Pathfinders: Capitalism’s Bond Villains

[alanjjohnstone]

Nothing like doing it the old fashioned way to do away with your enemies but you won't find the Super-powers protesting, will we?http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43851065

[alanjjohnstone]

MediaLens reviews the reporting of the Douma chemical attackhttps://dissidentvoice.org/2018/04/douma-deception-in-plain-sight/

[alanjjohnstone]

Part 2 of the Medialens articlehttps://dissidentvoice.org/2018/04/douma-it-just-doesnt-ring-true/

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We have no idea who was responsible for the event in Douma – we don’t know even if there was a chemical weapons attack. Our point is not that credible, sceptical voices are right, but that they should be heard.

[alanjjohnstone]

Another on-the-ground doing what journalists are supposed to do – investigate Fisk reporthttps://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/27/what-mysteries-lie-in-the-ruins-of-the-scientific-studies-and-research-center-in-damascus/

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The problem is that while we believe all Arab dictators regularly lie, we Western folk are supposed to hold our own leaders to account – and ensure that they tell the truth when they claim to act on our behalf. That’s why the Douma attack must be fully explained, and that’s why I wanted to know if this wreckage in Barzeh (the direct response to Douma, although of course no one was killed in Barzeh) was what we said it was, or whether it was what the Syrians claimed it to be – a medical research facility…It looked, indeed, very much like a site where, according to the 192-nation Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, during its most recent visit last November, there was no evidence of chemical or biological weapons being developed, tested or produced…Would the Syrian regime have maintained a chemical weapons research centre which could so easily have fallen into the hands of its enemies – then or later? If the Americans were correct when they said at the weekend that the Barzeh centre is used for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weaponry, then the regime was certainly taking some grave risks – before or after – the battles. For the American claims to be correct, then, an awful lot of work must have gone on to change the nature of this complex in the past five months – since the OPCW inspectors were last there.

[alanjjohnstone]

The West Closes its Ears to Douma Testimony

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Those of us who have preferred to avoid a rush to judgment until there was actual evidence of a chemical weapons attack have been invariably dismissed as “conspiracy theorists”. But who is really proposing the more fanciful conspiracy here: those wanting evidence, or those creating an elaborate series of revisions to maintain the credibility of their original story? If there is one thing certain in all of this, it is that the video produced as cast-iron evidence of a chemical weapons attack has turned out to be nothing of the sort.

[ALB]

When Russia brought witnesses from Douma to testify at a press conference at the headquarter of the Organisation for the Progibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague last week, an ITV journalist (who they promise to name and shame)

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asked the witnesses how much they were paid for taking part in the press conference,

It is not a question asked of the witnesses brought forward by the rebel side, but the obvious reply is of course "how much were you paid to ask this question?" The answer is provided by the famous poem by Humbert Wolfe "The British Journalist":

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You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.

Incidentally, I notice that his wikipedia entry also says:

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Wolfe said, in an interview with Twentieth Century Authors, that he was "of no political creed, except that his general view is that money and its possessors should be abolished"

[ALB]

What hypocrites the government and the tame  media are. The UK would never engage in such cloak and dagger stuff as Russia. Or would it?http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44070304The only reason they are "apologising" power is that the situation in Libya has changed. Incidentally, it happened under a Labour government.

[alanjjohnstone]

http://www.dw.com/en/syria-chemical-weapons-watchdog-confirms-chlorine-gas-attack-in-saraqeb/a-43802628Chlorine gas "was likely used as a chemical weapon" in an attack in the northern Syrian town of Saraqeb in February, the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), has now said.In a statement, the watchdog said:Investigators had "determined that chlorine was released from cylinders" in the Ali Talil neighborhood of Saraqeb in the northern province of Idlib. The organization found two cylinders and an analysis found both had previously contained chlorine.The organization also found an "unusual presence of chlorine in the local environment."Investigators also talked to local witnesses and patients at hospitals who had shown symptoms of exposure to chlorine.The Douma case which led to the US/UK/French missile attacks in still ongoing.

[alanjjohnstone]

Just to muddy the waters,http://www.dw.com/en/skripal-poisoning-germany-got-novichok-chemical-sample-from-russia-in-1990s/a-43818626"Some countries used the information about "Novichok" to produce small quantities of the nerve agent to produce countermeasures."

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Just to muddy the waters,http://www.dw.com/en/skripal-poisoning-germany-got-novichok-chemical-sample-from-russia-in-1990s/a-43818626"Some countries used the information about "Novichok" to produce small quantities of the nerve agent to produce countermeasures."

From the same site:

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The Czech government has confirmed a claim by President Milos Zeman that the country tested a type of Novichok nerve agent. The agent tested, however, was not the same as the one used to poison an ex-spy in the UK.

And in 2016, to reprise an earlier post, Iranian chemists synthesised five Novichok agents for analysis and produced detailed mass spectral data which was added to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Central Analytical Database. ** http://www.spectroscopynow.com/details/ezine/1591ca249b2/Iranian-chemist…

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