully.
Vanessa Beeley was, however, in Syria, and at the time tweeted:
Jaish Al Islam lied to secure their evacuation from #Douma. Only two buses have exited with kidnap victims. It is reported that remaining 3-5000 were executed prior to JAI surrender, many years before. All hope destroyed for waiting families. https://t.co/hY1H41xj6L— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) April 10, 2018
As it turned out, although thousands were expected to be released, Jaysh al-Islam terrorists had apparently executed the vast majority.
Al Masdar reported:
With expectation to free up to 5 thousands captives, it turned out that only 200 of them remained alive throughout years of captivity.
Sources said that Jaysh al-Islam manipulated the Syrian government and Russian mediators by providing fake lists of the captives with the objective to secure a surrender deal whereby it militants can safely leave their bastion to the country’s north.
Thousands of the kidnapped were executed by their captors or died of illness, hunger or fatigue while forced to dig tunnels.
Hundreds of distressed families desperately waited for their kidnapped relatives at al-Fayhaa Stadium in Damascus as the last 2 buses carrying around 100 captives arrived at the overcrowded facility.
The day of their release, abductees spoke to Syrian media: they were kidnapped by Jaysh al-Islam and al-Nusra in December 2013 from the industrial area of Adra, north of Damascus. They were kept in cages and humiliated, tortured, forced to dig tunnels, including children. Children and adults were starved, children deprived of education and even of sunlight.
Thousands of kidnapped civilians, brutalized, tormented, starved, and the majority executed or died in inhumane, unlivable, circumstances, and not a peep from Western media. The same media that claimed to have sources all over eastern Ghouta.
A search from the period of March to August 2018 revealed only Syrian, Chinese, Russian, and Iranian news sites reporting on the issue. Deafening silence from Western media. Vanessa Beeley was one of the only Western journalists who cared enough to report on it, although at the time, waiting at the site where the kidnapped civilians would be brought, in order to speak with them and share their horrific experiences.
At the time of the abductees’ release, the Guardian’s Istanbul-based Shaheen devoted a scant few sentences to mentioning the matter, referring to them as “kidnapped individuals and prisoners of war” with no mention that they were civilians, including women and children, no mention of their numbers, and none of the outrage that would have filled days of Guardian articles were they “kidnapped individuals and prisoners of war” taken by the Syrian army.
Reuters also made scant mention of the abductees, also merely referring to them as prisoners, with no indication that they were Syrian civilians, including children.
Some, while aware that the OPCW lied about Douma, still believe the corrupted body investigated honestly about previous chemical claims.
But there is much to indicate that is not the case, and much to indicate that, in fact, it has been terrorist factions that have many a time used chemicals against civilians and against the Syrian army.
Journalist Sharmine Narwani, in March 2018, exposed the likelihood that a chemical lab which she visited in Eastern Ghouta was used to manufacture chemicals which terrorists used in staged attacks.
This week, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) liberated some Eastern Ghouta farmlands between Shifouniyeh and Douma and discovered a well-equipped chemical laboratory run by Saudi-backed Islamist terrorists. Not a single Western reporter showed up to investigate the facility.
[…]
It is now indisputable that Western-backed and Gulf-financed Islamist militants have the capabilities to produce the chemicals of war inside the battlefield – and not in the makeshift way that media suggests. This lab demonstrates that militants can amass foreign-made equipment, create production lines and procure difficult-to-obtain components.
When Vanessa Beeley went to Douma, she visited a chemical lab in an area controlled by Jaysh al-Islam, seeing a gas cylinder which looked similar to the famous Douma “chemical attack” cylinder.
#Douma – 2nd chemical weapon manufacturing site I visited yesterday. This site was in a Jaish Al Islam fortified, secure area where nobody could enter without passing their checkpoints. Similar cylinder to one claimed to have been used in alleged CW attack on 7/4. @21WIRE #Ghouta pic.twitter.com/6566x6St8l— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) April 24, 2018
Interestingly, a CNN journalist who was with the delegation Beeley was with chose to ignore the scene.
Just prior to #Douma alleged attacks, I visited terrorist bomb factories with @CNN Frederick Pleitgen #Ghouta. We saw evidence of armed groups using chemical weapons, when Pleitgen reported Douma, he said nothing, blocked me on Twitter when challenged.— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) April 21, 2021
Presumably, it didn’t fit in with his scripted narrative on Douma.
When she interviewed civilians in Hamouri, eastern Ghouta, a month before the chemical allegations, Beeley learned that terrorist factions and their White Helmet accomplices had intended to stage an attack then, but it was derailed by Syrian civilians who came out demonstrating with Syrian flags.
On the 6th of March, in Hamouriya, we decided to protest against Failaq Al Rahman and we raised the Syrian flag. We marched against the terrorist occupation. They (Failaq Al Rahman) and the White Helmets were preparing a chemical attack which they intended to blame on the Syrian Arab Army as they closed in on the militants. They were furious with us for our march and for raising the Syrian flag, because it ruined their plans.
Very hard to present a “chemical attack” with scenes of cheering, flag-waving, Syrian civilians…
Fast forward to Saraqib, Idlib, February 2020, not long after it was liberated, where Beeley saw a former al-Nusra training centre containing another chemical lab.
#Idlib #Saraqeb – former Nusra Front military training center, suspected used by #WhiteHelmets also. Contains chemical lab where I saw boxes of ball bearings, nitric acid & other chem ingredients – alongside number of small rockets that could be packed wth materials. Report soon. pic.twitter.com/9WD7SLtCKM— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) February 24, 2020
Meanwhile, there are numerous instances of terrorist factions using chemicals against Syrian civilians.
Narwani’s Ghouta article also noted:
In Syria, the trouble began in December 2012 when the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front (a former IS ally), took over the country’s only chlorine manufacturing plant, a joint business venture with the Saudis located east of Aleppo. Damascus issued an immediate warning to the UN: “Terrorist groups may resort to using chemical weapons against the Syrian people… after having gained control of a toxic chlorine factory.”
Three months later, in what is viewed as the first real CW incident of the Syrian conflict, 26 people – the majority of them (16) Syrian soldiers – were killed in the village of Khan Assal in Aleppo in a reported chlorine attack. The next day, the Syrian government requested that the UN investigate the attack.
A few days later, there was another alleged chemical incident in Adra, northeast of Damascus, followed by a reported attack in Saraqeb, and then in Ghouta in August – the CW incident that almost triggered US military strikes. A Jordanian reporter on the ground in Ghouta interviewed witnesses who said the Saudis had provided militants with chemical weapons and that some had been detonated by accident.
Saudi-backed Jaysh al-Islam, publicly admitted in 2016 to using toxic agents in mortar attacks against Kurds in the Aleppo neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood. “During the clashes one of the Jaysh al-Islam brigades used [weapons] forbidden in this kind of confrontations,” the group said in a statement about the chemical attack, in which it claimed the perpetrator would be held accountable.
In November 2016, I spoke with the former director of al-Kindi hospital who told me of 65 casualties of what he and other doctors believed to be some sort of chemical attack, committed by terrorist factions.
In December 2018, Vanessa Beeley spoke with residents of the Khalidiyyah district of Aleppo where a week prior terrorists had committed a chemical attack, as well as in two other districts of the city.
In her upload of the residents’ testimonies, Beeley noted:
Nusra Front (rebranded as HTS) embedded in the Layramoun industrial area were responsible for the shelling of these districts with a total of 5 or 6 modified munitions containing toxic substances believed to be related to Amonium Nitrate (usually used as a chemical fertilizer).
Within hours of the attack, more than 150 civilians, including many children were treated for the effects of the toxic gas in the Aleppo hospitals – according to Dr Zaher Batal, head of the Aleppo Medical Association. Symptoms were streaming eyes, respiratory difficulty and tightness of the chest.
In March 2019, Vanessa Beeley wrote of a suspected chemical attack northwest of Al Suqaylabiyah, writing:
I was in Al Suqaylabiyah when this attack took place and I was able to visit the local hospital that received the 34 victims which included three children, one severely affected with respiratory problems. Victims complained of breathing difficulties, skin blisters, eye sensitivity, nausea and shock syndrome after the attack. One victim, Nawfal Tawbar, described the 1m high dense white smoke that enveloped the area after the mortars had exploded.
Clearly, there are numerous incidents of terrorist groups both having the capability to commit chemical attacks and their having actually done so.
Douma was not first “chemical attack” the West accused the Syrian government of carrying out. Over the years there have been many others, all of which were marked by the same inconsistencies of narrative and evidence of foreknowledge that mark the “official story” on Douma.
