By Jeremy Salt
Source: American Herald Tribune
In 2016 the White Helmets were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Justin Timberlake thought they should get it. So did Bear Grylls, Ben Affleck, Michael Palin, Daniel Craig, Rowan Williams, Ridley Scott, George Clooney, Sacha Baron Cohen, Vanessa Redgrave and various other artists, writers, and politicians who put their signatures to the petition on the White Helmets web site.

‘Give it to Syria’s White Helmets’ theGuardian, a media mainstay of the terrorist war on Syria from the beginning, implored the Nobel committee. ‘They embody a spirit of civic resistance.’

The actor George Clooney also identified their essential goodness. ‘In a world full of hate these people put on helmets and run towards violence while everyone else is running away from it,’ he said in London when attending a showing of the glowing documentary the White Helmets made about themselves.

On their website, the White Helmets describe themselves as ‘former tailors, bakers, teachers and other ordinary Syrians’ who had come together to form the ‘Syria Civil Defence’. In fact, Syria has, and has had since the 1950s, a government civil defense organization of the same name, which operates across the country, unlike the White Helmets, which has operated only in ‘rebel’ held areas.

Furthermore, far from being an organization set up by ‘ordinary Syrians’ who saw a need for ‘civil defense’ and decided to fill it, the White Helmets were not even Syrian in origin but the brainchild of a former British intelligence officer. Furthermore, again, they were never financially independent, as they claimed, but were funded from the beginning by the same governments making war on Syria through armed proxies tied to their intelligence services. They were a carefully constructed arm of this war.

The White Helmets were a sustained lie from the start. They were deliberately packaged to give the corporate media the images it wanted, dominated by the White Helmet hero scurrying across a rubble-strewn foreground with a dusty, crying child in his arms. In the background, out of sight but figuratively represented in the wailing of children and the bodies on the street were the architects of these horrors, the ‘regime’ in Damascus and the dictator sitting in his palace.

It was not long before holes began to appear in the narrative. These rescues were not genuine but were being staged for media consumption. Journalists Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett were the first to pick holes in the narrative and the more they picked the more the holes widened, to the point where it was clear that the White Helmets were a scam of the first order.

But they were a scam the governments making war on Syria wanted their people to believe and a scam that the corporate media perpetuated, when the most cursory research would have revealed the lies.

The White Helmets were not just working in ‘rebel-held’ areas, a media euphemism for civilian districts taken over by the most violent terrorist groups on the face of the earth. They were an extension of these groups. They boasted of their affinities on their Facebook pages. They hated the Syrian government with the same fervor as the takfiris. They also reviled the Alawi, the Shia, Christians and Sunni Muslims who fell short of the takfiris’ exacting standards.

Many White Helmets doubled up as ‘first responders’ and takfiri gunmen. They operated completely under the instructions of the takfiris. They took away the bodies of the newly executed for burial and staged chemical weapons attacks as required. As evidence gathered by Russian researchers indicates, they were also involved in the harvesting of body organs from the bodies of wounded civilians.

These activities were all funded by the ‘liberal democracies,’ including the UK, the US, the EU and individual EU governments, including Denmark and Germany, nominally committed to fighting terrorism around the world.

By 2017 the British Foreign Office alone had paid the White Helmets an acknowledged $80 million. Outside money had even come from the Jo Cox Foundation, set up in memory of the British Labor politician, murdered in 2016, to work for a ‘fairer, kinder and more tolerant world.’

The contradictions in western attitudes were exemplified when Raed Saleh, the head of the White Helmets, and the recipient of millions of dollars in US aid, travelled to the US in 2016 to receive a humanitarian award and was turned back at Dulles International Airport in Washington.

Although the Department of Homeland Security never makes its reasons public, Saleh was clearly on a security/terrorist watch list. He had been allowed into the country before but this time he was turned away.

Waiting to greet him, the well-meaning but naïve members of the InterAction NGO alliance donned white helmets in his absence. Unfortunately, they are not likely to see the White Helmets being outed anywhere in the US media.

The Russian Foundation for the Study of Democracy recently compiled evidence based on extensive interviews in Syria with hundreds of witnesses, including former White Helmets and takfiri fighters, physicians and civilians living in areas that had been taken over by takfiri groups.

