What is Bellingcat Going to Say Now?

Out of curiosity I entered "James Le Mesurier" as a search term on the Bellingcat website. "No results found."

I went to Bellingcat this morning because I wanted to see what sort of spookery, legerdemain and obfuscation would be on display to rebut the latest WikiLeaks documents release undermining the OPCW report which was used to conclude that the Syrian government was to blame for a chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018.

The latest WikiLeaks document release along with reporting by the Daily Mail's Peter Hitchens establishes that the investigators of the OPCW's Douma Fact Finding Mission (FFM) did not believe the official version of events. From the pristine condition of the pressurized metal canister supposedly dropped from great height which smashed through a reinforced concrete roof to the merely trace elements of normal chemicals -- not to mention the inconsistency of chlorine poisoning with victims foaming at the mouth -- the FFM investigators repeatedly voiced objections and raised concerns, which were then summarily suppressed by OPCW leadership.

In addition to WikiLeaks' OPCW document release on Saturday, Tareq Haddad, the Newsweek reporter who resigned after his story of the OPCW scandal was spiked, published his account, "Lies, Newsweek and Control of the Media Narrative: a First-Hand Account." Editors at Newsweek explained to Haddad that there was nothing to the OPCW scandal because Belingcat said so.

According to Caitlin Johnstone,

Newsweek’s foreign affairs editor Dimi Reider (who Haddad notes has Council on Foreign Relations ties) shot down Haddad’s pitch for a story about the OPCW scandal last month by falsely claiming that Bellingcat had “published a thorough refutation” of the story Haddad wanted to report on. In fact, as I documented at the time, Bellingcat had published an unbelievably pathetic spin job in which it tried to paint the whole OPCW scandal as a big misunderstanding.

Bellingcat argued that the concerns voiced in the leaked email published by WikiLeaks last month about the developing Interim Report in July 2018 had been fully addressed by the time the Final Report was published in March 2019, citing as evidence the fact that some slight adjustments had been made in the wording, like changing “likely” to “possible” and changing “reactive chlorine containing chemical” to “chemical containing reactive chlorine.” In focusing on this ridiculous, pedantic nonsense, Bellingcat tries to weave the narrative that because the whistleblower’s concerns were addressed with this pedantry, there was therefore no OPCW coverup. Never mind the fact that the multiple OPCW whistleblowers were still plainly so incensed by the organisation’s publishing that they felt the need to leak internal documents. Never mind that Bellingcat made no attempt whatsoever to address the aforementioned actual grievances by the OPCW whistleblowers like the low levels of chlorinated organic chemicals on the scene, the inconsistencies in symptoms and testimony with chlorine poisoning, or the Ian Henderson report. 

But that’s what happens when mass media outlets like The New York Times and The Guardian publish swooning puff piece after swooning puff piece about Bellingcat; they grant a US government-funded narrative management firm so much unearned legitimacy that even a transparently bogus argument like the one they made about the OPCW scandal gets passed around newsrooms by credulous editors assuring each other that it’s a “thorough refutation” of facts and reality. Mass media outlets help puff up Bellingcat’s legitimacy, and in turn Bellingcat rewards them with an excuse to not have to ever challenge establishment narratives. 

Reider also argued that Haddad’s report on the OPCW couldn’t be published because “not a single respected media outlet – many of whom boast far greater regional expertise, resources on the ground and in newsroom than Newsweek does – have taken the leak remotely seriously.”

That’s a great self-reinforcing system, isn’t it? MSM outlets validate US government-funded narrative managers like Bellingcat so they can tell them with authority why an unauthorised story shouldn’t be published, and each outlet sees the absence of other outlets reporting on it as evidence that it shouldn’t be reported on. And we wonder why no one’s reporting on the OPCW scandal. 

Given that Bellingcat specializes in open-source investigations of suspicious events, the fact that "James Le Mesurier," the co-founder of White Helmets who purportedly killed himself in Istanbul last month by jumping out of his apartment, cannot be found on its website is itself highly suspicious.

