Transcript of the video:

Helena Cobban (00:00:03):

Hi everyone. This is the fourth session in the 10-part webinar series, Commonsense on Syria. I'm Helena Cobban, the president of Just World Educational, which is presenting this series. In today's session, I'm gonna have a conversation with journalist and writer Max Blumenthal about the way the media here in the west frame the news on Syria that they present to all the rest of us. I am glad that so many people have joined us here already. I just saw the number 73 that was exciting, and I'm sure more people are coming in. I'll give newcomers just a minute. A few housekeeping things here. First, a Zoom webinar is a little different than the Zoom meetings you may have been taking part in recently. The webinar is more like an in-person seminar or a public discussion or presentation at a think tank in that there are the main speakers in this case, Max Blumenthal and I, and most of the people in this room are attendees whom we seek to engage in an orderly way that allows for reason discussion.

Helena Cobban (00:01:18):

The other people in the room here are our Just World elves who work behind the scenes to answer your questions, process your questions, and to receive and organize the substance. Questions that you may want to ask our chief elf is our board member, Dr. Alice Rothchild. Please note that we are not using the q and a capability that some Zoom seminars have. So if you want to ask a question of Max, can you do so via the chat box that you'll find if you send your cursor down near the bottom of your zoom window, and please, if you want your question to be actually asked, word it succinctly and have it be an actual question or else do not have the time to read through long screeds and rants. We also ask you to keep your questions to the topic of the session. As you should know, we have six more sessions coming after today, each on a different aspect of the Syria conflict. So please keep your questions to today's topic and keep them brief. Another thing I'll do as we go is maybe launch one or more little snap polls for you to participate in. Here's one now.

Helena Cobban (00:02:46):

Hope everybody's seeing that one. I'm just trying to move this across. So today I am happy to welcome to our webinar Max Blumenthal, who I am sure you will all agree has done some extremely courageous and groundbreaking work as a journalist and filmmaker on the topic of Gaza and many other aspects of the Palestinian struggle, as well as many other current anti-imperialist struggles worldwide, including in Venezuela. Max, thanks for being with us today.

Max Blumenthal (00:03:25):

Thanks for welcoming me on.

Helena Cobban (00:03:30):

So today Max and I are gonna talk about how the corporate media and even large portions of the alternative media in the West plan and produce the news they provide to us about Syria and how they do so within a specific frame that often has clearly political ends by way of a starting point or perhaps a contrast. I want to talk very briefly about the time that I spent as a war correspondent. When I covered the first six years of the Civil War in Lebanon from 1975 through 1981, I was working for the Christian Science Monitor, the London Sunday Times, and other major media. I was there on the ground. My colleagues in the media, and I took real risks as we crossed and recrossed the front lines to track down the facts behind the numerous rumors and reports that would come in and to interview leaders and fighters on all sides of the fighting.

Helena Cobban (00:04:30):

I spoke Arabic, which gave me a huge advantage over the many Western correspondents who spoke it, not at all, or only barely, and who were therefore reliant on the services of local fixers, nearly all of whom it's fair to say, have their own agendas. But for all of us, our shoe leather was firmly on the ground, or sometimes as when the jubilant falangists took us around Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp in August, 1976, less than a day after they had finally captured it, our shoes were mired in the muck of human remains. It was a tough job. One thing we Western journalists did was constantly, we constantly interrogated and discuss the shorthand terms we would use to describe the dizzying array of factions that were sometimes in the fighting. And we often had to argue with our editors back home resisting their desire to oversimplify headlines or descriptors.

Helena Cobban (00:05:32):

No, these people are not Christian in any recognizable use of the term. We would say they are falangists. That's how they describe themselves, and that is the political tradition to which they fit. Or no, please don't cave to the pressure of the pro-Israel lobby groups and call all the Palestinian resistance movements terrorists. So when I read the way the New York Times covers Syria today, I do so with a good understanding of the nuts and bolts of how a war gets covered. Here's a name to conjure with Hwaida Saad. She is a key reporter who has worked for the New York Times in Beirut for many years, given that the big shot Times correspondence who are based in Beirut have little prior knowledge of the region before they go there and little or know knowledge of Arabic, they are very dependent on her waiter who has a Rolodex full of contacts in Lebanon and Syria that she interviews on behalf of the Times.

Helena Cobban (00:06:32):

You'll often see her byline there. So maybe the people she knows in Lebanon, she can go and sit down and interview them over a cup of coffee in person. In Syria, there was a long time when no times journalist went into the country at all, and recently there was just a quick foray into Idlib by a Turkey-based correspondent. So nearly always when Hwaida Saad and the Times are reporting things from inside Syria, they're doing so through a Skype discussion. They hold with one of Hwaida's contacts inside the opposition held areas. Neither Hwaida nor the readers are able to gauge a thing about what is happening at the other end of that Skype call and maybe just outside the frame of that Skype screen. She literally has no way to fact-check what the Skype contact may be telling her. And I'm not sure she would always even want to.

Helena Cobban (00:07:30):

Hwaida has a long history in the Saudi funded anti-Syrian media environment in Beirut. And another thing, In all that so-called reporting that the New York Times uses, coming out of Syria, how often have you seen them mention the identity or the nature of the main fighting force in an area like Idlib? If you read the times, you'd get the impression from story after story that there are no fighting forces within Idlib, just millions of innocent civilians having barrel bombs reigned mercilessly down upon them. Anyway, I've written a lot more on this on my personal Just World News blog recently. Charlotte is one of our elfs. Charlotte, can you show the news critiques slide please?

Helena Cobban (00:08:23):

Anyway, that's enough on my background. Now, just before I bring Max Blumenthal on, Charlotte, can we have the max resources slide? Okay. These are two resources on the way the Western media have systematically, whoops, this is a bit disorienting for me, sorry. These are two resources on the way the Western media have systematically distorted coverage of Syria that Max and his team at the Grayzone have produced, and that he asked us to be sure to share. The film on the left is a 30 minute critique of the way people in the movie industry have been brought into the regime change project in Syria. And the book on the right, as I'm sure you know, is Max's own latest big opus, the Management of Savagery, which is a much broader critique of the recent phase of the American Empire. In the middle of the book, he has some good sections on Syria, so it's helpful to see how he fits that into his broader critique of American imperialism. So if we can go back to Max and I can say Max, it's great to have you with us.

