We should never forget that all human deaths are tragedies. No human is perfect and none is completely evil. Even the most wretched, snivelling excuse of a human being you can possibly imagine – say Ian Austin – has known a mother’s love. Le Mesurier leaves a wife and children who will be mourning. We should not forget that.
Unfortunately he worked in a profession where you can very quickly move from an asset to a liability. Le Mesurier’s usefulness to Western security services, Israel and their Gulf allies came to an end when the jihadist headchoppers to whom Le Mesurier had been providing logistic support and invaluable propaganda, lost their last secure footing in Syria. That the white helmets worked hand in glove with the extreme jihadists, and moved out wherever they moved out, is beyond dispute as a matter of fact, whatever the state of denial of the mainstream media. That there is now nowhere in Syria that people can go around executing Christians with impunity, and simultaneously now nowhere that the White Helmets can operate, is not the coincidence the mainstream media affect to believe. Some of them possibly do believe it. As a wise man once observed, it is amazing what people can believe when their job depends on it.
Having stopped being useful, Le Mesurier became much more of a liability after Turkey took over further control of former jihadist controlled areas in Northern Syria. The chances of Turkey obtaining both documentary and first person testamentary evidence of the relationship between the White Helmets, the jihadists, and western and allied intelligence services increased substantially. Indeed I have reason to believe Turkey may already have done so. His potential liability to his former employers ratcheted up. This resulted in his death. Whether he was killed or took his own life from the resultant stress, I have no information at present.
As regular readers know I have excellent contacts in Turkey of precisely the right kind. Leading a life a great deal more complicated than just being a blogger, I regret that I have been unable to date to tell you the full truth of what I was doing in Ankara in December 2017, and probably will not be able to tell you for a year or two yet. I will now try to get further information from my contacts on Le Mesurier, but please understand it may not be instant.
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Hello, yes it was HMG. No other plausible explanation. They got the idea from the film “the whistleblower”.
One reason why he was kiiled is because he was a liability and another reason was he was useful in concealing infiltration.
In other words HMG gives the impression of an external Russian problem (throwing someone off a building) to conceal an internal one which is their fault because they enable such a situation by keeping their legs open to all that dodgy money.
https://www.gchq-gov.org/2019/11/11/djlm/
Incidentally HMG was also responsible for Salisbury. There is no other explanation
https://www.gchq-gov.org/2018/10/22/wsb/
thanks, but the abbreviation HMG is not obvious to a non uk person… and it isn’t revealed in the gchq links either…
Come on, james; Her Majesty’s Government.
No quite. But government is quite disparate. There is the civil service, intelligence service which forms part of the civil service and executive
Thanks for raising the problem, James. I struggle to understand good half of comments here, those with abbreviations 🙂
it’s not an easy task – to wade through a couple of dozen of google search results, trying to find the contextually appropriate one.
Just ask, Tatyana. Anyone who is a civil person will explain.
I sympathise, I have tended to check with:https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/HMG whenever I am confused by an abreviation, My prefered translations are Heavy Machine Gun and Holy Mother of God for HMG, but feel free to use whatever you may prefer.
I assumed when it was reported that Le Mesurier fell out of a window that this was not an accident, that he was a liability and the suspects were many, Craig has helped us understand the likely scenario, he is disarmingly frank sometimes and that is refreshing.
I bet you get different result in Google UK and in Google Russia.
just look at the screenshot I’ve made. The second link
http://prntscr.com/pwjdzb
Trying to decide if a Horny Mexican Guy may be responsible for Salisbury… You can imagine how easily it makes my day 🙂
thanks everyone, including bevin.. in fact, i am not used to reading the term ‘her majesty’s government’ any… it sounds like to weird anachronism to a 6th generation canuck who doesn’t hold a lot of value in this hold over from the past..
Throwing people from roofs
is an Islamic State thing.
Mainly as manifested by Sisi’s Egyptian government.
That’s as may be, but Islamic State didn’t invent the practice; flinging victims from high places to their death is an ancient tradition.
More recently, arranging for people to “accidently fatally fall” out of upper-story windows is definitely a US state-security tradition. Two notorious examples of such deaths by (denied) defenestration are James Forrestal, the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense, and Frank Olson, biological warfare scientist and CIA employee.
Maybe it woz HMG wot didn’t do it.
Loadza mafia. Daesh, invertebrates pointing guns in Istanbul. You just scroll your body up and do an 007 over the balcony.
007 times out of ten it doesn’t work.
“As a wise man once observed, it is amazing what people can believe when their job depends on it.”
