Chris Hedges's Blog, page 609

North Korea Says it Has Suspended Nuclear, Missile Testing

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Saturday it has suspended nuclear and long-range missile tests and plans to close its nuclear test site.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the country is making the move to shift its national focus and improve its economy.

The North also vowed to actively engage with regional neighbors and the international community to secure peace in the Korean Peninsula and create an “optimal international environment” to build its economy.

The announcements came days before North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is set to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in in a border truce village for a rare summit aimed at resolving the nuclear standoff with Pyongyang.

A separate meeting between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump is anticipated in May or June.

The North’s decisions were made in a meeting of the ruling party’s full Central Committee which had convened to discuss a “new stage” of policies.

The Korean Workers’ Party’s Central Committee declared it a “great victory” in the country’s official “byungjin” policy line of simultaneously pursuing economic and nuclear development.

The committee unanimously adopted a resolution that called for concentrating national efforts to achieve a strong socialist economy and “groundbreaking improvements in people’s lives.”

“To secure transparency on the suspension of nuclear tests, we will close the republic’s northern nuclear test site,” the party’s resolution said.

The agency quoted Kim as saying during the meeting: “Nuclear development has proceeded scientifically and in due order and the development of the delivery strike means also proceeded scientifically and verified the completion of nuclear weapons.

“We no longer need any nuclear test or test launches of intermediate and intercontinental range ballistic missiles and because of this the northern nuclear test site has finished its mission.”

North Korea’s abrupt diplomatic outreach in recent months came after a flurry of weapons tests, including the underground detonation of a possible thermonuclear warhead and three launches of developmental intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to strike the U.S. mainland.

Some analysts see Kim as entering the upcoming negotiations from a position of strength after having declared his nuclear force as complete in November. South Korean and U.S. officials have said Kim is likely trying to save his broken economy from heavy sanctions,

Seoul says Kim has expressed genuine interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons. But North Korea for decades has been pushing a concept of “denuclearization” that bears no resemblance to the American definition, vowing to pursue nuclear development unless Washington removes its troops from the peninsula.

Cruz-O’Rourke Senate Race ‘Too Close to Call’

A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows a close race between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke for Cruz’s Senate seat. The poll indicates that 47 percent of Texas voters favor Cruz, while 44 percent favor his challenger, O’Rourke.

CNN continues:

The election is a crucial midterm race, with Republicans attempting to hold on to, if not grow, a razor-thin 51-49 seat advantage in the Senate. Texas is a historically red state, where Democrats haven’t won a state election since 1994 and a US Senate race since 1988.

The poll indicates gaps by registered voters’ gender, age and race. Voters who are white, male and older than 65 favored Cruz, while black, Hispanic, female, and 18- to 34-year-old voters favored O’Rourke. Men backed Cruz by an 11-point margin (51 percent to 40 percent), and women favored O’Rourke by a 4-point margin (47 percent to 43 percent).

O’Rourke attracted a younger group of supporters with a 16-point advantage (50 percent to 34 percent) among the 18- to 34-year-old demographic, while Cruz led among voters over 65 years old by 7 points (50 percent to 43 percent).

O’Rourke also leads among independent voters, with 51 percent of the independent vote compared with Cruz’s 37 percent. This could be significant. Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said: “The key may well be independent voters. O’Rourke’s 51-37 percent lead among that group is key to his standing today. But Texas remains a strong GOP state, so O’Rourke will need the independent strength to pull the upset.”

O’Rourke’s campaign has impressed voters on the left with its social media outreach. O’Rourke has also surpassed Cruz in fundraising for several quarters, despite refusing money from outside political groups. Earlier in April, O’Rourke announced that he had raised $6.7 million in donations through March 2018—an impressive feat for a Democrat in Texas.

“Considering this cycle that Democrats won in Alabama, Western Pennsylvania and local districts around the country that are more challenging than Texas, it makes sense that this race would be close,” said Adam Bozzi of the End Citizens United PAC, which endorsed O’Rourke because he rejected money from outside political groups.

The Washington Post continues:

O’Rourke has far from a perfect runway in Texas, even in a year where Republicans across the nation are warning of the potential for a blue wave. In last month’s Texas primary elections, 1 million Democrats voted, nearly 100 percent higher turnout than in 2014. But 1.5 million Republicans voted in that same primary, and Cruz got more than twice as many votes as O’Rourke did. …

Democrats say O’Rourke simply has a name-recognition problem. In the Quinnipiac poll, 53 percent of Texas voters say they hadn’t heard enough of O’Rourke to know whether they like him. He hails from the far western corner of the state and needs time to introduce himself. He’s certainly got the money to do that.

In New Walkouts, Students Look to Turn Outrage to Action

Once again, they filed out of class. In a new wave of school walkouts, they raised their voices against gun violence. But this time, they were looking to turn outrage into action.

Many of the students who joined demonstrations across the country Friday turned their attention to upcoming elections as they pressed for tougher gun laws and politicians who will enact them. Scores of rallies turned into voter registration drives. Students took the stage to issue an ultimatum to their lawmakers.

“We want to show that we’re not scared. We want to stop mass shootings and we want gun control,” said Binayak Pandey, 16, who rallied with dozens of students outside Georgia’s Capitol in Atlanta. “The people who can give us that will stay in office, and the people who can’t give us that will be out of office.”

All told, tens of thousands of students left class Friday for protests that spread from coast to coast. They filed out at 10 a.m. to gather for a moment of silence honoring the victims of gun violence. Some headed to nearby rallies. Others stayed at school to discuss gun control and register their peers to vote.

Organizers said an estimated 150,000 students protested Friday at more than 2,700 walkouts, including at least one in each state, as they sought to sustain a wave of youth activism that drove a larger round of walkouts on March 14. Activists behind that earlier protest estimated it drew nearly 1 million students.

Friday’s action was planned by a Connecticut teenager, Lane Murdock, after a gunman stormed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14, leaving 17 people dead. It was meant to coincide with the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado.

The focus on the November elections reflects a shift after activists gained little immediate traction in Washington. And prospects for their influence remain uncertain. Congress has shown little inclination to tighten gun laws, and President Donald Trump backed away from his initial support for raising the minimum age to buy some guns.

Among those who helped orchestrate the walkout — and the voter registration push — was the progressive group Indivisible, which formed after the 2016 election to oppose Trump’s policies.

In cities across the country, it was common to see crowds of students clad in orange — the color used by hunters to signal “don’t shoot” — rallying outside their schools or at public parks.

Several hundred gathered at New York City’s Washington Square Park, chanting “The NRA has got to go!” and “Enough is enough.” A large group in Washington marched from the White House to the Capitol building to rally for gun control.

Nate Fenerty was among hundreds of students who left class to rally in Richmond, Virginia. He registered to vote for the first time at tables set up by students at the protest and said he wants Congress to approve mandatory background checks for gun buyers.

“How many more times are we going to stand in memoriam for another school shooting before our policymakers to actually do something?” said Fenerty, who carried a sign saying “Am I Next?”

Shortly before the walkouts, news spread that there had been another shooting at a Florida school. Authorities say one student shot another in the ankle at Forest High School in Ocala early Friday. A suspect was taken into custody. Activists said it underscored the urgency of their work.

Student David Hogg, a Parkland survivor who has emerged as a leading activist, took to social media nearly every day this week urging students to register. On Thursday he made the motivation clear on Twitter: “The only way to make politicians listen to us is by voting in ones that will,” he said.

Hogg was among about 50 students who walked out of Stoneman Douglas on Friday after administrators threatened protesters with unexcused absences.

