This article was published on Facebook on 13 April 2018, the day before the Anglo-American-French missile strikes against Syria. The relevance of this to a Christian view is the twisting of Truth by media and politicians in order to justify violence, and consequent unwarranted violence by a “Christian” Prime Minister. (NB – long article, and you need to be fairly well in tune with the “news” to follow it easily.)
The media have never reported the Syrian War fully or accurately, but in recent days the coverage has done a U-turn away from reality. It’s looking very much like the Dodgy Dossier and WMD claims that were used to propel us into the Iraq War. Some key points to consider are outlined below.
Firstly, we are supposed to believe that no journalist or politician has the remotest clue about what a False Flag incident is. It’s probably true that most ordinary people don’t know, so you may need to do some googling on the subject, but the idea that those who professionally deal with war and current affairs are so ignorant is untenable. In essence, False Flag means doing something bad which can then be attributed to the other side, usually to justify an attack or even all-out war on them.
Consider the Douma case. Douma is a part of the East Ghouta enclave on the outskirts of the capital of Syria, Damascus. It has been held for years by various rebel groups, who could not be dislodged, as the Syrian Government lacked the power while most of the country was under ISIS control. In the last year Syrian forces, with Russian help, have decimated ISIS, and a month ago were able to turn their attention to East Ghouta. They advanced very rapidly into it, in spite of fierce resistance, and soon split it into three much smaller pockets of rebel control. At this point they ceased the attack and held talks with the rebels. In two of the pockets the rebels agreed to be transported in buses, with their personal weapons and families, to other rebel held areas. This is a standard strategy of the Syrian Government, with the rebels usually departing to rebel-held Idlib in North West Syria. However, the rebel group in Douma, Jaish al-Islam, hindered negotiations even though the writing was on the wall for them. Eventually they agreed an evacuation to Jarabulus on the Turkish border, then reneged on the agreement, so fighting began again. Within 24 hours they were losing territory so fast to the Syrian army that they genuinely accepted the peace terms and evacuated, an outcome that was wholly predictable a week earlier unless they fought to the death, an outcome that even most jihadis avoid.
The gas attack is claimed to have taken place in those final 24 hours of fighting. The problems with the claim are as follows:
1 Even now there is no clarity about what gas was used in the alleged attack. Was it Sarin or Chlorine? Or both?
2 Even now there is no clear number of deaths supposed to be caused by it. There is also no list of names of the dead. Syrians do have names.
3 The claim is made by Jaish al-Islam rebels; and by the White Helmets and the Syrian American Medical Society who work with them. White Helmets are a specifically rebel Civil Defence group, not remotely comparable to the Red Cross or Oxfam. Claims by these groups cannot reasonably be taken at face value. The Syrian Government and Russian inspectors say there was no attack.
4 A full and fully independent investigation must take place before any conclusions can be reached. Yet Theresa May, before such an investigation has taken place, and without even consulting Parliament, has approved military action. The Syrian War has gone on for seven years. Why the sudden rush?
5 In the absence of proper investigation, the one thing we are able to do is review the known facts and use the cui bono principle. Cui bono is Latin for “Who Benefits”. It is a principle often used in solving crimes. Simply, anyone who may benefit from a crime is a potential suspect. Conversely, anybody who might suffer as a result of it is unlikely to be involved. In this case, would the Syrian Government benefit from the use of gas? There are no reports of Jaish al-Islam fighters being killed in the attack, and therefore no military advantage to the Syrian Army. In any case, Syria was clearly about to take control of Douma anyway, and is accepted to have taken the rest of the East Ghouta pocket without resort to gas. Why would they use it now? Indeed, why would they want to kill Syrian civilians in an area which they were about to take over? Did they want to sow hatred for themselves among the local population that supported them? Or did they want to give the Americans an excuse to attack them? Clearly none of this makes sense. But it would definitely be a desire of Jaish al-Islam to encourage such an American attack. This clearly indicates Jaish al-Islam as the most likely perpetrators, if indeed the attack happened at all.
6 We should also dismiss claims that Assad did this because he is “mindless” or an “animal”. Before Assad returned to Syria to take the reins of government after his older brother’s death, he worked as an eye surgeon in London. Does that sound like a mindless animal? Notice “worked”, not playboy; notice “London”, not Moscow; notice “eye surgeon” not businessman.
