There is no Nazi presence in Ukraine, the Azov Battalion are merely excellent fighters, and Russian claims of denazifying the regime are cynical falsifications to justify aggression, according to the BBC.

In a sneaking way, one has to admire the aplomb of the British Broadcasting Corporation which promotes itself as one of the world’s “most trusted” news brands. While it smears and sneers at Russian news media as “state-owned” and “Kremlin propaganda machines”, the BBC is itself 100 percent state-owned and totally aligned with British government and NATO propaganda aims. That propaganda includes distortion and fabrication presented with the arrogant assertion of being independent news information.

Propaganda, old chap, is something that the Russians do. But not the British Bullshit Corporation. Oh no, heaven forbid, we’re British after all… fair play, objective, cricket, stiff-upper-lip, London Calling, fight them on the beaches, and so on, all the self-admiring epithets of a self-declared benign empire.

And so in a recent broadcast, the BBC’s ever-so smug Ros Atkins had the brass neck to assure viewers that there were no Nazis in Ukraine. He said it was a myth concocted by the Kremlin as a pretext for its military intervention in Ukraine. Atkins downplayed the Azov Battalion as having some far-right members who were negligible. He also claimed that the Azov Battalion was formed to defend Ukraine from Russia’s aggression that began in 2014. The BBC’s distortion of the 2014 coup in Kiev is astounding.

The BBC’s barefaced denial of Azov and others Nazi regiments in the Ukrainian military stands in jarring contrast to the well-documented facts. Images of torchlit processions honoring Stepan Bandera and others Ukrainian SS collaborators, images of Nazi flags, Nazi salutes, and Nazi insignia are abundant. Azov leaders like Andrey Biletsky and Olena Semenyaka openly pay homage to the Third Reich.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky may be Jewish and purportedly have relatives who died in the Holocaust. But he is owned by the Nazi brigades. His PR value as a Jewish face for the regime is a big asset (thanks CIA, MI6!). But it doesn’t change the fact that the Ukrainian military is a fascist force that waged a terror war against the Russian-speaking people of Southeast Ukraine for eight years since 2014 – killing 14,000 – until it was stopped by Russia’s intervention on February 24.

No wonder the BBC is covering for Azov when the British Ministry of Defense is training and arming their fighters, along with other NATO states.

In the same BBC broadcast, Atkins told viewers that the Russian army had bombed the Mariupol maternity hospital and the Mariupol theater resulting in civilian deaths. No evidence, no images of dead bodies. Just assumption of trust us, because, after all, “this is the BBC”.

Here the corporation goes from denial about the Azov and Nazis to actually promoting their propaganda lies. That’s because the BBC is employing and relying on Ukrainian journalists who are affiliated with far-right politics.

Civilians fleeing from Mariupol have testified to independent news organizations that the Azov fighters detonated both the hospital and the theater in a false-flag operation designed to smear Russia and to bolster NATO support for the Ukrainian regime.

What the BBC is doing here is echoed by U.S. media like CNN, NBC, and others. It is also a replay of how they reported on Syria where they accused the Syrian army and Russian allies of bombing civilians. The reality was that towns and cities like Aleppo were being held under siege by Western-backed mercenaries and their propagandists in the White Helmets who carried out false-flag atrocities. The BBC would tell viewers that the Syrian army and Russia were killing civilians when in reality the civilians were being liberated from a reign of terror. The same is happening with the Azov and other Nazis in Ukraine whom the BBC, CNN, etc., are whitewashing and promoting.

Ask yourself: why does the BBC no longer report from Syria? What about all those hysterical claims of war crimes against civilians when the Syrian army and Russia were liberating towns and cities? Why hasn’t the BBC followed up to interview Syrian civilians to find out how they feel about being liberated? The same BBC “journalists” are too busy spinning the next propaganda war for the British government and NATO in Ukraine.

This year marks the centennial anniversary of the “Beeb” as it is affectionately known. It was founded by the British government as a propaganda service. Earlier names included the British Empire Service. Up until recently, members of staff were vetted by MI5, the British state intelligence service. They no doubt still are, only now even more hush-hush covertly. By law, every British household must buy a TV license (£159 per year) to support the financing of the BBC. Failure to do so results in criminal prosecution and even jail.

The Orwellian reality of the Beeb should make it the world’s “most busted” propaganda outlet. But then again that’s what is so Orwellian about the BBC. It still retains a wholesome image for many people around the world. Even when the whitewashing of Nazis in Ukraine is its latest star turn.

By Max BLUMENTHAL

Before serving as a fixer and reporter for the BBC in Ukraine, Orysia Khimiak handled PR for a start-up called Reface which created what the Washington Post called a “reality distorting app” now serving as “a kind of Ukrainian war-messaging tool.”

According to her Linkedin profile, Khimiak was the director of PR for Reface until October 2021. While working that job, Khimiak says she built “long-term relationships with editors and media representatives.” She has also overseen a PR course for the Kiev-based Projector Institute, whose website currently greets visitors with the slogan, “Glory to Ukraine. We Will Win.”

With her wealth of media contacts, Khimiak now plays an instrumental role in shaping BBC’s coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war. She has even shared a byline with the network’s Lviv-based correspondent, Hugo Bachega, co-authoring reports focused on demonstrating Russian culpability for the bombing of the Mariupol dramatic theater.

Khimiak broadcasts her political bias in her Twitter bio, stating that she is “a fixer in Lviv for journalists for reporters who show honest image of Russian war against Ukraine. Ukraine will resist.”

Khimiak’s Twitter background references the “Snake Island” standoff which was widely reported by mainstream Western media outlets and heralded as a testament to Ukrainian military bravery. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, 13 Ukrainian border guards “died heroically” defending an island base against they Russian Navy. “Russian warship, go fuck yourself!” were the soldiers’ final words, or so the story went.

The Ukrainian guards ultimately turned up alive as Russian captives. The entire story of courage under fire, including the Snake Island defenders’ famous last words, was a myth – one of so many stories fabricated or heavily distorted by pro-Ukraine elements that they have become impossible to count.

On the Twitter page of the PR agent-turned-BBC correspondent Khimiak, the phony Snake Island stand-off is still treated as a real historical event. On her Twitter timeline, meanwhile, Khimiak takes credit for the BBC’s reports on the destruction of the Mariupol dramatic theater. She and her co-author, Bachega, have yet to respond to a request for comment from The Grayzone.

The incident at the Mariupol theater represents one of the most suspicious events of the war, with both the BBC and CNN citing a claim by one local Ukrainian official claiming hundreds were killed inside the building, but producing no evidence to verify it.

CNN, BBC rely on single official pro-Azov source for claim of hundreds dead

Russian forces have caused widespread destruction across Mariupol, where they have been engaged in intense street-by-street fighting with Ukrainian forces led by the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.

However, as this reporter detailed, the Mariupol theater was controlled by retreating Azov militants who were desperately appealing for military intervention by NATO. Several evacuees have claimed Azov detonated the theater to create the impression of a Russian attack that might draw the West into the war. Meanwhile, video of the alleged Russian attack on the theater has yet to materialize, and images of the supposed rescue of survivors or mass deaths at the scene remain unavailable.

On March 25, nine days after the incident, CNN broadcast what it said was the first footage of the attack on the theater. The footage (seen below) was only 20 seconds long and showed a small group of civilians slowly ambling down a staircase to the ground floor of a building. A narrator can be heard behind the camera repeatedly referring to an airstrike but claiming that those on the first floor had survived.

The video appeared to have been shot some time after the attack, as none of the smoldering present in video taken in the aftermath of the explosion could be seen. That video, seen below and taken on March 16, shows a smoking building with no rescuers or any people on site.

CNN has also claimed that 300 civilians were killed inside the theater. The BBC also echoed the official Ukrainian claim of 300 dead, but acknowledged, “Communication with Mariupol remains difficult so it is hard to independently verify information.”

Both networks relied on just a single source for the dramatic allegation: Petr Andryushchenko, an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol who recently saluted the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion as courageous “defenders” of his city.

The official’s evidence? According to the BBC, “officials were able to check the death toll because they had a record of who was in the theatre before the missile strike and had spoken to survivors.”

Western media did not see fit to mention that Andryushchenko was likely far from Mariupol, as he recently acknowledged “that we are forced to move in order to preserve our intelligence network.” His boss, Mayor Vadim Boychenko, reportedly fled the city several days ago.

Curiously, partisan Ukrainian reporters claimed a day after the attack that everyone sheltering inside the theater’s basement had miraculously survived.

Also on March 17, Ukrainian government ombudswoman Ludmyla Denisova stated on Telegram: “The (theatre) building withstood the impact of a high-powered air bomb and protected the lives of people hiding in the bomb shelter.”

Four days before the incident, Mariupol locals informed Russian media that the theater was to be the site of a false flag operation aimed at generating Western outrage and triggering NATO intervention.

One day after the incident took place, civilians evacuated from Mariupol testified to Donbas-based media that Azov fighters blew the theater up as they retreated. They went on to detail how Azov used them as human shields throughout the fighting, even sniping at them as they tried to escape.

Interview with #Mariupol refugee
You know what happened at the drama theatre?
–They blew up the drama theatre
So, it wasn´t a bombing but an explosion?
–Nothing landed on it, it exploded from inside
Did Azov let ppl leave the city?
–They didn´t let anyone leave#Ukraine #Russia pic.twitter.com/jKQDj8BLWj

— Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli (@ProfessorsBlogg) March 22, 2022

Among the most curious aspects of the incident of the theater was the disappearance of all vehicles from the parking lot in front of the structure hours before the explosion occurred. It seems that though they had been removed in order to avoid being damaged by the expected blast.

Photos and Maxar satellite images of the theater (above) on March 15 show vehicles parked immediately next to the building.

Ukrainian PR agent-turned-BBC fixer hand picks local sources

Ignoring the accounts of evacuees from Mariupol who said Azov militants had destroyed the theater before retreating, the BBC’s correspondent, Bechaga, and his fixer, Khimiak, initially turned to official Ukrainian sources and a resident who was not present at the theater on the day of the supposed attack.

On March 17, the day after the theater incident, Bechaga and Khimiak reported that “according to Ukrainian authorities, [the theater] was bombed by Russia…” Their only local source said she left the theater one day before the building was destroyed – when most, if not all those on the grounds appeared to leave. “We knew we had to run away because something terrible would happen soon,” she told the BBC.

The BBC reporter and PR agent-turned-fixer co-authored a March 22 follow-up article quoting two local witnesses who said they were near the theater when a massive blast occurred. Both delivered  cinematic accounts which open source intelligence analyst Michael Kobs called into question.

The really questionable part of the story is the step-by-step narration of a process that in reality lasts maybe a tenth of a second. Here, however, a man has the time to throw himself into the path of the blast wave and flying splinters. pic.twitter.com/FBIPLHwE9H

— Michael Kobs (@MichaKobs) March 23, 2022

The male witness said he “saw plenty of people bleeding.” However, in a time when nearly every person carries a smartphone, video of the harrowing scene he described has yet to surface.

Finally, the BBC turned to McKenzie Intelligence, a private contractor founded by a former UK military intelligence officer, to hypothesize that a Russian 500-pound laser guided missile was used to destroy the theater. But as the open source analyst Kobs pointed out, “the center of destruction sits right in the middle of the stage, so two dumb bombs can’t possibly be to blame.”

While the BBC seems intent on legitimizing the official Ukrainian narrative of the theater incident, other mainstream outlets have quietly moved on. “Even now, the fates of most of those people [inside the theater] remain unknown,” the NY Times noted in passing on March 21.

BBC fixer/correspondent worked for firm behind top “Ukrainian-war messaging tool”

The BBC’s choice of an overtly nationalist Ukrainian public relations agent to guide its coverage of the war highlights the network’s absolute alignment with NATO’s objectives.

Before her gig with the British state broadcaster, Khimiak handled public relations for a Kiev-based start-up that created an AI app enabling users to superimpose their faces on the bodies of famous people. Called Reface, the app has become “a kind of Ukrainian-war messaging tool” disseminating anti-Russian push notifications to millions of users, the Washington Post reported.

