4-16-2018 – Tony Cartalucci

In the aftermath of US-led missile strikes on Syria, the Western media has attempted to continue building the case for “US intervention.”

However, before the first agitators took to the streets in Syria in 2011, the US was already involved.

The New York Times in its 2011 article, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” would admit (emphasis added):

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks. 

The work of these groups often provoked tensions between the United States and many Middle Eastern leaders, who frequently complained that their leadership was being undermined, according to the cables.

The financing of agitators from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) before the so-called “Arab Spring” was meant to stampede targeted governments from power – paving the way for US client states to form. Nations that resisted faced – first, US-backed militants – and failing that, direct US military intervention – as seen in Libya in 2011.

After the US funded initial unrest in 2011 – the US has armed and funded militants fighting in Syria ever since.

The same NYT would publish a 2013 article titled, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.,” admitting (emphasis added):

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

As the proxy war the US waged against Damascus began to fail, multiple attempts were made to justify direct US military intervention in Syria as the US and its allies did in 2011 against the Libyan government.

This includes repeated attempts to enforce the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, multiple false-flag chemical attacks beginning with the Ghouta incident in 2013 and the emergence of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) which helped the US justify the deployment of ground troops now currently occupying eastern Syria.

The notion of the US currently “contemplating intervention” in Syria attempts to sidestep the fact that the Syrian conflict itself – from its inception – has been a US intervention.

Long Before “Day 1” 

Even before the most recent attempt at US-led regime change in Syria, the US has pursued campaigns of violent subversion aimed at Syria and its allies.

In 2007, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh would write in his article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?,” that (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Hersh’s words would become prophetic when, in 2011, the US would begin arming and backing militants – many with overt affiliations to Al Qaeda – in a bid to destabilize Syria and overthrow the government in Damascus.

The article would also lay out preparations that – even in 2007 – were clearly aimed at organizing  for and executing a wider conflict.

Yet, published CIA documents drawn from the US National Archives illustrate how this singular agenda seeking to overthrow the government of Syria stretches back even earlier – by decades.

A 1983 document signed by former CIA officer Graham Fuller titled, “Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria” (PDF), states (their emphasis):

Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey.

If Israel were to increase tensions against Syria simultaneously with an Iraqi initiative, the pressures on Assad would escalate rapidly. A Turkish move would psychologically press him further.

The document exposes both then and now, the amount of influence the US exerts across the Middle East and North Africa. It also undermines the perceived agency of states including Israel and NATO-member Turkey, revealing their subordination to US interests and that actions taken by these states are often done on behalf of Wall Street and Washington rather than on behalf of their own national interests.

Also mentioned in the document are a variety of manufactured pretexts listed to justify a unilateral military strike on northern Syria by Turkey. The  document explains:

Turkey has considered undertaking a unilateral military strike against terrorist camps in northern Syria and would not hesitate from using menacing diplomatic language against Syria on these issues.

Comparing this signed and dated 1983 US CIA document to more recent US policy papers and revelations of US funding of so-called activists prior to 2011,  reveals not only continuity of agenda – but that attempts to portray the 2011 “uprising” as spontaneous and as merely exploited by the US are disingenuous.

Breaking the Cycle 

The current stalemate in Syria is owed to Russia’s involvement in the conflict. This began in 2013 when Moscow brokered a political deal preventing US military intervention then – and again in 2015 when the Russian military – upon Damascus’ request – built up a presence within the nation. Today, it is the threat of Russian retaliation that has hemmed in US options and plunged American special interests into increasing depths of desperation.

The recent missile strikes by the US and its tentative holdings in eastern Syria reflect geopolitical atrophy amid a conflict that was initially aimed at quickly stampeding the Syrian government from power back in 2011.

Washington’s inability to achieve its objectives leave it in an increasingly desperate position – attempting to reassert itself in the region or face the irreversible decline of its so-called “international order.” However, a desperate hegemon in decline is still dangerous.

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Paul Craig Roberts

I wonder how many people, not just Americans but those in other countries, have come to the conclusion that the United States today is a less free and less aware society than the societies in the dystopian novels of the 20th century or in movies such as The Matrix and V for Vendetta. Just as people in the dystopian novels had no idea of their real situation, few Americans do either.

