Jacinda’s hedging on the whole Syrian gas attack is looking like a far smarter position to have taken rather than the unquestioning support other global leaders offered in the wake of a damning report by one of the best journalists on the planet, Robert Fisk…
The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack
This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks — and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world’s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There’s even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clinic, cheerfully tells me that the ‘gas’ videotape which horrified the world – despite all the doubters – is perfectly genuine.
War stories, however, have a habit of growing darker. For the same 58-year old senior Syrian doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.
As Dr Assim Rahaibani announces this extraordinary conclusion, it is worth observing that he is by his own admission not an eye witness himself and, as he speaks good English, he refers twice to the jihadi gunmen of Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] in Douma as “terrorists” – the regime’s word for their enemies, and a term used by many people across Syria. Am I hearing this right? Which version of events are we to believe?
…so in light of this, exactly what does Simon Bridges mean by ‘NZ should have been stronger on Syrian strikes’?
How else should NZ have been stronger on a fake news story on gassing children which may have been manipulated to con Trump into launching military action?
Bridges says he doesn’t know if he would send troops.
But he didn’t know whether, if he was in the position Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is in now, he would offer troops or other military support to the United States.
“The honest answer is I don’t know. We’ve got to be very careful about those sorts of things. In this instance, in terms of [New Zealand’s] diplomatic response, it’s fine, but it could have been a bit stronger,” Bridges told Newshub’s AM show.
Really? You don’t know if you’d send troops into a conflict inspired by manipulated war crimes?
That’s a tad concerning isn’t it?
Who is easier to manipulate? Donald Trump with faked images of gassed children or Simon Bridges sending troops into a war zones using faked images of gassed children?
Simon Bridges is a warmongering idiot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8A-qkVzj5g
‘NZ no mates’ over spies – Simon Bridges
https://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018638316
(…but the Greens gave him their questions in Parliament )
Jeffrey Sachs appearing on an MSNBC show about the war in Syria and how the US has created the humanitarian crisis there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vwKk4pADCw
If you want to check out his background here it is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs
Also worth watching is Lavrov’s interview with Steven Sackur on the BBC show Hard Talk
Lavrov barely manages to conceal his anger and impatience with an interviewer who does not seem to understand whats at stake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zJ41whNgR0
It is depressing that there seems to be no intelligent awareness of the terrible strife we are facing because of all the severance of back channels and diplomatic relations, and the ongoing hammering of Russia.
They are BAD BAD BAD , and its their nature to be bad
That we are being insulted every day with
propaganda that doesn’t even try very hard to be convincing is a real worry.
Francesca: “…Steven Sackur on the BBC show Hard Talk….”
Wasn’t it that Sackur fellow who, in about 2008-9, gave our unlamented ex-dear leader a right working-over about NZ environmental issues?
I haven’t yet watched the interview with Lavrov, but I do hope that he gave Sackur a proper towelling. By the sounds, it’d be richly-deserved. Lavrov is eloquent and sophisticated. Just in case anybody in the west wants to see a pollie of his calibre in action; nobody on our side comes close.
“That we are being insulted every day with
propaganda that doesn’t even try very hard to be convincing is a real worry.”
Indeed. It’s the WMD, yellowcake, Valerie Plane, Scooter Libby stuff all over again. And now the cyberattack furphy.
I was among the many who at the time protested at the lies we were being told. Fat lot of good it did; no consolation that we turned out to be right, either.
Oh Christ: the deaths that resulted! I’m still incandescent with rage about that.
I’m glad he didn’t let Key get away with anything
In general he’s a hectoring righteous prick .
I love Lavrov, apparently when Hillary was secretary of state there was a rule that she must never be left alone in a room with him, otherwise he’d have her eating out of his hand and all manner of concessions would be made
The patience of Putin and Lavrov is incredible, but its not limitless
And I do believe that ever since the US unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty, granting themselves first strike capability, The Russians
have been quietly working on their own military capability to counter it.
Nobody wants a war, but it becomes impossible to avoid and the idiot west keeps pushing
Francesca:
I watched that interview. Christ: that little shite Sackur! Lavrov exercised great restraint, I thought; at times, he looked like he wanted to punch Sackur in his smug, I’m-right-cos-I’m-right snout. I’d have cheered him if he had: nothing he said seemed to dent Sackur’s cocksureness one whit.
I think I’ll go read my current Jack Reacher novel. One of his reviewers described him as the sort of anti-hero we want around because he can beat the shit out of people. Just what I need, after having to sit through an interview by that Sackur fellow.
