anti-war propaganda

This well explained debunking comes from from Syriana Analysis

This story originally published 8 Feb 2017 at American Everyman with the long title: The Farce that is Amnesty International’s ” Human Slaughterhouse ” Study: It is, Quite Literally, Fake News Gone Viral. There was massive mainstream news yesterday (8 Feb 2017) of Amnesty International's report of 13,000 prisoneres hanged by the Assad Government during Obama's US regime. The next day, however, the story has been relegated to the back pages and some publications have actually pulled their aritcles. This is because there is zero evidence for the report, which, if you actually read it, claims nothing specific at all. Read Scott Creighton's article inside to know more. [Candobetter.net editor: We have included at the end of the article the request for donations from the original publication site, because this was integral to the original article.]

UPDATE: Check out al Jazeera story which features one of the sources of Nicolette’s report. He is a Free Syrian Army terrorist who did two years in the prison AND WAS RELEASED. Wait a minute… I thought they were exterminating everyone? What gives? (check out video at 1:10 mark)

I wonder who’s kids they grabbed for this PR shoot.

—

Everyone from CNN to al Jazeera covered the Amnesty International report of the 13,000 prisoners hanged by the Assad government during President Obama’s “moderate” terrorist regime change operation in Syria yesterday. They titled the report “Human Slaughterhouse” so the concentration-challenged American public wouldn’t have to read much further than the title to get their water-cooler talking points for the day at the office. Fox covered it. The Guardian covered it. ABC, USA Today, Telegraph, BBC, Red State, Breitbart, Business Insider you get the picture, right?

All day yesterday, Amnesty International was trending on Twitter. Thousands of people left comments reflecting their outrage at Assad “the monster” and various news organizations published the baseless comments as news. It was a megaphone project that worked perfectly… for a little while.

You’ll notice the story has been relegated to the back pages today and some publications  have actually pulled their articles on it. There’s a reason for that. The AI report is complete and total bunk. It’s baseless, technically flawed and as they accurately reported over at Moon of Alabama, it wouldn’t stand up in even the most rigged kangaroo court on the planet.

Do you want to know many of those 13,000 victims of “torture, hanging and extermination” that AI has actual evidence of?

Zero.

It’s not 13,000 which is the high range of their “estimate” which everyone is touting on various regime change backing “news” outlets.

It’s not 5,000 which is the low range of that “estimate”

It’s not 375 that were provided by the western-backed, regime hating, openly lying Syrian Network for Human Rights.

It’s not even the “additional” 36 names that were provided to AI by “witnesses”

It’s zero.

It is total,complete, absolute fake news and there is no other possible way to look at it.

Here is what Amnesty International says about the “documented deaths” in their report. It is found in section 4.3.4 on page 40 of their study. It is the entirety of the documentation of deaths in this report and therefore the entirety of the factual basis they offer.

“Amnesty International’s research, along with the research of the UN Commission of Inquiry, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, suggests that tens of thousands of detainees have died in Saydnaya and other government-run detention centres since 2011 as a result of the extermination policies discussed above. Because the Syrian authorities have withheld information on the names and whereabouts of the individuals they have in their custody as well as the names of those who have died in the detention centres it operates, the exact number of deaths in Saydnaya is impossible to specify. However, the Syrian Network for Human Rights has verified and shared with Amnesty International the names of 375 individuals who have died in Saydnaya as a result of torture and other ill-treatment between March 2011 and October 2016. Of these, 317 were civilians at the time of their arrest, 39 were members of the Syrian military and 19 were members of non-state armed groups.170 In the course of the research for this report, Amnesty International obtained the names of 36 additional individuals who died as a result of torture and other ill-treatment in Saydnaya. These names were provided to Amnesty International by former detainees who witnessed the deaths in their cells.171

170 Email correspondence with Chairman of the Syrian Network for Human Rights on 25 November 2016.
171 These names are on file with Amnesty International.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights is something akin to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and they have about as much credibility with regards to what is really happening in Syria.

