An earlier edition of this article first appeared at Fort Russ News
False Flag Flatulence: Debunking Nafeez Ahmed on Syria
“We become, ourselves, ideological tyrants and colonisers. Obsessed with the narrative structures we have projected into the world ourselves, we build them up using cognitive fragments we find from our favoured sources, and use them to either dominate and subjugate the wrongdoers outside of the circumference of our preferred belief-systems, or to simply excommunicate them“ -Nafeez Ahmed, State Propaganda in Syria [1]
Nafeez has certainly excommunicated Eva Bartlett & Vanessa Beeley, now let’s work out a bit of flaws in his method applied and arrive at some sensible rearrangement of facts that doesn’t necessarily altogether rehabilitate the parties on any of the controversies’ multiple facets.
Having been mentored in military special operations intelligence by SOF veterans of CIA liaised operations run in Indochina and Latin America, the number one missing element noticed by this observer in Nafeez’ assessment “State Propaganda in Syria: From War Crimes to Pipelines” is a deep understanding of the ‘dirty tricks’ capabilities of the Western intelligence agencies. This is not to speak of ‘capabilities’ solely in a sense of technical competence but more sorely, also capabilities in a sense of pure depravity. Have the Russians devolved to equal state we will detail in this assessment? If one were to believe the Skripal narrative one perhaps would think so. But that narrative has more holes than a fish weir, it doesn’t simply fail to hold water, more intelligent people including trained Western intelligence veterans (those not beholden to corporate news paychecks) have filleted that narrative than Japanese chefs know how to prepare fish. [2], [3], [4]
Recalling Jesus saying (and reminding Nafeez he is residing in a nominally Christian society) “You hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye…” let’s have a bit of a background exam of the Western intelligence apparatus’ criminal history, wherein is discovered a solid source of the modern Russia animus.
“The CIA very early on made a decision that Nazis were more valuable as allies and agents than as war criminals” -CIA officer Victor Marchetti [5]
Intergenerational violence is but one subset of a larger human phenomenon of intergenerational socialization. To understand today’s Western intelligence, it is this larger phenomenon or umbrella of intergenerational socialization is critical to explore; in its’ organizational-institutional history. In short, it was WWI military intelligence officer Allan Dulles, a bonafide pre-war Nazi business partner and traitor to the Western democratic principles post WWII, set up the nexus constituting today’s shadow government, when he organized the Central Intelligence Agency for the benefit of corporate boards and Wall Street bankers.
The early, most obvious, result of this had been the Arbenz (for United Fruit, a Dulles brothers’ invested enterprise) and Mossadegh (CIA proxy intervention on behalf of what became British Petroleum or BP corporation) (Guatemala & Iran) government overthrows.
Previous to these events, the CIA precursors, Office of Strategic Services and Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, in express violation of Harry Truman’s order, actively recruited Nazi war criminals for their services:
“Although he officially sanctioned the operation, President Harry Truman forbade the agency from recruiting any Nazi members or active Nazi supporters. Nevertheless, officials within the JIOA and Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the forerunner to the CIA—bypassed this directive by eliminating or whitewashing incriminating evidence of possible war crimes from the scientists’ records, believing their intelligence to be crucial to the country’s postwar efforts” [6]
With change of administration, Truman to Eisenhower, and the rise of the prewar Nazi business partners, the Dulles brothers, to the top tier of post war allied power, the policy of rehabilitating Nazis was ‘mainstreamed’ in Konrad Adenauer’s Germany; an egregious example at the military-industrial corporate level would be Alfred Krupp released from prison after conviction for war crimes (utilizing Gestapo enforced slave labor) and his crimes related personal fortune (confiscated at conviction, 400 million plus, in today’s dollars) restored.
More insidious was the CIA’s (Dulles brothers) creation of what became today’s Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) or Germany’s CIA. With the creation of the Gehlen Organization via the rescue of a real Nazi monster, Reinhard Gehlen, together with Hitler’s former Eastern front military intelligence apparatus, augmented with at least 100 veteran Gestapo officer hires, this was the intelligence apparatus gifted to Konrad Adenauer by the Allan Dulles directed CIA when John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State and practical USA overlord plenipotentiary for postwar Western Europe. [7]
Relevant to this in today’s circumstance of intergenerational socialization are two postwar career Nazi trajectories, the first being Reinhard Gehlen himself, who ran West Germany’s BND to 1968. To state the BND had been largely staffed by authentic ideological Nazis for two decades by this time (1968), would be no stretch of the imagination; known principles of intergenerational socialization would determine both; ideological empathy in these two decades hires and subsequent work environment shaping.