At Khan Sheikhoun for example, as I wrote in my 2018 Douma article:
It is worth recalling that their report in the previous year, on the allegations of a chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, contained “irregularities,” to put it mildly. The most glaring irregularity (mentioned in the annex section of their report) was the admission of 57 “victims” to hospital before any alleged attack even could have occurred. Another unexplained irregularity was sarin showing up in urine but not in blood tests from the same sample.
And at Ghouta, from the same article:
In 2013, the West and its media had accused the Syria government of a chemical attack in eastern Ghouta…These accusations were shot down by reports from investigative journalists, particularly Seymour Hersh, who concluded that terrorists possessed sarin and the workshops to manufacture rockets. Indeed, I saw one of these mortar and rocket workshops when in Saqba, eastern Ghouta. Massive amounts of missiles of varying sizes lay, as-yet unused, inside the workshop.
According to Mint Press News, Saudi Arabia also gave chemical weapons to terrorists in Ghouta for the 2013 attack. The Mint Press article cited anti-government fighters who said they’d been given chemical weapons which they didn’t know how to use, naming Saudi Prince Bandar as the source. So, in early May, I went to Kafr Batna where, in August 2013, hundreds of people had allegedly been treated at the Tuberculosis Hospital.
Mohammed al-Aghawani, administrator of the Tuberculosis Hospital which treated hundreds of alleged “chemical victims”, told me:
There was no chemical attack. I wasn’t at the hospital that night, but my staff told me what happened. Around 2am, there was suddenly noise, shouting, cars arriving at the hospital, bringing civilians. Some people, armed men, said there was a chemical attack. Some of them had foreign accents. They took people’s clothes off and started pouring water on them. They kept bringing people in till around 7am. Around 1,000 people, mostly children, alive, from nearby villages like Ein Terma, Hezze, Zamalka. Many people later said their children never came back.
Vanessa Beeley interviewed Ahmed Toumeh, a 42 year old from Hamouriya, about an alleged “chemical attack” in Zamalka in 2013:
Since the “chemical attack” in Zamalka in 2013 that supposedly killed 1300, people were fooled into not seeing it was an act between Nusra Front and their civil defence. When the chemicals were used, they had hospitals ready always two days before – they had information in advance of the supposed attacks. How could they know unless they were involved?
At that time (2013) there had been an earlier chemical attack by terrorist groups against the Syrian Army in Khan Al Asal. The Syrian government had invited UN investigators to Damascus. The same night the UN inspectors arrived, they (Nusra Front and White Helmets) prepared for the ‘chemical attack’ in Zamalka.
Everything was prepared. The video was filmed and produced, the water sprayers had been prepared two days in advance.
Many people were fooled by this act and from then on the White Helmets added to the image. They would film themselves rescuing children who were not hurt and they would take a wounded person and film him to change public opinion, to criminalise the Syrian government, portray the Army as destructive.
Those offering on-the-ground, substantive accounts countering the mainstream claims on Douma have been smeared and disregarded as Syrian or Russian propagandists. Ironically, most of those doing the smears have never set foot in Syria, much less Douma.
When Pearson Sharp, Vanessa Beeley, and myself shared our findings from Douma, we were predictably lambasted by Western corporate media like the BBC. And when others questioned the murky narrative, they too were smeared. As Vanessa Beeley wrote:
Academics, Professors Piers Robinson and Tim Hayward, came under concerted attack as did other members of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media when they analysed the events and questioned the veracity of it being a chemical attack. In the UK, the Times published no less than four articles labeling myself and the “rogue” academics as “Assad’s useful idiots,” timed to perfection on the day that the UK, US and France launched their unlawful bombing campaign against Syria. A bombing campaign that was fully enabled by the ignominious rush to judgement by corporate media in the West.
The Atlantic Council is a Washington DC-based think tank, which promulgates lies and propaganda to further imperialist wars and weapons sales, among other things.
They produced a whitewash article to discredit independent reporting on Syria, in which they dedicated a considerable segment to attacking both Vanessa Beeley and myself:
Many of the attacks on the White Helmets were both voiced and amplified by a group of pro-Assad bloggers, of whom the most prominent were British citizen Vanessa Beeley and Canadian citizen Eva Bartlett. These, in turn, were supported online by a group of Twitter users who have repeatedly targeted critics of the Assad regime. Neither Bartlett nor Beeley can be viewed as a credible or impartial commentator.”
A perhaps unintended result of their linking to articles we’ve written around Douma, and the White Helmets, is that open-minded readers might become informed instead of blindly believed the Atlantic Council’s nonsense.
There were more smears, but as usual they copy-pasted from prior ones, and don’t actually delve into the content of what we presented, which is testimonies of civilians — named civilians, even – in contrast to the “unnamed sources” or “media activists” Western corporate media so fondly make up.
An aspect of such character assassinations is implying that the reporting we do is effortless and we are essentially toured around by the Syrian government.
What the average reader may not realize is that even for ourselves, people known in Syria by now, there are the same bureaucratic procedures that all journalists must follow.
Further, unlike corporate journalists who have obscene funding and teams of people to help with research, translations, subtitling and even the logistics of planning a trip to Syria (visas, flights, travel from Lebanon, accommodation), we do everything on our own, with help from Syrian friends (accurate translations) and at our own expense.
Former producer Patrick Corbett elaborated on this to me a few years ago, saying:
If you’re working for a network like NBC, CBC, what people don’t realize is that behind the scenes you’ve got so much backup in every way. First of all, before you go out, you’ve got a team of researchers preparing things for you. You’ve got people who have contacts everywhere.
When you go to a place like Syria you have a fixer; a fixer is a local person who has contacts, can take you places..things like that. You go with things like a satellite phone, so you’re always in touch with your home base. If you have any problems, they’ll get people to you….
They’ve got somebody who will work with you doing your voice-over. When somebody stands in front of the camera, that’s not what’s coming out of their head, its what’s coming out of the corporate entity that is that news producing organization. They get paid six figure incomes to do what they do.
While the BBC is guilty of some of the worst war propaganda against Syria in this 10 year war against the Syrian people, it is worth mentioning that one of the BBC’s producers vocally expressed his skepticism over the “evidence” provided after the alleged events of April 7, 2018.
As Vanessa Beeley noted in 2019:
Riam Dalati is on the BBC production team based in Beirut and describes himself, on his Twitter page, as an “esteemed colleague” of Quentin Sommerville, the BBC’s Middle East correspondent.
Dalati broke ranks with his UK Government-aligned media, on Twitter, to announce that “after almost 6 months of investigation, I can prove, without a doubt, that the Douma hospital scene was staged.”
…Almost immediately after the alleged incident in Douma, he tweeted out his frustration that “activists and rebels” had used “corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption.”
The emotive wording of Dalati’s tweet, he was “sick and tired” of such manipulation of events, suggested that this was not the first time children had been used as props in a macabre war theatre designed to elicit public sympathy for escalated military intervention in Syria disguised as a necessary “humanitarian” crackdown on “Assad’s gassing of his own people.”
Dalati had been referring to the arranging of two children’s corpses into a “last hug” still life composition, a photo that went viral, rocketed into the social media sphere by activists who had collaborated with the brutal Jaish al-Islam regime while it tortured and abused the Syrian civilians under its control.
Yesterday, I posted the following:
No baby. Baby.
Ask yourselves why a baby has been added to the scene.
What else has been manipulated?
Everything?
#Douma https://t.co/VCVrKI3KA2
Seems like many others also find this questionable. pic.twitter.com/PRRE3hNfws— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) April 12, 2018
Whatever the reason for Dalati’s exasperation, the tweet was deleted before a watered down version appeared. Dalati claimed that a “breach of editorial policy” and lack of context was behind this alteration. Apparently BBC employees are not allowed to be “sick and tired” of the exploitation of children to promote a war that will inevitably kill more children. Simultaneously, Dalati’s account was protected, making tweets visible only to approved followers.
While the issue of the OPCW coverup and distortion of facts on the ground is important, there are many other issues sidelined by media, including well-intended media.
There’s the fact that countless hospitals have been attacked — severely damaged or destroyed — by terrorists, to the silence of Western media and politicians. This in turn means Syrians in areas where hospitals have been damaged or destroyed are denied medical care.
The suffering of civilians under terrorist rule is one. Thankfully, as most of Syria has been liberated from terrorist rule, there are now fewer civilians subject to their barbarism.
What has not been eradicated and has only gotten worse and worse are the criminal, brutal, sanctions against the Syrian people.
An article from the South African Broadcasting Corporation noted:
Electricity rationing in Syria has reached its highest levels due to the government’s inability to secure the fuel needed to generate electricity. This is mainly due to the damaging international economic sanctions led by the Western powers including the IIT protagonists France, UK and the US.
[…]The value of the Syrian pound has crumbled to almost nothing. Today it is about 3,660 pounds to one US dollar. An average wage is less than 2 US dollars a day.
