By Daniel Margrain
On September 16, 2013, the UN published its evidence in response to the claim that president Bashar al-Assad of Syria used chemical weapons in an attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Based on interviews with US intelligence and military insiders, Seymour Hersh, the journalist who revealed the role the United States played in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, was unequivocal in his assertion that the incident on August 21, 2013, was a false flag attack that was exploited politically by Obama in an attempt to deceive the world in making a cynical case for war.
This assertion was supported in April, 2016, by former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, who argued that the Turkish government, at the behest of Washington, engineered the chemical attacks in Ghouta in order to draw the United States into Syria. McGovern stressed that one of the Turkish journalists who exposed Turkey’s involvement in the alleged false flag attack has (as part of president Erdogan’s crackdown on independent journalism), been imprisoned and charged with treason.
Journalist Serena Shim‘s sources in the Southern Turkish province of Hatay appeared to corroborate the false flag thesis. The journalist cited local activists who claimed al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front insurgents transported chemical weapons to Syria from Turkey.
In its report entitled, The Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in the Ghouta Area, the UN did not, as the majority of the corporate media claimed, blame the Syrian president for the August 21, 2013 attack. One day after the incident, on August 22, 2013, the Guardian claimed there was not “much doubt” that Assad was to blame.
In an article for the same paper almost four years later (April 5, 2017), Jonathan Freedland, echoed the near-consensus view among the corporate mass media that Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad’s government was responsible for another alleged chemical gas atrocity, this time in Idlib province in the north of the country the previous day (April 4, 2017):
“We almost certainly know who did it. Every sign points to the regime of Bashar al-Assad”, he said.
What these ‘signs’ are were not specified in the article. Since the alleged attack over three months ago, there has not been a single piece of independently verifiable evidence that has been presented which alludes to Assad’s guilt.
Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News markets itself as a high grade impartial news broadcaster. On October 4, 2016, reporter, Krishnan Guru-Murthy described a rebel (Jihadist terrorist) “victory” in east Aleppo as “rebels fighting back against the forces of President Assad”. Guru-Murthy reported the battle from the narrow perspective of al-Qaeda and it was clear from his general tone to whom he intended his viewers sympathies to be aligned with.
Guru-Murthy’s embedded report also failed to mention that – as evidenced by the logo clearly displayed on a jacket of one of the individuals featured in the film – that the self-proclaimed ‘humanitarians’ depicted were in fact White Helmets inculcated with Harakat al-Nour al-Zenki, one of 22 brigades that operate in and around Aleppo that comprise one of many U.S. State Department-funded terrorist fighters.
Finally, the Channel 4 reporter omitted to mention that a video had surfaced shortly before the broadcast of the report in which Harakat al-Nour al-Zenki members were shown abusing and then beheading a child, Abdullah Issa, from a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Aleppo. Ten weeks later, on December 21, 2016, an observant commentator, Edward Laurance, inquired of Channel 4 News why it pulled its October, 4 film: “Would be interested to know why this film has disappeared without trace”, he said.
Getting involved in Syria
According to the Pew Research Journalism Project, “the No. 1 message” on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera, is that “the U.S. should ‘get involved’ in the conflict in Syria”. Although propaganda reports from the likes of Guru-Murthy are useful in terms of getting the public partially onside, they are on their own terms insufficient. A high level of public involvement is often achieved as the result of a singularly defining propaganda image or event. In terms of the first Gulf conflict, the event in question was the infamous nurse Nayirah affair. In relation to the 2003 Iraq invasion, it was the WMD debacle, and in Libya in 2011 it was the false claims of rape said to have been committed by Libyan government troops.
The image that probably more than any other captured the public imagination in relation to Syria, was that of a small boy, Omran Daqneesh, photographed covered in dust sitting on a chair which brought a CNN anchor to tears. The pro-regime change broadcaster, Al-Jazeera, produced what was clearly another piece of theatre, albeit far less convincing, in which the news anchor struggled not to laugh out loud live on air while interviewing the absurd figure, Abdulkafi Alhamdo, against a backdrop of a sound recording of explosions. This was reminiscent of CNNs “interview” with fake reporter and Western-funded propagandist, “Danny”.
