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

Moon of Alabama
This pic is making the rounds in “western” media together with a tearful story from “activists” in a neighborhood in al-Qaeda occupied east-Aleppo.

A boy, seemingly wounded, sits quietly in a brand new, very well equipped ambulance. At a point he touches what looks like a wound on his left temple. He shows no reaction to that touch.

The two minute video (also here), from which the pic is taken, shows the boy being handed from the dark above to some person in a rescue jacket and carried into the ambulance. There he sits quietly, unattended, while several people take videos and pictures of him. One other kids, not obviously wounded, is then carried to the ambulance.

As the story is told:

Mahmoud Raslan, a photojournalist who captured the image, told the Associated Press that emergency workers and journalists tried to help the child, identified as 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh, along with his parents and his three siblings, who are 1, 6 and 11 years old.

“We were passing them from one balcony to the other,” Raslan said, adding: “We sent the younger children immediately to the ambulance, but the 11-year-old girl waited for her mother to be rescued. Her ankle was pinned beneath the rubble.”

An internet search for “Mahmoud Raslan”, the claimed “photojournalist”, finds no other pictures or videos attributed to that name.

There are about 15 men standing around the scene and doing nothing. (Next to a “just bombed” site in a warzone? No fear of a double-tap strike?) At least two more men, besides the videographer, are taking pictures or videos.

Another kid is carried into the ambulance. In the background there is someone with a white helmet wearing a shirt of the U.S./UK financed “White Helmets” propaganda group.

An animated wounded man is walked towards the ambulance.

Like the boy, the man seems to have a wound at the upper head. But like the boy he is not bleeding at all. There is some red colored substance on his face but no blood is flowing. That is astonishing. When I rode ambulances as a first-responder, people with head wounds always bled like stuck pigs (they often messed up the car which I then had to clean). As WebMD notes:

Minor cuts on the head often bleed heavily because the face and scalp have many blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. Although this amount of bleeding may be alarming, many times the injury is not severe …

The amount of red colored substance on the boy and the man do not correspond to the amount one would expect from even a minor head wound. There are also no bandages applied or anything else that could have been used to stop an actual head wound from bleeding.

Compare the above to this recent picture from a boy in west-Aleppo [see boy on left of insert pic]. (No “western” media showed this boy and his suffering. He is not on “our side”.) The boy suffered a head wound after an improvised missile from al-Qaeda and its associates hit his neighborhood. He is in care, the bleeding has been stopped. The amount of blood on his body and soaked into his cloth is a multiple of that seen in the above pictures. The blood is also mixed with the other dirt on his face, not painted over. This looks like those patients in my ambulance. This looks real.

All attributes of the “boy on orange seat” scene and of the video are the same that can be found in dozens of “White Helmets” videos. It is the same theme that occurs over and over again in our picture collection Dramatic Rescue! Man With Kid Runs Towards Camera!.

I am inclined to believe that the video above is just as staged as the other “White Helmets” videos and pictures. The look of the boy’s wound is a bit more realistic than usual but the lack of bleeding, that no one attends to the boy, his non-reaction to touching the “wound” and the general setting of the video scene lets me believe that it is staged.

This new, widely distributed propaganda item comes again at a moment where al-Qaeda and its associates in Syria are in trouble. The Russian air force is hitting them in the rear area of their attack on west-Aleppo and it is hurting them badly. A “humanitarian ceasefire”, which can then be used to reorganize and resupply, is urgently needed. The propaganda helps to increase the pressure for such a demand.

Some of its sponsors want the “White Helmets” nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The organization itself lobbies for it on its website. Has anyone else ever done such?

Have they no shame asking themselves for the prize?…

But why not? Obama was nothing more than a marketed product when was handed the Peace Nobel. He then bombed people in seven Muslim dominated countries to dust. There is no good reason then to not give that prize to yet another propaganda tool which also wants more war.

Then again, I find a nomination for the Academy Awards, maybe in the category of “Best Marketed Fakes”, more appropriate.

By Prof. Tim Anderson
Source: Global Research
Over April-May dozens of people were murdered across Aleppo as civilian areas and major hospitals were bombed by the NATO-backed ‘rebel’ groups.