Craig Smith and Terry McGary, both 17-year-old juniors, said they walked out because they want to show respect for the Columbine victims.

“It was a guilt trip to make us not walk out,” McGary said about the threat.

The walkouts drew counter-protesters in some areas, including about 30 at a rally outside New Hampshire’s statehouse. In Kansas, about 200 gun-rights supporters held their own demonstration outside the statehouse. Many carried signs and flags, and some brought holstered handguns.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican candidate for governor, addressed the crowd and later criticized the walkout movement.

“Instead of walking out of class, why don’t you stay in class and spend that half hour studying the Second Amendment? You might learn something,” Kobach said later.

Some students in Colorado participated in the walkouts but not at Columbine, which has closed on April 20 ever since the 1999 shooting that left 15 people dead. Some Columbine students attended a vigil with Parkland survivors on Thursday night, but on Friday, their school called on them to attend a day of service.

Principal Scott Christy said in a letter to other schools in his district that April “has long been a time to respectfully remember our loss, and also support efforts to make our communities a better place.”

___

Binkley reported from Boston. Associated Press writers Terry Spencer in Parkland, Florida; Verena Dobnik in New York City; Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; and Mitchell Willetts in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.

America’s Never-Ending Southern Strategy and Urban Bamboozle

At the end of Dave Chappelle’s latest comedy stand-up Equanimity, he brilliantly explains how proximity hinders one from seeing the broader picture. He explains how standing too close to an elephant prevents the observer from realizing what is in front of her. One must step back and inspect from a distance in order to get a full understanding and gain a broader awareness. Dave used this story to explain how the horrific tragedy that befell Emmit Till set into motion a series of events that actually advanced justice. Intimacy engenders myopia and impedes discernment.

This same analogy is apropos when it comes to explaining our politics and the way injustice is concealed when we stand too close to partisanship. As long as we are loyal to dogmas above ideas, we will always see a part of the puzzle only to end up getting bamboozled by the status quo. One must step back not only from the elephant but from the jackass as well in order see how both parties are using the same playbook to hoodwink their followers. This is a hard task for most of us; ideological affinity is a form of tribalism that shapes our world views and informs how we react to externalities. For this one moment at least, I’m asking Democrats, Republicans, left, right and all in between to put away political allegiances and read this article with an open mind.

To understand the current political climate, we must go back to turbulent 60’s and scrutinize how America was intentionally ghettoized by the ruling class. At the apex of the Civil Rights Era, Republicans made a strategic decision to play on the fears and anxieties of “white” Americans by pivoting away from fiscal issues and focused on social sectarianism. Xenophobia became the lynch pin of the GOP; minorities were portrayed as a menacing threat to American ideals and values. As the era of Jim Crow and de jure segregation was drawing to a close, the Republican establishment cynically drew on the angst  of “white” voters by stoking racial resentments and using dog whistles to attract disaffected Democrats and disgruntled Caucasians who sensed that America was slipping away from them.

Richard Nixon successfully deployed the Southern Strategy to capture the White House by leveraging the pent up frustrations of the “silent majority” to consolidate votes in the former Confederate states and beyond. The racial lines became even more absolute as America was Balkanized by a party that saw jingoism as an opportunity to gain power and enhance their electoral fortunes. The otherizing tactics used by Nixon in the 1968 with ruthless efficiency was perfected by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election. Reagan used the imagery of the welfare queen and urban criminals to soundly defeat Jimmy Carter. In the process, he pushed Republicans to the right and pushed non-“white” and urban voters into the arms of Democrats.

This is a narrative that is freely pushed by the liberal establishment. What is left out of this analysis is that Democrats also decided to pivot in order to gain a swath of voters. Where Republicans deployed the Southern Strategy, Democrats turned to the Urban Bamboozle as they too used dog whistles and paternalism to attract marginalized communities, silence dissent and demonize rural “whites”. Both parties implemented a business plan; they identified their base, crafted a message to that base and then vilified their opposition to create an “us versus them” paradigm. Where Republicans spoke to the antipathy of “white” working class voters in rural America, Democrats targeted “minorities” in urban areas. Both parties painted the other side as the bogeymen who were out to get them, instill a sense of fear and manufacture clan loyalty among their supporters.

Standing too close to either elephants or jackasses prevents one from seeing how both parties are using the same blueprint to divide the nation and reap political boons. Sadder yet is that people on both sides end up fighting each other instead of uniting to defend their common interests. As I noted in the past, if you strip away politics, most liberals and conservatives would agree on the core issues. People on the left and on the right agree that power should be returned to our communities, that we should keep more of our earnings, that there should not be one set of rules for the rich and another set of rules for the rest of us and almost everyone will agree we should have equality of opportunities.

Instead of focusing on these areas of agreement, we are continually conditioned to bicker with each other along sectarian lines. Farmers in Kansas are facing the same economic anxieties that office workers in San Francisco are enduring. “Black” folks in the cities are being buckled by the same pyramid scheme that is fracturing “white” folks in exurbs. This is not to diminish the scourge of racism, sexism and exclusion and how their legacies still haunt our nation, but these issue are exacerbated as economic imbalances worsen. There can be no social justice without economic inclusion. As Martin Luther King once noted:

“All these problems are tied together. One cannot be concerned just with civil rights. It is very nice to drink milk at an unsegregated lunch counter—but not when there’s Strontium 90 in it.”

Strontium 90 is a radioactive agent that causes cancer and a lethal pathogen too much of it is introduced to organisms. King was noting that having the right to drink at a milk counter without having the means to pay for it is drinking milk that has poison in it.

Self-induced political apartheid inhibits us from seeing how the system is gaming us. Partisan fidelity and labeling get in the way of consensus between all sides of the political and social divides. This is, of course, how the the status quo wants it; if a time ever arrived when left joined right and “white” united with “black”, the days of crony capitalism on Wall Street and the kleptocracy in Washington DC would be over. What is getting in the way of the change that most of us yearn are the very thing we keep turning to for solutions—politics and social stratification are cul-de-sacs disguised as pathways.

Both parties and the political class as a whole have weaponized identity politics. They use human suffering as stepping stones and advertise the advancement of a few as progress for all. If more people step back and observe how both parties operate, there would be a collective Agent Kujan moment as partisans drop their coffee mugs in an act of mass awakening. The gig would be up as the citizenry would realize that Donald Trump used the Southern Strategy to capture the White House the same way Barack Obama turned to the Urban Bamboozle to become the first bank president. Alas, we are so focused on personalities that we keep missing the zoo for the trunks and jackasses. After one party gains power by promising change only to deliver nothing but broken promises, the other party steps in with the same promise of change only to deliver the same outcome. We have become a society of masochists hoping to be redeemed by sadists.

As long as we keep focusing on what makes us different instead of realizing what we all have in common, we will keep getting stepped on by the very people we keep idolizing. This bears repeating, RICH PEOPLE DO NOT WANT CHANGE. If you kept winning at a blackjack table where everyone else was losing, would you ask for a new dealer? Why then do we expect the gentry to give us a new deal when their interests lie in keeping the status quo intact. The media-politico complex are not interested in solving the issues that gash at society nor are they motivated to ameliorate suffering. In fact, they are incentivized to add fuel to the fire that is scorching all of us; the more tribulations we have the more fortunes they accumulate. Mo’ problems for us is mo’ money for the neo-aristocracy.

