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Thursday, July 11, 2019

Why Is Russia making war on the OPCW now?

Russian/Syrian is carpet bombing of Jisr al Shoghour today
First reports speak of 5 killed, 10 wounded.
This is what the OPCW "leak" story is meant to distract us from.
Russia claims that it is the United States government, and not the Syrian government, that is responsible for the chemical attacks that have taken place in Syria in recent years. According to the Syrian Arab New Agency (SANA), Russia will be presenting new evidence to back that claim on Friday. AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA) is reporting:
Moscow to present additional data on alleged chemical attack in Syria's Douma

11 July 2019
Source: SANA
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov announced that Moscow on Friday will present additional data on the alleged chemical attack in Douma City.

”We will soon present additional data gathered by our experts and social activists regarding the Douma incident. As I see it, a relevant presentation will be held in the Hague tomorrow and we will present new data on July 12 and we will invite journalists,” Sputnik Agency quoted Ryabkov as saying in a statement to journalists.

The US through its tools of terrorist organizations and members of the so-called “White Helmets” stage false flag chemical attacks to indict the Syrian Government in an attempt to prevent the inevitable end of terrorists in the face of the Syrian Arab Army and to justify the foreign aggression on Syria. More...
This promise of new allegations from Russia came the day after Anthony Deutsch of Reuters reported that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) would be sending the newly created Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) to Syria to determine who was responsible for nine recent chemical attacks in Syria, including the one that took place on 7 April 2018 in Douma:
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A new team established by the global chemical weapons watchdog to attribute blame for the use of banned munitions in Syria will investigate nine alleged attacks during the country’s civil war, including in the town of Douma, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters.
Both Russia and Syria opposed the formation of the IIT, or any fault finding mission.
While consistently claiming that the US lead terrorist jihadists are behind every chemical attack in Syria, they have just as consistently opposed any investigation of these attacks with the power to place blame. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of member states to the OPCW voted to give the IIT the power to find fault. Now it is beginning its investigations and has named the CW attacks it will be investigating. And now the Syria government is refusing visas to the IIT investigators, and is refusing to turn over relevant materials to them. This would seem to be very strange behaviour to come from a government that insists none of the evidence should indicate it was responsible for any attack.

This is one reason Russia, and its minions, have been making war on the OPCW. They need badly to discredit it ahead of any finding of the obvious, which is that the same war criminals that have been massacring civilians from the air with conventional explosives, have also occasionally done the same by dropping chemical weapons on them.

The Assad regime turns to chemical weapons because despite claims to the contrary, it is not winning without them. Ever since 21 August 2013, these minions have been claiming that Assad had no use for CW because he was winning without them. Six years running, longer than WWII! That has been their mantra: “he's winning without them.” But even today, even in the last holdout province of Idlib, he isn't winning, at least not easily, even with them, and very heavy Russian carpet bombing. He uses CW because it is a terror weapon par excellence, because it kills the little children first, and because it gets at those hiding in the basements from his bombs.


There is another reason why Russia is feeling none too friendly towards the OPCW these days. The OPCW is questioning whether the Assad regime has been honest in declaring and giving up all of its chemical weapons. One of the simplistic counter-arguments to be heard from the “Working Group,” and other Assad apologists, is that the regime couldn't possibly be responsible for chemical weapons attacks since it gave up all its CW years ago. They never entertained the possibility that mass murderers could also be liars, but The Arab News reported Tuesday that it appears Assad hung on to a hidden stash:
Top watchdog voices concerns over Syria’s chemical weapons

THE HAGUE: Member states of the global chemical weapons watchdog voiced concern Tuesday that Syria may still possess such weapons after inspectors discovered traces of what could be a byproduct of a nerve agent or poison gas at a Syrian research facility.

In a report submitted to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ Executive Council, the organization’s director-general said the traces were found late last year at Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center in Barzah. More...
Russian Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Georgy Kalamanov, claimed recently that the Assad regime couldn't be responsible for any of the recent chemical weapons attacks in Syria because it “has declared and destroyed all its chemical weapons arsenals.” So, like the Trump cabal, they are now refusing to co-operate with what they call “endless” investigations. According to the Russian News Agency TASS:
A number of Western nations have repeatedly accused Damascus of using chemical weapons, providing no evidence to support these allegations. The Syrian authorities have repeatedly denied the accusations. Russia is against additional inspections in Syria to verify the destruction of chemical weapons
Only one of the above statements is not true, which ain't bad for Tass. There has been plenty of evidence.