Liberation
The media propaganda intensified in late November, 2016, following the trouncing of the UK-US and Saudi funded and trained salafist mercenary terrorists by joint Kurdish-Syrian government forces. During this time, these forces began liberating vast swaths of territory in east Aleppo including the Sakhour, Haydariya and Sheikh Fares neighbourhoods.
In the wake of the liberation, at least 120 British MPs backed a petition calling for the UK government to carry out “life-saving aid drops” (euphemism for the implementation of a no fly zone) over eastern Aleppo. Among the MPs demanding the “aid drops” was Labour’s Emily Thornberry, who in the House of Commons cited the White Helmets as the justification for advocating this course of action. On the November 28, 2016 edition of Sky News, journalist Sam Kiley described the re-capture of a third of east Aleppo as a “so-called liberation”, in addition to uttering the trigger phrase “Assad regime”.
The persistent Bana myth
Kiley’s source for his ambivalent statement was Fatemah Alabed, mother of seven year old, Bana Alabed. Bana, in whose name a twitter account was set up in September, 2016, allegedly in an “unknown east Aleppo neighbourhood” – and whose tweets have consistently focused on anti-Assad and anti-Russian themes and the need to be saved from bombing – has been uncritically endorsed throughout the corporate media. Bana has garnered celebrity status, her most notable fan being the author, J K Rowling. Bana and Rowling share the same talent agent.
Bana’s mastering of English idiomatic expressions on twitter is indicative of somebody who is fluent in the language. But her prompted robotic responses to questions by Sky News presenter, Alex Crawford, clearly suggests otherwise. In addition, the various inconsistencies in Bana’s twitter feed narrative reinforce the notion that the seven year old’s account – given the number of tweets – is being run by others out of Aleppo for nefarious purposes. It’s clear that the Bana project, like the White Helmets, is an extremely well-funded propaganda operation. As Dr Barbara McKenzie puts it:
“There can be no doubt that the Bana project is a scam. The tweets are not the thoughts of a little Syrian girl wanting the world to save her from Russian bombs. Rather, they are the product of a sophisticated and well-planned operation designed to shape public perception of the Syrian and Russian operations, in order to justify Western intervention in Syria and facilitate regime change.”
Tormenting the liberated
The media strategy used to achieve this has been to depict the Russian and Syrian forces as tormentors rather than liberators. This has been the mass corporate media’s overriding narrative throughout six years of conflict. It’s an inversion of truth that also typified BBC reportage on the liberation of east Aleppo.
The truthful narrative in which 18,000 civilians in east Aleppo had been liberated by Syrian and Russian forces from their Islamist fundamentalist captors, had been twisted in the media to one in which civilians had been “forced to flee” this part of the city as a result of it being “besieged” by government troops.
This kind of false propaganda is intended to demonize the Syrian’s and Russian’s and thus give new meaning to the unfolding of events.
Mosul: The double standards
The contrast between the media coverage of the alleged killing of forty-five civilians as they fled to a safe-haven corridor in east Aleppo, on the one hand, and the subsequent coverage of atrocities committed by Western-backed Shia terrorists in Mosul, on the other, is stark. While, the devastation of Mosul was described in the media as a “liberation”, the liberation of east Aleppo by Syrian government forces was described as a “devastation”.
In east Aleppo civilians were evacuated by Syrian forces through a safe-haven corridor in order to protect them against Western-backed Sunni fundamentalists. In Mosul, Western-backed Shia fundamentalists shot civilians on mass and threw others off a cliff. Channel 4 News journalist, Jon Snow, had the audacity to smear Aleppo MP, Fares Shehabi for defending his constituents against the former (see below), while no UK minister has been challenged by Snow, or anybody else, to justify their support for the latter.
Jon Snow – an apologist for salafist beheader’s?
This fake narrative of civilians being besieged by government forces was subsequently adopted by the liberal-left’s favourite ‘pinko’ journalist, Channel 4s Jon Snow. “Interviewing” Aleppo MP, Fares Shehabi on the November 30, 2016, edition of Channel 4 News, Snow introduced Shehabi as a “regime MP” and proceeded to announce to his viewers with apparent authority, that Syrian and Russian government forces were responsible for “bombing civilians from the air with barrel bombs”, killing forty-five of them as they attempted to flee to safety.