My people, by that I mean all humans, please stop falling for the bamboozle. If we want to bend the arc of history towards justice, we—the suffering poor, the struggling worker and the toiling entrepreneur—will have to bend it on our own. Don’t let the punditry in corporate media and the blowhards in the political class keep pulling the wool over our eyes. Our enemies are not the people who are struggling just like us. Demagogues and shills are injecting hatred into the public square for a reason; they’re inciting hatred betting that rage will keep diverting our eyes from our ultimate goal–justice for humanity without regard to identity. Step away from both elephants and jackasses; standing too close to either is blinding us from seeing the solutions.

A Shocking Lack of Intelligence in Our Missile Strike on Syria

It was a scene that has played out before the American public on multiple occasions in recent history: Representatives of the American defense establishment walked out onto a stage backed by light-blue drapery sporting an oval-shaped sign containing the words “Pentagon” and, below it in smaller letters: “Washington,” along with an image of the unique five-sided building of the same name. With an American flag standing in the background, and standing on a wooden podium emblazoned with the seal of the Department of Defense, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a former Marine general, accompanied by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joseph Dunford, a current Marine general, briefed the American public on the details surrounding a U.S.-led missile attack against targets inside Syria, carried out with the United Kingdom and France, that had transpired the night of April 13, 2018, a little more than an hour before Mattis and Dunford took the stage at 10 p.m. (making the timing of the attack around 4 a.m. on April 14, Syrian time).

“As the world knows,” Mattis announced, “the Syrian people have suffered terribly under the prolonged brutality of the Assad regime. On April 7, the regime decided to again defy the norms of civilized people, showing callous disregard for international law by using chemical weapons to murder women, children and other innocents. We and our allies find these atrocities inexcusable. As our commander in chief, the president has the authority under Article II of the Constitution to use military force overseas to defend important United States national interests. The United States has vital national interests in averting a worsening catastrophe in Syria, and specifically deterring the use and proliferation of chemical weapons.”

Mattis continued: “Earlier today, President Trump directed the U.S. military to conduct operations in consonance with our allies to destroy the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons research development and production capability. Tonight, France, the United Kingdom and the United States took decisive action to strike the Syrian chemical weapons infrastructure.”

Gen. Dunford spelled out the scope of this attack. “The targets that were struck and destroyed were specifically associated with the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons program … [t]he first target was a scientific research center located in the greater Damascus area. This military facility was a Syrian center for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological warfare technology. The second target was a chemical weapons storage facility west of Homs. We assessed that this was the primary location of Syrian sarin and precursor production equipment. The third target, which was in the vicinity of the second target, contained both a chemical weapons equipment storage facility and an important command post.”

The specificity of language used by Secretary Mattis and Gen. Dunford, declaring Syria to have a chemical weapons program inclusive of a research facility where chemical weapons were produced, a storage facility containing sarin nerve agent precursor production equipment and another that contained chemical weapons equipment and an associated command post, implied a degree of certainty backed by intelligence information sufficient to justify the use of American and allied military force.

Secretary Mattis asserted as much. “I am confident,” he said, “the Syrian regime conducted a chemical attack on innocent people in this last week, yes. Absolutely confident of it. And we have the intelligence level of confidence that we needed to conduct the attack.” When pressed for details about the actual chemical used, Mattis noted, “We are very much aware of one of the agents. There may have been more than one agent used. We are not clear on that yet. We know at least one chemical agent was used.” Later he clarified this statement, declaring, “We’re very confident that chlorine was used. We are not ruling out sarin right now.”

Mattis was asked about a statement he had made the previous day, April 12, when he appeared before the House Armed Services Committee. Then, Mattis put forward a theory that chlorine gas or sarin nerve agent—or a combination of the two—had been used by the Syrian government. He noted, however, that at the time of his presentation, the U.S. and its allies “[didn’t] have evidence” that the Syrian regime carried out the attack on April 7 in the Damascus suburb of Douma. “I believe there was a chemical attack,” Mattis said, “and we’re looking for the evidence.” In response, Mattis noted that his confidence level that the Syrian regime had carried out a chemical attack had increased sometime after he had made that statement.

The next day, April 14, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Dana W. White (a former Fox News publicist and professional staff member for the Senate Armed Services Committee as well as a foreign policy adviser to John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign), together with Director of the Joint Staff Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. (a 1979 graduate of The Citadel who commanded Marines in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan before being promoted to flag rank and assuming various joint service staff assignments), gave a second briefing where more details about the attack were provided.

In terms of the specificity of the intelligence used to justify the attack, White indicated that she had nothing to add to the statement made by Secretary Mattis the previous night. However, in answering questions, Lt. Gen. McKenzie noted that the U.S. military assessed “that there were probably some chemical and nerve agents in that target.” He also noted that by striking the three targets in question “We are confident that we’ve significantly degraded his [Assad’s] ability to ever use chemical weapons again.” White seconded this assessment. “The strikes went to the very heart of the enterprise, to the research, to development, to storage. So we are very confident that we have significantly crippled Assad’s ability to produce these weapons,” she said.

According to the information contained in these two briefings, the United States had a high degree of confidence in the fact that Syria continued to retain a viable chemical weapons capability despite the elimination of such weapons having been certified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), created under the auspices of the United Nations to implement the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an international treaty banning the production, retention and use of chemical weapons (keeping in mind that the Syrians have been accused of using sarin nerve agent, a Schedule 1 chemical, the category of which includes the agent itself, as well as its unique-use precursors).

Moreover, the implication of the statements made by Secretary Mattis, Gen. Dunford, Lt. Gen. McKenzie and Dana White was that the United States possessed intelligence information of such specificity as to permit military planners to assess the level of force necessary to ensure that specific quantities of nerve agent assessed as being present in a facility inside the city of Damascus would be destroyed by the weapons employed. The same holds true for the two chemical storage facilities located near Homs, especially the one assessed as containing sarin nerve agent and its precursors. Moreover, the statements implied that United States was in possession of intelligence information of such quality to permit assessments pertaining to having “crippled” Syria’s ability to produce chemical weapons.

There is one major problem with the information provided by these briefings: It is exclusively drawn from assessments, not fact. When one examines the basis for these assessments, it becomes clear that there was a shocking lack of intelligence available to sustain the predicate used to justify the U.S.-led attack on Syria—that the Syrian government possessed, let alone used, chemical weapons in the city of Douma on April 7.

There is a dearth of information about the specific intelligence information used by the United States, France or the United Kingdom to back up their collective claim that Syria used chemical weapons against Douma on April 7. According to The Guardian, intelligence agencies from all three countries “studied videos” from Douma. American officials in particular noted similarities between the Douma images and those from two previously reported sarin incidents in Syria—East Ghouta, in August 2013, and Khan Shaykhun, in April 2017. The first incident set in motion the events that led to Syria signing the CWC and acceding to the supervised elimination of its chemical weapons capabilities; the second has been used to sustain the premise that Syria had retained, in contravention of its obligations under the CWC, a sarin nerve agent capability. This latter finding underpins the totality of the assessments made in support of the American case for attacking Syria: If Syria possesses sarin nerve agent (as the events in Khan Shaykhun would suggest), then logic dictates that there would be an associated research and development facility complete with on-hand stocks of nerve agent (target one), and chemical weapons storage facilities containing sarin nerve agent and precursors as well as associated manufacturing equipment (targets two and three). No actual proof was required, or offered, to sustain these assessments.

Two issues flow from this line of thinking. First, the Khan Shaykhun incident is not without significant controversy, with its conclusions questioned by numerous experts, journalists and governments. Second, even if one accepts the findings that sarin nerve agent was used in Khan Shaykhun, that fact does not automatically sustain any allegations of sarin use in Douma, especially when there is no evidence to sustain that allegation.

