Lying by Omission: Mainstream Media’s Distortion of the OPCW Report on Douma
Matthew Funke
Within hours of the release of the Organisation of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons report from their fact-finding mission (FFM), when they investigated the Syrian Arab Army’s alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians in the Douma stronghold, mainstream media already hopped on their sensationalist train of deception.
Chemical weapons agency finds ‘chlorinated’ chemicals in Syria’s Douma”
…and The Independent wrote:
Syrian conflict: Chlorine used in Douma attack that left dozens of civilians dead, chemical weapons watchdog finds”
While the Qatar’s government funded Al Jazeera posted their own article, titled:
Interim OPCW report finds proof of chlorine used in Syria’s Douma.”
Though these titles aren’t necessarily wrong, they are inherently misleading. Only in the fine print under the title of The Independent’s article does it say,
But no evidence of nerve agents, says watchdog.”
Later in the article, it says,
The OPCW has not attributed blame for the banned munitions in the April attack, but its investigation into the use of chemical weapons is continuing.”
Usually people just skim the article, or glance at the title itself, and if one did that, their mind would think “Okay, Assad gassed his civilians. The US government was right.” But that conclusion is wrong. Even then, those articles are wildly absolutist, and don’t acknowledge the complexities of the actual report, which I will deconstruct here. I am not claiming the OPCW report is wrong, I am simply showing that the media’s portrayal of these findings are flawed.
The summary of the report says,
The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.”
One key word is alleged casualties, not confirmed, which shows that a lot of this is still up for debate. The OPCW report actually invalidates a large part of the previously mentioned article’s statements, as the OPCW has not drawn their final conclusions about the chlorine and explosive residues found on site, and are still working to find out the truth.
Another invalid part of those articles is their accusation against the Syrian government, when nowhere in the July 6th report does it accuse them of such. In the report, the OPCW writes:
The FFM’s mandate is to determine whether chemical weapons or toxic chemicals as weapons have been used in Syria. It does not include identifying who is responsible for alleged attacks.”
Even if they completely confirm the presence of these chemicals, which they haven’t, that doesn’t mean the Syrian government is guilty. Keep in mind that this is a civil war, between numerous proxy forces, including the Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), a Saudi-backed terrorist group occupying the Douma suburb that was investigated, before Eastern Ghouta was completely liberated from terrorist forces. The likelihood of the Syrian Arab Army using chemical weapons is very slim, given that the OPCW confirmed that all declared chemical weapons in the country were handed over by Bashar al-Assad to the United States to be destroyed.
However, that doesn’t remove the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on some beforehand, which they did, most of them being salafist jihadist groups such as ISIS, Ahrar al-Sham, Jund al-Aqsaor, Saudi Arabia’s Jaysh al-Islam, Tahrir al-Sham, and the Guardians of Religion Organization. There is also the possibility that the Syrian Arab Army didn’t give all their weapons, but I don’t see the advantage of that, given that they already have tons of non-chemical weapons and the use of them would already make the international community hate Assad even more, and the OPCW probably wouldn’t let that fly.
But this isn’t the first time the SAA have been accused of gassing civilians after the destruction of the SAA’s weapons in 2014. The report specifically addresses two previous allegations
…of chemical weapons use in Al-Hamadaniya, Syria on 30 October 2016, and Karm al-Tarrab, Syria on 13 November 2016. On the basis of the information received and analysed… the FFM cannot confidently determine whether or not a specific chemical was used as a weapon in the incidents that took place in the neighbourhood of Al-Hamadaniyah and in the area of Karm al-Tarrab. The FFM noted that the persons affected in the reported incidents may, in some instances, have been exposed to some type of non-persistent, irritating substance.”
Given this conclusion, which sounds more likely, the Syrian Arab Army would gas the towns filled with civilians that they were trying to save, not caring what the international community thought of them, and that they still have a chemical weapons stockpile, or that the terrorist groups who have chemical weapons contaminated the area they were holding hostage.
