WHITE HELMETS: The Guardian Protects UK FCO Destabilisation Project in Syria

December 20th, 2017

Awake Goy

Screenshot from UK Column report on the Guardian article.

John Schoneboom
21st Century Wire

Today in Too Long Don’t Read: It’s hard to tell what’s going on in the world, isn’t it? Whom do you believe when there are competing, totally irreconcilable narratives out there? Are the White Helmets heroes or villains? The mainstream narrative has them as a neutral, unarmed, grassroots (and Oscar-winning) humanitarian group with no political affiliations, nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Independent journalists, notably Vanessa Beeley, Eva Karene Bartlett, Patrick Henningsen, and Khaled Iskef, among a few others, suggest a radically different picture, in which the White Helmets are nothing more than a propaganda front for terrorist groups like the Al Nusra Front.

The Guardian, in defense of the heroic narrative, just published a piece by Olivia Solon that turns the propaganda charge against the critics of the White Helmets and refers to them as “a network of anti-imperialist activists, conspiracy theorists and trolls with the support of the Russian government.”

I read this article with great interest, wondering whether it would actually back-up its claims and refute the allegations head on. That is what it would do if it were actual journalism. It would give a fair accounting of the allegations and assess the evidence behind them. If it found the evidence lacking, it would say why, it would offer context, additional evidence, show why the supposed facts were wrong, etc. That would be journalism.

Solon didn’t do that. She mentioned only one video, the so-called Mannequin Challenge piece, and dismissed it as simply the stupid mistake the White Helmets and their apologists said it was. As for the few cases of White Helmet involvement in terrorist activity that Solon did acknowledge, she dismissed these as a case of a few bad apples that left the overall courageous heroic narrative intact.

Watch White Helmets “Mannequin Challenge” spoof rescue video:

…
How can we tell what’s going on in the world? I feel that one way is to examine the way narratives are defended, and the way challenges are treated. What Solon has done is not journalism. Her work does nothing to examine or investigate seriously. It only tries to dismiss and defame with tired old negative buzzwords like “conspiracy theory” or new ones like “Russia” — never mind that the three main journalists she offers in support of her Russian operation CONSPIRACY THEORY are from the UK, Australia, and Canada.

There is no substantive analysis at all. Nothing. Meanwhile she uncritically and with a straight face describes the US-backed mayhem-generating team of mercenaries and fanatics as an effort to “stabilize” Syria. The piece also contains serious errors, e.g., Patrick Henningsen is NOT an editor at Infowars.com. Since it is not true, somebody had to have made it up. Is that an innocent mistake, or a cheap attempt to discredit? All of this tells us something about Solon and the Guardian and our media generally and these are clues to what is going on in the world. Look at what is and is not there. Listen to the dogs that are not barking here.

What else did she leave out? Was it anything important? I’ve taken the liberty of compiling a skeletal, condensed list of some of the important, credible allegations and facts that, to my mind, deserve more attention and investigation than the glib, contemptuous dismissals offered by the likes of Olivia Solon.

These are all taken from articles by Vanessa Beeley except where noted. If I’ve gotten anything wrong I hope she or someone else will correct me. Now, if you believe Solon, you’ll dismiss all of it in one fell swoop: “Well that’s Beeley! She’s appeared on RT for god’s sake!” And that is exactly the desired effect, I presume, of articles like Solon’s. To cancel out reams of evidence by impugning the messengers with what amounts to fear-mongering and slander.

But the thing is, you don’t have to take Beeley’s word for it. If you follow the links to her articles, you can see the photos and the videos and find the documentation yourself. For now, just have a look at the list. It’s simplified. You’ll have to follow the links if you want more details. But just have a look. These are things Solon couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t deal with in her hack job hit piece. There may be alternative interpretations of some of the photos and videos, and they might make an interesting argument. Solon unfortunately chose not to do that, however, and while she couldn’t be expected to cover everything in one newspaper article, see if you think credible journalism would ignore all of this:

THE CONDENSED CASE AGAINST THE WHITE HELMETS

All from Vanessa Beeley’s two articles unless other sources are mentioned:

White Helmets & ‘Local Councils’ – Is the UK FCO Financing Terrorism in Syria with Taxpayer Funds?

WHITE HELMETS: State Sanctioned Terrorism and Hollywood Poster Boys for War

1: White Helmets were started and largely trained not in Syria but in Turkey and Jordan, by James le Mesurier, a former British military intelligence officer who went on to become Vice President for Special Projects at the Olive Group, “a private mercenary organization that has since merged with Blackwater-Academi into what is now known as Constellis Holdings.”

2: White Helmets receive substantial funding from the US, the UK, and the EU, at least $150 million over 3 years, from the same parties that are supporting the rebels/terrorists. No political ties?

3: White Helmets only ever operated in territory controlled by terrorist groups like Al Nusra Front, ISIS, and Nour Al Din Zinki, the latter are notorious for filming themselves torturing and beheading a 12-year-old boy. When those groups are forced to move, the White Helmets move with them, often in the same buses, as when they abandoned East Aleppo.

