A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[David Guyatt]

For the record the below is the NYT story relating to the above post. I've posted it because in the UK, and therefore probably elsewhere in Europe etc., the NYT is locked behind a paywall. Using a VPN lock-picks that.

Earlier I had watched an RT correspondent question John Kirby at the State Department where she asked about the US bombing of Syrian soldiers at Dar ez-Zur. The RT journo shaped her question by saying it was an "accidental" bombing - which everyone in the whole world knows is untrue, but since the US insists the truth is simply not allowable, a game has to be played -- hence Kirby responded to the question by confirming the bombing was an "accident".

And reading the foregoing NYT article I almost wet myself at all the double-speak going on. For example:

At the meeting last week, Mr. Kerry was trying to explain that the United States has no legal justification for attacking Mr. Assad's government, whereas Russia was invited in by the government.

0:33

"The problem is the Russians don't care about international law, and we do."

The sheer hypocrisy of it all is breathtaking.

Anyway, on with the show:

Jason Decrow/Associated Press

Audio Reveals What John Kerry
Told Syrians Behind Closed Doors

By ANNE BARNARD SEPT. 30, 2016

BEIRUT, Lebanon Secretary of State John Kerry was clearly exasperated, not least at his own government.

Over and over again, he complained to a small group of Syrian civilians that his diplomacy had not been backed by a serious threat of military force, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.

0:34

"I think you're looking at three people, four people in the administration who have all argued for use of force, and I lost the argument."

The 40-minute discussion, on the sidelines of last week's United Nations General Assembly in New York, provides a glimpse of Mr. Kerry's frustration with his inability to end the Syrian crisis. He veered between voicing sympathy for the Syrians' frustration with United States policy and trying to justify it.

The conversation took place days after a brief cease-fire he had spearheaded crumbled, and as his Russian counterpart rejected outright his new proposal to stop the bombing of Aleppo. Those setbacks were followed by days of crippling Russian and Syrian airstrikes in Aleppo that the World Health Organization said Wednesday had killed 338 people, including 100 children.

At the meeting last week, Mr. Kerry was trying to explain that the United States has no legal justification for attacking Mr. Assad's government, whereas Russia was invited in by the government.

0:33

"The problem is the Russians don't care about international law, and we do."

Mr. Kerry has been hamstrung by Russia's military operations in Syria and by his inability to persuade Washington to intervene more forcefully. He has also been unable to sell Syrian opponents of Mr. Assad, like the ones in that room, on a policy he does not wholeheartedly believe in.

His frustrations and dissent within the Obama administration have hardly been a secret, but in the recorded conversation, Mr. Kerry lamented being outmaneuvered by the Russians, expressed disagreement with some of Mr. Obama's policy decisions and said Congress would never agree to use force.

0:19

"We're trying to pursue the diplomacy, and I understand it's frustrating. You have nobody more frustrated than we are."

The meeting took place at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on Sept. 22. There were perhaps 20 people around a table: representatives of four Syrian groups that provide education, rescue and medical services in rebel-held areas; diplomats from three or four countries; and Mr. Kerry's chief of staff and special envoy for Syria. The recording was made by a non-Syrian attendee, and several other participants confirmed its authenticity.

John Kirby, a State Department spokesman, declined on Thursday evening to comment on what he described as a private conversation. He said that Mr. Kerry was "grateful for the chance to meet with this group of Syrians, to hear their concerns firsthand and to express our continued focus on ending this civil war."

Several of the Syrian participants said afterward that they had left the meeting demoralized, convinced that no further help would come from the Obama administration. One, a civil engineer named Mustafa Alsyofi, said Mr. Kerry had effectively told the Syrian opposition, "You have to fight for us, but we will not fight for you."

"How can this be accepted by anyone?" Mr. Alsyofi asked. "It's unbelievable."

In the meeting, he and the others pressed Mr. Kerry politely but relentlessly on what they saw as contradictions in American policy. Their comments crystallized the widespread sense of betrayal even among the Syrians most attractive to Washington as potential partners, civilians pushing for pluralistic democracy.

One woman, Marcell Shehwaro, demanded "the bottom line," asking "how many Syrians" had to be killed to prompt serious action.

0:18

"What is the end of it? What he can do that would be the end of it?"

Mr. Kerry responded that "Assad's indifference to anything" could push the administration to consider new options, adding, "There's a different conversation taking place" since the intensified bombing of Aleppo and the further breakdown of talks with Russia.

But he also said any further American effort to arm rebels or join the fight could backfire.

0:39

"The problem is that, you know, you get, quote, enforcers in there and then everybody ups the ante, right? Russia puts in more, Iran puts in more; Hezbollah is there more and Nusra is more; and Saudi Arabia and Turkey put all their surrogate money in, and you all are destroyed."

At another point, Mr. Kerry spelled out in stark terms distinctions the United States was making between combatants, which have upset the Syrian opposition: The United States wants the rebels to help it fight the Islamic State and Al Qaeda because, as he put it, "both have basically declared war on us." But Washington will not join the same rebels in fighting Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia allied with Mr. Assad, even though the United States lists Hezbollah as a terrorist group like the others.

"Hezbollah," Mr. Kerry explained, "is not plotting against us."

He also spoke of the obstacles he faces back home: a Congress unwilling to authorize the use of force and a public tired of war.

0:17

"A lot of Americans don't believe that we should be fighting and sending young Americans over to die in another country."

One of the Syrians in the room assured Mr. Kerry, "No one is requesting an invasion," but he insisted that the rebels needed more help.

As time ran short, Mr. Kerry told the Syrians that their best hope was a political solution to bring the opposition into a transitional government. Then, he said, "you can have an election and let the people of Syria decide: Who do they want?"

A State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said later that Mr. Kerry was not indicating a shift in the administration's view of Mr. Assad, only reiterating a longstanding belief that he would be ousted in any fair election.

At one point, Mr. Kerry astonished the Syrians at the table when he suggested that they should participate in elections that include President Bashar al-Assad, five years after President Obama demanded that he step down.

Mr. Kerry described the election saying it would be set up by Western and regional powers, and the United Nations, "under the strictest standards." He said that the millions of Syrians who have fled since the war began in 2011 would be able to participate.

0:19

"Everybody who's registered as a refugee anywhere in the world can vote. Are they going to vote for Assad? Assad's scared of this happening."

But the Syrians were skeptical that people living under government rule inside Syria would feel safe casting ballots against Mr. Assad, even with international observers or that Russia would agree to elections if it could not ensure the outcome. And that is when the conversation reached an impasse, with Ms. Shehwaro, an educator and social media activist, recalling hopes for a more direct American role.

"So you think the only solution is for somebody to come in and get rid of Assad?" Mr. Kerry asked.

"Yes," Ms. Shehwaro said.

"Who's that going to be?" he asked. "Who's going to do that?"

0:16

"Three years ago, I would say: You. But right now, I don't know."

Source

[Michael Barwell]

[video]<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/361887-white-helmets-aid-pr/video/" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen/></iframe>[/video]

[video]https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/361887-white-helmets-aid-pr/[/video]

One of those should be a goer - the White Helmeted Superheros - quite possibly genuinely.

Also https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/

[Paul Rigby]

ON THE VERGE OF A MAJOR WAR: IS THERE A PILOT IN THE COCKPIT?

Russia defends its European territory from US missiles by creating a naval base in Syria.

17.10.2016

Written by Nikolay Nikolaev; Originally appeared at A-specto, translated by Valentina Tzoneva exclusively for SouthFront

https://southfront.org/on-the-verge-of-a...e-cockpit/

In late August 2010, the citizens of the Syrian Arab Republic looked for salvation from the heat in the cool Mediterranean shores of the country, resting after another working day. An ominous event will turn into a terrible omen for the future of the prosperous Arab country whose health, education or social system would make many Eastern European countries jealous. The deputy head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) to the Russian Armed Forces, Yuri Ivanov, was found dead in the neighboring Turkish province of Hatay. Officially, the general was on a private visit to the country having a holiday in the Syrian resort of Tartus, then heading to another Mediterranean port of Latakia. Unofficially, General Ivanov, who was visiting Syria with a diplomatic passport, was on a mission in Tartus, where the Russian military planned to deploy a complete naval base in 2011.