You might ask, “But what about the video?” You mean the video that looks a lot like this one of the Syrian opposition rehearsing a fake chemical weapons attack? The one with the inconsistent (but disturbing) aftermath footage? The one in which medical professionals who were filmed in the video spoke out about the artificiality of the video? The one in which a boy in the video confessed that the White Helmets started pouring water on all the children and faking other treatments? I think I can draw the obvious conclusions, but if I do, I might be accused of being an “apologist”, a “denier”, or “pro-Assad.”
Another lie includes mainstream media’s claims that the OPCW weren’t initially allowed on site, suggesting that the Russians were hiding evidence. This is false. The OPCW report says:
The FFM team was not able to enter Douma for almost a week after its arrival, owing to the high security risks to the team, which included the presence of unexploded ordnance, explosives, and sleeper cells still suspected of being active in Douma. On 18 April 2018, during a reconnaissance visit to two sites of interest, the security detail was confronted by a hostile crowd and came under fire from small arms and a hand grenade that exploded. The incident reportedly resulted in two fatalities and one injury.”
The report also says that the planned FFM deployment was delayed until security was ensured, as suggested by the UNDSS (United Nations Department for Safety and Security), and these security measures included
(a) clearing the areas to be visited by the FFM team;
(b) securing the areas during the 24-hour period before deployment;
(c) increasing the number of escorts and having advance teams from the UNDSS and the Russian Military Police monitor the area prior to the arrival of the team at the sites;
(d) using the police force for crowd control;
(e) minimising the movement of civilians near the areas of interest given the possibility of suicide bombers getting within close proximity of the inspection team;
and (f) deploying snipers on rooftops around the sites of interest.”
The United Nations suggested that they make the areas safer, so the Russian Military Police complied; they weren’t blocking anyone off from Douma with secretive, malicious intentions.
In fact the Syrian Arab Republic wasn’t reluctant to have an investigation in the first place:
On 10 April 2018, the Secretariat sent note verbale No. NV/ODG/214589/18 to the Syrian Arab Republic expressing its intention to deploy a team to Damascus. This correspondence coincided with note verbale No. 38 from the Permanent Representation of the Syrian Arab Republic to the OPCW requesting that an FFM team be dispatched urgently to visit the town of Douma to verify the information surrounding the alleged use of toxic chemicals on 7 April 2018. On the same day, the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the OPCW submitted a letter to the Secretariat in which he welcomed the request from the Syrian Arab Republic and pledged to facilitate the work of the FFM.”
But Syria and Russia were eager for a report and investigation, which isn’t how a government guilty of a massacre would react. Suspected murderers who turn out guilty typically aren’t desperate for the site of their crime to be investigated.
You might be thinking, “Why are you so adamant about defending the Syrian Arab Republic?” And the truth is, I’m not entirely. I’m adamant about defending the truth, the truth that has been hidden or distorted so often by western media, and their manipulation of current events has only led to the political nightmares in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, among many others. I’m not saying the Syrian government is perfect, nor do I agree with parts of their political ideology and laws, but I am saying this: the media lies a lot, and those lies lead to deaths.
Here in the imperial core, encouraging people to think critically, read carefully, and not jump to conclusions, while consuming media that isn’t tainted by greed and popularity, is the most I can do to try and stop these things from happening. No, I don’t think this article will single handedly end the Syrian Civil War, but the more people that are against western perpetuation of it, the better. Our suspicions aren’t historically unwarranted and if my defense of truth is a defense of the Syrian Arab Republic government, then maybe Assad is on the side of truth.
If the entire report, when finally completed, shows that the SAA isn’t guilty, the precedent that the imperialist triplets used to justify their bombing (which luckily harmed nobody) would turn out to be false, like Iraq, and Vietnam, and Libya. But they had to be telling the truth this time. Conveniently, they bombed the place where Assad was allegedly developing chemical weapons to kill civilians, which would have been a good place for the OPCW to investigate, had it not been blown to smithereens. Regardless of who is guilty, we must never forget the victims of this horrendous, bloody war; the loss of thousands of innocent civilians is something to mourn about, no matter who is guilty. The most we can do for them is bring justice to those that stole their lives, and somehow try to stop these things from happening again.
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Copied-and-Pasted from SyrPer:
anti_republocrat
nobody here can force Western media to report honestly, but even Sputnik reports in wrong. It reports,
"The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has announced in a report that it found that chlorine had been used in an attack in the Syrian city of Douma."
