Anti-BDS Bill Moves Forward (We Must Attempt to Stop It) - It's crazy that the progressives are right for once. The bill is 100% unconstitutional http://archive.is/YAgYA
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Anti-BDS Bill Moves Forward (We Must Attempt to Stop It) - It's crazy that the progressives are right for once. The bill is 100% unconstitutional
Anti-BDS Bill Moves Forward (We Must Attempt to Stop It) - It's crazy that the progressives are right for once. The bill is 100% unconstitutional http://archive.is/YAgYA
Theresa May Retreats to BREXIT Plan B, Renegotiate BREXIT Plan A
Theresa May has secured a mandate to return to Brussels and re-open negotiations in order to secure a "legally binding change" to the Irish backstop in May's original Brexit plan A.
Unfortunately for May, the European Union has stated that it will not change the legal text agreed to with the UK Prime Minister.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss Theresa May's Brexit Plan B, which is nothing more than a return to her first Brexit proposal, which got clobbered by MPs only a few short weeks ago.
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, February 1st, 2019.]
Unfortunately for May, the European Union has stated that it will not change the legal text agreed to with the UK Prime Minister.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss Theresa May's Brexit Plan B, which is nothing more than a return to her first Brexit proposal, which got clobbered by MPs only a few short weeks ago.
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, February 1st, 2019.]
Debating Remainers at Parliament (Sargon)
They really want a second referendum.
Best comment I saw: EU = Corporate Aristocracy ... although I can't find the source. This is right. The EU laws and regulations are not designed to help small business but larger corporations that can deal with the paperwork. The elites running the EU also screw over less affluent members of the union in the south such as Greece, Italy and Spain. Rather than justice for all, it's a rigged system that ends up syphoning money to the rich.
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, February 1st, 2019.]
Best comment I saw: EU = Corporate Aristocracy ... although I can't find the source. This is right. The EU laws and regulations are not designed to help small business but larger corporations that can deal with the paperwork. The elites running the EU also screw over less affluent members of the union in the south such as Greece, Italy and Spain. Rather than justice for all, it's a rigged system that ends up syphoning money to the rich.
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, February 1st, 2019.]
Gov. Northam (also a pediatric neurologist!) endorses infanticide!
Ya. So this is the very definition of murder.— MAGAtron aka Amber (@tmagasays) January 31, 2019
I can't believe what I am seeing right now. https://t.co/ghJWHIiwZr
Related:
Virginia State Proposes Bill that Would Allow Termination Until Moment of Birth - Former Planned Parenthood Director Exposes Abortion Lies! (Abby Johnson Uncut) | Louder With Crowder
Virginia State Proposes Bill that Would Allow Termination Until Moment of Birth - Former Planned Parenthood Director Exposes Abortion Lies! (Abby Johnson Uncut) | Louder With Crowder
Related:
Rev. Dr. Clenard H. Childress Jr. joins Alex Jones live via Skype to denounce Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger, the white supremacist who founded the abortion clinic to kill American minorities.
Trump Legislation to cut funding for Abortion Clinics - Black Pastor Exposes Democratic Sponsored Genocide
Democrats For Life of America and Former Planned Parenthood Manager Abby Johnson Support Defunding Planned Parenthood:
More:
http://www.debate.org/late-term-abortion/
http://trumpisright.blogspot.com/search?q=abortion
Trump Legislation to cut funding for Abortion Clinics - Black Pastor Exposes Democratic Sponsored Genocide - Democrats For Life of America and Former Planned Parenthood Manager Abby Johnson Support Defunding Planned Parenthood
Rev. Dr. Clenard H. Childress Jr. joins Alex Jones live via Skype to denounce Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger, the white supremacist who founded the abortion clinic to kill American minorities.
Trump Legislation to cut funding for Abortion Clinics - Black Pastor Exposes Democratic Sponsored Genocide
Democrats For Life of America and Former Planned Parenthood Manager Abby Johnson Support Defunding Planned Parenthood:
http://democratsforlife.org/index.php/articles-and-op-eds/press-releases/890-democrats-for-life-supports-defunding-planned-parenthood
"Late termination of pregnancy is more controversial than abortion in general because it results in the demise of a fetus that is more developed and sometimes able to survive independently." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_termination_of_pregnancy
Recalling his personal observation of a late-term abortion performed by one of his instructors during his medical residency, Ron Paul stated, “It was pretty dramatic for me to see a two-and-a-half-pound baby taken out crying and breathing and put in a bucket.” http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/abortion/
"Late termination of pregnancy is more controversial than abortion in general because it results in the demise of a fetus that is more developed and sometimes able to survive independently." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_termination_of_pregnancy
Recalling his personal observation of a late-term abortion performed by one of his instructors during his medical residency, Ron Paul stated, “It was pretty dramatic for me to see a two-and-a-half-pound baby taken out crying and breathing and put in a bucket.” http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/abortion/
Late-term abortion, which the news media also refers to as partial-birth abortion, generally refers to any intentional abortion procedure occurring after 20 weeks of gestation. The point that experts consider pregnancy to be late-term is one of the biggest debates involving this subject. Some experts believe that 12 weeks and later is late term, others state 16 weeks, 20 weeks or even later. A common belief is that any abortion where the child has a viable chance to survive out of the womb is certainly a late term abortion. The problem with this theory is that it varies widely from one pregnancy to another.
Late Term Abortion Laws
Countries around the world have different laws regarding late-term abortions. Canada, for instance, has no law regarding the gestational age of the child and when abortions can be performed. Of the 152 countries with records on hand, the following observations can be made:
- 54 of these countries ban abortion except in cases where the mother's life is at risk
- 44 countries ban late term abortion after a certain gestational age
- 2 countries (The Netherlands and The United States) have regulations in place having to do with viability.
- The remaining 52 countries, including Canada, have no laws regarding gestational age and abortion.
http://www.debate.org/late-term-abortion/
http://trumpisright.blogspot.com/search?q=abortion
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Defense Official: Nothing Stopping Trump from Authorizing Military to Build Border Wall
Defense Official: Nothing Stopping Trump from Authorizing Military to Build Border Wall
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood confirmed to Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) that Trump does not need Congress or a national emergency declaration to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Breitbart
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood confirmed to Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) that Trump does not need Congress or a national emergency declaration to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Breitbart
College Trustees Ditch Pledge of Allegiance Over Its History of 'White Nationalism' - House Democrats to Strike ‘So Help Me God’ From Oath
College Trustees Ditch Pledge of Allegiance Over Its History of 'White Nationalism'A California college's board of trustees ditched the Pledge of Allegiance because of the phrase "one nation under God" and because it “has a history steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism,"
Fox
House Democrats to Strike ‘So Help Me God’ From OathActing Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan says the U.S. will be sending “several thousand” more American troops to the southern border to provide additional support to Homeland Security.Breitbart
Related:
AntiWhiteRacismExposed.blogspot.com
ROGER STONE VICTORIOUS OVER MUELLER PROBE BY PLEADING NOT GUILTY TO PROCESS INDICTMENTS (HA Goodman)
Goodman goes through the actual indictment where we see that there are no charges/evidence of any collusion against Stone and that it assumes there was collusion at some point on material provided by a company paid for by the DNC which was not independently checked by the FBI. Goodman writes that the collusion claim is like having the attorney for a bank robber provide all the evidence to the court and then declaring their client didn't steal from any banks. There is actual evidence that refutes the DNC claims that their emails were hacked (as opposed to being simply copied and sent to Wikileaks by a disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter - namely Seth Rich, who was subsequently murdered).
On the other side of the coin, in the case of Hillary's classified emails, we know she lied under oath about them (and about the Benghazi incident when she was Secretary of State), and that she broke the law by sending highly classified material on an open server, and yet there are NO charges. The corruption inherent by those running the system, by the heads of various agencies and their minions, is blatantly obvious. The whole Russian collusion thing is to get at Trump's move to become friendly with Russia, and to hide the crimes of HRC and others within the establishment.
