U.S. Politics

[HanoiVillan]

5 hours ago, LondonLax said:

They are pretty standard conservative talking points, we have conservatives saying the same in Australia i.e. the manufacture of renewables causes more pollution than they are worth, turbines kill wildlife and destroy landscapes etc. I’m surprised he didn’t bring out the one about the noise from turbines causing illness (‘Wind Turbine Syndrome’).

You're right, these are pretty generic talking points from the brain-dead denier type of conservative, but my point was less about the stupidity of the content (though make no mistake, it's extremely stupid) and more about the scatterbrain delivery.

[LondonLax]

1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

You're right, these are pretty generic talking points from the brain-dead denier type of conservative, but my point was less about the stupidity of the content (though make no mistake, it's extremely stupid) and more about the scatterbrain delivery.

Yes, he’s been like that for a long time though. Seems to have a very short attention span. 

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, LondonLax said:

Yes, he’s been like that for a long time though. Seems to have a very short attention span. 

His success has always been in large part due to having a 'folksy' delivery that less-educated voters can follow and understand, but the bit about being completely incapable of staying on-topic is definitely more severe now than it was in 2015-2016. WTF was that bit about the Earth being smaller than the universe?

[Davkaus]

 

He is genuinely just not right. There's a clear mental and physical decline. Imagine him in 4 years.

[maqroll]

If "Anonymous" was telling the truth, the cabinet circa summer 2017 considered the 25A option to oust Trump for mental reasons. Big blown opportunity. Reminds me of Operation Valkyrie.

[peterms]

Tee hee.

 

[Genie]

2 minutes ago, peterms said:

Tee hee.

 

 

[TheAuthority]

Subtext: When we see Black people we assume they are criminals.

FTFY

[Straggler]

On 24/12/2019 at 14:34, Davkaus said:

 

He is genuinely just not right. There's a clear mental and physical decline. Imagine him in 4 years.

It's just the adderall kicking in.

[peterms]

On 15/05/2019 at 17:59, blandy said:

So Yes, there is fog. No one comes out of it well. Like I said earlier - it all makes it impossible to find the actual truth for the likes of us.

Returning to this issue of the supposed Douma chemical weapons attack, some of the fog is lifting, with the emergence of whistleblowers and leaked documents.

Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter has written a few things on this, including here.

Quote

...Once the FFM wrapped up its investigation in Douma, however, it became apparent to Fairweather that it had a problem. There were serious questions about whether chlorine had, in fact, been used as a weapon. The solution, brokered by Fairweather, was to release an interim report that ruled out sarin altogether, but left the door open regarding chlorine. This report was released on July 6, 2018. Later that month, both Üzümcü and Fairweather were gone, replaced by a Spaniard named Fernando Arias and a French diplomat named Sébastien Braha. It would be up to them to clean up the Douma situation.

The situation Braha inherited from Fairweather was unenviable. According to an unnamed OPCW official who spoke with the media after the fact, two days prior to the publication of the interim report, on July 4, 2018, Fairweather had been paid a visit by a trio of U.S. officials, who indicated to Fairweather and the members of the FFM responsible for writing the report that it was the U.S. position that the chlorine cannisters in question had been used to dispense chlorine gas at Douma, an assertion that could not be backed up by the evidence. Despite this, the message that Fairweather left with the OPCW personnel was that there had to be a “smoking gun.” It was now Braha’s job to manufacture one.

Braha did this by dispatching OPCW inspectors to Turkey in September 2018 to interview new witnesses identified by the White Helmets, and by commissioning new engineering studies that better explained the presence of the two chlorine cannisters found in Douma. By March, Braha had assembled enough information to enable the technical directorate to issue its final report. Almost immediately, dissent appeared in the ranks of the OPCW. An engineering report that contradicted the findings published by Braha was leaked, setting off a firestorm of controversy derived from its conclusion that the chlorine cannisters found in Douma had most likely been staged by the White Helmets.