The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019…is credited with bringing about starvation, darkness, plague, misery, robbery, kidnappings, increased mortality rate and the certain destruction of a nation that was once a beacon of hope across the Middle East.
International aid no longer reaches Syria compared to pre-Caesar Act. Many agencies are scared of falling foul of the harsh Act, which in short makes life a living hell for millions of ordinary Syrians.
In his overview of the Douma chemical lies, Kevork Almassian, of Syriana Analysis, also spoke of the harsh realities Syrians endure now, thanks to the war and the brutal western sanctions against Syrians:
Just imagine that for a second, that you have to wait for two to three to four hours to buy one package of bread that can suffice you maybe for two days for you and your family. Just imagine that you have to wait 20 to 48 hours on a gas station to fill a little bit fuel for your car. It’s unimaginable, you cannot imagine that because you’re not living that, but it is happening now in 21st century.
It is high time to put the Douma hoax to rest. It’s also beyond time to acknowledge the huge sacrifices of the Syrian army (and allies) in fighting terrorism and restoring peace to Syria.
Meanwhile, while cynical Western war propagandists mock the Syrian presidential elections, Syrians in Syria and around the world hold massive demonstrations in support of their president, as they did in 2014.
Filed under: Syria, War on Syria | Tagged: Douma, Eva Bartlett, False flag chemical attacks, Independent media, OPCW scandal, White Helmets | Comments Off on Douma: Three Years On: How independent media shot down the false “chemical attack” narrative.
By VT Editors -May 21, 2021
Damascus will be holding presidential elections on 26 May even though the government still does not control the province of Idlib, where the opposition and terrorist groups are in charge. It also does not control the country’s north-east, seized by the Kurdish militia backed by US forces.
The Al-Nusra Front* terrorist group is amassing chemicals in the Idlib de-escalation zone in Syria’s north in order to use them against the civilian population, the Russian Foreign Ministry has warned. According to the ministry, the terrorists are planning to carry out the provocation in the form of time-tested false-flag chemical attacks with the help of the White Helmets.
The White Helmets group calls itself a volunteer organisation and was established by former UK Army officer James Le Mesurier to allegedly help the victims of the Syrian civil war. However, they’ve often been spotted working hand-in-hand with terrorists from the Al-Nusra Front* and, according to Russian authorities citing witnesses, helped the group stage false-flag chemical attacks pretending to be assisting victims.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said that it obtained the information about the planned false-flag attack from a reliable source. The ministry stressed that the attack is scheduled to take place ahead of a crucial moment for Syria – the presidential election on 26 May.
“We express the hope that the disclosure of this information may help disrupt these criminal plans and prevent the deaths of innocent people”, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
The western media and governments have repeatedly accused Damascus of using chemical weapons against its own citizens in the war against the opposition and terrorists. Following the first accusations, the government agreed to destroy all of its stockpiles of chemical weapons under the surveillance of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). While Damascus destroyed its chemical armaments by June 2014, it warned that terrorists controlling some regions of the country, including Syrian Army warehouses, might still possess some.
Despite the supervised destruction of chemical weapons, western governments once again accused Damascus of using them in Douma, a city not far from the capital, on 7 April 2018. That attack was reported by the White Helmets, who published videos showing them purportedly treating survivors of the alleged attack. Although Damascus denied the act, the US, UK, and France launched airstrikes against Syrian government objectives claiming it was retaliation for the alleged chemical attack.
Terrorists Preparing Provocations Using Poisonous Substances in Syria’s Idlib, Russian Military Says
Russian chemical and military experts later found individuals who witnessed the actions of the White Helmets and who testified that there was no chemical attack and that members of the pseudo-humanitarian group simply grabbed them from off the street, poured water on them, and injected unknown medicine pretending to treat them for exposure to chemical weapons. Despite their testimonies, the OPCW failed to officially recognise the Douma incident as a false-flag attack.
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Filed under: Russia, Syria, UK, USA, War on Syria | Tagged: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Nusra Front), OPCW, OPCW scandal, White Helmets, Zakharova | Comments Off on Russia: White Helmets Planning New Gas Attack Outrage in Syria
May 2, 202121
Filed under: Syria, War on Syria, Western Lies | Tagged: Douma, False flag chemical attacks, OPCW, OPCW scandal | Comments Off on OPCW scandal: Jimmy Dore and Aaron Mate take it apart
OPCW NATO klansmen and their terrified house servants in The Hague, stripped Syria of its voting rights on Wednesday 21 April. The threat was originally launched by P3 member France, at the monthly anti-Syria chemical file meeting of the NATO klan ruling the UN, on 6 April. A whopping six days later, the UN-OPCW or the OPCW-UN published its Nuremberg crimes against humanity propaganda piece, via its IIT which is some type of geometric conversion of its FFM, as IIT is twice now twice the length of the criminally lying FFM.
Lest anyone forget, or have been thoroughly brainwashed into believing the crossword puzzle when the clue is “peacekeeping force,” NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Its stenography journalists keep to the acronym, to help prevent westerners — who used to learn geography via war — from looking at a map.
The NATO klansmen took over the OPCW when Dick Cheney sent John Bolton to threaten then OPCW head Jose Bustani, and then to threaten other members unless he was removed — because he refused to lie about Iraq and WMD (a similar reason as when Cheney had CIA agent Valerie Plame outted; her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson had refused to lie about Iraq and yellow cake.).
Another reminder: THE OPCW INVESTIGATORS NEVER ENTERED KHAN SHEIKHOUN, LTAMENAH, NOR SARAQIB BECAUSE AL QAEDA OCCUPYING THOSE AREAS OF SYRIA WERE A SECURITY HAZARD.
NONETHELESS, OPCW ACCEPTED AL QAEDA’S VERBAL TESTIMONY, AND AL QAEDA’S ‘SEXXED UP’ PHYSICAL EVIDENCE.
OPCW ADMITTED ITS INVESTIGATORS DID NOT ENTER THE AREAS THAT REQUIRED INVESTIGATIONS, IN ALL OF THE FFM AND IIT ‘DOSSIERS,’ ALL OF WHICH ARE INCLUDED IN ABOVE HYPERLINKED REPORT. SYRIA NEWS HAS READ EVERY WORD OF EACH OF THEM.
NOTE THE FEATURED IMAGE OF THE HUMAN GARBAGE PSYCHOPATHS THAT SCARED THE OPCW FROM ENTERING LTAMENAH. THESE BABOONS ARE THE REPUTED MEDICS, ACCORDING TO THE NATO KLANSMEN.
Colonialist France — which tested its nukes on Algeria — has always had a special antipathy toward the Syrian Arab Republic, for ejecting its occupiers, and its occupation; Evacuation Day was just celebrated, last week.
War criminal France, which nuked Algerians in its Gerboise Bleue atrocity, France which enucleated so many Gilets Jaunes that the ophthalmologists of the country actually sent a letter to Macron asking him to please stop blinding French citizens, also led the NATO UN klan sabotage of Syria’s request for an OPCW investigation of the terrorists’ use of chemical weapons which murdered upwards of 25 people in Khan al Asal, 19 March 2013, most of them Syrian Arab Army soldiers. France’s successful sabotage was assisted by UK, US, and Israel (the latter is basically a NATO country that pays no dues).
Syria’s requests to the UN for OPCW investigations began immediately after 5 December 2012, when terrorists located in Turkey uploaded a video showing the use of a chemical weapon in a terminal rabbit experiment, threatening to unleash it against the Syrian people. The same takfiri savages released a second deadly chemical video on 12 December 2012, claiming they had a poison that could be used to destroy the al Asinn natural water supply in Lattakia, and to massacre the ethnic minority of Alawites in the region. Both videos are in this report which pre-dates the al Qaeda atrocities in Khan Sheikhoun, by four weeks and two days. The poison appears to be what the Nusra Helmets used on their kidnapped victims on 4 April, as it was quick acting and resulted in the same, painful, agonal breathing in the caged rabbit as in the children stripped half-naked, triple atrocity of kidnap, poison, and show a snuff pornography to the world’s most degenerate pathogens.
The OPCW is NATO. NATO is the devil. As always — Iraq, Libya, Syria — in the making of any deal with the devil, it must only be considered in terms of a tactical necessity, to postpone the inevitable.
Despite Syria having joined the the NATO-run OPCW, turning over its unused chemical stockpile (something the US still has not done, yet there are no monthly meetings about the US ‘chemical file,’ no bombing of the US, no stripping it of its voting rights at The Hague), the NATO junta of the US, UK, France and assorted house servant criminals bombed the SAR based on the word of the Brit illegal once on trial for terrorism at home, the #NotADoctor criminal Shajul Islam, whose license to practice medicine in his homeland had long been revoked, and had it not, the illegal practice of medicine in someone else’s country is grounds for licensure revocation.