According to the Post, “reality-distorting apps like Reface are a way for users to absorb messages they might otherwise tune out. People have their guards up with political news on those platforms… But they lower them for an immersive experience like face-swapping.”

Reface now says it is engaged in a “viral battle against #russianterrorists.”

Turned off the #Reface app in #russia. According to our analytics, its audience couldn’t care less about the destroyed houses & women & children killed in #Ukraine.
Read about our viral info battle against #russianterrorists & #StandWithUkrainehttps://t.co/aO8Skrfg35

— Reface (@reface_app) March 17, 2022

As part of its efforts against Russia, Reface said it has blocked Russian users from accessing the app. Further, “everyone who opens the app sees a message to support Ukraine” along with a banner “with information about the real losses of the Russian army.” A watermark with the Ukrainian flag and the hashtag #StandWithUkraine is layered over each video that appears on the app.

Reface says its employees have joined “the territorial defense units and volunteers, and several teams have also joined the cyber troops to fight Russian propaganda.

For her part, the former Reface PR director Khimiak-turned-BBC correspondent/fixer has not been reticent about Ukraine’s Russian adversaries. “I just can’t accept opinion that not all Russians are bad. All I feel is pain and hate, because their silence is a consequence of this war,” she declared on Twitter in reaction to a video depicting rescuers trying to save a young girl from rubble.

Though BBC proclaims in its own statement of values, “Trust is the foundation of the BBC. We’re independent, impartial and honest,” its hiring of a Ukrainian public relations specialist who has confessed to hatred of all Russians to arrange its coverage of the war in the country is hardly surprising.

As The Grayzone reported in February 2021, the British broadcaster’s non-profit arm, BBC Media Action, participated in a covert UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) program explicitly designed to “weaken Russia.”

As seen below, UK FCDO documents revealed that BBC Media Action proposed working through a private British contractor called Aktis to cultivate and grow pro-NATO media in conflict areas like the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, now the focal point of fighting between pro-Russian forces and the Ukrainian military.

The BBC’s secret information warfare initiative had turned the network into an arm of British intelligence, operating as an actor in a foreign conflict which its broadcast media arm was simultaneously claiming to cover in an objective manner.

Now, the BBC has shed any pretense of objectivity by hiring an overtly nationalist Ukrainian public relations operative to shape its coverage of one of the most heavily disputed incidents in a war filled with cynical deceptions.

thegrayzone.com

The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) has admitted there were “serious flaws” in a Radio 4 documentary by journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou on the alleged 2018 chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma.

On 2 September, the UK national broadcaster issued a statement which read: “The ECU found that, although they were limited to one aspect of an investigation into a complex and hotly contested subject, these points represented a failure to meet the standard of accuracy appropriate to a program of this kind.”

The ECU statement came in response to an official complaint by Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens following last November’s broadcast of “Mayday: The Canister On The Bed.”

The documentary in question dealt with an alleged chemical attack in the city of Douma in 2018, and included an account by a former inspector with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), identified as ‘Alex’ during the program, who expressed concerns about the conclusions of the OPCW on the matter.

In 2019, ‘Alex’ teamed up with Wikileaks to expose the OPCW for allegedly doctoring a report over the Douma chlorine attack, as OPCW officials notably avoided revelations from the fact-finding mission which may point to terror groups having been behind the purported gas attack.

Many believe this was done in order to frame the Syrian government and justify missile strikes launched by the US, UK and France against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in April 2018.

But the complaints against the BBC documentary stem from the unsubstantiated insinuation that ‘Alex’ was motivated to go public about his doubts over the attack by the prospect of a $100,000 reward from WikiLeaks.

No such reward was ever paid, according to WikiLeaks.

BBC officials also accepted that Hadjimatheou had no evidence to justify the claim that Alex believed the attack in Douma had been staged, besides his doubts about the actions taken by his OPCW superiors.

Since 2018, Damascus has maintained that no chemical attack occurred in Douma, and that the incident had been staged by foreign intelligence agencies to pressure the government from making military progress against ISIS.

UK journalist Peter Hitchens has welcomed the ruling, saying, “It is astonishingly rare for the BBC to rule against itself. This is a huge development. I hope it represents a wider change of heart in the corporation.” He went on to add that he hopes the BBC and others will now “do some decent reporting of the scandal of what happened at the OPCW, namely the doctoring of a vital report to justify rash military action by the US, Britain and France.”

thecradle.co

Russian patrol vessels fired warning shots at an armed British warship after it breached Russian territorial waters this week. Then a SU-24 fighter jet dropped bombs in the path of the British destroyer apparently forcing it out of Russian waters.

It sounds almost incredible that a war situation was only a shot away in such a grim face-off between NATO member Britain and Russia.

But what’s also condemnable is that the incendiary incident was a deliberate provocation by Britain. Russia has warned Britain not to provoke it again in the Black Sea. And Moscow accused London of telling barefaced lies.

The British government and its Ministry of Defense were quick to play down the incident, claiming that there were no warning shots fired on the Royal Navy guided-missile destroyer. London accused Russia of “disinformation” and maintained that HMS Defender was engaged in “innocent passage” through international waters in the Black Sea.

However, the official British version is contradicted by a BBC correspondent who was on board HMS Defender.

Jonathan Beale reported: “I am on board the warship in the Black Sea.The crew were already at action stations as they approached the southern tip of Russian-occupied [sic] Crimea. Weapons systems on board the Royal Navy destroyer had already been loaded.

This would be a deliberate move to make a point to Russia. HMS Defender was going to sail within the 12 mile (19km) limit of Crimea’s territorial waters. The captain insisted he was only seeking safe passage through an internationally recognized shipping lane.”

Thus, according to the BBC’s account, a fully armed and cocked warship deliberately entered territorial waters claimed by Russia (since Crimea joined the Russian Federation by a referendum in 2014). The crew were at action stations on their approach “to make a point to Russia”.

Such conduct by the British is nothing less than a wanton provocation to Russia. The BBC version concurs with Russia’s account of the circumstances, including the sound of warning shots.

One question is: why did the British government and MoD seek to immediately play down the incident, purporting to say that nothing had happened? London claimed that the warship was merely in the vicinity of Russian “gunnery exercises” as if it was all coincidence and that Moscow was engaging in disinformation about warding off the Royal Navy vessel.

Another question is: why was the BBC correspondent invited to take part in the Black Sea voyage of HMS Defender from the Ukrainian port of Odessa to Georgia skirting the Crimea Peninsula? It seems like the British may have been expecting their “point to Russia” would have been met with a passive response. And so the British would have been able to spin that their plucky navy was able to stick it to the Russians. Turns out though that the BBC man unhelpfully contradicted the military planners in London.

Britain was obliged to deny the military encounter because it knows full well that it was a provocative show of aggression by its warship. If the shots had escalated it could have been an act of war that Britain had instigated. Aggression is the supreme war crime as defined by the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders.

Russia has condemned the British action, saying HMS Defender should be renamed HMS Aggressor or HMS Provocateur.

It is also reported that on Tuesday, the day before the skirmish, Ukrainian military chiefs were hosted onboard HMS Destroyer while docked in Odessa where they signed new military contracts with the British on naval cooperation. That the Brits then sailed the next day straight into Russian waters suggests that the maneuver was a calculated show of naval power in support of Ukraine’s claims of “fighting against Russian aggression”.

As far back as April, the British had given notice that they were intending to dispatch warships to the Black Sea “in support of Ukraine”. Russia responded angrily and warned Britain and other NATO members to stay away from its territory. Russia subsequently has deployed larger military forces in its Black Sea territory, including around the Crimea Peninsula.

That the British went ahead with their plans to send warships into disputed waters is further sign that London was deliberately goading Moscow.

What the Brits were not expecting, it seems, was the way Russia rapidly deployed firepower this week to underscore its warnings to back off.

This is the context for why international “stability talks” between the United States and Russia are an urgent matter. It remains to be seen if the American Biden administration genuinely responds to Moscow’s appeals for earnest negotiations to stabilize relations. NATO so far seems to be indifferent to Russian proposals for cooperating on forming new security mechanisms in Europe.

The deterioration in relations between Russia and the United States and other NATO members has reached a dangerous flashpoint. The arming by the U.S. and NATO of the anti-Russia regime in Kiev is fueling the potential for all-out conflict between nuclear powers. Western indulgence of Kiev’s reckless claims of “Russian aggression” is further insanity.

And amid the treacherous conditions, the British send a guided-missile destroyer into Russian waters in defiance of reasonable warnings. That’s just a shot away from disaster.

Incredibly, this is all happening on the 80th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa when Nazi Germany launched its war against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

When it comes to questioning guests, Stephen Sackur is perhaps the toughest of BBC hosts. He nonetheless has limits, as exhibited on his recent show with Ben Hodges. On matters pertaining to Russia, Sackur and the BBC at large can be expected to be harder when interviewing someone with an opposite view of Hodges. An example is Sackur’s recent exchange with Vladimir Chizhov. In Anglo-American mass media, the opposites to the likes of Hodges don’t get anywhere near the same amount of airtime.

It’s no surprise that Sackur didn’t challenge Hodges on the latter’s rather disgusting comment, which very inaccurately downplays Russian suffering during WW II in opposing Nazism. Hodges made that remark in an exchange involving the pro-Stepan Bandera Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) – an organization with extreme anti-Russian views. (This group was involved with the bigoted anti-Russian Captive Nations Committee, which led to the U.S. Congress approved Captive Nations Week.)

On the same show, Hodges was also not challenged on his one-sided observation that Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the Minsk Protocol‘s signing, with Russia recently having a noticeable military buildup near the Ukrainian border. Concerning these circumstances, Sackur and Hodges omitted several otherwise key facets.

Since the Minsk Protocol, Donbass rebels and civilians have been killed by Kiev regime forces. The recent Russian military buildup came after (not before) the Kiev regime’s military buildup near the Donbass rebels. Russia’s non-lethal military move and follow-up Russian comments served notice that Russia isn’t going to permit an Operation Storm like scenario near its border.

All of these points are mentioned in my last Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF) article of this past April 14. Coincidentally, on the following day, the Biden administration announced sanctions against the SCF (as well as some other outlets), which include a vaguely worded (if not mischievous) threat against Americans who’ve written articles for that venue.

Like Aaron Mate, I’ve found it difficult to get any follow-up from the U.S. Treasury Department (USTD). My specific inquiry concerns the matter of what I as a U.S. based American citizen can and can’t legally do with the SCF.

At issue is this USTD excerpt: “As a result of today’s designations, all property and interests in property of these targets that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them. Additionally, any entities 50 percent or more owned by one or more designated persons are also blocked. In addition, financial institutions and other persons that engage in certain transactions or activities with the sanctioned entities and individuals may expose themselves to secondary sanctions or be subject to an enforcement action.”

Meantime, outside the U.S., Canadians (at least for now) and some others are able to write for the SCF without penalty. Isn’t America supposed to be representative of diversity and a free press? U.S. President Joe Biden said that he wants to unite Americans with different opinions. It seems more like he wants to unite Americans under a limited range of perspectives on some issues.

A case in point is the Biden administration’s rejection of Matthew Rojansky for a State Department position. Rojansky appears to have more in common with the Biden appointed Victoria Nuland than a pro-American/pro-Russian advocate like myself. It’s somewhat laughable to believe that Rojansky is too off the reservation for the Biden administration. The pro-Bandera UCCA actively lobbied against Rojansky.

Individuals thinking along the lines of Rojansky can at least get the consideration for a State Department position. On the other hand, folks thinking more like me have been negatively dismissed in U.S. political establishment circles, without a substantive supporting overview to that take. The situation is such that some (stress some) who might be in general agreement with my views, could feel a need to be “restrained” (for lack of a better word), in order to have an elite presence (however limited). With confidentiality respected, some others besides myself have privately made this observation.