The OPCW, while eventually acknowledging that the leaked report was genuine, explained its exclusion from the final report on the grounds that it attributed blame, something the FFM was not mandated to do. According to the OPCW, the engineering report in question had been submitted to the investigation and identification team, a newly created body within the OPCW mandated to make such determinations. Moreover, Director General Arias stood by the report’s conclusion that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe “that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018.”

Arias’ explanation came under attack in November, when WikiLeaks published an email sent by a member of the FFM team that had participated in the Douma investigation. In this email, which was sent on June 22, 2018, and addressed to Robert Fairweather, the author noted that, when it came to the Douma incident, “[p]urposely singling out chlorine gas as one of the possibilities is disingenuous.” The author of the email, who had participated in drafting the original interim report, noted that the original text had emphasized that there was insufficient evidence to support this conclusion, and that the new text represented “a major deviation from the original report.” Moreover, the author took umbrage at the new report’s conclusions, which claimed to be “based on the high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives detected in environmental samples.” According to email’s author “They were, in most cases, present only in parts per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace quantities.” In short, the OPCW had cooked the books, manufacturing evidence from thin air that it then used to draw conclusions that sustained the U.S. position that chlorine gas had been used by the Syrian government at Douma.

Arias, while not addressing the specifics of the allegations set forth in the leaked email, recently declared that it is “the nature of any thorough inquiry for individuals in a team to express subjective views,” noting that “I stand by the independent, professional conclusion” presented by the OPCW about the Douma incident. This explanation, however, does not fly in the face of the evidence. The OPCW’s credibility as an investigative body has been brought into question through these leaks, as has its independent character. If an organization like the OPCW can be used at will by the U.S., the United Kingdom and France to trigger military attacks intended to support regime-change activities in member states, then it no longer serves a useful purpose to the international community it ostensibly serves. To survive as a credible entity, the OPCW must open itself to a full-scale audit of its activities in Syria by an independent authority with inspector general-like investigatory powers. Anything short of this leaves the OPCW, an organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its contributions to world peace, permanently stained by the reality that it is little more than a lap dog of the United States, used to promote the very conflicts it was designed to prevent.

This astonishing story, that a supposedly independent and impartial weapons inspectorate has apparently falsified evidence at the behest of the US in order to justify escalating military action against Syria, has received remarkably little coverage.  Peter Hitchens has written several things, some of which have been covered by the Mail on Sunday.  Newsweek suppressed a report by one of its staff and threatened him with legal action if he tried to run the story.  The BBC's correspondent in the Hague, supposedly covering OPCW, doesn't seem to have written about it, though she has managed to post several pictures of dogs.

There is a summary of coverage here, including a link to the leaked internal documents from the OPCW which Wikileaks published, including one which instructed the removal of a report from the internal information system which undermined the OPCW report, including removing traces that the document ever existed.

Quote

Update 27 December 2019 Wikileaks’ fourth release of leaked documents reveals more evidence of OPCW cover-up of its inspectors’ real findings.

Update 15 December 2019. Wikileaks’ third release of documents details malpractice in OPCW Douma reporting.

Update 10 December 2019. The most recent coverage has been rather indirect: first there was the tweeted announcement by Newsweek journalist, Tareq Haddad, of his resigning because his report on the scandal was spiked (a story in itself covered by Fox News and Consortium News). Then there was the mention of it in Monica Maggioni’s interview with the Syrian president for the Italian state broadcaster RAI that then did not get shown in Italy and was broadcast on Syrian TV instead (and these facts were reported by Associated Press and Al Jazeera).

Update 1 December 2019, OPCW Conference closes with consensus on other issues but with Syria reporting regarded as unfinished business by Non-Aligned States along with Russia and China. Meanwhile, Peter Hitchens meets whistleblower and intimates that there is much more is to come.

