1086 British & French elites fear the Lobby and align with it, but ordinary people stand up to it

British & French elites fear the Lobby and align with it, but ordinary
people stand up to it

Newsletter published on December 8, 2019

(1) Gilad Atzmon: elites fear the Lobby, but British people stand up to it
(2) French elite align with the Lobby,  estranged from working class -
Israel Shamir
(3) Macron attempts rapproachement with Putin
(4) OPCW manufactured a pretext for war by suppressing its own
scientists' research

(1) Gilad Atzmon: elites fear the Lobby, but British people stand up to it

{watch the video}

https://www.unz.com/gatzmon/as-of-today-i-am-the-only-winner-of-the-12-december-election/

As of Today, I am the Only Winner of the 12 December Election!

GILAD ATZMON

DECEMBER 1, 2019

For the last 15 years I have been warning both Brits and Jews of the
possibility of serious consequences that might result from the intensive
activities of the Jewish Lobby in Britain and beyond. I have written
thousands of commentaries about the topic, given endless talks and
interviews and published the best selling books on Jewish Identity
politics in return for which I have received relentless abuse. However,
I survive and with just a bit of luck Britain may also survive the
present chaos inflicted on it by the Lobby and by its own compromised
political establishment.

For the last three years we have witnessed an orchestrated smear
campaign conducted by many Jewish institutions against British political
parties, politicians, intellectuals, artists, and various other members
of the public. The Labour Party has been subjected to a uniquely vile
smear campaign: its leadership accused of being ‘anti-Semitic.’ The
Labour Party, not, perhaps, a collective of distinctly sharp minds, was
clumsy in its attempts to counter these empty accusations. The Party
foolishly responded by surrendering to the Lobby’s every demand:
suspending and expelling some of its best members for telling the truth
about Palestine and accepting the primacy of Jewish suffering by
adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The Party and its leader
repeatedly apologized to the Jewish community for acts it hadn’t
committed although this failed to assuage the Lobby’s unquenchable appetite.

In July 2018, the three British Jewish newspapers united in an attempt
to finish Corbyn’s political career by simultaneously issuing a joint
editorial that declared: "Today, Britain’s three leading Jewish
newspapers – Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph – take
the unprecedented step of speaking as one by publishing the same front
page. We do so because of the existential threat to Jewish life in this
country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government."

Since then Corbyn has been accused by Labour MP Margaret Hodge and other
Jewish celebrities of being "racist" and "an anti-Semite". In a uniquely
foolish move that conveys a severe inability to read his neighbours’
mood, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has launched an explosive and
unprecedented attack on Jeremy Corbyn calling on the Brits not to vote
Labour.

When Rabbi Mirvis published his article the Tories were leading in the
polls by 12-14 percent. Then came a remarkable shift. Corbyn was
confronted by the BBC’s Andrew Neil who no doubt expected him to offer
his customary words of appeasement but for some reason, this time the
Labour leader refused to provide the goods. Four times Neil used the BBC
to demand Corbyn’s apology and each time the Labour leader demurred.
Corbyn stood firm and in the next poll, not surprisingly, the Labour
Party bounced back. The Tories and their leader, or so I read in the
press, are in a panic and for good reason. A hung parliament may well
result in Corbyn being the next British prime minister. Leading polling
expert Sir John Curtice has warned that the recent election headlines
predicting a Tory landslide were premature. The Brits have had enough of
foreign Lobby interference with their politics. They are tired of a
hostile pressure groups weaponizing anti-Semitism, vandalising their
culture and politics and openly defying the Athenian roots at the core
of the British value system and its ethos.

The outlandish conduct of British Jewish institutions is perplexing. The
Jewish press, the Chief Rabbi, the unelected BOD that claims to
represent British Jewry have all apparently focused their energies on
smearing Britain’s opposition leader. But here is an interesting riddle.
Jewish institutions and celebrities have repeatedly described Corbyn as
an "existential threat to British Jews." They practically equate the
life long anti racist campaigner with Hitler. I assume that British Jews
know that in 1933 Hitler won the German election with the support of
just 33% of the German population. As of yesterday’s polls, Corbyn and
the Labour party enjoy the same level of support from the British
public. I reckon that if these Jewish institutions really believed that
Corbyn is a Hitler figure as he is so often outrageously described by
their leaders and press, the fact that a third of the Brits support him
would mean that Britain is the new Nazi Germany and a Shoah is just
around the corner. If British Jews really believed in such a ludicrous
scenario there would be a mass exodus of Jews out of Britain and real
estate prices in North West London would plummet. As of now, this is not
the case. The cost of a three bedroom house in Golders Green is still
way above the British average.

Not many scholars in the West tackle issues to do with Jewish politics,
they don’t dare criticise Jewish power since Jewish power is the power
to silence every person who dares to criticise Jewish power. I first
realised in the early 2000s that Jewish power is very dangerous for Jews
and gentiles alike. Jewish power is a sophisticated apparatus. In fact
it wasn’t the British politicians or establishment that defied that
treacherous spirit that has haunted British politics for too long. It is
actually the British people who have stood up and said, essentially,
‘enough is enough.’

A video popped out this weekend showing health secretary Matt Hancock
being humiliated, booed and heckled at a general election meeting. In
response to the Tory MP attempt to recycle the ‘antisemitism’ spin, the
entire gathering protested and ousted him within seconds.

The sudden unpredicted rise of Corbyn and Labour’s popularity is a
fascinating phenomenon in light of the failure of the dysfunctional
British institutions to defend elementary freedoms in the kingdom. The
transition of the Guardian, once a respected outlet, into a ‘Guardian of
Judea’ is almost as compelling as the transformation of the BBC into
BiBiC. Yet, in Britain, only a few brave souls have dared to look into
these topics. David Icke has been doing an incredible job of this for
which he has been subjected to relentless abuse. Stuart Littlewood has
produced a substantial body of work on Zionist and Jewish pressure
groups. Craig Murray has written a number of commanding articles about
the Israeli grip on British politics. Jonathan Cook watches his homeland
crumbling from the vantage point of Nazareth, Palestine. Each of them
are intellectuals. They are not political nor activists yet are
subjected to unrelenting abuse from the Lobby and its stooges within the
British establishment.

I have immersed myself in the study of the J-word. I realised a long
time ago that as Israel defines itself as the Jewish State and enjoys
the almost absolute support of world Jewry and its institutions, we need
to ask what the J-word stands for. Instead of asking who or what are the
Jews, I decided to examine what those who self-identify ‘as Jews’ mean
by that term. In my books The Wandering Who and its sequel, Being in
Time, I produced a study of the metaphysics of Jewishness. I examined
different perspectives of Judeo-centrism. I attempted to untangle the
concept of choseness. I have tried to understand what it is in Jewish
culture that provokes animosity and causes Jewish history to be a tragic
continuum.

