Today we have Britain and France backed by the war-seeking USA – then in 1914 we had Austria Hungary backed by the war-seeking Germany. Then the victim was Serbia allied with Russia, today the victim is Syria also allied with Russia. Then the excuse for war was the “highly likely” but in fact false claim that the Serbian Government was behind the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand – when leading Austrian Government figures involved admitted that was not the case.
2018
May, Trump and Macron are in dangerous waters.
Neither Russia nor Syria have attacked us. Russia is in Syria at the request of its Government. The US and Allies are not.
We have no UN approval. There is no legal justification under international law if there were it would also apply to the Syrian rebel forces who have used chemical weapons.
It will make no difference to Assad who, in his hour of victory against extreme Islamist forces in Eastern Ghouta, had no logical reason to risk the opprobrium of the world by using chemical weapons.
We know rebel forces have chemical weapons and have used them and the alleged Douma chemical attack may well be a false flag operation
To risk an East West war in these circumstances – with China siding with Russia – is criminally irresponsible. China has frequently sent warships into the area.
1914
The striking thing about these events is the dangerous and remarkable similarities with the 1914 Sarajevo assassination of the Austrian Archduke by the Bosnian Gavril Princip used as the unjustified excuse for Austria Hungary to attack Serbia, beginning the First World War.
Today we have Britain and France backed by the war seeking USA – then we had Austria Hungary backed by the war-seeking Germany. Then the victim was Serbia allied with Russia, today the victim is Syria also allied with Russia. Then the excuse for war was the “highly likely” but in fact false claim that the Serbian Government was behind the assassin – when leading Austrian Government figures involved admitted that was not the case. Today the excuse is that a chemical attack was “highly likely” by the Syria Government when rebel forces also possess such weapons, have used them and know that on past form Assad will be blamed in the western media for any false flag attack.
In 1914 both the lawyer Wiesner who was sent to Sarajevo to find conclusive proof that the Serb Government was involved in the assassination and the Austrian Foreign Secretary’s Chef de cabinet von Hoyos said that they never believed Serbia was involved. But it was too late. Irresponsibility plus the tide of events led to war.
In 2018 a false move could lead to a NATO EU war with Russia and China. In neither case did the excuse for military action justify the risk of a world war in which millions could die.
REBELS’ POSSESS AND USE CHEMICAL WEAPONS: EASTERN GHOUTA
Carla del Ponte was commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate claims of chemical weapon use in Syria. In May 2013 she said in an interview:
“Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated, This was use (b) the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,”
In 2013 the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed the traces of the sarin gas used in an attack in Syria were not linked with the Syrian government’s chemical weapons. The attacks of March 19, August 24 and August 25, 2013 upon Syrian government soldiers showed that the rebels were in possession of sarin both before and immediately after the chemical weapon attack at Ghouta of August 21, 2013.
As Tarek Ahmad of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party said:
“We have witnessed over the past seven years how many small factories were opened in Syria. They use chemical substances, which are available everywhere: chlorine, chlorine gas, sodium hypochlorite,”
There is a direct link between knowledge possessed by the US Government and CIA about rebel chemical weapons and the location of the most recent attack in Douma. As the distinguished award winning US journalists Seymour Hersch wrote:
“already by late May, the senior (US) intelligence consultant told me, the CIA had briefed the Obama administration on al-Nusra and its work with sarin, and had sent alarming reports that another Sunni fundamentalist group active in Syria, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), also understood the science of producing sarin. At the time, al-Nusra was operating in areas close to Damascus, including Eastern Ghouta.”
It has also been established that the shells used to carry the chemical weapons could easily have been made by the rebel forces. Herschel again:
“Theodore Postol, a professor of technology and national security at MIT, reviewed the UN photos with a group of his colleagues and concluded that the large calibre rocket used on 21st August in Ghouta was an improvised munition that was very likely manufactured locally.”
WHITE HELMETS
As usual in these claims about the use of chemical weapons it is the US, UK and NATO funded “White Helmets” operating in Syria with their video cameras who were so quickly on hand. There is a real “Syria Civil Defence” which the Syrians can call for help – there is no number for the White Helmets of which most Syrians have never heard. The White Helmets seem to operate principally in rebel and terrorist dominated areas of Syria and they never expose victims of Islamist attacks.
