THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
Life Site reports this is the first time in 35 years that Planned Parenthood will not receive the contract from a state in the U.S.
GOVERNOR BILL HASLAM
REPRESENTATIVE JIMMY MATLOCK
Through the required 90-10 federal-state match, over $1 million has been paid to these facilities over the past six years, according to Matlock. It’s “our money, [so] we should have a say where it goes,” he said.
TENNESSEE GOVERNOR BILL HASLAM SIGNS BILL DEFUNDING PLANNED PARENTHOOD
NASHVILLE, Tenn. —The Republican governor of Tennessee has signed into law a bill that defunds the abortion and contraceptive giant Planned Parenthood, as well as any other organization that performs abortions.
“It is the policy of this state to favor childbirth and family planning services that do not include elective abortions or the promotion of elective abortions within the continuum of care or services and to avoid the direct or indirect use of state funds to promote or support elective abortions,” S.B. 2251 reads.
It directs the state commissioner of finance and administration to submit a waiver amendment to the federal centers for Medicaid and Medicare to “require the exclusion of a provider from the program if the bureau of TennCare finds that inclusion of the provider in the program would result in the direct or indirect use of state funds to promote or support elective abortion.”
The measure was presented by Rep. Jimmy Matlock, R-Lenoir City, who said that is disturbed him that the state was giving money to entities that kill unborn babies.
“Putting an end to abortion is one of the primary reasons I got involved in politics. The very idea that our money was being handed over to industry executives who have proudly killed millions of babies for profit, and there was supposedly nothing we could do about it, absolutely sickened me,” he said in a statement on April 11.
Matlock told lawmakers during deliberations that Tennessee has reimbursed nearly $1 million to abortion facilities through TennCare over the past six years, and is a form of supporting abortion providers. He believes the funding should instead go to county health facilities and other healthcare organizations who assist women minus the killing.
Planned Parenthood decried the measure as being discriminatory and another facet of the so-called “war on women.”
“It would prohibit women from accessing preventive care at Planned Parenthood health centers and take away a person’s ability to see the qualified health care provider of their choice for these sensitive services,” said Keri Adams, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Middle & East Tennessee, according to The Tennessean.
The bill passed both Houses in March, and was signed by Gov. Bill Haslam on April 9.
“After years of fighting the incredibly powerful abortion lobby, I’m proud to say that Tennessee taxpayer dollars will no longer be sent to clinics that provide elective abortions,” Matlock said. “Abortion isn’t healthcare. It’s infanticide, and Tennessee taxpayers will no longer be forced to fund it. Now it’s time to show Washington D.C. how we do things down here in Tennessee.”
As previously reported, in his 1854 lecture at the University of Pennsylvania on criminal abortion, obstetrician Hugh Hodge declared, “[H]uman life commences at the time of conception; … the embryo and fetus therefore should be protected during its intra-uterine life as sedulously as after birth.”
“Hence, that all efforts, direct or indirect, to disturb the progress of gestation or to injure the product of conception are criminal, alike violating the laws of nature and of God,” he stated.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/29370/tennessee-defunds-planned-parenthood-paul-bois; EXCERPT: “This will hurt women, men, and teens in the Memphis region and have a disproportionate impact on women of color,” said Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region. “Patients rely on Planned Parenthood health centers for providers they can access quickly who specialize in nonjudgmental reproductive health care.” “Governor Haslam and the General Assembly continue to demonstrate blatant disrespect and dismissal of patients’ rights, which further discriminates against women, people of color, and people with low-incomes. This pushes the harmful and extremist agenda set forth by the Trump-Pence administration,” said Francie Hunt, Executive Director of Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood. “Our state has refused to expand Medicaid, which caused 280,000 Tennesseans to go without health care, and we have the second highest amount of hospital closures in the nation. Now is the time to trust patients and provide them with as many qualified health care options as possible, rather than restrict access and limit providers.”