But the report does not state that chlorine had been used in an attack. It says rather, that chlorinated organics were found and they are working to find where these came from [for example domestic products]:
"Various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from Locations 2 and 4, along with residues of explosive. These results are reported in Annex 3. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is ongoing."
If even Sputnik is going to be so sloppy, it’s up to all of us to report it accurately via blogs and social media. We can back up our truth with a link to the report itself:
https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/S_series/2018/en/s-1645-2018_e_.pdf
St Theresa the Incompetent:
Canthama 2hr ago BTL SyrPer
One more idiot bites the dust. Boris “the clown” is gone. Assad curse takes its normal course [on those pompous persons who brayed, “Assad must go”]
https://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/1016321872689008640
Theresa “the incompetent” May will be left alone in nbr 10, her criminal regime melted away.
+9
Wait long enough, and ‘I told you so’ is more or less a stock response given the endless lies and subterfuge that form the bedrock of imperial policy in the middle east.
But Matthew Funke needs a serious reality check if he thinks the MSM are ever going to report the implications of the OPCW findings in a balanced way.
Neocons can blow up major western cities but the cappuccino guzzling, metropolitan press corp still can’t be arsed to report forensic evidence even when it is staring them in the face (despite the fact the scientific community have done their job for them by explaining in painstaking detail why the 2 plane 3 building myth is a crock of shit).
If they are willing to turn a blind eye to New York what chance Douma, eh?
Yeah, offG. intresting times indeed.
They, the MSM lies about everything, all the time, the everything, is all encompasing, about every god dammed thing.
Then, the deadbeats, sorry debates, again, in some places, and like this so called CW attack, in Syria, was 100% bollocks from the start, and still is, like this Shitpal Saga in the Island of Angels.
The sad fact in this, debates is how single events, in an larger theater is used to highlight uh…. propaganda, when the premisses is based upon an perseption where everything to oponents states is propaganda, and counter that with their own propaganda, and everybody starts to whine about where in this single event is the “cockups”.
To me, its an irrelevance so irrelevant it hurts, thats why I never go deeper into single events, not even people, because the moment one looses the over all map of what events is happening, because of this people I still dont go deeper than that, as official persons, from where, I dont care, I dont trust the Norwegian sheep f…. for an split second, why on earth should I then trust scums whom have an track record of lying that even used care sales men would be shamed off.
That is Hasbaratnjiks best tool, drool down anything and now the pro-Trumpsteins are hoplessly blind, and to me, I just dont beother to debate hasbarah, never have and never will, waist of time since, as to how blind the Trumpsteins are, is pissing against the wind.
The Brits have been lying, fabricatin, inventing, faking for centurys.
Get an f…. grip, I dont even read the articles about this, sorry for the victims of something, lord have mercy upon their souls but thats it, the rest is bollocks, period, I simply dont care, its beyond riddicilous, its an absurd political farse.
Its an new low.
The thing with single events, and sometimes the use of narratives like Trolls, is done on purpouse, to divert the debate, and to use that, moronic label as an cowbar to force the opnent to drool along, yeah, pro-GassaAssad trolls, pro-Russian trolls, pro-Trump trolls, pro-berxit nazis, white trashnationalism, racism, yeah, our people gets killed, raped and robbed, every day stabbings etc, by people whom cames as “refugees”, and when one of theirs gets killed, yup, look to Paris, the rats are loose, one day, you will know it, I know whom and why, but we end up debating irrelevancys, aka single events, instead of whats really going on, like France/Italy etc, in Syria the war debate is about Gassing, yeah, an cadavre picket clean, and is of no relevance what so ever, apart from been used as propaganda in the same way as this Shitpal Saga, it all boils down to head lines, nobody reads the articles in the bonkers MSM anyway.
And Trumpstein got His schocolade cake while firing CM on Syria, and killed Syrians, incl Children like in Yemen, while the MSM drools about barrel bombing.
Dunka, dunka.
In this times where everybody drools something about IQ and manage to condem everybody else, specally religious people as dumb f…., becuase we are uh….. religious.