Mohammad Jnued, White Helmet and Nusra Front supporter. (Collage taken from his Facebook account)

4: The White Helmet leader, Raed Saleh, is tied to extremists, a fact acknowledged even by the State Department’s Mark Toner. Saleh was actually deported from the US out of Dulles Airport in April 2016, with no reason being disclosed. He is a close colleague of Mustafa Al Haj Yussef, another White Helmets leader, whose social media accounts show him openly declaring allegiance to Ahrar Al Sham, calling for unity with Al Nusra, advocating the shelling and execution of civilians and other equally charming practices. Actually a recent survey of social media activity carried out by the Syrian War Blog has conservatively identified 65 White Helmet operatives who have professed their membership of, or alliance with, extremist groups like Ahrar Al Sham and Nusra Front or even ISIS.

Also, Clarity of Signal – Massive White Helmets Photo Cache Proves Hollywood Gave Oscar to Terrorist Group

5: The White Helmet group in East Aleppo was established by the president of the UK-funded East Aleppo Council (EAC), Abdulaziz Maghrabi, often photographed with, offering support for, and maintaining active militant membership with terrorist groups Abu Amara and Nusra Front.

Abdulaziz Maghrabi (circled) with Abu Amara, one of the most brutal terrorist organisations in East Aleppo working as “security” for Nusra Front aka Al Qaeda in Syria. (Photo from Maghrabi’s Facebook account)

6: White Helmets in Idlib were photographed taking part in demonstrations and calling for the “burning and destruction” of the towns Kafarya and Foua, which resisted occupation by the terrorists and suffered a siege that deprived its citizens of food, water, and medicine in addition to attacks that killed some 1300 residents. White Helmets also participated in luring children evacuated from these towns off their buses to their death by a truck bomb in an event known as the Rashideen Massacre.

On the left White Helmets are carrying banners calling for burning of Kafarya and Foua, two Shia Muslim villages in Nusra Front controlled Idlib. On right post taken from the Facebook account of White Helmet, Abdul Halim al Shehab “Exterminate Kafarya”.

7: Muawiya Hassan Agha was present at Rashideen, and he later became infamous for his involvement in the execution of two prisoners of war in Aleppo. For this rogue bad appleness he was supposedly fired from the White Helmets, although he was later photographed still with them. He has also been photographed celebrating “victory” with Nusra Front in Idlib. There have been at least three other executions on video that show White Helmet involvement, not just being present and immediately cleaning up, but celebrating, mistreating bodies, and otherwise not acting in a manner consistent with being a neutral humanitarian group.

White Helmets in Idlib, celebrating with Nusra Front. Muawiya is on left in hi-viz jacket. (Photo: screenshot from Nusra Front video)

8: Videos show White Helmets participating in Nusra Front operations, e.g., joining in the beating and encirclement of a Syrian civilian, thoroughly mingling in with heavily armed Nusra terrorists.

…

9: The main White Helmets center in East Aleppo was integrated into the Nusra Front compound, and was adorned with a variety of graffiti and flags affirming the White Helmet affiliation to various terrorist groups, but predominantly Nusra Front.

Watch video by Pierre Le Corf showing the proximity of White Helmet centre in Sakhour to Nusra Front headquarters:

…

10: Numerous civilian witnesses from Aleppo were unfamiliar with the term White Helmets but knew the group as the Nusra Front Civil Defense and reported its participation in executions and atrocities.

11: On multiple occasions, the White Helmets have been exposed staging rescue scenes for both photo and video, recycling images in multiple propaganda pieces.

12: Swedish Doctors for Human Rights analyzed a White Helmets video report and concluded “the measures inflicted upon those children, some of them lifeless, are bizarre, non-medical, non-lifesaving, and even counterproductive in terms of life-saving purposes…[including measures that] would have resulted in the death of the child, if not already dead.” The implication is that the White Helmets may have actually killed children and/or were using already-dead children “as propaganda props.”

13: The White Helmets have been filmed describing Syrian Arab Army bodies as “trash” and one particular video shows them flashing “V” signs while standing on bodies of Syrian soldiers piled onto a truck.

14: Many photos show White Helmet operatives carrying arms or posing, armed, with rebel groups including Nusra Front. At least one of them, Mo’ad Baresh, who was killed fighting against the Syrian Army, was an active rebel/terrorist while also a member of White Helmets.

15: The White Helmets claim to have saved over 90,000 lives but there is zero documentation of these lives — no names, no records of any kind.

16: The White Helmets’ critics cannot be described or dismissed as comprising only “fringe” voices. Eminent prize-winning journalist and filmmaker John Pilger described the White Helmets as “a complete propaganda construct.”

These are all things that can be looked up and verified, much of it is in photographs and videos, other bits are first-hand accounts from Syrian people via reporters who bothered to go there instead of reprinting Pentagon press releases. Solon and the Guardian do not even hint at the existence of a body of evidence like this, let alone debunk it.

If they had only tried, and made an honest effort, then an informative debate might have ensued. I am all ears for counter arguments. Let us subject all of this to scrutiny, by all means. Maybe there are errors, mistranslations, missing context, mistakes. If truth is what we’re after, we confront criticism squarely, not weasel away from it or ignore it.

The once-respectable Guardian declines the invitation, preferring to smear and ignore, a choice that speaks sad volumes about the paucity of arrows in its quiver. The whole thing suggests, I think, that we ought to consider that what has happened before — in the Cold War, in Vietnam, in Iraq — is happening again: that people with an interest in war are offering a narrative of lies for hearts, minds, and resources. To put it another way, we might want to consider seriously the possibility that they are gaslighting the hell out of us.

Screenshot taken from UK Column report on the Guardian clumsy hit piece.