They were even filmed firing their ‘hell cannons’ and saying “throw it on the civilians”

Meanwhile, western media ran fantasy stories about the besieged city.

If you believed the western corporate media you might think that the Syrian Government, for some unknown reason, has been bombing its own hospitals, and had killed Aleppo’s only paediatric surgeon. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Aleppo faces a large operation by the Syrian Army, after the liberation of Palmyra on 28 March, to reclaim those sections of the city held by Islamist fighters since 2012. Almost half Aleppo’s population has been displaced because of the fighting, but there are still about 1.8 million residents.

The withdrawal of the Saudi-backed ‘High Negotiations Committee’ from the Geneva peace talks on 21 April was followed the very next day by a pre-emptive counter-offensive. Many hundreds of rockets were fired into government-held areas by a coalition led by the internationally banned terrorist organisation Jabhat al Nusra.

These attacks came mostly from ‘hell cannons’, which shoot large gas canisters filled with explosives and at times chemicals. They caused havoc, killing and wounding many people in the streets, residential areas, schools and hospitals. The Syrian Army responded by shelling the al Nusra hideouts.

Aleppo Doctor Dr Nabil Antaki Information Clearing House estimates that 1.5 million live in the government controlled western parts of the city, with another 300,000 in the Islamist controlled mostly eastern areas. Dr Antaki complains bitterly that the western media “only talk about loss of life in east of Aleppo which is entirely controlled by al Nusra. The three quarters of Aleppo under Syrian Government control, where numerous paediatricians are practising are of no consequence”.

He was referring to the string of NATO-Islamist bomb attacks on major state hospitals including Ibn Rushd, al Dabbit and al Razi. Many dozens of people were killed and injured. Those attacks were filmed by Syrian and Russian people on the ground, but very little of this reached the western media.

Photo caption: Aleppo Medical Association doctors stand with Syrian soldiers, demanding an end to the western mis-information about Aleppo attacks.

Dr Antaki wasn’t the only Aleppo doctor who was upset. The Aleppo Medical Association, on its Facebook page denounced the western propaganda campaign Facebook Album

Twenty doctors in front of the heavily damaged al Dabbit Hospital declared their support for the Syrian Army. Their signs – in English, Italian and German as well as Arabic – read: ‘Syrian Arab Army represents me’, ‘Long live Syria, long live Aleppo’, ‘Terrorists are killing our children’, ‘Armed opposition is destroying our civilisation’, ‘No for armed opposition’.

Yet the story of Russian or Syrian air attacks on the ‘al Quds hospital’ gained prominence in the western media. Stories were fuelled with information from the French group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors without Borders) and the US Government funded group the ‘White Helmets’ (who you can see celebrating their ‘revolution’ with Jabhat al Nusra here: White Helmets). CCTV showed people leaving this ‘hospital’ before an explosion.

The building is in the southern al-Sukkari district, which has been a stronghold of Jabhat al Nusra for some years. Many Aleppans had never heard of ‘al Quds hospital’. Dr Antaki says: ‘This hospital did not exist before the war. It must have been installed in a building after the war began”. MSF reports seem to confirm this.

This facility was not a state run or registered facility. Nevertheless, MSF representatives Pablo Marco and Muskilda Zancada claimed: “Al Quds hospital has been functional for more than 4 years so it was basically impossible that this information was not known … the facts are pointing to this being a deliberate attack” (Dissident Voice).

Photo caption: NATO-GCC backed terrorists in Aleppo load their weapon of choice, a ‘hell cannon’

Indeed, MSF-backed medical facilities in Syria have almost exclusively been in al Nusra held areas, such as Douma, north east of Damascus. Often they provide money but not doctors.

There is some debate as to whether clinics or hospitals run to service banned terrorist organisations have protection under international humanitarian law. Certainly US law does not allow it. A few years back the US jailed US doctor Rafig Sabir for 25 years after it emerged he had been ‘on call’ to treat al Qaeda fighters in Saudi Arabia (Caselaw).

