TPQ: Syrian conflict

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People And Nature ☭ By Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, a Syrian writer and political dissident. Republished, with permission, from the DAWN website.

In the week since Russia’s invasion began, Syrians opposed to President Bashar al-Assad might come second only to Ukrainians themselves in following every horror of the war that Vladimir Putin’s regime is waging in Ukraine. The reason behind this curious situation, of course, should be quite apparent. Russia has been occupying part of Syria since late September 2015, brutally supporting Assad’s regime, whose highest priority is to stay in power forever, even if he has to submit the country to expansionist outside forces like Iran and Russia itself.

A member of the Russian military police stands guard, before posters of
Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. Damascus, Syria, 2018

For six and a half years, Russia has held a major military base in northwestern Syria, called Hmeimim, to which Assad is usually summoned when Putin or his defence minister visit their troops there. In 2019, Russia secured a 49-year lease for the port of Tartous, where it can now base warships in the Mediterranean. Russia’s defence minister has boasted of successfully testing more than 320 different weapons from its military arsenal in Syria. Putin himself praised the combat experience that more than 85 percent of the Russian army’s commanders gained in Syria.

Syria was a testing ground for Russia’s military. It used phosphorus munitions, thermobaric bombs and cluster bombs—banned by international treaty—against civilian facilities, targeting hospitals, schools and markets. It labelled all those who opposed the Assad regime as terrorists (just like Assad did too). This simply means that their lives are ungrievable; that killing them is not a crime. It is even a good thing that should be rewarded, at least with praise. Indeed, Putin was praised by Islamophobic right-wing organizations in the West, and supporters of authoritarianism everywhere, for his imperialist war in Syria, responsible so far for killing some 23,000 civilians.

Yet there have hardly been enough voices in the West condemning Putin’s war in Syria. Why? Because of the long and criminal “war on terror,” which has been the basis of a broad international coalition against terrorists—that is, nihilist Sunni Islamic groups—where the United States and the European Union are in a de facto alliance with Russia, as well as the likes of Assad, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and the United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed bin Zayed, and of course the apartheid state of Israel. This has not just been a betrayal of Syrians who have been struggling for democracy for two generations, but a betrayal of democracy everywhere in the world.

The war on terror provided Putin with a golden chance to achieve his imperialist ambitions to resurrect the Russian empire, starting in Syria. Putin notoriously regards the fall of the Soviet Union as a “genuine tragedy” and the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”—not out of any communist sentiments, but because the Soviet Union was to a great degree a Russian empire. And now, encouraged by a costless mandate over Syria, Putin wants to annex Ukraine, which according to him never had “traditions of real statehood.”

This aggression is based on three contradictory pretexts. First, to “de-nazify” Ukraine, something that makes this war a continuation of the Soviet Union’s “Great Patriotic War” against Hitler—rather than of Putin’s own expansionist wars in Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea and Syria. Second, to “demilitarise” Ukraine, or destroy its armed forces and prevent it from ever joining NATO. And third, because Ukraine is not a “real nation,” as Putin claims, but a part of Russia.

Syrians on an anti-war demonstration. From Majd Khalaf’s twitter feed

One is reminded of the “kettle story” by Freud. A man borrowed a kettle from his neighbor and returned it damaged. To acquit himself, he provided three arguments: the kettle wasn’t damaged when he returned it; it was already damaged when he borrowed it; he had never borrowed the kettle at all. This is the logic of uncontrollable desire for power from a dictator who cannot or does not want to restrain himself as he wages his fifth war so far this century.

But Putin’s three arguments have already collapsed. While it is true that there are far-right, ultra-nationalist groups in Ukraine, they are a minority with limited political power, and by no means are they the ones actually targeted by Russia’s invasion. If anything, Putin’s war gives full justification to Ukraine to defend itself however it can from its aggressive, bullying neighbor. Ukraine is proving her national reality through resistance against the Russian invaders.

A Russian defeat would be a victory not just for Ukraine, but the world. A defeat of Putin might also well end his political life, which is the best news possible for the Russian democrats who are courageously protesting the aggression in their nation’s name. This can be good news for Syrians too, because it would also weaken Assad’s barbaric and traitorous regime, along with the growing authoritarian tendencies in the whole Middle East and indeed the world.

And while a defeat of our common enemy, Putin, will not necessarily be a victory for us Syrians, a victory for Putinism will be an even bigger defeat for us, as it will diminish our already meager opportunities to retrieve our own country.

But even if Ukraine can repel Russia, the possible victors will be the ones who were complicit in submitting Syria, our country, to that very enemy. I mean the Western powers, in particular the United States—the author of the war on terror. Putinist Russia is perceived as an aggressive invader on one front, and as the brute that can do the nasty job of the West on another front. But this is ethically contemptible, and politically counterproductive, as Ukraine is proving.