Even BBC journalists seem to have had enough of the suspicious activities of news manipulators like the White Helmets. BBC Foreign News Producer Riam Dalati wrote on Twitter:
”Sick and tired of activists and rebels using corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption. Then they wonder why some serious journos are questioning part of the narrative,”
The US Government itself has admitted that terrorist groups fighting Assad’s Government use chemical weapons: In a US State Department warning to US citizens traveling in the area they said:
“Tactics of ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and other violent extremist groups include the use of suicide bombers, kidnapping, small and heavy arms, improvised explosive devices, and chemical weapons.”
USA ATTACK THREAT BASED ON SOCIAL MEDIA!?
The US President’s rhetoric has now calmed down. But incredibly the US Government – according to the General James Mattis the US Defence Secretary – based their threats to bombard Syria with bombs and missiles on this:
“There have been a number of these attacks. In many cases, you know we don’t have troops, we’re not engaged on the ground there, so I cannot tell you that we had evidence, even though we had a lot of media and social media indicators that either chlorine or sarin were used,”
Maybe he should ask Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook whether war should be declared! Reminds us of the use by Tony Blair in his notorious Iraq dossier of work found in a student thesis!
James Mattis was speaking to members of the House Armed Services Committee and said that the US was still “looking for the actual evidence.”
THE WEST’S GEOPOLITICAL DISASTER. HAS TRUMP LOST IT?
The USA and the EU have lost Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Turkey, a lot of Eastern Europe and a majority of the populations of the UK and the USA. Syria is merely a microcosm of the failed geopolitics. As Pat Buchanan rightly shows, the enemies we have made are in turn the vital enemies of our Islamist enemy:
What are America’s limited interests in Syria in 2018? Containing al-Qaeda, exterminating the ISIS caliphate and effecting the best deal we can for the Kurds who have been loyal and crucial to our campaign against ISIS. Damascus, Moscow and Tehran are not fighting us on these fronts For al-Qaeda and ISIS are their enemies as well.
Buchanan goes on to expose the moronic inability to deal with Syria’s leader:
“If Trump can talk to Kim Jong-un, who used an anti-aircraft gun to execute his uncle and had his half-brother murdered in a Malaysian airport with a chemical weapon, why cannot we talk to Bashar Assad?”
A friend who is an award winning and highly experienced journalist in the USA wrote to me:
I think I’ve never before had such a strong sense of how the bureaucracy really runs government. The President, whoever he is, only knows what those around him are telling him (CIA, State, FBI, etc). Even when his own instincts may differ, he ends up surrounded by people who are feeding him info that serves their interests…
Donald Trump has become reckless and seems to have been captured by warmongers in both parties. Theresa May seems to be a liability to everyone and has no support for this attack from 80% of the British people while Schoolboy corporatist Macron enjoys no respect either at home or abroad.
The USA is unfortunately now seen according to measures of world opinion the “biggest threat to world peace”. Trump – who was tired of US interventions around the world and electioneered on the opposite – is now serving the interests of those he fought. The neocons and Democrats are cheering him!
As I pointed out on Freenations some time ago the USA is not the country we Atlanticists used to know.
WIDESPREAD CONDEMNATION
One influential Jewish site, after Trump had called Assad an “animal”, wrote:
But who’s the real ‘animal?’
Trump the serial adulterer?—who brags about grabbing women’s ‘private parts,” and (associates with) porn stars who perform the vilest acts…
…or Dr Bashar al-Assad?—who protects Christians, is faithful to one wife, is loved and publicly cheered by his own people
The Conservative Chairman of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee Julian Lewis MP has warned: ‘We touch this at our peril’.
The Chairman of the Russian State Duma Defence Committee Vladimir Shamanov said that the United States did not notify Russia of the approach of a group of US warships to the Russian naval base in Tartus on the Mediterranean coast of Syria.
“A group of ships of the US Navy has appeared at a distance of 150 miles from the Tartus region. It is common in international practice potential participants of events in the area should be notified accordingly in advance. We have not been notified, although we had legally ratified the agreement on two bases in Tartus and Khmeymim,”
“Moreover, US President Donald Trump said that he would think about the missile attack on Syria despite any resolutions at the UN Security Council. All this smells of something outside the framework of universally recognised international norms,”
Meanwhile the UK Premier Theresa May who has no public support for her Syria venture and has no majority in Parliament is proposing to act without consulting Parliament at all never mind giving her MPs a binding vote.
These are dangerous times which require statesmen and statesman-like behaviour, sober expression and careful words. Only Russia seems to be providing them.