Registered hospitals certainly do have such protection, and it is a crime to attack them. However this protection disappears when the facility becomes militarised. ‘Civilian objects are protected against attack, unless and for such time as they are military objectives’ (icrc).

Nevertheless, all three air forces that claim to be bombing terrorist groups in Syria – Russia, Syria and the USA – denied involvement in the ‘al Quds hospital’ incident. The US has engaged in bombing some areas around Aleppo (RT), but is not known to have carried out attacks on Jabhat al Nusra. That group is well embedded with the proxy armies Washington likes to call ‘moderate rebels’.

Photo caption: ‘al Quds hospital’: not quite a pile of rubble, nor a designated hospital

There were other serious discrepancies in the ‘al Quds hospital’ story. Pablo Marco for MSF told CNN and PBS that “there were two barrel bombs that fell close to the hospital … then the third barrel bomb fell in the entrance”. Barrel bombs are dropped by helicopters. Yet the MSF press release spoke of an “airstrike … [which] brought down the building … leaving a pile of rubble”. Reports of the death toll ranged from 14 to 50.

However that building is not a pile of rubble. As Rick Sterling pointed out in his 7 May ‘Open letter to MSF’ (Open Letter to MSF), photos show that the facility is still standing and it appears to be a heavily sand-bagged residential building, “a medical clinic in the ground floor of an unmarked and largely abandoned apartment building” ().

Even more damaging for the MSF story is the report that Russian satellite imagery shows the damaged building was in much the same state back on 15 October last year. If this is correct, the MSF-backed ‘al Quds hospital’, apparently a field clinic for al Nusra fighters and their families, suffered no attack on 27 April.

The scale of coverage of the ‘al Quds hospital’ story obscured the ugly fact that several much larger, real public hospitals in Aleppo were actually being bombed by the al Qaeda groups. The former story covered up these poorly reported massacres. It is not that there was no western coverage of the real hospital attacks, the coverage was just removed to the very margins of western headlines.

Take the devastating bombing of al Razi hospital, which Al Alam reported as killing 4 and wounding 38 (http://en.alalam.ir/news/1812988), in days of ‘rebel’ shelling which left 57 dead and 150 injured. The Wall Street Journal mentioned western Aleppo casualties and al Razi in an article which led by blaming Russia for the alleged ‘airstrike’ on ‘al Quds hospital’. The WSJ spent the next 28 paragraphs on that incident. Buried at paragraph 30 was this reference, from an anti-Syrian source: “shells had [also] hit the Al-Razi Hospital, a facility in a government-held neighbourhood where many wounded were being treated” (Airstrike on Hospital).

The bombing of al Dabbit hospital did make it into the UK Independent. This hospital was said to be in ‘regime controlled Aleppo’; apparently it pains them to say ‘Syrian government’. The report opened: “At least 19 civilians have been killed at a hospital and other parts of government-controlled Aleppo in shelling attributed to Islamist rebels” (Aleppo Bombing).

The Syrian news agency SANA reported on 3 May that the death toll from the bombing of al Dabbit hospital had risen to 16 dead and 68 injured (SANA).

Hardly mentioned in the western media was the bombing of the large Ibn Rushd hospital, but the Russian TV channel ANNA filmed the actual bombing and Latin American media ran that video (Ibn Rushd Hospital).

The attacks on Aleppo were extensive, well beyond hospitals. Vicar of Aleppo Mons. Georges Abou Khazen said “we have been under continuous bombardment over the past few days in Aleppo with civilian deaths, injuries and destruction”. He pointed his finger at the front backed by the West, along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, saying that “These bombings … are from the front of the so-called ‘moderates’ and … in reality [they] are no different from other jihadists [Islamic State (IS) and the Nusra Front]” (Asia News).

I wrote back in January 2014 (Global Research) that the al Qaeda groups’ attacks on Syria’s health system were far more systematic that any one incident could explain.

In just the first three years of this war, before ISIS came to Syria, the NATO and Gulf monarchy-backed armed groups had systematically attacked more than two thirds of Syria’s public hospitals, and had murdered, kidnapped or injured more than 300 health workers.