( a bit weird, isnt it, debating science this days, when physics is gone down the drain, in the beginning was God and The word, and with the Word God created light, to fundamentals, information and light, to where God created matter/land, and then as an consequence of it, the firmament, beat this, uh…… atheists?, whom by some obscure reason think you can create something straight out of nothing, yeehaa, and by the way, in this gorious IQ debate times, why dont we debate the Golden era of Islam, and remeber this, an Muslim fllew 600 years before Davinci crashed by default, humanity lost an hole f….. millenium to the bloody scam called the Catholic Curch, an bank, not an religion, an Muslim, one of the few real geniouses humanity have fostered was an Muslim, and where is Islam this days, they have lost track and lost them self on the road, pity is an people with an divided house, the greates sorrow to happen to Arabs)
The thing is, Trumpstein had one shining moment in regard of NK, thats it, the rest is scary shit, and somehow we dont debate that, nope, Trump to me, as I have realised Putin is, just petty bitches, and is lead by an freak show called ISISrael and their capos, have UssA/Russia by their balls, that is what matters, the rest is, hu…deals.
The Amercunts are the single most evil entity humanity have ever encountered, nothing have been moore evil, nobody have killed more, ruined lands upon lands, and whines about national security, and controls everything, incl Europa, where the system is rotten to its bone marrow.
WWs all of them, the last 250 years, was wars by design, plunder and rape, and to feed the best, the Imperial Banana Republic UssA.
Then too fisnish this rant, I know this, untill, Germans manages to drag their bloody head out of their own asses I am afraid nothing good will come from the present quag mire of traitores, political castrats and cowards, the rest, apart from some few, will be vassals as long the imperial banana republic rules, killing their own economy and people, and somehow scums like May and Mutti Morekill is still in charge, screaming inuendos in every directions, while the problem is glearingly obvious, they are, we all know it, and belivie me, I dont give an rats ass about labels, not for an second, I have been thru them all, means nothing.
Yeah, trust but verify, that, isnt easy anymore, have that in the back of your head, and dont hang up on single events/people, they all have an agenda, we all have, I have just two, my people and my land.
And right now, we are loosing, and the MSM have dragged their propaganda into warp drive this days, we are all nazis.
Have an nice day.
peace
A welcome analysis. Just one point to make: this is not a civil war, no more than was the case in Libya. Syria was on the western “hit list” (7 countries in 5 years) since at least 2001. The BBC was involved in preparing the ground for regime change from as early as 2004. There were no doubt numbers of people in Syria who didn’t like the regime. The ones fighting Assad are almost all paid mercenaries of various western and middle eastern regimes which wanted to dismember Syria, carve it up, steal its resources – and remove an alleged ‘threat’ to Israel.
@PaulC. Correct, except for one tiny typo. It’s not “threat” it’s “existential threat”; a much more impressively serious and highbrow class of threat.
There is an interesting website that can be used in searches for the origins and distribution of surnames(Forebears.io/surnames). The data is gathered from worldwide census information and is no doubt a bit hit and miss but it can still be quite revealing in giving an indication of migration patterns. I often have a look at this when so-called Syrians are quoted in the MSM – usually anti-Assad. It all started for me when a ‘Syrian’ was being interviewed on the MSM and his name didn’t strike me as typically Syrian – when I looked it up, the name occurred most commonly in Qatar or Bahrain and in single figures in Syria. Very small numbers usually indicate that the presence there is due to economic migration, not birth origin.
Just to give another more specific example, some while ago I researched Abdurrahman (as in the SOHR) and it produced the following data on the number of individuals worldwide identified with that surname in 2014. I have not included all listed countries, just the ones that throw up interesting comparisons.
Countries with highest number of people with that surname (High to low):
1.Indonesia (6973 records found)
2.Nigeria (5349)
3.Egypt (1634)
4.Libya (1012) (Has highest density per capita and believed to be where name originates from)
5.Saudi Arabia (808)
6. Pakistan 754)
.
.
9. US (165)
.
.
England (70)
13.UAE (61)
.
15.Qatar (39)
.
Iraq (2)
.
Oman (1)
Bahrain (1)
.
Syria (1)
Illuminating, heh?
.
