Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 05, 2017 8:13 pm
by Rory » Wed Apr 05, 2017 8:16 pm
by Mulligan » Wed Apr 05, 2017 8:17 pm
seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 05, 2017 7:13 pm wrote:welcome Mulligan.....hopefully we all can give you a chance here beyond your first post
by Mulligan » Wed Apr 05, 2017 8:26 pm
Rory » Wed Apr 05, 2017 7:16 pm wrote:It's almost certainly not sarin. Reports of a strong chemical smell, discount the odorless and colorless sarin. Also, the lack of hazard suits, or even masks and gloves make it look very shady.
by Rory » Wed Apr 05, 2017 8:29 pm
Mulligan » Wed Apr 05, 2017 4:26 pm wrote:Rory » Wed Apr 05, 2017 7:16 pm wrote:It's almost certainly not sarin. Reports of a strong chemical smell, discount the odorless and colorless sarin. Also, the lack of hazard suits, or even masks and gloves make it look very shady.
And yet I haven't seen Assad or Russia deny that it was sarin anywhere, have you? The official line is that it was a stockpile of "chemical weapons" that was headed for AQ in Iraq. The explanation that said stockpile would have simply gone up in a ball of flames rather than dispurse in clouds like the videos show seems to contradict that.
by Mulligan » Wed Apr 05, 2017 8:47 pm
by Elvis » Wed Apr 05, 2017 10:36 pm
Mulligan wrote:The Alex Jones blame-it-on-the-White-Helmets crowd doesn't really ring true based on reports on the ground, unless the White Helmets are flying Assad planes now.
Good grief.
by Elvis » Wed Apr 05, 2017 10:41 pm
by American Dream » Thu Apr 06, 2017 8:06 am
Sarin gas deaths in Khan Sheikhoun: separating fact from fiction
Indeed, if you Google Syria and “false flag”, you will get 556,000 results—most of them linking to conspiracist outlets like 21st Century Wire, The Duran and Zero Hedge. As I have seen in propaganda offensives like these, you can count on such explicitly over-the-top, pro-Assad websites to act as the shock troops in a propaganda offensive, to be followed within months by Seymour Hersh articles in the LRB and other high-toned purveyors of mass murder apologetics.
A template for future articles was written by Paul Antonopoulos. Expect versions of his piece to show up in its original version or plagiarized in places like Moon of Alabama, Global Research, DissidentVoice, et al. I also expect his talking points to be repeated by Rania Khalek, Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal who have indeed insinuated something like this on Twitter.
Titled “Something is Not Adding Up in Idlib Chemical Weapons Attack”, Antonopoulos’s article offers up a howlingly preposterous account of supposedly what really happened in Khan Sheikhoun. The corpses were not really victims of Sarin gas but the corpses of 250 al-Nusra kidnapping victims from the towns of Majdal and Khattab whose images became props in a false flag scenario. As unlikely as this seems, this was the same story concocted by Assadist nun Sister Agnes Maryam about the East Ghouta Sarin gas massacre in 2013. She produced a report that identified its victims as pro-Assad villagers having been killed by jihadists in Latakia who then made a video that was exploited by the rebels in East Ghouta for their own purposes. A plot like this would have been rejected by the producers of “X-Files” but it passes muster in these quarters.
Clearly not even up to speed on Assadist talking points, Antonopoulos refers to a claim by UN weapons inspector Carla del Ponte that there was no evidence that Assad ordered the hit on East Ghouta. I hope this PhD student is more on top of data gathering when he submits his dissertation but del Ponte was rendering a judgement on something altogether different, namely the jihadist use of Sarin gas in Khan al-Assal on March 2013, a full 4 months before East Ghouta. There’s not much point in taking up that case but I will say that del Ponte is not very trustworthy in the eyes of Jeff St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, two people who could hardly be charged with backing US imperialism. Referring to the war crimes tribunal against Milosevic, they wrote on May 22, 2000:On March 15, Mandel sent another complaint to Justice Carla del Ponte, the new chief prosecutor for the tribunal, who replaced Justice Louise Arbour in October. Mandel’s sharply worded letter protests the tribunal’s refusal to investigate NATO’s actions, saying that del Ponte has turned “the investigation into more of a farce than a judicial proceeding.” Mandel’s letter makes a solid case that far from being an independent investigator, the tribunal has conducted itself “as if it were an organ of NATO and not the United Nations.”
