Conspiracy Theorist Whackjob Eva Bartlett At It Again

Recently, Russian-backed propagandist Eva Bartlett wrote an article for RT news about the upcoming “false flag” chemical weapons attack in Syria. I have taken the time to debunk her article here.

In a move that was entirely predictable, the US administration is once again threatening to bomb Syria if there is a “chemical weapons attack”. This was entirely predictable because that chemical attack script has been read out, with salty crocodile tears, fake concern, and mocked indignation by US talking heads over the years – since 2012, in fact, when former US President Obama himself drew his red line on Syria.

The latest script-reader to toe the chemical hoax line is President Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, who on August 22, stated: “…if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time.”

Beyond the tattered veil of moral superiority that is US war propaganda, Bolton’s words were clearly a very public command to Al-Qaeda and co-extremists to stage yet another fake chemical attack.

In the interest of clarity, I have bolded John Bolton’s statement here. The seconnd bolded portion, wherein Bartlett states Bolton has given what is “clearly a very public command”, is just her conjecture and is in no part based in reality. She makes said statement in a very direct way, and again, has nothing concrete or flimsy with which to back it up.

Bolton’s statement was preceded by an August 21 France-UK-US (FUKUS) joint statement, likewise threatening further illegal bombing of Syria if a chemical attack in Syria occurred (based on evidence the US never has nor needs to reveal).

The evidence cited is easy to draw from myriad previous incidents where the Assad regime has been found guilty by world bodies of using chemical weapons.  Furthermore, the “FUKUS” acronym is not an actual acronym used by anybody outside conspiracy theorist Twitter. In fact, the acronym (if that were a real one) would probably be “FRUKUS”, not “FUKUS”, but most people say “Western states”. Bartlett tends to go with the more childish, silly statements because many of her readers are of that mindset.

Recall that the last time they acted on such a threat, in April 2018, the US and its interventionist allies didn’t even wait for the Douma lie to be exposed, let alone for any mythical evidence to materialize, before they illegally bombed Syria with 103 missiles. The bombings occurred before the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had a chance to visit the Douma sites in question.

It seems that FUKUS’ appetite for destroying Syria wasn’t satiated in April 2018, nor in the April 2017 bombings of Syria following unsubstantiated allegations around Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib.

We’ll let the United Nations explain this one away, with an excerpt from S/2017/904:

On the basis of the foregoing, the Leadership Panel is confident that the Syrian Arab Republic is responsible for the release of sarin at Khan Shaykhun on 4 April 2017.

Moving on to Bartlett’s next borderline-invented claim:

Bolton’s assertions are backed by the usual suspects of the corporate media, fake human rights groups, “media activists”, and individuals linked to NATO’s Atlantic Council war propaganda think tank.

The over two decades-long dictator of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Ken Roth – who couldn’t even discern whether a video was Gaza’s Israeli-flattened Shuja’iyya or Syria when he tweeted about it being Aleppo in 2015 – is re-beating the Ghouta 2013 dead horse to scare would-be humanitarians around the world. The Western narrative of events in Ghouta been widely-discredited by journalists, and by the so-called “rebels” themselves.

However, many people are rightly skeptical and disbelieving of the alarm cries, having seen this sort of song and dance before. The war propaganda heightened dramatically just prior to and during the liberation of eastern Aleppo and of eastern Ghouta, to name but two examples.

Again, we’ll let the UN debunk this one, this time via A/HRC/34/64 explaining the events surrounding the fall of Aleppo:

95. Resorting to a concerted aerial campaign coupled with ground forces that encircled eastern Aleppo city, government forces and their allies employed brutal tactics to force the armed groups to surrender. The siege simultaneously deprived civilians of freedom of movement and prevented basic commodities, including food and medical supplies, from entering the city. Widely used throughout the conflict, the
use of this “surrender or starve” tactic by the pro-Government forces has proven disastrous for civilians but successful for overtaking opposition-held territory.

96. While the deprivation of supplies might have ultimately forced armed groups to surrender, the achievement of this result was accelerated by daily Syrian and Russian air strikes, which claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed vital civilian infrastructure.
Chief among these were the bombardments that destroyed or otherwise rendered all hospitals in eastern Aleppo out of service by December. In none of the incidents investigated by the Commission were military targets identified as being present in or around the vicinity of a hospital, nor were warnings given prior to any given attack as required by international humanitarian law. Furthermore, the fact that the same hospitals were repeatedly bombarded within two specific time frames – late September to mid-October and mid-November 2016 – strongly suggests that pro-Government forces committed the war crimes of intentionally targeting protected
objects, medical personnel and transport.