According to local media, President Bashar Assad, accompanied by his family was in Latakia at the same time as Yury Ivanov. The plan for extension positions a full-scale naval base at a place with a single gas dispenser that can be briefly described as a checkpoint for logistic supply. The difference is not just in the names. A major point of a permanent naval base is its ability to provide the compounds of ships with all types of collateral security. This includes a complete set of tools for anti-aircraft and missile defense, anti-ship missiles; it is a means to restore fighting capacity and conduct combat training and will firmly secure Russian influence in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

In Bulgaria, the thesis of geo-economic causes of the war in Syria related to the battle for control over gas routes is popular. In practice, the events that began four months after the death of the GRU General are mostly related to considerations of a military strategic nature and are aimed at blocking Russian naval forces to the Black Sea straits and strategic expansion of US missiles to the Urals. In the Syrian crisis, Russia not only protects its "geopolitical interests," as they are accustomed to blaring in some environments. The danger of expelling the Russian fleet from the Mediterranean poses an existential threat to the Russian Federation.

The decision to build a permanent naval base in recent days is a breakthrough in the geopolitical strategy of "deterrence" and the concept of a "lightning strike" imposed by the US, and reflects the long-term prognosis for stabilising of Russian influence in the region.

Dangerous Game "Thunderbolt global strike"

"We must take into account not the intent but the capabilities." This ingenious sentence of the "Iron Chancellor," Otto von Bismarck, describes the importance of the military potential of a country for international relations. The military strategy can be described as a chessboard on which leading players have their figures: ground forces, ballistic missiles, naval vessels, missile defense, air forces. Each operating unit has a function and scope of action just as the figures on the board. The combined "value" of the forces on the battlefield in a hypothetical confrontation with the enemy must be able to lead to victory. In other words, in an offensive strategy, the player "on the move" must at some point declare "checkmate."

Regardless of diplomatic and economic pressure, as the practice of the post-Cold War points, the military force remains the main means of imposing the will of the global hegemon, whether it comes to Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America or Europe. The World domination of the United States, however, has one huge obstacle called the strategic weapons of mass destruction of Russia. The presence of strategic nuclear weapons capable of inflicting "retaliation," negating any military campaign, is a "stumbling block" to US strategists. This gives the Western leaders two possible choices: to give up their aspirations to impose their will on Russia and include Russia in a joint security system or to try to defuse Russian ballistic missiles. The debate in the late 90s in the US was heated.

According to the great diplomat, George Kennan, "father" of the policy of deterrence which earned the victory in the Cold War, the attempt to impose military superiority over Russia is harmful to the United States. NATO expansion, he said, would be a "tragic mistake" that will lead to a new Cold war. Unfortunately, his words are not heard. The policy of expanding NATO, shifting military infrastructure eastward and military-political ejection of Russia towards its borders started.

In everyday life, one rarely thinks that the European prosperity and security, our tranquility and peace are based on bilateral military and political agreements between the US and USSR from the time of the Cold War. The Treaty for limiting missile defense systems from 1972 (which prohibits the deployment of missile defense to deter opposing strategic nuclear forces), the Treaty on the Elimination of Missiles of Medium and Small Range of Action (removing all nuclear and conventional ground-based ballistic missiles with a range of 500 km 5 500 km), the consequent agreements limiting strategic nuclear forces (SALT-1,2, START 1,2,3) and the agreement excluding the expansion of NATO eastward, create a strategic balance that guarantees the non-use of military means, thanks to which peace prevails in Europe. Today all this is destroyed right in front of our eyes.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." In 1941, the Nazi military command explained to the officers and the personnel positioned on the Soviet border that this is … an offensive on Persia (now Iran) with Russian permission to punish the British. Ironically, the United States justified with an Iranian threat the first colossal impact on the strategic balance. In 2002, the US exited the Treaty, limiting missile defenses and moved the US military infrastructure to Russia's borders, which Washington leaders justified by nonexistent Iranian nuclear missiles. As stated by Russian President, Vladimir Putin, during the recently-held economic forum in St. Petersburg, it is obvious that from the beginning, Washington uses deception. After the nuclear agreement, Iran's nuclear "threat" no longer exists. The Russian leader rhetorically asked "Why did they then built an anti-missile system in Romania?"

The purpose of the risky game, the stakes of which is the life of every single person on this planet, is actually the attempt for military supremacy over Russia by dominating over strategic and nuclear forces. Along with the missile defense, an offensive strategy must rely on percussion forces to "zero" the threat of Russian ballistic missiles before they are launched. For this purpose, the United States developed the doctrine of so-called "lightning global strike" (Prompt Global Strike).

In 2010, Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, formally announced the US ability to cause a "global lightning strike," which in theory should be able to destroy a set of objectives within an hour with precision missiles without using nuclear weapons. Here, however, comes the problem of the strategists of the Pentagon: American missiles cannot reach Russian positions near the Ural Mountains.

What secrets does the "Aegis" hide?

The East Room of the White House is the biggest and most lavish room at the residence of the US head of state. At this place, weddings of presidential daughters have been conducted and memorial services have been held for the bodies of the seven of the eight presidents who died during their terms as presidents. Here documents are signed that built the "American exceptionalism" of a nation called to establish world peace, such as the Briand-Kellogg Pact rejecting war as a tool of state policy, the agreement between Nixon and Brezhnev for peaceful use of atomic energy, the Treaty of Camp David that led to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979. The East Room is the place where on December 8, 1987 the second fundamental of strategic balance was laid, ensuring world peace. This is the Treaty on the Elimination of Missiles of Medium and Small Range of Action signed between the leaders Gorbachov and Reagan. Europe may already be calm because there is no threat of a nuclear apocalypse. Successively withdrawn and eliminated are all land-based ballistic missiles with a range between 500 km and 5 500 km. The key word, however, is land-based'. Based on this limitation, the hawks in the Pentagon relying on creating a hidden powerful hit component for applying the first disarming strike, developed and implemented in the US Navy during the last decade the battle system "Aegis" (Aegis Combat System), which is officially designated as missile defense.

Aegis' in Greek mythology is the shield that Zeus used in the battle with the Titans to defend himself. Subsequently, it was used for both defense and attack. For this purpose, the head of Medusa was placed in the middle, fossilising everyone who looked at her and the shield was given to Athena goddess of wisdom and war strategies, whose symbol is the snake and the owl. The parallels are instructive.

The missile umbrella directed against Russia's strategic nuclear weapons is accompanied by a powerful hit component the system MK-41 VLS, allowing the launch of "Tomahawk" missiles .Because they are based on ships, these missiles, enabling the transfer of 2 500 km range missiles do not fall within the restrictions of the Treaty of 1987. This is the specific military strategic explanation for the "Maidan" in Ukraine and the attempts to push the capable to counteract the American destroyers Russian fleet from the Crimea.

The Aegis' is not a reaction to some imaginary "Russian aggression," nor is it a response to the crisis in Syria. Pentagon strategists have developed the technical parameters of the project for years. Officially, the decision to build a "missile shield" in Europe which covers the Mediterranean direction of impact was taken back in 2012 at the NATO Summit in Chicago and a little later in the Mediterranean the destroyers "Carney," "Donald Cook," "Ross" and "Porter" arrived with "Tomahawk" missiles on board.

Not by accident in the midst of the Ukrainian events, the Sixth Fleet, led by the aircraft carrier "George HW Bush" took positions on the Black Sea straits and the destroyer, "Donald Cook," approached the Crimean coast before being stopped. From the accumulated evidence comes the solid conclusion that the Ukrainian crisis is a consequence of the Russian resistance to attempts for a military campaign against Syria. Failing to remove the Mediterranean Navy of Moscow, the hawks in the Pentagon turned to the dangerous plan "B" banishment of the Black Sea fleet from Sevastopol, which automatically leaves the divisions in the Eastern Mediterranean cut off. As it became clear from the statements of the leaders of the "right sector" and the party "Freedom" which are the perpetrators of the Ukrainian coup, the "victorious march" on the "Maidan" had to be completed by the disposal of the Russian fleet from Sevastopol.

But Moscow established political control over the Russian and Russian-speaking population of Crimea and deployed air defense, missile systems, aviation and anti- ship system "Bastion" and simply parried completely any opportunity to extend the sea-based "Tomahawk" missiles to the Urals.

Did the second pillar of international stability collapse?