The other Nazi veteran postwar career trajectory under the Dulles brothers’ strategies and related patronage gifted to Nazi veterans was that of Hitler’s last serving staff intelligence officer, Bernd Freiherr Freytag von Loringhoven, who had been adjutant (direct assistant) to General Heinz Guderian when Guderian had overseen the handing over of hundreds of German military officers to the Reich’s so-called “Peoples Court” for sham trials and execution by firing squad; for disloyalty to the Nazi Party. [8]
Disingenuous historical revisionisms (rehabilitation myths) notwithstanding, von Loringhoven demonstrated his real sympathies with his intensely loyal service to Hitler when preparing intelligence reports to the very last days of the Reich, only abandoning his position at Hitler’s Berlin bunker at the very end, with Der Fuhrer’s blessing. When West Germany’s military was created in the mid 1950s, von Loringhoven was admitted as an officer, rising to to the rank of lieutenant general before retirement in 1973.
The intergenerational socialization elements in these authentic Nazi postwar career trajectories points squarely to present day phenomenon of widespread Nazi ideology tolerated in Germany’s armed forces and NATO tolerance of certain actions strongly suggesting a policy meme pointing to a philosophy of ‘Russians are untermensch’ incorporated into NATO’s Baltic republics, not to mention the Merkel CDU’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation (a BND front) bringing to Germany and training Svoboda (Nazi) activists for anti-Russian political purposes, pursued in Ukraine. In a context of intergenerational socialization, it cannot be construed a coincidence that von Loringhoven’s son, Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven, moving on from the BND directorate, is the present day NATO intelligence chief (since 2016.) [9], [10]
In a context of today’s NATO buildup on Russia’s borders against a backdrop of Germany’s invasion of Russia, it should be small wonder Russia, on an annual basis, sponsors a UN resolution condemning the glorification of nazism; a resolution routinely rejected in voting by the USA with reliable abstentions by the NATO states (inclusive of Germany!) [11]
In light of preceding, when obsessing with Vanessa Beeley and noting her concealment of Syria’s crimes of torture, Nafeez might better have served the interests of exposing the empire hosting himself by simply pointing out there is little difference between the Syrian ‘regime’ behavior in this regard and those of NATO states who’d hosted ‘black sites’ and serviced renditions flights delivering prisoners to Assad’s jailers to be tortured only shortly before the so-called ‘civil war.’ [12]
This would be particularly true considering the CIA’s employ of Klaus Barbie and subsequent David Petraeus oversight of a torture network, employing Latin America ‘dirty wars’ veterans, that had radicalized leadership found in the Islamist insurgency in Syria. Relevant to this, al-Baghdadi is reportedly an alumnus of the USA run Abu Gharib prison. [13]
The greatest danger to those countries of the so-called ‘Middle East’ is intergenerational socialization outside of the preceding era’s cultural norms that had kept violence in check. In this case we are speaking of the subcategory called intergenerational violence, now set in sectarian agitations more sourced in the NATO nations than anywhere else.
In the case of Syria, there is a multitude of possibilities for exploitation of resulting alienation, with hate memes having been set loose, should result in larger complications than ‘players’ of the ‘game’ will be able to contain. Inadvertent or otherwise, Nafeez’ glossing over the West’s PRIMARY responsibility, in his effort to bring Russia to equal complicity in the crimes of ‘empire’ destabilizing the Middle East region, radically overlooks the NATO nations’ history and resultant pervasive, deep and abiding criminality of the Western intelligence agencies. Bearing this in mind, now we can move on to chemical weapons incidents in the context of false flags.
In USA law there are two standards of guilt according to jury outcomes: “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is the criminal standard, “A preponderance of the evidence” is the civil liability standard. In the case of intelligence agency covert operations, the criminal standard should be exceedingly difficult to come by, because these are professionally engineered events by players highly trained to conceal, misdirect and otherwise deflect responsibility, up to, and including, pinning accountability for egregious crimes on parties that had not been responsible for certain murderous outcomes, i.e. false flags.