One such wise man was Upton Sinclair and his original quote is notably more acerbic: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
And I am sure many people are going to queue up to work for the FCO and MoD now what with him the Skripals and Gareth Williams amongst others
“We should never forget that all human deaths are tragedies. No human is perfect and none is completely evil”
Those were my exact sentiments when I heard of the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Although in this case I am more confident that Le Mesurier is no longer with us
The pertinent questing here being, was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ever actually with us to start with?
Yeah, it’s a shame he died, he was a…..er…..a nice piece of work. If ever there were unlawful combatants it has to be grubby mercenaries. Then to create an outfit like the White Helmets which was really bad news must have made him a target of various enemy governments and intelligence agencies, and with friends like the CIA, Mossad and MI6 he was always on a short lifespan.
I can’t see a mercenary taking his own life, there’s no money in it, and he clearly wasn’t dumb enough to fall off his own balcony. I wonder if they broke his legs while he lay in bed to prevent him fighting back, then dropped him overboard.
I am reminded of two well-known quotations.
“He who lives by the sword dies by the sword”.
“Put not thy trust in princes”.
Unfortunate he knew too much and hmg did not want his story told.
He did well with the monies he received as ceo of the white helmet trust.
He was in the British army in the Green Jackets and saw service in Northern Ireland working with army intelligence. He also worked with Good Harbour in Abu Dharbi, and Olive in London. It appears that he knew Mark Urban, which could link him to Pablo Miller who also got an OBE for spying. Christopher Steele is there somewhere as well.
The Russians were not involved, it was the mi6 goon squad again, who the police cannot even touch. Good luck with your investigations Craig.
George. Is that Mark Urban of BBC Newsnight (ex army). I recall so many of his reports that pushed the war narrative.
Wikikettle,
Yup.
You are partly right but it was to conceal infiltration
There is no other explanation. Period
https://www.gchq-gov.org/2018/10/22/wsb/
Ooops. I am sorry I thought you were talking about the Skripals. I feel silly now
Just wanted to say your first paragraph cheered me up immensely. Poor old Austin, gently savaged by an Austen-like wit.
Unhappily Austin was I believe adopted and therefore perhaps rather less endowed with Mother’s Love than the average…
That is sad – I would not have posted had I realised. I know from family experience that sometimes it is too late for the adopting parents, no matter how loving and kind, to repair the damage already done.
But then it is also sometimes too late for the natural parents to repair the damage already done. By their own genes, in an unfortunate combination. From birth.
I hope and trust you are not speaking from family experience.
To some extent, David.
But then, inheritance is always double-edged. Excellent traits always come with others that are much less advantageous in a given environment.
To take an extreme example, sociopathy can be a strong survival trait in certain environments – whereas empathy can be a deadly handicap.
Seems there would be several Levels of evil.
I hope your research gets results.. Stay Safe.
Thanks for confirming intuition Craig. I wonder now if the US strike on Al Halabi’s house in Barisha was also part of this attempt to cover up the crimes of Empire in Syria, as I explored here:
https://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/syria-crisis/3650-al-baghdadi-killing.html
The house, built only last year, was just a few k’s from the Turkish border and the Bab al Hawa crossing, which has seen so much traffic of weapons and fighters. Look forward to your discoveries, impatiently.
The very FIRST news item I saw on his death was trying to link it to the Russians. Further articles were a LITTLE more reticent at saying this outright but still ensured that we were left with the linked thoughts of his death and the Russian accusation that he was a spy. The also ensured that we knew that the accusations came from Russia & Syria and failed to name any independent sources who were saying that the organisation was being used/abused for other more nefarious purposes. I say abused because I have no doubts that many involved were sincerely trying to do their best for those in need. But, like many charities and NGOs they were, at least, piggybacked for government and intelligence uses as well as photo ops to ensure we knew who the bad guys were.
Anyone NOW saying anything about the organisation is to be seen as ‘on the side of’ the Russians and Syrians and will be discredited.
Even IF the organisation was founded with the best of intentions governments would’ve infiltrated it. I’m reminded how the US found Bin Laden, through a vaccination programme by an NGO – thus causing distrust of these organisations and placing their volunteers at yet greater risk.
There is nothing to suggest this was anything other than suicide though. He was being treated for depression and his wife states no one else came into their apartment that night. This may be true but as we know it IS possible to induce a state of depression in anyone should you have the resources and wish to do so. I doubt we’ll ever know…
bin laden died round about Dec 2001.
Sounds right, Ralph.
Nicely stated tone of forgiveness and understanding conveyed here, Craig, and I think we all need more of that. We should never forget that we are all flawed at times, weak, and capable of terrible blunders.
