East Ghouta

Caitlin JOHNSTONE
It’s been a bad last 24 hours for the war propagandists.

Western mass media have continued their conspiracy of silence on the OPCW scandal, making no significant mention yet this month of the leaks which have been emerging from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons indicating that the US, France and UK bombed Syria last year in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack which probably never occurred, and that OPCW leadership helped cover it up.

Almost immediately after Le Mesurier’s alleged plunge to his death, reports began to emerge of tampering and the removal of details about the controversial “private security” operative’s career.
Vanessa BEELEY
On November 11, 2019, the British founder of the notorious White Helmets, James Le Mesurier, died in Istanbul, Turkey. The circumstances surrounding his death immediately elicited a flurry of Turkish and corporate media reports, many of them contradictory, as the details of his final hours came to light.

Caitlin JOHNSTONE
Imperialist propaganda firm Bellingcat has published a response to the ever-expanding OPCW scandal, and it’s got to be seen to be believed.

Leaked documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that were analyzed by MIT Prof. Theodore Postol about the 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria, contradict the official UN report.

Robert FISK
We like to take the Big Boys on trust. No longer do we believe in our meretricious little leaders with their easy lies and twitters: the Trumps and Mays and now all the nationalists of Europe. We certainly don’t put any credit in Arab dictators.

It can’t get more absurdly audacious than this. The Trump administration is accusing Syria’s government forces of using once again – allegedly – internationally banned chemical weapons against civilians.
The US has provided no evidence to support its accusations. This time, it seems to have run out of “material”, relying on bombastic assertion and the dubious “word” of Washington alone. Yes, that’s how desperately hard-up the master weaver of false flags has become. “It is because, er, well, we say it is.”

People in Ghouta, doctors in Ghouta, and Russian experts who have arrived on the scene report that there is no sign of any chemical attack. Not only did Syria not use chemical weapons against the civilians that it liberated, there was no chemical attack, not even a false flag one staged by the US supported mercenaries who have been driven out of Ghouta by the Syrian Army. In other words, the chemical attack is entirely a hoax.

Introduction
Western neoconservatives and hawks are driving the international situation to increasing tension and danger. Not content with the destruction of Iraq and Libya based on false claims, they are now pressing for a direct US attack on Syria.
As a dangerous prelude, Israeli jets flying over Lebanese airspace fired missiles against the T4/Tiyas Airbase west of Palmyra.
This was Predicted

To anyone who has followed the Syrian war the news today sounds all too depressingly familiar.
After a series of advances the Syrian army has gained control of around 90% of the former Jihadi enclave of East Ghouta.  The last remaining part of the enclave still under Jihadi control – the town of Douma – is now entirely surrounded by the Syrian army save for a single humanitarian corridor, and the position of the Jihadis there has become militarily hopeless.