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 31st, 2019.]
Related:
Truth Teller's Radio Episode 23: JM Talboo Interviews Gerald Pechenuk, LaRouche Political Action Committee - Russian Collusion/Hacking HOAX! Roger Stone DID NOTHING WRONG!"
http://truthtellersradio.blogspot.com/2019/01/truth-tellers-radio-episode-23-jm.html
Why they hate PewDiePie - Paul Joseph Watson
The absolute state of the mainstream media right now.
This video is about the recent mass sacking of pseudo alternative/mainstream journalists and how they are crying about the situation juxtaposed to their hypocrisy when they called for the deplatforming, sacking and harassment of independent online journalists. I have no sympathy for these stooges who have been ignoring important stories - issues dealing with proxy war crimes, vote fraud, false flag terror, financial fraud etc - while they distract the public with a plethora of divisive identity politics (and left/right) framed stories that almost completely ignore high crimes in which people are actually being killed (in the thousands). It is one thing to call for a measure of social justice, opportunity to do what you want within one's ability, but to largely ignore or grossly misrepresent all these other things is a disgrace.
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 31st, 2019.]
This video is about the recent mass sacking of pseudo alternative/mainstream journalists and how they are crying about the situation juxtaposed to their hypocrisy when they called for the deplatforming, sacking and harassment of independent online journalists. I have no sympathy for these stooges who have been ignoring important stories - issues dealing with proxy war crimes, vote fraud, false flag terror, financial fraud etc - while they distract the public with a plethora of divisive identity politics (and left/right) framed stories that almost completely ignore high crimes in which people are actually being killed (in the thousands). It is one thing to call for a measure of social justice, opportunity to do what you want within one's ability, but to largely ignore or grossly misrepresent all these other things is a disgrace.
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 31st, 2019.]
Rancher Who Invited Pelosi to the Border to See Influx of Illegal Aliens, Drugs Take Message to Fox News
Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends First,” rancher and Breitbart contributor Chris Burgard took his plea for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to visit his and others ranches on the U.S.-Mexico in Arizona to get a firsthand account of the threats coming from the south and the effectiveness of a wall versus a fence.
Burgard explained the situation, which initially involved heavy illegal alien and drug trafficking.
“Four-and-a-half years ago, she did not take us up on our invitation, and if she would she would have seen how bad things are,” Burgard said. “My buddy John, conservatively at the time, had 2 million illegal aliens come through his ranch. In two years, 53 truckloads of dope making it through there.”
Burgard credited improvements to the fence on his ranch and coordination with local sheriff’s departments for the decrease in drug trafficking and Pelosi would see the results.
“What these ranchers live with every day is beyond comprehension of most humans,” he said. “I mean, can you imagine 2 million strangers coming across your ranch? Try running a ranch operation when the trucks carrying the dope are breaking fences. Your cows are getting out, how do you run a breeding program when you can’t keep your bulls and heifers separated? And everything that hits him then goes on to the cities.
The Arizona rancher criticized Pelosi for not taking Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen’s information more seriously because if she had, it could make a difference.
“You know, it is so disheartening when the Speaker of the House doesn’t believe DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen,” Burgard said. “She doesn’t believe her DHS facts. Well, right now it is a fact more people are dying in the United States from heroin and opioid overdoses than car accidents. Well, this is where it is coming from. If you stop it at the border, you will save lives in the rest of America, and it is just something that needs to be acknowledged, and you need to do something.”
Burgard insisted the initial offer made to Pelosi is still on the table.
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2019/01/29/watch-rancher-who-invited-pelosi-to-the-border-to-see-influx-of-illegal-aliens-drugs-take-message-to-fox-news/
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 31st, 2019.]
“Four-and-a-half years ago, she did not take us up on our invitation, and if she would she would have seen how bad things are,” Burgard said. “My buddy John, conservatively at the time, had 2 million illegal aliens come through his ranch. In two years, 53 truckloads of dope making it through there.”
Burgard credited improvements to the fence on his ranch and coordination with local sheriff’s departments for the decrease in drug trafficking and Pelosi would see the results.
“What these ranchers live with every day is beyond comprehension of most humans,” he said. “I mean, can you imagine 2 million strangers coming across your ranch? Try running a ranch operation when the trucks carrying the dope are breaking fences. Your cows are getting out, how do you run a breeding program when you can’t keep your bulls and heifers separated? And everything that hits him then goes on to the cities.
The Arizona rancher criticized Pelosi for not taking Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen’s information more seriously because if she had, it could make a difference.
“You know, it is so disheartening when the Speaker of the House doesn’t believe DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen,” Burgard said. “She doesn’t believe her DHS facts. Well, right now it is a fact more people are dying in the United States from heroin and opioid overdoses than car accidents. Well, this is where it is coming from. If you stop it at the border, you will save lives in the rest of America, and it is just something that needs to be acknowledged, and you need to do something.”
Burgard insisted the initial offer made to Pelosi is still on the table.
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2019/01/29/watch-rancher-who-invited-pelosi-to-the-border-to-see-influx-of-illegal-aliens-drugs-take-message-to-fox-news/
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 31st, 2019.]
So "Empire" actor Jusse Smollett forgot the alleged attackers yelled "MAGA" at him until after that TMZ story went viral on Twitter?
#Infowars update 1/30/2019 #FreeRogerStone & Empire actor liar liar pants on fire.So "Empire" actor Jusse Smollett forgot the alleged attackers yelled "MAGA" at him until after that TMZ story went viral on Twitter and police called him up and asked him why it was trending and then he 'remembered' that was what happened?— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) January 30, 2019
Related:
Truth Teller's Radio Episode 23: JM Talboo Interviews Gerald Pechenuk, LaRouche Political Action Committee - Russian Collusion/Hacking HOAX! Roger Stone DID NOTHING WRONG!:
http://truthtellersradio.blogspot.com/2019/01/truth-tellers-radio-episode-23-jm.html
What Really Happened to Empire Star Jussie Smollett?
Related:
Fake News vs Real Hate:
http://fakenewsinvasion.blogspot.com/2019/01/fake-news-vs-real-hate.html
Fake Hate Crimes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJtbMLVE8FA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FRwyWM0LYE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJbL3xWy8WE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_PGTOb4c4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_WmG5b8XA0
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fake+hate+crimes&sp=mAEB
HOAX: MUSLIM TEEN ADMITS SHE MADE UP TRUMP HATE CRIME ATTACK:
http://trumpisright.blogspot.com/2016/12/hoax-muslim-teen-admits-she-made-up.html
Motive... Empire’s Jussie Smollett continues to showcase his music outside the popular television drama and just released his new video “F.U.W. (Fuck Up World).” In the song and visual, Jussie Smollett addresses the turmoil that’s taken place since Donald Trump became President. The video also depicts the injustices and fights against various races, religions and the LGBT community. On the song, Jussie sings, “Why we back in the past/ It’s the same script, different cast/ All these alternative facts/ Catch me outside, how ’bout that/ Why is it so hard to keep hope/ Who got that popular vote/ Was the whole thing just a joke?/ It’s a fucked up world but here we are in it…” http://www.gripmagazine.com/empires-jussie-smollett-f-u-w-video/
Truth Teller's Radio Episode 23: JM Talboo Interviews Gerald Pechenuk, LaRouche Political Action Committee - Russian Collusion/Hacking HOAX! Roger Stone DID NOTHING WRONG!:
http://truthtellersradio.blogspot.com/2019/01/truth-tellers-radio-episode-23-jm.html
What Really Happened to Empire Star Jussie Smollett?
What Really Happened to Empire Star Jussie Smollett?