The most glaring weakness in Nafeez’ assessment of the chemical warfare in Syria is, not surprisingly, one he does not explicitly discuss: Assad is not a stupid man and there should have been less than zero motivation to invite a ‘Libya style’ USA intervention by crossing Obama’s well publicized “red line” concerning the sarin use at Ghouta, Syria, in August of 2013.
On the other hand, going to motivation, the ‘opposition’ (and certain of their sponsors) should have impetus to create a false flag circumstance justifying NATO intervention in Syria, and in this context, it should be recalled (Nafeez didn’t) there is a leaked conversation wherein Erdogan’s top lieutenants propose a false flag operation to justify NATO intervention in Syria. In light of this, there should have been an intensive investigation by Nafeez in pursuit of a ‘preponderance of the evidence’ rather than what amounts to a careless and unnecessary obfuscation of the known facts. [14], [15]
What we do know:
1) There was a serious sarin gas release at Ghouta in August of 2013 with civilian casualties well in excess of one thousand deaths.
2) That there are multiple proposed trails sourcing the sarin, including Assad’s stocks, the CIA’s Libya arms pipeline, or alternatively, sarin precursor chemicals acquired via Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey and/or Europe.
3) The so-called ‘rebels’ and sponsors should have had a primary motivation to pin a major false flag attack on Assad.
4) The Assad regime should have had serious reservations about crossing Obama’s “red line.”
5) Terrorists have, on previous occasion, employing amateur chemists & makeshift laboratory, successfully produced sarin used in attacks on civilians (Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo cult.) [16]
The initial breakdown of these un-disputable facts should be as follows; a common sense interpretation or preponderance of the known facts already point away from Assad. It follows, there should have been a strict scrutiny of the multiple possibilities of state sponsored terror (inclusive of non-state actors sponsored by state regimes) exterior to the Assad government.
In this regard, from the moment of Obama declaring his “red line” there should be rogue actors exploring multiple possibilities of acquiring sarin for purpose of false flag chemical attack. This, in and of itself, can explain seeming contradictions in narrative when referencing unseen intelligence reports via several sources. Al Qaida seeking sarin precursor chemicals in Iraq does not necessarily preclude al Qaida also seeking sarin precursor chemicals via Turkey, these are not mutually exclusive proposals.
In the event of the exposé in Turkey where CHP member of parliament, Eren Erdem, produced police files he had reviewed and discussed at length, pointing to sarin precursor chemicals interdicted en route to al-Qaida-ISIS (this story overlays the period when ISIS split from al Qaida), Nafeez plausibly misunderstands the circumstance by the time he chases this thread in the story. RT quoting Erdem:
“About the shipment, Republic prosecutor of Adana, Mehmet Arıkan, made an operation and the related people were detained. But as far as I understand he was not an influential person in bureaucracy. A week after, another public prosecutor was assigned, took over the indictment and all the detainees were released. And they left Turkey crossing the Syrian border”
Here in the preceding, it is absolutely sensible to assume the indictment had been rewritten and what Nafeez possesses and what Erdem possesses might be two separate documents. It follows, when Nafeez cannot square his copy of the indictment with Eren Erdem’s statements, it was simple case of sloppy research put Erdem off from communication.
In the case of Nafeez’ related claim…
“Hersh’s reporting is closely interrogated as to whether its detailed claims stack up against contemporaneous and relevant facts that ought to corroborate his claims, in particular the case of 11 al-Nusra suspects who had been arrested in Turkey and charged with attempting to obtain precursor chemicals to manufacture sarin. Hersh essentially claimed that the US Defense Intelligence Agency had acquired intelligence on this matter leading the government to conclude that al-Nusra rebels in Syria had an active sarin capability. However, a copy of the Turkish prosecution documents seen in the course of this investigation completely disproves Hersh’s reporting”
…is total bollocks if Nafeez and Erin Erdem are holding separate indictments, or pre & post Erdogan minions moving to control the prosecution narrative through exercise of a containment strategy.