Max Blumenthal (00:09:42):

Great to be with you. Your screen is somehow okay, we're back. All right. So yeah, great to be on here. I'm pretty much have nothing else to do. So it was, it's good to to be with all of you or tuning in

Helena Cobban (00:10:03):

Like there's a coup attempt in Venezuela or anything that our government is like, there's nothing else to cover,

Max Blumenthal (00:10:08):

Right? I mean, and, you know, I think this is you know, consistent with what our government is doing around the world, and I don't think it can be de-linked from anything the government's doing. I mean, I'm just looking at footage right now of US troops landing on the Columbian side of the Venezuelan border in helicopters. Yesterday, a very mysterious incident took place in Venezuelan territorial waters, where a Venezuelan naval ship was rammed by a cruise boat, which is actually made to cruise through the Arctic and smash through ice. And several sailors were injured. And, you know, the Trump administration has put out a mafia style hit on Venezuela's leadership. It's elected leadership. And this is consistent with what the US is doing around the world, which is using Coronavirus to turn up the heat on its designated enemies. You know, there's been a lot of attention, and I'm sure everyone watching this is aware of how Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, former CIA director sort of spiritual impersonator of Jabba the Hut, has refused to lift sanctions on Iran. They really want to use Coronavirus to basically increase the pain on Iran's civilian population in this bizarre hope that they're gonna somehow rise up against their government. Well, thousands of people at time

Helena Cobban (00:11:39):

Anyways, Max. Yeah, let's bring this back to Syria.

Max Blumenthal (00:11:42):

So I was about to do that, and, you know, we hear very little about how the US is actually increasing sanctions on Syria and a, in a time of coronavirus and the sanctions, economic warfare, what you could fairly call financial terrorism, are simply an extension of what the US has been doing to Syria, really since the 1970s. But you know, especially since 2011, 2012 when we were told that a revolution or uprising was taking place, and the US began irregular warfare along with its allies against the Syrian government that has failed that war, that proxy war is over, but the economic war is continuing. And you know, I got to see the economic war up close when I was in Syria last September. You know, I was attacked heavily including by some people who sort of, attempt to affiliate with the Palestine solidarity movement just for visiting.

Max Blumenthal (00:12:43):

They put more effort into actually you know, boycotting Syria than they do boycotting Israel. And that part of the reason was that the elements that seek to sort of turn Syria into another Libya to just basically fragment it and put it under the control of thousands of sectarian warlords. They do not want tourists to come to Syria. Tourism was a major source of you know, Syrian revenue prior to the proxy war that began in 2011. So they see Westerners having a good time in Damascus, seeing the really rich and pluralistic culture of Damascus and of Syria as a whole, and putting that out on social media. That's a major threat to their narrative. I saw how sanctions affected everyday ordinary people, whether or not they support the government. I mean, I met people from all walks of life, people who were critics of the government and supporters, and saw how sanctions were basically ruining their lives.

Max Blumenthal (00:13:44):

Everyone my age or younger was thinking of leaving, the only people, because there's no work there. Everyone said to me who was my age or younger, that all of their friends were abroad. And this is the product of the proxy war and the economic war beyond that, you know, I took a drive east from Damascus through the eastern suburbs, which were a battlefront for much of the war. They were occupied by Saudi and Qatari funded militias who were essentially mercenaries to the point where the Saudi and Qatari militias would fight each other. Thousands died in sort of fratricidal fights because Saudi Arabia and Qatar despise each other. These areas were basically destroyed. The Syrian government was using Vietnam era weapons to basically, every time I say Syria, by the way, Siri comes on, it's really annoying <laugh> to basically extricate militias with heavy weapons from these extremely densely populated areas with giant apartment blocks.

Max Blumenthal (00:14:49):

And so what you saw was just destruction for miles and miles and miles. I went, I drove through there with a former resident of Douma who told me that he had to leave because his, basically, his backyard was turned into a training camp for Jaysh al-Islam, the Saudi backed Wahhabi militia. And, you know, he pointed out several sites where religious minorities were massacred on our way. But the point of the point that I'm making here is that by now, reconstruction should have been taking place there, but US sanctions, specifically the Caesar Sanctions bill, which is based on another kind of deception punish any company, construction company, any investor who seeks to come in and do reconstruction in Syria with secondary sanctions. So sanctions are harming people in Venezuela who are now under, you know, facing the threat of a US invasion.

Max Blumenthal (00:15:44):

They're harming people in Iran who are dying by the hundreds and thousands of coronavirus, and they aim to do the same thing in Syria. And I think it's unfortunate that, you know, when you see letters by members of Congress calling for the lifting of sanctions, Syria's never mentioned, even within the left, within the anti-war movement, there's a sort of fear reluctance to include Syria as a target of imperialism of economic warfare. And that's really because of the echo chamber that was deliberately formed to bully and denigrate and attack blacklist. Anyone who spoke out against this, I've been a key target of that. You know, and I want to talk more about it. I don't know if you know, now you want to get into questions. I can definitely talk more about the situation on the ground. 

Helena Cobban (00:16:35):

Well, you know, I want to, what I really wanna do is to explore with you Max, this question of how the media, the mainstream media and great sections of the alternative media in this country, including, for example, Democracy Now, how they produce and contribute to this narrative on Syria that is very binary that everything, you know, that the Assad regime does. And it's always called Assad regime. It's never called, you know, the legitimate government of Syria.

Max Blumenthal (00:17:07):

It's never even just called Syria.

Helena Cobban (00:17:09):

No. It's, it's just the, and it's a regime. You know, when people use the term regime, that means that, you know, they're setting it up for regime change. But you and I both have fairly deep critiques of the way the corporate media have been covering Syria. I think we would both say at this point that a lot of people, including good people, have essentially been duped by the massively funded information management operations.

Max Blumenthal (00:17:37):

Yeah.

Helena Cobban (00:17:38):

That were mounted by Western governments. And I mean, the, the French government, the British government, and the, and our government here mounted these information operations as part of the regime change project in Syria. But then, you know, so, so a lot of our, our friends have been, I would say, duped, but no one likes to admit that he or she has been duped. I mean, you know, I wouldn't, and, you know, or or admit that they've been played by those, you know, governmentally funded campaigns. And there's always some nostalgia for the certainties that one previously believed in. Many people, for example, who've escaped from the ideological thrall of Zionism have experienced some of that nostalgia or regret for the loss of those old certainties. So you are someone who has made that journey on Syria from the certainties of the old anti-Assad to the position you currently hold. Can you talk a little bit about that and specifically what caused you to change your position?