Related:
Fake News vs Real Hate:
http://fakenewsinvasion.blogspot.com/2019/01/fake-news-vs-real-hate.html
Fake Hate Crimes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJtbMLVE8FA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FRwyWM0LYE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJbL3xWy8WE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_PGTOb4c4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_WmG5b8XA0
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fake+hate+crimes&sp=mAEB
HOAX: MUSLIM TEEN ADMITS SHE MADE UP TRUMP HATE CRIME ATTACK:
http://trumpisright.blogspot.com/2016/12/hoax-muslim-teen-admits-she-made-up.html
Motive... Empire’s Jussie Smollett continues to showcase his music outside the popular television drama and just released his new video “F.U.W. (Fuck Up World).” In the song and visual, Jussie Smollett addresses the turmoil that’s taken place since Donald Trump became President. The video also depicts the injustices and fights against various races, religions and the LGBT community. On the song, Jussie sings, “Why we back in the past/ It’s the same script, different cast/ All these alternative facts/ Catch me outside, how ’bout that/ Why is it so hard to keep hope/ Who got that popular vote/ Was the whole thing just a joke?/ It’s a fucked up world but here we are in it…” http://www.gripmagazine.com/empires-jussie-smollett-f-u-w-video/
OLD PHOTO OF SOOT-COVERED COAL MINERS IS RACIST “BLACKFACE,” SAYS OFFENDED IDIOT
OLD PHOTO OF SOOT-COVERED COAL MINERS IS RACIST “BLACKFACE,” SAYS OFFENDED IDIOT
Just when you thought snowflakes couldn’t get any more pathetic
An opinion columnist for The Arizona Republic newspaper penned an article in which he claimed that an old photograph of coal miners covered in soot was racist because it reminded him of “offensive blackface”.
Yes, really.
In a piece entitled Phoenix restaurant says this is a photo of coal miners. But I see offensive blackface, Rashaad Thomas relates the story of how he was triggered after seeing the photograph hanging on the wall in a downtown Phoenix bar.
Despite his friends telling him, “It’s coal miners at a pub after work,” Thomas demanded to speak to a manager, before he told someone he describes as a “white restaurant owner” that he found the photograph “offensive” because he felt that it resembled blackface.
Thomas even directly admits that “the photograph shows coal miners’ faces covered in soot,” but then ludicrously asserts that “context” doesn’t matter, only his feelings being hurt matters.
He then goes on to spout a series of pretentious platitudes such as “in art, everyone sees something different” to justify forcing the bar to take down the photograph.
After claiming that he is discriminated against because of his skin color, Thomas asserts, “At the downtown Phoenix restaurant, my concern that the photograph of men in blackface was a threat to me and my face and voice were ignored….A business’ photograph of men with blackened faces culturally says to me, “Whites Only.” It says people like me are not welcome.”
This despite having already established that the photograph was of coal miners in a pub after work and was not white men engaging in “blackface”.
The article concludes with Thomas demanding that the photo “should be taken down….for the greater good.”
This entire farce once again underscores the soft tyranny that leftists are attempting to impose on the world, forcing other people to change their environment and bow to every demand simply because progressives claim their feelings are hurt.
As writer Andrew Doyle points out, the fictional character Godfrey Elfwick, a parody of a permanently offended social justice warrior, actually tweeted about being offended by the same photograph back in August, meaning leftists are now directly imitating comedic characters created to satirize them.
The New York Times also recently published an article claiming that Mary Poppins’ face being covered in soot (she appears in a famous scene with chimney sweeps) is also actually an example of blackface.
When leftists precisely ape the behavior of fictional characters created to ridicule their oversensitivity, how is it even possible to joke about their behavior anymore?
What is going on?!
Godfrey Elfwick tweeted about miners in blackface years ago & now this story appears in @azcentral.@TitaniaMcGrath tweeted a post about Mary Poppins being guilty of blackface in September 2018, now we have this in @nytimes.
Are these satirists or prophets?
1,290 people are talking about this
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*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.
The Alex Jones Roger Stone’s Emergency Message To Mueller, Trump & America
The Alex Jones Roger Stone’s Emergency Message To Mueller, Trump & America
Related:
Truth Teller's Radio Episode 23: JM Talboo Interviews Gerald Pechenuk, LaRouche Political Action Committee - Russian Collusion/Hacking HOAX! Roger Stone DID NOTHING WRONG!:
http://truthtellersradio.blogspot.com/2019/01/truth-tellers-radio-episode-23-jm.html
Virginia State Proposes Bill that Would Allow Termination Until Moment of Birth - Former Planned Parenthood Director Exposes Abortion Lies! (Abby Johnson Uncut) | Louder With Crowder
Virginia State Proposes Bill that Would Allow Termination Until Moment of Birth - Former Planned Parenthood Director Exposes Abortion Lies! (Abby Johnson Uncut) | Louder With Crowder
Related:
Rev. Dr. Clenard H. Childress Jr. joins Alex Jones live via Skype to denounce Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger, the white supremacist who founded the abortion clinic to kill American minorities.
Trump Legislation to cut funding for Abortion Clinics - Black Pastor Exposes Democratic Sponsored Genocide
Democrats For Life of America and Former Planned Parenthood Manager Abby Johnson Support Defunding Planned Parenthood:
More:
http://www.debate.org/late-term-abortion/
http://trumpisright.blogspot.com/search?q=abortion
Trump Legislation to cut funding for Abortion Clinics - Black Pastor Exposes Democratic Sponsored Genocide - Democrats For Life of America and Former Planned Parenthood Manager Abby Johnson Support Defunding Planned Parenthood
Rev. Dr. Clenard H. Childress Jr. joins Alex Jones live via Skype to denounce Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger, the white supremacist who founded the abortion clinic to kill American minorities.
Trump Legislation to cut funding for Abortion Clinics - Black Pastor Exposes Democratic Sponsored Genocide
Democrats For Life of America and Former Planned Parenthood Manager Abby Johnson Support Defunding Planned Parenthood:
http://democratsforlife.org/index.php/articles-and-op-eds/press-releases/890-democrats-for-life-supports-defunding-planned-parenthood
"Late termination of pregnancy is more controversial than abortion in general because it results in the demise of a fetus that is more developed and sometimes able to survive independently." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_termination_of_pregnancy
Recalling his personal observation of a late-term abortion performed by one of his instructors during his medical residency, Ron Paul stated, “It was pretty dramatic for me to see a two-and-a-half-pound baby taken out crying and breathing and put in a bucket.” http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/abortion/
"Late termination of pregnancy is more controversial than abortion in general because it results in the demise of a fetus that is more developed and sometimes able to survive independently." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_termination_of_pregnancy
Recalling his personal observation of a late-term abortion performed by one of his instructors during his medical residency, Ron Paul stated, “It was pretty dramatic for me to see a two-and-a-half-pound baby taken out crying and breathing and put in a bucket.” http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/abortion/
Late-term abortion, which the news media also refers to as partial-birth abortion, generally refers to any intentional abortion procedure occurring after 20 weeks of gestation. The point that experts consider pregnancy to be late-term is one of the biggest debates involving this subject. Some experts believe that 12 weeks and later is late term, others state 16 weeks, 20 weeks or even later. A common belief is that any abortion where the child has a viable chance to survive out of the womb is certainly a late term abortion. The problem with this theory is that it varies widely from one pregnancy to another.
Late Term Abortion Laws
Countries around the world have different laws regarding late-term abortions. Canada, for instance, has no law regarding the gestational age of the child and when abortions can be performed. Of the 152 countries with records on hand, the following observations can be made:
- 54 of these countries ban abortion except in cases where the mother's life is at risk
- 44 countries ban late term abortion after a certain gestational age
- 2 countries (The Netherlands and The United States) have regulations in place having to do with viability.