When an Australian delegation met Syria’s then Health Minister Dr Sa’ad al Nayef on 22 December 2013 he told us that foreign backed terrorists had just detonated two truck bombs, completely destroying Aleppo’s al Kindi hospital, one of the biggest anti-cancer centres in the Middle East. All health workers inside were killed in the blast. Dr Malek Ali, Syria’s then Minister for Higher Education added that Al-Kindi was a functioning educational hospital co-managed by his ministry. You can see one of the suicide truck bomb attacks here, proudly cheered on in the Jabhat al Nusra video: al Nusra

In an Orwellian revision of events the BBC (21 December 2013) reported the destruction of Al-Kindi with the headline: “Syria rebels take back strategic hospital in Aleppo”. The introduction claimed the “massive suicide lorry bomb” had managed “to seize back a strategic ruined hospital occupied by Assad loyalists.” Al-Kindi was said to have been “a disused building” and “according to an unconfirmed report, 35 rebels died in the attack”.

In fact, these ‘rebels’ were a coalition of Free Syrian Army and Jabhat al Nusra, while the ‘Assad loyalists’ were the staff and security guards of a large public hospital.

Dr al Nayef told us that, since March 2011, 67 of the country’s 94 national hospitals had been attacked and damaged, with 41 out of service. 174 health workers had been killed, 127 wounded and 33 kidnapped. Further, 1921 primary health centres had been damaged, and 678 were out of service. 421 ambulances had been lost or were out of service, and 197 support vehicles had been damaged, with 169 out of service.

The scale of destruction of health facilities, combined with attacks on pharmaceutical factories, schools, universities and civilians shows the armed groups have been intent on destroying a functioning state, with no interest in trying to win public support.

The Health Minister showed us a video of the FSA (Farouk Brigade) blowing up Homs National Hospital in April 2012, another of damage to Al- Salamiyeh National Hospital (in Hama) after an attack in January 2013 and a third of the damage to Al Zahrway Hospital (in Damascus) after yet another terrorist attack in May 2013.

He also gave us details of the 26 November 2013 terrorist attack on Deir-Ateya Hospital in Rural Damascus, where 11 medical staff (2 Anesthesiologists, 3 Resident doctors, 4 Nurses and 2 Drivers) were stabbed to death.

The al Qaeda attacks are often accompanied by skilled social media campaigns, assisted by western created agencies such as the White Helmets. In her article titled ‘The storm of lies surrounding Syria’s humanitarian crisis: Aleppo Is Burning campaign calls for Syria no-fly zone’, investigative journalists Vanessa Beeley has compiled some of those campaigns in the ‘Aleppo Hospital’ smokescreen.

By Eva Bartlett
Source: In Gaza WordPress
This page will continue to expand as more so-called “Human Rights” groups are outed for propagating anti-Syria war rhetoric and false allegations against the Syrian government and Syrian Arab Army. As it is, the list of players is quite extensive. Below, I’ll list the known HR front people and groups (many, if not most, with links to the US State Department and criminals like George Soros). As Rick Sterling wrote in his “Humanitarians for War on Syria” (March 2015):

“A massive campaign in support of foreign intervention against Syria is underway. The goal is to prepare the public for a “No Fly Zone” enforced by US and other military powers. This is how the invasion of Iraq began. This is how the public was prepared for the US/NATO air attack on Libya.

The results of western ‘regime change’ in Iraq and Libya have been disastrous. Both actions have dramatically reduced the security, health, education and living standards of the populations, created anarchy and mayhem, and resulted in the explosion of sectarianism and violence in the region. Now the Western/NATO/Israeli and Gulf powers, supported by major intervention-inclined humanitarian organizations, want to do the same in Syria.”