The OPCW / UN klansmen are still enraged over the ten year anniversary of the failed NATO Spring against the SAR, and likely have also been engaged in rug-chewing over the recent closure of their al Qaeda boys’ training center near Tadmor.
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Filed under: Al Qaeda, France, NATO Alliance, Syria | Tagged: OPCW, OPCW scandal | Comments Off on OPCW NATO Klan Strips Syria Voting Rights in The Hague
** Please scroll down for the ADJUSTED English Machine translation **
بثينة شعبان
المصدر: الميادين نت
نيسان 19 2021
هناك حرب مخابراتية إعلامية تستخدمها أجهزة المخابرات الغربية، وهي تسبق وتستمر إلى ما بعد الحرب العسكرية. وهذه الحرب بحاجة إلى اهتمام شديد وإلى تكريس الميزانيات والخبراء والأدمغة والأقلام لتفنيد كل الادعاءات والردّ عليها من على منصات إعلامية نافذة للغرب.
هناك نوع من الحرب يبدأ قبل شنّ أي هجوم ويستمر خلاله وبعده وهو الذي يوفّر الأرضية والحالة المجتمعية والسياسية والإعلاميّة لنجاح أي هجوم عسكري في أي مكان ولأي هدف كان، وقد مردت الدول الغربية الاستعمارية على تخصيص الميزانيات السخيّة ووضع الخطط التفصيلية، وشحذ الأدوات المهنية لمثل هذه الحرب، بحيث مازالت تتربع على عرش هذه الحرب وتنتصر فيها مرة تلو أخرى، وذلك لإغفال الآخرين لهذه الحقيقة الهامة وإحجامهم عن التوقف قليلاً وتغيير جداول ميزانياتهم وأولويات خططهم.
ما أقصده هو الحرب الإعلامية التي يستخدم القائمون عليها من أجهزة المخابرات الغربية خبراء في اللغات والتعبير وخبراء في تاريخ وثقافة وأديان وطوائف الشعوب ليعلموا من أين ينفذوا إلى عقول هذه الشعوب وقلوبها ويسيّروها وفقاً للمصالح الغربية، ويستخدمون خبراء في علم النفس وخبراء في الترويج وخبراء في الأصوات والموسيقى والتأثير وربما خبراء في اختصاصات لم نطّلع عليها بعد ومازالت حكراً عليهم ولمراكز أبحاثهم ووسائل إعلامهم، إذ أن الدارس لساحة الصراعات والحروب التي تشنها القوى الغربية لنهب ثروات الشعوب وعلى الأخص الولايات المتحدة التي تشن الحروب اليوم مع أتباعها على دول عديدة يكاد يصاب بالدهشة من المفارقات الجمّة بين الواقع على الأرض وبين الادعاءات التي يتم الترويج لها في إعلام الكون حتى تصبح حقيقة لا يتجرّأ أحد على تحدّيها، وحتى إذا تجرأ لن يتمكن من قلب المعادلة وإعادة الاعتبار للوقائع التي تشير إلى عكس توجه العاصفة الإعلامية.
والأمثلة أكثر من أن تُحصى. وإذا بدأت بضرب المثال عن وطني سوريا فإننا نجد أن الغرب وبعد أن أنشأ غرفاً ومنظمات وموّلها بسخاء لتشويه ما يحدث على الأرض السورية (وقد كشفت تسريبات الوثائق البريطانية عن حرب إعلامية منظمة وممولة منذ اليوم الأول منذ بداية الحرب الإرهابية على سوريا) بعد ذلك بدأوا بإخراج أفلام ومنحها جائزة أوسكار لأكاذيب صمموها واخترعوها وروّجوا لها وأصبحت بالنسبة لهم واقعاً بديلاً يدحض سيرة الواقع المعاش ومن هذه الأفلام “رجل حلب الأخير” و”الكهف”، وبالنسبة لجماهير الغرب فإن هذه الأفلام هي القناة الأساسية التي تنبؤهم بما جرى في سورية. رغم أن هذه الأفلام، تماماً كقصة الطفل عمران، هي عبارة عن أكاذيب ملفقة لا تمتّ إلى الحقيقة بصلة قام بها بعض المأجورين وعلى رأسهم فراس فياض لتقديم ما يشتهي الغرب رؤيته وسماعه عن حرب ابتدعها لتدمير حياة الملايين من شعب مسالم في بلد آمن ومستقر يشكّل شوكة في أعين الصهاينة والطامعين بإرث هذه الأمة.
وفي الاتهامات المزعومة عن استخدام الحكومة السورية للغازات السامة في دوما وسراقب، تأتي هذه الاتهامات لتناقض تناقضاً صارخاً تقرير منظمة حظر الأسلحة الكيماوية والتي أكدت أن سوريا قد تخلت عن كلّ أسلحتها الكيماوية وأنها خالية من السلاح الكيماوي وكان هذا منذ سنوات، والبارحة في 16/4/2021 عقد السفير الروسي في الأمم المتحدة فاسيلي نيبينزيا جلسة استماع لخبراء منظمة حظر الأسلحة الكيماوية، وخبراء آخرين في الملف والموضوع أكدوا خلالها وبما لا يدع مجالاً للشك تلاعب بعض العناصر في المنظمة بالتقرير الذي كتبه الفريق الذي زار سوريا واستبدلوه بأكاذيب من قبل أطراف لم تطأ أقدامها أرض سورية، كما رفض المسؤولون في المنظمة الاستماع لهؤلاء الذين زاروا سورية والمدير السابق للمنظمة لأن تقاريرهم تؤكد على عدم استخدام الحكومة السورية للغازات السامة وأن ما تمّ الترويج له على شاشات التلفزة هو مسرحية إعلامية هزلية لأن هؤلاء الناس لو تعرضوا للغازات السامة لكانوا أمواتاً ولما كانوا موجودين لسكب الماء عليهم.
والذاكرة تعود بنا إلى كولن باول وإلى ادعاءات أميركا بأن العراق يمتلك أسلحة دمار شامل، وبعد أن أنهوا بحثهم في الملف ووجدوا أنه على الأغلب لا يوجد أي دليل لما أكدوه مراراً وتكراراً ختموا التقرير بالشمع الأحمر وأودعوه أقفال الأمم المتحدة ومنعوا فتحه إلى ما بعد ستين عاماً أي بعد أن يكون كل من عاش وشهد الأحداث أصبح في ذمة الله.
وهناك قصص مشابهة كثيرة ومتوفرة عبر الاتهامات التي يكيلونها لروسيا والصين بشأن مواضيع عدة، وعن الأكاذيب التي تطبخ في ذات المطبخ عن الحرب على اليمن، وعما يجري في أوكرانيا وعن حقيقة المواقف من الاتفاق النووي الإيراني والقائمة تطول. ولكن ما يثلج الصدر اليوم هو بداية التصدي وإن يكن مازال في بداياته لهذه الحرب المخابراتية الإعلامية الخطيرة، إذ أن الجلسة التي عقدها البارحة السفير الروسي في الأمم المتحدة وأعطى المنبر لعدد من الشهود الموثوقين والذين فنّدوا الحقائق حول الملف الكيميائي السوري بطريقة يجب أن تدفع القائمين على التزوير إلى الخجل من أنفسهم وعدم الإقدام على مثل هذه المهزلة مرة أخرى.
وفي الإطار ذاته وبذات الروح قرأت مقالاً في جريدة (الصين اليومية) عن إقليم شيجيانغ بقلم الكاتب فو زو وبتاريخ 8/4/2021 فنّد فيه بما لا يدع مجالاً للشك الأكاذيب الأميركية حول إقليم شيجيانغ وأثبت بالأرقام اهتمام الحكومة الصينية بالتعليم لكل سكان هذا الإقليم وبالتعليم الداخلي الذي يوازي بجودته أي تعليم داخلي في العالم. كما يتحدث الكاتب عن تحسين المستوى المعيشي لسكان الإقليم والعمل الذي يدأبون للقيام به لتحسين مستوى معيشتهم وأن الصين تقف ضدّ أي اضطهاد أو تطهير عرقي أو إبادة يدّعي الغرب أن الصين تمارسها في الإقليم. ومن الواضح من تاريخ الصين ومن عملها للقضاء على الفقر في كل الصين وعلى رفع مستوى المعيشة للصينيين أنها حضارة تهتم بالإنسان وبمقدرات عيشه ولا تدخل التفرقة الدينية أو العنصرية في قاموس سياساتها.