Snow’s evidence for this was that the Al-Qaeda-Al-Nusra Front propagandists, the White Helmets, who are embedded in terrorist-held eastern Aleppo, filmed what was purported to be the aftermath of the attack. Snow’s stenography underscored his subsequent independently unverified assertion that the Syrian civilian population held in captivity by salafist terrorist obscurantists on the UN terrorist list, “do not wish to live under Mr Assad, they do not wish to live under your [Assad’s] regime, they wish to be free (note how Snow repeats the propaganda ‘trigger term’, “regime”).
Presumably, Snow was unaware of General Martin Dempsey’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in September 2014, when the latter admitted he knew “major Arab allies who fund them [ISIS].”
Or perhaps he was ignorant of the information contained within a leaked US State Department memo, dated 17 August 2014, which states that:
“We [the United States] need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIS and other radical groups in the region.”
Or lastly, maybe Snow was unaware of the direct links between John McCain and ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in whose company he has been photographed (see below). If Snow had done his research, he would have known that McCain traveled to Aleppo in May, 2013 to arrange arms shipments to al-Qaeda and ISIS and that in early November, 2015, Joe Biden admitted that the Gulf Kingdoms Washington are aligned with, are among those supporting Islamist terrorists in Syria.
Leaving those rather awkward facts aside, Shehabi responded to Snow’s absurd claims by stating that Syria is not a regime “but a legitimate government fighting international terrorism.” For a population that supposedly doesn’t want to live under a president who Snow claimed was responsible for bombing them, the reaction among the 18,000 civilians who had at the time been liberated from terrorist controlled areas, belied that claim.
If the general public were to have been made aware of the significance of the jubilant scenes among the Syrian people in the aftermath of their liberation, it would have immediately brought the false propaganda perpetuated by the likes of Snow crashing down in flames.
Snow won’t settle
A snarling Snow, who must of been aware of these facts, looked on incredulously at his opposite number, the MP for Aleppo, and continuing, in no uncertain terms with his unsubstantiated allegations, stating: “Your own constituents, your own friends, have been killed by the government, flying planes, dropping barrel bombs.”
It’s inconceivable that somebody like Snow would direct a similar line of aggressive questioning to, say, French president, Macron, for speaking out against the terrorist threat posed by ISIS on the streets of Paris. But this was precisely the terrorist-apologist approach Snow undertook in relation to Mr Shehabi.
It is also unlikely that an establishment-embedded journalist like Snow would entertain the possibility that terrorists and Western-backed mercenaries, rather than Syrian government forces, could have killed forty-five civilians as part of a possible credible false flag attack.
In response to Snow’s independently unverified claim, an increasingly frustrated Shehabi, who clearly recognized that he had been set up, effectively accused Snow of being an apologist for the head-chopping salafist terrorists: “Look, if you are going to legitimize and beautify the existence of terrorist activity inside my city, you will not get any approval from me or any citizen in Aleppo”, he said.
It apparently hadn’t occurred to Snow that the rational explanation was that civilians were far more likely to have been killed by terrorist sniper fire as they approached the safe haven corridor controlled by the Syrian army, than they were by Syrian “barrel bombs”.
Seemingly undeterred, Snow continued to repeat similar soundbites to Shehabi as though the public at home watching needed to be reminded of the false propaganda one more time:
“You are the MP for Aleppo”, exclaimed Snow. “Your own constituents are dying from your own air force, and you don’t do anything about it.” He added: “You don’t seem to care a damn about your own constituents.”
Looking and sounding increasingly exasperated with Snow’s blatant one-sided line of aggressive questioning and baseless assertions, Shehabi, responded angrily: “Listen, this is absolutely false”, he retorted. “Our own civilians were being taken hostage, in the largest hostage-taking situation in the world by terrorists on the UN terrorist list.”
At this point Snow interrupted Shehabi, clearly realizing that such utterances of truth that have the potential of swaying public opinion towards the Syrian government position, cannot be tolerated by a British mainstream broadcaster. So Snow shifted the discussion towards another propaganda ‘trigger point’ – Aleppo hospitals.