The Pentagon realised the impossibility of ensuring naval superiority over Russia and it was combined with a shock from an event the modernisation of Russian arms and especially the development of precision missiles. The United States exited from the Treaty on the AMS 2002, which incidentally agreed with facts about the development of a Russian missile programme. Pentagon strategists apparently relied on finding in financial difficulties at the beginning of the century that Russia will fail to modernise the outdated military heritage of the Soviet Union.

Washington even called the large-scale Russian armaments programme until 2020 a "paper tiger." That is why the shock of the West must have been very big when on 7 October 2015, 26 cruise missiles of class "Caliber," launched from the water area of the Caspian Sea and flew more than a thousand kilometres and struck with precision targets of "Islamic State." The very next day, the Pentagon pulled the aircraft carrier, "Theodore Roosevelt," from the Persian Gulf for "repairs," and thus for the first time since 2007, the region was left without coverage in the midst of strained relations with Moscow. At first sight, the two events are unrelated, but it is only seemingly.

The carrier, "Theodore Roosevelt," is named after the 26th US president which was the number of rockets fired. With this move, the Russian military revealed to the colleagues in Washington that the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf is an easy target for Russian precision weapons. The carrier was left uncovered from missile defense systems, which considering the AMS, the sub-systems for correcting terrains of the area and the ability of the "Caliber" to carry tactical nuclear charge might prove to be ineffective.

Building a complete base of the Russian Navy in Tartus in this context will cement the defense capabilities of the Russian Federation. This, together with the preparation of a common missile defense system between Turkey and Russia using components from China, as announced by the Spokesperson of the Turkish President, Ibrahim Cullen, turn the south flank of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea into an impregnable fortress, ensuring the defense of the Russian strategic nuclear weapons from the south. Intentionally or not, a little later in the day after the announcement of the idea of a Russian-Turkish missile shield, the Turkish resort of Antalya came under fire from three rockets, shot by unidentified militants.

There are serious signs feeding fears that in pursuit of the sick ambition for military superiority over Russia, the hawks in Washington will break down the second pillar of the system of strategic balance the Treaty on the Elimination of Missiles of Medium and Small Range. After failing to break through the missile blockade in the southern seas, the deployment of the so-called missile defense system in Romania and Poland is essentially, among others, an indirect breach of contract for missiles with a medium range. The present anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe are based on the universal platform MK-41 and its technical specifications allow launching "Tomahawk" missiles with a range of 2 500 km at any point of the Russian European territories in violation of the prohibition of the contract.

There is hardly anything that threatened world security as much as this move of Washington. Even the Cuban Missile Crisis was not charged with such a high risk level. People do not understand how potentially dangerous the situation really is. "The world is pulled into an entirely new dimension, while Washington pretends that nothing happens," Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said, adding that Western officials "blur the eyes of the news media" which in turn misinforms their audiences.

In 2007 already, the Chief of General Staff of the Russian army warned that the deployment of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe could lead to Russia exiting the Treaty on the Elimination of Weapons of Medium and Small Range. The concern of the Russian side was confirmed recently by the President of the Federation Council's Defense and Safety, Victor Ozerov, who conceded the possibility for Russia to exit the Treaty on limitation of strategic offensive weapons the third pillar of the system of strategic balance. With the ratification of the new treaty, the Russian Parliament expressly stated that the deployment of missile defense system could be a reason for his denunciation. Ever since its conclusion during the Cold War, the USSR assumes its implementation with respect to the ABM Treaty.

The latest move is understandable American missiles of medium and short range are located far from the coast of the United States. Because of the ability to strike targets in Russia they have a strategic character, unlike Russian analogues that cannot reach US territory.

The situation in Syria is exacerbating in front of our eyes, and the militarisation of Eastern Europe and the destruction of strategic balance will mean that an accidental spark would be able to ignite a global war. In response to the article announcing the US strikes on the forces of the Syrian army, published in the Washington Post (close to the circle of the "hawks"), the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense declared readiness of the Russian army to bring down any American plane that constitutes a danger.

Military strategic plans of the warmongers in the Pentagon exclude reaching an understanding with Russia on Syria: Russia simply must leave Tartus. This is the reason for the failed peace arrangements between Presidents Putin and Obama and air strikes by the US, in which as per unofficial information, Russian military instructors had died. The Kremlin's response was quick and "Caliber" missiles struck targets including the headquarters of Western intelligence troops as per unofficial sources.

Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, directly said that the security services of the United States, and not the White House, dictate the foreign policy to Syria. "Despite the fact that the commander of the US is the president, Barack Obama has always supported, to my knowledge, cooperation with Russia and confirmed this during the meeting with Putin in China. It seems to me that the military does not listen to the commander," Lavrov said. Everything points to the fact that Barack Obama is the "brake" to further escalation of the conflict. As he said, the decision to strikes in Libya is his greatest political error, and after that, his resistance against intervention in Syria, the Nobel laureate for peace showed that he continues to be a supporter of non-violent methods in politics. But Obama's mandate ends and elections for the president of the United States seemingly do not promise anything about "doves" prevailing. The initiator of the end of the Cold War, Mikhail Gorbachov, recently said that the world "is approaching the danger zone."

[Paul Rigby]

PINKINDUSTRY
The ATLANTIC SEMANTIC

Who's behind the Syrian Support Group?

January 2016

https://pinkindustry.wordpress.com/the-s...ort-group/

This is an open-ended exploration of some of the outside figures offering assistance to the Syrian Support Group (SSG). These figures have assisted in the granting of a license that enabled the Group to effectively send arms and money to the Free Syrian Army'. The license was provided by the US State Dept's oddly named Office of Terrorism Finance and Economic Sanctions Policy'. Part of the Office of Terrorism Finance's stated remit is to coordinate: "efforts to create, modify, or terminate unilateral sanctions regimes as appropriate to the changing international situation, such as Iran, Syria, and Libya." The license was granted in July 2012, based on a May application lettera remarkably short time considering the nature of the SSG's objectives and the complexities of the situation.

With the license the SSG can now bypass laws restricting trade with Syria and it is free to pay the wages of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and enable them to buy weapons. The arrangements also seems to include chemical weapons training. From its onset Louay Sakka, the SSG spokesman stated: "Right now we're only asking them to provide more sophisticated weapons which nobody is willing to do" (Agence France Presse, June 8, 2012).

Obviously this American funding is in addition to secret CIA funding, the funding of the FSA by Qatar and Saudi Arabia and it is likely it will encourage an increase in funding and support of Assad and the other factions supported by Russia and Iran as the situation develops.

The Outside Figures

A range of outside figures have been said to appear because they are connected "to the Anglo-American opposition creation business." Examples are given such as those around western-elite connected figures such as Bassma Kodmani, formerly of the Syrian National Council (now with the Oxford Research Group). Together with other groups the SSG ostensibly lobby the US government to provide support to the resistance against Assad. But part of the State Dept's deal with the SSG is that it reciprocally provides them with reports on who the money is going to. The idea is that this will help them to turn the FSA into a more organized group that could then receive intelligence and so forth from Western security agencies. Essentially this is the formation of a proxy force at arm's length from the State Dept., so that it can retain the fiction that it is still opposed to providing direct lethal aid.

According to the New York Times, the SSG set up a base in Washington (it also has offices in London, Paris, and eastern Turkey) in April 2012 but had come together earlier in 20011; and even then the group was:

…already serving as a conduit between the United States and the armed forces seeking to topple Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, and having an effect on American policy.

To further their cause and advise the Syrian Opposition Coalition in April 2013 (the dates are imprecise) the SSG hired Carne Ross and his New York-based firm, Independent Diplomat. This describes itself as the "world's first non-profit diplomatic advisory group." The idea was that the firm would:

…meet with key officials and desk officers in the State Department and other U.S. agencies to gather their views [on the Syrian civil war] and advise the Syrian Coalition how best to tailor their own approach to the U.S. Government.

In May 2012 (possibly months earlier) the SSG (or its advisers) also hired Brian Sayers, supposedly after finding him through an online employment agency. At this point the license was applied for and then approved. Technically it was applied for by Mazen Asbahi, a lawyer who, when President Obama first ran for office, was appointed as his national coordinator to raise millions from Muslim Americans.

By granting such a license, according to a law expert, the US government has breached the UN Charter's article 2(4), the prohibition on the threat and use of force in international relations: "the basic principle of customary international law prohibiting the interference into the domestic affairs of another state." But no one seems interested, even although exactly who the FSA are remains a mystery: for the Russians "America's Syrian friends and Afghan foes are same people."

