John Mooney Wrote:Hilary is channeling Klebb.

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"BEFORE OUR EYES"

The Secret of Israeli Chemical Weapons

by Thierry Meyssan

Israeli research on chemical and biological weapons historically pushed Syria to reject the treaty banning chemical weapons. That is why the signing of this document by Damascus runs the risk of highlighting the existence and possibly the continuation of research on weapons designed to kill only Arabs.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | DAMASCUS (SYRIA) | 19 SEPTEMBER 2013 FRANÇAIS عربي PORTUGUÊS ITALIANO РУССКИЙ ESPAÑOL DEUTSCH ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ

Dr. Basson Wounter at his second trial in 2011. He directed the secret research program into chemical and biological weapons led jointly by Israel and apartheid South Africa, from 1985 to 1994.Western media seem amazed at the turnaround of the United States with regards to Syria. Though they announced, two weeks ago, a bombing campaign and the inevitable fall of the "regime", they are speechless before the retreat of Barack Obama. Yet it was probable, as I wrote in this column, that Washington's commitment in Syria no longer has an important strategic objective. Its current policy is primarily guided by the desire to preserve its unique superpower status.Taking him at his word, which was originally meant by John Kerry as a joke, and proposing the accession of Syria to the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Moscow has met Washington's rhetoric without the latter having to fight another war in times of economic crisis. The United States maintains its status in theory, even if everyone can see that Russia now calls the shots.Chemical weapons have two purposes : either military or to exterminate a population. They were used during the trench warfare of the First World War to the Iraqi aggression against Iran, but they are useless in modern warfare, whose front is always moving. It is with relief that 189 States signed the Convention banning them in 1993: they could thus get rid of dangerous and unnecessary stockpiles, the possession of which had become onerous.A second purpose of chemical weapons is the extermination of civilians before the colonization of their territory. Thus in 1935-36, Fascist Italy conquered a large part of Eritrea by eliminating its population through the use of mustard gas. In this colonial perspective, from 1985 to 1994, Israel secretly financed the research of Dr. Wouter Basson 's laboratory in Roodeplaat (South Africa). Its ally, the apartheid regime, sought to develop substances, both chemical and especially biological, that would kill individuals according to their "racial characteristics " (sic), whether they be Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general, or people with black skin. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was not able to determine the results of this program, nor what had become of it. At most it revealed the involvement in this huge secret project of the United States and of Switzerland. It has been established that several thousand people died as Dr. Basson's guinea pigs.If one can understand why neither Syria nor Egypt signed the Convention in 1993, the opportunity offered by Moscow to Damascus to join today is a bargain: it not only puts an end to the crisis with the United States and France, but it also helps to get rid of unnecessary stockpiles become increasingly difficult to defend. For all practical purposes, President al -Assad has specified that Syria was acting at the request of Russia and not under pressure from the United States, an elegant way of stressing the responsibility of Moscow to protect the country in the future from a possible chemical attack by Israel.Indeed, the Jewish colony of Palestine has yet to ratify the Convention. This could quickly become a political hot potato for Tel Aviv. That is why John Kerry went there today, Sunday, to discuss the issue with Benjamin Netanyahu. If the Prime Minister of the last colonial state is clever, he should jump at the opportunity to announce that his country would reconsider the matter. Unless, of course, Wouter Basson found ethnically selective gas and Israeli hawks are still considering using it.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Roger Lagassé

Source
Al-Watan (Syrie)