- The remaining 52 countries, including Canada, have no laws regarding gestational age and abortion.
http://www.debate.org/late-term-abortion/
http://trumpisright.blogspot.com/search?q=abortion
Video Surfaces of Bernie Sanders Drunken, Shirtless, and Singing with Communists
Video Surfaces of Bernie Sanders Drunken, Shirtless, and Singing with Communists
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Trump Wants Schools to be Able to Teach Bible Literacy. Somehow this is Controversial
Trump Wants Schools to be Able to Teach Bible Literacy. Somehow this is Controversial
Tom Fitton on Roger Stone Indictment: 'Not One Piece of Evidence' of Trump/Russia Collusion
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton appeared on "Breitbart News Daily" (SiriusXM Patriot 125) with host Alex Marlow to discuss the latest developments with the Roget Stone indictment by the Mueller special counsel investigation.
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 30th, 2019.]
Related:
Truth Teller's Radio Episode 23: JM Talboo Interviews Gerald Pechenuk, LaRouche Political Action Committee - Russian Collusion/Hacking HOAX! Roger Stone DID NOTHING WRONG!:
http://truthtellersradio.blogspot.com/2019/01/truth-tellers-radio-episode-23-jm.html
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 30th, 2019.]
Related:
Truth Teller's Radio Episode 23: JM Talboo Interviews Gerald Pechenuk, LaRouche Political Action Committee - Russian Collusion/Hacking HOAX! Roger Stone DID NOTHING WRONG!:
http://truthtellersradio.blogspot.com/2019/01/truth-tellers-radio-episode-23-jm.html
AfD leader Bundestag speech on Yellow Vests, the war on diesel +UN Global Compact, English subtitles
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 30th, 2019.]
Social Justice vs Islamic Values in British Schools (Sargon)
The SJWs will win.
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 30th, 2019.]
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 30th, 2019.]
Japan Data Scandal: Tokyo Admits 40% Of Its Economic Data Is "Fake News"
When it comes to the biggest monetary experiment in modern history, namely Japan's QE which has seen the BOJ buy enough Japanese bonds to match the GDP of Japan, there is nothing more important than the BOJ having accurate metrics to determine if its "inflation targeting" is working, i.e., if wages and broader inflation are rising. Alas, the recent news that Japan's labor ministry published erroneous statistics for years, has raised doubt about not only the accuracy of economic analysis released by the Bank of Japan, but prompted investors to doubt absolutely every economic report published by Tokyo.
For those who are unfamiliar with the latest economic fake news scandal, on Wednesday Japan's labor ministry revised its monthly labor survey for the period between 2012 and 2018 admitting it had overstated nominal year-on-year wage increases by as much as 0.7 percentage point between January and November of last year, to take just one example.
Unfortunately, there are many other examples, and according to an Internal Affairs Ministry report released late Thursday, nearly half of Japan’s key economic government statistics need to be reviewed with 22 discrete statistics, or roughly 40% of the 56 key government economic releases, turning out to be "fake news" and in need to be corrected.
This is a major problem for Kuroda and the Bank of Japan which uses statistics from the labor ministry to compile two key pieces of economic data, in making its ongoing decisions whether to continue, taper or expand QE.
One, according to Nikkei, is the quarterly output gap which compares the nation's supply capacity with total demand. Supply capacity is derived from elements such as labor and capital spending. Data from the labor ministry survey, such as the number of hours logged by the workforce, is used to compute the output gap.
Japan's output gap has climbed further and further into positive territory. That has partially informed the BOJ's judgement that "Japan's economy is expanding moderately." The gap is also considered a leading indicator for inflation. A sustained positive reading could lead companies to raise prices and lift wages.
Meanwhile, even as Japan's consumer price index that excludes fresh foods continues to print below 1%, the BOJ has been stubbornly saying that prices are maintaining momentum toward its 2% inflation target, with the conclusion based in part on the output gap.
In retrospect, it now appears that the BOJ may have been "mistaken" and since the underlying data was erroneous for all the years during which Japan's QE was running, the BOJ will now face pressure to rework its entire framework and estimates in light of the data scandal.
"With regard to the extent of the impact, we intend to undertake a careful examination based on upcoming results of government studies," a BOJ spokesperson told Nikkei, offering a few other details.
In addition to the output gap, the services producer price index, released monthly, is the second key BOJ indicator reliant on the labor survey. If the BOJ is forced to drastically revise either this indicator or the output gap, it could introduce uncertainty about the conclusions reached by the central bank which has bought trillions in government bonds and stock ETFs relying on... fake economic data!
"There is no telling how far the impact has spread," said a senior BOJ official, and for the BOJ to admit that economic data in Japan is now sheer chaos and that inflation had been overstated for years, is nothing short of catastrophic.
Meanwhile, adding insult to injury, Japan's latest scandal means that whereas everyone had long been making fun of China's economic data for being manipulated, fabricated and goalseeked, Japan's own "data" was far, far worse.
In the BOJ's quarterly Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices, at least eight out of roughly 60 diagrams incorporate data from the labor survey. Those include charts depicting individual income, nominal wages and consumer spending. The latest report, released Wednesday, amusingly describes a "steady improvement in the employment and income situation." Alas, it turns out the improvement was only possible because the underlying data was wrong and/or "cooked."
The outlooks are considered valuable since they are based on the conclusions about the economy and prices reached by BOJ Gov. Kuroda. The central bank may see no need to revise earlier statements, but the reliability of the body risks being thrown into question regardless.
Meanwhile, just to demonstrate how much of a circular farce "data" in developed countries has become, after Japan’s labor ministry admitted it published faulty wage data, 79% of respondents in a Nikkei poll taken between Friday and Sunday said they now can’t trust government statistics, while 14% said they can. And, making the farce complete, a separate poll found that the approval rating for PM Shinzo Abe rose 6% from last month to 53% in the Nikkei poll, with his disapproval rating falling 7%.
We wonder how long before Japan admits that all of its polls showing support for the prime minister were just as fake.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-27/japan-data-scandal-tokyo-admits-40-its-economic-data-fake-news
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 30th, 2019.]
FakeNewsInvasion.blogspot.com
For those who are unfamiliar with the latest economic fake news scandal, on Wednesday Japan's labor ministry revised its monthly labor survey for the period between 2012 and 2018 admitting it had overstated nominal year-on-year wage increases by as much as 0.7 percentage point between January and November of last year, to take just one example.
Unfortunately, there are many other examples, and according to an Internal Affairs Ministry report released late Thursday, nearly half of Japan’s key economic government statistics need to be reviewed with 22 discrete statistics, or roughly 40% of the 56 key government economic releases, turning out to be "fake news" and in need to be corrected.
This is a major problem for Kuroda and the Bank of Japan which uses statistics from the labor ministry to compile two key pieces of economic data, in making its ongoing decisions whether to continue, taper or expand QE.
One, according to Nikkei, is the quarterly output gap which compares the nation's supply capacity with total demand. Supply capacity is derived from elements such as labor and capital spending. Data from the labor ministry survey, such as the number of hours logged by the workforce, is used to compute the output gap.
Japan's output gap has climbed further and further into positive territory. That has partially informed the BOJ's judgement that "Japan's economy is expanding moderately." The gap is also considered a leading indicator for inflation. A sustained positive reading could lead companies to raise prices and lift wages.
Meanwhile, even as Japan's consumer price index that excludes fresh foods continues to print below 1%, the BOJ has been stubbornly saying that prices are maintaining momentum toward its 2% inflation target, with the conclusion based in part on the output gap.
In retrospect, it now appears that the BOJ may have been "mistaken" and since the underlying data was erroneous for all the years during which Japan's QE was running, the BOJ will now face pressure to rework its entire framework and estimates in light of the data scandal.
"With regard to the extent of the impact, we intend to undertake a careful examination based on upcoming results of government studies," a BOJ spokesperson told Nikkei, offering a few other details.