The world and its complexities brings out the worst in so many people but maybe it’s worth remembering that nobody alive today designed or created it — we were all born into it and to a large extent we are all playing the hand that providence dealt us.
That said, it’s hard to forgive so many successive westerners who have contrived to make the near and middle east areas that resemble hell for those who had the misfortune to be born there. History, without any equivocation or forgiveness, will attribute all their meddling, the tragic consequences, and needless deaths, to a simple lust for oil and wealth.
We should probably be glad that the Syrian conflict seems to be petering out. Trump and Putin seem to have played big parts in defusing the situation. Credit must go to the Syrian people who stood by their government, for all that it might be flawed, and resisted western attempts to foment an overthrow and takeover.
The west will want to punish the Syrian people for that but the attack dogs will soon lose their patience and move on to their next victim.
I daresay Assad’s government is less flawed than those of so-called Western “democracies”.
Undoubtedly.
lysias
Clearly not the “right type” of democracy though, because they were one of the seven countries in five years which Wesley Clarke told us about. When the US sets out to democratise a country, it inevitably ends in chaos, death and destruction.
After hearing General Clark’s comments I wondered why the criminal Bush administration blamed its false flag New York attack on Iraq instead of Syria. Had they blamed Syria at the time they had the world’s sympathy, the coalition could have taken the country as a bridgehead into the Middle East from the eastern Med. Then if Israel pushed north through Lebanon they’d have had the whole eastern shore from Turkey to Africa. And Russia would have no Syrian port as it does now.
I can only think their greed for controlling Iraq’s oil blinded them to doing robbery better. Eighteen years ago Russia would have been in no position to stop the West as it does do now, and perhaps Russia’s progress could have been stopped altogether.
Like cancer cells, neocons and neoliberals are not known for their foresight and intelligence.
“We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.” 26/01/1998 – the usual suspects: wolfowitz, dumbsfeld, bolton, abrahams, perle etc – letter to clinton.
Michael. That’s a wet dream of the the Greater Israel supporter and fundamentalist Christian nutter that believes in The Rapture.
“When the US sets out to democratise a country, it inevitably ends in chaos, death and destruction”.
Understandably, since the USA itself has never been in the slightest democratic since its foundation – and before.
Noam Chomsky has often explained how the system – and the perversion of language – works. Notably in his book “How the World Works”, from which I take the following quotations.
‘[I]n a briefing for US ambassadors to Latin American countries in 1950, [George] Kennan observed that a major concern of US foreign policy must be “the protection of our [i.e. Latin America’s] raw materials”. We must therefore combat a dangerous heresy which, US intelligence reported, was spreading through Latin America: “the idea that the government has direct responsibility for the welfare of the people”.
‘US planners call that idea Communism, whatever the actual political views of the people advocating it. They can be church-based self-help groups or whatever, but if they support this heresy, they’re Communists’.
‘The terms of political discourse typically have two meanings. One is the dictionary meaning, and the other is a meaning that is useful for serving power – the doctrinal meaning’.
Thus “democracy”, “free enterprise”, “dictator”etc. “Democracy”, as used by Washington, means absolute and unquestioning obedience to Washington. A “crisis of democracy” means any risk of real democracy emerging. A “dictator” is any strong political leader who has his own people’s interests at heart and resists corruption by Washington’s money and influence.
Hatuey
The need to forgive individuals is an extremely desirable characteristic. But what we must not forgive or forget is the system that dehumanises and forces individuals, who are fallible and vulnerable into such situations. Unfortunately this system of forgiveness has not been the norm as seen by the retributions carried out in the Nuremberg trials and more recently in the targeted assassinations. The South Africans did their best to create reconciliation after a bloody conflict and succeeded to some extent.
But let us not just be smug and praise this system of meritocracy as long as it is serving our own personal gain.
SA, you seem to be attributing war crimes and the usual imperialist policies to the system we call capitalism. Real capitalism doesn’t condone such behaviour though. War crimes are part of any neo-liberal doctrine and correct me if I’m wrong but the system of international law does not accommodate these practices.
You can’t attribute abuses of a system to the system itself. You can’t attribute crimes to the justice system.
Meritocracy is a solid strategy for incentivising people and driving human progress. It also has the potential to create a fairer distribution of wealth both within and between states. If it doesn’t appeal to you, I’d like to know what you think is a superior system.
The system we have now is based almost entirely on luck and corruption. If we are going to replace that with something plausible that doesn’t involve singing kumbaya, I can’t think of anything superior to meritocracy.
