Prison Planet & Newsweek & Haaretz – 2018-04-11 23:54:34
http://www.newsweek.com/russia-claims-syria-chemical-attack-was-staged-white-helmets-880372
Questioning the Latest Claim of a Gas Attack in Syria
Which Is It, Mr. President?
“Open area immediately for medical help and verification.”
— Donald J. Trump
“Missiles are on the way.”
— Donald J. Trump
Video comment: “This video from rebels-held area in Syria is one of the reasons why you don’t rush into war based on YouTube videos.”
The Alleged Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria
Paul Joseph Watson / Prison Planet (April 8, 2018)
Russia Claims Syria Chemical Attack Was ‘Staged’ by White Helmets
Shane Croucher / Newsweek
(April 11, 2018) — Russia’s ambassador to the European Union claimed the latest deadly chemical attack in Syria was a “staged event” by provocateurs working with the White Helmets, an aid NGO rescuing civilians in the war-torn country. A spokesperson for The White Helmets, formally called Syria Civil Defence, told Newsweek the group categorically rejects the claims.
Vladimir Chizhov told Euronews that Russia, which is militarily backing the Assad regime in Syria, is “shocked by yet another provocation with the so-called chemical attack in Douma.”
He claimed Russian investigators found no bodies or anyone needing treatment in Eastern Ghouta, just northeast of the capital Damascus, despite multiple reports, images and video from the area detailing the horrific aftermath of the chemical attack on Saturday April 7.
“We’ve seen another staged event,” Chizhov claimed. “There are personnel, specifically trained — and you can guess by whom — amongst the so-called White Helmets, who were already caught in the act with staged videos.”
The ambassador also warned President Donald Trump of “grave consequences” if any military response by the US harms Russian citizens “deliberately or otherwise.”
Volunteers from the group were among the first on the scene after Saturday’s shelling of Douma, relaying images of the bodies of victims, including many children, who appear to have suffocated on their own vomit.
A statement from the White Helmets on Sunday reported that over 500 cases of people attending medical centers with “symptoms of exposure to chemicals.”
“Cases have shown signs of respiratory distress, central cyanosis, excessive oral foaming, corneal burns, and the emission of chlorine-like odor,” the statement said. The group also said it had at found least 42 dead people showing similar symptoms in their homes or shelters.
“Following the chemical attack, the target site and the surrounding area of the hospital receiving the injured were attacked with barrel bombs, which hindered the ability of ambulances to reach the victims,” the White Helmets said.
The World Health Organization said it had received reports of approximately 500 patients at Syrian health facilities displaying signs of exposure to toxic chemicals. In addition, over 70 people sheltering in basements had died, 43 of those showing “symptoms consistent with exposure to highly toxic chemicals.”
President Donald Trump condemned the “heinous attack on innocent Syrians with banned chemical weapons” as other Western countries, including the U.K. and France, pledged to contribute to a response against those found responsible.
Trump appeared to attribute the blame to the Assad regime, which denies carrying out the latest attack, but was found by the UN to have been behind a similar chemical attack in 2017 on the town of Khan Sheikhoun.
“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria,” Trump tweeted. “Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world.
“President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!”
Trump and his military advisors are assessing the intelligence and working on how to respond.
After the Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack, which killed dozens of civilians, Trump authorized a missile strike on the Syrian army air base from which it was launched.
“Russia has warned US representatives, publicly as well as through proper channels, over the grave consequences that could arise if these strikes happen and whether deliberately or otherwise Russian citizens are hurt,” Chizhov told Euronews.
White Supremacists Defend Assad, Warn Trump:
Don’t Let Israel Force You Into War With Syria
Allison Kaplan Sommer / Haaretz
TEL AVIV (April 9, 2018) — Anti-Semites and white supremacists who are usually supportive of President Donald Trump have criticized him for his tough rhetoric against Russia and Syria following the deadly chemical attack that killed over 40 people in a rebel-held suburb of Damascus on Saturday.
Across Twitter and on Gab — a favored platform for Twitter refugees banned from the platform for violating its guidelines — the current situation in Syria is being portrayed as an effort by Israel, Jews, the “deep state” and other nefarious “globalist” forces to force Trump’s hand and keep the United States mired in a Mideast conflict.
Several alt-right figures are actively defending and glorifying the actions of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Richard Spencer championed the dictator in a Sunday night tweet as “a British-trained physician” who is “one of the most civilized leader(s) in the Middle East.”
Spencer, a leading proponent of a “white ethnostate” for the United States, is known for coining the term alt-right. He came to prominence through a viral video in which he celebrated Trump’s election victory in November 2016 by proclaiming “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” and leading his followers in Nazi-style “Sieg Heil” salutes. He was also one of the leaders of the infamous Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally last August.
Criticism of the White House from Spencer and other white nationalists intensified Monday following an airstrike on a missile facility in Homs that Russia attributed to Israel, along with statements by US Secretary of Defense James Mattis that the United States has not ruled out launching attacks against Syria.
In the conspiratorial far-right narrative, the chemical strike in Douma was a false flag operation, engineered in order to force Trump to backtrack on his surprise statement a week ago in which he indicated that US involvement in Syria may soon be coming to an end.
At a press conference in the Baltic states, Trump stunned many when he declared he wanted to bring US troops “back home” from Syria after they “were successful against ISIS” and had “almost completed the task” of eradicating them there.
The White House followed up on the president’s words with a statement that “the military mission to eradicate ISIS is coming to a rapid end, with ISIS being almost completely destroyed.”
Trump’s statement of intent was followed last week by a reportedly “tense” phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was concerned by the prospect of America abandoning Syria to Assad, Iran and its proxies.
But after the horrific pictures of suffocated children and families in Douma were released over the weekend, Trump has again seemingly changed tack on Syria. He declared in a tweet Sunday that “President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!” [Emphasis added.]
Trump’s tone sparked widespread speculation that he would once more authorize US military action against Assad — as he did last April after a similar chemical attack took place in Khan Shaykhun. The presence of a hawkish new national security adviser, John Bolton, has only encouraged such talk.
Last year, when the small-scale US airstrike on a Syrian air base took place in response to the first chemical attack, Spencer and others on the alt-right turned against Trump, decrying the strike as a “betrayal” of his “America First” principles.
Now they are coming down harshly on him again, warning that they will not support any sign of increased intervention in a foreign conflict that would distract him from his pledge to “Make America Great Again.”
Both Spencer and white supremacist David Duke repeatedly posted tweets lionizing Assad and Putin as heroic figures who are protecting Christians and other Middle Eastern minorities from barbaric Muslim hordes.
Across the far-right media, conspiracy theorists contended that the chemical attack was “fake news,” displaying video and photographs that they said had been manipulated and doctored to provoke outrage.
Most prominent among them was InfoWars’ Alex Jones, who claimed in a video uploaded to his 2.3 million YouTube subscribers on Sunday that the Syrian attack had “every hallmark of a false flag” perpetrated by the “globalists [who] openly want to keep us there.”
Trump famously appeared on Jones’ Internet talk show in 2015, telling the controversial host that “your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”
Jones has embraced Trump enthusiastically and acted as his cheerleader ever since, hosting his friends and aides, and bragging of ongoing contact with the administration as Trump became the Republican nominee and then president.
“Trump already bombed Syria once, bombed the Russian base, and it’s so obvious they are trying to suck us into a war,” intoned Jones in his typical freewheeling style as he paced across a golf course. “And many experts agree that it could quickly unravel into a greater regional war that could then start a war with Russia, which is exactly what the neocons and the globalists want.”
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