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The Troodos Conundrum

by craig on August 31, 2013 8:43 am in Uncategorized

The GCHQ listening post on Mount Troodos in Cyprus is arguably the most valued asset which the UK contributes to UK/US intelligence cooperation. The communications intercept agencies, GCHQ in the UK and NSA in the US, share all their intelligence reports (as do the CIA and MI6). Troodos is valued enormously by the NSA. It monitors all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, ranging from Egypt and Eastern Libya right through to the Caucasus. Even almost all landline telephone communication in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage, picked up on Troodos.
Troodos is highly effective the jewel in the crown of British intelligence. Its capacity and efficiency, as well as its reach, is staggering. The US do not have their own comparable facility for the Middle East. I should state that I have actually been inside all of this facility and been fully briefed on its operations and capabilities, while I was head of the FCO Cyprus Section in the early 1990s. This is fact, not speculation.
It is therefore very strange, to say the least, that John Kerry claims to have access to communications intercepts of Syrian military and officials organising chemical weapons attacks, which intercepts were not available to the British Joint Intelligence Committee.
On one level the explanation is simple. The intercept evidence was provided to the USA by Mossad, according to my own well placed source in the Washington intelligence community. Intelligence provided by a third party is not automatically shared with the UK, and indeed Israel specifies it should not be.
But the inescapable question is this. Mossad have nothing comparable to the Troodos operation. The reported content of the conversations fits exactly with key tasking for Troodos, and would have tripped all the triggers. How can Troodos have missed this if Mossad got it? The only remote possibility is that all the conversations went on a purely landline route, on which Mossad have a physical wire tap, but that is very unlikely in a number of ways - not least nowadays the purely landline route.
Israel has repeatedly been involved in the Syrian civil war, carrying out a number of illegal bombings and missile strikes over many months. This absolutely illegal activity by Israel- which has killed a great many civilians, including children - has brought no condemnation at all from the West. Israel has now provided "intelligence" to the United States designed to allow the United States to join in with Israel's bombing and missile campaign.
The answer to the Troodos Conundrum is simple. Troodos did not pick up the intercepts because they do not exist. Mossad fabricated them. John Kerry's "evidence" is the shabbiest of tricks. More children may now be blown to pieces by massive American missile blasts. It is nothing to do with humanitarian intervention. It is, yet again, the USA acting at the behest of Israel.

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The Weekend's Developments In The Mint Press Saga

At the end of last week I published a statement from Dale Gavlak, distancing herself from the the Mint Press article "Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack", published by Mint Press with Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh on the byline.

Mint Press News incorrectly used my byline for an article it published on August 29, 2013 alleging chemical weapons usage by Syrian rebels. Despite my repeated requests, made directly and through legal counsel, they have not been willing to issue a retraction stating that I was not the author. Yahya Ababneh is the sole reporter and author of the Mint Press News piece. To date, Mint Press News has refused to act professionally or honestly in regards to disclosing the actual authorship and sources for this story.
I did not travel to Syria, have any discussions with Syrian rebels, or do any other reporting on which the article is based. The article is not based on my personal observations and should not be given credence based on my journalistic reputation. Also, it is false and misleading to attribute comments made in the story as if they were my own statements.

After that statement was issued Sharmine Narwani claimed she had been sent the following email by Dale Gavlak

Basically I helped Yahya Ababneh, who traveled to Gouta, to write what he saw and heard. He mainly met with rebels, of course, the father of one of the rebels killed and doctors treating victims in the area. He has traveled to Syria numerous times. As you know Mint Press News is more of an advocacy journalism site and it seems to be the most likely to publish such a piece.

This, and other queries, resulted in Dale Gavlak publishing another statement based on a statement from her lawyers

Dale Gavlak has sought to make a public statement from the beginning of this incident and now is able to do so.

Email correspondence between Ms. Gavlak and Mint Press News that began on August 29 and ended on September 2 clearly show that from the beginning Ms. Gavlak identified the author of the story as Yahya Ababneh, a Jordanian journalist. She also made clear that only his name should appear on the byline and the story was submitted only in his name. She served as an editor of Ababneh's material in English as he normally writes in Arabic. She did not travel to Syria and could not corroborate his account.

Dale Gavlak specifically stated in an email dated August 29 "Pls find the Syria story I mentioned uploaded on Google Docs. This should go under Yahya Ababneh's byline. I helped him write up his story but he should get all the credit for this."

Ms. Gavlak supplied the requested bio information on Mr. Ababneh later that day and had further communications with Mint Press News' Mnar Muhawesh about the author's background. There was no communication by Mint Press News to Ms. Gavlak that it intended to use her byline. Ms. Muhawesh took this action unilaterally and without Ms. Gavlak's permission.

After seeing that her name was attached to the article, Dale Gavlak demanded her name be removed. However, Ms. Muhawesh stated: "We will not be removing your name from the byline as this is an existential issue for MintPress and an issue of credibility as this will appear as though we are lying."

Mint Press News rejected further demands by Dale Gavlak and her legal counsel to have her name removed. Her public statement explains her position.

Mint Press responded by publishing the following statement

By Mnar Muhawesh, executive director and editor at large for MintPress News

Statement:

Thank you for reaching out to me in regards to statements made by Dale Gavlak alleging MintPress for incorrectly attributing our exclusive report titled: "Syrians in Goutha claim Saudi-supplied rebels behind chemical attacks."Gavlak pitched this story to MintPress on August 28th and informed her editors and myself that her colleague Yahya Ababneh was on the ground in Syria. She said Ababneh conducted interviews with rebels, their family members, Ghouta residents and doctors that informed him through various interviews that the Saudis had supplied the rebels with chemical weapons and that rebel fighters handled the weapons improperly setting off the explosions.

