as an international norm sarah and cloran are back as a means of warfare actual warfare on the battlefield if you believe the west or the warfare of this information and duty skimming if you believe russia what is it worth while to discuss that i'm now joined by paul walker director of green cross international environmental security and sustainability program dr walker it's great pleasure talking to you thank you very much for your time yeah nice to be here oksana to thank you for the invitation now you've been leading this program since its very inception i assume you care a lot about the nonproliferation of chemical weapons how would you describe this moment in time when we have a number of western countries accusing russia of not only shielding they lodged user of chemical weapons but also using those chemical weapons itself you know the whole the whole current situation is very troubling exxon or and i have been working on chemical weapons in their nonproliferation and their safe and sound an

irreversible destruction for twenty five years since i first did. one of the very first western american inspections in russia in a place called shoot in the cauldron all blessed this is back in one thousand nine hundred four we've all worked for universal laws the chemical weapons convention we have been not one hundred ninety two countries who have joined today the chemical weapons convention was only for outstanding and and we haven't had any chemical weapons used really except you know back in the eighty's when saddam hussein attacked iran and we had in the mid ninety's when the terrorist group in japan rico tried to use sarin nerve agent in the tokyo subway was and so this this these latest occurrences in syria number one since since really two thousand and twelve accusations were made originally in late two thousand and twelve the syria was using chemical weapons but then syria joined the convention of course under pressure from the you know bilateral. sods from russia or in the united states and

now this whole scriptural assassination attempt in in england is just very troubling their weekly meetings of the executive council in the o.p.c. be trying to figure out what to do and what's true and who's to blame and course we all know that there have been a number of recent meetings just a couple days ago the last one of the un security council as well now are you just mentioned that you worked a lot in russia you visited i heard you say about the you visited every single russian chemical weapons stockpile until it was destroyed last year the green cross has been very active in russia he'd done enormous things in this country for for the environment and yet in this new east west standoff you side fully and unquestionably with a western narrative why did you choose dot position as opposed to let's say trying to be neutral as we would i argue expect from a representative of an international organization we we have been neutral we've

been very neutral i think be bend over backwards to be as neutral as we can but when the fact finding mission of the chemical weapons question was established and in just four years ago in april may of two thousand and fourteen we waited and went through all the reports i've met with the opi study inspectors you know that's a multilateral inspection group includes russian inspectors includes american included kluges i don't know fifteen or twenty different nationalities in the in the inspectorate and then when the joint investigative mechanism was set up a year later in two thousand and fifteen to try to look at accountability in other words try to find out who was to blame for these different attacks it was clear to me after the fact finding mission reports in the gym reports the joint investigative mechanism from the united nations that these were very accurate very storrow reports and i was convinced. so read them very thoroughly i mean with the

inspectors i'm a skeptic i'm for i mean the non-governmental community in green cross is trying to maintain objectivity here but we want these attacks to to stop wherever they if it's britain or whether it's syria or iraq and we and we also want for proof can i just seize on that because you you say you want to fool proof you you say that you subscribe to critical thinking but you know very well that the most fact finding missions unlike probably the latest one relied on evidence that was submitted by other parties in the most case the opposition parties or state actors affiliated with the opposition like turkey the chain of custody has never been fully established the gym mechanism they jim probed that you mentioned it has never visited the actual sides in syria and we all know that you know there is a lot of politics involved in the syrian the war let's not pretend that it is just the syrian government fighting the opposition there there are many foreign actress

present there who have a very clear interest in manipulating the public narrative i you discounting all of that no we're not discounting i don't think any of that. you know i would i would question about the chain of command that what i was about to say earlier though is remember we're in a war zone here and the opi study inspectorate which has existed since one thousand nine hundred ninety seven has inspected you know the the safe and sound destruction of over sixty nine thousand metric tons of live agent you know the majority of it in russia a lodge amount in the united states and in in six other countries. you know they've been very accurate they're very experienced very well trained but the entrance into syria in two thousand and thirteen after syria signed the chemical weapons convention was the very first time that they had to measure themselves for bullet proof vests and actually face potential life and death situation so we did. and

with a very difficult inspection situation nobody can get on site to any of these alleged chemical weapons attacks for days afterward. sometimes weeks afterward this also savant options opportunities for these for the data for the the photographs from the videos for the evidence to be manipulated or staged i totally agree with that but if you read the f.m. reports in the jim reports that have operated in full cooperation with the syrian government full cooperation with whatever sources they were they were fighting in that in those regions the the and the including the intelligence from a wide variety of sources forensic evidence blood samples urine samples interviews with the medical doctors you find these these the few that we know about we only know about a few of the couple hundred alleged attacks the few we know about pretty much i think certainly prove beyond a reasonable doubt i think one hundred percent would be stretching it but beyond a reasonable doubt that the syrians have undertaken at least five attacks syrian

