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Originally posted by 1kiki:
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said that a team of nine inspectors arrived in Damascus on Saturday, after it was invited by Syria and Russia to investigate the apparent chemical attack just over a week ago on on Douma, a suburb of Damascus that has been held by rebels.

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Originally posted by kpo:
"But ISIS are just as bad as the Syrian government."

Is that your defense, lol. Yeah, we're already bombing ISIS, moonbeam.

Or are you suggesting that, although the Syrian regime has carried out over two dozen other chemical attacks, it may not have carried out this one?

That's a pretty laughable position...

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Originally posted by second:
International weapons inspectors Theresa May says Syria and Russia have blocked them from entering the site of a chemical attack in Douma.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
The Director-General of the OPCW, Ahmet Üzümcü, told representatives Monday that team members have met with Syrian officials in Damascus.
"The Syrian and Russian officials who participated in the preparatory meetings in Damascus have informed the [Fact-Finding Mission] Team that there were still pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place," Üzümcü said.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

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Originally posted by second:
International weapons inspectors Theresa May says Syria and Russia have blocked them from entering the site of a chemical attack in Douma.

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Neither your video nor your link say the INSPECTORS are being quoted. In fact, what's being echoed are the claims of POLITICIANS. In contrast, what the OPCW said was this:

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
The Director-General of the OPCW, Ahmet Üzümcü, told representatives Monday that team members have met with Syrian officials in Damascus.
"The Syrian and Russian officials who participated in the preparatory meetings in Damascus have informed the [Fact-Finding Mission] Team that there were still pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place," Üzümcü said.

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only if inspectors could sneak in the same way the reporter did. Except there will be nothing to find because the chlorine gas has evaporated.- SECONDRATE

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
The Syrian government is winning the war.

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Originally posted by 1kiki: Furthermore, that attack seemed to get a lot of civilians, but no rebels - not only not furthering a military goal already in sight, but creating internal and external problems for the government.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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only if inspectors could sneak in the same way the reporter did. Except there will be nothing to find because the chlorine gas has evaporated.- SECONDRATE

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AH, the joys of being a chemist.

SECONDRATE, have you ever done laundry? Probably not: You depend on your female wetbacks for that. (I would expand that to: Have you ever done anything useful or productive in your life? Probably not: You're feeling too sorry for yourself to bestir yourself in that direction. But, I digress...)

Have you ever used bleach? Have you ever dripped some on your jeans? Have you ever found a whitened spot where the bleach dripped?

Hmm... The active ingredient in bleach is the active ingredient in chlorine gas: chlorine is a powerful oxidizer, and it attacks reactive molecules first - the kind that make up dyes and natural colors. Chlorine (gas or liquid) bleaches whatever it comes in contact with, so even if the gas disappears, the bleaching stays behind.

So, to make the point absolutely clear so that even the densest can't escape it: Chlorine gas leaves a signature bleaching that can't be reversed.

The Magic Eightball says TRY AGAIN.

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The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack

... At the same time, inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are currently blocked from coming here to the site of the alleged gas attack themselves, ostensibly because they lacked the correct UN permits.

Before we go any further, readers should be aware that this is not the only story in Douma. There are the many people I talked to amid the ruins of the town who said they had “never believed in” gas stories – which were usually put about, they claimed, by the armed Islamist groups. These particular jihadis survived under a blizzard of shellfire by living in other’s people’s homes and in vast, wide tunnels with underground roads carved through the living rock by prisoners with pick-axes on three levels beneath the town. I walked through three of them yesterday, vast corridors of living rock which still contained Russian – yes, Russian – rockets and burned-out cars.

So the story of Douma is thus not just a story of gas – or no gas, as the case may be. It’s about thousands of people who did not opt for evacuation from Douma on buses that left last week, alongside the gunmen with whom they had to live like troglodytes for months in order to survive. I walked across this town quite freely yesterday without soldier, policeman or minder to haunt my footsteps, just two Syrian friends, a camera and a notebook. I sometimes had to clamber across 20-foot-high ramparts, up and down almost sheer walls of earth. Happy to see foreigners among them, happier still that the siege is finally over, they are mostly smiling; those whose faces you can see, of course, because a surprising number of Douma’s women wear full-length black hijab.