We need a politics and justice against terror, not a war against terror. The word for that politics and this justice is democracy. Sacrificing democracy on the altar of the war on terror and the priority of security is unprincipled and self-defeating, not only in Syria and the Middle East, but also in the West itself.

Imperialism and democracy are incompatible. This is true for Russia, and everywhere else. The same applies in the West. Imperialism that had its boomerang effect in Europe before, in the form of Nazism, as Hannah Arendt argued in The Origins of Totalitarianism, is already having its analogous effect in our time in the form of right-wing populism, which was been progressively normalized and moved quickly from the extreme right to the acceptable mainstream, in direct relation to the war on terror and the so-called migrant and refugee crisis.

As refugees, uprooted from our home and scattered in 127 countries, we, Syrians, are now our own international community. As such, we invite ourselves to intervene in every struggle on the planet.

Ukraine is a Syrian cause. So is the world.

♜ ♞ ♟

Other Syrian authors on Ukraine

Why Ukraine Is A Syrian Cause

By AM Monday, March 28, 2022

Barry Gilheany writes in defence of the White Knights.

Of all the conspiracy theory/fake news memes that circulate in the virtual and physical media in this era of the hegemony of populists and anti-experts, perhaps the most preposterous and Goebbels-like has been the concerted campaign to discredit the work of and traduce the reputations of the volunteer Syrian civil defence force known as the White Knights.

Operating as they do in the parts of Syria not under the control of President Assad where they daily risk life and limb to save civilians under merciless bombardment from Assad’s forces and those of his Russian allies and, in so doing, provide stark witness testimony to the multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Assad regime.

Because they speak truth to power and bear witness to evil in these ways, they have been subjected to massive online aggression from Vladimir Putin’s troll army and a network of disparate bloggers and academics (none of whom has any expertise on Syria or wider Middle Eastern issues) who in their fawning obeisance to the Assad regime appear to have a vested interest in the survival of the Assad regime as some sort of perverse, “anti-imperialist” standard bearer. The narrative that this conglomeration of useful idiocy push is that the White Knights do the bidding of Al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups as well as that of Western powers and Zionism and fake atrocity scenes to these ends.

The White Helmets, officially known as the Syria Civil Defence, is a humanitarian organisation made up of 3,400 volunteers – former teachers, engineers, tailors and firefighters who rush to extract people from the debris created though the Assad regime’s blitzkrieg on the Syrian civilian population. They have been credited with saving thousands of civilians in the ongoing carnage of the Syrian Civil War (Solon, 2017 p.1)

They have also exposed, through first-hand video footage, war crimes including the chemical weapons attack on the Syrian town of Khan Shaykun, 4th April 2017, which killed almost 100 people and injured around 200 others; an atrocity which the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), after an exhaustive examination of competing theories interviews, laboratory tests, videos and photos, attributed in its report in October 2017 to a sarin gas attack by the Syrian government (Monbiot, 2017 p,1). Their work was the subject of an Oscar-winning Netflix documentary and the recipient of two Nobel peace prize nominations.

But despite these glowing testimonies and awards, a counter-narrative emerged around the same time as the Russian intervention in the Syrian conflict on the side of the beleaguered Assad regime in September 2015. This counter-narrative was pushed and driven by a vocal network of authors who write for a plethora of alternative news sites opposing the “MSM agenda”. Their views dovetail with the positions of Syria and Russia and have attracted huge online audiences, amplified by high-profile alt-right personalities, appearances on Russian state TV and regiments of Twitter bots (Solon, p1)

Almost immediately after the Russian entry into the Syrian war, Russian state media such as RT and Sputnik started falsely claiming that the so-called Islamic State or ISIS was the Assad’s regime only target and casting doubt on the bombings of infrastructure and civilian sites. The same propaganda behemoth absorbed fringe anti-American activists, bloggers and researchers who believe the White Helmets are terrorists, granting them a platform on state TV and disseminating their articles though social media.

The sarin gas attack on Khan Shaykun is an example of a case study within this wider case study of disinformation warfare. For almost immediately the Syrian government began to frame the atrocity as a “false-flag attack”. It started with an article published on the website Al-Masdar News, run by the Syrian government loyalist Leith Abou Fadel. It proposed that either “terrorist forces” were responsible, or chemicals stored in a missile factory had accidentally been discharged when the Syrian government bombed it (Monbiot: p.2)

The story was then “sexed up” on the infamous far-right conspiracy forum – Infowars. The Infowars article accused the White Helmets of staging the attack. It claimed that the victims were people who had been kidnapped by Al-Qaeda from a nearby city, brought to Khan Shaykun and murdered perhaps with the help of the UK and French governments, “to lay the blame on the Syrian government”. The author of this article was Assad loyalist Mimi Al-Laham alias Maram Susli, PartisanGirl, Syrian Girl and Syrian Sister who has appeared on podcasts hosted by David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. She adopts another personal: that of “expert” used by retired MIT professor Theodore :Postol who frequently disputes the Syrian regime’s complicity in chemical weapons attacks and who bases his trust in Susli’s scientific “expertise” from viewing her on Twitter and forming the impression “from her voice … that she was a trained chemist”. He made this claim when appearing with Sulsi on a podcast run by the Holocaust “revisionist” Ryan Dawson (Monbiot: p.2).