When Yahya had returned and shared the information with her, she stated that she confirmed with several colleagues and Jordanian government officials that the Saudis have been supplying rebels with chemical weapons, but as her email states, she says they refused to go on the record.

Gavlak wrote the article in it's entirety as well as conducted the research. She filed her article on August 29th and was published on the same day.

Dale is under mounting pressure for writing this article by third parties. She notified MintPress editors and myself on August 30th and 31st via email and phone call, that third parties were placing immense amounts of pressure on her over the article and were threatening to end her career over it. She went on to tell us that she believes this third party was under pressure from the head of the Saudi Intelligence Prince Bandar himself, who is alleged in the article of supplying the rebels with chemical weapons.

On August 30th, Dale asked MintPress to remove her name completely from the byline because she stated that her career and reputation was at risk. She continued to say that these third parties were demanding her to disassociate herself from the article or these parties would end her career.

On August 31st, I notified Dale through email that I would add a clarification that she was the writer and researcher for the article and that Yahya was the reporter on the ground, but did let Gavlak know that we would not remove her name as this would violate the ethics of journalism.
We are aware of the tremendous pressure that Dale and some of our other journalists are facing as a result of this story, and we are under the same pressure as a result to discredit the story. We are unwilling to succumb to those pressures for MintPress holds itself to the highest journalistic ethics and reporting standards.

Yahya has recently notified me that the Saudi embassy contacted him and threatened to end his career if he did a follow up story on who carried out the most recent chemical weapons attack and demanded that he stop doing media interviews in regards to the subject.

We hold Dale Gavlak in the highest esteem and sympathize with her for the pressure she is receiving, but removing her name from the story would not be honest journalism and therefore, as stated before, we are not willing to remove her name from the article.

We are prepared and may release all emails and communications made between MintPress and Dale Gavlak, and even Yahya to provide further evidence of what was provided to you in this statement.

All of which was reported in the New York Times' The Lede. Laura Rozen shared an email given to her by a former Mint Press contributor, Steve Horn, who resigned in the wake of the Dale Gavlak statement, that had been sent by Mint Press' editor in chief Mnar Muhawesh

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mnar Muhawesh <mnar@mintpressnews.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 4:12 PM
Subject: Fwd: ATTN MintPress Exclusive: Evidence found of Saudi involvement in Syrian Chemical weapons attack
To: Mnar Muhawesh <mnar@mintpressnews.com>
Cc: Steve Horn office@mintpressnews.com, staff@mintpressnews.com

Dear friends and colleagues,

MintPress News, Associated Press and NPR correspondent Dale Gavlak, based in Amman, Jordan, who has been the Associated Press correspondent based in that region for over 25 years and still going, has broken a very important story in regards to the Syrian chemical weapons attack that occurred last week, and I wanted to give you the opportunity to be the first to hear.

Witnesses on the ground in Goutha, Syria (location of recent chemical attack), including family members of rebels and even Jordanian officials have told Dale and her colleague Yahya Abaneh that the chemical weapons were provided to the rebels by Saudi Arabia, specifically through Prince Bandar Bin Sultan.

Click here for the article to read more.

Please feel free to contact me for any questions.

You also have permission to re-post this article on your site or cover this new revelation as long as it is sourced to MintPress News.

Just let me know!

Thanks for your cooperation!

Best regards,
Mnar A. Muhawesh
Executive Director | Editor In Chief
(612) 388-2006
http://www.mintpressnews.com

Elsewhere, Brian Whitaker published the article, Yahya Ababneh exposed, where he identified another name Yahya Ababneh was posting online with, Yan Barakat, and a very interesting comment posted by him on a Peter Hitchens column before the Mint Press article was submitted, highlighting one key passage about Yahya's/Yan's trip that was left out of the Mint Press article

The war is coming soon. Jordan was threatened by the Syrian government this time.

Who used the chemical weapons?

The answer is neither the Syrian regime, nor the rebels. This is the game of Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi intelligence chief. He gave these weapons to the rebels via tunnels but they did not have enough information about them. Almost all of the rebels handling the weapons were killed because they used them incorrectly.

Many people inside the village were really angry with Jabhat Al Nazrah (an Al Qaeda associate in Syria).

The Assad regime so far has not let anyone from the UN visit the village to investigate. I will not be surprised if the Assad regime will use this case to support its situation in the eyes of Russia and Iran. The first country who suggested to fight Assad was France and Saudi Arabia were ready to pay for the weapons.

The Assad regime will get his army ready with many Iranian soldiers. Some old men arrived in Damascus from Russia and one of them became friends with me. He told me that they have evidence that it was the rebels who used the weapons.

The US people will pay the price again.