ومن ناحية أخرى من المضحك أن تدّعي الولايات المتحدة الحرص على حياة المسلمين الإيغور في الصين وعلى تعليمهم ومستوى معيشتهم وقد كرّست منظمات إرهابية ومولتها بالمال ومازالت، لتدمير آلاف المدارس في سورية والتي يرتادها مسلمون ومسيحيون، ولتدمير الجوامع والكنائس والأسواق التاريخية والآثار والحضارة. فكيف يمكن أن تكون حريصة على مسلمي الصين ومدمّرة لمسلمي العراق وسورية وليبيا واليمن؟ من أين أتى اهتمام الولايات المتحدة بمسلمي الإيغور في الصين إلا من باب التدخل في شؤون الصين الداخلية، تماماً كما هي سياستها حيال تايوان وهونغ كونغ من جهة، وسياستها تجاه أوكرانيا والقرم بالنسبة إلى روسيا من جهة ثانية. لا يمكن فهم ما تقوم به الولايات المتحدة إلا من باب التدخل في شؤون الدول الداخلية والحرص على أمن “إسرائيل” وقوتها الإرهابية في المنطقة.
لقد علِمَتْ الولايات المتحدة أن الكيان الصهيوني هو الذي قام بالهجوم على محطة نطنز لتدمير المباحثات الأميركية الإيرانية ولكننا لم نسمع كلمة إدانة لهذا الهجوم من الولايات المتحدة أو من أي دولة غربية. كما أنهم يلتزمون الصمت عن كل الأكاذيب التي يتم الترويج لها عن أوكرانيا والقرم بعد أن اتخذت الولايات المتحدة عقوبات ضد روسيا على أسس واهية لا دليل واحد فيها على كل الادعاءات بل هي تعترف أن صحة هذه الادعاءات منخفضة إلى متوسطة.
المهم في الموضوع هو أن هذه الحرب المخابراتية الإعلامية التي تسبق وترافق وتستمر إلى ما بعد الحرب العسكرية بحاجة إلى اهتمام شديد وإلى تكريس الميزانيات والخبراء والأدمغة والأقلام لتفنيد كل الادعاءات والردّ عليها من على منصات إعلامية نافذة للغرب وتصل إلى أسماع البشر في كل أنحاء الدنيا تماماً كما فعل السفير فاسيلي نيبينزيا في الجلسة الهامة التي تحدث بها الخبراء وفندوا ألاعيب منظمة الأسلحة الكيماوية، وتماماً كما فعلت جريدة الصين اليوم بتفنيد كل الأكاذيب المختلقة حول إقليم شيجيانج. ولا بأس من تخصيص ميزانية سخيّة لهذا الأمر حتى وإن تم اقتطاعها من ميزانيات الدفاع العسكرية لأن الدفاع بالكلمة والترويج للحقائق النابعة من الأرض في وجه الأكاذيب والافتراءات قد يوفّر على الجيوش معارك عسكرية مكلفة وقد يساهم في تثقيف الرأي العام العالمي حول حقيقة السياسات الغربية والكلفة الباهظة التي يدفعها البشر في كل أنحاء الأرض نتيجة هذه السياسات.
إن مواجهة سياسة القطب الواحد وضمان ولادة عالم متعدد الأقطاب تحتاج إلى استراتيجيات شاملة تتصدى لاستراتيجيات الهيمنة والتدخل والإسفاف والتزوير والذي كلّف دماء وحياة واستقراراً وأمناً لشعوبنا جمعاء.
نحن بحاجة إلى وقفة عميقة صادقة وذكية وشاملة وبحاجة لمقارعة من يشن الهجوم ويدمر البلدان بأدوات أذكى وأدهى من أدواتهم على كل الصعد وفي كافة المجالات.
مقالات ذات صلة
مقالات ذات صلة
Buthaina Shaaban
Source: Al-Mayadeen Net
April 19, 2021
There is a media intelligence war used by Western intelligence services, which precedes and continues until after the military war. This war needs great attention and budgets, experts, brains and pens are devoted to refuting and responding to all allegations from west-window media platforms.
There is a kind of war that begins before, during and after any attack, which provides the ground and the societal, political and media situation for the success of any military attack anywhere and for any purpose, and the western colonial states have been forced to allocate generous budgets and draw up detailed plans, and sharpen the professional tools of such a war, so that they still sit on the throne of this war and win it again and again, in order to ignore others for this important fact and their reluctance to stop a little and change their budget schedules and priorities.
What I mean is the media war on which western intelligence agencies use experts in languages and expression, experts in the history, culture, religions and communities of peoples to know where to carry out to the minds and hearts of these peoples and to conduct them in accordance with Western interests, and use experts in psychology, promotion experts, experts in sounds, music and influence, and perhaps experts in disciplines that we have not yet seen and are still exclusive to them, their research centers and their media, as The study of the arena of conflicts and wars waged by western powers to plunder the wealth of peoples, especially the United States, which is waging wars today with its followers on many countries, is almost surprised by the great paradoxes between reality on earth and the allegations promoted in the media of the universe so that it becomes a reality that no one dares to challenge, and even if he dares, he will not be able to turn the equation and reconsider the facts that indicate the opposite of the direction of the media storm.
Examples are too many. If you start to set an example of my homeland syria, we find that the West, having created rooms and organizations and generously funded them to distort what is happening on Syrian soil (leaks of British documents have revealed an organized and funded media war since the first day since the beginning of the terrorist war on Syria) then began to direct and give films The Oscar for lies they designed, invented, promoted and became, for them, an alternative reality that refutes the biography of living reality, including “The Last Man of Aleppo” and “The Cave”, and for western audiences, these films are the main channel that predicts what happened in Syria. Although these films, just like the story of The Child Imran, are fabricated lies that have nothing to do with the truth, some of the hacks, led by Firas Fayyad, have done to present what the West desires to see and hear about a war it created to destroy the lives of millions of peaceful people in a safe and stable country that is a thorn in the eyes of the Zionists and those who aspire to the legacy of this nation.
In the alleged accusations of the Syrian government’s use of toxic gases in Douma and Saraqeb, these accusations are in stark contrast to the report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which confirmed that Syria has abandoned all its chemical weapons and that it is chemical-weapon-free and this has been for years, and yesterday on 16 April 2021, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia held a hearing of experts of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and other experts in the file and subject confirmed during it and not There is no doubt that some elements of the organization manipulated the report written by the team that visited Syria and replaced it with lies by parties that did not set foot on Syrian soil, as the officials of the organization refused to listen to those who visited Syria and the former director of the organization because their reports confirm the Syrian government’s non-use of toxic gases and that what was promoted on television is a comic media play because if these people had been exposed to toxic gases they would have died and would not have been there to pour water on them.
The memory brings us back to Colin Powell and America’s claims that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, and after they have finished their research on the file and found that there is probably no evidence of what they have repeatedly confirmed, they sealed the report with red wax, called it the locks of the United Nations and prevented it from opening it until after 60 years, i.e. after all those who lived and witnessed the events became in the hands of God.
There are many similar stories available through accusations by Russia and China on several topics, about the lies that are being cooked in the same kitchen about the war on Yemen, what is going on in Ukraine and about the reality of the positions on the Iran nuclear deal and the list goes on. But what is heartening today is the beginning of the response, although it is still in its infancy for this dangerous media intelligence war, as the meeting held yesterday by the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations and gave the platform to a number of reliable witnesses who refuted the facts about the Syrian chemical file in a way that should lead the counterfeiters to be ashamed of themselves and not to make such a farce again.
In the same spirit, I read an article in the China Daily on Zhejiang Province by writer Fu Zhou on April 8, 2021, in which he refuted beyond a doubt U.S. lies about Zhejiang province and in numbers demonstrated the Chinese government’s interest in education for all the region’s population and internal education, which is equal to the quality of any internal education in the world. The author also talks about improving the standard of living of the territory’s population and the work they are doing to improve their standard of living and that China stands against any persecution, ethnic cleansing or extermination claimed by the West to be practiced by China in the territory. It is clear from China’s history and its work to eradicate poverty in all China and to raise the standard of living of the Chinese that it is a civilization that cares about human beings and their livelihoods and does not include religious or racial segregation in the dictionary of its policies.
On the other hand, it is funny that the United States claims to take care of the lives, education and standard of living of Uighur Muslims in China, and has dedicated terrorist organizations and financed them with money and continues to destroy thousands of schools in Syria frequented by Muslims and Christians, and to destroy mosques, churches, historical markets, monuments and civilization. How can you be keen on the Muslims of China and destroy the Muslims of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen? Where did the U.S. interest in Uighur Muslims in China come from except for interference in China’s internal affairs, just as its policy on Taiwan and Hong Kong on the one hand, and its policy toward Ukraine and Crimea for Russia on the other. What the United States is doing can only be understood in order to interfere in the affairs of internal states and to ensure the security of Israel and its terrorist power in the region.