Don’t hold your breath Martyn, just heard on rnz nat that Jacinda has fallen in to line and now accepts the non existent fact that Syria and the evil Russians are responsible for the gas attack??? Just listening to the head of gcsb on nat radio telling us how to protect ourselves from cyber attacks, presumably from the evil russians
simon bridges will go where ever he’s told to go.
simon bridges will do whatever he’s told to do.
simon bridges will say whatever he’s told to say.
COUNTRYBOY … YEP!
Ardern is NZs Tony Blair put in power to ensure NZ tows the line by “accepting” the stampede to nuclear war. Shaw is the banksters man in the Greens. Davidson is scared she will; never get a cabinet level job if she doesn’t tow the line. Hence no criticism of NZ defence personnel participating in these war crimes e.g. in Qatar. Silence.
No anti-war movement, no peace movement, no protests in NZ. Silence. The left silenced. War mongers on the right left to push for more war unopposed.
Silence is consent to the bankster war mongers in their push for nuclear war. The latest false flag – trust us the Russians are attacking the internet. Ardern trusts. The Greens trust. And nobody asks how stupid are these people. I say not stupid – complicit. Complicit through silence.
Just look at the latest bunch of lies the masses are supposed to trust and which the government has “accepted”:
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/04/17/russia-douma-open-to-press-says-trump-may-lied/
If you get a split second before realising you are going to be incinerated in a nuclear attack or lie dying of a genetically engineered bacteria or virus after the bombs stop falling remember your silence made this possible – you were complicit.
A Bridges under troubled waters…
I have spent all morning trying to google the Doctor in question. He doesnt exist on the web. You would think a 58 yr old doctor in Syria would at least pop up somewhere. Not even when I googled Doctors in Syria, did his name come up.
Instead of lapping up the slightest contention from the Lavrov/RT propaganda machine in favour of the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers, responsible for 93% of deaths in Syria so far, let’s consider a human rights perspective sometimes.
https://www.facebook.com/TheSyriaCampaign/
It is not our responsibility to assure the ratings of commercial media outlets. That commercial media is increasingly viewed as a pack of lies is no more our fault than Rupert Murdoch. It’s real now. People no longer accept official versions of events that don’t fit the data or investigations.
You are directing me to farcebook and the oscar winning white helmets for fact???
Yes…the White Helmets are deeply sus
‘WHITE HELMETS: Taxpayers Funds Used to Finance Terrorism in Syria?’
http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/10/25/white-helmets-taxpayers-funds-used-finance-terrorism-syria/
The some 20 countries that support the recent Syrian missile strikes conducted by America, France and the U.K. out of about 120 nations globally only makes sense if you consider the foreign policy ambition of those 20 countries was to destroy Iraq, Lybia and now Syria because they oppose the Isreali State. Any other story of why state aggression just dosnt stack up.
R Bradford: Oh no, not the White Helmets! I thought that there was nobody left who didn’t know what their provenance is. They’re an arm of the jihadists: they do a particularly strong line in propaganda. Believe the White Helmets and you’ll believe anything.
Yes, I know that various US voices sing their praises; didn’t they get an award of some sort? But since when did you believe anything coming out of the US propaganda machine?
“Come on Judith do it, now, no point waiting…”
Don’t hold your breath Martyn, just heard on rnz nat that Jacinda has fallen in to line and now accepts the non existent fact that Syria and the evil Russians are responsible for the gas attack??? Just listening to the head of gcsb on nat radio telling us how to protect ourselves from cyber attacks, presumably from the evil russians.
Second posting first at 9.30 am???
I would doubt whether Bridges has even played War Games with paint balls let alone fired a weapon.
The guy is an academic neoliberal lawyer who has probably never ever got his hands dirty ?
Meantime, in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/17/syria-crisis-medics-intimidated-over-douma-gas-attack
As part of Anywhere But the Middle East we are sceptical about WMD and Goodies and Baddies and Those Peculiar People who scream RACIST! at the tops of their shrill wee voices.
Open empires are almost extinct. ‘The evil men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.’ Stay out of other people’s uncivil wars. Etc.
So we don’t know who thought this could be a good move in the Great Game. Or if was was something in the construction materials that escaped in the uncivil bombing.
We cannot be sure. Not on that.
However, we’ve endured many years of crocodile tears from Israel – and this whitewash on Assad has a similar nasty rusty tinge of blood to it. Goes with the barrel bombs and casual attacks on the neighbouring countries who have given refuge to Syrians. Suspicion comes alive.
Assad may not be behind this.
Assad is failing as a leader and statesman. He has poor taste in friends. He has yet to choose peace as his objective. Is there no other Syrian who can pick up the task and get the hounds of war back in the kennels?
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