In addition to the output gap, the services producer price index, released monthly, is the second key BOJ indicator reliant on the labor survey. If the BOJ is forced to drastically revise either this indicator or the output gap, it could introduce uncertainty about the conclusions reached by the central bank which has bought trillions in government bonds and stock ETFs relying on... fake economic data!
"There is no telling how far the impact has spread," said a senior BOJ official, and for the BOJ to admit that economic data in Japan is now sheer chaos and that inflation had been overstated for years, is nothing short of catastrophic.
Meanwhile, adding insult to injury, Japan's latest scandal means that whereas everyone had long been making fun of China's economic data for being manipulated, fabricated and goalseeked, Japan's own "data" was far, far worse.
In the BOJ's quarterly Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices, at least eight out of roughly 60 diagrams incorporate data from the labor survey. Those include charts depicting individual income, nominal wages and consumer spending. The latest report, released Wednesday, amusingly describes a "steady improvement in the employment and income situation." Alas, it turns out the improvement was only possible because the underlying data was wrong and/or "cooked."
The outlooks are considered valuable since they are based on the conclusions about the economy and prices reached by BOJ Gov. Kuroda. The central bank may see no need to revise earlier statements, but the reliability of the body risks being thrown into question regardless.
Meanwhile, just to demonstrate how much of a circular farce "data" in developed countries has become, after Japan’s labor ministry admitted it published faulty wage data, 79% of respondents in a Nikkei poll taken between Friday and Sunday said they now can’t trust government statistics, while 14% said they can. And, making the farce complete, a separate poll found that the approval rating for PM Shinzo Abe rose 6% from last month to 53% in the Nikkei poll, with his disapproval rating falling 7%.
We wonder how long before Japan admits that all of its polls showing support for the prime minister were just as fake.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-27/japan-data-scandal-tokyo-admits-40-its-economic-data-fake-news
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 30th, 2019.]
FakeNewsInvasion.blogspot.com
WMD Take Two: Chemical Weapons Claims in Syria - Prof. Tim Anderson
How do we know that every single allegation of Syrian Government use of chemical weapons use (2013 to 2018) was a fabrication? By ignoring, so far as possible, the propaganda storm of the warring parties and focusing on independent evidence and admissions.
Millions of words have been written about chemical weapons in Syria, and many people are still confused. How can the average person understand this controversy? Rather than debate each incident, I suggest some basic forensic principles can help us ‘cut to the chase’. In particular, we should ignore the endless partisan stories and pay more attention to the genuinely independent evidence.
I investigated and wrote about the early stages of this issue back in 2013, then published a chapter on it in my 2016 book The Dirty War on Syria. I concluded that the August 2013 incident in the East Ghouta was fabricated by the anti-government ‘jihadist’ groups, in an attempt to attract greater NATO support, as had happened in Libya.
In a diplomatic move, Russia persuaded Syria to give up its actual chemical weapon stock (held as a deterrent against Israel) and indeed that stockpile was certifiably destroyed in 2014. But this did not put an end to the allegations. Similar accusations came from the sectarian Islamist groups, particularly in 2017 and 2018, as the Syrian Army drove them out of the country’s cities. Western governments and their media once against raised a ‘weapons of mass destruction’ cry.
First of all we are entitled to consider the circumstances of all these claims. We must be sceptical, because many were fooled by the false claims over ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD) in Iraq. The ‘chemical weapons’ allegations are similar, in that they refer to banned WMDs and seem to provide a pretext for military intervention. These are claims promoted by the same states that ran WMD stories against Iraq. Other extraordinary allegations were argued to justify the NATO bombing of Libya. In each case exceptional claims have been used to justify (or cover up) what would otherwise be seen as transparent aggression.
Second, regarding Syria, we should note that none of the chemical weapons claims were linked to any conventional military objectives. Such weapons are simply unsuited to urban warfare. This was different to the circumstances of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. There the US helped Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iran’s mass troop movements (‘human waves’), and against the Faili Kurds of Halabja, who were armed by Iran (Harris and Aid 2013; Tan 2008).
I suggest that some standard legal-forensic principles can help us disentangle the claims and counter-claims. These involve (a) identifying interested parties, and discounting their promotional ‘evidence’ as ‘self-serving’; (b) identifying genuinely independent evidence, whether from witnesses or technical experts; and (c) making use of ‘admissions against interest’. These are standard concepts in criminal law.
In practice it means putting to one side ALL the claims and arguments of interested parties. That is, ignore everything said by the Syrians, Russians, Iranians and their media; and put aside everything said by the armed groups and their supporters, that includes the governments and media of the USA, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Turkey and Israel. We also have to ignore paid agents of the warring parties, such as the Aleppo Media Centre (paid by NATO governments), the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (paid by Britain), ‘Bellingcat’ (paid by the US Government) and others. This includes Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which have both help sell false pretexts for intervention and war. For example, Amnesty International had backed the false ‘incubator babies’ story that helped drive the first Gulf war against Iraq; they backed (but later retracted) false allegations against Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi; and in 2012 they praised the NATO occupation of Afghanistan (Anderson 2018).
What do we have left? Genuinely independent evidence! Let’s look at that in the four most publicised chemical weapons claims: Khan al Asal (2013), East Ghouta (2013), Khan Sheikoun (2017) and Douma (2018).
The first alleged use of sarin gas in Syria was in April 2013 at Khan al Asal, on the western outskirts of Aleppo city. The Syrian government reported to the UN that anti-government armed groups had used sarin gas, killing 25 and wounding dozens more, both soldiers and civilians. In May 2013 investigator Carla del Ponte confirmed that the UN had evidence of the ‘rebel’ use of sarin gas. Also in May 2013 Turkish police reported finding a 2kg canister of sarin, after raiding the homes of Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda) members in Turkey (Anderson 2016: 199-201).
The UN eventually sent weapons inspectors to Damascus, in August 2013. However, just as these inspectors arrived in Damascus, a sarin incident was staged in the East Ghouta area. Video and photos were published of sick or dead children, and the armed groups and their sponsors blamed the incident on the Syrian Army. Syria denied it. The armed groups claimed up to 1,400 were killed, but only eight bodies were reported buried. Syrians questioned the origins of the pictured children, as the area in question had long been a war zone and ghost town, with no schools. It was suspected that these may have been kidnapped children (ISEAMS 2013). This incident overshadowed and delayed the Khan al Asal investigation, and led to an international crisis which was partly resolved by the Russian proposal to destroy Syria’s chemical stockpiles.
UN Investigation of this second major allegation, the August 2013 East Ghouta incident, was given priority over the earlier Khal al Asal investigation. Nevertheless, in December 2013 the UN team presented a report on those and other reported incidents of that year. Because of divisions at the Security Council, the investigators were asked to report on the actual incidents, but without seeking to cast blame. They found that chemical weapons had been used on five occasions (Khan al Asal, East Ghouta, Jobar, Saraqueb and Ashrafieh Sahnaya), and on three of those occasions they were used against soldiers (UNMIAUCWSAA 2013). Only the armed groups were attacking Syrian soldiers. That finding discredited a key argument from the Obama White House, that only the Syrian government had the capacity to launch a sarin attack.
Two additional independent reports undermined the August 2013 accusations. A January 2014 report by MIT scientists Richard Lloydand Professor Theodore Postol found that the improvised rockets used had a range of only 2 kilometres and so “could not possibly” have been fired at the East Ghouta site from any of the closest Syrian Army positions, as had been suggested by the White House report. Richard Lloyd had been a UN Weapons Inspector, while Professor Ted Postol had been a forensic advisor to the US military. Their independence was unquestionable. A third independent report came from famous investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. His report (‘Whose Sarin’, December 2013) found that many in the US intelligence community did not believe the White House report, which omitted all reference to the evidence of sarin possessed by Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda).