No one cares about the children who were killed in this way. The people are really concerned about who used the chemical weapons in Syria. If in these days it is believed that Assad used chemical weapons, then there will be a devastating war including the USA, France, Britain and Arab countries. After some years when they have paid the price to kill the Syrian people, they will say that they are sorry but it was actually Al Qaeda who deployed the weapons. Already they know that this is the game of Bandar bin Sultan.

Laura Rozen spoke to Dale Gavlak about this

Spoke briefly with Dale Gavlak. She said she knows Yahya Ababneh under that name thru mutual friends, thought he uses Yan Barakat for FB 1/2
Laura Rozen (@lrozen) September 22, 2013

Gavlak told me she was not aware of Yan Barakat's comments citing Russian sources or that he had a Russia VK page http://t.co/oZZCZxnZO2
Laura Rozen (@lrozen) September 22, 2013

And seems to have a Russian VKontakte page that says he was born in St. Petersburg http://t.co/AQkNczvYJ0 @daoudkuttab
Laura Rozen (@lrozen) September 22, 2013

Yahya Ababneh Linkedin profile was also deleted over the weekend, with a copy in Google Cacheshowing a list of organisations he claims to have worked for

Self-employed

2007 Present (6 years)

Includes assignments in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Libya for clients such as Al-Jazeera, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Amman Net, and other publications

Before Yahya Ababneh pseudonym of Yan Barakat was known, Al Jazeera English journalists Anita McNaught Tweeted that

@snarwani @Brown_Moses #Syria Mint Press journalist Yahya Ababneh claims to work for Al Jazeera. But Al Jaz web has no record of him.
Anita McNaught (@anitamcnaught) September 21, 2013

Posted by Brown Moses at 00:21

Quote:Questions Plague UN Report on Syria



By Sharmine Narwani - Mon, 2013-09-23 15:57- Sandbox
By Sharmine Narwani and Radwan Mortada
A senior United Nations official who deals directly with Syrian affairs has told Al-Akhbar that the Syrian government had no involvement in the alleged Ghouta chemical weapons attack: "Of course not, he (President Bashar al-Assad) would be committing suicide."
When asked who he believed was responsible for the use of chemical munitions in Ghouta, the UN official, who would not permit disclosure of his identity, said: "Saudi intelligence was behind the attacks and unfortunately nobody will dare say that." The official claims that this information was provided by rebels in Ghouta.
A report by the UN Mission to investigate use of chemical weapons (CW) in Ghouta, Syria was released last Monday, but per its mandate, did not assign blame to either the Syrian government or opposition rebels.
Media commentators and officials from several western countries, however, have strongly suggested that the Syrian government is the likely perpetrator of CW attacks in Ghouta and other locations.
But on Sunday, veteran Mideast journalist for The Independent Robert Fisk also reported that "grave doubts are being expressed by the UN and other international organisations in Damascus that the sarin gas missiles were fired by Assad's army."
The UN official's accusations mirror statements made earlier this year by another senior UN figure Carla del Ponte, who last May told Swiss TV in the aftermath of alleged CW attacks in Khan al-Asal, Sheik Maqsood and Saraqeb that there were "strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof," that rebels had carried out the attack. Del Ponte also observed that UN inspectors had seen no evidence of the Syrian army using chemical weapons, but added that further investigation was necessary.
The UN Inquiry tasked with investigating chemical weapons use in Syria hastily dismissed del Ponte's comments by saying it had "not reached conclusive findings" as to the use of CWs by any parties.
So why then are we getting these contradictory leaks by top UN officials?
The recently released UN Report on CW use in Syria may provide some clues. While it specifically does not assign blame for the use of CWs to either side, its disclosures and exclusions very clearly favor a rebel narrative of the Ghouta attacks. And that may be prompting these leaks from insiders who have access to a broader view of events.
Startling environmental evidence
The UN investigations focus on three main areas of evidence: environmental sampling, human sampling and munitions forensics.
The most stunning example of the UN's misrepresentation of facts inside Ghouta is displayed in its findings on environmental samples tested for traces of Sarin nerve gas.
On page 4 of the Report, the UN clearly states that environmental "samples were taken from impact sites and surrounding areas" and that "according to the reports received from the OPCW-designated laboratories, the presence of Sarin, its degradation and/or production by-products were observed in a majority of the samples."
The UN team gathered environmental samples from two areas in Ghouta: Moadamiyah in West Ghouta, and Ein Tarma and Zamalka in East Ghouta. The Moadamiyah samples were collected on August 26 when the UN team spent a total of two hours in the area. The Ein Tarma and Zamalka samples were collected on August 28 and 29 over a total time period of five and a half hours.
The UN investigators specify those dates in Appendix 6 of the Report.
But in Appendix 7, an entirely different story emerges about the results of environmental testing in Ghouta. This section of the Report is filled with charts that do not specify the towns where environmental samples were collected - just dates, codes assigned to the samples, description of the samples and then the CW testing results from two separate laboratories.
Instead, a closer look at the charts shows a massive discrepancy in lab results from east and west Ghouta. There is not a single environmental sample in Moadamiyah that tested positive for Sarin.