In The Wandering Who I delved into the notion of Pre-Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PRE TSD). In PRE TSD, stress results from a phantasmic event,
an imaginary episode set in the future; an event that has never taken
place. Unlike PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in which stress
comes as a direct reaction to an event that (may) have taken place in
the past, with PRE-TSD, the trauma is caused by an imaginary scenario of
destruction. The fear of Corbyn is clearly an example of such a
phantasy. The illusion is self- perpetuating as neither Corbyn nor his
party did anything to contribute to its escalation. No one within the
British Jewish community managed to stop this snowball of collective
stress. And now the results of this are devastatingly clear. A crack of
mistrust has opened in British society between the Jews and their host
nation. I would think that Jews who find this upsetting can easily
identify the Jewish pressure groups, leaders and media outlets that led
to this unnecessary development.

My guess is that reading my work rather than burning my books could have
helped the Jewish community to introspect and prevent this development.
Engaging with me rather than attempting to cancel my talks might have
saved the Jewish institutions from repeating their most obvious historic
mistakes. I accept that blowing the whistle is a challenge. I understand
that for most people, living in a state of denial is convenient, but I
also know that truth unveils itself to us, often, unexpectedly. In the
real world it is not us, the people, who seek the truth, instead it is
actually the truth that haunts us wherever we are and against all odds.

(Republished from Gilad Atzmon by permission of author or representative)

(2) French elite align with the Lobby,  estranged from working class -
Israel Shamir
From: "israel shamir <israel.shamir@gmail.com>

http://www.unz.com/ishamir/for-the-love-of-jews/

For the Love of Jews

ISRAEL SHAMIR

DECEMBER 7, 2019

England and France, two antagonists, two mainstays of European
civilisation, are simultaneously engulfed in paroxysm of Judeophilia.
The result of the forthcoming very important parliamentary elections in
Britain hinges on this issue, with Labour and Tories competing who will
express their love of Jews more profusely, while the Jews can’t decide
whom they loath less. France, after a year of the middle-class Yellow
Vests rebellion, enters the fresh working class uprising with million
strikers rioting on the streets, but its parliament finds prime time to
ponder and rule how Frenchmen should love Jews and hate those who hate
them. What is the meaning of this charade?

Surely they do not argue about Jewish cuisine. While palatable, it is
rarely more than that. A proof can be found in Israel, where Arab food
rules, Japanese is recognised, Italian cherished but Jewish cuisine
shines by its absence. It is not Jewish noses, though a significant
feature of facial anatomy, they are not more elaborate or prominent
than, say, Sicilian. It is all about ideas.

Judeophilia, love of Jews is a troublesome symptom of a dangerous
malady, of elites’ estrangement from its working classes, the malady
presently in full bloom in France and England. Judeophilia strikes
divided societies and could lead to their collapse much faster than its
Siamese counter-twin, antisemitism. It did so in the past, most famously
in Kingdom of Poland, where the szlachta (nobility) loved Jews and
despised ordinary folks, the bydlo (rednecks), until their state
collapsed. In a Christian, or post-Christian society, Jews are a symbol,
a signifier of a certain attitude and behaviour that is profoundly
non-Christian.

Jews are a small minority that defies the large society and opposes it.
Jews care for themselves and disregard the majority and its needs; they
have no scruples beyond prescribed by the criminal law; they feel no
communality with the majority. Jews do not share communion with
majority, and do not appeal to the same deity. Jews prosper when the
majority regresses. They are fast to see a break and use it for their
advantage.

We won’t enter a discussion whether the real Jews fit the description,
and to what extent. That is how they are perceived by those who love
them and who hate them. There were Jews who acted against the paradigm,
and they weren’t considered ‘good for Jews’. Bruno Kreisky, the Austrian
Chancellor, Lazar Kaganovich, the Soviet official, Leon Trotsky or
Torquemada weren’t ‘good for Jews’.. And there are plentiful Gentiles
who were considered ‘good for Jews’, like Hillary Clinton or Tony Blair.
Usually they were bad for everybody else. So, while we shall defer our
judgment on ‘real Jews’, there is no doubt that philo-Semites are bad
for your health.

The dominant economic and political paradigm, Neo-Liberalism claims that
Jewish attitude is the right one, and that we all should emulate Jews.
This is an impossible claim; a majority can’t emulate a minority. A
society whose members relate to each other as Jews-to-Gentiles is a
cannibals’ cabal, and that is exactly what happens in our world. Jews
prosper because they are few; if all emulate Jews, the result is misery,
not prosperity. An all-Jewish society can’t exist; Israel is a place
where Thai, Chinese, Ukrainians and Palestinians work, the Russians and
Druze guard them, while Jews do usual Jewish things.

In England, the Jews are divided about Boris Johnson. They do not want
Brexit to succeed, but the access of Corbyn scares them even more.
Corbyn is an avowed enemy of … no, not of Jews, but of neo-liberalism.
Combine it with his rejection of Israeli politics, and you come to the
sum of anti-Jewish attitudes. Yes, Corbyn is anti-Jewish, if you wish,
even anti-Semite, i.e. a man whom Jews hate, for he is against both
Jewish modes of operation, the capitalist and the Zionist. He is
perfectly ok with people of Jewish origin, he has no prejudice, he is no
racist, but it is irrelevant. His victory won’t be ‘good for Jews’,
neither for Jews who bleed Palestine, nor for Jews who prosper at the
expense of the British worker. Perhaps Corbyn would be wonderful for
Jewish workers, but they are not represented in the
<https://www.bod.org.uk/who-we-are/>Board of Deputies, and the Chief
Rabbi does not care for them.

On the international scene, Corbyn is not a friend of NATO. If he could
he would take the UK out of this obsolete military alliance. So would
President Trump, who is looking for a justification to steer the US out
of NATO. Jews do not like this attitude. For them, the US and the UK
should stay in NATO, for NATO is a strong defender and supporter of the
Jewish state.

Brits have a difficult choice in the coming elections. Johnson is not
too bad, and his stand against EU should be applauded. Corbyn is likely
to seek compromise on every position, including Brexit, immigration,
NATO, but his initial stand is good. For a working man, he is the right
choice. And the Jewish attitude to him is a strong indicator: of the two
contenders, Corbyn would be better for those who do not emulate Jews.

France

In France, the Jews are very close to power, and it is usually a sign
that things do not go well for native middle and working classes. Indeed
things go from bad to worse. While a million of French workers
demonstrated against Macron’s government, the French parliamentarians
discussed antisemitism. Not surprisingly, they accepted the definition
produced by a Jewish organisation. Demurring against this definition
caused a lot of trouble for Corbyn; Macron had learned a lesson.

I am all for such definitions; their scope is too narrow, if anything.
I’d prefer a broad definition that would describe as anti-Semite any
person who attends a church or a mosque; who does not contribute to
Jewish settlements; who does not believe in God-chosen Jewish nation
being above all mortal laws. Maybe then the Gentiles would be healed of
their fear of being labelled ‘anti-Semite’. This fear kills their souls
more than the accusation. Though, best of people, Shakespeare, St John
the Divine, Dostoyevsky and Chesterton are considered anti-Semites, and
it did not diminish their fame and glory.

You can’t escape this label; if they want they will attach it to your
name. Likewise, a man can’t avoid being called a male chauvinist and
accused of harassment by a radical feminist.. Anna Ardin, the Swedish
feminist who accused Julian Assange of rape and destroyed his life as
surely as if she’d knifed him, also accused a student of harassment
because he avoided looking at her. Such accusations should be shrugged off.

