The western propaganda machine is endlessly impressive. People are so pervasively brainwashed by mass media psyops that they now find it easier to believe that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are deliberately killing civilians with poisonous gas for no reason whatsoever than to believe that the same empire which deceived us into Iraq is deceiving us into Iraq's next-door neighbor Syria.
There are early reports of another mass casualty chemical weapons attack in Syria, as usual in a region crawling with known terrorist forces, and as usual just as those terrorists are suffering critical defeats. As usual, the attack is placed in a location replete with children and cameras. As usual, all the expected high-profile pro-regime change propagandists are all over it, from the White Helmets to Charles Lister to Eliot Higgins to Julian Röpcke.
Details are sketchy and unconfirmed, but the early narrative being promulgated is clear.
"If 30+ died in the CW attack in Douma, then it would be the most fatalities in a chemical attack in Syria since Khan Sheikhoun just over a year ago," said the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins of the attack. "This could be another major moment in the conflict, something depressingly dependent on whether or not Fox and Friends covers it."
"Much attention was paid to #Trump’s desire to withdraw troops from #Syria, but tonight’s CW attack in #Douma relates to an entirely different area of U.S. policy," tweeted Lister. "There is agreement in the White House than a 'mass casualty chemical attack' would be grounds for action."
So to be clear, we're being asked by these people to believe that Bashar al-Assad launched a "mass casualty chemical attack", the thing which would provoke the wrath of the US war machine, just as Trump was seeking a withdrawal from Syria and just as Assad was approaching victory in Douma. We are being asked to ignore the fact that the area is crawling with actual, literal terrorists, to ignore the western empire's extensive history of using lies, propaganda and false flags to manufacture support for military aggression, to ignore the extremely suspicious western funding and terrorist ties of the White Helmets who are circulating these photos and information, and to ignore the fact that Syria has been a target of imperialist regime change for many years. We are being asked to ignore all that and believe instead that Assad spontaneously began acting against his own self-interest so that he could kill children for no discernible reason.
It says so much about the power of western media psyops that this has a strong chance of being believed.
There have been reports from the Russian government in the last few weeks claiming they have received intel that the US and its terrorist lackeys in Syria are preparing a major chemical weapons attack in southern Syria for the purposes of implicating Assad. Since a major chemical weapons attack in southern Syria appears to be what we are seeing, this could mean one of two things: either the Russians and Syrians just really, really wanted to kill some babies and planted a preemptive narrative to blame the US for it, or there was indeed a false flag planned and carried out by terrorist forces in some degree of coordination with the US government.
This is still early on, and it remains to be seen where this is headed, but I wanted to sound the alarm now for all the clear-eyed rebels out there in case this is used as justification for a NATO military campaign against the Syrian government. The western empire has been trying to get its talons into Iraq's next-door neighbor for a long time now, and it appears to have set up the most sophisticated psyops campaign in modern history to advance that agenda.
In my opinion, the US and its allies preference chemical weapons false flags because there's not much else they can accuse a disobedient government of doing that they themselves don't do constantly. They can't accuse Assad of simply using conventional munitions to kill civilians, because the US kills civilians with conventional munitions every day. It's got to be a reviled and internationally banned weapon that makes for gruesome photographs to plaster on screens throughout the world.
Nobody was ever punished for the Iraq invasion. A million people dead over lies, and nobody responsible for it suffered any consequences at all. No changes whatsoever were made to prevent such a great evil from being inflicted upon our world again. This is because the western empire never had any intention of changing, and has every intention of repeating those same evils in any way it can.
When a known compulsive liar asks you to place your faith in him on a very important matter, you tell him to piss off. When war propagandists for the western empire tells you Assad is using chemical weapons for no discernible reason, you take it with an Iraq-sized grain of salt.
Stay skeptical.
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I haven't checked this particular "chemical attack", but I remember the old ones which were complete hoaxes. Still a classic the dead girl which reopens her eyes
Between this and the Mueller investigation, it seems like the new playbook is "overwhelm the news cycle with as many obviously bullshit stories as possible, and then cite weight of evidence."
Unfortunately, based on conversations with my co-workers, it seems like it's working. For your typical semi-engaged headline surfer, all you need is a dozen or so separate incidents, no matter how flimsy individually, before you've got a new Official Truth (tm).
fishy to say the least
The Russians exactly predicted this.
It's good planning to stage this hoax before the Salisbury incident is spent and while the anti-Russian mood is still hot. As expected of course.
Caitlin posits a Western Empire as being behind — well, nothing at the moment, but which could end up being — another false flag act of obverse provocateur-ism, this time to justify an invasion of Syria. An invasion that, given the level of Iranian and Russian support that would have to be overcome, would end up being larger in scale than the Iraq one, the proxy (with NATO and Israeli aerial assist) one in Libya, the Afghanistan one, and the Serbia one. Caitlin locates Syria next to Iraq, but fails to mention here its location next to Israel. The location next to Israel seems far more crucial than any less proximate attribution to a Western Empire (whose existence is partly speculative).
The point of going into Syria, an ostensibly secular country, with a modern state apparatus capable of posing a threat to Israel; was to divide a post-colonial Arab State up into non-secular statelets. The settler colonial state feeling threatened is an ethnocracy, and having at its re-defined border other settler colonialist countries similarly exclusivist— even if the flavour of their non-secularity differs — suits Tel Aviv’s ambition to be the entrepôt of the region. Sectarian differences can by trumped by economic necessity, they reason, as trade then flourishes through the entrepôt, realizing a Greater Middle East.
Trump is under harsh attack for asking, “Why are we in Syria?” Writing in the New York Times on April 6th, Madeleine Albright, in a piece entitled, Will We Stop Trump Before It’s Too Late? lambasts the current President for a litany of failings, and kvetches:
"Thanks to allies in Moscow and Tehran, the tyrant Bashar al-Assad retains his stranglehold over much of Syria."
The piece was widely shared among those “resisting” Trump. Albright, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, campaigned insidiously for Mrs. Clinton. For Albright, and the Resistance which supports her, stopping Trump means starting a war to depose what proxies, notably the Israeli-sponsored Takfirs, failed to accomplish (or what Russian and Iranian assistance prevented). Whether this favours a Western Empire or not, most clearly it is the desire of Israel to see this deposition. Trump, then, as the titular head of this posited Empire, seems to be in the position of deciding whether America, and probably NATO as well, will assist Israel. The possibility that he may not do so is one of the reasons he has been reviled so intensely since day one of his administration. #Resistance?
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The good thing is many people know what you say is the truth, the bad thing is our well paid mainstream journalists don't. Shame on them in Europe as well.
Thanks for your reporting.
It seems no-one really cares about the actual people and they are only pawns on a chessboard to make political moves.
Destined to die by either the chemical weapons or conventional weapons , only difference being whose political boat is being floated !!
#sadbutreal