I first drove into Douma as part of an escorted convoy of journalists. But once a boring general had announced outside a wrecked council house “I have no information” – that most helpful rubbish-dump of Arab officialdom – I just walked away. Several other reporters, mostly Syrian, did the same. Even a group of Russian journalists – all in military attire – drifted off.

It was a short walk to Dr Rahaibani. From the door of his subterranean clinic – “Point 200”, it is called, in the weird geology of this partly-underground city – is a corridor leading downhill where he showed me his lowly hospital and the few beds where a small girl was crying as nurses treated a cut above her eye.

“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.”

Oddly, after chatting to more than 20 people, I couldn’t find one who showed the slightest interest in Douma’s role in bringing about the Western air attacks. Two actually told me they didn’t know about the connection.

But it was a strange world I walked into. Two men, Hussam and Nazir Abu Aishe, said they were unaware how many people had been killed in Douma, although the latter admitted he had a cousin “executed by Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] for allegedly being “close to the regime”. They shrugged when I asked about the 43 people said to have died in the infamous Douma attack.

The White Helmets – the medical first responders already legendary in the West but with some interesting corners to their own story – played a familiar role during the battles. They are partly funded by the Foreign Office and most of the local offices were staffed by Douma men. I found their wrecked offices not far from Dr Rahaibani’s clinic. A gas mask had been left outside a food container with one eye-piece pierced and a pile of dirty military camouflage uniforms lay inside one room. Planted, I asked myself? I doubt it. The place was heaped with capsules, broken medical equipment and files, bedding and mattresses.

Of course we must hear their side of the story, but it will not happen here: a woman told us that every member of the White Helmets in Douma abandoned their main headquarters and chose to take the government-organised and Russian-protected buses to the rebel province of Idlib with the armed groups when the final truce was agreed.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, AS USUAL YOU VEER OFF YOUR ORIGINAL POINT WHEN IT BECOMES TOO HOT FOR YOU, AND POST YET ANOTHER WORTHLESS PIECE OF TRIPE.

HERE IS THE LESS-FILTERED ACCOUNT OF A REPORTER WHO WENT, UNACCOMPANIED, TO THE SITE OF THE SUPPOSED ATTACK.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
HERE IS THE LESS-FILTERED ACCOUNT OF A REPORTER WHO WENT, UNACCOMPANIED, TO THE SITE OF THE SUPPOSED ATTACK

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, AS USUAL YOU VEER OFF YOUR ORIGINAL POINT WHEN IT BECOMES TOO HOT FOR YOU, AND POST YET ANOTHER WORTHLESS PIECE OF TRIPE.

HERE IS THE LESS-FILTERED ACCOUNT OF A REPORTER WHO WENT, UNACCOMPANIED, TO THE SITE OF THE SUPPOSED ATTACK

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
By some accounts then, 58 attacks haven't been attributed to anybody.

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So, let's go over your childish notions.

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The Syrian government is winning the war. It has absolutely no reason to carry out a chemical attack.

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Do you really think that makes sense?

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Originally posted by kpo:

Here's a good article addressing that very question:

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/world-report/articles/2017-04-10/why-di
d-syrias-bashar-assad-use-chemical-weapons

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Brian Michael Jenkins, Opinion Contributor

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I hear there's some WMDs in Iraq.

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Emphasis on the "Opinion" part.

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HRW have recorded a greater number of confirmed chemical attacks

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[Gaddafi’s] forces certainly harmed innocents while defeating rebels in urban areas, as U.S. forces have done in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he did threaten "no mercy" in Benghazi, but Gadhafi directed this threat only at rebels to persuade them to flee. Despite ubiquitous cellphone cameras, there are no images of genocidal violence, a claim that smacks of rebel propaganda.

