Spending cuts reduce demand in the economy, for every dollar spend by the govt at the lowest
levels (welfare and essential services) around five to seven dollars of extra economic
activity is generated.
This sustains demand in the economy, and despite what Scott Morrison thinks, demand is
actually the thing that drives investment. Investment will not be made by businesses if there
is no demand, no matter how low the tax on profits is.
If you continually cut govt spending you will dampen down economic activity and
demand.
If you give tax breaks on profit to those who with a low propensity to spend locally (ie
foreign investors and super wealthy) and then impose Austerity to "balance the books" then
you will do a few things:
Profits in the short term will increase as there is a greater intensive to declare profits
as the tax is lower;
The increased profit will be more than likely achieved by reducing investment and and not
giving wage rises. Both are costs deducted before profit is calculated;
Investment in productive businesses will stall as demand falls as austerity measures kick
in;
Investments in speculative / safe haven investments will increase (shares, Property,
artworks etc); This will drive up speculative house prices and price out many ordinary
people.
Wages will stagnate and start to fall in real terms; Demand will stagnate and fall.
Businesses will cut back on investment and wages.
Inequality will worsen; and
Social discontent rise.
The cut taxes and impose austerity mantra is the fatuous economic and social thinking we
have come to expect from from the neo-cons.
IT MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER
It never was going to work long terms. Only the massive con job by the media and
politicians made it seem even plausible.
If you want evidence of a con job by politicians you need look no further than the
assumption made that "all government spending is worthless" made by scot Morrison and co.
Even with this ridiculous assumption he was only able to get even one of five scenarios to
give a 0.5% boost to GDP in ten years time.
If he actually subtracted any negative effect of cutting govt spending, even without any
multiplier effect, then there was no scenario where the tax cuts made any sort of economic
sense.
And of course the MSM which is owned by the super wealth elite, will only continue to put
out pro neo-cons propaganda and ruthlessly degenerate any opposition viewpoint.
This is actually ironic as capitalism actually works best for all, including by the way
the super wealthy, when governments continually redistribute wealth downwards.
Economic well-being is something that thrives very well with social well-being.
Capitalism will fail catastrophically if governments continue to redistribute wealth
upwards.
Social dislocation is the probable outcome of the current ideological trajectory.
I am amused that our 'watchdog MSM' has finally awoken with a vengeance to tear DT a new one
because of his 'abrupt decision to withdrew from Syria after a single phone call'. Finally
there is an issue that both FOX and CNN can agree on where they are analyzing every possible
negative impact of leaving Syria,
1. ISIS will re-emerge, 2. DT didn't consult with anyone, 3. Our allies feel betrayed, 4.
Russia and Iran got an early Christmas Gift, 5. the Gates of Hell have been opened.
The part I find amusing is that there was absolutely no reflection in our MSM when we
entered Syria, occupied 30% of the country, killed up to 300 Russians, 200 Syrians, blew up
every bridge on the Euphrates, leveled Raqqa and refused to rebuild any infrastructure that
we destroyed. There was no reflection about attacking Syria twice with cruise missiles within
48hrs of the first accusation of a WMD attack, or shooting down one of their jets.
No, because attacking, bombing, and occupying other countries is well, normal. There is no
need to examine those decisions but if you leave then ... all hell breaks loose, you better
have a good explanation for that.
It is a major problem that the post 9/11 generals and admirals have to be broken from the
idea that war is the normal state. Trump for his own unfortunate personal reasons seem likely
to do that.
Absolutely right! The neocons are bawling because they can't get their way in Syria anymore.
This withdrawal is a Christmas present for the troops and the country. There is no point
wasting more blood and treasure doing Israel's bidding in Syria. Anyone who is screaming that
ISIS will rise again doesn't know the abc of the genesis of ISIS and the fight against it.
What proportion of killed ISIS can the US and its alliance lay claim to, and what proportion
can the SAA and the Russians (and their allies) lay claim to. The truth is clear to all keen
observers.
Merry Christmas everyone! There can't be any better gift to the long suffering people of
Syria and our soldiers toiling there.
I hope you are right about the end of the neocons. But Mattis was not the only or the worst
of them. And very much not the closest to Trump. I may start to believe it when John Bolton
is out.
"... We can be actually confident not just that the journalists in the MSM are on the payroll but that the invoices and accounts for their bribes are carefully preserved. Murray's blog is almost always worth following, just as 'b's is. Yesterday more news about the Skripal case emerged: it seems that the British government was prepared well in advance for the sudden attack on Skripal. ..."
Craig Murray today publishes accounts from the "Integrity Initiative" showing that
journalists in Scotland are receiving retainers of 2500 a month Sterling, plus expenses and
payment for actual articles published.
And if this is going on in Scotland we can be quite sure that it is actually happening in
North America and Europe, generally, and, of course, in the less prosperous parts of the
world where standards of integrity are just as low as they are hereabouts.
We can be actually confident not just that the journalists in the MSM are on the
payroll but that the invoices and accounts for their bribes are carefully preserved. Murray's
blog is almost always worth following, just as 'b's is. Yesterday more news about the Skripal
case emerged: it seems that the British government was prepared well in advance for the
sudden attack on Skripal.
What we are witnessing is the complete incompetence of those running the Empire. While
malicious, indeed deadly, they simply cannot keep up with the critics of imperialism. Their
power rests entirely on their ability to use force, both physical and financial. Their
attempts to use social medias to their advantage are lame and ineffective. It seems clear to
me that they will soon be reduced to using their power not just to hobble but to cripple
critics- net neutrality is already finished.
From what I have understood ( and as well you will, by extensive reading ) this, and other
till now seeminlgy unknown initiatives, is the source of the whole Russian meddling campaign,
and Skripal and other "poisonings" issue, the rise of neonazis in Ukraine and the rest of
Europe, the provocations in the Kerch Strait, various "colour revolutions" along European
history, "independentist movements" and last wars in Europe and the Middle East, or money
laundering schemes for unconfessable activities, with special chapter dedicated to the
recruiting, conditioning and military trainning of Muslim youth from disadvantaged
outcomes/neighborhoods to alleged "increase of opportunities", which has all the look of the
formation of our well know "proxy" army to use in the Middle East and various "terrorist
attacks" in European soil, where the perpetrators always resulted having a close relation, or
were "well known" with the intelligence services.
"... The list is headed CND gen list 2. CND is Christopher Nigel Donnelly, Director of the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative and a very senior career Military Intelligence Officer. ..."
"... Murder in Samarkand ..."
"... Now let us tie that in with the notorious name further down the list; Pablo Miller, the long-term MI6 handler of Sergei Skripal, who lived in Salisbury with Skripal. Miller is the man who was, within 24 hours of the Skripal attack, protected by a D(SMA) notice banning the media from mentioning him. Here Pablo Miller is actively involved, alongside serving FCO and MOD staff, in a government funded organisation whose avowed intention is to spread disinformation about Russia. The story that Miller is in an inactive retirement is immediately and spectacularly exploded. ..."
"... Now look at another name on this list. Howard Body. Assistant Head of Science Support at Porton Down chemical weapon research laboratory, just six miles away from Salisbury and the Skripal attack, a role he took up in December 2017. He combines this role with Assistant Head of Strategic Analysis at MOD London. "Science Support" at Porton Down is a euphemism for political direction to the scientists Body has no scientific qualifications. ..."
"... Zachary Harkenrider is the Political Counsellor at the US Embassy in London. There are normally at least two Political Counsellors at an Embassy this size, one of whom will normally be the CIA Head of Station. I do not know if Harkenrider is CIA but it seems highly likely. ..."
"... So what do we have here? We have a programme, the Integrity Initiative, whose entire purpose is to pump out covert disinformation against Russia, through social media and news stories secretly paid for by the British government. And we have the Skripals' MI6 handler, the BBC, Porton Down, the FCO, the MOD and the US Embassy, working together in a group under the auspices of the Integrity Initiative. The Skripal Case happened to occur shortly after a massive increase in the Integrity Initiative's budget and activity, which itself was a small part of a British Government decision to ramp up a major information war against Russia. ..."
"... Working Group on Syria, Media, and the Propaganda ..."
Craig Murray's latest provides convincing evidence that whatever happened to the Skripals in Salisbury was part of the Integrity
Initiative's propaganda campaign against Russia.
It is worth starting by noting that a high percentage of the Integrity Initiative archive has been authenticated. The scheme
has been admitted by the
FCO and defended as legitimate government activity. Individual items like the minutes of the meeting with David Leask
are authenticated. Not one of the documents has so far been disproven, or even denied.
Which tends to obscure some of
the difficulties with the material. There is no metadata showing when each document was created, as opposed to when Anonymous
made it into a PDF. Anonymous have released it in tranches and made plain there is more to come. The reason for this methodology
is left obscure.
Most frustratingly, Anonymous' comments on the releases indicate that they have vital information which is not, so far,
revealed. The most important document of all appears to be a simple contact list, of a particular group within the hundreds
of contacts revealed in the papers overall. This is it in full:
Tantalisingly, Anonymous
describe this as a list of people who attended a meeting with the White Helmets. But there is no evidence of that in the
document itself, nor does any other document released so far refer to this meeting. There is very little in the documents released
so far about the White Helmets at all. But there is a huge amount about the Skripal case. With the greatest of respect to Anonymous
and pending any release of further evidence, I want you to consider whether this might be a document related to the Skripal
incident.
The list is headed CND gen list 2. CND is Christopher Nigel Donnelly, Director of the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity
Initiative and a very senior career Military Intelligence Officer.
The first name on the list caught my eye. Duncan Allan was the young FCO Research Analyst who, as detailed in Murder
in Samarkand, appears in my Ambassadorial office in Tashkent, telling me of the FCO staff who had been left in tears by
the pressure put on them to sign up to Blair's dodgy dossier on Iraqi WMD. During the process of clearing the manuscript with
the FCO, I was told (though not by him) that he denied having ever said it. It was one of a very few instances where I refused
to make the changes requested to the text, because I had no doubt whatsoever of what had been said.
If Duncan did lie about having told me, it did his career no harm as he is now Deputy Head of FCO Research Analysts and,
most importantly, the FCO's lead analyst on Russia and the Former Soviet Union.
Now let us tie that in with the notorious name further down the list; Pablo Miller, the long-term MI6 handler of Sergei
Skripal, who lived in Salisbury with Skripal. Miller is the man who was, within 24 hours of the Skripal attack, protected by
a D(SMA) notice banning the media from mentioning him. Here Pablo Miller is actively involved, alongside serving FCO and MOD
staff, in a government funded organisation whose avowed intention is to spread disinformation about Russia. The story that
Miller is in an inactive retirement is immediately and spectacularly exploded.
Now look at another name on this list. Howard Body. Assistant Head of Science Support at Porton Down chemical weapon research
laboratory, just six miles away from Salisbury and the Skripal attack, a role he took up in December 2017. He combines this
role with Assistant Head of Strategic Analysis at MOD London. "Science Support" at Porton Down is a euphemism for political
direction to the scientists Body has no scientific qualifications.
Another element brought into this group is the state broadcaster, through Helen Boaden, the former Head of BBC News and
Current Affairs.
In all there are six serving MOD staff on the list, all either in Intelligence or in PR. Intriguingly one of them, Ian Cohen,
has email addresses both at the MOD and at the notoriously corrupt HSBC bank. The other FCO name besides Duncan Allan, Adam
Rutland, is also on the PR side.
Zachary Harkenrider is the Political Counsellor at the US Embassy in London. There are normally at least two Political Counsellors
at an Embassy this size, one of whom will normally be the CIA Head of Station. I do not know if Harkenrider is CIA but it seems
highly likely.
So what do we have here? We have a programme, the Integrity Initiative, whose entire purpose is to pump out covert disinformation
against Russia, through social media and news stories secretly paid for by the British government. And we have the Skripals'
MI6 handler, the BBC, Porton Down, the FCO, the MOD and the US Embassy, working together in a group under the auspices of the
Integrity Initiative. The Skripal Case happened to occur shortly after a massive increase in the Integrity Initiative's budget
and activity, which itself was a small part of a British Government decision to ramp up a major information war against Russia.
I find that very interesting indeed.
With a hat-tip to members of the Working Group on Syria, Media, and the Propaganda, who are preparing a major and
important publication which is imminent. UPDATE Their extremely important
briefing
note on the Integrity Initiative is now online, prepared to the highest standards of academic discipline. I shall be drawing
on and extrapolating from it further next week.
"... Sounds to me like that Integrity initiative dude needs to go on a 'de-radicalisation program !!! ..."
"... the powerbrokers have always been in London and now its hypercentralized endgame in Brussels. You can say that it is the US through and through, but ask yourself who has more to gain from US FP abroad: average Americans or the global elites? ..."
"... Those former-Eastern Bloc countries, i.e. Poland and Ukraine, do not count as power brokers. They have and will always be pawns in the game. So what if they still worship Icons of Americanism which is a remnant culture of their F*ed up narrative where they still believe they are fighting the commies. ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... From his curriculum vitae (pdf) we learn that Donnelly was a long time soldier in the British Army Intelligence Corps where he established and led the Soviet Studies Research Centre at RMA Sandhurst. He later was involved in creating the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth. ..."
"... He worked at the British Ministry of Defence and as an advisor to several Secretaries General of NATO. He is a director of the Statecraft Institute since 2010. Donnelly also advises the Foreign Minister of Lithuania. He is a "Security and Justice Senior Mentor" of the UK's Stabilisation Unit which is tasked with destabilizing various countries. He serves as a Honorary Colonel of the Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI). ..."
"... This was an order from the core of the British thinking to Donnelly to get even deeper into the inner-British influence business. Hype Russia as a threat so more money can be taken from the 'vested interests' of the people and dumped into the military machine. ..."
"... That particular advise of General Barrons was accepted. In 2017 the Integrity Initiative bid for funding from the Ministry of Defence (pdf) for various projects to influence the public, the parliament and the government as well as foreign forces. The bid lists "performance indicators" that are supposed to measure the success of its activities. The top indicator for the Initiative's proposed work is a "Tougher stance in government policy towards Russia" ..."
"... In March 2014, shortly after Crimea split from the Ukraine, Donnelly suggested Military measures (pdf) to be taken by the Ukraine with regards to Crimea: ..."
"... Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of Sevastopol harbor, the frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in Crimea. Those "guestures" would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear power which were legally stationed in Crimea. And how was the west to immediately supply gas to Ukraine and Ukraine's pipeline network is designed to unidirectionally receive gas from Russia? ..."
"... Yes, Putin really believes his own propaganda ..."
"... Putin's paranoia is driving his foreign adventures ..."
"... Russian information warfare - airbrushing reality ..."
"... Distract, deceive, destroy: Putin at war in Syria ..."
"... Russian penetration in Germany ..."
"... Russian conspiracy theory and foreign policy ..."
"... The most recent release of Integrity Initiative documents includes lots of in-depth reports (pdf) about foreign media reactions to the Skripal affair. One wonders why the Initiative commissioned such research (pdf) and paid for it. ..."
"... Here is an interesting look at how little the Russia-linked entities spent on advertising on Google during the 2016 election: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/12/google-russia-and-4700-in-advertising.html Slowly but surely, the Russian meddling narrative is falling apart. ..."
"... McCarthyesque smear campaigns to discredit opponents and squash dissent has become normal practice. Integrity Initiative tweets against Corbyn is a stark example, but there have been MANY other people and groups that have been tarred with claims of being sponsored/led/influenced by Russia, including Catalonian independence activists and Yellow vest protesters. ..."
"... Dear god, what has gotten into the minds of the military and political "elite" within the UK! Mining Sevastopol would have been an obvious act of war against Russia and Russia would have responded with force. ..."
"... It looks like one of the decision was to get closer to France (after getting very close friends in Homs and Aleppo?) See the list of people in the French II cluster dumped yesterday by Anonymous: half the names work at the fr Min of F Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster_House_Treaties and http://www.gmfus.org/publications/frances-defense-partnerships-and-dilemmas-brexit ..."
"... This group may have officially formed in 2015, but its work is no different from the British propaganda that swamped the MSM when MH17 was downed. Tied into the Steel dossier and Russian collusion in the US. This is the anglosphere or five eyes permanent state. ..."
"... it is apparent that this "Integrity Initiative" was engaged in to ensure that the regime was in the safe hands of the harpy. ..."
"... It is interesting that Trudeau, the Canadian figurehead, clothes his country's kidnapping of the Chinese business figure as "in defence of the rule of law." All in all, it is now apparent we would be far better off if the Kaiserreich, with all of its militaristic and bombastic flaws, had triumphed in the Great War. No Hitler, no Stalin, no five eyes fascism. ..."
"... Rules of the game are made up as the game is played to suit the players. There you have it real life imitates art. ..."
"... Better yet, can anyone name an NGO, any NGO ever, that's not closely if not directly linked to "a secret military intelligence operation." Anyone? Mueller? ..."
"... Thank you very much for this terrific analysis. Donnelly: "... it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. " Numerous American publications featured very similar language in the years ahead of 9/11, with "Islamic terrorist threat" substituted for the Russians. ..."
"... Vesti News has published an excellent documentary on how "clusters" work....not only to spread Russophobia...but also on continuous intends to overthrown Russian legitimate government... https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=E8-Stfrl5aM ..."
"... The last two periods of the US FP could be understood thusly: (1) Pre-Soviet collapse which was marked by a horrifically tragic and misplaced ideal of defending against communism (Good guys v. Bad Guys); and (2) Post-Soviet collapse which has been a period of coup d'etats where our hijacked military has been used for a Globalist Agenda for increasingly opaque (less defensible) reasons and missions. ..."
"... right after 2016 US elections there was a facade of split between military and intelligence differentiation. Seems that veil has been dispensed with ..."
"... Yeah, they hijacked a few other countries too, including Russia. Or if not hijacking, setting the mood right for some shenanigans in the near future... I think you're quite right about the cheif host of the globalist neolib parasite. Hijacked near fully. Being bled dry. That unaccounted for 21 Trillion at the pentagon is a bit of a giveaway. All under the guise of free markets and democracy. ..."
"... 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation Designed To Create A New Enemy ..."
Sounds to me like that Integrity initiative dude needs to go on a 'de-radicalisation
program !!! How many billions is that guna save us all ! not to mention lives saved.
Wrong JR. It seems quite the obvious that the big boy in the west, the US, would seem to be
the one spearheading the whole globalist agenda.
But this is a retarded proposition.
The US is nothing more than a Golem. It has been reduced to somnambulism and hijacked,
utilized for the ends of these Non-National elites. Sure, like many posters here, it feels good
to blame the US for everything. But the powerbrokers have always been in London and now its
hypercentralized endgame in Brussels. You can say that it is the US through and through, but
ask yourself who has more to gain from US FP abroad: average Americans or the global
elites?
Those former-Eastern Bloc countries, i.e. Poland and Ukraine, do not count as power
brokers. They have and will always be pawns in the game. So what if they still worship Icons of
Americanism which is a remnant culture of their F*ed up narrative where they still believe they
are fighting the commies.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi was arrested and tortured for it...
"They broke my teeth, my nose, my leg, they electrocuted me, lashed me, they would beat me,
they even broke a table or a chair over my back. I don't know, they had my eyes covered,"
al-Zaidi recalled. "This was one thing I never experienced before. Torture by the
authorities, by the rule of law."
I wish it had been a hand grenade.
The British government financed Integrity Initiative is tasked with spreading
anti-Russian propaganda and with influencing the public, military and governments of a number
of countries. What follows is an incomplete analysis of the third batch of the Initiative's
papers which was
dumped yesterday.
Christopher Nigel Donnelly (CND) is the co-director of The Institute for Statecraft and founder of its offshoot
Integrity Initiative . The
Initiative claims to "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation".
Both, the Institute as well as the Initiative, claim to be independent Non-Government
Organizations. Both are financed by the British government, NATO and other state donors.
Among the documents
lifted by some anonymous person from the servers of the Institute we find several papers
about Donnelly as well as some memos written by him. They show a russophobe mind with a lack of
realistic strategic thought.
There is also
a file (pdf) with a copy of his passport:
From his
curriculum vitae (pdf) we learn that Donnelly was a long time soldier in the British Army
Intelligence Corps where he established and led the Soviet Studies Research Centre at RMA
Sandhurst. He later was involved in creating the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office
(FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth.
He worked at the British Ministry of Defence and as an advisor to several Secretaries
General of NATO. He is a director of the Statecraft Institute since 2010. Donnelly also advises
the Foreign Minister of Lithuania. He is a "Security and Justice Senior Mentor" of the UK's
Stabilisation Unit which
is tasked with destabilizing various countries. He serves as a Honorary Colonel of the
Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI).
During his time as military intelligence analyst in the 1980s Donnelly wrote several books
and papers about the Soviet Union and its military.
Our problem is that, for the last 70 years or so, we in the UK and Europe have been living in
a safe, secure rules-based system which has allowed us to enjoy a holiday from history.
... ... ...
Unfortunately, this state of affairs is now being challenged. A new paradigm of conflict
is replacing the 19th & 20th Century paradigm.
... ... ...
In this new paradigm, the clear distinction which most people have been able to draw
between war and peace, their expectation of stability and a degree of predictability in life,
are being replaced by a volatile unpredictability, a permanent state of instability in which
war and peace become ever more difficult to disentangle . The "classic" understanding of
conflict being between two distinct players or groups of players is giving way to a world of
Darwinian competition where all the players – nation states, sub-state actors, big
corporations, ethnic or religious groups, and so on – are constantly striving with each
other in a "war of all against all". The Western rules-based system, which most westerners
take for granted and have come to believe is "normal", is under attack from countries and
organisations which wish to replace our system with theirs. This is not a crisis which faces
us; it is a strategic challenge, and from several directions simultaneously.
In reality the "Western rules-based system", fully implemented after the demise of the
Soviet Union, is a concept under which 'the west' arbitrarily makes up rules and threatens to
kill anyone who does not follow them. Witness the wars against Serbia, the war on Iraq, the
destruction of Libya, the western led coup in Ukraine and the war by Jihadi proxies against the
people of Syria and Iraq. None of these actions were legal under international law. Demanding a
return to strict adherence to the rule of international law, as Russia,
China and others now do, it is not an attempt to replace "our system with theirs". It is a
return to the normal state of global diplomacy. It is certainly not a "Darwinian
competition".
In October 2016 Donnelly had a Private
Discussion with Gen Sir Richard Barrons (pdf), marked as personal and confidential. Barrons
is a former commander of the British Joint Forces Command. The nonsensical top line is: "The UK
defence model is failing. UK is at real risk."
Some interesting nuggets again reveal a paranoid mindset. The talk also includes some
realistic truthiness about the British military posture Barrons and others created:
There has been a progressive, systemic demobilisation of NATO militarily capability and a run
down of all its members' defences
...
We are seeing new / reinvented ways of warfare – hybrid , plus the reassertion of hard
power in warfare
...
Aircraft Carriers can be useful for lots of things, but not for war v China or Russia, so we
should equip them accordingly. ...
The West no longer has a military edge on Russia. ...
Our Nuclear programme drains resources from conventional forces and hollows them out. ...
The UK Brigade in Germany is no good as a deterrent against Russia. ...
Our battalion in Estonia are hostages, not a deterrent. ...
The general laments the lack of influence the military has on the British government and its
people. He argues for more government financed think tank research that can be fed back into
the government:
So, if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response, then we need to find a
way to get the core of government to realise the problem and take it out of the political
space. We will need to impose changes over the heads of vested interests. NB We did this in
the 1930s
My conclusion is that it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something
dreadful to happen to shock us into action. We must generate an independent debate outside
government .
...
We need to ask when and how do we start to put all this right? Do we have the national
capabilities / capacities to fix it? If so, how do we improve our harnessing of resources to
do it? We need this debate NOW. There is not a moment to be lost.
This was an order from the core of the British thinking to Donnelly to get even deeper
into the inner-British influence business. Hype Russia as a threat so more money can be taken
from the 'vested interests' of the people and dumped into the military machine.
That particular advise of General Barrons was accepted. In 2017 the Integrity Initiative
bid for funding from the Ministry of Defence (pdf) for various projects to influence the
public, the parliament and the government as well as foreign forces. The bid lists "performance
indicators" that are supposed to measure the success of its activities. The top indicator for
the Initiative's proposed work is a "Tougher stance in government policy towards Russia"
.
Asking for government finance to influence the government to take a "tougher stand towards
Russia" seems a bit circular. But this is consistent with the operation of other Anglo-American
think tanks and policy initiatives in which one part of the government, usually the hawkish
one, secretly uses NGO's and think-tanks to lobby other parts of the government to support
their specific hobbyhorse and budget.
Here is how it is done. The 'experts' of the 'charity' Institute for Statecraft and
Integrity Initiative
testified
in the British parliament. While they were effectively paid by the government they lobbied
parliament under the cover of their NGO. This circularity also allows to use international
intermediates. Members of the Spanish cluster
(pdf) of the Initiative
testified in the British Parliament about the Catalan referendum and related allegations
against Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange. (It is likely that this testimony led to the change
in the position of the Ecuadorian government towards Assange.)
Unfortunately, or luckily, such lobbying operations are mostly run by people who are
incompetent in the specific field they are lobbying for. Chris Donnelly, despite a life long
experience in military intelligence, has obviously zero competence as a military strategist or
planner.
In March 2014, shortly after Crimea split from the Ukraine, Donnelly suggested
Military
measures (pdf) to be taken by the Ukraine with regards to Crimea:
If I were in charge I would get the following implemented asp
Set up a cordon sanitaire across the Crimean Isthmus and on the coast N. of Crimea with
troops and mines
Mine Sevastopol harbour/bay. Can be done easily using a car ferry if they have no
minelayers. Doesn't need a lot of mines to be effective. They could easily buy some
mines.
Get their air force into the air and activate all their air defences. If they can't fly
the Migs on the airfield in Crimea those should be destroyed as a gesture that they are
serious. Going "live" electronically will worry the Russians as the Ukrainians have the
same electronic kit. If the Russians jam it they jam their own kit as well.
Ukraine used to have some seriously important weapons, such as a big microwave
anti-satellite weapon. If they still have this, they should use it.
The government needs a Strategic communication campaign-so far everything is coming
from Moscow. They need to articulate a long-term vision that will inspire the people,
however hard that is to do. Without it, what have people to fight for?
They should ask the west now to start supplying Oil and gas. There is plenty available
due to the mild winter.
I am trying to get this message across
Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of Sevastopol harbor, the
frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in Crimea. Those "guestures"
would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear power which were legally
stationed in Crimea. And how was the west to immediately supply gas to Ukraine and Ukraine's
pipeline network is designed to unidirectionally receive gas from Russia?
Such half-assed thinking is typical for the Institute and its creation of propaganda. One of
its employees/contractors is Hugh Benedict Nimmo who the Initiative paid to produce
anti-Russian propaganda that was then disseminated through various western publications.
According to the (still very incomplete) Initiative files Ben Nimmo
received a monthly consultancy fee of £2.500 between December 2015 and March 2016. In
August 2016 he sent an invoice
(pdf) of £5,000 for his "August work on Integrity Initiative". A
Production Timetable (pdf) for March to June 2016 lists the following Nimmo outputs and
activities:
17 March Atlantic Council: Yes, Putin really believes his own propaganda , Ben
Nimmo
21 March Newsweek: Putin's paranoia is driving his foreign adventures , Ben
Nimmo
22 March, UK House of Commons: Russian information warfare - airbrushing
reality , Jonathan Eyal and Ben Nimmo
Mid May: Atlantic Council: Distract, deceive, destroy: Putin at war in Syria .
Ben Nimmo et al (Major study)
Early May timeframe: Russian penetration in Germany , Harold Elletson, Ben
Nimmo et al - 10,000 words
June timeframe: Atlantic Council, major report on Russian conspiracy theory and
foreign policy , Ben Nimmo (potential launch events in London and / or
Washington)
End-June: Mapping Russia's whole influence machine , Ben Nimmo - 10,000
words
One wonders how often Ben Nimmo double billed his various sponsors for these copy-paste
fantasy pamphlets.
In late 2017 Ben Nimmo and Guardian 'journalist' Carole Cadwalladr disseminated
allegations that Russia used Facebook ads to influence the Brexit decision. Cadwalladr even
received a price for her work. Unfortunately the price was not revoked when Facebook revealed
that "Russia linked" accounts had spend a total of 97 cents on Brexit ads. It is unexplained
how that was enough to achieve their alleged aim.
Cadwalladr is listed
as a speaker (pdf) at a "skill sharing" conference the Institute organized for November 1-2
under the headline: "Tackling Tools of Malign Influence - Supporting 21st Century
Journalism".
This year Ben Nimmo became notorious for claiming that
several real persons with individual opinions were "Russian trolls". As we
noted :
Nimmo, and several other dimwits quoted in the piece, came to the conclusion that Ian56 is
a Kremlin paid troll, not a real person. Next to Ian56 Nimmo 'identified' other 'Russian
troll' accounts:
One particularly influential retweeter (judging by the number of accounts which then
retweeted it) was @ValLisitsa, which posts in English and Russian. Last year, this account
joined the troll-factory #StopMorganLie campaign.
Had Nimmo, a former NATO spokesperson, had some decent education he would have
know that @ValLisitsa, aka Valentina Lisitsa , is a famous
American- Ukrainian pianist. Yes, she sometimes tweets in Russian language to her many fans
in Russia and the Ukraine. Is that now a crime? The videos of her world wide
performances on Youtube have more than 170 million views. It is absurd to claim that she is a
'Russian troll' and to insinuate that she is taking Kremlin money to push 'Russian troll'
opinions.
The
Institute for Statecraft Expert Team (pdf) list several people with military intelligence
backgrounds as well as many 'journalists'. One of them is:
Mark Galeotti
Specialist in Russian strategic thinking; the application of Russian disinformation and
hybrid warfare; the use of organised crime as a weapon of hybrid warfare. Educational and
mentoring skills, including in a US and E European environment, and the corporate world.
Russian linguist
Galeotti is the infamous inventor of the 'Gerasimov doctrine' and of the propaganda about
Russia's alleged 'hybrid' warfare. In February 2013 the Russian General Valery Gerasimov, then
Russia's chief of the General Staff, published a paper that analysed the way the 'west' is
waging a new type of war by mixing propaganda, proxy armies and military force into one unified
operation.
Galeotti claimed that Gerasimov's analysis of 'western' operations was a new Russian
doctrine of 'hybrid war'. He invented the term 'Gerasimov doctrine' which then took off in the
propaganda realm. In February 2016 the U.S. Army Military Review
published a longer analysis of Gerasimov's paper that debunked the nonsense (pdf). It
concluded:
Gerasimov's article is not proposing a new Russian way of warfare or a hybrid war, as has
been stated in the West.
But anti-Russian propagandist
repeated Galeotti's nonsense over and over. Only in March 2018, five years after Galeotti
invented the 'Germasimov doctrine' and two years after he was thoroughly debunked, he finally
recanted
:
Everywhere, you'll find scholars, pundits, and policymakers talking about the threat the
"Gerasimov doctrine" -- named after Russia's chief of the general staff -- poses to the West.
It's a new way of war, "an expanded theory of modern warfare," or even "a vision of total
warfare."
There's one small problem. It doesn't exist. And the longer we pretend it does, the longer
we misunderstand the -- real, but different -- challenge Russia poses.
I feel I can say that because, to my immense chagrin, I created this term, which has since
acquired a destructive life of its own, lumbering clumsily into the world to spread fear and
loathing in its wake.
The Institute for Statecraft's "Specialist in Russian strategic thinking", an expert of
disinformation and hybrid warfare, created a non-existing Russian doctrine out of hot air and
used it to press for anti-Russian measures. Like Ben Nimmo he is an aptly example of the
quality of the Institute's experts and work.
One of the newly released documents headlined CND Gen list 2
(pdf) (CND= Chris Nigel Donnelly) includes the names and email addresses of a number of
military, government and think tank people. The anonymous releaser of the documents claims that
the list is "of employees who attended a closed-door meeting with the white helmets". (No
document has been published yet that confirms this.) One name on the list is of special
interest:
Pablo Miller was the handler and friend of Sergej Skripal, the British double agent who was
"novichoked" in Salisbury. When Miller's name was mentioned in the press the British government
issued a D-Notice to suppress its further publishing,
Pablo Miller, a British MI6 agent, had
recruited Sergej Skripal. The former MI6 agent in Moscow, Christopher Steele, was also
involved in the case. Skripal was caught by the Russian security services and went to jail.
Pablo Miller, the MI6 recruiter, was also the handler of Sergej Skripal after he was released
by Russia in a spy swap. He reportedly also lives in Salisbury. Both Christopher Steele and
Pablo Miller work for Orbis Business Intelligence which created the "Dirty Dossier" about
Donald Trump.
At the very beginning of the Skripal affair, before there was any talk of 'Novichok', we
asked
if Skripal was involved in creating the
now debunked "Dirty Dossier" and if that was a reason for certain British insiders to move
him out of the way:
Here are some question:
Did Skripal help Steele to make up the "dossier" about Trump?
Were Skripal's old connections used to contact other people in Russia to ask about
Trump dirt?
Did Skripal threaten to talk about this?
If there is a connection between the dossier and Skripal, which seems very likely to me,
then there are a number of people and organizations with potential motives to kill him. Lots
of shady folks and officials on both sides of the Atlantic were involved in creating and
running the anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign. There are several investigations and some very
dirty laundry might one day come to light. Removing Skripal while putting the blame on Russia
looks like a convenient way to get rid of a potential witness.
The
most recent release of Integrity Initiative documents includes lots of in-depth
reports (pdf) about foreign media reactions to the Skripal affair. One wonders why the
Initiative commissioned
such research (pdf) and paid for it.
After two years the Muller investigation found zero
evidence for the 'collusion' between Russia and the Trump campaign that the fake Steele
dossier suggested. The whole collusion claim is a creation by 'former' British intelligence
operatives who likely acted on request of U.S. intelligence leaders Clapper and Brennan. How
deep was the Russia specialist Chris Donnelly and his Institute for Statecraft involved in this
endeavor?
Checking through all the released Initiative papers and lists one gets the impression of a
secret military intelligence operation, disguised as a public NGO. Financed by millions of
government money the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative work under a charity
label to create and disseminate disinformation to the global public and back into the
government and military itself.
The paranoia about Russia, which does way less harm than the 'western' "rules based system"
constantly creates, is illogical and not based on factual analysis. It creates Russia as an
"enemy" when it is none. It hypes a "threat" out of hot air. The only people who profit from
this are the propagandists and the companies and people who back them.
The Initiatives motto "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation" is a truly Orwellian
construct. By disseminating propaganda and using it to influence the public, parliament, the
military and governments, the Institute actively undermines the democratic process that depends
on the free availability of truthful information.
It should be shut down immediately.
---
Note: There have already been attempts to delete the released files from the Internet. A
complete archive of all Integrity Initiative files published so far is here . Should
the public links cease to work, you can contact the author of this blog for access to private
backups.
Aside from the fact that the government itself funds this organization, the creepiest thing
about it is that the "non-governmental individuals" that help fund it are the same people
that run the think tanks: a bunch of Rhodesians.
"Such half-assed thinking...Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of
Sevastopol harbor, the frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in
Crimea. Those "gestures" would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear
power which were legally stationed in Crimea."
It sure seems like this half-assed thinking isn't just the domain of a fringe element, but
is increasingly mainstream among the elites. Doesn't bode well.
Thank you B. It is truly amazing to watch the UK elites unravel as they have become truly
unhinged by their own connivances. It is a bad joke at the commoner's expense that they
propagandize and demonize in the name of the 'Western rules based system' even as they are
busy shooting themselves in both feet by committing Brexit. Although there are legitimate
grievances with the EU, it is clear that Brexit is a Tory power play that is all politics and
zero governance. Alas, Perfidious Albion has succumbed to Mad Cow disease.
What remains mysterious (not really) is why --if these initiatives are truly meant to save
and strengthen democracy-- they aren't proudly proclaimed and advertised, in the open,
transparent, for everyone one to see and judge, like an adult democracy that they claim to
stand for might want to debate and form an opinion on.
The fact that it isn't, is testimony to the nefarious anti-democratic, authoritarian and
totalitarian streak that runs in between every two lines that they put on paper.
McCarthyesque smear campaigns to discredit opponents and squash dissent has become normal
practice. Integrity Initiative tweets against Corbyn is a stark example, but there have been
MANY other people and groups that have been tarred with claims of being
sponsored/led/influenced by Russia, including Catalonian independence activists and Yellow
vest protesters.
Every time one scratches the surface of such smears, it seems there is a connection to
US/British MIC, Ukraine, or Israel - essentially, those who benefit (financially or
otherwise) from greater tensions with Russia.
At what point does neocon doubling-down on failed foreign policy become more than just
picking our pockets and warping our minds? At what point do they start killing our kids in
another unnecessary war?
Cold War has been over for nearly 30 years. It's time enough for Western countries to send
into real retirement every single cold-warrior, their time is over, their mindset is quaint
and useless, if not downright dangerous and counter-productive.
Thank you 'b'
I'll just say -- - there is safety in numbers ! Already valuable information, important to
the public good and democracy has been spread wide enough to be certain, this gene won't go
back in the bottle ! D notice or no ! And by doing that, has made the fearless journalists
and investigators lives all the safer ! Safety in numbers, spread this wide everyone?
Thanks for the continued exposition of this story b.....may it go viral
I want to comment on some of the wording you quote Donnelly as writing
" .....is giving way to a world of Darwinian competition where all the players
– nation states, sub-state actors, big corporations, ethnic or religious groups, and
so on – are constantly striving with each other in a "war of all against all".
"
This is Donnelly's characterization of a world in which finance is a public utility
instead of the private jackboot that it currently is. This is the delusion these people have
been led to believe.
So instead of his "war of all against all" that some might call human cooperation on the
basis of merit we have a mythical God of Mammon religion that continues to instantiate the
private finance led world of the West with it parasitic elite and fawning acolytes.
Dear god, what has gotten into the minds of the military and political "elite" within the
UK! Mining Sevastopol would have been an obvious act of war against Russia and Russia would
have responded with force.
Thankfully it wasn't done but the fact this was even discussed by senior figures confirms
that there was at least a sizable minority pushing for it. 30 years after the fall of the
Soviet Union, the Western elite have truly abandoned all sense of reality and embraced a
consequence free view of the use of force. After Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya they haven't
learned a thing! I'm becoming more and more certain that a peaceful transition to the
multipolar world is impossible and that it will only happen after the US or one of its'
vassal states blunder into a proxy war and get utterly and comprehensively defeated, forcing
a radical world realignment, but with nuts like John Bolton and the neocons in the Whitehouse
it could easily lead to a nuclear war
This group may have officially formed in 2015, but its work is no different from the
British propaganda that swamped the MSM when MH17 was downed. Tied into the Steel dossier and
Russian collusion in the US. This is the anglosphere or five eyes permanent state.
exiled off mainstreet , Dec 15, 2018 2:22:39 PM |
link
As an aside this happens to be "Bill of Rights Day", the anniversary of the passage of the
Bill of Rights as amendments to the yankee constitution. This reveals again how far from the
rule of law the yankee imperium, now the key element of the British Empire they supposedly
seceded from, has strayed, since it is apparent that this "Integrity Initiative" was
engaged in to ensure that the regime was in the safe hands of the harpy.
It has also ensured that the victorious candidate has been neutered and faithfully follows
the world control line put forward by the five eyes spy-masters making up the empire in its
present iteration. This also shows what a farce the regime, based on the rule of law, now
presents.
It is interesting that Trudeau, the Canadian figurehead, clothes his country's
kidnapping of the Chinese business figure as "in defence of the rule of law." All in all, it
is now apparent we would be far better off if the Kaiserreich, with all of its militaristic
and bombastic flaws, had triumphed in the Great War. No Hitler, no Stalin, no five eyes
fascism.
The "Western-based rules system" described in this article reminds me of a game called
"Calvin Ball" which appeared in the former comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes." In the strip
Calvin a wildly imaginative adolescent boy who plays a free-form of football with his
imaginary pet toy tiger (Hobbes). Rules of the game are made up as the game is played to
suit the players. There you have it real life imitates art.
b, I downloaded the zip file, and had also downloaded all the PDF's from pdf-archive
yesterday. There are more files in the zip, but the following were on pdf-archive and are NOT
in the zip:
integrity-france.pdf (this is a dud, looks like html, prob. response from a failed
attempt to put a file up on pdf-archive)
Better yet, can anyone name an NGO, any NGO ever, that's not closely if not directly
linked to "a secret military intelligence operation." Anyone? Mueller?
Thank you very much for this terrific analysis. Donnelly: "... it is we who must either
generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. "
Numerous American publications featured very similar language in the years ahead of 9/11,
with "Islamic terrorist threat" substituted for the Russians.
Emmanuel Goldstein , Dec 15, 2018 4:21:51 PM |
link
The transcript of his conversation with the general shows very starkly that we would last
about two minutes in a nuclear exchange, but about half a day in a conventional one. No
reserves, no equipment stockpiles, a navy consisting of two fat targets, neither of which has
any aircraft and some destroyers which have propulsion problems, a smallish air force and
very small numbers of troops. The tripwire force in Estonia is wholly sacrificial. In fact he
lays bare the whole fallacy of biting the bear. With the armed forces in the state he
describes, and with the recruitment and retention problems, wouldn't it be better, as one
defense minister said, 'to go away and shut up'...
Thanks b and especially the link to Valentina Lisitsa who I had tinkling in the background as
I read your grand expose. These people are seditious morons, parasites infesting the state
apparatus. Shut these fools down. Nice touch publishing the passport image. I can just
imagine the frenzied aftermath of Kit's visit to the basement. Big thanks to anonymous and
Craig Murray too. Their IT personel are probably visiting Devil's Island or Diego Garcia as
we read.
Vesti News has published an excellent documentary on how "clusters" work....not only to
spread Russophobia...but also on continuous intends to overthrown Russian legitimate
government... https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=E8-Stfrl5aM
The British and US connections to loot and evade Russian riches and funds are exposed, as
well as the origin of sanctions, supposed "alt-media" "truth-seakers" like Meduza...or
supposed "pro-Russian" US intelligence operatives married to Russian women....
Amongst the many issues he usually passes over trying to make himself the fool, while at
the same time trying to convince us of the oustanding intellectual capacities, honesty and
classy stance of him and his "comittee"...
For that travel, to end bluntly and in such public view siding with the nazis of the "Azov
Regiment" and other criminals of war, there was no need of so many saddlebags, so as
pretending that the people who supported Trump as if there was no tomorrow, were enlightened
people who only wanted to rescue "America" for the "Americans", as if there would not be a
sign of blatant exceptionalism in appropriating of the term "Americans" for themselves in
such a huge continent....
In my view, the USA's FP has been undermined by EURO elites which is forcing a game of
chicken with Russia.
The FP pre-Soviet collapse consisted of one MO: GET THE COMMIES!
Since then, Neocons and Neolibs which are frontmen for this Non-National Globalized Elite,
have hijacked our country's military and have steered it to a Global agenda where dominance
in the ME means either superiority for these EURO elites or Vassal-hood.
The last two periods of the US FP could be understood thusly: (1) Pre-Soviet collapse
which was marked by a horrifically tragic and misplaced ideal of defending against communism
(Good guys v. Bad Guys); and (2) Post-Soviet collapse which has been a period of coup d'etats
where our hijacked military has been used for a Globalist Agenda for increasingly opaque
(less defensible) reasons and missions.
The average American could care less about the ME and the US would be 1000x better-off
reverting to an isolationist stance.
But this will not happen so long as Nationalism in the US and UK is repeatedly put-down.
It seems as though there is going to be another Brexit vote. Does anyone doubt that
miraculously the people by then will have second-guessed their will to Brexit and so will
vote against it given another crack at a vote?
Import IT workers and staff science faculties from abroad w dual citizens while kkr
buys wafer labs that outsource to mainland for manufacturing
Cry boo hoo hoo to wake up with indigenous capacity decades behind world players like
Russia, China, India, etc who operate on fractional budgets...
But this drama also exposes ashura/emigods intra necine warfare: right after 2016 US
elections there was a facade of split between military and intelligence differentiation.
Seems that veil has been dispensed with , but it invites other questions, insofar as UK
is Her Majesty's Service, so are we to read this with Prince Harry or Philip's culture, or a
"consent by silence") in mind? Defending crown or EU "Saturnus Sattelitus"?
Yeah, they hijacked a few other countries too, including Russia. Or if not hijacking,
setting the mood right for some shenanigans in the near future... I think you're quite right
about the cheif host of the globalist neolib parasite. Hijacked near fully. Being bled dry.
That unaccounted for 21 Trillion at the pentagon is a bit of a giveaway. All under the guise
of free markets and democracy.
Good to see Trump finally give it a face... 'you need freedom and security now pay up
bitches'
In my view, the USA's FP has been undermined by EURO elites which is forcing a game of
chicken with Russia.... Globalist Agenda
I think the opposite is true.
The US-led Empire and their globalist sycophants seek to weaken Europe so that it can not
act independently in its own best interests. They will do what ever they can to ensure that
the vassals never join with Russia/China and the SCO.
Russian scare-mongering and immigration have been effective in furthering this agenda.
Also note: what USA has termed "new Europe" - eastern European states like Poland and Ukraine
- are solidly pro-American.
Skripal father probably fully participated to the whole story. These kinds of narratives are
useful to distract the masses from the complete impotency of their politicians.
He now enjoys a forced holiday in Brasil under a new name and a new face, and the same for
his daughter, who had to share in this involuntarily .
"... Because once we go from "corruption is getting more and more common; something must be done" to "meh," we are crossing from a flawed democratic republic to outright tyranny and oligarchy with little way back. ..."
"... Why would anyone expect anything different from the Times, or any major U.S. Newspaper or media outlet? They are organs of the intelligence community and have been for many years. ..."
"... I think the ridiculous and pathetic explanations by NYT in this case are, in part, due to the fact that they simply don't care enough to produce better answers. In their view, these CIA connections and those with other Govt. agencies are paramount, and must be maintained at all costs. ..."
"... It is likely that the relationship is a little more formal than mere collusion ..."
"... "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few" [George Bernard Shaw" ..."
"... Has been since Judith Miller told us there were WMD in Iraq in 2003. They don't plan anticipations of crises, but the actual crises themselves. In a moral world, the NYT is as guilty of genocide as Bush and Blair. ..."
The more important objection is that the fact that a certain behavior is common does not negate its being corrupt. Indeed,
as is true for government abuses generally, those in power rely on the willingness of citizens to be trained to view corrupt
acts as so common that they become inured, numb, to its wrongfulness. Once a corrupt practice is sufficiently perceived as
commonplace, then it is transformed in people's minds from something objectionable into something acceptable.
Because once we go from "corruption is getting more and more common; something must be done" to "meh," we are crossing
from a flawed democratic republic to outright tyranny and oligarchy with little way back.
Besides, they don't all do it ... there are honorable reporters out there, some few of whom work for the Times and the Post.
Another great article Glenn. The Guardian will spread your words further and wider. Salon's loss is the world's gain.
Why would anyone expect anything different from the Times, or any major U.S. Newspaper or media outlet? They are organs
of the intelligence community and have been for many years. That these email were allowed to get out under FOIA is indicative
of the fact that there are some people on the inside who would like to get the truth out. Either that, or the head of some ES-2's
Assistant Deputy for Secret Shenanigans and Heinous Drone Murders will roll.
Scott Horton quote on closely related Mazzetti reporting (in this case regarding misleading reporting on how important CIA/Bush
torture was in tracking down and getting bin Laden, the focus of this movie):
"I'm quite sure that this is precisely the way the folks who provided this info from the agency [to Mazzetti] wanted them to
be understood, but there is certainly more than a measure of ambiguity in them, planted with care by the NYT writers or their
editors. This episode shows again how easily the Times can be spun by unnamed government sources, the factual premises of whose
statements invariably escape any examination."
I think the ridiculous and pathetic explanations by NYT in this case are, in part, due to the fact that they simply don't
care enough to produce better answers. In their view, these CIA connections and those with other Govt. agencies are paramount,
and must be maintained at all costs.
If you don't like their paper-thin answers, tough. In their view (imo) this will blow over and business will resume, with the
all-important friends and connections intact. Thus leaving the machinery intact for future uncritical, biased and manipulative
"spin" of NYT by any number of unnamed govt. sources/agencies...
In what conceivable way is Mazzetti's collusion with the CIA an "intelligence matter" that prevents the NYT's managing
editor from explaining what happened here?
That one is easy, as we learned in the Valerie Plame affair. It is likely that the relationship is a little more formal
than mere collusion.
Just another step down the ladder towards despotism. "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment
by the corrupt few" [George Bernard Shaw"
The relationship between the New York Times and the US government is, as usual, anything but adversarial. Indeed, these
emails read like the interactions between a PR representative and his client as they plan in anticipation of a possible crisis.
Has been since Judith Miller told us there were WMD in Iraq in 2003. They don't plan anticipations of crises, but the actual
crises themselves. In a moral world, the NYT is as guilty of genocide as Bush and Blair.
The humor seems to go completely out of the issue when 100,000 people are dead and their families and futures changed forever.
"... Having said that, still worrying that the CIA devotes time to finding out what Maureen Dowd might write! ..."
"... It is true that Mazzetti's emails with the CIA do not shock or surprise in the slightest. But that's the point. With some noble journalistic exceptions (at the NYT and elsewhere), these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as "watchdogs" over them." ..."
"... A few years ago the New York Times reported that there had been a successful coup in Venezuela - toppling Chavez. The story turned out to be inaccurate. The NY Times finally revealed their source - US State Dept... who were using NYT to give critical mass and support to their dream end to a thorn in their side. ..."
"... The New York Times-all the news the CIA decided is fit to print. ..."
Great column. The NYT does do some good things, such as give us Paul Krugman three times a
week, some important reporting and articulate editorial opposition to the republican
nightmare, but they are much, much too close to the government, as evidenced by their asking
for permission to print news the White House disapproves of.
They are also devoted to denying their readers an accurate picture of American foreign
policy. I frequently comment on threads there and my contributions nearly always get posted,
except when I use the word empire. I have never succeeded in getting that word onto their
website , nor have I seen it make it into anyone else's comment. It is like the famous
episode of Fawlty Towers. "Don't mention the empire.'' Stories and commentaries sometimes
describe specific aspects of US policy in negative terms, but connecting the dots is
obviously forbidden.
Bill Keller is like a character from The Wire. The perfect example of the kind of
authority-revering careerist that butt-kisses his way to the top in institutions.
most of the story seems to come down to the usual kind of thing we see from Judicial
Watch - manufactured outrage over almost nothing
I think part of the outrage here is the extent to which it's almost hard to muster the
energy because it's become so much the norm for the NYTimes to be in bed with whoever is in
power in Washington at any given time. It's the sort of thing that should be "they did
what!!!!?" but instead it's "yeah, well, Judith Miller, Wen Ho Lee, etcetc ... >long
drawn-out sigh<." So, perhaps there is some manufacturing of outrage, but not unreasonably
so if you take a step back and look at what's going on.
Having said that, still worrying that the CIA devotes time to finding out what Maureen
Dowd might write!
"This cynicism – oh, don't be naive: this is done all the time – is precisely
what enables such destructive behavior to thrive unchallenged.
It is true that Mazzetti's emails with the CIA do not shock or surprise in the slightest.
But that's the point. With some noble journalistic exceptions (at the NYT and elsewhere),
these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger –
between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as
"watchdogs" over them."
Once a corrupt practice is sufficiently perceived as commonplace, then it is transformed
in people's minds from something objectionable into something acceptable. Indeed, many
people believe it demonstrates their worldly sophistication to express indifference toward
bad behavior by powerful actors on the ground that it is so prevalent. This cynicism
– oh, don't be naive: this is done all the time – is precisely what enables
such destructive behavior to thrive unchallenged.
This is extremely important, and manifestly true. One runs into such people all the
time.
I haven't read any comments yet, but it would not surprise me to find some of them already
here.
Even worse, I've done it myself on occasion, most recently just the other day on a Cif
thread. Though I will say this; this kind of bullshit is not so much "transformed in people's
minds from something objectionable into something acceptable ", as grudgingly
transformed into something unstoppable , but still toxic and objectionable.
That's mighty thin gruel as an alibi, but the reality for a lot of ordinary working people
is they get fucking tired of it, and yes, they do get discouraged, then cynical and hardened
to it all.
That, of course, is part of the plan.
I'm unaware of a "source" being a person who requests documents from the reporter for doing
damage control on behalf of the boss. (Not that I'd worry about Dowd either.) How exactly is
this secret national intel? I'm glad this came out. We are being manipulated by the govt.
through its minions in the media. The entire incident, from the glorious movie to this
revelation is a fraud.
I found this interesting example of media manipulation at nakedcapitalsim.org:
"Pro-marijuana group endorses Obama The Hill. This purported group, which claims 10,000
members, appears to be just one guy with a PO Box and a press list. But don't count on your
average reporter digging deeper than the news release.":
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/links-82812.html#717LX1oL7dfPsb7I.99
The breadth and depth of propagandizing of citizens is astounding. I wonder what it's like
to have so little integrity. What kind of person so readily sells out their fellow citizen
with lies? It's scary because people read these things and they have no idea they are lies.
People are making decisions based on manufactured "facts". It's very difficult to find actual
information and I can tell you from personal experience, Obama supporters cling desperately
to "authorities" like the NYTimes to maintain their belief in the goodness of dear
leader.
This weird big-brother relationship goes both ways.
A few years ago the New York Times reported that there had been a successful coup in
Venezuela - toppling Chavez. The story turned out to be inaccurate.
