Barrel bombs are back!

Under HTS - in Syria the old propaganda canards have returned

An old meme accusing the Syrian government of barrel bombing their own civilians - 2016

In response to the re-emergence of the “barrel bomb”, below is an article I prepared earlier in 2017. Since October 7th, the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza has been using barrel bombs against the genocidal Zionist forces.

In 1964, the US began "Operation Barrell Roll" between 1964-1973, the US dropped around 2.5 million tons of ordinance on Laos during 580,000 bombing sorties - equal to a plane load of bombs every eight minutes 24 hours a day for 9 years.

Anyway I digress, here is the article:

SYRIA: Consign “Barrel Bombs” to the Propaganda Graveyard

Every time one of these barrels strikes, it is the seismological equivalent of a 7.6 magnitude earthquake, and it happens around 50 times a day. (In Syria)You can’t dial 911. You can’t dial the fire service. You can’t call the local police department. They don’t exist.” ~ James Le Mesurier, British ex-military trainer of the NATO-state, multi-million-dollar-funded White Helmets, based in Gaziantep, Turkey.

In an interview with CNN in May 2015, this is the claim made by British mercenary trainer of the White Helmets to Dr Sanjay Gupta. Again, in June 2015, Le Mesurier made a similar claim to an audience during a speech at The Performance Theatre, Lisbon entitled very grandly, “Act 1: Witnesses to history in the making”.

On the front page of the fraudulently named Syria Civil Defence aka the NATO state sponsored, White Helmets, there is the same claim made by the extensively discredited, Ammar Al Salmo, “leader” of the Syria Civil Defence in Aleppo.

Al Salmo’s “evidence” was pivotal to the US alliance claims that, on 21st September 2016, Russian jets had targeted a humanitarian convoy to the west of Aleppo – Urum al Kubra, causing international outcry and almost precipitating a terrifying escalation of the conflict between Russia and the US on Syrian soil. Claims that were universally debunked, as were so many before them. Syricide on Twitter produced a video that demonstrates the grave anomalies in the Al Salmo report, that was used to trigger international outrage against Russia and the Syrian government. Read more about Al Salmo here.

In November 2016, Raed Saleh, president of the White Helmets and “humanitarian” poster boy for the international community supporting the terrorist support group, gave an acceptance speech for the Right Livelihood Award. During this speech, Saleh reinforced the barrel bomb/earthquake imagery and increased the magnitude to a whopping 8:0

Here is the segment of the speech in which Saleh presents the barrel bomb case. Watch

Just after the liberation of East Aleppo by the Syrian Arab Army and allies, BBC Radio 4 interviewed James Le Mesurier who trotted out the usual platitudes regarding his band of “selfless humanitarians”, described, universally as “Nusra Front civil defence” by Syrian civilians freed from almost five years of Nusra Front-led terrorist and extremist imprisonment, supported by the interventionist alliance of the US, UK, EU, Gulf States, Turkey, Israel, Canada, Jordan & Australia & Co.

This time the BBC, themselves, announce that one barrel bomb is equivalent to an earthquake of an 8:0 magnitude, so parroting the White Helmet and NATO-state-aligned NGO narrative without hesitation. Listen to the interview here.

We have compiled statements by James Le Mesurier into a short video. They include the bare-faced lie, presented to CNN, that in Syria there is no emergency number to call for rescue or fire services, an attempt by this UK regime intelligence operative & OBE recipient, to disappear the REAL Syria Civil Defence, established in 1953:

Do They Have Us Over a Barrel?

Just a casual check on scientific charts correlating Richter scale magnitude with corresponding amounts of explosives will show that anything above a 7.0 magnitude would require as much as 20 billion kilograms of TNT, or according to other charts as much as 10 megatons, something approaching the output of an atom bomb, greater than the one used against Hiroshima by the US.

21st Century Wire had previously debunked CNN claims, in October 2016, that a White Helmet centre in Damascus had been targeted by a barrel bomb:

A NOBEL LIE: CNN’s Claim That ‘White Helmets Center in Damascus’ Was Hit by a Barrel Bomb

In August 2015, Ken Roth, director of Saudi/Soros funded & CIA linked, Human Rights Watch, tweeted that “Assad’s barrel bombs” were equivalent to the US nuclear bomb that had destroyed Hiroshima.

YallaLaBarra’s blog addressed Ken Roth’s unhealthy obsession with barrel bombs:

“This was the first of a whopping 200 Syria tweets that he has posted about “barrel bombs”. These don’t include at least an equal number of other anti-government tweets that range from Assad’s “use of chemical weapons against his people” to fawning praise of militants in Syria. Between 12 November 2013 and December 2014, Ken Roth tweeted about “barrel bombs” (BB) a total of 65 times. This is no small number, but it pales in comparison to the 135 barrel bomb tweets he posted in 2015 – thus far. During the first 8 months of 2015, the frequency of barrel bomb tweets varied from month to month. For example, after having posted 27 BB tweets in February of 2015, he surprisingly controlled his urges and kept it at under 15 for each of the following 4 months (March -June). In July his obsession got the best of him and he graced us with 28 BB tweets.Things got worse in August with a staggering 40 BB tweets. One of the reasons the BB tweeting became so trigger happy in the last two months is because he is now frantically inserting “barrel bombs” into tweets that are unrelated to the topic.”