One of the major problems confronting those who contend that both sarin and chlorine were used in the alleged Douma incident is the absolute incompatibility of the two substances. A U.S. Army study from the 1950s found that chlorine serves as a catalyst that promotes the decomposition of sarin nerve agent, meaning that if both substances were either combined or released together, the sarin would rapidly decompose. This reality seemed to escape American officials evaluating the Douma incident, who postulated to The Guardian that chlorine and sarin were stored separately in the same cylinder, ignoring how this would be achieved in a gas cylinder of the type alleged to have been used in Douma.

Only after the U.S.-French-U.K. attack of April 13 did one of the nations involved—in this case, France—provide an assessment outlining the intelligence case behind the Douma allegations. “On the intelligence collected by our services,” the report noted, “and in the absence to date of chemical samples analyzed by our own laboratories, France considers, beyond possible doubt, a chemical attack was carried out against civilians at Douma.” The basis of this conclusion was similar to that which underpinned the American assessment: “After examining the videos and images of victims published online, they (intelligence services) were able to conclude with a high degree of confidence that the vast majority are recent and not fabricated.” Without providing any further information or analysis, the French report concluded that “[r]eliable intelligence indicates that Syrian military officials have coordinated what appears to be the use of chemical weapons containing chlorine on Douma, on April 7.”

In short, the French case for war—and by extension, that of its allies, the United States and the United Kingdom—rested solely on “open source” information provided by opponents of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, for whom military intervention by the West was a long-standing objective. The illogic behind the Syrian government employing chemical weapons in a manner that would invite Western military intervention at a time when the battle for Douma was all but over seems never to have been probed in a meaningful fashion by the intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom—or France.

Ground Zero

As far as “objective news sources” go, the Abkhazian Network News Agency, or ANNA, would not logically top any list. Based out the breakaway Georgian territory of Abkhazia, the ANNA is an unabashed pro-Russian online news outlet known for its gritty front-line reporting from inside Syria, where its reporters, at great risk (many have been wounded while doing their jobs), accompany the Syrian army on combat operations against Islamist militants. Their reporting combines hand-held cameras, running alongside infantry and monitoring tactical command posts, GoPro-type cameras attached to tank turrets and cameras mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles hovering overhead, to provide a full-spectrum look at the ground war inside Syria unmatched by any other news source.

On April 5, 2018, the Syrian army’s vaunted Tiger Force, an elite assault unit of around 1,000 men, captured the village of al-Rayyan, on the western approaches to Douma, from fighters of the Army of Islam, a pro-Saudi jihadist group that had occupied Douma since 2013. The advance of the Tiger Force was the latest in a series of offensives carried out by Syria against rebel-held positions in the district of Eastern Ghouta, in which the city of Douma was located, since the beginning of the year. In March 2018 the Syrian army managed to break the rebel-held territory into three separate pockets, prompting thousands of fighters from groups other than the Army of Islam to agree to surrender their heavy weapons and evacuate Eastern Ghouta, together with their families to the northern Syrian town of Jarablus, adjacent to the Turkish border, which was under the control of the Turkish military and opposition forces belonging to the Free Syrian Army.

Only the area in and around Douma, under the control of the Army of Islam and the remnants of other defeated militant groups, held out. By early April, however, the relentless attacks by the Syrian army pushed even the hardened fighters of the Army of Islam to falter, and negotiations were opened with the Russians, leading to a series of temporary humanitarian cease-fires that quickly broke down amid mutual accusations of violations. The capture of al-Rayyan by the Tiger Force took place after the collapse of one such cease-fire and led to the resumption of negotiations between the Syrian government and the Army of Islam for the evacuation of the Islamists and their families from Douma. Earlier evacuations from Douma, involving thousands of militants and their families, had been conducted by the Russian military, which provided security. The negotiations, however, broke down as factions within the Army of Islam balked at having to leave Douma without their weapons.

On the morning of April 7, the Syrian army, supported by the Syrian and Russian air forces, renewed its assault on Douma. ANNA reporters accompanied Syrian troops from the Tiger Force as they overwhelmed the defenses of the Army of Islam, capturing a swath of open ground known as the Douma Farms, penetrating nearly three kilometers into the Army of Islam positions along a 10-kilometer front. The Tiger Force offensive represented the death knell of the Army of Islam; denied the buffer provided by the Douma Farms, the Army of Islam was trapped in the kind of urban terrain the Tiger Force thrived in, having perfected its house-to-house fighting tactics during the battle for Aleppo in 2017. Faced with inevitable defeat, the Army of Islam reached out to the Russians to renew negotiations that would lead to surrendering Douma to Syrian government control.

As the Army of Islam defenses crumbled in the face of the Tiger Force offensive, and the inevitability of defeat settled in among the leadership of the Army of Islam, a coordinated series of messages from various humanitarian organizations with a long history of opposition to the regime of Bashar Assad began to come out from within Douma about a series of chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian air force against the civilian population of Douma.

Among the first, a tweet from the Ghouta Media Center, a well-known outlet for anti-Assad information, was illustrative of what was to follow: “A new #Chemical massacre in #Syria was committed, this time in #Douma_city, 75 civilians were suffocated till death & 1000 suffocation cases, by a barrel was dropped by #Assad helicopters around 9:00pm contains the toxic #Sarin gas, some activists reached bodies in some basements.” Another group, known as the Douma Revolution, published a series of videos on its Facebook page on April 7 that would later be shown repeatedly on Western television channels as evidence of a chemical weapons attack.

By the morning of April 8, news of the alleged chemical weapons attack reached the front lines, where they were dismissed by the officers and men of the Tiger Force. “[Militants] claim we shelled them with chemical weapons,” a senior Tiger Force officer told ANNA reporters during a lull in the fighting on the morning of April 8, as the initial reports of a chemical attack in Douma became public, “but that is a lie, because at the same time we were advancing forward, not one of our soldiers has a gas mask.” Another Tiger Force officer made a similar argument. “We have no protection against the chemical weapons,” he told ANNA. “Those dogs used the chemical weapons themselves and said we did it. If we had that kind of weapon, we would have to carry gas masks. Go to the front and see for yourselves—what are you going to see? We are all here preparing to advance.” A third Tiger Force officer emphasized this point. “We do not have chemical weapons. We breathe the same air. If we had used chemical weapons, we would have suffered ourselves. There are only 20 meters between us. This is just a publicity stunt.”

The “publicity stunt,” however, had served its purpose. By April 8, the White Helmets, the nongovernmental organization lionized by many as a vaunted search-and-rescue organization credited with saving thousands of lives in the face of Syrian and Russian aerial bombardment, and demonized by others as a vehicle for generating anti-regime propaganda and promoting Western military intervention to topple Assad, and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), another NGO possessing a similarly controversial pedigree, had published a joint statement on the Douma attack, the contents of which would be repeated verbatim (and seemingly without question) by Western media outlets and government agencies.

On Saturday, 07/04/2019 at 7:45 PM local time, amidst continuous bombardment of residential neighborhoods in the city of Douma, more than 500 cases—the majority of whom are women and children—were brought to local medical centers with symptoms indicative of exposure to a chemical agent. Patients have shown signs of respiratory distress, central cyanosis, excessive oral foaming, corneal burns, and the emission of chlorine-like odor.

During clinical examination, medical staff observed bradycardia, wheezing and coarse bronchial sounds. One of the injured was declared dead on arrival. Other patients were treated with humidified oxygen and bronchodilators, after which their condition improved. In several cases involving more severe exposure to the chemical agents, medical staff put patients on a ventilator, including four children. Six casualties were reported at the center, one of whom was a woman who had convulsions and pinpoint pupils.

