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Heart - Black

Best of the Web: Boy clinging to his dead father won't become face of Yemen war for millions of Westerners (GRAPHIC)

yemen boy dead father
© Ruptly
A harrowing image taken after the Saudi-led bombing of a wedding party in Yemen last Sunday showed a young boy clinging to his dead father's body. But it's a safe bet he won't become the face of the war in the mainstream media.

Photos and footage were taken after the bombing, which happened in a remote village in the northwestern province of Hajjah. Appearing to be aged seven or eight, the boy tightly grasps the body of a man, grabbing his shirt and repeating "no, no, no" as rescuers try to take him away. People on the ground told Ruptly the boy insisted his killed father was just sleeping, and would soon wake up and take him to their home village not far from the one that was bombed.

He most probably remained there for hours, judging by how some of the images were taken at night and some in the morning. A Ruptly cameraman said the father's body was the last one to be removed from the scene, and the boy stayed with it until the very end.


Comment: What a disgrace that the West has such double standards. They pretend to care about the well-being of Arabic children, but if those children are exterminated in Yemen then it is not on their radar.


Bulb

Best of the Web: Russian MOD says OPCW confirms no chemical weapons at facility bombed by FUKUS

opcw
Last week, the fact-finding mission of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) visited a site in the Damascus suburb of Douma to collect samples in connection with the alleged April 7 chemical attack.

Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff Col. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy has announced that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had confirmed that there were no chemical weapons found at the Barzeh research center in Damascus despite the US officials' claims.

The official further noted that thousands of people could have died if there was any chemical weapon on the sites that were attacked by the US-led coalition.

"Immediately after the attacks, many people who worked at these destroyed facilities and just bystanders without any protective equipment visited them. None of them got poisoned with toxic agents," Rudskoy said.

He said the logic of strikes on alleged facilities with toxic agents in Syria was unclear, because if toxic agents had theoretically been stored there, tens of thousands of people would have died after the cruise missile strikes.

Comment: If the U.S. media bothered to actually read or undertake even cursory research, they'd know that the OPCW inspected the Barzeh site in November 2017 and found nothing. And if the U.S. media could use their vision and their ability to count to ten, they would have been able to confirm for themselves Rudskoy's counts of successful missiles, as SOTT's Joe Quinn did immediately after the attack: Just for comparison, we estimated 9 hits on Barzeh, 5 on Han Shinshar, and 1 on storage facility. The Russians counted 13, 7, and 2.


Blue Planet

Best of the Web: Russian Defense Minister at SCO: 'US is pushing the world towards a new arms race'

Sergei Shoigu
© Sputnik / Sergei GuneevRussian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that Washington was not ready for partnership on an equitable basis even with its own traditional allies.

According to the Russian senior defense official, the United States demonstrates readiness to use all means, including military ones, in a bid to retain the role of a hegemon in international relations by pushing the world toward a new arms race.

"Today, we are witnessing the transformation of international relations, their transition to a multipolar system, which is characterized by the redistribution of spheres of influence and stiffer competition for regional and global leadership. In these conditions, the United States wishes to preserve the role of a hegemon in international relations, exercising all means, including military ones, and pushing countries [of the world] toward a new arms race," Shoigu said during the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's (SCO) defense ministers.

According to the minister, the United States, "without embarrassment," declares readiness to "correct" trends in world politics and economy which it deems unfavorable through the use of military force.


Biohazard

Best of the Web: Russian prank call captures OPCW director on tape admitting chemical used against Skripals could have been made anywhere

skripal
© AFP 2018 / Ben STANSALL
If the audio is authenticated, the phone call will put another dent in London's claim that the A234 chemical agent known in Western countries as Novichok, was Russian-made.

Vladimir 'Vovan' Kuznetsov and Alexei 'Lexus' Stolyarov, the pair of Russian telephone pranksters well-known for their constant trolling of Western officials, have put out an audio recording of what they say is their conversation with Ahmet Uzumcu, the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Posing as Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the pranksters got the man in the tape to admit that the nerve agent used to poison Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia could have been made anywhere, and to point out that the British government never gave the OPCW the mandate to trace the source of the chemical.

Question

Best of the Web: What are 'Assad Apologists'? Are they like those 'Saddam Apologists' from 2002?