The NY Times finally revealed their source - US State Dept... who were using NYT to give
critical mass and support to their dream end to a thorn in their side.
Nice investigative journalism. A couple of years ago the NYTmade a big deal of publicly
firing a low level writer for making up articles from his NY apt when he was supposed to be
in the field. He was hardly the worst of the bunch.
Great article and thankfully I do not trust big newspapers in the USA especially the New York
Times since it has being caught lying about Weapons of Mass Destructions in Iraq to justify
the Iraq War. Judith Millar was the liar then.
Read CounterPunch and smaller publications for the truth.
The NYT is all about selling ads on a Sunday. It really is a corrupt rag.
"this didn't come from me and please delete after you read." -- Mazzetti
This could serve as the epitaph for our times. This (Shock and Awe, drones, the Apache
Massacre, Guantanamo, killing children, etc.) didn't come from US (even though it did)
because ...our crimes can be deleted through that magical "we're too big and bad to fail"
button.
See, nothing to worry about.
(Except future historians who will not be blindfolded and gagged and who will
therefore have some choice things to say about the journalists who were fully complicit
in the crimes of this lawless era.)
"... It acknowledges that "police never identified who had hung the banners," but nonetheless goes on to assert that: "The Kremlin, it appeared, had reached onto United States soil in New York and Washington. The banners may well have been intended as visual victory laps for the most effective foreign interference in an American election in history." ..."
"... The authors, Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, complain about a lack of "public comprehension" of the "Trump-Russia" story. Indeed, despite the two-year campaign of anti-Russian hysteria whipped up in Washington and among the affluent sections of the upper-middle class that constitute the target audience of the Times ..."
The New York Times published a fraudulent and provocative "special report" Thursday titled "The plot to subvert an election."
Replete with sinister looking graphics portraying Russian President Vladimir Putin as a villainous cyberage cyclops, the report
purports to untangle "the threads of the most effective foreign campaign in history to disrupt and influence an American election."
The report could serve as a textbook example of CIA-directed misinformation posing as "in-depth" journalism. There is no news,
few substantiated facts and no significant analysis presented in the 10,000-word report, which sprawls over 11 ad-free pages of a
separate section produced by the Times.
The article begins with an ominous-sounding recounting of two incidents in which banners were hung from bridges in New York City
and Washington in October and November of 2016, one bearing the likeness of Putin over a Russian flag with the word "peacemaker,"
and the other that of Obama and the slogan "Goodbye Murderer."
It acknowledges that "police never identified who had hung the banners," but nonetheless goes on to assert that: "The Kremlin,
it appeared, had reached onto United States soil in New York and Washington. The banners may well have been intended as visual victory
laps for the most effective foreign interference in an American election in history." The article begins with an ominous-sounding
recounting of two incidents in which banners were hung from bridges in New York City and Washington in October and November of 2016,
one bearing the likeness of Putin over a Russian flag with the word "peacemaker," and the other that of Obama and the slogan "Goodbye
Murderer."
It acknowledges that "police never identified who had hung the banners," but nonetheless goes on to assert that: "The Kremlin,
it appeared, had reached onto United States soil in New York and Washington. The banners may well have been intended as visual victory
laps for the most effective foreign interference in an American election in history."
Why does it "appear" to be the Kremlin? What is the evidence to support this claim? Among the 8.5 million inhabitants of New York
City and another 700,000 in Washington, D.C., aren't there enough people who might despise Obama as much as, if not a good deal more
than, Vladimir Putin?
This absurd passage with its "appeared" and "may well have" combined with the speculation about the Kremlin extending its evil
grip onto "United States soil" sets the tone for the entire piece, which consists of the regurgitation of unsubstantiated allegations
made by the US intelligence agencies, Democratic and Republican capitalist politicians and the Times itself.
The authors, Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, complain about a lack of "public comprehension" of the "Trump-Russia" story. Indeed,
despite the two-year campaign of anti-Russian hysteria whipped up in Washington and among the affluent sections of the upper-middle
class that constitute the target audience of the Times , polls have indicated that the charges of Russian "meddling" in
the 2016 presidential election have evoked little popular response among the
"We pledge subservience to the Owners of the United Corporations of America, and to the Oligarchy for which it stands, one Greed
under God, indivisible, with power and wealth for few."
Notable quotes:
"... bin laden gave terror a face. how conveeeenient for warmongers everywhere! ..."
"... CIA in collusion with mainstream newspaper NYT. And you call this news ? ..."
"... collusion between the us media and the us government goes back much, much further. Chomsky has plenty of stuff about this... ..."
"... The NYTimes has its own agenda and bends the news that's fit to print. Journalistic integrity? LOL. No one beat the war drums louder for Bush's Neocons before the Iraq war. Draining our nation's resources, getting young Americans killed (they didn't come from the 1%, you see). The cradle of civilization that's the Iraqi landscape wiped out. Worst, 655,000 Iraqis lost their lives, said British medical journal Lancet, creating 2.5mn each internal & external refugees. ..."
"... The NYT never dwelled on the numbers of Iraqis killed. Up to a few weeks ago, its emphasis on the current Syrian tragedy is to inform us on the hundreds or thousands who've lost their lives. ..."
"... World financial meltdown? When Sanford Weill of Citi pushed for the repeal of Glass-Steagall late 1990's, the FDR era 17-page law separating commercial from investment banks, a measure that's preserved the nation's banking integrity for over half a century, the Nyt added its megaphone to the task, urging Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin to comply, editorializing In 1988: "Few economic historians now find the logic behind Glass-Steagall persuasive" . In 1990, that "banks and stocks were a dangerous mixture" "makes little sense now." ..."
"... just off the top of my head I recall the editor of one of a British major was an MI5 agent; this is in the public domain. ..."
"... We pledge subservience to the Owners of the United Corporations of America, and to the Oligarchy for which it stands, one Greed under God, indivisible, with power and wealth for few. ..."
"... The NYT has been infiltrated for decades by CIA agents. Just notice their dogged reporting on the completely debunked "lone-gunman" JFK theory---they will always report that Oswald acted alone---this is the standard CIA story, pushed and maintained by the NYT despite overwhelming evidence that there was a conspiracy (likely involving the CIA). ..."
I've often wondered what you think of the journalism of someone like Seymour Hirsch. (sic) He broke some very important
stories by cozying up to moles in the MIC.
You'e confusing apples with oranges. Hersh seeks information on issues that outrage him. These do not usually include propaganda
for the intelligence agencies, but information they would like to suppress. He's given secret information because he appears to
his informers as someone who has a long record of integrity.
It's straight outta that old joke about the husband being caught by his wife in flagrante delicto with the pretty young lady neighbour,
who then tells his wife that he and his bit on the side weren't doing anything: "And who do you believe-- me, or your lying eyes?"
The NYTimes has its own agenda and bends the news that's fit to print. Journalistic integrity? LOL. No one beat the
war drums louder for Bush's Neocons before the Iraq war. Draining our nation's resources, getting young Americans killed (they
didn't come from the 1%, you see). The cradle of civilization that's the Iraqi landscape wiped out. Worst, 655,000 Iraqis lost
their lives, said British medical journal Lancet, creating 2.5mn each internal & external refugees.
Following the pre-Iraq
embellishment, NYT covered up its deeds by sacrificing Journalist Judith Miller. As Miller answered a post-war court case, none
other than Chairman & CEO Arthur Sulzberger jr. locked arms with her as they entered the courtroom.
The NYT never dwelled on the numbers of Iraqis killed. Up to a few weeks ago, its emphasis on the current Syrian tragedy is
to inform us on the hundreds or thousands who've lost their lives.
World financial meltdown? When Sanford Weill of Citi pushed for the repeal of Glass-Steagall late 1990's, the FDR era 17-page
law separating commercial from investment banks, a measure that's preserved the nation's banking integrity for over half a century,
the Nyt added its megaphone to the task, urging Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin to comply, editorializing In 1988: "Few economic
historians now find the logic behind Glass-Steagall persuasive" . In 1990, that "banks and stocks were a dangerous mixture" "makes
little sense now."
NYT, a liberal icon? In year 2000, when I lived in NYC, New York Daily News columnist A.M. Rosenthal used to regularly demonize
China in language surpassing even Rush Limbaugh. I told myself nah, that's not the Rosenthal-former-editor of the NYT. Only when
I read his obituary a few years later did I learn that it was indeed the same one.
We pledge subservience to the Owners of the United Corporations of America, and to the Oligarchy for which it stands, one Greed
under God, indivisible, with power and wealth for few.
NOAM CHOMSKY _MANUFACTURING CONSENT haven't read it? read it. read it? read it again.
thought totalitarianism and the ruling class died in 1945? think again. thought you wouldn't have to fight like grandpa's generation
to live in a democratic and just society? think again.
Would that we could hold these discussions without reference to personal defamations -- "darkened ignorance" and "educate yourself"
which sounds like "f___ yourself". Why can't we just say "I respectfully disagree"? Alas, when discussing political issues with
leftists, that seems impossible. Why the vitriol?
Greenwald's more lengthy posts make it clear that he believes that people who differ with him are "lying" and basing their
viewpoint upon "a single right wing blogger". He chooses this explanation over the obvious and accurate one -- legal rationales
developed by the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration. The date of Greenwald's archive is February 19, 2006.
Oddly, he bases all of his contentions upon whatever he could glean up to that date. But the legal rationale for warrantless wiretaps
was based upon memos written by John Yoo at the OLC that Greenwald did not have access to in 2006. The memos were not released
until after Obama took office in 2009.
Obama released them in a highly publicized press conference staged for maximum political impact. Greenwald could not possibly
have understood the legal rationale for the program since he had not been privy to them until March 2009 if, indeed, he has bothered
to acquaint himself with them since then. Either way, nobody was "lying" except those who could have understood the full dimension
and willfully chose to hide or ignore the truth. It's not exactly like I am new to this subject as you seem to imply. I wrote
a 700 page book about Obama administration duplicity in this same vein. An entire chapter is devoted to this very topic.
Warrantless wiretaps were undertaken after a legal ruling from OLC. And after Obama took office, warrantless wiretaps were
continued. Obviously since they were based upon OLC rulings, since no prosecutions have ever been suggested and since they have
continued uninterrupted after Obama took office, the Justice Department under both administrations agrees with me and disagrees
with Greenwald. We arrive at this disagreement respectfully. Despite Obama's voluminous denunciations of the Bush anti-terror
approach on the campaign trail, he resurrected nearly every plank of it once he took office.
But this is a subsidiary point to a far larger point that some observers on this discussion to their credit were able to understand.
Despite all of these pointless considerations, the larger point of my original post was that Greenwald missed the "real" story
here, which was that the collusion between NYT and CIA was not due to institutional considerations as Greenwald seems to allege,
but due to purely partisan considerations. That, to me, is the story he missed.
I find that people who are losing debates try to shift the focus to subsidiary points hoping that, like a courtroom lawyer,
if they can refute a small and inconsequential detail raised in testimony, they will undercut the larger truth offered by the
witness. It won't work. Too much is on the record. And neither point, the ankle-biting non-issue about legality of warrantless
wiretaps or the larger, salient point about the overt partisan political dimension of NYT's collusion with a political appointee
at CIA who serves on the Obama reelection committee, has been refuted.
Joseph Toomey
Author, "Change You Can REALLY Believe In: The Obama Legacy of Broken Promises and Failed Policies"
Conspiracy theorists, have been, of course, telling you this for years (given media's motive is profit and not honesty). I suppose
the exact same conspiracy theorists other guardian authors have been too eager to denounce previously?
The NSA wiretap program revealed by Risen was not illegal as Greenwald wrongly asserts. As long as one end of the intercepted
conservation originated on foreign soil as it did, it was perfectly legal and required no FISA court authorization.
Mr. Toomey, in 2006 Greenwald
published a compendium of legal arguments defending the Bush Admin's warrantless wiretapping and the (sound) rebuttals of
them. It is exhaustive, and covers your easily dispensed with argument. By way of introduction to his many links to his
aggregated, rigorous analyses of the legal issues, he wrote this:
I didn't just wake up one day and leap to the conclusion that the Administration broke the law deliberately and that there
are no reasonable arguments to defend that law-breaking (as many Bush followers leaped to the conclusion that he did nothing
wrong and then began their hunt to find rationale or advocates to support this conclusion). I arrived at the conclusion that
Bush clearly broke the law only by spending enormous amounts of time researching these issues and reading and responding to
the defenses from the Administration's apologists.
He did spend enormous time dealing with people such as yourself, and all of his work remains available for you to educate
yourself with, at the link provided above.
Maybe you'd like to explain that to Samuel Loring Morison who was convicted and spent years in the federal system for passing
classified information to Janes Defence Weekly. I'm sure he'd be entertained. Larry Franklin would also like to hear it. He's
in prison today for violating the Espionage Act.
Courts have recognized no press privilege exists when publishing classified data. In 1971, the Supreme Court vacated a prior
restraint against NYT and The Washington Post allowing them to publish the Pentagon Papers. But the court also observed that prosecutions
after-the-fact would be permissible and not involve an abridgement of the free speech clause. It was only the prior restraint
that gave the justices heartburn. They had no issue with throwing them in the slammer after the deed was done.
Thomas Drake, a former NSA official, was indicted and convicted after revealing information to reporters in 2010. The statute
covers mere possession which even NYT recognized could cover reporters as well. There have been numerous other instances of arrests,
indictments and prosecutions for disclosure to reporters. It's only been due to political calculations and not constitutional
limitations that have kept Risen and others out of prison.
The NYT has been infiltrated for decades by CIA agents. Just notice their dogged reporting on the completely debunked "lone-gunman"
JFK theory---they will always report that Oswald acted alone---this is the standard CIA story, pushed and maintained by the NYT
despite overwhelming evidence that there was a conspiracy (likely involving the CIA).
What outrages me the most is the NYT's condescending attitude towards its readers when caught in this obvious breach of journalistic
ethics.
Both Baquet and Abramson, rather than showing some humility or contrition, are acting as if nothing bad has happened, and that
we are stupid to even talk about this.
This article misses the elephant in the room. Namely, that the NYT only plays footsies with Democrats in positions of power.
With the 'Pubs, it's open season.
Not true. There are many examples of the NYT colluding with the Bush administration, some of which Glenn has mentioned in this
article. Take, for example, the fact that the NYT concealed Bush's wire-tapping program for almost a year, at the request of the
White House, and didn't release details until after Bush's re-election.
They are not only presstitutes, they are degenerative presstitutes...
Notable quotes:
"... I love how the NYT mentions how no public evidence has emerged, to skirt around the fact that if there were internal evidence (from some gov agency or private citizen) it would've leaked by now. There is no such thing as evidence which hasn't been leaked in an alleged scandal of this size. ..."
"... Further, the corporate news media gave Trump something like $2 billion dollars worth of advertising in free airtime. That's a much larger impact -- around 20 times Clinton's campaign costs IIRC -- than any alleged hacked e-mails (though the e-mails were leaked not hacked, and that played a role. As well as the FBI's investigation into Clinton's illegal email server which was public fact at the time) or social media interference. ..."
"... Banks, defense contractors and oil companies decide who the President is and what their Cabinet will look like (see Obama's leaked CitiBank memo "recommending" executives to his 2009 Cabinet). Russians and the American people do not. ..."
"... John Pilger's essay: Hold the Front Page, the Reporters are Missing appropriately describes this BigLie media item b dissected, while also observing, "Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years," prior to providing Why this is so. ..."
"... but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it. ..."
"... The amorality of the years of Tony Blair, whom the Guardian has failed to rehabilitate, is its echo. [My emphasis] ..."
"... on journalism and it being usurped by social media behemoths google, facebook, twitter and etc - i found this cbc radio) interview last night worth recommending.. ..."
"... That New York Times piece was amazing. Belief anything the US Gov't/anti-Russian lobby and other nut cases tell you, unquestioningly. Investigative journalism at its best! ..."
"... Accept the most stupid evidence with blinking an eye. Even if one believes the collusion argument, try to be a bit critical. And always believe that a GRU hacker will put Felix Dzerzinnsky's name in their program. For heaven's sake he was Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, not the GRU which was military intelligence. ..."
"After the security briefing and everyone cleared out, McCabe shut the door to
Priebus's office. This is very weird, thought Priebus, who was standing by his
desk.
"You know this story in The New York Times?" Priebus knew it all too well.
McCabe was referring to a recent Times story of February 14 that stated, "Phone records
and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump's 2016
presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with
senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the elections, according to four
current and former American officials."
The story was one of the first bombs to go off about alleged Trump-Russian
connections after Flynn's resignation.
"It's total bullshit," McCabe said. "It's not true, and we want you to know
that. It's grossly overstated."
Oh my God, thought Priebus.
"Andrew," he said to the FBI deputy, "I'm getting killed."
The story about Russia and election meddling seemed to be running 24/7 on
cable news, driving Trump bananas and therefore driving Priebus bananas.
"This is crazy," Trump had told Priebus. "We've got to stop it. We need to
end the story."
McCabe had just walked in with a big gift, a Valentine's Day present. I'm
going to be the hero of this entire West Wing, Priebus thought.
"Can you help me?" Priebus asked. "Could this knockdown of the story be
made public?"
"Call me in a couple of hours," McCabe said. "I will ask around and I'll let
you know. I'll see what I can do."
Priebus practically ran to report to Trump the good news that the FBI would
soon be shooting down the Times story
Two hours passed and no call from McCabe. Priebus called him."I'm sorry, I can't," McCabe
said.
"There's nothing I can do about it. I tried, but if we start issuing comments on individual
stories, we'll be doing statements
every three days." The FBI could not become a clearinghouse for the accuracy of news stories.
If the FBI tried to debunk certain stories, a failure to comment could be seen as a
confirmation.
"Andrew, you're the one that came to my office to tell me this is a BS story,
and now you're telling me there's nothing you can do?"
McCabe said that was his position.
"This is insanity," Priebus said. "What am I supposed to do? Just suffer, bleed out?"
"Give me a couple more hours."
Nothing happened. No call from the FBI. Priebus tried to explain to Trump,
who was waiting for a recanting. It was another reason for Trump to distrust and
hate the FBI, a pernicious tease that left them dangling.
About a week later on February 24 CNN reported an exclusive: "FBI Refused
White House Request to Knock Down Recent Trump-Russia Story." Priebus
was cast as trying to manipulate the FBI for political purposes.
The White House tried and failed to correct the story and show that McCabe
had initiated the matter.
Four months later on June 8, Comey testified under oath publicly that the
original New York Times story on the Trump campaign aides' contacts with
senior Russian intelligence officials "in the main was not true."
The Mueller Hoax is unraveling.
Posted by: Sid2 | Sep 20, 2018 3:03:44 PM | 3
The Mueller Hoax is unraveling, and concommittently the NYT is digging in; ergo ,
the NYT is also unravelling! The NYT will permanently damage its reputation with its own
readers.
I love how the NYT mentions how no public evidence has emerged, to skirt around the
fact that if there were internal evidence (from some gov agency or private citizen) it
would've leaked by now. There is no such thing as evidence which hasn't been leaked in
an alleged scandal of this size.
Further, the corporate news media gave Trump something like $2 billion dollars worth of
advertising in free airtime. That's a much larger impact -- around 20 times Clinton's
campaign costs IIRC -- than any alleged hacked e-mails (though the e-mails were leaked
not hacked, and that played a role. As well as the FBI's investigation into Clinton's illegal
email server which was public fact at the time) or social media interference.
Banks, defense contractors and oil companies decide who the President is and what their
Cabinet will look like (see Obama's leaked CitiBank memo "recommending" executives to his
2009 Cabinet). Russians and the American people do not.
John Pilger's essay: Hold
the Front Page, the Reporters are Missing appropriately describes this BigLie media
item b dissected, while also observing, "Although journalism was always a loose extension of
establishment power, something has changed in recent years," prior to providing Why this is
so.
Want to highlight this additional bit from Pilger:
"Journalism students should study this [New book from Media Lens Propaganda Blitz ]
to understand that the source of "fake news" is not only trollism, or the likes of Fox news,
or Donald Trump, but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal
journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects
it, and colludes with it.
The amorality of the years of Tony Blair, whom the Guardian has
failed to rehabilitate, is its echo. [My emphasis]
IMO, the bolded text well describes BigLie Media. I wonder what George Seldes would say
differently from Pilger if he were alive. Unfortunately, Pilger failed to include MoA as a
source in his short list of sites having journalistic integrity.
on journalism and it being usurped by social media behemoths google, facebook, twitter and
etc - i found
this cbc radio) interview last night worth recommending..
That New York Times piece was amazing. Belief anything the US Gov't/anti-Russian lobby and
other nut cases tell you, unquestioningly. Investigative journalism at its best!
Accept the most stupid evidence with blinking an eye. Even if one believes the collusion
argument, try to be a bit critical. And always believe that a GRU hacker will put Felix
Dzerzinnsky's name in their program. For heaven's sake he was Cheka, the forerunner of the
KGB, not the GRU which was military intelligence.
"... The Government leaks classified material at will for propaganda advantage, but hunts Assange and tortures Private Manning for the same. ..."
"... these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as "watchdogs" over them. ..."
"... The issue under discussion here, however, is the extent to which the media is an eager partner in the message-sending, rather than an unwitiing tool. ..."
The New York Crimes. The seamless web of media, government, business: a totalitarian system.
Darkly amusing, perhaps, unless one begins to tally the damage.
USA Inc. Viva Death,
Did you hear the one about the investment banker whose very expensive hooker bite off his
crank?
I'm not sure what's scarier--that the CIA is spending taxpayer dollars spending even a split
second worrying about what a two bit hack like Maureen Dowd writes, or that the NY Times
principals are so institutionally "captured" that they parrot "CIA speak".
Or maybe that our purported public servants in the legislature are bipartisanly
and openly attempting to repeal portions of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign
Relations Authorization Act in 1987 banning domestic propaganda.
America is becoming a real sick joke. And the last to know will be about 65% of the
populace I like to call Sheeple.
Very depressing. I thought we would get a smart bunch over here. The major trend I've noticed
instead? Blind support for the empire and the apparatus that keeps it thriving. Unable to be
good little authoritarians and cheer for the now collapsing British Empire, they have to
cheer for it's natural predecessor, the American Empire. This includes attacking all those
who might question the absolute infallible of The Empire. Folks like.. Glenn. It is
fascinating to watch, if not disheartening.
So all cozying up to spooks is not always a bad thing, huh?
Just my point.
I see. I thought your point was that there was some sort of equivalence between Hersh's
development of sources to reveal truths that their agencies fervently wished to keep secret
and Mazzetti's active assistance in protecting an agency's image from sullying by fellow
journalists.
And that ended his career in government service, as it should have...or not:
From Wikipedia: John O. Brennan is chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President
Barack Obama; officially his title is Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security
and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President.
Unfortunately this is nothing new for Mazetti or the New York Times, nor is it the first time
Glenn Greenwald has called Mazetti out on his cozy relationship with the CIA:
The CIA and its reporter friends: Anatomy of a backlash
The coordinated, successful effort to implant false story lines about John Brennan
illustrates the power the intelligence community wields over political debates.
Glenn Greenwald Dec. 08, 2008 |
...Just marvel at how coordinated (and patently inaccurate) their messaging is, and --
more significantly -- how easily they can implant their message into establishment media
outlets far and wide, which uncritically publish what they're told from their cherished
"intelligence sources" and without even the pretense of verifying whether any of it is true
and/or hearing any divergent views:
Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, New York Times, 12/2/2008:
Last week, John O. Brennan, a C.I.A. veteran who was widely seen as Mr. Obama's likeliest
choice to head the intelligence agency, withdrew his name from consideration after liberal
critics attacked his alleged role in the agency's detention and interrogation program. Mr.
Brennan protested that he had been a "strong opponent" within the agency of harsh
interrogation tactics, yet Mr. Obama evidently decided that nominating Mr. Brennan was not
worth a battle with some of his most ardent supporters on the left.
Mr. Obama's search for someone else and his future relationship with the agency are
complicated by the tension between his apparent desire to make a clean break with Bush
administration policies he has condemned and concern about alienating an agency with a
central role in the campaign against Al Qaeda.
Mark M. Lowenthal, an intelligence veteran who left a senior post at the C.I.A. in 2005, said
Mr. Obama's decision to exclude Mr. Brennan from contention for the top job had sent a
message that "if you worked in the C.I.A. during the war on terror, you are now tainted," and
had created anxiety in the ranks of the agency's clandestine service.
...The story, by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, noted that John O. Brennan had withdrawn
his name from consideration for CIA director after liberal critics attacked his role in the
agency's interrogation program, even though Brennan characterized himself as a "strong
opponent" within the agency of harsh interrogation techniques. Brennan's characterization was
not disputed by anyone else in the story, even though most experts on this subject agree that
Brennan acquiesced in everything that the CIA did in this area while he served there.
"these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger –
between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as
"watchdogs" over them."
Glenn - the only objection I have to your column and all your previous columns on this
matter is that I am not sure the establishment media actually claim to be watchdogs, at least
not any more, and certainly not since Sept 11. They really are more like PR reps.
The media is another tool in the [government, in this case] arsenal to help send a
message, as are speeches before think tanks and etc.
Yes. The issue under discussion here, however, is the extent to which the media is an
eager partner in the message-sending, rather than an unwitiing tool.
Did everyone forget the Judith Miller article? The usage of Twitter and other social media
during the Iranian election of 2009? The leaks about the Iranian nuclear program in the
Telegraph? ARDA?
The U.S. government, along with every other government in the world, uses the media to
influence public opinion and send geopolitical messages to others that understand the message
(normally not the masses). The media is another tool in the arsenal to help send a message,
as are speeches before think tanks and etc.
We use social media to create social unrest if it aligns with our interests. We use the
media to send political messages and influence public opinion. The vast majority of reporting
in the N.Y. Times, WSJ, Guardian, Telegraph, and etc. do not reflect this, but every now and
then "unnamed sources" help further a geopolitical message.
In this country, it has been that way since before the founding fathers and the Republic.
Remember the Federalist, Anti-Federalist, Sam Adams as Vtndex, and etc.? Newspapers used for
"propaganda" purposes.
Upthread I asked him for his comments on the reporting of Seymour Hirsh. He is someone
who cozied up to all kinds of people - and wound up busting some extremely important
stories in the process.
I think a modest amount of review of Sy Hersh's work will demonstrate that his "cozying
up" hasn't included running interference for the spooks' official PR flacks.
"... For one thing, Marzetti apparently passed a draft of a Maureen Dowd column for vetting by the CIA . Her importance, or not, as a columnist or pundit aside, why would a NYT employee slip material to a gov't agency? That's the skillset of an informant, not a journalist. ..."
"... Today, the Wall Street-Security-Military Industrial Complex is unchallenged. Exaggerated respect is shown to the Military. Many of the Reporters who called in question the Political-Military establishment during Vietnam were muted during the second invasion of Iraq. None of lessons that Vietnam should have taught them about the lengths the Government would go to such as out right lies, and covert deceit were learned. Perhaps they were cowed into cooperation. ..."
"... Unprincipled and disingenuous - both the Obama Administration and the New York Times. Doesn't come as a surprise though ... ..."
"... I'd be worried about anyone going to the CIA for their fact-checking too... ..."
"The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried
to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration."
I would have answered just as OnYourMarx has done. Most every story Hersh broke was from a series of well-developed relationships
within CIA and/or MIC.
In terms of its relevance, it seems to me that any real journalist worth their salt does this. And so rather than deride those
who have relationships with government sources, we need to dig a bit deeper and ask ourselves what distinguishes the kind Hersh
developed from those that are problematic.
Excuse me for thinking that perhaps in the context of a discussion about the relationship between the media and government, it
might be helpful to talk about how journalists can actually use their relationships with people in the government to break important
stories. So I noted my thoughts about Hersh and asked for his.
Contrary to "gotcha," I thought it might be an opportunity to take the conversation a bit deeper. As with what I said about
humor, its no skin off my nose if no one takes me up on it. The only reason I brought it up later is because someone suggested
perhaps I should attempt to engage on a more substantive level...which I had done.
I've been completely upfront about the fact that I disagree with Glenn on most things (although I'll just point out that I
did comment about how much I agreed with his article on authoritarianism). So please also excuse me while I try to learn all the
rules about what is ok and not ok to talk about and how I'm supposed to do that properly in order to satisfy someone like you.
But thanks for ultimately getting back to the point in talking about the difference being what emerges from the "cozy relationship."
I actually disagree with that though. I think it depends on the journalist's ability to do critical thinking and questioning.
If they're merely stenographers or are simply set on finding something negative - either way they corrupt what the real story
might be.
Let's clear up one thing...Maureen Down is not a journalist OR a reporter. She is opinion columnist.
You can suggest that there's a qualitative difference between journalists and reporters, but Dowd is neither one. So to
me, the distinction when it comes to her is meaningless.
If that is so, then why would the CIA be so interested in what she wrote? And why would a NYT employee pass an unpublished
draft to them without, presumably, checking with an editor? "See, nothing to worry about," indeed.
Frankly, I don't even understand what your hang up is. Was Marzetti supposed to violate this woman's trust? Is he not supposed
to talk to government officials in order to report the news, which is the whole raison d'etre of his career.
For one thing, Marzetti apparently passed a draft of a Maureen Dowd column for vetting by the CIA . Her importance,
or not, as a columnist or pundit aside, why would a NYT employee slip material to a gov't agency? That's the skillset of an informant,
not a journalist.
I didn't think Ms. Dowd was that important to our nation's security, but that aside, why pass company material to outsiders?
"This song was known to everybody. A book was afterward printed, with a regular license He happened to select and print
in his journal this song ... He was seised in his bed that night and has been never since heard of. Our excellent journal
de Paris then is suppressed and this bold traitor has been in jail now three weeks Thus you see, madam, the value of energy
in government; our feeble republic would in such a case have probably been wrapt in the flames of war and desolation for want
of a power lodged in a single hand to punish summarily those who write songs."
-- Thomas Jefferson, in Paris, to Abigail Adams, June 21, 1785
Right, and I knew some of that. However I was after the other commenter's notions of what he meant by saying Hersh "cozyd
up" to CIA and MIC ppl, with an eye to figuring out why s/he thinks Hersh and his sources have relevance to the article being
discussed.
I've often wondered what you think of the journalism of someone like Seymour Hirsch. He broke some very important stories
by cozying up to moles in the MIC.
And I assumed Glenn supported Hirsh's work.
It's been kind of a long day. And, it's possible that I either need another drink, or to simply hit the sack. So, apologies
if this comes off sounding less than supportive. While you're busy wondering and assuming , you might better advance
your case if you also did a little Googling . And, pro tip, it wouldn't hurt to spell Hersh's name correctly. Lends credibility,
methinks.
I'd suggest that you were ignored because of the gotcha flavor to the way you tried to engage. I would also suggest
that if Glenn thought you were asking your question with some sincere intent, he might answer that it depends on how that coziness
is conducted, and what emerges from that "cozy relationship." Dan Gillmor's piece - to which Glenn links - on this subject
may add some additional insight.
In other words, if you're gonna do gotcha it helps not to show your hand too soon, or be quite so transparent. One could
do a little research first and bring their best game.
@MonaHot: Hersh's New Yorker piece about Bush regime ramping up against Iran in 2008. Robert Baer of the CIA was at least one
of his sources for that piece. In fact the film Syriana based Clooney's character on Baer.
Richard Armitage is the other MIC dude that comes to mind when thinking back on Hersh's stories. There must be countless of
them, though, including Saudis and Israelis who work to provide info to the MIC.
And I assumed Glenn supported Hirsh's work. That's why I brought him up. He cozys up to MIC folks as well. So its important
to make a distinction between cozying up to break important stories and cozying up to get access to power...a distinction that
Glenn didn't make.
What do you mean by claiming Hersh "cozys up" to MIC ppl? And what would be a specific example of a story he broke after
doing that?
The American Mega-Media has long been in the bag of Corporatism. Long gone are the days of reporters challenging the Military.
During the Vietnam War the Military Briefings were Derisively called the Five O' Clock Follies.
Today, the Wall Street-Security-Military Industrial Complex is unchallenged. Exaggerated respect is shown to the Military.
Many of the Reporters who called in question the Political-Military establishment during Vietnam were muted during the second
invasion of Iraq. None of lessons that Vietnam should have taught them about the lengths the Government would go to such as out
right lies, and covert deceit were learned. Perhaps they were cowed into cooperation.
Julian Assange who should be seen as a hero to the free press was vilified by our corporate press. Assange did the work a free
press and a real reporter should perform.
Let's clear up one thing...Maureen Down is not a journalist OR a reporter. She is opinion columnist.
You can suggest that there's a qualitative difference between journalists and reporters, but Dowd is neither one. So to me,
the distinction when it comes to her is meaningless.
And I assumed Glenn supported Hirsh's work. That's why I brought him up. He cozys up to MIC folks as well. So its important
to make a distinction between cozying up to break important stories and cozying up to get access to power...a distinction that
Glenn didn't make.
Finally, I have no need whatsoever for anyone to laugh with me. I just found the juxtaposition of Dowd and reporting to be
funny. Someone said something similar and I added my agreement. If its not funny to you - ignore it. Not sure why you'd think
I'd expect anything else.
Mr. Grenwald, let's not make more of this than it's worth. I see nothing wrong with newspapers working with government agencies
in order to report their news to their readership. Frankly, I don't even understand what your hang up is. Was Marzetti supposed
to violate this woman's trust? Is he not supposed to talk to government officials in order to report the news, which is the whole
raison d'etre of his career.
Mr Greenwald, please don't pretend that journalism has only just 'degraded'
If the sub-header had read "Mark Mazzetti's emails with the CIA expose the degradation of journalism that has only just
lost the imperative to be a check to power" then you would have a case.
It doesn't, and you don't.
Next time read past the sub-header. You might get more out of it.
Exactly. Not coming from the so-called socialistic/communistic Democrat party either. In fact, the only reference I have seen
to poverty since John Edwards in 2008 (he who shall not be named!) is on the front page of HuffPo, where there are Shadow Conventions,
one of which concerns Poverty in America. There was a book in 1962, The Other America by Michael Harrington. We are well
on our way to having that be The Only America , at least for the vast majority of us.
I'd agree that the comment Glenn responded to was pretty superficial. I was just laughing with another commenter at the
idea of Dowd doing any actual reporting.
What's interesting to me is that's the one Glenn responded to. And yet when I asked what I believe was a pretty substantive
question about where the reporting of someone like Seymour Hirsh [sic] fits into his critique of journalism, he ignores it.
Superficial? He responded because, intentionally or not, you misrepresented what he said. While you may not have appreciated
the difference, "reporting" and "journalism" are qualitatively (there's that word you don't like) different things.
It takes very little in the way of courage, skill or talent to work as a "reporter" for a major mainstream newspaper like the
New York Times. For most pieces that the government has an interest in spinning (like the one under discussion), this is how it
works: 1. Type up the words of anonymous officials, 2. Submit your article to those same officials for "fact-checking," censorship
and approval, 3. Retire for the day.
Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer, and not a trained journalist, on the other hand, is doing real journalism, and putting
most reporters to shame in the process. I can count on a single hand the number of reporters in the U.S. who deserve, like Greenwald,
to have the term of art "journalism" applied to their work. Hersh is one of them, and in this context, there isn't any more to
say with regards to a "critique."
As far as Glenn's own position goes, you can read any number of articles where he has praised Hersh's work. Just Google it.
That said, by joining the Guardian, Greenwald has graduated to a milieu where he rightly expects higher standards, in both
professional practice and in the quality of his readership. That doesn't mean you leave levity at the door, but it does mean that
you leave your whiny, self-entitled attitude ("But why won't he answer the question I really want him to answer?").
There are serious issues at stake here. I have a genuine question for you: if you disagree with Greenwald so much, why would
you expect him (or most of his readers) to laugh along with what you find funny?
Think about that, and get back to me if you come up with something plausible.
The USA has become so engrossed in itself that it doesn't even pretend to be a judicial state. Here we have a man called Osama
Bin Laden who is innocent of any crime yet the President of the United States of America brags about having him murdered.
This means that a precedent has been set that the President can order the murder of anyone even you.
The reason I said that perhaps I'd need to leave off the levity is that it was my superficial comment finding some humor in
all this that Glenn responded to and suggested that I was a complainer lacking in quality. It wasn't meant as anything but a half-baked
half-assed jab at the lightweight known as Maureen Dowd.
But as I said above, when I attempted to engage with some substance, I got ignored. I have no doubt that Glenn has a sense
of humor. But I'm afraid I'm not a good enough humorist to combine a laugh with in-depth engagement.
I'm counting on you being right on the idea that Glenn thrives on well reasoned dissent. That's why I'm here.
Indeed. Horse-hooey is a pleasant alternative to this steaming load of self-congratulatory manure.
About those fabled "handouts" ...where are they? Not in evidence when I see the local homeless vets in their wheelchairs...Nowhere
to be found when I see children shivering at bus stops without proper coats...can't quite see it in my overcrowded library...one
of the hottest tickets in town because it's literally a warm place to go. I'm sure parents who've lost homes because they were
craven enough to have a sick child and went bankrupt caring for them would love to find this fabled place where those generous
hands, stuffed full of money and goodies, are vying with each other to make things right.
If only we could find it.
-------------
"As of March 2012, 46.4 million Americans were receiving on average $133.14 per month in food stamps. "
According to the Government Accountability Office, at a 2009 count, there was a payment error rate of 4.36% of food stamps
benefits down from 9.86% in 1999. A 2003 analysis found that two-thirds of all improper payments were the fault of the caseworker,
not the participant. ("Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Payment Errors and Trafficking Have Declined, but Challenges
Remain GAO report number GAO-10-956T, " July 28, 2010)
Wow, let's go wild on $33.25 a week! And then be accused of being "lazy," "pigs," "welfare queens," "parasites," "scum," etc.
[Pay no attention to the fat man behind the curtain busy purchasing his third home, or paying his lawyer to find another tax
loophole in the Virgin Islands; that pure industrious Republican bloke is too busy to stick his neck out and see the world as
he's helped make it for others.]
As if the National Transportation Safety Board didn't have enough to worry about.
Oh, and Glenn, here's a Salon story from 2010 titled
The NYT spills key military secrets on its front page .
Your lede: "In The New York Times today, Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins expose very sensitive classified government secrets
-- and not just routine secrets, but high-level, imminent planning for American covert military action in a foreign country ..."
This didn't come from me, and please delete after you read. See, nothing to worry about. -- Guardian story
"... Non-elite members of the Party -- functionaries -- mistake their "secret" knowledge as professional courtesy rather than as perquisite and status marker. (I don't suppose it's a secret to anyone that the US CIA regularly plants stories in the NYTimes and elsewhere... unless you weren't paying attention in the strident disinfo campaign prior to the Iraq invasion.) ..."
Howard Zinn said, in a speech given shortly after the 2008 Presidential election, "If you don't know history, it's like you were
born yesterday. The government can tell you anything." (Speech was played on DemocracyNow www.democracynow.org about Jan. 4, 2009
and is archived, free on the website.)
Being older (18 on my last Leap Year birthday - 72), I recall the NYTimes and CIA have had relationship with, and was caught
having "planted CIA workers" as NYTimes writers. Within my adult lifetime, in fact.
This is what the CIA reflexively does: insists that [...] it is an "intelligence matter".
In a sense the CIA is always going to be right on this one - "Central Intelligence Agency" - but only as a matter of nomenclature,
rather than of any other dictionary definition of the word "intelligence".
Actually the collusion between the CIA and big business is far more damaging. The first US company I worked for in Brussels (it
was my first job) was constantly being targeted by the US media for having connections to corrupt South American and Third World
regimes. On what seemed like an almost monthly basis our personnel department would send round memos saying that we were strictly
forbidden to talk to journalists about the latest exposι.
It was great fun - even the telex operators knew who the spies were.
The line "'The optics aren't what they look like,' is truly an instant classic. It reminds me of one of my favorite Yogi Berra
quotes (which, unlike many attributed to him, is real, I think). Yogi once said about a restaurant in New York "Nobody goes there
anymore. It's too crowded." Perhaps Yogi should become an editor for the Times.
British readers will no doubt be shocked -- shocked! -- to learn of cozy relations between a major news organization and a national
intelligence agency.
"'I know the circumstances, and if you knew everything that's going on, you'd know it's much ado about nothing,' Baquet
said. 'I can't go into in detail. But I'm confident after talking to Mark that it's much ado about nothing.'
"'The optics aren't what they look like,' he went on. 'I've talked to Mark, I know the circumstance, and given what I know,
it's much ado about nothing.'"
How can you have a Party if you don't have Party elites?
And how can a self-respecting member of the Party claim their individual status within the Party without secret knowledge designed
to identify one another as members of the Party elite?
[Proles are] natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals ... Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance
not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals the Party was trying to achieve. ... The
ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering -- a world of of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines
and terrifying weapons -- a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts
and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting -- 300 million people all with the same
face. The reality was decaying, dingy cities, where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes... [
1984 ,pp 73-74]
It makes no difference if an imagined socialist England, a collapsing Roman city-state empire, an actual Soviet Union, or a
modern American oligarchy.
Party members thrive while those wretched proles flail in confused and hungry desperation for something authentic (like a George
Bush) or even simply reassuring (like a Barack Obama.)
Non-elite members of the Party -- functionaries -- mistake their "secret" knowledge as professional courtesy rather than
as perquisite and status marker. (I don't suppose it's a secret to anyone that the US CIA regularly plants stories in the NYTimes
and elsewhere... unless you weren't paying attention in the strident disinfo campaign prior to the Iraq invasion.)
Manzetti has "no bad intent" because he is loyal to the Party.
Like all loyal (and very well compensated) Party members, he would never do anything as subversive as reveal Party secrets.
Recently MI6 were implicated in Steel report, Skripals poisonings, Browder machinations, and creation of the Integrity
Initiative. Nice "non-interference" mode...
Notable quotes:
"... The UK's top spy spent some of his time blaming Russia for trying to, as he put it, "subvert the UK way of life" by supposedly poisoning the Skripals and through other mischievous but ultimately never verified actions, though moving beyond the infowar aspect of his speech and into its actual professional substance, he nevertheless touched on some interesting themes ..."
"... In other words, it's all about applying what he calls the "Fusion Doctrine" for building the right domestic and international teams across skillsets in order to best leverage new technologies for accomplishing his agency's eternal mission, which is "to understand the motivations, intentions and aspirations of people in other countries." ..."
"... "being able to take steps to change [targets'] behavior", this has actually been part and parcel of the intelligence profession since time immemorial, albeit nowadays facilitated by social media and other technological platforms that allow shadowy actors such as the UK's own "77th Brigade" to carry out psychological, influence, and informational operations. ..."
"... Considering Russia to be a country that "regards [itself] as being in a state of perpetual confrontation with [the West]", Younger believes that unacceptably high costs must be imposed upon it every time it's accused of some wrongdoing, forgetting that the exact same principle could more applicably be applied against the West by Russia for the same reasons. ..."
"... If read from a cynical standpoint by anyone who's aware of the true nature of contemporary geopolitics, Younger's speech is actually quite informative because it inadvertently reveals what the West itself is doing to Russia by means of projecting its own actions onto its opponent . ..."
"... That in and of itself is actually the very essence of Hybrid War , which is commonly understood to largely include blatantly deceptive techniques such as the one that the UK's top spy is unabashedly attempting to pull off. ..."
"... Accusing one's adversaries of the exact same thing that you yourself are doing is a classic method of deflecting attention from one's own actions by pretending that you're being victimized by the selfsame, which therefore "justifies" escalating tensions by portraying all hostile acts as "proactive defensive responses to aggression". ..."
"... Basically, the British spymaster just sloppily revealed his hand to Russia while attempting to implicate it for allegedly conducting "fourth generation espionage" against the UK. ..."
The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) Alex Younger briefed the public
about the challenges of so-called " fourth
generation espionage ".
The UK's top spy spent some of his time blaming Russia for trying to, as he put it, "subvert
the UK way of life" by supposedly poisoning the Skripals and through other mischievous but
ultimately never verified actions, though moving beyond the infowar aspect of his speech and
into its actual professional substance, he nevertheless touched on some interesting themes.
According to him, "fourth generation espionage" involves "deepening our partnerships to counter
hybrid threats, mastering covert action in the data age, attaching a cost to malign activity by
adversaries and innovating to ensure that technology works to our advantage."
In other words, it's all about applying what he calls the "Fusion Doctrine" for building the
right domestic and international teams across skillsets in order to best leverage new
technologies for accomplishing his agency's eternal mission, which is "to understand the
motivations, intentions and aspirations of people in other countries."
While he remarked that the so-called "hybrid threats" associated with "fourth generation
espionage" necessitate "being able to take steps to change [targets'] behavior", this has
actually been part and parcel of the intelligence profession since time immemorial, albeit
nowadays facilitated by social media and other technological platforms that allow shadowy
actors such as the UK's own "77th Brigade" to
carry out psychological, influence, and informational operations.
Younger warned that "bulk data combined with modern analytics" could be "a serious
challenge" if used against his country , obviously alluding to Cambridge
Analytica's purported weaponization of these cutting-edge technological processes to
supposedly "hack" elections, though neglecting to draw any attention to the fact that his
intelligence agency and its allies could conceivably do the same in advance of their own
interests, something that everyone who uses Western-based social media platforms is theoretically
at risk of having happen to them.
What Younger is most concerned about, however, are what he describes as the "eroded
boundaries" that characterize so-called "hybrid threats" lying between war and peace, which he
fears could undermine NATO's Article 5 obligation for all of the military alliance's members to
support one another during times of conflict. Considering Russia to be a country that "regards
[itself] as being in a state of perpetual confrontation with [the West]", Younger believes that
unacceptably high costs must be imposed upon it every time it's accused of some wrongdoing,
forgetting that the exact same principle could more applicably be applied against the West by
Russia for the same reasons.
He claims that it's the UK that will never respond in kind by
destabilizing Russia like Moscow's accused of doing to the UK, but in reality, it's President
Putin's so-called "judo moves" which prove that it's Russia who has mastered asymmetrical
responses instead. If read from a cynical standpoint by anyone who's aware of the true nature
of contemporary geopolitics, Younger's speech is actually quite informative because it
inadvertently reveals what the West itself is doing to Russia by means of projecting its own
actions onto its opponent .
That in and of itself is actually the very essence of HybridWar ,
which is commonly understood to largely include blatantly deceptive techniques such as the one
that the UK's top spy is unabashedly attempting to pull off.
Accusing one's adversaries of the
exact same thing that you yourself are doing is a classic method of deflecting attention from
one's own actions by pretending that you're being victimized by the selfsame, which therefore
"justifies" escalating tensions by portraying all hostile acts as "proactive defensive
responses to aggression".
Basically, the British spymaster just sloppily revealed his hand to
Russia while attempting to implicate it for allegedly conducting "fourth generation espionage"
against the UK.
"... Trump won't fire his son-in-law, so if Jared doesn't have the decency to resign on his own, he may well be responsible for Trump's downfall in addition to his own. Trump's silly daughter, Ivanka, needs to go to. ..."
"... Time for Bolton to send for the clairvoyant Theresa May who has managed to accuse Russia, and Mr. Putin personally, in the Skripals' poisoning n the absence of any evidence ..."
Comment section (David Wooten): "According to the crown prince himself, Trump's [Jewish]
son-in-law gave him a secret list of his enemies -- the ones like Al Aweed who were
tortured and shaken down for cash. Khashoggi might even have been on that list.
One or more of the tortured ones likely tipped off Erdogan, which is why Turkey only
needed to enter the consulate, retrieve the recorded audio device they planted, and walk out
with the evidence. Turkey also has evidence that puts MbS' personal doctor and other staff
arriving in Turkey at convenient times to do the job -- and probably more. Khashoggi was
anything but a nice person but Trump cannot say that or he'll likely be accused of
involvement in his murder.
Dissociation is made far more difficult by the fact that Jared is a long time friend of
Netanyahu who, like Jared, hasbefriended MbS .
Trump won't fire his son-in-law, so if Jared doesn't have the decency to resign on his
own, he may well be responsible for Trump's downfall in addition to his own. Trump's silly
daughter, Ivanka, needs to go to.
Were it not for the Khashoggi affair, fewer Republican seats would have been lost in the
election."
-- Time for Bolton to send for the clairvoyant Theresa May who has managed to accuse
Russia, and Mr. Putin personally, in the Skripals' poisoning n the absence of any
evidence .
These people -- Bolton, May, Gavin Williamson and likes -- are a cross of the ever-eager
whores and petty brainless thieves. To expose themselves as the willing participants in the
ZUSA-conducted farce requires a complete lack of integrity.
Of course, there is no way to indict the journalist's murderers since the principal
murderer is a personal friend of Netanyahu and Jared.
Jump, Justice, jump, as high as ordered by the "chosen."
By the way, why do we hear nothing about Seth Rich who was murdered in the most surveilled
city of the US?
@annamaria A 1st
grader can see that MbS was behind the murder of Kashoggi.
Trump won't fire his son-in-law, so if Jared doesn't have the decency to resign on his
own, he may well be responsible for Trump's downfall in addition to his own. Trump's silly
daughter, Ivanka, needs to go to.
I've been hoping for this since they moved to Washington with 'big daddy'.
@Anon " crappy
bedtime reading the woolyheadedness "
Hey, Anon[436], is this how your parents have been treating you? My condolences.
If you feel that you succeeded with your "see, a squirrel" tactics of taking attention
from the zionists' dirty and amoral attempts at coverup of the murder of the journalists
Khashoggi, which was accomplished on the orders of the clown prince (the dear friend of Bibi
& Jared), you are for a disappointment.
One more time for you, Anon[436]: the firm evidence of MbS involvement in the murder of
Khashoggi contrasts with no evidence of the alleged poisoning of Skripals by
Russian government.
The zionists have been showing an amazing tolerance towards the clown prince the murderer
because zionists need the clown prince for the implementation of Oded Yinon Plan for Eretz
Israel.
The stinky Skripals' affair involves harsh economic actions imposed on the RF in the
absence of any evidence , as compared to no sanctions in response to the actual murder
of Khashoggi, which involved MbS according to the availableevidence . Thanks
to the zionists friendship with the clown prince, the firm evidence of Khashoggi murder is of
no importance. What else could be expected from the "most moral" Bibi & Kushner and the
treasonous Bolton.
The stinky Skripals' affair involves harsh economic actions imposed on the RF in the
absence of any evidence, as compared to no sanctions in response to the actual murder of
Khashoggi, which involved MbS according to the available evidence. Thanks to the zionists
friendship with the clown prince, the firm evidence of Khashoggi murder is of no
importance. What else could be expected from the "most moral" Bibi & Kushner and the
treasonous Bolton.
The Brits recently landed in Mexico. Will they use the Mercosur-EU FTAS to secretly continue
to hold the grip on Europe? Will they install additional military bases in MAKEDONIA,
ALBANIA, KOSOVA the heroin-smuggling human trafficking FAKE US state, BULGARIA, to finish the
AMBO pipeline from IRAQ to GREECE?
City of London Parasites' Paradise (Or the Best Criminal Sanctuary Money Can Buy)
From: Newsbud.com
"with multi-billion pound drug, arms, people smuggling and sex-slave cartels. The "Brits"
specialize in laundering funds from the Mexican, Colombian, Peruvian, Russian, Polish, Czech,
Nigerian narco-kings. Albanian white slavers have their 'private bankers' at prestigious City
banks with a preference for graduates of the London School of Economics. Bi-lingual Greek
kleptocrats, lifelong billion dollar tax evaders, fleeing from their pillaged homeland have
their favorite real estate brokers, who never engage in any sort of naughty 'due diligence'
which might uncover improper tax returns. The City Boys with verve and positive initiative,
aided and abetted by the hyper-kinetic "Tony" Blair's open door policy to swindlers and
saints of all colors and creeds, welcomed each and every Russian gangster-oligarch-democrat,
especially those who paid cash for multi-pound 'Olde English' landmark estates'.
@JLK naling
of open frontiers and multiculturalism among the educated (indoctrinated).
For example, it's still completely unacceptable in middle class British society to support
Nationalism (you're a Nazi) or Anglo racial identity (other races are welcome to their
identities – but if you're and Anglo you're a racist).
It will eventually be resolved by the people who don't care (the working class), who will
toss out their elite and their "educated" middle class collaborators – in fact it's
already happening with Brexit – check out the Daily Mail comments section.
Guardian is just a propaganda outlet. That sad fact does not exclude the possibility of publishing really good articles,
thouth. That still happens occasionally.
The fact that they follow MI6 and Foreign Office talking points in all foreign events coverage a is just a testament the GB is
a "national security state". Nothing more, nothing less.
Notable quotes:
"... I'm not going to debunk the Guardian article here. It has been debunked by better debunkers than I (e.g., Jonathan Cook , Craig Murray , Glenn Greenwald , Moon of Alabama , and many others). ..."
"... The short version is, The Guardian 's Luke Harding, a shameless hack who will affix his name to any propaganda an intelligence agency feeds him, alleged that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, secretly met with Julian Assange (and unnamed "Russians") on numerous occasions from 2013 to 2016, presumably to conspire to collude to brainwash Americans into not voting for Clinton. Harding's earth-shaking allegations, which The Guardian prominently featured and flogged, were based on well, absolutely nothing, except the usual anonymous "intelligence sources." After actual journalists pointed this out, The Guardian quietly revised the piece ( employing the subjunctive mood rather liberally ), buried it in the back pages of its website, and otherwise pretended like they had never published it. ..."