The interviews indicated that many of the White Helmets were not volunteers as claimed. In East Aleppo men were imprisoned and given time to decide whether to join Jabhat al Nusra or the White Helmets. It had to be one or the other. There was no third option unless saying ‘no’ to both and facing execution can be considered an option.

For some, joining the White Helmets was the only means of survival for themselves and their families but once inside the organization, everyone knew orders had to be obeyed whatever they were.

These orders came from the takfiri groups. A member of Jaysh al Islam’s internal security services told Russian researchers that instructions were delivered to the White Helmets by phone or personal messenger but either way, they were under the full control of Jaysh al Islam.

After eastern Ghouta was taken over by the takfiris it was divided into four sectors. The White Helmets in the district were integrated with the takfiri group assigned responsibility for each sector.

Along with faked chemical weapons attacks, setting up faked ‘regime’ bombings in line with instructions from the takfiri groups was a specialty of the White Helmets media unit. Witnesses gave evidence of bodies being brought from the morgue and the wounded from the hospital in preparation for faked attacks. Wrecked cars would be dragged to the site. The stage having been set with the apparent consequences of a ‘regime’ bombing, tyres and trash would be set on fire and the cameras would begin to roll.

In Douma, the White Helmets constructed barriers, dug trenches and tunnels, and transported fighters, weapons, and ammunition to the front lines. According to witness evidence, they were permanently engaged in preparing battle positions for the takfiris. White Helmet or ‘rebel’ media rooms or centers kept the global corporate media supplied with a steady flow of lies which were eagerly lapped up, no questions asked. The lies included the faked 2018 chemical weapons attack in Douma.

Theft was a common perquisite of being a White Helmet. Money and gold would be stolen from houses and jewelry stripped from the living – usually women – as well as the dead. Senior White Helmet figures enriched themselves, one in Douma buying cars and summer houses.

In the districts, they occupied the takfiris and the White Helmets shared office space. They took over schools and kindergartens. Under the threat of death, teachers in eastern Ghouta were told to send their students to religious schools. Students at the Gaza school in Aleppo were told to seek their education at the mosque.

The most heinous of White Helmet activities was the harvesting of body organs. Statements made to the Russian researchers indicated that organs were being removed in Turkey for transplantation into the bodies of wounded fighters and that the White Helmets and takfiri groups such as Ahrar al-Sham acted as an integrated team throughout the whole process.

The Russian researchers heard extensive prima facie evidence of the wounded being taken away for treatment by the White Helmets and being returned as corpses stripped of their body parts. A doctor in Aleppo gave evidence relating to a driver in Aleppo who weighed about 70 kgs when taken away and about 30-45 kgs when his corpse was returned. He had been cut from his throat to his stomach.

‘The skin almost touched his back,’ the doctor said. ‘I touched him with my hand and understood that there were clearly no organs left.’

In Aleppo the mother of a boy whose organs had been removed was only allowed to see his head and neck. An injured girl was taken to Turkey for ‘treatment’ and her body returned three days later with her internal organs missing. Even a person with a minor injury would be taken away and returned with the stomach cut open and the organs removed. It was understood, according to witnesses, that people taken away for medical treatment by the White Helmets often did not come back alive.

In July, 2018, 429 members of the White Helmets were smuggled out of Syria across the occupied Golan Heights and moved immediately to Jordan. The transfer was facilitated by the government of Israel which had armed the takfiris and given hospital care to their wounded since the beginning of the war. It had also helped and protected them by attacking Syrian military installations and now it was saving their White Helmet enablers from the retribution of the Syrian state and people.

From Jordan, the White Helmets were dispersed among the countries whose governments had supported them. They were quickly whisked away into a life of anonymity, supported by the British, European or American taxpayer. No one would know where they were or who they were so no critical questions could be asked. The truth was being buried with them.

This is a shocking story, of government criminality and media irresponsibility, of which the lies fed to the world about the White Helmets is only part.

The Russian report is a significant addition to the enormous body of prime facie evidence about the real nature of the White Helmets but as anything coming out of Russia is instantly dismissed as ‘fake news’ the corporate media already has a licensed reason to ignore this report.

The caravan of celebrities who moved quickly to capture some of the limelight created by the White Helmets, without asking any questions about what they were actually supporting, without caring as long as some of the spotlight fell on them, will move on in their narcissistic, feckless fashion.