The SSG's lucky find, Brian Sayers is said to have been an ex-NATO Advisor in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libyawhat he advises on we can only guess at. Some say he was a Political Officer for the International Secretariat at NATO', others say he worked for the Defense Operations Division at the US State Department,' or he was the Civilian Representative of the Secretary of Defense'. He was also said to have run a company called Private Digital Limited Corporation'. Information on all this is scant, but the State Dept's records have a Brian Neil Sayers, the husband of Mrs Adeline Hinderer Sayers, the second secretary for Trade at the US' K Street Delegation of the European Union. Sayers previously studied at the University of St. Andrews and then Georgetown Universitywho else found him useful one wonders?

What is peculiar here is that Sayers' output has been given a remarkably sympathetic airing in the Israeli press. Elsewhere we find him quoted as setting out the FSA as the lesser evil:

We believe that if the United States does not act urgently, there is a real risk of a political vacuum in Syria, including the possibility of a dispersion of chemical weapons to rogue groups such as Hezbollah.

This type of framing and commentary has a familiar ring about it: a private group being given tax-deductible status to raise money for an armed rebel group trying to overthrow a government in a country with which the US is not at war: the outsourcing to the private sector of the sort of thing the CIA used to do.

The Spook

Carne Ross' International Diplomat (ID) reports to Najib Ghadbian, who co-ordinates the SSG. According to Ross' firm, with SSG he will: "meet with key officials and desk officers in the State Department and other U.S. agencies to gather their views [on the Syrian civil war] … and advise the Syrian Coalition how best to tailor their own approach to the U.S. Government." The acknowledged (thanks to Wikileaks) State Dept. funding of a Syrian opposition dates back to at least 2006. Ross started to advise the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces' at the point were concerns were publicly raised that the rebellion was "being hijacked by Islamists linked to Al Qaeda" according to the New York Times. But the rebellion has never really been in the ascendency, nor has its rebels been homogenous: in 2012, when the US blacklisted the Al-Qaeda-linked group Al-Nusra Front in Syria, the measure was initially criticized by the opposition. Of his firm's role Ross was quoted as saying: "We're not lobbyists, we're an advisory group." But he openly advocates intervention, arguing that similar fears of a perceived Islamist threat were used to justify non-intervention in Bosnia two decades ago. This was parroted by Johnathan Freedland in the Guardian (seemingly before Ross was hired). Ross' other pronouncements in favour of escalating the conflict, include the inflamatory Let's call Russia's bluff on Syria,' also in the Guardian. Independent Diplomat, as a private firm, clearly perceived an opportunity to shakedown the émigré groups that would emerge and be supported by the West.

After he resigned over Syria, Kofi Annan wrote in the Financial Times that peace was never given a chance by the UN: multiple players were responsible for the failure of diplomacy in Syria, and he said that Assad was not solely responsible for peace in the region. For Al Jazeera the UN's Security Council is engaged in a hegemonic power struggle over the Syrian conflict. The legend which has been put around Carne Ross is that he is some saintly liberal interventionist helping the underdog, somehow at a remove from these machinations and the sanctions on, and then invasion of Iraq. But he was not. Now that he has resigned' Ross has availed himself of the situation whereby governments outsource aspects of diplomacy'. This privatisation of diplomacy is a return to the pre-League of Nations' secret diplomacy: it will not tackle the problem whereby wars are run by sinister vested interests.

Ross was head of the Arab-Israeli Section of the Foreign Office according to the Jerusalem Post (September 5, 1995) and it is mentioned far and wide that he was the chief drafter of a key December 1999 UN Security Council resolution easing sanctions against Iraq in return for restarting weapons inspections (The Cairns Sun (Australia) January 5, 2001). Less put-about stories include when John Pilger met Ross, and described him, more accurately, as the British official responsible for the imposition of sanctions. To confront him Pilger read to him a statement Ross had made to a parliamentary select committee in 2007:

"The weight of evidence clearly indicates that sanctions caused massive human suffering among ordinary Iraqis, particularly children. We, the US and UK governments, were the primary engineers and offenders of sanctions and were well aware of this evidence at the time but we largely ignored it or blamed it on the Saddam government. [We] effectively denied the entire population a means to live."

Ross' reply was:

"I feel very ashamed about it… Before I went to New York, I went to the Foreign Office expecting a briefing on the vast piles of weapons that we still thought Iraq possessed, and the desk officer sort of looked at me slightly sheepishly and said, Well actually, we don't think there is anything in Iraq.' "

Pilger's story is really about another individual, Dr. Rafil Dhafir, who for 13 years with his Help the Needy' organisation had raised money for food and medicines for sick and starving Iraqis who were the victims of Ross' sanctions. US officials told Dhafir his humanitarian aid was legal and then arrested him. Today, Dhafir is serving 22 years in prison for aiding terrorism. Remember the State Dept. gave the SSG a licence to fund who knows who after looking at them for just over four or so weeks.

As chance would have it Ross has explained exactly how a false case for war is constructed using émigré and/or defector groups. He has also outlined further how he and his colleagues pretended to delude themselves, when he was Blair's Iraq expert at the UN security council, and was responsible for liaison with the weapons inspectors and intelligence on WMD. This was accomplished:

…not by the deliberate creation of a falsehood, but by willfully and secretly manipulating the evidence to exaggerate the importance of reports […] and to ignore contradictory evidence. This was a subtle process, elaborated from report to report, in such a way that allowed officials themselves to believe that they were not deliberately lying more editing, perhaps, or simplifying for public presentation.

One of many witnesses at the Chilcot enquiry bent on self-exoneration, Ross was involved in all that he condemns, i.e. he was involved in the initial preparation of Blair's dossier on WMD, and kept quiet about it until it was too late. He even claims to have discussed the Number 10 WMD dossier at length with David Kelly in late 2002, who told him it was overstated. There are reasons to doubt that his resignation was particularly motivated by his experience engineering the waras he claims. Before, when on sabbatical leave in the US, he was happily extolling the virtues of his employers in the Guardian in March 21, 2002, claiming that:

I've never had a problem with motivation. I always thought that this job was worthwhile and work that needed to be done. One of the great things about the Foreign Office is that nearly everbody feels like that […] I didn't feel unvalued a year ago.

Ross was also the UK's Afghanistan "expert" at the UN Security Council after September 11th, 2001, and also briefly served in the British Embassy, Kabul, after the 2002 invasion.

Independent Diplomat's name comes from one of his books: Independent Diplomat, Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite'. But we are not far away from this elite in his firm's make-up. It has a prestigious board of directors including Kieran Prendergast, who is also a member of the advisory board of another British business intelligence' firm, Hakluyt (Intelligence Online, January 8, 2009). Its advisory board, includes Sir David Manning, who was Tony Blair's principal foreign affairs adviser in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. The company has been found to have engaged in activities such as employing an operative to infiltrate environmental groups on behalf of BP and Shell; it was the firm that hired the subsequently murdered British businessman Neil Heywood as a consultant in Chinahe was said to be "part of a global network of consultants who use local connections to provide intelligence for Hakluyt clients."

Haykluyt's parent company is the Holdingham Group who's Advisory board are beyond a shadow of a doubt an unaccountable elite. Its other organisations are H+ (described as: "An insight-driven consultancy providing independent and objective advice to senior executives at leading international corporations who face major strategic challenges and decisions") and Pelorus Research (which says: "Government intrusion into the commercial space is on the rise, and this is an increasingly important investment consideration. This weighs heaviest on industries most exposed to regulatory action, including telecoms, financial services, tobacco and natural resources"). Yes governments are way down the pecking order herejust another palm to cross with silver in the process of money making.

The Lobbyist

In April 2013, along with Carne Ross, the SSG also hired professional lobbyist Andrew Gifford as co-director with Sayer, together with UK Ambassador Donald MacLaren as a political Consultant and Ian Griffiths (in charge of operations).