What are we to make of the extraordinary war crimes committed by the United States in the 21st century that have destroyed in whole or part seven countries, resulting in millions of dead, maimed, orphaned, and displaced peoples? Consider, for example, the latest Washington war crime, the illegal attack on Syria. Instead of protesting this illegality, the American media egged it on, cheering impending death and destruction.

During the entirety of the 21st century, Israel, Washington’s only ally—as contrasted with the European, Canadian, Australian, and Japanese vassal states of Washington’s empire—has continued with Washington’s support, protection, and encouragement the genocide of the Palestinian people. Essentially, all that is left of Palestine is a getto concentration camp known as Gaza which is routinely bombed by Israel using weapons and money supplied by Washington. When a bombing of Gaza is announced, God’s Chosen People take their lawn chairs and picnics up on a hill overlooking Gaza and applaud as the Israeli military murders women and children. This is America’s only ally.

The crimes committed by the US and Israel are horrific, but meet with little opposition. In contrast, an alleged attack in which 70 Syrians are alleged to have died sets in motion the wheels of war. It makes no sense whatsoever. Israel routinely bombs Syrian targets, killing Syrians, and the US arms and supports the “rebels” that the Obama regime sent to overthrow Assad, resulting in large numbers of dead Syrians. Why all of a sudden do 70 Syrians matter to Washington?

According to the Washington authorities, or to the presstitutes’ reports of their statements, two or three alleged Syrian chemical weapons facilities were destroyed by Washington’s missile attack. Think about this for a minute. If Washington bombed or sent missiles into chemical weapons facilities, a vast cloud of lethal gas would have been released. The civilian casualties would be many times higher than the claimed 70 victims of Assad’s alleged and unsubstantiated chemical attack used as the pretext for the Trump regime’s war crime against Syria. There is no evidence whatsoever of these casualties.

Had there been casualties, Washington’s attack would obviously be a far greater crime than the chemical attack that Washington used as cover for its own crime. Yet the American presstitutes are crowing over the lesson that America has taught Syria and Russia. The American media consists of immoral, moronic hirelings.

As I wrote yesterday, when I was a Wall Street Journal editor, if Washington had just announced that it had bombed the chemical weapons facilities of another country in punishment for that country’s alleged use of a chemical weapon, the Journal’s reporters were sufficiently intelligent to ask where are the victims of Washington’s chemical attack on that country? Are there thousands of dead people from the chemical gas released by Washington’s attack? Are the hospitals of the country over-filed with the injured and dying?

If a reporter had brought to us a story that was nothing but a Washington press release claiming obviously impossible happenings, we would have told him to go look again and ask the obvious questions. Today the NY Times and Washington Post put the unsubstantiated report on the front page.

Today reporters no longer have to check sources, because there is no longer journalism in America. When the Clinton regime in compliance with the Deep State that made the Clintons super-rich permitted 90% of the independent and diverse US media to be concentrated in the hands of six political companies, that was the end of journalism in America. All we have now is a propaganda ministry that lies for a living. Anyone in American journalism who tells the truth is either immediately fired or in the case of Tucker Carlson at Fox News is set upon by outside presstitutes in an effort to force Fox to replace him. I wonder how long before some woman pops up and claims Tucker Carlson sexually harrassed her.

As far as I can tell, the United States is now a police state in which all information is controlled and the population is trained to believe the propagana or be accused of lack of patriotism and consorting with terrorists and Russians.

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A child is “treated” in a hospital in Douma, eastern Ghouta in Syria, after a claimed chemical attack April, 7, 2018. Notice that so-called professionals are not wearing protective gloves. They are not washing poison chemicals. They may be washing smoke contamination caused by a fire. Or possibly it is just a poorly staged show.

Moscow has “irrefutable proof” that the alleged chemical incident in Syria’s Douma was a “false-flag attack,” orchestrated by UK security services with support from the United States, said the Russian envoy to the OPCW.

“We have not just a ‘high level of confidence,’ as our Western partners uniformly put it; we have irrefutable proof that there was no chemical attack in Douma on April 7,” Russia’s Ambassador to the Organization for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons Aleksandr Shulgin said at a special meeting of the UN chemical watchdog’s executive council. The diplomat added that the incident had been a “pre-planned false-flag attack by the British security services, which could have also been aided by their allies in Washington.”