The truth must have dawned on George Clooney by now. Certainly, it would be surprising to see him going ahead with his feature film on the White Helmets unless he intends to show what they were really like behind the lies he and many others swallowed. That’s the story that certainly needs to be told.

Carla Ortiz video on White Helmets HQ in Aleppo

UN Panel Details Organ Theft, Staged Attacks by the White Helmets
As 2018, a year of staggering corporate media fake news, drew to a close so do the last vestiges of credibility of media lauding the White Helmets.

By Eva Bartlett
Source: Mint Press News
Utter silence. That is the sound of Western corporate media days after a more than one-hour-long panel on the White Helmets at the United Nations on December 20.

Journalists were present, so the silence isn’t due to lack of access. And in any case, it was live streamed on the UNTV channel and remains available on Youtube for keen observers to watch.

More likely, the silence is due to the irrefutable documentation presented on the faux-rescue group’s involvement in criminal activities, which include organ theft, working with terrorists — including as snipers — staging fake rescues, thieving from civilians, and other non-rescuer behavior.

On the panel was one of corporate media’s favourite targets to smear, British journalist Vanessa Beeley, who gave a fact-based lecture on her years of research into the founding, funding and nefarious activities of the White Helmets, research which includes numerous visits to White Helmets centers, countless testimonies from Syrian civilians, and even an interview with a White Helmets leader in Dara’a al-Balad, Syria.

Maxim Grigoriev, the director of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy (a member of the UN’s Global Counter-Terrorism Research Network) spoke at length, detailing some of the over 100 eyewitnesses his foundation has conducted interviews with.

These include over 40 White Helmets members, 15 former terrorists, 50 people from areas where terrorists and WH operated, with another over 500 interviewed by survey in Aleppo and Daraa.

Among testimonies presented by Grigoriev were numerous accounts of the White Helmets’ involvement in organ theft.

A head of nursing in Aleppo is cited as seeing the body of his neighbor who had been taken by the White Helmets to Turkey for “treatment.”

I lifted the sheet and saw a large wound cut from the throat to the stomach… I touched him with my hand and understood there were clearly no organs left.”

Another interviewee said:

A person receives a minor injury, is rescued… and then brought back with their stomach cut open and with their internal organs missing.”

The interviews with civilians, White Helmets and terrorist members themselves put to rest NATO’s and their lapdog media’s explanations that in the White Helmets there are a few bad apples but in general these are humanitarian rescuers.

For example, a Syrian civilian, Omar al-Mustafa, is cited as stating:

Almost all people who worked in nearby White Helmets centers were al-Nusra fighter or were linked to them. I tried to join the White Helmets myself, but I was told that if I was not from al-Nusra, they could not employ me.”

Still, more testimonies detail staged fake rescues and staged chemical attacks. Omar al-Mustafa was cited as stating:

I saw them (White Helmets) bring children who were alive, put them on the floor as if they had died in a chemical attack.”

The testimonies incriminate not only the White Helmets organization but also the doctors who, in 2016, Western corporate media fawned over.

According to one interviewee, Mohamed Bashir Biram, his attempt to take his father to a White Helmets affiliated al-Bayan hospital, failed. He said:

Since my father was not a fighter, the doctors in the hospital refused to help him and he died.”

But in 2016, the Western media was praising the same valiant doctors, in their crescendo of war propaganda around Aleppo.

Many other independent journalists have corroborated aspects of what the panelists — also comprising Syrian journalist Rafiq Lotef, and Russian and Syrian Representatives to the UN, Ambassadors Vassily Nebenzia and Bashar al-Ja’afari — described in detail.

In my own visits to eastern Ghouta towns last April and May, residents likewise spoke of organ theft, staged rescues, the White Helmets working with Jaysh al-Islam, while an Aleppo man likewise described them as thieves who steal from civilians, not rescuers.

Copy-paste corporate media silence
Journalists present at the panel were not interested in asking follow-up questions on organ theft, staged rescues, or any of the content presented, unsurprisingly, instead of asking questions about other Syrian issues.

A CBS journalist didn’t have a single question about what had just been presented, although CBS has previously repeatedly reported on the White Helmets. But their reporting, like most in corporate media, spun the transparent propaganda that is corporate media coverage of the group.