An appeal supporting Rojansky by over a hundred people within the U.S. academic/foreign policy establishment concurs with my contention about him. I recognize a good number of these signatories and their biases (at different levels) against Russia. Regarding Rojansky and some of his defenders, refer to my Eurasia Review article of November 7, 2016 and SCF articles of April 24, 2019 and August 21, 2019.

There hasn’t been any evidence presented to conclusively show that the SCF is associated with the Intel wing linked to the Russian Foreign Ministry. Myself included, several others have said that their SCF submissions aren’t edited, along with not being told what to write in advance.

I know some of the other Americans who’ve written for the SCF to be decent people. In my opinion, they don’t deserve to be treated in the kind of manner exhibited by the U.S. government. During the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda visited North Vietnam without getting sanctioned by the U.S. government. The unannounced FBI visits to some SCF writers is an effort better pursued towards real criminals who pose an actual threat to society.

In a feature with the largely U.S. government funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), America’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken, decried support for the Russian government to have RFE/RL labelled a foreign agent. From the prism of their faulty biases, Blinken and RFE/RL conveniently ignore the earlier advocacy against Russian media with U.S. government approval.

The reasoning behind the aforementioned Biden administration sanctions remain factually unfounded. In true reality terms, it’s not so difficult to demolish the tabloid image of “Russia’s Disinformation Ecosystem”. Those individuals who’re uncritically harping on that presentation are mum, in addressing the blatant lies against Russia appearing on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.

Evelyn Farkas serves as a prime example, with her numerous mass media appearances which include the BBC. In these situations pertaining to Russia related topics, one will be hard-pressed to find Farkas put under scrutiny.

Among Farkas’ lying tweets, is the assertion that the Russian government had a bounty on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. At best, this is a very dubious claim that’s more likely untrue. Another lying tweet of hers states that Vladimir Putin poisoned Alexey Navalny. To date, no medical or other evidence has been made available to support that questionable claim – made more suspect by the kind of theatrical antics which Navalny and some of his core supporters have undertaken over the course of time.

I’ve readily attested that Farkas is flat out lying when she says (via Facebook and Twitter) that the Russian government interfered against her in the congressional election that she participated in as a candidate. The basis of Farkas’ claim is my placing an SCF article of mine in the Yonkers Tribune. I’ve repeatedly noted that submission being 100% my doing, without any goading from the SCF.

Given the inaccurate and predominating biases out there, it’s no surprise that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have banned the SCF unlike Farkas. According to one source, the Twitter ban includes any attempts to hyperlink SCF material on Twitter.

The fix was already in the works against the SCF prior to last summer’s hoopla over that venue and yours truly. Beforehand, I was unsuccessful in placing the SCF at News Now (NN). I was successful in doing likewise with Eurasia Review (ER). As was true with the Yonkers Tribune, my submitted proposals to NN were done without any prodding from ER and the SCF. Hence, there’s a clearly established pattern of independently minded communication activity.

ER is more diverse than the SCF. That facet doesn’t serve as a good justification for NN to rebuff the SCF. NN has carried content from the Kiev regime controlled Ukraine situated Euromaidan Press and StopFake venues. These two outlets are definitely not more diverse and accurate than the SCF. In varying degrees, the same can be arguably said of some other venues picked up by NN.

By Max BLUMENTHAL

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) have sponsored Reuters and the BBC to conduct a series of covert programs aimed at promoting regime change inside Russia and undermining its government across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, according to a series of leaked documents.

The leaked materials show the Thomson Reuters Foundation and BBC Media Action participating in a covert information warfare campaign aimed at countering Russia. Working through a shadowy department within the UK FCO known as the Counter Disinformation & Media Development (CDMD), the media organizations operated alongside a collection of intelligence contractors in a secret entity known simply as “the Consortium.”

Through training programs of Russian journalists overseen by Reuters, the British Foreign Office sought to produce an “attitudinal change in the participants,” promoting a “positive impact” on their “perception of the UK.”

“These revelations show that when MPs were railing about Russia, British agents were using the BBC and Reuters to deploy precisely the same tactics that politicians and media commentators were accusing Russia of using,” Chris Williamson, a former UK Labour MP who attempted to apply public scrutiny to the CDMD’s covert activities and was stonewalled on national security grounds, told The Grayzone.

“The BBC and Reuters portray themselves as an unimpeachable, impartial, and authoritative source of world news,” Williamson continued, “but both are now hugely compromised by these disclosures. Double standards like this just bring establishment politicians and corporate media hacks into further disrepute.”

Thomson Reuters Foundation spokesperson Jenny Vereker implicitly confirmed the authenticity of the leaked documents in an emailed response to questions from The Grayzone. However, she contended, “The inference that the Thomson Reuters Foundation was engaged in ‘secret activities’ is inaccurate and misrepresents our work in the public interest. We have for decades openly supported a free press and have worked to help journalists globally to develop the skills needed to report with independence.”

The tranche of leaked files closely resemble UK FCO-related documented released between 2018 and 2020 by a hacking collective calling itself Anonymous. The same source has claimed credit for obtaining the latest round of documents.

The Grayzone reported in October 2020 on leaked materials released by Anonymous which exposed a massive propaganda campaign funded by the UK FCO to cultivate support for regime change in Syria. Soon after, the Foreign Office claimed its computer systems had been penetrated by hackers, thus confirming their authenticity.

The new leaks illustrate in alarming detail how Reuters and the BBC – two of the largest and most distinguished news organizations in the world – attempted to answer the British foreign ministry’s call for help in improving its “ability to respond and to promote our message across Russia,” and to “counter the Russian government’s narrative.” Among the UK FCO’s stated goals, according to the director of the CDMD, was to “weaken the Russian State’s influence on its near neighbours.”

Reuters and the BBC solicited multimillion-dollar contracts to advance the British state’s interventionist aims, promising to cultivate Russian journalists through FCO-funded tours and training sessions, establish influence networks in and around Russia, and promote pro-NATO narratives in Russian-speaking regions.

In several proposals to the British Foreign Office, Reuters boasted of a global influence network of 15,000 journalists and staff, including 400 inside Russia.

The UK FCO projects were carried out covertly, and in partnership with purportedly independent, high-profile online media outfits including Bellingcat, Meduza, and the Pussy Riot-founded Mediazona. Bellingcat’s participation apparently included a UK FCO intervention in North Macedonia’s 2019 elections on behalf of the pro-NATO candidate.

The intelligence contractors that oversaw that operation, the Zinc Network, boasted of establishing “a network of YouTubers in Russia and Central Asia” while “supporting participants [to] make and receive international payments without being registered as external sources of funding.” The firm also touted its ability to “activate a range of content” to support anti-government protests inside Russia.

The new documents provide critical background on the role of NATO member states like the UK in influencing the color revolution-style protests waged in Belarus in 2020, and raise unsettling questions about the intrigue and unrest surrounding jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny.

Further, the materials cast serious doubt on the independence of two of the world’s largest and most prestigious media organizations, revealing Reuters and the BBC as apparent intelligence cut-outs feasting at the trough of a British national security state that their news operations are increasingly averse to scrutinizing.

Reuters solicits secret British Foreign Office contract to infiltrate Russian media

A series of official documents declassified in January 2020 revealed that Reuters was secretly funded by the British government throughout the 1960s and 1970s to assist an anti-Soviet propaganda organization run by the MI6 intelligence agency. The UK government used the BBC as a pass-through to conceal payments to the news group.

The revelation prompted a Reuters spokesman to declare that “the arrangement in 1969 [with the MI6] was not in keeping with our Trust Principles and we would not do this today.”

The Trust Principles outline a mission of “preserving [Reuters’] independence, integrity, and freedom from bias in the gathering and dissemination of information and news.”

In its own statement of values, the BBC proclaims, “Trust is the foundation of the BBC. We’re independent, impartial and honest.”

However, the newly leaked documents analyzed by The Grayzone appear to reveal that both Reuters and the BBC are engaged yet again in a non-transparent relationship with the UK’s foreign ministry to counter and undermine Russia.

In 2017, the non-profit arm of the Reuters media empire, the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), delivered a formal tender offering to “enter into a Contract with the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as represented by the British Embassy Moscow, for the provision of a project ‘Capacity Building in Russian Media.’” The letter was signed by Reuters CEO Monique Ville on July 31, 2017.

Reuters’ tender was a response to a call for bids by the FCO, which sought help in implementing “a programme of themed tours to the UK by Russian journalists and online influencers.”

Working through the British Embassy in Moscow, the FCO sought to produce an “attitudinal change in the participants,” promoting a “positive impact” on their “perception of the UK.”

In 2019, the FCO put forward a similar initiative, this time articulating a more aggressive plan to “counter the Russian government’s narrative and domination of the media and information space.” In effect, the British government was seeking to infiltrate Russian media and propagate its own narrative through an influence network of Russian journalists trained in the UK.

Reuters responded to both calls by the FCO with detailed tenders. In its first bid, the media giant boasted of establishing a global network of 15,000 journalists and bloggers through “capacity building interventions.” In Russia, it claimed at least 400 journalists had been cultivated through its training programs.

Reuters claimed to have performed 10 previous training tours for 80 Russian journalists on behalf of the British embassy in Moscow. It proposed eight more, promising to promote “UK cultural and political values” and “create a network of journalists across Russia” bonded together by a shared “interest in British affairs.”

Reuters’ tender highlighted the institutional prejudices and interventionist agenda that underlined its training programs. Detailing a series of UK FCO-funded programs dedicated to “countering Russian state-funded propaganda,” Reuters conflated Russian government narratives with extremism. Ironically, it referred to its own efforts at weakening them as “unbiased journalism.”

At the same time, Reuters appeared to recognize that its covert collaboration with the British Embassy in Moscow was highly provocative and potentially destructive to diplomatic relations. Recounting a UK FCO-funded tour it ran for Russian journalists in the midst of the Sergei Skripal affair, after the British government accused Moscow of poisoning a turncoat Russian intelligence officer who spied for Britain, the tender stated, “[Thomson Reuters Foundation] was in constant communication with the British Embassy in Moscow, to assess levels of risk, including reputational risk to the embassy.”

The mention by Reuters of the Belarusian TV Station Belsat, and its particular relevance “to the UK Government Strategy’s capacity to detect and counter the spread of Russian information” was notable. While describing itself as “the first independent television channel in Belarus,” Belsat is, as the Reuters tender makes clear, a vehicle of NATO influence.

Based in Poland and funded by the Polish Foreign Ministry and other EU governments, Belsat played an influential role in promoting the color revolution-style protests that erupted in May 2020 to demand the ouster of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Ultimately, Reuters’ bid appears to have been successful, as it received a July 2019 contract with the FCO’s Conflict, Stability & Security Fund (CSSF). But neither entity seemed to want the public to know about their collaboration on a project designed to counter Russia. The contract was marked “Strictly Confidential.”

“Weaken the Russian state’s influence”

The programs exposed through the latest leak of documents operate under the auspices of a shadowy division of the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office called Counter Disinformation & Media Development (CDMD). Led by an intelligence operative named Andy Pryce, the program has shrouded in secrecy.

Indeed, the British government has denied freedom of information requests about the division’s budget and stonewalled members of parliament like Chris Williamson who sought data about its budget and agenda, citing national security to block their demands for information.

“When I tried to probe further,” former MP Williamson told The Grayzone, “ministers refused to let me have access to any documents or correspondence relating to this organization’s activities.  I was told that releasing this information could ‘disrupt and undermine the program’s effectiveness.’”

During a meeting convened in London on June 26, 2018, Pryce outlined a new FCO program “to weaken the Russian State’s influence on its near neighbors.” He solicited a consortium of firms to assist the British state in establishing new and seemingly independent media outlets to counter Russian government-backed media in Moscow’s immediate sphere of influence, and to amplify the messaging of NATO-aligned governments.

Justified on the basis of Russia’s supposed intention to “sow disunity and course[sic] disruption to democratic processes,” the campaign Pryce laid out was more aggressive and far-reaching than anything Russia has been caught doing in the West.

Pryce emphasized that secrecy was of the essence, warning that “some grantees will not wish to be linked to the FCO.”

A year later, the FCO’s CDMD division outlined a program to run through 2022 at a cost of $8.3 million to the British taxpayer. It aimed to establish new outlets and support preexisting media operations “to counter Russia’s efforts to sow disunity” and “increase resilience to hostile Kremlin messaging in the Baltic states.”

Thus the British government set out with an array of intelligence contractors to dominate Baltic media with pro-NATO messaging – and perhaps sow some disunity of its own.

As seen below, the BBC placed an apparently successful bid to participate in the covert Baltic program through its non-profit arm, known as BBC Media Action.

The BBC also proposed to participate in a separate UK FCO media propaganda program in Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. It named Reuters and a now-defunct intelligence contractor called Aktis Strategy, which participated in previous FCO CDMD programs, as key allies in its consortium.

The BBC identified local partners like Hromadske, a Kiev-based broadcast network born in the midst of the so-called Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 that relied on ultra-nationalist muscle to remove an elected president and install a pro-NATO regime. Hromadske materialized almost overnight with seed money and logistical support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and billionaire media mogul Pierre Omidyar’s Network Fund.

BBC Media Action proposed working through Aktis to cultivate and grow pro-NATO media in conflict areas like the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where a proxy war has raged since 2014 between the Western-backed Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatists. It was textbook information warfare, weaponizing broadcast media to turn the tide of battle in a protracted, grinding conflict.

The UK FCO propaganda campaign warned that “Kremlin-affiliated structures” could undermine the project if it was exposed. For a media organization that claims to place trust at the heart of its charter of values, the BBC was certainly operating under a high degree of secrecy.

The UK FCO’s meddling in Eastern Europe and the Baltics created a feeding frenzy among contractors seeking to provide “capacity building” and media development assistance on Russia’s periphery. Among the bidders were Reuters and veteran FCO contractors that had participated in an array of information warfare campaigns from Syria to the British home front.

The Consortium

Among the intelligence contractors bidding to participate in the UK FCO-funded Consortium were the Zinc Network and Albany Communications. As journalist Kit Klarenberg noted in a February 18 report on the recent FCO leaks, these firms “boast staff possessed of [security] clearances, individuals who previously served at the highest levels of government, the military and security services. They furthermore have extensive experience in conducting information warfare operations on London’s behalf the world over.”

Previously known as Breakthrough, Zinc has contracted for the UK Home Office to covertly implement media projects propagandizing British Muslims under the auspices of the Prevent de-radicalization initiative. In Australia, Zinc was caught running a clandestine program to promote support for government policies among Muslims.

Ben Norton reported for The Grayzone on Albany’s record of “secur[ing] the participation of an extensive local network of over 55 stringers, reporters and videographers” to influence media narratives and advance Western regime-change goals in Syria, while conducting public relations services on behalf of extremist Syrian militias funded by NATO member states and Gulf monarchies to destabilize the country.

In its bid for the UK FCO media program in the Baltic region, Albany proposed a series of satirical “interactive games” like “Putin Bingo” to encourage opposition to the Russian government and exploit “frustrations experienced by Russians in the EU.”

Albany pitched a Latvia-based outlet called Meduza as “a leading proponent of these games.” A top website among Russian opposition supporters, Meduza has received financial support from the Swedish government and several billionaire-backed pro-NATO foundations.

As a UK FCO contractor, the Zinc Network said it was “delivering audience segmentation and targeting support” not only to Meduza, but also to Mediazona, a supposedly independent media venture founded by two members of the anti-Kremlin performance art group Pussy Riot.

One of Mediazona’s founders, Nadya Tolokno, shared a stage with former US President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Foundation’s 2015 conference. The following year, Tolonko trashed now-imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, claiming, “He’s connected with the Russian government, and I feel that he’s proud of it.”

Besides delivering “targeting support” for “independent” outlets pushing the right line against the Kremlin, Zinc proposed leveraging UK FCO funding into a program of direct payments and gaming Google search results in their favor. The intelligence cut-out was explicit about its desire to reduce the search visibility of the Russian government-backed broadcaster RT.com.

The UK covertly funded and managed a network of Russian YouTubers and “activated” anti-government protest content

In a document marked “private and confidential,” Zinc revealed the Consortium’s role in setting up a “YouTuber network” in Russia and Central Asia designed to propagate the message of the UK and its NATO allies.

According to Zinc, the Consortium was “supporting participants mak[ing] and receiv[ing] international payments without being registered as external sources of funding,” presumably to circumvent Russian registration requirements for foreign-funded media outfits.

Zinc also helped the YouTube influencers “develop editorial strategies to deliver key messages” while working “to keep their involvement confidential.” And it carried out its entire program of covert propaganda in the name of “promoting media integrity and democratic values.”

Perhaps the most prominent Russian YouTube influencer is Alexei Navalny, a previously marginal nationalist opposition figure who was nominated for a Nobel Prize after becoming the target of a high-profile poisoning incident that brought relations between Russia and the West to its post-Cold War nadir.

The Russian government’s sentencing of Navalny to a 2.5-year prison term for evading parole has inspired the largest wave of anti-government protests since 2018, when Navalny helped sponsor national demonstrations against the banning of the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

In its bid for a UK FCO contract, Zinc revealed that it played a behind-the-scenes role “to activate a range of content within 12 hours of the recent telegram protests.” Whether those activities involved Navalny or his immediate network was unclear, but the private disclosure by Zinc appeared confirm that British intelligence played a role in amplifying the 2018 protests.

Russian intelligence services have released sting video footage showing Vladimir Ashurkov, the executive director of Navalny’s FBK anti-corruption organization, meeting in 2013 with a suspected British MI6 agent named James William Thomas Ford, who was operating out of the British embassy in Moscow. During the rendezvous, Ashurkov can be heard asking for 10 to 20 million dollars to generate “quite a different picture” of the political landscape.

In 2018, Ashurkov’s name appeared in leaked documents exposing a covert, UK FCO influence network called the Integrity Initiative. As The Grayzone reported, the Integrity Initiative operated behind the cover of a think tank called the Institute for Statecraft, which concealed its own location through a fake office in Scotland.

Run by a group of military intelligence officers, the secret propaganda group worked through clusters of media and political influencers to escalate tensions between the West and Russia. Listed among the London cluster of anti-Russian influencers was Ashurkov.

The Integrity Initiative’s military directors outlined their agenda in stark, unequivocal terms. As the leaked memo below illustrates, they aimed to exploit the media, think tanks and their influence network to stir up as much hysteria about Russia’s supposedly malign influence as possible. Since they embarked on their covert campaign, nearly all their wishes have come true.

Bellingcat joins the Zinc Network, allegedly meddles in Moldova’s elections

After Alexei Navalny’s poisoning, he collaborated with the UK-based “open source” journalism outfit Bellingcat to pin the crime on Russia’s FSB intelligence services. Though it is well established that Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, a US government entity that supports regime-change operations around the globe, the fact has never appeared in the reams of fawning profiles that corporate media outlets, including Reuters, have published about the organization.

Bellingcat’s role as a partner in the Zinc Network’s UK FCO-funded EXPOSE Consortium may add an additional layer of suspicion about the outlet’s claim to independence.

Indeed, Bellingcat was listed in leaked 2018 documents as a key member of Zinc’s “Network of NGOs.” Among the members in the network was the Institute for Statecraft, the front for the Integrity Initiative.

Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins has vehemently denied accepting funding from the UK FCO or collaborating with it. But after Zinc documents leaked in early 2019, Higgins disclosed that some version of the Zinc proposal had received the green light from the Foreign Office.

Christian Triebbert, a Bellingcat staff member who was named as a potential trainer by the Zinc documents, and who now heads the New York Times’ video investigations unit, claimed the program consisted of benign workshops on “digital research and verification skills.”

What he and Higgins did not mention, however, was that Bellingcat had apparently been dispatched by the Zinc Network to “respond” to the 2019 parliamentary elections in North Macedonia. Stakes were high as the elections were likely to determine whether the tiny country would enter NATO and join the EU. The pro-NATO candidate triumphed, and not without a little help from the British Foreign Office and its allies.

According to the Zinc proposal, Bellingcat provided training to the Most Network, a Macedonian media outlet. It was joined by DFR Lab, a project of the NATO- and US government-funded Atlantic Council in Washington, DC.

After apparently participating in the covert UK FCO-funded intervention in North Macedonia, Bellingcat published an article ahead of the country’s 2020 parliamentary elections entitled, “Russia’s interference in North Macedonia.”

Several Zinc Network documents list Reuters as a member of the UK FCO-funded Consortium media intervention in the Baltic states.

Asked by The Grayzone how Reuters’ participation in UK FCO-funded programs aimed at countering Russia conformed to the news organization’s Trust Principles, spokesperson Jenny Vereker stated, “This funding supports our independent work to assist journalists and journalism all over the world, as part of our mission to strengthen a free and vibrant global media ecosystem to support a plurality of voices and preserve the flow of accurate and independent information. This is because accurate and balanced news coverage is a crucial pillar of any free, fair and informed society.”

In recent years, the BBC and Reuters have played an increasingly aggressive part in demonizing the governments of countries where London and Washington are seeking regime change. Meanwhile, high-profile online investigative outlets like Bellingcat have sprouted up seemingly overnight to assist these efforts.

With the release of the UK FCO documents, questions must be raised about whether these esteemed news organizations are truly the independent and ethical journalistic entities they claim to be. While they hammer away at “authoritarian” states and malign Russian activities, they have little to say about the machinations of the powerful Western governments in their immediate midst. Perhaps they are reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.

thegrayzone.com

A new BBC podcast, “Mayday,” uses smears, gaping omissions, leaps of logic, and factual errors in a desperate attempt to repair the image of late White Helmets founder James Le Mesurier, and discredit the OPCW inspectors who challenged a cover-up of their Syria chemical weapons probe. Mayday’s producer has failed to answer the following questions.

The new BBC podcast Mayday covers the life and death of James Le Mesurier, the former UK military officer who founded the group The White Helmets, which has operated extensively in Syria’s proxy war.

The White Helmets have been marketed to Western audiences as a neutral aid organization conducting rescue operations in opposition-held cities targeted by Syrian and Russian bombings. But as The Grayzone has extensively reported, the White Helmets have worked closely with jihadist groups in Syria, and have been used as a PR tool to whitewash the proxy war against Damascus by their US, UK, Turkey, and Gulf State sponsors.

The White Helmets were established thanks to tens of millions of dollars in funding from the UK, US and Qatari governments. Members of the organization have been filmed and photographed carrying guns and waving Salafi-jihadist flags, and have even participated in numerous public executions of citizens in militant-held territory.

A British former military officer-turned-mercenary, James Le Mesurier founded the White Helmets in southern Turkey in 2014. Le Mesurier died in an apparent suicide in November 2019 after falling from the roof of an Istanbul building where he kept an apartment and office. Days before his death, Le Mesurier admitted to pocketing tens of thousands of dollars in donor funds and committing financial fraud to cover it up. In an emailed confession, Le Mesurier urged Western donor countries to prevent a second forensic audit which, he warned, could uncover further “mistakes and internal failures” and provide “a victory for Russia and the pro-Assad trolls.”

The BBC podcast, “Mayday,” represents a prolonged effort to salvage Le Mesurier and the White Helmets’ tarnished reputations. Despite a forensic audit and Le Mesurier’s own confession, Mayday host and BBC producer Chloe Hadjimatheou makes the implausible claim that Le Mesurier was innocent of all financial wrongdoing. In her view, it was all the result of a misunderstanding. Hadjimatheou goes on to make the equally outlandish suggestion that Le Mesurier was at least partly driven to suicide as a result of the allegations leveled against him by Russia, Syria and critics on social media.

It would take several lengthy articles to detail all of the falsehoods and editorial lapses in Hadjimatheou’s eleven-episode series. These include false statements about The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal – whom Hadjimatheou never contacted for comment – as well as cheap insinuations about my own reporting as well.