Perhaps what’s more important is, Erdem’s on record statements are misrepresented; where Nafeez points to timing demands the case at hand was never possibly the source of the chemicals in the Ghouta attack…
“Most damningly for his narrative, which alleges Turkish military intelligence complicity in supplying sarin to rebels for the Ghouta attack, the reality is that the suspects who were supposed to have supplied this sarin were in Turkish detention from May to September 2013. They would never have been able to supply the sarin for the 21st August 2013 attack in Ghouta”
…Erdem’s on record statements were clearly qualified as the case pointed to a very strong possibility of the complicit actors. RT quoting Erdem:
“For example the chemical attack in Ghouta. Remember. It was claimed that the regime forces were behind it. This attack was conducted just days before the sarin operation in Turkey. It’s a high probability that this attack was carried out with those basic materials shipped through Turkey. It is said the regime forces are responsible but the indictment says it’s ISIS. UN inspectors went to the site but they couldn’t find any evidence. But in this indictment, we’ve found the evidence. We know who used the sarin gas, and our government knows it too” (bold RTW)
Erdem, not a native English speaker, however imperfectly, nevertheless clearly had been communicating the circumstantial evidence in the case at hand was strong enough to implicate al Qaida in the attack at Ghouta, and Nafeez himself admits the materials in his own possession demonstrate al Qaida was seeking sarin precursor chemicals. In other words, Erdem’s claims aren’t that this particular case is the source of the chemicals used at Ghouta but demonstrate Turks close to the state had been complicit in acquiring the necessary precursor chemicals on behalf of al-Qaida and therefor is entirely consistent with al Qaida perpetrating the sarin attack.
It would seem that both the source he attacks (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), and Nafeez himself, couldn’t (or, in the case of Nafeez, perhaps didn’t) read the original RT reporting. [17]
Then, Nafeez crediting the Turk ambassador’s disclaimer the interdicted chemicals were “anti-freeze” is amazing, hello & duh, how on earth and under the heavens could anyone expect other than disinformation or a state denial should be manufactured, also known as damage control?
It should be mentioned here what an ‘insurance file’ is, in the parlance of ‘spooks.’ A common form of safety exercised in espionage whistle-blowing is a kind of ‘blackmail’ where the at risk party is known to have arranged certain damning information to be released (if one were compromised) in case where the state (or other party, such as colleague) in relationship of animosity should be held at bay. It entirely plausible this had become the case concerning Eren Erdem, were he to possess the original or ‘pre-containment’ prosecutorial files (original indictment and related material Nafeez is not privy to) that the Erdogan regime had set out to amend in its’ taking over the criminal case.
This would further explain both the discrepancies in accounts, and Erdem’s reluctance to discuss the matter to Nafeez’ satisfaction, were Erdem to place a high value on the safety of family and friends, not to mention his own freedom. This also would give cover to the Erdogan regime’s having manipulated the content of Turkey’s criminal case file 2013/120 (it were never a perfect world.)
What we see to now in Nafeez ‘study’ is at best slop & haste, or possibly the self-deceit of a middle ground bias (where there isn’t much of a middle ground) or at worst, deliberate misinformation in service of Western empire.
At this point, moving on to very shortly examine 7 April 2018 Douma and chlorine, we have Nafeez quoting an OPCW report:
“The Secretariat remains unable to confirm that the Syrian Arab Republic has submitted a declaration that can be considered accurate and complete in accordance with the Convention and the decisions of the Council”
A few sentences later, this is incredibly construed by Nafeez to confirm:
“So, why are we still here? Because not all Syria’s chemical weapons had in fact been destroyed – only all of what had been declared, and it turned out later: not everything had been declared […] That Syria is lying about its chemical weapons facilities is therefore undeniable”
Excuse me but, that’s like a mafia shakedown thug reporting to his boss that ‘he showed us through the shop but we can’t be certain we saw everything’ or in other words because you didn’t see the DNA result it is still possible David Icke is right, the queen quite possibly has reptile ancestry.
Ok, so this last, immediate preceding sentence is ALMOST far-fetched, so let’s rephrase it with saying Nafeez might have wished he had a crystal ball when he’d concluded the above; considering what had finally come out in the Fall of 2019. To add insult to injury, this following reference comes from Sputnik (it can be found in numerous places elsewhere)
“The [Courage] Foundation’s expert panel met with a member of the OPCW’s Douma fact-finding mission, who provided the an “extensive presentation, including internal emails, text exchanges and suppressed draft reports” – in its resultant report, the team were unanimous in expressing alarm “over unacceptable practices in the investigation of the alleged chemical attack in Douma”, and concluded each of the key evidentiary pillars of the investigation (including chemical analysis, toxicology, ballistics and witness testimonies) were flawed and bear little relation to the facts” [18], [19], [20]
Nafeez’ OPCW is politicized? Why am I not surprised when in fact at other places in his reporting, Nafeez utilizes Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Doctors Without Borders, each of which organizations have, at one time or another, demonstrated symptoms & evidence of penetration and manipulation by Western intelligence agencies. [21], [22], [23]
Now wait just a minute, what’s wrong with this emerging picture? Despite sometimes confused details, even changed stories, Russian media had been giving us accurate metadata in regards to false-flag chemical weapons employ in Syria? Oh my. Journalism were never so imperfect?