Four days after the UN panel, to my knowledge, not a single corporate media outlet has covered the event and its critical contents.

This is in spite of the fact that the Western corporate media has been happy to propagandize about the White Helmets for years and to attack those of us who dare to present testimonies and evidence from on the ground in Syria which contradicts the official narrative.

Russian, Syrian, and Lebanese media did report on the panel, and of course, if Western corporate journalists ever do bother to mention it, they will ignore the incriminating evidence presented by panelists and instead accuse Russia of bullying the White Helmets.

Prior to the panel, a number of publications came out with articles echoing one another, and in fact echoing claims already repeatedly uttered about a “Russian disinformation campaign” against the White Helmets.

That’s right, that’s the best they’ve got.

‘Big bad Russia’ tarnishing the pristine image of the White Helmets, a theme rerun ad nauseum over the last year or two, and one which I addressed in early January 2018 when I was under attack for questioning the White Helmets.

In my rebuttal to a mid-December 2017 Guardian smear, I pointed out that it was not Russia which began looking into the White Helmets’ affiliations, funding, and role in the propaganda war, but two independent North American researchers.

Canadian journalist Cory Morningstar in September 2014 exposed the role of the New York-based PR firm, Purpose Inc, in marketing campaigns for the White Helmets.

And as I wrote, “In April 2015, American independent journalist revealed that the White Helmets had been founded by Western powers and managed by a British ex-soldier, and noted the “rescuers” role in calling for Western intervention—a No Fly Zone on Syria.”

These, and the subsequent numerous investigations by Vanessa Beeley, including on the ground in Syria, taking countless testimonies of Syrian civilians on the matter of the White Helmets, far precede any Russian media reporting on the group.

That Russian media and bodies have since done their own investigations does not equate to a “disinformation campaign”, but rather doing the job corporate media are clearly incapable of, and unwilling to do.

Why haven’t the media written about the panel, or as per the corporate media norm, issued yet more smears against panelists?

They haven’t because they are cornered, and while they can always try their standard juvenile character smears and libel, they cannot refute the facts, the countless testimonies which corroborate yet still more testimonies taken by independent journalists over the years.

Or as Ambassador Nebenzia said:

We understand why #WhiteHelmets are being defended by #Western capitals. They do not hide that they provided substantial financial support to this organization and instrumentalized it to pursue political goals under humanitarian cover. It’s logical to protect your asset.”

Last week, it came out that German reporter for Der Spiegel, Claas Relotius, winner of the German Reporter Award 2018, had falsified a number of his articles. One article on the fakery noted Relotius had:

Confessed to have fabricated at least 14 of 55 articles,” including a “story about a Syrian boy who believed he triggered the civil war in the country with his graffiti, an article that won the German Reporter Prize just three weeks ago but which was made up.”

Former German journalist, Udo Ulfkotte, in 2014 reached his tipping point and admitted to having for years lied for Western, anti-Russia interests, admitting to making propaganda against Russia after having been bribed by billionaires, and by the Americans, to “not to report exactly the truth.”

As 2018, a year of staggering corporate media fake news draws to a close, so do the last vestiges of credibility of media lauding the White Helmets.

Given the scandalous depth of their lies, it is unlikely corporate journalists will have an Ulfkotte moment and admit to their manifold deceptions.

But it doesn’t really matter, because more and more, Western corporate media, and the propaganda construct known as the White Helmets they support, are becoming irrelevant.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine. She is a recipient of the International Journalism Award for International Reporting. Visit her personal blog, In Gaza, and support her work on Patreon.

Source | RT

Source: 21st Century Wire
As the conflict in Syria gradually draws down, more revelations are surfacing regarding the US and UK-backed pseudo NGO commonly known as the White Helmets.

The following UN presentation details many of the groups exploits, including staged rescues which were tailor-made for the group’s various propaganda films disseminated across western mainstream media. Testimonies included 21WIRE reporter Vanessa Beeley, along with witness statements taken from former White Helmet members who admit to carrying out various frauds and crimes perpetrated since the group’s inception in 2013, as well as admissions of their direct links to Jabat al-Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria) and other known terrorist groups.