This is a critical piece of information. These samples were taken from "impact sites and surrounding areas" identified by numerous parties, not just random areas in the town. Furthermore, in Moadamiyah, the environmental samples were taken five days after the reported CW attack, whereas in Ein Tarma and Zamalka where many samples tested positive for Sarin UN investigators collected those samples seven and eight days post-attack, when degradation of chemical agents could have been more pronounced.
Yet it is in Moadamiyah where alleged victims of a CW attack tested highest for Sarin exposure, with a positive result of 93% and 100% (the discrepancy in those numbers is due to different labs testing the same samples). In Zamalka, the results were 85% and 91%.
It is scientifically improbable that survivors would test that highly for exposure to Sarin without a single trace of environmental evidence testing positive for the chemical agent.
I spoke with Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former commander of the British military's chemical defense regiment and CEO at CW specialists, SecureBio Ltd. "I think that is strange," he admits, when told about the stark discrepancy between human and environmental test results in Moadamiyah.
"It could be significant. Nobody else has brought that point up," says Bretton-Gordon, who has read the UN Report closely since he actually trains doctors and first-responders in Ghouta via an NGO.

"I think that it is strange that the environmental and human samples don't match up. This could be because there have been lots of people trampling through the area and moving things. Unless the patients were brought in from other areas. There doesn't seem another plausible explanation."

Bretton-Gordon notes that while Sarin's "toxicity" lasts only between 30-60 minutes when humans are directly exposed, it can remain toxic for many days on clothes (which is why medical workers wear protective gear) and lasts for months, sometimes years in the environment.
Why did the UN not highlight this very troubling result of its own investigations? The data had to be included in the Report since the two samplings human and environmental were core evidentiary components of the investigation. But it is buried in the small print of the Report an inconvenient contradiction that was dismissed by the UN team. If anything, the UN blatantly claims on page 5 of its findings:

"The environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and compelling evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent Sarin were used in Ein Tarma, Moadamiyah and Zamalka in the Ghouta area of Damascus."

There are several logical conclusions for the lack of environmental evidence and the abundance of human evidence of Sarin exposure in Moadamiyah:
One is that there was no Sarin CW attack in Moadamiyah. There can't have been - according to this environmental data. A second explanation is that the samples from Moadamiyah were contaminated somehow, even though the human samplings showed no sign of this. This is an unlikely explanation since the UN went to great pains, explained in depth in several sections of the Report, to ensure the sanctity of the evidence collected.
A third explanation, mentioned by Bretton-Gordon, is that patients might have been "brought in from other areas." All the patients were pre-selected by Ghouta doctors and opposition groups for presentation to the UN teams. And if this is the only plausible explanation for the discrepancy between environmental and human test results, then it suggests that "patients" were "inserted" into Moadamiyah, possibly to create a narrative of a chemical weapons attack that never took place.
This would almost certainly imply that opposition groups were involved in staging events in Ghouta. These towns are in rebel-controlled areas that have been involved in heavy battle with the Syrian government for much of the conflict. There is no army or government presence in these Ghouta areas whatsoever.
Human Testing
The UN team's selection of survivors in Moadamiyah and Zamalka raises even more questions. Says the Report:

"A leader of the local opposition forces who was deemed prominent in the area to be visited by the Mission, was identified and requested to take custody' of the Mission. The point of contact within the opposition was used to ensure the security and movement of the Mission, to facilitate the access to the most critical cases/witnesses to be interviewed and sampled by the Mission and to control patients and crowd in order for the Mission to focus to its main activities."

In short, opposition groups in these entirely rebel-held areas exercised considerable influence over the UN's movements and access during the entire seven and a half hours spent gathering evidence. The Report continues:

"A prominent local medical doctor was identified. This medical doctor was used to help in preparing for the arrival of the Mission… Concerning the patients, a sufficient number was requested to be presented to the Mission, in order for the Mission to pick a subpopulation for interviews and sampling. Typically a list of screening questions was also circulated to the opposition contacts. This included the queries to help in identification of the most relevant cases."