Sorry, thought I’d included position numbers for all countries listed but clearly not. Should read:
12. England
29. Iraq
34. Oman
35. Bahrain
41. Syria
JJ
@Judy. Shines a bright light on where the FO is likely to have gone recruiting for its Syrian expert. Are you wagering your usual $k that the 1 who runs the FO anti-Assad office in Coventry is not the 1 actually registered in Syria?
vexarb, even he admits he hasn’t been to Syria for 12 (?) or so years. I doubt he’s ever been there. The one registered in Syria is probably his primary contact on the ground, feeding him all the dodgy info to pass on to his duplicitous sycophants here and now better off to the tune of £196k paid by British taxpayers for recording and camera equipment – I am going to contact the FO at some point to ask for a precise breakdown of what that money has been spent on. I don’t doubt for one minute that the money or equipment has never found its way to Syria. And, as far as I can judge, the WH are well enough equipped with cameras without needing UK taxpayers to equip them further through the SOHR.
Don’t knock the SOHR, it’s one of the most reliable sources for casualties in the civil/proxy/terrorist war in Syria. For instance, using SOHR figures it’s possible to demonstrate that Assad has not murdered “hundreds of thousand civilians” as was claimed on a number of occasions by the NY Times, Washington Post, etc. as in December 2016, the number of civilian dead in Syria did not exceed 100,000. Most of the dead (about 200,000 on each side) were either government forces or insurgents/terrorists.
Another claim that is easy to dismiss using the SOHR figures was that the majority of fighters on the government side were Iranians or Iranian-backed militia, a lie put about by the insurgents/terrorists and picked up by the western media, but at the time this lie was spread, the SOHR casualty figures showed that between 90% and 95% of the casualties on the government side were Syrian soldiers in tthe SAA.
There are problems with the SOHR figures, particularly relating to the number of civilian dead – in the early days of the war, fighters on the insurgent/terrorist side were regarded as civilians if they were not foreigners and had not deserted from the SAA which is in accords with the Geneva Conventions where an irregular fighter is a civilian unless he is bearing arms, and later on I suspect some insurgents/terrorists were treated as civilians by the predominantly anti-government biased observers supplying information from within Syria to the SOHR . The true figure for civilian dead might actually be in the region of about 50,000.
Actually this is lying WITH INTENT.
The omission, is that of perspective and balance. In this so called “post truth era” the craven MSM know this all too well.
How do we know this? Well when a correction has to be made, no apology or acknowledgement is ever made to the [what is laughingly called these days] the public record…
For the exact details see here:
https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/S_series/2018/en/s-1645-2018_e_.pdf
Chlorine cylinders are used by swimming pools, water treatment facilities etc. and can be ordered online by civilians – like in Saudi Arabia.
Blowing up my kitchen will “produce some evidence of chlorine”.
OPCW, my home is full of chlorine gas, please investigate. My neighbour is cleaning his floors with bleaching powder and washing the residues into the common drain.
Or burning plastic.
Amazing that Western Christendom commits so many sins of omission and sins of commission — flagrantly — and engages in soccer-like shithousery exaggeratedly and defiantly doubling down and defending their lies and pretending victimhood and failing to both repent and amend their sinful ways. Jesus Wept.
Not to mention the BBC’s headline banner for the OPCW interim report “Syrian attack was chlorine gas -watchdog”. Followed by “The deadly attack in Douma in April left dozens of civilians dead and caused an international outcry”.
As I have commented elsewhere, in the expectation that the OPCW would have carried out a thorough and extensive examination within Douma, one would be surprised if they did not produce some evidence of chlorine for several reasons clearly beyond the grasp of the MSM.
For one thing, the SAA found at least one (maybe two?) terrorist controlled weapons factory as Douma was liberated where there were vast stocks of artillery devices and multiple drums of a liquid presumed to be chlorine based (I think it was labelled as such). I can’t recall precise details but there were also other weaponry components including empty smoke canisters (labelled ‘Porton Down’), appropriate for filling with said liquid and/or other explosive materials. I would like to assume that the OPCW FFM would have taken samples from this factory for analysis and confirmation of what was there, and this is quite possibly what their report refers to.