Far from being the “tailors, bakers, teachers and other ordinary Syrians” which they regularly portray themselves, the White Helmets have instead been exposed as frauds, thieves, kidnappers and organ traffickers.

RT International reports…

The ‘White Helmets’ are not a rescue group but an extension of jihadist militants, and should be designated a terrorist organization, Russia’s envoy to the UN argued at the presentation of evidence into the group’s wrongdoing.

Praised in the West as humanitarian rescue volunteers, in reality the ‘White Helmets’ work with Islamist militants in Syria, harvest organs from the victims they pretend to be “rescuing,” stage false chemical weapons and other attacks for cameras, and loot the bodies and homes of Syrians killed and injured in the war, according to Maxim Grigoriev, director of the Russia-based Foundation for the Study of Democracy.

Watch the full presentation with multiple researchers sharing findings into activities of the ‘White Helmets’ in Syria at UN headquarters in New York City: Presentation at UN on WH

Grigoriev presented the results of the Foundation’s research into White Helmets at the UN headquarters in New York on Thursday. Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said the evidence shows the group is dangerous.

“The White Helmets deserve to be on the United Nations’ designated terrorist list,” Nebenzia said.

Rather than volunteers, almost all the members of White Helmets were paid staff, Grigoriev explained. There is also “undeniable evidence” that the group has been taking written orders from Jaysh al‑Islam, an Islamist militant group most notorious for its occupation of Douma.

It was in this suburb of Damascus that the White Helmets staged the “chemical attack” that served as the pretext for French, UK and US missile strikes against the Syrian government in April this year.

“Falsification of chemical attacks was an essential part of the White Helmets’ activities,” Grigoriev testified, adding that the group also regularly engaged in “making fake news and organizing staged rescues.”

He cited a particular example of a place called Jisr al‑Haj in Aleppo, where the militants had set trash on fire, brought bodies from the local morgue, and had the White Helmets film a staged rescue. Grigoriev cited a testimony by a member of the White Helmets, who also said that everyone involved received an extra $50 for the effort.

Many local residents interviewed for the research spoke about people “rescued” by the White Helmets ending up dead, with their internal organs missing. One of the witnesses interviewed was a former member of Ahrar al-Sham, who testified that his commander Shadi Kadik, also known as Abu Adel Al-Halabi (of Aleppo), acknowledged the organ harvesting. The total number of cases involving organ theft is “at least several hundred” in Aleppo alone, Grigoriev testified.

Instead of rescuing civilians and children, the White Helmets looted homes damaged in the fighting and bodies of the dead, while forcing the children out of schools and kindergartens to set up offices there.

“At a rough estimate, out of 26 centers operating in Eastern Ghouta, ten were located in schools and one in a kindergarten,” Grigoriev cited from the testimony of a Syrian journalist in the area.

In Eastern Ghouta alone, between 100 and 150 members of White Helmets were also members of terrorist and militant groups. They engaged in building trenches, tunnels and fortifications for the militants, openly boasting about their membership on social media, but denying it whenever they were interviewed by Western reporters.

“Facebook accounts of members of the White Helmets are full of propagandist materials of terrorist groups, including [Islamic State] and al-Qaeda, praising Osama bin Laden and other individuals listed by the UN as terrorists,” Grigoriev said, adding that the so-called rescuers also posted “hundreds of photos with weapons in their hands.”

The Foundation is a member of the Global Counter-Terrorism Research Network established in 2013 by the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate. Its report is based on interviews with over 100 eyewitnesses, including 40 members of the White Helmets, 50 local residents and 15 former terrorist and militant fighters. More than 500 local residents were also surveyed in Aleppo and Deraa.

A number of Western countries, such as the UK and Canada, have proudly announced they would be accepting White Helmets as refugees, after several hundred members of the group were evacuated from a jihadist-held enclave in southern Syria ahead of the advancing government troops.

The government in Damascus considers the White Helmets to be in the same category as illegal militias and terrorists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaQFUA5Zf7U

By Tim Anderson
In late 2016, at the cost of many young lives, Syrian forces took back the eastern part of the city of Aleppo, occupied by NATO and Saudi backed terrorists for more than four years.