New Age

Trump arrives in the United Kingdom on Thursday to what the Guardian says is a massive police mobilization "in numbers not seen since widespread rioting in 2011, in order to meet planned anti-Trump protests." The UK is in turmoil as the hard Brexiters play out their weak hand. There is no appetite for a clean break with the European Union. Business is raising an alarm of massive layoffs. According to Stephen Castle's "Theresa May in Fight to Save Government Amid Brexit Rift":

Several major British employers have issued warnings in recent weeks over the risks of a chaotic, or “cliff edge,” Brexit. Most prominently, Jaguar Land Rover said it could derail more than $100 billion worth of investment plans in Britain and force the closing of some factories. Airbus and BMW also questioned whether they could continue to keep manufacturing facilities in the country under those conditions.

May's muddle will continue until the day of reckoning when parliament must vote to accept whatever deal the EU grants it.

But that's several months off. Right now it's summer, and I feel as if we entered a new era. It's Trumpian of course: Life on the street as the floor beams of neoliberalism continue to disintegrate.

Craig Murray captures the spirit of our new, confused age in his post devoted to the OPCW report on Douma, "No Trump, No Clinton, No NATO":

Trump’s reaction to yet more lying claims by the UK government funded White Helmets and Syrian Observatory, a reaction of missile strikes on alleged Syrian facilities producing the non-existent nerve agent, was foolish. May’s leap for British participation was unwise, and the usual queue of Blairites who stood up as always in Parliament to support any bombing action, stand yet again exposed as evil tools of the military industrial complex.

Hillary Clinton, true to form, wanted more aggressive military action than was undertaken by Trump. Hillary has been itching to destroy Syria as she destroyed Libya. Libya was very much Hillary’s war and – almost unreported by the mainstream media – NATO bombers carried out almost 14,000 bombing sorties on Libya and devastated entire cities.

The destruction of Libya’s government and infrastructure directly caused the Mediterranean boat migrant crisis, which has poisoned the politics of much of the European Union.

Donald Trump has not started any major war. He has been more restrained in military action than any US President since Jimmy Carter. My own view is (and of course it is impossible to know for sure) that, had Hillary been in power, Syria would already have been totally destroyed, the Cold War with Russia would be at mankind threatening levels, and nuclear tension with North Korea would be escalating.

“He hasn’t destroyed mankind yet” is faint praise for anyone. Being less of an existential danger to mankind than Hillary Clinton is a level achieved by virtually the entire population of the planet. I am not supporting Trump. I am condemning Clinton. I too, like Susan Sarandon, would have voted for Jill Stein were I an American.

Mackey vs. Beeley + North-South Peace on the Korean Peninsula

This morning Niqnaq posts an illuminating exchange of tweets between the odious Robert Mackey and the excellent Vanessa Beeley. Mackey attempts to undermine last Thursday's news conference at the OPCW by alleging that Russia rushed the testimony of the eyewitnesses to the public without allowing the OPCW to interview them first. Beeley refutes this, with an assist from the Russian embassy in the Netherlands, and then demands that Mackey produce the OPCW statement that he says "asked Russia to let them interview the witnesses first, and not hold their event until after the inspectors finish their work and file their report." Mackey does not, which probably means that he just made it up.

The silver lining to the Douma false flag provocation is that it exposes intelligence agency assets like Robert Mackey who have burrowed into left-of-center outlets like The Intercept. Mackey will go on finding work, but his career will never be the same.

****

Having had an opportunity to digest some of the reporting of the Kim-Moon talks at Panmunjom, my sense is that there is little chance for success because the U.S. is insisting on complete, rapid denuclearization before any sanctions are lifted. Call it the Gaddafi option. North Korean leadership is not as gullible as the ousted and lynched colonel.

Everyone knows by now that the United States is a bad-faith agent, something that will be even more pronounced when the U.S. pulls out the Iran nuclear deal sometime in May. It will be an official marker for the end of the U.S. unipolar world.

The North Korean strategy is to move South Korea away from the U.S. and closer to China. I think they will be successful.

Information Warfare

If you enter "opcw" as a search term now in Google News the three top stories that pop up are

• Reuters, "Russia presents unharmed Syrians at OPCW, Western allies stay away"
• AP, "Russia chided for "obscene masquerade" on alleged Syria chemical attack"
• Reuters, "UK envoy: Russian briefing at OPCW chemical arms body is stunt"

The "breaking news" is not the Ghouta residents who can bear witness to being used as players in a chemical weapons theater staged by the White Helmets. The breaking news are the denunciations by the French and British envoys to the OPCW. This is basic rudimentary information warfare.