*

The Players:

–Avaaz: “Avaaz is an online lobby organization founded in 2007 by Jeremy Heimans (now CEO of Purpose) and others. Start-up funding was provided by George Soros’ foundation. …they have been prominent in promoting neoliberal foreign policies in keeping with the U.S. State Department. …Avaaz very actively promoted a No Fly Zone in Libya. They are now very actively promoting the same for Syria. In-depth research and exposure of Avaaz can be found here. The titles give some indication: “Faking It: Charity Communications in the Firing Line”, “Syria: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire”, “Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps for Militarism”. Avaaz justifies its call for No Fly Zone in part on White Helmets. Given the close interconnections between Avaaz and Purpose, they are surely aware that White Helmets is a media creation. This calls into question their sincerity.” [citation from: Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators White Helmets, Avaaz, Nicholas Kristof and Syria No Fly Zone]

–Amnesty International: “Amnesty does take money from both governments and corporate-financier interests, one of the most notorious of which, Open Society, is headed by convicted financial criminal George Soros (whose Open Society also funds Human Rights Watch and a myriad of other “human rights” advocates). Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, for instance was drawn directly from the US State Department …Amnesty International’s website specifically mentions Nossel’s role behind US State Department-backed UN resolutions regarding Iran, Syria, Libya, and Cote d’Ivoire… Nossel’s “contributions” then are simply to dress up naked military aggression and the pursuit of global corporate-financier hegemony with the pretense of “human rights” advocacy.” [citation from: Amnesty International is US State Department Propaganda]

–Human Rights Watch: “Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an integral part of the West’s propaganda machine.
HRW shapes the narratives of conflicts, narratives which become solidified through repetition, and which eventually become regarded as undeniable facts. Moreover, the language HRW employs, far from being simply stylistic choices, is deliberately utilized to obscure the reality of war zones in the service of the Empire. This is undoubtedly the case with the Israel/Palestine conflict where Israeli actions are never outright war crimes, while Palestinian ones are. It is equally true of Ukraine. This is also the case in Libya, Syria, and Venezuela, countries where HRW has played a critical role in constructing narratives in the interests of its financier and corporate paymasters, not to mention of course the US foreign policy agenda. In both Libya and Syria, HRW has played a critical role in propagandizing the western public against the governments of those countries, thereby justifying the imperialist assault on them. More than simply “collecting the facts,” HRW cobbled together a completely distorted, and in many cases utterly dishonest and factually wrong, narrative which has buttressed the case for “intervention” in Syria, as it did in Libya….Human Rights Watch is undeniably an appendage of US foreign policy. It is in many ways part of the “soft power” arm of US power projection, a means of delegitimizing, demonizing, and otherwise destabilizing countries that do not play ball with the US.” [citation from: HRW: Human Rights Watch or Hypocrites Representing Washington (Part 2)]

–Ken Roth: “Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, has been vocal in his support for a full scale war on Syria in the name of humanitarianism. Roth has repeatedly called for intervention against the legal government of Syria, having recently tweeted statements such as “Like Sarajevo, could Douma market slaughter finally force Assad to stop targeting civilians?” (@KenRoth, Aug 16). The implication of the statement is quite clear: there should be military intervention, such as the US-NATO war on Yugoslavia and later Serbia, in order to stop the “slaughter” of civilians. It should be noted that this tweet was posted within hours of the news of the incident in Douma long before any investigation. Roth, and by extension his organization Human Rights Watch, further discredits whatever vestiges of impartiality he and HRW might have had with inane tweets such as “Douma market killings show how Assad chooses to fight this war: deliberately against civilians,” (@KenRoth, Aug 16), an obviously biased, and utterly unsubstantiated allegation. Roth could have absolutely no knowledge of either the identities of the dead, or the Syrian government’s motives, when he released the tweet the same day as the attack. He reveals himself here to be little more than a lackey for imperialism, a war hawk masquerading as a human rights defender.” [citation from: The Douma Market Attack: a Fabricated Pretext for Intervention?]

–Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders: “Doctors Without Borders is fully funded by the very same corporate financier interests behind Wall Street and London’s collective foreign policy, including regime change in Syria and neighboring Iran. Doctors Without Borders’ own annual report (2010 report can be accessed here), includes as financial donors, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, and a myriad of other corporate-financier interests. Doctors Without Borders also features bankers upon its Board of Advisers including Elizabeth Beshel Robinson of Goldman Sachs. Complicating further Doctors Without Borders so-called “independent” and “aid” claims is the fact that their medical facilities are set up in terrorist held regions of Syria, especially along Syria’s northern border with NATO-member Turkey. In an interview with NPR, Doctors Without Borders’ Stephen Cornish revealed the nature of his organization’s involvement in the Syrian conflict, where he explains that aid is being sent to regions outside of the Syrian government’s control, and that his organization is in fact setting up facilities in these areas….In other words, the Wall Street-funded organization is providing support for militants armed and funded by the West and its regional allies, most of whom are revealed to be foreign fighters, affiliated with or directly belonging to Al Qaeda and its defacto political wing, the Muslim Brotherhood. This so-called “international aid” organization is in actuality yet another cog in the covert military machine being turned against Syria and serves the role as a medical battalion.” [citation from: “Doctors” Behind Syrian Chemical Weapons Claims are Aiding Terrorists]

–Physicians for Human Rights (PHR): “They make bold but sometimes inaccurate assertions….A recent PHR press release is headlined “New Map shows Government Forces Deliberately Attacking Syria’s Medical System.” It looks slick and impressive but is inaccurate. For example, one of the most dramatic attacks on a Syrian hospital was the suicide bombing of Al Kindi Hospital in Aleppo. Yet the PHR map shows the attack having been carried out by “government forces.” Readers are encouraged to look at the 3 minute rebel video of the suicide attack which leaves no doubt who was responsible.” [citation from: About Those Chlorine Gas Attacks in Syria]

–PURPOSE Inc.: “This is an international PR firm. CEO is Jeremy Heimans, a co-founder of Avaaz. President is Kevin Steinberg, previous CEO of World Economic Forum USA (antithesis of World Social Forum). Their website describes their goal: “Purpose builds and accelerates movements to tackle the world’s biggest problems.” In this case the “problem” is reluctance to take over Syrian skies and land. For a hefty fee, “Purpose” will dupe the public and break down that reluctance. Toward that end, Purpose created “The Syria Campaign”.”” [citation from: Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators White Helmets, Avaaz, Nicholas Kristof and Syria No Fly Zone]

–“The Syria Campaign”: “The Syria Campaign began in spring 2014…The Syria Campaign is managed by Anna Nolan, who grew up in northern Ireland and has very likely never been to Syria. In addition to promoting the White Helmets, Syria Campaign promotes a new social media campaign called “Planet Syria”. It features emotional pleas for the world to take notice of Syria in another thinly veiled effort pushing for foreign intervention and war. According to their website, The Syria Campaign received start-up funding from the foundation of Ayman Asfari, a billionaire who made his money in the oil and gas services industry. …One of their first efforts was to work to prevent publicity and information about the Syrian Presidential Election of June 2014. Accordingly, “The Syria Campaign” pressured Facebook to remove advertisements or publicity about the Syrian election. Since then Syria Campaign has engineered huge media exposure and mythology about their baby, the “White Helmets” using all sorts of social and traditional media. The campaigns are largely fact free. For example, the Syrian election was dismissed out of hand by them and John Kerry but taken seriously by many millions of Syrians.” [citation from: Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators White Helmets, Avaaz, Nicholas Kristof and Syria No Fly Zone]

–White Helmets/”Syrian Civil Defence: “This is a new organization, highly publicized as civilian rescue workers in Syria. In reality the White Helmets is a project created by the UK and USA. Training of civilians in Turkey has been overseen by former British military officer and current contractor, James Le Mesurier. Promotion of the program is done by “The Syria Campaign” supported by the foundation of billionaire Ayman Asfari. The White Helmets is clearly a public relations project. …White Helmets work in areas of Aleppo and Idlib controlled by Nusra (Al Queda).” “White Helmets primary function is propaganda. White Helmets demonizes the Assad government and encourages direct foreign intervention. A White Helmet leader wrote a recent Washington Post editorial. White Helmets are also very active on social media with presence on Twitter, Facebook etc. According to their website, to contact White Helmets email The Syria Campaign which underscores the relationship.” [citations from: About Those Chlorine Gas Attacks in Syria & Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators White Helmets, Avaaz, Nicholas Kristof and Syria No Fly Zone]

by Rick Sterling
Source: Dissident Voice 9 April 2015