Postol’s claims were two-fold. First, the crater from which the sarin in Karin Shaykhun was most likely not caused by a bomb dropped from the air but by an explosive device on the ground (a hypothesis examined and completely disproved by the OPCW report). Second, there was “no evidence to support” the theory that sarin had been released from the air and that there was strong evidence that the mass poisoning resulted from bomb explosion at a rebel weapons depot. This theory was in turn thoroughly debunked by a visit by The Guardian (the only news organisation in the world to do so) to Khan Shaykhun in the wake of the attack. It established that there had been no weapons depot near to the scene of the contamination. The contamination had emerged from a hole in the road from where the remains of a projectile protruded (Monbiot: p.2).

But still the counter-narrative would not go away. Infowars described as an “Al-Qaeda affiliated group funded by George Soros." The White Helmets have never received any Soros funding. Critics of the OPCW investigation include the blogger Vanessa Beeley, the daughter of a former British diplomat who visited Syria for the first time in July 2016; and who believes that the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was staged, Al-Qaeda was not behind the 9/11 attacks and that “Zionists rule France” a University of Sydney senior lecturer, Timothy Anderson, who described the Khan Shaykhun attack as a “hoax” and Eva Bartlett, a Canadian writer and activist who said that the White Helmets staged rescues using recycled victims (Solon: p.3).

Arguably the most influential of these conspiracist and false information merchants is Beeley. In April 2017, she gave a talk at a conference alongside ministers in Assad’s cabinet (who spoke via video conference) titled “White Helmets: Fact or Fantasy?”. Her briefing paper and slides on the topic were then submitted by the Russian government as “evidence” against the “White Helmets”. After refusing The Guardian’s requests for comments, Beeley appeared on a 40-minute long YouTube programme in which she discussed these comment requests and criticised The Guardian’s coverage of Syria, alleging “faux reporting” based on footage provided by “al-Qaeda affiliates” the White Helmets. Beeley asserted that the “majority consensus” was that the White Helmets were a fraudulent terrorist organisation. (Solon: p.5)

The Syrian regime was then given cover by outstanding investigative journalists and commentators of the past/turned conspiracy theorists of the present. John Pilger, on the website Consortium News, praised Postol as “the distinguished MIT professor" and suggested that the Syrian government could not have carried out the attack – as he claimed it had destroyed its chemical arsenal and maintained that jihadists in Khan Shaykhun “have been playing with nerve gases and sarin … for some time. On 26 April 2017 Noam Chomsky, interviewed on Democracy Now, claimed that Postol, whom he described as “a highly regarded strategic analyst and intelligence analyst”, had produced a “pretty devastating critique” of a White House report that maintained that the Syrian government was responsible (Monbiot: pp.2-3)

In June 2017 Seymour Hersh published an article in the German newspaper Die Welt, based on information from a “senior adviser to the US intelligence community who maintained that there had been no sarin strike on Khan Shaykhun. Rather, they Syrian Air Force, with Russian support and the “full” knowledge of Washington, had bombed a meeting of jihadists in “a two-story cinder-block building” and that the mass poisoning could have been caused by fertilisers and disinfectants in the basement of the building. Again, this possibility was completely debunked by the OPCW (Monbiot: p.3).

So how precisely has the online conversation about the White Helmets been shaped by the Russians and why has it been so successful? By gaming the social media algorithms with a flood of content, boosted by bots, sock puppet accounts and a network of agitators, Russian propagandists have been able to construct a Chomsykian-in-reverse “manufactured consensus” that legitimises fringe views. (Solon: p.3).

What have been the mechanics of this huge fake news operation? A search for “White Helmets” on the tool Hoaxy, developed by Indiana computer science professor Fil Menczer1 maps the proliferation on online misinformation, reveals a handful of sources produced hundreds of stories about the organisation. The same small cohort of “experts” are cited in articles that are repackaged and interlinked to generate a corpus of content whose conspiracy claims gain a, albeit spurious, semblance of legitimacy (Solon: p.4)

In research commissioned by the human rights group, the Syria Campaign, the analytics firm Graphika found that the patterns in the online network of the 14,000 Twitter users discussing the White Helmets appeared “very similar” and included many known pro-Kremlin troll accounts, some of which were closed down as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the US Presidential election of 2016. Graphika also found evidence of synchronicity of timing and messaging around key events in the news cycle relating to the White Helmets. (Solon: pp.4-5).