SAMS has documented 43 casualties with similar clinical symptoms of excessive oral foaming, cyanosis, and corneal burns. Civil Defense [White Helmet] volunteers were unable to evacuate the bodies due to the intensity of the odor and the lack of protective equipment. The reported symptoms indicate that the victims suffocated from the exposure to toxic chemicals, most likely an organophosphate element.

These reports succeeded in generating the desired results—the United States was joined by the United Kingdom and France in condemning the alleged chemical weapons attack as a violation of international law that demanded an international response. President Trump tweeted out his own response, replete with ominously threatening language: “Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price … to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!”

By April 9, the U.N. Security Council was meeting in emergency session, leading to the inevitable rhetorical clash between the ambassadors from the United States and Russia. “The Russian regime, whose hands are all covered in the blood of Syrian children, cannot be ashamed by pictures of its victims,” U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told the Security Council. She also took aim at Syria’s president, noting, “Only a monster does this.” For its part, Russia’s ambassador stated: “There was no chemical weapons attack,” adding that “[t]he boorishness against my country is unacceptable and exceeds Cold War standards.”

While a war of words transpired in New York, on the ground in Syria the situation was evolving in a manner which began to threaten the narrative marketed by the White Helmets, SAMS and other sources that had peddled the information used by Washington, London and Paris to build a case sustaining the allegation of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government. The Army of Islam, having been thoroughly defeated on the field of battle by the Syrian army, abandoned Douma for refuge in rebel-held Idlib province. As the probability of unfettered access to the actual sites of the alleged chemical attacks became reality, the locations and people captured on film at what had become Ground Zero in Douma were about to be placed under a microscope of scrutiny where fact would ultimately triumph over fiction.

The Inspectors

 At the headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, Netherlands, the inspectors maintain a situation center responsible for monitoring news reports from around the world, looking for any initial indication of an event that would fall under the purview. As soon as reports started coming out of Syria of an alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, the OPCW Situation Center kicked into action, briefing the director-general, Ahmet Üzümcü, on the developments. After years of experience in Syria investigating similar allegations, the situation center had developed significant contacts with various NGOs on the ground inside Syria, including the White Helmets and SAMS, and contact was established between the OPCW and these entities to learn more about what was transpiring on the ground inside Douma. Using the preliminary assessment of the situation center, derived solely from the images provided by anti-regime activists, that an incident had actually occurred inside Syria, the director-general ordered the Fact Finding Mission (FFM), a standing body of inspectors tasked with investigating chemical incidents in Syria, to assemble and prepare for deployment into Syria. By April 9 a team of nine personnel, all volunteers, including several who were pulled out of training courses, were gathered, and preparations were made for the FFM to travel to Syria under protocols associated with what the OPCW called an “Investigation of Alleged Use” (IAU) inspection under Article X of the CWC, where a state party to the CWC requests assistance in investigating an alleged use of chemical weapons. (The Syrian government had formally requested that the OPCW dispatch a team to Syria on April 10.)

A Title X IAU inspection is limited in scope to simply ascertaining whether a chemical agent was used—there would be no attribution of responsibility. By inviting the OPCW to investigate the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma, the Syrian government (together with its Russian allies, who had joined with Syria in pressing for the OPCW to investigate the Douma allegations) was creating a diplomatic crisis of sorts over the role and function of the inspectors. For the United States, the United Kingdom and France, simply ascertaining whether a chemical agent was used was not enough—they wanted blame attached, and preferably to the Syrian government. The OPCW was not mandated to assign attribution for any alleged chemical incident; as such, the United States pushed a resolution in the Security Council to stand up an investigation team that would be able to assign blame. This resolution was promptly vetoed by Russia.

In the case of Syria, the Security Council had set up an entity, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), which worked hand-in-glove with the OPCW to investigate incidents of alleged chemical weapons use in Syria. The only difference was that the JIM was specifically mandated to assign blame for an attack, something it did with no small amount of controversy. In the aftermath of the joint OPCW/JIM investigation and report of an alleged use of chemical agent in Khan Shaykhun in April 2017, where blame was assigned to the Syrian government despite evidentiary issues related to a lack of chain of custody for samples used in the investigation, a failure to inspect the site of the alleged incident, and other investigatory shortfalls, Russia vetoed the extension of the mandate for the JIM, terminating it.

Without a specifically mandated investigatory mechanism to accompany the OPCW into Syria, any report issued by the OPCW would not be able to ascertain the blame needed by the United States, the United Kingdom and France to justify taking military action against Syria, something all three nations were speaking openly about in the days following the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma. Indeed, the existence of the OPCW team was viewed by many in the West, including James Mattis, as being irrelevant to the fact-finding process. “We’re trying to get inspectors in,” Mattis told Congress on April 12. “We will not know from this investigating team” who was responsible, Mattis said. “We will not know who did it. Only that it happened.” For Mattis and the other decision makers, who had already reached the conclusion that Syria had employed both chlorine gas and sarin nerve agent in Douma, this wasn’t good enough.

New videos had emerged from within Douma in the days following the alleged chemical attack, provided by the White Helmets, which claimed to show yellow 150-pound chlorine gas cylinders dropped by the Syrian military on targets inside Douma, including one site where numerous deaths were reported. These videos were picked up by the Western media and promoted by anti-regime social media activists such as Elliot Higgins, who posted a detailed assessment of the canisters and their relevance on his Bellingcat website. However, questions soon emerged about the legitimacy of the White Helmet video as proof of a chlorine attack, namely around the lack of damage to the cylinders involved, the lack of any indication that the cylinders contained chlorine gas, or, if they did, any chlorine gas leaked from the cylinders (the regulator valves on both canisters appeared to be undamaged and closed, and the physical integrity of both canisters seemed intact, prompting the question as to how any gas was alleged to have originated from either). Complicating matters further was the fact that, on April 9, a Russian military unit had arrived at the scene of the alleged gas attack to investigate and found no evidence of any chemical attack.

Suddenly, the OPCW fact-finding mission had new relevance. It no longer mattered that it could not assign blame for an alleged chemical weapons incident; the Russians and the Syrians had said that no such attack had taken place, and that no evidence of chemical weapons use existed at a site where numerous casualties from a chemical attack were alleged to have occurred. If the OPCW team confirmed the findings of the Russian reconnaissance team, there would be no case for military action. If, on the other hand, the OPCW team found that a chemical agent had been used in the face of Russian claims that none existed, the United States, the United Kingdom and France would have a stronger case for intervention.

The OPCW advance party deployed to Beirut on Thursday, April 12, and was joined by the rest of the team on Friday, April 13. Their plan was to deploy to Damascus on Saturday, April 14, and begin their work shortly thereafter. If chlorine had been used in Douma, as the White Helmets, SAMS and others claimed, inspectors would be able to find evidence of such in the form of various chloride salts, produced by the hydrochloric acid that was in turn produced through the reaction of chlorine gas with any substance it encountered upon release. The Russian military experts who visited Douma on April 9 were no doubt aware of this. If the OPCW team was able to detect significant traces of chloride salts, then the Russian findings would be debunked, and the claims of the White Helmets, SAMS and others bolstered.

The American-led military attack on Syria took place while the OPCW fact-finding mission assembled in Beirut; on Saturday, April 14, while the team drove to Damascus, Syria was dealing with consequences of this act. Despite this new reality, the Syrian government met with the fact-finding mission to discuss the arrangements needed for the team to travel to Douma to carry out its tasks. Problems soon arose regarding the security of the OPCW team; Russia and Syria claimed that, in the aftermath of the missile strike on Douma, the security environment in Douma had deteriorated when militants, emboldened by the attack, began shooting at Syrian military patrols. This prompted the need for Russia and Syria to find alternative routes into and out of the areas in Douma that needed to be inspected and to clear these routes of debris and mines. On Tuesday, April 17, the OPCW fact-finding mission sent a reconnaissance team to Douma but withdrew after coming under fire, further delaying the arrival of the main body of inspectors and their ability to carry out their assigned tasks.

