She’s good on some issues, but others…my stars. H/t to Tony Cartalucci on Twitter (3-parts) for the heads-up.
“Inside Syria’s Secret Prisons”: A Harrowing Account of How Assad’s Torture Machine Crushed Dissent’, democracynow.org, May 16, 2019
From the transcript:
‘A shocking exposé by the New York Times looks at how Bashar al-Assad’s government has jailed and tortured tens of thousands of Syrians since the uprising began in 2011. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, nearly 128,000 people have disappeared. They are presumed to be either dead or still in custody. The group estimates almost 14,000 individuals have died under torture. The detentions are continuing even as the fighting winds down. More than 5,600 Syrians were reportedly arbitrarily detained last year in a 25 percent jump from the previous year. While the Syrian government has denied running a secret torture and detention program, more evidence — including internal Syrian government documents — has emerged showing the extent of the torture program. A United Nations panel has said the conditions in the prison —including the paucity of toilet facilities, rampant illness, minimal and rotten food, and the absence of medical treatment — are tantamount to “extermination.” We speak with the report’s author Anne Barnard. She’s a reporter at The New York Times and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.”
CFR? Okay, Amy; what.ev.er. You can read or watch the rest for what it’s worth, but cripes, as I’d remembered it the NY Times had been forced to admit that the Syria Observatory for Human Rights (as it was called back in the day) was one guy in the UK who’d never stepped foot into Syria.
But although the name of the Chief Dude has changed, the psyop sure hasn’t.
From RT.com on Oct. 2, 2015: ‘Who is behind Syrian Observatory for Human Rights? Nimrod Kamer investigates for RT’
“Since the start of the Moscow anti-ISIS campaign Russia has started featuring in its reports as well – and it was quickly picked up by major Western media outlets. One of the latest wires from the Observatory that “Russian warplanes [killed] 30 civilians in Homs including women and children” quickly made it into major news sources.
“To the degree people choose to believe social media, they can be my guest. But quite contrary to what [US Secretary of State John Kerry] has said, it is a notoriously unreliable tool upon which to base judgments,” former CIA officer, Ray McGovern told RT.
‘I am not a media organization’ – Rami Abdel Rahman
RT decided to investigate who the man behind the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is and why the media outlet is so popular with MSM. Well-known journalist and prankster Nimrod Kamer took up the job.
The two-bedroom Coventry home of Syrian immigrant Rami Abdel Rahman has been the organization’s base and the source of information for major mainstream media on anything Syria-related from the past four years, including the death toll.
Nobody quite knows who Abdel Rahman has on the ground in Syria, but information just keeps flowing on and on, usually in a dramatic fashion and with little detail.”
here’s the 3-minute+ video.
On the The Syrian Network for Human Rights’ about us page, the claim is that the agency was started in 2011 ‘upon the initiative’ of Mr. Fadel Abdul Ghany, who is now the chairman of the ‘board of directors’. As I can’t copy/paste from their site, you may be ticked to learn ‘who and what they depend on’ for their reports, although I’ll volunteer that they seem to be much like bellingcat and other online investigative serices. Here’s their most recent Tweet; note the White Helmets.
To show how effective agitprop is, especially if it affirms confirmation bias, and remember, this is just days after MSM totally ignored the suppressed OPCW report on ‘the gassing of Duma’ was really faked by the White Helmets:
‘US ‘sees signs’ Damascus ‘may’ have used chlorine in Idlib, threatens ‘quick & appropriate’ response’, RT.com, May 21, 2019
“In a statement on Tuesday, Washington alleged that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad is likely to be found responsible for allegedly using chlorine to attack civilians in militant-controlled areas of Idlib province.
“We continue to see signs that the Assad regime may be renewing its use of chemical weapons, including an alleged chlorine attack in northwest Syria on the morning of May 19, 2019,” the statement says.
Despite the evident uncertainty, the State Department adopted the habitually threatening stance against Damascus.
“We are still gathering information on this incident, but we repeat our warning that if the Assad regime uses chemical weapons, the United States and our allies will respond quickly and appropriately.”
The State Department’s claims of a ‘new’ chlorine incident, uncorroborated so far, follow a fresh warning by the Russian military of a terrorist plans to stage a false-flag chemical attack in the Idlib de-escalation zone.
The Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria reported on Tuesday that the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir ash-Sham – formerly known the Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate – had set up a special “chemical unit” and had enough chemicals at its disposal to carry out an attack it would frame on the Syrian government. The center said that the “chemical unit” is headquartered in Idlib and consists of three sub-divisions that would plan, execute and publicize the “attack.”
And as night follows day, from Bill Van Auken this morning: ‘Washington threatens new attack on Syria amid US war buildup in Persian Gulf’, May 22, 2019
There’s a lot more on Iran, but this is about the ‘report’ above:
“Even as this testimony was unfolding, the US State Department issued a statement claiming that it was gathering information about an alleged chlorine gas attack on May 19 in Idlib, combined with a threat that the “United States and our allies will respond quickly and appropriately.”
The State Department’s missive included a denunciation of a “continuing disinformation campaign by the Assad regime and Russia to create the false narrative that others are to blame for chemical weapons attacks that the Assad regime itself is conducting.” [snip]
“In the midst of the provocative military threats against both Syria and Iran, a bipartisan Congressional group comprising the majority of both the House and the Senate signed a letter to President Trump urging an even more aggressive policy in the region and in particular in Syria.