The good news is that what I’m proposing is going to happen anyway, alongside the luck and corruption stuff. It’s happening. It works. It’s fairer than what we have ever had. And it’s growing.
“SA, you seem to be attributing war crimes and the usual imperialist policies to the system we call capitalism. Real capitalism doesn’t condone such behaviour though. War crimes are part of any neo-liberal doctrine and correct me if I’m wrong but the system of international law does not accommodate these practices.”
Well we are now going to have to understand what is meant by the terms used. A certain Vladimir Lenin spent some time on this, so as a shortcut I will only reference the title of his study “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism”.
One of the ways you talk about capitalism is in a static virgin and extremely righteous form whose main aim is to further human endeavour. But no such thing exists anymore, even if it ever existed, except as a theory. Monopoly, war, colonialism and imperialism, now morphed into neo-imperialism are just inevitable progressions of capitalism. You try to dissociate capitalism from war crimes on no basis whatsoever. Your attempts at whitewashing is an adoption of the ‘missionary position’ of the Victorians, to screw other nations under a sort of self righteous excuse of giving them better chances in life.
Meritocracy is yet another of those terms used to try and put a decent front to exploitation whilst patting yourself on the back. Why is meritocracy any different to any other exploitative system? I am clever, more resourceful, brainier, whiter, given god’s approval, you can substitute any of these attributes, and therefore I deserve to progress in life, but because you have no merits (unmeritocratic) you deserve what is coming to you. Why is that so different from the rule of the jungle?
You ask about what alternative system we should adopt. We have none, but that is not to say that what we have is the best. There are however principles that should be adopted in a to be formulated system which not exclusively, should include:
1. Consider people before profit.
2. Work for the many not the few.
3. Respect cultural differences.
4. Conflicts must be solved through a universal framework and not a power network.
5. Have an equal playing field especially where currency is used.
6. Public ownership of all monopolistic resources.
7. Abolition of usury.
8. Abolition of financialization including secondary trading of commodities.
9. Universal rights applied to all.
10. Abolish copyrights and patents on certain essentials that benefit the whole of mankind. Most of the current system based on these is absurd because nobody arrives at a certain discovery without others being involved. The system is based on a winner takes all and is not fair.
11. The abolition of weapons of mass destruction universally. If it is bad for one country to have them, it is bad for all.
Here you are, my manifesto.
And your concept of meritocracy is not new by the way:
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”
Just as you attribute abuses of systems to the systems themselves, you are attributing a plethora of things to my proposal that my proposal is intended to avoid and negate.
I was hoping you’d say more about Lenin’s ‘Imperialism’ essay. It doesn’t merit being called a whole book as it’s so small. By now you’ll realise that I’ve read it — I have, parts of it more than once. It contains some great ideas and principles, most of which were “borrowed” from Bukharin.
The system we call neoliberalism has at its core the potential to move beyond competition towards a system of cooperation. I’m not arguing that it has succeeded in that yet but who can deny that since 1945, military and to a large extent political rivalry between the traditional great powers (of primarily Europe) has ended.
That traditionally violent rivalry has been replaced with cooperation and a general acceptance of rules and laws in terms of access to markets, trade, investment, the movement of goods, services, people, and much else.
It is a huge success that a man or woman from say Glasgow can buy directly from manufacturers in say China and arrange for the safe unfettered delivery of goods across continents, pay for those goods, and trade them on, with a few mouse-clicks.
If you took the time to read Lenin’s ‘imperialism’, you’d be unavoidably impressed by the peace that has broken out in international relations that has made the sort of transaction I describe above not only possible but a common occurrence. I’m sure Lenin would be impressed too, even if it confounded his understanding of national and economic rivalries.
A helmet –white or any other color– is useless at such a fall.
Oh I dunno, seeing as he was trying and failed to have them resettled here, maybe a white helmet or two was invaluable in helping that fall.
Shatnersrug. No doubt they will be Chinooked to Libya, Yemen, Iraq….
Yes, but surely it’s a pity that no White Helmets happened to be lounging about below the window to catch poor Le Mesurier– or at least break his fall.
Yes it’s awfully sad a man has died.
Great that they beat the piss out of him and broke the bastard’s arms and legs before hurling off the balcony though, isn’t it ?
It’s just good old gang warfare. Le Mesurier knew what he was getting himself into. Pretty irresponsible of him to have children given that fact. Spies like us to think they’re nobly holding up our ideals but they are no better than (in fact some times even are) common drugs and arms smugglers. They just happen to work for the biggest rackets in the world.
