white helmets
© Msallam Abdalbaset / AFP
Hollywood is all about fake. That is what movies are - fake depictions of a fake reality that only exist in the mind of scriptwriters, directors and a usually gullible audience. (Disclosure: I do like some movies.)

Hollywood has never been shy of plagiarizing. Every idea, tale of cinematographic trick that made a splash somewhere - and is thereby a potential money generator - will get copied again and again. Every successful make gets a remake. And another one.

In 2015 the promoting host of the Miss Universe franchise "misread" the name of the winner. He announced "Columbia" when the chosen winner was "Philippines". After a few minutes he "corrected" himself. That "mistake" brought a lot of additional media attention - and financial value - to the event owner.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the U.S. marketing and lobby organization of the movie makers, hands out some yearly rewards arranged to promote specific movies or persons in the movie business. The academy award ceremony is a rather boring event but it gets a lot of hype and media attention (and thereby generates lots of advertisement revenue).

To further increase its value this year's event plagiarized the idea of the Miss Universe promoters. One of the hosts announced the wrong winning movie for some category and then reversed himself to announce a different "real" winner. It was a "mistake" just as surely as Hollywood's latest movie was a description of real life.

Those without memory went into the desired frenzy, the insiders yawned. "Oh, that clumsy fake again."

One of this years prizes went to a fake "documentary" about a fake "rescuer" group which makes and distributes fake videos, staged photos and fake victims of the war on Syria. These al-Qaeda propaganda sidekicks, the White Helmets, are a British disinformation operation that is financed by more than $100 million of U.S. and UK taxpayer money. Its general task is to convince the "western" public that the war on Syria is justified because of the "cruelty of the Syrian government" which the fakes intend to establish in the mind of its consumers.

Hollywood never was shy of taking government money to promote war on this or that country or "enemy". The Pentagon's liaison office in Hollywood finances many movies. If there are some tanks needed and military heroes in a script the Pentagon will organize the props, real tanks and soldiers, at no cost - provided of course that it can read and "correct" the script the way it sees fit. The makers of "Top Gun" need planes, air craft carriers and lots of explosions? No problem at all and at no costs to the producers. In exchange military recruitment staff will wait to trap moviegoers when they leave the theaters. Congress will happily pass the money for more useless planes.

An Academy Award reinforces the message a production carries and gives the people behind the message additional value. The marketing companies that create and run the "White Helmets" will surely receive a few extra millions for yesterday's Oscar promotion.

Hollywood is all fake. The wrong winner is announced and al-Qaeda gets an Oscar. "No harm done," the promoters of such fakes might say.

Except to the people of Syria. For them the destruction and death promoted by the fancy people in Los Angeles is all too real.


Comment: RT reports:
Patrick Henningsen, a geopolitical analyst at 21st Century Wire.com in an earlier interview to RT late last month explained how the footage was obtained.

The "film itself is not a real documentary," he said. "All of the footage used in the film was provided to the producers by the White Helmets themselves. This film production crew - Netflix productions - did not film any of the so-called rescue scenes."

"What this film is essentially a PR cushion for a $100-$150 million covert op, which is basically an NGO front funded by USAID, the British Foreign Office, various EU member states, Qatar, and other various and sundry nations, and members of the public, who quite frankly in my opinion and many others, have been duped into donating their money for this rescue group, that is anything but. It essentially functions as a support group alongside Al-Nusra and al-Din al-Zenki and other known terrorist groups operating in Syria. That is a fact that has been proven by a number of eyewitness testimonies."
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White Helmets financially backed by West - journalist to RT

In December, Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist and rights activist who has traveled to Syria several times since the start of the conflict, said that members of the group "purport to be rescuing civilians in eastern Aleppo and Idlib [but] ...no one in eastern Aleppo has heard of them."

Bartlett noted during her highly emotional speech at the UN that "their video footage actually contains children that have been 'recycled' in different reports; so you can find a girl named Aya who turns up in a report in say, August, and she turns up in the next month in two different locations."

The White Helmets operate in Syria's rebel and Islamist territories and appear to enjoy the support of various western governments.

"They are fantastically brave, these White Helmets. I'm proud to say we're giving them I think £32 million [$39.78 million] funding as part of a wider £65 million package for non-humanitarian aid," British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said last year.
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Beeley believes that "there is massive video and photographic testimonial evidence from inside Syria to give evidence that they are running a terrorist support group."

"If we look at their claims to be neutral, they are embedded entirely in terrorist-held areas whether it is predominantly Al-Nusra Front or ISIS or any of the various associated brigades of terrorists that take their command very much from Al-Nusra Front, that is where White Helmets are exclusively."

Beeley said the group members "provide medical care for the terrorists, they funnel equipment in from Turkey into the terrorist areas (...) They've been filmed participating and facilitating an execution of a civilian in Aleppo. They post celebratory videos to their social media pages of the execution of civilian Arab soldiers."

She added that "from the testimony from the real Syria Civil Defense across Syria they have also been involved in the taking over of the real Syria Civil Defense units, the stealing of their equipment and the eventual massacres and kidnapping of real Syria Civil Defense crews."

'They are thieves' - locals on White Helmets

The group's rescue efforts go only as far as to release dramatic videos, Aleppo residents say. RT's war correspondent Lizzie Phelan, reporting from Aleppo, spoke to some survivors who accused the group of being "camera posers, thieves, and raiders."

"When they came to help the injured they stole from them," one elderly man told RT. "If people are wearing jewelry, they cut it off. All of them are thieves."

One man accused the White Helmets of intentionally killing his little daughter. "I took her to the Civil Defense hospital and they gave her an injection filled with air to kill her," the devastated young father said in December.

One of the scandals surrounding the White Helmets' work in Syria was the group's "Mannequin Challenge" video. The rescue workers performed a stunt with a fake rescue as they staged a scene of saving a person from the rubble, raising questions over the authenticity of the group's other frequently-posted videos.

Late last month, two members of the controversial White Helmets were barred from attending the Academy Awards, the producer of a documentary featuring the NGO said. White Helmets leader Raed Saleh and cinematographer Khaled Khateeb, both Syrian, were invited to the 2017 Academy Awards by Joanna Natasegara, the film's producer, who expressed her outrage over the travel ban in a statement: "They've been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize," she said.

"These people are the bravest humanitarians on the planet, and the idea that they could not be able to come with us and enjoy that success is just abhorrent."

It's not the first time Saleh has been banned from entering America. In April 2016, he had to return to Istanbul after discovering that his visa had been canceled by the US. This prevented him from receiving an award in Washington at a gala party supported by White Helmets sponsor USAID.