We can apply the same principles to the third highly publicised incident, the alleged sarin attack on Khan Sheikoun (Idlib). This served as the pretext for President Trump’s 7 April 2017 missile attack on Shayrat airbase in Syria. By this time Syria, with help from Russia and Iran, were driving back the armed ‘jihadists’. These groups and their supporters, in particular the US government and various paid ‘information activists’ claimed it was an attack by the Syrian airforce; the Syrians denied it.
What did the independence evidence say? Once again Professor Ted Postol issued a report, the main focus of which was White House reports from the Trump administration. After analysing the allegations, video and wind evidence he issued a rebuttal which said: “the nerve agent attack described in the White House report did not occur as claimed. There may well have been mass casualties from some kind of poisoning event, but that event was not the one described by the WHR” (Postol 2017a). Once again Syrians suspected kidnap victims were being used for these ‘false flag’ attacks. Later Postol issued a second and a third report. Taking into account further information argued by the jihadists in Idlib, and other US allies, he concluded: “the WHR was fabricated without input from the professional intelligence community” (Postol 2017b).
In the Khan Sheikhoun case US agencies used each other to lend the appearance of ‘corroboration’. So the US and UK funded groups, the White Helmets, provided ‘evidence’ of the Sarin attack to both the UN’s OPCW and to the US group Human Rights Watch (2017). Funded by the UK and US governments, there is substantial photographic and video evidence that The White Helmets are close affiliates of the armed Islamist groups in Syria, including Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS/DAESH (Beeley 2018; Hands Off Syria 2019). However for the purpose of this analysis it is sufficient to observe that their major funders are the governments of the UK and the USA, active parties in the war against the Syria Government. That alone disqualifies the White Helmets as a source of independent evidence. Nor is Human Rights Watch (HRW) an independent NGO. It is closely linked to the US foreign policy elite, and its leader Kenneth Roth has issued a series of demonstrably false claims about Syria, during the long war (Anderson 2018).
The OPCW would later report that there had been use of a “sarin like substance” in Khan Sheikhoun (OPCW 2017). However even here they relied on evidence provided by the White Helmets, as no-one from the OPCW visited the site. This problem was discussed by another clearly independent expert, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Ritter had warned that Iraq had no significant weapons of mass destruction. He was ignored then, but was later proven correct. In mid-2017 Ritter wrote that the Human Rights Watch claim that “the material cause of the Khan Sheikhoun event is a Soviet made KhAB-250 chemical bomb” must be false as: “if a KhAB-250, or any other air delivered chemical bomb had been used at Khan Sheikhoun, there would be significant physical evidence of that fact, including the totality of the bomb casing, the burster tube, the tail fin assembly and parachute” (Ritter 2017).
The OPCW was therefore:
We see once again that, when the shrill propaganda is removed, and we pay attention to genuinely independent and qualified voices, we can see the makings of another ‘weapons of mass destruction’ scandal. The partisan sources mislead us.
The fourth and final widely-publicised, alleged chemical weapons incident was said to have been carried out just as the Syrian Army was about to liberate the city of Douma from al Qaeda and its allied ‘jihadists’. This was the alleged 7 April 2018 attack on Douma hospital. Notice that the Syrian Army, by this time, with Russian and Iranian help, had been steadily driving the armed groups out of the urban centres. Once again, any military rationale for the use of chemical weapons was absent. Yet that is what the Douma-based ‘Army of Islam’, the banned Jabhat al Nusra and their western sponsors claimed.
Once again the armed groups and their White Helmet partners issued video which showed people rushing around the hospital reception area, washing people including children with water. The White House and associated media and paid agencies (including the BBC, CNN, Bellingcat and the US-based ‘Syrian American Medical Society’) repeated the jihadists’ stories. The ‘Army of Islam’ media group, the Ghouta Media Centre, put out the story that ‘hundreds’ were killed and injured by a “barrel bomb containing sarin” (Embury-Denis 2018). A White House statement duly affirmed:
After the Syrian Army took control of Douma, one of the children in that video would denounce the story, saying he was effectively dragged into his unexpected film role and experienced no toxic chemicals. Yet, because he contradicted the jihadists claims, western media suggested he might have been an “unwitting pawn” (Barker 2018). However, as well as this unwilling ‘victim’, no less than twelve hospital staff told media in Damascus that no chemical attack took place. Several of them were flown to The Hague to repeat this evidence. These doctors and nurses said, in various ways, that there had been an extended filmed commotion at reception; but there had been no air attack on the hospital, there were no fatalities and there had been no chemical weapons (RT 2018b). The British Guardian called this an ‘obscene masquerade’, organised by Russia. Western agencies claimed that these witnesses had probably been pressured by the Syrian Government (Wintour 2018). Before this particular controversy is dismissed we might observe that hospital staff in Douma could not have survived had they been government sympathisers. It is well known that both religious minorities and government supporters were murdered by the Army of Islam and Jabhat al Nusra. In that sense those medical staff were likely quite independent.
In any case, not long after the area was liberated the UN’s OPCW went in and made their report. First they found no trace of any nerve agent: “no organophorphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected” (OPCW 2018). So much for the claims from the ‘Ghouta Media Centre’ and the White House. But what about the chlorine backup story? The UN team did find “various chlorinated organic chemicals … from two sites”. However “the FFM cannot confidently determine whether or not a specific chemical was used as a weapon” (OPCW 2018). This report was misused by some media to pretend that the UN group had found that chlorine was used as a weapon. Yet others pointed out that ‘chlorinated organic chemicals’ are found in most households, including as cleaning agents in hospitals. Although under great political pressure in New York, the UN team had rejected the Douma story.
Nevertheless, relying on the general spin over the OPCW report, the BBC (2018) headlined: ‘Douma attack was chlorine gas – watchdog’. This story was a misrepresentation of the OPCW report. It was soon deleted from BBC websites; but not before it had been picked up by several other sites (e.g. MyVueNews 2018).
To wrap up five disgraceful years of chemical weapons propaganda, forensic principles entitle us to look at independent statements, or ‘admissions against interest’, by the warring parties. That includes statements from military leaders in the USA and the UK. US Defence Secretary James Mattis, for example, both before and after the Douma incident, said that he had “no evidence” Syria had used sarin, but was relying on media including social media stories. On 3 February 2018 Mattis was reported as saying: “We have other reports from the battlefield from people who claim it’s been used. We do not have evidence of it. We’re looking for evidence of it” (Burns 2018). In April, just days after the Douma claims, he told the US Congress: “We are not engaged on the ground there so I cannot tell you that we have evidence, even though we certainly had a lot of media and social media indicators that either chlorine or sarin were used” (RT 2018a).
Two former British military leaders expressed their incredulity at the Douma claims, even though those claims had been backed by their government. That fact makes them both independent, as well as qualified. Former SAS commander British General Jonathan Shawasked:
When we remove the clamour from the warring parties, their media and paid propagandists, the independent evidence points in one direction: every single claim of chemical weapon use by the Syrian Army was a fabrication. As Lord Alan West said, the al Qaeda aligned groups wanted to attract greater western military support. Western governments and media went along with this extended ‘WMD’ hoax. The scandal served to hide naked US-led aggression against Syria. Western audiences were played, for the second time in a decade, over a ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ scam. Most took the bait.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/wmd-take-two-chemical-weapons-claims-syria/5666284?fbclid=IwAR1kwe8LtFIgOLnbN1N7ccv8VkQ-KTJx57HA_eK3yZcGa-8xg9ll1MVzAg4
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 29th, 2019.]
Millions of words have been written about chemical weapons in Syria, and many people are still confused. How can the average person understand this controversy? Rather than debate each incident, I suggest some basic forensic principles can help us ‘cut to the chase’. In particular, we should ignore the endless partisan stories and pay more attention to the genuinely independent evidence.