Max Blumenthal (00:18:45):

Yeah, well, just, that's a great question. And you know, I have, I've talked about this a good amount and at greater length at the podcast I do with Ben Norton, mModerate Rebels, I think it was like our third or fourth episode just, you know, to you know, bring things up to date. I mean, one of the two resources that I recommended that you presented at the beginning the Syria Deception, which is a documentary made for my website, the Grayzone by Dan Cohen you know, another Jewish anti-Zionist who I did, who was the co-producer of our documentary Killing Gaza. It really will expose the various propaganda constructs that have been a constant sincethe US really stalled on its regime change project in Syria. And the Syrian opposition started to kind of do all it could to stimulate opposition among the Western public to push their own government for intervention.

Max Blumenthal (00:19:48):

And so they're using a human rights narrative. And so you're introduced to this various cast of characters who speak English who project a certain message behind them is a public relations firm. The Syria Campaign behind that is money from Syrian exiled billionaires, as well as the US and UK governments and Qatar put a ton of money into it. And what you're getting is a gigantic propaganda blitz a war on your mind and it is disseminated through mainstream media with absolutely no counter narrative. And that's what you get now through Democracy Now. There is no counter narrative on Democracy Now. And, you know, alternative media has been infiltrated. The parts of the left have been infiltrated with this narrative. I can get into the details of that. But, you know, as Helena mentioned, I was duped early on.

Max Blumenthal (00:20:44):

And it was partly a product of ignorance. Also a sort of a, a, a, a product of I wouldn't say opportunism, but, you know, really wanting to take a stand that I thought people around me in the Palestine solidarity movement that, you know, would appreciate. And, you know, I basically denounced my employer at al-Akhbar which is a Lebanese leftist paper, which was taking a Pro-Syrian government position back in 2012. And, you know, I saw the conflict in Syria in, i, I, I conflated it with Palestine in a very simplistic way and sort of compartmentalized to the point where I had excised knowledge I had of, for example, the way the US used contras sort of opposition mercenary forces in irregular warfare in Nicaragua and El Salvador. And, you know, I kind of knew this was taking place in Syria, but within the circles I was in, it just, you know, led me to compartmentalize.

Max Blumenthal (00:22:00):

So I saw, for example, the Syrian opposition as the Palestinians the Syrian government as the Israelis. I think that's why, that's how a lot of people got duped within the Palestine solidarity movement. And, you know, as after I, you know, took that little brief stand, I realized I had made a big mistake. I was getting pats on the back from lots of kind of people in grad school at NYU who were kind of I thought, I saw them as opportunists. A lot of mainstream media people DC think tank people seemed really happy about me for the first time when they had been, you know, the same people attacking me for my work on Palestine. And I started to look more deeply into it. I think, you know, by 2013 when there was the first attempt to get the US to intervene in Syria over a very suspicious chemical attack or a alleged chemical attack in East Ghouta I realized something was kind of off.

Max Blumenthal (00:22:59):

I took a look, a close look at how the Syrian opposition was behaving in Washington, how they had gathered around the office of John McCain, how they were working hand in glove with the right wing Cuban exile lobby in Miami and the Israel lobby. And their goal, the goal that they were driving for was exactly what they had done in Libya, where they took out a sovereign government and simply destroyed a state. They took a stable and prosperous state and turned it into a failed state where, you know, today and Libya, it's nine year, nine years later after the US regime change operation, and they're still in, you know, they're still in a civil war, a bloody civil war. The country has been absolutely ruined, and they have a refugee crisis. And so, and

Helena Cobban (00:23:45):

The reemergence of slavery in Libya.

Max Blumenthal (00:23:47):

And the reemergence of slavery, I mean, every horror you can imagine, and the US did the same thing in Libya that it did in, in Syria. And, you know, I laid it out in my book, the Management of Savagery. It supported Al-Qaeda affiliated factions like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, provided them with weapons. Those weapons then went to even more extreme groups like Ansar al-Sharia, which attacked the US Consulate in Benghazi. I mean, I can go on and on about this, but the point is that was the project for Syria, which really was a leader of it at least Arab independence after Egypt fell into the Western camp after Camp David. And the goal was simply to destroy the Arabs as an independent people and put them under the control of the Saudis and the UAE and the Israelis that that kind of axis.

Helena Cobban (00:24:36):

One thing that interested me was that you know, has interested me over this whole, whole business is that if you ask people who are like anti Assad and, you know, anti Assad regime and barrel bombs and, and chemical weapons and all the kind of the, the tropes that you find in, in, in the Western media, and then you ask them, well, who in the Syrian opposition do you support who's, which of the Syrian opposition parties programs do you find admirable? They don't know. They, you know, it's kind of a, a completely apolitical sort of bandwagon effect.

Max Blumenthal (00:25:19):

It's just sort of a, a bleeding heart generic middle class liberal human rights critique of a situation where, where there's an information blackout by, I would say 2016, when the propaganda machine really reignited, and I'll talk about the, the various elements involved in it later, it, it reignited itself around Aleppo five areas in East Aleppo were under the control of extremist factions supported by Turkey. And I mean, extre, when I say extremist, I mean their leadership who were clerics brought in from Saudi Arabia, like Abdullah Mohseni, I mean, watch this guy's videos. He was the most popular man in East Aleppo at this time. Wanted to establish a Sunni supremacist theocracy in a pluralistic country. And they were basically occupying five districts of a giant city, Aleppo, where West Aleppo was completely ignored by US Media. 1.4 million people were basically under siege, and the Syrian army and its allies were attempting to go in and remove them.

Max Blumenthal (00:26:28):

And I kind of knew what the facts were and had been exposed to, you know, sources on the ground and various other sources providing a counter narrative. And I decided that you know, it was time to tell people the truth and to use the credibility that I'd amassed over the years to do it, knowing that I was gonna be brutally attacked. And so I kind of took a three week retreat from all my other work and just focused intensely on, you know, who the armed factions were, who was supporting them, all of the atrocities they committed. I sort of reexamined as, as, as closely as I could, the whole history of the war. I I was calling people who, you know, I had, you know, been attacked by or disagreed with you know, to ask them, you know, what the deal really was.

Max Blumenthal (00:27:20):

And I came out with my two-part piece on the White Helmets, because it was this group, which we were told were selfless, heroic rescuers who were being honored with Nobel Prize nominations. And Oscar, you know, they were, they're a documentary about them won the Oscars. You know, I wanted, this is all we were being exposed to. They were covering up the reality on the ground in East Aleppo, which is Salafi-Jihadi groups who sought to ethnically cleanse Syria of religious minorities and establish a theocracy who were backed by foreign forces, including the United States. And they were being driven out, and they had no popular support on the ground, and this story wasn't being told. So I exposed the white helmets as being, you know, basically an auxiliary to that operation, and to being basically a creation of UK and US intelligence with US UK and Qatari money behind them.