While the OPCW inspectors waited in Damascus, the Syrian government provided them with access to 22 medical personnel it claimed had treated the alleged victims of the chemical attack, and who could provide testimony that no such attack took place. While the OPCW has not indicated whether these interviews actually took place, or what the findings of any such interviews were, insight into their probable content could be found via Russian media, which aired interviews with two Syrian medical personnel who appeared in the White Helmet video showing victims of the alleged chemical attack being treated in Douma.

In one such interview, a person identified as Khalil Azizah, claiming to be a medical student who works in the emergency room of the central hospital of Douma, declared that “a house in the city was bombed. The upper floors of the building were destroyed and a fire broke out on the first several floors. All those who were injured in this building were brought to us. The residents of the upper floors had signs of smoke inhalation from the fire’s smoke. We provided assistance based upon the symptoms of smoke inhalation. During this time an unknown person came in. I don’t know him. He said that this was an attack using poisonous substances. People were frightened, there was a struggle; the relatives of the wounded began to spray each other with water. Other people without medical training began putting anti-asthma inhalers in children’s mouths. We didn’t see a single patient with signs of chemical poisoning.”

Khalil Azizah claimed that the incident in question took place on April 8, one day after the alleged attack of April 7. However, he referred to the same video shot by the White Helmets and pointed to his image in the video as one of the personnel providing medical treatment. As such, there is no doubt that the incident Khalil Azizah refers to is the same one recorded by the White Helmets. Moreover, Azizah’s narrative of smoke inhalation is consistent with the finding of the French intelligence report on the Douma chemical attack, which noted that, based upon an examination of the images of the alleged victims, one of the possible explanations behind the symptoms produced was “hydrocyanic acid” (the solution of hydrogen cyanide in water). Hydrogen cyanide is something not found in either chlorine or sarin exposure, but prevalent in the smoke produced by structure fires. The presence of hydrogen cyanide would be explained by a structure fire, and as such, Azizah’s testimony provides a viable alternative explanation for the victims being treated by the Douma hospital, as well as those filmed dead at the scene of the alleged chemical attack.

The Western media aired its own recorded interviews of alleged victims who had fled from Douma to refugee camps along the Turkish border. Complicating the story further, reporters from a variety of news outlets had made their way to the actual site of the alleged Douma chemical attack while the OPCW inspectors were stranded in Damascus. A CBS crew was shown the chlorine canister on the roof of the building where the victims of the chemical attack were claimed to have died and interviewed eyewitnesses who claimed to have been present during the attack. Other journalists visited the same location and interviewed eyewitnesses who claimed no chemical attack had taken place.

Meanwhile, the delay for getting the OPCW inspectors into Douma prompted the United States, the United Kingdom and France to speculate that Russia was sanitizing the site of the attack of any evidence that would show chemicals were used, a charge Russia vehemently denied (and something the various news reports conducted at the scene would suggest was not, in fact, the case). Not to be outdone, the head of the White Helmets claims to have provided the OPCW fact-finding mission the locations of “mass graves” containing the victims of the alleged chemical attack. The forensic viability of these bodies (for which no documentation exists and no chain of custody has been provided linking them to the chemical incident in question, if they in fact exist) is virtually nil, and it is unlikely the OPCW would seek to have them exhumed in any event. The allegations of their existence, however, represents the latest in a series of roadblocks that have been placed in the way of the OPCW inspectors.

The truth is out there, waiting on the ground in Douma. There is no doubt that the OPCW fact-finding mission has the forensic investigatory capability to detect the presence of chemical agents at the scene of the alleged chemical attack of April 7. The amount of chlorine necessary to have produced the number of casualties claimed is significant, and as such the chemical residue unique to such an event would be present in large quantities, and easily detected; no amount of “sanitation” by Russia or any other party could eliminate these traces.

This is the truth of the Douma chemical allegations—they can be readily proved or disproved almost immediately upon arrival at the scene by qualified inspectors from the OPCW. The fact that the United States, the United Kingdom and France opted to attack Syria without allowing the OPCW inspectors to first accomplish their mission provides the clearest indication possible that all three nations knew they possessed a shocking lack of intelligence to sustain their allegations surrounding the use of chemical agents by the Syrian government, and that the missile attack of April 13, was little more than a propaganda exercise designed to promote larger policy objectives regarding U.S., U.K. and French policy in Syria. This conclusion holds regardless of what the ultimate finding is by the OPCW inspectors as to what transpired on the ground in Douma the evening of April 7, 2018.

Dems Bring Suit Alleging Conspiracy Between Trump Camp, Russia

NEW YORK — The national Democratic Party sued President Trump’s campaign, his son, his son-in-law, the Russian Federation and WikiLeaks on Friday, accusing them of an intricate conspiracy to undercut Democrats in the 2016 election by stealing tens of thousands of emails and documents.

The lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court sought unspecified damages and an order to prevent further interference with computer systems of the Democratic National Committee.

“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement. He called it an “act of unprecedented treachery.”

The Democrats accuse Trump and his associates of trading on pre-existing relationships with Russian oligarchs tied to President Vladimir Putin and of collaborating with Russia as it worked to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Trump has said repeatedly there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia.

The lawsuit doesn’t reveal new details in the sprawling storyline of connections between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives working on behalf of the Kremlin.

Instead it knits many of the threads that have emerged in public over the past two years to paint a picture of an alleged conspiracy between the Trump campaign, the Kremlin and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The DNC says the “brazen attack on American democracy” began with a cyberattack on DNC computers and phone systems in 2015, allowing the extraction of tens of thousands of documents and emails. WikiLeaks then blasted out many of the documents on July 22, 2016, shortly before Clinton was to be nominated — upsetting the Democrats’ national convention.

That added up to a “campaign of the presidential nominee of a major party in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency,” the DNC lawyers write in the lawsuit.

That conspiracy violated the laws of the U.S. Virginia and the District of Columbia, the lawsuit says, and “under the laws of this nation, Russia and its co-conspirators must answer for these actions.”

The DNC accuses Donald Trump Jr. of secretly communicating with WikiLeaks, and blames the president, too, saying he praised the illegal dissemination of DNC documents throughout fall 2016, making it a central theme of his speeches and rallies.

The DNC also fingers Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner as a co-conspirator for his role overseeing the Trump campaign’s digital operation.

A spokesman for the campaign didn’t immediately return a request for comment Friday afternoon. Requests for comment from the Russian Embassy in Washington were also not immediately returned.

WikiLeaks did respond, caustically.

“DNC already has a moribund publicity lawsuit which the press has become bored of–hence the need to refile it as a ‘new’ suit before mid-terms,” the group said in a tweet. “As an accurate publisher of newsworthy information @WikiLeaks is constitutionally protected from such suits.”

Assange, avoiding detention, remains in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has filed charges against multiple former Trump campaign aides stemming from his federal Russia probe. But Mueller has directly accused only former Trump campaign foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos of trying to work with Russian operatives to support the Trump campaign.

Mueller also has indicted 13 Russian individuals working for the Internet Research Agency accused of running an elaborate scheme to meddle in the U.S. elections. The indictment alleges one of Putin’s close allies, Yevgeny Prigozhin, oversaw the effort.

