Reporters Without Borders Tries to Shut Down Independent Press Event Discussing White Helmets

SPOTLIGHT, MILITARISM, MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA, MEDIA, SYRIA IN CONTEXT, 4 Dec 2017

Brandon Turbeville - Activist Post

28 Nov 2017 – Self-proclaimed “press freedom watchdog” Reporters Without Borders launched a new campaign that it deemed of urgent importance – shutting down a short panel discussion by journalist Vanessa Beeley and Swedish Doctors for Human Rights.

The USAID/NED-funded RWB wrote an open letter published in the Tribune de Geneve addressed to Guy Mettan, Executive Director of the Swiss Press Club, the organization that was hosting the event, where it dismissed Beeley as a “so-called” journalist who is cited only by “Russian media propaganda” and claimed that Doctors for Human Rights is merely “a tool of Russian propaganda.” The letter urged Mettan to cancel the event or risk tarnishing the image of the Swiss Press Club.

The event was entitled “They don’t care about us: About White Helmets True Agenda,” where Vanessa Beeley, who has reported extensively from inside Syria would present alongside fellow panel members Richard Labeviere’ and Marcello Ferranda De Noli editor of the Proche et Moyen Orient and Swedish Doctors For Human Rights respectively were scheduled to present. As the title suggests, the event was merely a platform to discuss the possibility that the reputation of the White Helmets in Western countries may be different from the reality on the ground. Beeley was included not only because of her expertise in terms of research but also because of her extensive on-the-ground experience in Syria, her length of time in country, and her numerous interviews and investigative reports from Syria itself.

Faced with the impending reality that the White Helmets would be exposed in this short presentation, Reporters Without Borders resorted to what State Department backed engines of deceit and Western propaganda outlets typically resort to – bullying and censorship. Ironically whining about Russian propaganda in its letter, RWB immediately calls on a press club to censor and silence statements from a reporter that do not fit the State Department narrative, thus exposing its own narrative as propaganda or, at the very least, one based upon flimsy evidence.

Thankfully, Mettan did not back down and kowtow to the calls for censorship. In fact, not only did he refuse but he leveled a healthy dose of criticism back at the RWB organization.

“For the 20 years I have been working at the Swiss Press Club, I have always been under pressure to prevent people from expressing themselves. But so far these pressures have always come from authoritarian or dictatorial regimes, such as China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Bahrain,” wrote Mettan.

This is the first time that a defense organization for journalists from a democratic country has sent me such a request. It goes without saying that I cannot act on it. It would dishonor a job that, I hope, is still yours.

Mettan called for the RWB to attend the event and present its view rather than call for censorship.

But Mettan should not have been so surprised. Reporters Without Borders is a fully funded organization receiving money from the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, International Republican Institute and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. As F. William Engdahl wrote in his article “Reporters Without Borders seems to have a geopolitical agenda,”

After years of trying to hide it, Robert Menard, Paris-based Secretary-General of Reporters Sans Frontieres or RWB, confessed that the RWB budget was primarily funded by “US organizations strictly linked to US foreign policy.” [6] Those US organizations behind RWB include the Open Society Foundation of billionaire speculator, George Soros, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Congress’ National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Also included is the Center for Free Cuba, whose trustee, Otto Reich, was forced to resign from the George W. Bush Administration after exposure of his role in a CIA-backed coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected President Hugo Chavez. [7]

As one researcher found after months of trying to get a reply from NED about their funding of Reporters Without Borders, which included a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute. The IRI is one of four subsidiaries of NED. [8]

The NED, as I detail in my book, Full Spectrum Dominance:Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, was created by the US Congress during the Reagan administration on the initiative of then-CIA Director Bill Casey to replace the CIA’s civil society covert action programs, which had been exposed by the Church committee in the mid-1970s. As Allen Weinstein, the man who drafted the legislation creating the NED admitted years later, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [9]

Thus, there should be no surprise to anyone that Reporters Without Borders would launch a jihad against any facts or alternative opinion that does not coincide with the narrative peddled by the U.S. State Department. After all, it is just one tentacle of the color revolution apparatus and COINTELPRO operation aimed at the domestic population.

UPDATE: Thankfully, the event was not cancelled and the presentation continued as scheduled.

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Brandon Turbeville is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. Turbeville has published over 1000 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com

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