Max Blumenthal (00:28:17):

They were not just a group of selfless rescuers. They were an international influence operation that was working basically through a public relations firm called the Syria campaign based in London and New York. And they dominated everything we saw. So that was really the moment when I kind of came out and I, the, the attacks that I withstood continue to this day, and it, you know, it folded or it, it led to me writing this book, the Management of Savagery, where I put Syria in a historic context. And I also try to place the refugee crisis which, you know, Europe is bearing the brunt of, and refugees are bearing the brunt of, and, you know, Islamophobia in the West in a historic context, and show how the US has traditionally weaponized the most reactionary right wing force in the Arab world.

Max Blumenthal (00:29:13):

And, you know, I would say in the, one of the most reactionary forces in the world wahhabi you know, militarized wahhabism to undermine its geopolitical foes, and that's what took place in Syria. So here we are, I mean, years later, I think the whole crisis could have been averted if, for example, the CIA had not embarked on Operation Timber Sycamore. And if you're watching this right now, feel free to look that up. Google that Timber Sycamore, the New York Times reported on that. It was a multi-billion dollar arm and equip operation, launch launched by the CIA to flood Syria with heavy weapons, put them in the hands of the so-called moderate rebels who were just basically a front for 31 flavors of, you know, extremism backed by the Gulf States who've wanted to destroy Syria for decades. And what happens when you do that? What happens when you flood a country with weapons and put them in the hands of extremists? Imagine if Russia and China got together and somehow sent boatloads of weapons into the United States and put 'em in the hands of, you know, the Bundy gang in the West and the the proud boys,

Helena Cobban (00:30:28):

Or, or more than that, if, if they actually sent in arms with fighters from all around the West.

Max Blumenthal (00:30:34):

Well, in addition, foreign fighters

Helena Cobban (00:30:36):

Which is what we have in, in Idlib

Max Blumenthal (00:30:38):

Right, great point.

Helena Cobban (00:30:39):

There are tens of thousands of foreign fighters from all around the world.

Max Blumenthal (00:30:46):

That's a great point.

Helena Cobban (00:30:47):

Essentially holding the, the, the local population hostage as, as you know, human shields and posing great dilemmas for the humanitarian organizations that want to help the people. But I, I actually have written about this a little bit recently that it's very similar to what happened in Rwanda after the end of the genocide, after the the RPF, the RPA ended the genocide and the genocidal networks that had previously been sort of government sponsored, fled to the Eastern jungles of Eastern Congo. So they fled west into Eastern Congo and took most of the Hutu population that they could with them, and held them as human shields there. And the aid organizations wanted to help the people, but the, the genocidal networks had an iron grip on the people. And it's, it is a dilemma. But if the, if the humanitarian aid organizations don't tell us about this situation, and if the media don't tell us about this situation, if the media, if the New York Times never mentions the name of the organization, that is the big fighting force in Idlib. I mean, I should have put, put together a little poll here. How many people here know the name of the main fighting force in Idlib? And the answer is, it's Tahrir al-Sham, which is, you know, Al-Qaeda affiliated, Turkish supported, or, you know, the Turks support the Turkish government supports them some and doesn't support them some. But you know, if, if you don't even know the political facts like that, how can you produce a a media narrative that is honest? I mean,

Max Blumenthal (00:32:51):

Right? I mean, it would be devastating if the New York Times would actually report on the factions in Idlib, because when you actually trace them to their roots, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham is rebranding ofJabhat al-Nusra through various coalitions. And Jabhat al-Nusra was for,

Helena Cobban (00:33:14):

Was a rebranding of, of 38 that came before <laugh>,

Max Blumenthal (00:33:17):

Right? But essentially, what they are, and the flag they carry is the Syrian franchise of the organization responsible for the killing of 3000 and or so, Americans and others in the on 9/11 2001, they are the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, and they're not even the most extreme faction in Idlib. You have the Turkistani Islamic party, which is a wing of the East Turkistan Islamic movement from Xinjiang, China, who are Uyghurs, who have come to another country to occupy Syrian homes that have been destroyed or taken, and to basically colonize parts of Syria with the support of Erdogan's Turkey, which is a NATO partner. And NATO itself, I mean, they're seen as a battering ram, not just against the US', you know, geopolitical target in Syria, but also against the Chinese government. And actually, you know, if you go back and look at what happened in Guantanamo Bay when several members of this this faction, this extremist Wahhabi faction were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and brought to Guantanamo they were let go on the condition that they returned to the battlefield and fight against China, it was determined that their, their fight was not actually against the US In some ways, they're pro US that could at least be used as proxies.

Max Blumenthal (00:34:45):

And, you know, our emerging geopolitical enemy ultimately was going to be China. So this is the cynicism behind the whole project in Idlib. Now, how, I mean, since you brought up Idlib, and I was talking about how this war was never necessary, how hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved if weapons weren't dumped into Syria to extend the war and basically increase the pain on a state that the US and its allies have wanted to destroy for decades. Idlib was taken in 2015, and it was the result, again, of the US arm and equip operation using Saudi and Qatari money to buy heavy weapons from straw buyers, specifically BGM TOW missiles. These are anti-tank missiles that anyone can put together and assemble and take out a Syrian T-72 tank. And they're made by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

Helena Cobban (00:35:41):

Oh, so, that's good for the, for the American economy. I mean, come on, we've gotta have an industrial policy. And it's known as the military industrial policy.

Max Blumenthal (00:35:48):

They're job creators. And in 2015 these extremist forces you know, including Jabhat al-Nosra, in coalition, decided that they wanted to march towards the the, the, the heartland of the Alawite community, who they see as violators of Islam, who they openly said they wanted to exterminate.

Helena Cobban (00:36:14):

There have been many genocidal acts. I mean, that has to be, you know, these are not just people with genocide in their, in their mind. They have carried out genocidal acts against Alawites against many different Christian communities. I mean, the north of Syria is historically the home of a massive Christian population. There are 10 Byzantine lost cities in northern Syria. So you have, what, what's happened to the, to the members of these communities, as well as Yezidis and, you know very few, small number of Shiites there. But at the hands of these, these genocidal extremists has been terrible, just as bad in Idlib as it was in northeastern Syria with ISIS.