Now lets consider the earthquake magnitude claim, bearing in mind that, at various stages, members of the NATO-aligned White Helmets and associated NGOs, & corporate media outlets have stated that as many as 50 of these earthquakes are hitting Syria per day for possibly the last six years.

Here’s a look at the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which struck January 12, 2010. The earthquake measured a “mere” (by White Helmet standards) 7.0 magnitude:

Figures taken from Dec.org reports.

Corporate Media Plays Along

On the 10th January 2017, the Independent’s headline was – “Assad ‘dropped 13,000 barrel bombs on Syria in 2016’, watchdog claims” . So according to this headline, Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, personally dropped 13, 000 (equivalent to) atom bombs on his own country and people in 12 months. Even the war-hungry US administration, with its penchant for obliterating entire nations would struggle to match that accolade!

The “watchdog” that has been cited by The Independent is none other than the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a long term purveyor of the barrel bomb myth and one of the multitude of NGOs affiliated with the anti-Syria-war-propaganda-impresario, George Soros, along with the Ford Foundation & the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

‘Helicopters Carry Two Bombs’

The British military intelligence officer turned mercenary who founded the White Helmets (yes, that’s right, they were set-up and are funded by the UK government) James Le Mesurier confirms what independent warfare analysts had previously told me, that a helicopter will carry two barrel bombs at at time.

SNHR report:

“The report documents that Syrian regime helicopters dropped 12,958 barrel bombs in 2016. Most of these barrel bombs were dropped in Damascus suburbs governorate, followed by Aleppo and then Hama, Idlib, Daraa, and Homs. Furthermore, November 2016 saw the most of these barrel bombs with 1946 dropped followed by June, and then January and August.”

In order to achieve this, the Syrian Airforce would have to fly 19 helicopter missions per day every day for the whole year. That is with limited airports available to them, the effect of sanctions,resulting in fuel shortages, and taking into consideration daylight hours and distances to and from alleged targets. Not to mention, downtime, maintenance etc.

Also, if there had been 19 helicopter flights per day over this time period, is it not strange that we dont see footage of these helicopters other than the oft recycled images & video that are used to depict these attacks? The NATO state funded, Turkish based and trained “citizen journalists” cameramen and women, “activists” have the equipment to record such flights, surely?

In this video which is a 9 minute alleged compilation of barrel bomb attacks, we actually see what looks suspiciously like reused shots of barrel bombs, or rudimentary finned Mortar-type bombs, being dropped by helicopters. The majority of the footage is actually of airforce, air to ground missile attacks on various terrorist and extremist held positions in Syria. There is the clear sound of Combat jets prior to the bombing.

James Longman of the BBC, embedded with such “activists & citizen journalists” in Homs & Damascus in 2011, during the early days of the NATO state-fomented armed uprising against the Syrian state, told the Frontline Club that they had impressive technological/media capabilities. So why is there not better coverage of the 19 helicopter missions per day?

The Nusra Front-led factions, with whom these so called “activists” and “citizen journalists” are embedded, certainly have the “equipment” to shoot helicopters down..as with the Russian helicopter flying in humanitarian aid in August 2016.

The Numbers Game

In their report, SNHR claim:

“According to the report, the barrel bombs that were dropped by Syrian regime warplanes in 2016 resulted in the killing of 653 civilians including 166 children and 86 women.”

How reliable these figures are, is hard to analyse. The majority of the statistics reported by these weaponized NGOs come from the SOHR (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights) that is notorious for mingling “civilian” deaths with those of the NATO-state funded and armed terrorist & extremist factions. The SOHR is in reality, Rami Abdulrahman, an EU funded one-man-band operating out of Coventry in the UK and communicating with “activists” via Skype.

“Abdulrahman of the SOHR admitted in 2012: “I have thousands of rebels in the civilian list. I put all the non-defectors in the civilian list…It isn’t easy to count rebels because nobody on the ground says ‘this is a rebel.’ Everybody hides it.” In another interview he confirmed the view that “most of Syria’s dead were combatants, not civilians.” ~ The Death Toll in Syria, What do the Numbers Really Say?

According to a former US diplomat who had served in Syria:

“I have serious problems with all the talk about military intervention in Syria. Everyone, especially the media, seems to be relying solely on anti-regime activists for their information. How do we know 260 people were killed by the regime in Homs yesterday? That number seems based solely on claims by anti-regime figures and I seriously doubt its accuracy.” ~ Veteran US Diplomat Questions Syria Storyline by Sharmine Narwani.