NEW SCHOOL HISTORY BOOK PAINTS TRUMP AS RACIST & EXTREMIST~
ALEX NEWMAN & DR. DUKE PESTA DISCUSS
The new Advanced Placement U.S. History book is under fire across America for, among other scandals, portraying President Donald Trump's supporters as ignorant old racists. It also paints Trump as a racist and highlights his alleged “extremism,” without explaining what, exactly, the far-left author considers to be “extreme.”
U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- 15% of illegal aliens admit to voting in local and federal elections. In CA 26 that’s 12-15,000 votes. CA 26 is a district that covers most of Ventura County. The seat was won each of the election cycles by less than 2,000 votes and won by the democrat.
This is the most conservative number based on a report by the Pew Research center and Sacramento Bee. Let’s be honest, shall we, without illegals voting CA 26 (along with a dozen other districts in the Golden State) would be red and not blue.
For gun owners in CA, this makes a tremendous difference. Since EVERY gun sale requires a background check in CA, and illegal aliens cannot own a gun under federal law, not ONE, not a single one of these illegal voters have our interests at heart. This guarantees that liberal democrats can vote for gun confiscation and gun banning with impunity. The votes of illegal aliens tip the scales and make them immune to the constitutional rights of legal gun owners. It INCENTIVIZES them to oppose citizenship and keep illegal aliens as non-citizen voting slaves.
CA District 26
The local CA26 representative does not need to worry about the gun owners in her district because she is insulated by having a large population of illegals who vote to preserve their state and local benefits and to avoid deportation.
Personally, I think illegal aliens are grossly under-counted. Best guess is the reported numbers are 50% low. Likewise, the percent that admits to voting is also low, who admits to a felony with a possible 5-year federal prison sentence? For illegals in CA, voting is a sign of defiance. A way to show that California is still part of Mexico, and should be legally returned after an unjust war of white expansionism. It’s call Reconquista, the repatriation of the lost northern Mexican states through illegal immigration.
Will gun owners wake up and realize that we have the numbers and strength to stop this? Not here in CA. The fact is the social pressure to conform to the views of the left are more than meaningless. Coming out as pro-2A will cost you your job if you have the wrong boss.
Here in CA GOP candidates give back money from the NRA. One of the two GOP primary candidates in CA 26 (Antonio Sabato) is pro-open borders and recently in a town hall called for MORE gun control. This guy is a dumb as a sack of rocks and seems to agree with whomever he spoke to last. His GOP opponent is Jeff Burum and a 2A stalwart. Guess which of the two the GOP is backing in the primary? Yup… the dumb guy.
The Democrats in California have allied with illegal aliens to keep themselves in power. The question they fail to ask is what happens when the illegal population doesn’t need THEM anymore?
About Don McDougall
Don McDougall is an NRA instructor and member of the Los Padres “Friends of the NRA”committee. If he’s not at the range you will find him setting the record straight with on gun issues and gun safety on AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.
U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- Dicks Sporting Goods announced on Monday their plan to destroy all of the unsold firearms that the chain pulled from the shelves of their subsidiaries including Field & Stream.
Dicks Sporting Goods stopped selling modern sporting rifles such as the AR-15 on Feb. 28, 2018, in response to the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. The school shooting took place on Valentine's day by a deranged former student using an AR-15. Dicks also raised the minimum age to buy a long gun or ammunition in their stores from 18 to 21. They also stopped selling standard capacity magazines even though the shooter only used 10 round magazines.
“Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” the company said in a statement released after the shooting. “We support and respect the Second Amendment, and we recognize and appreciate that the vast majority of gun owners in this country are responsible, law-abiding citizens. But we have to help solve the problem that's in front of us.”
Dick's CEO Ed Stack stated that he was worried that the Parkland shooter could have purchased the rifle he used at a Field & Stream store, but he insisted that Dicks Sporting Goods still supported the Second Amendment upon the growing backlash from gun owners as well as a boycott by Second Amendment supporters.