Intercept tweet
© The Intercept
Isn't it fascinating how western journalists are suddenly rallying to attack the dangerous awful and horrifying epidemic of "Assad apologists" just as the western empire ramps up its longstanding regime change agenda against the Syrian government? Kinda sorta exactly the same way they began spontaneously warning the world about "Saddam apologists" around the time of the Iraq invasion?

The increasingly pro-establishment Intercept has published an article titled "Dear Bashar al-Assad Apologists: Your Hero Is a War Criminal Even If He Didn't Gas Syrians," condemning unnamed opponents of western interventionism in Syria for not being sufficiently condemnatory of Bashar al-Assad in their antiwar discourse.

Last week The Times published an article titled "Apologists for Assad working in British universities," frantically informing the public that "top academics" are circulating information that runs counter to the official Syria narrative, followed this week by a Huffington Post article attacking those same academics in the same way. Yesterday, the BBC ran an article titled "Syria war: the online activists pushing conspiracy theories," warning its readers about "pro-Syrian government" internet posts.

Comment: It only takes a little bit of truth to drag down a big lie. That is why one lie has to 'fit all.'


Beaker

Best of the Web: 20 more Skripal questions: The lady and the curiously absent suspect

Salisburystreet
© Andrew Parsons/ Global Look PressZizzi restaurant where the Skripals dined, Salisbury, UK
Okay, so I'm up to 70 questions so far on this case (here, here and here), and here come another 20. Most of these are focused on Yulia Skripal, but there are also a number of questions at the end relating to the main character in the case, who so far seems to have been almost entirely forgotten. Let's just call him or her or them "A. Suspect", and note that so far he or she or they have been curiously conspicuous by their absence.

1. Both Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were admitted to Salisbury District Hospital (SDH) on 4th March 2018 and were said to have been in a coma in the weeks that followed. During this time, what actions were taken by the Hospital Trust to inform their next of kin of their condition - particularly Mr Skripal's 90-year-old mother (and of course Yulia's grandmother) -, and to keep them updated throughout their illness?

2. According to reports on 28th March, both Mr Skripal and his daughter were in a critical condition, and it was even suggested that the likelihood of either of them surviving was so remote that a judgement might be needed to make the "politically-sensitive decision over whether to maintain life support" for them. Yet just eight days later, on 5th April, it emerged that Yulia Skripal had contacted her cousin, Viktoria, by telephone, and that she had repeatedly stressed that "everything is fine" and "everyone is fine", including her father, who she said was "having a sleep". This suggests that the two of them had recovered a good while before the phone call. On what dates did the two of them regain consciousness?

3. The telephone conversation, which was recorded by Viktoria and played on Russian television, was the first public information that both Yulia and her father were no longer in a "critical condition". Why was this information not made public before her phone call was aired?

Comment: Slane's previous writing on the Skripal case:


Bomb

Best of the Web: Waco, Texas: 25 years since the US government committed a chemical weapons attack against its own people

waco raid
When reports claimed that a chemical attack killed 70 civilians in Syria earlier this month, the Trump administration was quick to place the blame on the Syrian government-despite having no evidence - and they claimed that the horror of such an atrocity deserved retaliation in the form of targeted airstrikes.

While the United States military maintained that the 120 missiles launched in the attack destroyed a facility that was used to produce chemical weapons, witnesses on the ground in Douma, Syria, claimed that the airstrikes actually destroyed a cancer research facility.

U.S. intelligence officials have since admitted that the attack was carried out despite the fact that the United States had no proof that the Syrian government had carried out a sarin gas attack. Instead, the U.S. acted before an investigation could be conducted, and as is usually the case with reported gas attacks in Syria, proof has yet to be found to show that President Bashar al-Assad was responsible.

If the idea that a government would use chemicals to kill dozens of its own citizens is so abhorrent that the U.S. would risk World War 3 to take a stand against it, then it must mean that the U.S. would never do the same thing to its own citizens, for fear that it could be subjected to a similar response from another country-right?

Comment: See also:


Dig

Best of the Web: Democratic Party STILL can't accept election result - Sues Wikileaks, Trump and Russian government for 'damages'

hillary clinton
In a last-ditch effort to keep the Trump/Russia collusion story alive, the Democratic National Committee filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit on Friday against the Trump campaign, the Russian government, and WikiLeaks.