Russia is making this move no doubt because the OPCW is stacked against it and some ruse is afoot to skew the Douma investigation to find traces of chlorine and hence blur the conclusion that there was no chemical attack.

Darkness is descending over the neoliberal West. Craig Murray's latest post, "Blocked By Facebook and the Vulnerability of New Media," speaks to this:

I am among those who argue that the strength of the state and corporate media is being increasingly and happily undermined by our ability to communicate via social media. But social media has developed in such a way that the channels of communication are dominated by corporations – Facebook, Twitter and Google – which can in effect turn off the traffic to a citizen journalism site in a second. The site is not taken down, and the determined person can still navigate directly to it, but the vast bulk of the traffic is cut off. What is more this is done secretly, without your being informed, and in a manner deliberately hard to detect. The ability to simply block the avenues by which people get to see dissenting opinions, is terrifying.

Furthermore neither Facebook nor Twitter contact you when they block traffic to your site to tell you this is happening, let alone tell you why, and let alone give you a chance to counter whatever argument they make. I do not know if I am blocked by Facebook as an alleged Russian bot, or for any other reason. I do know that it appears to have happened shortly after I published the transcript of the Israeli general discussing the procedures for shooting children.

Likely "shadow banning" will become the norm. All web sites will be filtered. The cat will be put back in its bag.

Robert Mackey of The Intercept is a Spook

Proof that The Intercept, funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and featuring the work of Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, is a platform for government-sponsored chicanery can be found in Robert Mackey's "Russia Says It Has 'Irrefutable Evidence' U.K. Staged Chemical Attack in Syria. Let’s See It."

Mackey is a spook along the lines of Eliot Higgins (whom Mackey admiringly quotes in the story), a cyber-savvy sleuth of social media who works to uphold Langley's world view. Mackey asserts that

Russian diplomats and pundits on state-controlled news outlets have, for years, promoted unverified conspiracy theories about the White Helmets working with Islamic extremists and foreign intelligence agencies. Attempting to discredit the rescue workers, who often film in the immediate aftermath of bombings by government forces or Russian jets, has been a central concern for supporters of the Syrian government since the protest movement of 2011 turned into an armed conflict.

What will Mackey say of Robert Fisk's exclusive from Douma "The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack"?

Mackey alleges that  

Given that Douma is now under the control of the Assad government, Russia’s ally, and thus off-limits to independent journalists, the Russian claims are impossible to verify or debunk — a situation Russian and Syrian officials have taken advantage of throughout the war to cast doubt on claims that atrocities have been committed by forces loyal to Assad.

Well, debunk Fisk does, not only that there was a chemical weapons attack in Douma, but that the White Helmets are legitimate, independent rescue workers. As Fisk notes

The White Helmets – the medical first responders already legendary in the West but with some interesting corners to their own story – played a familiar role during the battles. They are partly funded by the Foreign Office and most of the local offices were staffed by Douma men. I found their wrecked offices not far from Dr Rahaibani’s clinic. A gas mask had been left outside a food container with one eye-piece pierced and a pile of dirty military camouflage uniforms lay inside one room. Planted, I asked myself? I doubt it. The place was heaped with capsules, broken medical equipment and files, bedding and mattresses.

Of course we must hear their side of the story, but it will not happen here: a woman told us that every member of the White Helmets in Douma abandoned their main headquarters and chose to take the government-organised and Russian-protected buses to the rebel province of Idlib with the armed groups when the final truce was agreed. 

The Intercept should disavow Mackey's story, or at least request that Mackey write another one, explaining some of Fisk's revelations. Are all the people Fiske spoke to Russian plants? Are the White Helmets not associated with Jaysh al-Islam?

The Failure of Alternative Media

Now is a good time to click through the internet and take note. We are on the brink of another "Missiles of October" moment with Russia proclaiming that any U.S. missiles fired at Syria will be shot down and their launch sites targeted, and Trump responding by taunting Russia that "nice new and smart missiles" are headed for Syria.

