Syria CW Infowar Latest Moves in Review

in review moves regarding the high-profile CW allegations of Douma, 2018 and  Khan Sheikhoun, 2017. I'm not that read-up on the news, so these may not be the best sources - more may be offered in comments below.
Here my comments
first Douma

Douma: an Emmy for NYT's Thought-Impaired Analysis -A few months back was the leak of a report by an OPCW engineering sub-team. A complete lack of an answer the challenge it brought - the OPCW's own suppressed science agrees with that of Russian scientists and all credible independent experts who like myself, who consider the actual details and show their work - as if to help erase that victory for truth, someone re-endorsed one of the worst efforts to support the fake narrative of the powerful, granting a News Emmy to the New York Times for last June's program "One Building, One Bomb." It's described as "the most definitive reconstruction" of the event, using amazing visual analysis to "cut through government denials to reveal how the attack took place and assign blame to the Syrian authorities." The NYT team here worked with Forensic Architecture and Bellingcat so all the genius wound up tripping over itself. This was an especially stupid exercise full of invented science that makes no sense. I could find several other examples if I reviewed it now, but here's a quick list of some of those I compiled earlier in a lengthy rebuttal.

- super-deadly dose, death in minutes - No. Everything known about how chlorine (rarely) kills argues against this. Maybe 1-3 people would die, probably in hospital after leaving this site. Chlorine is not a nerve agent, does not cause instant death, paralysis or impairment, just a lot of corrosive irritation and a desire to leave. These people appear to have died suddenly while doing bizarre things, or to have died at unknown speed in some gas chamber before their bodies were dragged into place here. I've always suspected the latter, and deeper research suggests more and more to be the case.

- corneal burns - No. The "opacity" cited is from being dead. It's as standard as rigor mortis. They suspiciously LACK the redness of corneal burns you'd expect from chlorine or other caustic agents. Still, it seems they were exposed to a caustic agent...

- grid pattern on the cylinder's side means impact through the metal grill - No. It would mean the thing was laid sideways like a sausage on that grill, while its bars were heated red hot to get the lines "seared in" on the side. NYT fake experts need to go to a barbecue someday and try to think that out. Do the grill marks on those hot dogs prove they flew lengthwise, like little meat missiles, crashing right through the grill?

- frosted cylinder - No. Malachy Browne at least proudly posted the image at right following supposed frost on the top of the cylinder at location 4, lasting for days after the event, including where someone wiped it with their hands and it never re-frosted. That's clearly settled dust, from the impact or - considering the many, many problems with this scene and the precedent set at loc. 2 - just sifted on top for realism. There's clearly a white dust coating the whole bed area, not just the cold metal of the cylinder. And as anyone on that team who actually looked into this auto-refrigeration might know, it happens only on the parts of the metal in contact with the cold-boiling liquid gas inside - the lower half, then a shrinking portion of the underside as it slowly boiled away trough the open valve or whatever breach there is.

The cylinder at location 2 is frosted only on a small part of its underside, as the same NYT report times it abut 10 pm  - some 2-3 hours after the attack it's close to empty. At loc. 4 the valve was intact, might have a hairline crack, and there are signs of major chlorine release, besides additional liquids - but it never seems to be frosted, was noted as half-full and NOT leaking when inspectors went (noted by Sander H), suggesting any release here was after someone opened the functional valve and then closed it again. And anyway, if that were frost it would be on the underside, you morons.

- black rust from chlorine - No. Black rust can happen in low-oxygen environments, underwater, on the steel inside the concrete on bridges, etc. No examples of prior chlorine attacks show a black rust, just the usual orange kind, on bare metal. We see that in Douma as well. Here the "rust" is seen on the intact yellow paint, which doesn't "rust" at all. And it looks like the black soot everything below the cylinder was coated with. That's clearly from a fire deliberately set atop the rubble (so the after the alleged cylinder impact), and might be a clue to the staging of the scene. But NYT, Bellingcat, FA, et al. totally missed it.

- missed: besides all the basic issues about logic, timing, and motive that always argued pretty strongly against government guilt: actual deaths needing another explanation, specific and unusual signs of their death that also need special explanation (in progress) - details large and small proving the cylinders did not cause the damage. Here again is a decent view from above and then below the impact point.