“We're staunch supporters of the Second Amendment – I'm a gun owner myself,” Stack said on “Good Morning America” after the policy change was announced. “We don't want to be a part of this story, and we have eliminated these guns permanently.”
This instance was not the first time Dicks have faced a backland from gun owners. In 2012, following the Sandy Hook tragedy, Dicks pulled modern sporting rifles from all Dicks Sporting Goods stores across the country. The rifles were still available for purchase at Field & Stream.
The sporting goods chain could return the unsold firearms to the manufacturers but has chosen not to return the merchandise. According to some Second Amendment supporters, this stance is further evidence of an anti-gun bias at Dicks. It is unclear how many firearms Dicks will be destroyed, or if they plan on writing off those guns as a loss on their taxes.
“We are in the process of destroying all firearms and accessories that are no longer for sale as a result of our February 28th policy change,” a spokesperson from Dick's Sporting Goods told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We are destroying the firearms in accordance with federal guidelines and regulations.”
Dicks Sporting Goods has been storing the modern sporting rifles at their distribution centers since they pulled the guns from their shelves. The company will destroy the firearms and send the parts to a salvage company to be recycled.
The company is facing two lawsuits for age discrimination due to their policy of having to be 21 to buy a long gun. These cases are still pending, but the company plans to fight out the suits in court.
Dicks Sporting Goods is the largest sporting goods retailer in the country.
Their stock dropped sharply after the retailer pulled the firearms from the shelf and enacted anti-gun policies. The company claimed the boycott did not effect their stock prices.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. He is the former CEO of Veritas Firearms, LLC and is the co-host of The Patriot News Podcast which can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/patriotnews. John has written extensively on the patriot movement including 3%'ers, Oath Keepers, and Militias. In addition to the Patriot movement, John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and is currently working on a book on leftist de-platforming methods and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, on Facebook at realjohncrump, or at www.crumpy.com.
Bombshell’ population growth in Africa means Europe is entering an “unprecedented” age of mass migration, Emmanuel Macron has said, asserting that the two continents’ destinies are “bound”.
The French people may have a different vision, given their calls to outlaw “radical Islam” and their demands for the deportation of 11,000 known jihadists. Macron talks the talk when it suits him, when he promises the French people that he will fight the jihad ideology, but his other statements present a different portrait.
Macron once asserted that jihad terrorism was now part of daily life in France, so the French may as well get used to it.
Macron is a leftist who has gone along to get along with the EU. He has embraced the EU’s suicidal globalist vision of wide-open borders, in the bizarre hope that migrants from oppressive countries in the Middle East and North Africa would somehow peacefully integrate, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Just ignore the anti-Western rancor of Muslim migrants, indoctrinated into them from early childhood. Europe is determined to continue its utopian dream of peace, while the hijrah continues as well. European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has declared that “Europe has a ‘clear need’ for mass migration from Africa,” and even claims that without millions of migrants coming in, “Europe will be lost.”
Europe is already near lost, but not due to its low birthrates. It is is grave peril because of spiraling lawlessness, jihad attacks, violent no-go zones, sharia patrols and the kind of sharia oppression that a decade ago would have been considered inconceivable in the West. Just yesterday, Muslims started “extremely violent” riots in France over a woman who was forced to remove her full face veil, and now, lesbians in suburbs heavily populated by Muslim migrants are being forced to hide their sexuality.
Recently, the EU border agency boss, Fabrice Leggeri, warned the European Parliament that the increase in people-smuggling from Africa makes for a high threat of jihad terror in Europe. Emmanuel Macron’s double game is evident, but he is firmly compliant with the EU plan to saturate Europe with migrants from Africa and the Middle East who have contempt for democratic societies and the principles of human rights.
The Visegrad Group (Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland) and Austria need urgent support. They have resisted these damaging immigration policies and are now the only hope for Europe, unless the people in other countries fight for their freedoms at the polls. Let’s hope it isn’t too late. Europe definitely does not need a “shared destiny with Africa.”