Shoulda just been like James Bond in the flicks, then: love ’em and leave ’em. The one time Bondy made a mistake and married the girl, we all know what happened to her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNgw-TaiEuM
“Spies like us to think they’re nobly holding up our ideals but they are no better than (in fact some times even are) common drugs and arms smugglers.”
“What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx?
They’re not. They’re just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me. Little men, drunkards, henpecked husbands…civil servants playing cowboys and Indians trying to brighten up their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?” ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’, screenplay, 1965
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold
… John le Carré.
“Leading a life a great deal more complicated than just being a blogger, I regret that I have been unable to date to tell you the full truth of what I was doing in Ankara in December 2017, and probably will not be able to tell you for a year or two yet.”
Ooh-er! An international man of mystery, if not exactly a “grey man” 🙂
N- you should start your own web site/blog
True, all human deaths are tragedies and James Le Mesurier created a great many such tragedies, directly and indirectly, while he was alive and in a position in which decisions he made and actions he took resulted in extending misery, impoverishment, pain and chaos to thousands of innocent civilians. While his manner of death might have caused him unbearable pain and brings anguish, pain and an uncertain future perhaps to his family, perhaps it is for the greater good of humanity that he is dead before his time.
“The world and its complexities brings out the worst in so many people but maybe it’s worth remembering that nobody alive today designed or created it — we were all born into it and to a large extent we are all playing the hand that providence dealt us.”
Do Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell still qualify for this?
No Inquest again
Really? Why wouldn’t the Turks want to do an autopsy?
Iysias. I meant Inquest into his death back home in UK. A la lady who died of so called Nowayichocke
I see Wee Philip Cross ( Not his real name ) has been all over this one –
Former UK ambassador Craig Murray has flagged the fact that Wikipedia’s imperialist narrative manager “Philip Cross” has made dozens of edits to Le Mesurier’s Wiki page since his death.
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/narrative-managers-overdrive-after-death-white-helmets-founder?
Brianfujisan. Didn’t George Galloway expose Philip Cross and say he was being run by a Tory MP to smeer ?
Wikikettle
I’m not sure Who exposed P.C first.. But I remember Craig, and Clark..And i think Squonk .Being onto him. .From Craig’s blog alone..Who else..I forget..Mary, I’m sure..Been a while.
What I cant quite understand is if this person is not a straight/sincere operator on wikipedia, why is he not barred from editing entries.My impression that not just anyone can make or edit comments.
If it is some kind of clandestine smearing/misinformation operation why doesn’t Phillip Cross do more to remain concealed.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that the people who control Wikipedia are mainly concerned with truth and honesty.
They aren’t.
In my experience, Wikipedia is quite reliable for any topic that is not controversial or politically sensitive. For such topics, it invariably adopts the politically correct establishment view.
Thus people like Craig Murray, and anyone else who questions the establishment/government/MSM line, are maligned, misrepresented, and often virtually banned.
tom welsh-I do understand the nature of wikipedia. what I cant quite get is the ineptitude. Why stick withe same name, when, assuming there is connivance between intelligence services and wikipedia there is no shortage of resources. Are the intelligence services that stupid?
Wow. I’m late to bed. Had one too many to comment. But this is seriously exciting.
“Leading a life a great deal more complicated than just being a blogger, ..”
You are worth every penny of subcricpsion.
I say.
maybe i’m too callous, but it’s hard for me to see this death as tragic. the guy did a hell of a lot of damage.
What 007’s really do….
Not forgetting that Brendan Cox funnelled £500k to the White Helmets from the Jo Cox Fund.
Le Mesurier is remembered.
rehttps://www.jocoxfoundation.org/statement_condolences
Hardly any of the brown skinned people that have been killed, shredded and burned by the West are remembered though.
What a murky world we are inhabiting.
Mary
I wonder what the true death toll is since 2001, we will never be told, but it is enormous.
Certainly in the millions. I believe that over 3 million Iraqis have been killed, in one way or another, by the various US attacks and invasions.
Quite a symmetrical match for the over 3 million Koreans and over 3 million South-East Asians. In total, a great deal more than any estimate of the “Holocaust”.
To my mind one of the greatest mysteries of all is how the US government can kill over 9 million people, quite deliberately, without anyone in the West turning a hair. And if you try to raise the subject, people act as if it were you who is a weirdo.
As George Smiley put it ‘Yes, one does tend to forget natural causes’.
The organisation Le Mesurier “founded”, organised and promoted, has through its direct actions in Syria and through its extensive use in Western propaganda, has been responsible for tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths since 2013, because it has facilitated the ongoing terrorist insurgency and sabotaged attempts to negotiate ceasefires and peace agreements, in East Ghouta and Idlib, and in the south too.