Their findings also correlate with work done by Kate Starbird from the University of Washington in Seattle who asserts that Beeley and the alternative news site 21st Century Wire that she edits and which was set up by a former Infowars editor Patrick Henningsen dominated the Twitter conversation about White Helmets in 2016-17 along with Sputnik and RT.com. The apogee of Ms Beeley’s career was arguably the two-hour meeting with Assad in 2016 as part of a US Peace Council delegation in Damascus, which she described on Facebook as her “proudest moment”. (Solon: p.5).

In sinking to the occasion thus, Vanessa Beeley finds herself in the same league of sycophancy as the notorious Stalin apologist of the 1930s, Walter Duranty of the New York Times and the so-called US Peace Council hawks its conscience around the world in the manner of the Jeremy Corbyn figure of his era, George Lansbury and its 1930s analogue the Peace Pledge Union who averted their gaze from the global threat of fascism and its steamrolling over the Spanish Republic. Just as in the 1930s the isolationist right saw Franco as a bulwark against “communism” in Spain; so, in this age the far right sees Assad as the guy to back against radical Islamism and the “anti-imperialist” left views Assad as a force of resistance to the West and “Zionism”. Both past “the son-of-a-bitch but our son-of-a-bitch” test.

The main allegations against the White Helmets are that they are ‘embedded’ and ‘work with’ terrorists; they are not the ‘real’ Syria Civil Defence; they are funded by the US and UK governments and therefore serve a nefarious purpose and that their late founder James Le Mesurier was a spy. These components of the White Helmets fairy tale can be dismissed as follows.

On the allegation that the White Helmets work with terrorists, the reality is that in order to carry out humanitarian work in any part of the world, an NGO must negotiate with whoever is in charge in order to gain access and permission to operate. In Syria’s multi-dimensional conflict this inevitably means communicating with and then operating in areas the control of Islamist groups such as ISIS, Al-Nusra Front and Jaysh al-Islam. Likewise, hundreds of NGOs operate in areas controlled by groups and regimes designated by the West as terrorist or human rights abusers e.g. the Red Cross conducts numerous operations including sending teams of surgeons during outbreaks of conflict in Hamas-controlled and numerous NGOs operate in Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan, risking kidnap and death to provide services. It should also be borne in mind that the only authority in Syria to have officially banned NGOs from its territory is the Syrian government itself. (Huff Post,)

On the canard that the White Helmets are not the ‘real’ Syria Civil Defence; the latter entity is an official government force also referred to as “self-protection squads.” They are part of the Syrian Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defence, are trained by the Syrian Army and operate only in government-held areas of Syria. So, is it really plausible that, in the words of James Le Mesurier in HuffPost UK, "the government would send its fire brigade to these areas to rescue the civilians they’ve just bombed?"

On the surface, the most persuasive charge made against the White Helmets are that because they are an NGO funded by the UK, which has also previously called for Assad to step down, they are automatically part of a regime change plot against the Syrian government. This exercise in “two-plus-two-equals-five” deductive logic is most vocally advocated by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM). This thinktank was established by a number of academics previously accused of “whitewashing” Assad’s war crimes. The WGSPM’s reasoning is that because the White Helmets are funded through the UK Government’s £1bn Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), they have a ‘potential dual use” as.

… first, as a means of supporting and lending credibility to opposition structures within Syria; second, as an apparently impartial organisation that can corroborate UK accusations against the Russian state.

Granted that the online documentation of indiscriminate attacks on Syrian civilians from the air gathered by the White Helmets is proving invaluable evidence sources for Syrian and international human rights organisations as well as future ICC prosecutors, it does not automatically follow that the UK government is pursuing a similar agenda (indeed the UK House of Commons vote in August 2013 not to take military action against the Assad regime after the Eastern Gouta sarin gas atrocity of that month would suggest that UK legislators at any rate have an opposite agenda). According to the CSSF’s 2016-17 annual report, the UK government funded a rage of other projects such as negotiating a deal between FARC rebels and the Colombian government; helping reduce cattle-raiding in South Sudan; and rehabilitating 20 Soviet-era irrigation projects in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan none of which attracted the ire of the WGSPM when asked by HuffPost UK to comment. (HuffPost UK). But more pertinently, who should fund groups rescuing civilians in areas from which the Syrian government has disengaged? Or in the words of James Le Mesurier how does “rescuing people from under the rubble secure regime change”?

Two-plus-two-equals-five is also the best that detractors of the White Helmets can come up with when trying to prove that its late founder James Le Mesurier was a spy something for which Russian authorities have never provided any proof of. Instead they only repeat unsubstantiated claims made by sources such as 21st Century Wire (whose biggest claim to infamy is its claim that the “alleged Sandy Hook “massacre” of 20 schoolchildren “smells like a cover-up”) ... An article on the White Helmets from 2015 claims (via discussion of 9/11 and George Soros) that Le Mesurier is linked to the CIA because a company he once worked for (Olive Group) merged with another company (Constellis Holdings) that also owns another company (Academi) which used to be known as Blackwater which was once used by the CIA to carry out black operations including assassinations. The author even concedes that Le Mesurier left Olive Group but claims this is sufficient to “give a degree of valuable insight into the elite intelligence and Pentagon circles that Le Mesurier moved in.”