government and the isis islamic state has undertaken at least two attacks well mr walker you mentioned the victim's blood and urine samples before and we already hearing similar reports from western particularly american media that the victim's blood and urine samples tested positive for cloran and spoken to a number of experts in the argonne a chemistry and they all say that molecular chlorine could simply not be found in the biological materials it reacts to quickly it can vary its to chlorate which is a natural component of blood and urine i have here a printout from the u.s. department of health and human services guide for cloran i'd also states that there are no biomarkers that can be used to quantify exposure to chlorine gas how is it possible that western scientists would so quickly discover something for which a sign. tast doesn't even exist you know i i don't know exxon or if korean

samples can be taken i'm not a physician i'm not a chemist you mentioned the blood and you're into something else or earlier i did and what they have found is sarin and any of you or any of your nerve agents leave leave residue markers in the blood on the bodies in the soil chlorine is very you know is very volatile evaporates very quickly agreed disassociates very quickly if you but nerve agents do not for the most part it all depends on the weather in the rain and everything else going on at the scene but what i was referring to was blood samples with signs of sarah age an attack in and we found out over and over again in the country coon last year told me that we heard the same claim following behind attack and i'm sure you heard that the u.s. defense secretary mr mattis just the other day just recently now the other day but

i think it was in february stated that the united states till this day does not have forensic evidence for the use of sarin in ha ha when he was referring specifically to that attack i suppose he had access to the same report that you mentioned by jim or perhaps by the fact finding mission how is it possible that the united states beats all the delegates bit older forces and has on the ground cannot secure the very same samples that you know opposition groups or turkey could provide to the o.p.c. w investigators. well the opi study tries to maintain chain of custody you mentioned earlier you want you know every inspector that goes in the team wants to maintain a hundred percent chain of custody in other words the sampling they have ideally taken by them and under their control until they get to the. designate a laboratory and if you don't have full chain of command which you know is very likely in most if not all of these cases due to the fact that you can't get to the

sites and you can't get to the victims or the medical personnel for probably a week later i'm here and here in duma we're dealing with you know over a week later with it where they are now you have to read the read the f.m. in the gym reports very carefully look at the the sampling techniques on the whole i would continue to say all evidence points towards the syrian government and it's not just you know videos it's not just blood samples either it's i witness reports . and also intelligence on aircraft checkering helicopters most of these bombs except in the case of the isis two strikes came from the air came from barrel bombs or weapons dropped from the air and there's only one one fighting force in this in syria today that has helicopters and aircraft and we know that this well dr walker let me stop you here just for a second to need to take every shot big but we will be back in just a few moments stay tuned.

this american foreign policy possesses specific d.n.a. it would seem so it doesn't matter who the president is it doesn't matter which party controls the why don't the neo cons are firmly in the south.

welcome back to worlds apart with paul walker director of green cross international's environmental security and sustainability program mr walker just before the break you mentioned barrel bombs as supposedly the most typical a weapon the weapon of choice for the syrian army and the pentagon just released its assessment suggesting that it believes a barrel bombs were used in the case of the duma attack to deliver the chemicals one of. filmed in the bathroom of the building where that attack supposedly took place and it supposedly came through a small opening in the roof flew across the room around five or seven meters landed

on the bag without damaging the bad or even the blanket underneath it. without having any visible scratches or a dance on the shell itself with its fins still being in tagged out supposedly after crashing through the reinforced concrete of the ceiling does this all look straightforward to you. that's another news story oksana i'm not sure that's at all truthful i never heard that story before but i have heard. syrian and russian diplomats again and again and tell these extraordinary stories about how these weapons could not go straight down a smokestack or a straight through you know room or whatever none of that or in the f.m. of the gym reports i've not seen any of that before and i know all the reports indicate where the bombs landed with a with a likely bombs landed there were craters in the roads or in the house of the room whatever it is. you know i i'm very loath to believe these reports about bouncing

off beds and coming straight down smokestacks it just is so unbelievable and i would urge everyone to look at all the evidence oksana but you know i'm i'm the first to say because this is in a war zone and we cannot have inspectors there perhaps even in many cases ever on site so we'll never know you know where eighty or ninety percent of these attacks have come from you have to put it in the whole context of the war and the syrian government is the only one with helicopters and aircraft the syrian government as far as we know is the only country there which has just recently given up a very large stockpile and the the declaration assessment team a group we called the debt the dia to haiti uses acronyms but. the declaration assessment team which which assesses the initial declaration from a new state party a new member state of the o.p.'s w has gone to the masses now at least fifteen