France is not doing well because its elites are engaged in the rip-off
and sale of their country’s industrial, political, and cultural assets.
In the last few years, France had lost Alstom, Pechiney, Technip,
Alcatel. These premium assets were lost to US companies. French
businessmen and officials who were supposed to care about French
heirlooms, betrayed their trust and defrauded their country, that’s why
France is not doing well.

Not all of these treacherous men are Jewish, not by a long chalk. But
Jews are invaluable partners in such publicity-shy schemes, and that’s
why: "The Shoah Memorial is a secular temple for the entirety of
France’s post-Christian elite. Holocaust foundations, Jewish communal
projects, Jewish benevolent societies and Jewish philanthropies allow
the Jewish community to discourage reporting affairs they are involved
in. They can facilitate the deals in obscurity" – I was told by a
knowledgeable Jewish person, well versed with goings-on within the
French Jewish community and in the higher business, banking and
political circles of the Republic. I’ll call him JT (I shall share more
of his knowledge in the next essay – ISH). – "Jewishness has once again
become a way of avoiding scrutiny and accountability. Only anti-Semites
dare to see a link between the sale of Alstom, Macron’s career, the
Rothschilds, and the Jewish community." Wink wink.

"At two crucial moments Jewish communal support was decisive to Macron’s
political career; first, at the second tour of the French elections, in
which major Jewish organizations unanimously cajoled and preached the
Macron vote to all and sundry; second, to suppress the Yellow Vests
Uprising. Only anti-Semites dare to think the Rothschilds had anything
to do with either."

JT is very critical with France and French people: "French White
gentiles are ashamed of their past and identity, flee into hedonism,
profligacy, drugs, anti-depressants, libertinism, pornography, and
homosexuality. Their Stockholm syndrome is driven by an
extra-European-birth-cohort whose numbers now exceed that of the native
population. Unwilling to fight for their land and heritage, ignorant of
their past and increasingly illiterate, their love of France is futile,
superfluous, and incoherent at best.

"As France increasingly resembles a North African backwater, its Jews,
the chief facilitators of this demographic shift, have become its chief
losers, and a process of Jewish de-assimilation from the Republic has
began. French Jews cannot identify with a society on its last legs, and
a spineless native population. In such circumstances, French Jews shift
their focus to survival and opportunism, not to national defence.
Israel, Miami, New York have become second homes. France’s Jewish
patricians (all to the last dual-citizens since the fifties), are
helpless. Their ties to an increasingly hard-up Israel and to the
powerful Jewish American community make them leaders of the fire-sale of
France’s industrial, political, and cultural assets. France is sliding
into failed nation status in which everyone is abandoning ship."

French Jews help the US to rob France, says JT. The American companies
supported by all-powerful DoJ are the main reason why France does not
prosper. When France attempted to tax American Internet companies
(Amazon, Google, Facebook) Trump threatened to slap 100% custom duties
on French wine. The right choice for France is to part the company with
the Yankee predator, to cease paying billions of fines for breaking
unjustifiable unilateral American ‘sanctions’, to part with NATO and to
laugh at Trump’s demands to pay more for unnecessary American
protection. But France, and other European nations are hesitant. They do
not jump at the opportunity offered by Trump’s stupidity and arrogance,
though the Orange man did everything he could to free the Europeans. He
opened the gates, he insulted them and kicked them, but they refused to
leave the stables.

An Excellent American expert in International relations, Prof Michael
Brenner of Pittsburgh U, has noted:

"Europe’s political class is psychologically unable to break free of its
dominant/subordinate relationship with America. This pattern endures
despite the presence of a mentally impaired man in the White House. The
prognosis, therefore: ‘Wither thou goest, we go!" American leaders have
exploited this compulsive deference ruthlessly. It allows Washington to
ensure European fealty at virtually no cost. Moreover, they can extract
compliance across a wide array of non-security issues – commercial,
financial, IT (warring against Huawei), political, diplomatic – by
drawing on the same free-floating loyalties.

Europe has been obedient to the siren call of Uncle Sam in following it
over the cliff time after time – in Afghanistan, in Iraq (France
excepted), on Russia, on Iran (by acquiescing in severe sanctions), on
Saudi Arabia, in Yemen, in embracing Bolsonaro (invited Keynoter at
Davos), even on Venezuela and Bolivia. The ultimate test will come were
Washington to pick a fight with China that it, and the West, cannot win;
will Europe then take the final, fatal leap hand-in-hand?"

It appears that love of Jews is an integral element of this fealty,
together with LGBT nonsense and other peculiar American imports. Love of
Jews and love of America – are they separable at all? If and when France
and England regain their independence, their Jews would recover their
normal place in their societies. Admittedly, it won’t be a place at the
top, but it would be a respectful place of equals in a healthy society,
rather than a place of a symbol and a facilitator of foreign influence
on the ruins of Europe, as it is now.

Israel Shamir can be reached at
<mailto:adam@israelshamir.net>adam@israelshamir.net

(3) Macron attempts rapproachement with Putin

Macron recently had a long interview with The Economist, the Rothschild
news outlet.  He acknowledges that Russia has been treated as 'the
enemy', and is uncomfortable with China's ambitions, but his attempts at
reconciliation are hindered by his anti-Russia position of Syria and
Ukraine.

If he knew what we do, that the OPCW's own scientists have demolished
the claim that Syria was using Chemical Weapons; and that the coup in
Kiev was engineered by the CIA, then the path would be clear.

The Economist interviewers did not challenge Macron's new thinking on
Russia, which is at variance with their usual hostility. - Peter M.

Economist Macron Ukraine, Syria chem-weapons, Russia rapproachement

https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/11/07/emmanuel-macron-in-his-own-words-english

Transcript

Emmanuel Macron in his own words (English)

The French president's interview with The Economist

Nov 7th 2019

Editor’s note: The interview was conducted at the Elysée Palace in Paris
on October 21st. The French transcript (here) has been lightly edited
for clarity. This English translation was made by The Economist

The Economist: We were all struck by the very sombre tone of your recent
speech at the ambassadors’ conference. You began on an almost
existential note about the future of Europe; you spoke of Europe’s
possible disappearance. Aren’t you over-dramatising the situation? Why
such a bleak vision of Europe’s future?

Emmanuel Macron: I don’t believe I’m over-dramatising things, I’m trying
to be lucid. But just look at what is happening in the world. Things
that were unthinkable five years ago. To be wearing ourselves out over
Brexit, to have Europe finding it so difficult to move forward, to have
an American ally turning its back on us so quickly on strategic issues;
nobody would have believed this possible. How did Europe come into
existence? I’m trying to face the facts. Personally, I think Europe is a
miracle. This continent has the greatest geographical concentration of
cultural and linguistic diversity. Which explains why, for almost two
millennia, Europe was rocked by constant civil wars. And over the past
70 years we’ve achieved a minor geopolitical, historical and
civilisational miracle: a political equation free of hegemony which
permits peace. And this is due to the fact that Europe experienced one
of the most brutal conflicts, the most brutal in its entire history,
and, I would say, reached its lowest ebb in the 20th century.

