A sure sign you're reading bullsh@t

Chrystia Freeland loses sleep worrying about the White Helmets.

I hope Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Minister of Border Security Bill Blair are losing sleep too, because they don’t seem to have a clue about the can of worms they’re opening with this heroic rescue mission of the Syrian White Helmets.

Canada’s role in this heroic rescue mission grows with every day that passes. Original foreign news reports of the rescue made no mention of Canada, but Freeland and her department seized the moment and have been busy beavers covering themselves in glory ever since.

Our national newspaper of record is happy to oblige. By today this incident is the greatest triumph for Canadian diplomacy in almost forty years, according to Mark MacKinnon at the Globe and Mail. The last time Canadian diplomacy was this great was when we teamed up with the CIA to spirit a few CIA agents out of Tehran in 1980.

Really?

When you see that kind of over-the-top exaggeration, its a sure sign you’re reading bullshit. Surely our diplomats have done a few notable things in the intervening years?

One of the disturbing factors about our government’s position and the reporting of the Globe is that both rely entirely on the White Helmets for news about the White Helmets. Whatever that is, it’s not journalism. When I was writing about the rescue the other day I linked to Scott Ritter and Robert Fisk as two credible journalists who don’t buy the White Helmets’ propaganda. Here’s a few more names: Sy Hersh, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Parry, Max Blumenthal, Philip Giraldi… can they all have morphed in Assad-Putin stooges?

That would indeed make a far-fetched conspiracy theory.

Here’s another puzzle. How does it take over 100 million dollars to fund a band of volunteers? Turns out they’re not volunteers at all; each “volunteer” gets $150/month. That is indeed a tidy take-home pay in war-torn Syria, where a soldier in Assad’s army makes less than half of that.

Of course, that math leads to another question. If the White Helmets have, since 2014, received $100 million plus from countries wanting to overthrow Assad, where’s the rest of the money going? Three thousand paid volunteers on the ground at 150 per, runs to five million a year. That’s twenty millions in the past four years.

Where’s the missing $80,000,000?

A good place to start looking might be in this story. The name of James Le Mesurier pops up again and again. Seems the lion’s share of the funding goes through his Mayday Rescue NGO. Maybe he could answer that question.

By the way, another clue that you’re dealing with bullshit is when the Non Government Organizations you’re talking about get their funding from government.

Consider that a tip, Mr. Senior International Correspondent for the Globe and Mail. Get out there and ask a few questions instead of waiting for the next White Helmets press release.