It has also drawn in hundreds of thousands, or millions of “innocent/ignorant” but well-intentioned Westerners who support linked “medical” associations providing support to terrorist groups and denying treatment to Syrian civilians in insurgent occupied areas.
So sympathy of any kind for those who contrived this infernal scheme to push their own interests at any cost is misplaced; offered such sympathy they would no doubt say they have no regrets, and “the price was worth it” – but the price was paid by innocent Syrians.
Besides that, Mesurier was past his use-by apparently, so we should focus on the other criminals still involved in this cyber-war and efforts to bring them to trial and imprisonment. I’m afraid it’s better late than never, but earlier would have been better!
Thanks David. Exactly right. Rejoicing over someone’s death or gloating over the horrible details is not seemly, but I would not express sympathy when a person reaps the consequences of the choices he made which had such disastrous effects on the lives and life chances of others – including his own family.
I agree, Rose. My attitude is that I am sorry he had to die, but I am pleased that he is dead. The world is (microscopically) a better place without him.
As usual, David Macilwain hits the nail on the head.
Where would we be without our friends from the Antipodes? Has anyone news of Julian? He is always the first in our thoughts. Is there a God?
Mary, there is no god and there is no news (that I have read lately) about Julian, but something concrete happened today in the Australian Parliament. A Greens MP, Peter Whish-Wilson tabled a 200,000-signature petition demanding Julian’s safe return to Australia or country of his choosing. I was told about it by a Guardian reader and eventually found it here:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2019/nov/13/australias-population-can-be-bigger-alan-tudge-says-politics-live
mixed in with all the other guff that went on in parliament today. The move a few weeks ago by two MPs to set up a Julian support group among their colleagues seems to have gone nowhere which was to be expected.
In reporting the death the Guardian said the White Helmets had been subject to a Russian backed disinformation campaign and linked their previous material on the matter which said much the same thing but there’s this 2015 John Cantlie propaganda video which shows the White Helmets in the middle of Isis controlled Aleppo referring them to as the Islamic State Fire Brigade. https://youtu.be/eVQzkxqHVNY?t=481
Leaked MoD documents show that the Guardian belongs to the intelligence agencies and is a key player in their disinformation campaigns.
When someone had to go in Roman times, it was suggested they take a warm bath and open their veins (as reprised in Godfaterh II). In the 20th Century, it was whisky and a revolver. I guess nowadays, it’s jump off the balcony if his wife’s story is to be believed. Namely that the apartment had fingerprint identification entry, there was nobody else in the apartment and Le Mesurier was on anti-depressants as well.
Reasoning abstractly, I certainly agree that a death of a human being is a tragedy. But if you want a piece of russian philosophy, then…
Well, we would ask “а кто он такой по жизни?” *Who is he, what is his social function?* And knowing he is the founder if the White Helmets, most of us would probably say some polite words, because we do not say bad of dead people. But what we think to ourselves is “помер дед Максим, да и х* с ним”. *The man is dead, no regret*.
This one mans death is a statistic, not a tragedy, that tragedy belongs to the millions.
I didn’t celebrate his living, and I won’t be celebrating his death.._
Filthy business. I am sure the truth will come out once it is no longer relevant.
“The chances of Turkey obtaining both documentary and first person testamentary evidence of the relationship between the White Helmets, the jihadists, and western and allied intelligence services increased substantially.”
I don’t understand. Turkey was involved in the White Helmets from its start in 2014. This was back in the day when Turkey was channeling jihadis across their border into Syria by the hundreds of thousands. So it is absurd to imply that it is only in the last few days that Turkey has evidence of what WH were up to.
It is also a certainty that Russia/Syria would have had operatives on the inside of WH. WH operated large highly secure offices in the middle of Istanbul; they were not likely to be below the radar of any intelligence service.
(btw, I read that the Mesuriers had moved into their office building to sleep because they had lately felt unsafe in their home elsewhere. This would account for his corpse being found outside his office as opposed to his home)
“Selman Arslan, who worked as a take-out employee in Le Mesurier’s neighborhood, told Hürriyet daily that 20-25 people used to work in the building including locals.
IT WAS TOO MUCH SECURITY FOR AN AID ORGANISATION (and this is coming from a pizza vendor ffs), but thanks to the locals, we used to work with them, we used to take [food] orders. But they would never talk to us. They would never open the door without seeing who we were from the camera at the entrance. Also there’s another door after you open the door. That door works only with fingerprints,” he said.”