Here, The Grayzone is calling attention to glaring issues surrounding one particular topic: the OPCW’s scandal-ridden Douma investigation.

In an extra episode, “The Canister on the Bed,” Hadjimatheou attempts to refute the OPCW inspectors who have challenged a cover-up of their investigation into an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018. Hadjimatheou relies extensively on an anonymous source, identified as “Leon,” whom she claims “works for the OPCW.”

Hadjimatheou declined my request for an interview, but did agree to answer questions in writing. A BBC spokesperson also pledged to “endeavour to get you some replies.” I submitted a list of questions to Hadjimatheou and the BBC on Tuesday, November 24^th 2020. Having not yet heard back (I did not even receive an acknowledgment that my questions were received), I have published my questions in full below.

Should Hadjimatheou and the BBC ever respond to me, I will update this article accordingly.

Questions for Chloe Hadjimatheou from Aaron Maté (submitted November 24, 2020)

1) “Leon”

“Leon”, the purported OPCW source whom you interview for the episode “The Canister on the Bed”, tries to diminish and refute two highly experienced OPCW inspectors, as well as the organization’s first Director General, José Bustani. But it is not clear whether Leon had any serious involvement in the OPCW’s Douma investigation – if any involvement at all – or indeed whether he is actually an OPCW official, or just a contractor. It is also unclear what his scientific credentials are.

You claim that Leon “works for the OPCW.” (7:55). Is this something that you have confirmed independently? How did you verify that he “works for the OPCW”? Can you disclose anything about the nature of this work?

Leon’s comments suggest to me that he was not a part of the OPCW FFM team that deployed to Douma. “They had to wait for, like, two weeks,” he says of the Douma team (7:38). This indicates that he was not a part of that team. Can you confirm that “Leon” did not deploy to Douma? Assuming that he did not, what was his actual role in the Douma investigation, if any?

What is Leon’s competence to comment on the chemistry, ballistics and toxicology studies? Did you verify if he had any access to information, data, or evidence regarding the Douma investigation? If so, how?

2) Critical Omissions

Your Extra Episode (“The Canister on the Bed”) on the Douma incident omits critical information about the OPCW investigation that is in the public record. I hope to get your explanation as to why these omissions were made.

A) No mention of the original, censored OPCW report, or the egregious attempts to publish a bogus report

You make no mention of the OPCW FFM team’s original, initial report, which raised serious doubts that a chemical attack had occurred in Douma but was suppressed by unknown persons. This report has been publicly available since December 2019, via Wikileaks.

You omit the fact that this suppressed report was secretively substituted with a new, doctored version, which the Organization attempted to deceptively publish unknown to the inspectors. This doctored report had key facts and findings removed, and unsupported conclusions added, for example: “The team has sufficient evidence at this time to determine that chlorine, or another reactive chlorine-containing chemical, was likely released from cylinders.” This statement was clearly untrue, as the compromise Interim report that was subsequently published on July 6 2018 demonstrated. This doctored report has also been publicly available, via Wikileaks, since December 2019.

You also omit that one of the dissenting investigators, described by the OPCW as “Inspector B”, was the original report’s chief author, a fact that has been public knowledge (I reported it this July in The Nation, for example) for a long time. That Inspector B is Brendan Whelan is also now public knowledge; it has been the subject of public speculation for over a year and I reported it at The Grayzone last month, after he was doxxed by Bellingcat (with the help of a fake document allegedly leaked from the OPCW; more on that below).

You also failed to mention that Whelan/Inspector B protested the censorship of the initial report in a June 22, 2018 letter to the Chief of Cabinet. In this letter, published in November 2019 by Wikileaks, Whelan expressed his “gravest concern” about the doctored report that was about to be published. He alleged that it “misrepresents the facts,” thereby “undermining its credibility.” Because of this intervention, the imminent publication of this doctored report was thwarted just hours before it was due for release. The OPCW has never denied that this incident happened. Even OPCW Director General Fernando Arias, in his response (published on October 28 2020 at The Grayzone) to a letter of complaint Whelan sent to him (see below) detailing these events, does not deny the suppression and the failed attempt to publish a bogus report.

Critically, a number of key facts and findings contained in the original, censored report never made their way back to the final report. As Whelan wrote in his April 2019 letter to the DG, also published last month at The Grayzone: “Having read in detail the Final FFM Report issued on 1 March 2019, I am very concerned at the way the facts have been misrepresented and highly questionable conclusions drawn. The final report, in grand part, is the original report I had written (the same report that had been heavily redacted in June) but in which key conclusions have since been altered to contradict those of the original report. This is despite the fact that no substantive or valid new information, particularly with respect to the sampling and analysis results, has been gathered since the interim report was issued.”

Whelan’s letter also discloses that the initial report was “reviewed and agreed among 4-5 team members in mid-June” 2018. This, among other known facts, contradicts your claim that “there was a scientific consensus among investigators that a chlorine attack had very likely taken place.” Again, none of this is denied or challenged by the Director General in his response to Whelan.

Why did you make no mention of any of this? Given that you attempt to refute the dissenting inspectors and claim that their concerns were addressed, how can you exclude the incident that set off the entire dispute: the deceptive editing and censorship of the original team report, and subsequent attempts to publish a bogus replacement?

The omission of any mention of the doctored initial report is particularly glaring in light of the fact that you include a clip of “Leon” – a purported OPCW official – claiming that “there was no tampering, there was no doctoring.” (25:01) The redacted OPCW report is incontrovertible proof that there was indeed tampering and doctoring. You have thus aired without challenge a statement that is contradicted by the censorship that you ignored.

B) No mention that all but one of the Douma team members were sidelined and replaced by a so-called “core” team

You omit that the inspectors involved in the on-site Douma investigation were sidelined and replaced by a so-called “core” team. Those sidelined included Whelan – the mission’s scientific coordinator, the chief author of the initial report, and the author of the email of protest that challenged the initial report’s censorship.

The only member of this “core” team who set foot in Douma is a paramedic with no scientific expertise. It was this “core” team — not the inspectors who deployed to Syria, including some who signed off on the original report — that produced the final report of March 2019.

This fact alone should raise an automatic red flag about the final report’s credibility.

Why did you not mention it?

C) No mention of the toxicology assessment that doubted chlorine gas exposure

Experts from a NATO-member state conducted a toxicology review at the OPCW team’s request. They concluded that observed signs of the civilians in Douma, particularly the rapid onset of excessive frothing, as well as the concentration of victims filmed in the apartment building so close to fresh air, “were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine, and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified.” Yet this critical assessment was excluded from the final report.

Why did you omit this critical assessment, and also omit the fact that it was kept out of the OPCW’s final report?

D) No mention of your own BBC colleague Riam Dalati’s reporting on “staged” events

Incredibly, in an episode that attempts to refute the argument that the Douma incident was staged, you make no mention of the reporting of your own BBC colleague, Riam Dalati, that the hospital scene in Douma was staged. (This omission is made throughout your entire podcast series, including in the episode that discussed the Douma hospital scene, episode 7 “Managed Massacres.”)

As you are well aware, Riam has claimed, based on six months of his own research, that the scene in the Douma hospital was staged. If the hospital scene was staged, then this automatically raises doubts about the entire incident, including at the apartment block, where Riam also said that activists were “manipulating the scene” and “[used] corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption.”

Truth is @James__Harkin got the basics right in terms of #Douma‘s “propaganda” value.
The ATTACK DID HAPPEN, Sarin wasn’t used, but we’ll have to wait for @OPCW to prove Chlorine or otherwise.
However, everything else around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect. https://t.co/abRvSIMV1L

— Riam Dalati (@Dalatrm) February 13, 2019

The Douma hospital staging also raises serious questions about the role of the White Helmets, the subject of your series. As you report in episode 7, the White Helmets were clearly involved in the events at the Douma hospital. The fact that they took part in a potentially staged incident could implicate them in a crime. You even report yourself that the White Helmets played a role in giving witness testimony and evidence to the OPCW. How credible are the White Helmets, and their “evidence,” if they may have been involved in staging a hospital scene used to allege a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government? Only by ignoring your own colleague’s reporting can you ignore this critical question.

Given the significance of your own BBC colleague Riam Dalati’s reporting, and its profound relevance to the topics you’re reporting on, why did you omit any mention of it?

3) “Alex’s” non-existent Wikileaks award

You strongly imply that “Alex” leaked documents to Wikileaks in return for a $100,000 reward. Did you first check with Wikileaks, as a minimum journalistic step, whether they ever paid out such a reward, and particularly if they paid “Alex”?

By the way, in trying to falsely insinuate that “Alex” received money, you misrepresented the nature of the Wikileaks offer itself. You state that it was “for any leaked material relating to the Douma incident.” In fact – quoting the actual offer – Wikileaks sought “confidential information (intercepts, reports) showing who is responsible for the alleged attack in Douma.” Wikileaks tweeted this offer out on April 9, 2018, before the OPCW investigation had even begun. It appears that it was clearly aimed at government officials who would be in a position to possess intercepts or reports assigning responsibility.

A source close to Wikileaks told me that they have not paid this award to anyone. They also said there is no record of you contacting them to inquire about whether “Alex” was paid this award.

Will you issue an update to inform your audience that you made this false insinuation?

4) Hypotheses Regarding Staging

You state: “But reading the OPCW report, it’s clear that the inspectors took the idea that the attack might have been faked very seriously. They discussed it as a scenario and tested their evidence against that possibility.”

What is your evidence for this assertion? Can you show where such an alternative was discussed in the final report?

From my reading, any statements in the original report that might suggest a faked attack – such as that the victims may have died in a “non-chemical related” incident – were removed from the final report.

5) José Bustani

You: “Bustani was the director general of the OPCW back when the Iraq War started. Then in 2003, he was removed from his position, something he believes was the result of pressure from the US. And it’s unusual for a former Director General to weigh in like this. And Leon tells me he thinks Bustani might have an axe to grind with the Americans. Even so he says Bustani isn’t in a position to comment.”

That Bustani was removed under US pressure isn’t something he “believes”, it’s a documented fact. Bustani was personally threatened by John Bolton (“We know where your kids are“, Bolton said) and the US also threatened to cut the OPCW’s budget. The International Labor Organisation, a UN agency, sided with Bustani and ruled against his “unlawful dismissal.”

Why did you omit these critical facts, and instead portray them as merely a “belief” by someone who “might have an axe to grind with the Americans”?

Leon: “The work back then was completely different from today. In those days, the main point of the OPCW was to make sure that the massive stockpiles of the US and Russia were being destroyed. There was no mission to investigate the actual use of chemical weapons. This only really started with Syria. So how can Bustani say whether things are done properly or not?”

Apart from the fact that his statement is irrelevant, Leon seems unaware that the methodologies and procedures for investigations of alleged chemical weapons uses (including large field exercises) were developed under Bustani’s watch. Bustani explained this in his recent statement to the UN Security Council (a statement that the US, UK, and France blocked him from delivering – another fact that you have managed to omit).

Quoting Bustani: “More recently, the OPCW’s investigations of alleged uses of chemical weapons have no doubt created even greater challenges for the Organization. It was precisely for this kind of eventuality that we had developed operating procedures, analytical methods, as well as extensive training programs, in strict accordance with the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Allegations of the actual use of chemical weapons were a prospect for which we hoped our preparations would never be required. Unfortunately, they were, and today allegations of chemical weapons use are a sad reality.”

Additionally, you and Leon also omit that Bustani worked with the dissenting OPCW inspectors when Bustani headed the organization. If Leon – someone whose qualifications are kept hidden, along with his actual proximity to the Douma probe – is qualified to comment on the dissenting inspectors, why isn’t the first Director General of their organization?

As someone who worked with the two dissenting inspectors, Bustani is certainly qualified to comment on their level of expertise, integrity and credibility, as he has already publicly in effusive fashion, but which you also failed to include. “They are extremely competent,” Bustani said of the inspectors, in an interview with me at The Grayzone. “All of them. In fact, they always impressed me because they were extremely professional and extremely reliable.”