"One building, one bomb," yes, or maybe a mortar shell. It hit that upper left corner and detonated, sprayed shrapnel all around the balcony, impacted the floor of it first with its blast wave, hurling the concrete and rebar inward. Also, someone laid a gas tank at the same spot later on, and shoddy journalism helped them pass of that cheap trick, and THAT is what gets rewarded around here. But news Emmies aren't about truth but about that "news" thing - here it's assured authority, distracting computer graphics, dark, though-simulating mood music, and most importantly a "plausible" or politically acceptable conclusion in line with the accepted findings of controlled agencies so far. Bad news: Someone gassed babies and other civilians in a horrible manner and got away with it. Eh. Go ask Madeline Albright about the kind of hard choices we have to make to do the amazingly righteous stuff we do in the world.

KS liberated, Grim Discoveries

Syrian government force finally re-reconquered the city from HTS militants by August 22, ending a five-year occupation (Al-Masdar). Syrian and Russian officials inspected the site of the cave "hospital" from the 2017 videos - where people were left dying in the mud - and found attached a sprawling underground base, they say, considered adequate "for stationing 3,500 terrorists," with various facilities including propaganda "studios." Some discarded weapons were found, along with "military equipment, helmets and gas masks" and flags and uniforms of the defeated militants. (Fars News) RT showed some video footage of the tunnels, along with apparent jail cells showing squalid conditions, and women's clothing left behind (RT video set to 1:10 to show the same well-known exterior). This is all allegedly from just behind where those women, children and men were seen dead and dying, some later developing head wounds, some sporting them already.

No word on gas chambers being found on this site, but it's not clear they've found everything nor that this part would be done right here. The number of loaded trucks involved does still suggest gathering from somewhere else within short driving distance they've still never shown us.

New Info on Staging of CW Attacks with Murdered Hostages?
The same recent Fars News article cited above adds:
"In a relevant development on Wednesday, Director of the Fund for Research of Problems of Democracy Maxim Grigoryev stated that members of the so-called civil defense group White Helmets have deliberately executed women and children for the purpose of disseminating false information about the situation in Syria."
...
Grigoryev highlighted that White Helmets, on certain occasions, have used the bodies of hostages executed by terrorists on their territories to take photos and make video records of a staged chemical attack.
“Some of them, including women and children, were deliberately executed for the purpose,” he added."

The basis and veracity of these exact claims is unclear at the moment, but of course I've long suspected the gist of the allegation (managed massacres of captives) is true, and that there is valid evidence around, some of which I find, some more of which Grigoriev's team might have just found.

KS: Postol - Chen Critical Analysis Derailed:
An anticipated mainstream journal publication of a report co-authored by MIT professor Theodore Postol had its publication postponed, maybe cancelled. Science Magazine reported on this story:

"Now, a manuscript questioning that conclusion has caused a heated dispute among U.S. scientists. Until this week, the paper was scheduled for publication by Science & Global Security (SGS), a prestigious journal based at Princeton University. But as Science went to press, SGS’s editors suspended publication amid fierce criticism and warnings that the paper would help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Russian government."

Before, the journal had noted controversy existed, but "the scientific community has well-established practices for dealing with this challenge." But on 24 September, they mentioned "a number of issues with the peer-review and revision process" requiring they put it on hold to review those issues.

This comes after a concerted effort by regime-change activists to pressure SGS to refuse publication, raising concerns if their political pressure caused the journal to cave in.

The Bellingcat critique cited by Science Mag raises a valid point on lack of usual damage - Postol argues rebel rockets just don't fragment well, so they're pretty useless. He didn't seem to consider it was a non-explosive chemical rocket as I've always suspected.

Supposed expert J.P. Zanders' critique that Syrian sarin was used is faulty, based on a faith that past use as all by Syria. But that was always circular, accepted based on prior believed use, never on established fact. Or IF this is the real recipe Syria used, and not just the one that keeps turning up, he ignores that recipes can be replicated by people with a more rational motive than Damascus would have.

Still none of these critics can find anything but alibis in the radar record (right), and they all ignore key facts like that the observed wind was opposite of that needed for the allegations to work. (below, my classic wind graphic for upper-level winds - ground level is more westerly (to the east). Anyone who thinks this must be or can be shown wrong, be sure to check here first, and if you still feel that way, bring it there.)