I investigated and wrote about the early stages of this issue back in 2013, then published a chapter on it in my 2016 book The Dirty War on Syria. I concluded that the August 2013 incident in the East Ghouta was fabricated by the anti-government ‘jihadist’ groups, in an attempt to attract greater NATO support, as had happened in Libya.
In a diplomatic move, Russia persuaded Syria to give up its actual chemical weapon stock (held as a deterrent against Israel) and indeed that stockpile was certifiably destroyed in 2014. But this did not put an end to the allegations. Similar accusations came from the sectarian Islamist groups, particularly in 2017 and 2018, as the Syrian Army drove them out of the country’s cities. Western governments and their media once against raised a ‘weapons of mass destruction’ cry.
First of all we are entitled to consider the circumstances of all these claims. We must be sceptical, because many were fooled by the false claims over ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD) in Iraq. The ‘chemical weapons’ allegations are similar, in that they refer to banned WMDs and seem to provide a pretext for military intervention. These are claims promoted by the same states that ran WMD stories against Iraq. Other extraordinary allegations were argued to justify the NATO bombing of Libya. In each case exceptional claims have been used to justify (or cover up) what would otherwise be seen as transparent aggression.
Second, regarding Syria, we should note that none of the chemical weapons claims were linked to any conventional military objectives. Such weapons are simply unsuited to urban warfare. This was different to the circumstances of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. There the US helped Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iran’s mass troop movements (‘human waves’), and against the Faili Kurds of Halabja, who were armed by Iran (Harris and Aid 2013; Tan 2008).
I suggest that some standard legal-forensic principles can help us disentangle the claims and counter-claims. These involve (a) identifying interested parties, and discounting their promotional ‘evidence’ as ‘self-serving’; (b) identifying genuinely independent evidence, whether from witnesses or technical experts; and (c) making use of ‘admissions against interest’. These are standard concepts in criminal law.
In practice it means putting to one side ALL the claims and arguments of interested parties. That is, ignore everything said by the Syrians, Russians, Iranians and their media; and put aside everything said by the armed groups and their supporters, that includes the governments and media of the USA, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Turkey and Israel. We also have to ignore paid agents of the warring parties, such as the Aleppo Media Centre (paid by NATO governments), the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (paid by Britain), ‘Bellingcat’ (paid by the US Government) and others. This includes Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which have both help sell false pretexts for intervention and war. For example, Amnesty International had backed the false ‘incubator babies’ story that helped drive the first Gulf war against Iraq; they backed (but later retracted) false allegations against Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi; and in 2012 they praised the NATO occupation of Afghanistan (Anderson 2018).
What do we have left? Genuinely independent evidence! Let’s look at that in the four most publicised chemical weapons claims: Khan al Asal (2013), East Ghouta (2013), Khan Sheikoun (2017) and Douma (2018).
The first alleged use of sarin gas in Syria was in April 2013 at Khan al Asal, on the western outskirts of Aleppo city. The Syrian government reported to the UN that anti-government armed groups had used sarin gas, killing 25 and wounding dozens more, both soldiers and civilians. In May 2013 investigator Carla del Ponte confirmed that the UN had evidence of the ‘rebel’ use of sarin gas. Also in May 2013 Turkish police reported finding a 2kg canister of sarin, after raiding the homes of Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda) members in Turkey (Anderson 2016: 199-201).
The UN eventually sent weapons inspectors to Damascus, in August 2013. However, just as these inspectors arrived in Damascus, a sarin incident was staged in the East Ghouta area. Video and photos were published of sick or dead children, and the armed groups and their sponsors blamed the incident on the Syrian Army. Syria denied it. The armed groups claimed up to 1,400 were killed, but only eight bodies were reported buried. Syrians questioned the origins of the pictured children, as the area in question had long been a war zone and ghost town, with no schools. It was suspected that these may have been kidnapped children (ISEAMS 2013). This incident overshadowed and delayed the Khan al Asal investigation, and led to an international crisis which was partly resolved by the Russian proposal to destroy Syria’s chemical stockpiles.
UN Investigation of this second major allegation, the August 2013 East Ghouta incident, was given priority over the earlier Khal al Asal investigation. Nevertheless, in December 2013 the UN team presented a report on those and other reported incidents of that year. Because of divisions at the Security Council, the investigators were asked to report on the actual incidents, but without seeking to cast blame. They found that chemical weapons had been used on five occasions (Khan al Asal, East Ghouta, Jobar, Saraqueb and Ashrafieh Sahnaya), and on three of those occasions they were used against soldiers (UNMIAUCWSAA 2013). Only the armed groups were attacking Syrian soldiers. That finding discredited a key argument from the Obama White House, that only the Syrian government had the capacity to launch a sarin attack.
Two additional independent reports undermined the August 2013 accusations. A January 2014 report by MIT scientists Richard Lloydand Professor Theodore Postol found that the improvised rockets used had a range of only 2 kilometres and so “could not possibly” have been fired at the East Ghouta site from any of the closest Syrian Army positions, as had been suggested by the White House report. Richard Lloyd had been a UN Weapons Inspector, while Professor Ted Postol had been a forensic advisor to the US military. Their independence was unquestionable. A third independent report came from famous investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. His report (‘Whose Sarin’, December 2013) found that many in the US intelligence community did not believe the White House report, which omitted all reference to the evidence of sarin possessed by Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda).
“When the attack occurred al Nusra should have been a suspect, but the [Obama] administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad,” wrote Hersh.So, when stripped of the clamour from the warring parties and their supporters, the independent evidence of East Ghouta incident of August 2013 lines up against the al Qaeda groups, which controlled much of the East Ghouta area and wanted a pretext for greater military assistance from NATO.
We can apply the same principles to the third highly publicised incident, the alleged sarin attack on Khan Sheikoun (Idlib). This served as the pretext for President Trump’s 7 April 2017 missile attack on Shayrat airbase in Syria. By this time Syria, with help from Russia and Iran, were driving back the armed ‘jihadists’. These groups and their supporters, in particular the US government and various paid ‘information activists’ claimed it was an attack by the Syrian airforce; the Syrians denied it.
What did the independence evidence say? Once again Professor Ted Postol issued a report, the main focus of which was White House reports from the Trump administration. After analysing the allegations, video and wind evidence he issued a rebuttal which said: “the nerve agent attack described in the White House report did not occur as claimed. There may well have been mass casualties from some kind of poisoning event, but that event was not the one described by the WHR” (Postol 2017a). Once again Syrians suspected kidnap victims were being used for these ‘false flag’ attacks. Later Postol issued a second and a third report. Taking into account further information argued by the jihadists in Idlib, and other US allies, he concluded: “the WHR was fabricated without input from the professional intelligence community” (Postol 2017b).
In the Khan Sheikhoun case US agencies used each other to lend the appearance of ‘corroboration’. So the US and UK funded groups, the White Helmets, provided ‘evidence’ of the Sarin attack to both the UN’s OPCW and to the US group Human Rights Watch (2017). Funded by the UK and US governments, there is substantial photographic and video evidence that The White Helmets are close affiliates of the armed Islamist groups in Syria, including Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS/DAESH (Beeley 2018; Hands Off Syria 2019). However for the purpose of this analysis it is sufficient to observe that their major funders are the governments of the UK and the USA, active parties in the war against the Syria Government. That alone disqualifies the White Helmets as a source of independent evidence. Nor is Human Rights Watch (HRW) an independent NGO. It is closely linked to the US foreign policy elite, and its leader Kenneth Roth has issued a series of demonstrably false claims about Syria, during the long war (Anderson 2018).