6) Bornyl chloride

You:

“I’m not an expert in chemistry. So I checked with actual chemists, who told me that what Mate suggests seems highly unlikely. I was told that heavily chlorinated water couldn’t have caused that chemical compound to penetrate the surface into the deeper layers of wood. Only a gas could have done that.”

This isn’t a question, but a correction. You and your sources are confused here. I never claimed that bornyl chloride was in the chlorinated water (to penetrate the wood). “Alex” never made that claim either. So you’re making a counterpoint to an argument that was never made.

I also should point out that the way that you and Leon address the bornyl chloride issue is illogical and contradictory.

At one point you say that there “was one specific piece of evidence that convinced the team that chlorine gas had been used.” You then quote Leon: “There is a chemical in wood samples, which is formed when the wood is exposed to chlorine gas. Those wood samples, they show that a chemical attack happened.”

But just a few lines later, you acknowledge something contradictory: “the report says this doesn’t definitively prove that the wood came into contact with chlorine gas, the investigators concluded, and check out the very careful language they use, that there were reasonable grounds to believe a chlorine attack had taken place and that the attack had come from the air.” (14:36)

So, putting aside your skewed definition of “the team” – which requires excluding the actual team that deployed to Syria in favor of the “core” team that did not (see “2b” above) – which one is it? Was the team “convinced… that chlorine gas had been used”, or did they only conclude that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe so?

This also contradicts your statement at the end, where you state that “all the evidence needs to be seen together, not in isolation” (29:13) Again, which is it? Was it that “one specific piece of evidence” – the wood samples, or was it “all the evidence… seen together, not in isolation”?

Contrary to what you and Leon claim, the presence of bornyl chloride does not confirm the presence of chlorine gas. As the original report states, it merely indicates that the wood was exposed to hydrogen chloride, which can come from chlorine gas but can also come from other benign sources.

This is why the final report also acknowledged the uncertainty about what the wood samples were exposed to: “Based on these findings alone, it cannot be unequivocally stated that the wood was exposed to chlorine gas, rather than to hydrogen chloride or hydrochloric acid.” It is curious then that Leon is now trying to revise the final report’s own words, and now tell your audience that the wood samples “show that a chemical attack happened.”

If you had been willing to acknowledge the initial, censored report, and Whelan’s letter to the DG expressing his concerns, you might have been able to catch Leon’s egregious error.

7) Note Verbal

Quoting you:

(32:02)

“But here’s something interesting: the OPCW leaker Alex has spent time and energy disputing the idea that there was ever chlorine gas released from those canisters in the two apartment buildings. But when the OPCW reached its conclusions, the Russian and Syrian states didn’t dispute those findings. I’ve managed to see their notes verbale. Those are the responses from member states to the final conclusions of the OPCW. And the OPCW answers all the Syrian and Russian representatives’ questions. But at no point do either the Russian or the Syrian states argue about the Bornyl Chloride found in the wood samples, or the idea that chlorine gas was present at both locations. And maybe that’s because in the document I’ve seen, it’s made clear that the Syrians were given samples from all the evidence gathered in Douma. And so they know the facts of what that evidence shows.” (33:03)

Your attempt to suggest here that Russia and Syria “didn’t dispute those findings” that “there was ever chlorine gas released from those canisters in the two apartment buildings” is deceptive.

First, you falsely insinuate here that you are seeing some kind of damning secret document – “I’ve managed to see their notes verbale”; “…in the document I’ve seen.” But anyone can “manage” to see the notes verbale – they’re freely available on the OPCW website. And reading the Russian note verbal, you’ll see that it undermines your characterization:

“The Russian Federation does not challenge the findings contained in the FFM report regarding the possible presence of molecular chlorine on the cylinders.  However, the parameters, characteristics and exterior of the cylinders, as well as the data obtained from the locations of those incidents, are not consistent with the argument that they were dropped from an aircraft. The existing facts more likely indicate that there is a high probability that both cylinders were placed at Locations 2 and 4 manually rather than dropped from an aircraft. Apparently the factual material contained in the report does not allow us to draw a conclusion as to the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon. On that basis, the Russian Federation insists on the version that there was false evidence and on the staged character of the incident in Douma.”

So Russia does not challenge the claim that there is a “possible” presence of molecular chlorine in the cylinders found in Douma. And that is for obvious reasons: no one has argued that there was no possibility of a chlorine presence. The issue is whether there is evidence to demonstrate that chlorine gas was used as a weapon with any level of confidence. Hence why Russia said – which you omitted – that “the factual material contained in the report does not allow us to draw a conclusion as to the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon,” and that it believes that “that there was false evidence” and a “staged character of the incident in Douma.”

This is clearly contradictory to your claim that Russia and Syria “didn’t dispute those findings” that “there was ever chlorine gas released from those canisters in the two apartment buildings”, because “they know the facts of what that evidence shows.”

8) Repeating Bellingcat’s dubious claims

Your deceptive and false claims, outlined in 6) and 7), happen to mirror the dubious claims recently published by Bellingcat, a website funded by NATO member states. Another supposed OPCW source tried, via Bellingcat, to launder the same deceptive arguments that you have made: that the bornyl chloride constituted a smoking gun (section 6, above), and that Russia and Syria did not challenge the report’s findings (section 7, above).

But as I exposed, the Bellingcat ploy turned out to be a hoax. A purported OPCW letter that made these claims, which Bellingcat claimed was sent to Whelan, was in fact, at best, only a draft that was never actually sent, or at worst a fake from someone outside the OPCW.

The fact that Bellingcat’s text was never sent to Whelan suggests that the OPCW itself might not even stand behind the arguments that Bellingcat’s source and your source, Leon, have each made.

Were you aware of the Bellingcat letter fraud before you published an “extra episode” that made the same dubious claims, and does it give you any pause about airing them?

My hope is that you did not knowingly take part in promoting the deceptive Bellingcat/Leon claims that you aired, and that you will now endeavor to confront your source(s) about how you were misled.

The Bellingcat connection here also raises another issue. The chemist who you interviewed in your attempt to refute me, Andrea Sella, did not actually challenge anything that I have said. But more importantly, Sella has previously contributed to Bellingcat’s attempts to prove that chlorine gas was used in Douma. Did Bellingcat play any role in connecting you with Sella?

9) A researcher with a conflict of interest

The Mayday: Intrigue credits state that Abdul Kader Habak conducted “Arabic translation and additional research.” According to Mr. Habak’s Facebook page, he has worked for the UK-led contractor ARK from 2013 to 2019. This poses a serious conflict of interest.

According to a 2018 report from the British journalist James Harkin in The Intercept, ARK “branded the White Helmets and provided its training and equipment.” ARK was also “funded by the U.S. State Department and the British Foreign Office.” Harkin additionally reported that “ARK was also gathering intelligence on Islamist groups in [Syria], and those reports were being privately forwarded by a British Army liaison officer to U.S. Central Command, with an email recommending additional funding for the organization’s filmmaking arm.” I believe that your researcher, Mr. Habak, worked for this filmmaking arm in Syria.

As the Guardian recently reported, James Le Mesurier – the subject of your “Mayday” series – previously worked for ARK, before taking the White Helmets project with him to his venture, Mayday Rescue.

And as my colleague Ben Norton at The Grayzone has reported based on leaked documents, ARK has also played a critical role in branding and marketing not just the White Helmets, but Syria’s Salafi-jihadist armed opposition:

In a leaked document it filed with the British government, ARK said its “focus since 2012 has been delivering highly effective, politically-and conflict-sensitive Syria programming for the governments of the United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Canada, Japan and the European Union.” ARK boasted of overseeing $66 million worth of contracts to support pro-opposition efforts in Syria.

…ARK played a central role in developing the foundations of the Syrian political opposition’s narrative. In one leaked document, the firm took credit for the “development of a core Syrian opposition narrative,” which was apparently crafted during a series of workshops with opposition leaders sponsored by the US and UK governments.

…The firm even oversaw the PR strategy for the Supreme Military Council (SMC), the leadership of the official armed wing of Syria’s opposition, the Free Syrian Army (FSA). ARK created a complex PR campaign to “provide a ‘re-branding’ of the SMC in order to distinguish itself from extremist armed opposition groups and to establish the image of a functioning, inclusive, disciplined and professional military body.”

ARK admitted that it sought to whitewash Syria’s armed opposition, which had been largely dominated by Salafi-jihadists, by “Softening the FSA Image.”

…The leaked documents show ARK ran the Twitter and Facebook pages of Syria Civil Defense, known more commonly as the White Helmets. ARK took credit for developing “an internationally-focused communications campaign designed to raise global awareness of the (White Helmets) teams and their life saving work.”

All of this poses a major conflict of interest. The White Helmets is the topic of your podcast. Your researcher, Abdul Kader Habak, worked for a UK government contractor, ARK, that, among other things, branded the White Helmets; ran the White Helmets’ social media accounts; promoted the White Helmets to the public; and [may have] used the White Helmets to gather intelligence for the UK and US militaries.

Were you aware of your researcher’s work for ARK, and ARK’s critical role in establishing and promoting the White Helmets – the very topic of your series? What steps will you be taking to address this serious conflict of interest?

thegrayzone.com

There have been many US military interventions that were based on lies. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is not some kooky blogger’s opinion. It is an extensively documented and indisputable fact.

Nothing has ever been done to address this extensively documented and indisputable fact. No laws were ever changed. No war crimes tribunals were ever held. No policies or procedures were ever revised. No one was ever even fired. No changes were implemented to prevent the Iraq deceptionfrom happening again, and, when it happened again, no changes were implemented to prevent the Libya deception from happening again.

When you make a mistake, you take measures afterward to ensure that you never make the same mistake again. When you do something on purpose, and you intend on doing it again, you do not take any such measures.

There is a large and growing body of evidence that we have been lied toabout Syria to an extent and to a level of sophistication that may be historically unprecedented. One particular aspect of the US-centralized empire’s military involvement in that nation, the 2018 airstrikes by the US/UK/France alliance and the alleged chemical weapons incident which preceded it, has been subject to intense scrutiny ever since it took place. And with good reason: there are many pieces of evidence indicating that the Douma incident was staged to falsely implicate the Syrian government.

I don’t claim to know exactly who would have been involved in such a staging and to what extent. It is technically possible, as the UK’s Admiral Lord West speculated at the time, that it was perpetrated independently by the vicious al-Qaeda-linked Jaysh al-Islam forces who’d been occupying Douma, a last-ditch attempt to provoke a western military response that might save them from the brink of defeat at the hands of the surging Syrian Arab Army. Jaysh al-Islam has an established record of deliberately massacring civilians, and of using civilians as military leverage by locking them in cages on rooftops in strategic Douma locations to prevent airstrikes. The narrative management operation known as the White Helmets would also have been involved to some extent, and it’s very possible that Saudi Arabia, who backs Jaysh al-Islam, was involved as well.

Any number of other allied intelligence agencies could have also been involved to some degree (perhaps with the more expanded goal of ensuring continued US military commitment in Syria during an administration that is vocally opposed to it), and it’s unknown if anyone involved would have had direct contact with any part of any US government agency regarding any of this. All we know for sure is that there’s a growing mountain of evidence that the Syrian government was not involved, and that this raises extremely important questions about (A) who really killed those civilians in Douma and (B) how seriously any future demands for military action should be taken from the US power alliance.

That mountain of evidence includes the following 12 items. Taken individually they are reason enough to be skeptical of the narratives that are being promoted by a government with a known history of using lies, propaganda and false flags to advance preexisting military agendas. Taken together, and looked at with intellectual honesty, they are enough to obliterate anyone’s trust in what we’ve been told about Douma.

1. A leaked OPCW Engineering Assessment concluded that the gas cylinders on the scene were manually placed there.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is a purportedly neutral and international watchdog group dedicated to eliminating the use of chemical weapons around the world. In May of this year, a leaked internal OPCW document labeled “Engineering Assessment of Two Cylinders Observed at the Douma Incident” was published by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media. The Engineering Assessment was signed by a South African ballistics expert named Ian Henderson, whose name is seen listed in expert leadership positions on OPCW documents from as far back as 1998 and as recently as 2018, and its authenticity was quickly confirmed by the OPCW in a statement sent to multiple journalists that it was “conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised release of the document in question.”