To be clear, doctors and medical staff working in rebel-held areas are understood to be sympathetic to the opposition cause. Shelled almost daily by the Syrian army, you will not find pro-government staff manning hospitals in these hotly contested towns. Bretton-Gordon, who trains some of the medical staff in Ghouta, acknowledges that this bias is "one of the weaknesses" of evidence compilation in this area.

"We've been helping doctors on the opposition side, so they tend to tell you things they want you to hear."

The entire population of patients to be examined by the UN team were essentially selected and delivered to the inspection team by the opposition in Ghouta. This, of course, includes the 44% of "survivors" allegedly from Moadamiyah.
In a report on Thursday, American CW expert Dan Kaszeta raised further questions. While concluding that Sarin was used in Ghouta based on "environmental and medical evidence" produced by the UN team, Kaszeta notes that testing only 36 survivors "cannot conceivably be considered a scientifically or statistically accurate sample of the population of affected victims. It would be considered scientifically unsound to draw widespread conclusions based simply on this sample."
Kaszeta also points out that the survivors' "exact presentation of signs and symptoms seems skewed from our conventional understanding of nerve agent exposure." He gives as example the relative lack of Miosis - "the threshold symptom for nerve agent exposure" - in Ghouta patients, which was found in only 15% of those tested compared to 99% of survivors in the 1995 Tokyo Sarin attack.
Other patient indications that appear out of proportion to Kaszeta were those who experienced convulsions (an advanced symptom) but did not concurrently display milder ones like excess salivation, excess tearing or miosis. "That is very strange to me," says Kaszeta.
"Generally, loss of consciousness is considered to be a very grave sign in nerve agent poisoning, happening shortly before death. How is it 78% of the patients had lost consciousness?" he asks.

"Is it possible that we are looking at exposure to multiple causes of injury? Were some of the examined victims exposed to other things in addition to Sarin? I am not stating that Sarin was not used. It clearly was. My point is that it is either not behaving as we have understood it in the past or that other factors were at work in addition to Sarin."

Munitions "Evidence"
Although the highest rate of Sarin-exposure was found in Moadamiyah "survivors," the UN team found no traces of Sarin on the 140mm rocket identified as the source of the alleged CW attack - or in its immediate environment.
Moving to an adjacent apartment building where the initial debris from rocket impact was found: "the Mission was told that the inhabitants of this location were also injured or killed by a gas.'" There was no evidence of Sarin there either.
The Report also notes: "The sites have been well-travelled by other individuals both before and during the investigation. Fragments and other evidence have clearly been handled/moved prior to the arrival of the investigation team."
That theme continues in both Ein Tarma and Zamalka where UN inspectors observed:

"As with other sites, the locations have been well traveled by other individuals prior to the arrival of the Mission. During the time spent at these locations, individuals arrived carrying other suspected munitions indicating that such potential evidence is being moved and possibly manipulated."

While Sarin traces were found on munitions in the latter two locations, the UN Report cannot identify the location from which these munitions were fired. The team studied five "impact sites" in total, only two of which provide "sufficient evidence to determine the likely trajectory of the projectiles."
These two sites are in Moadamiyah (Site 1), where an 140mm M14 artillery rocket was investigated, and in Ein Tarma (Site 4), where a "mystery" 330mm artillery rocket was identified as the source of the CW attack.
The flight path (trajectory) of these munitions provided in the UN Report may be more or less accurate, but less so is the distance they traveled, for which the UN offers no estimates whatsoever. And in a large "range" area criss-crossed by pro-government and pro-opposition areas, both sets of data are critical in determining the source of the alleged attacks.
Maps currently being disseminated by the media that claim to identify the point of origin of the projectiles, are misleading. I spoke with Eliot Higgins, whose Brown Moses blog has kept a running video inventory and analysis of munitions used in the Syrian conflict and who has worked closely with Human Rights Watch (HRW), which produced one of these maps:

"Munitions have a minimum range as well as a maximum range so it gives you a zone of where they can be fired from. Problem with the mystery rocket (in Ein Tarma) is that data doesn't exist so it's harder to be sure. You can show the trajectories and if they intersect, it might suggest a common point of origin. While the M14 has a range of just under 10km, the other munition is harder to figure out, there's a lot of factors, not least the type of fuel. And it's impossible to know the type of fuel short of finding an unfired one."