CW expert and regime-change activist Gregory Koblentz "says Postol has disregarded overwhelming evidence and has a pro-Assad agenda," Science reports, and warned with some telling hyperbole "The paper would be “misused to cover up the [Assad] regime’s crimes" and "permanently stain the reputation of your journal."" To "cover up" "crimes" that were just bogus accusation to begin with, by demonstrating that they were bogus, is not an ethical lapse not something that should harm anyone's reputation. Mr. Koblentz probably has no special reason to be so sure his own obvious anti-Assad agenda is based in fact rather than just a politically convenient narrative that's been steered to emerge. He's a hypocrite.

But all these critics may have varying points. I'm not sure how to "properly" judge a scholarly paper, but I've looked at the Postol, Chen, et al. report and it seems to have some logic issues (at least the debatable answer to lack of fragmentation, as noted above, the insistence the metal fragments must be from the weapon used, and must be some kind of pipe or tube). Working alone these last years Postol's output is rather poor and error-prone, to the extent I've looked at it. Working with Richard Lloyd in 2013-14 the team output was excellent. With others, Goong Chen and his team, it seemed on quick review they came out somewhere in the middle.

I humbly suggest from my corner we take advantage of this pause. That exact paper should be cancelled, but considering the complexities, a slot should be left open. Perhaps Mr. Chen could lead a revision of the findings for a better product with no logical or factual errors, just political ones. That could be the test; as it stands, it's hard to separate political agendas from genuine technical issues. It seems from my end the truth tends to help Syria and Russia in the way Mr. Koblentz suggested Postol's paper would, and could be blocked for that reason alone. Is that the case here? I wish I could be more clear on that question.

KS: Bellingcat's Dying M4000 Narrative
Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins was excited recently to solidify some fragment IDs they made last year, comparing scraps from the Latamnah and Khan Sheikhoun sarin attacks in March and April 2017 to a Syrian-made M4000 chemical bomb. This is taken as proving Syrian forces dropped that bomb from a jet that must have been over the town somehow, and ignores the possibility the pieces are planted. But the new twist is an old example of an M4000 seen in 2013, and then another from 2014, being noticed and brought to compare - the first visual comparisons possible so far. Neither of these, he thinks, was used for CW, both of them likely being re-purposed for conventional explosives (which he says Syria has claimed and which I don't doubt).

But in the 2017 cases, sarin turned up, so that would be the M4000 doing its original job. If that's what these scraps are from, and if they relate to the attack.

An earlier March 24 attack … did the M4000 turn up there too? I'm not so read up on that one, but it's thought to have caused a doctor to die the next day after a simple chlorine attack on the 25th. It went totally unreported at the time, but later had reports lodged, and samples gathered 10 months later that tested positive for intact, non-degraded sarin - meaning it was introduced to the source material probably just weeks earlier, not 10 months earlier.

The 2013 M4000 is said to fall from a jet ("gift of Mig") and landed near fighters in the southern Damascus suburbs, with no visible damage besides some mild denting of the tail assembly. This suggests it landed on its side, likely tail-end first, after a short and unstable fall, from maybe 50 meters up? Maybe at an angle, arcing in after it was hurled with some crude catapult? Or maybe I'm under-estimating the damage and someone dropped it off the bed of the delivery pickup truck? To me it looks more in that range than any range of plausible aircraft altitudes. Here it is (bottom) compared to the broken and distorted parts found at Latamnah.

Allegations: Both of these fell from jets and landed. Neither detonated with powerful high explosives. Aside from perhaps the drop altitude, no difference is proposed besides one having a small CW dispersal charge triggered upon impact. The 2017 story is debatable, likely involving high-explosives and thus ruling out sarin. But the 2013 story is out. If it makes no sense, it's not true. And if it's not true, wonder why they don't tell us the true story of how militant got at least one copy of a M4000 to play around with.

I've never been one to doubt that identification (see Postol-Higgins debate post), and I'm not about to start now. Others insist on challenging it as if it were central, as if it has to be from the weapon used and can't just be planted to sow a bogus story. But these things have a way of being in bogus stories. I was working on this subject is a little more detail for a post of middling importance I may not complete on "The M4000 distraction." If this seems to be needed, I'll finish it. In the meantime and in case, my advice is quit doubting the ID unless you can find a VALID reason, neither fully accept nor reject it, and just focus on the follow-up question: "if it were M4000 scraps, so what?" As Charles Wood proposes:
"In a spectacular own goal, Higgins has 'disclosed' that Syrian terrorists have long held bomb parts that could be used to fake the Khan Sheikhoun sarin bombing.
That's not to say an M4000 was even used, just that the parts in the crater are 'consistent' with Higgin's bomb parts."