Henderson ran some experiments and found no scientifically grounded theory for how the cylinders could possibly have been dropped vertically from the air while being found in the condition and locations that they were found in, concluding instead that they were manually placed on the scene. This is a huge difference, since the Assad coalition was the only side with aircraft and Jaysh al-Islam were the only forces on the ground.

“The dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the cylinders, and the surrounding scene of the incidents, were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder being delivered from an aircraft,” Henderson wrote. “In each case the alternative hypothesis produced the only plausible explanation for observations at the scene.”

“In summary, observations at the scene of the two locations, together with subsequent analysis, suggest that there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft,” Henderson concludes.

This is unsurprising, since the hypothetical physics of the empire’s airdrop narrative make no sense to anyone with any understanding of how material objects move. To get a simple explanation of this, watch the breakdown in this three-minute animation. For a more in-depth look, check out this long Twitter thread by Climate Audit’s Stephen McIntyre.

The existence of Henderson’s report was kept secret from the public by the OPCW, which might make more sense after we get through #2 on this list.

2. US officials reportedly pressured the OPCW to find evidence of Assad’s guilt.

Journalist Jonathan Steele met with second OPCW whistleblower, who detailed the doctoring of the report on Douma to conform to the phony US/NATO version of events.

He also described direct US pressure on the OPCW in the form of three unnamed officials: https://t.co/YER9WJN4lX pic.twitter.com/4nDNPUbEQq

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) 18 ноября 2019 г.

In addition to whoever leaked the Henderson report in May, a second whistleblower going by the pseudonym of “Alex” emerged in October to give a presentation before the whistleblower’s advocacy group Courage Foundation exposing far more plot holes in the official Douma narrative. This same whistleblower also spoke with award-winning British journalist Jonathan Steele, who published a bombshell report on Alex’s revelations in CounterPunch last month.

Among the most stunning revelations in Steele’s article was Alex’s report that US officials attempted to pressure OPCW inspectors during the Organisation’s drafting of its Interim Report on their Douma investigation in July 2018, and that this intercession was facilitated by an OPCW official named Bob Fairweather.

“On July 4 there was another intervention,” Steele writes. “Fairweather, the chef de cabinet, invited several members of the drafting team to his office. There they found three US officials who were cursorily introduced without making clear which US agencies they represented. The Americans told them emphatically that the Syrian regime had conducted a gas attack, and that the two cylinders found on the roof and upper floor of the building contained 170 kilograms of chlorine. The inspectors left Fairweather’s office, feeling that the invitation to the Americans to address them was unacceptable pressure and a violation of the OPCW’s declared principles of independence and impartiality.”

It’s unknown what forces were at play that enabled the US government to insert itself into into an ostensibly impartial OPCW investigation with the help of an OPCW official, but it wouldn’t be the first time the US government leveraged the Organisation into facilitating preexisting regime change agendas against a disobedient Middle Eastern nation. In 2002 Mother Jones reported that the US government, spearheaded by John Bolton, had used the threat of withdrawing its disproportionately high percentage of funding from the Organisation if it didn’t oust its then-Director General Jose Bustani. The popular Bustani, who’d previously been unanimously re-elected to his position, had been hurting the case for war with his successful negotiations with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In March 2018, after Bolton was selected as Trump’s National Security Advisor, The Intercept revealed that the campaign to remove Bustani had also included Bolton personally threatening his children.

Bolton was operating at the highest levels of the Trump White House throughout the entire duration of the OPCW’s Douma investigation. He was Trump’s National Security Advisor from April 9, 2018 to September 10, 2019. The OPCW’s Fact-Finding mission didn’t arrive in Syria until April 14 2018 and didn’t begin its investigation in Douma until several days after that, with its final report being released in March of 2019.

3. Levels of chlorinated organic chemicals didn’t indicate any chlorine gas attack took place.

“The main point is that chlorine gas degrades rapidly in the air,” Jonathan Steele told Tucker Carlson last month detailing what was told to him by Alex. “So coming in two weeks later, you wouldn’t find anything. What you would find is that the gas contaminates or affects other chemicals in the natural environment. So-called chlorinated organic chemicals [COCs]. The difficulty is they exist anyway in the natural environment and water. So the crucial thing is the levels: were there higher levels of chlorinated organic chemicals found after the alleged gas attack than there would have been in the normal environment?”

“When they got back to the Netherlands, to The Hague where the OPCW has its headquarters, samples were sent off to designated laboratories, then there was a weird silence developed,” Steele continued. “Nobody told the inspectors what the results of the analysis was. It was only by chance that the inspector found out through accident earlier the results would come in and there were no differences at all. There were no higher levels of chlorinated organic chemicals in the areas where the alleged attack had happened where there is some suspicious cylinders had been found by opposition activists. So it didn’t seem possible that there could have been a gas attack because the levels were just the same as in the natural environment.”

“[Alex] got sight of the results which indicated that the levels of COCs were much lower than what would be expected in environmental samples,” Steele reported in CounterPunch. “They were comparable to and even lower than those given in the World Health Organisation’s guidelines on recommended permitted levels of trichlorophenol and other COCs in drinking water. The redacted version of the report made no mention of the findings.”

“Had they been included, the public would have seen that the levels of COCs found were no higher than you would expect in any household environment”, Alex told Steele.

This inconvenient fact was omitted from both the OPCW’s Interim Report in July 2018 and its Final Report in March 2019.

4. Many signs and symptoms of alleged chlorine gas poisoning weren’t consistent with chlorine gas poisoning.

Some major plot holes in the OPCW report’s chemical analysis, including chemicals claimed to be “not naturally present in the environment” which are in fact “ubiquitous in the background”, with no transparency from the OPCW about control samples of those chemicals. pic.twitter.com/nP403iZc8w

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) 23 октября 2019 г.

The OPCW’s Final Report on Douma in March 2019 assures us that the team found “reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.” A leaked internal OPCW email, featuring an inspector voicing objections to the aforementioned Bob Fairweather over vital information being omitted from the developing Interim Report on Douma, contradicts this assurance, saying observed symptoms weren’t consistent with chlorine gas poisoning.

“In this case the confidence in the identity of chlorine or any choking agent is drawn into question precisely because of the inconsistency with the reported and observed symptoms,” the email reads. “The inconsistency was not only noted by the FFM [Fact-Finding Mission] team but strongly noted by three toxicologists with expertise in exposure to CW [Chemical Weapons] agents.”

So the OPCW’s investigative team as well as three toxicologists said what was observed didn’t match chlorine gas poisoning symptoms. This information was, of course, hidden from us by the OPCW.

A leaked first draft of the Interim Report on Douma, before OPCW officials started cutting out chunks which didn’t suit the US narrative, gives more detail. Here are some excerpts (emphases mine):

“Some of the signs and symptoms described by witnesses and noted in photos and video recordings taken by witnesses, of the alleged victims are not consistent with exposure to chlorine-containing choking or blood agents such as chlorine gas, phosgene or cyanogen chloride. Specifically, the rapid onset of heavy buccal and nasal frothing in many victims, as well as the colour of the secretions, is not indicative of intoxication from such chemicals.”

“The large number of decedents in the one location (allegedly 40 to 45), most of whom were seen in videos and photos strewn on the floor of the apartments away from open windows, and within a few meters of an escape to un-poisoned or less toxic air, is at odds with intoxication by chlorine-based choking or blood agents, even at high concentrations.”

“The inconsistency between the presence of a putative chlorine-containing toxic chocking or blood agent on the one hand and the testimonies of alleged witnesses and symptoms observed from video footage and photographs, on the other, cannot be rationalised. The team considered two possible explanations for the incongruity:
a. The victims were exposed to another highly toxic chemical agent that gave rise to the symptoms observed and has so far gone undetected.
b. The fatalities resulted from a non-chemical-related incident.”

5. A doctor in Douma told journalist Robert Fisk that there was no gas poisoning.

Shortly after the Douma incident a video was circulated online and redistributed on news media around the world featuring people being hosed down with water in a hospital and an infant receiving a respiratory treatment. A doctor who worked in the hospital Assim Rahaibani gave the following account to journalist Robert Fisk days after the incident, saying those in the video were actually just suffering from hypoxia due to dust inhaled after a conventional bombing:

“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night — but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a ‘White Helmet’, shouted ‘Gas!’, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia — not gas poisoning.”

Lest anyone accuse Fisk of having any special loyalties to the Syrian government, in this same report he says it “is indeed a ruthless dictatorship.”

6. A BBC reporter said he has proof that the hospital scene was staged.

Truth is @James__Harkin got the basics right in terms of #Douma‘s “propaganda” value.
The ATTACK DID HAPPEN, Sarin wasn’t used, but we’ll have to wait for @OPCW to prove Chlorine or otherwise.
However, everything else around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect. https://t.co/abRvSIMV1L

— Riam Dalati (@Dalatrm) 13 февраля 2019 г.

The BBC, another establishment that can hardly be accused of Assad loyalism, saw its Syria producer Riam Dalati claiming earlier this year that he had proof beyond a doubt the aforementioned hospital scene was staged. While holding to the establishment line that the attack did happen, Dalati expressed uncertainty as to what if any chemical would have been used and said “everything else around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect.” Emphases mine:

“The ATTACK DID HAPPEN, Sarin wasn’t used, but we’ll have to wait for OPCW to prove Chlorine or otherwise,” Dalati tweeted. However, everything else around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect. After almost 6 months of investigations, i can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged.”

“No fatalities occurred in the hospital,” Dalati continued. “All the White Helmets, activists and people i spoke to are either in Idlib or Euphrates Shield areas. Only one person was in Damascus. Russia and at least one NATO country knew about what happened in the hospital. Documents were sent. However, no one knew what really happened at the flats apart from activists manipulating the scene there. This is why Russia focused solely on discrediting the hospital scene.”

In other words, Russia knew that these “activists” were staging the scene for the news media, and understandably focused on discrediting their work.

“I can tell you that Jaysh al-Islam ruled Douma with an iron fist,” Dalati added. “They coopted activists, doctors and humanitarians with fear and intimidation.”

Dalati set his account to private for an extended period after these extremely controversial statements got him a flood of attention, but the thread is up on Twitter as of this writing (here’s an archive in case they vanish again).

7. More evidence the Douma scene was knowingly staged for media.

Pro-rebel activists appear to have staged “Last Hug” photo. It went viral claiming to show young victims of the Douma gas attack in their “last embrace”.
Victims can be clearly seen on 2 separate floors in aftermath footage. Placed in position at collection/identification point. pic.twitter.com/9kyGQEtO8p

— Riam Dalati (@Dalatrm) 11 апреля 2018 г.

Riam Dalati also tweeted evidence after the attack that people had staged the corpses of two children to make it appear as though they died hugging each other for the purpose of emotional manipulation. If you’ve got a strong stomach (seriously think hard about whether this is something you want in your head before diving in), Stephen McIntyre also compiled some disturbing proof of dead infants being physically placed on top of other corpses in between video shoots of the Douma incident’s aftermath.

Whoever was positioning these bodies for the cameras clearly had a goal of generating an emotional response from the outside world. Which would be precisely the goal of staging a false chemical weapons attack.

8. Witness testimony at The Hague.

It seems the UK govt launched strikes on #Syria– bringing us into potential conflict with nuclear-armed Russia-in response to a CW attack that witnesses (speaking at The Hague), say didn’t happen. If that’s not a resigning offence, then what on earth is? https://t.co/TMitqbvAQ6

— Neil Clark (@NeilClark66) 27 апреля 2018 г.