In short, the only one of the two munitions whose range we know is the one from Moadamiyah, which has an estimated range of between 3.8 and 9.8 kilometers, was not found to have traces of Sarin, and is therefore not part of any alleged CW attack.
On the map produced by HRW - which points specifically to the Syrian army's Republican Guard 104th Brigade base as the likely point of origin - the distance from Moadamiyah to the base is 9.5km. But since this now appears to be a munition used in conventional battle, it can't even legitimately be used by HRW in their efforts to identify an intersecting point of origin for CWs. It could have come from the military base, but so what?
The HRW map draws another line based on the trajectory of the Ein Tarma munition (the one with Sarin traces) to this Republican Guard base (9.6km), but we have no evidence at all of the range of this rocket. Its large size, however, suggests a range beyond the 9.8km of the smaller projectile which could take it well past the military base into rebel-held territory.
HRW has very simplistically assembled a map that follows the known trajectories of both munitions and marked X at a convenient point of origin that would place blame for CW attacks on the Syrian government.
It doesn't at all investigate any evidence that the rockets could have come from more than one point of origin, and skirts over the fact that HRW doesn't even know the distance travelled by either missile. As Higgins says: "the best you can do with the mystery munition is draw a straight line and see where it goes."
But western media ran with HRW's extrapolations, without looking at theevidence. "This isn't conclusive, given the limited data available to the UN team, but it is highly suggestive," says the HRW report. Not really. The case for culpability will need much tighter evidence than the facile doodling on this HRW map.
CWs were used, but by whom and how?
The discrepancies in the story of the Ghouta CW attacks are vast. Casualty figures range from a more modest 300+ to the more dramatic 1,400+ figures touted by western governments. The UN investigators were not able to confirm any of these numbers they only saw 80 survivors and tested only 36 of these. They saw none of the dead neither in graves nor in morgues.
While media headlines tend to blame CW attacks on the Syrian government - and US Secretary of State John Kerry now flat-out states it - on August 21 there existed little motive that would explain why the army would sabotage its military gains and invite foreign intervention for crossing CW "red lines."
If anything, the more obvious motive would be for retreating rebels to manufacture a CW false flag operation to elicit the kind of western-backed military response needed to alter the balance of force on the ground in favor of oppositionists. Which as we all know, almost happened with a US strike.
Clearly, further investigation is needed to put together all these contradictory pieces of the Ghouta puzzle. And for that you need an impartial team of investigators who have complete access to randomly sampled witnesses, patients, impact areas, their surroundings and beyond. More importantly, you need time to conduct a thorough investigation.
It should be noted here that during the UN team's visit to Moadamiyah on August 26, unknown snipers in the rebel-held area fired at the UN Mission, further limiting their time in the area for investigation.
This UN Report raises more questions than it answers. The entire population it interviewed witnesses, patients, doctors share a bias toward rebels. Almost all were pre-selected by the opposition and presented to the UN team for a rushed investigation. The munitions forensics provide little evidence as to their point of origin, which is critical to determine culpability. The human and environmental testing are inconclusive in that they don't provide enough information to help us determine what happened - and even suggest tampering and staging. Why would evidence need to be manufactured if this was a chemical weapons attack on a grand scale?
At the end of the day, the UN Report does not tell us who, how or whathappened in Ghouta on August 21. As the team prepares to head into Khan al-Asal for further investigations, one hopes that they will learn from these shortcomings and provide the conclusive findings needed to assign blame for war crimes. These missions are not merely an exercise. While the UN itself may not be allowed to point a finger at either side in this conflict, they must produce water-tight forensic conclusions that help the international community reach a decisive verdict based on evidence. And all these leaks from UN officials will dissipate the moment there is internal confidence that the job is being done properly.

Quote:

french were 'hours' from military strikes on syria before phone call from obama

fighter jets were preparing for scheduled take off when president hollande took 'stunning' call from us telling him to hold fire

anne penketh

paris

sunday 29 september 2013




french president francois hollande called off military strikes against syria on 31 august following a phone call from the us president only hours before fighter jets were set to take off, a french weekly magazine has revealed.
The report in the nouvel observateur shows how close the west came to launching a war on syria over the syrian regime's presumed use of chemical weapons in a damascus suburb, before washington backed down. President obama announced in a televised speech on 31 august, after informing a "stunned" mr hollande, that he would seek a congressional vote, effectively lifting the military threat.
Rafale aircraft were readied that saturday for take-off and official statements prepared in anticipation of the strikes, according to the nouvel observateur. "everything made us think that d-day had arrived," a french official is quoted as saying. The magazine said that "this incredible misunderstanding lasted until the end of the afternoon," at 6.15pm, when president obama telephoned mr hollande, who was expecting to confirm the military orders just after the phone call. The strikes had been intended to start at 3am later that night, targeting missile batteries and command centres of the 4th armoured division in charge of chemical weapons.
But instead of confirming that the us and french military would intervene jointly, president obama changed his mind following a conversation in the white house rose garden with his chief of staff denis mcdonough.
The french defence ministry had no comment on the nouvel observateurreport today. But it was clear that the french military establishment was stung by the us leader's behaviour. The former head of the french military academy, general vincent desportes, told le monde on 2 september that "president obama's u-turn reflects a great contempt by the united states for france."