This linking of the tangential, circumstantial, coincidental and the fantastic is the classic recipe of all conspiracy theories. Just as 9/11 ‘truthers’ seize upon routine actions such as requests by insurance companies to their clients in the World Trade Centre a fortnight before the Al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers or the coincidental presence of Israeli nationals near them around the day of the attacks as evidence of a “false flag” attack by the US government or Mossad conspiracy and just as Al-Jazeera spun an entire fantasy about the interference of the Israeli Embassy in British politics on the basis of a casual remark by a junior Embassy staffer about “taking down” certain politicians so those seeking to ‘take down’ the White Helmets weave the most incredulous stories about them which, unfortunately, appeal to a growing constituency whose anathema to the “mainstream media”, “elites”, “the establishment” and “experts” makes them ready consumers for this grotesque type of agitprop.

Isolated incidents such as the former White Helmet who was fired after being filmed helping armed militants disposing of the mutilated corpses of pro-regime fighters and the mannequin challenge when the rescue group filmed themselves in a staged rescue and posted the video on social media in November 2016 (Solon: p.5) were in the manner of afore-mentioned elaborate conspiracy theories seized upon by propagandists to extrapolate a story of unremitting bad actors from such occasional infractions.

The wider context of the White Helmets disinformation campaign is of course the conduct of the Assad regime and its Russian (and Iranian and other Shia militia forces) allies. Russian forces killed 5,233 civilians, including 417 children between September 2015 and September 2017 according to the Syrian Network of Human Rights (SNHR). In the same period, they also attacked 143 educational facilities and 119 medical facilities. Since the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, Russia has used its UN Security Council veto six times to prevent any attempt to curtail Assad’s tactics which by 2018 had cost the lives of 192,793 civilians according to SNHR; 90.6% of those killed during the conflict. (Syria Campaign, 2018).

Since the concerted campaign to malign the work of the Syrian White Knights is so much a part of the wider story of the proliferation of false content on social media and the threats it carries for genuine independent journalism and the genuine free flow of information; it is instructive to look at the role of one academic especially in this disinformation network – Professor Piers Robinson.

Professor Piers Robinson was the chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield, specialising in ‘contemporary propaganda with a particular focus on the current war in Syria” until his departure in April 2019. He was also co-director of the University’s Organisation for Propaganda Studies, which aims to conduct ‘rigorous academic research and analysis of propaganda. He left after academic colleagues described his work as “conspiracy-theory driven”, “completely insulting” and of having “no interest in truth or justice”. (Huffington Post, 5 January 2019).

As mentioned earlier, Piers Robinson was active in the WGSPM network active in discrediting the work of the White Helmets. His lectures and public appearances are heavily critical of Western governments and media. During an interview with Sputnik in March 2018, Robinson suggested Russia was being “demonised” over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in order to distract from the West’s “aggressive regime change strategy” in the Middle East. (Huffington Post)

His views on Syria were laid out in his inaugural lecture to students in October 2017 which was based on a paper he published around the same time, titled “Learning from the Chilcot report: Propaganda, Deception and the ‘War on Terror’." The paper argues that the ongoing Syrian conflict is not the result of the Arab Spring of 2011, but is actually the “consequence “of policies made by former leaders George W. Bush and Tony Blair in response to the 9/11 attacks. He cherry picks quotes from Chilcot and other sources, to make the case that the current Syrian conflict is part of a regime-change plot by Western governments, bolstered by an extensive propaganda campaign aimed at the public. For example he quotes Blair as saying “the Middle East is set for catastrophe as “indicative evidence” that the former UK PM knew the region would be embroiled in “big and significant” western-backed conflict a decade later; disregarding what appears on the next page of the Chilcott Report which shows Blair was actually offering Iran and Syria ‘help and support in building a new partnership with the West.. In the process, he, in the words of Dr Yasser Munif, a Lebanese expert on Middle Eastern Politics and Society at Emerson College, Boston, “denies the agency of the Arab population” and “perceives anything happening in the region as a from of conspiracy.” (Huffington Post).

