Establishment Narrative Managers Struggle With New Syria Plot Holes By Caitlin Johnstone!!!!
(2019-05-20 at 21:15:17 )

Establishment Narrative Managers Struggle With New Syria Plot Holes by Caitlin Johnstone

It has been about a week since the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM) published a leaked internal document from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation into an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria last year.

The document, whose authenticity the OPCW has confirmed, contends that the official story which was used to justify an air strike by the United States, the United Kingdom and France about poison gas being dropped on civilians from Syrian government helicopters is scientifically implausible, saying "In summary, observations at the scene of the two locations, together with subsequent analysis, suggest that there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft."

The document, titled "Engineering Assessment of Two Cylinders Observed at the Douma Incident", was signed by a man named Ian Henderson, whose name is seen listed in expert leadership positions on OPCW documents from as far back as 1998 and as recently as 2018.

The OPCW hid this information from the public, for reasons it has yet to attempt to justify.

The fact that a longtime OPCW-trained investigator wildly dissented with the OPCWs official conclusions within the OPCWs own investigation should obviously have been made public knowledge, and this revelation should obviously have made headline news throughout the western media.

Instead, it has been completely ignored.

Only a few alternative media outlets and the usual Russian publications have covered it.

"According to ProQuest database, Peter Hitchens piece is the only mention in any United Kingdom corporate newspaper so far," tweeted media analysis site Media Lens yesterday.

So there is a total media blackout on this story from the usual plutocratic news outlets, which is a huge story in and of itself.

Just as significantly, the less well-known propagandists who are typically the first to attack any argument which casts doubt on the "Assad is a child-gassing monster who must be stopped at all cost" imperial narrative have been incredibly feeble in their attempts to dispute this new revelation.

Bellingcat is a pro-NATO narrative management firm which has defended ridiculous Syria regime change propaganda like the Bana Alabed psyop, and is consistently elevated with fawning puff pieces and collaborative reports from major mass media outlets like the Guardian and the New York Times.

As of this writing it has published absolutely nothing on the Engineering Assessment.

Nothing for, nothing against. Nothing.

The outlets incredibly shady founder, Eliot Higgins, has responded to this new revelation by pinning a tweet citing a completely baseless theory that the WGSPM "got played by a disgruntled OPCW employee."

"This reporting by Brian Whit on the leaked Douma report that the conspiracy theorists and chemical weapon denialists are so excited about is consistent with what I am hearing.

Looks like they all got played by a disgruntled OPCW employee," Higgins tweeted with a link to a Medium article by United Kingdom reporter and virulent Syria regime change cheerleader Brian Whitaker, adding, "This is why the Syrian Propaganda Group needs to work on verifying things it decides to republish, even if it fits with their attempts to deny chemical weapon use in Syria, otherwise they just get played by people with their own agenda."

The silliness of this argument was pointed out by journalist Aaron Mate, who responded, "What -reporting-?

He is citing rumors that he acknowledges are -not confirmed.- Regardless, the document comes from OPCW, as Whitakers update notes. The question now is whose findings are accurate - and there is nothing in this article that challenges the leaked findings."

Mate highlighted portions of the text that Mr. Higgins shared from Mr. Whitakers article, which I will put in bold here:

-"One story circulating in the chemical weapons community (though not confirmed) is that Mr. Henderson had wanted to join the FFM and got rebuffed but was then given permission to do some investigating on the sidelines of the FFM.

The suggestion (again, not confirmed) is that this was a way of extending his contract at the OPCW. If true, it might explain how he appeared to be working with the FFM while not (according to the OPCW press office) actually being part of it."

Even if all of the completely unconfirmed things Mr. Whitaker is speculating are true, it would not actually negate the importance of the Engineering Assessment; this is merely an attempt to divert attention from the message to the messenger.

And, again, this was a post that Mr. Higgins pinned to the top of his Twitter profile. It was his very best argument.

It is not terribly surprising that Mr. Higgins has struggled to address this new revelation, partly because there is not much ground upon which for him to do so, and partly because in the midst of an online debate in the wake of the alleged Douma attacks he already conceded that one of the gas cylinders may have been manually placed where it was photographed.

"Again, you are assuming it was photographed in its original resting place and not moved.

Keep up,"Mr. Higgins tweeted following the April 2018 incident in response to someone questioning the strange placement and circumstances of one of the cylinders.

It was lying on an unbroken bed in relatively good condition and people were rightly perplexed as to why it had not shattered the bed base upon impact.

Idrees Ahmad, a particularly loathsome anti-Assad regime change propagandist who has smoothly transitioned into an anti-Maduro regime change propagandist as well when the United States empire focused its crosshairs on Venezuela, has had similar difficulty in addressing the leaked document.

Mr. Ahmad flipped out and posted dozens of tweets in response to Susan Sarandon sharing my article about the OPCWs admission that the Mr. Henderson report is legitimate.

His arguments range in brilliance from falsely claiming that I am an "Australian fascist", to repeatedly arguing that Mr. Hendersons conclusions differ from the official OPCW report (duh), to repeatedly regurgitating Mr. Higgins aforementioned baseless argument about Mr. Henderson being a "disgruntled OPCW employee".

So they have really got nothing.

There is no actual argument to be made that the OPCW had any business keeping the public in the dark about a dissenting assessment about the Douma incident signed by a longtime OPCW investigator.

Or if there is I have not seen it, and I have been looking in all the usual places one might expect such an argument to appear.

There are still plenty of unanswered questions about the Douma incident.

The leaked document does not by itself prove that the Engineering Assessment is correct and the official OPCW findings are incorrect, it just proves that there were other analyses which differed sharply with the official conclusions we have been permitted to see, and that we were not permitted to see those analyses.

In a post-Iraq invasion world, this by itself is entirely unacceptable.

And, rather than pushing for answers and accountability, the so-called journalists of the largest media outlets in the west are completely ignoring it.

Thanks for reading!!
Everyone has my unconditional permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I have written) in any way they like free of charge.

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my "sweet merchandise", buying my new book "Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone", or my previous book "Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers". The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for "my website", which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I am trying to do with this platform, "click here".