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So why has Human Rights Watch (HRW)—despite proclaiming itself “one of the world’s leading independent organizations” on human rights—so consistently paralleled U.S. positions and policies? This affinity for the U.S. government agenda is not limited to Latin America. In the summer of 2013, for example, when the prospect of a unilateral U.S. missile strike on Syria— a clear violation of the UN Charter—loomed large, HRW’s executive director Kenneth Roth speculated as to whether a simply “symbolic” bombing would be sufficient. “If Obama decides to strike Syria, will he settle for symbolism or do something that will help protect civilians?” he asked on Twitter. Executive director of MIT’s Center for International Studies John Tirman swiftly denounced the tweet as “possibly the most ignorant and irresponsible statement ever by a major human-rights advocate.”

HRW’s accommodation to U.S. policy has also extended to renditions—the illegal practice of kidnapping and transporting suspects around the planet to be interrogated and often tortured in allied countries. In early 2009, when it was reported that the newly elected Obama administration was leaving this program intact, HRW’s then Washington advocacy director Tom Malinowski argued that “under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place” for renditions, and encouraged patience: “they want to design a system that doesn’t result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured,” he said, “but designing that system is going to take some time.”

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Malinowski’s background is but one example of a larger scenario. HRW’s institutional culture is shaped by its leadership’s intimate links to various arms of the U.S. government.

In her HRW biography, the vice chair of HRW’s board of directors, Susan Manilow, describes herself as “a longtime friend to Bill Clinton,” and helped manage his campaign finances. (HRW once signed a letter to Clinton advocating the prosecution of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes; HRW made no case for holding Clinton accountable for NATO’s civilian-killing bombings despite concluding that they constituted “violations of international humanitarian law.”)

Bruce Rabb, also on Human Rights Watch’s Board of Directors, advertises in his biography that he “served as staff assistant to President Richard Nixon” from 1969-70—the period in which that administration secretly and illegally carpet bombed Cambodia and Laos.

The advisory committee for HRW’s Americas Division has even boasted the presence of a former Central Intelligence Agency official, Miguel Díaz. According to his State Department biography, Díaz served as a CIA analyst and also provided “oversight of U.S. intelligence activities in Latin America” for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. As of 2012, Díaz focused, as he once did for the CIA, on Central America for the State Department’s DRL—the same bureau now to be supervised by Malinowski.

Other HRW associates have similarly questionable backgrounds: Myles Frechette, currently an advisory committee member for the Americas Division, served as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean from 1990-93, and then became U.S. Ambassador to Colombia from 1994-97. Frechette subsequently worked as the executive director of a “nonprofit” group called the North American-Peruvian Business Council, and championed the interests of his funders in front of Congress. His organization received financing from companies such as Newmont Mining, Barrick Gold, Caterpillar, Continental Airlines, J.P. Morgan, ExxonMobil, Patton Boggs, and Texaco.

Michael Shifter, who also currently serves on HRW’s Americas advisory committee, directed the Latin America and Caribbean program for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)[funded by Soros] a quasi-governmental entity whose former acting president Allen Weinstein told The Washington Post in 1991 that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” Shifter, as current president of a policy center called the Inter-American Dialogue, oversees $4 million a year in programming, financed in part through donations from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the embassies of Canada, Germany, Guatemala, Mexico and Spain, and corporations such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Boeing, and Western Union.

To be sure, not all of the organization’s leadership has been so involved in dubious political activities. Many HRW board members are simply investment bankers, like board co-chairs Joel Motley of Public Capital Advisors, LLC, and Hassan Elmasry, of Independent Franchise Partners, LLP. HRW Vice Chair John Studzinski is a senior managing director at The Blackstone Group, a private equity firm founded by Peter G. Peterson, the billionaire who has passionately sought to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare. And although Julien J. Studley, the Vice Chair of the Americas advisory committee, once served in the U.S. Army’s psychological warfare unit, he is now just another wealthy real-estate tycoon in New York.

That HRW’s advocacy reflects its institutional makeup is unremarkable.

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Originally posted by kpo:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I hear there's some WMDs in Iraq.

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Did you miss the part where the UN blamed the Assad regime for 27 chemical attacks? Is the UN part of the conspiracy? The OPCW and HRW (whom kiki is citing)? Amnesty International?

