phl43 Posted April 16, 2017 Posted April 16, 2017 Hi everyone! I just registered to this forum and I wanted to briefly introduce myself. I'm doing a PhD in philosophy at Cornell, where I specialize in logic and philosophy of science. I'm originally from France, although I have lived in the US for several years. My political views are difficult to quickly summarize, but to make a long story short, you can say that I'm more or less a classical liberal. I have recently started my own blog, where I discuss various topics of interest to me, which I think many people here will also find interesting. I just published a very detailed post about the allegations against Assad with respect to the recent chemical attack in Syria, which unfortunately led to the US attack earlier this week. I explain that, despite the fact that everyone is talking as if we knew for sure that Assad was responsible, we are not actually in a position to know that. I compare the situation with what happened in August 2013, after another chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus almost led to a US military intervention, which was only averted because at the last moment Obama accepted Putin's offer to jointly supervise the dismantling of the Syrian chemical arsenal. I show that, although journalists keep talking as if we knew for a fact that Assad was behind this attack, the evidence that emerged in the aftermath of that attack makes that claim very dubious at best. I'm urging people to take seriously the possibility that the same thing may prove to be the case about the recent attack and not to rush to judgment until we know more about what happened. In the process, I show how the media has systematically ignored evidence that contradicted the official narrative as it emerged, which is why everyone still talks as if we knew for a fact that Assad's regime was responsible for the attack in 2013, even though it's actually very dubious. The whole thing is more than 5,000 words long and I provide at least one link for every single factual claim I make. I actually mention one of your previous articles, though I used almost exclusively mainstream sources, because I wanted to make sure that my analysis wouldn't be dismissed as the work of a crackpot. I think that many of you will enjoy it and I would love to know what you think. It has already been shared pretty widely and people have criticized it, so I plan to publish a follow-up soon, in which I will examine the evidence about what happened in Khan Sheikhoun in more detail and reply to critics.
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