“Things unfolded according to the pre-written scenario prepared by Washington. There’s no doubt, the Americans play ‘first fiddle’ in all of this,” Shulgin said, adding that the “attack” was staged by “pseudo-humanitarian NGOs,” (the “White Helmets” are NATO-sponsored NGOs, adversaries of the Syrian government).

 

Syrian and Russian experts claim that the ‘chemical attack’ was a false flag provocation to justify the US airstrike.

The Russian Defense Ministry has presented what it says is proof that the reported chemical weapons attack in Syria was staged. It also accused the British government of pressuring the perpetrators to speed up the “provocation.”

During a briefing on Friday, the ministry showed interviews with two people, who, it said, are medical professionals working in the only hospital operating in Douma, a town near the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The two men reported how footage was shot of people dousing each other with water and treating children, which was claimed to show the aftermath of an April 7 chemical weapons attack. The patients shown in the video suffered from smoke poisoning and the water was poured on them by their relatives after a false claim that chemical weapons were used, the ministry said.

“The Russian Defense Ministry also has evidence that Britain had a direct involvement in arranging this provocation in Eastern Ghouta,” the general added, referring to the neighborhood of which Douma is part. “We know for certain that between April 3 and April 6 the so-called White Helmets were seriously pressured from London to speed up the provocation that they were preparing.”

According to Konashenkov, the group, which was a primary source of photos and footage of the purported chemical attack, was informed of a large-scale artillery attack on Damascus planned by the Islamist group Army of Islam, which controlled Douma at the time. The White Helmets were ordered to arrange the provocation after retaliatory strikes by the Syrian government forces in response to the shelling from terrorists.

The UK rejected the accusations, with British UN Ambassador Karen Pierce calling them “grotesque,” “a blatant lie” and “the worst piece of fake news we’ve yet seen from the Russian propaganda machine.”

One of the interviews published by the ministry showed a man who said his name was Halil Ajij, and who said he was a medical student working at Douma’s only operational hospital. This is how he described the origin of the footage:

“On April 8, a bomb hit a building. The upper floors were damaged and a fire broke at the lower floors. Victims of that bombing were brought to us. People from the upper floors had smoke poisoning. We treated them, based on their suffocation.”

Ajij said that a man unknown to him came and said there was a chemical attack, and panic ensued. “Relatives of the victims started dousing each other with water. Other people, who didn’t seem to have medical training, started administering anti-asthma medicine to children. We didn’t see any patient with symptoms of a chemical weapons poisoning,” he said.

‘They can go anywhere they want in Douma’: OPCW team arrives in Syria to investigate alleged attack

The first photos claiming to show the aftermath of the alleged chemical attack on April 7 were published online on the same day, and featured the bodies of many people, including children, some with foam around their mouths and noses. Footage from the hospital was released on Sunday, with the sources behind it claiming that it had been shot on Saturday.

Konashenkov said Russia hoped that international monitors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is due to investigate the circumstances of the incident, will help establish the truth. He added Eastern Ghouta is currently trying to return to peaceful life after being liberated from terrorist groups by Syrian government forces. He called on other nations and international organizations to provide humanitarian aid, which is badly needed in the area. Russia is already supplying food, medicine, building materials and other essential supplies to the neighborhood, he said.

Residents of the neighborhood, who previously fled violence, are returning to their homes now that the area is relatively safe, the Russian official said. The latest reports from the ground say about 63,000 people have returned, which is over half of the displaced residents, he added.

The reported chemical weapons attack escalated tensions over Syria, just as Damascus was about to seize full control of Eastern Ghouta. The US and allies such as the UK and France threatened military action in response to what they claim is an atrocity committed by the Syrian government. Russia insists the incident was staged and said it reserves the right to counter any attack on Syria.

RT spoke about the Russian claims with Lord Alan West, a retired officer of the British Royal Navy. He said he had strong reservations about taking allegations against Damascus at face value, because it didn’t make much military sense.

 

The facts behind the ‘staged’ video of kids portrayed as victims of chemical weapons drill in Syria

This video shows Syrian children being trained to fake the symptoms of a chemical weapons attack.

RT Digital investigated the origins of the video and found that it is more than four years old and the actions carried out by the children in the video are part of a play by a group called the Nesma Organization based in eastern Ghouta.

The original copy of the video was uploaded to YouTube on September 19, 2013. The Nesma Organization advertised the play on its Facebook account on September 18 and 19, 2013 – the exact timeframe the original video was uploaded to the YouTube channel whose name roughly translates into English as Rural Damascus Media.