"... By that time, of course, its purpose had been served. The story had been picked up and disseminated by other "respectable," "authoritative" outlets, and it was making the rounds on social media. Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, in an attempt to counter the above-mentioned debunkers (and dispel the doubts of anyone else still capable of any kind of critical thinking), Politico posted this ass-covering piece speculating that, if it somehow turned out The Guardian 's story was just propaganda designed to tarnish Assange and Trump well, probably, it had been planted by the Russians to make Luke Harding look like a moron. This ass-covering piece of speculative fiction, which was written by a former CIA agent, was immediately disseminated by liberals and "leftists" who are eagerly looking forward to the arrest, rendition, and public crucifixion of Assange. ..."
"... And this is why The Guardian will not be punished for publishing a blatantly fabricated story. Nor will Luke Harding be penalized for writing it. Luke Harding will be rewarded for writing it, as he has been handsomely rewarded throughout his career for loyally serving the ruling classes. Greenwald, on the other hand, is on thin ice. It will be instructive to see how far he pushes his confrontation with The Guardian regarding this story. ..."
"... It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ..."
"... Those who are conforming to [official truth] are doing so, not because they are deceived, but because it is safer and more rewarding to do so. ..."
"... The powerless are either servants of power or they are heretics. There is no third alternative. ..."
"... It is important to realize that "the truth" is not going to "rouse the masses from their slumber" and inspire them to throw off their chains. People are not going to suddenly "wake up," "see the truth" and start "the revolution." ..."
"... The distinction is simple. We can't know the truth about distant and complex events like 9/11 or JFK unless we were directly involved, and those people are all dead. For big events we have to rely on, or ignore, the official accounts. ..."
"... Given all this, still, we can approach an approximation of truth that some can agree on. Here is where the trouble starts . ..."
The short version is, The Guardian 's Luke
Harding, a shameless hack who will affix his name to any propaganda an intelligence agency
feeds him, alleged that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, secretly met with
Julian Assange (and unnamed "Russians") on numerous occasions from 2013 to 2016, presumably to
conspire to collude to brainwash Americans into not voting for Clinton. Harding's earth-shaking
allegations, which The Guardian prominently featured and flogged, were based on well,
absolutely nothing, except the usual anonymous "intelligence sources." After actual journalists
pointed this out, The Guardian quietly revised the piece ( employing the subjunctive mood
rather liberally ), buried it in the back pages of its website, and otherwise pretended
like they had never published it.
By that time, of course, its purpose had been served. The story had been picked up and
disseminated by other "respectable," "authoritative" outlets, and it was making the rounds on
social media. Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, in an attempt to counter the
above-mentioned debunkers (and dispel the doubts of anyone else still capable of any kind of
critical thinking), Politico posted this
ass-covering piece speculating that, if it somehow turned out The Guardian 's story
was just propaganda designed to tarnish Assange and Trump well, probably, it had been planted
by the Russians to make Luke Harding look like a moron. This ass-covering piece of speculative
fiction, which was written by a former CIA agent, was immediately disseminated by liberals and
"leftists" who are eagerly looking forward to the arrest, rendition, and public crucifixion
of Assange.
At this point, I imagine you're probably wondering what this has to do with manufacturing
"truth." Because, clearly, this Guardian story was a lie a lie The Guardian got
caught telling. I wish the "truth" thing was as simple as that (i.e., exposing and debunking
the ruling classes' lies). Unfortunately, it isn't. Here is why.
Much as most people would like there to be one (and behave and speak as if there were one),
there is no Transcendental Arbiter of Truth. The truth is what whoever has the power to say it
is says it is. If we do not agree that that "truth" is the truth, there is no higher court to
appeal to. We can argue until we are blue in the face. It will not make the slightest
difference. No evidence we produce will make the slightest difference. The truth will remain
whatever those with the power to say it is say it is.
Nor are there many "truths" (i.e., your truth and my truth). There is only one "truth" the
"official truth". The "truth" according to those in power. This is the whole purpose of the concept
of truth. It is the reason the concept of "truth" was invented (i.e., to render any other
"truths" lies). It is how those in power control reality and impose their ideology on the
masses (or their employees, or their students, or their children). Yes, I know, we very badly
want there to be some "objective truth" (i.e., what actually happened, when whatever happened,
JFK, 9-11, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Schrödinger's dead cat, the Big Bang, or
whatever). There isn't. The truth is just a story a story that is never our story.
The "truth" is a story that power gets to tell, and that the powerless do not get to tell,
unless they tell the story of those in power, which is always someone else's story. The
powerless are either servants of power or they are heretics. There is no third alternative.
They either parrot the "truth" of the ruling classes or they utter heresies of one type or
another. Naturally, the powerless do not regard themselves as heretics. They do not regard
their "truth" as heresy. They regard their "truth" as the truth, which is heresy. The truth of
the powerless is always heresy.
For example, while it may be personally comforting for some of us to tell ourselves that we
know the truth about certain subjects (e.g., Russiagate, 9-11, et cetera), and to share our
knowledge with others who agree with us, and even to expose the lies of the corporate media on
Twitter, Facebook, and our blogs, or in some leftist webzine (or "fearless adversarial" outlet
bankrolled by a beneficent oligarch), the ruling classes do not give a shit, because ours is
merely the raving of heretics, and does not warrant a serious response.
Or all right, they give a bit of a shit, enough to try to cover their asses when a
journalist of the stature of Glenn Greenwald (who won a Pulitzer and is frequently on
television) very carefully and very respectfully almost directly accuses them of lying. But
they give enough of a shit to do this because Greenwald has the power to hurt them, not because
of any regard for the truth. This is also why Greenwald has to be so careful and respectful
when directly confronting The Guardian , or any other corporate media outlet, and state
that their blatantly fabricated stories could, theoretically, turn out to be true. He can't
afford to cross the line and end up getting branded a heretic and consigned to Outer Mainstream
Darkness, like Robert Fisk, Sy Hersh, Jonathan Cook, John Pilger, Assange, and other such
heretics.
Look, I'm not trying to argue that it isn't important to expose the fabrications of the
corporate media and the ruling classes. It is terribly important. It is mostly what I do
(albeit usually in a more satirical fashion). At the same time, it is important to realize that
"the truth" is not going to "rouse the masses from their slumber" and inspire them to throw off
their chains. People are not going to suddenly "wake up," "see the truth" and start "the
revolution." People already know the truth the official truth, which is the only truth there
is. Those who are conforming to it are doing so, not because they are deceived, but because it
is safer and more rewarding to do so.
And this is why The Guardian will not be punished for publishing a blatantly
fabricated story. Nor will Luke Harding be penalized for writing it. Luke Harding will be
rewarded for writing it, as he has been handsomely rewarded throughout his career for loyally
serving the ruling classes. Greenwald, on the other hand, is on thin ice. It will be
instructive to see how far he pushes his confrontation with The Guardian regarding this
story.
As for Julian Assange, I'm afraid he is done for. The ruling classes really have no choice
but to go ahead and do him at this point. He hasn't left them any other option. Much as they
are loathe to create another martyr, they can't have heretics of Assange's notoriety running
around punching holes in their "truth" and brazenly defying their authority. That kind of stuff
unsettles the normals, and it sets a bad example for the rest of us heretics.
#
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist
based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play
Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
Good piece. I think there's another layer, though.
The truth or falsehood of individual facts about the physical world can often be
determined with near-certainty. But when it comes to history, or "news" about current events/
politics, reality is much too complex to address directly. Too many individual facts to be
comprehensible, let alone useful.
We must pick, choose, emphasize, or ignore particular elements, and arrange them into some
kind of structure, in order to form a useful narrative. Or in the case of "news," the legacy
media oligarchy largely performs this function for us -- we simply passively accept/ adopt
their narrative. Or, in many cases, "choose" between the closely-related variants of that
narrative offered by the "liberal" vs. "conservative" press.
This process of abstraction, simplification, and organization inevitably involves data
loss. So no narrative is "true" in the same sense that individual facts about the real world
are true. But some narratives incorporate large amounts of "facts" that are demonstrably
false, and some are more useful/ descriptive/ predictive than others. No one engaged in this
process is "objective." They -- or we -- are all in some way part of the story. It should be
self-evident that some narratives are more useful to the perceived interests of owners of
major media outlets than others, and that these will assume a much more prominent place in
their coverage than ones that are deleterious to those interests.
Ideally, most people would take these factors into account when evaluating the "news," and
maintain a much more skeptical attitude than they typically do. But there are several factors
that prevent this.
One is simply time/ efficiency. These individual narratives, taken together, support --
and are supported by -- our overall worldview. There aren't enough hours in the day to be
constantly skeptical about everything, especially since the major tools of distortion
involved in constructing mainstream narratives tend to be selection bias/ memory-holing, with
obvious lies about known facts (like the Guardian story referenced here) used only sparingly.
It's simply not practical to to constantly consider potentially "better" narratives, and to
reevaluate one's worldview based on these.
And which narrative we believe often has more to do with perceived social pressure/ social
acceptability than with "truth." As you put it,
Those who are conforming to it are doing so, not because they are deceived, but because
it is safer and more rewarding to do so.
Mass media pushing a common narrative creates an artificial perception of social
consensus. Creating, or even finding, alternative narratives means fighting the inertia of
this perceived consensus, and potentially suffering social costs for believing in the "wrong"
one. The social role of narratives is largely independent of their "truth" -- if what you're
"supposed" to believe is highly implausible, that actually gives it higher value as a signal
of loyalty to the establishment.
It's probably best to maintain a resolutely agnostic attitude toward most "news" items,
unless one is particularly interested in that particular event. " Why are they pushing
this particular story?" "Why now ?" and " What are they trying to accomplish
here?" are often more useful questions than "Is it true?"
It's not a new issue -- only exacerbated by the advent of mass visual media:
"Propaganda" -- Edward Bernays (1928)
"The Free Press"– Hilaire Belloc (1918)
I get what Hopkins is trying to do here, but redefining terms (i.e., "truth") doesn't do what
he thinks it does.
The truth is not ' what most people think '; it's not ' what we are told to
believe '; it's not ' the official narrative '.
There is a useful cautionary tale embedded in Hopkins' piece, but he doesn't tease it out
properly.
Take this excerpt:
The truth is what whoever has the power to say it is says it is. If we do not agree that
that "truth" is the truth, there is no higher court to appeal to. We can argue until we are
blue in the face. It will not make the slightest difference. No evidence we produce will
make the slightest difference. The truth will remain whatever those with the power to say
it is say it is.
With significant caveats, it is a reasonable description of the way the political world
works: if the political class decides that its interests are best served by declaring that a
specific narrative X is 'true', it will obtain immediate compliance from about half
the livestock, and can then rely on force (peer pressure; subsidy or taxation; state
coercion) to get an absolute majority of the herd to declare that they accept the 'truth' of
X .
If X is objectively false, too bad.
Try to run a legal argument based on the objective falsity of a thing that the political
class has deemed to be true: you'll be shit outta luck.
This is highly relevant where I am sitting: here are two examples – one really
obvious, one a bit less so (but far more important because of its radical implications).
Obvious Example: Drug Dogs
Recent research has shown that drug sniffing dogs give false positive signals between 60%
and 80% of the time – i.e., in terms of identifying people who are in actual
physical possession of drugs at any point in time, drug sniffing dogs perform worse than
a coin toss.
Note that this is before considering that the dog's handler is often pointing the dog at a
target that the handler thinks is likely to be carrying drugs. (Although in reality, drug
dogs are paraded around at concerts and in public spaces, sniffing every passer-by).
However there is an Act of Parliament (capitalise all the magic words) that asserts that a
signal from a drug sniffing dog is sufficient to qualify as what Americans call "probable
cause" – i.e., reasonable suspicion for a search.
Does anyone think that evidence should be admissible if it results from a search conducted
based on 'probable cause' derived from a method that produces worse outcomes than tossing a
coin?
Judges will tie themselves into absolute epistemological knots to get that evidence
admitted – and they will refuse to permit defence Counsel from adducing evidence about
drug dog inaccuracy because since the defendant actually did have drugs in their
possession, the dog didn't signal falsely.
In other words, the judge conflates posterior probability with prior
probability; the prior probability that the dog is correct, is 10%-40%; this should not
suffice to generate probable cause (or 'reasonable suspicion).
More Interesting Example: 'Representative' Democracy
In general, Western governments assert that their legitimacy stems from two primary
sources: some founding set of principles (usually a constitution – written or
otherwise), and 'representativeness' (including ratification of the constitution by a
representative mechanism, for those places with written foundational documents).
The Arrow Impossibility Theorem [1,2] and the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem
[3,4], both show that there is no way of accurately determining group preferences using an
ordinal voting mechanism.
What this boils down to, is that representativeness is a lie – and it's a lie before
any consideration of voting outcomes ; it's a meta -problem (the problem that
ordinal voting cannot do what it is claimed to do – viz ., accurately identify
the 'will of the people'/'social preferences'/'what the people want').
Beyond the meta-problem, there is also the actual counting problem: no government has ever
been elected having obtained the votes of an outright bare majority, i.e., 50%-plus-1
of the entire eligible franchise. (It's more like 25-35% for most parliamentary systems
– for US presidential elections in the full-franchise period, the winner is voted for
by 29% of the eligible population; you would be horrified to look at US Senate
results).
So when the new unhappy lords (and their Little Eichmann bureaucrat enablers)
promulgate laws based on assertions of legitimacy because of a constitutional
Grundnorm and/or the representative nature of government both of those things are
pretty obvious furphies; they are objectively not 'truth' and no amount of heel-clicking and
wishing will make it so.
Which brings us to a key legal aphorism that has a jurisprudential history going back four
centuries: Ratio legis est anima legis, et mutata legis ratione, mutatur ex lex
– which dates from Milborn's case ( Coke 7a KB [1609]).
The reason for a law is the soul of the law, and if the reason for a law has changed,
the law is changed .
What this means – explicitly – is that " no law can survive the
[extinction of the] reasons on which it is founded ".
American courts re-expressed this as " cessante ratione legis, cessat ipsa lex "
(the reason for a law having ceased, the law itself ceases) – e.g., in Funk v. United
States , 290 US 371 (1933) in which Justice Sutherland opined –
This means that no law can survive the reasons on which it is founded. It needs no
statute to change it; it abrogates itself . If the reasons on which a law rests are
overborne by opposing reasons, which in the progress of society gain a controlling force,
the old law, though still good as an abstract principle, and good in its application to
some circumstances, must cease to apply as a controlling principle to the new
circumstances.
(Emphasis mine)
Again: try running this argument in a court: " The asserted basis for all laws
promulgated by the government, is provably false. Under a doctrine with a 4-century
jurisprudential provenance, the law itself is void ."
See how far you get.
So Hopkins makes a good-but-obvious point – power does not respect either rights
or truth; as such it does you no good whatsoever to have the actual truth on your side.
He should have made the point better.
C J Hopkins, despite some good quotes and insights above, regrettably falls into the trap of
peddling Derrida-tier relativistic nonsense, playing a word game about 'truth', as if 'truth'
was not real merely because most people have strong incentives to avoid being devoted to it
Where you stand depends upon where you sit, etc., Karl Marx's dictums about economic and
power positions shaping consciousness, and of course the century-old classic:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not
understanding it.
from Upton Sinclair (1878-1968). Hopkins more or less repeats Sinclair when he says
Those who are conforming to [official truth] are doing so, not because they are
deceived, but because it is safer and more rewarding to do so.
Despite selling-out truth to the relativism devil in some passages, Hopkins nevertheless
creates some quotable, including the particularly insightful:
The powerless are either servants of power or they are heretics. There is no third
alternative.
The following notion of Hopkins is seen now and then in the alt-sphere, but always bears
repeating
It is important to realize that "the truth" is not going to "rouse the masses from their
slumber" and inspire them to throw off their chains. People are not going to suddenly "wake
up," "see the truth" and start "the revolution."
Iron and blood are the tools used to force people to accept what isn't true.
(Another way to tell: it was uttered by a fucking politician – a cunt who wanted to
live in palaces paid for by the sweat of other people's brows).
Truth does not need violence to propagate itself: in a completely-peaceful system of free
exchange, bad ideas (of which lies are a subset) will get driven out of the market place
because they will fail to conform to ground truth.
Falsehood requires violence (arguably it is a form of violence: fraud is 'violent'
because it causes its victims to misallocate their resources or to deform their preferences
and expectations).
In a very real sense, truth does not need friends: all it requires is an absence of
powerful enemies.
The distinction is simple. We can't know the truth about distant and complex events like 9/11
or JFK unless we were directly involved, and those people are all dead. For big events we
have to rely on, or ignore, the official accounts.
But we CAN know the truth about our own situation, our own neighborhood, and our own
families. The current riots in France are a concrete ASSERTION of local truth against the
blatant and condescending official lies. The majority of France is getting poorer and
suffering more from migrant crime. Macron insists that starvation is necessary to serve Gaia,
and crime is necessary to serve Juncker. The people would prefer to have a leader that serves
France.
@FB Scientific truth
is limited by two factors – assumptions, and hidden variables. For example,
we might drop a brick in a vacuum and believe that it falls at 9.8 m/s squared. Here, we make
the assumption that the force of gravity is constant. And for most of history we were unaware
of the hidden variable of relativity to the speed of light.
So, assuming (LOL) that we are able to eliminate all assumptions and account for all
hidden variables, there is a scientific truth. That is ASSUMING we are not just a simulation
in someone elses computer!
Given all this, still, we can approach an approximation of truth that some can agree on.
Here is where the trouble starts .
@The scalpel LOL and
then there is the 'observer effect' also especially in good old quantum mechanics in the end
scientific truth does boil down to what 'some can agree on'
@Kratoklastes Strength
is the production of force over distance. That is to say, force is a quantifiable, physical
phenomenon that, deconstruct it as much as you want, will hit you like a tsunami whether you
believe it or not.
Force only works because there is a real world that transcends philosophical bullshit and
marketing.
The subjective piece is will: victory is attained when the enemies will to resist is
crushed. Through the repeated use of physical force, eventually any enemy can be worn down
and vanquished.
The world is finite, desire is infinite, and for every desire and appetite, there is a
will. As multiple wills will that they attain their infinite desires in a finite world, there
will always be a conflict of will, which will always ultimately be resolved by force. Which
means ultimately, despite the rich imaginations and appetites of humans, and their related
striving, physical force will ultimately rule the day, and conquer, condition, and constrain
the mental life of mankind.
Of course, desire and appetite will not take no for an answer, and in their frustration,
they will imagine, fantasize, and conceptualize rationales for why this is not so. This is
the nature of our desires, and in good times of prosperity and peace, they may even bend our
reason in the direction of these appetites and fantasies, until the instincts for self
preservation and endurance rust, and are even forgotten. But like the moon revealed by a
passing cloud, the perpetual war of human existence will inevitably reassert itself, and
those that have prepared for the inevitable will vanquish those who were content to daydream
when they should have been preparing.
After reading the article and the aggregate comments, I am strengthened in my belief that
the physics analogy of Schrödinger's cat is among the most useful (and
notwithstanding the otherwise valid criticism of it in the comments). In the same way that
the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, does not purport to define a given word,
per se , but rather gives a detailed description of how the word has in fact been used
over the years and centuries.
I refer to my version of Schrödinger's cat as counter-sense words or
oscillating-contradictions .
Oscillating contradictions and cogno-linguistic manipulation
The primary means by which corporate supremacy, for example, is achieved and maintained in
practice is via the maintenance and use of a small arsenal of about two dozen critical
counter-sense or yo-yo -like words/terms that are asserted or claimed to mean
either "X" or "Minus-X" at the option of the decision-maker.
Among the most important and sui generis (in a class of its own) is the word
person which is held to mean a living, breathing being of conscience (literally
a being of equity) with the rights, powers and privileges of such being ("X"), or else it can
mean a corporate entity which is a notional/inanimate item of property to be bought
and sold and otherwise traded for profit in the stock and financial markets ("Minus-X").
By way of example/demonstration of the ongoing cognitive manipulation process, if someone
had managed to hit the judges of the U.S. Supreme Court with a blast of truth-ray just
before they announced their decision in Citizens United, here is what we may have got
instead:
[MORE]
We here at the Supreme Court are part of what can be fairly and broadly referred to as
an arm of the entrenched-money-power.
At certain times and under certain circumstances it is to our enormous advantage over
you the masses that corporations be natural-persons-in-law with the rights, powers and
privileges of a natural person or living being of conscience.
At other times and other circumstances it is to our enormous advantage over you the
masses that corporations be items of property that can be actively bought and sold and
traded for profit in the stock and financial markets.
Your laughable naiveté is manifest in your expectation that you are going to
receive a definitive answer from this Court, or even that it is possible for us to give you
one. Among the foundational purposes of this Court is to actively prevent that question
from being answered definitively at all. The instant we give a definitive answer, the game
is over.
Whatever answer we give you must perpetuate the systematized delusion that the same
concept (corporate personhood) can mean either X (a living being of conscience), or minus-X
(an item of property), depending on the ever-changing needs of the decider.
So our current answer is that a corporation is a natural-person-in-law with the rights,
powers and privileges of a natural person, except when it isn't. We'll let you know next
time whether that situation has changed in the meantime.
Essentially all counter-sense words/terms follow that same template .
Notwithstanding that the respective concepts are logically and objectively mutually
exclusive , the judges of the Courts (and the broadly-defined
financial-world/social-control-structure) maintain that it can be either or both , and
we'll let you know if and when it becomes important.
So a corporate person has a right of free speech when giving money to
influence political parties, but not to object to itself being sold as a piece of property in
the stock and financial markets or when it is acquired in a merger or takeover financed by
its own assets. If a corporation has the legal capacity and rights of a natural person, then
how can it be owned as the legal property of another? The purpose of the Courts is to ensure
that that question is never presented in that way.
After person , the remaining most significant counter-sense or yo-yo
-like words are (surprise surprise) essentially all money-and-finance-based, and the most
important among these is the word principal and its role in facilitating illegal
front-loading or ex-temporal fraud (interest illegally and unlawfully compounded in
advance).
Is the amount of principal the actual or net amount advanced by the creditor and
received by the debtor for their own use and control?
Or is it the amount that the debtor agrees that they owe regardless of the amount
received?
Is the amount of principal a question of fact ? Or of the agreement of
parties ?
[Here is the premise / offer that is referenced immediately below:]
Lender (e.g., typical second-mortgage lender): "I will loan you $10,000 at 20%
per annum provided that you sign and give to me a marketable security that claims or
otherwise purports to evidence that I have loaned you $15,000 at 10% per annum, plus an
undisclosed and unregistered side-agreement and cheque (check) back to me for a bonus or
loan fee of $5,000 as a payment from the nominal proceeds."
In the process example used above, what is the principal amount of the loan? Is it
$10,000 because that is the factual net amount invested by the creditor and received by the
debtor for their own use? Or is it $15,000 because that is the amount that the debtor is
required to falsely agree that they have received and owe as a condition of the loan? Or is
it $20,000 because that is the total cash-equivalent/money assets ($15,000 mortgage + $5,000
cheque) that the debtor has to give to the creditor?
Is it a noun/fact ? Or is it an adjective/opinion merely pretending to be a
noun? All debt and therefore money in the world today depends on the answer to that question
that theoretically cannot exist.
Principal is a special type (and most significant form) of counter-sense
word or oscillating contradiction where dictionaries normally only give one sense,
while commercial practice defines the contrary. It would be very difficult to put the
Whatever-the-debtor-agrees-that-they-owe sense into a dictionary, because the fraud against
meaning (as well as the criminal law) is manifest in spelling it out, and ever more so in
more specialized financial dictionaries.
So virtually every legal, financial, accounting, and ordinary English dictionary and/or
regulation defines it to the effect "The actual amount invested, loaned or advanced to the
debtor/borrower net of any interest, discount, premium or fees", while virtually every
financial security in the real world at least implicitly incorporates the fraudulent
alternative/contrary meaning.
This in turn allows the academic world to function on the rational/factual
definition, while the markets maintain a wholly contradictory deemed or pretended
reality, while both remain oblivious to the contradiction.
Thus principal means the nominal creditor's actual and net investment, unless it
doesn't .
With this class of counter-sense word where there is a necessary and definitive
answer, the real job of the judges of the Courts becomes to make certain that the question is
never officially asked, and under no circumstances is it to be definitively answered.
With just one of these words you can theoretically steal the Earth . With a
financial system that is relatively saturated with them, such becomes child's play .
With these rules a group of competently-trained chimpanzees otherwise pulling
levers at random could do as well as the so-called wizards of Wall Street .
And significantly, these oscillating contradictions enable the judges to be self-righteous
in the extreme on behalf of the entrenched-money-power, while looting the little
people of the product of their labour.
As in: You have received the principal amount ($10,000) and you are going to pay
back the principal amount ($15,000) plus the ever-accumulating (and super-leveraged)
interest upon it according to your contract, while the meaning of the word oscillates
between fact and opinion – between a noun and an adjective
– according to what the judge needs it to mean (or accommodate) at any given instant in
time.
It seems impossibly obvious in this simple example, but with several of them orchestrated
simultaneously or sequentially, anything can truly be made to mean anything
.
A partial list of the most critical oscillating-contradicitions includes: loan, credit,
discount, interest, rate-of-interest, agreement, contract, security, repay, restitution,
etc., all of which mean either "X" or its conceptual opposite "Minus-X" at the option of the
entrenched-money-power whose vast financial fortunes are founded on such cogno-linguistic
arbitrage .
Here are what I believe to be four essential tools needed to triangulate
reality via congo-linguistic parallax . The first two are mine, and the last two
are from the American and English Courts, respectively.
1. Humans are highly cogno-linguistic . We perceive reality very largely as a
function of the language that we use to describe it. Most everyone inherently believes
and presumes that you have to be able to think something before you can say it.
The greater reality is that, above a certain base level of perception and communication, you
have to have the words and language by which to say something before you can think
it .
2. The world is ever-increasingly controlled and administered by people who genuinely
believe whatever is necessary for the answer they need. Administrative agents of the
entrenched-money-power have solved the criminal-law enigma of mens rea or guilty
mind by evolving or devolving (take your pick) into professional schizophrenics
who genuinely believe whatever they need to believe for the answer they need, and who
communicate among themselves subconsciously by how they name things. They suffer a
cogno-linguistically-induced diminished capacity that renders them incapable of
perceiving reality beyond labels .
3. Their core business model or modus operandi is the systematized delusion
:
"A "systematized delusion" is one based on a false premise, pursued by a logical process
of reasoning to an insane conclusion ; there being one central delusion, around which other
aberrations of the mind converge." Taylor v. McClintock, 112 S.W. 405, 412, 87 Ark. 243.
(West's Judicial Words and Phrases (1914)).
4.
One must not confuse the object of a conspiracy [to defraud] with the
means by which it is intended to be carried out. Scott v. Metropolitan Police
Commissioner [1974] 60 Cr. App. R. 124 H.L.
I have long since abandoned my search for truth, per se, since I came to realize that the
best I can ever do is to constantly strive to move closer to it. With apologies to the
physicists, Truth is the Limit of Infinite Good Faith .
@Tulip " which will
always ultimately be resolved by force."
Right there is where you lost the plot. That statement is just your opinion and it cannot
be proven true. The rest of your argument falls victim to this logical error.
" and those that have prepared for the inevitable will vanquish those who were content to
daydream when they should have been preparing."
Also, just your opinion. For example, the "dreamer" might die still comforted by his/her
dreams, while the "prepper" might waste his life witing for the "inevitable' that never
arrives.
In what can be described as a monumental step forward in the relentless pursuit of 9/11
truth, a United States Attorney has agreed to comply with federal law requiring submission to
a Special Grand Jury of evidence that explosives were used to bring down the World Trade
Centers.
The Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry successfully submitted a petition to the federal
government demanding that the U.S. Attorney present to a Special Grand Jury extensive
evidence of yet-to-be-prosecuted federal crimes relating to the destruction of three World
Trade Center Towers on 9/11 (WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7).
After waiting months for the reply, the U.S. Attorney responded in a letter, noting that
they will comply with the law.
Some good documentary films here to watch for free:
My question/quibble relates to your objection to the use of sniffer dogs to establish
probable cause for search because it is no better than a coin toss. That seems fallacious
if, according to your figures, the dogs sniff 500 people and get excited by 10 of them of
which 3 are correctly identified and 7 are false positives.
Yeah. The concepts of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative
predictive value might be very helpful in assessing this.
"... As for the self-licking ice cream cone that "mainstream media" have become, and how they overlook little peccadilloes like feeding at the government PR trough and helping Cheney and Bush attack Iraq, well – now, now – let's not be nasty. Here's how Jill Abramson, The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief from 2000 to 2003, while the Times acted as drum major for the war, lets Bob Woodward off the hook for his own abysmal investigative performance. ..."
"... Are we to believe that the Abramsons, Woodwards, et al. of the media elite simply missed the WMD deception? ..."
Dishonest (not "mistaken") intelligence greased the skids for the
widespread killing and maiming in the Middle East that began with the Cheney/Bush "Shock and
Awe" attack on Iraq. The media reveled in the unconscionable (but lucrative) buzzword
"shock-and-awe" for the initial attack. In retrospect, the real shock lies in the awesome
complicity of virtually all "mainstream media" in the leading false predicate for this war of
aggression – weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Only one major media group, Knight Ridder, avoided the presstitution, so to speak. It
faced into the headwinds blowing from the "acceptable" narrative, did the investigative
spadework, and found patriotic insiders who told them the truth. Karen Kwiatkowski, who had a
front-row seat at the Pentagon, was one key source for the intrepid Knight Ridder
journalists. Karen tells us that her actual role is accurately portrayed by the professional
actress in the Rob Reiner's film Shock and Awe .
Other members of the Sam Adams Associates were involved as well, but we will leave it to
them to share on Saturday evening how they helped Knight Ridder accurately depict the prewar
administration/intelligence/media fraud.
Intelligence Fraud
More recently, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper added a coda to
pre-Iraq-War intelligence performance. Clapper was put in charge of imagery analysis before
the Iraq war and was able to conceal the fact that there were were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. In his memoir, Clapper writes that Vice President Cheney "was pushing"
for imagery analysis "to find (emphasis in original) the WMD sites."
For the record, none were found because there were none, although Clapper –
"eager to help" – gave it the old college try. Clapper proceeds, in a matter-of-fact
way, to blame not only pressure from the Cheney/Bush administration, but also "the
intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn't
really there."
Regarding those Clapper-produced "artist renderings" of "mobile production facilities for
biological agents"? Those trucks "were in fact used to pasteurize and transport milk,"
Clapper admits nonchalantly. When challenged on all
this while promoting his memoir at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, Clapper gave not the
slightest hint that it occurred to him his performance was somewhat lacking.
Media: Consequential Malfeasance
As for the self-licking ice cream cone that "mainstream media" have become, and how
they overlook little peccadilloes like feeding at the government PR trough and helping Cheney
and Bush attack Iraq, well – now, now – let's not be nasty. Here's how Jill
Abramson, The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief from 2000 to 2003, while the
Times acted as drum major for the war, lets Bob Woodward off the hook for his own abysmal
investigative performance.
Reviewing Woodward's recent book on the Trump White House, Abramson praises his "dogged
investigative reporting," noting that he has won two Pulitzer Prizes, and adds: "His work has
been factually unassailable." Then she (or perhaps an editor) adds in parenthesis: "(His
judgment is certainly not perfect, and he has been self-critical about his belief, based on
reporting before the Iraq War, that there were weapons of mass destruction.)"
Are we to believe that the Abramsons, Woodwards, et al. of the media elite simply
missed the WMD deception? (Hundreds of insiders knew of it, and some were willing to
share the truth with Knight Ridder and some other reporters.) Or did the media moguls simply
hunker down and let themselves be co-opted into helping Cheney/Bush start a major war? The
latter seems much more likely: and transparent attempts to cover up for one another, still,
is particularly sad – and consequential. Having suffered no consequences (for example,
in 2003 Abramson was promoted to Managing Editor of the NYT ), the "mainstream media"
appear just as likely to do a redux on Iran.
This is why there will be a premium on honest insider patriots, like Karen Kwiatkowski, to
rise to the occasion and try to prevent the next war. Bring along your insider friends on
Saturday; they need to know about Karen and about Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in
Intelligence.
Please do come and join us in congratulating Karen Kwiatkowski and the other SAAII members
who also helped Knight Ridder get the story right. (Those others shall remain unnamed until
Saturday.) And let insiders know this: they are not likely to hear about all this
otherwise.
Date : Saturday, December 8, 2018
Time : 6:30 PM Showing of film, "Shock and Awe" – 8:00 PM Presentation 17th
annual Sam Adams Award – Ceremony will include remarks by Larry Wilkerson, 7th SAAII
awardee (in 2009)
Place : The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Road, NW, Washington, DC 20009
FREE : But RSVP, if you can, to give us an idea of how many to expect; email:
[email protected]
ALL WELCOME : Lots of space in main conference room
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). William
Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world
military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems
still used by NSA. Reprinted with permission from Consortium News .
"What do you mean by claiming Hersh "cozys up" to MIC ppl? And what would be a specific
example of a story he broke after doing that?"
Our Men in Iran?
"We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the
D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada," a former senior American intelligence
official told me. ... In a separate interview, a retired four-star general, who has advised
the Bush and Obama Administrations on national-security issues, said that he had been
privately briefed in 2005 about the training of Iranians associated with the M.E.K. in
Nevada
His conversations with Lieutenant Calley are apparently what allowed him to break the My
Lai massacre story as well, even though members of the military had already spoken out about
it, and there had been already been charges brought. It just revealed the story to the
general public, which prompted a fuller investigation and courts martial. I'm sure there are
others.
So, obviously Hersh's "cozying up" (surely not the right term for it, though) is in the
interests of raising public awareness of nefarious deeds, and is not scared of painting these
organizations in a bad light, whereas Mazzetti's goal here seems to be to maintain his
privileged access by providing favors - totally different motivations. It's rather easy to
contrast the two, which "smartypants54" has even stated here.
Whatever the case, it's true that elements of the NYT have been mouthpieces more or less
for government and corporate power for a long time. While I agree with Glenn about the faux
cynicism perpetuating this kind of activity - "don't be naive, this is done all the time" - I
can understand that it exists.
Such cynicism on the part of the public, rather than being an acknowledgment of
acceptance and approval of such practices, can also be seen as part of a more radical
critique of the corporate media in general, and the NYT particularly, in that such
organizations - not that I totally agree with this - , by their very nature, can't be
reformed and can never be totally effective checks on power because of the way they're
structured, and who they answer to.
That's definitely not a reason to stop pointing it out, though.
"... I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services. ..."
Luke Harding and the Guardian Publish Still More Blatant MI6 Lies
The right wing Ecuadorean government of President Moreno continues to churn out its
production line of fake documents regarding Julian Assange, and channel them straight to MI6
mouthpiece
Luke Harding of the Guardian.
Amazingly, more Ecuadorean Government documents have just been discovered for the Guardian,
this time spy agency reports detailing visits of Paul Manafort and unspecified "Russians" to
the Embassy. By a wonderful coincidence of timing, this is the day after Mueller announced that
Manafort's plea deal was over.
The problem with this latest fabrication is that Moreno had already released the visitor
logs to the Mueller inquiry. Neither Manafort nor these "Russians" are in the visitor logs.
This is impossible. The visitor logs were not kept by Wikileaks, but by the very strict
Ecuadorean security. Nobody was ever admitted without being entered in the logs. The procedure
was very thorough. To go in, you had to submit your passport (no other type of document was
accepted). A copy of your passport was taken and the passport details entered into the log.
Your passport, along with your mobile phone and any other electronic equipment, was retained
until you left, along with your bag and coat. I feature in the logs every time I visited.
There were no exceptions. For an exception to be made for Manafort and the "Russians" would
have had to be a decision of the Government of Ecuador, not of Wikileaks, and that would be so
exceptional the reason for it would surely have been noted in the now leaked supposed
Ecuadorean "intelligence report" of the visits. What possible motive would the Ecuadorean
government have for facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort? Furthermore it is
impossible that the intelligence agency – who were in charge of the security –
would not know the identity of these alleged "Russians".
Previously Harding and the Guardian have published documents faked by the Moreno government
regarding a diplomatic appointment to Russia for Assange of which he had no knowledge. Now they
follow this up with more documents aimed to provide fictitious evidence to bolster Mueller's
pathetically failed attempt to substantiate the story that Russia deprived Hillary of the
Presidency.
My friend William Binney, probably the world's greatest expert on electronic surveillance,
former Technical Director of the NSA, has stated that
it is impossible the DNC servers were hacked, the technical evidence shows it was a
download to a directly connected memory stick. I knew the US security services were conducting
a fake investigation the moment it became clear that the FBI did not even themselves look at
the DNC servers, instead accepting a report from the Clinton linked DNC "security consultants"
Crowdstrike.
I would love to believe that the fact Julian has never met Manafort is bound to be
established. But I fear that state control of propaganda may be such that this massive "Big
Lie" will come to enter public consciousness in the same way as the non-existent Russian hack
of the DNC servers.
Assange never met Manafort. The DNC emails were downloaded by an insider. Assange never even
considered fleeing to Russia. Those are the facts, and I am in a position to give you a
personal assurance of them.
I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York
Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security
services.
I am not a fan of Donald Trump. But to see the partisans of the defeated candidate (and a
particularly obnoxious defeated candidate) manipulate the security services and the media to
create an entirely false public perception, in order to attempt to overturn the result of the
US Presidential election, is the most astonishing thing I have witnessed in my lifetime.
Plainly the government of Ecuador is releasing lies about Assange to curry favour with the
security establishment of the USA and UK, and to damage Assange's support prior to expelling
him from the Embassy. He will then be extradited from London to the USA on charges of
espionage.
Assange is not a whistleblower or a spy – he is the greatest publisher of his age, and
has done more to bring the crimes of governments to light than the mainstream media will ever
be motivated to achieve. That supposedly great newspaper titles like the Guardian, New York
Times and Washington Post are involved in the spreading of lies to damage Assange, and are
seeking his imprisonment for publishing state secrets, is clear evidence that the idea of the
"liberal media" no longer exists in the new plutocratic age. The press are not on the side of
the people, they are an instrument of elite control.
My opinions are conflicted, but I'd rather give Assange a Nobel Peace Prize than a criminal
conviction. He definitely deserves a Nobel Prize more than Obama. I was in an eatery in
Cambridge, MA, when I heard Obama's prize announced, and even there people where aghast and
astounded.
The Guardian was bought by Soros, a few years ago.
Washpost, NYT and CNN, Deep State mouthpieces.
That the USA, as long as Deep State has not been eradicated completely from USA society, will
continue to try to get Assange, and of course also Snowdon, in it claws, is more than
obvious.
So what are we talking about ?
Assange just uses the freedom of information act, or how the the USA euphemism for telling
them nothing, is called.
How Assange survives, mentally and bodily, being locked up in a small room without a
bathroom, for several years now, is beyond my comprehension.
But of course, for 'traitors' like him human rights do not exist.
"I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times
have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services."
These outfits are largely state-run at this point. The Washington Post is owned by Jeff
Bezos, a man with deep ties to the CIA through his Amazon company (which depends upon federal
subsidies and has received security agency "support") and the Guardian is clandestinely
funded through UK government purchases, among other things. MI6 has also effectively
compromised the former integrity and objectivity of that outlet by threatening them with
prosecutions for revealing MI6 spy practices. And the NYT has always been state-run. See
their coverage of the Iraq War. The Israelis have bragged about having an asset at the Times.
The American government has several.
It's amazing to see the obvious progression of the lies as they take hold in an anti-Trump
elite who seem completely impervious to understanding his victory over Clinton. All these
people who claim to be so cosmopolitan and educated seem to think Assange or Manafort would
have any interest in meeting each other. (Let alone in the company of unspecified
'Russians'.)
At first it was that Assange was wrong to publish the DNC leaks because it hurt Clinton
and thus helped Trump.
Then it was that Assange was actively trying to help Trump.
Now it's that Assange is in collusion with Trump and the 'Russians'.
The same thing happened with the Trump-Russian nonsense which goes ever more absurd as
time goes on. Slowly boiling the frog in the public's mind. The allegations are so
nonsensical, yet there are plenty of educated, supposedly cosmopolitan people who don't
understand the backgrounds or motives of their 'liberal' heroes in the NYT or Guardian who
believe this on faith.
None of these people will ever question how if any of this is true how the security
services of the West didn't know it and if they supposedly know it, how come they aren't
acting like it's true. They are acting like they're attempting to smear politicians they
don't like, however.
Luke Harding is particularly despicable. He made his name as a journalist off privileged
access to Wilkileaks docs, and has been persistently attacking Assange ever since the Swedish
fan-girl farce.
Assange did make a mistake (of which I am sure he is all too aware now) in the choice to,
rather than leave the info. open on-line, collaborate with the filthy Guardian, the sleazy
NYT, and I forget dirty name of the third publication.
@anon Since you
are posting as Anon coward, I am not expecting a reply, but would be interested in (and would
not doubt) state funding of the 'Guardian'?
As for the NYT, they are plainly in some sense state-funded, but the state in question is
neither New York nor the U.S.A., but the state of Israel.
@Che Guava
Perhaps he is referring to the sheer volume of ads the British government places for public
sector appointments. As for the paper edition, most of it seems to be bought by the BBC!
So he screamed in the cafeteria and spilled his morning coffee. We all wondered what
happened to him and so we looked at his friend, and he told us that he must have read the
NYT, as that was his common reaction, a cry of pain and anguish and screams of "all lies, all
lies, all lies" whenever he reads the newspaper or watches the TV, esp. NYT.
Your article and the previous news about Manfort visiting Assange and the funny timing of
the same reminded me of this story.
The Western MSM is a lying scamming neoliberal propaganda machine.
"... "The US economy has left large swaths of people behind. History shows that such periods are ripe for demagogues, and here again, deep pockets buy not only the policy set that protects them, but the "think tanks," research results, and media presence that foments the polarization that insulates them further." ..."
"... Stagnation of median wages may have been evident for longer in the US, but the recession has led to declining real wages in many other countries. Partly as a result , we have seen 'farther right' parties gaining popularity across Europe in recent years. ..."
A lot of US blog posts have asked this after the US government came very close to self-inflicted default. It was indeed an extraordinary
episode which indicates that something is very wrong. All I want to suggest here is that it may help to put this discussion in a
global context. What has happened in the US has of course many elements which can only be fully understood in the domestic context
and given US history, like the
enduringinfluence of race
, or cultural wars . But with other, more economic, elements
it may be more accurate to describe the US as leading the way, with other countries following.
"The US economy has
left large swaths of people behind. History shows that such periods are ripe for demagogues, and here again, deep pockets buy not
only the policy set that protects them, but the "think tanks," research results, and media presence that foments the polarization
that insulates them further."
Support for the right in the US does
appear to be correlated with low incomes and low human capital. Yet while growing inequality may be most noticeable in the US,
but it is not unique to it, as the chart below from the Paris School of Economics
database shows. Stagnation of median wages
may have been evident for longer in the US, but the recession has led to declining real wages in many other countries. Partly as
a result , we have seen 'farther
right' parties
gaining
popularity across Europe in recent years.
Yet surely, you might say, what is unique to the US is that a large section of the political right has got 'out of control', such
that it has done significant harm to the economy and almost did much more. If,
following Jurek Martin
in the FT, we describe business interests as 'big money', then it appears as if the Republican party has been acting against big
money. Here there may be a parallel with the UK which could be instructive.
In the UK, David Cameron has been forced to concede
a referendum on continued UK membership of the European Union, in an attempt to stem the popularity of the UK Independence Party.
Much of UK business would
regard leaving the
EU as disastrous, so Cameron will almost certainly recommend staying in the EU. But with a a divided
party, he lost a referendum. So the referendum pledge seems like a forced concession to the farther right that entails
considerable risks. As Chris Dillow
notes
there are
other areas where a right wing government appears to be acting against 'big money'.
While hostility to immigration has always been a reaction to economic decline, it is
difficult to deny that hostility to the
emigration associated with European
Union is a burning issue for the majority of people in the UK. That's why was Cameron forced to make such a dangerous concession over
the referendum.
Nice post, although I fear the causality in the US is exactly the same as in the UK. Politicians love scapegoats that cannot
answer back or that have no votes: immigrants and foreign countries both fit the bill and so end up being lambasted ad infinitum.
I also don't believe this issue is as trivial to the general population as you seem to suggest - if you tell a lie often enough
it becomes the truth.
So when, as you so often point out, the politicians can be seen to be going against all the tenets of sound macroeconomic policy,
perhaps because of their promotion of their almost religiously held ideologies, these policies fail, instead of taking responsibility
they pass the blame onto the last government, the Eurozone, or whoever is handy. Their friends in the press are happy to add petrol
to the flames, and as you say, at some point it all spirals out of control in some kind of right wing transatlantic race of the
copy cats.
When will big business stand up and defend their profits and markets? Only perhaps when the referendum falls due in the next
quarter...
As far as the US debt limit fiasco goes, that's to a significant extent the fault of the economics profession. That is, you
can't blame the average politician (who hasn't studied economics) for thinking that national debts can be treated the same way
as the debt of a microeconomic entity. So politicians think national debts need to be limited.
The reality, as Keynes pointed out is: "Look after unemployment and the budget looks after itself". I.e. we should concentrate
on keeping demand at a level that brings full employment, while leaving the debt to bob up and down (which it will do).
Unfortunately there is new breed of vociferous so called "economists" who don't understand Keynes: Rogoff, Reinhart, Fama,
etc. Thus politicians get mixed messages from economists, and plumb for the simple minded microeconomic view of debt.
Immigration and the EU have become linked. Popular EU support among the 12 started to fall with the rushed expansion eastwards
that expanded it to 27 much poorer countries in a single stroke. Before then we did not see huge movements of labour. Britain
went gung ho into this with immediate and complete liberalisation of labour flows based on a forecast (probably based on a "rigorous"
DSGE model) that said only 13000 would enter the country following this expansion. Virtually overnight over a million entered
from Poland alone. We have no control over this, and in a country in recession, growing income inequality, long term unemployment
despite the Blair boom, pressures on the NHS and education expenditure, and with a moral obligation to allow in refugees to enter
from outside the EU with a genuine need to escape violence, this is political dynamite.
We have seen something similar before in the UK, when after WW1 the Anti-Waste League led by the Daily Mail came into force
to attack Lloyd-George's 'land fit for heroes' welfare policies.
The 1921-2 Geddes Committee was pressured by the Treasury, which wanted Geddes' savings to reduce the debt, while the Cabinet
wanted to use them to reduce taxation. Geddes took as his 'normal year' 1914, but in the end spending on social services remained
above 1914 levels, and the problem was solved with taxation on business profits.
I'm an American. I used to go, long ago in my younger years, to a bar to play pool. I'd play with these two guys who drank
whisky and looked like a Clint Eastwood type. They were poor mechanics, but total libertarians filled with conspiracy theories.
You can't reason with these people. You just nod your head and walk away.
A few years back, the "big business" right in the U.S. (as typified, say, by the Chamber of Commerce lobby) consciously sought
an infusion of energy and numbers by inviting in the Far Right "insurgents" (or "crazies," depending on your point of view).
Now the Far Right faction has slipped its leash.
It is potentially good news that the Right has split. It can be easier to cope with two factions than a single unified party.
Progressive Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1912 because Theodore Roosevelt split the Republicans.
But there are too many echoes of other countries and other years -- 1933 comes to mind -- to take much comfort in the situation.
I'm not sure I understand the "mirror to a phenomenon that must be explained" stance of recent conservate media. Rush has been
around for a long time. And he's a babe compared to Pat Buchanan, the 700 Club and the John Birch Society. Anti-other and anti-social
contract have very long track records in the United States. News Corp. simply put large amounts of money into the coming niche
programing in the 90's as cable news became accepted and diversified (fragmented if you like that word better). That gave a concentrated
platform to the likes of Rush. The evolution was Murdoch's removal of religion as the context in which those views were presented
(as was prevalent on cable in the 80s).
I put a comment onto this blog about BBC think-tank reliance, comparing the number of Krugman, Shiller, and Stiglitz references
on their website to IEA, Taxpayers' Alliance, and Adam Smith Institute references (the latter far greater).
The episode of 'Daily Politics' (24th October, minutes 30:19-40:27 on the iplayer for BBC 2 at 12:00) shows what 'centre ground'
really means to the BBC:
1. 364 economists from 30 March 1980 Times letter are said to have been proven wrong by the show's host
2. Vicky Redwood says the UK could be like Greece if Osborne hadn't followed his economic plan
3. Booth from the IEA turns up etc.
4. Will Hutton looks flustered as a man with very slicked hair from the Telegraph mocks him
There is one day left on Feedback on Radio Four episode 18th October, in which Prof. Steve Jones talks about trying to convince
the BBC that their reporting on climate change isn't 'centre-ground' but inadequate. The conclusions he draws so politely about
the BBC couldn't be more germane to their economics coverage.
Simon - thanks for this post - I've been wondering about this issue myself for some time.
I'm not so sure about your conclusion that the media have driven right-wing discontent with the EU. Consider:
1. The Daily Express was the only national paper that called for an EU referendum prior to January (when the PM announced he
would hold one in the next parliament).
2. The rucktions in the Tory party over Europe started in the late 1980s and peaked over Maastrict - please correct me if you
remember differently but I thought that much of the hostility in the press towards the EU came after 1997, with the adoption of
the Social Chapter and large immigration post-2004 from Eastern Europe. This suggests that the popular press at most propogated
discontent that was already there, rather than originated it.
3. With such a large readership, you might expect that anti-EU sentiment in the right-wing press to be reflected across a lot
of people. But as you rightly note, most people don't care. Instead it's a small group of people who care *a lot*, and seem to
be disproportionately powerful in selecting some Tory MPs. This suggests that something else is going on.
I suspect that the key issue is that being a member of the EU involves a loss of soverignty - and it's plausible that a certain
type of Tory voter ("little Englanders") would care a lot about this independent of whether the media was pushing this or not.
The fact that they don't like many of the byproducts of the EU (immigration from Eastern Europe, more regulation) is grist to
the mill.
I agree that the line you suggest is certainly plausible. But even then I do not think you can discount the influence of the
press in reinforcing this group's views. If the press do succeed in getting an out vote, then I think their influence will be
clear.
They are not the only people who like to have their beliefs and prejudices confirmed. Imagine how many economists would be
happy to see examples of rational expectations all over the place.
The US political system is simply basically dysfunctional, but because the way it is designed it is not able to properly adress
that issue.
Go to the 4 major forces (roughly) in US politics (from right to left):
-Teadrinkers (morons that think the 18th century can come back):
-Rest Reps. Maybe not owned by big business but very close (and it is big business not business);
-Right part Demos. Very similar to the left Reps;
-Left Demos. Spendophiles who donot mind going bust in that process as it is other people's money anyway.
Centre being very similar (so effectively there is no choice for the half that votes). This is a system that allowed complete
jokes like Bush and even worse Obama come to power. Probably there were realistically more people pro bombing Congres than there
were pro bombing Syria. You have to shut down the government to be able to have that number of governmentservices that are affordable
on basis of normal tax revenue apparently.
This is a seriously sick system.
If a populist rises who has some appeal (no tea crap as that will never work mainstream anyway even if the policies were realistic
and they would be able to manage things and change) and is a bit clever you could see landslide.
Simply like in most of Europe an Alfa Romeo problem. You can sell a couple of time a crap car and subsequently tell people
that the next generation model has it solved. But if you do that a couple of time in a row, people try something different (whatever
it is). How good the alternative is mainly determines when they will move not if they will move. The latter is a certainty. In
Europe the alternative looks to come from the former Lada and Zastava factories (so put on your safetybelts and have your airbags
checked).
Pretty simple.
EMs and Co have caught up especially on quality of workforce. The middle income (and subsequently average quality) Western workers
are now competing in a world that is overflooded by cheap workers in their part of the market.
Simply means prices (of labour there) will go down.
Top end is not and capital is not. Capital is even 'subsidised' by things as QE.
A lot of the things you see happening can largely be explained by that eg:
-South of EU tanked. They face the EM competition first. Nobody is making stuff in Spain or Italy when it can be done for half
the price in India or China. Even worse effectively except with design the latter 2 make already better stuff than the former
2.
-US was first to get hit as it has the most open economy and the most international and openminded companies. UK will be next
on that list rest of Europe will follow.
-Germany looks to be the next outsource wave. It looks like that say in half a decade their model will not look as great as
they like to believe themselves. They simply havenot got the outsource wave yet in the same way as the US and UK. Chinese can
now make top end stuff and furthermore they have become a large part of the market for that.
Hard to tackle that redistribute income and you will see a lot more outsource. It is mainly in big business which is flexible
anyway. But anyway can now chose between probably 50 or so countries that are able to provide a location for a headoffice, R&D
and similar higher functions. Tax goes up they move.
Simply moronic to think you can tax international companies at rates for individuals 40-50-60%. Their stockvalue will drop with
20-30-40% because of that. Basically the CEO that gets that on his watch will never have any stock bonus because all growth he
will create will be eaten by tax increases. You only can increase taxes for corporate functions that are impossible to move.
And longer term. Of course a factory will not be moved from today to yesterday. But when it goes wrong reversing it is even more
difficult. Not that we won't see it, we probably will. But as said it will not work more likely only create trouble.
Longer term but worldwide the distribution will have to be adressed so way. Looks clear that there is not enough consumption.
However probably completely in the EMs. As the Western mid level worker is still way too expensive for the worldmarket.
And when China becomes too expensive the next way is already in position. Not much help to be expected from that corner.
So better rephrase the question. When will we be hit with this phenomenon?