The United States has learned that it was the Zionist entity that attacked Natanz station to destroy the U.S.-Iran talks, but we have not heard a word of condemnation from the United States or any Western country. They also remain silent about all the lies promoted about Ukraine and Crimea after the United States has taken sanctions against Russia on flimsy grounds, not a single evidence of all allegations, but recognizes that the veracity of these allegations is low to medium.
What is important about the matter is that this media intelligence war that precedes, accompanies and continues until after the military war needs great attention and devoting budgets, experts, brains and pens to refute all allegations and respond to them from media platforms open to the West and reach the ears of people in all parts of the world just as Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia did in the important session in which the experts spoke and refuted the tricks of the Chemical Weapons Organization, just as the China Today newspaper refuted all the fabricated lies about Zhejiang. There is nothing wrong with allocating a generous budget for this matter, even if it is cut from military defense budgets, because defending by word and promoting facts emanating from the ground in the face of lies and fabrications may save armies costly military battles and may contribute to educating the world public opinion about the truth of Western policies and the high cost paid by them. Humans are all over the earth as a result of these policies.
Confronting one-pole politics and ensuring the birth of a multipolar world requires comprehensive strategies that address strategies of domination, intervention, subsistence and forgery that have cost blood, life, stability and security to all ourpeoples.
We need a deep, honest, intelligent and comprehensive stand and need to fight those who launch the attack and destroy countries with smarter and more powerful tools at all levels and in all areas.
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Filed under: China, Double standards, Russia, Syria, Western Propaganda | Tagged: Bouthaina Shaaban, Douma, False flag chemical attacks, Informational intelligence war, Media War, Multi-polar world order, OPCW scandal, Saraqib, The Zio-temporary entity, Western MSM lies | Comments Off on الحرب الأخطر The most dangerous war
By VT Editors -April 15, 2021
Press TV: Syria has dismissed as “false and fabricated” the results of a probe by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into an alleged chemical attack in the northwestern city of Saraqib on February 4, 2018.
On Monday, the OPCW released the findings of its Investigation and Identification Team (IIT), which blamed the Saraqib incident on the Syrian government.
“The report reached the conclusion that there are reasonable grounds to believe that, at approximately 21:22 on 4 February 2018, a military helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Force under the control of the Tiger Forces hit eastern Saraqib by dropping at least one cylinder. The cylinder ruptured and released chlorine over a large area, affecting 12 named individuals,” it claimed in a report.
In a statement published on Wednesday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said the OPCW’s “misleading report,” written by “an illegitimate and incredible team,” fabricates “facts” to incriminate the Damascus government.
“This report has included false and fabricated conclusion which represents another scandal for the OPCW and the inquiry teams that will be added to the scandal of the reports of Douma incident in 2018, and Ltamenah in 2017,” it said.
“The Syrian Arab Republic condemns, in the strongest terms, what has been included in the report of the illegitimate so-called ‘Investigation and Identification Team’ and rejects all its context.”
The ministry also stressed that the Syrian government categorically denies using toxic gases in Saraqib or in any other city or village, affirming that the army has never used such materials during most difficult battles carried out against armed terrorist organizations.
It further reiterated that Syria categorically rejects the use of chemical weapons at any time or place, saying, the country “has never used any chemical weapon and can’t use it.”
Syria surrendered its entire chemical stockpile in 2013 to a mission led by the United Nations and the OPCW.
It believes that false-flag chemical attacks on the country’s soil have been staged by foreign-backed militants in a bid to pressure the government amid army advances.
https://if-cdn.com/dM0G7Br?v=1&app=1
Revelations suggest that the OPCW may have intentionally doctored its findings about alleged gas attacks in Syria to avoid implicating the foreign-backed militants.
Damascus has repeatedly urged the chemical weapons watchdog to avoid politicizing Syrian issues.
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Filed under: Syria, Takfiris, War on Syria, Western Lies | Tagged: Douma, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Nusra Front), OPCW, OPCW scandal, SAA, Saraqib, White Helmets | 1 Comment »
The ruling NATO junta at the UN held its monthly chemical weapons lying meeting against Syria, on 6 April. The rabid hyenas once again vomited up and then ate each others’ emesis, though even they are becoming bored with their nonsense. The US ambassador did not bother to post a self-aggrandizing tweet, UK issued a blurb without statement, and the High Representative on Disarmament apparently also had better things to do than to issue a tweet on her statement to the UNSC. Colonialist France — which has never forgiven the Levantine republic for ejecting its occupiers, seventy-five years ago on 17 April — did issue an arrogant and menacing statement based on the NATO klansmen’s chemical weapons lies against the SAR.
UK’s tweet once again showed Great Britain’s support of al Qaeda in Syria. The Ltamenah chemical weapons lies came from terrorists of whom the OPCW FFM investigators were too terrified to actually investigate, so the team basically took the savages at their word, having “assessed the credibility of the allegations based on information collected from open sources and information received from several non-governmental organizations (NGOs).” In Khan Sheikhoun, the primary source of the lies came from the Brit illegal in Idlib, the fake doctor whose medical license in his home country was permanently revoked, and the place where the terrorists were too terrifying for the fake FFM to do any physical inspecting, as admitted in the OPCW report of 19 May 2017.
Regarding Douma, the Brits continue to lie that chemical weapons were used, and continue to lie that Syria — which immediately invited the OPCW investigators to come and investigate, but they first were inexplicably detained in Belgium — and Russia had blocked entry, after the team belatedly arrived. Though the criminal OPCW reports on the teams non-inspections of Ltamenah and Khan Sheikhoun were published in a timely fashion, it took almost a year for the once noble, and subsequently corrupted by NATO klansmen to jerry-rig a report that could barely concoct a meaningless conclusion that “the objects from which the samples were taken at both locations had been in contact with one or more substances containing reactive chlorine.” [2.6]. Syria News has provided massive evidence provided by the savages’ own videos and photographs, that al Qaeda’s Jaish al Islam faction, with the assistance of its humanitarian benefactors kidnapped dozens of civilians, especially woman and their children, slaughtered most of them, engaged in acts of necrophilia with their corpses, and terrorized children taken from their moms, stripped some half-naked and turned power hoses on them in a fake hospital setting on a chilly night.
The FFM team could not enter Douma until almost a week after arrival due to the
high security risk to the team, which included the presence of unexploded ordinance,
explosives and sleeper cells still suspected of being active in Douma. On 18 April,
during a reconnaissance visit to two sites of interest, the security detail was
confronted by a hostile crowd and came under small arms fire and a hand-grenade
explosion. The incident reportedly resulted in two fatalities and one injury. — 2.2 Summary, 106 pp OPCW report on Douma, 1 March 2019
The once-noble OPCW showed its turn to corruption when it ejected Jose Bustani per the dictate of neocon Dick Cheney, via his errand boy neocon, John Bolton, who threatened the lives of Bustani’s children. Since October 2020, this organization has shown its revulsion to integrity by ending open, civilized, discourse to its Twitter account.
OPCW only permits comments by its designated elites; the serfs who pay for the now phony watchdog group are excluded from civilized discourse.
The devastating photo posted by La France looks like it could be Libya after NATO obliterated it, or al Raqqa after the fascist coalition of war criminals led by the US bombed it, though it also could be CGI, as it is not found in a reverse image check of 46.7 billion images on the web.
In her second consecutive monthly address on the never-ending Syria files dedicated to the never-ending implementation of UNSCR 2118 (2013), Zakamitsu sallied for against the difficulties regarding COVID being in the way, reported on previously unreported September 2020 samples having been analyzed with cryptically unexpected results to which the UNSC chemical weapons gathering is not yet privy. Due course has also not yet arrived as, per the UN press release, she made no mention of the collected November 2020 samplings.
At the 4 March chemical weapons propaganda party.
In meticulously diplomatic language, First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy told the Council of the upcoming, unprecedented plot by the NATO klan to illicitly remove Syria from the CWC at the upcoming Conference. Such an attempt to “incapacitate” Syria at the OPCW is a breach of the OPCW noble Charter and is based on the “illegitimate” IIT which “defied the principles of investigation, including the so-called ‘chain of custody.’” What Representative Polyanskiy diplomatically did not say is that the removal of the SAR from its membership to the CWC would facilitate new false flag chemical attacks by various al Qaeda terrorist factions, many of which have been thwarted over the recent period (here, here, here, here, here.)
His Excellency Bassam Sabbagh reaffirmed that Syria has never used chemical weapons, that it willingly ascended to the CWC, that it gave full accounting of its stockpile, and continues to work closely with the OPCW and the High Representative. He decried the ongoing politicization by ‘some members’ [NATO klan bullies who have hijacked the UN], the omission of any mention of the Courage Foundation of 11 March, which forcefully condemned the unscientific OPCW reports on the Douma ”chemical weapons” attack, as culled from the mass murderers and NGOs with charitable status, conveniently aligned with State Department and other NATO countries anti-Syria propaganda (
The seemingly long silence at the beginning of the Syrian ambassador’s statement is actually short, and likely part of the ongoing subtle sabotage of the Syrian Mission to the UN, which includes such things as getting stuck with the worst simultaneous translators on the planet, and introducers choking on the pronunciations of Syria, Arab, Syrian Arab Republic.