Max Blumenthal (00:37:07):

And so Idlib was captured thanks to the destruction of large numbers of Syrian tanks with these anti-tank weapons that came in thanks to the US arm and equip program when Idlib in Idlib is on the way to Tartus and to some of the, you know, to the Alawite heartland. And what took place in Idlib was, was, it was exactly what you just described. People Druze people were forced at the barrel of a gun to dig up the graves of their ancestors because they were not given proper burials according to the so-called moderate rebels. Then the Druze were forced to either convert or be slaughtered the same with the Christians in this area. And, you know, I went to Maaloula, which is a a mostly Christian town outside Damascus, and I saw how their antiquities were destroyed and faces were shot off because it was considered idolatry to display the faces of their saints.

Max Blumenthal (00:38:10):

You know, it was 10 times worse in Idlib, the Russian government, historic ally of Syria going back to the, you know, days of the Soviet Union saw how dangerous what was taking place was in a place that was as far from the Russian frontier as West Virginia is from Washington, DC. And they, that's when Russia decided to intervene. So the Russian intervention caused, at least for the next two years, an escalation, which eventually led to the end of the conflict, along with Iranian and Hezbollah intervention. But my point again, is that.

Helena Cobban (00:38:48):

It hasn't really ended, though.

Max Blumenthal (00:38:49):

It hasn't ended, but it's, it's at a very low ebb. I mean, I can talk about what's going on, but I'm just trying to make, I'm trying to make this broader point, which is that this whole thing could have been avoided if all of this money from our pockets as US taxpayers hadn't gone into this arm and equip mercenary, kind of contra operation to shatter the state, to ruin so many lives.

Max Blumenthal (00:39:14):

If our money hadn't gone into this propaganda operation to infiltrate our brains, to scramble our brains and make us support the horror that was taking place, this whole thing could have ended. But what it was all driving at was regime change. And so many people within the broader left, supported that goal because they thought it was about bringing down a dictator and liberating a country so its people could be free, which is just not what was taking place in Syria at all. It would've replaced Bashar al-Assad, who is not, you know, sitting in some computer cave controlling everything. It would've replaced him with thousands of little dictators, just as in Libya. But in the heart of the Middle East, Lebanon would've been overrun, or at least parts of Lebanon would've been overrun by wahhabi extremist forces. It would've been a field day for Israel.

Max Blumenthal (00:40:12):

The entire region would've been destabilized in a much worse way than we've currently seen. And so, you know, it really was the result of Syria calling on its allies, particularly in Russia, that the situation is at least stabilized now, but in the West, they're not content to allow it to stabilize to the point where people can rebuild. Where internally displaced refugees can come home to places like the eastern suburbs of Damascus, where refugees in general can come home. They want to keep the pain going. And so Congress continues to pass one sanctions bill after another US troops remain in northeastern Syria, guarding Syrian oil wells, Turkey, a NATO member state, is occupying parts of Northeastern Syria. And, you know, the pain on this state increases, and the people who pay the price are just average people regardless of what they think. You need to understand what sanctions really are to see them as part and parcel of the war on the Syrian.

Max Blumenthal (00:41:20):

And it really is a war on the Syrian people that I just described. They're not targeting specific leaders, although the media reports it that way, the mainstream media will say, oh, it report Syria's intelligence chief who oversees a network of gulags was just sanctioned. What it does is it prevents states like Syria from having assets from selling their oil on the international market, from exporting from doing business, and without assets, the same in Venezuela or Iran. They can't buy things like medical equipment. And so Syrian hospitals are really suffering right now particularly oncology wards where they need to import chemotherapy drugs, things they can't do, dialysis. It's very hard to replace dialysis machines. So this is the effect of sanctions, and it's the Syrian opposition right here in Washington amid the Coronavirus pandemic, which continues to lobby for this economic war.

Helena Cobban (00:42:14):

Well, it's kind of like Cuba, you know, after the Bay of Pigs failed, then the sanctions were put on and are still on today. And there are plenty of Cuban exiles, as we know in this political system who are, you know, urging tighter and tighter. So it's very, it's very similar to what you are describing about the Syrian exiles and, and their claim to represent Syrian people's interests in general very similar to, you know, groups like the Band of Brothers or whatever in this, in the Cuban exile community, or indeed the, that famous chap Ahmed Chalabi who claims to represent the Iraqi people and claims that when, when he was returned to Baghdad, there would be, you know, masses, millions of people on the street to support him. And that he went, he went back. I think he had 200 people that he, he paid to be on the street, and, and he was nothing.

Max Blumenthal (00:43:18):

Right.

Helena Cobban (00:43:18):

So I, I mean, these, these claims of political exiles, you know, in Europe, in Europe in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, it was full of white Russians, you know, and they all had plans and schemes and said, you know, we can overthrow the Bolsheviks, but the European governments took them at, you know, I mean, they, they knew that this was hogwash. But in this country, for some reason, you know, when Syrian exile politicians stand up in this country, Syrian Americans and say, you know, I represent the true interests of the Syrian people. I know that they all hate Bashar al-Assad. You know, then just one little tip, one little tip, you know, it won't be difficult. I mean, they, they sold a bill of goods to the American people and to the, and to the Obama administration. And, and I think we are still paying the price for that. I'm gonna just launch one poll here about which media people we have about we have more than a hundred people taking part in this webinar, which is pretty exciting. It's our biggest number yet. So that's a tribute to you, max. And probably it's a good idea if we can move to have some questions. So let's bring in our Chief Elf Alice Rothchild with the first of the questions you've picked for us.

Alice Rothchild (00:44:50):

Sure. So let me just get to my first question here. So this is a question from Chuck Scurich and he says, one of the major sources that the media has used to validate their position is Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, United Nations and other nonprofit humanitarian organizations. What do you think happened to these organizations to believe the ongoing regime change position?

Max Blumenthal (00:45:18):

Yeah, I mean, the, the NGO industrial complex has been a major source of a lot of the deceptions on Syria. They don't have people on the ground, just as the media hasn't had people on the ground. And that's another point I want to make, is that you know, there's so many areas of Syria where o overtaken for several years by foreign backed extremist militias and the, the so-called Syrian White Helmets who are actually founded and run out of Turkey by a British military intelligence officer, James Le Mesurier, who was recently murdered under very suspicious circumstances, apparently. They provided the media with its eyes and ears on the ground. Why couldn't the media go in? Look at what happened to James Foley. Look at what happened to Steven Sotloff. Under very suspicious circumstances, they were captured and beheaded after being sort of kidnapped and sold off.