Secondly, it is also well documented that terrorists have had supplies of such materials in many locations over several years so there is no reason to assume that any possible environmental residue must have resulted from the actions of the SAA or their Russian allies.
Thirdly, there are many innocent industrial and household uses for chlorine based products which could have led to the detection of residues.
I am not able to declare categorically that the SAA/Russians didn’t use chlorine based munitions at all during the Douma campaign but the MSM’s campaign targeted at blaming them at every perceived opportunity, and failing to even acknowledge any alternative interpretation, is completely outrageous, indefensible and irresponsible (I can’t list enough damning adjectives to describe how I feel) in the extreme.
@JudyJ. Excellent observations but for one small passage:”one would be surprised if they did not produce some evidence of chlorine for several reasons clearly beyond the grasp of the MSM” – the MSM are calculating and sewer rat savvy and are fully aware of the many household and ordinary uses for chlorine and therefore “grasp” only too well their utter distortion of the facts. It’s the truth they choose not to “grasp”.
PS. Hope you don’t mind but I copied and pasted your comment when I shared it.
Mohandeer, thank you for your appreciation. On the whole you’re right of course about the MSM but, having said that, I am partial to watching TV quizzes and the appalling lack of general knowledge displayed by participants under 40 years of age and of all educational standards and professions is frightening, so I do think in some cases it is genuinely down to sheer ignorance! I am grateful to you for sharing my comment – the more people that our views can be shared with, the better.
JJ
We have had a discussion at Moon of Alabama a few days ago about the level of knowledge and experience that MSM journalists have.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/07/syria-opcw-issues-first-report-of-chemical-weapon-attack-in-douma.html#comments
This was my opinion (with some new additions) in response to three comments about the competence of journalists in reporting on the presence of chlorine residue in gas cylinder containers:
It would seem that a common (and deliberate) ploy used by the MSM these days is to use journalists with no particular knowledge, experience or insight in an area to write articles that need that knowledge, [insight] or experience.
The Guardian employs Olivia Solon, a digital journalist (whose speciality is in writing about and recommending particular IT consumer hardware or software products) based in California, with no knowledge or access to knowledge about Syria, its politics or history, to write an article defending the White Helmets and [at the same time] defame the investigative journalists Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley. That practice seems to be par for the course for The Guardian and other print and online newspapers.
Plus The Guardian and others rely on dubious sources like Bellingcat and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose credentials are laughable at best, as “experts” in their chosen areas of reporting.
All the Western MSM are now entirely driven by the pursuit of sales revenue and profit and are now no different from outlets peddling entertainment. No surprise really when news media outlets are now owned by the same individuals or corporations that own film studios, TV stations, online media and TV channels, book and comics publishers, and games publishers.
I came across the same article and forgot where I’d seen it. And you’ve said everything about it I was thinking! 🙂
Chlorine gas is only effective in confined spaces, being heavier than air, where it can collect or pool. The munition photographed as having been responsible for the Douma incident entered a 3 storey building through the roof and landed on a bed of a room with blown out windows. For the gas to be effective in the basement it would have to filter down 3 floors, which is not impossible but unlikely.
In my youth I had a job in which part was to maintain the chemical balance of a resort indoor swimming pool. I once, trying to save time, mixed the chemicals together, added water and was horrified as the bucket started producing a cloud of chlorine gas. Of course this was not a weaponised chlorine gas but it was a very fast reaction producing a large enough volume of gas that I immediately evacuated the pool. In the ençlosed space of the plant room if I had taken a second breath I am not sure if I would have survived. Luckily I realised the reaction, grabbed the bucket and got it outside via an adjacent emergency exit. In the 10-15 seconds the reaction was taking place indoors it did produce enough gas to burn eyes and throat throughout the 1400sq meter pool room via the pool level plant room. It is extremely unpleasant stuff.
The point of this confessional anecdote is that I personally understand that chlorine would be highly effective in driving out jihadist fighters from the extensive tunnel systems of Douma since that is exactly where it is most effective. And given the nature of the gas it would not even need to be a lethal concentration to force any hiding terrorists out of the tunnels. Thus it is an effective weapon. Even at non lethal concentrations. So in my mind using such a tactic for clearing the last pockets of mercenary jihadists to make Douma safe is highly plausible and to my mind at least not a war crime. So I do not discount chlorine may have been used by SAB or Russian forces, quite legitimately. And there is all the difference in the world by such legitimate use and using a nerve agent on civilians.
candideschmyles, Thanks for recounting this interesting episode from your carefree days of youth! I can only imagine what the headlines might have been!