The liberation of Aleppo, Syria’s second city and an ancient marvel, represents the most serious setback for the 15-year long Washington-led aggression on the entire region. An effective recolonisation of the region has stretched from Afghanistan to Libya, under a range of false pretexts. Invasions and proxy wars have been backed by economic sanctions and wild propaganda.

But this great war of aggression – called the creation of ‘New Middle East’ by former US President George W. Bush – has hit a rock in Syria. The massive proxy armies bought and equipped by Washington and its regional allies the Saudis, Turkey, Qatar and Israel, have been beaten back by a powerful regional alliance which supports the Syrian nation.

The endgame in Aleppo involves a handful of foreign agents – US, Saudi, Israeli and others – said to remain with the last al Qaeda groups in a tiny part of what was once their stronghold. The US in particular is keen to secure their release, because their presence is further evidence of the foreign command of what was claimed to be a ‘civil war’.

After a storm of western government and media misinformation (claims of massacres, mass executions and ‘civilians targeted’) over the evacuation of around 100,000 civilians and many thousands of terrorists, the UN Security Council authorised some ‘independent observers’ to monitor the process. However most of that evacuation is now over. Resettlement and reconstruction is already underway, and army reserves have been called up to defend the city.

Syrian, Iranian, Russian and independent reporters (including Maytham al Ashkar, Shadi Halwi, Asser Khatab, Khaled Alkhateb, Ali Musawi, Lizzie Phelan, Murad Gazdiev, Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett and the late Mohsen Khazaei) have already told us quite a lot. What they said bore little resemblance to the western apocalyptic stories. For example, outgoing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, a close ally of Washington, claimed in his last press conference that ‘Aleppo is now a synonym for hell’. Those claims were based on stories from NATO’s desperate jihadists.

Reporters on the ground told a different story. As Syrian forces smashed the al Qaeda lines, the trapped civilians streamed out. They published video of long lines of people leaving east Aleppo and finding relief, food and shelter with the Syrian Arab Army. Tired and relieved, they told their stories to anyone who cared to listen. Russia and Iran gave many tonnes of food, clothing, blanket and shelter aid. By contrast, western countries generally gave nothing and the terror groups rejected all aid from the Syrian alliance.

Civilians were prohibited from leaving the al Qaeda enclave, many were shot dead when they tried to do so. The armed gangs had food reserves but kept it for their fighters. Arms factories including toxic chemicals were found and were being made safe. Some of the armed men were taken into custody, but most were shipped out to Idlib, where Damascus has been concentrating the foreign-backed fighters.

When the hell canons fell silent, and no more home-made gas cylinder mortars landed in the heart of the city, there was elation and dancing in the streets, shown widely on social media. The US State Department spokesman claimed he had not seen this.

Al Qaeda in Aleppo was crushed. All the anti-Syrian government armed groups in Aleppo were either the ‘official’ al Qaeda in Syria (Jabhat al Nusra aka Jaysh Fateh al Sham) or deeply embedded associates. When the US pretended to suppress Jabhat al Nusra in 2012 and 2016, all the ‘Free Syrian Army’ groups protested, saying ‘we are all Jabhat al Nusra’. One might have thought that the US Government – which once claimed to be engaged in a global war against terrorism, in the name of 3,000 people murdered in New York back in September 2001 – would be as elated as those on the streets of Aleppo. They were not.

Much of the western media, reflecting their governments, solemnly reported on ‘the fall of Aleppo’. The Syrian victory over the al Qaeda groups was a great tragedy, they said. On the other hand, the near simultaneous recapture of Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra, by the eastern al Qaeda group ISIS, was reported differently. That city was said to have been ‘retaken’.

All this underlines what should have been an obvious point, admitted by many US officials, that every single armed group in Syria (whether ‘moderate’ or ‘extremist’) has been armed and financed by the US and its allies, in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian Government. All the talk about ‘moderate rebels’, a ‘brutal regime’ and a ‘civil war’ just tries to hide this.

The final evacuations of Aleppo – which included an exchange of civilians besieged for 20 months in the Idlib towns of Faoua and Kafraya for remaining NATO-jihadists in eastern Aleppo – were organised between Russia and Turkey. There was some serious sabotage of these agreements, but the understandings have so far stayed on track. Now Iran is engaged with Russia and Turkey, in three way talks. Practical matters are being discussed.