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Rep. John Garamendi, a California Republican, argued that Article 2 is too broad, and he was concerned it could be used for additional action in other regions, saying to reporters, "that justification allows the President to wage war anywhere, anytime, anyplace he might want to, by simply saying it's in the national security interests."

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For those with short attention spans a delusional case of partisanship, Trump will be the third President in a row ... ONE OF WHOM WAS A DEMOCRAT ... to abuse Article 2.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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For those with short attention spans a delusional case of partisanship, Trump will be the third President in a row ... ONE OF WHOM WAS A DEMOCRAT ... to abuse Article 2.

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Just to be pellucidly clear.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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I have placed authority for the resumption of coal mining in the hands of a civilian, the Secretary of the Interior. If it becomes necessary to protect any miner who seeks patriotically to go back and work, then that miner must have and his family must have -- and will have -- complete and adequate protection. If it becomes necessary to have troops at the mine mouths or in coal towns for the protection of working miners and their families, those troops will be doing police duty for the sake of the nation as a whole ... Tonight, in the fact of a crisis of serious proportions in the coal industry, I say again that the spirit or this nation is good. I know that the American people will not tolerate any threat offered to their Government by anyone. I believe the coal miners will not continue the strike against their (the) Government. I believe that the coal miners (themselves) as Americans will not fail to heed the clear call to duty. Like all other good Americans, they will march shoulder to shoulder with their armed forces to victory.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SIX- I was disappointed with the missile launches too. But as I thought about it, I came to the idea that Trump's arms were being twisted, not only by the deep state in the USA but also by the deep state in the UK and France, and that he chose the least bad option.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Did SECOND post something? I wouldn't know, I scrolled past it, because SECOND's posts are ALWAYS twisted by hate and bias.

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I just noticed I missed the byline underneath the sub-title of the article you linked where the author calls himself a "Opinion Contributor".

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Originally posted by kpo:

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I just noticed I missed the byline underneath the sub-title of the article you linked where the author calls himself a "Opinion Contributor".

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Sure, but I think you miss the point of me posting that article. Kiki asked why Assad would be gassing his own people. Any answer to that is going to be 'opinion', I think you'll find. I answered with an article giving one theory, I can think of a few more.

The point is there are explanations for it, that make some sense. Much more sense than the rebels gassing themselves* dozens of times to 'frame Assad', and the UN, OPCW etc. going along with it.

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*Yes, kiki, rebels have been victims of these attacks as well as civilians - check your own HRW link

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-21/germanys-largest-public-tv-n
ews-broadcaster-syria-chemical-attack-most-likely

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Yeah OK, the Russians did it.

JJ

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"No Nerve Agents" In Douma: OPCW Report Demolishes White House Sarin Narrative
Profile picture for user Tyler Durden

A preliminary report published Friday by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found no traces of any nerve agent at the site of a suspected chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma. The OPCW report states this unambiguously as follows:

"No organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties."

Compare the newly published official OPCW findings with the 5-page White House assessment released on April 13th, just days after the alleged attack. Now contradicted by the new OPCW findings, the White House asserted that sarin was used at Douma,

A significant body of information points to the regime using chlorine in its bombardment of Duma, while some additional information points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin.

Yes, a real headline: CNN screenshot of coverage of the alleged chemical attack in April 2018 which we discussed here.



Firebrand British MP George Galloway responded as follows moments after the OPCW's findings were made public:

Was that, was that the news? What about Douma? The chemical weapons attack? The nerve agent bombs that rained down on Douma that took us to the brink of World War 3?

The OPCW have just reported, well two hours ago... There was no nerve gas attack on Douma. There was no nerve agent deployed on Douma. We were taken to World War 3’s brink on a crock. A crock of vile propaganda.

Ring any bells? No Nerve Agents, Concludes OPCW Report

The April 7th alleged chemical attack, widely blamed by Western countries and the media on Assad's forces, resulted in massive US-led retaliatory airstrikes mostly concentrated on suspected chemical production facilities in Damascus.