Seventeen Syrian civilians, including medical personnel and some of the “victims” seen in the aforementioned hospital footage, spoke at the OPCW headquarters in The Hague saying that no chemical weapons attack took place. RT reports:

“There were people unknown to us who were filming the emergency care, they were filming the chaos taking place inside, and were filming people being doused with water. The instruments they used to douse them with water were originally used to clean the floors actually,” Ahmad Kashoi, an administrator of the emergency ward, recalled. “That happened for about an hour, we provided help to them and sent them home. No one has died. No one suffered from chemical exposure.”

The briefing was boycotted by the US and 16 of its allies and was smeared as an unconscionable Russian hoax by media outlets ranging from Sky Newsto Al Jazeera to The Guardian to The Intercept, apparently for no other reason than that what these Syrians were saying didn’t match the unsubstantiated claims being promoted by the political/media class of the US-centralized empire. If you want to just listen to what the Syrians themselves say and make up your own mind, RT has an English translation video here:

9. The first OPCW Director General finds the glaring irregularities and omissions from the OPCW’s Douma report “very disturbing”.

After the aforementioned Courage Foundation presentation given by Alex this past October, the aforementioned former OPCW Director General Jose Bustani (the one whose kids John Bolton threatened) had this to say:

“The convincing evidence of irregular behaviour in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had. I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing”

“I have always expected the OPCW to be a true paradigm of multilateralism. My hope is that the concerns expressed publicly by the Panel, in its joint consensus statement, will catalyse a process by which the Organisation can be resurrected to become the independent and non-discriminatory body it used to be.”

10. This OAN reporter literally just walking around asking people in Douma what they saw.

11. MIT Professor Emeritus Theodore Postol speaking about the plot holes and irregularities in scientific protocol with the Douma investigation.

12. Common sense: Assad stood nothing to gain from launching a chemical attack, while Jaysh al-Islam fighters stood everything to gain by faking one.

This is the initial reason why critical thinkers were so skeptical of the establishment Douma narrative: from the very beginning, it made no sense at all.

Click this hyperlink to read a BBC article dated five days before the Douma incident, describing how the Syrian government “appears poised to regain control” of the town and how Jaysh al-Islam fighters were already evacuating. The battle was won. Assad would have stood absolutely nothing to gain from tempting a retaliation from western powers (which could have been far more severe than it ended up being) all to drop a couple of cylinders of chlorine gas, which incidentally is a highly ineffective weapon that ordinarily takes a very long time to kill.

Jaysh al-Islam (and whoever else they may have been working with), on the other hand, would have stood everything to gain by murdering a few of the civilians they had been holding captive in the town they’d invaded in the hopes that western forces would become their airforce for a bit and hold off the Syrian Arab Army from reclaiming Douma.

“Why would Assad use chemical weapons at this time? He’s won the war,” Major General Jonathan Shaw told The Mail on Sunday at the time. “That’s not just my opinion, it is shared by senior commanders in the US military. There is no rationale behind Assad’s involvement whatsoever. He’s convinced the rebels to leave occupied areas in buses. He’s gained their territory. So why would he be bothering gassing them?”

“The jihadists and the various opposition groups who’ve been fighting against Assad have much greater motivation to launch a chemical weapons attack and make it look like Assad was responsible,” the ex-SAS and Parachute Regiment commander added. “Their motivation being that they want to keep the Americans involved in the war — following Trump saying the US was going to leave Syria for other people to sort out.”

Admiral Lord West made similar comments on the BBC around the same time, prompting BBC host Annita McVeigh to flip into frantic narrative management mode suggesting that he’s “muddying the waters” during an “information war with Russia”.

“President Assad is in the process of winning this civil war, and he was about to take over Douma, all that area,” West said. “He’d had a long, long, long slog slowly capturing that area of the city, and there just before he goes in and takes it all over, apparently he decides to have a chemical attack. It just doesn’t ring true. It seems extraordinary, because clearly he would know that there’s likely to be a response from the allies. What benefit is there for his military? Most of the rebel fighters, this disparate group of Islamists, had withdrawn, there were a few women and children left around. What benefit was there militarily in doing what he did? I find that extraordinary.”

“Whereas we know that in the past some of the Islamo groups have used chemicals, and of course there’d be huge benefit in them labeling an attack as coming from Assad, because they would guess quite rightly that there would be a response from the US as there was last time, and possibly from the UK and France,” West added.

“If I were advising some of the Islamist groups, many of whom are worse than Daesh,” West said, “I would say look, we’ve got to wait until there’s another attack by Assad’s forces, particularly if they’ve got a helicopter overhead or something like that and they’re dropping barrel bombs, and we set off some chlorine. Because we’ll get the next attack from the allies. And there’s no doubt that if we believe he’s done a chemical attack we should do that. And those attacks will get bigger, and it’s the only way they’ve got, actually, of stopping the inevitable victory of Assad.”

These are not Assad sympathizers or Kremlin assets saying this. These are not a bunch of hippie dippie anti-imperialists. These are lifelong military men, thinking in military terms, describing what they were seeing. And what they were seeing is the thing that a false flag is.

The @OPCW concealing that #Douma was likely staged is a big story.

But perhaps a bigger story is this: if staged, how did the victims (mostly children) die? And what role if any in their deaths did US UK backed #WhiteHelmets ‘rescuers’ who appear to have staged the attack play? https://t.co/BDY1lSqfmz

— Charles Shoebridge (@ShoebridgeC) 15 декабря 2019 г.

This isn’t just some idle philosophical question. People died. A massive war crime occurred and the more minutes tick by before a legitimate investigation is launched — with full transparency and accountability this time — the less available evidence there will be. Which is why establishment narrative managers on Syria go full dead-weight when asked if they support a full criminal investigation into what happened. They don’t actually believe it will go their way, and rightly so.

Meanwhile the illegal occupation of Syria drags on, perhaps until Trump can be replaced with a more compliant puppet, and we’re all basically just sitting around waiting to be deceived again.

This cannot continue. This must not continue.

medium.com

When Lord Lucan disappeared after the murder of his Nanny in his London flat in 1974, there were reports soon after of his sighting in Australia. Reports of a man fitting his description, with a posh English accent and an upper class moustache were in fact wrongly attributed to a British plumber from Essex on holiday. The joke at the time was “well, for the Australians, a plumber from Essex might as well be an aristocrat to them”.

I’m reminded of this while thinking about the Assange case and British justice, which, itself like the political system, appears to be also either in exile or a case of mistaken identity. When you examine carefully what is happening with the unprecedented times of Theresa May and her rank arrogance to not accept that no one – not even people in her own cabinet want her brexit deal – and the Assange arrest, we are led to believe that the country is in a crisis, either political or constitutional.

But the Assange case is not about freedom of speech, but more how the Australian publisher’s absolute hatred by America for lifting the lid on its foul work around the world and Britain’s servile role towards US, overlapping with him jumping bail in the UK. Even the most arduous, stubborn Australians who consider Assange a national treasure would not argue against Australia’s courts banging up a British fugitive who was wanted for alleged crimes in another country – and certainly one who had jumped bail in Australia.

The tragedy is that Britain, for decades, has been in decline and its people as well as its state apparatus is afraid of its own shadow. We just don’t know how to win at anything and be confident any more around the world in our decisions and policies – and Trump, sensing weakness, has seized this all time low malaise – with May’s refusal to resign making Britain a laughing stock of the world, with this Assange move. The overture from Washington is of course to stifle free speech and stellar journalism but at the same time to deal with Assange, as, now in power, he presents more of a threat to Trump while before, his publications of Hillary emails, many believe gave the US president the edge, to finally secure the presidency.

Defeated Britain

Britain, battered and lost, a nation defeated and drowning in its own effluent of self-deprecation and doubt, had little choice to do what is was told as a client state of the US, which both offers the possibility of a post Brexit US-UK trade deal, but also threatens the May government with a shut down on intelligence sharing if the UK doesn’t ditch its business dealings and planned 5G roll out with the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei.

We are reminded just how phoney the ‘special relationship’ with Washington is as well as how insignificant press awards are by the BBC’s Panorama team recently when it aired the most bloody awful documentary that I have ever seen on the BBC. Broadly speaking, it wheeled out the usual suspects of telecoms experts and spooks who all agreed that, in theory, the Chinese government could “attack” the UK via its Huawei network, if the Chinese telecoms agreed but only in theory. It had to admit that most of the sensitive data like banking and intel is encrypted anyway, so there’s no real threat. So why make the documentary? If the BBC team of journalists can indulge themselves in so much inference and hilarious conjecture and abandon the tenets of journalism altogether, then perhaps I can as well. Could I speculate that the British government leant on the apparently unbiased BBC to whip up some fear amongst the population about the impact of Britain making its own decisions as a sovereign state and investing further in the Chinese?

The Americans always do this with huge competitors to their industries. Outlaw them and shamelessly plagiarize, er, sorry relicense their products (as was done with firearms in America in 1989), or demonize them as a national threat to security. And the BBC have played along with this disgraceful fake news and given Washington a ‘plat du jour’. No doubt there will be other orders for the British kitchen to serve up in the coming months as Britain turns its back on the dark days of being called America’s poodle to now its compliant bitch.

The BBC, whose bureaus around the world now are so badly run that their journalists often just replicate work from other journalists in the region (this has happened to me personally) is not what it used to be. But the Panorama episode has shown us what it really is and what depths we are sinking to.

Press awards and Assange being a journalist

BBC Panorama has many journalism awards you might argue and you’d be right. You might also argue that Julian Assange is a journalist as, he has received press awards. You would also be right. Almost. Assange has received press awards, but such awards are often given to other players within the media who are not strictly journalists. He has even received some awards as a ‘publisher’. And press awards themselves are hardly an endorsement of merit or quality. I have one myself and have been nominated for two and hardly consider myself even to be a third rate journalist, let alone a top one. What Assange supporters don’t get by obsessing over this label (that he is a journalist and therefore the issue, logically, is one of freedom of speech) is that it is not helping his case, in the UK of all places. In Britain, where journalists have strict codes – written and unwritten – which they are legally bound by, journalists have gone to prison for breaking them in recent years. What Assange supporters don’t get is that if they continue to parrot this idea that Assange is a journalist, then he may well end up facing other charges in the UK which could accumulate to be a very long spell in prison, before the US process begins. The Americans, wisely, have avoided the free speech and journalism arena altogether and focused on the illegality of acquiring information. And again, his supporters might note that no matter how far you want to stretch the notion of what a modern day journalist is, journalists stop short of helping sources break laws to get access to information.

The recalcitrant character who arrived at meetings with British editors in a stab vest is reported to have really clashed with them, who argue that Wikileaks documents should be redacted so, homosexuals in Saudi Arabia need not be outed, say and this is what puts the distance between Wikileaks and any media outlet which believes in the disciplines of journalism. Perhaps Assange was so assiduously against the idea of the journalistic process as he wasn’t capable of actually doing it himself?

The Assange issue is not really much to do with free speech in the sense that this is not the legal basis of the move by Washington, although, yes, free speech will be the victim. If people think that Assange is being targeted for being a poor journalist who is hell-bent on being a martyr for freedom of expression, then this is one of those Lord Lucan cases of mistaken identity. It’s really about how far Trump can go in boosting further his support from the military and making sure that Assange is not free to attack him personally. And it’s also about US using its bitch in London to extract more and more from the so-called special relationship. If the debate was really about free speech and journalism, Assange would get much more support in the UK from journalists themselves and Britain would be arguing now that his extradition to the US should be exempted.

Instead the debate has been hijacked by hacks on the one side who hate Assange as they can’t adhere to his style of journalism (journalists and security experts) and fanatics who, ironically, can’t apply the open minded, liberal free speech ethos, when it comes to others thinking aloud about their leader.

Rightly or wrongly, Assange was never a journalist who carried out the discipline like any journalist. His supporters, who react quite violently when you ask them “where are his articles, then?”, who agonize over this point have misunderstood what’s really at stake by his arrest. Expect a Panorama documentary soon about his alleged poor hygiene and what an insufferable guest he was to the Embassy staff in the Ecuadorian Embassy soon, complete with hidden camera footage. Even a Lord Lucan sighting. And plenty of press awards.