The hacking of the DNC has long been a sore spot for Democrats across the board since Clinton’s stunning loss in November 2016. The hack and subsequent release of the emails hit the party just before it formally nominated Clinton, and the emails remained a major issue through Election Day.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz lost her job as party chairwoman just hours before the nominating convention after emails were released showing the DNC appearing to favor Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the primaries. The emails ripped open fresh wounds and formed a rallying cry for Sanders supporters hoping for a last-minute chance to deny the Clinton the nomination in Philadelphia.

Wasserman Schultz confronted then-FBI Director James Comey a few months later, in January 2017 during a private briefing at the Capitol, accusing him of helping throw the election to Trump because of his handling of the Clinton email investigation. DNC staffers at the time accused the FBI of not doing enough immediately after the hack was discovered in 2015 to alert them to the problem.

Democrats have similarly been critical of President Barack Obama for not doing enough in 2016 to fight back against Russia. Obama expelled Russian diplomats and shuttered diplomatic compounds in December 2016.

This is the second time in recent history that the DNC has sued a Republican president.

The Democrats sued Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President in 1973, following the break-in at the DNC’s Watergate Hotel headquarters.

__

Associated Press reporter Chad Day contributed to this report from Washington. LoBianco reported from Washington.

Shotgun Blast Wounds 1 at Florida School; Suspect in Custody

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Panic and fear gripped another Florida school Friday when a gunman who carried a shotgun in a guitar case opened fire, wounding one student before he was taken into custody on a day planned for a national classroom walkout to protest gun violence, authorities said.

It happened Friday morning at Forest High School, which was put on lockdown, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office reported. The wounded student, a 17-year-old boy, was taken to a local hospital for treatment of a non-life threatening injury to his ankle.

Some students and teachers piled desks and filing cabinets against classroom doors as a makeshift barricade.

Police initially said the 19-year-old suspect is also a student at the school, but later said he was a former student not currently enrolled. No charges were immediately announced. The sheriff’s office said no other schools in the county were under any threat.

The Ocala shooting comes just over two months after a gunman killed 17 people and wounded 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Nikolas Cruz, 19, faces the death penalty if convicted in that Valentine’s Day shooting.

The shooting also coincided with a nationwide student walkout to protest gun violence on the anniversary of the 1999 massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School. The Ocala school had planned its version of a walkout, students said.

Chris Oliver told the Ocala Star-Banner that his 16-year-old son, a Forest student, told him the shooting happened near his classroom. The boy told Oliver the shooter was standing in a hallway and fired at a closed classroom door. The shooter then dropped what authorities said was a shotgun, ran and tried to hide, the boy told his father.

Craig Ham, deputy superintendent of Ocala schools operations, said the gunman carried the shotgun in a guitar case into the school by blending in with students. Ham told reporters the shooter fired at the bottom of a classroom door, which was locked, and pellets struck the victim in the ankle.

Jake Mailhiot’s psychology class had just begun Friday morning when school officials announced a “code red” alert over the intercom.

“You could hear in their voice that this wasn’t a drill,” the 16-year-old junior said.

Students and teachers had been prepared for such alerts and leapt into action to barricade the classroom’s one door and block the door’s window.

“Our teachers started pushing file cabinets and desks toward the door, and a few friends and I joined in,” Mailhiot said. “We also started tying together some jackets to hang out the window, in case we needed another way out.”

In a photograph Mailhiot shared on social media, the classroom door is invisible behind a tall pile of furniture.

Mailhiot said about 15 people in the classroom waited over 30 minutes to be evacuated by Ocala police. They were instructed to leave the room with their hands up, he said.

The school had planned to participate around 11 a.m. in a walkout commemorating the Columbine shooting. Mailhiot said he had hesitated to participate in the walkout because he was worried the large crowd outside the school would present a large target for anyone waiting to cause a disturbance.

“I worried if something was to happen, that’s where it would happen,” Mailhiot said.

Marion County schools Superintendent Heidi Maier decided six weeks ago that any students who walked out would be punished. Instead, Maier instructed the seven mainstream high school principals to meet with their school’s student body to develop a topic of discussion for a 30-minute session. All such events were canceled Friday.

Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods praised the quick response by the school resource officer, as well as school personnel and first responders. In the Parkland shooting, school resource officer Scot Peterson retired amid accusations he did not do enough to confront the Stoneman Douglas gunman.

The Forest resource officer, Marion County Sheriff’s Deputy James Long, “did not hesitate. He went right in,” Woods said at a news conference.

Woods said Long heard a “large, loud banging sound” and immediately responded. Long “recognized what we had at that time,” he said.

The sheriff said the suspect was not injured, was not fired at and was arrested without resistance.

“Marion County does everything to protect their children,” Woods said.

After the shooting, all students were taken by bus with a police escort to First Baptist Church of Ocala, where parents gathered to pick them up, officials said.

Rachael Carter was at the church waiting to be reunited with her daughter, a 10th-grader who turned 16 this week. Carter’s pastor called her when he saw a post on social media.

“I’m shaking like a leaf in a hurricane,” Carter said.

She that once she’s reunited with her daughter, she will “stick to her like Velcro.”

Students who saw anything related to the shooting were being interviewed by investigators.

School district spokesman Kevin Christian sent a recorded phone message urging parents to stay away from the school.

Ocala police, the sheriff’s office, the Florida Highway Patrol and the FBI were investigating. They divided into teams that cleared all buildings, vehicles and the parking lot area. Once all students were off campus, authorities began conducting a more methodical search of the campus.

Forest High has an enrollment of more than 2,000 students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

___

Associated Press reporter Jennifer Kay in Miami contributed to this story.

John Densmore: The Legacy of The Doors

In this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” host and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer speaks with John Densmore, famed American musician best known as the drummer of The Doors.

Scheer and Densmore discuss how the activism of the 1960s affected The Doors’ music, and how today’s young people advocating for gun control are continuing the legacy of the Vietnam protests.

“There was, dare I say it, a search for integrity,” Scheer says of The Doors.  To Densmore, he adds: “I’ve observed you as a citizen, as an activist, as a person who has stood for something.”

Densmore expressed his admiration for the resurgence of contemporary youth activism. “I see these Parkland kids, and I get going,” he said. “If you’re a politician, you’re supposed to be an elder, listening to these kids. I get worked up about all this.”

Listen to the interview in the player above and check back for the full transcript tomorrow. Find past episodes of “Scheer Intelligence” here.

—posted by Emily Wells

The Air We Breathe Is Killing Millions

A major new study finds that 95 percent of the world’s population breathes dangerous air. The report by the Health Effects Institute reinforces data from the World Health Organization, which says that air pollution in many of the world’s largest cities is killing millions of people. In 2016, the U.N. reported that 3.3 million premature deaths occur every year due to unsafe air.

In the U.S., more than two of every five Americans live in areas with unhealthy levels of smog and air pollution. According to Janice Nolen of the American Lung Association, climate change and global warming were big contributing factors. Ozone levels spiked in 2016, which was the nation’s second hottest year on record.

The American Lung Association says eight of America’s 10 most polluted cities are in California.

Nolen worries about renewed efforts by the Trump administration to undermine the Clean Air Act. The White House announced in January that it plans to throw out many air emissions policies that had been opposed by fossil fuel companies. The Environmental Protection Agency said it planned to withdraw its “once-in always-in” policy, which determines how to regulate major sources of hazardous air pollutants. The administration also plans to repeal regulations that reduce carbon pollution from power plants and remove limits on emission from oil and gas operations.