Soon imho btw, you are probably hit by it already only didnot notice.
Brilliant isn't it - ordinary people taking upon themselves to challenge the domination of 'big money' as you put it. I know
you like big money but me, I'm a victim of the big money and its great mate, Big Government. No-one brainwashed me, no-one had
to tell me my taxes were too high, no one forced me to arrive at the view that big business is anti-market and anti-consumer.
As I said - it's brilliant, absolutely fantastic that people on the right of politics have realised that the establishment
isn't their friend and hasn't been for a generation.
I would let them describe themselves because my thinking about them is too complicated to put into a simple slogan.
I see them as essentially a single issue party - yes, I know they let themselves get contaminated with race and immigration
- and I tend to dislike single issue parties. Single issue parties always have the weakness that their views on other issues are
up for grabs, and they will "sell out" all but their single issue to whoever can put them into power.
However, the UKIP is now a fact. And we ignore facts at our peril. Perhaps worse than ignoring facts is explaining facts away.
If we dismiss the UKIP as just X-kind of party, we won't understand their growth.
So I just don't see right-anything as a useful way to describe them. It's much more complex than that.
As an American observer I believe Simon is correct. No doubt there are many complex factors that led to the ongoing mess in
our Congress but there is little doubt that the tremendous investment made by the right wing business community into buying up
media and "coin operated think tanks" has indeed created the conditions where we have in the U.S. a situation where the rich get
ever richer while the poor and middle class fall farther and farther behind. All the while, with the aid of clever propaganda
combined with a failing education system, the very people who are hurt the most by our skewed economic distribution keep voting
the crazies in. For a look into one of the original stimuli of this state of affairs, see the memo written in 1971 by Lewis Powell,
a Republican corporate attorney and later Supreme Court justice.
Excellent analysis, Professor Wren-Lewis. As a native of the US, your insights into parallels with UK politics come as news
to me, and it helps to gain some global perspective. I am inclined to conclude from your arguments that Bernstein's assertions
about the direction of causality (that income inequality creates fervent groups of voters, thereby leading to right wing media
"reflecting" extreme political views) is wrong, and that the direction of causality in the US is probably the same as it is in
the UK (that elements in the media want to push extreme political views, thereby "leading" the opinions of voters). Rupert Murdoch
is an especially clear example of where a figure in the media uses his influence to sway voters, but I think in the US it is not
uncommon for private citizens with enough resources and connections to manipulate the media in order to "lead" voters. Take for
example the Koch brothers, who, despite normally being associated with business interests, were supposedly instrumental in fomenting
the defund/shutdown strategy. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html )
"So why was Cameron forced to make such a dangerous concession over the referendum? "
That would be because, if you remember all the way back to May, Ukip polled 23% in the last local government elections, just
short of the Tories and far ahead of the Lib Dems.
Of course, just as support for the Tea Party is very strong. But I'm trying to ask why this is. Is it because the Conservative
Party has drifted left - that does not seem credible. So why the move to the right in popular opinion? Some say that is reading
it wrong - UKIP gets it support because its anti-EU. But why is Europe so far down the list of what people say they are worried
about?
I think we can learn from the US here. Obamacare is very similar to Romneycare - so why does the Tea Party see it as such a
threat? Perhaps the information they are getting is completely wrong.
"Perhaps the information they are getting is completely wrong."
The left has long comforted itself with lines like this. Blaming what the public believe on Beaverbrook, Rothermere or Murdoch
(or in the US Limbaugh or Beck).
If only they heard "the truth" they'd agree with us.
Well, the internet age has tested that theory to destruction. Today few people get their news from the press, most get it from
TV and the internet. The internet version of the Daily Mail (by far the most successful version of an internet newspaper) is mainly
gossip, not rightwing propaganda. The influence of the rightwing press in 2013 is negligible. For those who are interested, more
serious high quality information about the world we live in is readily accessible than ever before (for proof, see this very blog).
People vote Ukip because they agree with them. Uncomfortable, but there we are.
Cameron has no choice politically but to try and tack to the right on the issue of Europe. If, say, 10% vote Ukip at the GE
he knows he loses. A referendum promise was simply the least he could do politically.
The appeal of Ukip is probably down to immigration, and not Europe. People have probably cottoned on to the fact that Poles
(and Romanians etc) have freedom of movement so long as we remain in the EU. Arguments by economists that, in aggregate terms,
immigration is a good thing for the UK completely miss why individuals oppose immigration, which is nothing to do with the overall
economic picture.
We have to treat people who disagree with us (eg those voting Republican in the US) as grown ups with a legitimate different
opinion, rather than as children tricked into voting the wrong way by Limbaugh and Beck.
Both euroenthusiasts and eurosceptics have agreed that "Europe" is not a discrete policy area but a comprehensive constitutional
issue.
It certainly wasn't UKIP who laid down the classic sceptic challenge to EU authority - "What power have you got? Where did
you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?" It was Tony
Benn (a much demonised left wing hate figure for the conservative press of the day).
The public understand that "Europe" is indivisible from their immigration & welfare concerns, their crime and civil rights
concerns and their prosperity and tax concerns.
Europe is involved in everything on their political agenda. The only question that really divides euroenthusiasts from eurosceptics
is - should it be?
SpinningHugo: I agree that information is much more available, although so is misinformation. But there is good evidence that
people are not well informed on key political issues: see http://timharford.com/2013/07/popular-perceptions-exposed-by-numbers/
This should not be a surprise - getting the correct information takes time.
That problem with democracy, that the polis are, roughly speaking, idiots has been a known problem since Plato. that is why
Plato opposed democracy, and wanted government by Philosopher Kings. Hoping that, given time, we'll have a population of Philosopher
Kings is crying for the moon.
What has changed recently however is not the growing strength of rightwing media, but its decline.
If, even given this, the Tea Party, Ukip and Golden Dawn do better, and not worse, there is no hope that giving it more time
will enable people to see sense.
I am afraid I just think you don't like democracy much. Philosopher Kings don't.
In America the Tea Party began with a large dollop of disgust at a dysfunctional-from-their-POV democracy (too much welfare,
too much crony capitalism) and settled into an American tradition of just hating government and taxes and belief that the solution
is to tear it down. This was quickly co-opted into the Republican Party platform as "don't raise my marginal tax rate," which
is essentially the only thing the party has stood for in three decades. The party ignores the other planks of the Tea Party platform.
It is just possible that as "average Americans" the Tea Party correctly perceives that the Big Money internationalization agenda
results in the hollowing out of the middle class and debt-servitude of the majority to the banks; and they would rather not go
down that path, implicitly being willing to sacrifice some GDP growth for greater equality, a trade-off that the research of Wilkinson
et al. (Equality Trust over there) supports. Between the EU and NAFTA a lot of middle class destruction has taken place. Increasingly
concentrated capital is just way too eager to arbitrage labor anywhere in the world. I don't understand why this is so hard to
see (or perhaps it is still just too taboo to speak; i.e., that Marx was right about some of the long-term dynamics of capitalism).
A nice snapshot of Tea Party demographics is available at http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/tea-partiers-fairly-mainstream-demographics.aspx
. They are *very slightly* higher than average income and *entirely average* in education and most other demographics.
Traditionally both Euroenthusiasts and eurosceptics have understood "Europe" as a constitutional issue and not merely as a
particular policy area. It is pointless saying that Europe ranks lower (in public concerns) than immigration when so much immigration
policy is set at EU level. It is pointless for a Greek or Spaniard to say that the economy is the key issue for them when the
commanding economic framework for their economic policy is set in Brussels and Frankfurt.
Therefore the fact that "Europe" is not a policy priority in U.K. public opinion survey's does not mean that the public do
not fully understand the resonance of Europe in all the policy areas that they do care about - energy & environment, policing
and civil rights, immigration & welfare, Economy ad employment.
"Europe" is a constitutional issue - it has a key role (and sometimes a dominant role) in all UK policy areas.
The British public care about Europe precisely because they care a lot about economic policy, welfare policy and all other
policy areas......
Your post-script mentions a poster who was "insulted" by your suggestion that the press are a strong influence on euro-scepticism.
I'm not insulted, but I think that your analysis really misses the point.
We live in a democracy, where the voters are exposed to all kinds of influences. We just have to live with that. The Murdoch
Press is one influence, but the BBC is another.
Most parts of the Press have to make a living, and so they can't afford to take positions that are really unpopular. Over time
they have to follow their readership. ironically, that doesn't apply to either the BBC, which can tax us, or the New Statesman,
which exists on a massive interest free loan.
The real question is whether public opinion on the EU or the rise of the UKIP are paradoxes that need to be explained away,
or if the gradual change in UK public opinion on the topic of the EU is just that, a gradual change in response to the experience
of the average voter. You can argue for either side, but it's unwise to assume.
I tend to distrust the UKIP and yet welcome its influence in politics, since it tends to keep the two - for now - major parties
honest on the subject of the EU.
I also interpret Cameron differently to you. If I were Cameron, I would see my actions less as a "forced concession" and more
as preparing the ground for negotiation with the EU.
The ideal outcome for those negotiations - to me - would be for the UK to stay in the Single Market, but gradually distance
itself from the EU's political institutions. In a sane World, I think this would happen, since it really doesn't cost Europe anything
to re-concede full sovereignty to the UK, but it will cost them quite a bit if the UK leaves the Single Market.
Of course, I am joking because I know perfectly well that we don't live in a sane World, and I think that the EU will come
to the table with a toxic mixture of hurt ego, power hunger, and a foul attitude towards the UK.
To counter this, Cameron will need a powerful lever in the form of a credible threat that if push comes to shove the UK really
will leave the EU, and the rise of the UKIP is exactly that lever.
If Cameron is the student of politics I think he is, he will remember Nixon's dictum that to get what you want, you have to
appear to be capable of insane acts.
"... We've seen it before : a newspaper and individual reporters get a story horribly wrong but instead of correcting it they double down to protect their reputations and credibility - which is all journalists have to go on - and the public suffers. ..."
"... Sometimes this maneuver can contribute to a massive loss of life. The most egregious example was the reporting in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Like nearly all Establishment media, The New York Times got the story of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- the major casus belli for the invasion -- dead wrong. But the Times , like the others, continued publishing stories without challenging their sources in authority, mostly unnamed, who were pushing for war. ..."
"... The Times' unsteady conviction is summed up in this paragraph, which the paper itself then contradicts only a few paragraphs later: "What we now know with certainty: The Russians carried out a landmark intervention that will be examined for decades to come. Acting on the personal animus of Mr. Putin, public and private instruments of Russian power moved with daring and skill to harness the currents of American politics. Well-connected Russians worked aggressively to recruit or influence people inside the Trump campaign." ..."
We've seen it before : a newspaper and individual reporters get a story horribly wrong but
instead of correcting it they double down to protect their reputations and credibility - which
is all journalists have to go on - and the public suffers.
Sometimes this maneuver can contribute to a massive loss of life. The most egregious example
was the reporting in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Like nearly all Establishment media,
The New York Times got the story of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- the major casus belli
for the invasion -- dead wrong. But the Times , like the others, continued publishing stories
without challenging their sources in authority, mostly unnamed, who were pushing for war.
The result was a disastrous intervention that led to hundreds of thousands of civilian
deaths and continued instability in Iraq, including the formation of the Islamic State.
In a massive Times '
article published on Thursday, entitled, "A Plot to Subvert an Election: Unravelling the
Russia Story So Far," it seems that reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti have succumbed to
the same thinking that doubled down on Iraq.
They claim to have a "mountain of evidence" but what they offer would be invisible on the
Great Plains.
With the mid-terms looming and Special Counsel Robert Mueller unable to so far come up with
any proof of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election -- the
central Russia-gate charge -- the Times does it for him, regurgitating a Russia-gate Round-Up
of every unsubstantiated allegation that has been made -- deceptively presented as though it's
all been proven.
Mueller: No collusion so far.
This is a reaffirmation of the faith, a recitation of what the Russia-gate faithful want to
believe is true. But mere repetition will not make it so.
The Times' unsteady conviction is summed up in this paragraph, which the paper itself then
contradicts only a few paragraphs later: "What we now know with certainty: The Russians carried out a landmark intervention that will
be examined for decades to come. Acting on the personal animus of Mr. Putin, public and private
instruments of Russian power moved with daring and skill to harness the currents of American
politics. Well-connected Russians worked aggressively to recruit or influence people inside the
Trump campaign."
But this schizoid approach leads to the admission that "no public evidence has emerged
showing that [Trump's] campaign conspired with Russia."
The Times also adds: "There is a plausible case that Mr. Putin succeeded in delivering the
presidency to his admirer, Mr. Trump, though it cannot be proved or disproved."
This is an extraordinary statement. If it cannot be "proved or disproved" what is the point
of this entire exercise: of the Mueller probe, the House and Senate investigations and even of
this very New York Times article?
Attempting to prove this constructed story without proof is the very point of this
piece.
A Banner Day
The 10,000-word article opens with a story of a pro-Russian banner that was hung from the
Manhattan Bridge on Putin's birthday, and an anti-Obama banner hung a month later from the
Memorial Bridge in Washington just after the 2016 election.
On public property these are constitutionally-protected acts of free speech. But for the
Times , "The Kremlin, it appeared, had reached onto United States soil in New York and
Washington. The banners may well have been intended as visual victory laps for the most
effective foreign interference in an American election in history."
Kremlin: Guilty, says NYT. (Robert Parry, 2016)
Why? Because the Times tells us that the "earliest promoters" of images of the banners were
from social media accounts linked to a St. Petersburg-based click-bait farm, a company called
the Internet Research Agency. The company is not legally connected to the Kremlin and any
political coordination is pure speculation. IRA has been
explained convincingly as a commercial and not political operation. Its aim is get and sell
"eyeballs."
For instance the company conducted pro and anti-Trump rallies and social media messages, as
well as pro and anti-Clinton. But the Times , in classic omission mode, only reports on "the
anti-Clinton, pro-Trump messages shared with millions of voters by Russia." Sharing with
"millions" of people on social media does not mean that millions of people have actually seen
those messages. And if they had there is little way to determine whether it affected how they
voted, especially as the messages attacked and praised both candidates.
The Times reporters take much at face value, which they then themselves undermine. Most
prominently, they willfully mistake an indictment for a conviction, as if they do not know the
difference.
This is in the category of Journalism 101. An indictment need not include evidence and under
U.S. law an indictment is not evidence. Juries are instructed that an indictment is merely an
accusation. That the Times commits this cardinal sin of journalism to purposely confuse
allegations with a conviction is not only inexcusable but strikes a fatal blow to the
credibility of the entire article.
It actually reports that "Today there is no doubt who hacked the D.N.C. and the Clinton
campaign. A
detailed indictment of 12 officers of Russia's military intelligence agency, filed in July
by Mr. Mueller, documents their every move, including their break-in techniques, their tricks
to hide inside the Democrats' networks and even their Google searches."
Who needs courts when suspects can be tried and convicted in the press?
What the Times is not taking into account is that Mueller knows his indictment will never be
tested in court because the GRU agents will never be arrested, there is no extradition treaty
between the U.S. and Russia and even if it were miraculously to see the inside of a courtroom
Mueller can invoke states secrets privilege to show the "evidence" to a judge with clearance in
his chambers who can then emerge to pronounce "Guilty!" without a jury having seen that
evidence.
This is what makes Mueller's indictment more a political than a legal document, giving him
wide leeway to put whatever he wants into it. He knew it would never be tested and that once it
was released, a supine press would do the rest to cement it in the public consciousness as a
conviction, just as this Times piece tries to do.
Errors of Commission and Omission
There are a series of erroneous assertions and omissions in the Times piece, omitted because
they would disturb the narrative:
Not mentioning that the FBI was never given access to the DNC server but instead gullibly
believing the assertion of the anti-Russian private company CrowdStrike, paid for by the DNC,
that the name of the first Soviet intelligence chief found in metadata proves Russia was
behind the hack. Only someone wanting to be caught would leave such a clue.
Incredibly believing that Trump would have launched a covert intelligence operation on
live national television by asking Russia to get 30,000 missing emails.
Trump: Sarcastically calls on Russia to get Clinton emails.
Ignoring the possible role of the MI6, the CIA and the FBI setting up Trump
campaign members George Papadopoulos and Carter Page as "colluders" with Russia.
Repeating misleading statements about the infamous Trump Tower meeting, in which Trump's
son did not seek dirt on Clinton but was offered it by a music promoter, not the Russian
government. None was apparently produced. It's never been established that a campaign
receiving opposition research from foreigners is illegal (though the Times has decided that
it is) and only the Clinton campaign was known to have obtained any.
Making no mention at all of the now discredited opposition research dossier paid for by
the Clinton campaign and the DNC from foreign sources and used by the FBI to get a warrant to
spy on Carter Page and potentially other campaign members.
Dismissing the importance
of politicized text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page because the pair
were "skewered regularly on Mr. (Sean) Hannity's show as the 'Trump-hating F.B.I.
lovebirds.'"
Putting down to "hyped news stories" the legitimate fear of a new McCarthyism against
anyone who questions the "official" story being peddled here by the Times .
Seeking to get inside Putin's head to portray him as a petulant child seeking personal
revenge against Hillary Clinton, a tale long peddled by Clinton and accepted without
reservation by the Times.
Pretending to get into Julian Assange's head as well, saying he "shared Mr. Putin's
hatred of Mrs. Clinton and had a soft spot for Russia." And that Assange "also obscured the
Russian role by fueling a right-wing conspiracy theory he
knew to be false."
Ignoring findings backed
by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity that the DNC emails were leaked and not
hacked.
Erroneously linking the timing of WikiLeaks' Podesta emails to deflect attention from the
"Access Hollywood" tape, as
debunked in Consortium News by Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, who worked with
WikiLeaks on those emails.
Distorts Geo-Politics
The piece swallows whole the Establishment's geo-strategic Russia narrative, as all
corporate media do. It buys without hesitation the story that the U.S. seeks to spread
democracy around the world, and not pursue its economic and geo-strategic interests as do all
imperial powers.
The Times reports that, "The United States had backed democratic, anti-Russian forces in the
so-called color revolutions on Russia's borders, in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004." The
Times has also spread the erroneous story of a democratic revolution in Ukraine in 2014,
omitting crucial evidence of
a U.S.-backed coup.
The Times disapprovingly dismisses Trump having said on the campaign trail that "Russia was
not an existential threat, but a potential ally in beating back terrorist groups," when an
objective view of the world would come to this very conclusion.
The story also shoves aside American voters' real concerns that led to Trump's election. For
the Times, economic grievances and rejection of perpetual war played no role in the election of
Trump. Instead it was Russian influence that led Americans to vote for him, an absurd
proposition defied by a Gallup poll in July that
showed Americans' greatest concerns being economic. Their concerns about Russia were
statistically insignificant at less than one percent.
Ignoring Americans' real concerns exposes the class interests of Times staffers and editors
who are evidently above Americans' economic and social suffering. The Times piece blames Russia
for social "divisions" and undermining American democracy, classic projection onto Moscow away
from the real culprits for these problems: bi-partisan American plutocrats. That also insults
average Americans by suggesting they cannot think for themselves and pursue their own interests
without Russia telling them what to do.
Establishment reporters insulate themselves from criticism by retreating into the exclusive
Establishment club they think they inhabit. It is from there that they vicariously draw their
strength from powerful people they cover, which they should instead be scrutinizing. Validated
by being close to power, Establishment reporters don't take seriously anyone outside of the
club, such as a website like Consortium News.
But on rare occasions they are forced to take note of what outsiders are saying. Because of
the role The New York Timesplayed in the catastrophe of Iraq its editors took the highly
unusual move of apologizing
to its readers. Will we one day read a similar apology about the paper's coverage of
Russia-gate? Tags Politics
"... You might like to report on the recent bill in Congress giving broadcasters "immunity" for spying. The New York Times acquires information from spying on citizens by the CIA twenty four hours a day - aa CIA Wire Service which is unconscionable for a newspaper. Such information allows the Times to keep competitors out of favored industries, scoop other news groups, and enhance revenues by pirated material. The Times isn't a newspaper at all but a clandestine operation run by intelligence units. ..."
"... Interestingly, the NYT revelation itself was illegal, a felony under the Intelligence Act of 1917. ..."
"... Which, ipso facto, makes at least that part of the Intelligence Act of 1917 unconstitutional: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" ( US. Constitution, Amendment I ). This perhaps explains why no newspaper has ever been prosecuted under the Intelligence Act of 1917. Prosecutors would rather have it available as a threat rather than having it thrown out as unconstitutional, and of course the Supreme Court can't rule on its constitutionality unless someone has standing to bring a case against it before them. ..."
"... It's also not surprising that the CIA would take an interest in how it is perceived. I would argue that the CIA was actually preventing or controlling the flow of info the WH was giving to filmmakers. ..."
"... This story only scratches the surface on the extent of corruption in US media and journalism in general over the last 10-15 years. The loss of journalistic integrity and objectivity in US media is on display as many media outlets showcase their one-sided liberal or conservative views. Sadly, the US media has become just as polarized as the government. However, the greatest corruption is not with the govt-media connection; the greatest corruption involves the lobbyists - foreign and domestic. Lobbying groups exert an enormous influence on politicians and the media and it extends to both sides of the aisle. ..."
"... It's no secret that the CIA and State Department have colluded with media since 1950. Public relations is nothing more than propaganda. And if you think the CIA doesn't have it's own PR department, with *hundreds* of employees, dedicated to misinformation, spin, half-truths, and psychological operations, well, consider this your wake-up call. ..."
"... "The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - William Colby - Former CIA Director ..."
"... "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director 1981 ..."
"... While you rightly characterize this case as indicating the "virtual merger" of government and media "watchdogs," I think a meta-theme running through your writings illuminates the "virtual merger" of both corporate & state power (esp. after Citizens United), ..."
"... the real issue is not personalities or trivial post deletions, the real issue is that the CIA is tightly bound to the institutions of America ... and that this is not a good thing for everyone ..."
...this is the norm not the exception. It's also representative of a very significant cross
section of the State Department/CIA/Pentagon/DC Beaurcratic Machine, made up of various
Leftists, Statists, academia, and privileged youth with political science degrees from east
coast/DC/Ivy League schools.
I am having a very difficult time wrapping my mind around this story.....we have an alleged
CIA spokesperson purportedly attempting to engage in damage control with a prominent national
newspaper regarding the flow of information between the CIA and film-makers doing a story on
the Bin Laden raid. Ostensibly, the information provided, regarding the raid, was to help
secure the President's reelection bid?
I note that the logo on the phone of the published photo of CIA spokesperson Marie Harf
looks remarkably similar, if not identical, to the Obama campaign logo. A "Twitter" account
profile for M's. Harf references that she is a "National Security Wonk at OFA...." . Could
the "OFA" she makes reference to possibly be "Obama for America"? Her recent tweet history
includes commentaries critical of Romney and his supporters, which appear to be in response
to her observations while watching Republican Convention coverage.
My understanding heretofore was that those engaged in the Intelligence Community,
particularly spokespersons, preferred to keep a low profile and at least appear apolitical.
Based upon the facts as presented, one must reexamine whether a US intelligence agency is
engaging in the most blatant form political partisanship to unduly influence a US
Presidential election.
You might like to report on the recent bill in Congress giving broadcasters "immunity" for
spying. The New York Times acquires information from spying on citizens by the CIA twenty
four hours a day - aa CIA Wire Service which is unconscionable for a newspaper. Such
information allows the Times to keep competitors out of favored industries, scoop other news
groups, and enhance revenues by pirated material. The Times isn't a newspaper at all but a
clandestine operation run by intelligence units.
I'm surprised by the pettiness of it all. And it's this pettiness that makes me think that
such data exchange is not only routine, but an accepted way to enhance a career. After all, who really cares what Dowd writes? I
believe Chomsky called her 'kinda a gossip columnist'. And, that's what she is.
That anyone
would bother passing her column to the CIA is, on the face of it, a little absurd. I don't
say she is a bad columnist, she's probably quite good, but hardly of interest to the CIA,
even when she is writing about the CIA. So basically, someone passed her column along,
because this is normal, and the more ambitious understand that this is how you 'get along'.
This kind of careerism is something I see, on some level, every day: the ambitious see the
rules of the game, and follow them, and the rationale comes later. For most of us, this
doesn't involve the security services. However, the principle that the MSM is, at the least,
heavily influenced by state power is fairly well understood by now in more critical circles:
all forms of media are subject to unusual and particular state pressures, due to their
central import in propaganda and mass-persuasion. The NYT is, in short, an obvious target for
this kind of influencing. And as such should really know much much better.
Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that most of what I read, or see on the nightly
broadcasts, is essentially bullshit. I could switch to RT, and in a way its counter-point
would be useful in stimulating my own critical thinking, but much of what RT broadcasts is
also likely to be bullshit. We have a world of competing propaganda memes where nobody knows
the truth. It's like we are all spooks now, each and every one of us. An excellent article,
again.
Interestingly, the NYT revelation itself was illegal, a felony under the Intelligence
Act of 1917.
Which, ipso facto, makes at least that part of the Intelligence Act of 1917
unconstitutional: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
press" ( US. Constitution,
Amendment I ). This perhaps explains why no newspaper has ever been prosecuted under the
Intelligence Act of 1917. Prosecutors would rather have it available as a threat rather than
having it thrown out as unconstitutional, and of course the Supreme Court can't rule on its
constitutionality unless someone has standing to bring a case against it before them.
Excellent article, but it's not necessarily a surprise to see a reporter who has developed a
relationship with his source do that source a favor in hopes that the favor will some day be
returned with greater access.
It's also not surprising that the CIA would take an interest in
how it is perceived. I would argue that the CIA was actually preventing or controlling the
flow of info the WH was giving to filmmakers.
This story only scratches the surface on the
extent of corruption in US media and journalism in general over the last 10-15 years. The
loss of journalistic integrity and objectivity in US media is on display as many media
outlets showcase their one-sided liberal or conservative views. Sadly, the US media has
become just as polarized as the government. However, the greatest corruption is not with the govt-media connection; the greatest corruption involves the lobbyists - foreign and domestic.
Lobbying groups exert an enormous influence on politicians and the media and it extends to
both sides of the aisle.
What the commoners fail to understand is that the Public Relations (PR) industry controls 75%
of the information that you are fed from major media outlets. It's an industry that has
artfully masked everything you thought you knew. It's no secret that the CIA and State
Department have colluded with media since 1950. Public relations is nothing more than
propaganda. And if you think the CIA doesn't have it's own PR department, with *hundreds* of
employees, dedicated to misinformation, spin, half-truths, and psychological operations,
well, consider this your wake-up call.
Glenn, thanks for illuminating the insidious, dangerous cynicism pervading American media
& culture, which have become so inured to hypocrisy, corruption & desecration of
sacrosanct democratic values & institutions that has been crucial to the normalization of
formerly intolerable practices, laws & policies eating away at the foundations of our
constitutional democracy. The collective moral, principled "lines in the sand" protecting us
from authoritarian pressures are steadily being washed away, compromised, thanks to media
obsequious complicity.
While you rightly characterize this case as indicating the "virtual merger" of government
and media "watchdogs," I think a meta-theme running through your writings illuminates the
"virtual merger" of both corporate & state power (esp. after Citizens United), and all
the "checks & balances" enshrined in our constitution after 9/11 (e.g. deferential
judiciary, bi-partisan Congressional consensus on increasingly authoritarian, secretive US
executive, propagandistic media, etc.). At least that's my thinking, and I see no significant
countervailing pressure capable of slowing- let alone reversing- this authoritarian
re-ordering of our constitutional order & political culture, though a few exceptions
exist (e.g. Judge Forrest's suprising courage to suspend NDAA provision 1021), and rare
journalists like yourself.
One astounding example of this widespread cynicism facilitating this authoritarian trend,
was the media's rather restrained response to the revelation that elements in the massive
Terrorist/Military Industrial Complex (HBGary) had been plotting military-style
social-engineering operations to discredit & silence progressive journalists,
specifically naming YOU, who I see as one of the rare defenders of the
constitutional/democratic "lines in the sand" under relentless attack. Where was the
overwhelming collective shock & outrage, or media demanding criminal investigations into
US taxpayer-funded attacks on our so-called "free press?"
My question for Glenn, is whether he thinks it would be possible for him to get legal
standing to sue the private (& US??) entities, which proposed the covert
discrediting/repression operations targeting you specifically?
I'm no lawyer, but it seems the documents published by Anonymous, reveal actions
constituting criminal conspiracy. Given the proposed methods included forms of
politically-motivated military warfare & coercion, the guilty parties would likely be
aggressively investigated and charged with some terrorist crimes, if they had been busted
planning attacks on people/entities that trumpeted Obama administration policies or its
corporate backers (i.e. if they were Anonymous). The HBGary proposal to discredit/silence
Wikileaks defenders strongly indicated they had experience with- & confidence in- such
covert operations. Requiring a journalist/academic to be covertly
discredited/destroyed/silenced before they get legal standing would be as absurd as the Obama
administration's argument that Chris Hedges & Co. plaintiffs lack standing because they
hadn't yet been stripped of their rights & secretly indefinitately detained without
charges or trial.
I thought you might be in the unique position to use the US courts to pry open & shine
some light upon the clearly anti-democratic, authoritarian abuses of power, & virtual
fusion of corporate & state powers, which you so eloquently write about.
I glad that foreign journalism is available for me to read our the internet, it's the only
way i can find truthful information about what's going on in my own country (USA). I've known the liberal media bias was a problem for a long time, but articles like this
continually remind me that things are far worse than they appear.
All the actions surrounding the NY Times and the CIA on this issue are atrocious. With this
type of "journalistic independence", why am I paying for a Times account??
As a favor to all readers, following is a summation of all past, present, and future ideas as
articulated by the Fortune Cookie Thinker, John Andersson:
A certain amount of genocide is good because the world is overpopulated.
You should never question authority; after all, you are not an expert on authority.
Everyone wins when we kill terrorists; the more we kill, the more we generate, thus the
more we kill again, which makes us win more.
It is not possible to have absolute power; therefore, power does not corrupt.
Drones kill bad people. Only bad people are killed by drones. Thus, drones are good. We
should have more drones. That is all.
I secretly think he's the real "Jack Handy" from the Deep Thoughts series on SNL.
In my high school history class in 1968 I learned all about how newspapers printed propaganda
stories before WWI and Spanish American war in order to influence the public so they would
want to go to war and it was called "yellow journalism". I also had an English teacher that
taught us about "marketing" and how they use visuals and printed words and film to make us
want to buy a product. My father taught me to NOT BELEIVE everything you read. Now it is
called "critical thinking" and has been added as a general education class in college that
you have to take for a college degree. Critical thinking about what you read and see and hear
should be taught as early as 10 year olds so people can think for themselves. I do not read
main stream newspapers in America but read news sites all over the world.
THANK GOD FOR THE
INTERNET THAT YOU CAN READ WHAT OTHER NEWSPAPERS. I discovered Glenn on Democracy Now and
they are my go to place to read about what is really happening.
the real issue is not personalities or trivial post deletions, the real issue is that the CIA
is tightly bound to the institutions of America ... and that this is not a good thing for
everyone
"... We should not even talk about "conflict of interest" anymore. It is a collusion all the way. We saw it in the phone hacking scandal here, now at the New York Times. I have always wondered about these white tie dinners in Washington DC and how chummy and cozy the reporters looked mingling with the power-holders and -brokers. ..."
"... In what is turning out to be the CIA Century, the American President and major news outlets seem to operate under CIA authority and in accordance with CIA standard operating procedures. ..."
"... Or Afghanistan. Many of the cruise missile libs supported the invasion of Afghanistan but not Iraq. ..."
"... The press is managed on behalf of what I will call US powers. Those powers seem to be high level military, clandestine agencies, financial industry "leaders", and war contractors. The political parties and the faces they present to the public (with some few exceptions) act as functionaries to keep up the illusion that the US is a democracy. ..."
"... And I am not sure why I associate Washington's bureaucratic CIA with dancing midgets. ..."
If we thought the public trust in journalism is low, then this news only pushes it down further. Do people in journalism care?
Some do very much but for the most the media and the power-holders are in collusion.
We should not even talk about "conflict of interest" anymore. It is a collusion all the way. We saw it in the phone hacking
scandal here, now at the New York Times. I have always wondered about these white tie dinners in Washington DC and how chummy
and cozy the reporters looked mingling with the power-holders and -brokers.
The critical articles are nothing more than smokescreens. We are led to believe how hard-hitting the newspapers are and how
they hold the politicians and other power-brokers to fire. All hogwash. It is better we recognize that the citizens are merely
props they need to claim legitimacy.
Not till this moment did I realize that we are under siege. I thought Julian Assange was the one under siege but he was just trying
to offer us a path to freedom. With Assange neutralized and The New York Times and its brethren by all appearances thoroughly
compromised, how can any one of us stand for all of us against government malfeasance let alone tyranny?
Where would you go if you had dispositive proof of devastating government malfeasance? In what is turning out to be the
CIA Century, the American President and major news outlets seem to operate under CIA authority and in accordance with CIA standard
operating procedures.
It would actually be foolish to take evidence of horrific government behavior to the titular head of the government {who'd
likely persecute you as a whistleblower} or the major news organizations supposedly reporting to us about it {they'd bring it
right back to the government for guidance on what to do}.
Without safe and reliable ways to stand and speak for and to each other on a large scale about the foul deeds of our government,
we are damned to live very lonely vulnerable lives at the mercy of an unrestrained government.
Excerpt from script of Three Days of the Condor --
Higgins: I can't let you stay out, Turner.
Turner slowly stops, leans back against a building, shakes his head sadly.
Turner: Go home, Higgins. They have it all.
Higgins: What are you talking about?
Turner: Don't you know where we are?
Higgins looks around. The huge newspaper trucks are moving out.
Turner: It's where they ship from.
Higgins' head darts upward and he reads the legend above Turner's head. THE NEW YORK TIMES. He is stunned.
Higgins: You dumb son of a bitch.
Turner: It's been done. They have it.
Higgins: You've done more damage than you know.
Turner: I hope so.
Higgins: You want to rip us to pieces, but you damn fool you rely on us. {then} You're about to be a very lonely man,
Turner.
***
Higgins: It didn't have to turn out like this.
Turner: Of course it did.
Higgins: {calling out as they depart separate ways} Turner! How do you know they'll print it?
Turner stops. Stares at Higgins. Higgins smiles.
Higgins: You can take a walk. But how far? If they don't print it.
Several commenters have pointed out that the NYT does do "good" journalism. That is true. It is also true that they tell
absolute lies. See Judith Miller. The best way to sell a lie is to wrap it in the truth.
I know it's late in the comments thread by the time anyone bothers to read THIS minor contribution, but I think it worth mentioning
how this article from Glenn proves just how important are outlets like Democracy Now, RT, Cenk Uyger, Dylan Ratigan, et al. You
really have to turn away from the mainstream media as a source of anything. Far too compromised, by both their embeddedness with
the government, and their for-profit coroporate owners.
Note CNN's terrible ratings problems as of late, and the recent news that they are considering turning to more reality-type
shows to get the eyeballs back. If that isn't proof positive of the current value of corporate news, I don't know what is.
DemocracyNow.org. I think I'm going to donate to them today....
i'm do not understand why so many people are against authority in general, even when the legal & enforcement system is there
to protect your property, life and rights. i understand when corruption exists, it should be seriously addressed, but why throw
out a whole system that is "somewhat working"? why blindly call for revolution?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying
its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety
and Happiness."
This is a political officer acting as editor of a major newspaper. I agree this has been going on for some time. Here is my analysis
of that. The press is managed on behalf of what I will call US powers. Those powers seem to be high level military, clandestine
agencies, financial industry "leaders", and war contractors. The political parties and the faces they present to the public (with
some few exceptions) act as functionaries to keep up the illusion that the US is a democracy.
Romney and Obama are functionaries. They do as they're told. Obama is the more useful of the two as fewer people seem able
to look honestly at his policies. They will not oppose Obama for doing the same things and worse as Bush. It is why all stops
are being pulled out to get him, rather than Romney elected. The policies will be the same but the reaction of our population
to each man is vastly different.
So yes, the capture of the media has been going on for quite some time. It appears nearly consolidated at this time. Instead
of using this as a reason to ignore the situation, it is more important than ever to speak out. History is helpful in learning
how to confront injustice. It is not a reason, as I see many use it, to say; "well it's always been that way, so what?" In history,
we learn about corruption but we also learn that people opposed corruption. Is there some reason why we cannot also oppose corruption
right now?
I though Michael Wolff's recent analysis of Apple (here in the Guardian) was in many ways metaphorical for Western leadership,
his article acting in some ways to explain the behavior we see in cultural "elites."
Worth the read.
And somehow, after reading this article, all I can think of is the Wizard of Oz and a dancing midget army singing in
repetitive, high-pitched tones.
And I am not sure why I associate Washington's bureaucratic CIA with dancing midgets.
Who will be the first commenter to leave the classic devastating critique: "The author fails to present a balanced view, showing
only one side. The author's argument has no substance and is not really worth anything."
Don't forget this one: "The author just complains and complains without ever offering a solution or a better approach."
Also, can anyone 'splain me how to do a "response"?
I changed my default search engine to DuckDuckGo years ago.
Commenters occasionally say here at TUR that Google is somehow superior, but even if
that's so (which I doubt), isn't the corruption plenty of reason to boycott? Guess not, in
light of news the other day that Amazon continues to expand.
Most people, even here in Exceptionalia, are lazy and dull. In a better society, the
Establishment would be better reined in.
Somehow Google has convinced everyone that their search is not biased because it uses a trade
secret algorithm. Eventually the public will figure out that the argument does not even make
any sense. The algorithm is tuned by the work of thousands of engineers, and of course it is
biased.
Semi-OT: NYT has something about Facebook hiring an oppo research firm to look into George
Soros. Apparently he trashed Facebook at Davos and Sheryl Sandberg thinks he might be
shorting their stock.
Just goes to show that there probably isn't some giant super conspiracy among the
Jews/SJWs/Democrats/whatever – Soros and Facebook both seem pretty keen on open borders
globalist nonsense, and yet here they are fighting like cats in a sack.
This makes me proud that I use Bing. It has a nice picture each day as its backdrop. Here is
yesterday's, a particularly beautiful one of the Frankfurt Christmas Market, which proves
Bing is Christmas-friendly -- and even German-friendly, Heaven forbid:
I've been using https://www.startpage.com/ as my main search engine for four
years now. It serves my purposes >95% of the time. I only resort to Google no more than
once every couple weeks. Startpage also allows you to visit sites anonymously and never ever
tracks anything. Also no Gmail or Google Docs. Also run Ghostery to block Google Analytics on
all sites (that, by the way, includes Unz.com).
Since I am not interested in luvvies, Hollywood, and all that, I hardly ever comment on them.
Kevin Spaceyga, however, is worth a remark. Because I was a great fan of the British original
I thought I'd watch a couple of episodes of the American "House of Cards". It was noticeable
that of the whole cast he was the only one who could act.
"But I don't think that the Google Suggestions are deliberately skewed in the way you're
suggesting."
Oh sweet summer child.
I think it was Steve who recommended this, but do an image search on Google for American
Scientists and let us know if you think that's an accurate representation. Try the same with
the phrase White Couples.
These days you get similar returns on Bing btw.
Yes I know these are not auto-suggestions, but fruit of the same tree.
The Creepy Line, add it to your watch lists. Amazon Prime I think.
@Tyrion 2
I'm not taking a side in your spat, I just want to point out that it'd be foolish in the
extreme to take Vox at its word there. All Vox does is tell people what they want to hear,
and from that you can infer what kind of reader they're after, and it ain't Regular Joe.
'Cos what the "policy elite" really want is the news patronisingly explained to them
I think it would be more precise to describe Vox as being aimed at the social class from
which the policy elite is drawn, rather than at the policy elite itself. Even so, I'd be
shocked if most of the policy elite weren't regular readers. I doubt even 1% of them find it
patronising. Remember: these people are 27-yr olds who literally know nothing.
@Roger
More times than I can count, I have engaged on this topic with people who smugly declare that
"Google searches are controlled by an algorithm" and hence cannot possibly be biased. After
all, it's a big computer not a person!
And they appear to believe that this explanation is completely dispositive.
You are considerably more optimistic than I am about the general intelligence and critical
faculties of the American public.
@Trevor H.
Incidentally, anyone keen on researching the wealthy and powerful members of the Tribe is
well advised to use "philanthropy" as a primary keyword. Heck, even Sheldon Adelson is
considered a philanthropist by Google. Wikipedia is not far behind.
Bernie Madoff? Oh, he was just a misunderstood philanthropist.
Because of this article, I bookmarked Duck Duck Go and will use it instead of Google from now
on. BTW, did you ever Google "Google autocomplete policy?"
I actually suspect that the "deaths from opioids" result is phased out as part of some
algorithm to stop racist predictions, in this case, against white people
No. If you spend time around leftist websites, you will find lots and lots of Leftists
don't see the opioid crisis as bad at all, because it mostly kills the wrong kind of white
people (at least that's the perception, I don't know the numbers). Some openly cheer it and
mock the "dumb hillbillies" that are dying by the thousands.
Google doesn't want to let you know about it because they're happy it's happening.
Just goes to show that there probably isn't some giant super conspiracy among the
Jews/SJWs/Democrats/whatever – Soros and Facebook both seem pretty keen on open
borders globalist nonsense, and yet here they are fighting like cats in a sack.
Medieval nobles fought each other, often bitterly, often to the death. But they usually
suspended their quarrels whenever the peasants got uppity. They could all agree to repress
the commoners. Just because the elites aren't a monolithic block in everything, doesn't mean
they don't conspire against all the rest of us.
I suspect that there is a broader part of the population that isn't sure what words they are
looking for to complete their search query; but, does anybody here not know the end to the
question that they are going to ask the internet? It is occasionally amusing when I see
suggested searches go off in a wildly different direction than I had intended, but I rarely
follow the suggestions to their conclusion. I am sure Google has statistics that support
their "micro-gaslighting"; however, marketing to the masses always feels counter-intuitive to
my brain. Click-through ads and the like are mind-boggling, but it -appears to work on enough
people to justify the ad-spend.
Google's image recognition has been gutted. In 2014 it would recognize a face and find photos
of that person across the internet. A right click would find the original of the fakes used
by Russian trolls to suggest non existent attacks on civilians by the Ukrainian army. Now it
can't even match the same image.
deaths from her ➔ deaths from herbalife/herpes/hernia surgery/herbal
supplements
deaths from mor ➔ (nothing)
deaths from ox ➔ (nothing)
deaths from perc ➔ deaths percy jackson
deaths from cod ➔ (nothing)
deaths from vic ➔ death from victoza/vick's vaporub
deaths from hydro ➔ deaths from hydropower/hydroxycut/hydrogen sulfide/hydrofluoric
acid/hydroxyzine/hydrogen cyanide/hydrochloric acid
deaths from coc ➔ deaths from coconuts
deaths from metha ➔ deaths from methadone (lol)/methanol poisoning/methane
deaths from cry ➔ deaths from cyrotherapy/cryptococcosis
deaths from amp ➔ deaths from amputation
deaths from ec ➔ deaths from ectopic pregnancy/e coli/e cigs/eclampsia/eczema/ect
deaths from md ➔ (nothing)
deaths from mari ➔ deaths from maria/marinol
deaths from ls ➔ (nothing)
deaths from lyse ➔ deaths from lysenkoism
@Buzz
Mohawk I find that Bing is more objective and I also like the daily photo, so I switched
to them as my browser home page a couple of years ago.
I have to say one of the things I like about Steve Sailer is his charming, old school
White Guy naïveté:
"the news media doesn't seem all that enthusiastic about reporting on what goes on inside
Google, perhaps out of fear of what Google could do to them."
Actually Steve, it's because the news media think Google is doing a wonderful thing and wish
they would do it harder and faster.
Our problem is Google has Plausible Irrelevance: it's obvious they're manipulating
auto-completes in directions they favor, and since Google is vast and powerful that seems
highly relevant to us dissidents. But it's easy for Google to hide behind 'if searchers get
all the way to "Kevin Spacey g", let them hunt and peck for a and y – what's the big
deal?'
And the offending author becomes internet-famous as a flying saucer nut.
Brian Littlefair didn't write that. The search term "Brian Littlefair" does not appear on
that UFO web page at all. What did appear there, for a while, in the Latest Article column,
was 'The First Thing We Do,'
That was presumably the offending article. Its content might be triggering to hasbara bots
or JTRIG-type keyboard commandos or both. The trick of suppression could be effected by a bit
of incremental traffic while both articles appeared on the same page.
This was most pronounced on (Yahoo(oath)(Verizon)). It didn't replicate exactly but the
same general hits permuted. DuckDuckGo returned a hit on the UFO article too. By contrast
Metager.de, searx.me, and yandex.ru gave you what you would expect.
@anonymous
Same here on the duckduckgo, Mr #340, but I'll use google when I get to an impasse and really
want to try hard to get some information.
DuckDuckgo search escalates to Bing (MUCH BETTER on 2 things: images and finding
addresses/phone numbers for local businesses), then, if need be, Google.
BTW, I , uhhh, well, this friend of mine, yeah, sometimes types my blog name into Google
to help it stay high in the rankings. Doing this on google, though I detest them, is akin to
something everyone in the stock market does. With 90%, or what-have-you, of the searches, I
crap, my friend wants to work within the system, so to speak. That's just like buying shares
of some company because you know that others will buy on some news coming (the news alone may
not actually be a good business reason to buy, but it's the psychology of the masses).
The algorithm is tuned by the work of thousands of engineers,
No, those people are absolutely NOT engineers, no matter WTF Sergey Brin calls them. There
may be a few dozen engineers working for that place, but they'd be the guys calculating heat
transfer loads off of the servers, or designing electrical power systems.
@Alfa158AGREED! However, Steve's probably got your point in mind too. If there is a
proto-Tucker Carlson in a media operation, then he may fear the loss of business and
de-linking by Google, though he does know Google is not doing wonderful things.
@Redneck
farmer With good reason. Life expectancy in the US is now falling, largely as a result of
them (and suicide), despite the fact that we spend more on health care than anyone. We are
prolonging the lives of the non-productive elderly at tremendous cost but killing healthy
young people in what should be their prime productive years. You usually only see falling
life expectancy in countries with serious decline, such as Russia after the fall of the
Soviet Union.
But, yes, it's not exactly a secret, which makes it even more puzzling that Google is
manipulating its results in this way. I don't think it is just some by-product of the strange
counter-intuitive workings of AI but is probably the result of human intervention, although I
don't know for what reason. PC thinking is even more counter-intuitive than that of AI bots.
I'm still trying to figure out why "colored people" is bad but "people of color" is good.
Here's a few things I've noticed about Google's auto-complete from my own anecdotal
experience.
1. It relies heavily not only on your search history but also on your search "currency,"
i.e. it will preferentially auto-fill a word or phrase if that same word or phrase appears on
another tab you have open on your computer at the time, even if you've never typed that word
or phrase into the search box before.
2. It is massively tied into television viewing patterns. Google knows what is on
television, when and where. If you do a search about an item that was just featured in a
commercial during an NFL game, you may get an auto-fill "hit" even before you've typed in
anything you might think would be a relevant term.
Google is not in business to do social engineering, it's in business to make money. My
impression is that Google's auto-fill suggestions are the result of a bunch of nerds trying
desperately to monetize search and bumping up against the hard, cold reality that it can't
really be done to any great extent, that the diminishing returns come sharp and quick, and
that AI is nothing like it's cracked up to be. To that end they will mine every scrap of
available data they can get their hands on and apply their algorithms to it, but the end
product is mostly cheesy and useless, like Facebook showing you ads for products you just
bought (and consequently don't need to buy again).
Since this is the best that the brightest programmers with the most powerful computers can
do, it tells you that the whole concept is flawed. Advertising doesn't really work. AI
doesn't really work. But the world today shuts its eyes to these facts in order to keep alive
its inward vision of a prosperous, progressing global marketplace. If the facts were fully
accepted, the value of companies like Google would sink to niche levels and the internet for
the masses would basically shut down. This will happen one day, but in the meantime they will
blow that bubble up with as much hype as possible in order to justify their own
existence.
@Tyrion 2
I did the same comparison before I even started reading the comments. ; )
Here it is for anyone who wants to save some time. Notice the spike this week. iSteve
influence?
This one is REALLY blatant given that "deaths from open heart surgery" returns: "Hmm, your
search doesn't have enough data to show here." (sometimes a flatline just means one search
happens much more than another, but still has data)
Does anyone know anything about how Google actually implements this algorithm
tweaking?
Do they just remove results or actively provide innocuous replacements? Typing "deaths from
ope" in Bing gives the Google response as the third option so seems inconclusive.
How do they get complete coverage? Is it some kind of regular expression like "deaths from
op*", a similarity match to phrases, or ?
Another interesting data point is that typing "deaths from opi" gives zero
autocompletions. Surely if they were doing explicit replacements they could add something
like "deaths from opinion surveys."
@Anon I
don't have the knowledge you seem to have about it, Mr. #190, though it sounds like you were
in this around the time of Lycos and Alta Vista, etc. Lots has happened since then. I want to
ask you if you think my first thought (upon reading Mr. Sailer's post) has any merit. That
is, do you think some of the searches, say the Buchanan one*, were the result of bots made to
beat all hell out of the search engine on one very particular topic to make auto-complete,
and more importantly, IMO, the top results appear as one wants?
I could see some guy trying to make his name or business appear on top, maybe even Mr.
Haney (haha, if he's still alive) on the "Bu"-for "Buchanan" thing, but who would want to
make the "open-heart surgery.." appear first, a team of computer savvy cardiologist?! It
would also require lots of different manipulations besides just the one displayed by Steve.
Of course, that's what computers are damn good at.
I tend to agree with Mr. Sailer's opinion on this, but for me, all this discussion (if
some good geeks come on here) is a good thing, as I'd like to learn more about SEO for my own
benefit.
information retrieval engineers
See, now that's not engineering. These people don't work out problems using the math and
empirical data that describe the laws of nature. I don't want to have to keep doing this,
dammit.
.
* and I did read you back then, Steve, as I remember this well. I cannot believe that was
8 damn years ago. Time is figuratively flying!
@Anonymous
Arguably (and I'm not saying this is right) because whites are the hardest hit group, which
contradicts the narrative of "white privilege". An old joke headline (and I've seen actual
examples of this many times in our MSM after natural disasters, wars, etc.) is " World Ends
– Minorities and Women Hit Hardest".
This is the lens thru which the Left views everything, so something that shows that in
fact working class whites, especially men, are the ones who are in the most trouble in our
society (but get the least help from our government and institutions) is not something that
the Left is eager to highlight. This might force them to reconsider whether they have put
their thumb on the scale too heavily in favor of other groups. It also undermines their
nonsensical claim that they are only "helping" minorities and immigrants, which is a purely
good thing, when in fact they are manipulating a zero sum game, so for every bit of "help"
that they render, there is an equal amount of "harm" put on someone else's head.
Does anyone know anything about how Google actually implements this algorithm
tweaking?
I think the answer is no. Sometimes you can gain little glimpses from patents, but as a
whole Google algorithms are a heavily guarded trade secret for many reasons. First of all
because they don't want to give search engine competitors (not that they have many left) an
advantage – their search algorithm was their secret sauce in the 1st place. 2nd because
people who are trying to game the search system for various nefarious economic and political
reasons would LOVE to know how the algorithm works because then they could manipulate it
– better for it to be a black box. And lastly because they don't want you to tour the
sausage factory and see how much "hand tuning" is going on (I suspect a lot, because bots are
very "racist" when left to their own devices) and how much of that hand tuning is based on
SJW considerations and the financial and petty personal interests of the Google execs. This
would open them up to all kinds of 2nd guessing and criticism. So from their POV they are
much better off keeping it all a complete mystery and telling you that it's all "science"
that you wouldn't understand anyway.
"Western man towers over the rest of the world in ways so large as to be almost
inexpressible. It's Western exploration, science, and conquest that have revealed the world
to itself.
Other races feel like subjects of Western power long after colonialism, imperialism, and
slavery have disappeared.
The charge of racism puzzles whites who feel not hostility, but only baffled good will,
because they don't grasp what it really means: humiliation.
The white man presents an image of superiority even when he isn't conscious of it.
And, superiority excites envy.
Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we
call minorities."
Joseph Sobran, April 1997
Here is a great article on how evil the Sackler family is. Getting doctors to chuck their
public trust and credibility into the toilet to shill for Purdue Pharma was pioneered by
these people for Valium.
It would seem to be pretty reasonable to ask that Google publicly disclose how it is
manipulating specific topics like this, but nobody ever seems to do this.
Big tech will typically try to obfuscate the issue by saying "it's the algorithm" or "it's
complicated." It's not.
The easiest, least cumbersome way to regulate the major search engines is make them
provide an audit log of all filtering rules or hard overrides in their search results. Limit
this to for profit services that have above a certain threshold in daily users or market
share, so it does not hurt innovation in startups. The vast majority of changes would be
understandable or inconsequential. But it gives both parties of government direct insight,
particularly around local elections, where meddling would be impossible to detect.
Further out, you can make them report any substantial bias they are introducing into the
training data and give a basic explanation. In the same way lenders have to explain their
lending models, search engines should have to explain how they are tweaking theirs. As search
increasingly shifts to mobile, personalized, and voice-based, this becomes important as the
only search result that matters is the first one that is returned.
In a world where national elections are coming down to a few hundred thousand votes, it
blows my mind Republicans have not been pushing for this.