Update 26 November 2019. On the eve of the OPCW’s 24th Conference of States Parties, Wikileaks released an email revealing claims of what Peter Hitchens, writing in the Mail on Sunday, called a ‘sexed up dossier’. On the first day of the conference, the whistleblower revelations were referred to by the OPCW director general only to downplay their significance, a line uncritically followed by Reuters, AFP, CBS News, The Guardian, etc. In the evening, however, the story received prominent coverage from American TV on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

The new leak reinforced the message of the earlier whistleblower revelations that this post began by noting:

On 23 October 2019, the Courage Foundation and Wikileaks released a statement arising from a panel meeting with the OPCW whistleblower on irregular practices in the OPCW’s investigation of alleged chemical attack in Douma, on 7 April 2018. This was signed by seven figures of international standing, including the OPCW’s first director general, José Bustani.

Within hours of its release, this statement was reported in La Repubblica (Italy) and NachDenkSeiten (Germany), but no mainstream outlet in English-speaking countries mentioned it on the day. Meanwhile, though, alternative and non-Western outlets have been alive with discussion of the statement and its implications, as have social media.

This post will keep a note of significant media comment on the revelations and the issues they give rise to, being updated as and when items appear.

Links to coverage (most recent first)

...

Hitchens and others have been trying to get some coverage of this by mainstream outlets like the Guardian and BBC.  There was a brief interview with Jonathan Steele on the BBC World Service, but for the most part, there has been a mainstream media blackout of this issue.

Clearly the reason is not that it isn't newsworthy.  Presumably they have been asked to let the story drop, in the hope that as few people hear about it as possible.

 

[peterms]

...and now Twitter is censoring some tweets about all this.

 

[peterms]

Another account being censored. Someone really doesn't want this stuff getting attention.

 

[peterms]

And yet more censorship of information about this.

 

[bickster]

@petermsit's a glitch, it is not twitter censoring anything

It is happening right across the twittersphere. Even my taxi accounts are affected, unavailable posts all over the place

[peterms]

7 minutes ago, bickster said:

@petermsit's a glitch, it is not twitter censoring anything

It is happening right across the twittersphere. Even my taxi accounts are affected, unavailable posts all over the place

I imagine they will all be restored very soon, in that case.

[bickster]

13 minutes ago, peterms said:

I imagine they will all be restored very soon, in that case.

I doubt it, it's been going on all day, some people can see them btw, others can't. They are still there. Even the bloke that wrote one of the tweets you posted believes them if that makes you feel better

[peterms]

42 minutes ago, bickster said:

I doubt it, it's been going on all day, some people can see them btw, others can't. They are still there. Even the bloke that wrote one of the tweets you posted believes them if that makes you feel better

I don't see it happening on all sorts of random threads I've clicked on.

Just a coincidence, I expect.

[bickster]

1 minute ago, peterms said:

I don't see it happening on all sorts of random threads I've clicked on.

Just a coincidence, I expect.

I see there's plenty of tinfoil left over from the Turkey, I'll not bother to help you understand what going on in future

[bickster]

Maybe you'll believe this bloke then

 

[peterms]

28 minutes ago, bickster said:

I see there's plenty of tinfoil left over from the Turkey, I'll not bother to help you understand what going on in future

Leaving aside the silly digs, which I shall try not to respond to:

What I can see is that a very large proportion of tweets about the specific issue of the involvement of senior OPCW staff in suppressing evidence are currently invisible, and it seems a small proportion of other tweets are also invisible.

I suppose any technical issue would not differentiate between tweets according to type of content, ie political or apolitical.  I'm sure that I see more political ones than tweets about cats or hockey or cake, because of who I follow.  I do understand that this means that my twitter experience is not a representative cross-section of the whole of twitter.  And I do see that a very large proportion of tweets about the OPCW suppression of evidence have gone missing, like a third to a half of some threads.   If this proportion is replicated across twitter, then that will be a truly massive amount.

Is that what has happened, do you think?