Europe was built on this notion that we would pool the things we had
been fighting over: coal and steel. It then structured itself as a
community, which is not merely a market, it’s a political project. But a
series of phenomena have left us on the edge of a precipice. In the
first place, Europe has lost track of its history. Europe has forgotten
that it is a community, by increasingly thinking of itself as a market,
with expansion as its end purpose. This is a fundamental mistake,
because it has reduced the political scope of its project, essentially
since the 1990s. A market is not a community. A community is stronger:
it has notions of solidarity, of convergence, which we’ve lost, and of
political thought.

Moreover, Europe was basically built to be the Americans’ junior
partner. That was what lay behind the Marshall Plan from the beginning.
And this went hand in hand with a benevolent United States, acting as
the ultimate guarantor of a system and of a balance of values, based on
the preservation of world peace and the domination of Western values.
There was a price to pay for that, which was NATO and support to the
European Union. But their position has shifted over the past 10 years,
and it hasn’t only been the Trump administration. You have to understand
what is happening deep down in American policy-making. It’s the idea put
forward by President Obama: "I am a Pacific president".

So the United States were looking elsewhere, which was in fact very
astute from their point of view at the time: they were looking at China
and the American continent. President Obama then theorised it as a
geopolitical strategy of trading blocs, signed treaties and withdrew
from the Middle East, saying: "This is no longer my neighbourhood
policy". But that then created a problem and a weakness: the 2013-2014
crisis, the failure to intervene in response to the use of chemical
weapons in Syria, which was already the first stage in the collapse of
the Western bloc. Because at that point, the major regional powers said
to themselves: "the West is weak". Things that had already begun
implicitly became apparent in recent years.

Q: Which already modified the relationship between Europe and the United
States?

EM: The United States remains our major ally, we need them, we are close
and we share the same values. I care a lot about this relationship and
have invested a great deal in it with President Trump. But we find
ourselves for the first time with an American president who doesn’t
share our idea of the European project, and American policy is diverging
from this project. We need to draw conclusions from the consequences.
The consequences, we can see them in Syria at the moment: the ultimate
guarantor, the umbrella which made Europe stronger, no longer has the
same relationship with Europe. Which means that our defence, our
security, elements of our sovereignty, must be re-thought through. I
didn’t wait for Syria to do this. Since I took office I’ve championed
the notion of European military and technological sovereignty.

So, firstly, Europe is gradually losing track of its history; secondly,
a change in American strategy is taking place; thirdly, the rebalancing
of the world goes hand in hand with the rise—over the last 15 years—of
China as a power, which creates the risk of bipolarisation and clearly
marginalises Europe. And add to the risk of a United States/China "G2"
the re-emergence of authoritarian powers on the fringes of Europe, which
also weakens us very significantly. This re-emergence of authoritarian
powers, essentially Turkey and Russia, which are the two main players in
our neighbourhood policy, and the consequences of the Arab Spring,
creates a kind of turmoil.

All this has led to the exceptional fragility of Europe which, if it
can’t think of itself as a global power, will disappear, because it will
take a hard knock. Finally, added to all this we have an internal
European crisis: an economic, social, moral and political crisis that
began ten years ago. Europe hasn’t re-lived civil war through armed
conflict, but has lived through selfish nationalism. In Europe there has
been a north-south divide on economic issues, and east-west on the
migration issue, resulting in the resurgence of populism, all over
Europe. These two crises—economic and migration—hit the middle classes
particularly hard. By raising taxes, by making budgetary adjustments
which hurt the middle classes, which I believe was a historic mistake.
That’s incidentally what lies behind the rise in extremism throughout
Europe. A Europe that has become much less easy to govern.

Given all the challenges I’ve just listed, we have a Europe in which
many countries are governed by coalitions, with fragile majorities or
unstable political balances. Look at Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium,
look at the United Kingdom which you know well, look at France.
Admittedly, we have strong institutions, a majority until 2022. But
we’ve also had a very tough social crisis, which we haven’t yet put
behind us, and which has been the French way of responding to this
crisis. Not a single European country has been spared. Except those that
turned their backs on liberal democracy, and decided to get much
tougher. You could say that Hungary and Poland have sheltered themselves
from such crises, even though there are warning signs in Budapest.

So, given all these factors, I don’t think I’m being either pessimistic
or painting an overly gloomy picture when I say this. I’m just saying
that if we don’t wake up, face up to this situation and decide to do
something about it, there’s a considerable risk that in the long run we
will disappear geopolitically, or at least that we will no longer be in
control of our destiny. I believe that very deeply.

Q: But how in practical terms can you meet the challenge you describe?
How will you actually overcome all the resistance, the obstacles, and
build this European sovereignty?

EM: First of all, things are changing; we need to keep explaining this.
There is a deep current of thought that was structured in the period
between 1990 and 2000 around the idea of the "end of history", of a
limitless expansion of democracy, of the triumph of the West as a
universal value system. That was the accepted truth at the time, until
the 2000s, when a series of shocks demonstrated that it wasn’t actually
so true.

So I think the first thing to do is to regain military sovereignty. I
pushed European defence issues to the forefront as soon as I took
office, at the European level, at the Franco-German level. At the
Franco-German Council of Ministers on 13 July 2017, we launched two
major projects: the tank and the aircraft of the future. Everyone said:
"We’ll never manage that." It’s very tough, but we’re making progress,
it’s possible. We launched the European Intervention Initiative that I
announced at the Sorbonne and which is now a reality: on Bastille Day
this year, we had the nine other member states in Paris. Since then,
Italy has joined us, and Greece would also like to join this initiative.
This shows that there is growing awareness of the defence question.
Countries like Finland and Estonia have joined this initiative,
countries which up until now were, for one, deeply suspicious of NATO,
and, for the other, distrustful of Russia, so in a mindset of: "I
surrender completely to NATO". The instability of our American partner
and rising tensions have meant that the idea of European defence is
gradually taking hold. It’s the aggiornamento for a powerful and
strategic Europe. I would add that we will at some stage have to take
stock of NATO. To my mind, what we are currently experiencing is the
brain death of NATO. We have to be lucid.

Q: "The brain death of NATO?"

EM: Just look at what’s happening. You have partners together in the
same part of the world, and you have no coordination whatsoever of
strategic decision-making between the United States and its NATO allies.
None. You have an uncoordinated aggressive action by another NATO ally,
Turkey, in an area where our interests are at stake. There has been no
NATO planning, nor any coordination. There hasn’t even been any NATO
deconfliction. A meeting is coming up in December. This situation, in my
opinion, doesn’t call into question the interoperability of NATO which
is efficient between our armies, it works well in commanding operations.
But strategically and politically, we need to recognise that we have a
problem.

Q: Do you now believe that Article Five doesn’t work either, is that
what you suspect?

EM: I don’t know, but what will Article Five mean tomorrow? If the
Bashar al-Assad regime decides to retaliate against Turkey, will we
commit ourselves under it? It’s a crucial question. We entered the
conflict to fight against Daesh [Islamic State]. The paradox is that
both the American decision and the Turkish offensive have had the same
result: sacrificing our partners who fought against Daesh on the ground,
the Syrian Democratic Forces [a militia dominated by Syrian Kurds]
That’s the crucial issue. From a strategic and political standpoint,
what’s happened is a huge problem for NATO. It makes two things all the
more essential on the military and strategic level. Firstly, European
defence—Europe must become autonomous in terms of military strategy and
capability. And secondly, we need to reopen a strategic dialogue,
without being naive and which will take time, with Russia. Because what
all this shows is that we need to reappropriate our neighbourhood
policy, we cannot let it be managed by third parties who do not share
the same interests. So that for me is an important point, it’s a
priority issue which is both geopolitical and military. Then there’s the
technological issue...