Stumbling forward in his bogus investigative reporter mode, Antonopoulos is constrained by parameters set by Assad, whose military issued a statement that the Sarin gas was disseminated accidentally as the result of a bombing raid on a jihadist weapons depot by Su-22 bombers. Unlike East Ghouta, which we were told was a “false flag” mounted by the rebels, Khan Sheikhoun then becomes the unintended product of a bombing raid that only had military purposes.Antonopoulos’s most important argument against the Su-22 being the conveyor of Sarin-laced weapons was this: “Most importantly, the Su-22’s bombs are unique and cannot be filled with any chemical substances, which is different to the bombs dropped from attack helicopters.”
Furthermore, there are reports in the Independent and Reuters that it was a helicopter that dropped the payload of Sarin gas, not a Su-22. I doubt if that makes any difference to someone like Antonopoulos who likely regards everything except RT.com as “fake news”.
by seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 06, 2017 8:27 am
...yeah you got that right ElvisGood luck with that around here
Rory » Wed Apr 05, 2017 6:54 pm wrote:Bellingcat? They have as much credibility as Alex Jones, no?
And Sarina gas victims, tended to by unprotected Al Qaeda Helmets terrorists, I mean "aid workers"? Does not make sense
Elvis » Wed Apr 05, 2017 9:36 pm wrote:Mulligan wrote:The Alex Jones blame-it-on-the-White-Helmets crowd doesn't really ring true based on reports on the ground, unless the White Helmets are flying Assad planes now.
I'm not persuaded. Those "reports on the ground" are coming from the White Helmets.
Welcome to RI, Mulligan. However, your weasel-wording of White Helmet skepticism with the "Alex Jones crowd" marks you from the start. Good luck with that around here.
by American Dream » Thu Apr 06, 2017 9:39 am
Tim Anderson’s Dirty War on Syria
Anderson outlines the framework in which he will conduct his work in chapter 2, entitled “Barrel Bombs, Partisan Sources And War Propaganda”. He writes:War propaganda often demands the abandoning of ordinary reason and principle … A steady stream of atrocity stories – ‘barrel bombs’, chemical weapons, ‘industrial scale’ killings, dead babies – permeate the western news on Syria. These stories all have two things in common: they paint the Syrian President and the Syrian Army as monsters slaughtering civilians, including children; yet, when tracked back, all the stories come from utterly partisan sources. We are being deceived. (p.7)
Here we have a central proposition of Anderson’s – all stories that come from “partisan sources” carry no credibility and can be safely ignored.
Anderson is quick to dismiss “partisan sources” when they bear adversely on the position he is expounding, but appears blithely unware that an argument of this sort is only logically tenable if it is consistent. If it applies to “partisans” opposing Assad then it must equally apply to the partisans of the other side—such as Anderson.
Moreover Anderson & co.’s definition of “partisan sources” has a far wider sweep than the phrase suggests: he applies it not only to anyone who opposes the Syrian regime but to the entire western media, academic institutions, human rights organisations, and even most recently, relief organisations like Medecins sans Frontieres.
Anderson’s world is built around a binary divide—you are either on his side in relation to Syria or you are a paid hack, obeying the orders of some hidden hand. There is no room for professional principles and intellectual independence—every journalist, every human rights worker, every researcher, every academic specialist on Syria, who dissents from his view is simply a “partisan” whose views can be ignored or dismissed.
This is the epistemology, not of an academic or scholar, but of a propagandist.
by Mulligan » Thu Apr 06, 2017 10:18 am
Elvis » Wed Apr 05, 2017 9:41 pm wrote:I'm not convinced that a gas attack even occurred. The man (a doctor?) in the video above makes a big deal out of pinhole pupils, which are easily induced without poison gas. They show a baby's eyes but the camera doesn't get too close; the baby's pupils look quite normal. But it really helps to show a baby victim.
It's what the White Helmets do: they make videos.
by Mulligan » Thu Apr 06, 2017 10:18 am
by seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 06, 2017 10:22 am
by Rory » Thu Apr 06, 2017 10:28 am
Mulligan » Wed Apr 05, 2017 3:30 pm wrote:Good rundown of the available evidence so far here:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/20 ... dence-far/
There's no direct evidence that Assad ordered chemical attacks, but...
1) Assad aircraft committed airstrikes. This was confirmed by the UN and admitted by Russia and the Assad regime.
2) These airstrikes were at the same location of the sarin gas casualties.
3) These airstrikes happened at the same time as the sarin gas casualties.
4) Assad aircraft subsequently conducted air strikes on medical facilities treating the sarin gas victims.
The Alex Jones blame-it-on-the-White-Helmets crowd doesn't really ring true based on reports on the ground, unless the White Helmets are flying Assad planes now.
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