According to a 1991 study of the firm: in the 1980s GJW's three founding partners worked in the offices of David Steel, James Callaghan and Edward Heath (an original partner was to be Peter Mandelson). Its Finance director, Nigel Clarke, is the nephew of former defence secretary Tom King. Gifford is known for manipulating the press, e.g. for the arms industry (such as GEC's bid to retain an MoD contract for heavyweight torpedoes). Gifford's firm, GJW Government Relations, also hired the young Nick Clegg and was known for its work aiding Colonel Gaddafi with Lockerbie. Other clients included Enron, Lady Shirley Porter and the Kuwaiti ruling family. But according to PR Week (April 29, 1993) the biggest account GJW handled was with Citizens for a Free Kuwait' (similar to the SSG). But let me back track a little bit here. Gifford is an associate of ex-SAS officer, Tony Buckingham who was "linked to a series of mercenary military operations launched on behalf of governments in power or exile and multinationals, in return for cash." The New Statesman noted that:

Executive Outcomes was registered in the UK in September 1993 by Simon Mann, a former troop commander in 22 SAS specializing in intelligence and South African director of Ibis Air, and Tony Buckingham, an SAS veteran and chief executive of Heritage Oil and Gas. The Heritage Oil and Gas board of directors includes former Liberal Party leader David Steel, and Andrew Gifford of GJW Government Relations, an influential parliamentary lobbyist. The company, originally British, now registered in the Bahamas, is associated with a Canadian oil corporation, Ranger Oil.

Both Heritage Oil and GJW are subsidiaries of Sandline International, another international security company. Their own testimony states that together they brokered the arms into Sierra leone that met with the approval of the British Government and MI6. In the mid 1990s EO blended into Sandline International. The military companies operated from Buckingham's offices in King's Road, Chelsea, with the premises operated by Heritage Oil and Gas, and Branch Energy. GJW, City PR firm Financial Dynamics and pollster Gallup joined forces to bankroll a new public affairs agency called Matrix Public Affairs Consultants. Gifford and Tony Buckingham also share ownership with Guardian Newspapers of a publishing company called Fourth Estate.

If I turn back to GJW'S big account, Citizens for a Free Kuwait (CFK) this was a front group, established with the assistance of another large public-relations company, Hill & Knowlton. Other groups: e.g. the Council of American Muslims for Understanding were funded by the US State Dept. The Iraqi National Congress, was also a front organisation funded by the US governmentall echoed the call for intervention and war. After his 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was accused of removing Kuwaiti premature babies from incubators and leaving them on the floor to die. The charges were made during testimony given before a meeting with a front group the Congressional Human Rights Caucus' designed to resemble the US Congress in October 1990. As John McArthur put it:

The Human Rights Caucus is not a committee of congress, and therefore it is unencumbered by the legal accouterments that would make a witness hesitate before he or she lied [ …] Lying under oath in front of a congressional committee is a crime; lying from under the cover of anonymity to a caucus is merely public relations.

Nevertheless the story was widely circulated in the media and cited by political leaders (including George Bush and Amnesty International) as a justification to launch the invasion three months later. After the Gulf War was over, the false testimony was revealed to have been by the teenage daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington as part of an elaborate propaganda campaign devised by Hill & Knowlton and financed by the Kuwaiti government via CFK. GJW was hired by the Association for a Free Kuwait to lobby Westminster and Brussels. The Kuwaitis paid GJW more than £400,000 in fees and expenses while the Association's US equivalent paid $5.6 million to Hill and Knowlton for the work in Washington (PR Week, January 17, 1991).

The Ambassador

The SSG also hired Ambassador, Donald MacLaren, who can be seen at rallies in Whitehall that call for intervention in front of 10 Downing St. He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1978 and served until 2008, after posts in Berlin and Moscow he became Ambassador to Georgia from 2004 to 2007, but he was seconded to Oxford Analytica from 1998-99. Their assessment of the situation in Syria as of May 16 (2013) was:

Syrian regime forces have managed to turn the tide in central and southern Syria by adopting a new counter-insurgency strategy. Despite slow but steady rebel advances in the north and east, President Bashar al-Assad's regime is now in a position to exploit international developments, such as the US-Russian diplomatic initiative, Saudi-Qatari divisions over the opposition, and Jordanian reluctance at hastening regime change in Syria.

Oxford Analytica is a private intelligence company advised by Sir Colin McColl the ex-Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service amongst others that includes John Negroponte who was involved in supervising the Nicaraguan Contras, and according to Michel Chossudovsky:

Negroponte's mandate as US ambassador to Iraq [together with, now US Syrian Ambassador, Robert S. Ford] was to coordinate out of the US embassy, the covert support to death squads and paramilitary groups in Iraq with a view to fomenting sectarian violence and weakening the resistance movement. Robert S. Ford as "Number Two" [Minister Counsellor for Political Affairs] at the US Embassy played a central role in this endeavor.

OA also have Peter Woicke, former CEO of the International Finance Corporation and Managing Director of the World Bank Group and other high flyers (and David Milliband). It was started by David Young after he fled from the Nixon administration after working with the White House Special Investigations Unit, the Plumbers,' and was miraculously granted immunity from prosecution. OA believe that the Syrian conflict is a proxy war involving the regional actors and the US and Russia.

Conclusion

Syria's misery is all gravy from a dripping roast for the lobbyists and advisors who will work both sides of the street thousands of miles away. Back in 2005 the Syrian government, then under fire for its suspected role in sponsoring terrorism, involved the lobbying and PR world to improve its image in the West. Recently, the New York Times reported that high-priced PR firm, Brown Lloyd James were paid $5,000 a month for liaison between Vogue and the Syrian first lady' to put Assad and his wife into the magazine (see picture above). Even Barbara Walters, after she conducted a negative interview with Assad on ABC News, offered to provide recommendations for Sheherazad Jaafari, Assad's press aide and a BLJ intern then applying for a job at CNNand the daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the UN. We know of this because of information that was leaked by the hacker group Anonymous. Jaafari suggested to Assad that the:

American psyche can be easily manipulated when they hear that there are mistakes' done and now we are fixing it.' It's worth mentioning also what is happening now in Wall Street and the way the demonstrations are been suppressed by policemen, police dogs and beatings.

Carne Ross also advises the Wall Street Protestors. Brown Lloyd James offered advice on how to create the appearance Syria is pursuing reform while repressing the uprising and reports say it formerly advised Gaddafi in Libya and supporters of the Mujaheedin-e-Khalq (an Iranian opposition group identified as a terrorist organization by the US); other reports include the Tony Blair Faith Foundation as a client; and the BLJ team also supported the UN's Independent Inquiry into the Oil-for-Food Programme that Carne Ross organised.

[Magda Hassan]

Fascinating article Paul. Well worth the read!

[Paul Rigby]

SYRIA'S WHITE HELMETS: WAR BY WAY OF DECEPTION PART I

The Wind Will Fall

October 23, 2015

by Vanessa Beeley

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/tag/olive-group/

"The Ivy League bourgeoisie who sit at the helm of the non-profit industrial complex will one day be known simply as charismatic architects of death. Funded by the ruling class oligarchy, the role they serve for their funders is not unlike that of corporate media. Yet, it appears that global society is paralyzed in a collective hypnosis rejecting universal social interests, thus rejecting reason, to instead fall in line with the position of the powerful minority that has seized control, a minority that systematically favours corporate interests." ~ Cory Morningstar

In his recent speech Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Nasrallah, alluded to a multi-phase "soft war" which relies upon the mass media complex to disseminate propaganda and bias, propelling the Middle East into, primarily, a sectarian crisis before descending even further into regionalism and finally a devastating individualism.

Cory Morningstar's body of work does more than any other to expose the bare bones of the non-profit propaganda industry that governs both our reactions and inactions, through a network of multi-layered and multi-faceted media manipulation campaigns, of which the end result is mass thought control. She explains:

"The 21st century NGO is becoming, more and more, a key tool serving the imperialist quest of absolute global dominance and exploitation. Global society has been, and continues to be, manipulated to believe that NGOs are representative of "civil society" (a concept promoted by corporations in the first place). This misplaced trust has allowed the "humanitarian industrial complex" to ascend to the highest position: the missionaries of deity the deity of the empire."

In a paper entitled, Foreign Aid and Regime Change: A Role for Donor Intent, written just prior to NATO intervention in Libya, Prof. Sarah Blodgett Bormeo describes the "democratization" process for target nations. Unwittingly or wittingly, Bormeo perfectly outlines the role played by NGOs in this process. Bormeo even goes so far as to pinpoint the lack of impartiality rife among NGOs large and small, the majority of whom, receive their funding directly from western government and major corporation sources all of whom have a vested interest in the outcome of their NGO's activities and intervention' in a particular location. Bormeo emphasises the importance of "picking winners" in this scenario, as opposed to respecting and supporting the will of the people in any sovereign nation.