“Macron: Europe Entering Age of ‘Unprecedented’ Mass Migration, ‘Shares Destiny’ with Africa,” by Virginia Hale, Breitbart, April 17, 2018:
‘Bombshell’ population growth in Africa means Europe is entering an “unprecedented” age of mass migration, Emmanuel Macron has said, asserting that the two continents’ destinies are “bound”.
“The migratory phenomenon we are facing will be historic,” declared the French president in a television appearance Sunday night, when he announced that “great poverty”, “climate change”, and “geopolitical conflicts” will see Africans flooding into Europe “for many years to come”.
To back up his point, Macron pointed to “bombshell” population gr0wth across the third world continent, which he added has been “tremendously well described” by French-American journalist and professor Stephen Smith in a recent book.
“[Africans] are mostly turning to Europe because the continent [of Europe] is not an island, because of our location, and because Europe has its destiny bound with Africa,” stated the vehemently pro-EU French figure during a two-hour long interview.
Smith, the Africa expert to whom Macron referred during his appearance on BFMTV, estimates that the number of Africans living in Europe will grow from nine million to between 150 million and 200 million within the next 30 years.
In The Rush to Europe, the Duke University professor describes a massive, unprecedented population transfer still in its infancy, which he explains will — “paradoxically” — be triggered largely as a result 0f Western aid money financing would-be migrants’ journeys from Africa.
Asserting he set out to provide a “dispassionate” expert view on how Africa’s demographic explosion will affect Europe, Smith in his book has outlined a number of different scenarios he believes could emerge from the situation.
“The most optimistic” of these — according to Le Figaro — is “Eurafrica”, which would see mass migration create a ‘welcoming’, multicultural Europe, which “would fully embrace being a ‘mixed-race land of immigration and interbreeding’”…..
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Hundreds of police were deployed after residents rioted and torched cars in Toulouse
following a police stop of a woman wearing an illegal full-face Islamic veil.
Meanwhile, Muslim advocacy groups that are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood serve as battering rams, beating into the minds of non-Muslims that they are “Islamophobic” for expressing valid concerns about the violence of Islamic supremacists and jihadis in Europe and North America. If these groups are genuinely interested in diversity, dialogue, tolerance, peace and secular government, as they claim to be, then they should be stating the truth that violence against unbelievers is sanctioned in Islamic law. They should then encourage the rejection of these calls for violence and demand that their coreligionists desist from persecuting Christians and other religious minorities, as well as from antisemitism, the rape of infidel women, and jihad attacks against infidels.
Gone are the days when the torture and abuse sanctioned by the oppressive sharia was found only in Islamic states. Now they are found in the West, thanks to opportunistic leftists chasing the Muslim vote. The story below will not make the front pages in the mass media, as it should. The one protest in Charlotte that led to the unfortunate death of an innocent person will forever take precedence over the hundreds of thousands of other innocent people who are killed or raped, brutalized, and tortured in the name of Islam.
The more Islamic supremacists are enabled, the more overtly violent they become.
“Riots, Cars Burned After Woman Ordered to Remove Full-Face Islamic Veil”, by Chris Tomlinson, Breitbart, April 17, 2018:
Hundreds of police were deployed after residents rioted and torched cars in Toulouse following a police stop of a woman wearing an illegal full-face Islamic veil.
The incident that allegedly sparked the riots took place Sunday after 5 pm when local police stopped a woman in the Toulouse district of Bellefontaine who was wearing a full-face Islamic veil, which is illegal in France.
Police asked the woman for identification and when she presented a poor photocopy of her government identification, they ordered her to remove her veil, broadcaster Franceinfo reports.
The woman refused to lift her veil and is said to have started screaming for help. She was then arrested and placed in the police vehicle.
Shortly after, around 30 locals arrived and attacked the police with projectiles, injuring one officer. The officers retreated and discharged their weapons, including a tear gas launcher, 18 times before they could escape the mob.