Helena Cobban (00:46:19):

So those were journalists who went in.

Max Blumenthal (00:46:21):

These were journalists who went in. And so journalists basically for many years until groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Cham sort of got their PR act together and started bringing people like CNN's Clarissa Ward in to do their little propaganda pieces they couldn't go in. And that meant, you know, human rights workers couldn't go in as well, but they, you know, the human rights industrial complex of Amnesty International, or Human Rights Watch, particularly Human Rights Watch under Ken Roth's control, I mean, they just exist to weaponize human rights in a, as you know, kind of mechanism of soft power for Empire. Just two days ago, a Human Rights Watch like a a, I think someone at a mid-level Human Rights watch position went on Twitter to celebrate sanctions against Nicaragua in the middle of the Coronavirus Pandemic. We look at Ken Roth's Twitter account where he is just cheering on every regime change propaganda construct possible right now against China, cuz that's the new designated enemy.

Max Blumenthal (00:47:34):

But, you know, if you look at Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and their performance throughout this proxy war in Syria, they were very mum on atrocities committed by the opposition, the Western backed extremist opposition. It's very hard to find human rights reports on that. And then Amnesty UK, which is under the control of just an open regime change operative named Kristyan Benedict they've actually participated in rallies calling for Western military intervention in Syria, calling for the West to implement a no-fly zone, the kind of which they implemented in Libya, which led to the destruction of the Libyan state. So you actually have a human rights group's local chapter participating in pro-war rallies under the guise of human rights. I, I, again encourage, I think we need

Helena Cobban (00:48:25):

To, we need to move along to the next question.

Max Blumenthal (00:48:28):

Okay.

Alice Rothchild (00:48:29):

So Jennifer Bing asked, so was it naive to be supportive of the initial protests in 2011 calling for reform? Don't you agree there was need for political change under the Assad regime in 2011?

Max Blumenthal (00:48:42):

That's a great question from my friend Jennifer who does really important work on Palestine. And, you know, many people I spoke to when I was in Damascus would've agreed with that statement, and they participated in those protests. And I cover this in my book, a close friend of mine, Naji you know, who was very supportive of me when I came to Syria. He actually not only participated in those protests, but helped try to fund them, provide protest materials in 2011. He's a you know, an American Syrian businessman, mainly Syrian, who saw it as a great moment for reform. The Arab Spring is a great moment for reform. He said, we had the government on its back foot. They didn't know what was happening to them. They never expected this, and they were ready to negotiate. And then the weapons came in, and then the extremists came in, the Syrian Muslim brotherhood took over, and the whole conflict became militarized.

Max Blumenthal (00:49:47):

And then the government went into sort of siege mode, crisis mode, and the, the, the, the, the bureaucracy took over along with the military intelligence apparatus. That's what happened. And that's what so many people that I and my colleagues have spoken to who participated in some of the early reformist protests described to us. I quote one of them, Edward Dark, in my book, who said that he was involved in the protest. And then after the whole situation became militarized by the forces that I described he was asked to produce his ID by a Chechnyan man on the corner upholding a checkpoint where he lived in Aleppo. And he said, that's it. I'm out. And he eventually had to leave Syria. So the protests that were about reform of, you know a corrupt government, and we, we, we can't look down and on them and sneer at them because our government's pretty corrupt here are completely distinct from what took what began to take place in 2012, where you had a sectarian collection of sectarian militias armed and funded by the enemies of Syria to destroy the state and tear it to shreds, including supporting support from Israel, including direct support from Israel in the Syrian Golan.

Max Blumenthal (00:51:10):

You, you have to, you have the, the two are all constantly conflated, but they're absolutely distinct. And so Naji, his factory where he was employing it was I think a Pepsi bottling plant. He was employing Palestinian refugees from a local refugee camp. He had to go down to his factory because the area came under the control of the Syrian armed opposition and proved that he was not an Alawite. And he had to say, you know, make various statements to prove to the so-called moderate rebels that he was not a member of the Alawites. So they basically wouldn't kill him or just shut down his factory. Then, you know, the factory was basically surrounded with military installations by the armed opposition, and then it was bombed by the government to remove the armed opposition. And he said, today, you know, I don't blame anyone.

Max Blumenthal (00:52:02):

I blame the forces from the outside that were pushing the conflict, imposing the conflict on Syria. And that's really the way that everyone I met there sees it, regardless of what they think about the government. The sanctions aren't affecting the government. They're doing, the people in the government are fine, and they, the government has more control than ever, and there is less hope for reform than ever. And that is the result of this proxy war. And we should point the finger at our own government instead of, you know, behaving in such a neo-colonial fashion towards countries that we don't even understand or know about.

Alice Rothchild (00:52:42):

So this sort of leads into another question by Rick Sterling Syria has accused the US of aiding ISIS by, for instance, transporting them around. Do you have information on that?

Max Blumenthal (00:52:53):

Yeah, I mean what is ISIS? I mean, ISIS is, you know, constantly blended in and out of the Syrian opposition. I write a, there's a chapter in my book called The Moderates at Menagh about how ISIS worked directly with a US trained and armed faction of the free Syrian army to overtake the Menagh military base. It, it was an air base in Syria, and, you know, ultimately the poor conscripts inside were slaughtered. But, you know, ISIS would not have existed were it not for the arm and equip operation. And it's not just me saying that, it's the Defense Intelligence Agency of the Pentagon, which predicted that in I think 2012 in a suppressed memo where it predicted that a Salafist principality would come into being in northeast Syria if the US Qatar, Turkey continued to send weapons in or escalated its arm and equip program.

Max Blumenthal (00:53:55):

And that's exactly what took place in Raqqa which became the capital of the so-called Islamic State. But how did that take place? The Islamic State didn't roll into Raqqa and take it from the Syrian army with Islamic state flags. They came under the cover of Jabhat al-Nosra and the Free Syrian Army, the official US backed wing of the opposition. Then after that battle took place, the activists of the Syrian Revolution tried to implement their project in Raqqa. They were all driven out or killed or arrested by Nosra. Nosra declared the caliphate and Baghdadi emerges as the caliph of the Islamic state. And it all, the entire project there folds into what we know of as Isis and half of the members of the FSA who participated in that fight joined the Islamic state. So basically any amount of weapons that the US would dump into Syria, any training that they gave to the so-called moderates benefited ISIS.