"Thus, it is possible that aid donors, in an effort to avoid further entrenching an "authoritarian" [my edit: this status is decided by donor] regime and perhaps increase the likelihood of democratization, channel funds through NGOs and civil society organizations in authoritarian states."

In this short video below, we are introduced to the US military's symbiotic relationship with NGOs in countries [in this instance, Iraq] where the policy is to Induce Pacification & Advance Western Ideologies. NGOs are cynically used to "soften" cultures and render entire communities dependent upon foreign aid in order to facilitate "Democratization".

In this role, and dependent upon their donor support, NGOs cease to be the neutral, unbiased humanitarian' organisations they publically purport to be, and instead become actual covert tools for foreign intervention and regime change. By default, they are assimilated into the Western modus vivendi of "waging war by way of deception" and their purpose is to alter public perception of a conflict via a multitude of media and "marketing" channels.

Following this formula, let's examine, once more, the role of the Syria Civil Defence aka,'The White Helmets' currently operating in Syria and take a closer look at their financial sources and mainstream media partners in order to better determine if they are indeed "neutral" as media moguls proclaim these "humanitarians" to be.

White Helmets: Follow the Money

The White Helmets were established in March 2013, in Istanbul, Turkey, and is headed by James Le Mesurier, a British "security" specialist and ex' British military intelligence officer with an impressive track record in some of the most dubious NATO intervention theatres including Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Le Mesurier is a product of Britain's elite Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, and has also been placed in a series of high-profile pasts at the United Nations, European Union, and U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The origins of The White Helmet's initial $300k seed funding is a little hazy, reports are contradictory but subsequent information leads us to conclude that the UK, US and the Syrian Opposition' [or Syrian National Council, parallel government backed an funded by the US, UK and allies] are connected. Logistical support has been provided and given by Turkish elite natural disaster response team, AKUT.

A further $13 million was poured into the White Helmet coffers during 2013 and this is where it gets interesting. Early reports suggest that these "donations" came from the US, UK and SNC with the previously explored connections to George Soros in the US.

However, subsequent investigations reveal that USAID has been a major shareholder in the White Helmet organisation.

The website for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) claims that "our work supports long-term and equitable economic growth and advances U.S. foreign policy objectives by supporting: economic growth, agriculture and trade; global health; and, democracy, conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance."

In a USAID report update in July 2015 it is clearly stated that they have supplied over $ 16m in assistance to the White Helmets.

The USAID track record as a primary US Government/CIA regime change facilitator is extensively documented. From South America to the Ukraine and in the Middle East, USAID serve a malevolent and ultimately destructive role in the dismantling of sovereign nations and their reduction to Western hegemony vassal states, as always, all in the name of freedom and democracy.

"The United States does not lack institutions that continue to conspire, and that's why I am using this gathering to announce that we have decided to expel USAID from Bolivia" ~ Bolivian President Evo Morales

"USAID and NED are in the business of "Democracy Promotion" which uses public money (from U.S. taxpayers) for secretive operations with the intention to support pro-U.S. governments with the help of political and social movements abroad. The goal is regime change." ~ Timothy Alexander Guzman

With recent developments in Syria and as a consequence of the Syrian Government requested Russian intervention, we have seen a scramble to justify the shambolic US foreign policy and its clandestine terror operations in Syria. We have previously established the White Helmet connections to this US regime change operation and their undisputed exclusive integration into the Al Nusra and Free Syrian Army [Muslim Brotherhood] and even ISIS networks and strongholds.

After RT and Sott.net among others, exposed the gaping holes in White Helmet propaganda whereby the group recycled older photographs on Twitter in an effort to blame Russia for civilian deaths' even before the alleged Russian bombing had occurred. Since then, the propaganda "war" has only ramped up. The Russian involvement in Syria, did not only betray the US military deception, it also brought some heavyweight media giants of its own into the fray who set about de-constructing the Western media and NGO indoctrination that had, for so long, been largely unchallenged.

At this point the London Telegraph went into damage limitation mode. It published an article expounding the White Helmet humanitarian role in Syria but with admissions of UK Government "majority" funding and that the White Helmets are embedded with ISIS ("in at least one ISIL held area"), claims previously vehemently denied but rendered indisputable after discovery of the photo showing an ISIS mercenary posing directly in front of a White Helmets depot located deep in ISIS held territory south of Yarmouk.

"The Foreign Office is currently the largest single source of funding. It is an irony that if Britain does effectively become an ally of Assad, and starts raids against Isil in Syria, it will be bombing from the air and paying for the bodies to be dug out on the ground. The White Helmets are also operating in at least one Isil-held area."

Interestingly, the Telegraph stated clearly that the UK Foreign Office is the "largest single source of funding" for the White Helmets which may be perceived as an attempt to draw fire away from the USAID funding which still outstrips official figures released by the British Gov't who "gifted" £ 3.5 million in equipment to "civil defence teams" in Syria [Report March 2015]. However, the British Government also committed to an additional £ 10m to "increase coordination between the Syrian Interim Government and civil defence teams" to be funded by: UK Government's Conflict, Security and Stability Fund (CSSF).

If an organisation is funded by foreign governments who are directly involved in trying over-throw Syria's government, how can they be rightly called an independent relief organisation'?

It should be noted here also that although cries of regime change!' from both Washington and London have been muted since Russia entered the Syria conflict, both Washington and London have been supporting their own parallel, hand-picked interim government' for Syria since at least 2012.

So, with millions in hard cash and equipment being invested into the White Helmets by US & UK donors who have a very clear regime change objective in Syria, it becomes increasingly difficult to perceive their role as anything other than donor-biased propaganda merchants and a humanitarian' extension of a clandestine terror operation allied to the NATO proxy armies in the region.

White Helmet Leadership

James Le Mesurier has been portrayed as a Humanitarian maverick hero, miraculously in the right place (Istanbul) at the right time, just as the need arose for the formation of a Syria Civil Defence team, perhaps coincidentally, only a few months prior to the now infamous and universally (except for a few diehard propagandists) discredited Ghouta chemical weapon' attack in August 2013, an event which has already been proven beyond a doubt to be a false flag attack, as well as subsequent accusations levied at the Syrian Government which narrowly failed to precipitate the NATO desired No Fly Zone'.

However, when we delve deeper into the life and times of Le Mesurier we see that it was no happy accident that he was in Istanbul at this juncture. As Sandhurst Military Academy's top student and recipient of the Queen's Medal, his chequered career took him from OHR [Office of High Representative] in Bosnia to intelligence co-ordinator in NATO's newly won prize, Kosovo. We're told that Le Mesurier left the British Army in 2000 and joined the UN serving as deputy head of the Advisory Unit on Security and Justice', and Special Representative of the Secretary General's security policy body within the UN mission in Kosovo. His career then took him to Jerusalem where he worked on implementing the Ramallah Agreement, then to Baghdad as a special advisor to Iraqi Minister of Interior, and to the UAE to train their gas field protection force, and later to Lebanon during the 2006 war. In 2005 he was made Vice President for Special Projects at private mercenary firm Olive Group, and in January 2008 he was appointed as Principal for Good Harbour International, both based in Dubai.

Le Mesurier is also the founder of Mayday Rescue, a "non profit" organisation providing SAR [search & rescue] training to civilians enduring conflict. According to Mesurier's own biography on the website, Mayday Rescue was founded in 2014, after he had established Syria Civil Defence/White Helmets.

Mosab Obeidat, previous Assistant Chief of Mission with the Qatar Red Crescent, one of whose officials, Khaled Diab was accused of supplying $ 2.2 m to secure arms for the terrorist groups in Syria. Details of this transaction and its exposure can be found in this Al Akhbar article from June 2013. http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/16160

At least three other members of the team were a part of the Syrian "revolution" including Farouq al Habib, one of the 3 most prominent White Helmet leaders who was also a leader of the Homs uprising against the Syrian government and according to his testimony, was tortured by the Syrian "regime" security forces in 2012 for smuggling a journalist into Syria to "cover" the "peaceful protests". Habib was a founder member of the "Homs Revolutionary Council" (note that the CIA have been linked to nearly all Revolutionary Councils' in Syria) before fleeing to Turkey in 2013 (A more in-depth analysis of his anti-Syrian government testimony will be presented in Part II of this article).