Yet Jacobin, the smart-set magazine of the coming socialist revolution, is silent. So too is Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept. Democracy Now conducted an interview with Phyllis Bennis yesterday which was very basic. Bennis made the connection between what is happening currently with the previous Iraq wars under Bush I and Bush II. This morning the broadcast is focusing on Michael Cohen's legal difficulties and Mark Zuckerberg's Capitol Hill testimony, which is pretty much the same as right-wing Breitbart. Infowars was silent on Syria yesterday, but today has a largely mainstream write-up.

So that's the alternative media. Not much help. You need to visit The Saker, MofA or 21st Century Wire.

This is a "Which Side Are You On?" moment. Look around.

Clearly the Douma chemical attack was fabricated. It has only been verified by anti-Assad groups.

There is no large, organized anti-war opposition in the United States. The Democrats are more hawkish than Republicans. My local congresswoman, whom I campaigned for and donated to based on evidence that she was the most anti-war candidate in the field, has become one of the up-and-coming traffickers of the New McCarthyism.

This boil has to be lanced. Maybe the Russians are correct. Maybe the only way to check the destructive, slaughtering proclivities of the U.S. warfare state is to bring the planet to the brink of nuclear annihilation.

U.S./French Attack on Syria Likely in the Works

In the wake of Israel's bombing of a Syrian military airfield in Homs Province, which apparently killed a number of Iranians, we need to keep focused on the possibility of a double tap. The second strike would be delivered by France and/or the United States.

Macron and Trump conferred by phone prior to today's UNSC special meeting on the alleged chlorine attack in Douma. They will be united in opposition to whatever Russian position is put forward.

Is Trump foolish enough to have another go at a Tomahawk attack as he did last year in response to Khan Sheikhoun? How about Macron? He's facing an unwinnable situation with a calendar chock full of rolling strike dates. France will be largely paralyzed in April. What better way to look tough to the rail unions than bombing the Syrian Arab Army?

Trump will be happy to have Emmanuel Macron as a wing man. Say what you will about Trump, but he is generally a quick study. He knows by know that the Saudis and Israelis are running U.S. policy on Syria. 

Jaysh al-Islam is a Salafi terror group guided by Saudi Arabia. It staged the chlorine attack in Douma prior to agreeing to an evacuation. The Saudis have Trump in a box. They stage a chemical weapon attack and they know Trump has to respond.

The problem here is that Russia is going to respond sooner or later, and that response will be designed to bring us to the brink of nuclear confrontation.

Read the Saker's informative post, "Russia Is Ready for War -- Mood on Prime-Time TV Is Grim":

I just spend about 2 hour listening to a TV debate of Russian experts about what to do about the USA. Here are a few interesting interesting points.

1) They all agreed that the AngloZionist (of course, they used the words “USA” or “Western countries”) was only going to further escalate and that the only way to stop this is to deliberately bring the world right up to the point were a full-scale US-Russian war was imminent or even locally started. They said that it was fundamentally wrong for Russia to reply with just words against Western actions.

2) Interestingly, there also was a consensus that even a full-scale US attack on Syria would be too late to change the situation on the ground, that it was way too late for that.

3) Another interesting conclusion was that the only real question for Russia is whether Russia would be better off delaying this maximal crisis or accelerating the events and making everything happen sooner. There was no consensus on that.

4) Next, there was an consensus view that pleading, reasoning, asking for fairness or justice, or even for common sense, was futile. The Russian view is simple: the West is ruled by a gang of thugs supported by an infinitely lying and hypocritical media while the general public in the West has been hopelessly zombified. The authority of the so-called “western values” (democracy, rule of law, human rights, etc.) in Russia is now roadkill.

5) There was also a broad consensus that the US elites are not taking Russia seriously and that the current Russian diplomatic efforts are futile (especially towards the UK). The only way to change that would be with very harsh measures, including diplomatic and military ones. Everybody agreed that talking with Boris Johnson would be not only a total waste of time, but a huge mistake.

6) To my amazement, the notion that Russia might have to sink a few USN ships or use Kalibers on US forces in the Middle-East was viewed as a real, maybe inevitable, option. Really – nobody objected.

Reach your own conclusions. I will just say that none of the “experts” was representing, or working for, the Russian government. Government experts not only have better info, they also know that the lives of millions of people depend on their decisions, which is not the case for the so-called “experts”. Still, the words of these experts do reflect, I think, a growing popular consensus.