Q: The gap between Europe’s defence, which doesn’t have an Article Five
equivalent, and NATO is very hard to bridge though, isn’t it? It’s very
hard to guarantee each other’s security with the same credibility that
NATO has, even allowing for the weakening of NATO that you’ve just
spoken of. So how do you get from an idea of collaboration to the
guarantee of security, that NATO perhaps can’t provide anymore? How do
you cross that gap, and project power too if necessary?

EM: First of all, NATO is only as strong as its member states, so it
only works if the guarantor of last resort functions as such. I’d argue
that we should reassess the reality of what NATO is in the light of the
commitment of the United States. Secondly, in my opinion, Europe has the
capacity to defend itself. European countries have strong armies, in
particular France. We are committed to ensuring the safety of our own
soil as well as to many external operations. I think that the
interoperability of NATO works well. But we now need to clarify what the
strategic goals we want to pursue within NATO are.

Europe may be in a position to do so if it accelerates the development
of European defence. We’ve decided on enhanced cooperation between
several member states, which involves pooling, a solidarity clause
between member states. A European Defence Fund has been set up. We have
the European Intervention Initiative, designed to be complementary to
NATO. But you also need to have stress tests on these issues. France
knows how to protect itself. After Brexit, it will become the last
remaining nuclear power in the European Union. And so it’s also
essential to think about this in relation to others.

It’s an aggiornamento for this subject. NATO was designed in response to
an enemy: the Warsaw Pact. In 1990 we didn’t reassess this geopolitical
project in the slightest when our initial enemy vanished. The
unarticulated assumption is that the enemy is still Russia. It’s also
true that when we intervene in Syria against terrorism, it’s not
actually NATO that intervenes. We use NATO's interoperability
mechanisms, but it’s an ad hoc coalition. So, the question about the
present purpose of NATO is a real question that needs to be asked.
Particularly by the United States. In the eyes of President Trump, and I
completely respect that, NATO is seen as a commercial project. He sees
it as a project in which the United States acts as a sort of
geopolitical umbrella, but the trade-off is that there has to be
commercial exclusivity, it’s an arrangement for buying American
products. France didn’t sign up for that. [...]

Q: But on the question of 5G, Europe is divided...

EM: Because Europe has simply failed to have any degree of thinking or
coordination on the issue. In other words, sovereign decisions and
choices were de facto delegated to telecoms operators. I would put it as
bluntly as that. I discussed it the other day at the European Round
Table with the German Chancellor, and it was as if I’d used a swear word
when I said: "Can you guarantee that the development of 5G on the most
technologically sensitive cores will be totally European?" Nobody can.
In my opinion some elements must only be European.

Q: Exactly, these are divisions…

EM: They’re not divisions!

Q: Opinions diverge on the attitude to be taken towards Huawei, for example.

EM: I don't want to stigmatise any manufacturer in particular, it
wouldn't be effective. And those on the other side of the Atlantic who
have occasionally stigmatised them ended up making deals. I'm just
saying that we have two European manufacturers: Ericsson and Nokia. We
have a number of key issues. The day that everyone is connected to 5G
with critical information, will you be able to protect and secure your
system? The day you have all your cyber-connections on a single system,
will you be able to ring-fence it? That's the only thing that matters to
me. On the other issues I'm business-neutral. But this is a sovereign
matter. This is what sovereignty is all about.

For years we delegated the thinking on these issues to the telecoms
operators. But they’re not in charge of the sovereignty of security
systems. Their duty is to provide their shareholders with profits, I
can’t blame them for that. In a way we’ve completely abandoned what used
to be the "grammar" of sovereignty, which are issues in the general
interest that cannot be managed by business. Business can be your
partner, but it’s the role of the state to manage these things. So we
put our foot in it, and I think there’s a change starting to take place
on this issue. But it isn’t about mistrust or being commercially
aggressive towards anyone.

I’ve always said to our partners, whether it’s the Americans or the
Chinese: "I respect you because you’re sovereign". And so I believe
Europe will only be respected if it reconsiders its own sovereignty. You
have to grasp the sensitivity of what we’re talking about. On the issue
of 5G, we refer mostly to relationships with Chinese manufacturers; on
the subject of data we mostly talk about relationships with US
platforms. But today we’ve created conditions in Europe where it’s
business that has decided these things. The result is that if we just
allow this to continue, in ten years’ time, no one will be able to
guarantee the technological soundness of your cyber-systems, no one will
be able to guarantee who processes the data and how, of citizens or
companies. [...]

Q: But in defence and technology, you described a Europe that’s failed
to work together, a Europe that’s too fragmented. Do you believe that
Europe can act together, within the present constitution of the European
Union? Does it require a big centralisation of power, of money?

EM: These are subjects which Europe hadn’t previously taken on board.
European defence was relaunched in the summer of 2017. It was something
that hadn’t been put on the table since the mid-1950s, despite various
efforts that began in 1999. We’ve only thought about technology in
Europe in terms of the single market, ie, how to remove barriers,
roaming, etc. We haven’t thought it through at all in terms of suppliers
and the strategic aspect. Europe is divided on some issues, and it moves
too slowly, notably on issues of economic stimulus, budgetary
solidarity. It’s more the issue of integrating the euro zone, banking
union, which aren’t moving fast enough, and which are a subject of
division in Europe. Europe is also divided on the migration issue.
Basically, Europe has been too slow to manage the two major crises it
has experienced over the past ten years and to find joint solutions, on
that you are right.

On the sovereignty agenda I’ve referred to, these are fairly new
questions, and so we can move fast. On defence, Europe has moved quite
quickly. Much more so than on other issues, because it’s basically a new
environment. We need to share this geopolitical awareness and make sure
that everyone is on board. On many of these subjects, the European
Commission has competence: digital, single market, and now defence under
enhanced cooperation. This incidentally is the French portfolio in the
next Commission. That’s why it’s so important for us, but these are
subjects in which the Commission has a major role to play.

As to the question of whether we change constitution, personally I don’t
see the topic as closed, I’ve said that several times. But the question
of whether we share the same agenda, in other words of pooling more in
order to move towards a system that is somehow looser, softer, less and
less strategic, I’m not in favour of that. I’m in favour of making
things more effective, deciding more quickly, more clearly, changing the
dogma and ideology that drive us collectively today. And to have a more
sovereign, more ambitious project for Europe’s future, which is more
democratic, and which on both digital and climate issues goes much
faster and is more powerful. But that depends on getting the major
European players behind this agenda. Having said that, I think at some
point of course Europe will need to be reformed, of course we’ll need a
Commission with fewer members, of course we’ll need to have qualified
majority voting on a range of issues.

Q: When we interviewed you in July 2017, you already seemed quite
frustrated by Europe’s slow pace and especially by the Franco-German
relationship and the Germans’ ability to work alongside you, and keep
pace with you. Who will you build this Europe with, if it’s not the Germans?