@Mr. Anon
Haha good analogy, Mr. Anon. Zerohedge had a story on this little spat. However, these are no
medieval nobles, but more like candidates for AntiChrist . It'll be
entertaining, I suppose, like Christopher Walken is as the angel Gabrial in Prophecy ,
but I'm stayin' outta' this one.
"It would seem to be pretty reasonable to ask that Google publicly disclose how it is
manipulating specific topics like this, but nobody ever seems to do this."
You mean it would seem to be pretty reasonable to ask Google, DuckDuckGo AND Bing publicly
disclose how it is manipulating specific topics like this, but nobody ever seems to do
this.
Probably because it is Coalition of the Fringe Group Cringeworthy.
@alaska3636
Yes, I'd rather not even look at the auto-complete, or do it on a bogged-down computer like
mine in which it can't catch up with me! The exception is when I want to look up a word
spelling. I just let auto-complete do it for me.
On your 2nd point:
Click-through ads and the like are mind-boggling, but it -appears to work on enough
people to justify the ad-spend.
Not necessarily, Alaska. Who really knows if the ads do a damn thing? Google or whoever
might honestly give you numbers as to click-throughs, but loads of them, at least for me, are
mistakes and times that the little X for close is SO DAMN SMALL that I can't be sure to close
rather than click the ad. (That's especially bad on a touch screen.)
Then, the only way to know if your ad really was read at all, is if it leads to a sale or
request of some sort being sent in. Google may tell you how many people are reading what
you've got out there, but that's just more lies.
@Intelligent
Dasein Very good comment, I.D., especially the last paragraph re: advertising. Your first
part reminded me of something that is fairly-well related, so I'll write it here.
Have you all noticed something with youtube, owned by Google? It now uses the IP number
(or something else at the modem or router) to keep track of videos that you've been watching
or searching for, rather than just cookies, or some other method based on just THE ONE
DEVICE.
Here's the observation – My wife likes to watch a number of the same kinds of silly
soap-opera-like and reality-show videos on her computer or phone when she is bored. Yes, I
know she is no dummy, but it's whom they are. Anyway, it used to be I'd see music and
political video suggestions based on what I've viewed and (I believe) what videos have been
embedded in web pages (such as unz) that I've viewed.
All of a sudden, about 3 months back, I started seeing all these suggestions on youtube on
my computer for the dumb-ass soap-opera/reality-show videos that my wife watches. The
suggestions area was filled with her crap. That happened like the flip of a switch. That's
probably literally the case (OK, a software setting), but also likely one of the "action
items" decided on at a meeting by some Google Anything-But-Engineers just before that day.
It's pretty annoying – I don't need the suggestions anyway, but now I can see what
these people are up to.
Just a word to the wise: If you watch something, cough, porn, cough cough, that you may
not quite want others in the household to know about, you'd better go to Starbucks. The
bathroom code is 1-1-1-1. Glad to be of help.
@Anon We
know that AI is "racist" and that Google is working hard to find a way to make it not racist
(and yet still produce meaningful results), which is probably impossible. We also know that
Google has plenty of human resources (although not an infinite #) to throw at such problems
until an automated fix is found, just as Facebook now has thousands of people searching
manually for Rooshian election interference in order to keep the dogs of Washington at bay.
We can also guess that they are not eager to publicize to what extent they are tweaking or
hand tuning algorithms or results – they would much rather you think that it is all
done by "science". Putting this together, it's my guess that they are doing a fair amount of
hand tuning, which is some spotty and uneven combination of combatting SEOs, de-racisting
their AI bots, the leftist predilections of Google employees, the commands from on high of
Google management, etc.
@tambit
Final observations about Silicon Valley big tech. People need to appreciate a few things:
– Think of the short tenures that employees have at big tech companies. A
conservative at Google or Facebook will only be there for two or three years. So they wonder,
"Why rock the boat? In two years, I will be at Netflix or Amazon, or joining a startup,
anyway." The transitory nature of it makes employees who break from the orthodoxy stay
silent, especially after Damore.
– As with any company, everything is tacitly approved from the CEO and senior
leadership. It's unlikely they have their hands in augmenting search results directly. On the
other hand, they know the biases of their employees, and look the other way. For example, a
CEO may talk about how getting SF contractors to vet news articles means there is
unintentional liberal bias. But what prevents them from having some of the contractors in
say, Kansas or Ohio, for a more balanced sample? Because the CEO condones the bias.
– If people are waiting for a smoking gun from Google, you will be out of luck.
Because of their reach, they can quietly nudge people in a certain direction through repeated
exposure. You may see an isolated incident and think "that's weird." But you're not seeing
the few thousand other ways they are doing it concurrently. More so, as things continue to
shift to mobile and native apps, there will be no meaningful way to measure this. For
example, voice search could be construed so it "misunderstands" some phrases with slightly
higher probability. This prompts users to type it in manually, which many will not do. Good
luck catching that.
@Reg
Cæsar Typing !bing, !google, !youtube, !amazon, !wikipedia and some others into
duckduckgo before the search phrase, will redirect you to a search result from those sites,
rather than duckduckgo results.
@KunioKun
I have an impression that in media coverage of the opioid crisis the role of heroine, its
price and where does it come from is underplayed. Any connection to Afghanistan?
@utu Most
"heroin" nowadays is fentanyl or some other synthetic opiate and it comes from labs in China
or from US prescription sources. It is so powerful that you don't need to smuggle in large
quantities – 1 kilo is enough to lethally overdose everyone in a city of half a
million. Actual heroin (a declining product) comes from Mexico. Afghanistan would be way down
on the list in the US nowadays.
@KunioKun
I'm not at all defending the Sacklers; if I made the laws I'd subject the ones involved in
the business, and the other responsible Purdue personnel, to one of the more humane-ish old
fashioned forms of execution, perhaps blowing from a gun , and seize the
wealth of the rest, but this notion of KMac's fan club that their actions have escaped
notice, and in particular escaped notice from liberals, is 180 degrees the opposite of the
truth.
In fact, the Sacklers are all that liberals want to talk about WRT the opioid crisis -- it
deflects blame from Mexican heroin, illegal alien drug pushers and Chinese fentanyl -- hence
the widely
read New Yorker article , and the bestseller Dopesick
, which also toes the left-wing party line* that it was all Sacklers and not
Mexico/illegals/China, and which received glowing reviews in the New York
Times , Washington Post and Wall Street Journal .
*Unlike dueling bestseller Dreamland
, which assigns the Sacklers their share of blame but also tells the rest of the story.
I suspect that there is a broader part of the population that isn't sure what words they
are looking for to complete their search query; but, does anybody here not know the end to
the question that they are going to ask the internet?
+1000.
I was about to type something along the same lines but my version had "fuck[ing]" and
"retard[s|ed]" in it several times.
@Tyrion 2
You are already aware of this, Tyrion 2 , since you followed the discussion/debate
over in the other comments thread, but this information might be interesting to other UR
readers and commenters:
Another question :
i) It appears the 2018 total drug overdose death will be 80,000! That is immense, and is
twice as much as auto deaths. Until three days ago, I had no idea the number was
skyrocketing this much.
But then why does it not show up in the CDC death table (2016 linked here, which was
still a high enough number)? For younger age brackets, surely even the 2016 number was in
the Top 10. Is it categorized as something else (like 'Unintentional Injury')?
Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
[...] Overdoses are injuries too
[...] It is easy to find evidence that drug overdoses are unpopular subjects for study or
intervention by injury professionals. Index Medicus reveals that to date Injury
Prevention has published only one article with the word "overdose" or the phrase "drug
poisoning" in its title or abstract. A search of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention flagship publication, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report ( http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr , accessed 16 Jan 2007),
uncovered only 53 citations using the word "overdose" since 1982. In contrast, a search for
"lead poisoning" in MMWR returned 1531 references. Scanning the 53 articles mentioning
overdose reveals that overdoses are not the focus of most of them. Instead, many
describe outbreaks of unusual cases, such as lead poisoning among methamphetamine users.5
Topics such as endemic use of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and narcotic analgesics
receive relatively little attention in the injury literature despite their large
contribution to morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs.
OT: Wikileaks is threatening to release more Hillary docs. I suspect if they'd had them
earlier, they would have released them earlier. These look like a batch of new docs, then.
They're probably ones on Weiner's laptop, and I don't think it's a coincidence that Wikileaks
suddenly ended up with them after Sessions was given the boot. Some government leaker wanted
to wait until Sessions was gone to make sure his butt was covered.
@dearieme
And it really shows with his absence in the most recent season. I think it's also that Frank
Underwood comes off as a likable guy at times while everyone else on the show are just plain
nasty people.
Google's *is* fairly transparent about their autocomplete policy. According to them, they
censor "sex', "hate", "violence" and "harmful activities". Most of the above examples
probably fall under the "hate" grouping, which includes ethnicity, religion, and sexual
orientation.
You also have to keep in mind that Google is a very algorithm driven company. More often
than not someone's making a high-level decision, but most of the individual level choices are
made by some machine learning algo that's essentially a black box. Some neural network linked
a non-insignificant percentage of "jew" queries to downstream clickthroughs to the Daily
Stormer. Whereas "mormon" queries don't lead to hate sites. So the censor algo tries to tag
everything with "jew" in the autocomplete.
As for the opiod death thing, that's pretty consistent with Google's general censoring of
any drug-related query. This would fall under the "harmful activities" category. You'll
notice that sites Drugs-Forums, Bluelight and Erowid, which openly discuss and advocate
recreational drug use, no longer appear in most searches. Again, "death from opiates" is
being tagged, not for nefarious political reasons, but because to an algorithm it looks like
something someone might search for before getting high.
Steve, You have readers at The Goolag. By the time I read this, "death from open heart
surgery" was at the top of the heap returned for your search string, along with some other
amusing obscure suggestions.
I'm old enough to remember the wild west web. It probably ended when Obama legally forced
google to take down the movie 'innocence of muslims' from youtube until hillary could get to
benghazi or something.
But I loved it when back in the day the first search result for "Jew" was "Jew Watch".
Of course Larry and Sergei were among the Jews being "watched" (I assume Stalin and Sailer
are too, those are some verbose fellas!) but despite the 2 minutes of outrage Google stuck to
it's guns.
Bear in mind, a lot of kids ACTUALLY WERE innocently searching "Jew" and getting an
interesting earful.
But it wasn't until this had been the top result for nonths and headlines in every paper
for 3 days that Google gave in by placing a: "Here's why you are seeing this result first.
Also, no, we do not like Nazis".
I really liked the old internet but somewhere along the way, "the market" got in the
way.
I also happen to think that encouragement is both sweet and probably at least as effective
as the opposite so I enjoy crediting google for letting jew watch hold top position (it had
the most references to "jew" apparently) and for publicly fighting obama on thr innocence of
muslims thing – another thing that was rather principled considering as how many people
believed the Copt that the movie was financed by "a hundred rich jews" and herr Larry and
Sergei were fighting to keep broadcasting it to the world.
Oh, and if ur one of the local antisems suck a lemon
@Anon Lmao
at the idiot SJW who thinks that "Islamist" is a synonym for "Muslim" and gets triggered upon
finding out that Islamists aren't universally revered.
@Achmed E.
Newman What you describe is called, in the search results context (although I'm not sure
about the Google Suggest context), "Google bombing" or "Googlewashing."
I do think that Google has a way to manually preempt their normal algorithms for these
situations, while they work to come up with automated ways to detect and prevent such
mischief, since Google bombing produced bad PR and was embarassing for them. The problem was
generally "fixed" too quickly to have been due to a fundamental algorithm modification.
information retrieval engineers
There are two degrees that most universities give, computer science and computer
engineering. The latter is a more difficult major and involves classes in how computers work
at the hardware level and more machine and assembly language study, but in practice the
graduates just end up working as programmers, like the computer science guys. It's known that
CE guys tend to be smarter, so at the very beginning of your career it helps to have a CE
degree rather than a CS degree. You get a slight salary boost, that snowballs over time,
until you get too old and expensive and are laid off in place of an Indian.
There used to be an activist project called Scroogle which would disrupt Google's
track-keeping of who searched for what, and by way of explanation posted screengrabs of
Google altering its displayed search results ( not suggesed terms ), so that in
one case a Vietnam vet magically became an antiwar anti-Vet hippie. If you clicked through
and read the original page, everything would be clear. If you were a lazy student writing a
paper in a hurry and just read the little summaries posted on the search result page, you
would have a backward but seemingly legitimate understanding. And none of these errors ever
broke right.
@Achmed E.
Newman Sorry, Starbucks no longer wants you watching porn because of "pressure groups";
guess it's one more step to stopping Unz and Vdare down the road once the SPLC gets going.
"Internet safety campaign group Enough is Enough have called on Starbucks to block the
viewing on their Wi-Fi networks since 2016. The group relaunched an online petition calling
for them to keep a promise they said they made more than two years ago to implement a
blocking system.
"The group say that open Wi-Fi hotspots -- like those at Starbucks -- can create "criminal
safe havens for sexual predators to operate with anonymity."
@meh Your
screaming that Google is putting its thumb on the scale, and for exact given nefarious
reason, isn't an argument either, just your suspicion based on prejudice.
Google's tweaked search results are often superficially illogical or seem to be because
they are fluid as well as geographically dependent. It used to be any search for "Jewish"
gave an idiotic "We're concerned about these results" message even if the search was for
"best Jewish daycare."
Ever since Steve first complained about Buttram it's been pointed out that location and
personal history, i.e. cookies and other identifiers also skew the results. Yet he believes
Google should be able to read his mind, and show him whatever story about golfers taking the
SAT on steroids he thinks should be #1 Worldwide News.
It is trivial to modify the browser search extension -- or just to use a different portal
-- in order to gather and compare search pages from multiple sources. But it appears the
cognoscenti around here are lazy and need the world to be changed before they modify their
own behavior for a supposedly better outcome. They don't even realize that Duck Duck Go
merely recycles Google searches with some added pretense of "anonymizing" them, which will
get a laugh if you explain it to any online marketing professional. That's probably too
generous in light of the barely concealed salivating to control what everyone ELSE sees.
Because Google was always intended as some munificent public utility staffed by meek
librarians committed to informing you according to your best interests, yeah right.
Note that Google probably _should_ filter, by default, the suggestions. You wouldn't want
your kid stumbling onto hardcore porn just because it's a common suggestion. Yes, I realize
kids see everything these days -- but that doesn't mean we should surrender all attempts at
decency.
The real problem is that society is so divided that we can't agree on what should be
filtered anymore. I can't imagine anyone getting worked up over tax rate suggestions on
Google, which is what our politics used to be about. Homogeneous societies (in many things,
such as race, culture, religion) have a lot of advantages.
@snorlax
If Sackler thought he'd be the hero to the colored hordes by cooking up his
white-gentile-seeking magical death formula Yaqub-like -- per current state-of-the-art theory
with Unz.com brain-trust -- he sure was kidding himself. The hordes tend not to be too
laudatory of rich elite Jews who spend money on gay paintings n' that shizz.
Sometimes I feel like I live in another country. Haven't used Google or Yahoo search
functions in about 8 years. You would think other people would start to catch on that BigTech
is the Iron Fist of PozFeed, but alas many sheeple remain.
Only use duckduckgo, and more recently ixquick.com or startpage.com
Google has over 85% of the search engine market share in India, Brazil, Spain, Italy,
Australia, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, France & Canada which is a bit odd given than Italy
& Australia are way more sane than Sweden, Belgium & Canada.
Sweden & Belgium are clearly in the palm of Google's Globalists & Mme
Lerner-Spectre is surely quite delighted.
ttps://www.statista.com/statistics/621418/most-popular-search-engines-in-sweden/
Google is not in business to do social engineering, it's in business to make money.
You reckon? I'm inclined to think that Google already has all the money it could ever
want. So if you have more than enough money, what else is there? The obvious answer is power.
Power is even more exciting and even sexier than money.
If modern capitalism really were just about money we wouldn't be facing the problems we're
facing now. But modern capitalism is much much more about power than money.
So Google's main priority is definitely more likely to be social engineering than making
money.
@anonymous
I don't use Google nor do I shop on Amazon. That is what gets me about Instapundit; every
other article, it seems, is how evil big tech is followed up by two links to Amazon for the
latest item that you don't need. Baffling, really.
I'm still trying to figure out why "colored people" is bad but "people of color" is
good.
The thinking is that "colored people" implies that the default is white and then people
can be modified by having a non-white color, while "people of color" implies that they are
the default.
@Anon "And
it is possible that when the skew is anti-right it is not caught as early as anti-left skews
are caught, due to company implicit political biases."
This all by itself could be sufficient to create a significant political bias. Imagine
that you paid much more attention to cleaning the left side of your windshield than your
right side. Without ever deliberately dirtying the right side, you would still end up with a
clean left side and a dirty right side.
@anonymous
I've done some comparisons. For most searches, DDG is just as good. For very recondite
searches Google is better. But I almost always use DDG because I loathe the vermin at Google.
@dfordoom
The same sort of people are always telling us that Hollywood has only money in view when it
produces movies and television shows. No one denies that they worship money, but
yes–power is the greater aphrodisiac.
Skripal events probably helped to advance this line of investigation. So in a way UK intelligence services put their own
stooge on the line of fire.
Notable quotes:
"... Russian prosecutors on Monday claimed that Magnitsky and several other people familiar with Browder's illicit activities in Russia may have been killed on his order. They said a new criminal case has been opened against Browder in Russia, and that Moscow will seek his extradition as an alleged ringleader of an international criminal enterprise involved in money laundering ..."
"... The prosecutors identified four people who were suspects in the Browder case, all of whom died over the course of less than two years as the investigation against him unfolded. Oktay Gasanov was the first of the four, dying in October 2007; while Magnitsky's death in November 2009 was the last. By the time of his death, Magnitsky had spent almost a year in pre-trial detention. The two others were Valery Kurochkin and Sergey Korobeinikov, who died in April 2008 and September 2008, respectively. ..."
"... Considering that the three individuals, with the exception of Magnitsky, died within months of each other while being investigated as part of Browder's case, "it is highly likely that they were killed to get rid of accomplices who could give an incriminating testimony against Browder," a senior official with the Russian General Prosecutor's office told journalists. The same may be true for Magnitsky, he said. The prosecutor stressed that Russia didn't conduct detailed studies into how the suspected poison affects living organisms, but several research institutions based in the US, France and Italy did. ..."
"... The prosecutors claim that Browder was the party who benefited most from the death of Magnitsky. They cited journalist Oleg Lurie, who shared a prison cell with Magnitsky before the latter's death. Speaking under oath during a court hearing in New York, Lurie said that his cellmate had complained to him that Browder's lawyers were pressuring him into signing a false statement. Magnitsky's testimony claimed that he had uncovered a conspiracy to embezzle taxpayers' money involving Russian officials. ..."
"... The Russian prosecutors said Browder allegedly wanted to silence his employee after obtaining the false claim. The statement itself was used to blame Russian officials for Magnitsky's death and accuse the Russian government of a cover-up. ..."
"... Described by critics as a 'vulture capitalist,' Browder seemed quite comfortable earning millions of dollars in the financial wild west. In 2005, as fallen oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was standing trial for tax evasion, Browder scolded him on the BBC for using personal wealth to grasp at political power, and for leaving "in his wake aggrieved investors too numerous to count." He was also a staunch public supporter of the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... The investor then reinvented himself as an anti-Putin figure, using the death of Magnitsky to lobby various countries to impose sanctions on the Russian officials he blamed for his employee's death. The US Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012, allowing people accused by Washington of human rights violations to be targeted. However, it is perceived by the Kremlin as just a tool to restrain Russia for the sake of global political and economic competition. ..."
"... Among Browder's latest exploits is playing a role in the 'Russiagate' story. A key part of the elusive search for collusion between US President Donald Trump and the Russian government is a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. The meeting was apparently organized with a view to lobbying for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Its architect, Browder, has therefore been eager to lend his expertise on 'Russian machinations' to US lawmakers and media outlets. ..."
"... If you like this story, share it with a friend! ..."
Kremlin
critic Bill Browder may have given the order for his employee Sergei Magnitsky to be poisoned
with a rare toxin in a Russian prison cell, along with other suspects in a tax-evasion probe
against him, prosecutors have said. British financier Browder was once a well-connected
investor in post-Soviet Russia, but he became a fugitive from the law in the country after
being accused of financial crimes. In the West, however, he is best known as the employer of
Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant who died in police custody while being investigated in
connection to the Browder case. Magnitsky's death became an international scandal, with Browder
accusing Russian officials of killing him.
Russian prosecutors on Monday claimed that Magnitsky and several other people familiar with
Browder's illicit activities in Russia may have been killed on his order. They said a new
criminal case has been opened against Browder in Russia, and that Moscow will seek his
extradition as an alleged ringleader of an international criminal enterprise involved in money
laundering.
The prosecutors identified four people who were suspects in the Browder case, all of whom
died over the course of less than two years as the investigation against him unfolded. Oktay
Gasanov was the first of the four, dying in October 2007; while Magnitsky's death in November
2009 was the last. By the time of his death, Magnitsky had spent almost a year in pre-trial
detention. The two others were Valery Kurochkin and Sergey Korobeinikov, who died in April 2008
and September 2008, respectively.
Korobeinikov died after falling off a high-rise building, while the others had health
complications. The Russian prosecutors believe all four of them may have been killed with a
rare water-soluble compound of aluminum. Each of the men showed symptoms consistent with being
poisoned by the toxin prior to their deaths, while Korobeinikov had traces of it in his liver,
according to a post mortem. An investigation into four possible murders has been
opened.
Considering that the three individuals, with the exception of Magnitsky, died within
months of each other while being investigated as part of Browder's case, "it is highly likely
that they were killed to get rid of accomplices who could give an incriminating testimony
against Browder," a senior official with the Russian General Prosecutor's office told
journalists. The same may be true for Magnitsky, he said. The prosecutor stressed that Russia
didn't conduct detailed studies into how the suspected poison affects living organisms, but
several research institutions based in the US, France and Italy did.
The prosecutors claim that Browder was the party who benefited most from the death of
Magnitsky. They cited journalist Oleg Lurie, who shared a prison cell with Magnitsky before the
latter's death. Speaking under oath during a court hearing in New York, Lurie said that his
cellmate had complained to him that Browder's lawyers were pressuring him into signing a false
statement. Magnitsky's testimony claimed that he had uncovered a conspiracy to embezzle
taxpayers' money involving Russian officials.
The Russian prosecutors said Browder allegedly wanted to silence his employee after
obtaining the false claim. The statement itself was used to blame Russian officials for
Magnitsky's death and accuse the Russian government of a cover-up.
Last year, Browder was sentenced by a Russian court to nine years in prison for tax evasion.
The trial was held in absentia and Moscow failed to have him extradited to serve the term. The
prosecutors said that they will renew attempts to get custody of Browder as part of the new
criminal case, using a UN convention on fighting transnational crime to have him arrested.
Browder is a US-born British financier, whose change of citizenship had the benefit of
allowing him to avoid paying tax on foreign earnings. However, he claimed the switch was
prompted by his family being persecuted in the US during the McCarthyism witch hunt, while the
UK seemed like the land of law and order.
He made a fortune in Russia during the country's chaotic transition to a market economy,
having invested before there was a stock exchange in Moscow. His Hermitage Capital Management
fund was a leading foreign investment entity in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Described by critics as a 'vulture capitalist,' Browder seemed quite comfortable earning
millions of dollars in the financial wild west. In 2005, as fallen oil tycoon Mikhail
Khodorkovsky was standing trial for tax evasion, Browder scolded him on the BBC for using personal
wealth to grasp at political power, and for leaving "in his wake aggrieved investors too
numerous to count." He was also a staunch public supporter of the policies of Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
The transformation of his public image from a financial shark into a human rights crusader
started when Browder himself entered the spotlight of Russian law enforcement. In 2007, the
foundation he ran was targeted by a probe into possible large-scale embezzlement of Russian
taxpayers' money. Magnitsky, who worked for Browder and had knowledge of his firms' finances,
was arrested and held in pre-trial detention until his death in November 2009. The British
businessman insisted that the entire case was fabricated and that Magnitsky had been
assassinated for exposing a criminal scheme involving several Russian tax officials.
The investor then reinvented himself as an anti-Putin figure, using the death of
Magnitsky to lobby various countries to impose sanctions on the Russian officials he blamed for
his employee's death. The US Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012, allowing people accused by
Washington of human rights violations to be targeted. However, it is perceived by the Kremlin
as just a tool to restrain Russia for the sake of global political and economic
competition.
Browder's new-found status as a rights advocate and self-proclaimed worst enemy of Putin
helps him deflect Russia's attempts to prosecute him. On several occasions, Russia filed
international arrest warrants against him with Interpol, which even led to his brief detention
in Spain last May.
Among Browder's latest exploits is playing a role in the 'Russiagate' story. A key part
of the elusive search for collusion between US President Donald Trump and the Russian
government is a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. The meeting was
apparently organized with a view to lobbying for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Its
architect, Browder, has therefore been eager to lend his expertise on 'Russian machinations' to
US lawmakers and media outlets.
Russia to UK: Prove Your Spies Did Not Poison Our Citizens or Face Consequences
What a great Russian response! Finally!
RI
Staff
Thu, Mar
29, 2018
|
300 words
17,686
225
YOLO Lavrov
What is good for the goose is good for the gander. At least Russia seems to think so. There may not be conclusive
evidence Britain poisoned Sergei Skripal and his visiting daughter Yulia. But then neither is there evidence
Moscow did it and that did not prevent London from demanding Russia proves its innocent (in 24 hours). Moreover
the British are keeping Russians away from evidence, not the other way around.
So why wouldn't Russia now demand
Britain instead proves its own innocence? Well, Lavrov's Ministry of External Affairs
can't think of a reason
why not.
It
better be something good!
Russia as demanded that London provide proof that
British spies did not carry out the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that their analysis of the assassination attempt has them
to believe in 'a possible involvement in it of the British intelligence services'.
The Ministry says that in the absence of proof of British innocence, Moscow will regard the incident as an
attempt on the lives of Russian citizens on foreign soil.
'An analysis of all the circumstances ... leads us to think of the possible involvement in it (the
poisoning) of the British intelligence services,' the foreign ministry said in a statement.
'If convincing evidence to the contrary is not presented to the Russian side we will consider that
we are dealing with an attempt on the lives of our citizens as a result of a massive political provocation.'
Excellent! 'Do what you demand of us and prove your innocence to us, or we will regard it was a state-sponsored
attempt at murder of our citizens.'
Lavrov has truly outdone himself here. And yet all he has done is responded in kind. So simple and yet so
brilliant.
UK had the verdict ,before the trial on poisoning.No evidence? If May cannot explain the
poisonings of Russians on their soil,Russia would be justifyed in a token bombing of London.
The Muslim Empire will forever be (gratefully) indebted to the Russian spirit and all it's
peoples for saving our posteriors in the Middle East ; if the people being saved are the
creators of the numbers everybody is using : what does that say about the brilliance of those
strong enough to protect our villagers from thieves!? *bows before the great Russian
homeland* :)
The idiots in our leadership outplayed and outmanoeuvred themselves within 48 hours; the
whole thing is farcical and an embarrassment to my Country. I know it, millions of other
Brits know it, the World knows it.
PS Call it the British establishment not low-brow Brits,
who are the people from the South and Scotland.
Agreed. A lot of commentators have difficulty separating the people from their
governments, don't realize that most 'leaders' are in their positions due to corruption
of one type or another.
by allowing your political class to do these types of things, just like
americans, you are complicit in the crimes. therefore ghartwells point is
well delivered
I am a B1 / A2 citizen of the UK that owns a Company and has been a
follower of the Conservatives for most of my political life (changing
my life as paid member of UKIP for 4 years). Do not question or
accuse me on my beliefs nor intelligence - our government has fallen
and sold its soul.
LOL. That`s the establishment, of which the many governments are only small
parts... People just get used... as always, and everywhere...
Gorbachev was given a Nobel Peace Prize (when it still meant something, I think),
but he is considered a traitor by people in Russia and not so much because of
what he has done, but how he went about doing it...
Rev 1 - it was the Red Indians or whatever they are called now that called / said
...... the US dark blue army and in general the white man or invaders "'speak
with forked tongue.'
We in the US sympathize with your condition. Both our countries suffer from the same
entropic political/financial methods and it is time to put an end to it. From GHW Bush
and Margaret Thatcher to GW Bush and Tony Blair, Obama and Cameron, we have all seen
nothing but unjustified wars and suffering. Now Theresa May is trying to trap Trump
into a war with Putin. So all of this is more about continuing the effort to remove
Trump than it is against Putin.
Thank you. But (sorry) my good Maggie made many mistakes but I didn't realise it
then, but for the UK, she was the last to defend our Country or so I thought, I
do not want to think about that.
Since Blair, the UK is a shadow of itself.
Regards "Now Theresa May is trying to trap Trump into a war with Putin", I
disagree, in that, this is thoroughly orchestrated between all the vermin. It is
like watching a B rated spy movie, but thankfully many Countries are waking up to
the goings on.
We need a revolution as do you guys ..we have gotten to that stage
unfortunately .......and yes, it is sad to say.
Your "Maggie" is the one who brokered the El Yamamah deal with the Saudis
that unleashed the the Saudi 9/11/01 attacks years later. She also provoked
the Malvinas War. Did good? C'mon that is like saying Benedict Arnold was a
hero. Yes, May is pulling Trump into war with Russia, why? Because the
British Empire is finally finished and it sees the Belt Road Initiative and
the American System a threat. We in the USA already had our revolution and
won the military victory. Now we will win the political victory over
imperialism. England should do the same.
Irish hate themselves? I think not : those people not only appreciate life but
they stand up for Palestine #WW3 ignorant slave of money sheeple cries trying to
defame their betters?
http://biblehub.com/1_samue...
shekel whores are promised to be left with
NOTHING ... they just donkeys to anybody with a spine after all hehe
View
Hide
As I remember having read:
- The proud people of Ireland are the only country really aligning with the
Palestinian people.
- The Irish are the only country in the world really boycotting the Invader
and Oppressor and Racist, Israel.
- The Irish have a lot of experience with "what is right and what is
wrong".
- The Irish have a lot of years, 800 years, experience what it is to be
oppressed by an oppressor and BTW it is their neigbor who is their
oppressor.
- The Irish are sometimes not quite clear in their stance for now they are
joining the warmonger Britian, the same oppressor who is trying to oppress
Russia which country have done nothing wrong to nobody nor at all to the
Irish.
Remarkable.
Britain does not comprise an entity called Ireland, hence Irish are not 'Brits',
as intimated by the statement above. Yes, Britain still colonises six counties on
the island of Ireland which they call Northern Ireland, a consequence of planting
their subjects over generations in a foreign land. Yes, Britain has caused much
damage to the entire world and its peoples. Its governing classes, and probably
the vast majority of its peoples (out of loyalty and poor education), are of
course blind to, and unaccepting of, such facts. Britain as it has operated over
the centuries, and now a fully engaged neoliberal stooge, can not survive in a
multi-polar world. Non-neoliberal, non-empire vassal Irish people would be fully
behind Russia and its cultural philosophy.
Just to point out an assumption that we have all jumped on, the poisoning; we do not actually know
if there was any poisoning done at all, all I have seen was on day one of this fiasco, a picture of
the two fast asleep on a park bench. I have seen no proof, jut the opposite in fact.
We have a letter to the Times from Steven Davies, the consultant in emergency medicine at
Salisbury hospital, stating that no [sic] patients had been treated for nerve-agent
poisoning, and only three had been treated for poisoning of any kind. [Type not stated]
Discussed here, with full text of the letter:
Oh no, sorry but, the letter has been published or a last the intention of it, in most
UK MSM, comments section blocked, interpretation watered down.....SSDD.
Damn I cannot edit it....as half my comment disappeared.
The letter was
published but the connation given to the context of it was totally reversed in
that millions will continue believing the government and media's BS.
I wondered too. Their phones were turned off before the incident, and who knows if the
Brutish (sic) authorities had arranged a deal with Skripal who is now a British citizen.
Perhaps Yulia will conveniently die now that she has apparently recovered a lot and may
decide to speak out. Imagine if she tried to contradict the May/Boris/EU/NATO line how long
she would survive.
I didn't now about the phones, Unless Skripal has duel Nationality he is a resident NOT
citizen, but it is intriguing how the UK government will get out of this hole they have
dug for themselves. "HOSPITAL HIT BY MSRN combined with EBOLA, AIDS and MARS
!!!?".......it is all a total crock of s..t and those Bsta.rds have seriously
embarrassed my country.
PS I still have a terrible feeling that it is about stopping
BREXIT.
She has no chance and no way back now. UK will never let her speak the truth. Two
options: speak what May wants or dissapear under "witness protection programm." Skripal
relatives (Ylia's step sister) was denied of UK visa now.
The Upper Class is going to loose the Plot.
Be vigilant.
The British Rotschild might give it another try, a chemical attack (4th time) in Syria.
Just to keep the game against Russia going.
Remind you that Jacob Rothschild. bought the "gaspipes" in Ukraine AND
Jacob R. is also taking part in a cooperative "alleged stealing" of the Syrian resources of
the Golan Heights with his Zionist Friends. Oil and Gas is there to have.
Mr. Assad of
Syria promised the world, all foreign forces will be driven from the land of the Syrian
people. I assume together with Hezbollah, Iran and of course the famous Syrian Tiger Brigade.
About time.
The Khazarians are left some time to move to their new country Ukraine. With hands off the
independent Republics of Luhansk and Donbass.
And, finally the Palestinian and Israelian people will have peace.
...'s pretty 'asymmetric' and rather 'subtle', ...ain't it?
NNNAAAAHAAA! ...Russia isn't being
offended WITHOUT consequences!
Not only are the Pomm's going to very silently 'divert' the attention fom this alleged
'poisoning', and let it 'slip', but are going to make OVERT 're-approachments' to Russia, come next
winter, and they get low on Natural Gas!
I don t want Russia to politely let them OFF . this is tge time ..because they chose to throw
theur "politicsl..media..world kangaroo court accuse ..no need for rvidence" GAME ..TO be
CONOKETELY MASSIVELY DESTROYED by Russia in a grand Historical sense this time aroubd ..i
want Russia to HANG THEM ALL politically by very intensely going on a diplomatic media
political campaignmit only takes nothing more than the resources russia ALREADY HAS...WORLD
PUBLIC OPINION GRAVITATING AROUND RUSSIA ..because these people are only continuing what all
started from CENTURIES AGO WITH JOHN MILTON thecplayright in elizabethan england ...HE was
one of the original creators of these caricaturish ..demonizing RACIST Pattern that hss been
unbroken sjnce then ....i am talking about his long ago appointment as FIRST ambassadir to
russia to open rekations in St petersburg but brought with him that SUPERIORITY complex snd
went back to england making his "reports" about how Russians were inferior oluncouth
..eatingveithout forks..drew the early cartoons we know TODAY reflected in these demonizing
of russia..NOW IS THE TIME FOR RUSSIA ..before the shots are fired...to FIRST DESTROY RVERY
LAST SHRED of that fake credibility from the west. So that in the afyermath of WHATEVER
transpires next ..the LYING Western
Atlantic Empire can NEVER EVER SLEAZE its way in lies NOR in "letting it slide away quietly "
as if nothing was the matter. Well..DUH
"... Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway, Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region ..."
"... The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government agencies." ..."
The hacking collective known as "Anonymous" published a
trove of documents on November 5 which it claims exposes a UK-based psyop to create a " large-scale information secret service
" in Europe in order to combat "Russian propaganda" - which has been blamed for everything from
Brexit to US President Trump winning the 2016 US election.
The primary objective of the " Integrity Initiative " - established
in 2015 by the Institute for Statecraft - is "to provide a coordinated
Western response to Russian disinformation and other elements of hybrid warfare."
And while the notion of Russian disinformation has become the West's favorite new bogeyman to excuse things such as Hillary Clinton's
historic loss to Donald Trump, we note that "Anonymous" was called out by WikiLeaks in October 2016 as an FBI cutout, while the report
on the Integrity Initiative that Anonymous exposed comes from Russian state-owned network
RT - so it's anyone's guess whose 400lb
hackers are at work here.
Operating on a budget
of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists,
military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference
in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim.
The UK establishment appears to be conducting the very activities of which it and its allies have long-accused the Kremlin,
with little or no corroborating evidence. The program also aims to "change attitudes in Russia itself" as well as influencing
Russian speakers in the EU and North America, one of the leaked
documents states. -
RT
The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway,
Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its
sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region .
The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts
embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government
agencies."
The initiative has received £168,000 in funding from HQ NATO Public Diplomacy and £250,000 from the
US State Department , the
documents allege.
Some of its purported members include British MPs and high-profile " independent" journalists with a penchant for anti-Russian
sentiment in their collective online oeuvre, as showcased by a brief glance at their Twitter feeds. -
RT
Noted examples of "inedependent" anti-Russia journalists:
Spanish "Op"
In one example of the group's activities, a "Moncloa Campaign" was successfully conducted by the group's Spanish cluster to block
the appointment of Colonel Pedro Banos as the director of Spain's Department of Homeland Security. It took just seven-and-a-half
hours to accomplish, brags the group in the
documents .
"The [Spanish] government is preparing to appoint Colonel Banos, known for his pro-Russian and pro-Putin positions in the Syrian
and Ukrainian conflicts, as Director of the Department of Homeland Security, a key body located at the Moncloa," begins Nacho Torreblanca
in a seven-part tweetstorm describing what happened.
Others joined in. Among them according to the leaks academic Miguel Αngel Quintana Paz, who wrote that "Mr. Banos is to
geopolitics as a homeopath is to medicine." Appointing such a figure would be "a shame." -
RT
The operation was reported in Spanish media, while Banos was labeled "pro-Putin" by UK MP Bob Seely.
In short, expect anything counter to predominant "open-border" narratives to be the Kremlin's fault - and not a natural populist
reflex to the destruction of borders, language and culture.
"... It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" ..."
"... "The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016." ..."
"... "Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..." ..."
"... this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war ..."
"... Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same laws as the rest of the UK. ..."
"... The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth ..."
"... British hypocrisy publicly called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me ..."
"... It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint does not bode well for such relations ..."
"... A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants? ..."
"... I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins. ..."
"... The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's explicit approval. ..."
"... Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda ..."
"... This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap. ..."
"... Pat Lang posted a report that strongly implies that charges of Russian influence on Trump are a deliberate falsification ..."
"... It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6 meddling ..."
"... As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was the best candidate for the job. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love? ..."
"... They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass psychological pathology among the elites. ..."
"... The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist "order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation. ..."
"... Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is Strength." The three pillars of political power. ..."
"... Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK government. ..."
British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear CampaignsSteveg , Nov 24,
2018 11:43:44 AM |
link
In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia
propaganda into the western media stream.
We have already seen
many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who
does not follow the anti-Russian government lines. The 'Russian collusion' smear campaign
against Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but
seems to be part of a different project.
The ' Integrity
Initiative ' builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military
personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via
social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.
On June 7 it took the the Spanish cluster only a few hours to derail the appointment of
Perto Banos as the Director of the National Security Department in Spain. The cluster
determined that he had a too positive view of Russia and launched a coordinated social media
smear
campaign (pdf) against him.
The Initiative and its operations were unveiled when someone liberated some of its
documents, including its budget applications to the British Foreign Office, and
posted them under the 'Anonymous' label at cyberguerrilla.org .
The Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by The Institute for Statecraft in
cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to bring to the attention of
politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed
by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North
America.
It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" and
promises that:
Cluster members will be sent to educational sessions abroad to improve the technical
competence of the cluster to deal with disinformation and strengthen bonds in the cluster
community. [...] (Events with DFR Digital Sherlocks, Bellingcat, EuVsDisinfo, Buzzfeed,
Irex, Detector Media, Stopfake, LT MOD Stratcom – add more names and propose cluster
participants as you desire).
The Initiatives Orwellian slogan is 'Defending Democracy Against Disinformation'. It
covers European countries, the UK, the U.S. and Canada and seems to want to expand to the
Middle East.
On its About page
it claims: "We are not a government body but we do work with government departments and
agencies who share our aims." The now published budget plans show that more than 95% of the
Initiative's funding is coming directly from the British government, NATO and the U.S. State
Department. All the 'contact persons' for creating 'clusters' in foreign countries are
British embassy officers. It amounts to a foreign influence campaign by the British
government that hides behind a 'civil society' NGO.
The organisation is led by one Chris N. Donnelly who
receives (pdf) £8,100 per month for creating the smear campaign network.
To counter Russian disinformation and malign influence in Europe by: expanding the
knowledge base; harnessing existing expertise, and; establishing a network of networks of
experts, opinion formers and policy makers, to educate national audiences in the threat and
to help build national capacities to counter it .
The Initiative has a black and white view that is based on a "we are the good ones"
illusion. When "we" 'educate the public' it is legitimate work. When others do similar, it
its disinformation. That is of course not the reality. The Initiative's existence itself,
created to secretly manipulate the public, is proof that such a view is wrong.
If its work were as legit as it wants to be seen, why would the Foreign Office run it from
behind the curtain as an NGO? The Initiative is not the only such operation. It's
applications seek funding from a larger "Russian Language Strategic Communication Programme"
run by the Foreign Office.
The 2017/18 budget application sought FCO funding of £480,635. It received
£102,000 in co-funding from NATO and the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense. The 2018/19
budget application shows a
planned spending (pdf) of £1,961,000.00. The co-sponsors this year are again NATO
and the Lithuanian MoD, but
also include (pdf) the U.S. State Department with £250,000 and Facebook with
£100,000. The budget lays out a strong cooperation with the local military of each
country. It notes that NATO is also generous in financing the local clusters.
One of the liberated papers of the Initiative is a talking points memo labeled
Top 3 Deliverable for FCO (pdf):
Developing and proving the cluster concept and methodology, setting up clusters in a
range of countries with different circumstances
Making people (in Government, think tanks, military, journalists) see the big
picture, making people acknowledge that we are under concerted, deliberate hybrid attack
by Russia
Increasing the speed of response, mobilising the network to activism in pursuit of
the "golden minute"
Under top 1, setting up clusters, a subitem reads:
- Connects media with academia with policy makers with practitioners in a country to impact
on policy and society: ( Jelena Milic silencing pro-kremlin voices on Serbian TV )
Defending Democracy by silencing certain voices on public TV seems to be a
self-contradicting concept.
Another subitem notes how the Initiative secretly influences foreign governments:
We engage only very discreetly with governments, based entirely on trusted personal
contacts, specifically to ensure that they do not come to see our work as a problem, and to
try to influence them gently, as befits an independent NGO operation like ours, viz;
- Germany, via the Zentrum Liberale Moderne to the Chancellor's Office and MOD
- Netherlands, via the HCSS to the MOD
- Poland and Romania, at desk level into their MFAs via their NATO Reps
- Spain, via special advisers, into the MOD and PM's office (NB this may change very soon
with the new Government)
- Norway, via personal contacts into the MOD
- HQ NATO, via the Policy Planning Unit into the Sec Gen's office.
We have latent contacts into other governments which we will activate as needs be as the
clusters develop.
A look at the 'clusters' set up in U.S. and UK shows some prominent names.
Members of the Atlantic Council, which has a contract to
censor Facebook posts , appear on several cluster lists. The UK core cluster also
includes some prominent names like tax fraudster William Browder , the daft Atlantic Council
shill Ben Nimmo and the neo-conservative Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. One person
of interest is Andrew Wood who
handed the Steele 'dirty dossier' to Senator John McCain to smear Donald Trump over
alleged relations with Russia. A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah
Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times, Neil Buckley from the FT and Jonathan Marcus
of the BBC.
A ' Cluster
Roundup ' (pdf) from July 2018 details its activities in at least 35 countries. Another
file reveals (pdf) the local
partnering institutions and individuals involved in the programs.
The Initiatives Guide
to Countering Russian Information (pdf) is a rather funny read. It lists the downing of
flight MH 17 by a Ukranian BUK missile, the fake chemical incident in Khan Sheikhoun and the
Skripal Affair as examples for "Russian disinformation". But at least two of these events,
Khan Sheikun via the UK run White Helmets and the Skripal affair, are evidently products of
British intelligence disinformation operations.
The probably most interesting papers of the whole stash is the 'Project Plan' laid out at
pages 7-40 of the
2018 budget application v2 (pdf). Under 'Sustainability' it notes:
The programme is proposed to run until at least March 2019, to ensure that the clusters
established in each country have sufficient time to take root, find funding, and
demonstrate their effectiveness. FCO funding for Phase 2 will enable the activities to be
expanded in scale, reach and scope. As clusters have established themselves, they have
begun to access local sources of funding. But this is a slow process and harder in some
countries than others. HQ NATO PDD [Public Diplomacy Division] has proved a reliable source
of funding for national clusters. The ATA [Atlantic Treaty Association] promises to be the
same, giving access to other pots of money within NATO and member nations. Funding from
institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal
disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been
resolved and funding should now flow.
The programme has begun to create a critical mass of individuals from a cross society
(think tanks, academia, politics, the media, government and the military) whose work is
proving to be mutually reinforcing . Creating the network of networks has given each
national group local coherence, credibility and reach, as well as good international
access. Together, these conditions, plus the growing awareness within governments of the
need for this work, should guarantee the continuity of the work under various auspices and
in various forms.
The
third part of the budget application (pdf) list the various activities, their output and
outcome. The budget plan includes a section that describes 'Risks' to the initiative. These
include hacking of the Initiatives IT as well as:
Adverse publicity generated by Russia or by supporters of Russia in target countries, or by
political and interest groups affected by the work of the programme, aimed at discrediting
the programme or its participants, or to create political embarrassment.
We hope that this piece contributes to such embarrassment.
Posted by b on November 24, 2018 at 11:24 AM |
Permalink
"The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to
prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election
meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil
throughout 2016."
"Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that
Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In
Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling
custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele
dossier..."
For M16 to expose this level of stupidity is stunning.
this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and
propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex
corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the
voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war.. i guess the idea is to get the
ordinary people to think in terms of hating another country based on lies and that this would
be a good thing... it is very sad what uk / usa leadership in the past century has come down
to here.... i can only hope that info releases like this will hasten it's demise...
Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of
illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a
financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same
laws as the rest of the UK.
The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to
me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth
@6 ingrian... things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of Russia after the fall of
the Soviet Union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit Russia
fully, as they'd intended...
Let the Doxx wars begin! Sure, Anonymous is not Russian but it will surely now be targeted
and smeared as such which would show that it has hit a nerve. British hypocrisy publicly
called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me.
I think we've all noticed the euro-asslantic press (and friends) on behalf of, willingly
and in cooperation with the British intelligence et al 'calling out' numerous Russians as
G(R)U/spies/whatever for a while now yet providing less than a shred of credible
evidence.
It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The
interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint
does not bode well for such relations.
Meanwhile in Brussels they are having their cake and eating it, i.e. bemoaning Europe's
'weak response' to Russian propaganda:
"A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of
the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you
have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants?
Yet another example of the pot calling the kettle black when in fact the kettle may not be
black at all; it's just the pot making up things. "These Russian criminals are using
propaganda to show (truths) like the fact the DNC and Clinton campaigns colluded to prevent
Sanders from being nominated, so we need to establish a clandestine propaganda network to
establish that the Russians are running propaganda!"
"In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia
propaganda into the western media stream."
I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit
and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been
launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins.
The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's
explicit approval.
Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed
by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to
have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are
not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own
party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda
BUT...the author assures us that the "deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding
should now flow" Huh?? In other words, the fix is in. Mueller will pardon Trump on collusion charges but the
propaganda campaign against Russia will continue...with the full support of both parties. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it...
This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been
about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had
plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap.
A lot of
sour grapes with this so-called 'integrity initiative', IMO. BP was behind a lot of this, I
would also think. When Assad pulled the plug on the pipeline through the Levant in 2009, the
Brits hacked up a fur ball. It's gone downhill for them ever since. Couldn't happen to a
nicer lot. If you can't invade or beat them with proxies, you can at least call them names.
If Trump was taking dirty money or engaged in criminal activity with Russians then he
was doing it with Felix Sater, who was under the control of the FBI... And who was in
charge of the FBI during all of the time that Sater was a signed up FBI snitch? You got it
-- Robert Mueller (2001 thru 2013) ...
It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6
meddling, including:
Steele dossier: To create suspicion in government, media, and later the public
Leaking of DNC emails to Wikileaks (but calling it a "hack"):
To help with election of Trump and link Wikileaks (as agent) to Russian election
meddling
Cambridge Analytica: To provide necessary reasoning for Trump's (certain) win of the electoral college.
Note: We later found that dozens of firms had undue access to Facebook data. Why did the
campaign turn to a British firm instead of an American firm? Well, it had to be a British
firm if MI6 was running the (supposed) Facebook targeting for CIA.
As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The
election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was
the best candidate for the job.
The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love?
"things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of russia after the fall of the soviet
union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit russia fully, as
they'd intended..."
They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent
Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course
the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass
psychological pathology among the elites.
The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist
"order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US
and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation.
Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it
all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is
Strength." The three pillars of political power.
Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his
pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always
been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so
called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK
government...and in this context, new empowerished sovereign governemts into the EU should
consider the possibility expelling these traitors as spies of the UK....
Country list of agents of influence according to the leak:
Germany: Harold Elletson ,Klaus NaumannWolf-Ruediger Bengs, Ex Amb Killian, Gebhardt v Moltke, Roland
Freudenstein, Hubertus Hoffmann, Bertil Wenger, Beate Wedekind, Klaus Wittmann, Florian
Schmidt, Norris v Schirach
Sweden, Norway, Finland: Martin Kragh , Jardar Ostbo, Chris Prebensen, Kate Hansen Bundt, Tor Bukkvoll, Henning-Andre
Sogaard, Kristen Ven Bruusgard, Henrik O Breitenbauch, Niels Poulsen, Jeppe Plenge, Claus
Mathiesen, Katri Pynnoniemi, Ian Robertson, Pauli Jarvenpaa, Andras Racz
Netherlands: Dr Sijbren de Jong, Ida Eklund-Lindwall, Yevhen Fedchenko, Rianne Siebenga, Jerry Sullivan,
Hunter B Treseder, Chris Quick
Spain: Nico de Pedro, Ricardo Blanco Tarno, Eduardo Serra Rexach, Dionisio Urteaga Todo, Dimitri
Barua, Fernando Valenzuela Marzo, Marta Garcia, Abraham Sanz, Fernando Maura, Jose Ignacio
Sanchez Amor, Jesus Ramon-Laca Clausen, Frances Ghiles, Carmen Claudin, Nika Prislan, Luis
Simon, Charles Powell, Mira Milosevich, Daniel Iriarte, Anna Bosch, Mira Milosevich-Juaristi,
Tito, Frances Ghiles, Borja Lasheras, Jordi Bacaria, Alvaro Imbernon-Sainz, Nacho Samor
US, Canada:
Mary Ellen Connell, Anders Aslund, Elizabeth Braw, Paul Goble, David Ziegler
Evelyn Farkas, Glen Howard, Stephen Blank, Ian Brzezinski, Thomas Mahnken, John Nevado,
Robert Nurick, Jeff McCausland
Todd Leventhal
UK: Chris Donnelly
Amalyah Hart William Browder John Ardis
Roderick Collins, Patrick Mileham Deborah Haynes
Dan Lafayeedney Chris Hernon Mungo Melvin
Rob Dover Julian Moore Agnes Josa David Aaronovitch Stephen Dalziel Raheem Shapi Ben
Nimmo
Robert Hall Alexander Hoare Steve Jermy Dominic Kennedy
Victor Madeira Ed Lucas Dr David Ryall
Graham Geale Steve Tatham Natalie Nougayrede Alan Riley [email protected]Anne Applebaum Neil Logan Brown James Wilson
Primavera Quantrill
Bruce Jones David Clark Charles Dick
Ahmed Dassu Sir Adam Thompson Lorna Fitzsimons Neil Buckley Richard Titley Euan Grant
Alastair Aitken Yusuf Desai Bobo Lo Duncan Allen Chris Bell
Peter Mason John Lough Catherine Crozier
Robin Ashcroft Johanna Moehring Vadim Kleiner David Fields Alistair Wood Ben Robinson Drew
Foxall Alex Finnen
Orsyia Lutsevych Charlie Hatton Vladimir Ashurkov
Giles Harris Ben Bradshaw
Chris Scheurweghs James Nixey
Charlie Hornick Baiba Braze J Lindley-French
Craig Oliphant Paul Kitching Nick Childs Celia Szusterman
James Sherr Alan Parfitt Alzbeta Chmelarova Keir Giles
Andy Pryce Zach Harkenrider
Kadri Liik Arron Rahaman David Nicholas Igor Sutyagin Rob Sandford Maya Parmar Andrew Wood
Richard Slack Ellie Scarnell
Nick Smith Asta Skaigiryte Ian Bond Joanna Szostek Gintaras Stonys Nina Jancowicz
Nick Washer Ian Williams Joe Green Carl Miller Adrian Bradshaw
Clement Daudy Jeremy Blackham Gabriel Daudy Andrew Lucy Stafford Diane Allen Alexandros
Papaioannou
Paddy Nicoll
In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia
propaganda into the western media stream.
We have already seen
many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who does
not follow the anti-Russian government lines. The 'Russian collusion' smear campaign against
Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but seems to be
part of a different project.
The ' Integrity
Initiative ' builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military personal,
academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via social media to
take action when the British center perceives a need.
"... When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also. ..."
"... Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. ..."
"... This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the WEST? This is nuts. ..."
One of the documents lists a series of propaganda weapons to be used against Russia. One is
use of the church as a weapon. That has already been started in Ukraine with Poroshenko
buying off regligious leader to split Ukraine Orthodoxy from Russian Orthodoxy. It also
explicitly states that the Skripal incident is a 'Dirty Trick' against Russia.
The British political system is on the verge of collapse. BREXIT has finally demonstrated
that the Government/ Opposition parties are clearly aligned against the interests of the
people. The EU is nothing more than an arm of the Globalist agenda of world domination.
The US has shown its true colours - sanctioning every country that stands for independent
sovereignty is not a good foreign policy, and is destined to turn the tide of public opinion
firmly against global hegemony, endless wars, and wealth inequity.
The old Empire is in its death throes. A new paradigm awaits which will exclude all those
who have exploited the many, in order to sit at the top of the pyramid. They cannot escape
Karma.
The Western world needs to come to terms with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its
aftermath. Today, Russia is led by Putin and he obviously has objectives as any national
leader has.
Western "leaders" need to decide whether Putin:
Is trying to create Soviet Union 2.0, to have a 2nd attempt at ruling the world thru
communism and to do this by holding the world to ransom over oil/gas supplies. OR
Is wanting Russia to become a member of the family of nations and of a multi-polar world to improve the lives of
Russian people, but is being blocked at every twist and turn by manufactured events like Russia-gate and the Skripal affair
and now this latest revelation of anti-Russian propaganda campaigns being coordinated and run out of London.
Both of the above cannot be true because there are too many contradictions. Which is it??
Yes because imagine that that we lived in 1940 without any means to inform ourselves and
that media was still in control over the information that reaches us. We would already be in
a fullblown war with Russia because of it but now with the Internet and information going
around freely only a whimpy 10% of we the people stand behind their desperately wanted war.
Imagine that, an informed sheople.
Can't have that, they cannot do their usual stuff anymore.... good riddance.
"250,000 from the US State
Department , the documents allege."....... Interesting.
"During the third
Democratic debate on Saturday night, Hillary Clinton called for a "Manhattan-like
project" to break encrypted terrorist communications. The project would "bring the government and the tech communities together" to find a way
to give law enforcement access to encrypted messages, she said. It's something that some
politicians and intelligence officials have wanted for awhile,"........
***wasn't the Manhatten project a secret venture?????? Hummmmm"
Hillary Clinton has all of our encryption keys, including the FBI's . "Encryption keys" is
a general reference to several encryption functions hijacked by Hillary and her surrogate
ENTRUST. They include hash functions (used to indicate whether the contents have been altered
in transit), PKI public/private key infrastructure, SSL (secure socket layer), TLS (transport
layer security), the Dual_EC_DRBG
NSA algorithm and certificate authorities.
The convoluted structure managed by the "Federal Common Policy" group has ceded to
companies like ENTRUST INC the ability to sublicense their authority to third parties who in
turn manage entire other networks in a Gordian knot of relationships clearly designed to fool
the public to hide their devilish criminality. All roads lead back to Hillary and the Rose
Law Firm."- patriots4truth
When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with
plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also.
FBI/Anonymous can use this story to support a narrative that social media bots posting
memes is a problem for everybody, and it's not a partisan issue. The idea is that fake news
and unrestricted social media are inherently dangerous, and both the West and Russia are
exploiting that, so governments need to agree to restrict the ability to use those platforms
for political speech, especially without using True Names.
Oilygawkies in the UK and USSA seem to be letting their spooks have a good-humored (rating
here on the absurd transparency of these ops) contest to see who can come up with the most
surreal propaganda psy-ops.
But they probably also serve as LHO distractions from something genuinely sleazy.
Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. Anything that is
remotely like Nationalism is the true enemy of these Globalist/Internationalists, which is
what the Top-Ape Bolshevik promoted: see Vladimir Lenin and his quotes on how he believed
fully in "internationalism" for a world without borders. Ironic how they Love the butchers of
the Soviet Union but hate Russia. It is ALL ABOUT IDEOLOGY to these people and "the means
justify the ends".
Basically, if one acquires factual information from an internet source, which leads to
overturning the propaganda to which we're all subjected, then it MUST have come from Putin.
This is the direction they're headed. Anyone speaking out against the official story is
obviously a Russian spy.
Better to call it the Anti-Integrity Initiative. UK cretins up to their usual dirty tricks - let them choke on their poison. The judgement of history will eventually catch up with them.
A good 'ole economic collapse will give western countries a chance to purge their crazy
leaders before they involve us all in a thermonuclear war. Short everything with your entire
accounts.
This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have
such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the
WEST? This is nuts.
Isn't it just as likely someone in the WEST planted this cache, intending Anonymous to
find it?
Any propaganda coming from the UK or US is strictly zionist. EVERYTHING they put out is to
the benefit of Israel and the "lobby". Russia isn't perfect, but if they're an enemy of the
latter, then they should NOT be considered a foe to all thinking and conscientious
people.
Yesterday, the BBC had a thing on Thai workers in Israel, and how they keep dying of
accidents, their general level of slavery etc. Very odd to have a negative Israel story, so I
wonder who upset whom, and what the ongoing status will be.
Thai labourers in Israel tell of harrowing conditions
A year-long BBC investigation has discovered widespread abuse of Thai nationals living
and working in Israel - under a scheme organized by the two governments.
Many are subjected to unsafe working practices and squalid, unsanitary living
conditions. Some are overworked, others underpaid and there are dozens of unexplained
deaths.
England and the U.S. don't like their very poor and rotten social conditions put out for
the public to see. Both countries have severely deteriorating problems on their streets
because of bankrupt governments printing money for foreign wars.
More of the same fraudulent duality while alleged so called but not money etc continues to
flow (everything is criminal) and the cesspool of a hierarchy pretends it's business as
usual.
This isn't about maintaining balance in a lie this is about disclosing the truth and
agendas (Agenda 21 now Agenda 2030 = The New Age Religion is Never Going To Be Saturnism).
The layers of the hierarchy are a lie so unless the alleged so called leaders of those layers
are publicly providing testimony and confession then everything that is being spoon fed to
the pablum puking public through all sources is a lie.
Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity
Initiative consists of "clusters" of (((local politicians, journalists, military personnel,
scientists and academics))).
The (((team))) is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian
interference in European affairs, while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes,
the documents claim.
Bellingcat (not Belingcat) is a [intelligence aenies] front, financed by amongst other
orgs, the Atlantic Council which in turn is financed by, well it's a long list!
Anonymous have leaked some documents relating to a secretive (and Orwellian) UK Government
'Integrity Initiative' project launched in 2017. There are numerous PDF files detailing
members, organizational structure, budgets, 'mission statements', etc. The backup documents
are held at pdf-archive. The project has members from the FCO, MOD, journalists, academics,
the usual thinktanks - Chatham House, Atlantic Council, Hermitage Foundation - and the usual
suspects - Browder, Applebaum, Aaronovitch.
One document contains an interesting reference the the Skripal incident. The project team
describe it as a 'Dirty Trick'. Given these documents all pass through the FCO for funding
and overall project approval, that must also be the FCO view. That suggests that the
government is fully aware that Skripal wasn't poisoned by the Russians. If the Russians
really had attempted to murder Skripal, it would be referred to as attempted murder, use of
CW, act of war, etc. and not a 'dirty trick'.
Embarrassing yellow paper journalism: attempt to connect the deal with Skripals false flag
operation by British intelligence agencies. The Daily Mail story preudo-analyst from Bellingcat
as a serious source, but provides no source at all for the alleged Russian quotes.
This actually a quite interesting article ( [written] by the 5 eyes intelligence
agencies)
Hot on the heels of proven Saudi state sanctioned murder under diplomatic immunity we have
a completely UNFOUNDED accusation that Russia has essentially committed the same crime.
Saudi bad guy.....Russia bad guy. Two negatives equals a positive (kind of thing). See
what I just did there? LMAO
The US spent $824.6 billion in 2018 compared to Russia's budget of $46 billion (18 times
the difference). Nevertheless, Congress recently declared, that in the event of a war with
Russia, the US could lose! So, if a President (Obama, Trump, whoever) really wanted to "Make
America Great Again" he would have to begin by firing 90% of the Military Industrial
Complex.
and Daily Mail knows this detail of how he emerged after the meeting because ...
more to come from BS factory ...
janus 1 day ago
Daily Mail will report that he died trying to slaughter a convention of journalists at
Putin's behest.
So ******* sick of britain's ruling class i want to wretch, if we need to break Britain to
get rid of them, so be it. They're all a bunch of decadent pedos and foppish fags
matriculated on globalism. they're disgusting, and even though we'll never get to see the
details, they actively tried to undermine our democracy (along with Tel Aviv).
And so it goes with our 'special relationships', special indeed, with friends like
these...
janus
Shemp 4 Victory 1 day ago
And Daily Mail knows this detail of how he emerged after the meeting because. Because they
read it from a script provided by a branch of MI6 known as OSF (Office of Substandard
Fiction).
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." 1st
Amendment
--------------
This underlined phrase gives the press the right to publish or bloviate on broadcast TV
about anything that is not treasonous in time of war. It DOES NOT give the press the right to
question the president personally or his administration about anything and it certainly does
not give them the right to access to public buildings. pl
I remember a day when "reporters" were not sitting in a room waiting for someone to tell
them what is happening. They were out where things are happening, observing things
happening, and then writing about what they saw. These guys are not reporters, they are
stenographers, dutifully writing down what they are told. As a sort of snarky remark,
does the constitution guarantee freedom of stenography?
IMO the white house press corp should be replaced by a dictation machine. The editors
can then decide how to edit it. Or the President could come out with a series of
questions to ask himself and then answer them.
I realize that our 4th estate leaves much to be desired, but cutting off the press is not
the best way to maintain an informed electorate. Canada's previous PM (Harper) went out
of his way to avoid answering for his actions, e.g., severely limiting press conferences
and only answering "pre-approved" questions. Such evasive maneuvering (aka message
control) on the part of the government does not promote a healthy democracy.
"... The US is addicted to violence at home and war abroad as much as its many poor and middle class citizens are addicted to a whole slew of legal and illegal drugs. alas poor America ..."
"... The more I think of it, the more similarities I see between the fall of the Soviet Union & Warsaw pact countries and the United States & NATO countries. Time for some truth bombs, Namely... ..."
"... 1. A bloated military industry that is strangling the civilian side of the economy in a struggle for limited resources. The US official spends 720 billion on the military (not counting the NSA & NSA budgets, the operating expenses of the Afghanistan/Iraq wars, US nuclear weapon costs are paid out from the department of Energy, the real cost is probably around 1.1 Trillion dollars annually) for that amount of money the US could repave all the highways, replace every bridge, pay for universal health care for all citizens, send every American to university AND still have enough money left over to replace every Hospital in the US), but the civilian economy will get none of that money and will instead make due with the rusting relics from Johnson's Great Society Programs he started in the mid-60s (which is now 60yrs old) ..."
"... Strictly regulated economic relationships between the central power and their "vassal" states, which bleeds off the wealth out of the central power's country in the form of bribes to the vassal states' elites to ensure their loyalty. ..."
"... A decaying political elite that draws it's legitimacy from its' victory in a prior great conflict 30-40 years (the Great Patriotic War for the Soviet Union, The Cold War for the US). ..."
"... Declining life expectancy: average life expectancy has declined for most Americans for 3yrs in a row ..."
"... Increasing drug and Alcohol abuse ..."
"... lastly and most importantly, a corrupt and dishonest media. ..."
False Reports In U.S. Media Suggest A Great DeceptionNever Mind the Bollocks
, Nov 12, 2018 2:09:45 PM |
link
The New York Times is lying to its readers about the commitments of an
adversarial state. It did not learn a single lesson from its fake reporting that led the Iraq
War. It again furthers hostile aggression.
North Korea is moving ahead with its ballistic missile program at 16 hidden bases that have
been identified in new commercial satellite images, a network long known to American
intelligence agencies but left undiscussed as President Trump claims to have neutralized
the North's nuclear threat.
The satellite images suggest that the North has been engaged in a great deception : It
has offered to dismantle a major launching site -- a step it began, then halted -- while
continuing to make improvements at more than a dozen others that would bolster launches of
conventional and nuclear warheads.
There is no North Korean deception. It agreed to dismantle a missile test site, not an
operative "launching site", and it agreed to a moratorium of nuclear and missile testing.
Nowhere has it made any commitment to stop productions or deployments of missiles.
The Singapore Declaration Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump signed says nothing about ballistic
missiles. It agrees on
four step to be taken in sequence : 1. establish new US-DPRK relations, 2. build a
lasting and stable peace regime in all of Korea, 3. support of the Panmunjom Declaration
between North and South Korea, 4. North Korea commits "to work toward complete
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula".
There is no public or secret commitment by North Korea to stop its production of ballistic
missiles just as there is not commitment by the United States to stop its continuing arms
buildup.
There is in fact the opposite. North Korea openly said multiple times that it would
increase its ballistic missile capacity. In May 2017 Chairman Kim Jong-un
ordered to start mass production of the medium range Pukguksong-2 (Poseidon-2)
missile:
This is related to the question you asked about the recent New York Times cartoon. Is the New
York Times trying to help Trump get legitimacy to start a war with North Korea? For all
Trump's peace talks with North Korea, his administration still has an aggressive policy
towards North Korea.
The deep state/Atlanticist lobby strikes again! Evidence? We don't need to stinking evidence,
let's just make something up. We're the NYT and we write in nice sounding sentences, so you
NOW everything we say is well researched. It's where intelligent people get their news, after
all.
Fake news, deception, outright lies, so-called informed press, mouthpieces for the various
U.S. Government outlets, which seem to be at odds within the whole. What to believe, what not
too believe, has been muddied by Trump and his bravado. The so-called deep state, have they
given Trump the o.k. to do all this? Keep everyone off guard as to the things that really
matter. How about the homeland infrastructure decaying? How about the education system? Where
have all those vocational schools that resulted in making the U.S. great after WW 2 gone to?
It takes more than just entitlement for the M.I.C. to "make america great again". The U.S.
needs to repair back to its own borders, stop telling the world how to behave. After all,
just how long can the "bully of the beach" continue until if fails?
So the Media and the New York Times didn't learn it's lesson from Iraq. Well, I have to
disagree with b on this one. The Media was a co-conspirator for the Iraq war from day 1, they
KNEW everything coming out of the Whitehouse & Whitehall regarding Iraq and WMD was a lie
and they repeated the lie because they wanted the war for the profits it would bring to their
corporate owners. Consortumnews, WikiLeaks, globalresearch, Scott Riter, RT, Jimmy Dore and
countless others have reported and shown that the fix was in with the media to start the war,
the truth be damned. heck, Phil Donahue was fired by MSNBC for opposing the war.
Let us never forget MSNBC's professional liar, Brian "I'm guided by the beauty of our
weapons" Williams and his orgasmic jubilation at the US for launching missiles at Syria back
in April. He must have been thinking he'll get another chance to play dress-up on US carrier,
he must have been so disappointed when Trump failed to give him that World War 3.
After 17 years in Afghanistan, the financial crisis, the cheap money policies, the
national security state is now hopelessly addicted to war, if the US ever stopped its' $1
Trillion annual military budget addiction it would trigger a recession (maybe even a
depression), because the US has no manufacturing base, except for armaments and perpetual
warfare are the only economic policies the Democrats & Republicans agree on. So there is
no alternative economic policy that has political support to fall back on to. The corporate
owned media is well aware of this fact so they will continue to promote war as the one
unifying policy for a disunited America. In short don't ask why the Media/New York
Times/Washington post, have not learned their lesson from the Iraq war, ask why the American
People have NOT learned their lesson from the Iraq war.
@Kadath: Freshing to hear the unvarnished truth. What observers see as a "mistake" or a
"failure to learn lessons of the past" is often just projecting of the common moral viewpoint
onto what is a deliberately immoral person, institution, or system.
Trump is not trying to make peace with North Korea. The president of South Korea is maybe
trying to make peace, but it remains to be seen whether the US will allow a protectorate to
escape to independence. I think the US system cannot allow this, and this is the CIA or such
moving against Moon. The CIA is the President's Praetorian Guard in foreign policy.
Institutions like it are in some ways like ocean lines, a new captain can't turn the ship on
a dime. But in the end, the CIA is the president's to command, and ex-CIA aka bureaucratic
losers to complain.
The NYT has always promoted war. There is not a single occurrence (USA act of aggression) in
the history of the NYT (established 1851) which the NYT did not encourage.
If anyone can point to one act of American aggression which the NYT opposed, I'd like to
know about it. It cannot be found. There is not a single exception.
There are thousands of articles in the archives and all of them favor war - that is USA
Aggression.
...talks between the United States and North Korea are again on hold as the U.S. demands to
proceed with point 4 of the Singapore Declaration, denuclearization, before delivering on
point 1, 2 and 3...
Hm, I have already seen it somewhere... Oh yeah, the Ukrainian regime, demanding the
implementation of paragraph 9 of the Minsk Agreements before fulfilling the first eight
paragraphs.
Apparently, the US elite decided to adopt the habits of the brainless Ukrainian
nomenclature.
That is an interesting point. I read that Venezuela buys its tractors from Iran.
Wikipedia reports that Cuba buys railroad cars from Iran along with Agricultural
materials. I suppose that includes Iranian tractors. It seems Iran buys sugar and other Ag
products from Cuba.
The misinformation and disinformation is quite thick. It is difficult to discern
anything.
What you say, certainly has merit. If you can't build tractors, do you have the industrial
capability to produce complicated weaponry, launch systems and infrastructure to support such
systems from A to Z.
"....Consortumnews, WikiLeaks, globalresearch, Scott Riter, RT, Jimmy Dore and countless
others have reported and shown that the fix was in with the media to start the war, the truth
be damned. heck, Phil Donahue was fired by MSNBC for opposing the war..."
It's a total war economy now, the industrial base of the country has been long hollowed
out, mostly thanks to Clinton and Nafta and the free trade agreement follow ups under the
neo-liberal regimes, all of which have become world-wide since Reagan and Thatcher started
destroying the unionized working classes in the 1980s.
The NYT has been a constant purveyor and cheerleader for such war economy violence
overseas for decades (in my lifetime alone since the Vietnam war), so it is not surprising
that it is continuing with its lies about Korea. What is heartening is that the talking
between the two Koreas continues and advances the causes of peace on the peninsula.
The US is addicted to violence at home and war abroad as much as its many poor and middle
class citizens are addicted to a whole slew of legal and illegal drugs.
alas poor America
Korea was annexed by the japanese in 1910. Korea has been either occupied or under sustained
attack for a long period of time.
Food can still be grown with a hoe, but but the country can't be defended with sticks. Any
manufacturing capacity will be going to defense, which under the North Korean circumstances
would have to be given highest priority.
Faith in institutions is very weak. The NYT and Scopes are two of the weakest. The right
plays Kabuki claiming both are leftist, but when the chips need to be fluffed on the table
both step up.
@ fast freddy 14
Yes, The Jew Pork Slimes have always promoted US military aggression on poorer countries, for
Israel and for Profit.
Imagine you are the biggest liar the World has ever seen and then you sign a contract with
someone and demand all the money be paid out before you even start working!? How many times
have I written that signing contracts with the sponsors of terrorism is pointless? Those who
lie - they steal, those who steal - they kill, by bombs or by terrorism.
Minsk "Agreement", Singapore "Agreement" ... keep dreaming. Only a financial collapse can
save us.
The more I think of it, the more similarities I see between the fall of the Soviet Union
& Warsaw pact countries and the United States & NATO countries. Time for some truth
bombs, Namely...
1. A bloated military industry that is strangling the civilian side of the economy in a
struggle for limited resources. The US official spends 720 billion on the military (not
counting the NSA & NSA budgets, the operating expenses of the Afghanistan/Iraq wars, US
nuclear weapon costs are paid out from the department of Energy, the real cost is probably
around 1.1 Trillion dollars annually) for that amount of money the US could repave all the
highways, replace every bridge, pay for universal health care for all citizens, send every
American to university AND still have enough money left over to replace every Hospital in the
US), but the civilian economy will get none of that money and will instead make due with the
rusting relics from Johnson's Great Society Programs he started in the mid-60s (which is now
60yrs old)
2. Strictly regulated economic relationships between the central power and their "vassal"
states, which bleeds off the wealth out of the central power's country in the form of bribes
to the vassal states' elites to ensure their loyalty. This weakens the Central power's
civilian economy, where generating chaos in the Vassal states as the elites place their
economic interests above the interests of the state (also making the elites alienated from
the non-elite citizenry who suffer most from these policies). Ukraine's Robber Barons have
profited mightily from their relationship with the US, but Ukraine as a state is in civil war
and near collapse, kept alive only by "Bribes" from the US/IMF/EU, how is this in the
interests of the Ukrainian people
3. A decaying political elite that draws it's legitimacy from its' victory in a prior
great conflict 30-40 years (the Great Patriotic War for the Soviet Union, The Cold War for
the US). Note that just like the Soviet union of the 80s most of the Democratic &
Republican leadership is in its' 70-80s and none of them seem interested in retirement (Nancy
Pelosi, John McCain, Diane Feinstein), the average senator is now 61 years old, an age when
most plebeians are planning on leaving the workforce. How many great (or at least competent)
political leaders are being pushed out of the political arena in favor of the geriatric
status quo, the US/the West has gone from a democracy to a Gerontocracy(rule by the old). I
don't know about you, but I cant wait to see what revolutionary economic policies 85yr old
Nancy Pelosi will bring to the floor of the house!
4. Declining life expectancy: average life expectancy has declined for most Americans for
3yrs in a row, despite (or perhaps because of) a half-assed, unaffordable, semi-universal,
mandatory health insurance plan. Life expectancy increased within the Soviet Union stagnated
in the 1980s then dropped more than 10yrs (to a low of 58.9yrs for men!), before slowly
recovering and the growing to 71.5 yrs in 2018.
5. Increasing drug and Alcohol abuse: the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia resulted
to a spike in deaths due to suicide, alcohol and drug abuse (alcohol abuse being a historical
Russian ill), since the 2000s we've seen a similar spike in deaths due to drug abuse and
suicide (firearms), like the Russians of the 90s the Americans seem to be embracing their own
historical ills of shooting up (both in drugs and guns) as a means of coping with the
economic and social dislocation of the last 18yrs
6. lastly and most importantly, a corrupt and dishonest media. The Soviet union had 2
major news papers Komsomolskaya Pravda (Truth) & Izvestia (news), a popular saying in the
Soviet Union was that "there's no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia". The US outdid the
Soviet Union by creating 6 Mass media news outlets, but all of them just give the left or
right wing interpretation of US policy. my advise is this, NEVER read The New York Times and
the Washington Post for news or the truth, only read them to know the Party line. The
Corruption of the mass media & news industries is the worst of all similarities because
the entire organizing theory of a Democracy is that an informed and educated electorate will
create the best (a more perfect) form of governance. if the newsmedia deliberately misinforms
the electorate it logically flows that the electorate will not create the best polices and
political culture will deteriorate into a meaningless Blue Team vs Red Team dichotomy as
opposed to a reasoned debate on the best of political, economic, foreign or social
policies.
The US's trajectory as it is, clearly parallel's the Soviet Union and Russia's situation
during the mid-80's. This is NOT to say I am hoping it will continue to do so, but if the US
doesn't address these 6 points it WILL create a systemic crisis because these issues by their
very nature do not promote stability as they do not allow for self-correction (everything is
based on bribing people to put their interests above that of the local society itself, take
away the brides the system collapses as people withdraw their support in favor of local
interests, increase the bribes the system collapses because it hollows out the economic
vitality that pays for the bribes, maintain the status quo, the system collapses because it
does not address the social/economic/political problems created by the status quo)
Kadath @ 34 said in part; "6. lastly and most importantly, a corrupt and dishonest media."
Yep, absolutely critical that you have a media that informs the public and doesn't
mislead, if, in fact, you really want a participatory democracy, which the ruling elites do
not.
It's not the corporate media that has failed to learn the lessons of the Iraq invasion, but
rather those who have continued to read, and take as authoritative, the output of the NYT et
al.
The extra factor is that most Americans are morbidly obese and without mobility scooters
cannot move. An hour spent in any mall is a terrifying experience.
Huff, Puff & Foam - the NYT latest hit , Nov 13, 2018 12:17:18 AM |
link
The NYT - the war newspaper of record - can foam and huff all it wants. The fact is that the
USA will never, never dare North Korea. Why? Because North Korea is a nuclear power, that is
why.Let the cabal of the NYT huff and foam or whatever. It is a dress rehearsal for the
coming death of the US empire, which actually is a euphemism for .... the NYT knows the
answer.
It did not learn a single lesson from its fake reporting that led the Iraq War
Eh? They learned everything from it. They got away with it. Subsequent wars and aggression
in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Georgia could not have happened without Iraq paving the way.
Self professed liberals and leftists cams out in favour of, or remained indifferent to, all
of these assaults on national sovereignty. What is under attack here is the concept of
independent and sovereign nation states and national governments. Imperfect they might be,
but they are the only mechanism we have for protecting citizens' rights and freedom to pursue
a path of development independently of the dictates global monopoly capitalism is trying to
impose on the world.
Meanwhile, there is an arresting suggestion, floating on blogosphere, to rename Gaza
Ghetto into Auschwitz.
Posted by: Anya | Nov 12, 2018 4:41:19 PM | 15
That would be a good strategic move. Israel bombing Auschwitz? Doesn't look good. It sends
a potent message.
"... both men demonstrate utter contempt and disrespect for their respective roles as they shamelessly peacock for ratings. ..."
"... You can almost feel the republic devolving to its lowest common denominator: narcissists preening before the cameras and beating their chests in self-righteous fury. ..."
"... Acosta asked very few actual questions during his exchange with Trump. This is typical. ..."
"... Nobody watches CNN that doesn't already hate Trump. CNN does Trump more good than harm. ..."
"... I enthusiastically endorse everything you say in this commentary. However, I don't understand why you write, "None of this means that the White House is justified in removing Acosta's pass." It is clear from what you recount above that Acosta has a long record of abusing his license to stand and ask questions of the President when he never actually does that. Certainly his press credentials should be suspended, if not completely revoked. ..."
watch -- not because the
video has been "
doctored " as some are now claiming , but because both men
demonstrate utter contempt and disrespect for their respective roles as they shamelessly
peacock for ratings.
You can almost feel the republic devolving to its lowest common denominator: narcissists
preening before the cameras and beating their chests in self-righteous fury.
That's not how the media portrayed the event, of course. "Freedom of the press is under
assault," CBS agonized. CNN declared that the White House's justification for removing Acosta's
access was a " lie ." Other
journalists speculated that Acosta losing his "hard pass" access to the White House was "
unprecedented ," somehow forgetting Obama's war with Fox News
that included spying "extensively on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010, collecting his
telephone records, tracking his movements in and out of the State Department and seizing two
days of Rosen's personal emails,"
according to a Department of Justice report.
By the end of the day, the media had canonized Acosta as a martyr to True Journalism™.
But is he?
Acosta asked very few actual questions during his exchange with Trump. This is
typical. Back in August 2018, for instance, the New York Timesnoted
that "Jim Acosta, the square-jawed CNN correspondent, has stood out among the White House press
corps for his impassioned on-air monologues about the importance of the First Amendment" and
that "Acosta [broke] from the usual sober style of White House reporters [by framing] his
question to [White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee] Sanders as a moral choice."
The Times reported on one exchange he had with Sanders:
"It would be a good thing if you were to state right here, at this briefing, that the
press -- the people who are gathered in this room right now, doing their jobs every day,
asking questions of officials like the ones you brought forward earlier -- are not the enemy
of the people," Mr. Acosta said in his newscaster's baritone. "I think we deserve that."
Ms. Sanders deflected -- and then mirrored Mr. Acosta's tone.
"It's ironic, Jim," she said, "that not only you and the media attack the president for
his rhetoric, when they frequently lower the level of conversation in this
country."
The New York Times also noted that Acosta's monologues have led "some of his rival
White House reporters" to roll their eyes. Why might other journalists in the room react that
way, and why did Fox News's Chris Wallace say that Acosta had "
embarrassed himself " on Wednesday?
Because the White House briefing room isn't the appropriate place to deliver commentary in
the form of questions. Furthermore, during his press conferences, the president has a right to
tell a reporter that his turn is up and that he is moving on to another person. Other outlets
and reporters in the room deserve opportunities to ask their questions too. A press briefing is
not a one-on-one interview, nor is it the place to issue snide putdowns and characterizations
of the president's positions.
More importantly, self-aggrandizing harangues that turn the reporter into the story are not
a legitimate form of journalism. As the Society of Professional Journalists warns, "injecting oneself into the story or
creating news events for coverage is not objective reporting, and it ultimately calls into
question the ability of a journalist to be independent, which can damage credibility."
None of this means that the White House is justified in removing Acosta's pass. What it does
mean is that Acosta isn't even a practitioner of true journalism, let alone a martyr to its
cause. For CNN to have a martyr, the network would need to send someone who acts like a
journalist.
Wednesday's performance was never about journalism, and the first clue to that is how few
questions Acosta actually asks. He started off his exchange with the president by saying that
he will "challenge" Trump on his description of the migrant caravan.
Even as Acosta is muttering these words, Trump begins to mock him: "Oh here we go. Come on,
let's go."
Another clue is when Trump says this: "You know what, I think you should let me run the
country. You run CNN, and if you did it well, your ratings would be much better."
It's a dead-giveaway: each man is playing to his audience. If there is one thing that Trump
knows well, it's how to get ratings, a fact that CBS Chairman Les Moonves once
testified to when he said that "it may not be good for America" but Trump is "damn good" at
getting viewers.
CNN watchers want to see Trump taken to task. Just as ravenously, Trump supporters want the
president to take the media to the mat. They love nothing better than seeing him combat what
they perceive to be sneering media elites. Every time Trump engages pugnaciously with a
reporter, he throws red meat to his base.
For its part, CNN probably got the views it was looking for thanks to this incident. But the
network should tread carefully. Every time a member of the media behaves like Acosta, they're
not only damaging the media's credibility; they're playing into Trump's hands.
Barbara Boland is the former weekend editor of the Washington Examiner . Her work has
been featured on Fox News, the Drudge Report, HotAir.com, RealClearDefense, RealClearPolitics,
and elsewhere. She's the author of Patton Uncovered , a book about General Patton in World War
II. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC
.
Jim Accosta is the epitome of the leftist media and the radical Hillary left who consider
Trump unworthy and unjustly president. It is self evident in the way they treat trump and his
administration and his Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee.
I continue to think that this incivility is different this time around. I continue to see
people on the right that are just very simply unwilling to the treatment and the antics of
the left.
I fully support Trump is banning Accosta and wish that he would ban more press credentials
until the meeting has the professionalism worthy of a Presidential Press briefing.
Nobody watches CNN that doesn't already hate Trump. CNN does Trump more good than
harm.
And the notion that Acosta is a journalist is risible. Larry King says "CNN stopped doing
news a long time ago". Acosta isn't even a propagandist. He is merely a troll.
I enthusiastically endorse everything you say in this commentary. However, I don't
understand why you write, "None of this means that the White House is justified in removing
Acosta's pass." It is clear from what you recount above that Acosta has a long record of
abusing his license to stand and ask questions of the President when he never actually does
that. Certainly his press credentials should be suspended, if not completely revoked.
Nobody watches CNN that doesn't already hate Trump. CNN does Trump more good than harm.
And the notion that Acosta is a journalist is risible. Larry King says "CNN stopped doing
news a long time ago". Acosta isn't even a propagandist. He is merely a troll.
Unfortunate episodes like this could be avoided if, at press conferences, questioners were
required to stand on trap doors. A triggering button on the President's podium would insure
that questioners remained courteous.
"... Union Jackboot: What Your Media and Professors Don't Tell You About British Foreign Policy ..."
"... There seems to be a consensus that we need a strong military because Russia is on the rise. What do you think about that rationale? ..."
"... What about military threats? ..."
"... So we've extended NATO to pretty much the Russian border? But there's a hard border there. Everyone knows we're never going to attack Russia, both for reasons of morality and self-preservation. So maybe this situation is safer than you imply. ..."
"... Brexit White Paper ..."
"... T. J. Coles is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University's Cognition Institute and the author of several books. ..."
"... Matthew Alford teaches at Bath University in the UK and has also written several books. Their latest is ..."
"... The Rise and Fall of the British Empire ..."
"... Bolshevism and Imperial Sedition ..."
"... Power without Responsibility ..."
"... Russian Roulette: A Deadly Game: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot ..."
"... Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community ..."
"... Vision for 2020 ..."
"... Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future ..."
"... The New Atlanticist ..."
"... The United Kingdom's relations with Russia ..."
Alford: There seems to be a consensus that we need a strong military because Russia is on the rise. What do you think about
that rationale?
Coles: There's no consensus, except among European and American elites. Europe and America are not the world.
There are a lot of issues to consider with regards to Russia. Is it a threat? If so to whom? What kind of threat is Russia? So
let's consider these questions carefully. As far as the British establishment is concerned, Russia is an ideological threat because
it is a major power with a substantial population. It's also self-reliant where oil and gas is concerned, unlike Britain. So there's
lots of potential for Russian political ideology to undermine Britain's status. In fact, there are European Council on Foreign Relations
papers saying that Putin's Russia presents an "ideological alternative" to the EU.
[i] And that's dangerous.
Britain, or more accurately its policymaking elites, have considered Russia a significant enemy for over a century. Under the
Tsar, the so-called Great Game was a battle for strategic resources, trading routes, and so on. The historian Lawrence James calls
this period the first Cold War, which went "hot" with the Crimean War (1853-56).
[ii] Britain had a mixed relationship with
the Tsars because, on the one hand, theirs' were repressive regimes and Britain tended to favour repressive regimes, hence their
brief alliance with Russia's enemy, the Ottomans. On the other hand, Russia was a strategic threat to Britain's imperial interests,
and thus the Crimean War (1853-56).
When the Bolsheviks took over Russia, beginning 1917, the relationship became much less ambiguous Russians, and especially Bolsheviks,
were clearly the enemy. Their ideology posed a threat internally. So Winston Churchill, who began as a Liberal and became a Conservative,
considered the Labour Party, which was formed in 1900, as basically a front for Bolsheviks.
[iii] That shows the level of paranoia among
elites. The Labour Party, at least at the beginning, was a genuine, working man's political organisation women couldn't vote then,
remember. So by associating this progressive, grassroots party representing the working classes as an ideological ally or even puppet
of the brutal Bolshevik regime, the Tories had an excuse to undermine the power of organised, working people. So you had the Zinoviev
letter in 1924, which we now know was a literal conspiracy between the secret services and elements of the Tory party to fabricate
a link between Labour and Moscow. And it famously cost Labour the general election, since the right-wing, privately-owned media ran
with the story as though it was real. It's an early example of fake news.
[iv]
That's the ideological threat that Russia has posed, historically. But where there's a threat, there's an opportunity. The British
elites exploited the "threat" then and as they do today by associating organised labour with evil Bolshevism and, in doing so, alienate
the lower classes from their own political interests. Suddenly, we've all got to be scared of Russia, just like in 1917. And let's
not forget that Britain used chemical weapons M-Devices, which induced vomiting against the Bolsheviks. Chemical weapons were
"the right medicine for the Bolshevist," in Churchill's words. This was in 1919, as part of the Allied invasion of Russia in support
of the White Army. [v]
So if we're talking about the historical balance of forces and cause and effect, Britain not Russia initiated the use of chemical
weapons against others. But this history is typically inverted to say that Russia poses a threat to the West, hence all the talk
about Novichok, the Skripals, and Dawn Sturgess, the civilian who supposedly came into contact with Novichok and died in hospital
a few days later.
The next question: What sort of threat is Russia? According to the US Army War College, since the collapse of the Soviet
Union and since pro-US, pro-"free market" President Boris Yeltsin resigned in 1999, Russia has pursued so-called economic nationalism.
And the US doesn't like this because markets suddenly get closed and taxes are raised against US corporations.
[vi] That's the real threat. But you can't
tell the public that: that we hate Russia because they aren't doing what we say. If you look through the military documents, you
can find almost nothing about security threats against the US in terms of Russian
expansion, except in the sense that "security" means operational freedom. You can find references to Russia's nuclear weapons,
though, which are described as defensive, designed "to counter US forces and weapons systems."
[vii] Try finding that on the BBC. I should
mention that even "defensive" nukes can be launched accidentally.
The real goal with regards to Russia is maintaining US economic hegemony and the culture of open "free markets" that goes with
it, while at the same time being protectionist in real life. (US protectionism didn't start under Trump, by the way.) Liberal media
like the New York Times run sarcastic articles about Russian state oil and gas being a front for Putin and his cronies.
And yes, that may be true. But what threat is Russia to the US if it has a corrupt government? The threat is closing its markets
to the US. The US is committed to what its military calls Full Spectrum Dominance. So the world needs to be run in a US-led neoliberal
order, in the words of the US military, "to protect US interests and investment."
[viii] But this cannot be done if you have
"economic nationalism," like China had until the "reforms" of the '70s and '80s, and still has today to some extent. Russia and China
aren't military threats. The global population on the whole knows this, even though the domestic US and British media say the opposite.
Alford: What about military threats?
Coles: The best sources you can get are the US military records. Straight from the horse's mouth. The military plans for war and
defence. They have contingencies for when political situations change. So they know what they're talking about. There's a massive
divide between reality, as understood from the military records, and media and political rhetoric. Assessments by the US Army War
College, for instance, said years ago that any moves by NATO to support a Western-backed government in Ukraine would provoke Russia
into annexing Crimea. They don't talk about Russia spontaneously invading Ukraine and annexing it, which is the image we get from
the media. The documents talk about Russia reacting to NATO provocation.
[ix]
If you look at a map, you see Russia surrounded by hostile NATO forces. The media don't discuss this dangerous and provocative
situation, except the occasional mention of, say, US-British-Polish war-gaming on the border with Russia. When they do mention it,
they say it's for "containment," the containment of Russia. But to contain something, the given thing has to be expanding. But the
US military like the annual threat assessments to Congress say that Russia's not expanding, except when provoked. So at the moment
as part of its NATO mission, the UK is training Polish and Ukrainian armed forces, has deployed troops in Poland and Estonia, and
is conducting military exercises with them.
[x]
Imagine if Scotland ceded from the UK and the Russians were on our border conducting military exercises, supposedly to deter a
British invasion of Scotland. That's what we're doing in Ukraine. Britain's moves are extremely dangerous. In the 1980s, the UK as
part of NATO conducted the exercise, Operation Able Archer, which envisaged troop build-ups between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries.
Now-declassified records show that the Russians briefly mistook this exercise for a real-world scenario. That could have escalated
into nuclear war. This is very serious. [xi]
But the biggest player is the USA. It's using the threat of force and a global architecture of hi-tech militarism to shape a neoliberal
order. Britain is slavishly following its lead. I doubt that Britain would position forces near Russia were it not for the USA. Successive
US administrations have or are building a missile system in Europe and Turkey. They say it's to deter Iran from firing Scud missiles
at Europe. But it's pointed at Russia. It's a radar system based in Romania and Turkey, with a battery of Patriot missiles based
in Poland. The stationing of missiles there provoked Russia into moving its mobile nuclear weapons up to the border in its Kaliningrad
exclave, as it warned it would do in 2008.
[xii] Try to find any coverage of that in the media, except for a few articles in the print media here or there. If Western media
were interested in survival, there would be regular headlines: "NATO provoking Russia."
But the situation in Ukraine is really the tipping point. Consider the equivalent. Imagine if Russia was conducting military exercises
with Canada or Mexico, and building bases there. How would the US react? It would be considered an extreme threat, a violation of
the UN Charter, which prohibits threats against sovereign states.
Alford: So we've extended NATO to pretty much the Russian border? But there's a hard border there. Everyone knows we're never
going to attack Russia, both for reasons of morality and self-preservation. So maybe this situation is safer than you imply.
Coles: There's no morality involved. States are abstract, amorphous entities comprised of dominant minorities and subjugated majorities
who are conditioned to believe that they are relatively free and prosperous. The elites of those states act both in their self-interests
career, peer-pressure, kickbacks, and so on and in the interests of their class, which is of course tied to international relations
because their class thrives on profiting from resource exploitation. So you can't talk about morality in this context. Only individuals
can behave morally. The state is made up of individuals, of course, but they're acting against the interests of the majority. As
we speak, they are acting immorally or at least amorally but creating the geopolitical conditions that imperil each
and every one of us.
As for invasion, we're not going to invade Russia. This isn't 1918. Russia has nuclear weapons and can deter an invasion. But
that's not the point. Do we want to de-escalate an already tense geopolitical situation or make it worse to the point where an accident
happens? So while it's not about invading Russia directly, the issue is about attacking what are called Russia's "national interests."
Russia's "national interests" are the same as the elites' of the UK. National interest doesn't mean the interests of the public.
It means the interests of the policymaking establishment and the corporations. For example, the Theresa May government sacrificed
its own credibility to ensure that its Brexit White Paper (2018) appeased both the interests of the food and manufacturing
industries that want a soft Brexit easy trade with the EU and the financial services sector which wants a hard Brexit freedom
from EU regulation. Everyone else be damned. That's the "national interest."
So for its real "national interest," Russia wants to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence because its oil and gas to Europe
pass through Ukraine. About 80% of Russia's export economy is in the oil and gas sector. It's already had serious political tensions
with Ukraine, which on several occasions hasn't paid its energy bills, so Russia has cut supplies. If Europe can bump Ukraine into
its own sphere of influence it has more leverage over Russia. This is practically admitted in Parliamentary discussions by Foreign
Office ministers, and so forth. [xiii]
Again, omitted by the media. Also, remember that plenty of ethnic Russians live in eastern Ukraine. In addition, Russia has a naval
base in Crimea. That's not to excuse its illegal action in annexing Ukraine, it's to highlight the realpolitik missing in
the media's coverage of the situation.
T. J. Coles is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University's Cognition Institute and the author of several books.
Matthew Alford teaches at Bath University in the UK and has also written several books. Their latest is
Union Jackboot(Atι Books).
[ii] 'Anglo-Russian relations were severely
strained; what was in effect a cold war lasted from the late 1820s to the beginning of the next century'. The Crimean War seems to
have set a precedent for today. James writes:
[It] was an imperial war, the only one fought by Britain against a European power during the nineteenth century, although some
would have regarded Russia as essentially an Asiatic power. No territory was at stake; the war was undertaken solely to guarantee
British naval supremacy in the Mediterranean and, indirectly, to forestall any threat to India which might have followed Russia
replacing Britain as the dominant power in the Middle East.
Lawrence James (1997) The Rise and Fall of the British Empire London: Abacus, pp. 180-82.
All these strikes and rumours of strikes and threats of strikes and loss and suffering caused by them; all this talk of revolution
and "direct action" have deeply offended most of the British people. There is a growing feeling that a considerable section of
organized Labour is trying to tyrannize over the whole public and to bully them into submission, not by argument, not by recognized
political measures, but by brute force
But if we can do little for Russia [under the Bolsheviks], we can do much for Britain. We do not want any of these experiments
here
Whether it is the Irish murder gang or the Egyptian vengeance society, or the seditious extremists in India, or the arch-traitors
we have at home, they will feel the weight of the British arm.
A settlement of relations between the two countries [UK and Russia] will assist in the revolutionising of the international
and British proletariat, [and] make it possible for us to extend and develop the propaganda and ideas of Leninism in England and
the colonies.
It also says that 'British workmen' have 'inclinations to compromise' and that rapprochement will eventually lead to domestic
'[a]rmed warfare'. It was leaked by the services to the Conservative party and then to the media. Richard Norton-Taylor (1999) 'Zinoviev
letter was dirty trick by MI6' Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/1999/feb/04/uk.politicalnews6
and Louise Jury (1999) 'Official Zinoviev letter was forged' Independenthttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/official-zinoviev-letter-was-forged-1068600.html
. For media coverage at the time, see James Curran and Jean Seaton (1997) Power without Responsibility London: Routledge,
p. 52.
[v] Paul F. Walker (2017) 'A Century
of Chemical Warfare: Building a World Free of Chemical Weapons' Conference: One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment,
Consequences pp. 379-400 and Giles Milton (2013) Russian Roulette: A Deadly Game: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot
London: Hodder, eBook.
[vi] 'The Russian Federation has shown
repeatedly that common values play almost no role in its consideration of its trading partners', meaning the US and EU. 'It often
builds relationships with countries that most openly thwart Western values of free markets and democracy', notably Iran and Venezuela.
'In this regard, the Russian Federation behaves like "Russia Incorporated." It uses its re-nationalized industries to further its
wealth and influence, the latter often at the expense of the EU and the U.S.'. Colonel Richard J. Anderson (2008) 'A History of President
Putin's Campaign to Re-Nationalize Industry and the Implications for Russian Reform and Foreign Policy' Senior Service College, US
Army War College, Pennsylvania: Carlisle Barracks, p. 52.
[vii] Daniel R. Coats (2017) Statement
for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Washington,
DC: Office of the Director of
[ix] The document also says: 'a replay
of the West-sponsored coup against pro-Russian elites could result in a split, or indeed multiple splits, of the failed Ukraine,
which would open a door for NATO intervention'.Pavel K. Baev (2011) 'Russia's security relations with the United States: Futures
planned and unplanned' in Stephen J. Blank (ed.) Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future Strategic Studies Institute
Pennsylvania: Carlisle Barracks, p. 170, www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1087.pdf.
[xi] For example, Nate Jones, Thomas
Blanton and Christian F. Ostermann (2016) 'Able Archer 83: The Secret History' Nuclear Proliferation International History Project
Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/able-archer-83-the-secret-history
.
[xii] It was reported in the ultra-right,
neo-con press at the time that:
[Russian] President Dmitri Medvedev announced in his first state-of-the-nation address plans to deploy the short-range SS-26
("Iskander") missiles in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad if the U.S. goes ahead with its European Ballistic Missile Defense
System (BMDS). Medvedev told parliament that the deployment would "neutralize" U.S. plans for a missile defense shield based in
Poland and the Czech Republic [now in Romania), which the U.S. claims as vital in defending against missile attacks from 'rogue
states' such as Iran.
Neil Leslie (2008) 'The Kaliningrad Missile Crisis' The New Atlanticist , available at http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-kaliningrad-missile-crisis.
[xiii] For example, a Parliamentary
inquiry into British-Russian relations says of the newly-imposed US-British ally in Ukraine:
President Poroshenko's Government is more openly committed to economic reform and anti-corruption than any previous Ukrainian
Administration. The reform agenda has made considerable progress and has enjoyed some successes including police reform, liberalisation
of the energy market and the launch of an online platform for government procurement
The annexation of Crimea also resulted in a ban on importing products from Crimea, on investing in or providing services linked
to tourism and on exporting certain goods for use in the transport, telecoms and energy sectors.
https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/08/285043.htm
"Following the use of a "Novichok" nerve agent in an attempt to assassinate UK citizen
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal, the United States, on August 6, 2018,
determined under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of
1991 (CBW Act) that the Government of the Russian Federation has used chemical or
biological weapons in violation of international law or has used lethal chemical or
biological weapons against its own nationals.
Following a 15-day Congressional notification period, these sanctions will take effect
upon publication of a notice in the Federal Register, expected on or around August 22,
2018"
.....
Under the law, Russia had to end the use of the nerve agent Novichok, which was used in
the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March, commit to not using
chemical weapons against its own people, and allow on-site inspections by agencies like the
United Nations.
"Today, the department informed Congress we could not certify that the Russian
Federation met the conditions," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a
statement."
100% of the corporate mass media is "fake news". What anyone assumes to be legitimate news
coming from corporate media is just fake news that has been tailored to be compatible with
that person's biases and preconceptions. If a media consumer fails to identify it as "fake
news" that is just an indication that the false narratives contained within that fake news
were successfully implanted in that media consumer's consciousness without that media
consumer being aware of it.
It is funny. Media consumers from Team Blue look at false narratives tailored for Team Red
by FOX and exclaim "How could anyone believe that trash?" while media consumers from
Team Red look at false narratives tailored for Team Blue by CNN or WaPo or The NYT and
likewise express incredulity that anyone could be blind enough not to see the falsity in
it.
I'm not surprised that you are such a fine shot with his harpoon considering your naval
background, Mark! The UK is slowly sinking to its appropriate level of incompetence and
self-delusion with the likes of former PM Dave Cameron declaring that he is 'shit bored' and
would like to return to cabinet, preferably as Foreign Minister. That could be arranged, but
as Foreign minister in Libya.
Still, the whole 'Russian corrupting in Britain' is the British government's perception
management at its finest. As someone recently posted on the last thread, a Spanish case
against RUSSIAN MAFIA collapsed for lack of evidenceafter ten years , which I
suspect was partly provided by British Intelligence paid organized crime experts from Russia
like Litvenenko & Skripal. Who's been bilked then?
Yes, this is a classic case of 'LOOK OVER THERE!' rather than the billions upon billions
sunk in to London by the UK and the west's bestest Gulf buddies, you know, the one's who fear
not their exposure for outrageous human rights abuses on a genocidal scale such as in Yemen,
and a much smaller scale with the likes of their own citizens, sic Kashoggi. But, Chelsea
& Westminster are such a fundamental part of British Life (coz its London, innit?) and
does very well for itself. I have to admit, it is (mostly) nice around there where you can
take a stroll along the Embankment, wander around Hyde Park and visit the museums.
"Like in the Wild West, betting in the saloon is also common when it comes to Syria. The US
State Department under Obama placed all its bets on some entity they invented, which they
liked to call "moderate rebels" (why not "respectable terrorists" or "polite criminals"?).
They lost. Numerous left-wing academics signed on to regime change years ago, and because
they only pretend to be seasoned analysts for their day jobs, they did not foresee the
collapse of the anti-government forces in Syria. That list included noted "post-colonial"
scholars and anthropologists, united in their belief in "democracy promotion" and remaking
Syria into something palatable to them, with the right leaders in place. Five years later and
a smaller group -- including feminists like Gloria Steinem and Judith Butler, anarchists like
Noam Chomsky and the anthropologist David Graeber, the Marxist David Harvey, and advocates of
recolonization like Michael Walzer -- placed their bets on socialist Kurdish militias,
presumably increasing the value of their bet by the important sign value of their brand name
authority. Ironically, in the process of reimagining legendary Rojava as the site of a second
Spanish Civil War, they were openly collaborating with Donald Trump (not naming him directly,
since "the US government" was more convenient). These signatories were thus complicit with
the very same commander-in-chief of the armed forces they were calling on for support of
Syrian Kurds. They wanted "the US government," whose President is Donald Trump, to impose
sanctions on Turkey, and to develop a foreign policy that put Kurdish interests at the
forefront. You can be sure that, elsewhere, in front of different crowds, they return to "the
Resistance" by puffing up their little chests and sounding all "anti-Trump" -- but when it
came to cheering their favourite band of ethnic anarchists, they could dispense with
appearances. Less "prestigious" characters, publishing in a less "prestigious" outlet,
countered the call to "defend Rojava", a call which appropriated "progressive" politics for
the cause of imperialism (thus reigniting an old marriage). (David Harvey, by the way, having
cashed in on abundant sales of his volume, The New Imperialism, has recently changed his
mind: he has decided that imperialism is merely a metaphor, "rather than anything real". Out
of curiosity, we have to wonder if "capitalism" is also a metaphor, rather than anything
real, seeing how Marxists have linked capitalism with imperialism. Perhaps even socialism is
a metaphor, rather than anything real."
This Canadian has a lot to say well worth reading!!!!!
Looks like Iran was "Skripaled". Intelligence agencies are now capable to perform false flag operation in thier
home countries and blame other government with absolute impunity.
Notable quotes:
"... Israels secret service Mossad, with the CIA behind it, is framing Iran with alleged assassination plots in Europe. ..."
"... It is unlikely that Iran would take action in Europe, which it urgently needs to reduce the damage of U.S. sanction, over an incident for which it already punished the Islamic State. ..."
"... The Danish claims are allegedly based on information provided by Mossad. That only increases the suspicion that the assassination plot is a false flag operation similar to a recent one in Belgium. More likely though is that the CIA is behind such false flag incidents. ..."
"... Bahram Ghasemi, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Iran "re-emphasized" to the diplomats a previous warning about the presence in their respective countries of members of a group that Iran classifies as a terrorist group and wants arrested and prosecuted. ..."
"... On October 30 Denmark suddenly accused Iran of an assassination plot against a leader of the ASMLA group ..."
"... It indeed seems that Danish government, led by the rightwing Venstre party, is collaborating with the U.S. and Britain to sabotage the European position against U.S. sanctions on Iran ..."
"... The former Secretary General of NATO and U.S. stooge Anders Fogh Rasmussen is the predecessor of the current Venstre party leader and Danish premier Lars Lψkke Rasmussen. Both are hawks. ..."
"... Yesterday Israeli journalist reported that the information on which Denmark acted came from Israel ..."
"... Iran's foreign minister accuses Israel of running false flag operations to frame Iran ..."
"... Times of Israel ..."
"... Iran has no interest in causing any upheaval with Europe shortly before the second round of U.S. sanctions, which threaten its economic well being, come into place early this month. Iran already took revenge for the Ahvaz attack. It has no need to tackle some unrelated separatist who resides in Denmark. Iran needs Europe to work around the U.S. sanctions. That aim prohibits any such operations. ..."
"... Both, the MEK plot as well as the case in Denmark, smell of false flag incidents. In both case no one was hurt. In both cases some stooges with no current relation to Iran were caught. Both cases came to light after information was allegedly provided by Mossad ..."
"... "Both, the MEK plot as well as the case in Denmark, smell of false flag incidents. In both case no one was hurt." Just like with the "bombs" shipped to a few US "liberals" recently. ..."