97. In one of the most egregious attacks conducted during the period under review, a humanitarian convoy was hit by an air strike, which killed 15 aid workers and destroyed much-needed aid supplies. The means and methods employed and the circumstances in which the attack was carried out indicate that Syrian forces sought
to deliberately obstruct the delivery of humanitarian aid. Under international humanitarian law, aid workers enjoy protection and may not be made the object of  attack. By using air-delivered munition with the knowledge that humanitarian workers were operating in the location, Syrian forces committed the war crimes of
deliberately attacking humanitarian relief personnel, denial of humanitarian aid, and attacking civilians.

98. An alarming number of allegations of the use of chlorine were reported during the siege of eastern Aleppo. In at least two incidents, chlorine bombs were airdropped by Syrian forces, resulting in civilian casualties, many of them children. The use of chlorine, regardless of the presence of a valid military objective, is prohibited by
customary international humanitarian law as well as by the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical  Weapons and on Their Destruction, to which the Syrian Arab Republic is a party. The
continued use of chlorine by Syrian forces evinces a blatant disregard for international legal obligations, and also amounts to the war crime of indiscriminate attacks against a civilian population.

99. Syrian and/or Russian air forces pervasively used cluster munitions, which killed and injured civilians. Given the large number of sub-munitions that each cluster bomb releases, their use in such a densely populated area as eastern Aleppo city amounts to the use of an inherently indiscriminate weapon, constituting the war crime of indiscriminate attacks in a civilian populated area.

104. After the recapture of eastern Aleppo, the Government and armed groups reached an agreement that led to the evacuation of the remaining population. Under the terms of the agreement, which follows previous similar agreements, including those applied to Darayya and Moadamiyah in August 2016, civilians had no option to
remain. Many were permitted to move to western Aleppo, while others were transported to Idlib, where they live without adequate living conditions and in fear of future attacks. Such agreements amount to the war crime of forced displacement of
the civilian population.

While blatant war crimes may seem minor and insignificant to Bartlett, to most people they make for an indication of guilt and bad intentions.

Indeed, the AFP’s Twitter thread on Bolton’s threat is filled with almost-exclusively mocking comments about replaying the false flag chemical attack scenario, and other overused, unbelievable war propaganda. Likewise on NBCNews’ video of Bolton making the threats.

If we based all our foreign policy decisions on the comment section on NBCNews.com or AFP’s Twitter account, we’d all be as wildly-misled as Bartlett herself. One can see where her “journalistic” integrity falls by the wayside; it’s something akin to Edward Murrow reading bathroom graffiti at McDonalds and reporting it as government policy.

Doing the job of corporate media, others continue to pose valuable questions about this latest outbreak of propaganda on chemical weapons attacks.

Bartlett wrote this for a corporate media outlet, RT.

Chemical weapons accusations are among the most overused war propaganda tactics during the war on Syria. From late 2012 to April 2018, NATO’s mouthpieces have screamed bloody chlorine or sarin. But time and again, they’ve been revealed as intellectually-challenged, supremely-unoriginal liars, to put it politely. Less shrill voices have pointed out the many occasions where so-called “rebels” had access to sarin, control over a chlorine factory, and motives for an attack to occur, among other prudent points.

None of this is true, and none of it can be debunked because it has no grounds in reality whatsoever. Syrian opposition forces have never had access to sarin, and they have no motives to attack (themselves) with chemical weapons. Once more, Bartlett’s conspiracy brain is running away like a train down a mountain with nobody seemingly able to stop it. How many people it kills when it gets to the bottom is still to be determined.

Some of the more loudly blasted claims were: March 2013, in Khan al-Assal, Aleppo; August 2013, in eastern Ghouta areas; April 2017, in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib; and April 2018, in Douma, eastern Ghouta.

We’ll go over each of these lies one at a time.

Khan al-Asal/East Ghouta

128. In Al-Ghouta, significant quantities of sarin were used in a well-planned indiscriminate attack targeting civilian-inhabited areas, causing mass casualties. The evidence available concerning the nature, quality and quantity of the agents used on 21 August indicated that the perpetrators likely had access to the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military, as well as the expertise and equipment necessary to manipulate safely large amount of chemical agents. Concerning the incident in Khan Al-Assal on 19 March, the chemical agents used in that attack bore the same unique hallmarks as those
used in Al-Ghouta.

Khan Sheikhoun

(h) The sarin identified in the samples taken from Khan Shaykhun was found to have most likely been made with a precursor (DF) from the original stockpile of the Syrian Arab Republic;

(i) The irregularities described in the present annex are not of such a nature as to call into question the aforementioned findings.
On the basis of the foregoing, the Leadership Panel is confident that the Syrian Arab Republic is responsible for the release of sarin at Khan Shaykhun on 4 April 2017. 