It isn’t clear where and when the dead bodies of women and children were photographed in the propaganda material presented to accuse the Assad Govt of the chemical weapons attack in Douma but I can almost guarantee they were poor unfortunate civilians suffocated by terrorists in an enclosed room/basement filled with chlorine gas. As you say, the use of chlorine gas is, and has been for generations, considered to be an accepted relatively humane way in open warfare of moving ‘the enemy’ from where you don’t want them to where you do want them, and to temporarily incapacitate them.
The liars tried for a time to say that chlorine and ‘sarin’ had been used together, but that lie was dropped. I just recently saw Seymour Hersh assert that such combinations were tried years ago, but were totally ineffective because the chlorine rendered the sarin neutralised by scavenging hydrogen atoms from the sarin, or some such chemical reaction. That’s the fakestream media-all lies, all the time. I see, too, unsurprised, that one of the underclass patsies poisoned in Amesbury have been sacrificed, to ramp up the fear and hatred-making them permanently disappear, like the Skripals, is easier in a graveyard. I don’t fancy the bloke’s chances one little bit-it looks like Evil Russian novichok becomes MORE lethal as time goes by.
I daresay there’s going to be a rash of “Novichok” poisonings in the Wiltshire county area and possibly surrounding counties all targeting drug addicts (especially those addicted to the new exotic “zombie” drugs like spice and Xylazine), homeless people, prostitutes and other marginalised individuals. The folks at The Fraudian and their like will rage at the prejudices of Russian President Putin against the poor, the sick and homeless, that he sees fit to target them and only them with his nefarious scheming.
The shelter where Dawn Sturgess was staying is likely to disappear and the premises demolished.
Perhaps when enough “Novichok” poisonings start jamming up the nine-bed Salisbury District Hospital, that institution will also have to be closed down, the patients sent to other hospitals and the staff dispersed to all the cardinal points of the green and septic isle. And the petty cash in the biscuit tin marked “National Health System Budget” can breathe a little easier that the pressure of funding a small public hospital and its staff payroll has been lifted a little.
The BBC is totally controlled by Zionists and their stooges, and destroying Syria is a PRIME Zionist ambition, as outlined by the Oded Yinon Plan and the utterances of numerous Zionist bosses down through the years. QED.
Sounds like an anti-Semite…
Antony – Zionists can be of any religion, not all Jewish people are Zionists. QED: Anti-Zionist does not equate to anti-Semite.
As a further example of my point.. in the 1970s the university I went to had an “Anti-Zionist Organisation” (yes, it was the days when such groups were permitted and allowed to debate such issues). The Organisation’s secretary was…yes, a young Jewish man.
Have you noticed that the Zionist lynch-mob and the Fraudian sewer have re-vivified their hate propaganda campaign against Labour under Corbyn. Apparently the impertinent ‘antisemites’ in Labour refuse to grovel properly, and adopt the entire Zionist ‘antisemitism’ definition, which outlaws all criticism of the actions or behaviour of any Jew, anywhere, and all criticism of the Israeli state and its clerico-ethno-fascistic ideology Zionism, and, by direct inference, any support for the Palestinian Amalekites. I’m sure Antonyl will be over the moon.
Yes, maybe 1% of all Zionists are not Jewish. Possible 50% of all Jewish people are not Zionists.
So 1% chance that Mumblebrain is not an anti-Semite.
He started calling me a racist: those living in glasshouses……
False accusations of ‘antisemitism’ concerning utterly unarguable observations regarding Zionist power, of both Jewish Zionists and goy Zionists like the Blairite scum, are a sure sign of a slandering Zionist racist.
Zionism is just a variety of imperialism. Why are you so obsessed with this mini imperialism in Palestine, but mum on Syria, Irak, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, PR China, Indonesia etc.?
This is what make you look a.s.