Other videos from the Rural Damascus Media have also been shared by the Nesma Organisation’s Facebook page.

Rural Damascus Media’s description of the video reads: “The aim of the play was to teach children the horrors of being under attack by chemical weapons and to show the world its neglect and failure to take action on a man who would use such weapons against his own citizens.”

Rural Damascus Media’s YouTube channel also contains videos of rallies where FSA (Free Syrian Army) and Al-Qaeda flags were waved.

The Nesma Organisation also has a Facebook history of sharing content from the Syrian Revolution Coordinators Union. The Nesma Organisation is the Arabic translation, but the group also calls itself Aura Volunteers.

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April 14, 2018

 

The substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab, the Russian foreign minister said. The toxin was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states.

The Swiss center sent the results to the OPCW. However, the UN chemical watchdog limited itself only to confirming the formula of the substance used to poison the Skripals in its final report without mentioning anything about the other facts presented in the Swiss document, the Russian foreign minister added. He went on to say that Moscow would ask the OPCW about its decision to not include any other information provided by the Swiss in its report.

Lavrov said that the Swiss center that assessed the samples is actually the Spiez Laboratory. This facility is a Swiss state research center controlled by the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection and, ultimately, by the country’s defense minister. The lab is also an internationally recognized center of excellence in the field of the nuclear, biological, and chemical protection and is one of the five centers permanently authorized by the OPCW.

The Russian foreign minister said that London refused to answer dozens of “very specific” questions asked by Moscow about the Salisbury case, as well as to provide any substantial evidence that could shed light on the incident. Instead, the UK accused Russia of failing to answer its own questions, he said, adding that, in fact, London did not ask any questions but wanted Moscow to admit that it was responsible for the delivery of the chemical agent to the UK.

The scandal erupted in early March, when former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found in critical condition in the town of Salisbury. Top UK officials almost immediately pinned the blame on Russia.

Moscow believes that the entire Skripal case lacks transparency and that the UK is in fact not interested in an independent inquiry. “We get the impression that the British government is deliberately pursuing the policy of destroying all possible evidence, classifying all remaining materials and making a transparent investigation impossible,” the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, said during a press conference on Friday.

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John Vibes – April 12, 2018

This week, it seems that the U.S. military may be getting the green light to escalate their war in Syria, after the false-news alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, which was consequently blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Most Americans don’t realize it, but the U.S. military has already been at war in Syria for years, with indiscriminate drone strikes that many times kill innocent civilians, with thousands of troops also on the ground. This is a war that has been waged without the knowledge of most Americans and without a declaration of war from Congress.

[It is business as usual for the CIA and US military to stage covert attacks and sponsor terrorists like ISIS to murder and create chaos in countries like Syria. Then the US politicians and MSM falsely blame it all on the victims and the victims’ national leaders. For instance, the current claim by Trump that Syrian president Assad gassed some of his own people has been proven to be a completely fabricated lie … not unlike Bush’s and Powel’s proven false claim of “weapons of mass destruction” to facilitate their invasion of Iraq in 2003.]

The coverage that this war has received in the mainstream press—from both liberal and conservative sources—has suggested that the US military is just there trying to help. However, classified State Department documents leaked in 2015 showed that regime change in Syria has been a major goal of the US establishment since well before the Arab Spring when the protests and rebellions in the region began.

Sure enough, as the years have passed, the U.S. military and NATO have taken every opportunity to further their goal of regime change—at the expense of the Syrian people. From arming and funding the rebels/terrorists who would eventually become ISIS, to drone bombing schools and hospitals, the U.S. military has done nothing but add to the death and destruction that people in this part of the world are experiencing.

Considering the pain and bloodshed that the US military and their allies have unleashed upon Syria, it should be easy for anyone with this information to see that the renewed threats on Assad have everything to do with opportunism, and nothing to do with helping Syrians or “punishing the bad guys.”

Sadly, this is nothing new. The U.S. government has a long history of senselessly killing millions of people in wars of conquest that were sold as “humanitarian interventions.” Most recently, the war of regime change in Libya has left the country in ruins, torn by civil war and ravaged by slave traders, where there was once a thriving civilization.