APPENDIX:
While in search of a criminal lie tweeted about Douma and the OPCW investigative team (not found), the author stumbled into a lengthy lying statement by the UK to the OPCW, issued two days after UK, France, and the US bombed Syria on behalf of al Qaeda kidnappers, mass-murderers, and necrophiliacs of Douma. The Couture Beauty Diamond Lipstick wearing pig lied about a chemical weapons attack, lied that breaching the Geneva Agreements was “humanitarian intervention.” The Couture-wearing pig flagrantly flaunted the use of open source — i.e., mass murderers and necrophiliacs of various al Qaeda factions – as ‘evidence’ of his war criminal lies.
Quite disturbing was his blanket statement that “The World Health Organization has reported that 500 patients, seen by its partners in Syria, had symptoms consistent with chemical weapons exposure.” While the WHO was ”deeply alarmed by reports of the suspected use of toxic chemicals in Douma city,” its actual statement does not say that, but does open up a can of maggots involving its unnamed Health Cluster partners, given that the reports all came from kidnappers and killers:
According to reports from Health Cluster partners, during the shelling of Douma on Saturday, an estimated 500 patients presented to health facilities exhibiting signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals. In particular, there were signs of severe irritation of mucous membranes, respiratory failure and disruption to central nervous systems of those exposed.
The WHO also made the outrageous claims that “[m]ore than 70 people sheltering in basements have reportedly died, with 43 of those deaths related to symptoms consistent with exposure to highly toxic chemicals. Two health facilities were also reportedly affected by these attacks.”
The subsequent outrage demanded by WHO Deputy Director-General Peter Salama, “at these horrifying reports and images from Douma” should be directed to the criminally insane savages who slaughtered dozens, dumped them like garbage, next to empty dog food bowls and rusting bicycles, dumped them in a way that even persons forced to stand jammed like human sardines could not have possibly fallen when murdered, corpses shown as rearranged for more emotional impact, murdered children whose bodies have been stripped half naked, photographed with useless ambu bags nearby, EKG electrodes wrongly positioned, something unidentifiable placed between the legs of a murdered, half-naked child, non-existent hospitals where kidnapped children separated from their moms, were emotionally terrorized and physically abused.
Only idiots or degenerates who touch themselves watching murder porn videos could possibly see hospitals where none exist, or human beings slaughtered to give the NATO war criminals the excuse to murder more Syrians, would lie that these obscene photographs are evidence of civilians who died from a chemical weapons attack. Infamia.
Let us also finally put to rest the horror of perverts smearing shaving cream and other concoctions onto the faces of corpses — many in varying states of decomposition — so that the rabid hyenas can claim the “foaming at the mouth” reputedly caused by chemical toxins. “Foaming — or frothing — at the mouth” is a simplified way to describe pleural effusion, and the body’s attempt to excrete excessive fluid in the lungs, caused by a variety of diseases and disorders, including an acute episode of congestive heart failure (CHF). The excretion may look like small bubbles on the lips, which do not have the drama of shaving cream applied by perverts.
Look on these terrible works by the criminally psychotic, and despair, but do not dare to suggest these heinous atrocities perpetrated against Syrian human beings are anything other than mass slaughter for the unfettered rabid dogs of war.
More Here
Filed under: Al Qaeda, Syria | Tagged: Douma, John Bolton, Khan Sheikhoun, NATO Alliance, OPCW, OPCW scandal | 1 Comment »
MARCH 30 ,2021
By Rick Sterling
In the past few months, Grayzone journalist Aaron Mate has interviewed two former ambassadors to Syria: former UK Ambassador Peter Ford and former U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Ford.
The two ambassadors have a common surname but dramatically different perspectives. This article will compare the statements and viewpoints of the two diplomats.
UK Ambassador Peter Ford (PF)
Peter Ford trained as an Arabist and served in the British foreign service in numerous cities including Beirut, Riyadh, and Cairo. He was Ambassador to Bahrein from 1999 to 2003, then Syria from 2003 to 2006. From 2006 until 2014 he was a senior officer with the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.
The interview with UK Amb. Peter Ford (PF) shows why he is exceptional former diplomat. He analyzes and criticizes western aggression against Syria.
PF describes the current situation:
“The Syrian government forces control about 70% of the country. There’s that pocket of jihadi fighters controlling Idlib province and a couple of patches of neighboring provinces, and then you’ve got the big—what I call the wild east of Syria—the big triangle of land up all the way along the thousand miles along the Turkish border and then down the Iraqi border, and that is effectively a US protectorate. There are US forces there being helped on the ground by basically Kurdish militia, the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces.”
PF describes the crushing economic sanctions:
“It’s utterly shocking…The policy has been effective in the sense that Syrian people are suffering every day. There are long queues for bread, long queues for gasoline. The policy of sanctions and denial of assistance for reconstruction has been effective, but what kind of policy is it that tries to immiserate a whole country? It’s delusional because it’s not even going to work….
“The experience of 10 years of this conflict is that the Syrian government is amazingly resilient. They’ve been on the ropes many times in this conflict and pulled through largely because they have the support of great swaths of the Syrian populace. Assad is not going to buckle under this new increased economic pressure. It is utterly delusional to believe that this cynical, callous policy could work.”
PF analyzes the US troops in north eastern Syria.
“By their mere presence, they’re preventing the advance of the Syrian government forces. The result is that the Syrian people are denied the great oil and grain wealth of that triangle, the territory. And, so the war over the last year has been more an economic war than a military war…
“The troops are there basically as a tripwire, a deterrent, so that if the Syrian government forces advanced, they would trip over a few American soldiers and that would incur the massive intervention of the US Air Force. This is what it comes down to. They don’t even need big numbers of troops to create the tripwire.
“Even so, it’s interesting that the architects of this policy in the permanent government of the US found it necessary to deceive the head of the executive, the President, keep him in the dark about the numbers…. So, the deceit that has gone on—on every level—is jaw-dropping to me as a former ambassador and an insider in the British system. I find it absolutely incredible.”
PF describes what the war is and is NOT about.
“US policy is NOT about installing in Syria a democratic government, because there is no prospect of that while the US is effectively supporting Islamist fanatics, and while it’s supporting elsewhere in the Middle East regimes like the feudal regime of Saudi Arabia. No, it’s not about democracy. It’s about helping Israel on the one hand and scoring points against Russia on the other. And when it comes down to it, that is what this whole war is really about, from the US standpoint.”
PF analyzes accusations Syrian government used chemical weapons.
“The world has amnesia over Iraq, the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the Colin Powell dossier proof presented to the UN. It’s like Groundhog Day when you hear the claims made about Assad, the use of chemical weapons.
“In the first place, it would make no practical sense for Assad to use chemical weapons; it could only ever have been an own goal. If he wanted to invite heavy Western intervention, he would not have gone about it any other way. You’d have to be incredibly either twisted or delusional to believe that Assad could have been so stupid as to do the one thing—use chemical weapons—which would bring about, or possibly bring about, his obliteration.
“I’m quite convinced this is an elaborate hoax. A series of hoaxes. It’s very revealing that not one of the alleged instances of use of chemical weapons was investigated on the ground by any UN or other international investigations, with the sole exception of Douma. And why Douma? Because that was a piece of territory that the government forces managed to recover immediately after the alleged incident, so that the US and its allies were unable to keep away the international investigators…. That ultimately is the purpose of the chemical weapon hoaxes—to justify the occupation of northeast Syria and the continuing cruel economic pressure.”
PF comments on the senior staff from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons who say they did NOT find evidence of chemical weapons attack and their findings were changed by management.
“These gentlemen [from OPCW]) drafted a report stating that they found evidence that was consistent with staging of an incident, rather than an authentic incident. And ever since, they have been vilified, condemned, undermined. And the campaign against the truth goes on and on and on….”
PF comments on the role of the “White Helmets”.
“The White Helmets’ role is absolutely crucial, pivotal to the Western effort to undermine Syria through these accusations of use of chemical weapons. I think, basically, what happened is that Western governments realized that after the Iraq debacle, that if they were going to use claims about WMD, chemical weapons, whatever, again, they were going to have to produce some kind of smoking gun.
“And this is the role of the White Helmets. They produced the phony pictures of phony incidents which constitute the smoking gun. And that is absolutely pivotal to the propaganda to justify the bombing and the relentless economic and military pressure on Syria…. Western governments [have] been funding the White Helmets to the tune of about $50 million a year. That’s peanuts compared to what they see as the advantages of bringing Syria to its knees.”
