The OPCW has opened the door to ridicule, when the simple truth would have been enough
Gas mask, check. Gas canister looking as if it fell through a ceiling from considerable height, check. Selfie, check. Bingo! ASSAD CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK!
We like to take the Big Boys on trust. No longer do we believe in our meretricious little leaders with their easy lies and twitters: the Trumps and Mays and now all the nationalists of Europe. We certainly don't put any credit in Arab dictators.
But when, despite all its bureaucracy and corruption, the UN tells us that the world faces climate change, we largely believe what it says. If the International Red Cross warns us of a humanitarian catastrophe in Africa, we tend to take their word for it. And when the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) - which represents 193 member states throughout the world - reports on chlorine attacks in Syria, we assume we are hearing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Until now. For in the last few days, there has emerged disturbing evidence that in its final report on the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime in the city of Douma last year,
the OPCW deliberately concealed from both the public and the press the existence of a dissenting 15-page assessment of two cylinders which had supposedly contained molecular chlorine - perhaps the most damning evidence against the Assad regime in the entire report.
The OPCW officially maintains that these canisters were probably dropped by an aircraft - probably a helicopter, presumably Syrian - over Douma on 7 April 2018.
But the dissenting assessment, which the OPCW made no reference to in its published conclusions, finds there is a "higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft".
Theresa May has confirmed that
she will resign as leader of the Conservative Party on 7 June in order for a leadership election to take place this summer.
Following a widespread revolt over her 'new Brexit deal', the Prime Minister has finally caved to growing calls from her MPs to step down. Her decision follows a meeting with Sir Graham Brady, the leader of backbench Tories, in Downing Street this morning.
Mrs May said that the process of electing her successor would begin the week after she finally stepped down as Conservative leader. She said she had informed the Queen that she would continue to serve as Prime Minister until that process was complete.
In an emotional statement on the steps of Downing Street, she said she had "done my best" to get her Withdrawal Agreement Bill through Parliament but acknowledged she had failed to do so.
Comment: Here's her full statement:
Despite the tears, few in the UK feel sorry for her.
She may feel contrition for 'failing to deliver Brexit', but the real mission since she took over from Cameron three years ago has been - first and foremost - to reinstate parliament as the arbiter of whether or not the UK leaves the EU. In that respect, she has been successful. The 'dictatorship of the parliamentariat' has been preserved, and for now the entrenched political class remains relevant...
Meanwhile, real issues that urgently require government intervention are piling up in the UK:
Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has, of course, seized the opportunity to again call for a general election:
After three years of fecklessness by the entire political class over Brexit, Corbyn's chances of returning the Labour Party to power have likely also taken a hit. Why would people - a substantial majority of whom seem to support Brexit - vote Labour when that party offers no real alternative to the Conservative strategy of keeping the UK in the EU?
Nigel Farage has weighed in:
You'll never believe who the UK media is proposing as May's successor...
And where is BoJo at this crucial time? In Switzerland,
promising bankers that:
"We will leave the EU on October 31, deal or no deal. The way to get a good deal is to prepare for a no deal."
...which is EXACTLY what the Tories were saying about the March 31st deadline.
European leaders
suspect, correctly, that May's resignation forms part of the UK permanent govt's strategy for managing Brexit while holding onto power. All the Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov had to say about it was:
"Regrettably, I cannot recall offhand any landmarks that might somehow illustrate a contribution to the development of bilateral relations between Russia and Britain. It is rather the other way round."
Indeed, apart from 'not-Brexit', what else will May be recorded in history for... the 'not-nerve agent' Skripal Saga?
© FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images
People walk past a McDonald's fast food restaurant in Beijing on Jan. 9, 2017.
The announcement immediately triggered a public outcry, when a netizen posted in on the internet.
Chinese state-run media have begun ramping up anti-American propaganda, as the U.S.-China trade dispute recently escalated with tit-for-tat tariff increases. The company's memo came to light shortly after the hawkish state-run newspaper
Global Times in a May 13 editorial called on the Chinese public to "fight a people's war" with the United States.
© AP Photo / Hassan Ammar
The three men are all described as "moderate" Sunni clerics: wad al-Qarni, a Sunni preacher, academic and author; Ali al-Omari, a popular broadcaster; and Sheikh Salman al-Odah, all of whom were arrested in September 2017 alongside 20 other clerics in a renewed crackdown on dissent.