Let’s also not forget about Afghanistan or Iraq for the purpose of regime change, but over a decade later these places are riddled with terrorism, occupied by foreign troops and experiencing a quality of life much lower than they had prior to US interventions.

It is now well established that the war in Iraq was built on a total lie, and that Saddam Hussein never actually had the weapons of mass destruction that were used as a pretext for U.S. invasion. It is almost certain that these stories of Assad using chemical weapons on Syrian people are fabricated lies as well. Former Congressman Ron Paul seems to think that it could be a false flag attack, designed to justify an invasion.

In the string of military conflicts that the United States and NATO have been involved in since World War II, they have always claimed the high road by saying that they were responding to some kind of threat. They bombed the people that they claimed to be helping.

This approach is largely accepted by the general public who seem to rationalize the nonsensical things that are happening in their name. They lie to themselves by thinking that their government is doing good and “policing the world.”

Just as ancient Rome’s government could not care less about “spreading civilization” in their conquests, today’s Western governments are not interested in helping other nations or regimes, but rather their goal is to rule the world.

War is, and always has been, about conquest for plunder, power, and strategic influence; and the many wars that we see taking place around the world today are no different.

This fact is not admitted by the national mainstream media, but people around the world are seeing through the cover stories that have been used to sell these wars. According to a 2014 Gallup International survey, people across the world believe that the U.S. government is the greatest threat to world peace. This makes considering the fact that the U.S. has been a country for 242 years and has been at war for 221 of those years.

Research from the European Security Strategy Council found that since 1990, almost 4 million people have died in wars, 90 percent of them civilians, while UNICEF has reported that civilian fatalities have been even higher in recent years.

Given that the U.S. government has such a reputation for mass murder and human rights violations, we should be extremely suspicious whenever anyone in power claims to be doing something noble, especially when military force is involved.

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The US Navy is creating a strike group with hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles for a possible attack on Syria.

The USS Donald Cook has already drawn attention to its actions in the eastern Mediterranean where it has reportedly been “harassed” by Russian warplanes.

The USS Carney is also deployed somewhere in Mediterranean, while the USS Porteris somewhere en route to or has already entered it. Another guided-missile destroyer, the USS Laboon is also somewhere near the Mediterranean. These four guided-missile destroyers together can carry up to 240 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Considering that the USS Georgia and USS John Warner nuclear submarines are also deployed in the region, the US Navy could have about 406 Tomahawks to use for its attack on the Assad government.

On April 11, the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group is set to depart Naval Station Norfolk for deployment in the Middle East and Europe. The strike group includes the guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy and the guided-missile destroyers USS Arleigh Burke, USS Bulkeley, USS Forrest Sherman and USS Farragut. The destroyers USS Jason Dunham and USS The Sullivans will join the strike group later.
If the attack on Syria does not take place in the coming days, the USS Harry S. Truman will further strengthen the US offensive capabilities for a possible large-scale invasion against the Assad government and thus Russian and Iranian forces deployed in Syria.

SF recalls that on April 10, US President Donald Trump canceled his trip to South America. According to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, he “will remain in the United States to oversee the American response to Syria and to monitor developments around the world.”

It looks like Russia is not happy to see such developments. On April 10, a Russian Su-34 fighter jet armed with what looks like Kh-35 cruise anti-ship missiles was photographed over the Syrian city of Tartus, where the Russian naval facility is located. According to local sources, this was not the only Russian jet armed with Kh-35 cruise missiles flying in the area.

Russia’s envoy to the European Union told Euronews on the same day that “Russia has warned U.S. representatives, publicly as well as through proper channels, over the grave consequences that could arise if these strikes happen and whether deliberately or otherwise Russian citizens are hurt.”

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council failed to approve three draft resolutions on chemical weapons attacks. Russia vetoed a US text, while two Russian-drafted resolutions did not get nine votes to pass.

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya also revealed that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will send two expert teams to Syria later this week to investigate the April 7 Douma incident, which the US-led bloc seeks to use as a pretext for a military action against Syria.

However, the chances of a military escalation still remain high.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Here is Jason Ditz on the pending attack on Syria.

https://news.antiwar.com/2018/04/10/trump-builds-coalition-for-war-against-syrian-government/

Vladimir Soloviev explains the failure of Putin’s policy of appeasement:

https://russia-insider.com/en/breaking-defining-moment-putin-stand-usisrael-empire-chaos-or-fold/ri23052

If you were the president of France or the prime minister of the UK, would you permit criminally insane Washington to drag you into military conflict with Russia? https://www.infowars.com/get-ready-russia-trump-takes-to-twitter-to-threaten-strike-on-syria/

I didn’t think so. I wouldn’t either. So what’s with Macron and May? What’s with the French and British governments? What’s with the French and British media? I read recently that former UK Labour prime minister Tony Blair is now worth $100 million, his payoff for lying to the UK government and people in order to support the George W. Bush regime’s invasion of Iraq. Have Macron and May been promised the same?

It makes no sense for the UK and French governments to make themselves targets of a military power against which they have no possibility of defense. It makes no sense that their peoples and media sit silently while one French president and one British prime minister endanger not only France and the UK but the entirety of Europe. What’s with the European Union? There is only silence as Europe, and the world with it, are taken to the brink of annihiliation. This makes no sense. https://www.globalresearch.ca/taking-the-world-to-the-brink-of-annihilation/5635456

People in Ghouta, doctors in Ghouta, and Russian experts who have arrived on the scene report that there is no sign of any chemical attack. Not only did Syria not use chemical weapons against the civilians that it liberated, there was no chemical attack, not even a false flag one staged by the US supported mercenaries who have been driven out of Ghouta by the Syrian Army. In other words, the chemical attack is entirely a hoax.

To keep the hoax from being confirmed by independent investigation, Washington vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to send in neutral experts to evaluate the claim of chemical attack. Why would Washington prevent an investigation that would prove Washington’s allegation? Clearly, Washington would only prevent an investigation that would disprove the false allegation. There is no doubt whatsoever that Washington’s allegation is false and is being used as an excuse to force Russia to fight or to accept Washington’s hegemony in the Middle East.

What if there was a chemical attack? Why does it matter to people who are killed whether it was by bullets, bombs, missiles, or chemicals? Why is it so bad to use chemicals instead of Hellfire missiles? Why is it OK for Washington and Israel to blow up schools, hospitals, weddings, funerals, market places, and homes full of women and children with missiles, but not OK to kill people with chemicals? Why is it worth starting World War 3 over a hoax chemical weapons attack or a real one?

Americans, for the most part a clueless people, have no awareness of the risk that the criminally insane government in Washington is taking with their lives. What if the Russians mean what they say and do not again turn the other cheek and back down? What happens if Russia replies to force with force?

Why is it that only a few Internet sites are asking this question?

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Patients treated by aid group not exposed to any chemical agents

Pat Buchanan – 4-6-18 “Information Clearing House”

With ISIS on the run in Syria, President Trump this week declared that he intends to make good on his promise to bring the troops home.

“I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home,” said the president. He continued: We’ve gotten “nothing out of the $7 trillion (spent) in the Middle East in the last 17 years. …So it’s time.”

Not so fast, Mr. President.

Even as Trump was speaking he was being contradicted by his Centcom commander General Joseph Votel. “A lot of good progress has been made” in Syria, Votel conceded, “but the hard part…is in front of us.”

Moreover, added Votel, when we defeat ISIS, we must stabilize Syria and see to its reconstruction.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had been even more specific: “It is crucial to our national defense to maintain a military and diplomatic presence in Syria, to help bring an end to that conflict, as they chart a course to achieve a new political future.”

But has not Syria’s “political future” already been charted?

Bashar al-Assad, backed by Iran and Russia, has won his seven-year civil war. He has retaken the rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. He now controls most of the country that the US and the Kurds do not.

According to The Washington Post, Defense Secretary James Mattis is also not on board with Trump and “has repeatedly said…that U.S. troops would be staying in Syria for the foreseeable future to guarantee stability and political resolution to the civil war.”

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who fears a “Shiite corridor” from Tehran through Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut, also opposes Trump. “If you take those [U.S.] troops out from east Syria,” the prince told Time, “you will lose that checkpoint…. American troops should stay [in Syria] at least for the mid-term, if not the long-term.”

Bibi Netanyahu also wants us to stay in Syria.

Wednesday, Trump acceded to his generals. He agreed to leave our troops in Syria until the Islamic State is finished. However, as the 2,000 U.S. troops there are not now engaging ISIS—many of US’s Kurdish allies are going back north to defend border towns threatened by Turkey—this could take a while.