This brings us to the White Helmets ‘charitable organization’, whose co-founder, James Le Mesurier, had recently ‘suicided’ himself in Istanbul (quite possibly because dead men cannot be interrogated with embarrassing questions), following the Russian Foreign Ministry having outed him as a longtime British military intelligence operative.
Vanessa Beeley shouldn’t have been entirely thrown under the bus for her ‘embedded’ reporting, if indeed the White Helmets, as Beeley reports, shared a compound with al Qaida in Aleppo. Nafeez pointing out al Qaida and other ‘militants’ associated White Helmets being “dismissed” from the organization is proof/provenance of the organization’s ‘cleanliness’ and independence is laughable. The German bundeswehr does the same but in the main as a public relations move; if all of the nazi empathetic were rooted out, there would be a serious force degradation, and the same could be said of the “Christian Dominion” (anti-secular, Bible above the Constitution, treasonous) senior leadership of the USA military tolerating Christian supremacists to extreme, that is until public exposure requires public relations dismissals of individuals committing egregious acts in overall case where mainstream media does not dig deep. If the truth were to be widely known, and attrition enforced on those nearly one third of the USA military embracing anti-constitutional order, the result would be crippling, particularly in the SOF and officer corps. [24], [25], [26]
“Unmentioned, what is can become as though it were not” -Aldous Huxley, Point, Counter Point
This brings us to Nafeez dismissing RT’s propaganda without delving into the simple genius of the Russian method; recognizing Western media is so coopted/corrupted by the criminal intelligence agencies on behalf of the Western military industrial wealth machine, providing a platform to legitimate journalists and political/social commentators, those whose voices are routinely denied by UPI, Reuters and Associated Press, allows the Russians to actually present a higher quality of news and commentary to the Western audience, on the Western issues per se, in the arena of geopolitics. Whether this phenomenon of Western militarized corporate wealth culture shooting itself in the foot is taken advantage of by Russian method to mix disinformation into the narrative is a matter of interpretation; as this reporter (yours truly) notices the preferred Russian method is what amounts to ‘lies by omission’ in the ‘reporting’ practiced, more often than not, when facts are inconvenient.
In light of this, it should be noted Nafeez’ “State Propaganda in Syria” and RT are precisely equals in present circumstance, when it comes to Nafeez altogether avoiding (a lie by omission) the fact of witnessing element of the “Yinon Plan” unfolding before our eyes in Syria, in a paper that ostensibly unwinds the propaganda myths surrounding the purported facts. This is a critical omission in an already disingenuous paper that scarcely alludes to Israel’s pivotal role. Another rank fail. [27]
References:
1 http://statecrime.org/data/2018/07/Nafeez-Ahmed-State-Propaganda-in-Syria-ISCI-Report-July-2018.pdf
2 https://michaelantonyblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/the-alternative-skripal-narrative/
5 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1983/07/their-will-be-done/
6 https://www.history.com/news/what-was-operation-paperclip
7 https://www.britannica.com/topic/BND
9 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/heinz-guderian
11 http://defendinghistory.com/resolution-glorification-nazism-opposed-21-nov-2014-countries/69940
13 https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/mar/06/james-steele-america-iraq-video
14 https://archive.org/details/LeakedTurkishTapes
16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Chemical_weapon_production
18 https://sputniknews.com/military/201910281077167657-opcw-douma-bbc-steele/
19 https://journal-neo.org/2019/11/05/syria-opcw-whistleblowers-confirm-what-we-already-knew/
20 https://couragefound.org/2019/10/opcw-panel-statement/
21 https://ratical.org/co-globalize/AIonJenin.html
22 https://thegrayzone.com/2017/12/11/human-rights-watch-honduras-venezuela-kenneth-roth/
24 https://thewallwillfall.org/2017/05/15/white-helmets-living-next-door-to-al-qaeda-in-aleppo/
26 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/no-dominion-the-dangerous_b_643888
27 https://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-yinon-plan-christians/228409/
Ronald Thomas West 