Oblivious to the fact that the mainstream printed media had reported Russia’s alleged bombing of hospitals in eastern Aleppo on at least twenty separate occasions since 10 June, 2016, and that these hospitals have been turned into terrorist command centres and sniper towers, Snow snapped back at Shehabi, “Why do you bomb the hospitals in which your own constituents, your own civilians, are seeking aid to help them repair their wounds that your air force has inflicted?”, he remarked.
Shehabi, who by now seemed to be losing the will to live, exclaimed, “Your line of questioning is absurd.” On the basis of that fact alone, there would have likely been hundreds of thousands of people nodding in agreement at their TV screens.
Aleppo’s terrorist doctors
Evidence uncovered by Professor Tim Anderson, points to the fact that the Aleppo hospital claims are an imperialist smokescreen used to cover-up terrorist massacres in Syria. Dr. Hamza al-Khatib, who has been interviewed, uncritically, on Channel 4 News, after almost every alleged attack on an Aleppo hospital, was credited with filming “new pictures inside [Aleppo]” for the news broadcaster.
One of the images al-Khatib filmed for Channel 4 News was of Cardiologist, Dr. Abo Zaid.
Independent investigative journalist, John Delacour, uncovered information from the Revolutionary Forces of Syria Media Office (RES), which revealed that Zaid, as well as being a Cardiologist, is also a legal adviser to the Syrian government opposition, the FSA.
Neither this, nor the obvious conflict of interest issues that arose from images produced by al-Khatib, were explained during the Channel 4 report. When Delacour asked Chief Correspondent, Alex Thompson on twitter, the reason why viewers were presented with a deliberately under-exposed, darkened image of Zaid in his report, Thompson’s “reply” was to block him.
Inconvenient narratives or inconsistencies that independent journalists and ordinary members of the general public expose or attempt to legitimately challenge, are either shunned by many corporate journalists, or those concerned are smeared as “conspiracy theorists.” If the media were to accurately report that Syrian society is largely secular and its people unified behind their president in opposition to the mercenary terrorist forces the UK-US-Saudi governments fund and support, the entire media charade would collapse.
One of the media’s biggest lies is the notion that violent attacks against the Syrian people amounts to a “civil war” when in reality the violence is the consequence of a proxy war initiated and fueled by external mercenary forces. This is highlighted by the graphic below:
Source: Maytham
Dr Declan Hayes, who has experience on the ground in Syria, offers some additional insights:
“If this were a genuine revolution or revolt against a tyrannical regime, the sort of despots one gets in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait or Turkey, one would expect most Syrian moderates to support it. Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, to take one pertinent example, famously had the support of the shopkeepers, hawkers and students of Tehran who ended up sending the Shah, his secret police and their toadies scuttling for American-supplied bolt holes overseas.
Whatever its rights or wrongs, Iran’s Islamic Revolution had widespread support, as do Bahrain’s moderate protesters, who brave the henchmen of Saudi Arabia every time they protest against that truly autocratic regime. Moderate Alawites, Shias or Christians cannot support the Syrian insurgents as all the rebels are agreed that the Alawites and Shias must be exterminated and the Christians driven into exile, if they are not first also exterminated. All of Syria’s Christian leaders support, implicitly at least, the government of the Syrian Arab Republic, not least because, a few token rebels apart, there is no area in rebel-held Syria where they can openly practice their religion or live without perpetual fear.”
Hayes continued:
“Nor is there anywhere the moderate rebels control that Christians and other minorities can be safe from kidnapping by these same moderates, who will then sell them on to their more violent partners in crime, in much the same way the moderate rebels sold on the Ma’lulah nuns and the two American journalists who were recently beheaded. There is, in short, no way Syria’s Christians, Shias or Alawites, who do not have a death wish, can support the moderate rebels.”
The British government support the mercenary forces and terror organisations of the kind outlined by Hayes to the tune of £2.3 billion – a sum that is channeled into propaganda campaigns. Conservative estimates suggest that many countries and regions have handed over at least £100m to the White Helmets, alone.