Yet make no mistake: a showdown is coming. And, stated starkly, the divide is this.

Trump sees al-Qaeda and ISIS as the real enemy and is prepared to pull all U.S. forces out of Syria as soon as the caliphate is eradicated. If that means Assad is in power then, backed by Russia and Iran, so be it.

Trump does not see an Assad-ruled Syria (which has existed since the Nixon presidency) as a great threat to the United States. He is unwilling to spill more American blood to overturn the outcome of a war that Syria, Iran, and Russia have already won. Nor is he prepared to foot the bill for the reconstruction of Syria, or for any long-term occupation of that quadrant of Syria that we and our allies now hold.

Once ISIS is defeated, Trump wants out of the war and out of Syria. [But the US has been supporting ISIS and Kurds in Syria – Ben]

The Israelis, Saudis, and most of our foreign policy elites, however, vehemently disagree. They want the U.S. to hold onto that slice of Syria east of the Euphrates that we now occupy, and to use the leverage of our troops on Syrian soil to effect the removal of President Assad and the expulsion of the Iranians.

The War Party does not concede Syria is lost. They see the real battle as dead ahead. They’re eager to confront and, if need be, fight Syrians, Iranians, and Shiite militias should they cross to the east bank of the Euphrates, as they did weeks ago, when U.S. artillery and air power slaughtered them by the hundreds, Russians included.

If U.S. troops do remain in Syria, the probability is high that Trump, like Presidents Bush and Obama before him, will be ensnared indefinitely in the Forever War of the Middle East.

President Erdogan of Turkey (a NATO member), who has seized Afrin from the Syrian Kurds, is threatening to move on Manbij, where Kurdish troops are backed by U.S. troops. If Erdogan does not back away from his threat, NATO allies could start shooting at one another. (the US has forced NATO nations in the area into wars not of their making – Ben)

As the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria are both uninvited and unwelcome, a triumphant Assad is likely soon to demand that we remove them from his country.

Will we defy President Assad then, with the possibility that U.S. planes and troops could be engaging Syrians, Russians, Iranians, and Shiite militias, in a country where we have no right to be?

Trump is being denounced as an isolationist. But what gains have we reaped from 17 years of Middle East wars—from Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen—to justify all the bloodshed and the treasure lost?

And how has our great rival China suffered from not having fought in any of these wars?

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Every 80 years, nations often experience colossal events. There are different theories about this cycle – for example, the Fourth Turning theory focuses on the cyclical strengths of institutions versus individuals. Others surmise that four generations after a major crisis, there are no more older people to warn the society, and the younger people take peace and prosperity for granted.

Well, exactly 80 years ago, America was mired in the Great Depression, and World War II was about to begin. Yet, predictably, most Americans and Europeans now cannot even fathom such scenarios repeating in their lifetime.

There are two major catalysts that can ignite catastrophic wars in the next decade: debt/economic crisis in the West and the great-power rivalries (US + EU versus Russia + China). Geopolitical tensions that are simmering now will reach a crescendo very soon. Without extraordinary caution and prudence, we’re destined to become another victim of history’s inexorable cycle.

America is #2

How many American politicians and elites can say, “America is the second largest economy in the world”? How will Americans react when they hear it for the first time? There will be shock, anger, denial and a lot of blame and finger-pointing. However, most Americans fail to realize that not only is this scenario almost inevitable, but it will happen within the next 8-10 years.

Consider that China’s nominal GDP grew 200% since 2008, while the US grew only 35%. Even if China slows down a lot and grows only 100% and the US continues at the same pace, China will be #1 before 2028.

What does China’s rise mean to Western corporations and the globalists who control them? Loss of power and wealth. And that’s something the globalists aren’t going to just let happen.

There’s more to China’s rise than just GDP. In late 2017, US News and World Report ranked China’s Tsinghua University as #1 for computer science and engineering, dethroning MIT. In hi-tech areas such as 5G, driverless vehicles, electric vehicles, passenger drones (“flying cars”), 3D printing, artificial intelligence, super computers, quantum computing and numerous other fields, China is #1 or #2.

Throughout history, an established power has never passively watched a rising power take its spot. As Harvard Professor Graham T. Allison points out, 75% of the time, the established power goes to outright war with the rising power.

