{"id":369966,"date":"2018-07-19T00:43:17","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T23:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/no-nerve-agents-found-dissident-voice\/"},"modified":"2018-07-19T00:43:17","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T23:43:17","slug":"no-nerve-agents-found-dissident-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/no-nerve-agents-found-dissident-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"No Nerve Agents Found | Dissident Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2018\/07\/no-nerve-agents-found\/opcw\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-82138\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-82138\" src=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/opcw.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/opcw.png 200w, https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/opcw-150x150.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a>In terms of suffering caused, there is often not, in fact, much to choose between dismembering and burning people alive with high explosives, shredding them with shrapnel, and choking them with poison gas. Modern \u2018conventional\u2019 weapons can be far more cruel and devastating than, for example, chlorine gas. But chemical weapons, prohibited by international law, <em>are<\/em> extremely potent in allowing Western \u2018humanitarians\u2019 to justify \u2018intervention\u2019 in response to crimes \u2013 real, hyped or imagined \u2013 that the West has itself far surpassed using more respectable forms of mass murder.<\/p>\n<p>Noam Chomsky has <a href=\"https:\/\/chomsky.info\/199201__\/\">observed<\/a> that \u2018propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state\u2019. This is certainly true for social control at home, but propaganda also allows nominally democratic states to wield their military bludgeons abroad in much the same way as totalitarian states.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, in April, it happened again: the entire corporate media system rose up with instant certainty to damn an enemy state for crimes against humanity on April 7, in Douma, Syria.<\/p>\n<p>This was not acceptable death by bomb and bullet; this was a nerve gas attack. The villainous agent on every journalist\u2019s lips: sarin, a highly toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound that has no smell or taste, but which quickly kills through asphyxiation.<\/p>\n<p>As we <a href=\"http:\/\/medialens.org\/index.php\/alerts\/alert-archive\/2018\/868-douma-part-1.html\">discussed<\/a>\u00a0at the time, there was no question that this was a repetition of the fake justification for war to secure non-existent Iraqi&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2018\/07\/no-nerve-agents-found\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In terms of suffering caused, there is often not, in fact, much to choose between dismembering and burning people alive with high explosives, shredding them with shrapnel, and choking them with poison gas. Modern \u2018conventional\u2019 weapons can be far more cruel and devastating than, for example, chlorine gas. But chemical weapons, prohibited by international law, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-369966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}