Interwoven web
The existence of a complex interwoven web that connects the various government departments, NGOs, opposition groups and activists with the corporate media, facilitate and amplify the propaganda in order to help achieve the ultimate objective of regime change in Syria. The evidence outlined by Barbara McKenzie is compelling:
“The role played by the British Foreign Office and other government departments in the unremitting propaganda against the Syrian government is unquestionable. The British government is determinedly pursuing its policy of regime change in Syria, and sees gaining public acceptance of that policy through propaganda that demonises the Syrian government and glorifies the armed opposition as essential to achieving that goal.”
The propaganda effort was stepped-up after the government failed to persuade parliament to support military action against the Assad government. In the autumn of 2013, the UK embarked on behind-the-scenes work to influence the course of the war by shaping perceptions of opposition fighters. It was during this time that the media narrative in which Islamist extremist beheaders were described as “Jihadists” and “terrorists” began to shift to the more benign terms, “rebels” and “Syrian opposition”.
McKenzie notes that the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), working with the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office and the Prime Minister’s Office formed contracts companies for the express purpose of creating “targeted information” in relation to the war on Syrian. In effect, the British government is funding a comprehensive top of the range advertising campaign to promote sectarian extremists in Syria who function as units of al-Qaeda and ISIS.
This involves the production of videos, photos, military reports, radio broadcasts, print products and social media posts branded with the logos of fighting groups by contractors hired out by the Foreign Office and overseen by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
The nature and extensive reach of the state outlined is what is meant by the military-industrial complex or Deep State. Established broadcast media like Channel 4 News which, as discussed above, deliberately frames its reports and interviews based on compromised sources, is deeply embedded in the Deep State.
Lack of credibility
The lack of credibility of Channel 4 News reportage is, of course, not unique to them. The BBC have upped the ante. Having gone to great lengths at the tax payers expense to promote their regime change agenda, the organisation who are embedded with Ahrar Al-Sham terrorists, produced a far more elaborate form of state propaganda as part of their Panorama documentary strand.
An episode of Panorama entitled “Saving Syria’s Children”, which purported to depict the aftermath of a chemical weapons attack, and was released just before the crucial vote by the Commons on the government’s request to go to war with Syria, was an elaborately staged piece that was probably planned for months, possibly even years, in advance. The “documentary” has been meticulously critiqued by independent researcher, Robert Stuart.
I alerted the post-satirist television producer, Victor Lewis-Smith, to Stuarts work. Convinced of the veracity of Stuart’s case, Lewis-Smith confronted BBC executives with an ultimatum. He insisted that unless he be handed the unedited rushes to Saving Syria’s Children, he would tear up his BBC contract.
Having failed to fulfill their part of the bargain, Lewis-Smith followed through on his promise, evidence of which he filmed. Lewis-Smith then contacted Stuart with a view to collaborating on the possible production of a crowdfunded documentary examining the issues surrounding Saving Syria’s Children, the plans of which have yet to be finalised.
Dr Saleyha Ahsan
The Saving Syria’s Children production team were assisted in the hoax by a willing cast of actors among whom was Dr Saleyha Ahsan, executive with Syrian ‘charity’ Hand in Hand – a propaganda front for the Syrian opposition. Robert Stuart revealed that Ahsan, who claims to be an humanitarian, is in fact closely connected to ‘revolutionary’ elements opposed to president Assad’s rule.
Ahsan, a BBC TV presenter and doctor, was the first female Muslim commissioned in the British army. In her previous role she provided arms and logistics assistance to the Libyan rebels. While based in Benghazi, Ahsan removed photos from her Facebook page, in which she was shown smiling alongside anti-Assad armed Jihadist groups, after Stuart raised the issue in his twitter page articles.
According to Moeen Raoof, the BBC presenter trained al-Qaeda affiliates in the UK in the use of arms and battlefield first aid. In addition, Raoof claims she assisted British Islamist Jihadists travelling out to Syria in road convoys that comprised second-hand British ambulances. Prior to assisting and training these Islamist terrorists, Raoof claims Ahsan met in London with one of the lead negotiators on Libya in the UN Security Council, Reza Afshar, who contributed to the passing of UNSCR-1973 that led to NATO action during 2011. Afshar is also head of UK FCO with responsibility for Syria Policy.