Though at the time both UN and OPCW officials urged caution in the rush to blame "animal Assad" for "using nerve agents" as many world headlines breathlessly concluded a mere moments after videos purporting to show scores of chemical attack victims first surfaced (and though CW experts themselves warned that not a single neutral observer was on the ground to verify such claims when it happened), the latest OPCW report flatly contradicts the narrative that quickly solidified in the mainstream.

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OPCW Issues Fact-Finding Mission Reports on Chemical Weapons Use Allegations in Douma, Syria in 2018 and in Al-Hamadaniya and Karm Al-Tarrab in 2016
Friday, 06 July 2018

.... The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.

The Fact-Finding Mission also issued a report on 2 July 2018 addressing allegations of chemical weapons use in Al-Hamadaniya, Syria on 30 October 2016, and Karm al-Tarrab, Syria on 13 November 2016. On the basis of the information received and analysed, the prevailing narrative of the interviews, and the results of the laboratory analyses, the FFM cannot confidently determine whether or not a specific chemical was used as a weapon in the incidents that took place in the neighbourhood of Al-Hamadaniyah and in the area of Karm al-Tarrab. The FFM noted that the persons affected in the reported incidents may, in some instances, have been exposed to some type of non-persistent, irritating substance.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
There's ONE pattern that I'm detecting: THUGR is an idiot.

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:
I noticed:
1. That's an obvious fake CNN screen shot

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2. SIGHEIL is ramping up her chaos propaganda machine largely by just reposting ZeroSludge here.

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Yes, Russia is that stupid. Too often people look for or assume that behind such things there's some Deep Logic or Great Cunning, when it's more likely a Confederacy of Dunces at work.

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:
I really need to get into the AltMedia biz - since everything can be explained pretty convincingly as a "false flag" you don't have to have studied journalism, or care about professional integrity, which makes the business model pretty bullet proof. Plus, we've seen that many people never seem to get passed their child mind fear of there being a Boogey Man under their bed or a Balrog in the wood pile, or a pedophile in the pizza shop, so sowing doubt and fear is so very easy. < / truthy snark >

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:
The "Syrian Rebels" have according to Russia and her defenders, gassed themselves how many times, because why? So they can have the US/UK/France drop a few bombs on... chemical weapons plants? And they based this most recent self-gassing on an event that happened a year ago, when they gassed themselves which produced... a limp wristed slap on an abandoned air field. Makes zero sense.

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:
So Douma is where the Rebels are and where the chemical attack happened... It's like a puzzle with 2 pieces. Let's see if you can put them together.

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:
For the last 7 years they've been "winning."
You can't seriously be looking for common sense or logic in what drives the Medusa that is the Middle East, can you?
So, how would one go about counting Rebel dead anyway? From Assad's pov the number has to be zero or else he admits to using chemical weapons. From the Rebels pov would they want to claim any? Who would count that and confirm it? Perhaps you have evidence of "only civilians dead."
And what's with bringing back years old, 'made the headlines in the US" ISIL terrorist acts? Is that the new line to win over US "news" consumers? I thought Trump said we were done with them anyway, threat over? And finally: is cutting someone's head off with a dull knife somehow worse than using a sharp one? What's up with you and Siggy specifically repeating that odd descriptor?

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:
https://ahvalnews.com/syria/trumps-bombing-campaign-syria-exactly-what
-putin-and-assad-wanted
Trump’s Bombing Campaign In Syria Is Exactly What Putin And Assad Wanted
By James Miller
The world looked on in horror nearly this month as videos emerged from the Damascus suburb of Douma showing what many experts suspected was yet another chemical weapons attack against civilians. As many as 70 people may have been killed in this latest incident , though questions remain because Russia has blocked experts from The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) from entering the site for more than three days, creating a fear of a cover up.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

SECOND, KPO - care to chime in? CC and THUGGER have already taken their trollish best shots. Yanno, when you can't dispute the facts, be an asshole.

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Well golly gee. Looks like we, SECOND, KPO, G and I were right.The Russians did it.

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Police ID'd Russians for Skripal poisonings: British media

http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/national-today-newsletter-uk-poison
ing-russia-novichock-1.4752296

T