Le Mesurier is heavily involved in several organisations not mentioned in this article, but for the purposes of demonstrating that the White Helmets should not be considered impartial or neutral as they claim, we will focus on those that best substantiate that argument.

Both Olive Group and Good Harbour International are experts in private "security". Taken from Sourcewatch on Olive Group:

"Olive Security was founded in 2001 by Harry Legge Burke. Olive lends their quick success to strong relations in the government and military industry. Harry Legge-Burke is an ex-Welsh Guard, and a former aid to chief of defence staff Sir [Charles Guthrie]. He can claim Prince William as a skiing partner and his sister was a nanny to the royal children.

Iraq: Olive were on the ground since the invasion began in 2003, and were able to deploy 38 former SAS employees within two days of the invasion's completion in 2004

Jonathan Allum, Olive's former director and co-owner, is also the son of Tony Allum, who is the chairman of the engineering company Halcrow and also the head of the UK government's Iraq Industry Working Group. It was in the latter position that Tony Allum went to Washington to meet with Bechtel leaders, where he suggested, among other UK companies, Halcrow and Olive as companies worth considering for subcontracted work, all stemming from Bechtel's $680 million contract with USAID. They were considered and contracts followed, though both Legge-Burke and Allum deny one had anything to do with the other."

In May 2015, Olive Group merged with Constellis Holdings, in whose portfolio we can also find Academi, previously the notorious Blackwater Group (Nisour Square massacre, Iraq 2007). Taken from The Atlantic July 2012: Post 9/11, Bush enabled the CIA to subcontract assassinations allegedly targeting Al Qaeda operatives. Blackwater was awarded this contract.

"Running operations through Blackwater gave the CIA the power to have people abducted, or killed, with no one in the government being exactly responsible."
The CIA can no longer hide its Blackwater/Academi connections, especially after this week's Wikileaks data dump of CIA director John Brennan's emails, whose contact list included now spy chief Robert Richer at his Blackwater contact address.

The outsourcing of intelligence operations was in full-swing. What Bush initiated, Obama ran with, awarding Blackwater/Academi a $ 250m contract in 2010 to offer "unspecified" services to the CIA, thus maintaining the apparatus for "unaccountable" covert assassinations.

It is true that James Le Mesurier only joined Olive Group in 2005 and left them in 2008, but his involvement with them and their subsequent merger with Constellis and by default, Blackwater/Academi, gives a degree of valuable insight into the elite intelligence and Pentagon circles that Le Mesurier moved in prior to working for Good Harbour International and creating Syria Civil Defence (not forgetting the USAID funding & influence that underpins both Olive and SCD/White Helmets).

In 2008, Le Mesurier joined Good Harbour International, another private "security" expert organisation, whose CEO is none other than former terror advisor to the Bush administration, the Terror Czar himself, Richard A. Clarke.

The jury is still out on whether Clarke was indeed the "whistleblower" he fashioned himself as, post 9/11, or a merely a high-level gatekeeper who aided in preventing a full and detailed investigation into Bush and Rumsfeld's roles in 9/11.

Patrick Henningsen, a political analyst and writer for 21st Century Wire believes the latter is more likely:

"On first glance, one might buy into the mainstream media's characterization of him, but it's more likely that Richard Clarke is not a whistleblower at all. While appearing to oppose the Bush administration from a safe enough distance, I believe his role was inserted into the mix in the period of 2004-2005 in order to VALIDATE the bin Laden mythology and help to portray al Qaeda as an organic, independently run terror organization. He also claimed that Bush and Rumsfeld committed war crimes, but this means nothing because everyone knows that no US official will ever face war crimes' charges in any court of law anywhere on the planet. It's effectively a straw man narrative that distracts from the real scandal in the US which is that the entire premise of the war on terror is completely contrived. Clarke's whistleblower' status gives him brilliant cover from too much public scrutiny. I remain skeptical of his whole public narrative. He was, is, and always will be an insider."
What is perhaps even more telling, is Clarke's reported close ties with Israeli-US operative Rita Katz of the SITE Intelligence Group, another supposedly independent, albeit private' intelligence firm located in Bethesda, Maryland, a stone's throw away from CIA headquarters. SITE are said to be responsible for the media release of the harrowing ISIS execution videos, al Qaeda videos, and their credibility has been extensively questioned.

Katz's long term working relationship with Clarke began before 9/11 when she and her research associate Steve Emerson were commissioned by Clarke to identify Islamic radicals' inside the Unites States. Over time, Katz's relationship with Clarke blossomed into a much more extensive one that included regular briefings at both the Clinton and Bush White Houses.

"One of SITE's founders, Rita Katz, is a government insider with close connections to former terrorism czar Richard Clarke and his staff in the White House, as well as investigators in the Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security, according to SourceWatch. Her father was executed in Iraq as an Israel spy, a fact that suggests a connection to Israeli intelligence."
~ Mark Taliano

Wheels Within Wheels

This background on Le Mesurier should at least make us question the media portrayal of an affable, debonair and philanthropic leader of a civilian humanitarian mission. His military & intelligence roots, the fact that despite working for OHR in Bosnia, no visible record of his employment can be found there, his private security-centric career path, his appearance in Istanbul at just the right moment to partner USAID, the UK government & Syrian opposition in creating just the sort of "democratization" enabling NGO as described in our introduction, MUST at least cause us to doubt the transparency and neutrality of the White Helmets in Syria.

In addition, the White Helmet leadership consisting of known Syrian opposition protagonists such as Raed Saleh and Farouq al Habib must make us more cynical about the claims of impartiality and lack of bias and for those who will defend the "peaceful" revolution narrative upheld by Habib and Saleh, please take the time to read Professor Tim Anderson's in depth analysis of events in Syria pre NATO intervention.

"I have seen from the beginning armed protesters in those demonstrations … they were the first to fire on the police. Very often the violence of the security forces comes in response to the brutal violence of the armed insurgents" Jesuit priest Father Frans Van der Lugt, January 2012, Homs Syria

"The claim that armed opposition to the government has begun only recently is a complete lie. The killings of soldiers, police and civilians, often in the most brutal circumstances, have been going on virtually since the beginning." Professor Jeremy Salt, October 2011, Ankara Turkey
Our presentation of the White Helmets as regime change propagandists & terrorist allies in this article will be further explored and verified in Part II.

"Existing soft power initiatives and agencies, particularly those engaged in development and strategic communications, must be reinvigorated through increased funding, human resources and prioritization. Concurrently, the U.S. government must establish goals, objectives and metrics for soft power initiatives. Furthermore, the U.S. government can better maximize the effectiveness of soft power instruments and efforts through increased partnerships with NGOs. By providing humanitarian and development assistance in areas typically inaccessible to government agencies, NGOs are often able to access potential extremist areas before the government can establish or strengthen diplomatic, developmental or military presence, including intelligence." Joseph S. Nye, former US assistant secretary of defence, June 2004

END OF PART ONE

[Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.]

[Peter Lemkin]

The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda.

The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term "public relations" as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions.