Running alongside all of this and inevitably connecting with it is the Skripal affair. Again, blame is laid at the door of the Syrian-Russian alliance. In this case investigations have taken place, and nobody is in doubt that the poison used was Novichok. Novichok is a Russian invention so, the story goes, it absolutely must have been the Russians. The media and politicians don’t seem to talk about Vil Mirzayanov, the Russian co-inventor of Novichok. He now lives in the USA. He is also “Prime Minister” of the Tatarstan “Government in Exile”, Tatarstan being a part of Russia. Given a Russian MIG fighter aircraft, would the Americans just scrap it, or do everything possible to evaluate it? Given all the secrets of Novichok, would they burn them, or make some and research it? The latter of these is the only logical conclusion. Therefore one must reasonably assume that the states with access to Novichok are not only Russia, but also the USA, and possibly close US allies such as the UK or Israel.
In the Skripal case, one is forced to use the cui bono principle to point to the likely perpetrator. It’s all we have, since the mere existence of Novichok at the crime scene does not prove its source. It only limits it to a few state players who could potentially possess it. Of those state players, which might benefit from action against Russia or Syria? Clearly not either Russia or Syria. The only potential benefit to Russia would be the death of Skripal. But Skripal served six years in a Russian prison for being a double-agent, until his release by the Russians in a spy swop eight years ago. It is most unlikely that he was of any concern to them now. If somehow he was, and they really wanted him dead, they could have done it in lots of ways that did not point the finger at them. In consequence, it is reasonable to assume that it was done by some power that did want to point the finger at Russia.
On the basis of currently available evidence, the Skripal and Douma affairs are being manufactured as a cassus belli, a cause for war. This is frequently the purpose of False Flag events. The total lack of reasoned arguments from either politicians or media makes it appear that the decision to attack has already been made. The News, if you can call it that, is all about bringing the population into line.
UPDATE. 24 April 2018.
The speed with which the attacks took place after this article was published makes it clear that the decision to attack had indeed already been taken. And all the media froth was an attempt to justify it.
At the present time the OPCW report is still not available, but many other reports clearly indicate that no gas was used by anybody. One such report is from the highly-respected Robert Fisk of the Independent. But it is still hard to find the truth. As Jonathan Cook shows on his blog here, even the Guardian took care to avoid any reference to Fisk’s report. As an ex-Guardian journalist turned Middle-East specialist, Cook should know. And the Windrush Affair promptly filled all the main news spots after the missile attack, making it a forgotten fait accompli. All the current evidence is that Douma was indeed a false flag type of event, designed to bring down Western missiles on Syria.
UPDATE. 10 MAY, 2018.
As far as twisting the truth is concerned, things are now looking even worse. It emerges that the evidence for the existence of Novichok nerve agents comes entirely from Vil Mirzayanov, the Russian defector mentioned above. The chemical compounds involved, five of them, do actually exist, and are relatively easy to synthesise in any University Laboratory. Iran has made them and handed over details to the OPCW. There is no evidence that they are massively lethal as claimed by Mirzayanov, and the OPCW has not classified them as Chemical Weapons. It may be that they were made as part of research into possible pesticides. That fact that all three people affected in Salisbury survived indicates they were not affected by something truly lethal. Early local Press reports considered Fentanyl the likely cause. There has also been a Tweet from Alex Thomson of Channel 4 News that the Government slapped a D-Notice (voluntary media self-censorship) on the identity of Skripal’s MI6 handler living nearby. The handler, Pablo Miller, is strongly linked to Christopher Steele of the Trump/Russia “golden shower” dossier. This suggests a totally different and current reason for the Skripal attack. There is much more on the web for those who are interested. The key point is that the neatly packaged truth on the Mass Media may be anything but.
UPDATE. 25th JUNE, 2018
Eleven weeks after the alleged Douma Gas attack, and ten weeks after the missiles were fired, an investigation by Bellingcat and the New York Times pops up “proving” the attack happened. I’m still trying to check the details of their evidence, but what is certainly worth knowing now is that media-darling Bellingcat is actually run by Elliot Higgins from his front room in England. He does “internet investigations”, not on-the-spot ones. He is something of a double for Osama Suleiman, who runs the oft-quoted Syrian Observatory for Human Rights from his front room in Coventry. What Higgins and company are saying is that the evidence provided by the Jihadi Rebels, seen through the internet, looks sound. It’s interesting that the mainstream media give such prominence to this, when the on-site report of the highly-respected, Arabic-speaking Robert Fisk, which reached the opposite conclusion, was buried by them. The OPCW has yet to report; they are taking a very long time.
UPDATE 10 September 2018
Latest mainstream news is about two alleged Russian perpetrators of the Skripal attack. This has been hyped around all the media even though the evidence is only circumstantial at best. What the media have is ignored is the final report from the OPCW, which said there was no evidence of Sarin use, but some evidence of chlorine. So at least we know that all the Sarin allegations were false. OPCW also clearly stated that they were completely unable to say who may have used chlorine. Thus one is left with cui bono and the Fisk reports in order to fix blame. Both point clearly to the rebels. Hence the missile attacks were unjustified, illegal aggression.