A waiter who works in a cafe right next to the office said that the workplace is extremely secure and it is not possible for an outsider to get in.
Fırat Bulut, a street worker who claims that Le Mesurier was his customer, told Milliyet daily that there were some noises heard in the middle of night.
“We came to our work at 09:00 am. When we researched what happened, we found out that there were some events that occurred in the night. He was our customer too. [We learned that] noises started at 03:00, and the dead body was found at 05:30 in the morning. At night some arguments were heard. And he was arguing with a woman,” Bulut said.”
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/probe-launched-into-death-of-former-british-military-officer-148565
“I don’t understand. Turkey was involved in the White Helmets from its start in 2014. ”
The Turks are burning the candle at both ends. If they can get some dirt on their Western “allies”, they will milk it for what it is worth, just like the Kashoggi murder. Now that the West is pulling out, leaving the Turks to pursue their imperialist ambitions on their own, the Turks are eager to blame Western imperialists for all that went wrong in Syria.
Mesurier must have had contacts with criminal gangs and jihadists of all descriptions to funnel tens of millions into the Syrian proxy war. Now that the funds are drying up, there must be plenty of unhappy thugs who are not disinclined to a bit of rough man-handling. He was a human being too, just like Bagdhadi, but when you get into that Jihadi business, you ought to know what you get into, and that you might not get out alive.
I feel sorry for all the innocent victims and refugees of the proxy war, but those who fueled the war with propaganda don’t deserve our pity.
Russia did it – the Heil. Of course they did!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7678641/Just-truth-brutal-end-quiet-British-hero-James-Le-Mesurier.html
A piece in the Guardian contains 10 mentions of ‘White Helmets’ just to ensure the readers get the message presumably..
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/11/british-founder-of-white-helmets-found-dead-in-istanbul-james-le-mesurier
There is also an article in the Sun which I will not link to.
To my surprise, most of the comments on the Daily Mail article seem to accept its gross distortions, blaming Russia. It seems that the NATO “cybertroll” brigades have been fully mobilised.
Of course, if the comments had been adverse, probably they would not have been published. How simply, when you consider it, to publish only a set of “made-to-measure” comments, while consigning all genuine (and critical) ones to the bit bucket.
“That the white helmets worked hand in glove with the extreme jihadists, and moved out wherever they moved out, is beyond dispute “. You might as well say that the Secret library of Daraya (see the excellent book by Mike Thomson) was an extreme jihadist operation because they had to fold up when the Syrian government finally took over Daraya, and the librarians fled to places like Idlib where there are jihadists.
The white helmets were a humanitarian operation whose head may well have been thrown off his balcony by Syrian or Russian agents. What else can you expect from the agents of repressive regimes?
let’s just ignore the evidence they faked war crimes by the assad government. humanitarian operation, jesus.
and that the Kurds prevented them from entering YPG controlled areas. The Kurds knew what sort of “humanitarian assistance” the White Helmets were providing.
“What else can you expect from the agents of repressive regimes?”
Precisely why most of us are sure the perpetrators work for the UK government (or some other NATO agency).
“What else can you expect from the agents of repressive regimes?”.
So if he was, as you appear to believe, simply the innocent and saintly founder of a humanitarian operation, what exactly would be the motive for having him killed? I suggest you try to identify a credible motive…’they are psychopaths who like to torture and murder people for the fun of it’ won’t suffice.
Emma Winberg is his widow.
Mayday Rescue’s Strategy Director
and
Skoll – http://skoll.org/contributor/emma-winberg/
Palo Alto California – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoll_Foundation
No show without Karen Pierce at the UN – ‘Today Karen Pierce, the UK’s representative to the UN, called Mr Le Mesurier a “true hero”, and said claims he was a spy were “categorically untrue”. The Istanbul governor’s office said “comprehensive administrative and judicial investigations into Le Mesurier’s death have been initiated”.’
James Le Mesurier: Family of White Helmets co-founder ‘still don’t know anything’ about mystery death
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/james-le-mesurier-family-of-white-helmets-cofounder-still-don-t-know-anything-about-mystery-death-a4285201.html
Karen Pierce has all the authority of an inadequate schoolteacher with children running amok, screaming and shouting and not listening to a word she says.
If Mark Urban was strung up in Malaysia for carrying drugs in condoms inside his stomach, she would still say he was a man of peace.
Lying abroad for your country is all very well, but le Mesurier was entirely equivalent to the INLA in Northern Ireland: a troublemaker seeking to overthrow legitimate regimes through terror.