EM: I’ve always said we must have the Germans alongside us, and that the
British must be a partner on European defence. We’re keeping the
bilateral treaties we upheld at Sandhurst. I believe that the UK has an
essential role to play. Actually, the UK will be faced with the same
question because the UK will be even more affected than us if the nature
of NATO changes. So I see the bilateral relationship as essential from a
military perspective. What is true is that the UK, even prior to Brexit,
was opting for a much more aggressive strategy.

 From a technological and many other standpoints, they decided to
abandon sovereignty for a Singapore-type model, I would call it.
Personally, I’m not so sure that’s sustainable. I discussed this with
Theresa May, and then with Boris Johnson, because I think it was the
middle classes who reacted and voted for Brexit. I think the elites
stand to gain from that type of model. I don’t believe that the middle
classes do. I think the British middle classes need a better-functioning
European model, in which they are better protected. [...]

Q: Could we come back to your diplomatic activity? We’ve seen a great
deal of activity on the Iranian dossier, but also Ukraine. You put
forward the idea of France as a balancing power, that’s to say a power
that can talk to others, have an open dialogue with all. Isn’t there an
element of contradiction between that ambition and the ambition to
create a militarily powerful Europe?

EM: I don’t believe so in the slightest. Quite the contrary. Europe in
any case has to think of itself as a balancing power. But I think that
it’s France’s role, as a permanent member of the Security Council, a
nuclear power, founding member of the European Union, a country which is
present through its overseas territories on every continent and which
remains very present because of the French-speaking world. We have
unparalleled reach. Basically, only the UK, via the Commonwealth, can
claim a similar reach, although it’s decided to follow a different path.
But our traditions and our diplomatic history are different: we’re less
aligned with American diplomacy, which in this world gives us more room
for manoeuvre.

When I say balancing power, that also raises the question of our allies.
But to put it very simply, we have the right not to be outright enemies
with our friends’ enemies. In almost childish terms, that’s what it
means. That we can speak to people and therefore build balances to stop
the whole world from catching fire.

I don’t think it’s in the least incompatible. Because it’s first of all
what enables us to be effective and have leverage in the European
neighbourhood. It’s also what allows us to enact the fact that, for me,
the point of military power is not necessarily for it to be used. It’s
used in the fight against terrorism, in Africa, and as a partner in the
international coalition. However, it essentially serves our diplomacy. I
think it’s very important to keep both levers, and therefore to seek to
play this role of balancing power as well as to maintain military
credibility. These days, if you don’t have military credibility, in a
world where authoritarian powers are on the rise again, it won’t work.

And actually this is why what just happened in Syria is dramatic. We’ve
enacted a military retreat. It’s the opposite of what we obtained from
the Americans on 13 April 2018, during the strikes against the Syrian
chemical-weapons programme, which enhanced our credit in the region,
including from a diplomatic standpoint. With Operation Hamilton, we
carried out surgical strikes on chemical-weapons bases in Syria. We
showed that the red line was being enforced. Which was not done in
2013-2014. So it’s a combination of both, I think it’s very complimentary.

Q: You have spoken about the essential value of humanism as being the
essence of what Europe brought to the world. And this evening you’ve
spoken to us about a world that is more and more dominated by
realpolitik, that the idea that Western values had permanently triumphed
was false. Yet many of your European partners find it very difficult to
act in a realpolitik way because it requires them to look the other way,
to talk to Mr Putin for instance, or to deal with China despite what’s
happening to the Uighurs in Xinjiang. How do you reconcile that question
of humanity and humanism and the requirements of realpolitik in a
hostile and dangerous world?

EM: First of all, there’s a factor which we may have underestimated,
which is the principle of the sovereignty of the people. And I think
that the spread of values, of the humanism that we hold high, and the
universalisation of these values in which I believe, only work to the
extent that you are able to convince the people. We’ve sometimes made
mistakes by wanting to impose our values, by changing regimes, without
popular support. It’s what happened in Iraq or in Libya. It’s perhaps
what was envisaged at one point in Syria but failed. It’s an element of
the Western approach, I would say in generic terms, that was a mistake
at the beginning of this century, undoubtedly fatal, and sprang from the
union of two forces: the right to intervene with neo-conservatism. And
these two forces intertwined and produced dramatic results. Because the
sovereignty of the people is in my opinion an unsurpassable factor. It’s
what made us what we are, and it must be respected everywhere.

The great difficulty is that we are witnessing a sort of backlash, the
return of other competing values. Non-democratic models, which are
challenging European humanism like never before. I’ve often said that
our model was built in the 18th century with the European Enlightenment,
the market economy, individual freedom, democratic rule and the progress
of the middle classes. The Chinese model is a model that brings together
a market economy and an expanding middle class, but without freedom.
Some people say it works, so there's some kind of living proof. I don’t
know whether it’s sustainable, I don’t think so. But I think that this
non-sustainability is at some point demonstrated by the people in terms
of the tension it creates.

The question now is whether our model is sustainable, because I see
people everywhere in our countries who are willing to go back on some of
these parameters. People who say: "Well, I'm having second thoughts
about the market economy, maybe in fact we should withdraw from the
world and move towards protectionism or isolationism." Others who say:
"Well, I'm willing to give up certain freedoms to move towards a more
authoritarian regime if it protects me more, and allows for growth and
greater wealth." This crisis is right here among us, advocated by a
number of parties in our democracies. It’s emerging in Europe, and
should lead us to question ourselves. And so I think it would be wrong
simply to say: "I want humanism and I’m going to impose it on others."
The question is how to pursue a strategic agenda while at the same time
fostering an agenda for development, an economically open agenda, a
political, cultural agenda, through which you can consolidate this humanism.

That’s my firm belief for Africa and it's what I'm pushing for in
African policy: a massive reinvestment in education, health, work, with
Africans, a deep empowerment. It’s also the reason why I want to work
with new partners. I was for example the first to host the Sudanese
prime minister, from the transitional government, we’ve provided a great
deal of help to Prime Minister Abiy in Ethiopia, because they embody
this model, in countries we thought had turned their backs on this
model. Basically, I think that European humanism, in order to win, needs
to become sovereign once again and to rediscover a form of realpolitik.

We now need to think about this, to equip ourselves with the "grammar"
of today, which is a grammar of power and sovereignty. This is also what
justifies my cultural and copyright policy, for example. I want to
defend European authors and European creativity, because this is how
humanism spreads. Today the biggest threat to humanism is authoritarian
regimes, but also political religious ideology. The rise of radical
political Islam is undoubtedly the foremost enemy of European humanist
values, which are based on the free and rational individual, equality
between women and men, and emancipation. The model of subjugation and
domination today is that of radical political Islam. How do you fight
this? You can say, when they resort to terrorism, I’ll fight them. The
other way is by fostering democracy, by demonstrating that other models,
including cultural, economic and social models, can emerge.

Q: On the subject of authoritarian regimes, you have called for a
rapprochement with Russia, evoking in a way Obama's reset policy, which
in the end was not a great success. What gives you reason to think that
this time it will be different?