Shortly after the meeting, Ahsan is said to have proceeded to Turkey where it is alleged she received several containers from Kenya. These containers, ostensibly medical equipment, operating theatre equipment, medicines and other related equipment, were allegedly packed with weapons. Once cleared, the containers were shipped out to the Turkey-Syria Border town of Gazientep and handed-over to rebels who used the weapons to hold on to towns, cities and regions.
The organizers of the much hyped “People’s Convoy”, led by Ahsan, which set off for the Turkish-Syrian border a week before Christmas, 2016, has been less than transparent about the convoy. On December 23, 2016 the Telegraph revealed the conviction of a terrorist sympathizer who had allegedly infiltrated another “aid convoy” whose aim was to funnel cash to al-Qaeda members.
One would think that the highly dubious credentials of Ahsan that both Raoof and Stuart exposed – which include gun-running and Jihadist activities – would be cause for concern for not only the state broadcaster that prides itself on its supposed impartiality, but would also ring alarm bells for the UK security services. On the contrary, the former were only too willing to give publicity to the “People’s Convoy to Syria” that Ahsan partly led.
On March 29, 2014, Robert Stuart filed a report to the Metropolitan Police regarding the activities of Ahsan and other contentious issues, but at the time of writing the authorities have failed to follow up on the report. It would appear that the publicity generated as a result of the arrest and conviction of relatively small-fry Islamist terrorist instigators is intended to divert the public’s attention away from the far more significant players.
Meanwhile, the deaths of innocent people that result from these actions by way of blow back is presumably a price the establishment regard as worth paying in order to ensure that their broader geopolitical objectives are achieved. A key part of the establishments agenda is to not only defend human assets on their payroll, but to discredit their opponents.
Exposed
What the secrecy surrounding Syria’s Children exposes, are the lengths to which the corporate-political establishment, in collusion with the national state broadcaster and terrorists tied to al-Qaeda, are prepared to go in their efforts to dupe the public into supporting the case for illegal war. But more than that, it raises serious questions about the wider role both the BBC and UK intelligence services play in the conduct of the so-called war on terror.
The revelation, for example, that the Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi, was known by MI5 to have been part of a North African-based cell of ISIS “plotting to strike a political target in the UK”, contradicts PM Theresa May’s assertion that Abedi acted as a “lone wolf”.
It also adds to the suspicion that operatives are being used by the Deep State to foment terrorist acts in Britain in order to perpetuate the cycle of tit-for-tat violence as the justification for the continuation of endless war.
Whatever the truth, blow-back is an inevitable consequence resulting from evidence which points to “UK covert and overt action in the region in alliance with states [who are] consistently supplying arms to terrorist groups.” In fact:
“Agencies of the British government have, in some senses, become part of the broader ‘terrorist network’ with which the British public is now confronted…Without these actions – by Britain and its close allies – it is conceivable that Abedi might well not have had the opportunity to become radicalised in the way he did.”
Regardless of whether the suspicion ultimately has its basis in conspiracy or cock up, the UK government cannot seriously deny the credibility underlying former M15 Director General Eliza Manningham-Buller’s assertion that wars of aggression increase the terrorist threat.
Breakdown of funds
The latest manifestation of government secrecy and possible media collusion that is likely to invoke blow-back, concerns the refusal by the Home Office to provide a breakdown of funds donated to Islamist terrorist organisations, many of which are arguably linked to Saudi Arabia, who use their “charitable status” as a way of increasing their revenue streams.
On July 12, 2017, Home Secretary Amber Rudd refused to issue a full report into the nature of the funding. Instead, the government published an edited summary. The reports full exposure would have revealed the extent of UK-Saudi links to extremist Islamist groups.
It can safely be assumed that the Tory cover-up also extends to UK government links to “charities”, CEOs and other UK and Syrian-based organisations that fund terrorism – and and in some cases are terrorists – inside Syria such as Hand in Hand and the White Helmets. Indeed the Telegraph conceded as far back as October 4, 2013, that charity cash “was going to Syrian terror groups.”
This was reiterated, and added to, by Vanessa Beeley who stated on the July 17, 2017 edition of UK Column:
“The UK government through UK Aid is funding and sponsoring a number of NGOs and charities that are fundamentally supplying the terrorist factions inside Syria. So the UK government is actually creating, funding, supporting and promoting the NGOs it then accuses its own public of funding terrorism through.”