"... It was only going to be a matter of time until Iran got Skripalled. Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif Tweets a list : "Incredible series of coincidences. Or, a simple chronology of a MOSSAD program to kill the JCPOA?" ..."
Israels secret service Mossad, with the CIA behind it, is framing Iran with alleged assassination plots in Europe.
In September a terror attack killed some 30 people in Iran. Two entities, an Arab separatist movement as well as the Islamic State
terror group ISIS, took responsibility. After an investigation Iran found that it was ISIS which was responsible. It took revenge
against the identified culprits.
Six weeks later Denmark claims, without providing evidence, that Iran tried to assassinate a leader of the Arab separatist movement
over the incident. Iran denies any such attempt. The right wing Danish government uses the claim to urge other European countries
to sanction Iran.
It is unlikely that Iran would take action in Europe, which it urgently needs to reduce the damage of U.S. sanction, over
an incident for which it already punished the Islamic State.
The Danish claims are allegedly based on information provided by Mossad. That only increases the suspicion that the assassination
plot is a false flag operation similar to a recent one in Belgium. More likely though is that the CIA is behind such false flag incidents.
The details:
On September 22 gunmen
killed 29 and wounded
more than 70 participants and onlookers of a veterans day parade in Ahvaz, Iran:
Three of the attackers were gunned down during clashes with the security forces and one other was arrested, news agencies reported.
...
"The terrorists disguised as Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and Basiji (volunteer) forces opened fire to the authority
and people from behind the stand during the parade," the governor of Khuzestan, Gholam-Reza Shariati, said, according to IRNA.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert also referred to the attack as terrorism. Nauert said on Saturday, "We stand
with the Iranian people against the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism and express our sympathy to them at this terrible time".
On 22 September 2018, Yaqoob Al-Ahvaz claimed responsibility for the 2018 Ahvaz military parade attack in comments to UK-based
Iran International TV. He said that his group Ahvaz National Resistance, a part of Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of
Ahvaz, has "no choice but to resist." On 23 September, a statement made in The Hague, Netherlands, on the ASMLA website, denied
responsibility for the attack, saying that the claim was made by a "group that was expelled from the organization since 2015."
After Yaqoob Al-Ahvaz claimed responsibility Iran
accused Saudi Arabia
of involvement in the attack:
IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif said the attackers were affiliated with a terrorist group supported by Saudi Arabia, Iran's state-run
Press TV said.
"The individuals who fired at the people and the armed forces during the parade are connected to the al-Ahvaziya group which
is fed by Saudi Arabia," Sharif said. Saudi Arabia has yet to respond to the allegations.
Several years ago ASMLA aka Al-Ahvaziya
committed several
terror attacks in Iran. Its leaders live in the Netherlands and Denmark.
Iran immediately reminded
those countries of their duties:
Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassadors of the Netherlands and Denmark, along with a senior British diplomat on Saturday
to issue a strong protest the attack, Iran's state-run media reports.
Bahram Ghasemi, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Iran "re-emphasized" to the diplomats a previous warning about
the presence in their respective countries of members of a group that Iran classifies as a terrorist group and wants arrested
and prosecuted.
According to IRNA, Ghasemi said "it is unacceptable" that members of a terrorist group be allowed in those countries and not
be included on the European Union's terror list only because they have not committed crimes on European soil.
A few days later though, Iran concluded that the attack was not committed by the Ahvaz movement, but by the Islamic State. On
October 1 it responded with a missile salvo
that hit Islamic State facilities in Syria:
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) announced they have bombed a site in eastern Syria in retaliation to the terrorist
attack against a military parade in Iranian Ahvaz 10 days ago.
...
The IRGC confirmed that the targeted terrorist group was behind the terror attack that killed over a dozen and injured many
more in the city of Ahvaz.
An additional operation against the planers of the attack
took place on October 15 in Iraq:
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday they had killed the "mastermind" behind an attack on a military parade in the Iranian
city of Ahvaz last month which left 25 people dead, nearly half of them members of the Guards.
The Guards said in a statement published on state media their forces had killed a man named Abu Zaha and four other militants
in Diyala province in Iraq. One news website run by Iran's state television said Abu Zaha was a member of Islamic State.
That closed the issue for Iran.
On October 30 Denmark suddenly accused Iran of
an assassination plot against a leader of the ASMLA group:
Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen described the alleged planned assassination by Iran of an exiled separatist leader
in Denmark as "totally unacceptable"
The Iranian ambassador to Copenhagen was summoned to the foreign ministry over the allegations. A Norwegian citizen of Iranian
origin was arrested in Sweden on 21 October in connection with the alleged plan. The man denies the charges. Authorities conducted
a massive manhunt on 28 September which led to road closures, trains and ferries being cancelled, and bridges being shut across
Denmark.
On Tuesday, Danish intelligence chief Finn Borch Andersen confirmed the measures had been taken to prevent the alleged plot.
The Danish intelligence accused the Norwegian citizens of taking pictures of a house where one of the ASMLA leader lives. It provide
no evidence for its claims. Iran rejected the accusations:
An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said such "biased reports" and allegations pursued " the enemy's plots and conspiracies"
to harm the developing relations between Iran and Europe , according to Tasnim news agency.
It indeed seems that Danish government, led by the rightwing Venstre party, is collaborating with the U.S. and Britain to
sabotage the European position against U.S. sanctions on Iran:
Mr Rasmussen said, after a meeting with his British counterpart Theresa May in Oslo, that he appreciated her support. "In close
collaboration with UK and other countries we will stand up to Iran," he tweeted. Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said Denmark
would discuss further actions with European partners in the coming days.
The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, congratulated
Denmark on arresting "an Iranian regime assassin".
The former Secretary General of NATO and U.S. stooge Anders Fogh Rasmussen is the predecessor of the current
Venstre party leader and Danish premier Lars Lψkke
Rasmussen. Both are hawks.
Yesterday Israeli journalist reported that the information on which Denmark acted came from Israel:
BREAKING: Israeli Mossad gave Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) the information about the assassination attempt
planned by Iranian intelligence service against the leader of the Iranian opposition organization ASMLA, Israeli official tells
me
Well - if Israeli officials says Iran did something bad that will surely be true. (Not.)
Iran's foreign minister
accuses
Israel of running false flag operations to frame Iran :
Denmark's accusations against Iran followed the unveiling of another suspected Iranian plot to target a Paris rally by an opposition
group in June. According to Israeli reports, the Mossad helped thwart that attack as well , which led to the arrest of several
Iranians in Europe, including a diplomat.
The earlier plot
involved two members of the anti-Iranian terror cult MEK in Belgium who were caught with explosives that they allegedly wanted
to use to blow up a MEK conference in Paris:
The allegation that an Iranian operative plotted an attack on French soil is jeopardizing Europe's support for the accord. As
U.S. and Israeli officials ramp up pressure on Europe to sever ties with Tehran, they have cited it as a reason why Mr. Macron
and other leaders should end their support for the deal.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced it had foiled an Iranian operation to kill a dissident, turning up the pressure on Europe to
harden its posture toward Tehran. A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry said Iran had no involvement in the case.
The most interesting question about such plots is always "Cui bono?". Who benefits from these incidents?
Iran has no interest in causing any upheaval with Europe shortly before the second round of U.S. sanctions, which threaten
its economic well being, come into place early this month. Iran already took revenge for the Ahvaz attack. It has no need to tackle
some unrelated separatist who resides in Denmark. Iran needs Europe to work around the U.S. sanctions. That aim prohibits any such
operations.
Both, the MEK plot as well as the case in Denmark, smell of false flag incidents. In both case no one was hurt. In both cases
some stooges with no current relation to Iran were caught. Both cases came to light after information was allegedly provided by Mossad
.
But is it really Israel who set up these incidents? Both serve U.S. interest just as much. It is no secret that the U.S. wants
to prevent European subversion of U.S. sanctions on Iran.
In June 2017 the Trump administration
installed
a new CIA group to plot and launch undercover operations against Iran. It is led by its most ruthless operator:
He is known as the Dark Prince or Ayatollah Mike, nicknames he earned as the Central Intelligence Agency officer who oversaw the
hunt for Osama bin Laden and the American drone strike campaign that killed thousands of Islamist militants and hundreds of civilians.
Now the official, Michael D'Andrea, has a new job. He is running the C.I.A.'s Iran operations, according to current and former
intelligence officials, an appointment that is the first major sign that the Trump administration is invoking the hard line the
president took against Iran during his campaign.
Mr. D'Andrea's new role is one of a number of moves inside the spy agency that signal a more muscular approach to covert operations
under the leadership of Mike Pompeo, the conservative Republican and former congressman, the officials said.
A year later the same Mike Pompeo, now Secretary of State, created the
Iran Action Group within
the State Department. It is a complementary entity to the CIA group. Little has been published about the action both groups have
taken so far. What has Ayatollah Mike done since he set up shop 18 month ago?
It is likely that the false flag operations in Europe, like the ones in Belgium and Denmark, are run by the CIA with the Mossad
only in an auxiliary role. The U.S. can hardly admit that it is faking terrorist incidents in Europe while the overrated Mossad loves
to take credit for everything that happens on this world.
Europe has no interest in supporting or escalating Trump's war on Iran. EU countries should demand hard evidence from Denmark
and other accusers of Iran and should not act on the basis of only vague accusations.
Posted by b on November 1, 2018 at 10:30 AM |
Permalink
Comments Iran should sue the puppet state Denmark. End of story
Israel is regarded as a beneficent country with no ulterior motives by western governments and media. Every time, you can count
on like clockwork, no matter how outrageous or self serving the claim.
thanks b.. i agree with your analysis here.. the usa needs to keep its puppet states. on a string... cia has a long history of
these types of actions.. i am surprised at how easily or convenient it is for the puppets to continue as puppets.. and of course
as we approach the nov 5 th financial santion bs from the evil empire that claims equality for all (after usa and israel are cared
for) will be trying to alienate the rest of the world to iran as much as possible.. the timing here is in line with that goal
post.. very predictible, just like our local shill who will claim it is iran as opposed to usa-israel-ksa and etc, that pull this
shit regularly.. the same ugly crew responsible for supporting terrorism as witnessed in syria, yemen and etc further back are
at work here... predictible..
i suspect more bs to come from these same state sponsored liars....
The complete and utter amorality of the West on display yet again, as if we needed any more examples. There is certainly compelling
evidence that a group of "extremists" are endangering all of humanity and the entire planet, the only problem for Western MSM
in reporting on this is that those "extremists" are in fact the ruling elites of the West and their "allies" in Saudi Arabia and
Israel.
"Both, the MEK plot as well as the case in Denmark, smell of false flag incidents. In both case no one was hurt." Just like
with the "bombs" shipped to a few US "liberals" recently.
I thought the War on Terror dictated that the whole world was the battlefield. What's the difference between Iran trying to take
down a terrorist in Denmark and the US trying to take one down in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Africa?
It was only going to be a matter of time until Iran got Skripalled. Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif
Tweets a list : "Incredible series of coincidences.
Or, a simple chronology of a MOSSAD program to kill the JCPOA?"
Please note the last listed "coincidence."
Also on Zarif's Twitter is a video segment of his interview with Face The Nation and other important announcements.
This is what he said about the Pittsburg attack:
"Extremism and terrorism know no race or religion, and must be condemned in all cases. The world deserves better than to
have to live with weaponized demagoguery. Thoughts and prayers with victims of terrorist attack on Pittsburgh synagogue and
their loved ones." [My Emphasis]
The nations of the world have had the following choice to make for awhile now, and I'd say the choice can no longer be kicked
down the road:
Either blindly follow the two prevaricating Outlaw Nations--United States and Israel--or stand with Russia, China, and others
in supporting proven truths and upholding the fundamental principles of International Law as expressed via the UN Charter. In
other words, it's past time to review GW Bush's dicta: Either you're with us or against us--abet the lawbreakers or join the posse
to contain them.
The evil empire and their bought minions are infecting the globe. They will never stop until their domination by organised $ brings
surfs everywhere under their control.
These forces do not believe in a "middle class", they believe the wealthiest should rule because it creates a more stable and
predictable society..
A society Charles Dickens wrote about. Wonderful...
One needs a high level of stupid among the western population to sell bull s... by the buckets. But then again, that is US and
allies. As was said: Too stupid to realize they are stupid. In the US the most trusted institution is the military. Proof enough?
about MEK, the terrorist group... our shithead exprime minister steven harper was singing the praises of them the past month....
apparenlty stevie just can't do enough for israel and zionism, and if the canuck media which is essentialy bought and paid for
by the same interests has its way, we will get a similar insane gov't after trudeau light is finished his term... apparently canucks
are one cycle behind the usa in electing its leaders... it will be a trump type israel subservient toad for next pm of cauckistan...
i sure wish the western political players weren't so beholden to neoliberalism. and we had someone even half the leader putin
is.... but, we don't....
East by not responding strongly to West provocations is begging for war.
East by crying for West for cooperation is begging for war.
And since East and West are controlled by the same same cabal - war is inevitable.
Just ask Mr. Kissinger...
The Edomites, who after Rome's extermination of the remnant of the House of Israel at Jerusalem began calling themselves "Jews"
for "controlled opposition" for "the real Anti-Christ" "engine for enslaving mankind" we founded God's America to escape, become
sex perverts, including incesting Sabbatean Frankists - hence the Manchu-baldness, as a consequence of their satanic cult's ritual
sodomy of innocent toddlers while being rabbinically inculcated as "gods chosen by God to rule the world."
Wow. Thank You for this one. After reading this excellent assessment of the present situation, of which we might only know the
most shallow facts, I had to do a search (DDG) about Iran during the time of the first openly Fascist Europe - being described
as having emanated from 3rd-Reich-Germany and Italy.
I was unaware that there was an
Anglo-Soviet
Invasion of Iran , because of the alleged sympathy of the Shah's Iran with Nazi-Germany. The Brits and the Russians were buddies
then and wanted to prevent that Iranian oil is accessible to Nazi-Germany.
All over sudden I am confused that the Brits invaded shoulder to shoulder with Soviet forces Iran - while now, besides delivering
the political ham theater of saber rattling against Russia, supporting terror and instigating sanctions against Iran again.
To make things much worse to comprehend, one is to wonder how many European countries actually did join Nazi Germany without
much ado at the time, based on the fact that the Scandinavians and the Netherlands are now as Fascist as Nazi Germany was during
its short 1000 years of glory. Does anybody else get the impression that this was always this way? That we have been lied to about
everything regarding Fascism? That it was never Fascism that was the problem in Europe - as it appears to do very well there -
but a strong Germany that could have easily governed its territory via effective 'bureaucracy'. All of Europe.
The truth is, that the stench of Fascism today, was already stinking badly in the 20th century, but was never really a problem.
The problem were the Germans. And somehow, the Germans want to continue to have economic ties with Iran. Is this how history repeats
itself - minus the marching Soviet/Russian and British buddy forces?
How many false flag operations have been invoked to explain unpopular events in recent years? The British government was behind
the attempted murder of Skripal. All of the chemical attacks launched against the opposition in Syria were false flag operations
to bring the US into the war (which amounted to nothing burgers anyway). Ray McGovern hypothesized the US used the Vault 7 tools
as a false flag to blame Russia for the DNC hack. Is there any end to false flag speculation?
Who cares if the Iranians deny the charge? That means absolutely nothing. Russia has been lying and denying for years. Additionally,
that Mossad would have provided the information to Denmark and France is completely logical since they have been collecting intelligence
on Iran for years - and have been dealing with Iranian-supported terrorists for decades.
There is no evidence for a false flag operation. Sure it's a possibility (it's always a possibility), but the current evidence
points toward Iranian plans to murder dissidents. The British were right about Skripal. The Dutch were right about MH17. Ray McGovern
was wrong about the CIA hacking the DNC - and the likely result of this investigation is that Iran planned to murder a couple
of dissidents. In lieu of the stupidity exhibited by the Saudis in the Khashoggi murder, it's completely believable.
With all of that said, this is a well thought out attempt to blame the US.
Denmark has become another UK, willing to perform any act and light any fuse against Russia, Iran or any nation that challenges
the hegemony of US, EU and NATO.
Just a subservient vassal, self-degradating. I would compare Denmark to a whore, but that defames those poor souls.
The Danes are like Brits. There, I said it. Nothing worse than the official scumbags of Britain. Pity the good folks of both
countries.
Such a little country desperately trying to hide their true Nazi soul, fabricating events and promulgating Fake News and bogus
Intel.
In service to big Hegemon and little hegemon (Israel).
thanks for the analysis. we all see the pattern, but i guess it's still important to debunk the bullshit--it just never seems
to stop the predetermined goals. it was widely seen that saddam's alleged wmd's didn't exist, but the invasion went on. now the
u.s. wants war with iran. unless russia or china intervenes, what can stop it?
DontBelieveEitherPropaganda , Nov 1, 2018 3:15:48 PM |
link
@10 - WJ: Difference is, USA has drones and some 19 yo teen can kill you with his joystick. ;)
I think false flag seems likely, but i also have some doubts about ISIS claiming to be resposible. The Iranian state is also pretty
complex, with many different actors and power centers. So it cant be ruled out that those arab seperatists are resposible and
that some rouge IRGC faction took action against reason of the state as a whole.
Like B said, the EU should demand evidence. Like with Skripal.. Not trust the Danish NATO proxys.
The Dutch were not right about MH17, and neither are the Danes. Almost certainly another anti-Iranian false flag coming --
this on American soil -- w war soon to follow.
'The Russian military traced the Buk missile [9M38 missile], which shot down the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in eastern
Ukraine in 2014, using serial numbers found on missile fragments showcased by an international team of investigators led by the
Netherlands.
'Using the serial number of the nozzle cluster 9D13105000 No. 8-30-113 and the engine of the missile 9D131 with the serial
number 8869032, the Russian military identified this missile as one produced by the Dolgoprudny plant a Soviet/Russian designer
and mass producer of surface-to-air missiles located in the city of Dolgoprudny, Moscow Oblast.
'The military said that the documentation for the aforementioned missile is still stored at the plant the missile with the
aforementioned engine and nozzle cluster has the manufacturing serial number of 8868720.
'According to the provided documents, the nozzle cluster was installed in the missile on December 24, 1986. The engine was
installed to the missile on the same day.'
About the only difference between Trump and Hillary I can judge is he's not quite as reckless. Otherwise, their policy goal
remains the same: Full Spectrum Dominance by any means necessary. The attack proves yet again the Outlaw US Empire would rather
have destabilization and war in the region than peace, still thinking it remains the World's Boss.
Thanks b, this is Journalism. Poor craigsummers appears to be in shock. It's ok craig.
We're in a really strange place vis a vis "Mossad" in the west. The average person on the street doesn't know whether to idolize
them as superhuman kickass kravmaga-inventing Jason Bourne types, or diabolical creeps like Weinstein's "former Mossad" minions.
Then Sacha Baron Cohen comes around and makes them funny again. Are they scary? Funny? When they appear in official media, it's
usually in a display of mindblowing incompetence or fraud. So you can see how we're confused.
25 - "USA has drones and some 19 yo teen can kill you with his joystick."
Yes, from a safe place in some place in the U.S. desert, but I wonder how the pilots of the aircraft refueling the KSA bombing
runs to Yemen feel as they finish and do a 180 to return to base. Do they first look to see what their evil has done before heading
back?
More likely it is Iran conveniently concluded that ISIS was responsible, only to get off the hook of EU countries that harbor
terrorists not only anti Iran by anti Russia, so they closed the case not to wreck meek EU attempt to find the way around US sanctions
with trade with Iran. Mossad did not like that and hence used another Russia Gate like provocation to stop EU Iran accommodation,
this time claiming new Iranian terrorism issue Orwelian style blame victims.
karlof1 27 "About the only difference between Trump and Hillary I can judge is he's not quite as reckless."
I would agree with that, but I also think he will be willing to take big risks to see his plan through. He may well be like
Putin's cornered rat if his plans are blocked.
One question we should be asking is why all of a sudden is Denmark taking a leading role in accusing Iran of supporting terrorism
and terrorist cells in Europe. Is Denmark's action as much to pressure Sweden and Finland into joining NATO as it is to pressure
the EU into following the US in sanctioning Iran and tearing up the nuclear treaty the EU still adheres to?
This crap by the Danes is not without precedent. They were in on the US attack against the SAA at Deir Ezzor. US, UK, Australia
and Denmark all took part in that attack.
One question we should be asking is why all of a sudden is Denmark taking a leading role
the danes swede and norway,netherlands folks have all been anglo zion borged.
the man leading this charge is a mr samuel son a proud son of a son i am sure he believes what he says i'm sure he has good reason.
wait for future headlines involving norways trillion dollar sovreign wealth fund vanishing just like gadaffi libya or ukraines
gold..
country control via epstein lolita express blackmail.
young boys and girls in ritual cctv horror show as a form of soft power persuasion
I'm not entirely convinced b. The Iranian government has a long history of assassination attempts. And Denmark is not exactly
a war mongering nation so your claims seem a bit shaky. I have never been impressed by analyses of Iran on this blog, as I think
both b and many commentators here totally ignorant of the IRI's crimes against its own citizens. I am very knowledgable when it
comes to Iran and so incidents like these do not surprise me. Of course I should make clear that it is possible to be against
the IRI and western war mongering nations at the same time.
I just can't stand responding to cs21 hasbara garbage; nothing is more annoying than hasbara. To quote Irish Nobel laureate GB
Shaw: never wrestle with pigs, you both get dirty and the pig loves it!
Mossad used the MEK and another terrorist group, Jundallah in Iran when they didn't do the dirty job themselves to assassinate
Iranian scientists extra-judicially. Imagine if JFK had done same when Israel was developing its nuclear weapons on the sly?
That's not all, Mossad used these terrorists like they used terrorists in Syria to foment manufactured revolution, specifically,
in Iran, the Green Revolution and as for example what was done in Ukraine, terrorist snipers masquerading as basiji fired into
the crowd of green protestors and killed a young women who the Western media elevated as the face of the Revolution hoping it
would incite anger that would spread exponentially and trigger riots everywhere then civil war like in Syria and Ukraine, but
they were very disappointed. This is playbook Mossad/CIA revolution engineering. All constituted criminal acts against sovereign
nations, except in Iran their plan fizzled.
Mossad also used false flag against Gadaffi in Libya and years earlier against Mossadegh, the democratically elected leader
of Iran that preceded the Shah. The Lavon Affair was a false flag comprised of multiple terrorist attacks that Israel planned
and plotted to execute and blame on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Egyptian groups.
Mossad has assassinated what it considered to be terrorists in Europe, Syria, Lebanon, UAE, Jordan and on and on with total
impunity. Some of these so-called terrorists were political leaders recent example Arafat, and attempted murder of Meschal, at
least one or more were false flag to trigger civil war, i.e. in Lebanon, and some were what South African Apartheid victims would
consider resistance and freedom fighters.
Israel also attacked the USSLiberty and no doubt had a hand in U.S. military sabotage in Lebanon not to mention murdering American
journalists and activists.
ALL this was done with impunity. So in regards to these foiled terrorist attacks I have no doubt Mossad is up to no good and
Israel has everything to gain in this dirty business they have executed many times before.
The truth lies in who benefits most and who has exhibited the most egregious pattern of behaviour. ISRAEL.
Yes, it certainly smells like a false flag operation.
The CIA, MI6, and Mossad have been doing such operations in Europe since the end of WW2.
No surprise.
IRAN must be a hasbara trigger word. The Zionist web army recruits have arrived. Everything you pulled out of wiki I can double,
triple, quadruple for Isra-hell. For starters, let's talk about Prison facility 1391 - torture, murder, perpetual isolation--dark
ages stuff.
Let's talk about the kidnapping, imprisonment, even torture of children. Perhaps, the worst human rights record against children.
8000 Palestinian children arrested since 2000.
What about the two-tier justice system in Isra-hell?
Shall we discuss the murder of activists, journalists and protestors? What about political prisoners in Isra-hell? What about
administrative detention. Detention without trial.
This is the tip of the iceberg regarding Isra-hell's human rights abuses. Don't get me started.
As we approach the end of the year the big questions facing Europe are:
(1) Which country will win the prize for the most decapitations or slit throats? France or Germany?
With dozens of horrific crimes recently these two competitors are running neck and neck, however with Macron's France averaging
close to one slit throat per day, France is probably going to win this contest
Which leaves us with the big question Germans are asking
(2) Which city will earn the distinction of being 2018's Rape Capital of Germany?
For a long time it seemed that the winner would surely be Berlin, but then Freiburg lurched into the lead a few weeks ago.
And now, with a 15-year-old being gang-raped by Afghan asylum seekers, Munich is hustling to take the title.
This crime and subsequent arrests were kept out of the media for a few weeks
-- coincidentally, until just after the recent local elections in Bavaria
The article below from Bild, also translated into English, contains additional details:
Suspects in Custody: Six Men Allegedly Raped Girl (15)
October 30, 2018
Munich -- The Munich police have arrested five Afghan refugees; according to Bayerischer Rundfunk another alleged perpetrator
is on the run.
The allegation: They reportedly raped a 15-year-old girl.
The Munich public prosecutor confirmed to BILD upon request that there is an investigation involving a sexual assault and several
people have been arrested. The spokesman did not want to comment further.
The case: The girl, who is being psychologically cared for, according to BILD's information, had filed charges against her
"partner" at the end of September. The asylum seeker is said to have verbally threatened her and thereby forced her to have intercourse.
Also, he forced her to have intercourse with several his friends. She was so intimidated that she had to endure being abused
by them all for several days. Each case is to be handled individually. Physical violence had played no role in the incidents.
In addition to the alleged victim's partner, four other refugees (all between 20 and 25 years old) were arrested. The alleged
perpetrators are registered asylum seekers.
In the meantime, warrants have been issued against them on suspicion of rape. They are in custody.
The assaults are said to have occurred at the end of September. The first arrests were made four weeks ago.
Some interrogations remain to be conducted to substantiate the allegations made by the alleged victim, which is one explanation
for why the authorities have not made the case public.
Some of the detainees admitted that they had intercourse with the minor, but said that it had taken place by mutual agreement."
Got that?
According to Bild, "Physical violence played no role in the incidents"
First their is money laundering charges by the US against Denmark's largest bank and now we have Denmark joining the Trump stomp
on Iran project. Could it be the US cut a deal with Denmark to limit their investigations and penalties into this bank and maybe
others, or possible involvement of Danish government officials, and the Dane's jumped at the chance to limit the damage to the
country and it's economy and keep sanction happy Trump from sanctioning them into the poor house.
Denmark, like Sweden and Norway are the biggest enablers of USA's imperial efforts more than any other nations in the whole world.
I think it is only Russia which gets that fact. Nobel prizes are nothing but tooks of the US empire
42 ben, ditto... cs has never heard of the cia and the past countless years of there horrors... in fact as far as cs is concerned,
they never had any role to play in ghouta 2011 and afterwards either...cs thinks the letters stand for charity international association...usaid
is another benevolent org as far as cs is concerned... if cs was ever to read john perkins 'confessions of an economic hit man'
he would fall out of his chair and have his world turned upside down.... cs really needs to hang over at pat langs site where
some of his love and ignorance of the usa's covert history has a place of acceptance.. it ain't here..
"It is likely that the false flag operations in Europe, like the ones in Belgium and Denmark, are run by the CIA with the Mossad
only in an auxiliary role."
Very difficult to distinguish the two. Israel declared its campaign to internally destabilise Iran last spring (evidently having
quailed at the risks of the open military attack), the US has been fruitlessly attempting the same for forty years. I suppose
the new Israeli campaign has revived US efforts.
By the way, I was interested by Alastair Crooke's recent remark that Israeli air superiority has been broken by the S300s.
Crooke's views are to take seriously.
Steve, how could you overlook the all time top lap dog: the UK? The UK would be first on most people's list of sycophant enablers
of US terrorism, regime change, and false flag operations. Sometimes Macron tries to run ahead of the pack, but gets slapped back
by Trump, but when all is said and done, the whole NATO crew are self-serving idiots and assholes.
Denmark, like Sweden and Norway are the biggest enablers of USA's imperial efforts more than any other nations in the whole world.
I think it is only Russia which gets that fact. Nobel prizes are nothing but tooks of the US empire
Posted by: Steve | Nov 2, 2018 4:49:42 AM | 46
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well said!
I totally agree with you after saw the ghastly bully behaviour of Denmark on 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference,
who was actively trying to force down the throat of BRICS (EPS. China & India) and developing countries the schemes that US &
Co wanted: 1): to strangle the development chance of third world and 2). to escape the accountability/ownership of the big messy
pollution the Western countries has been emitted into the air and the world for centuries.
Another aggressive Dane who was in full swing to propagate the Empire's interests/schemes is Anders Fogh Rasmussen, ex-NATO
Secretary General, who was so belligerent that I sometimes question how the peace-love Denmark can produce such an aggressive
person......
b, is there any way to highlight a 'Craig Summers' post at the top, so we can skip over his/her/their lying rubbish unread. Bad
enough having to wade through the effusions of the sprinkling of religious loonies who seem to be posting now, without wasting
time on this bellingcrap-style hasbarollocks.
"In the beginning of 2017 the Danish Security Service PET had received information about planned political murder of individuals
in Denmark who oppose the Turkish government. The PET acted on the information and put the would be targets in safety. This is
revealed by Swedish Radio Ekot. https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=6975341
And is Denmark going to stop doing this:"Denmark's foreign minister has for the first time acknowledged that the government
allowed the sale of surveillance technology to authoritarian Arab governments, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE." "Mass surveillance
during and after the Arab Spring was used to facilitate the mass incarceration of dissidents, leading to the eventual crushing
of popular movements, the report alleged."
And what are the Syro-Ahwazian pro-FSA dudes up to in Denmark:"One battalion of the rebel Free Syrian Army is called the "Ahwaz
Brigade", although the group says there are no foreign fighters in its ranks.
"We have relations with different factions of the (Syrian) rebels," said Habib Nabgan, the former head of a coalition of Ahwazi
parties whose armed wing carried out last week's pipeline attack.
"They need information, which we give them, and we need some of their expertise, so there is cooperation and that is developing,"
he told Reuters via telephone from Denmark, where he took refuge in 2006." https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-iran-arabs-insight-idUKBRE97E0O620130815
Ahwazians in Syria:"Before the Syrian uprising, the Ahwazi community in Damascus was living in fear, but is now fully behind the
revolutionary struggle.There have been frequent demonstrations in Syria by Ahwazi Arabs flying the opposition flag alongside their
own."
Interesting, the first time i heard of this story my instinct immediately was, why on earth would Iran conduct such risky and
rather pointless operations where the downside would greatly outweigh any benefit if they were caught?? Add to that, no one was
harmed, they got "caught".. and Mossad involved.. seems pretty clear to anyone who actually understands what's going on in the
world.. but there aren't many of us who actually think when we read the news.. thanks again MR B for another insightful piece
on analysis :)
Why? Because you think your Zionist propaganda claptrap is actually convincing and working to bring down surviving bastions
of independent thought? It's laughable how hasbara-scripted you read; delivering superficially well-constructed neoliberal brainwash,
whitewash material. Your disingenuous ilk courting the Left with liberal goodies, in one hand while unleashing double-standard
neoconservative righteous destruction with the other is the main reason we now suffer Trump's fascist right-wing version of same.
People protest vote neoliberalism and end up in the arms of the hard right-wing version. It's a no choice choice; an affront to
real democracy. You play the desperation of the Left against the Right and then deliver it into the same neoconstruct. You're
two sides of the same cult and neither can stand independent thought. After I read your Zionist-contrived claptrap, I feel like
my mind has been abused and my time wasted. Once you're wise to the trap, you never go back to falling for whichever charismatic
puppet is going to save us from the other side.
The goal becomes helping others break free of the vicious, cyclical no-choice duopoly to viably challenge and destroy it for
good! You pretend at righeousness, but you're on the side of status quo darkness.
Uh, just one more point, I still believe in GW Shaw's wisdom that you shouldn't wrestle with ignorance, ie pigs, but I just intended
@56 as a Reader Beware CS for anyone who's out there only reading.
Perhaps of more importance was Crooke's remark on US debt. He said in August the cost of servicing the debt, for the first
time, exceeded tax revenue. On top of that, the US must sell over a trillion of new debt each year for the next three years.
Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Nov 2, 2018 11:31:43 AM | 58
Yes I too thought that was interesting. But Israel's problem is more fatal, in a permanent sense. Air superiority once lost
won't be recovered, but the US could, if it wanted to, live more within its means.
As usual, some former official has to include : Israeli intelligence tipped off the CIA that Iran had likely identified
some of its assets, said the same former official.
"Bolton, speaking Wednesday at an event hosted by the Alexander Hamilton Society in Washington, said he expects U.S. defense
spending "to flatten out" in the near term. He said he didn't anticipate major cuts to entitlements such as Medicare and Social
Security.
""It is a fact that when your national debt gets to the level ours is, that it constitutes an economic threat to the society,"
Bolton said. "And that kind of threat ultimately has a national security consequence for it.""
Of course, he wants to cut support for citizens instead of support for the Deep State and its massively corrupt MIC. The massive
cut in revenues caused by Trump's giveaways to corporations and the 1% were designed to exacerbate the problem and create an artificial
crisis in discretionary spending. Most from all sides of the political spectrum can see this for what it is and are already pushing
back, which will be the fundamental reason Trump won't get a 2nd term--his policies are proving to be a fiscal nightmare.
The evidence provided by the author that the CIA was the primary driving agent in these incidents is not compelling. In fact,
the US government under Obama supported the JCPOA against the wishes of the Netanyahu government. Thus the statement that "US
interests" are necessarily defined by sanctions against Iran seems to me to be unfounded. Had the author replaced "US interests"
with "Trump administration policies", which are clearly much more aligned with the interests of the Likud and Netanyahu the statement
might be more supportable.
"Do you remember the Green revolution of 2009 that went pfttttt?"
Very interesting article, but the Green Revolution didn't go pfft because of that. 2009 failed because the middle class aren't
very good at revolutions. They aren't the majority, and they didn't have popular support.
Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons, contrary to US and British claims. I discovered in
Baghdad a group of British scientific technicians who had been sent by the UK Ministry of
Defense to build outlawed biological weapons at Salman Pak. These included deadly anthrax
and Q-fever – but only for use against Iran if a second Iraq-Iran War erupted.
This is a typical projection. France is a member of "dirty four". Macron government is a
typical neoliberal cabinet, not that different from Merkel government. As such it is controlled
by the USA.
"Honestly, to say that we were surprised or upset is to say nothing. I think this condition
could be better described as 'shock' when we heard the spokesman for the French government, Mr.
Griveaux, just recently said the following. I quote: there are two media outlets that I refuse
to see in the press room of the Elysee Palace, they are RT and Sputnik because I do not
consider them to be media, they are not journalists, they are engaged in propaganda," Zakharova
said at a weekly news briefing.
According to Zakharova, such an approach is the result of
"the unwillingness of the French authorities to hear alternative sources of information."
Last month, two French government's think tanks issued a report, which recommended the
country's authorities to abstain from accrediting journalists of the RT broadcaster and the
Sputnik news agency.
Last year, RT reporters were denied entry to the headquarters of then-French presidential
candidate Macron twice in April, and in May, a Sputnik reporter was not allowed to enter the
square in front of Paris' Louvre museum where Macron and his supporters were celebrating the
victory in the presidential run-off. After Macron became French president, he accused RT and
Sputnik of "spreading false information and slander."
The situation around RT and Sputnik in France is not unique for the European Union: in 2016,
the European Parliament adopted a resolution claiming that Russia was waging information
warfare and singled out RT and Sputnik. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the resolution
proved that Western democracy was failing, but expressed hope that common sense would prevail
and Russian media outlets would be able to work abroad without restrictions.
Plenty of good stuff at the link including what we have read before.
The article leads me to this question: If whomever can fabricate Syrian Army messages,
isn't there one small problem with it? I.e. The Brits may be hoovering up SIGNIT from Mount
Troodos in Cyprus, but unless the radio signals are highly directional (and even then they
emanate outwards), other nations are also recording these signals, such as Russia,
which we never hear about.
Therefore, the Brits/8200 whomever must assume that the Russians have copies and would
know if the former are putting up the bs and can call it out behind closed doors at the UN to
other nations. So what's the point? Simply for building media outrage and DO
SOMETHING! momentum, hoping to act first before it can be scotched? That's what used to
happen in the past
That's a really good piece, with loads of interesting information. What jumped out for me,
though was what amounts to a professional acknowledgement of something that was introduced by
commenters early on in the Skripal affair – the almost complete absence of CCTV footage
of their movements and those of people close to them. As both sources point out, England is
lousy with CCTV, you can barely move without being picked up on multiple cameras. Therefore
the British must have hours of footage that they have chosen not to reveal. And as the
article concludes, the only logical reason for that is that it does not support the official
narrative, since one has obviously been decided upon and vigorously defended.
As an aside, it is tragic that intelligence is manipulated the way it is to present a
desired conclusion. Because intelligence is supposed to be something like the irrefutable
clue, the piece that doesn't fit, in detective stories. It is supposed to provide that
epiphanous moment when you know what has transpired beyond any reasonable doubt. Every
time that moment is discovered to have been brought about by fabrication and deceit so as to
push an incorrect conclusion to the forefront, trust in the method diminishes. Consequently,
the harder governments push this or that piece of evidence as the conclusive piece of proof
which cannot be denied, the more likely it is to have been manufactured rather than
discovered.
Two disappearances, and two very different responses from Western governments, which
illustrates their rank hypocrisy.
When former Russian spy Sergei Skripal went missing in England earlier this year, there was
almost immediate punitive action by the British government and its NATO allies against Moscow.
By contrast, Western governments are straining with restraint towards Saudi Arabia over the
more shocking and provable case of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The outcry by Western governments and media over the Skripal affair was deafening and
resulted in Britain, the US and some 28 other countries
expelling dozens of Russian diplomats on the back of unsubstantiated British allegations
that the Kremlin tried to assassinate an exiled spy with a deadly nerve agent. The Trump
administration has further tightened sanctions
citing the Skripal incident.
London's case against Moscow has been marked by wild speculation and ropey innuendo. No
verifiable evidence of what actually happened to Sergei Skripal (67) and his daughter Yulia has
been presented by the British authorities . Their claim that President Vladimir Putin
sanctioned a hit squad armed with nerve poison relies on sheer conjecture.
All we know for sure is that the Skripals have been disappeared from public contact by the British authorities for more than
seven months, since the mysterious incident of alleged poisoning in Salisbury on March 4.
Russian authorities and family relatives have been steadfastly refused any contact by London with the Skripal pair, despite
more than 60 official requests from Moscow in accordance with international law and in spite of the fact that Yulia is a citizen
of the Russian Federation with consular rights.
It is an outrage that based on such thin ice of "evidence", the British have built an edifice of censure against Moscow,
rallying an international campaign of further sanctions and diplomatic expulsions.
Now contrast that strenuous reaction, indeed hyper over-reaction, with how Britain, the US, France, Canada and other Western
governments are ever-so slowly responding to Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi case.
After nearly two weeks since Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, the Saudi regime is this week
finally admitting he was killed on their premises albeit, they claim, in a "botched interrogation".
The Blogmire
According to
an article in The Mail , the mother of Sergei Skripal, Yelena, has not heard from
her son since the incident on 4th March , and the last time she heard from her granddaughter,
Yulia, was on 24th July:
"Recalling her phone conversation with Yulia, Yelena told the Daily Mirror : 'The
last time I actually spoke to Yulia was on the 24th of July on my 90th birthday. She
rang - it was unexpected but it was so lovely to hear from her. She called and was actually
with Sergei. She told me: "I'm with daddy he is beside me but he can't speak as he has a pain
in his throat". She said he had been in some pain.'"
This is interesting for a number of reasons.
Firstly, we know that during the conversation on 24th July, according to a number of reports
(for example here
), Yulia told her grandmother that the reason Sergei was unable to speak was because his voice
was still weak due to a tracheostomy :
"Babushka, happy birthday, everything is fine, everything is perfect. I am in London with
papa. He can't speak because he's got a tracheostomy, that pipe, which will be taken off in
three days. Now when he speaks with that pipe, his voice is first of all very weak and
secondly, he makes quite a lot of wheeze. So babushka with your poor hearing you would really
struggle to understand him. He'll call after the tracheostomy is off. "
This was almost 3 months ago. So the tracheostomy was preventing Sergei from
speaking; but it was coming off in three days; yet nearly 3 months later and still no call from
Sergei? Is that not very odd? Indeed, especially given that Yelena states in the interview that
she and Sergei used to speak every week .
Secondly, the call on 24th July is itself very odd. Notice that Yulia uses the phrases
"everything is fine, everything is perfect." These are basically the same sorts of phrases that
she repeated over and over in
her call with her cousin Viktoria on 5th April :
"Everything is ok, everything is fine."
"Everything is fine, but we'll see how it goes, we'll decide later. You know what the
situation is here. Everything is fine, everything is solvable, everyone is recovering and is
alive."
"Everything is ok. He is resting now, having a nap. Everyone's health is fine, there are
no irreparable things. I will be discharged soon. Everything is ok."
She seems very keen - some would say overly keen - to emphasise that everything is
fine and okay and perfect etc. To me it sounds unnatural and forced. What do you think?
But more than this, imagine yourself in the same situation. Your father is next to you. He
can speak, but not very well, and so can't communicate through the phone to his mother. What
would you do? Well, I know what I would do. I would relay speech from the one to the other. "He
says he's getting better and misses you very much grandma." "She says she loves you, dad."
Isn't that what normal people would do in such circumstances?
But instead, Yulia speaks in a way that doesn't fill me with too much certainty that he was
actually in the room with her. It's all very medical and somewhat officious. And even if his
voice was a bit wheezy and hard to understand, his ears were okay, weren't they? Couldn't Yulia
have held the phone to her dad's ear so he could hear his mother speak to him? Again, that
would be what a normal person would do in such circumstances, wouldn't it? But of course they
don't do normal in SkripalWorld.
Thirdly, we have to reckon with the fact that since that call, in which Yulia indicated that
Sergei would call in as little as three days, there has been no communication at all . Not with
grandma. Not with Viktoria. Not with anyone (apparently even Mark Urban got the cold
shoulder).
Actually, that's not quite the case. We don't really have to reckon with this because the
heroic journalism of The Mail gives us the answer. In the same piece that it mentioned
a call between Yulia and her grandma, in which Sergei was apparently sat right next to Yulia,
we get this:
"Since that solitary phone conversation, she [Yelena] has not heard from her the two targeted
relatives as any contact could lead Russian forces to the pair."
Remarkable, isn't it? So according to The Mail , the reason that Sergei
Skripal cannot call his mother, is because Russian forces might be able to trace his
whereabouts and order a hit on him. Another one, apparently. And yet in the very same piece
they report on Yulia Skripal calling her grandmother on 24th July, with Sergei Skripal at her
side. See? It's obvious, isn't it?
Not for the first time in this case, I'm left scratching my head and wondering whether the
journalists who write this sort of thing believe their readers to be so dim that they won't
notice statements in the same article that utterly refute one another, or whether the
journalists themselves are so witless that they simply don't realise that they are
contradicting themselves in the space of a few sentences. Any thoughts?
The fact is that Yulia has phoned her cousin Viktoria a number of times since the beginning
of April, and in most, if not all of those calls, her father was said to be close by. She even
did a little film for Reuters in May, with her father apparently in the same compound. Why were
these allowed, since according to The Mail , it could have led Russian forces to the
pair? Or are we to believe that Russian forces have only just developed the capability to trace
phone calls since 24th July? Worse still, have British Security Services forgotten how to
prevent phone calls being traced by other intelligence agencies since 24th July, not to mention
also losing the ability to stop Russian forces from coming and getting them?
Or is it more likely that The Mail cannot be bothered to ask the obvious questions
that stem from their own report. Such as:
1. Why is the apparent victim in this case, Sergei Skripal, who is under the protection of
British (and possibly US) intelligence services, unable to phone his mother, whom he used to
speak to on a weekly basis?
2. Does this constitute a violation of his human rights?
3. Given that he has had no contact with his mother since 4th March, how can we be sure
that he is alive, and if he is, whether he is not being held against his will?
UK politicians in Skripal story behaved by cheap clowns. Their story with door knob was pathetic. They tried to invent
the legend with poisoning on the fly and that shows. There is definitely something else brewing here and Shamir proposed his
version with Skripal double dealings or something along those line is quite plausible.
We will never know, but I think British discredited themselves for the whole world in this story. Trump was not better will
using this tory to impose additional sanctions on Russia. This is just another proof that he is another neocon who during election
campaign like Obama played the role of isolationalist and then appointed Haley to UN and hired Pompeo as his Secretary of
state and Bolton as his security advisor -- a typical "bat and switch" operation in US politics.
Notable quotes:
"... Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly. ..."
"... As we had learned from videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home. ..."
"... There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan Bandera was. ..."
"... However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services. ..."
"... Such a massive operation against Russian agents and their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal their full knowledge of enemy agents. ..."
"... I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director and actors. ..."
Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that
GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly
matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr
Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the
secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps
he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly.
Two GRU agents, supposedly experts on extraction (they allegedly sneaked the Ukrainian
president Yanukovych from Ukraine after the coup and saved him from lynching mob) were sent to
Salisbury to test the ground and make preparations for Skripal's return. As we had learned from
videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the
beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his
daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home.
There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually
been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if
the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan
Bandera was.
However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to
expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive
expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services.
Still, the Russians had no clue how the West had learned identities of so many diplomats
connected to GRU. They suspected that there was a mole, and a turncoat who delivered the stuff
to the enemy.
That is why Vladimir Putin decided to dare them. As he knew that the two men identified by
the British service had no connection to the alleged poisoning, he asked them to appear on the
RT in an interview with Ms Simonyan. By acting as village hicks, they were supposed to provoke
the enemy to disclose its source. The result was unexpected: instead of revealing the name of a
turncoat, the Belling Cat, a site used by the Western Secret Services for intentional leaks,
explained how the men were traced by using the stolen databases. Putin's plan misfired.
The Russian secret service is not dead. Intelligence services do suffer from enemy action
from time to time: the Cambridge Five infiltrated the upper reaches of the MI-5 and delivered
state secrets to Moscow for a long time, but the Intelligence Service survived. Le Carre's
novels were based on such a defeat of the intelligence. However they have a way to recover.
Identity of their top agents remain secret, and they are concealed from the enemy's eyes.
But in order to function properly, the Russians will have to clean their stables, remove
their databases from the market place and keep its citizenry reasonably safe. Lax, and
not-up-to-date agents do not apparently understand the degree the internet is being watched.
Considering it should have been done twenty years ago, and meanwhile a new generation of
Russians has came of age, perfectly prepared to sell whatever they can for cash, it is a
formidable task.
There is an additional reason to worry. Such a massive operation against Russian agents and
their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal
their full knowledge of enemy agents. It made president Putin worry; and he said this week: we'll
go to heaven as martyrs, the attackers will die as sinners. In face of multiple and recent
threats, this end of the world is quite possible.
Great story. If told many people would believe it. But now it is kind of late. So why it
wasn't told within few days or weeks of Skripal affair? Why it is the British media that has
initiative and Russian media is reactive and defensive? The story that Skripal wanted to
return and that two agents were lured in there should have been told right away and that it
turned out be MI5 provocation should have been insinuated. And the two agents should have
been interviewed on Russian media. Instead we get defensive inept and indolent Russian
reactions.
I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never
know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people
like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director
and actors.
@utu " Instead we get
defensive inept and indolent Russian reactions."
The reaction 'if we want to kill somebody that somebody does not survive' I cannot see as
inept and indolent.
Excellent piece by Israel Shamir which I think gives the correct explanation of the Skripal
poisoning. This was a classic fishing, 'click bait' operation which produced a very valuable
haul for Western Intelligence. The only question is whether Skripal cooperated with it
– which I think he did – not knowing that both he and his daughter were meant to
die. Hence Putin's rage against Skripal a few weeks ago ( calling him a scumbag traitor etc,
etc) after the Russian operatives were identified because retired agents are supposed to stay
retired.
Russia made a very serious mistake with the RT interview with the 2 operatives. Better not
to say anything if you can't give the whole story. The GU weren't happy to show their
incompetence, but compounded the original mistake with obvious lying. That was a propaganda
gift to the Western media and has helped convince original disbelievers of Russian
perfidy.
Russia needs to step up its game especially in the media dept.
@Anatoly Karlin " British
or American human capital, but there are certainly consummate professionals relative to what
passes for today's Russian intelligence services. "
On what this 'certainly' is based, I see no argument whatsoever.
Already a long time ago, I must admit, the CIA director had to admit to senator Moynihan that
he had lied about the CIA not laying mines in Havana harbour.
A professional in espionage does not get caught.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 'Secrecy', New Haven 1998
Anyone acquinted with Sept 11 understands that the USA's secret army, the CIA, was
involved.
Another blunder.
As far as I know British secret services never get caught.
How clever the Russians are, suppose quite clever, I for one do not think that the stupid
stories about for example Skripal have any truth in them.
Until now the asserted Russian meddling in USA elections have not been proved.
Do not know of anything credible that Russian intelligence people are said to have done.
But of course Russian intelligence does exist.
"A related problem is that since there is now a free market economy, with many more
attractive career options for talented people, the high quality people go to work in other
spheres, leaving the intelligence agencies with the dregs;" .
A direct result of erasing ideology so as to erase personality cult towards highly
respected people in former USSR .When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with
your opponent, i.e free market .) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific
human capital to secret service officials, are out there in the global market for possible
selling to the best postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said,
almost everybody has a price .The challenge is finding out where that little bunch who have
not are ..Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little"
advantage How to overcome this would be part of "what is to be done" ..
If the Russians wanted to kill them they would be dead. Period. It is all FN hoax.
The latest English came up with was that poison was smeared on the door handle and that both
touched the door handle. Give me a break. Such a idiocy. Just imagine the exit procedure
where both are touching the door knob.
And than both Russians went to garbage dump carrying the little bottle and thru it there.
What an exemplary citizen neat behavior by Russians,
All English story is such a stupid idiocy that it turns my stomach.
However, the presence of Russian spies in Salisbury can be explained by its nearness to
Porton Down, the secret British chemical lab and factory for manufacturing chemical weapons
applied by the White Helmets in Syria in their false-flag operation in Douma and other
places. It is possible that a resident of Salisbury (Mr Skripal?) had delivered samples
from Porton Down to the Russian intelligence agents. This makes much more sense than the
dubious story of Russians trying to poison an old ex-spy who did his stretch in a Russian
jail.
If Mr. Skripal has been poisoned by the stuff of which he himself took samples in Porton
Down, this would run completely parallel to the earlier poisoning of Mr. Alexander
Valterovich Litvinenko, who also became ill because of carrying poison (polonium) around.
If [Yulia Skripal] had not had the courage to make this call while slipping the
observance of British intelligence, she would probably be dead by now.
Both Skripals are most likely DEAD, murdered by British "intelligence"
services.
The formulaic and curiously uninterested treatment of the matter in the British media
seems inconsistent with the Skripals still being alive.
The article above suggests that the Skripals were unwitting or witting participants in a
sting to expose Russian intelligence agents. More importantly, Sergey Skripal appears to have
had a role in the creation of the DNC's "dossier" to undermine the Trump presidencey.
Whatever the background, Sergey Skripal became privy to important secrets that the Brits
and their seditious allies in the U.S. Deep State do not want exposed.
In the Skripal case the British have not explained why, after claiming to have found the
closest approach to a smoking gun in the form of traces of novichok in that hotel room, the
hotel was not then immediately quarantined.
And assuredly, with Putin's name on the line, the Russians have to do a better job if they
are to refute the standing accusations – the RT interview was something of a PR
disaster.
The Belloncat data, although superficially convincing, could so easily have been faked by
anybody with reasonable knowledge of Russian internet infrastructure and some proficiency in
Photoshop.
But I did not know about these massive intelligence security breaches in Russia. Wow,
that's huge. Even though it's not clear to me how this indicates Putin's plan misfired. If
anything he got exactly what he wanted: confirmation that the "West" had access to the entire
passport database. Knowing what your enemy has in intelligence is a huge win, now they can
work on correcting it (hard as it may be, it would be impossible without knowing).
But the fact is Russia has not really disputed the results so I am fairly confident that
not only was Belling Cat right, but Israel is right, and now we have the situation where
Russia knows that Western intelligence has full access to Russia's passport database.
@Tyrion 2 Had some
experiences with Chinese and Mossad spies, not to mention Russian Jewish hard-drug dealers.
Here are a few examples.
There was an AMES postdoc at UCSD, a Chinese applied-math brain who had a 10-plus female
handler. She'd stop by occasionally to check up on him. He always get extremely anxious when
she was around. Couldn't figure out if it was fear, sexual excitement, or a combination of
both.
There was an old Chinese man and his foxy young female protege, who enjoyed filming U.S.
military maneuvers along the San Diego coast. I observed their operation for days.
There was a swing-shift cleaning crew in a Southern California high-tech mfg facility that
was all Chinese, in an area that typically employed Latin American crews. Its head honcho was
a beautiful Chinese lady. They made it their job to sort through trash bins and save papers.
The feds busted them.
As far as the Mossad, I spent two years on a rental property in SD county, which was
occupied by them as well. Mostly Israeli kids using the property and a local Israeli-owned
vegetarian restaurant as their "scorpion den." Got fairly familiar with some of their
espionage work and methods.
I don't go looking for this stuff. I'm just able to recognize it. As an empath I can read
people, quite well. It's a natural gift.