Max Blumenthal (00:55:01):

And now ISIS has again folded back into the Syrian opposition as it takes shelter in Idlib. Where was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed? He was killed in Idlib, which is now the base of the Syrian armed opposition. And it was because he was taking shelter among the very groups that he emerged from. And it's that fact that the US media sort of sought to obscure because it's so uncomfortable for the narrative that ISIS somehow existed as a distinct faction, which had nothing to do with the broader armed opposition who are just a bunch of moderates who want freedom.

Alice Rothchild (00:55:40):

So there's a question from Peter Ford. Can the administration succeed in laundering the brand of Hayat Tahrir al-Cham? Is this the next phase?

Max Blumenthal (00:55:51):

What <laugh>, you know, I mean, I'm getting questions from Rick Sterling and Peter Ford who are, I mean, if you're watching this, these are some of the most prestigious experts and people who've done some of the most pathbreaking research whenever, you know, I hear Peter Ford on the radio, he writes anything, you know, I stop and pay attention. So I think he would have more to say about that than I would. But you know, the US has, has struggled particularly here in Washington to cover up the fact that Hayat Tahrir al-Cham controls Idlib, and that they emerged from the Al-Qaeda brand or the Al-Qaeda familyBrett McGurk, who was essentially in charge of US anti ISIS operations and anti Al-Qaeda operations. Spoke at the Middle East Institute here in Washington, which really has been one of the major think tanks pushing regime change in Syria on on K Street.

Max Blumenthal (00:56:49):

It's backed by the Gulf States. And, you know, various experts have been fired from there for contra contradicting that position. Brett McGurk said that Al-Qaeda has its largest you know, gathering of forces in Idlib. You know, Idlib is basically the largest base of Al-Qaeda on earth since 9/11, and he was harshly attacked for, basically for saying that there is a price to pay in Washington for noting that Donald Trump probably the most Islamophobic president in history, someone who's implemented a Muslim ban, has been the key protector of Idlib throughout his administration. And that's really because of the purpose that Idlib serves. But I think the, the real tension there is, is with, is with Turkey. What does Turkey do? How does Turkey manage these forces? Where do they go? And right now it seems like the conflict in Idlib is on pause.

Max Blumenthal (00:57:46):

Right now no one's paying attention to anything but coronavirus in the US and somehow as the US struggles to come up with masks and ventilators, we recently accepted two days ago ventilators from a sanctioned Russian company. Again, it appears that our sanctions don't actually affect leadership and they do affect humanitarian needs. The US manages to keep troops in Syria, inside Syria and Northeastern Syria. So i, I don't know, everything's in flux right now. I would love to hear what Peter would have to say, I guess, after the broadcast about that question.

Helena Cobban (00:58:23):

Okay. if I could just jump in there. Max did mention the Brookings Institution as being a kind of a, a citadel of the regime change operation. And it's worth pointing out that there's been a huge amount of Gulf money washing into the think tank scene here in Washington, DC. Not only, you know, the Middle East Institute getting 25 million from the United Arab Emirates and Brookings, and, you know, those are the kind of big old think tanks. But then there's this proliferation of new think tanks like the Arab Center DC which is the, which is the Qataris' go-to Think tank and, and the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. And the Arabia--, actually, I think the Arabia Foundation closed because the, the guy who was running it ran off with the money. But all these people create experts who are then, you know, just marketed and described in the mainstream media as the go-to expert on Syria, right? Whereas they're all, you know, bought and paid for essentially by Gulf regimes that have a lot of money and, and a strong agenda regarding Syria. And that's been a, a real pity because there used to be some, some real expertise here.

Max Blumenthal (00:59:42):

Yeah, they never, it's never, you know, if someone was, you know, an a host at RT or, you know, they were on Russian, they, they were part of a, a think tank based in Moscow or that was supported by the Kremlin, the US media would always mention that if they quoted them. But when you look at someone like Charles Lister, who's basically a lobbyist for the Syrian armed opposition in Washington, who's supported by the Gulf States through the Atlantic Council and through the Middle East Institute, he's just described as a kind of expert, even though he's been consistently wrong again and again. And what he's done is he's been brought in to vet the so-called moderate rebels and say this group is moderate. One of the groups that he said was moderate was Nour al-Din al-Zenki who've been exposed not only for beheading, a 19 year old captured Palestinian fighter on camera in Aleppo, but for also capturing kidnapping Italian aid workers all kinds of human rights atrocities.

Max Blumenthal (01:00:41):

And this all took place after he authorized them and vetted them based on his supposed expertise as moderate. And when you get vetted as moderate, it means that you get the BGM TOW missiles, you get the anti-tank missiles, you get the heavy weapons through the CIA. So this has been an absolute disaster where you've had the actual you know, information and intelligence on the ground privatized or exploited by Gulf interests inside Washington. Really you know, and I write about this in, in my book inside the Obama administration, Barack Obama himself complained about this, and it's what kind of led him to step back from directly militarily intervening because he determined that he wasn't getting accurate intelligence inside his own administration because of the proliferation of Gulf interests on K Street, along with figures like Samantha Power, who thought that, you know, human rights needed to be weaponized to destroy another opponent or geopolitical target of the US.

Helena Cobban (01:01:48):

So Alice, maybe we could have just one more question and then we'll wrap up. Sorry to jump in there.

Alice Rothchild (01:01:54):

Okay. So the next question, I mean, there are many, many questions, so I apologize. Maybe

Max Blumenthal (01:01:58):

We could do like two or three at once and I'll try to knock 'em out or condense it. Okay. Well,

Helena Cobban (01:02:03):

We still have more than a hundred people, so they're hanging in there <laugh>.

Alice Rothchild (01:02:07):

Okay, well, I'll do, how about I'll do two. One of them has several people asking the same question. So Peter Larson says my experience is that Palestinians are quite divided on the issue of Syria. Rather than talking about people being duped, I would be interested in hearing what Max thinks are the most legitimate arguments on either side. And then there have been several people asking about the role of the Kurds. So I'll just put that out there. And what,

Max Blumenthal (01:02:36):

Well, yeah, I mean, I, I, I would like to hear what Helena has to say, but I don't want to speak for Palestinians. The point I would make simply is just by stating a few facts that Israel directly supported elements of the Syrian armed opposition inside the Syrian Golan trained them, provided them with medical services. These even included factions affiliated with the Islamic State. We did some reporting on the Grayzone about this. My colleague, Rania Khalek actually interviewed former commander of a Free Syrian Army faction who found out that he was being supported by Israel. He hadn't known it until he was taken across Israeli controlled lines and basically handed weapons. The Golan Knights, Fursan al-Joulan, they were paid something like per fighter, $2,500 a month, which is a lot of money in Syria to basically fight inside the Golan.