The suit alleges that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government to hack the DNC's computer network and publish the committee's emails via WikiLeaks, reported the Washington Post.

"During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump's campaign," DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement.

The DNC is seeking financial reparations for the alleged collusion, which the committee says amounted to an illegal conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 election.

Comment: Well, as they say, "Good luck with that!"

The DNC (and by extension, the majority of the Democratic Party) have completely lost the plot.

How are they even funding such a ridiculous enterprise? The DNC coffers are empty: Maybe Soros gave them a cash infusion.


Eye 2

Best of the Web: The White Helmets attempted to gain Roger Waters endorsement using Saudi cash

roger waters
Roger Waters on stage in Barcelona, April 13, 2018
During a Barcelona concert on April 13, Roger Waters denounced the Syrian White Helmets as "a fake organization that exists only to create propaganda for jihadists and terrorists." Warning that the groups' unverified claims about chemical weapons attacks across insurgent-held territory were aimed at triggering Western military intervention, Waters cautioned his audience,
"If we were to listen to the propaganda of the White Helmets and others, we would encourage our governments to start dropping bombs on people in Syria. This would be a mistake of monumental proportions for us as human beings."
In fact, Waters had first hand experience with the powerful pro-war PR operation behind the White Helmets. Back in October 2016, a public relations firm representing the White Helmets called The Syria Campaign attempted to recruit Waters by inviting him to a lavish dinner organized by a Saudi-British billionaire, Hani Farsi. The rock legend and renowned activist was told that by signing on to the organization's mission, he could help "elevate the voices of Syria's peaceful heroes"

Blackbox

Best of the Web: Who is really stalling the OPCW investigation in Syria? Blame the UN and the jihadis

OPCW Syria
© Associated Press / Bassem Mroue
Why has the fact finding mission (FFM) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) not visited Douma?

The OPCW inspectors are held up by the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) which has a say about any movement of UN aligned organizations in areas that might be dangerous. The UNDSS is led by an Australian police / intelligence officer. The holdup seems to be intended.

On Sunday April 8 videos were published of an alleged 'chemical attack' in Douma near Damascus. At that time the area was under control of Jaish al-Islam, a Salafi terrorist organization financed by Saudi Arabia. The various videos from terrorist supporters like the 'White Helmets' were unconvincing. They showed obviously arranged scenes of an alleged 'barrel bomb' and manipulated bodies of dead children that had been moved and decorated with shaving foam to superficially fit the claims of a 'chemical incident'. Another video showed people in a hospital being doused with water for no apparent reason.

An often quoted opposition news outlet, the Syrian Observatory in Britain, denied that a 'chemical attack' had happened. It reported on April 8 of suffocation after a shelter collapsed due to bombing:
[I]n among the casualties there are 21 civilians including 9 children and 3 women were killed as a result of suffocation caused by the shelling which destroyed basements of houses as a result of the violence bombardment that stopped about an hour ago on Douma area.
The 'chemical incident' was likely faked. It suspiciously happened just a few days after U.S. President Trump had announced the he wanted the U.S. military to leave Syria. A year earlier a similar incident was claimed to have happened after a similar announcement by Trump. The U.S. had responded to the 2017 incident by bombing an empty Syrian airfield.

Comment: MoA seems to be implying that the UNDSS fabricated the attack on their reconnaissance team. Perhaps that's the case. But regardless, the Russians are going with it, because assuming it is true, the conclusion is still obvious, as Russian Deputy FM Bogdanov stated today:
"There are militants who terrorize citizens and, among other things, impede the normal work of representatives of the international community - the UN and the OPCW [Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons]. Someone does not want an objective professional investigation [to be carried out]," the diplomat told RIA Novosti on Thursday.

When asked if there is a security threat to the OPCW mission, the deputy minister said: "As events show, there is."
It's not the Russians or Syrians who want to block the investigation. Who stands to lose if it is carried out successfully? Lavrov has the answer:
"At the time when they were in the area, shooting began from the part of the town where there were still a few dozen extremists, who were clearly warned ahead about who specifically will be arriving in the area and for what purpose," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.