Police believe there may have been a link between the incident and the riots in Bellefontaine and the neighbouring district of Reynerie which erupted at around 8 pm.
Around 15 cars were torched by the rioters and 200 police mobilised during the riots which lasted several hours with some 300 tear gas grenades fired until calm was restored at around midnight.
Firefighters were not able to reach the scene until after 10:30 pm due to residents lighting fires on the road. The police station in Bellefontaine was also targetted by rioters.
“The clashes were extremely violent,” said Didier Martinez of the peacekeeping union. “My colleagues were very shocked, the events were very complicated to manage but they showed a lot of composure.”…..
The World Muslim Minorities Summit “aims to boost ties between Turkey and Muslim minorities under the motto ‘The Believers are but a single Brotherhood.’ In an opening speech, Erdoğan lashed out at the West for stoking anti-Islam sentiment in its bid ‘to impose its own ideology and lifestyle.'”
This is the simple but powerful tactic employed by jihadists seeking global expansion into the West: scream “Islamophobia” while working to expand the domains of Islam. It’s a win-win for Islamic expansionists such as Erdogan, who dreams of a revived Ottoman Empire. The tactic works in this way: the greater the violence by Muslims, the more jihad terror attacks and sharia enforcement there is in the West (and they’re on the rise since the hijrah into Europe began), the greater the pushback will be from those who strive to preserve free societies. The greater the pushback, the more jihadists (stealth and violent) will claim victimhood and charge non-Muslims with “racism,” “Islamophobia” and the like. The idea is to “cast terror into the hearts of disbelievers” (Quran 8:12) and then call them “Islamophobic” and “racist” when the disbelievers try to defend themselves. The Islamic supremacists also increase in rage and commit acts of violence in face of any resistance to their supremacy, and then blame the infidel for provoking them. Leftists always fall for this trick, accusing those who oppose the jihad of inflaming Muslims, as if they were incapable of civilized behavior and self-control.
Ankara has “stepped up rhetoric” against what Erdogan calls “rising anti-Islam sentiment particularly in Europe.” Erdogan threatened last year that “Europeans would not be able to walk safely on the streets if they kept up their current attitude towards Turkey.” Europeans are now not able to walk safely in the streets, because their governments have allowed in too many unvetted Muslim migrants.
Turkey’s “attitude” is what needs the adjustment.
On January 20 and 21, 2018, 90,000 Turkish mosques prayed Qur’anic “conquest” prayers calling on Muslims to be “ruthless against unbelievers” and for victory against the Kurds, right before thousands of Turkish soldiers were dispatched. Erdogan has also called for “an army of Islam” to destroy Israel.
It is Muslims who are attacking infidels, not the other way around. Erdogan is an instigator and propagator of the “Islamophobia” trick, along with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Muslim Brotherhood groups.
“Erdoğan slams Western countries stoking hatred against Muslims”, Daily Sabah, April 16, 2018:
The World Muslim Minorities Summit opened in Istanbul yesterday amid President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s strong criticism of the West’s anti-Islam sentiment. The four-day event, organized by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (DİB), brings together representatives, academics, experts and journalists from 100 countries where Muslim minorities live and focuses both on the internal problems of the communities and the challenges they endure in the face of Islamophobia. On the first day of the summit, the participants discussed the past and future of Muslim minorities and today, they will debate issues ranging from freedom of minorities to radicalization.
On the third day, problems regarding religious services and maintaining religious education will be discussed. The summit, the first of its kind, aims to boost ties between Turkey and Muslim minorities under the motto “The Believers are but a single Brotherhood.” In an opening speech, Erdoğan lashed out at the West for stoking anti-Islam sentiment in its bid “to impose its own ideology and lifestyle.” Known for his frank criticism of what he calls the hypocrisy of Western countries who are turning a blind eye to their histories of colonialism, Erdoğan said they wanted to stain Islam through “terrorist groups engineered to accomplish that.” The president said attacks against Muslims and refugees has become “an ordinary thing” in many countries championing democracy and law.