EM: I look at Russia and I ask myself what strategic choices it has.
We’re talking about a country that is the size of a continent, with a
vast land mass. With a declining and ageing population. A country whose
GDP is the same size as Spain’s. Which is rearming at the double, more
than any other European country. Which was legitimately the subject of
sanctions over the Ukrainian crisis. And in my view this model is not
sustainable. Russia is engaged in over-militarisation, in conflict
multiplication, but has its own internal issues: demography, economy,
etc. So what are its strategic options?

One option is: rebuild a superpower by itself. That will be extremely
difficult, even if our own errors have given it some leverage. We showed
ourselves to be weak in 2013-2014, and Ukraine happened. Today Russia is
optimising its game in Syria because of our own errors. We’re giving it
some breathing space, so it can still play that way. But all that is
very tough, for the reasons I mentioned, along with a political and
ideological model based on identity-based conservatism that prevents
Russia from having a migration policy. Because the Russian population is
composed of and surrounded by Muslim populations that worry it a lot.
Given the size of the territory, it could have had a tremendous growth
lever, namely a migration policy. But no, it’s an Orthodox conservative
political project, so that won’t work. I don't believe much in this
stand-alone option.

A second path that Russia could have taken is the Eurasian model. Only
it has a dominant country, namely China, and I don’t think that this
model would ever be balanced. We’ve seen this in recent years. I look at
the table plans that are laid out for meetings for the new Silk Road,
and the Russian president is seated further and further away from
President Xi Jinping. He can see things are changing, and I'm not sure
he likes it. But the Russian president is a child of St Petersburg. He
was born there; his elder brother died in the great famine and is buried
in St Petersburg. I don't believe for one second that his strategy is to
be China's vassal.

And so what other options does he have left? Re-establishing a policy of
balance with Europe. Being respected. He’s hard-wired to think: "Europe
was the vassal of the United States, the European Union is a kind of
Trojan Horse for NATO, NATO was about expansion right up to my borders."
For him, the 1990 deal wasn’t respected; there was no "safe zone". They
tried to go as far as Ukraine, and he wanted to put a stop to it, but
through traumatic dealings with us. His conservatism led him to develop
an anti-European project, but I don’t see how, in the long term, his
project can be anything other than a partnership project with Europe.

Q: But you’re basing your analysis on logic, not on his behaviour?

EM: Yes I am. His behaviour in recent years has been that of a man who
was trained by the [security] services with a state that is more
disorganised than we realise. It’s a huge country with the logic of
power at its centre. And a kind of obsidional fever, that’s to say the
feeling of being besieged from everywhere. He experienced terrorism
before we did. He strengthened the structure of the state at the time of
the Chechen wars, and then he said: "it’s coming at us from the West".

My idea is not in the least naive. I didn’t by the way talk about a
"reset", I said it might take ten years. If we want to build peace in
Europe, to rebuild European strategic autonomy, we need to reconsider
our position with Russia. That the United States is really tough with
Russia, it’s their administrative, political and historic superego. But
there’s a sea between the two of them. It’s our neighbourhood, we have
the right to autonomy, not just to follow American sanctions, to rethink
the strategic relationship with Russia, without being the slightest bit
naive and remaining just as tough on the Minsk process and on what’s
going on in Ukraine. It’s clear that we need to rethink the strategic
relationship. We have plenty of reasons to get angry with each other.
There are frozen conflicts, energy issues, technology issues, cyber,
defence, etc. What I’ve proposed is an exercise that consists of stating
how we see the world, the risks we share, the common interests we could
have, and how we rebuild what I’ve called an architecture of trust and
security.

Q: What does that mean in practical terms?

EM: It means, for example, that we’re aligned on the terrorist issue,
but we don’t work enough on it together. How do we achieve that? We get
our [intelligence] services to work together, we share a vision of the
threat, we intervene perhaps in a more coordinated way against Islamist
terrorism throughout our neighbourhood. We show that it’s in our best
interests to collaborate on cyber, which is where we’re waging total war
against one another. How it’s in our interests to deconflict on many
issues. How it’s in our interests to resolve frozen conflicts, with
perhaps a broader agenda than just the Ukrainian issue, so we look at
all the frozen conflicts in the region and explain our position. What
guarantee does he need? Is it in essence an EU and a NATO guarantee of
no further advances on a given territory? That's what it means. It
means: what are their main fears? What are ours? How do we approach them
together? Which issues can we work on together? Which issues can we
decide no longer to attack each other on, if I can put it that way? On
which issues can we decide to reconcile? Already, sharing, we have more
discussions. And I think it's very productive.

And when you speak to your counterparts in Poland and the Baltic States
about this vision, what do they say?

EM: It depends on the country. In Poland, there’s some concern. But I'm
starting to talk to them. Obviously I’ve talked about it first with
Germany, but I do have partners who are moving on this. Finland has
moved significantly, they’re in the European Intervention Initiative. I
went to Finland, I was the first French President in more than 15 years
to go there. President Niinistö and I spoke together, we made some
progress. I’ve discussed it with Denmark, I’ve discussed it with the
Baltic States—Estonia and Latvia. Things are moving forward. I'm not
saying that everyone is on the same line. I had a very long discussion
on this subject with Viktor Orban. He’s quite close to our views and has
a key intellectual and political role within the Visegrad group, which
is important. That’s also the way we may be able to convince the Poles a
little more.

So, I think things are changing. I can't blame the Poles. They have a
history, they have a relationship with Russia, and they wanted the
American umbrella as soon as the wall fell. Things won't happen
overnight. But once again, I am opening a track that I don’t think will
yield results in 18 or 24 months. But I have to start all these projects
at the same time, in a coherent way, with some things that should have
an immediate effect and others that may have an effect in five or ten
years' time. If I don't take this path, it will never open up. And I
think that would be a huge mistake for us. Having a strategic vision of
Europe means thinking about its neighbourhood and its partnerships.
Which is something we haven’t yet done. During the debate over
enlargement, it was clear that we are thinking about our neighbourhood
above all in terms of access to the European Union, which is absurd. [...]

Q: One last question: it seems to me a corollary of what you are saying
about Syria and Turkey that, in the long run, Turkey doesn’t belong in
NATO. Is that your view?

EM: I couldn’t say. It’s not in our interest to push them out but
perhaps to reconsider what NATO is. I applied exactly the same reasoning
to the Council of Europe and Russia. I was roundly criticised for that,
but I believe it’s a stronger message because the Council of Europe
involves obligations. Keeping Russia in the Council of Europe was about
giving greater protection to Russian citizens. In any case, I think the
question that needs to be asked is: "What does it mean to belong to
NATO?" I think that, in the current context, it’s more in our interest
to try to keep Turkey within the framework, and in a responsible
mindset, but that also means that given the way NATO operates today,
NATO’s ultimate guarantee must be clear with regards to Turkey. And
today, what’s caused this friction? What we have seen, why I spoke about
"brain death", is that NATO as a system doesn’t regulate its members. So
as soon as you have a member who feels they have a right to head off on
their own, granted by the United States of America, they do it. And
that’s what happened.