According to their previous meme, for the period between March 2011 and March 2016, over 35, 956 barrel bombs have been dropped by the Syrian airforce, killing 14, 652 civilians. Now this is a fascinating piece of analysis by SNHR, as even, NATO intervention sympathiser, Elliot Higgins aka Brown Moses of Bellingcat states that the first recorded barrel bomb attack in Syria, was in August 2012. A fact, corroborated by Wikipedia, in their list of barrel bomb attacks.

So if we rely upon Soros-allied SNHR, the barrel bomb attacks started 17 months before they were first recorded. Impressive. This immediately skews the numbers they are presenting.

In “The Barrel Bomb Conundrum”, Craig Murray states, (emphasis added):

“It is a fascinating example of a propaganda meme. Barrel bombs are being used by Syrian government forces, though on a pretty small scale. They are an improvised weapon made by packing conventional explosive into a beer barrel. They are simply an amateur version of a conventional weapon, and they are far less “effective” – meaning devastating – than the professionally made munitions the UK and US are dropping on Syria, or supplying to the Saudis to kill tens of thousands of civilians in Yemen, or to Israel to drop on children in Gaza.”

East Aleppo Liberation Opens Pandora’s Box?

If an earthquake has occurred anywhere in Syria, it is the tectonic plates of corporate media obscurantism and deceit being torn assunder by the truth that has emerged from the liberated districts of East Aleppo. Civilians escaping their almost five year ordeal of life under Nusra Front-led occuption and brutal imprisonment, exposed the truth behind the corporate media pre-fabricated narratives that had in effect prolonged the suffering of these people, while amplifying the voices of their captors, described euphemistically as “rebels” by the majority of the predatory NATO-aligned “mockingbird” media and NGOs.

Nusra Front Hell Cannon, captured in Sheikh Saeed, East Aleppo. 12/12/2016. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Nusra Front Hell Cannon, captured in Sukare, East Aleppo. 24/12/2016. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

No mention is made by this media-propaganda juggernaut of the 11,000 recorded and documented dead civilians, among them thousands of children, murdered by the “hell cannon” mortar fire, sniper fire and explosive bullets from Nusra Front-led terrorists in East Aleppo fired deep into Syrian state protected West Aleppo. These figures were given to me by Head of Forensics in Aleppo, Dr Zahar Hajjo and confirmed by Eva Bartlett during her debate with Dilly Hussain on RT.

Nor is there any mention of the recent discoveries of what look suspiciously like barrel bombs, previously stored by Nusra Front and assorted extremist factions in ammunuition depots in the liberated areas of East Aleppo.

Barrel bomb spec

Lets have a look at the technical specification of the barrel bomb. According to an animated depiction of the composition of the barrel bomb, they are filled with “twisted shards of metal shrapnel. When detonated the metal explodes in every direction causing tremendous damage to the immediate area”.

Barrel bomb as depicted in video. Screenshot.

Compare this to a description of the Nusra Front Hell Cannon mortars, from an Aleppo resident:

“The terrorists are using mortars, explosive bullets, cooking-gas cylinders bombs and water-warming long cylinders bombs, filled up with explosives and shrapnel and nails, in what they call “Hell Cannon”. (google these weapons or see their YouTube clips. The cooking-gas cylinder is made of steel, and it weighs around 25 kg. Imagine it thrown by a canon to hit civilians? And imagine knowing that it’s full with explosives?… Yet, the media is busy with the legendary weapon of “barrel bombs”! They came to spread “freedom” among Syrians! How dare they say that Syrian army shouldn’t fight them back?”

Can you tell them apart?

Many civilians that I interviewed as they were streaming out of the liberated areas of East Aleppo told me that the Nusra Front-led terrorist and militant gangs had often attacked civilian homes, schools and hospitals in the same areas and then blamed it on the Syrian national army.

Is it so far fetched to suggest that the barrel bomb myth is just that, a myth propagated by those who are claiming to be under attack while attacking civilians in the areas occupied or besieged by these terrorist factions?

Here is one such testimony from one of the first civilians I spoke to, on the 10th December 2016, in Hanano which had been fully liberated two days previously. Watch:

Conclusion

It is surely time to put the barrel bomb to bed? It is now an outdated and debunked, mass produced myth. 50 earthquakes per day of an 8.0 magnitude would have obliterated the entire region. Enough of these theatrics designed to obfuscate the very real bloodshed that is being witnessed daily in Syria as a result of the dirty war being waged against it by the US neocons and war hawks, hell-bent on regime change and the weakening of the sovereign nation to please their Israeli allies in the region.

I leave you with a timeless classic, “The Barrel Bomb Song” featuring Ken Roth, a fitting epitaph for one of the most flagrant media fabrications and distortions of the almost six year war of aggression against Syria led by a multitude of NATO & Gulf state funded and armed atrocity committing extremists.

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