Sheaf Saint

I haven't looked at the info you are referring to Batman, but were their projections as bad as this? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/18/each-brexit-scenario-will-leave-britain-worse-off-study-finds

The former First Sea Lord of the British Navy and Minister for Security and Counter Terrorism, appearing on the BBC to dispute the narrative that Assad carried out the Douma chemical attack. Is he just being a useful idiot for the Kremlin?

Time

I'm just trying to keep an open mind to all possibilities. Just because I posted about that Fisk report doesn't mean I 100% believe that's what happened. I was actually just expanding the discussion by responding to Oldnick's post with something that appeared to be more substantial. The claim that chlorine was found in blood samples of the victims comes from NBC with the quote "The officials said they were "confident" in the intelligence, though not 100 percent sure." Not exactly cast iron that, is it. Certainly not strong enough to be deciding to kick the hornets nest and **** off the Russians even more. Yes I accept that the video does not show people covered in dust. But they all appear to have been hosed down, so it does not prove there was no dust either. As for Fisk's report - he has been embedded in the middle east for decades and has an excellent reputation for neutrality and objectivity, and as such it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he actually has some friends and contacts in Syria. He certainly isn't pro-Putin or pro-Assad, so it seems a little odd to me that he would not mention in his report if he was being escorted by Assad's men and that the doctor's testimony was made under duress. I really am just trying to understand what happened by reading and absorbing news from all angles. So far, it seems that our entire case for the chemical attack is based on the White Helmets' video, and they're not exactly the most trustworthy source of information are they? They're intrinsically linked to ISIS and Al-Nusra who, last time I checked, were supposed to be our enemies. There may or may not have been a chemical attack in Douma last week. It may or may not have been carried out by the Assad regime. There is clearly a lot of misinformation being spread and it is difficult to separate what's true from what's not, but I am far from convinced by the 'evidence' our government has claimed so far. Why would they decide to go in and attack a facility that has already been declared free of chemical weapons by the OPCW, the very day before the OPCW were due to go in and carry out an actual investigation? May claims that it was crucial to act quickly to give the element of surprise, but Trump had already given them pre-warning via Twitter FFS. None of it adds up. IF Assad launched the attack, you have to ask yourself what possible strategic advantage he would gain from it (a point that the former chief of our armed forces in Iraq was making on Sky news the other day). He may be a murderous tyrant, but he isn't stupid. His forces had all but won against what remained of the rebel forces in the region, so why would he then go and do the one thing that was guaranteed to turn the rest of the world against him? Just days after Trump had announced that he was pulling troops out because they were no longer needed? Again, it just doesn't add up.

It's a pretty shocking account of government abuse, granted, but how does a 6-year old report prove your claim that there were soldiers present when Fisk interviewed this doctor?

Did you not read this bit of Fisk's report? "I walked across this town quite freely yesterday without soldier, policeman or minder to haunt my footsteps, just two Syrian friends, a camera and a notebook.... I first drove into Douma as part of an escorted convoy of journalists. But once a boring general had announced outside a wrecked council house “I have no information” – that most helpful rubbish-dump of Arab officialdom – I just walked away. Several other reporters, mostly Syrian, did the same. Even a group of Russian journalists – all in military attire – drifted off... It was a short walk to Dr Rahaibani."

I assume this is what you are alluding to... https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-chemical-attack-gas-douma-robert-fisk-ghouta-damascus-a8307726.html “I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”

Wow. I always thought you were a bit of a kn0bhead. Now I know for sure, you're a total pr!ck

If press releases aren't acceptable then I'll just jump on a flight to Yemen and take some pictures shall I? ? I see exactly what you are trying to do here Batman, and you're only making yourself look foolish. I obviously can't give you 'concrete' evidence, and then no doubt you will throw that back at me for wanting it before supporting our government's actions. But the situations are quite obviously not the same, and you know that full well. Are you going to answer my previous question about where JC has said he would go into action if Russia gave the nod?

Maybe you missed all the headlines last month when the Saudi prince visited the UK to do a massive arms deal with our government. Arms which are being used in what UNICEF is calling a humanitarian crisis. Theresa May cannot pretend to care about the lives of Arab civilians while remaining completely silent about that.

But it's the double standards that's the issue, which foreign powers can and will quite rightly point to. Our government is currently 'propping up a brutal regime' carrying out mass genocide on civilians in Yemen, but apparently that's OK because they aren't using chemical weapons, so May's conscience is apparently clear.

Has he? Where are you getting that from?