“Racists and fascist groups target businesses, homes and places of worships belonging to Muslims, particularly in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium. Muslim women are harassed because they wear headscarves, for instance, in France,” he said.
Erdoğan pointed to the multi-layered, multi-sided wave of attacks against Muslims in the post 9/11 period “through gangs with blood on their hands.” “Terror attacks by Daesh, Boko Haram, al-Shabab, FETÖ, etc. both harm us and give opportunities to anti-Islam circles to defame Islam. They ask: ‘How come Muslims do not shed blood? Isn’t Islam a religion of peace?’ They ignore the plight of Muslims and the slaying of Muslims by those groups. On the contrary, they hold Muslims accountable for these brutal murders. Most Western countries, in a bid to smokescreen their internal problems, stoke this fire,” he said. He lashed out at “seemingly clean” countries with histories of massacres and immorality. “I asked one of them in a phone call recently why they didn’t account for killing 5 million in Algeria,” he said, referring to a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Ankara has stepped up rhetoric against rising anti-Islam sentiment particularly in Europe and Parliament’s human rights committee launched a probe into Islamophobia on the continent amid reports that in Germany alone, some 950 Muslims and Muslim institutions faced attacks in 2017…..
Volume One of My Mohammad Cartoons will contain a hundred of my Mohammad cartoons, in color and black and white, as well as new, exclusive Mohammad cartoons for this collection, and a new essay by me on Why I Draw Mohammad. I will also include two of my most popular articles, My Name is Bosch and I’m a Recovered Muslim, and Calling Islam Islam. You can pre-order my book now, and I plan to have it ready for print one month from now, in mid-May 2018, after prepping the book for print and collecting as many pre-orders as I can to use for my print order. There is no book like it out there today, so you can own something very unique. I’m charging $20 for it, and $5 for shipping and handling. (See International options below for prices) Thanks for your support, and order My Mohammad Cartoons Vol. 1 below.
Dr. Assim Rahaibani, a Syrian doctor, has told journalist Robert Fisk, writing for the British publication, The Independent, that last week’s alleged chemical gas attack by the Assad government on civilians in Douma did not happen. The alleged chemical attack was the pretext for a combined bombing raid by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom.
“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred meters from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened,” Rahaibani told Fisk. “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.”
According to Rahaibani, “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.”
This was a video that was shown around the world, but Rahaibani explained what really happened. “Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia — not gas poisoning.”
The “White Helmets” described by Rahaibani are what most Americans would call medical “first responders.” Russia has charged that the Douma incident was “staged” by this volunteer rescue organization. Fisk noted that the White Helmets are funded by the British Foreign Office.
Americans have become increasingly skeptical of U.S. government assurances that Assad actually used chemical weapons “against his own people.” First of all, it is quite illogical that Assad would resort to gas warfare on civilians, when almost all observers believe that he is on the verge of victory in the multi-year Syrian civil war. Assad would have to know that the one thing that he could keep him from winning the war, at this point, is intervention by the British, the French, and especially America. And the only thing that would cause the U.S. public to support yet another military adventure in the Middle East would be gruesome pictures of the aftermath of just such a chemical attack.
In 2003, Americans were fed a steady diet of “information” from their government that Iraq’s dictator, Sadaam Hussein, was in possession or was developing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), such as chemical weapons, biological weapons, and even nuclear weapons, and that he was likely to use those weapons on American forces in the region, or he was going to give them to some Islamic terrorist group that would use them. Additionally, Americans were told that Hussein was a particularly brutal man, keeping “rape rooms,” and the like.
While Hussein was no doubt a brutal dictator, it is hard to argue that his removal from power has improved the civil liberties situation either in Iraq, or in the region. It certainly has contributed to the increased significance of the Iranians in the region.
President Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016, at least in part, because he condemned the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, based on the WMD claim, which U.S. forces were unable to find after the war was over. Now, Trump has been persuaded to bomb targets in Syria to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.