Professor Robinson further validated his conspiracist credentials by writing an enthusiastic review of a book titled 9/11 Unmasked by David Ray Griffin a leading figure in the self-styled 9/11 truther movement. The book rejects the accepted narrative that 19 al- Qaeda operatives highjacked four planes and crashed them into the Twin Towers and Pentagon (the fourth White House bound one crashed in Pennsylvania after a passenger revolt) and suggests that explosives were used to bring down the towers, and questioning whether the planes were even hijacked by Islamist suicide-mass murderers. Many of these claims were demolished by The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the US Government science laboratory. (Huffington Post, January 2019)

Robinson also claims not to “have seen any compelling analysis or evidence to show that there was any significant propaganda campaign to influence the 2016 US Presidential election.”. He has also recommended a number of other academics whose work would allow readers to get up to speed with geo-politics and the current dynamics of the international systems, one of whom was Kees van der Pijl, an emeritus professor at the University of Sussex who in January 2019 tweeted: “Not Saudis, Israelis blew up Twin Towers with help from Zionists in US govt” (Huffington Post, January 2019).

The departure of this conspiracist, fake news evangelist must surely have been a relief for university authorities as its Journalist Studies Department is one of the most prestigious in the UK and has twice (at the time of writing) been placed top in the Guardian’s rankings in the subject and on its advisory board are a range of high-profile media figures including BBC Sports and Breakfast TV anchor Dan Walker, Yorkshire Post Editor James Mitchinson and Nina Bhagwat, Channel 4’s Diversity Executive. (Huffington Post, January 2019).

To conclude, as President Assad rubs his hands in glee at the prospect of “rubbing the noses of rebels” in the dust of Idlib, the calumnies told by his assorted allies, useful idiots and criminal associates in relation to the White Knights serve as accessories to the multiple crimes of the 21st century second mass murderer. The false witness that they have borne is a cautionary tale for those who celebrate the emancipatory potential of the Internet and for cynics of the frequently derided mainstream media. Just like the 9/11 truthers, the Holocaust deniers, the anti-vaxxers, the Illuminati and Rothschilds chroniclers (whose pernicious enterprises so frequently overlap) they speak lies to power. Healthy scepticism of authority and received wisdom is always an asset for writers and journalists but those who play fast and loose with the truth and manipulate and doctor primary evidence to underpin their paranoid beliefs prostitute whatever scholarly or writing profession they claim to operate in the name of. Those of us who rightly critique aspects of Western foreign policy,
consumerism and globalisation have a duty to do so using the tools of critical thinking and enquiry that the Enlightenment has bequeathed us. Especially in the era of authoritarian populist democracy in which we live where the telling of bare-faced lies and the weaponising of prejudice and myth making are now pathways to power.

Bibliography

Olivia Solon "How Syria’s White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine." Guardian 18th December 2017.

George Monbiot, "A lesson from Syria: it’s crucial not to fuel far-right conspiracy theories." Guardian 15th November 2017.

Chris Hunt, "Professor Piers Robinson Teaches Journalism at a top UK University. He is also a 9/11 Truther." Huffington Post 5th January 2019.

Chris York and Ewan Somerville, "Professor Piers Robinson leaves Sheffield University Post after accusations of promoting conspiracy theories." Huffington Post 17th April 2019.

Syria Campaign Killing the Truth. How Russia is fuelling a disinformation campaign to cover up war crimes in Syria. 2018.

This is why James Le Measurier’s White Knights are targets of a Russian disinformation campaign, Huffington Post.

➽ Barry Gilheany is the author of a PhD thesis Post-Eighth Abortion Politics in the Republic of Ireland from Essex University, Department of Government. He is also the author of The Discursive Construction of Abortion in Georgina Waylen & Vicky Randall (Eds) Gender, The State and Politics Routledge, 1998.

The Syrian White Knights: An Anatomy Of Global Disinformation

By AM Thursday, March 12, 2020

Fra Hughes was recently at a trade union event in Damascus.

The General Federation Trade Union of Syria hosted the World Federation Trade Union Conference in Damascus on September 9-10, 2019.

I was privileged to attend.

After a 20 hour trip I spent a total of five days in Syria’s capital meeting fellow delegates, many of whom represented their respective trade Union movements from the Middle East and Africa. Many western delegates were there, including myself on fact finding missions to ascertain exactly what is happening on the ground in Syria and by extension the wider region. I have visited Syria a total of four times in 2010, 2013, 2017, 2019.

The conference focused on the war on Syria, the sanctions and how they have impacted on the trade Union movement, the workers, their families and broader society.

With my UK comrade Issa at the Sahara Conference centre Damascus

To date over 10,000 public sector workers have been killed, 30,000 wounded and over 3,000 kidnapped for ransom, many considered dead, by those seeking to destroy Syria, to foment regime change to facilitate the balkanisation of Syria with the creation of a second Libya. A country gripped by civil war, daily dragged back into the abyss of conflict

The beneficiary of these wars of aggression both economic and physical are Israel, America, and the West for their own strategic geo political ambitions. To see the expansionist dreams of Zionism come to fruition. A white European colonisation of Palestine.

I met with President Bashar al Assad for a second time, an affable, engaging clever man who spent over two hours outlining the range of enemies arrayed against his country to include illegal EU, American sanctions, illegal American -Turkish bases and troops in Syria.

