News Commentary – Dec 31, 2018
This file photo shows a member of the so-called White Helmets “aid” group which independent researchers cite as an example of group members previously being part of terrorist groups in Syria. Click to enlarge
It has long been said that elements in the media and individual journalists worked hand-in-glove with Western intelligence. The following Guardian article is the result of this symbiosis.
In brief, in return for insider information Western mainstream media journalists are expected to do the bidding of the intelligence agencies on specific topics.
This might involve casting this or that figure in the role of “bad guy”; in the way Saddam Hussein and Syrian President Assad were portrayed as dictators and despots prior to Western military intervention.
Or alternatively, it might entail celebrating a leader who was useful to the West with laudatory articles, or at least providing coverage that downplayed their faults. An example of this was the way the Western media portrayed Boris Yeltsin. Despite bringing Russia to its knees and working at the behest of Western-aligned oligarch’s, Yeltsin was still praised by the western media.
Even as he presided over unprecedented levels of corruption and economic decline he was lauded as a “reformer”. In effect, Yeltsin did exactly what the West wanted; he oversaw the disintegration of what was once its main adversary, the Soviet Union.
Of course that has now changed but the Western media remains the prime means for intelligence agencies to manipulate public opinion.
What follows is a recent example of how carefully crafted disinformation now masquerades as ‘journalism’.
The Syrian White Helmets were founded by James Le Mesurier, a Sandhurst-trained former British Army officer who went onto to work for private military contractors after military service. The Guardian pointedly omits to mention this key fact.
It also omits to mention the White Helmet’s ties with known terror outfits like Al Nusra. Despite the fact that the Russian Foreign Ministry has confirmed those ties and loudly condemned the White Helmet’s Western supporters.
Yet the Guardian breathes not a word of this to its readers. Instead it portrays the White Helmets as authentic civilian rescue workers; without asking why Britain, Israel and Canada were so quick to help them escape from Syria? After all why was it so necessary to get them out of Syria if they were only humanitarian “rescue workers”?
The Syrian White Helmets rehearse another staged ‘chemical weapons attack’. Click to enlarge
The answer, of course, is that they weren’t authentic rescue workers. They were crisis actors, funded by the West and used in staged terror attacks, which were then blamed on Assad’s forces and used to justify calls for direct Western military intervention in Syria.
More than that however, the White Helmets also worked in coordination with al Qaeda terror groups like Al Nusra.
Had Assad’s forces, or his Iranian or Russian allies, detained members of the White Helmets this would have all been exposed. Along with the West’s role in inciting the Syrian conflict and the part it played in funding and assisting various terror groups. That’s why Britain, Canada and Israel evacuated the White Helmets en masse and relocated them so far away.
However, instead of exposing the White Helmet’s real origins and role in the Syrian the Guardian perpetuates the myth that they were “civilian rescue workers”.
So what follows is NOT investigative journalism. It is not even poorly researched journalism. It’s outright disinformation, crafted to conceal the truth of the West’s involvement in Syria and fed to the public in the guise of news.
Nor is the Guardian alone in publishing outright disinformation about the White Helmets. It’s echoed by the New Yorker, which earlier in July this year described them as “Syria’s noble rescuers” who “have saved more than a hundred thousand people in Syria’s vicious civil war”.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the White Helmets have been relocated to the relative isolation of Nova Scotia. So while the group’s leaders may be paraded before the media the rank and file members will be located far from where citizen journalists may find them to interview. Thereby ensuring that the real story behind the White Helmets remains hidden and carefully crafted fictions, like the following Guardian report, are the order of the day. Ed.
Syrian White Helmets try to rebuild lives in Canadian exile
Kareem Shaheen – The Guardian Dec 30, 2018
Members of rescue organization that saved thousands resettle in Nova Scotia after evacuation via Israel and Jordan.
Under cover of darkness, Maysoon al-Masri and her husband began their march towards the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Masri was the head of the women’s division in southern Syria of the White Helmets, the rescue organization that has saved thousands of people from under the rubble of homes after Russian and Syrian government airstrikes.
Now she is now in Canada, along with dozens of other rescue volunteers who fled Syria earlier this year, as the noose of Bashar al-Assad’s forces tightened around them.