Great. Now hopefully the massively inordinate amount of attention paid to the White Helmets (along with the endless recycling of allegations of media fakery, denialism of war crimes by the Assad government, and that most stupid of phrases ‘propaganda construct’) will die the death that’s been due for years.
The fact is, the White Helmets are just one example of Western support for jihadists in Syria, but because of Assad-supported propagandists like Bartlett and Beeley they get 99% of the attention. This whole sorry episode just reveals how dumb the conspiracy-themed news media are, and how they’ll just endlessly repeat war propaganda for the other side as long as they get paid for it.
As to the demonstrably false claims about ‘white helmets’ in Venezuela – that was such an obvious attempt to expand this conspiracist bullshit to other conflicts so Beeley could try to remain relevant and profitable. She made a bunch of claims about this which got recycled and taken at face value by a conspiracy media who gave up on facts a long time ago, but has since stopped pushing this theory after it became abundantly clear she was just making shit up and labelling anyone who wears a white helmet as some sort of covert CIA agent of influence.
Now please, everyone just stop talking about the White Helmets. There are much, much, much, much more important things in the world.
it will be easier to stop reporting on propaganda campaigns like that waged by the white helmets once the u.s. and britain stop financing and conducting them. if you don’t want to hear about reality, just skip that news.
Tom’s asking you and everyone else to ignore reality. I hope people will be gracious enough to do so.
Such as, Mr. Secker? (see what I did there?)
Actual propaganda operations, not ‘this guy stood up in an unusual way, FAKE DOCTOR! FAKE DOCTOR!’ which is what we get with critiques of the WH.
So the UN critique of the White Helmets was wrong to deem them to be a fake, child killing, organ trafficking propaganda outfit?
Show me this critique and I’ll tell you what I think of it. I doubt they used the same adjectives as you.
Tom
OK. And I’ll leave you to flag up the number of times they use the adjectives I used. To make things easier you have a choice of a written summary of the proceedings and the archived video of the actual proceedings.
https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2018/12/27/tv/media-ignores-un-investigation-into-the-white-helmets-crimes-syria-lies/
http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/security-council/watchbr%20/watch/roundtable-discussion-on-the-activities-of-the-white-helmets-organization-in-Syria/5982221816001/
Now please, everyone just stop talking about the White Helmets…
I’d love to follow your peremptory instructions Tom. Unfortunately, it’s a bit difficult as long as my news medium of choice, the BBC,* continues to give worldwide prominence to their five-bob propaganda videos that I could have knocked off in my bdroom in fifteen minutes and still had time for a session with my underpants round my ankles.
* Just being facetious. You would have to staple my knees to a chair and prop my eyes open with toothpicks before I would watch anything masquerading as ‘news’ on the BBC…
Bollocks
Lots of assertions, false equivalences and soothing nonsense but not so many facts or sources. I’d love you to demonstrate how Bartlett and Beeley received ‘99% of the attention’ despite their work sorely deserving it.
You’ve misread what I wrote. I said the WH receive 99% of the attention – I rarely come across anyone discussing Syria who knows the name of any other group that’s operated in the country in recent years.
Bartlett and Beeley are paid by the Assad government to cover up for his war crimes. They’re the equivalent of embedded reporters with US forces in Iraq. Just propagandists for war, nothing more. To call them journalists is an insult to actual journalists.
The White Helmets, Oscar for Most Publicised Propaganda Film, 2017. I take it Bartlett and Bealey arranged for that too?
Yes, there are more important things to discuss, but you just happen spend your time smearing the only two journalists to do any first hand reporting from Syria for the majority of the war. You don’t find that interesting?
They aren’t journalists and I’m not smearing them. They have received money and protection from the Assad government in exchange for access and reporting what Assad wants them to report. Just like an embedded journalist with US forces in Iraq.
Neither one have actually been to the areas where the WH operate, and one of them endorsed torture (but only when it’s Assad’s side who do it). Calling these psychopaths ‘journalists’ is an insult to journalists.
I’m convinced.
Can you point me to some specific examples when either lied for Assad as you suggest? Do you happen to know how much they were paid? How often? When? Their interviews in former ‘moderate rebel’ areas, some regarding the White Helmets, how did they get such a wide cross section of society to lie so consistently? Actors presumably. But is Assad writing the script or do they ad lib? How does it work? Does he email it? Do they make it up as they go? And why do they do it? I mean, of all the things they could be doing. I’m sure you’ve worked up a psychological profile by now. Will you share?
Many thanks in advance.
It’s strange that someone who has conducted careful and detailed research in the past would make a statement which is so obviously disinformation. Unfortunately It makes me question your motives and integrity..