Sleeping Bear Wakes Up

After the fall of the Soviet Union, American intellectuals’ favorite phrase was “the end of history.” And John Bolton famously claimed that there should be only one country in the UN’s Permanent Security Council: USA! America has the won the Cold War and will stay as the hyperpower forever! Everyone will embrace America’s exceptionalism and remain submissive.

Alas, Putin came along and resuscitated the Russian bear that was on life support. He thwarted the globalists in Ukraine and Syria, survived a Wall Street-engineered drop in oil price (from $115 to $45 in mere six months), prevented the collapse of the Russian economy in spite of severe sanctions, shored up enormous gold and foreign exchange reserves, and even managed to develop hypersonic ICBMs that can evade America’s vaunted missile defense systems.

Worse, Putin is working with the Chinese on US-independent versions of the Internet, banking system, credit card system, etc. All these have turned Putin into the globalists’ public enemy #1.

In the 1960s, the CIA came up with all sorts of false flag attacks to blame Russia – killing Cuban refugees in Miami, buying Russian planes to attack US military installations, etc. Now, the Russia hacking/interference claim and the spy-poisoning drama are just the previews; expect much more in the coming months and years.

Middle East Powder Keg

In the 1990s, Neocons in Israel and the US – remember PNAC? – dreamed of hegemony over the Middle East. Take out Iraq and Iran, the domination is complete. Imagine controlling all that oil and the strategic portions of water through which much of global trade passes.

And if Western firms can construct oil/gas pipelines from the Middle East to Europe, the latter can say, “Nyet” to Russian oil/gas. Without Europe as the customer, Russia will suffer immensely and surrender.

Controlling the Middle East also means controlling the land and the sea routes of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. A few “moderate rebels” in strategic locations can greatly disrupt China’s Europe-bound trains.

This is why Syria and Iran are so important to all sides of the geopolitical struggle.

With Neocons and pro-Israel warmongers filling up Trump’s cabinet, a war on Iran is more likely than ever before, which will definitely draw Russia, and possibly China, into the conflict.

Asian War to Contain China

China’s Achilles’ heel is that it’s surrounded by America’s vassal states – Taiwan, Japan and South Korea for now. The Philippines used to be America’s puppet, but it’s now leaning towards China and Russia, thanks to Duterte. How North Korea will turn out is yet to be seen. India, which was colonized by the British for 200 years, is experiencing amnesia and is quickly ceding its sovereignty to the US.

Japanese elites – under pressure from globalists – are trying to change their constitution so that Japan can build up its military again. This is obviously an ominous sign.

Thus globalists have a lot of options to wage a proxy war on China. Asia has been growing rapidly and enjoying unprecedented prosperity, but there’s a good chance they will screw it up by becoming sacrificial pawns in the geopolitical chessboard.

Financial Wars

If the globalists have mighty military and vassal states to impose their hegemony, they have one tremendous weakness: a fake economy based on debt and money-printing. America’s enormous strength is based on the petrodollar – an unfair system that forces other countries to buy oil and other commodities in US dollars. Take that away, the American Empire starts to wobble. Without enormous demand for the US dollar and treasuries, interest rates will go up, debt will become expensive, and interest payments on existing debt will skyrocket.

This is why China, the largest importer of oil, just started oil futures that trade in Yuan. Before the end of the year, China plans to announce systems where one can directly buy and sell oil in Yuan. If China were to get out of the globalist hegemony, there’s no better way than to establish petroyuan, especially if it’s backed by gold.

What’s Next?

Thanks to the Deep State and Democrats, US-Russia relations will continue to deteriorate as sanctions pile on. Globalists will also use the anti-Russia hysteria to create an EU army, bolster NATO, and provoke Russia with missile defense systems and military build up on its borders.

The US will continue to build its troops to encircle China, saber rattle in the South China Sea, incite Muslim separatists in Western China (Xinjiang), and try to turn Asian countries against China.

There will also be endless economic, propaganda and hybrid wars against both Russia and China in the coming years.

Conclusion

America’s uni-polar dominance is a blip in history. America’s elites are filled with hubris and hegemonic fantasies. Americans – and sadly most Europeans now as well – are ignorant about geopolitics, easily swayed by propaganda, and programmed to accept wild stories without demanding proof or evidence. The combination of ruthless elites and gullible masses is extremely dangerous. Without great restraint, diplomacy, wisdom and compromises, we will be sleepwalking into a nuclear disaster in the next decade.

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