Paul Joseph Watson
The SummitFri, 24 May 2019 10:04 UTC
Fmr Netherlands’ asylum minister Mark Harbers
Harbers failed to include a category called 'other' in the report on crimes committed by asylum seekers, which included 79 sexual offenses, 51 aggravated assaults, and 31 suspicions of murder and manslaughter.
Harbers' excuse for not reporting the figures was that it would lead to "confusion".
Palestinians in Gaza carry an injured girl on March 31, 2018.
Recently, hundreds of PBS stations around the United States were scheduled to broadcast a powerful new Frontline documentary:
One Day in Gaza.
But viewers tuning in found that it had been replaced by a slightly updated Frontline report on Robert Mueller that had been broadcast two months before and had been streaming online ever since.
PBS no longer has the Gaza film listed on its schedule.
The documentary was to be aired on the one-year anniversary of events that took place on May 14, 2018, when tens of thousands of men, women, and children in Gaza gathered with the intention of deploying the tactics Gandhi had used in freeing India from British control.
India ended its imports of Iranian oil last month, Indian Ambassador to the United States Harsh Shringla told reporters at the country's embassy in Washington on Thursday.
© Sputnik
Comment: How many times have we seen this method of subjugation. Destabilize a country, take away their defenses, and rob them of everything they have... All for democracy. The problem is that Iran isn't a pushover, so this attempt won't play out like Libya, Iraq, etc.
© Gage Skidmore/CC by-SA 2.0/MGN
US President Donald Trump
President Donald Trump directed the intelligence community Thursday to "quickly and fully cooperate" with Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr's investigation into surveillance activities during the 2016 presidential election, said White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.
In Thursday's memo Trump ordered the Department of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, Secretary of Energy, Homeland Security, Director of National Intelligence and the director of the CIA to assist Barr in his review of the activities of the agencies during the FBI's probe into alleged - now debunked - collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
"Today, at the request and recommendation of the Attorney General of the United States, President Donald J. Trump directed the intelligence community to quickly and fully cooperate with the Attorney General's investigation into surveillance activities during the 2016 Presidential election," said Sanders in a statement released late Thursday. "The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long established standards for handling classified information."
"Today's action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions."
J.Hawk, Daniel Deiss, Edwin Watson, Dermot Arrigan
South FrontTue, 21 May 2019 00:00 UTC
The Impending Crisis
At one time, specifically during the post-World War 2 Bretton Woods era, it looked like as if the capitalist model could be indefinitely sustainable and avoid plunging the world into major world conflicts. That era began to come to an end during the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, and came to a complete end at the end of the Cold War which ushered in the era of the so-called "globalization" which took form of unbridled competition for markets and resources. At first this competition did not show many signs of trouble. There were many "emerging markets" created as a result of the collapse of the Soviet bloc into which Western corporations could expand. However, the law of diminishing returns being what it is, the initial rapid economic growth rates could not be sustained and attempts to goose it using extremely liberal central bank policies, to the point of zero and even negative interest rates, succeeded in inflating-and bursting-several financial "bubbles". Even today's US economy bears many hallmarks of such a bubble, and it is only one of many.
Sooner or later the proverbial "black swan" event will unleash a veritable domino effect of popping bubbles and plunge the global economy into a crisis of a magnitude it has not seen since the 1930s. A crisis against which the leading world powers have few weapons to deploy, since they have expended their monetary and fiscal "firepower" on the 2008 crisis, to little avail. The low interest rates and high levels of national debt mean that the next big crisis will not be simply "more of the same." It will fundamentally rearrange the global economy.
RTThu, 23 May 2019 17:13 UTC
© AFP / Pierre-Henry Deshayes
FILE PHOTO. Globus-2 radar stations are seen in Vardo, northern Norway.
Moscow has vowed to retaliate if Washington sees through the modernization of its Globus-2 radar facility in Norway, saying that the radar is used specifically to spy on Russia.
The warning was issued by the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Wednesday during a press briefing.
"There is every reason to believe that the radar will monitor Russia's territory and will become part of the US global missile defense network," Zakharova stated.
As any other country, Russia won't leave the "military preparations" right on its borders unanswered, she warned, and will take unspecified retaliatory measures.
Comment: Surely the people of Norway can see there's no benefit in hosting US belligerence:
Comment: Here is the leaked report. See also: