More Hitchens on Douma

16 Dec

Yesterday in his Mail on Sunday column, Peter Hitchens wrote:

The global chemical weapons watchdog is facing renewed questions after fresh details emerged about how it suppressed the findings of its own inspectors who raised serious doubts about an alleged poison gas attack in Syria.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a senior official at the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) demanded the ‘removal of all traces’ of a document which undermined claims that gas cylinders had been dropped from the air – a key element of the ‘evidence’ that the Syrian regime was responsible.

Unconfirmed reports and videos showing the bodies of adults and children foaming at the mouth in Douma, a rebel-held Damascus suburb, shocked the world in April 2018.

Children are pictured after the attack. Alleged casualties shown in videos of the attack were foaming at the mouth in a way that might be expected of victims of sarin, but not by victims of chlorine. Yet all the reports agree that no traces of sarin were found at Douma

Children are pictured after the attack. Alleged casualties shown in videos of the attack were foaming at the mouth in a way that might be expected of victims of sarin, not of chlorine. Yet all the reports agree no traces of sarin were found at Douma

A week later, without waiting for proof that chemical weapons had been used, Britain, France and the US launched a retaliatory missile strike, the biggest Western military action of the eight-year war.

Full piece here.

3 Replies to “More Hitchens on Douma

  1. Credit to Hitchens and, to a limited extent, the Mail on Sunday for picking up this ball and running with it.

    However, what is missing is any explicit details or even mention of what pressure was applied to the organisation, the source(s) of that pressure and the motivation of those who applied that pressure.

    This leaves it to the reader to interpret the situation as one of a corrupt UN body rather than one which is being manipulated and pressured by State Mafia actors.

    • Point taken Dave. There’s a gulf a mile wide between you and me on the one hand, Peter Hitchens on the other. What’s significant here is how one or two mavericks (free thinkers?) on the right – American Conservative and Tucker Carlson being others – are challenging aspects of the regime change agenda where Lefties of the Guardian School (Owen Jones, Paul Mason, George Monbiot) and most of the Trotskyist Left (SWP, Workers Power but not, to their credit, Socialist Equality Party) have been its de facto cheerleaders.

      • And yet it is not only the self labelled “left” which occupies this position. Hitchens and others on the right are, as you point out ‘Mavericks’ in this and other similar matters in terms of adherence to the principles of scientific realities.

        As can be seen from this report:

        https://www.rt.com/news/476137-newsweek-bellingcat-opcw-leak-reuters/

        From the scientific nonsense of Salisbury to the denial of biological realities inherent in certain sections of ‘gender’ politics (an absolutist minefield which goes nuclear over a single word) the Cuckoo’s of Karl Rove’s ‘creating our own reality’ and the Overton Window have come home to roost and are playing havoc with the perceptual tools and narratives necessary to maintain any standard of civilised coherence.

        This is Kleins ‘Shock Doctrine’ operating on an epic scale. Undermining the fundamental core basic scientific values, realities and perceptions within which we exist under the guise of ‘Politics.’ Those who insist on living in Rove’s ‘Reality Based Community’ – whether on the ‘left’ or the ‘right’ – and who point out the nakedness of the emporer from objective reality are now ‘Mavericks.’

        And this is now the new ‘Normal.’

        A normal in which right down to the individual level everyone is being encouraged, coerced, pushed into creating their own subjective, infantalised, individualised ‘reality’. Self labelling and self identifying which has no relationship to objective, provable, and evidence based reality.

        A normal which has real life repercussions:

        A normal cutting everyone off from each other in atomised ghettos scrapping like rats in a sack for ever decreasing scraps.

        The graffiti attack on a local Indian owned restaurant last Friday/Saturday night was not the only incident in this neck of the woods which occurred as a result of people self identifying in a particular way being emboldened by the election result.

        No doubt the same or similar people were responsible for the strategically placed anti-Corbyn posters of Wednesday/Thursday night.

        Also in the aftermath of that result a local LP Branch member who happens to be from the Trans Community had their home broken into and was physically attacked.

        The point being it is now becoming increasingly apparent that in terms of access to resources it is open season on the vulnerable. From the unemployed we have moved to the “foreigner” (regardless of skin colour or national origin), onto the disabled and anyone who the new Tory/Brexit voter base consider unworthy to receive support from ‘their’ taxes.

        Impossible ‘choices’ are increasingly going to have to be made between committing dwindling resources for different vulnerable groups. Do we spend this reducing pot of money on subsidising the low wages of the precariously employed on zero hours contracts; or meeting the needs of disabled people whose means of mobility have been removed; or rehousing people who have been attacked because of who they are and fitting expensive high tech security cameras; or bus passes for the elderly.

        All in a context in which those who seek to drive out those vulnerable groups from society don’t want the money spent on them in the first place.

        Rats in a sack.

        It’s going to get messy and will not end well.

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