Max Blumenthal (01:03:36):

Why did Israel want that? Want to do that? Number one they see the Syrian army and what they consider to be Iranian-backed Shia militias as a greater threat, as they see Hezbollah. These are groups that are inclined to actually resist Israel to push back. These other groups, which are also aligned with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they were being used to basically hold the line to prevent the Syrian military and Shia militias from restoring control. But the other idea is just to keep the war going for as long as possible to destabilize a country which has consistently supported resistance of the Israeli project around the Middle East and which is a longstanding ally of Iran. So it's about breaking down Arab unity. It is about breaking apart another independent Arab state. Israel also supported the, the White Helmets. And, you know, I was denounced by a sector of the Palestine solidarity movement.

Max Blumenthal (01:04:41):

There was a letter, they didn't name me, but they said, they said, you know, these are the allies that we're not proud of in the letter because I exposed the Syrian White Helmets as what they are a western-backed influence operation. And where, where the Syrian White Helmets who were active in southern Syria in much of the country actually, where were they evacuated from? When the proxy war was rolled up, it was through the Israeli occupied Golan Heights with the assistance of Israeli intelligence, the Shin Bet. And then they were dumped off in Jordan to be taken to Western countries as asylum seekers who nominated the White Helmets in 2019 for the Nobel Prize. It was Irwin Cotler, the Canadian Alan Dershowitz, a figure who is, I think the most prominent Israel lobbyist in Canada. So it's just very clear at every step of the way that Israel has had an interest in supporting the Syrian opposition, supporting all of these propaganda constructs, and to, and that doing so ultimately, in the minds of the Israeli military intelligence apparatus, would weaken the Palestinian struggle. And that's the saddest part to me about the duping is seeing people in the Palestine solidarity movement being duped into basically suicidal position.

Alice Rothchild (01:06:07):

And the Kurds.

Max Blumenthal (01:06:09):

And the Kurds. Well, you know, we were told that there was going to be a genocide of Kurds late last year because Donald Trump had announced that the US was no longer going to militarily support them. You know, i I, I don't know how much I should talk about this except to say that the Kurds and the US were involved in an alliance of convenience. The Kurds entered the military alliance with the US to save Kobani from ISIS. Again, this never should have happened. It Kobani would've never been threatened by ISIS if the US hadn't started dumping all these weapons into Syria. But it all ended because Donald Trump personally was very suspicious about it and had wanted to get US troops out of Syria. And what it did lead to were a few days of atrocities against Kurds, including female, a female Kurdish legislator who was executed on a highway.

Max Blumenthal (01:07:04):

And again, we have to look at who the perpetrators are here. Who was slaughtering the Kurds on those two days? It was the Turkish Free Syrian army. So basically what took place after the Free Syrian army was defeated, and it wasn't the Free Syrian army, it was all these different extremist factions, is that Erdogan's Turkey repurposed them as a mercenary army and continued to pay their salaries. And as I reported at the Grayzone, 18 out of the 21 factions comprising the Turkish Free Syrian army. There might be actually 21 of 25 factions were previously armed and trained by the CIA. So all of these forces which were being denounced by US officials and US mainstream media as barbarians and pirates and the worst people in the world because they were killing our former proxy in the Kurds, were actually our former proxies. And this is the blowback. This is just the beginning of the blowback that we're going to see from the proxy war that our government supported.

Helena Cobban (01:08:16):

So that's great. I'm afraid we're gonna have to wrap this up now. Thank you Alice for fielding the questions. What a rich discussion it has been. I want to thank everybody here. All of the attendees and participants are super elf team, and of course you Max. By the way, the maximum number of people we saw on the webinar today at any one time was 107. There were a few people coming in and leaving. Just before we leave, I'll quickly share the results of the poll you participated in today. Here it is not as interesting, well, pretty interesting actually. We, we'll share the results of the polls on our

Max Blumenthal (01:09:04):

Yeah, it's pretty interesting

Helena Cobban (01:09:06):

Website. Later on I've stopped sharing it. Hang on. I can get rid of that now. Oh, ooh, Lord. So I wanna say a big thank you to Max for taking the time. I know there's a lot going on in town and we're all struggling to deal with the with, with what's going on, but I, I like the way that you put it together with the other kind of regime change operations, especially the ones in Latin America. Because people too often think, you know, just Syria and, you know, poor Syria. Well, you know, yes, poor Syria, but there's a lot that we here in the United States can and should be doing to organize solidarity movements and, and to oppose the sanctions above all right now. So thanks for being here. Hope to see you again soon.

Max Blumenthal (01:09:59):

Thanks.

Helena Cobban (01:10:01):

And before everybody else goes away I want to remind you that we'll be holding these webinars every Wednesday and Saturday at 1:00 PM Eastern time from now through April 25th. Next Wednesday, I'll be talking to the Syrian historian, Dr. Sami Moubayed, and Charlotte, if you could get that slide up. Talking to Dr. Sammi Moubayed about the role that Israel has played in Syria over the past 75 years and right until today. I think Sami wants to actually focus on, you know, the, the, the last decade. But we'll do a little bit of gallop through history first. At the end of today's session, when we close it or you click on the leave webinar button that's at the bottom right of your screen, we, or Zoom on our behalf, will be sending you a little questionnaire inviting your feedback and evaluation. Please do fill it out and send in those evaluations to us.

Helena Cobban (01:10:58):

This whole session, like all the preceding three, has been recorded for us by Zoom. We've already started building a permanent zone on our website where we're posting the links to all the videos and related materials to be a continuing resource for people going forward. Charlotte if you could share the other resources slide. Thank you. Those are the links where you can get to our resources page. Keep checking back there as we load more material onto it, including the video of today's session. And we are also planning to get that page a lot better organized. Here are two final appeals. If you found this webinar valuable, please be sure to tell your friends and networks about it and hope that they can come along. They can register starting next Wednesday. And going forward, we are providing this whole webinar series at no cost to attendees so that we can win the largest possible audience. If you find the project worthwhile, please do send us as generous of a donation as you can. And big thanks to everybody who's already been giving to us this year and as a result of this webinar project. That's great. But the rest of you can also donate either online or via check by clicking the donate button on our website at www.justworldeducational.org. Thanks to everybody for being with us today. Stay safe and be sure to join us for Sami Moubayed session next Wednesday. Thank you everybody, and goodbye. Stay safe.