They are a UK-based “not-for-profit” that is focused on helping the Western-backed ‘coalition’ force a brutal regime change in Syria at any cost. As Steven Lendmen pointed out in Aug. of 2016 (a couple months before the SNHR provided AI with their “list”) the SNHR has a long history of making unsubstantiated claims about brutality in Syria and always their claims are focused on aiding the regime change operations in one way or another.

“Instead of reporting truthfully, SNHR falsely claimed “Russian forces have killed no less than 2704 civilians including 746 children and 514 women” from September 30 last year through end of July.

Its assertions aren’t based on credible documentation, Western-sponsored propaganda alone. Saying “(t)he Russian regime has terrorized and massacred the Syrian people and surpassed the extremist group ISIS,” then adding “(w)e have to be brave enough to acknowledge this truth (sic)” is simply crude propaganda anyone paying attention understands instantly.

Ghani is a poor liar. SOHR’s Rami Abdulrahman does a better job of reporting misinformation and Big Lies. Maybe they should get together and compare notes.

Their purpose is similar. Demonize Syria and Russia. Support US-led imperial aggression. Blame its high crimes on Assad and Putin.” Lendman, Aug. 2016

If you go here, you can watch the chairman of SNHR give a presentation before the UN in 2013 which he accused Assad of everything from ordering institutional rape of women to the Lindberg baby kidnapping. He was literally screeching for regime change. He was saying that peace “at the cost of justice” would lead to more instability not less. Meaning, no deal between opposition and Assad government could be tolerated without removing and executing Assad and other members of the legitimate government back then. The chairman, Fadel Abdul Ghani, set up a Youtube channel back in 2013 in which he featured a number of poorly made fake propaganda videos.

This video is one of the first on his ridiculous channel. It features a bunch of Obama’s “moderate” terrorists taking a break from shelling civilians population centers to make a propaganda video where they grab local kids and pretend to weep like they are their fathers. Apparently these Salafist monsters didn’t understand back then of the power of the image of the mother holding their dead child. Either that, or the other terrorists were too busy raping the women to stick one or two in the video.

SNHR is apparently the precursor of the White Helmets al-Qaeda production company.

Taking ANYTHING this organization offers as “evidence” and basing a report such as this on that alone, is beyond irresponsible. It’s almost criminal. The history of this liar Ghani speaks for itself. The fact that the organization is located in the UK and probably receives funding from organizations that support the regime change program makes anything they offer all that more tainted in terms of evidence.

In short, the 375 names emailed to AI for their “extensively researched study” is bunk. And their using it in this report makes it “fake news” pure and simple.

And what about those 36 others reported by “witnesses”?

So, let me get this straight… some released “moderate” terrorists say, without providing evidence of course, that they know of 36 other “moderate” terrorists who were executed by the Syrian government for launching homemade Hell Cannon mortars into population centers and killing and raping civilians during their time in Syria… and yet, remarkably, AI doesn’t wonder why these particular terrorists were allowed to leave and tell their story?

Does anyone else notice a stark contradiction in the “extermination of the opposition” story here?

Does anyone else notice the fact that these guys who were released had at one time been dedicated to the regime change operation and that MOTIVE might just still be part of their agenda?

Would such testimony be permissible in court? Would it be laughed out of court if allowed by a rational jury of 12?

So now what are we at? We have gone from 13,000 “exterminated” “activists” to 5,000 to 375 to 36 and now we are left with what?

Zero.

See how the math works with that one?

For a good explanation of how AI fraudulently came up with their extrapolations which provided them the massive numbers of inmate hangings, based entirely on hearsay “evidence” (they literally took a lie, extrapolated it as a baseline norm, and then multiplied the lie over the course of the 5 years… I’m not kidding, that is what they did) you need to read Moon of Alabama’s work on the bullshit study. It’s well worth the time and while you are there, check out the informed comments as well.

If you go to Russian Insider you will find a pretty good critique of the “mass graves” images AI included in their study.

Does anybody remember this?

That was one of the many fake photos of Iraqis WMDs they used to try to get the UN Security Council to agree to our illegal war of aggression against Iraq. It failed. The image was a fraud. Much like AI’s pics of “mass graves”

This whole story is I call a foundation lie. When they came up with this idea, they knew it was bound to be torn apart on the merits by the few conscientious journalists still working these days, but they went forward with it anyway knowing the complicit media would ask no questions, do no independent investigation of their sources or their methods and megaphone their conclusions without pause.

The purpose of crafting such disinformation is that in the future, talking heads and politicos will be able to now say “Assad must go because he hanged 13,000 peaceful activists” and if someone dares challenge them on the lie, they can refer them to all those fraudulent MSM outlet articles posted yesterday without having to worry about the fact that the study itself is entirely baseless. That kind of discussion would take longer than the 45 seconds they have allotted for the segment.

From there, they can call for things like “safe zones”, humanitarian bombing campaigns and even “boots on the ground”

If you want recent examples of other foundation lies, there was the one about Gaddafi killing thousands of his own people, Assad using chemical weapons or even Saddam’s WMD story, which even today is being revisited by the revisionists trying to white wash the Bush administration’s crimes against humanity.

But the foundation lie is key. It pops up, it can’t stand the light of day… and ultimately it’s purpose is to serve as that tiny tidbit of disinformation rumbling around in the back of someone’s head so that when a war-monger brings it up in the near future, all he has to do is mention it and the audience accepts it at face value.

Upon these lies, the structure of future war-crimes is based.

It’s not enough to run around with a “No War for Lies” sign a year from now while Trump is bombing Syria into the stone age. These kinds of efforts they produce must be attacked and dismantled when they surface. Google will certainly prevent searches for the real truth about the 13,000 in the future, as they already do today regarding the truth of things like faked aerial photos of Iraqi chemical weapon sites. We understand that and move on regardless.

This is not going to be the last time AI produces politically based disinformation. In fact, right now, front and center of their website, they are still promoting the stopping of what they call Trump’s “Muslim Ban” even though most complicit MSM outlets have already given up on that line of destabilization.

When you find good, well researched work on disinformation campaigns like this one, share it widely. Make a point to do so. That’s what ultimately stopped Obama from acting on the “redline” violation his “moderate” terrorists in Syria crafted for him with the chemical weapon use in Syria (his mercs did it). When the internet journalists exposed the fraudulence of that event en masse, he couldn’t respond the way they wanted him to because it was already well known and circulating through the internet that the Syrian government didn’t do it.

Yet that foundation lie continues to be used today as well.

Moon of Alabama’s work on this “study” should go viral. Everyone should read it and make IT the topic of discussion at the water cooler today.

It’s not enough to run around on the streets waving signs while bombs are dropping in foreign countries.

It’s not enough to come back years later and say “oh look. the claims were baseless after all”

We have to undermine the foundations of these war-crimes BEFORE they happen by chipping away at the fake news as it is crafted. That is the only way to stop them.

—

Please help keep AE up and running if you can.

I really could use any help you can afford. Things are getting pretty bad

Thank you all so much

(For my mailing address, please email me at [email protected])

Apparently, the US Left has yet to figure out that Washington doesn’t try to overthrow neoliberals. If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were a devotee of the Washington Consensus–as Counterpunch’s Eric Draitser seems to believe–the United States government wouldn’t have been calling since 2003 for Assad to step down. Nor would it be overseeing the Islamist guerilla war against his government; it would be protecting him.

There is a shibboleth in some circles that, as Eric Draitser put it in a recent Counterpunch article, the uprising in Syria “began as a response to the Syrian government’s neoliberal policies and brutality,” and that “the revolutionary content of the rebel side in Syria has been sidelined by a hodgepodge of Saudi and Qatari-financed jihadists.” This theory appears, as far as I can tell, to be based on argument by assertion, not evidence.

This article was first published October 22, 2016 at https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/the-revolutionary-distemper-in-syria-that-wasnt/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog. Reproduced here in part. Readers are strongly encouraged to go to the original publication site and read the whole article.

A review of press reports in the weeks immediately preceding and following the mid-March 2011 outbreak of riots in Daraa—usually recognized as the beginning of the uprising—offers no indication that Syria was in the grips of a revolutionary distemper, whether anti-neo-liberal or otherwise. On the contrary, reporters representing Time magazine and the New York Times referred to the government as having broad support, of critics conceding that Assad was popular, and of Syrians exhibiting little interest in protest. At the same time, they described the unrest as a series of riots involving hundreds, and not thousands or tens of thousands of people, guided by a largely Islamist agenda and exhibiting a violent character.

Time magazine reported that two jihadist groups that would later play lead roles in the insurgency, Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, were already in operation on the eve of the riots, while a mere three months earlier, leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood voiced “their hope for a civil revolt in Syria.” The Muslim Brothers, who had decades earlier declared a blood feud with Syria’s ruling Ba’athist Party, objecting violently to the party’s secularism, had been embroiled in a life and death struggle with secular Arab nationalists since the 1960s, and had engaged in street battles with Ba’athist partisans from the late 1940s. (In one such battle, Hafez al-Assad, the current president’s father, who himself would serve as president from 1970 to 2000, was knifed by a Muslim Brother adversary.) The Brotherhood’s leaders, beginning in 2007, met frequently with the US State Department and the US National Security Council, as well as with the US government-funded Middle East Partnership Initiative, which had taken on the overt role of funding overseas overthrow organizations—a task the CIA had previously done covertly.

Washington had conspired to purge Arab nationalist influence from Syria as early as the mid-1950s, when Kermit Roosevelt, who engineered the overthrow of Iran’s prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh for nationalizing his country’s oil industry, plotted with British intelligence to stir up the Muslim Brothers to overthrow a triumvirate of Arab nationalist and communist leaders in Damascus who Washington and London perceived as threatening Western economic interests in the Middle East.

Washington funnelled arms to Brotherhood mujahedeen in the 1980s to wage urban guerrilla warfare against Hafez al-Assad, who hardliners in Washington called an “Arab communist.” His son, Bashar, continued the Arab nationalists’ commitment to unity (of the Arab nation), independence, and (Arab) socialism. These goals guided the Syrian state—as they had done the Arab nationalist states of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi and Iraq under Saddam. All three states were targeted by Washington for the same reason: their Arab nationalist commitments clashed fundamentally with the US imperialist agenda of US global leadership.

Bashar al-Assad’s refusal to renounce Arab nationalist ideology dismayed Washington, which complained about his socialism, the third part of the Ba’athists’ holy trinity of values. Plans to oust Assad—based in part on his failure to embrace Washington’s neo-liberalism—were already in preparation in Washington by 2003, if not earlier. If Assad was championing neo-liberalism, as Draitser and others contend, it somehow escaped the notice of Washington and Wall Street, which complained about “socialist” Syria and the country’s decidedly anti-neoliberal economic policies.

A Death Feud Heats Up With US Assistance

In late January 2011, a page was created on Facebook called The Syrian Revolution 2011. It announced that a “Day of Rage” would be held on February 4 and 5. [1] The protests “fizzled,” reported Time. The Day of Rage amounted to a Day of Indifference. Moreover, the connection to Syria was tenuous. Most of the chants shouted by the few protesters who attended were about Libya, demanding that Muammar Gaddafi—whose government was under siege by Islamist insurrectionists—step down. Plans were set for new protests on March 4 and March 5, but they too garnered little support. [2]

Time’s correspondent Rania Abouzeid attributed the failure of the protest organizers to draw significant support to the fact that most Syrians were not opposed to their government.

Read more at https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/the-revolutionary-distemper-in-syria-that-wasnt/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog

Video inside. Satire about double standards in international law and democracy, fake evidence, such as Ukraine 'proving' a Russian invasion, and Ukrainian media stories faking looting of a toy and a wedding ring. Relevant to Australia where all these wrongs have been promoted by our press, our primeminster and our minister for foreign affairs. This skit appeared in a regular program on mainstream German TV, amazingly. Can't imagine any real political criticism in Australian mainstream comedy these days.

Click on the small rectangular icon that has two horizontal lines in it to the right bottom of the video to get the English subtitles.