PF predicts what may happen ahead.
“I think things are likely to get worse, rather than better.
“What we’ll probably see is simply a continuation of the status quo. The current policies will simply be extended…. to prolong the conflict, to prevent Assad gaining military victory, the continuation of economic warfare to try to bring Assad to his knees and force him to sign a suicide note, which would be acceptance of elections on US terms. I’m sure these policies will be continued.
“But there’s a question mark over whether policy might not become even more adventurous and interventionist with a beachhead of a few thousand soldiers already occupying part of Syria. I greatly fear that Biden might be tempted to increase those numbers, put some military pressure on the Syrian government forces, create more no-fly zones. Already, there’s effectively a no-fly zone over that big triangle of territory that’s occupied by the US forces and Kurdish allies. An attempt might be made to create the no-fly zone of Idlib, which would be ironic. It would mean that the US Air Force was the air wing of al-Qaeda…
“I’m definitely not optimistic. And I fear things could get even worse.”
US Ambassador Robert S. Ford (RSF)
Robert S. Ford was a U.S. diplomat in numerous cities including Algiers and Cairo. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Bahrein from 2001 to 2004, then Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2006. As an Arabic speaker, he may have helped Ambassador John Negroponte launch the “El Salvador option” (death squads) in Iraq. Robert S. Ford was Ambassador to Syria from the end of 2010 until 2014 when the US terminated diplomatic relations with Syria. He has continued as an unofficial advisor on Syria policy.
In contrast with the Peter Ford interview, the interview with US Ambassador Robert S. Ford (RSF) is a case study in public relations. Interviewer Aaron Mate asks important questions but RSF deflects the questions, claims ignorance of new revelations, and repeats standard talking points on Syria.
RSF acknowledges there has been “mission creep” for US troops in Syria.
“American troops were sent into Syria originally to fight ISIS. Now that that job is more-or-less finished, we have a sort of mission creep where now the American forces are there not to defeat ISIS—ISIS is already defeated… But now, so what are the Americans doing? Well, now they sort of changed the mission to putting pressure on Damascus, the Assad government, trying to get the Iranians out, trying to limit the Russian influence.”
RSF implies the sanctions on Syria are just.
“Sanctions is a different question, Aaron. I think a lot of it is emotional here in the United States. There’s a desperate desire for justice after all the war crimes committed in Syria. And I think getting rid of the sanctions is going to be a much harder battle to fight in the Congress. So, the sanctions have very strong approval in Congress…”
RSF maintains the initial protests were “almost entirely peaceful”
“In March and April, May into June, the protests were almost entirely peaceful. That’s not to say there was no violence. In the first protest, for example, in Daraa, in which we’re now coming up on the 10-year anniversary, yeah, the protesters did attack the telephone office [Syriatel] that’s owned by Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf. They did attack a court building…”
[Fact check: RSF neglects to mention seven police were killed in the “almost entirely peaceful” Daraa protest.]
RSF acknowledges US allies were sending weapons early but claims the US began sending weapons in 2013.
“Those countries [Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey] did send in weapons before the Americans…
“I supported arming factions of the Free Syrian Army as early as the summer of 2012. And it took the president a year to get to a decision.”
[Fact check: US Central Intelligence Agency was sending weapons from Benghazi Libya to Syria in Oct 2011.]
RSF compares the Free Syrian Army to the anti-Nazi resistance in WW2.
“The United States never gave anti-tank weapons to al-Qaeda…. the number might be half a dozen.
“I want you to think about this in historical context. Do you think when the Americans airdropped weapons into the French resistance against the Nazis in France, do you think the Nazis never got their hands on any of those air drops?…
“The leakage to the al-Qaeda elements, there was a small amount of leakage, but much, much, much more of their weaponry came from the Assad government, either, because the Assad soldiers were corrupt, as we said, we talked at the start about corruption. They sold them, or in some cases, they surrendered, and with that, huge caches of weaponry made their way into al-Nusra hands. The amount of material that al-Nusra got from the United States wouldn’t have lasted them for a day of combat.”
Fact check: This claim is preposterous. As reported by Janes Defense, the US supplied nearly one thousand TONS of weapons in December 2015, much of which ended up in Nusra (Al Qaeda) hands. Nusra obtained weapons when they over-ran Syrian military bases, but otherwise they were amply supplied with weapons by the Gulf monarchies, Israel, Turkey, the US and UK.
RSF claims the Syrian government has primary responsibility for the war and are the “bad guys”.
“What I hope your listeners will take away from this is that it is not an equal combat on both sides; is not an equal responsibility on both sides. One side from the beginning was using torture and shooting at innocent people, thousands of arrests. And one side was trying peacefully, for a very large part, to bring about change. And, unfortunately, in this instance, the bad guys won.”
Fact check: The campaign against Syria has been waged by a coalition of western powers, Turkey, Israel and the Gulf monarchies. About 121 thousand Syrians in the Syrian army and militias have died defending their country.
RSF claims that Syria is responsible for the war refugees and destabilizing its neighbors.
“Even had Turkey, Qatar and the United States, Saudi Arabia, stayed out of it, there still would have been huge refugee flows trying to escape from those same brutal Syrian security forces, and they still would have flooded the borders of Lebanon and Jordan and of Turkey, which is itself destabilizing, particularly in Lebanon, but some places like Jordan, Turkey. Therefore, you can’t just say that all these other countries intervened in sovereign Syrian territory. The Syrian government itself was taking actions which were destabilizing to its neighbors.”
Fact check: Most refugees fled when their neighborhoods were taken over by militants and became battle zones, NOT because they were afraid of Syrian security.
RSF criticizes Turkey but thinks Syrian government bears primary responsibility.
“I’m never going to justify the Turks allowing Salafi jihadists to go into Syria. I think that I’ve already said that that was a bad mistake. And we criticized them at the time of playing with snakes. I’m never going to justify it. But I have to say, Aaron, that in the end, they came in response to what the Assad government was already doing. And so, the principal responsibility … do the Americans have a share of responsibility? Of course, we do. Yeah. It was our anti-tank missiles blowing up Syrian government tanks, and not just a few; I mean, hundreds of them.
“I think we have to go back to where it started in 2011. And that’s with the Syrian government…”
RSF says he is not aware of the huge scandal at the OPCW but believes Syria has used chemical weapons.
“I’m not familiar with that controversy within the OPCW….
“But I guess I would just say this, Aaron. There’s plenty of documentation by the UN’s joint investigative group with the OPCW that looked at incidents in Syria chemical weapons use, from 2013 onwards. They’ve issued several reports…. So, the 2018 incident, I don’t know about that report, but I have no doubt whatsoever that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons on multiple instances, the same government that bombs hospitals, the same government that bombs bakeries, the same government that kills people in detention routinely. Look at the photos that were brought up by the military defector. You know, why would you think they wouldn’t use chemical weapons? Why would you think they would suddenly have moral scruples against these? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
[Fact check: the OPCW scandal has confirmed manipulation of that organization by the US and west. The “military photographer” refers to the ‘Caesar torture photos’ propaganda stunt.]
RSF wants to increase humanitarian aid to Syria refugees.
“Something the Americans could do that would be hugely helpful is to increase humanitarian aid to the Syrian refugees that number some five million, particularly in Lebanon, where their living circumstances are precarious, very precarious, but also in Jordan and Turkey… I’d like to spend less on the military operation and much more on humanitarian aid.
“And then there is the issue of Northwest Syria, Idlib, where the UN is in charge of an operation getting humanitarian aid to some two million displaced Syrian civilians.”
[Fact check and observation: Idlib province is dominated by Nusra (Al Qaeda). Robert Ford seems to want to perpetuate the AQ stronghold and refugee crisis by supplying aid to Idlib and foreign countries while preventing return of refugees and rebuilding war torn Syria.]
Conclusion
Both ambassadors speak Arabic and have intimate knowledge of Syria.
Robert S. Ford criticizes some past decisions and tactics, but not the assumptions or right of the US to violate the UN Charter and commit aggression against Syria.
Meanwhile, Peter Ford is doing his best to expose the reality of the situation, contrary to government and media bias and falsehoods. Like Daniel Ellsberg, Scott Ritter and Katharine Gun, he is using his special knowledge to publicly challenge the claims and assumptions of western policy. With Ellsberg it was about Vietnam. With Ritter and Gun, it was about Iraq. With Peter Ford, it is about Syria.
The full interview with UK Ambassador Peter Ford is well worth watching or reading.
Filed under: America, American Empire, American Hegemony, American Lies, American Wars, Syria, War on Syria, Western Lies | Tagged: OPCW, OPCW scandal | Comments Off on Two Ambassadors to Syria with Wildly Different Analyses
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UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 