In this blog on 12 May 2017 I wrote: “Our media have accepted without examination the US/Intelligence view that President Assad was responsible for the awful gas attacks in Syria. He may have been responsible. But no independent evidence has been produced. I have not seen any of our media attempt to examine this issue’.
Pulitzer Prize winning author, Seymour Hersh has now written that there was no evidence that the Assad regime had initiated the chemical weapons attack in April this year.”
Seymour Hersh is a famous and credible journalist who exposed the US massacre in My Lai in Vietnam and the US torture in the Abu Graib prison in Iraq.
Refused publication in the US and the UK, Hersh offered this story about the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria to Die Welt in Germany. See https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article165905578/Trump-s-Red-Line.html?wtrid=socialmedia.email.sharebutton
Hersh alleges that the US knew that its information about the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons was false, but that President Trump decided anyhow to attack with Tomahawk missiles. Worse still, there are claims that the US administration is now planning another attack on Syria based on false information again about chemical weapons.
In this blog on 17 April 2017 James O’Neill also cast serious doubts about the alleged Assad chemical weapons attacks.
Our media continue to do us a great disservice. Without thought and analysis it allows itself to be led along by the US military and political complex and its propaganda..
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
6 responses to “JOHN MENADUE. Our white man’s media coverage of chemical weapons attacks in Syria”
Haven’t the French and the UN confirmed the chemical attacks?
If Hersh is correct, I would guess that Trump’s motive in launching the airstrike against the Syrian airfield is to get one up over President Obama. By launching the airstrike Trump could contend that he acted against Syria for using chemical weapons whereas Obama had failed to act despite having drawn a line in the sand over the use of these weapons. I have no doubt that Trump is petulant, childish and ego-driven enough to launch a strike against a bogus attack just to cast himself in a good light against his more popular predecessor.
I am amazed and wholly alarmed that the media does not do its job of investigation. Over the years, I have become totally and absolutely disillusioned and ultimately disgusted in our media, be they the puppets of Murdoch or the satraps of the ABC. Let me give you a few examples of our (Aus) media’s compliance with lies.
We all remember the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh. I too took the line I was given that he detonated a small truck load of ammonium nitrate caving in the Murragh building killing all those innocents including a lot of children. That is, until I read an interview by the serving commander of the US Airforce’s munitions who stated that this explosion would not have been enough to cause that damage and that, in his opinion, there were 4 separate internal explosions which caused the carnage. This chap was in charge of all the things that cause mayhem and misery that the US Airforce drops, fires and leaves for misadventure on others.
Now if this had come from someone who had trouble not blowing his fingers off with a ‘thripenny’ bunger, then I would dismiss it immediately. However, it came from a bloke who I expect, but don’t know, would have advanced degrees in Chemical Engineering and Nuclear Physics at least. He wouldn’t get to his position without some form of in depth knowledge in the science of things that explode. And I read that close to 20 odd years ago. No one here took that up. ‘Move on, move on, there’s nothing to see here’.
And don’t get me started on the Towers, what with thermite being found on pre-cut uprights in the Towers; with a battalion of highly credentialled experts ranging from all areas involved with flight, engineering and explosives questioning the dominant narrative; and even Donald Trump, pre Presidency who, on witnessing the destruction of the towers as it happened stated, as a man who had built many such construction in New York that the planes would not have caused the collapse of them. And what about Grenfell tower in London? It was built with half the care of Twin Towers if reports are to be believed but it didn’t collapse. Why not? If the Twin Towers are any guide it should have folded like a house of cards. It didn’t and still stands to this day, at testament to greed and a complete lack of governance. Similar towers in Shanghai etc have not collapsed either and we all know that the Yanks are the best engineers ever. Move on, move on, there’s nothing to see here’.
And lastly: the so called plane crashing into the Pentagon. All the reports I have read from airline captains of over 20,000 hours experience state that it is impossible for a jet to cruise just over the ground given as the official explanation. The reason for that is simple physics. A jets engines point slightly down as if they pointed level to the plane, they would destroy the tail section in no time flat. Thus, if a jet was to fly at around 20 or so feet over the ground, the down draft would rebound up to the tail causing the plane to nose dive. In any case, the only video of that crime shows not a plane but something so fast that it was hard to make out. And in any case, where is the wreckage of the plane? Where is the passenger’s luggage, at least some of it? It always get strewn around. Move on, move on, there’s nothing to see here’.
And we are expected to believe, without a shred of evidence, that Assard kills his own people with chemical weapons? And this comes from a people who have lost all honour with their non stop lies? They are nothing but descendants of the British East India company who formed the template of present day economic exploitation based on armed conquest.
Needless to say, not one of our doughty media types picked up on any of this but instead sang to the official hymn sheet, much to all our detriment. We are being professionally lied to by our media as their strings are being pulled from a greater height than what is obvious. Thank God for sites like this and the many others like it.
The Washington lobbyists, who also control mainstream media, require the destruction of Syria preceded by Iraq and followed by Iran. Following the vengeance applied to Julia Gillard, Canberra will also toe the line.
It is significant and welcome that John Menadue saw this issue as important enough to highlight in his blog under his own name. Australia needs to wake up to what our ally is doing in Syria. We should suspend all our RAAF airforce operations in that country till the US sorts out its lines of communication with Russia. There is a G20 meeting coming up in Hamburg very soon, 21-22 July. Turnbull and Bishop and Payne need to review Australia’s stance on Syria, we could play a positive role with France and Germany in putting the Western Alliance’s Syria policy back on track, if we had some vision and guts now. Tony Kevin.
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Actually, one report in the US, courtesy of Ron Paul:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/06/27/ron_paul_seymour_hersh_reporting_trump_knew_latest_syria_chemical_attack_was_false_flag_bombed_assad_anyway.html
But disturbing that Secretary Mattis is now leading the charge
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/06/28/mattis-claims-syria-heeds-u-s-warnings-over-chemical-strike-they-didnt-do-it/?utm_term=.ea171596bdf3
in claiming they are having success this week in stopping Syria from doing it ‘again’.
Most of us learned as children the perils and eventual consequences of lie to cover lie.
What is particularly troubling is that while efforts are being made to talk a line to the American public, Russia, Syria, Germany and most other mildly diligent governments know the absurdity and will see it as further weakening of the US in the world. The USSR learned the consequences of lie upon lie in its handling of Chernobyl.