Quote:Who is Dr Rola?


Dr Rola - BBC Newsnight, 30 August 2013


Dr Rola Hallem MBBS, BSc, FRCA

From her 'role of honour' entry on the ATFAL website:

Rola is a doctor in anaesthesia and intensive care, with a passion for education, child and global health. Drawing on her previous charitable work in sub-Saharan Africa, Rola has been working since the beginning of the Syria crisis on delivery of aid to Syria, raising awareness and advocacy.

Dr Rola Alkurdi FRCA

This page suggests Dr Rola Alkurdi, "Education Fellow + Registrar in Anaesthesia"[SUP][1][/SUP].
Appearances

BBC Newsnight on 30 August 2013

Introduced to BBC Newsnight viewers as "A British Doctor just back from volunteering in Syria who wants to be called 'Dr Rola'" an attractive thirty-something lady described her experience of an alleged napalm attack in Aleppo, Syria as "...one of the most horrific few hours of my life". Speaking in an educated English - with just a trace of East Midlands - accent, she gave a bravura, restrained-emotional performance describing the horrors she had witnessed and advocating Western military intervention in support of Syrian anti-government forces. It is not too much of a stretch to say that, had her interview been broadcast before the UK House of Commons vote which had declined military action a few hours earlier, the outcome may well have been different. Her performance was that persuasive. Her access to funding for her cause is clearly no problem because, during the interview she pointedly offered to host a 7 day visit by Ed Milliband and his family to Aleppo "... to see for himself and at my expense" [SUP][2][/SUP]
BBC Panorama Footage

In separate BBC Panorama footage which included video described as 'unverified' but shown nonetheless, a female introduced as "An English Doctor" was filmed in Aleppo in the claimed aftermath of the alleged attack. In a related Daily Telegraph article she was again described as an 'English Doctor working at a London Hospital' and volunteering for relief work in Syria through 'Hand-in-Hand-for-Syria' [SUP][3][/SUP]. Towards the end of the video she opined in an impeccably Estuary English accent "The whole world has failed our nation" - so, is she Syrian or English?
Although not explicitly stated, the strong impression conveyed in the Newsnight piece is that these two women are one and the same person, but the video clearly shows that they are different people. So who is she? because she is certainly NOT the Newsnight Dr Rola.
The Nurse Nayirah affair

To those who remember the run-up to the first Iraq war in 1990, it carried disturbing echoes of the Nurse Nayirah episode, in which the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, anonymously and fraudulently claimed that she had witnessed Iraqi troops "throwing new-born babies from incubators and leaving them to die on the cold floor". She had been coached by the US PR firm Hill & Knowlton, retained by the Kuwait government to make the case for war, and her father sat behind her as she delivered her testimony (as simply a volunteer 'student nurse' who, for security reasons, wished to remain anonymous) before the US Congress.
Public right to know

You do not volunteer to appear on the flag-ship BBC Politics TV program advocating for a military bombing campaign with any realistic expectation - let alone right - to remain anonymous.
The use of medical, charitable and otherwise altruistic credentials as qualifications to advocate for military intervention of ANY kind - let alone the sort of cowardly stand-off high-tech carnage Dr Rola was effectively shilling for on BBC Newsnight is, by any civilised standard, deeply offensive behaviour.
In the fraught circumstances of a rising drum-beat crescendo for military intervention in Syria, the public has an absolute right to know exactly who Dr Rola is and what her connection are.
Request for information

Please send any relevant information to:

• admin[at]wikispooks.org - PGP public key or
  
• use the anonymous upload/contact form
  
• Twitter hash-tag #WhoIsDrRola
  

Anti-Israeli Torture Letter

Dr Rola Alkurdi was one of 725 doctors who signed a 2009 open letter demanding the dismissal of newly-appointed WMA president, Dr Yoram Blachar because of Israeli doctors complicity in the torture of Palestinians [SUP][4][/SUP]


See Also

• Nurse_Nayirah
  
• Hand in Hand for Syria
  

References

• ↑ UCL Staff page
  
• ↑ Syria crisis: Doctor criticises Miliband over MPs' vote - BBC News 31 August 2013
  
• ↑ Syria: BBC Panorama films 'napalm' attack on school - Telegraph Friday 30 August 2013
  
• ↑ Torture-row doctors stick the knife in