times maybe more and still cannot find all the evidence that it's asked syria for so there's a whole series of questions that syria has been either unwilling or unable to answer it's hardly surprising that there is a lot of mistrust on the syrian side when you can you have one attack after another which has also lots of unanswered questions which has lots of fat flags and yet all of the blame is put on the syrian government because i just gave you an example of a video where about a bomb placed positioned at a place where it could not. be positioned if you actually take physics and velocity and all of that seriously that is just impossible i mean you need to take physics one on one to understand that it's not possible for a barrel bulb to fly through the roof and this that's video was provided by the same activist who submitted the videos all of the of the video don't believe those i don't believe those reports i know i know russia i know russia and some others in the syrians certainly and maybe at times the iranians are trying to push some of

these stories these stories are really not very credible at all and i i'm a scientist i'm that i'm the first one to look for all the evidence and i've been critical of all governments there we all want the war to stop we want no chemical weapons use we want no violence period and i think the part of the reason is because we cannot get a diplomatic solution either in the geneva process or in the stand up process in kazakhstan so i'm all in favor of a you know a diplomatic solution to stopping the violence and all of this i'm also for finding whoever is using illegal in you main globally banned chemical weapons bringing them before the international criminal court and imprisoning them and i think in the end all of this will go before the court but i'm willing to bet if we both went to the court if there were a trial of bashar al assad today he would be found guilty before the international commitment mr walker if your country or the united states why we're not allowed to

manipulate the court. the composition of the court i'm actually not sure how the verdict would be out but you said about the evidence i won the person you got through because i think it's caught very very important you very critical of the syrian government you made it very clear that you called it responsible so let's talk about the other side and the other side the leaders that the both the french intelligence and you know the american government based its findings on its conclusions on base out it outloud in that official statements that they base that can. it's on social media reports on public source information and one of such videos includes children corpses being moved around clearly rearranged in different positions apparently for emotional impact in several cases we can see the same bodies with the foam on that mouth in other cases there is no film we send you pictures before over a phone trail which really looks pretty i'm not sure and i think most people would

agree that it looks as if it was applied with the help of a dispenser. i wonder what is you know what are your thoughts on that do you at the very least question the motives and the actions of decide that would be also very very interested in finding in the international community agreeing that it was assad who was behind it but at the end of the day it wasn't their fault soldiers who were carrying children's corpses around and putting them in all those many positions. well first of all i guess we all i saw those photos and thank you for sending to me on i you know these photos are horrible it's one of the things i think that moves a lot of viewers towards becoming very concerned and worried about the whole civil war in syria today i can't judge whether these and i don't think opie seven inspectors judge either whether these photos are. extremely accurate or could have been manipulated i would assume some of them clearly could have been easily manipulated manipulated

a foam coming from the mouth you just don't know sometimes foam is extreme you know it's like dilated pupils to or constricted pupils as well the eyes and you just don't know when the photos were taken how long the body was the poor child of the individual is dead it's very difficult and that's why i say we can't make any judgments on these attacks based on photos of that nature we we clearly know it's some point somebody was hit with some sort of a chemical they look like they were victims of chemical warfare no other wounds on the body at all but we can even tell that because they're fully clothed it could be they could have been requote so i'm just saying we need multiple sources of information to prove these cases and in the in the dozen a so cases that the gym in the a fact finding. mechanism from a mission from the o.p.'s w used i'm quite convinced that what they've concluded is correct that syria has been found guilty of probably the syrian government about

five i think it's five maybe it's up to six cases now with if do whatever we see from duma this week from the fact finding mission and the isis islamic state has been found guilty of at least two uses of mustard we don't know where this these chemicals are coming from except now apparently you know according to police the americans the british the french and others who supported them maybe the you know scientific research facility was still doing work but the. inspections that have gone on by the o.p.'s w. in syria over the last five years you know have not proven any major production of chemicals any hidden stockpile or anything so that that's still remains an open question but dr walker riyadh talking here about the upholding of a major global norm on the prohibition of the use of chemical weapons on their clearest signs here that one of the parties jaish al islam an al qaeda affiliate beach was accused by amnesty international off using chemical weapons against the

kurds in two thousand and sixteen these parties clearly involved in manipulating the evidence to create the impression that chemical weapons were used if it's ok for them to use children's corpses like died do you think they would really think twice about using chlorine for real given how easily available it is you know chlorine is very subtle it's not banned necessary it's not banned at all in the chemical weapons convention but it is banned any chemicals banned of it's used as a weapon and no matter what it is. you know talk and he talks a and he talks a chemical. peel ation of these pictures your question and i. say again i think they can be manipulated but i think it's still useful to see some of these these victims look like in fact they were hit with some sort of chemical and the other question is if it was dropped with barrel bombs or aerial bombs which is many times the case from helicopters and aircraft and if syrian aircraft and helicopters