Director-General Fernando Arias also reported that Syria has refused to issue a visa to the coordinator of an OPCW team that aims to attribute blame for chemical weapons attacks in the country.

Many of these issues came up for discussion at 91st session of the OPCW Executive Council, which was held 9-12 July 2019 in The Hague, the Netherland. At it H.E. Sabine Nölke, Permanent Representative to the OPCW from Canada, issued an insightful statement about the current controversies whirling around the OPCW. In it he said:
Canada is deeply concerned by recent reports of the Declaration Assessment Team (DAT) that Syrian authorities have removed and destroyed equipment and munitions that the DAT had requested be preserved for further assessment. Samples of a chemical detected at Barzah were identified by two separate designated labs as a likely by-product of a Schedule 1 chemical. This adds to the growing evidence of deliberately false declarations by Syria, destruction of possible evidence, and the alarming likelihood that Syria continues to possess Schedule 1 chemicals. Continued possession of these chemicals by Syria lends additional credence to existing allegations of their use by the regime.
I'd be curious to hear the “Working Group's” apology for Assad on this question. Destruction of evidence is not the act of an innocent party.
Beyond the submission of an incomplete or untrue declaration, the Syria continues to obfuscate and present obstacles to undermine the work States Parties have instructed the OPCW to carry out. Syrian authorities have refused to issue a visa to the Coordinator of the Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) to enter the country as a member of a delegation from the Technical Secretariat. This violates Article VII, paragraph 7 of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which obliges each State Party to “cooperate with the Organization in the exercise of its functions and in particular to provide assistance to the Technical Secretariat”. We urge Syria to fulfill its obligations under the Convention.
The Canadian representative then goes on to speak of Ian Henderson's “Executive Summary” of a paper none have seen:
The Director General informed the States Parties on April 28th that an OPCW internal engineering report, produced as part of the work of the Fact-Finding Mission on Douma, had been leaked to actors outside the organisation. The FFM considered the report in question along with all available information it examined, weighed and deliberated on. Based on the overall facts and evidence collected and analysed, the FFM found that there are reasonable grounds to conclude that molecularchlorine was used as a weapon in Douma. Since the leaked engineering report also addressed attribution questions outside the mandate of the FFM, the DG asked that it also be transferred to the IIT for consideration in its ongoing work.
I emphasised that part because I had also reached the same conclusion, Henderson had submitted it to the wrong mission, possible because he already knew Syria would refuse to recognize the IIT.
Canada remains steadfast in its confidence in the professionalism and integrity of the FFM and its methods.However, Mr. Chair, we are unsettled with the leak of official confidential documents from the Technical Secretariat. The DG has indicated that an investigation is underway to determine how the breach occurred and to ensure that it does not happen in the future. We are all aware that there have been serious attempts to compromise the information security and confidential material held by the Technical Secretariat, including by States Parties in this room. The Organisation, its current and past staff, and States Parties are all bound by the OPCW’s Policy on Confidentiality and have a responsibility and an interest in preserving internal information. We support the DG for his management of this issue.
He probably was referring to the hacking attempt mount against the OPCW in The Hague by the Russian GRU. Was he also thinking of the “leaked” Henderson note?
In a similar vein, we are watching with concern a growing coordinated effort to undermine this organisation. We have seen efforts from a number of actors to conduct smear campaigns against individuals in the TS, circulate false information and attempt to discredit the OPCW as an institution. Canada, like most of us here, is bound by facts, evidence-based decision-making and the rule of law. We will not be distracted by efforts to draw attention away from the use of chemical weapons, or the use of non-facts and non-science to call into question the scientific evidence and investigation into these crimes. We will continue to call out disinformation where we see it, and to counter it with the facts and the truth, which underpin rules-based international order.
This is how Sabine Nölke called out Russia's war on the OPCW just a few days ago.

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

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