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Sunday, May 7, 2017

Chomsky and the Syria revisionists: Regime whitewashing

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad recently published this important two part critique of Noam Chomsky. Idrees Ahmad is a lecturer in digital journalism at the University of Stirling. He is the author of The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War, and is currently writing a book on the war of narratives over Syria. The New Arab just published:
Chomsky and the Syria revisionists: Regime whitewashing

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
5 May 2017

This is Part I of a two-part article examining Chomsky and the Left's relationship with Syria. Read part II here.

Early on the morning of Tuesday 4 April when General Mohammed Hasouri of Syria's Air Force Brigade 50 prepared his Sukhoi Su-22 for take-off, he may not have known that in the age of satellites and smartphones, crucial details of his flight would be recorded.

The jet's communications were intercepted by Syria Sentry spotters when, using the call-sign "Quds-1", it lifted off from al-Shayrat airbase at 6:26 am local time; CentCom recorded its flight path on its bombing run over the Idlib countryside; and, 12 minutes later, when it delivered its lethal payload on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, multiple witnesses reported the strike, posting videos online (which have since been verified and geo-located.)

A comprehensive Human Rights Watch report has since confirmed that the regime was responsible for this and at least three other chemical attacks since December as "part of a broader pattern of Syrian government forces' use of chemical weapons".
The attack killed 92 people and injured many more. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) found the symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent; the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found "incontrovertible" evidence that the agent used was sarin; and, after testing samples of the chemical agent, the French government concluded that the attack was perpetrated by the "Syrian armed forces and security services". More...
Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

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