I'm not for a second suggesting we are just as bad as people who would use chemical weapons against their own people. Merely pointing out that it's pretty hypocritical for our PM to be moralising about the use of such weapons when it was her own predecessor's government that authorised the export of them. May jumped because Trump told her to and she is too weak to stand up to him. Ask yourself this - Was Donnie's decision to attack Syria borne out of some altruistic sense of protecting the Syrian people from chemical attack? Was it f*ck!

Sorry but I disagree. Our government simply cannot claim the moral high ground here... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-uk-government-let-british-company-export-nerve-gas-chemicals-to-syria-8793642.html

So what then was the point of launching a missile attack on a facility that the OPCW recently declared to be free of any chemical weapons? Seems to me it was sending a message to Russia that we won't just sit back and accept the expansion of their global reach into resource-rich regions. It absolutely wasn't about saving ordinary Syrians from the horrors of chemical weapons, because if our government actually cared that much they wouldn't have sold them the chemicals in the first place and then denied entry to Syrian refugee children.

Of course they are, and so are we. Do you really need to even ask the question? Isn't it just an amazing coincidence that all of the middle-eastern countries in which we have intervened in recent years have large oil and gas reserves that western energy companies would love to get their hands on?

Oh FFS Batman, have you really not got the message after all these years about using strawman arguments!? Your simplistic reasoning that anybody who questions the mainstream narrative must therefore be a Britain-hating, Russia-loving traitor is so utterly f*cking moronic, but I have come to expect nothing less from someone who is clearly incapable of seeing the world in anything other than binary, black and white terms. Yes, Buctootim, I can see the reality of Putin's regime. I fully acknowledge that he is an extremely devious dictator, playing a dangerous game with the world. I have never doubted that. Unfortunately for the rest of us, and it saddens me that I have to ad this caveat that this in no way suggests that I support him, he is very good at the game he is playing. The disinformation that comes out of Moscow to muddy the international waters is the result of many years of deception, corruption and, sadly, is very successful. So no, I do not accept at face value the blatant propaganda they push. Unfortunately, neither do I accept the propaganda that is put out by our own government at the moment. Just because the Russians are clearly untrustworthy, doesn't make our own government a shining beacon of truth and virtue. There are so many aspects of the current narrative that don't add up or make sense, that to accept it without question based on nothing more than blind patriotism is ridiculous. Syria has quite obviously become a proxy war between Russia and the west. Yes, it's quite obvious that Putin is using it to push an imperialist agenda. But if you accept that, then you also have to accept that the US/UK are doing the same. Anybody who believes the action that May took along with Trump and Macron is based on genuine humanitarian concerns and protecting Syrian civilians from the use of chemical weapons is a foolish simpleton.

You are, of course, correct to be extremely skeptical of anything that the Sergei Lavrov claims. After all, we have already seen how Foreign Secretaries can't be trusted to tell the truth about this issue, haven't we. But the Swiss lab have not 'flat-out rejected' Lavrov's assertion at all. Their response is ambiguous at best, and appears to be very carefully worded so as not to confirm or deny what he is saying. https://twitter.com/SpiezLab/status/985243574123057152 I'm not saying I believe Lavrov any more than I believe Johnson. They are both proven liars, so the truth is I have no idea who to believe.

Yeah this is the nub of it for me too. It's obviously controversial but, as with everything, context is the key here. Even taking into account my misgivings about the BBC's impartiality these days, there is no way this is being presented as just propaganda. There will obviously be some kind of critique of it as well. I have to say though, given the connotations of it and the xenophobic message the speech carried, perhaps it might have been a good idea for the Beeb to get someone other than the bloke who played Emperor Palpatine to read it

STILL waiting for you to send us pictures of you eating your own sh!t after we got into the playoffs in 2007

https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?59676-Chelsea-(H)-Build-up-thread&p=2616158#post2616158

Yes and they are apparently the ones now trying to block the OPCW from carrying out an investigation into the attack on Douma.

Well this is the problem isn't it. We can never prove it beyond any doubt, and Putin knows that only too well. He's obviously played a blinder here, because whatever accusations we make, he will always have plausible deniability. Especially given the massive PR victory that BoJo handed him last week. That episode means he can point to the fact that we can't even get our own story straight as 'evidence' that we are just making it up as we go along. If it was the Russian state that did it, and I have said all along that it probably was, then unfortunately our government have been outmaneuvered by someone far smarter than any of them, I'm sorry to say.

Yes yes, very predictable sarcastic responses from you two. All the OPCW have confirmed is that they agree with Porton Down's assessment of the type of nerve agent used. They haven't confirmed where it was made and who by. So this isn't actually a new development at all, and it doesn't provide any further 'evidence' against Russia on top of the purely circumstantial case we already had.

I'm assuming you meant to post this on the other thread, rather than imply that the IOW is one of the most amazing places you've ever been to