The Guardian reports:

Cities are home to an increasing majority of the world’s people, exposing billions to unsafe air, particularly in developing countries, but in rural areas the risk of indoor air pollution is often caused by burning solid fuels. One in three people worldwide faces the double whammy of unsafe air both indoors and out.

The report by the Health Effects Institute used new findings such as satellite data and better monitoring to estimate the numbers of people exposed to air polluted above the levels deemed safe by the World Health Organisation. This exposure has made air pollution the fourth highest cause of death globally, after high blood pressure, diet and smoking, and the greatest environmental health risk.

Experts estimate that exposure to air pollution contributed to more than 6 [million] deaths worldwide last year, playing a role in increasing the risk of stroke, heart attack, lung cancer and chronic lung disease. China and India accounted for more than half of the death toll.

Burning solid fuel such as coal or biomass in their homes for cooking or heating exposed 2.6 billion people to indoor air pollution in 2016, the report found. Indoor air pollution can also affect air quality in the surrounding area, with this effect contributing to one in four pollution deaths in India and nearly one in five in China.

Some positives revealed in a report by the Health Effects Institute, a nonprofit research organization, are the aggressive moves made by China and India to cut the use of coal and ramp up controls on indoor air pollution. In the 1990s, the number of people exposed to indoor air pollution was estimated at 3.6 billion; today that figure stands at 2.4 billion.

The Call for Criminal Prosecution of Clinton, Comey: Will Media Suppress This Major News?

Wednesday’s criminal referral by 11 House Republicans of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as several former and serving top FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials is a giant step toward a Constitutional crisis.

Named in the referral to the DOJ for possible violations of federal law are: Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey; former Attorney General Loretta Lynch; former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe; FBI Agent Peter Strzok; FBI Counsel Lisa Page; and those DOJ and FBI personnel “connected to” work on the “Steele Dossier,” including former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente.

With no attention from corporate media, the referral was sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah John Huber. Sessions appointed Huber months ago to assist DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz. By most accounts, Horowitz is doing a thoroughly professional job. As IG, however, Horowitz lacks the authority to prosecute; he needs a U.S. Attorney for that. And this has to be disturbing to the alleged perps.

This is no law-school case-study exercise, no arcane disputation over the fine points of this or that law. Rather, as we say in the inner-city, “It has now hit the fan.” Criminal referrals can lead to serious jail time. Granted, the upper-crust luminaries criminally “referred” enjoy very powerful support. And that will come especially from the mainstream media, which will find it hard to retool and switch from Russia-gate to the much more delicate and much less welcome “FBI-gate.”

As of this writing, a full day has gone by since the letter/referral was reported, with total silence so far from The New York Times and The Washington Post and other big media as they grapple with how to spin this major development. News of the criminal referral also slipped by Amy Goodman’s non-mainstream Democracy Now!, as well as many alternative websites.

The 11 House members chose to include the following egalitarian observation in the first paragraph of the letter conveying the criminal referral: “Because we believe that those in positions of high authority should be treated the same as every other American, we want to be sure that the potential violations of law outlined below are vetted appropriately.” If this uncommon attitude is allowed to prevail at DOJ, it would, in effect, revoke the de facto “David Petraeus exemption” for the be-riboned, be-medaled, and well-heeled.

Stonewalling

Meanwhile, the patience of the chairmen of House committees investigating abuses at DOJ and the FBI is wearing thin at the slow-rolling they are encountering in response to requests for key documents from the FBI. This in-your-face intransigence is all the more odd, since several committee members have already had access to the documents in question, and are hardly likely to forget the content of those they know about. (Moreover, there seems to be a good chance that a patriotic whistleblower or two will tip them off to key documents being withheld.)

The DOJ IG, whose purview includes the FBI, has been cooperative in responding to committee requests for information, but those requests can hardly include documents of which the committees are unaware.

Putting aside his partisan motivations, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) was unusually blunt two months ago in warning of legal consequences for officials who misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to enable surveillance on Trump and his associates. Nunes’s words are likely to have sent chills down the spine of those with lots to hide: “If they need to be put on trial, we will put them on trial,” he said. “The reason Congress exists is to oversee these agencies that we created.”

Whether the House will succeed in overcoming the resistance of those criminally referred and their many accomplices and will prove able to exercise its Constitutional prerogative of oversight is, of course, another matter—a matter that matters.

And Nothing Matters More Than the Media

The media will be key to whether this Constitutional issue is resolved. Largely because of Trump’s own well earned reputation for lying, most Americans are susceptible to slanted headlines like this recent one—“Trump escalates attacks on FBI …”—from an article in The Washington Post, commiserating with the treatment accorded fired-before-retired prevaricator McCabe and the FBI he (dis)served.

Nor is the Post above issuing transparently clever warnings—like this one in a lead article on March 17: “Some Trump allies say they worry he is playing with fire by taunting the FBI. ‘This is open, all-out war. And guess what? The FBI’s going to win,’ said one ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. ‘You can’t fight the FBI. They’re going to torch him.’ ” [sic]

Mind-Boggling Criminal Activity

What motivated the characters now criminally “referred” is clear enough from a wide variety of sources, including the text messages exchange between Strzok and Page. Many, however, have been unable to understand how these law enforcement officials thought they could get away with taking such major liberties with the law.

None of the leaking, unmasking, surveillance, “opposition research,” or other activities directed against the Trump campaign can be properly understood, if one does not bear in mind that it was considered a sure thing that Secretary Clinton would become President, at which point illegal and extralegal activities undertaken to help her win would garner praise, not prison. The activities were hardly considered high-risk, because candidate Clinton was sure to win.

But she lost.

Comey himself gives this away in the embarrassingly puerile book he has been hawking, “A Higher Loyalty”—which amounts to a pre-emptive move motivated mostly by loyalty-to-self, in order to obtain a Stay-Out-of-Jail card. Hat tip to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone for a key observation, in his recent article, “James Comey, the Would-Be J. Edgar Hoover,” about what Taibbi deems the book’s most damning passage, where Comey discusses his decision to make public the re-opening of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Comey admits, “It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the re-started investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in the polls.”

The key point is not Comey’s tortured reasoning, but rather that Clinton was “sure to be the next president.” This would, of course, confer automatic immunity on those now criminally referred to the Department of Justice. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men—even very tall men. One wag claimed that the “Higher” in “A Higher Loyalty” refers simply to the very tall body that houses an outsized ego.

I think it can be said that readers of Consortiumnews.com may be unusually well equipped to understand the anatomy of FBI-gate as well as Russia-gate. Listed below chronologically are several links that might be viewed as a kind of “whiteboard” to refresh memories. You may wish to refer them to any friends who may still be confused.

2017

Russia-gate’s Mythical ‘Heroes’ June 6, 2017

The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate Oct. 29, 2017

The Foundering Russia-gate ‘Scandal’ Dec. 13, 2017

What Did Hillary Clinton Know? Dec. 25, 2017

2018

The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate Jan. 11, 2018

Will Congress Face Down the Deep State? Jan. 30, 2018

Nunes Memo Reports Crimes at Top of FBI and DOJ Feb. 2, 2018

‘This is Nuts’: Liberals Launch ‘Largest Mobilization in History’ in Defense of Russiagate Probe Feb. 9, 2018

Nunes: FBI and DOJ Perps Could Be Put on Trial Feb. 19, 2018

‘Progressive’ Journalists Jump the Shark on Russia-gate March 7, 2018

Intel Committee Rejects Basic Underpinning of Russiagate March 14, 2018

McCabe: A War on (or in) the FBI? March 18, 2018

Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared March 19, 2018

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for a total of 30 years.  In retirement, he co-created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).