Thank you very much

EM: Thank you

(4) OPCW manufactured a pretext for war by suppressing its own
scientists' research

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/12/as-the-opcw-is-accused-of-false-reporting-us-propaganda-jumps-to-its-help.html

December 02, 2019

As The OPCW Is Accused Of False Reporting U.S. Propaganda Jumps To Its Help

An international organization published two false reports and got caught
in the act. But as the false reports are in the U.S. interests a U.S.
sponsored propaganda organization is send out to muddle the issue. As
that effort comes under fire the New York Times jumps in to give the
cover-up effort some extra help.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
manufactured a pretext for war by suppressing its own scientists' research:

OPCW emails and documents were leaked and whistleblowers came forward to
speak with journalists and international lawyers. Veteran journalist
Jonathan Steele, who has spoken with the whistleblowers, wrote an
excellent piece on the issues. In the Mail on Sunday columnist Peter
Hitchens picked up the issue and moved it forward. Under U.S. pressure
the OPCW management modified or suppressed the findings of its own
scientists to make it look as if the Syrian government had been
responsible for the alleged chemical incident in April 2018 in Douma.

The public attention to the OPCW's fakery lead to the questioning of
other assertions the OPCW had previously made. With the OPCW under fire
someone had to come to its help.

To save the propaganda value of the OPCW reports the U.S. financed
Bellingcat propaganda organization jumped in to save the OPCW's bacon.
Bellingcat founder "suck my balls" Elliot Higgins claimed that the OPCW
reports satisfied the concerns the OPCW scientist had voiced.

That assertion is now further propagated by a New York Times piece
which, under the pretense of reporting about open source analysis,
boosts Bellingcat and its defense of the OPCW:

The blogger Eliot Higgins made waves early in the decade by covering the
war in Syria from a laptop in his apartment in Leicester, England, while
caring for his infant daughter. In 2014, he founded Bellingcat, an
open-source news outlet that has grown to include roughly a dozen staff
members, with an office in The Hague. Mr. Higgins attributed his skill
not to any special knowledge of international conflicts or digital data,
but to the hours he had spent playing video games, which, he said, gave
him the idea that any mystery can be cracked. ... Bellingcat journalists
have spread the word about their techniques in seminars attended by
journalists and law-enforcement officials. Along with grants from groups
like the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, the seminars
are a significant source of revenue for Bellingcat, a nonprofit
organization. It seems that the New York Times forgot to mention an
important monetary source for Bellingcat. Here is a current screenshot
of Bellingcat's About page:

Porticus, Adessium, Pax for Peace and the Postcode Lottery are all Dutch
organizations. Then there is the notorious Soros organization the New
York Times mentioned. But why did the NYT forgot to tell its readers
that Bellingcat is financed by the National Endowment for Democracy
which itself is to nearly 100% funded by the U.S. government?

Could that be because the NED, which spends U.S.government money on more
than 1.600 U.S. government paid Non-Government Organizations, is a
Trojan horse, a cover for the CIA?

Spurred by Watergate – the Church committee of the Senate, the Pike
committee of the House, and the Rockefeller Commission, created by the
president, were all busy investigating the CIA. Seemingly every other
day there was a new headline about the discovery of some awful thing,
even criminal conduct, the CIA had been mixed up in for years. ... What
was done was to shift many of these awful things to a new organization,
with a nice sounding name – The National Endowment for Democracy. The
idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been
doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma
associated with CIA covert activities. ... "We should not have to do
this kind of work covertly," said Carl Gershman in 1986, while he was
president of the Endowment. "It would be terrible for democratic groups
around the world to be seen as subsidized by the C.I.A. We saw that in
the 60’s, and that’s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the
capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created." And
Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED,
declared in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years
ago by the CIA."

In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.

The fact that the NED is doing the CIA's work is likely the reason why
the NYT puff piece about Bellingcat forgets to mention its payments and
also why it jumps to Bellingcat's and the OPCW's help:

Some journalists and activists hostile to what they characterize as
Bellingcat’s pro-Western narratives have criticized some of its coverage
of the war in Syria.

At issue is an April 7, 2018, attack on Douma, Syria. Bellingcat
reported, based on an analysis of six open-source videos, that it was
"highly likely" that Douma civilians had died because of chemical
weapons. In March, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons reported that there were "reasonable grounds" to say that
chemical weapons had been used in the attack.

Critics of Bellingcat have pointed to an email from an investigator with
the organization, saying that it raised questions about the findings.
WikiLeaks published the email on Nov. 23. In a response, Bellingcat
defended its reporting, saying the final report on Douma from the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons reflected the
concerns of the investigator whose email was published by WikiLeaks.

By playing video games Elliot Higgins learned to identify chemical
attacks in dubious video sequences published by terrorist affiliates. If
true it is an admirable capability. Still his assertion that the OPCW
report "reflected the concerns of the investigator" who criticized it
is, as Caitlin Johnstone demonstrates, utterly false:

Bellingcat simply ignores this absolutely central aspect of the email,
as well as the whistleblower’s point about the symptoms of victims not
matching chlorine gas poisoning.

"In this case the confidence in the identity of chlorine or any choking
agent is drawn into question precisely because of the inconsistency with
the reported and observed symptoms," the whistleblower writes in the
email. "The inconsistency was not only noted by the [Fact Finding
Mission] team but strongly noted by three toxicologists with expertise
in exposure to [Chemical Weapons] agents."

Bellingcat says nothing about these revelations in the email, and says
nothing about the fact that the OPCW excluded them from both its Interim
Report in July 2018 and its Final Report in March 2019, the latter of
which actually asserted the exact opposite saying there was "reasonable
grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This
toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was
likely molecular chlorine."

Bellingcat completely ignores all of these points, ...

In its defense of the OPCW report Bellingcat wrote:

[A] comparison of the points raised in the letter against the final
Douma report makes it amply clear that the OPCW not only addressed these
points, but even changed the conclusion of an earlier report to reflect
the concerns of said employee. Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens
did not concur with that paragraph:

Apart from the words ‘a’, and ‘the’, everything in the above paragraph
is, to put it politely, mistaken. Bellingcat have been so anxious to
trash the leak from the OPCW that they have (as many did when the attack
was first released) rushed to judgment without waiting for the facts.
More is known by the whistleblowers of the OPCW than has yet been
released ...

Caitlin and Peter should play more video games. I have read in the NYT
that they are the true path to learning and to the factual assessment of
alleged chemical attacks.

On April 7 2018 terrorists of the Jaish al Islam group ruled in Douma.
They killed 40 civilians. The bodies were shown in videos along with
chlorine gas canisters to pretend that the Syrian government had killed
those people. The OPCW's fact finding team analyzed the evidence and
found that the canisters had not been dropped from the air but were
manually placed. The symptoms the victims showed were inconsistent with
a chlorine attack and chlorinated substances were only found in
extremely low concentrations. There were absolutely no "reasonable
grounds" to say that chemical weapons had been used in the attack.

But the OPCW management, under U.S. pressure and despite the protests by
its own scientists, put out a report that said the opposite. As the
manipulation came to light the U.S. funded Bellingcat made a perfunctory
attempt to muddle the issue. Thus another propaganda organization, the
New York Times, had to jump in to save Bellingcat and the false OPCW claims.

It is not going to help. There will soon be more evidence that the OPCW
management published two false reports on Douma, and likely even more on
other issues. There will be a public recognition that the OPCW has failed.

Posted by b on December 2, 2019 at 16:43 UTC