In regard to Syria, I fully support the Government, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the others who are liquidating the invading takfiri death-squad butchers, many of whom (eg al-Nusra)were directly aided by Israel, as well as the other villains of the piece. Iraq, I support in the country’s travails, where over three million have been murdered since 1990 pursuant to your darling Zionists’ ‘Oded Yinon Plan’. Turkey I see as villainous in its support of the takfiris attacking Syria, and I have no time for Erdogan’s Islamism. Sordid Arabia, darling Israel’s close ally, I believe to be the vilest regime, equal with a couple of others, on Earth, and Wahhabism to be an utter Evil. Pakistan is a country on the brink of self-destruction, run by corrupt elites, and I pity the poor Pakistani people, but love the cricket. China, in my opinion, is perhaps the last, best, hope for humanity in the face of racist and supremacist Western aggressive psychopathy, and Indonesia is much better than it was under Uncle Satan’s favourite, the genocidal butcher and thief, Suharto. But none them are as arrogant, narcissistically self-adoring, constantly demanding, bullying, contemptuous of International Law and just plain racist and sadistic in the barbarity they inflict on the imprisoned Palestinians as your darling Zionists. I hope that clears things up for you.
Mulga, I see that Israel are still sustaining their contrived, underhand and completely unwarranted attacks on Syrian army posts based near the Golan Heights. This time their excuse is that it was in response to a ‘drone infiltration’. Probably a drone observing what the Israelis are up to in their illegally occupied sector of the Golan Heights. The fact that these attacks serve to assist the terrorists in the region is incidental of course.
Who does? Showing your true colours now.
No, just truthful. The previous BBC director was a fanatical, rabid Zionist called Mark Thompson. (Not Jewish, he wasn’t.) He had private meetings with Nitwityahoo where he promised that no criticism of Israel would ever appear on the BBC.
“the media lies a lot, and those lies lead to deaths.”
This is the crux of it. The journals and journalists (though it is high time we universally referred to them as stenographers), of MSM are indeed guilty of coñspiracy before and after the fact in the mass murder of unarmed civilians. It is not enough to call them loathsome liars. They must be held to account and face charges and punishment for their collusion with the terrorists who have ravaged Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.
I would suggest that a better brain than mine formulate a 38° petition to government that is worded to the effect from the date of the petition charges may be brought retrospectively using existing legislation on providing material support to terrorists by MSM and it’s writers who lie, promote terrorist agendas, omit significant pertanant information and otherwise conspire with any actor to misinform the general public. Aggravated charges should be applicable to state employed individuals and institutions. It should be so worded that this is a declaration of the people and not just a petition to government that the guilty will one day be held to account.
Such a declaration may seem toothless now, but we all have to strive for the time when it is not.
I agree-somewhere, sometime, these lying vermin must face the same judgment as Streicher. Without the neck-snapping of course. Life at hard labour seems appropriate.
Why “of course”?
Apparently, it was good enough for Saddam Hussein and Julius Streicher.
A personal choice, and I think they’ll suffer more by being made to work for once in their lives.
The one issue some of us here at Off-G may have is that no form of labour, however physically, mentally or emotionally taxing or relentless, will be hard enough for the criminals, short of digging their own graves.
After the war, minor Nazi functionaries like hack journalists, who had not committed atrocities, but who were cogs in the machine, were not executed or imprisoned in many cases. But they were banned from holding any position of influence of responsibility. They were free to earn a living as manual workers, eg, building work, road sweepers, brussels sprout pickers etc. This would be the best sanction to apply to people like Grauniad and all other MSM hacks. Don’t jail them, just make them do an honest day’s work for the first time in their miserable lives.
Once again as you (and MoA and The Skwawkbox) clearly demonstrate the media acts as a puppet, without any will or ideas of its own, of its sponsors and enablers the Security ‘Services’.
So, clearly, by carefully making its reports ambiguous does the OPCW.
One wonders what these people are planning to do in the next phase of their careers, for this sort of credibility killing warmongering is suicidal.
What is incomprehensible is why they waste away their credibility on picayune points like this- the number of people who come away from their cunning misrepresentations believing that there was a chlorine attack must be small, half hearted in their conviction and uninformed.