An agreed communiqué was delivered at the end of the two day seminar.

Closer ties with Venezuelan Lugansk, Iran, Russia and China were to be explored, as these Sovereign nations are also subject to various forms of cold war attack.

I visited the liberated town of Maaloula where ISIS had destroyed some of Christianity's oldest chapels, Icons and relics, where Aramaic the language of Jesus is still spoken.

The people had been brutalised and many summarily executed.

The people of Syria are determined to remove the foreign threats from Syrian soil and free all areas under occupation to include the Israeli illegal occupation of the Golan Heights.

I visited again the old town bazaar/souk and saw how Syrians really live in harmony and tolerance. I saw Syrian Arab Army personnel protecting the people.

I engaged with Syrians who demanded an end to the foreign backed inspired and financed war of aggression and they called for an end to the sanctions so the country can return to peace and rebuild its economy infrastructure and civil society.

Sentiments I wholeheartedly endorse.

Please do not believe the lies perpetuated by the likes of Talkback, BBC, CNN the Guardian etc.

Syrians want to live in peace.

They overwhelmingly voted for President Assad in the elections 2014.

Let’s stand together against imperialist aggression wherever it manifests in the world. Say no to war, no to sanctions, no to military interventions!

⏭ Fra Hughes blogs @ The North Belfast Journal: A View From Napoleon's Nose.

World Federation Trade Union Conference Damascus

By AM Tuesday, October 15, 2019

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By AM Thursday, August 23, 2018

Selective Outrage

By AM Wednesday, May 9, 2018

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By AM Thursday, December 28, 2017

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By AM Saturday, August 12, 2017

Cui Bono?

By AM Thursday, April 20, 2017

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Horrified By Aleppo But Not Gaza

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A Children’s Story: Panic From Outbreak Of Meningitis In “Death Camp” Of Madaya

By AM Saturday, October 1, 2016

Syria: A Children's Story, Part 1

By AM Monday, September 19, 2016

Franklin Lamb writes for Counterpunch from the Qalamoun Mountains, Syria. Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and Lebanon and volunteers with the MSRCL (http://mealsforsyrianrefugeechildrenlebanon.com/) and the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program. His latest book, Syria’s Endangered Heritage is available on Amazon/Kindle. He is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com.

As Our Cultural Heritage In Syria Hemorrhages, Villagers Work To Restore It

By AM Friday, August 26, 2016

Mick Hall from Organized Rage writes:

Its time for the Syrian civil war to end and no amount of editorialising about humanitarian intervention will help bring this about.

Time For Syrian Civil War To End

By AM Sunday, August 21, 2016

Middle Eastern Stew Or How Is Your Oil?

By AM Friday, January 29, 2016

The case of Palestinian-Syrian software developer Bassel (Safadi) Khartabil who is held in a Syrian prison is flagged up in a piece referred to TPQ by Steven Katsineris.

1403 days in prison

Free Bassel (Safadi) Khartabil

By AM Sunday, January 17, 2016

Middle East: On Saudi Arabia, Iran, The killing Of Samir Kuntar And The Kurds

By AM Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Mick Hall pours scorn on some "useful idiots" in the British parliament. Mick Hall is a Marxist blogger @ Organized Rage.

In any other walk of life if an employee had made a decision which had catastrophic consequences, they would not only be sacked, they might well end up in jail.

Politicians, [along with bankers] have become the exceptions to this rule. Whereas in the past senior MP's were expected to act honorably and resign when they help perpetrate a policy which proves disastrous, these days they continue in office as if their misdemeanor were a minor issue or did not happen at all.

One would have to be blind to all reason not to believe the 2003 majority decision of British MPs to attack and occupy Iraq was a monstrous mistake and in all probability an illegal act. Which has turned out to have disastrous consequence for the middle east, and much of the rest of the western world.

It's regarded by most rational people as the biggest foreign policy mistake of any British government since Suez in 1956. After the Suez debacle the Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, after Iraq Tony Blair went on to prosper both politically, he won a third term in office, and financially as he travels the world in 'retirement' scooping up his ill gotten gains for past services rendered. As too did many of those MP's of all parties who trooped into the lobby behind him and voted for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. One, David Cameron went on to lead the Tory Party.

In last Wednesday's debate on whether the UK should start bombing Syria, David Cameron and Hilary Benn led the yes campaign. They both spoke in unison of having a moral and military duty to attack Isis in Syria. How these two can talk of morals when they voted for the Iraq war, and instead of doing their duty and resigning they continued to slither up the greasy pole. Leaving them to repeat their mistake of 2003 on two further occasions.

In 2012 they both voted to intervene in the Libyan civil war, which left that nation a failed state with ISIS having a major presence's just 300 miles from the European shore. Then last week our two armchair warriors did much the same on Wednesday night when they colluded to get a majority in parliament for airstrikes on Syria.