It is notable that the Obama administration is playing no direct constructive role in the endgame over Aleppo. Its ‘regime change’ proxy war on Syria is failing and, in its place, the incoming Washington regime promises a new approach. More importantly, a new regional alliance has formed to reject any new aggression from the colonial powers.

Many things have changed during the war on Syria. The Syrian alliance has beaten back powerful NATO-GCC forces. The Muslim Brotherhood and its patrons in Egypt, Qatar and Turkey have received another beating. Egypt and Iraq now support Syria. The Saudis have joined with Israel against Iran and Syria. Russia has built stronger bonds with Syria and Iran. The Arab League, having backed the destruction of two Arab states, seems all but dead. Will the new, enhanced ‘Axis of Resistance’ take its place?

By Vanessa Beeley
Jibreen East #Aleppo. Today we visited the area that welcomes the civilians who have escaped from NATO and Gulf State funded terrorist imprisonment in districts of East Aleppo.

In this area, civilians are given food, medical care and assessment and they register with the Syrian authorities before joining families in West Aleppo or entering the IDP camps in Jibreen. Those families who dont have IDs are given a paper that enables them to travel in Syria until their IDs are replaced.

We were told that up until today, 95,000 civilians had been registered, from East Aleppo. This number can probably be increased by a further 10% as some women and children had gone directly to their families in West Aleppo without registering.

We were confronted by emaciated, exhausted children. Mothers whose sons had been murdered by the terrorists for no reason. Syrian civilians, sick and malnourished, broke down in tears as they recounted the atrocities they had suffered at the hands of these so called “moderate rebels”.

One woman started talking and burst into tears, the relief of getting out of East Aleppo was too much for her and the horror she had lived through overwhelmed her. The terrorists had murdered two of her 12 sons because her other sons were fighting in the Syrian army. She had been sick for many months but she said no civilians were treated in the makeshift terrorist field hospitals, only fighters were given any help.

She wept again when I asked her what she though of the western media narrative, that the SAA were killing civilians. She said quite simply “yesterday we were in Hell, today our life begins again”.

I will be writing up all testimonies and uploading all video interviews…but please dont fall for the corporate media lies based on spurious sources, the majority of whom are now in Turkey, fake photos and evil propaganda that works only to ensure the perpetual misery of the Syrian people.

I was allowed into one of the Russian field hospitals on site..Russian doctors were efficiently and kindly treating all manner of injuries. One young man, skin and bones, had great difficulty breathing. Another was having a dressing changed on an open wound on his leg. Russian doctors were administering clean bandages with no fake blood or special effects. This was real humanitarianism in action.

Photo: Vanessa Beeley #Aleppo

By: Tim Anderson
Source: TeleSur
Looking at a photo of a shell-shocked child, Tim Anderson asks the most important question: “Who took it?”

Within days of appealing for humanitarian help to global audiences, through a picture of injured 4 year old boy Omran Daqneesh, the very same group of ‘jihadists’ in Aleppo were publicly cutting the throat of 10 year old Palestinian boy Abdallah Issa.

The western-backed armed gangs tried to blame Syrian and Russian air raids for Omran’s injuries. However Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the Russian air force “never work on targets within residential areas … [especially not in] al-Qaterji, mentioned by the Western media, as it is adjacent to the exit corridors for locals which were opened in the framework of the Russian humanitarian mission.” Western media ignored the statement.

This is today’s ‘humanitarian war’ and its propaganda. Sectarian mercenaries commit a series of horrific crimes, publicly boast about them, then blame Syrian forces either for those same crimes or for attacking ‘civilians.’ There is no accountability for partisanship and repeated fabrications because of the close links the terrorists enjoy with their sponsor states and embedded media channels, such as al Jazeera and CNN.

The images of little Omran, put out by jihadist support groups, gained widespread attention from the western media, which has backed the sectarian gangs through more than five years of brutal terrorist war. On the other hand, video of the murder of little Abdallah was largely ignored, or scorned with claims that the boy was really 18 years old, or a spy for the pro-Syria Palestinian militia Liwa al-Quds.

The child throat cutters were from a U.S.-armed group Noureddin al Zinki, mostly based in East Aleppo and now under siege from Syrian forces. The U.S. State Department claimed it was considering a ‘pause’ in its support for al-Zinki, pending confirmation of the story.

