Vanessa Beeley

Hanano, East Aleppo, December 2016. A woman who had been liberated from terrorist occupation hours previously, gives the victory sign.
Vanessa Beeley
21st Century Wire

Are the White Helmets heroes or villains? The mainstream narrative has them as a neutral, unarmed, grassroots (and Oscar-winning) humanitarian group with no political affiliations, nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Independent journalists, notably Vanessa Beeley, Eva Karene Bartlett, Patrick Henningsen, and Khaled Iskef, among a few others, suggest a radically different picture, in which the White Helmets are nothing more than a propaganda front for terrorist groups like the Al Nusra Front.

The dynamics of the establishment Syria narrative are hilarious if you take a step back and think about them. I mean, the Western empire is now openly admitting to having funded actual, literal terrorist groups in that country, and yet they’re still cranking out propaganda pieces about what is happening there and sincerely expecting us to believe them.

The Corbett Report
Contrary to what its multi-million dollar international PR campaign would have you believe, the “White Helmets” are not a group of volunteer search-and-rescue workers that sprang spontaneously out of the Syrian soil. When you peel back the layers of foreign financing and reveal the foreign intelligence operatives and murky lobbying groups at the heart of the organization, what you find is that the White Helmets are, in fact, a propaganda construct.

I sat down with my coffee this beautiful Australian morning to watch two of my favorite independent media figures jam together in a Corbett Report interview of renowned independent investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley. About two-thirds of the way through, I nearly fell out of my chair.

Vanessa Beeley
21st Century Wire
“A lion from Jabhat Al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria) died today and went to Paradise, I pray that God will accept his soul.”

The Guardian recently published an article claiming that critical discussion of the White Helmets in Syria has been ‘propagated online by a network of anti-imperialist activists, conspiracy theorists and trolls with the support of the Russian government’. Many readers were dismayed at this crude defence of a – presumably – pro-imperialist perspective, and at the unwarranted smearing of reasoned questioning based on evidence from independent journalists.

ALISON BANVILLE takes to task the BBC flagship programme over its investigation of British foreign aid diversion to extremist groups in Syria
The post Is BBC Panorama just a useful propaganda tool? appeared first on BSNEWS.

Dahiyeh Al Quds rally. Beirut 11th December 2017. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)
Vanessa Beeley
21st Century Wire

Boris Johnson preached to the UK State choir, in the Foreign Office, on the 7th December. In Churchillian tones, Johnson announced “when in the course of a prolonged, ambitious struggle, you eventually record a success, it is essential, with due humility and caution, to celebrate that success – so I draw your attention, once again, to the defeat of DAESH in Raqqa […]