Syria: Consign Barrel Bombs to the Propaganda Graveyard

January 17, 2017

By Vanessa Beeley

21st Century Wire

Full article with photos, video and audio is at <<www.21stcenturywire.com>>.

“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 also known as 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.

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.

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.

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 and Order of the British Empire 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  and 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 let’s consider the earthquake magnitude claim, bearing in mind that, at various stages, members of the NATO-aligned White Helmets and associated NGOs, and 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.