SYRIA & LEBANON

ERIC ZUESSE—Venezuelan refugees and asylum-seekers grew in number during 2018. The broader movement of Venezuelans through the region and beyond, increasingly took on the characteristics of a refugee situation, with some 3.4 million living outside Venezuela by the end of 2018, as more than 3 million Venezuelans left their homes, travelling mainly elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean. “This is the biggest exodus in the region’s recent history, and one of the biggest displacement crises in the world.” It could turn out to be even worse than Colombia’s was.

It’s a David vs Goliath story. A former local newspaper reporter, Robert Stuart, is taking on the British Broadcasting Corporation. Stuart believes that a sensational video story about an alleged atrocity in Syria “was largely, if not entirely, staged.” The BBC would like it all to just go away. But like David, Stuart will not back down or let it go. It has been proposed that the BBC could settle the issue by releasing the raw footage from the event, but they refuse to do this. Why?

BILL VAN AUKEN—In issuing its Tuesday threat of US retaliation over the alleged use of chemical weapons, the State Department included a warning against a “disinformation campaign by the Assad regime and Russia to create the false narrative that others are to blame for chemical weapons attacks that the Assad regime is itself conducting.” This passage was apparently included in large measure due to the leaking of a document prepared by a leading investigator of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which tore apart the official story regarding the alleged chemical weapon attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma that was used as the pretext for the last US, British and French missile attack in April 2018.

Jimmy Dore and his crew demolish the latest stunt by the US Propaganda Ministry to reboot its sneaky aggression on the Syrian people.