Because of the lack of funding transparency, the government could, in theory through a “charity” like the Jo Cox Fund, implicate the British people in the funding of terrorism inside Syria as a means of diffusing and deflecting their own culpability.
Beeley goes on to point out that a high proportion of funding to Syrian terrorists from the UK is channeled from the Foreign Office’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund through International Diplomat, an organisation that was set up by former Foreign Office employee, Carne Ross, in 2004:
“The funding goes from ID into the White Helmets and the Syrian opposition in order to destabilize Syria and to affect regime change.”
On June, 2013, former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas claimed that Britain had been planning war on Syria “two years before the Arab spring” which was to involve the organizing of an invasion of rebels into the country. “This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned”, he said.
Who can seriously deny that the goal of the political and media establishment in Syria is to secure yet another illegal and immoral middle east resource grab?
I rely on the generosity of my readers. I don’t make any money from my work and I’m not funded. If you’ve enjoyed reading this or another posting, please consider making a donation, no matter how small. You can help continue my research and write independently..… Thanks!
Road To Somewhere Else 
A very good article . I’d liked to have seen you raise the important role that parts of the “anti-war” left have played in propagandizing for the “freedom fighters” in Syria and before that in Libya . Through the leadership roles they often play in anti-war movements such “left” groups have prevented any reprise of the huge demonstrations organised against the invasion of Iraq . In Ireland where I live, one parliamentary representative ,who is a steering committee member of the Irish Anti War Movement , addressed the chamber of the house on December 15 last at the time of the liberation of Aleppo saying : “ Assad’s troops are going house to house butchering anybody left alive”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Mick. Yes, there wasn’t the scope to add that. We would have been talking about a book. Barbara McKenzie has done exhaustive work on this subject and I recommend her work highly. I agree with you. The stance of the anti-war left has been appalling. I can only comment on STWUK who since Iraq have been atrocious. I used to donate to them but stopped from Libya onward. Your clip is shocking.
LikeLike
Excellent article Daniel that deserves to be read widely. I agree with Mick that the role of a large section of the left and their failure to oppose imperialism because of some romantic notion about a revolutionary movement in Syria needs some examination. Perhaps another article?
Disappointing to hear about Ireland, no good news from Scotland either, I’m afraid. The SNP that campaigns for sovereignty and self determination for Scotland has done virtually nothing to defend Syrian sovereignty. They rightly criticised the media bias in the independence referendum campaign but have remained silent on the biased reporting on Syria, even falling for the media’s propaganda on the WH for example. True the SNP voted against bombing Syria but for tactical reasons rather than any principled opposition to ‘regime change’. Nicola Sturgeon in a one sided conference speech accused the Syrians and Russians of deliberately bombing schools and hospitals in E Aleppo. After the liberation Angus Robertson spoke of “Aleppo descending into hell” This when people were dancing in the streets celebrating their freedom after five years of hell living under al Nusra and their friends! The breaking of international law and UN Charter principles don’t appear to be an issue for the SNP.
Barbara Mackenzie has written critically about SNP on her blog. She includes a video of Sturgeon speaking to the US Council on Foreign Relations. Keen to reassure her neocon audience Sturgeon said an independent Scotland would always be a close ally of the US, ” do not think that the SNP and the Scottish government takes a markedly different position from the U.K. government on the—the vast majority of international issues. We—don’t. We are a responsible participant and a responsible voice when it comes to these matters.” She also told them that the Scottish government supports sanctions against Russia and the U.K. position on Ukraine and Russia. I left the SNP because of their foreign policy position which is hardly discussed in the party.
Btw did you catch Stephan Gowans presentation in NYC? (starts 12.20) Excellent debunking of the historical context for the present war, role of MB, foreign governments etc.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Jan, Thanks for the link. I’ve cited Gowans in previous articles and love his latest book so I look forward to watching the presentation after I’ve written this to you. I agree with everything you said about the SNP. It’s naive of people to think they are anything other than an imperialist party. I see them as being a kind of liberal democratic party who are cynically riding the current wave of left populism. Craig Murray’s critique of their General Election strategy is worth reading. As he is a supporter of the SNP, his insights I find to be invaluable.
LikeLike