But did Assad really use chemical weapons? Very little evidence has been presented to prove that contention. In fact, it has been nine days since the alleged gas attack in Douma, Syria, and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has still not been given access to the site.
Russian officials have visited the site, leading Kenneth Ward, U.S. ambassador to the OPWC, to question whether the Russians may have “tampered” with the site. “It is our understanding the Russian Federation may have visited the attack site. We are concerned they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW fact-finding mission [FFM] to conduct an effective investigation. This raises serious questions about the ability of the FFM to do its job.”
Peter Wilson, the British ambassador to the OPCW, echoed Ward’s suspicions. “Since 2016, Russia has sought to undermine every OPCW investigation into allegations of regime chemical weapons use. Yet again, Russia is spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation designed to undermine the integrity of the OPCW’s fact finding mission.”
For their part, the Russians strongly reject such accusations. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that his government is not doing anything to hamper the OPCW. Instead, Ryabkov said the delays in the OPCW reaching Douma is because of “the illegal, unlawful military action” — the airstrikes conducted by the U.S., France and Britain last Friday.
Some local Arabs told Fisk that the Islamists had forcibly taken over Syrian homes to avoid bombing by the Syrian government and the Russians. The local population hates these radicals — the forces that would likely take over the country were Assad fall from power.
For more than a century, dating back to the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898, which led to a U.S. declaration of war against Spain in 1898, Americans have been persuaded to support military action by incidents in which the whole truth of the matter is disputed, e.g., Germans allegedly eating babies in Belgium before American entry into the First World War; the supposed attacks upon American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin; WMDs in Iraq; and other debatable incidents. Now, Americans are being told that a civil war in Syria is of vital interest to our country.
Perhaps the time has come to demand proof. As President Ronald Reagan said of taking the Soviets at their word — we should “trust, but verify.” Sadly, we need apply the same skepticism to our own government’s assertions before we launch bombing attacks inside another country.
In an extraordinary exchange, a BBC News host told a former Navy Admiral that he shouldn’t question the motivation behind military intervention in Syria because “we’re in an information war with Russia”.
Admiral Lord West expressed doubt that the alleged chemical weapons attack which led to air strikes on Syria was actually carried out by Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, asserting it “doesn’t ring true” and asking “what benefit is there for his military?”
“We know that in the past some of the Islamic groups have used chemicals, and of course there would be huge benefit in them labeling an attack as coming from Assad,” he added.
After questioning the impartiality of evidence presented by groups like the White Helmets and the World Health Organization, West revealed that he had been put under pressure before to lie about war.
“I had huge pressure put on me politically to try and say that our bombing campaign in Bosnia was achieving all sorts of things which it wasn’t. I was put under huge pressure, so I know the things that can happen,” said West.
The BBC’s Annita McVeigh then made the stunning suggestion that West shouldn’t be truthful and shouldn’t question the narrative behind the attack on Syria because his words might help Russia.
“Given that we’re in an information war with Russia on so many fronts, do you think perhaps it’s inadvisable to be stating this so publicly given your position and profile, isn’t there a danger that you’re muddying the waters?” she asked.
In that moment, McVeigh basically let slip that the BBC is just as biased as RT or any other Kremlin controlled outlet when it comes to acting as a propaganda mouthpiece for the state.
West replied: “I think the answer is, if there’s a real concern, let’s face it, if [Assad] hasn’t done it then that is extremely bad news. If Assad hasn’t carried out the attack, I think it’s just worth making that clear. I think our government’s policy towards Assad has not been clever since 2013.”
The former head of the British Armed Forces Jonathan Shaw echoed West’s concerns when he told Sky News last week that Assad had no motivation to carry out chemical weapons attack, before being abruptly cut off.
Have BBC and Sky News hosts been given instructions to dismiss any questions about who really carried out the chemical weapons attack?
It seems that there’s a definite split between former top brass and current legacy media talking heads when it comes to propagandizing for further intervention in the Middle East.