Their track record on international affairs is one of abject failure, although you wouldn't know it from the mainstream media nor those MPs who voted for airstrikes, who whooped and hollered at both Cameron's sorry justification and Hilary Benn's threadbare sorry excuse for war.

It's worth noting while Cameron was pontificating from his high horse in the Common's, his former foreign secretary William Hague was letting the cat out of the bag next door in the House of Lords when he said: "Iraq and Syria need to be broken up."

One wonders what Cameron's allies in the Free Syrian Army think about this, when the only other parties involved in the Syrian civil war who have this as their aim are ISIS and smaller Islamic militias like al Nusra. Even Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the Turkish president balks at this, as it would allow the Kurdish people their State.

What we have been witnesses since 9/11 is a war of aggression on the part of the US and its allies against any and every state in the middle east which does not bow to the writ of western power and neoliberal economics. Bombing Syria is the latest example of this.

After the invasions of Iraq and the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, the US and its allies failed to install lasting stability, let alone democracy in the aftermath. What has subsequently occurred only makes sense if it was never their main aim.

Never forget in today's world, war and chaos are big earners for some. Every generation has men like Basil Zaharoff who are willing to use chaos as a mean to enrich themselves, especially the UK which is never been short of merchants of death. Could it be Cameron and Benn would rather have the pickings from that, than a stable state led by independent minded governments in the middle east?

The Brimstone missiles which were're told the RAF will use in Syria, are conservatively estimated to cost £100,000 each; the heavier Paveway IV bombs are estimated to cost £30,000 each, and Hellfire missiles £71,300 each. Just the cost of those three armaments give us a fair idea of the profits to be made from war.

A spokesman for CND said:

“In Libya the bombing operation was quickly extended to military personnel being sent in to support rebels fighting Qaddafi on the ground. The bombing didn’t produce the results the government hoped for, so mission creep ensued. We know that operations in Libya cost up to £1.5 billion.

The Royal Service Institute said a seven month campaign against ISIS without putting British boots on the ground would cost around £390 million. However Cameron and his wing Hilary Benn both said the war on ISIS will be a long campaign. So the overall cost will be in the low billions.

The US, it's allies France and the gulf State satraps have been allegedly bombing ISIS for months now with very little in return as Simon Jenkins wrote in last Thursday's Guardian:

The role of airstrikes in modern war has barely advanced since the days of Bomber Harris. Bombs destroy buildings and equipment and kill people. They cannot take or hold territory. They cannot secure victory, let alone peace and prosperity. Air power can be effective in battlefield support for determined ground troops.

It may have helped contain Isis from straying into non-Sunni territory round Baghdad. But in general it is pointless if not followed up on the ground. Whatever is “degraded” can always be regraded, as Britain showed after the Blitz.

Cameron has no ground troops in Syria of his own or anyone else’s come to that. His so called seventy thousand troops on the ground were demolished in Wednesday's debate as a hollow shell, a desert mirage thought up by the secret intelligent service, having been homed to the prime minister's wishes, a la Tony Blair. [Why wouldn't the spooks dance to the prime ministers every whim when they witnessed close up how those senior spooks who helped draw up Blair's dirty Iraq war dossier have been promoted and prospered.]

As I wrote in my open letter to Labour MP's, the only ground troops worthy of the name who are willing to take back Raqqa and drive ISIS from Syria are the armed forces of the Syrian State who fight under Assad's banner, and those like the Shia Hezbollah who do Iran's bidding. Only an inclusive agreement which involves all parties to the civil war, including the Assad regime and Iran's proxies will bring an end to the Syrian civil war.

But none of this mattered to the Tory, LibDem and Blairite politicians who wilfully ignored the reality on the ground in Syria, and the long history of bad judgement of the two men leading them into the yes lobby.

Far from Jeremy Corbyn and his loyal Labour MP's being terrorist sympathisers, it's David Cameron and Hilary Benn who are the useful idiots of ISIS.

List of MP's who voted for Iraq War in 2003

The 66 Labour MPs who voted for airstrikes, many of the names are one and the same as those who voted for the 2003 Iraq war.

Cameron, Benn And Supporters Are Little More Than The Useful Idiots Of ISIS

By AM Monday, December 14, 2015

Mick Hall appealed to members of the British parliament prior to their war-war vote. Mick Hall is a Marxist blogger @ Organized Rage.

Dear Citizen MP's,

David Cameron's justification for Airstrikes on Syria is as weak and deceitful as the 2003 'Dodgy Dossier' Blair put before a gullible and pliable parliament to justify the war and occupation of Iraq.

An Open Letter To All Labour Party MP's About Airstrikes On Syria.

By AM Sunday, December 6, 2015

The Broken Elbow reminds its audience of how the late Tony Benn viewed previous British militarist adventures.

As British MP’s Vote On Bombing Syria, Tony Benn’s 1992 Speech Echoes

By AM Friday, December 4, 2015

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