As the Douma incident was never fully investigated by the OPCW or the UN, we cannot draw from their data on the subject. Their investigation was repeatedly vetoed and blocked by the delegate of the Russian Federation at the United Nations, thus holding the entire body hostage to the whims of the Assad regime and it’s Russian backers.

Of the Khan al-Assal allegations, Carla Del Ponte, a lead member of the UNHRC commission of Inquiry, stated that it was “rebels” which used sarin, saying: “I was a little bit stupefied by the first indications we got… they were about the use of nerve gas by the opposition.”

Actually, what Carla Del Ponte said before resigning in frustration due to inaction against war criminals was, “everyone in Syria is on the bad side. The [Bashar al-] Assad government has perpetrated horrible crimes against humanity and used chemical weapons.” This is far different from the excerpt Bartlett used, because once again, she is a propagandist and not an independent journalist.

A Mint Press News journalist who went to the areas in question wrote of speaking to “rebels” and their family members who blamed Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar for sending them weapons they didn’t know were chemical weapons and didn’t know how to use.

Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory outlet MintPressNews has been thoroughly debunked as a news source by Buzzfeed, and there isn’t a lot else to say about them.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote and spoke on the sarin allegations, noting (among many things) that, “the sarin that the Syria army has, has a different chemical component than the sarin that would be made by al-Nusra.”

As previously pointed out in this article, this statement is blatantly untrue and has been thoroughly debunked by the OPCW and United Nations.

Among the many questions journalists should have posed around the April 2017 Khan Sheikhoun allegations is the question of how we can trust any of the samples by the OPCW when clearly there was no chain of custody: the area is controlled by Al-Qaeda or groups affiliated, groups which have a vested interest in fudging results.

As noted in an article by Moon of Alabama, there is also a distinct lack of certainty around the Khan Sheikhoun accusations. The article further notes that in the OPCW report on Khan Sheikhoun, there are what they mildly dub as irregularities: the 57 cases of patients being admitted to hospitals before the alleged incident occurred, and the contradictory results of blood vs urine samples in “sarin victims”.

Now Bartlett, ever the conspiracy theorist whack-job, is insinuating that the OPCW is in cahoots with jihadists in Syria. Furthermore, Moon of Alabama is less reputable than Fox News, so once again Bartlett is proving her journalistic integrity with her choice of sources that are as unhinged as she is.

Following the April 2018 White House accusation that the Syrian government used sarin in Douma, and in spite of Damascus’ insistence on an OPCW investigation, FUKUS bombed Syria, including Damascus’ densely-inhabited Barzeh district, destroying a site which was involved in production of cancer treatment components, but not chemical weapons.

If Bartlett is truly concerned with the OPCW investigation, perhaps her Russian benefactors would be a better group to contact to protest to. After all, they are the party that prevented the OPCW from investigating Douma in 2018.  The air strikes launched by the US, UK, and France killed zero civilians, and their targets were all chemical weapons production facilities, not cancer treatment centers as Bartlett seemingly has pulled out of thin air.

In Douma, medical staff said that patients had not shown symptoms of a chemical attack. Douma citizens likewise said there hadn’t been a chemical attack. Seventeen Douma civilians and medical staff testified this at the Hague. Corporate media snidely dismissed these testimonies.

Some citizens, under duress in government-held areas and in the presence of government minders, have claimed there was no chemical attack. This is completely blown out of the water when one actually reads the OPCW reports from Douma, which Bartlett dismisses as jihadist propaganda (but for some reason she lacks the same critical thinking capabilities when quoting random civilians on the street).

The OPCW’s July 2018 interim report on Douma noted that in samples taken from alleged sites, no chemicals that are prohibited in the Chemical Weapons Convention were detected. The OPCW found traces of “chlorinated organic chemicals”, but not Sarin, as alleged by supposed expert Eliot Higgins and the White House, among others.

Eliot Higgins never stated that sarin had been used at Douma. Furthermore, Bartlett glosses over the fact that chlorinated organic chemicals had been found on bomb fragments at the scene, thus proving that chlorine was being used as a chemical weapon. 

Who benefits from these repeated allegations? Would the Syrian government truly have benefited had it perpetrated any of these alleged attacks? No. Would it have been logical for the Syrian president to have ordered such a chemical attack, knowing it would bring forward the wrath of Obama, Trump, and their allies? Do these allegations benefit the regime-change coalition? Yes.

True, Assad does not benefit from allegations. But he does directly benefit from the use of said chemical weapons on the battlefield. After all, if the US coalition is really intent on hitting Assad, they’ve had 5 years since sarin began to be used in the country, several glaring incidents to cite, yet have launched minimal, punitive airstrikes in response. One would expect, should those governments be actually engaging in a “false flag”, that they would have, you know, done something meaningful by now. Alas, they have not.