The letter amounted to a demand that the Trump administration maintain a strong military presence in Syria, escalating confrontation with the government of President Bashar al-Assad as well as Iran and Russia and unconditionally supporting Israeli attacks on the country.
It was signed by nearly 400 members of Congress, including leading Democrats in both the House and Senate. The letter was issued in the names of the Representatives Eliot Engel and Michael McCaul, the chairman and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Senators James Risch and Bob Menendez, chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
While briefly referring to the continued presence of Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, the letter centered on charges concerning the “Iranian regime’s threatening behavior” and “Russia’s destabilizing role” in the country. It demanded that the administration “increase pressure on Iran and Russia with respect to activities in Syria” in order to “stop the growing threats to US interests, Israel, and regional security and stability.”
(The rest again, is here.)
These are from Part 3 of Tony Cartalucci’s Tweet: @TonyCartalucci May 18
The image used by Democracy Now! comes from older propaganda already long-since discredited. Exposed in 2017: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/02/amnesty-international-admits-syrian.html …
Later recycled by WaPo: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/05/us-revives-discredited-syria.html …
All the News that’s fit to manufacture in aid of Empire.
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
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café babylon 
As you are featuring propaganda in this post, wendye, and as there hasn’t been an open thread for a while, I’ll simply add to that theme with a comment from the reading I am enjoying at present – “Les Miserables”. I emphasize reading as while the BBC offering was very admirable for visual elements of the locale, it simply overrode the development of character present in the novel, as well as the actual plot – did not mind changing the latter at will – whose will? But I digress. Here is a quote about the character of Marius, the young man who appears somewhat bewildered by events in the BBC telling, (and advisedly so, since his part in the series has been brutally mangled). I will post the excerpt separately, with one change in the translation I have – I am substituting “lovely” for “pretty” at the end of the first paragraph.
Here is the quote:
All passions, except those of the heart, are dissipated by reverie. Marius’ political fevers were over. The revolution of 1830, by satisfying him and soothing him, had aided in this. He remained the same, with the exception of his passionateness. He had still the same opinions. But they were softened. Properly speaking, he held opinions no longer; he had sympathies. Of what party was he? of the party of humanity. Out of humanity he chose France; out of the nation he chose the people; out of the people he chose woman. To her, above all, his pity went out. He now preferred an idea to a fact, a poet to a hero, and he admired a book like Job still more than an event like Marengo. And then, when after a day of meditation he returned at night along the boulevards, and saw through the branches of the trees the fathomless space, the nameless lights, the depths, the darkness, the mystery – all that which is only human seemed to him very lovely.
Marius thought he had, and he had perhaps in fact, arrived at the truth of life and of human philosophy, and he had finally come hardly to look at anything but the sky, the only thing that truth can see from the bottom of her well.
i stuck up a new open menu for you so that you might feature this quote and comment.
Now Amy once was young, and she once had similar ideals to those expressed here by the young Marius. She had a very violent experience in those islands near Indonesia, and for a long while she was dedicated to what ‘truth can see from the bottom of her well.’ We all loved that Amy.
What she and the BBC are now engaged in is a distortion of the truth – or in fact, the elimination of it – in the presentation of visuals such as those concocted by the White Helmets that are in blatant disregard of underlying truths. Personhood, character, that is neglected or ignored on behalf of propaganda. Telling what you want to tell instead of what really happened.
And I wondered, when did the word present in a novel such as this great one become so unimportant as to be changed at will? Marius never got to see his father in the novel – not so, says the BBC concocting a scene saying the opposite. Jean Valjean didn’t fire Cosette’s mother – he had been oblivious to her dismissal. These are character issues – we can change those, says the BBC. They don’t fit with our message. Look what we are doing recreating the battlefield, recreating Paris!
Well, I’m like Marius, I guess – or like his old friend Monsieur Mabeuf, who:
…took Marius into favour because Marius, being young and gentle, warmed his old age without arousing his timidity. Youth, with gentleness, has upon old men the effect of sunshine without wind. When Marius was full of military glory, gunpowder, marches, and countermarches, and all those wonderful battles in which his father had given and received such huge sabre strokes he went to see Monsieur Mabeuf, and Monsieur Mabeuf talked with him about the hero from the floricultural point of view…
Bravo, Victor Hugo! And bravo the younger Amy – we remember you.
Am I equating the BBC with the White Helmets?
Yes.
lol. well, the bbc just jiggered the novel for its own creepy reasons, while the white helmets are staging gas attacks in syria, pretending to be rescuers, and dealing in harvested organs, according to vanessa beeley, who’s been reporting from syria for a long time. so…no comparison to me, to say the truth.
i agree amy’s changed, and many say it’s due to her funding sources now, although several corporate and other foundations are involved. evn now, as i’ve said, she gets some things right: julian assange, and trump’s crisis at the border. but i wonder if she’d called foul on obomba for doing much the same. although trump’s by now…trumped even obomba’s calumny.
but later on the rest, i’m putting together a new piece that i’d suspended in favor of all this rubbish. i will offer that on a recent piece on julian assange i’d put up over yonder (but not here), that as a closing theme i’d offered that in the end, inspector javert had seen that jean valjean was a more moral man than he, and had jumped into the river styx.
nice to see you, ww.