In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter Parade - behaviour then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, "Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!"
Bernays' influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War. The secret, he said, was "engineering the consent" of people in order to "control and regiment [them] according to our will without their knowing about it".
He described this as "the true ruling power in our society" and called it an "invisible government".
Today, the invisible government has never been more powerful and less understood. In my career as a journalist and film-maker, I have never known propaganda to insinuate our lives and as it does now and to go unchallenged.
Imagine two cities. Both are under siege by the forces of the government of that country. Both cities are occupied by fanatics, who commit terrible atrocities, such as beheading people.
But there is a vital difference. In one siege, the government soldiers are described as liberators by Western reporters embedded with them, who enthusiastically report their battles and air strikes. There are front page pictures of these heroic soldiers giving a V-sign for victory. There is scant mention of civilian casualties.
In the second city - in another country nearby - almost exactly the same is happening. Government forces are laying siege to a city controlled by the same breed of fanatics.
The difference is that these fanatics are supported, supplied and armed by "us" - by the United States and Britain. They even have a media centre that is funded by Britain and America.
Another difference is that the government soldiers laying siege to this city are the bad guys, condemned for assaulting and bombing the city - which is exactly what the good soldiers do in the first city.
Confusing? Not really. Such is the basic double standard that is the essence of propaganda. I am referring, of course, to the current siege of the city of Mosul by the government forces of Iraq, who are backed by the United States and Britain and to the siege of Aleppo by the government forces of Syria, backed by Russia. One is good; the other is bad.
What is seldom reported is that both cities would not be occupied by fanatics and ravaged by war if Britain and the United States had not invaded Iraq in 2003. That criminal enterprise was launched on lies strikingly similar to the propaganda that now distorts our understanding of the civil war in Syria.
Without this drumbeat of propaganda dressed up as news, the monstrous ISIS and Al-Qaida and al-Nusra and the rest of the jihadist gang might not exist, and the people of Syria might not be fighting for their lives today.
Some may remember in 2003 a succession of BBC reporters turning to the camera and telling us that Blair was "vindicated" for what turned out to be the crime of the century. The US television networks produced the same validation for George W. Bush. Fox News brought on Henry Kissinger to effuse over Colin Powell's fabrications.
The same year, soon after the invasion, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the renowned American investigative journalist. I asked him, "What would have happened if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged what turned out to be crude propaganda?"
He replied that if journalists had done their job, "there is a very, very good chance we would not have gone to war in Iraq".
It was a shocking statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same question -- Dan Rather of CBS, David Rose of the Observer and journalists and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous.
In other words, had journalists done their job, had they challenged and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today, and there would be no ISIS and no siege of Aleppo or Mosul.
There would have been no atrocity on the London Underground on 7th July 2005. There would have been no flight of millions of refugees; there would be no miserable camps.
When the terrorist atrocity happened in Paris last November, President Francoise Hollande immediately sent planes to bomb Syria - and more terrorism followed, predictably, the product of Hollande's bombast about France being "at war" and "showing no mercy". That state violence and jihadist violence feed off each other is the truth that no national leader has the courage to speak.
"When the truth is replaced by silence," said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, "the silence is a lie."
The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened because the leader in each of these countries was not a puppet of the West. The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi was irrelevant. They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country.
The same fate awaited Slobodan Milosevic once he had refused to sign an "agreement" that demanded the occupation of Serbia and its conversion to a market economy. His people were bombed, and he was prosecuted in The Hague. Independence of this kind is intolerable.
As WikLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2009 rejected an oil pipeline, running through his country from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked.
From that moment, the CIA planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics - the same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo hostage.
Why is this not news? The former British Foreign Office official Carne Ross, who was responsible for operating sanctions against Iraq, told me: "We would feed journalists factoids of sanitised intelligence, or we would freeze them out. That is how it worked."
The West's medieval client, Saudi Arabia - to which the US and Britain sell billions of dollars' worth of arms - is at present destroying Yemen, a country so poor that in the best of times, half the children are malnourished.
Look on YouTube and you will see the kind of massive bombs - "our" bombs - that the Saudis use against dirt-poor villages, and against weddings, and funerals.
The explosions look like small atomic bombs. The bomb aimers in Saudi Arabia work side-by-side with British officers. This fact is not on the evening news.
Propaganda is most effective when our consent is engineered by those with a fine education - Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia -- and with careers on the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post.
These organisations are known as the liberal media. They present themselves as enlightened, progressive tribunes of the moral zeitgeist. They are anti-racist, pro-feminist and pro-LGBT.
And they love war.
While they speak up for feminism, they support rapacious wars that deny the rights of countless women, including the right to life.
In 2011, Libya, then a modern state, was destroyed on the pretext that Muammar Gaddafi was about to commit genocide on his own people. That was the incessant news; and there was no evidence. It was a lie.
In fact, Britain, Europe and the United States wanted what they like to call "regime change" in Libya, the biggest oil producer in Africa. Gaddafi's influence in the continent and, above all, his independence were intolerable.
So he was murdered with a knife in his rear by fanatics, backed by America, Britain and France. Hillary Clinton cheered his gruesome death for the camera, declaring, "We came, we saw, he died!"
The destruction of Libya was a media triumph. As the war drums were beaten, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian: "Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong."
Intervention - what a polite, benign, Guardian word, whose real meaning, for Libya, was death and destruction.
According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. They included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. The Unicef report on the children killed says, "most [of them] under the age of ten".
As a direct consequence, Sirte became the capital of ISIS. Ukraine is another media triumph. Respectable liberal newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, and mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN have played a critical role in conditioning their viewers to accept a new and dangerous cold war.
All have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia when, in fact, the coup in Ukraine in 2014 was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato.
This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington's military intimidation of Russia is not news; it is suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign of the kind I grew up with during the first cold war. Once again, the Ruskies are coming to get us, led by another Stalin, whom The Economist depicts as the devil.
The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember. The fascists who engineered the coup in Kiev are the same breed that backed the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Of all the scares about the rise of fascist anti-Semitism in Europe, no leader ever mentions the fascists in Ukraine - except Vladimir Putin, but he does not count.
Many in the Western media have worked hard to present the ethnic Russian-speaking population of Ukraine as outsiders in their own country, as agents of Moscow, almost never as Ukrainians seeking a federation within Ukraine and as Ukrainian citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated coup against their elected government.
There is almost the joie d'esprit of a class reunion of warmongers. The drum-beaters of the Washington Post inciting war with Russia are the very same editorial writers who published the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
To most of us, the American presidential campaign is a media freak show, in which Donald Trump is the arch villain. But Trump is loathed by those with power in the United States for reasons that have little to do with his obnoxious behaviour and opinions. To the invisible government in Washington, the unpredictable Trump is an obstacle to America's design for the 21st century.
This is to maintain the dominance of the United States and to subjugate Russia, and, if possible, China.
To the militarists in Washington, the real problem with Trump is that, in his lucid moments, he seems not to want a war with Russia; he wants to talk with the Russian president, not fight him; he says he wants to talk with the president of China.
In the first debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump promised not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict. He said, "I would certainly not do first strike. Once the nuclear alternative happens, it's over." That was not news.
Did he really mean it? Who knows? He often contradicts himself. But what is clear is that Trump is considered a serious threat to the status quo maintained by the vast national security machine that runs the United States, regardless of who is in the White House.
The CIA wants him beaten. The Pentagon wants him beaten. The media wants him beaten. Even his own party wants him beaten. He is a threat to the rulers of the world - unlike Clinton who has left no doubt she is prepared to go to war with nuclear-armed Russia and China.
Clinton has the form, as she often boasts. Indeed, her record is proven. As a senator, she backed the bloodbath in Iraq. When she ran against Obama in 2008, she threatened to "totally obliterate" Iran. As Secretary of State, she colluded in the destruction of governments in Libya and Honduras and set in train the baiting of China.
She has now pledged to support a No Fly Zone in Syria - a direct provocation for war with Russia. Clinton may well become the most dangerous president of the United States in my lifetime - a distinction for which the competition is fierce.
Without a shred of evidence, she has accused Russia of supporting Trump and hacking her emails. Released by WikiLeaks, these emails tell us that what Clinton says in private, in speeches to the rich and powerful, is the opposite of what she says in public.
That is why silencing and threatening Julian Assange is so important. As the editor of WikiLeaks, Assange knows the truth. And let me assure those who are concerned, he is well, and WikiLeaks is operating on all cylinders.
Today, the greatest build-up of American-led forces since World War Two is under way - in the Caucasus and eastern Europe, on the border with Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, where China is the target.
Keep that in mind when the presidential election circus reaches its finale on November 8th, If the winner is Clinton, a Greek chorus of witless commentators will celebrate her coronation as a great step forward for women. None will mention Clinton's victims: the women of Syria, the women of Iraq, the women of Libya. None will mention the civil defence drills being conducted in Russia. None will recall Edward Bernays' "torches of freedom".
George Bush's press spokesman once called the media "complicit enablers".
Coming from a senior official in an administration whose lies, enabled by the media, caused such suffering, that description is a warning from history.
In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: "Before every major aggression, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack. In the propaganda system, it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons."

John Pilger
27 October 2016

[David Guyatt]

It looks like al-Baghdadi is completely bust

[Paul Rigby]

It looks like al-Baghdadi is completely bust

Abu Bakr al-Clapper has fled the besieged HQ of Isis in Iraq, Washington DC, reportedly saying it felt "pretty good" to hand in his resignation: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...23061.html

[Magda Hassan]

::lilgreenman:: ::laughingdog::