UPDATE 15 October 2018
Recently the media has treated us to a lot of detail on the alleged Russian perpetrators of the Skripal attack. Strangely, this information also comes first from the same Elliot Higgins’ Bellingcat website mentioned above. The revelations that Higgins comes out with by sitting at his laptop in Leicester, whether about MH17, Syria, or whatever else, are truly remarkable. And they all precisely fit the UK Government’s agendas. We are not saying that Putin is “Mr Nice Guy”. People who fight their way to the top in politics almost never are. But the story has too many lies (such as Boris Johnson saying Porton Down proved the Novichok was Russian) and too many inconsistencies to be taken at face value.
Far worse today was the Panorama broadcast on Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons. It was a mash of inuendo, hearsay and cherry-picked data. It still used the Douma incident as primary evidence, again showing the hospital scenes that Robert Fisk investigated on the spot and showed to be false. It said the OPCW was still investigating Douma, when in fact their investigation is complete, and they have stated that no Sarin was used; that there was some evidence of chlorine; and that they were unable to say who might have used chlorine. It said that not all of the Syrian Chemical weapons had been destroyed, neglecting to state that two of the sites were in rebel territory at the time, and the UN did not have access (but the rebels did.) It pushed the view that the Syrian war was nearly over, and nearly won by Assad, because he used Chemical weapons. The truth is that it has been Russian help that has moved the war in that direction. If the BBC can give so much airtime to Syria, why can’t they tell some hard facts? For example, eight months ago ISIS was reduced to a single worthwhile piece of land, about half the size of the Isle of Wight. They also held some desert areas of no use to man nor beast, but their little tiny enclave on the East bank of the Euphrates really was the only territory worth having. They could not be attacked there by Syrian forces on the other bank of the River, because the Kurds and their American backers regard the East bank as “their territory.” Therefore it’s the responsibility of the Kurds, the Americans and the rest of the sixty-odd nation anti-ISIS Coalition to clear this minute enclave. The enclave is still there! Most of the World versus half the Isle of Wight, and after eight months it’s still a no-score draw! Seems it must be (very) friendly match.
The relevance of these events for Christianity is twofold. One issue is the whole question of how war is justified by obscuring truth. The bigger one is that our Anglo-Catholic, Vicar’s Daughter Prime Minister saw fit to attack a sovereign nation two thousand miles away without Parliamentary or UN approval, without any clear justification, and without any possible claim of self-defence, since the Muslims we are told to be so afraid of are the very ones the Syrian Government are trying to defeat. For many, the conclusion, since you can’t get more “Christian” than an Anglo-Catholic, Vicar’s Daughter is that Christianity is freely violent. That is the wrong conclusion. The correct one is that Theresa May and her ilk are fake Christians whose only connection with Christ is to drag His Name through the gutter with their aggression.
Truth is the first casualty of War. Normally it has to be dead or in Intensive Care before a war even begins, in order to get it started.
UPDATE 26th October 2018
This is not exactly an update, as I’m evidently well behind the curve here. Elliot Higgins of Bellingcat has had a lot of detractors for a long time, described among other things as a “NATO Troll”, see here, or click here for debate at the Centre for Investigative Journalism. For Higgins to become a Media Darling, given the evidence about him, he must have hidden backing.
UPDATE 22nd November 2018
BBC Panorama broadcast “Salisbury Nerve Attack – The Inside Story” today. With all the scary background music and repeated statements of how evil Russia is, an unthinking viewer would certainly be taken in. However, there was virtually no new information. Vil Mirzanov, previously mentioned here, got some coverage, but without any mention of how much he hates Russia, which renders him an unreliable witness. Mirzanov did, however, provide one new piece of information, and one that has to be believed as it was an “admission against interest”. He told that Novichok degrades rapidly in damp conditions. Would not Salisbury in early March count as damp? So why the extended clean-up that went on for so long? We are also told that some one hundred and fifty Russian diplomats have been expelled because of Salisbury. Interesting to compare the number of Saudi diplomats expelled after the Khashoggi Murder, which is far more clearly the work of Saudi Arabia. Saudi diplomats expelled: nil. So, in short, little new information, and no fresh evidence to back the UK Goverment claims. So why was this worth a whole new episode of Panorama?
The program also repeated assertions of just how lethal Novichok is, and that it was smeared on the handle of Skripal’s front door. Why did both Sergei and his daughter touch the handle? It only takes one person to close a door. And why, after contact with a lethal, fast acting nerve agent, do they walk around for hours before suddenly becoming ill simultaneously? Looks like Novichok is much less use as a battlefield weapon than a bow and arrow.
Read more articles on the Canadian Global Research website here.