In their recent briefing report on the Douma allegations, the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media analyzed the facts around the Douma allegations (and previous ones), the discrepancies around the official narratives, and the murky details behind experts bringing us “evidence”, including one expert with potential ties to the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

The Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media is not a government or UN-affiliated organization, but is in fact a brand new (founded in 2018), unknown and untested collection of random university professors. This source, once again, can be written off as one of Bartlett’s zany conspiracy-minded examples.

Regarding the latest concerns by FUKUS about a chemical attack, I agree on one point: we should be concerned that there will be a new attack or staging thereof, but not by the Syrian government. As has happened so many times prior, a staged attack would be done by NATO’s tools in Syria.

In fact, Syrian media recently noted the likelihood that members of the White Helmets and Al-Qaeda in Syria recently transported shipments of barrels from a chlorine recycling factory near the Turkish border to terrorist-occupied areas of Idlib.

Here we see Bartlett attacking her favorite target, the volunteer rescue workers known as the White Helmets. Unable to combat their videos of the Assad regime bombing schools, hospitals, and markets, the regime has instead taken to slandering their name in situations such as this one. There is zero evidence of any chlorine being transported to Idlib for chemical weapons purposes. And it is important to remember that chlorine is often used in water purification processes. Thus, chlorine being moved into Idlib alone wouldn’t even be evidence of an impending false flag. Finally, chlorine would not make a sarin attack. Bartlett’s basic misunderstanding of chemistry has once again reared its ugly head.

If true, indeed strange activities for a “neutral rescue” group, and a worrisome setting of the stage for a new round of accusations.

What Bolton, CNN, or any other mouthpieces of illegal intervention attempts in Syria are avoiding mentioning is the Al-Qaeda elephant in the room: the designated terrorist group, which now goes by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), dominates Idlib. HTS supposedly “cut” ties with Al-Qaeda but still maintains the same ideology.

Envoy for the US-led coalition (pretending to defeat ISIS), Brett McGurk, even deemed Idlib “the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11, tied directly to Ayman al-Zawahiri (current #Al-Qaeda leader) & this is a HUGE problem.”

I don’t really need to debunk this one, she thoroughly debunks her second paragraph with her third.

Yet, CNN was just back in Idlib (having illegally entered, again), glossing over the Al-Qaeda factor, as predicted, and beginning, what will become, a nonstop stream of war propaganda focused on the city.

In fact, many on social media are predicting the recycled war propaganda memes we’ll be seeing more of soon from the regime-change coalition, including “last hospitals”, Bana al-Abed 3.0 child twitter accounts (Bana 2.0 accounts were created during the liberation of eastern Ghouta), and the latest emotive hashtag #EyesOnIdlib.

CNN is unable to get access to Idlib from the Syrian government. Sometimes journalists will break local laws to get to the truth. Bartlett would understand this if she were a real journalist. She is not. She goes on government-sponsored and guided tours of Syria and bases her opinions on those. The “last hospital” meme is a horrible one at best, as it mocks the repeated targeting of hospitals in Aleppo by Syrian and Russian forces (as documented above), and proves nothing more than “humans will rebuild their hospital when you bomb the last one, even if you keep bombing it.” Bana al-Abed has had the same Twitter account for several years now. Again, Bartlett is inventing facts to fit her narrative.

Days ago, HTS’ Abu Mohammed al-Golani spoke against the surrender of armed groups in Idlib. Another “Syrian rebel” in Idlib, an Egyptian Al-Qaeda commander, threatened Syrians, who might be considering reconciliation, with crucifixion.

It’s not only terrorists who oppose reconciliation. Western governments find that concept a thorn in the side of their intervention project. Reconciliation has brought peace and stability to areas across Syria, most recently Daraa governorate. When I went to Daraa in May 2018, terrorist shells rained down. Now, after a combination of military operations and reconciliations throughout Daraa, calm reigns, as in eastern Ghouta and Aleppo prior.

In this example, Bartlett mistakes ethnic cleansing of a neighborhood and the execution or arrest of all those who oppose the government as “peace”. In that sense, the Trail of Tears brought peace to the Eastern United States.

Yet, every time the process is beginning in a new area, terrorists shell humanitarian corridors, and Western talking heads squeal about unverified “atrocities”, turning wilfully blind eyes to Al-Qaeda and affiliates in Syria, and demonizing the Syrian and Russian governments for fighting terrorism in Syria.

The FUKUS August 21 statement also read: “We implore those countries to recognize that the unchecked use of chemical weapons by any state presents an unacceptable security threat to all states.”

I’m fairly certain I’m not alone in demanding the US and its allies be held accountable for their documented, unchecked and criminal use of chemical weapons on civilians around the world.

And there’s a little bit of unfounded whataboutism for the road! We hope you enjoyed this installment of “Eva Bartlett is an unhinged lunatic”, hopefully we’ll see you around next time!