The principal photographer of Omran was Mahmoud Rslan, according to his social media posts a close friend and admirer of al-Zinki, a self-described ‘media activist’ and member of the U.S.-funded Aleppo Media Centre.

Rslan told U.S. media that U.S. and U.K. funded group ‘The White Helmets’ carried out the rescue of Omran, adding that ‘the tears started to drop as I took the photo’. There is no record of whether he cried when his close friends murdered little Abdallah.

The White Helmets have presented themselves as heroes of the war on Syria, as independent and humanitarian medical rescue workers. In fact, as writer Vanessa Beeley and film-maker Steve Ezzedine have pointed out, the group is closely linked to Jabhat al Nusra, and has participated in sectarian rallies and executions. While the group denies receiving government funds, the U.K. and U.S. government have admitted paying it tens of millions of dollars.

Soon after Rslan’s links to al-Zinki were exposed he removed the pictures of the terrorist group’s flag and ‘martyrs’ from the banner of his Facebook page (now offline). But screen shots of his page show him calling dead al Zinki fighters “martyrs of free information in Aleppo,” while showing pictures of his own “beautiful moments … [with] the frontline heroes who are rolling back Assad.” Apart from the ‘viral’ photo of Omran, video scenes of the supposed rescue were posted online by the Aleppo Media Centre.

What is the Aleppo Media Centre (AMC) and who are these ‘media activists’? According to the shadowy, Washington-based ‘Syrian Expatriates Organization’, it has coordinated and provided technical and financial aid to the AMC since October 2012. The SEO, in turn, receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from un-named sources. In its 2014 annual report the SEO lists its main areas of humanitarian and development work as Raqqa, Moaddamia, Idlib and Douma: areas dominated by ISIS, al Nusra and other sectarian killers.

Like many other U.S.-created front groups (The Syrian Campaign, the White Helmets), the SEO is committed to the overthrow of the Syrian Government. That also happens to be the aim of the U.S. Government and its longer standing periphery of ‘embedded’ NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (USA).

Petitions from academics and Nobel Prize winners have condemned the ‘revolving door’ for officials who move to and from these groups to the US State Department. Indeed it is notable that the main advocates of this style of ‘humanitarian’ proxy war, as practised against Libya and Syria, come from the ‘liberal’ side of western politics. That is why we see the New York Times and the UK Guardian in the front line of war propaganda against Syria.

Humanitarian intervention also seems to appeal to Amnesty International, which in 1990 backed the false pretexts for the first Gulf War, then supported the false pretexts for NATO’s 2011 bombing of Libya. In 2012 the group praised NATO’s ten year occupation of Afghanistan, with the claim that it was advancing women’s rights. In Syria, Amnesty has consistently misrepresented the proxy war.

Nevertheless, we must admit that the war propaganda of Washington and its allies, designed to confuse and deflect attention from the horrendous crimes of their own proxy armies, has been quite successful. The myths of a ‘civil war’, of ‘moderate rebels’ and of a Syrian Army doing nothing but ‘targeting civilians’ persist. This is despite open admissions from the most senior of U.S. officials that they and their close allies (mainly the Saudis, Turkey and Qatar) have funded every single terrorist group in Syria, specifically to overthrow the government led by President Bashar al Assad. That is not too complicated. Yet admissions and evidence have little to do with the wartime narrative.

The actual character of the war on Syria involves the great powers using the most reactionary forces in the region (sectarian mercenaries, drawing on Saudi-wahhabi ideology) to destroy yet another independent state.

In reality there has really only been one war in the Middle East over the past 15 years. This new ‘great game’ was unleashed by the Bush regime in 2001, trampling Afghanistan and Iraq, stalking Iran, including Israel’s failure to crush Hezbollah and Obama’s destruction of little Libya.

Yet with the growth of the Syrian alliance this great game has hit a wall. A realignment of forces in the region means the plan is set to unravel.

“Tim Anderson is an Australian academic and writer. A Senior Lecturer a the University of Sydney, he researches, writes and teaches in the areas of economic and human development, international cooperation, self-determination and development stategy. Author and co-author of a number of articles and books, including, Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea, and The Dirty War on Syria.“<strong