The OPCW would later report that there had been use of a “sarin like substance” in Khan Sheikhoun (OPCW 2017). However even here they relied on evidence provided by the White Helmets, as no-one from the OPCW visited the site. This problem was discussed by another clearly independent expert, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Ritter had warned that Iraq had no significant weapons of mass destruction. He was ignored then, but was later proven correct. In mid-2017 Ritter wrote that the Human Rights Watch claim that “the material cause of the Khan Sheikhoun event is a Soviet made KhAB-250 chemical bomb” must be false as: “if a KhAB-250, or any other air delivered chemical bomb had been used at Khan Sheikhoun, there would be significant physical evidence of that fact, including the totality of the bomb casing, the burster tube, the tail fin assembly and parachute” (Ritter 2017).
The OPCW was therefore:
“in no position to make the claim … [that] a sarin like substance was used at Khan Sheikhoun, a result that would seemingly compensate for both the lack of a bomb and the amateurish theatrics of the rescuers” (Ritter 2017).The main reason for this was that there was a broken ‘chain of custody’ in taking samples from the site, out of Syria to the OPCW (Ritter 2017). That act was carried out by the obviously non-independent White Helmets.
We see once again that, when the shrill propaganda is removed, and we pay attention to genuinely independent and qualified voices, we can see the makings of another ‘weapons of mass destruction’ scandal. The partisan sources mislead us.
The fourth and final widely-publicised, alleged chemical weapons incident was said to have been carried out just as the Syrian Army was about to liberate the city of Douma from al Qaeda and its allied ‘jihadists’. This was the alleged 7 April 2018 attack on Douma hospital. Notice that the Syrian Army, by this time, with Russian and Iranian help, had been steadily driving the armed groups out of the urban centres. Once again, any military rationale for the use of chemical weapons was absent. Yet that is what the Douma-based ‘Army of Islam’, the banned Jabhat al Nusra and their western sponsors claimed.
Once again the armed groups and their White Helmet partners issued video which showed people rushing around the hospital reception area, washing people including children with water. The White House and associated media and paid agencies (including the BBC, CNN, Bellingcat and the US-based ‘Syrian American Medical Society’) repeated the jihadists’ stories. The ‘Army of Islam’ media group, the Ghouta Media Centre, put out the story that ‘hundreds’ were killed and injured by a “barrel bomb containing sarin” (Embury-Denis 2018). A White House statement duly affirmed:
“The United States assesses with confidence that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons in the eastern Damascus suburb of Duma on April 7, 2018, killing dozens of men, women, and children … information points to the regime using chlorine in its bombardment of Duma, while some additional information points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin” (White House 2018).Most western media ran with this. Later the story would be revised to a ‘chlorine bomb’, after a photo of an unexploded tank was shown in a building.
After the Syrian Army took control of Douma, one of the children in that video would denounce the story, saying he was effectively dragged into his unexpected film role and experienced no toxic chemicals. Yet, because he contradicted the jihadists claims, western media suggested he might have been an “unwitting pawn” (Barker 2018). However, as well as this unwilling ‘victim’, no less than twelve hospital staff told media in Damascus that no chemical attack took place. Several of them were flown to The Hague to repeat this evidence. These doctors and nurses said, in various ways, that there had been an extended filmed commotion at reception; but there had been no air attack on the hospital, there were no fatalities and there had been no chemical weapons (RT 2018b). The British Guardian called this an ‘obscene masquerade’, organised by Russia. Western agencies claimed that these witnesses had probably been pressured by the Syrian Government (Wintour 2018). Before this particular controversy is dismissed we might observe that hospital staff in Douma could not have survived had they been government sympathisers. It is well known that both religious minorities and government supporters were murdered by the Army of Islam and Jabhat al Nusra. In that sense those medical staff were likely quite independent.
In any case, not long after the area was liberated the UN’s OPCW went in and made their report. First they found no trace of any nerve agent: “no organophorphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected” (OPCW 2018). So much for the claims from the ‘Ghouta Media Centre’ and the White House. But what about the chlorine backup story? The UN team did find “various chlorinated organic chemicals … from two sites”. However “the FFM cannot confidently determine whether or not a specific chemical was used as a weapon” (OPCW 2018). This report was misused by some media to pretend that the UN group had found that chlorine was used as a weapon. Yet others pointed out that ‘chlorinated organic chemicals’ are found in most households, including as cleaning agents in hospitals. Although under great political pressure in New York, the UN team had rejected the Douma story.
Nevertheless, relying on the general spin over the OPCW report, the BBC (2018) headlined: ‘Douma attack was chlorine gas – watchdog’. This story was a misrepresentation of the OPCW report. It was soon deleted from BBC websites; but not before it had been picked up by several other sites (e.g. MyVueNews 2018).
To wrap up five disgraceful years of chemical weapons propaganda, forensic principles entitle us to look at independent statements, or ‘admissions against interest’, by the warring parties. That includes statements from military leaders in the USA and the UK. US Defence Secretary James Mattis, for example, both before and after the Douma incident, said that he had “no evidence” Syria had used sarin, but was relying on media including social media stories. On 3 February 2018 Mattis was reported as saying: “We have other reports from the battlefield from people who claim it’s been used. We do not have evidence of it. We’re looking for evidence of it” (Burns 2018). In April, just days after the Douma claims, he told the US Congress: “We are not engaged on the ground there so I cannot tell you that we have evidence, even though we certainly had a lot of media and social media indicators that either chlorine or sarin were used” (RT 2018a).
Two former British military leaders expressed their incredulity at the Douma claims, even though those claims had been backed by their government. That fact makes them both independent, as well as qualified. Former SAS commander British General Jonathan Shawasked:
“Why would Assad use chemical weapons at this time? He’s won the war. That’s not just my opinion, it is shared by senior commanders in the US military. There is no rationale behind Assad’s involvement whatsoever. He’s convinced the rebels to leave occupied areas in buses. He’s gained their territory. So why would he be bothering gassing them?” (Basu 2018).A similar opinion was expressed and developed further by Lord Alan West, former senior British government security advisor and former head of the British Navy:
“Just before he [President Assad] goes in and takes it [the Douma area] all over, apparently he decides to have chemical attack. It just doesn’t ring true, it seems extraordinary because, clearly he would know that there is likely to be a response from the allies … what benefit is there for his military? Most of the rebel fighters, this disparate group of Islamists, have withdrawn, there are a few women and children left around. What benefit is there is doing what he did [sic]? I find that extraordinary. Whereas we know that in the past some of the Islamic groups have used chemicals, and of course there would be huge benefit for them in labelling an attack as coming from Assad, because they would guess quite rightly that there would be a response from the US, as there was last time, and possibly from the UK and France … The reports that came from there were from the White Helmets who, let’s face it, are not neutrals, you know, they are very much on the side of the disparate groups who are fighting Assad” (NewsVoice 2018).These are genuinely independent assessments from two military experts. ‘Similar fact’ principles of criminal law entitle us to apply their rationales over Douma to the earlier claims made by the same armed groups in the same area, back in August 2013. That is, there is a pattern of behaviour from these armed groups, involving repeated fabricated claims, to gain greater outside military support. This ‘similar fact’ pattern increases confidence in the evidence that they have indeed been fabricating their claims against the Syrian Army.
When we remove the clamour from the warring parties, their media and paid propagandists, the independent evidence points in one direction: every single claim of chemical weapon use by the Syrian Army was a fabrication. As Lord Alan West said, the al Qaeda aligned groups wanted to attract greater western military support. Western governments and media went along with this extended ‘WMD’ hoax. The scandal served to hide naked US-led aggression against Syria. Western audiences were played, for the second time in a decade, over a ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ scam. Most took the bait.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/wmd-take-two-chemical-weapons-claims-syria/5666284?fbclid=IwAR1kwe8LtFIgOLnbN1N7ccv8VkQ-KTJx57HA_eK3yZcGa-8xg9ll1MVzAg4
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, January 29th, 2019.]
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