were vectoring over that very site at the same time where all this happened it's pretty clear to me that the syrian government is to blame for this i don't see any other explanation the al qaeda groups islamic state they have no aircraft no helicopter they could easily have brought some some barrel bombs also some destroyed to that very side as i think happened in duma i mentioned you the case of these huge cylinder cylinder lying are bad you know without damaging bad or. even the blanket underneath it how much how much really how much physics does it take to figure out that this would be highly unlikely i think you know the o.p.'s the inspectors have looked at all of that. and i i can't answer every single instance you know i've i've never been to syria i know the access of the opi study inspectors has been limited to a week or two after all or later after these incidents i think you just have to read the reports well and you'll find that on the whole there are obviously further

questions many of which you've raised which i think a very fair on the whole these fact finding mission and jim reports have been very accurate what bothers me most right now is we need the jim the joint investigative mechanism under the united nations auspices to continue and russia has vetoed the extension of the gym even after personnel have been changed in the gym several times and these are all multilateral operations including russian inspectors and officials as well but mr walker i'm sure you know that russia has all for its own composition of how the they the joint investigative mechanism could be structured i mean i don't believe that the you know a person who is so involved in the subject like you wouldn't know about that you know that russia also submitted its own draft and the united states we view to that please don't they don't make it they don't deprive our viewers of the context here because there are actually three resolutions that were put on the draft resolutions put on the table i'm sure russian was beat up and they had them eric and was well

it'll be important for some sort of invest independent investigative mechanism that everyone finds fair including multilateral inspectors from a dozen countries we don't want to rush an inspection we don't want american inspection we don't want you know our iraqi inspection or syrian inspection one of multilateral inspectorate which is what the fact finding mission is all about what the gym was all about and i don't understand having read the russian proposals. why russia cannot agree on a fully independent multilateral international inspector going forward to try to find a club that i can tell you that i think it believes that the united states the united states tries to manipulate. to mechanism through structuring it in a way that is most beneficial for its aims i can i can but rather the debating about it because i think we made our views pretty clear can i ask you one more thing because you know you to fax from the explanation to everything that we have

discussed today in russia is that what we're witnessing in syria goes back to barack obama's august two thousand and twelve statement on the red lines and the intensified efforts on the part of various state and non-state actors to make sure that the united states is drawn into the conflict that it stays in syria for as long as it takes and hopefully take the side of not only the militants or their problems but also the end tyranny inside that it would be of these really interest for example do you find these explanation plausible at all. you know i think i think i wish the peace process the geneva diplomatic peace process would have taken hold much earlier i think obama drew a red line and never fulfilled his his threats i suppose are predictions. on the other hand i also don't support trump president trumps you know unilateral

actions either but those of us who've worked on this crisis for the last five or more years a very frustrated and more long frustrated long before. when the rebel groups in syria had to resort to violence to try to oppose bashar assad's really a new man cruel long time tactics of torture and an ugly behavior as a dictator in syria and i i think. everyone has a little bit to blame i agree not sure what the united states could have done more you know we haven't done military action directly as we have the last year with president trump maybe we should have done that earlier but i'm in favor of multilateral responses not unilateral action and i must say we're also very critical of russia's support for such a horrible dictator in damascus we all hope for the syrian people that we can find

a good resolution to this in fact we can develop democratic processes in syria and elsewhere in the middle east as well. dr walker may have to leave it there the only thing i can say that from my experience of talking to many syrians both on the process side the opposition side they said we don't want any help from the united states when it comes to democracy building. please please supply those efforts elsewhere for example in saudi arabia and i think it would also help turning some of your attention to the treatment of humanity in human beings there but anyway is dr walter you've been very gracious and very patient with me thank you very much for her to. bating in this conversation i also encourage our viewers to keep it going on our social media pages and i hope to see you again same place same time here on worlds apart.

when lawmakers manufacture consent to instant of public wealth. when the ruling classes project themselves. with the famous merry go round lifts only the one percent. nor middle of the room six. million real news. los angeles the city of luxury and fame but also an alarming number of people

living in the streets. the simple fact in l.a. is there's just not enough shelter even if people on the streets right now decided to come in there's nowhere to come in it's been a struggle. and this man found his own response to the problem and constructed dozens of tiny homes for people in need of shelter when you have nothing in order to go. you know having something like this may as well be a castle to the earth or news except such solution. me house on a city parking space is not a solution your craft or someone monitoring the site otherwise it will be a free for all and is there a better alternative to end the homelessness crisis. russia's

envoy to the global chemical weapons watchdog says the united states has produced. and painted the nerve agent no the choke which was allegedly used to poison said again and you'll be a script found. all the news congress is printing admits neither it nor the o.p.c. w. can confirm the origin of the nerve agent despite claiming it was highly lightweight . team of experts investigating an alleged chemical attack in duma comes under rebel file while trying to enter the syrian town. no no no she's sure it is a situation. and arabic speaking use his phone to talking to jewish men in the latest anti-semitic incidents to cause our.