Can't stomach Israel's insensitive nature. That's why you'll typically find me pointing
out their self-serving bullshit.
This is a pretty good article but also falls on its face at the end
Mr Shamir's 'inside' information confirms my own take on Petrov and Boshirov which I
published a few days after that RT interview with Ms Simonyan
I wrote this on Col Lang's blog on Sept 14
'Yeah those two 'tourists' do look the part don't they I would say they are probably GRU
or something similar but nobody 'poisoned' the Skripals that's total kabuki theater another
Potemkin village production from the reality masters
Something is afoot here though perhaps these two were lured to Salisbury as part of a
frame up plot, perhaps by Skripal himself or perhaps the Brits caught wind of their plans
to visit [on some standard spying mission, certainly not assassination] and put in motion
the elaborate hoax
Everybody there protested loudly including Andrey Martyanov [Smoothie] I also added
this
' I disagree with everyone here it seems these guys aren't tourists but they also didn't
try to kill anyone that's stupid
It's some sort of spy game
Here's one scenario double agent Skripal makes convincing noises about flipping back
someone at GRU [or some similar outfit] sends these two to Salisbury to check it out a very
stupid move which is why Putin is now miffed enough to display these guys publicly and
their field career surely over also a slap in the face to the silly Limeys for playing
dirty pool even in the cloak and dagger game there are unwritten rules '
This is now exactly the story that Mr Shamir is presenting here but he is a day late and a
dollar short
I also don't agree with his take that this is all somehow a big loss for Russian intel the
Brits are the ones who have painted themselves in a corner their Skripal story is a wet paper
bag waiting to fall apart the fact that they lured the Russians to Salisbury, under whatever
pretext, be it Skripal or Porton Down/white helmets etc was their only small tactical victory
because they could then later expose those two after months of Russian denials in order to
show the Russians were in fact somehow involved
But that exposure came months later all that time the Russians would have known that
Boshirov and Petrov had been captured on candid camera and would have had time to work on
their countermove
Mr Shamir writes this like the game is over that is ridiculous the Brits have no way out
of the Skripal hoax there was never any poisoning the original diagnosis of the Skripals in
the Salisbury hospital was opioid overdose that came out in the first BBC interview with the
hospital staff months after the 'poisoning'
It was not until 48 hours after the Skripals were admitted to hospital and the convenient
intervention of Porton Down that the medical diagnosis was 'changed' to nerve agent
poisoning
BUT this is an unsustainable story that WILL FALL APART the simple reason is medical and
chemical fact both nerve agents and agricultural pesticides are based on the exact
same chemical compound organophosphates
'There are nearly 3 million poisonings per year resulting in two hundred thousand
deaths.'
That is the simple reason why emergency doctors EVERYWHERE are trained to recognize and
treat this kind of poisoning especially in rural, agricultural areas like
Salisbury
That is why it took months for media to gain access to the medical staff at that hospital
the British spooks needed to do a lot of 'persuading' with medical professionals that would
have wanted no part in such trickery and fakery
But this is a ticking time bomb that is bound to blow up in the faces of the very stupid
Brits
So yes they pulled off a minor coup in luring those two to Salisbury but the game is very
very far from over
As for Skripal he is in on it for sure as I speculated in my original comment on the
matter..the Russian intel services are perfectly aware of this, yet Mr Shamir's supposedly
well connected source has zero knowledge of this which tells me this source is actually a
useless clown who 'knows' exactly what an internet commenter [myself] already knew two months
ago
PS the fact that the Brits supposedly have all kinds of database info on the Russian intel
apparatus and personnel files etc doesn't mean anything the author is a making a big deal out
of this, but his story lacks meat on its bones most 'intel' is open source material
anyway
As for sensitive stuff that may have been 'sold' by 'corrupt' bureaucrats one must ask if
such 'info' is actually real or a clever plant providing fake info is the oldest spy trick in
the book and this article simply takes for granted that such a trick would not have been
employed why not ?
@FB How would a fake
database leak include the real data on the two GRU agents that just happened to be sent to
UK? Maybe it was to make the data leak seem real?
In spycraft it is always impossible to know how deep the deception goes. That's why the
very article to which you are responding started with:
It is hard to evaluate the exact measure of things in the murky world of spies and
counter-spies, but it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the
subterranean battle.
I think that a clear strategy by the western "intelligence" services is starting to emerge
vis-a-vis the Russians. By accusing any Russian that they can get their hands on, of being a
spy, they want to scare the ordinary Russians from visiting the west, so afterwards any
Russian actually caught traveling to the west can be safely assumed to be a spy – since
by the calculations of the clever western intelligence – only someone who is actually a
spy while at the same time being Russian, would dare to travel to the west. How smart is
that?
Joking aside, it really is becoming unsafe for Russian nationals to travel to the west.
Even though the west reserves the generosity of calling somebody equal only for those that
are from the 3rd world – Russians clearly don't deserve such generosity.
Despite this, exceptions can be made and some unfortunate Russian soul could be accused of
being equal with those highly evolved westerners and against their will can be offered
protection from Mother Russia.
Pretty much like it happened to Yulia Skripal. She was only visiting her gastarbeiter
father in GB, who apparently expressed desire to return to Russia, against pretty much
everybody's wishes, and all of a sudden Yulia Skripal found herself bestowed with the western
generosity of being declared equal, and was disappeared from public eye in order to protect
her from those with whom she is clearly not equal – the Russians.
Thank God at least MI-6 proved equal to the task and discovered her equalness in a nick of
time and saved her. The moral of the story: Only democracy has the power to recognize who is
equal and who is not. Then, on the other hand, capitalism can keep acquiring new monikers
such as "democracy" – all they want, Russia still has better quality of equality,
despite ditching socialism.
@CalDre Yes I 'stubbornly'
refuse to take at face value this silly statement
it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the subterranean
battle.'
Because it's not backed up by anything other than hot air as for that supposed 'data'
about Petrov and Boshirov
that was put out by Bellingcat
Ie mickey mouse stuff as with everything these clowns do, it is meant only to bamboozle
the most utterly stupid bipeds
A very nice clue is the fact that a Russian website called 'The Insider' is Bellingcat's
acknowledged partner here
If you read the article in English they claim to have 'dug' up a lot of info from various
sources such the central Russian resident database and passenger check in data for their
flight to the UK
Big deal that Shamir is building a mountain out of a molehill is more than clear
In fact this entire Shamir tale appears to have one subtle purpose to publicize and
glorify the Bellingcat outfit
which irredeemably lost any credibility a few weeks back when illiterate poofter Eliott
Higgins refused a debate challenge by the distinguished MIT physicist and former presidential
advisor Ted Postol actually calling Postol an 'idiot' a move that astounded even those
willing to entertain Higgins on a semi-credible level
@Anatoly Karlin Be that as
it may, the "Western side" had (publicly known) Aldrich, Hanssen and Benghazi fiasco.
Boils down to, from the comment below:
When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with your opponent, i.e free market
.) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific human capital to secret
service officials, are out there in the global market for possible selling to the best
postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said, almost everybody has
a price..
and
Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little"
advantage.
And, on top of it, in West, since the fall of The Wall, we've been having "Cooking the
Intelligence to Fit the Political Agenda".
This commenter begs to differ with M. Karlin's assessment (8) of the relative competence of
Russian sovok and CIA. "consummate professionals relative to what passes for today's Russian
intelligence services"? Mais non.
CIA always gets caught. All they do is step on their crank, again and again. They depend
not on professionalism but on what Russ Baker describes as a strange mix of ruthlessness and
ineptitude. Both stem from impunity in municipal law.
For example: CIA torture and coercive interference got comprehensively exposed, worldwide,
in the '70s. What happened? Don Gregg gave the Church and Pike committees an ultimatum: Back
off or it's martial law. CIA got busted again in the '80s for the criminal enterprises under
the Iran/Contra rubric. By then CIA had installed Tom Polgar, Former Saigon Station Chief, as
chief investigator for the cognizant Senate Select committee, and Polgar assured Gregg that
his hearings would not be a repeat of the abortive Pike and Church flaps.
So CIA are clowns. They can afford to be clowns because they know they can get away with
it. Getting away with it is their only skill, and the only skill they need.
The persistent category error at this site is failing to realize that CIA is the state.
They rule the USA.
"... "The United States has that ability, with our Navy, to make sure the sea lanes are open, and, if necessary, to blockade ... to make sure that their energy does not go to market," ..."
The spoken word is known to be sticky. The quote tells us "Be careful with your words. Once they're said, they can only be
forgiven, not forgotten." Especially when it is the word of some high-ranking official. For example, the US Ambassador to NATO, which the day before, according to Reuters,
said the following, quoting the Agency: "If Russia does not stop the development of prohibited
weapons systems, the US will consider destroying them before they work."
How can you not believe Reuters? Okay there some dubious sources like NYT or WaPo, but it's the most respectable news Agency
in the world. The main provider of financial news on the planet -- the type of news
for the reliability of which people pay serious money. Because they make important decisions on their basis.
And now the whole world is holding its breath. Especially as days earlier the USA Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proudly declared that
the USA can organize sea blockade of Russia (washingtonexaminer.com).
"The United States has that ability, with our Navy, to make sure the sea lanes are open, and, if necessary, to blockade ...
to make sure that their energy does not go to market," he said. To prevent the supply of Russian energy resources to the Middle East. It's
so scary. The impression is that WWIII is coming as a bunch of crazy lunatics in the USA are hell-bent on destroying Russia.
Suddenly, the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, wrote on Twitter that she's not mean. And said only
that if Russia will continue to develop their weapons, and the United States will also have to
get the same weapons. And on careful reading of the transcript, it becomes clear that she
really did not talk about any weapon destruction. But nobody checked.
And for some reason no onein MSM asked the
question, and why supplies of Russian energy to the middle East that the Minister of internal
Affairs of the United States trying to prevent are needed. Was he talking about gas supplies to
Qatar? Or oil to Saudi Arabia? Or whether former Navy SEAL and Congressman Ryan Zinke drink or smoke something really strong.
No, nobody checked anything. Everyone just believed what the media gave us. Because not only
is absolutely impossible not to believe Reuters. especially when the whole world is waiting for
such fake news. Such news seems natural to the world in light of what is happening. Humanity is
waiting for an aggravation, and the press gives mankind an exacerbation. Moreover, all know the
fake news are distributed only by the Chinese and the Russians. And the free Western media
cannot lie.
Science fiction, philosophers and futurologists have been trying for several decades to
predict how the WWIII can begin. And now you and I know how it can start. It can start with the
fact that some stupid or corrupt (or both )news agency decides to get more WEB traffic.
That's why probably the creator of WWW Tim Bernes Lee recently announced that he was going
to produce alternative which will destroy this old WWW.
And may be for MSM just silence in case you are not sure, and avoiding excessive concern
about profitability are somewhat safer. Actually safer for all of us, not just MSM.
".......Russia's
foreign minister has accused the open-source Bellingcat investigative team of acting as a front
for Western intelligence services seeking to manipulate public opinion.
Bellingcat has played a leading role in identifying the alleged names of two men accused
of trying to poison ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain this year. It has
previously published investigations that reportedly link Russia to the downing of flight MH17
in eastern Ukraine and suspected chemical attacks in Syria.
"It's no secret to anyone, Western journalists write openly that Bellingcat is connected to
special services," Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Euronews
on Tuesday.
"They leak information through it to have some effect on public opinion," he
said......."
Two disappearances, and two very different responses from Western governments, which illustrates their rank
hypocrisy.
When former Russian spy Sergei Skripal went missing in England earlier this year, there was almost
immediate punitive action by the British government and its NATO allies against Moscow.
By contrast,
Western governments are straining with restraint towards Saudi Arabia over the more shocking and provable case of
murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The outcry by Western governments and media over the Skripal affair was deafening and resulted in Britain, the US
and some 28 other countries
expelling
dozens
of Russian diplomats on the back of unsubstantiated British allegations that the Kremlin tried to assassinate an
exiled spy with a deadly nerve agent. The Trump administration has further tightened
sanctions
citing
the Skripal incident.
London's case against Moscow has been marked by wild speculation and ropey innuendo.
No verifiable
evidence of what actually happened to Sergei Skripal (67) and his daughter Yulia has been presented by the British
authorities
. Their claim that President Vladimir Putin sanctioned a hit squad armed with nerve poison
relies on sheer conjecture.
All we know for sure is that the Skripals have been disappeared from public contact by the British
authorities for more than seven months
, since the mysterious incident of alleged poisoning in Salisbury
on March 4.
Russian authorities and family relatives have been steadfastly refused any contact by London with the Skripal
pair, despite more than 60 official requests from Moscow in accordance with international law and in spite of the
fact that Yulia is a citizen of the Russian Federation with consular rights.
It is an outrage that
based on such thin ice of "evidence", the British have built an edifice of
censure against Moscow, rallying an international campaign of further sanctions and diplomatic expulsions.
Now contrast that strenuous reaction, indeed hyper over-reaction, with how Britain, the US, France, Canada and
other Western governments are ever-so slowly responding to Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi case.
After nearly two weeks since Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, t
he Saudi
regime is this week finally admitting he was killed on their premises albeit, they claim, in a "botched
interrogation".
Turkish and American intelligence had earlier claimed that Khashoggi was tortured and murdered on the Saudi
premises by a 15-member hit squad sent from Riyadh.
Even more grisly, it is
claimed
that
Khashoggi's body was hacked up with a bone saw by the killers, his remains secreted out of the consulate building
in boxes, and flown back to Saudi Arabia on board two private jets connected to the Saudi royal family.
What's more, the Turks and Americans claim that the whole barbaric plot to murder Khashoggi was on the orders
of senior Saudi rulers, implicating Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The latest twist out of Riyadh, is an
attempt to scapegoat "rogue killers" and whitewash the House of Saudi from culpability.
The fact that 59-year-old Khashoggi was a legal US resident and a columnist for the Washington Post has no
doubt given his case such prominent coverage in Western news media. Thousands of other victims of Saudi vengeance
are routinely ignored in the West.
Nevertheless, despite the horrific and damning case against the Saudi monarchy,
the response from the
Trump administration, Britain and others has been abject.
President Trump has blustered that there "will be severe consequences" for the Saudi regime if it is proven
culpable in the murder of Khashoggi. Trump quickly qualified, however,
saying
that
billion-dollar arms deals with the oil-rich kingdom will not be cancelled.
Now Trump appears to be joining
in a cover-up by spinning the story that the Khashoggi killing was done by "rogue killers".
Britain, France and Germany this week issued a
joint
statement
calling for "a credible investigation" into the disappearance. But other than "tough-sounding"
rhetoric, n
one of the European states have indicated any specific sanctions, such as weapons contracts
being revoked or diplomatic expulsions.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was "concerned"
by the gruesome claims about
Khashoggi's killing,
but he
reiterated
that
Ottawa would not be scrapping a $15 billion sale of combat vehicles to Riyadh.
The Saudi rulers have even
threatened
retaliatory
measures if sanctions are imposed by Western governments.
Saudi denials of official culpability seem to be a brazen flouting of all reason and circumstantial evidence
that Khashoggi was indeed murdered in the consulate building on senior Saudi orders.
This week a glitzy international investor conference in Saudi Arabia is being boycotted by top business
figures,
including
the
World Bank chief, Jim Yong Kim, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Britain's venture capitalist Richard Branson. Global
firms like Ford and Uber have pulled out, as have various media sponsors, such as CNN, the New York Times and
Financial Times. Withdrawal from the event was in response to the Khashoggi affair.
A growing bipartisan
chorus
of
US Senators, including Bob Corker, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and Chris Murphy, have called for the cancellation
of American arms sales to Saudi Arabia, as well as for an overhaul of the strategic partnership between the two
countries.
Still, Trump has rebuffed calls for punitive response.
He has said that American jobs and
profits depend on the Saudi weapons market. Some 20 per cent of all US arms sales are estimated to go to the House
of Saud.
The New York Times this week headlined: "In Trump's Saudi Bargain, the Bottom Line Proudly Stands Out".
The Trump White House will be represented at the investment conference in Saudi Arabia this week dubbed
"Davos in the Desert" by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. He said he was
attending
in
spite of the grave allegations against the Saudi rulers.
Surely the point here is the unseemly indulgence by Western governments of Saudi Arabia and its so-called
"reforming" Crown Prince. It is remarkable how much credulity Washington, London, Paris, Ottawa and others are
affording the Saudi despots who, most likely, have been caught redhanded in a barbarous murder.
Yet, when it comes to Russia and outlandish, unproven claims that the Kremlin carried out a bizarre
poison-assassination plot, all these same Western governments abandon all reason and decorum to pile sanctions on
Russia based on lurid, hollow speculation. The blatant hypocrisy demolishes any pretense of integrity or
principle.
Here is another connection between the Skripal and Khashoggi affairs. The Saudis no doubt took note of the way
Britain's rulers have shown absolute disregard and contempt for international law in their de facto abduction of
Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
If the British can get away with that gross violation, then the Saudis probably
thought that nobody would care too much if they disappeared Jamal Khashoggi.
Grotesquely, the way things are shaping up in terms of hypocritical lack of action by the Americans, British
and others towards
the Saudi despots, the latter might just get away with murder. Not so Russia. The
Russians are not allowed to get away with even an absurd fantasy.
We are in "Pulp Fiction" aren't we? Any scenario is possible coming from the Saudis or
the Anglo media. The Skripal has been a successful one.
Thanks for completing the scenario with your own ideas of the beheading of witnesses that you
mistakenly attributed to me.
I would suppose that Saudis have something usually convincing to shut off talkative
people, like they will shut off Trump or even the Turks: Money
The Skripal hoax grew legs I never imagined possible. If people did quietly question it,
those people were deprived of a public counter-narrative in the mainstream Press to nurture
their skepticism. This could cause a dimwit to renounce natural suspicion and a sharpie to
know when to shut-up if he/she did not wish to be laughed at or worse.
They have so many of us dangling on a string. Thank b and others for MoA!
Cool down! We had TWO GRU murderers walk into Salisbury, with no CCCTV ecidense yet that they
were near Skripal's house, and no evidence from his house , which surely must have under
surveillance. Do you believe this? OK you believe the official story too.
And apart from that, Kashroggis probable demise is all cool, as he was a head chopping
advocate, a Wahabistst. Fuck him . Wahabists go in Class on camps which has on the entrance
"Arbeit mach frei" which of course is a general lie, but the whe get to kill them in a
humanely way (see instruction manual from CiA)
Or you just shoot them in the chest, less smatter and more blood. Headshots are messy, stuff
everywhere., sometimetimes, if you accidentially hit a weak point in the cranium , you have
brains everywhere , dont wan't that.
As another poster commented, something is missing...
It is like a well choreograhped drame, Skripals were the same, this also is tooooo nice
fitting together... Hmfr!
Qui bono? Who makes money on this? I certainly cannot answer that, but lets play safe : The
Russians did it!
They beamed up Kasshoggi to their base on the dark side of the moon, the re killed him in
civilized manner, fucking him to death with nice looking whores and spoonfeeding him Beluga
caviar and interjected wit sips of Russian Starka. He was then made to mush and beamed back
into the Saudi consulate making a real mess. Now poor headchop promoter is all over the
place! He must love that up in his muslum heaven with 72 old hags. There is no martyrdom in
being beamed to the moon and put through a garden shredder, that is nothing special.
So now the Saudi's has Khassoggi al over their faces (literally :)) and the Turks eye a new
way to betray someone (Putin, wake up!!). Ever since democracy was bestowed on these people,
they have made a mess of it.
Back in the day (when I was gung ho Army boy), it was OK for a Turk officer to shoot dead a
couple of conscripts a year, no problemo, the sentries with weapons had no live rounds hi-hi.
Turkey does not need a hard shove and it will crumble, and the Americans will intervene,
unless Russia is first.
This game is about Turkey, and not goat herders in Saudi Sodoma. They have hardly oil left
and the plebs are angry.
Jared Kushner's friendship/affair with previously merely progressive war criminal MBS, who
has progressed to now also beinted tainted with responsibility for the lurid butchery of an
offensive to MBS 'journalist' who was but days from marriage and the arms of his love, does
not elevate Kushner's already dubious standing in some circles.
Kushner, he who on one memorable occasion chatted til the early hours of the morning,
"cultivating a close friendship", with the mass murdering progressive MBS, who (thus
inspired?; coincidentally?) to Trumpian applause arrested and shook down many members of his
billionaire-cult family. But is this a busom buddy friendship born of equality, two young men
with so much in common?
MBS has been quoted as saying he has "Kushner in my pocket". Hmmm.
And then there's NYT's Tom Friedman's gushing rhapsody in purple over MBS: "... a genuine
reformer, mega-popular dude, and an all-around super awesome guy." Friedman's love was stoked
over what he presumed was a lamb dinner, but in the light of further developments, we are not
so sure....
He was most critical of the Saudi Royals and ;) 'pro-reform.' He was kidnapped in Geneva,
apparently as carried out or 'allowed' for a good part by the Saudi Ambassador.
He was, allegedly, 'rendered' back to KSA, drugged and tortured. Five masked men
knocked him unconscious, anesthetized him, taken him to a Boeing 747 waiting at the Geneva
airport, and flew him to the Saudi capital Riyadh
In F, closer to the events: Celui-ci s'éclipse de la pièce et peu
après, des hommes armés font irruption, frappent Sultan ben Turki, le
menottent, lui font une injection et le transportent inconscient jusqu'à
l'aéroport de Cointrin, où il est embarqué à bord d'un Boeing
médical arrivé plusieurs jours auparavant et toujours prêt à
décoller, selon le récit qu'il en a fait plus tard.
Prison > house arrest, > once freed - he was allowed to go to Boston for medical
treatment - he fled - back to Geneva! - and a court case took place (2016.) Pierre de Preux,
a well known lawyer here, represented him. Imho the state prosecutor (= DA) was brave to take
on this case. It was nevertheless shelved for lack of evidence.
Killing off critics / potential trouble makers / other / takes different forms in
different régimes.
In the US for ex. no big show is made, and the death is classed as suicide, car accident,
druggie death, mystery fall / drowning, etc. no matter how weird the circumstances. In other
lands, it is deemed necessary to demonstrate the power of the Overlords, who can organise 15
ppl, a stark warning is projected.
Posted by: Den Lille Abe | Oct 13, 2018 8:46:30 AM | 118
On one hand, the quantity of black flag incidents is increasing, and that leads to low
quality at many occasions. Ukrainians in particular excel in making most laughable incidents
and the British seem to be influenced. Babchenko was killed, his murder condemned by Her
Majesty Foreign Office and then got resurected. Brits seem to liked that, as exemplified by
heroics of Sir Gavin, the Lord Defender of the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland,
Island of Man etc. etc.) on the frontline of the Free Ukraine.
On the other hand, were Saudis innocent they should have means of proving it. Consulates
have security systems including cameras near the entry. While they are attacked less
frequently than convenience stores, they have a better budget for such systems. Thus it
should not be hard to show that either (a) Jamal Khashoggi actually did not enter KSA
consulate in Istanbul on the day in question or (b) he entered and exited. Barring the use of
hitherto unknown types of beam weapons, I would conclude that he entered and did not exit by
normal means.
That said, there were no reports on beam weapons capable of transporting material objects.
At worst, Russians could focus microwave weapons reducing people inside the consulate to
incontinent cricket hearing idiots, enter through the underground and get out carrying
whatever they please. KSA could be reluctant to release videos showing their people as they
looked like idiots who just pissed into their pants and worse. This is what I can imagine on
the basis of stories from American press that include at least two of "Russia,
consulate/embassy, microwave weapons", usually all three. If we restrict ourself to more
corroborated stories, Russians could drill holes and saturate the air with "military grade
fentanyl" and eschew microwaves. But it would be easier if it was done by Turks with the help
of Russian experts who botched something like that at least once, so they have data how to
drill, spray and calculate the dosage.
Surely, one should not deprecate the ability of Turks to concoct tales. For example, a
typical tale from Tales of 1001 Nights features a beautiful Turkish princess that falls from
one misfortune to another at the hands of a trio of bad characters: a Jewish merchant, a
Christian magician and a Kurdish leader of a band of robbers, only to be eventually rescued
by a dashing young Muslim Arab, and we may have such a tale suitable altered for the occasion
-- perhaps despicable Kurds will show up later.
But really, offering Starka to a prisoner? Because of long aging time and the demand, it
is surprisingly hard to buy, and it is hard to tell if it is popular in Russia at all, Poland
and the Baltics have more of Starka tradition.
"... He is just an agent of one Saudii faction against the MBS faction, a faction just as evil. ..."
"... After Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, was kidnapped and taken to Riyadh to be re-educated (tortured) Khashoggi left Saudi Arabia . Khashoggi continued with his columns criticizing the Saudi regime, attacking its campaign in Yemen on Al Jazeera. ..."
According to an article in the Duran Khashoggi was an agent in the employ of Riyadh and
the CIA during the Soviet presence in Afghanistan.
Turki bin Faisal Al-Saud was Khashoggi's political protector. Turki bin Faisal Al-Saud was
at the center of relations between Washington and Saudi Arabia against the USSR while it was
in Afghanistan using fighters who later became known as Al Qaeda - armed and trained by
CIA:Pakistan and financed by the Saudis.
Faisal became the leader of Saudi intelligence. He was removed from his post on May 24,
2001, a few months before September 11, 2001 (convenient) .The connections he had with Osama
bin Laden led him to being sued by relatives of 9/11 directed at him and other Saudi
operatives.
In 2005, Turki bin Faisal was appointed Saudi ambassador to the US during the Bush
administration, with Khashoggi accompanying him as a media advisor. During Turki bin Faisal's
ambassadorship in Washington, Khashoggi assumed the position of head of press relations,
coming into direct contact with major national and international organs of US media.
During the Obama administration, Khashoggi supported the Obama administrations strategy of
color revolutions and the Arab Spring to extend US imperialist domination following the
disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. He was most likely a CIA asset, perhaps also Saudi
intelligence as well
When MBS became the strongman holding power in Saudi Arabia, he triggered a near war with
Qatar with Trumps blessing, and was unhappy over the role of Al Jazeera, which often hosted
Khashoggi and was increasingly critical of MBS.
So whatever the story is I am not losing any sleep over Khashoggi. He is just an agent
of one Saudii faction against the MBS faction, a faction just as evil. Kind of like the
pick between agents of the 2 factions duking it out in the US. Evil does vs Evil do. There
are no white knights here.
After Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, was kidnapped and taken to Riyadh to be
re-educated (tortured) Khashoggi left Saudi Arabia . Khashoggi continued with his columns
criticizing the Saudi regime, attacking its campaign in Yemen on Al Jazeera.
What hypocrisy on display by the US. Unfuckingbelievable. Such concern for a journalist, such
outrage!
There is currently a case working its way through the court system (here in the US)
brought by two journalists, one of them an American, where they are pleading to have their
names removed from the US "kill list". They say their inclusion on the list is erroneous, and
ask that they be given a chance to show that they are not, in fact, terrorists before a drone
blows them into pieces. They are represented by Reprieve lawyers, and they joined their two
suits together as co-plainiffs, although it now appears that the foreign-born journalist was
basically told by the judge he was shit out of luck, having "no standing", since he didn't
sufficiently prove that he was on the list. (He had found his name listed as a "highest
scoring target" on some of Edward Snowden's leaked NSA materials, but that was not enough
"proof" for the judge.)
The American journalist is Bilal Kareem, and the other is a journalist from Pakistan named
Ahmad Zaidan. BTW, both these men were originally targeted under the Obama administration,
but their names remain on the list under Trump. And Trump has increased the use of these
targeted drone killings by 4 to 5 times the number of Obama's, who himself had increased the
assassination program 10 fold over Bush' numbers. Trump has also loosened the "rules" about
where these drone killings can take place, and who can be targeted. US drone warfare has
taken the lives of some 10,858 individuals since 2004, according to the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).
The Washington Post and the Middle East Monitor both have good stories about the case, but
the best article by far is Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone published on 19 July.
According to
NYT , Khashoggi "had expressed concern to a friend on Monday that he could be
kidnapped and returned to Saudi Arabia if he visited the consulate". He went in at
1:30pm , while his friend and fiancée were waiting outside till 9:00pm .
Isn't it a bit odd that his friend and fiancée, while fully aware the danger of him
being kidnapped insider the consulate, waited for 7:30 hours before alerting Turkish
authorities? Normally it takes 2 or 3 hours get a document, esp. already processed ones.
Why didn't his friend and fiancée alert the Turkish police earlier? Esp. "he
left his cellphone outside with Hatice, who had instructions to alert his friends if Mr.
Khashoggi did not return".
Mr. Khashoggi's wife had remained in Saudi Arabia while he was no longer able to return
freely. Their separation had led to a divorce, and he wanted to remarry to a Turkish woman.
Normally, you don't divorce your wife/husband because of one-year's separation. According
to this NYT article, Khashogg divided his time between the Washington, D.C., London and
Istanbul, how long did he come to know his fiancée? Isn't it a bit too
rush/risky for a 59-year old man suddenly decided to divorce long-year wife and marry a new
Turkish girl friend? Could it be a honey trap?
" Odd dates ?"
- Oct. 2, Khashoggi disappeared.
- Oct. 3, Trump told his supporters that Saudi could last two weeks without American
support.
- Oct. 6, MbS said Suadi could survive 2000 years without US help .
- Now full-blown MSM storm, State Deparment is closely monitor the whole affair, Turkish
government is feeding the media with all sorts of lurid details and claims. (Isn't it much
easier and simpler just to kidnap/shot him on the streets of Istanbul or London than
dismembering his body inside Istanbul consulate?)
Now Saudi is "willing to cooperate" with Turkey, American priest Brauson is set free, plus
MbS now has probably to purchase tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of US
armaments. What a "coincident" win-win situation for Erdy and Trump.
As another poster commented, something is missing...
It is like a well choreograhped drame, Skripals were the same, this also is tooooo nice
fitting together... Hmfr!
Qui bono? Who makes money on this? I certainly cannot answer that, but lets play safe : The
Russians did it!
They beamed up Kasshoggi to their base on the dark side of the moon, the re killed him in
civilized manner, fucking him to death with nice looking whores and spoonfeeding him Beluga
caviar and interjected wit sips of Russian Starka. He was then made to mush and beamed back
into the Saudi consulate making a real mess. Now poor headchop promoter is all over the
place! He must love that up in his muslum heaven with 72 old hags. There is no martyrdom in
being beamed to the moon and put through a garden shredder, that is nothing special.
So now the Saudi's has Khassoggi al over their faces (literally :)) and the Turks eye a new
way to betray someone (Putin, wake up!!). Ever since democracy was bestowed on these people,
they have made a mess of it.
Back in the day (when I was gung ho Army boy), it was OK for a Turk officer to shoot dead a
couple of conscripts a year, no problemo, the sentries with weapons had no live rounds hi-hi.
Turkey does not need a hard shove and it will crumble, and the Americans will intervene,
unless Russia is first.
This game is about Turkey, and not goat herders in Saudi Sodoma. They have hardly oil left
and the plebs are angry.
"... Any scenario is possible coming from the Saudis or the Anglo media. The Skripal has been a successful one. ..."
"... The Skripal hoax grew legs I never imagined possible. If people did quietly question it, those people were deprived of a public counter-narrative in the mainstream Press to nurture their skepticism. This could cause a dimwit to renounce natural suspicion and a sharpie to know when to shut-up if he/she did not wish to be laughed at or worse. ..."
"... It is like a well choreograhped drame, Skripals were the same, this also is tooooo nice fitting together... ..."
"... Jared Kushner's friendship/affair with previously merely progressive war criminal MBS, who has progressed to now also beinted tainted with responsibility for the lurid butchery of an offensive to MBS 'journalist' who was but days from marriage and the arms of his love, does not elevate Kushner's already dubious standing in some circles. ..."
"... And then there's NYT's Tom Friedman's gushing rhapsody in purple over MBS: "... a genuine reformer, mega-popular dude, and an all-around super awesome guy." Friedman's love was stoked over what he presumed was a lamb dinner, but in the light of further developments, we are not so sure.... ..."
"... Reminded me of the Sultan Bin Turki affair. ..."
"... He was most critical of the Saudi Royals and ;) 'pro-reform.' He was kidnapped in Geneva, apparently as carried out or 'allowed' for a good part by the Saudi Ambassador. ..."
"... On one hand, the quantity of black flag incidents is increasing, and that leads to low quality at many occasions. Ukrainians in particular excel in making most laughable incidents and the British seem to be influenced. Babchenko was killed, his murder condemned by Her Majesty Foreign Office and then got resurected. ..."
We are in "Pulp Fiction" aren't we? Any scenario is possible coming from the Saudis or the Anglo media. The Skripal has
been a successful one.
Thanks for completing the scenario with your own ideas of the beheading of witnesses that you mistakenly attributed to me.
I would suppose that Saudis have something usually convincing to shut off talkative people, like they will shut off Trump or
even the Turks: Money
The Skripal hoax grew legs I never imagined possible. If people did quietly question it, those people were deprived of a public
counter-narrative in the mainstream Press to nurture their skepticism. This could cause a dimwit to renounce natural suspicion
and a sharpie to know when to shut-up if he/she did not wish to be laughed at or worse.
They have so many of us dangling on a string. Thank b and others for MoA!
Cool down! We had TWO GRU murderers walk into Salisbury, with no CCCTV ecidense yet that they were near Skripal's house, and no
evidence from his house , which surely must have under surveillance. Do you believe this? OK you believe the official story too.
And apart from that, Kashroggis probable demise is all cool, as he was a head chopping advocate, a Wahabistst. Fuck him . Wahabists
go in Class on camps which has on the entrance "Arbeit mach frei" which of course is a general lie, but the whe get to kill them
in a humanely way (see instruction manual from CiA)
Or you just shoot them in the chest, less smatter and more blood. Headshots are messy, stuff everywhere., sometimetimes, if you
accidentially hit a weak point in the cranium , you have brains everywhere , dont wan't that.
As another poster commented, something is missing...
It is like a well choreograhped drame, Skripals were the same, this also is tooooo nice fitting together...
Hmfr!
Qui bono? Who makes money on this? I certainly cannot answer that, but lets play safe : The Russians did it!
They beamed up Kasshoggi to their base on the dark side of the moon, the re killed him in civilized manner, fucking him to death
with nice looking whores and spoonfeeding him Beluga caviar and interjected wit sips of Russian Starka. He was then made to mush
and beamed back into the Saudi consulate making a real mess. Now poor headchop promoter is all over the place! He must love that
up in his muslum heaven with 72 old hags. There is no martyrdom in being beamed to the moon and put through a garden shredder,
that is nothing special.
So now the Saudi's has Khassoggi al over their faces (literally :)) and the Turks eye a new way to betray someone (Putin, wake
up!!). Ever since democracy was bestowed on these people, they have made a mess of it.
Back in the day (when I was gung ho Army boy), it was OK for a Turk officer to shoot dead a couple of conscripts a year, no problemo,
the sentries with weapons had no live rounds hi-hi. Turkey does not need a hard shove and it will crumble, and the Americans will
intervene, unless Russia is first.
This game is about Turkey, and not goat herders in Saudi Sodoma. They have hardly oil left and the plebs are angry.
Jared Kushner's friendship/affair with previously merely progressive war criminal MBS, who has progressed to now also beinted
tainted with responsibility for the lurid butchery of an offensive to MBS 'journalist' who was but days from marriage and the
arms of his love, does not elevate Kushner's already dubious standing in some circles.
Kushner, he who on one memorable occasion chatted till the early hours of the morning, "cultivating a close friendship", with
the mass murdering progressive MBS, who (thus inspired?; coincidentally?) to Trumpian applause arrested and shook down many members
of his billionaire-cult family. But is this a busom buddy friendship born of equality, two young men with so much in common?
MBS has been quoted as saying he has "Kushner in my pocket". Hmmm.
And then there's NYT's Tom Friedman's gushing rhapsody in purple over MBS: "... a genuine reformer, mega-popular dude, and
an all-around super awesome guy." Friedman's love was stoked over what he presumed was a lamb dinner, but in the light of further
developments, we are not so sure....
He was most critical of the Saudi Royals and ;) 'pro-reform.' He was kidnapped in Geneva, apparently as carried out or 'allowed'
for a good part by the Saudi Ambassador.
He was, allegedly, 'rendered' back to KSA, drugged and tortured. Five masked men knocked him unconscious, anesthetized him,
taken him to a Boeing 747 waiting at the Geneva airport, and flew him to the Saudi capital Riyadh
In F, closer to the events: Celui-ci s'ιclipse de la piθce et peu aprθs, des hommes armιs font irruption, frappent Sultan
ben Turki, le menottent, lui font une injection et le transportent inconscient jusqu'ΰ l'aιroport de Cointrin, oω il est embarquι
ΰ bord d'un Boeing mιdical arrivι plusieurs jours auparavant et toujours prκt ΰ dιcoller, selon le rιcit qu'il en a fait plus
tard.
Prison > house arrest, > once freed - he was allowed to go to Boston for medical treatment - he fled - back to Geneva! - and
a court case took place (2016.) Pierre de Preux, a well known lawyer here, represented him. Imho the state prosecutor (= DA) was
brave to take on this case. It was nevertheless shelved for lack of evidence.
Killing off critics / potential trouble makers / other / takes different forms in different rιgimes.
In the US for ex. no big show is made, and the death is classed as suicide, car accident, druggie death, mystery fall / drowning,
etc. no matter how weird the circumstances. In other lands, it is deemed necessary to demonstrate the power of the Overlords,
who can organise 15 ppl, a stark warning is projected.
On one hand, the quantity of black flag incidents is increasing, and that leads to low quality at many occasions. Ukrainians
in particular excel in making most laughable incidents and the British seem to be influenced. Babchenko was killed, his murder
condemned by Her Majesty Foreign Office and then got resurected. Brits seem to liked that, as exemplified by heroics of Sir Gavin,
the Lord Defender of the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Island of Man etc. etc.) on the frontline of the Free Ukraine.
not seen till now though is any questioning of Bellingcat's credentials in mainstream
media. So let me hand you over, without further ado and with hearty if surprised approval,
to Mary Dejevsky: not known as a Kremlin stooge or Putin troll. Yet here she is, in today's
Independent, asking in all sincerity and with admirable bluntness just WTF is Bellingcat?
"... Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit out at those on the left who cheered Facebook and Twitter's coordinated 'deplatforming' of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in August. "Those who demanded Facebook & other Silicon Valley giants censor political content...are finding that content that they themselves support & like end up being repressed," he wrote. "That's what has happened to every censorship advocate in history." ..."
"... "a wider war on dissident narratives in online media." ..."
Alternative voices online are incensed after Facebook and Twitter closed down hundreds of
political media pages ahead of November's crucial midterm elections. Facebook says they broke
its spam rules, they say it's censorship. Some 800 pages spanning the
political spectrum, from left-leaning organizations like The Anti Media, to flag-waving opinion
sites like Right Wing News and Nation in Distress, were shut down. Other pages banned include
those belonging to police brutality watchdog groups Filming Cops and Policing the Police.
Even
RT America's Rachel Blevins found her own page banned for posts that were allegedly
"misleading users."
Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit out at those on the left who cheered Facebook and Twitter's coordinated 'deplatforming' of
right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in August. "Those who demanded Facebook & other Silicon Valley giants censor political
content...are finding that content that they themselves support & like end up being repressed," he wrote. "That's what has
happened to every censorship advocate in history."
In America, Conservatives were the first to complain about unfair treatment by left-leaning Silicon Valley tech giants.
However, leftist sites have increasingly become targets in what Blumenthal calls "a wider war on dissident narratives in
online media." In identifying enemies in this "war," Facebook has partnered up with the Digital Forensics Lab, an
offshoot of NATO-sponsored think tank the Atlantic Council. The DFL has promised to be Facebook's "eyes and ears" in
the fight against disinformation (read: alternative viewpoints).
"... The most flagrant case is Syria where a war was orchestrated by "proxy groups" by Western powers and the Petro monarchies of the Gulf States. Before the war, Syria was a country that could support itself in terms of food and industrialization with a well-developed population that enjoyed a modern health system. The "strategy of the chaos" imported hoards of mercenaries of which the Syrian government can hardly get rid of after 8 years of war (2011-2018). The imperialist intervention, meant to fight this state that refused to obey, has driven 5 million people from their homes" ..."
"... L'intervention and Libye, la pire erreur de ce début de siecle ..."
"... Propaganda Blitz. How the Corporate Media Distort Reality ..."
"... For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities of this dark world ... ..."
Living in Syria in the sixth-century Mar Yakub monastery in the city of
Qara, 90 kilometers north of the capital Damascus, Flemish Father Daniël Maes has been a
witness to the invasion of western-backed terrorists since the very beginning. To this day, he
and his friends continue to support the Syrian people by not only helping them directly, but
also by spreading the truth about what is truly going on in the country.
Each week, a newsletter written by Father Daniël
is published, in which he describes his experiences and thoughts on the situation in Syria.
With the help of much needed donations and NGOs such as Hand in Hand voor Syrië,
Father Daniël and others have been working tirelessly with the Syrian people liberated
from (formerly) terrorist-held areas.
Below, you can read his latest newsletter
, as published on September 28th, 2018, and as translated by Sott.net:
Dear friends,
It seems unlikely that the planned military escalation by Western forces to protect the
terrorists in Idlib and to risk a last chance to subvert Syria, will continue. The Abou
al-Dohour safe zone basically ensures that citizens can escape the terrorist-controlled
Idlib. This was largely guaranteed by the agreement between Russia and Turkey. And Putin
seems determined to impose a no-fly zone over all of Syria! Well done. Meanwhile, the Syrians
continue to work very diligently on the restoration of their country and society. After the
fantastic course of the 60th annual fair last Friday, a 'marathon of peace' was organized to
support those who work for the end of the war and the restoration of peace. This marathon was
held in Hama, Homs, Lattakia, Tartous and Sweida.
At the same time, a limited bicycle race was organized in Damascus for 200 cyclists from
the Ommayade mosque through the city.
In Qara there was one crossroad that was full of rubble for years. It was the place where
the hardest fighting took place in 2013. Well, the debris is finally cleared up. And between
the monastery and the Ante-Lebanon Mountains people have been working hard lately. The
so-called Qara 4 gas source is now operational. It delivers 120,000 cubic meters of gas and
100 condensed barrels every day. We pray and hope that there will be a definitive end to this
war and the Syrian people can fully develop their identity.
Father Daniël then goes on to sharing news about the community, his
reflection on the root causes of the refugee problem, and a warning with regard to the
"official fake news":
Preparation
We want to have a quiet retreat in the community and some preparation has been made for
this. On Monday, we visited Sadad and the Syrian Orthodox community with some sisters and a
guest, with whom we now maintain a close contact. We visited the "martyress" of the village
again, the old woman, who was all alone, was left behind by terrorists to die but recovered.
She received a shed that is now being converted into a two-room house, which she proudly
showed us.
We prayed together in the church and visited a number of villagers. The pastor abou
Michaiel and the Christians count on us that we also continue to help them financially. It is
mainly about the purchase of material for the reconstruction, they will do the work
themselves. Tuesday and Wednesday were still preparation days to start with a real quiet
retreat for the whole community on Thursday. Hopefully more about that next time. So, you
won't be getting a message about the war around us this time, we are committing to the
struggle in ourselves right now.
Ministerial visit
This week we were again visited by the Minister of Supply together with his wife. They
were with us before. He practically has the function of the patriarch Joseph in Egypt during
the famine. He asked mother Agnes-Mariam to help find the means to offer more people work in
agriculture so that they can provide themselves with their own food. In Aleppo we have been
able to help 5,000 families. He also asked in India (mother Agnes-Mariam will briefly give a
retreat in India) to find out whether material and prostheses can be shipped from there for
disabled people.
From our monastery MSJM (Saint Jacques le Mutilé) about 1,000 people are now
employed as paid workers in relief efforts throughout Syria. In the beginning we received a
lot of opposition and suspicion. Meanwhile, there is a strong and good spirit with five
responsible people, with mother Agnes-Mariam assuming the final responsibility. Now, big
organizations are coming to us to work with us. However, the first and foremost impulse
always starts with simple, sincere people who give their contribution with generosity. That
is why we would like to express our sincere thanks to all our benefactors.
Our wars, our refugees
The continuing flow of refugees from the Middle East and Africa to Europe is a
humanitarian drama for these people themselves and is also a threat to the countries in which
they seek refuge. In this regard, two attitudes are mainly present. Some respond from a
humanitarian point of view and want these people who are in need to be helped and taken care
of. The others want to defend the identity of their country to for example prevent a
Christian country from being flooded with Muslims who do not want to adapt and who create
their own areas where the authentic population can not even visit.
However, what is missing too often is the question about the actual cause and background
of the problem. When you return home and you see that the water is flowing out the front
door, do you first look for buckets and mops to remove the water from your house? No. You
first search for the cause of this flooding. And then you see, for example, that you have
left the faucet of the sink open while the stopper was in. So the very first thing you do is
close the tap.
There can be many causes that trigger a flow of refugees, but almost always they involve
rich Western countries who want to master the resources of other countries. Under the pretext
of "freedom and democracy" these countries are being disrupted, a change of government is
being worked on, and puppets are being appointed to ensure the interests of the West.
" The most flagrant case is Syria where a war was orchestrated by "proxy groups" by
Western powers and the Petro monarchies of the Gulf States. Before the war, Syria was a
country that could support itself in terms of food and industrialization with a
well-developed population that enjoyed a modern health system. The "strategy of the chaos"
imported hoards of mercenaries of which the Syrian government can hardly get rid of after 8
years of war (2011-2018). The imperialist intervention, meant to fight this state that
refused to obey, has driven 5 million people from their homes" . (Bruno Guigue, 23
september 2018: Link
)
The US and the Western powers proclaim that they no longer have colonial policies, that
they only want to ensure freedom and democracy, defend human rights and, finally, defend
their own national security and interests. Those who claim their sovereignty must also
recognize the sovereignty and interests of other countries. And that is precisely not the
case. The military intervention by Western countries is not the solution, but the problem
itself. It is the French troops in Mali, Niger (rich in uranium), Chad, Central African
Republic that ensure that the countries remain dependent and poor.
It is NATO that destroyed Libya with active participation from Belgium and France. After
the Belgian "aid" to Libya, there was hardly a bomb left in Belgium. No "mea culpa" came from
any country for this total devastation (Jean-François Kahn, L'intervention and
Libye, la pire erreur de ce début de siecle , Le Soir, 25/9/18; about this
well-known French journalist see: Link ). The invasions of Somalia
(1992), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003) destroyed these countries. The aggression of Saudi
Arabia with active support from the West against Yemen has killed 10,000 people since March
2005, causing a deadly cholera epidemic and famine for 8 million people.
Certainly, there are several causes of the refugee flow. However, the most important
remains the neo-colonial domination of Western powers who shamelessly and with military force
appropriate the richness of other countries. Subsequently, there is often a corrupt elite of
the country itself who have allowed themselves to be bribed to betray their own people.
Finally, there are Mafia bosses who set up an extremely lucrative business to get the
refugees across. Let's stop whining about the shortage of mops, pullers, buckets, and turn
off the tap. These are our wars and our aggression against other countries that are making
people flee. If we want to assert our sovereignty, we must also respect the sovereignty of
other countries and their interests.
Ready for the battle for your mind!
The spreading of false, incorrect or misleading information, 'fake news', is a problem.
The European Union is working diligently on a strategy to combat this ailment. The East
StratCom Task Force was already set up for this purpose in 2015. Certain guidelines have been
developed and at the end of this year we can expect more concrete actions.
However, there's a catch. Let's make it clear immediately. We are getting more and more
into a situation where fake news is imposed with great enthusiasm by government leaders,
politicians, official statements, authoritative media and acclaimed journalists, who conceal
reality, while the channels of honest researchers who bring the truth, are closed expertly.
The justification is then: We must defend European values. That free speech and the
obligation to tell the truth are also values, is then forgotten. Or real news and truthful
reporting are condemned as being a "conspiracy theory". Or, as we now experience with the
announcement of the criminal behavior of the Dutch government, which smoothly helps with the
slaughter of innocent Syrian people, says that it should not come to light because it is a
"state secret".
The example we know best is of course Syria. A very harmonious, prosperous and
particularly safe (albeit imperfect) society with a President who is supported by broad
sections of the population is suddenly presented as a terrible dictatorship with a gruesome
dictator. The CIA provided an abundance of false photos, films, reports, books, testimonies
of inhuman torture (the American prisons remain an inexhaustible source for this) that were
spread throughout the West. And everyone (including our "conflict journalist"!) "knew",
almost one day after another, how that terrible Syrian president strangled people all day,
tortured them to death and carried out chemical attacks.
Something like that makes the blood of every right-minded person boil and that makes a
heavy-handed military intervention more than justified. When someone dared to say that there
was no "popular uprising" in Syria and certainly no "civil war", that Syria had not committed
any chemical attacks at all, he was dismissed as unreliable, fake news. And so the US,
Israel, NATO and allies could continue to send their most fanatical terrorists to destroy the
country and take away oil, gas and sovereignty. In our own Flemish press I never read one
balanced article about the situation in Syria.
In the end it is about the loss of credible journalism. For England, this is now greatly
described by David Edwards and David Cromwell, Propaganda Blitz. How the Corporate Media
Distort Reality , Pluto Press, 2018, foreword by John Pilger. They show how the liberal
media give half-truths and whole lies or sometimes represent reality in reverse, in the
service of large interest groups. And the writers of this work are not even journalists but a
former professor and an oceanographer. It will become increasingly difficult to discover
reality, but it is not impossible. The Australian journalist and founder of WikiLeaks, Julian
Assange, is now imprisoned at the Embassy of Venezuela in London but in reality deserves a
monument to what he has made public. There are undoubtedly many more people than we suspect,
who are aware of the prevalent lies.
Anyone who has any insight into the ever-recurring anti-Russia, anti-Iran, anti-China,
anti-Brexit... hysteria on the one hand and on the other Western unlimited war propaganda,
justified by the most unlikely pretext to dominate the rest of the world, will soon find more
reliable sources. It is also necessary. " For our struggle is not against flesh and
blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities of this dark world ... "
(Ephesians 6, 12). And by our attitude, we are always either on the side of the murderers or
on the side of the innocent victims. We are called to be people of peace and not silly
servants of hatred and war, which we conveniently want to package in a message of peace.
Bahar Azizi lives in Europe, holds an MA in psychology, is an instructor in Éiriú Eolas meditation , and is a
keen animal lover. Bahar has been a contributing writer and editor at SOTT.net since 2012.
"... its russia and chinas job to assist america to reach the acceptance stage as peacefully as possible while allowing as much face saving as possible for washington and their ruling class. at the end of the day everyone wants to go on living. the next 15 years ought to be quite exciting. ..."
SKRIPALMANIA. Has now been completely outsourced to Bellingcat. Which tells the discerning observer two things: 1) there is
no evidence 2) the truth is probably the opposite. (And for those of you who take Bellingcat seriously: become discerning.)
To those of you who are like myself deeply sceptical about this story can I recommend this article in the UK Independent newspaper.
We should be asking for answers about the Skripals and Bellingcat and not just from Russia. Mary Dejevsky.
Higgins has entered the polite academic space both in the Uk and the US in lightening speed. And as a result of that got special
attention by media. Not only that, but in the US he additionally joined an important cog of the EU-US think thank world. The Atlantic
Council made him a non-resident "Senior Fellow". As expert in digital forensics, open source and the future of Europe.
When the huge open source "gold rush" caught my attention in the early post 9/11 years, all the excited members I witnessed
more close up were quite system conform. That was after the Iraq war intelligence expertise. That's why it made me wonder. Thus,the
story of Eliot Higgins seems no outlier from my rather limited perspective.
And yes, I am with Paul Robinson, who a while ago noticed the same contradictions as Mary Dejevsky. On one hand the Russians
seem to be omnipotent, on the other they have all these bungling secret service members that are so easy to out. But notice not
by a bunch of laymen, but by a crowd led by a serious senior expert and academic. ;)
Higgins has entered the polite academic space both in the Uk and the US in lightening speed. And as a result of that got special
attention by media. Not only that, but in the US he additionally joined an important cog of the EU-US think thank world. The Atlantic
Council made him a non-resident "Senior Fellow". As expert in digital forensics, open source and the future of Europe.
When the huge open source "gold rush" caught my attention in the early post 9/11 years, all the excited members I witnessed
more close up were quite system conform. That was after the Iraq war intelligence expertise. That's why it made me wonder. Thus,the
story of Eliot Higgins seems no outlier from my rather limited perspective.
And yes, I am with Paul Robinson, who a while ago noticed the same contradictions as Mary Dejevsky. On one hand the Russians
seem to be omnipotent, on the other they have all these bungling secret service members that are so easy to out. But notice not
by a bunch of laymen, but by a crowd led by a serious senior expert and academic. ;)
I think some people here are actually taking Eliott Higgins far too seriously...he is still an uneducated underwear salesman...and
acts like it...case in point his recent twitter outburst at Ted Postol, calling him an 'idiot'...that just shows what a substance
free clown this guy is...
I briefly looked at that blog article linked to by snowflake and it is basically verbal diarrhea...bottom line is that Higgins
and that Bellincat 'outfit' are best simply ignored...not worth the time or mental bandwidth to even think about...
Atlantic Council has a very great Ph.D consultant, and strategists' strategist and tacticians' tactician, Dr. Blank. He, of all
places, taught in US Army War College. He taught, of course, about Russia, since he has Ph.D in Soviet/Russian "history" or whatever
passes as such in US "Russian Studies" field.
His strategic concepts are so devoid of even basic high school level knowledge of Russia (and her geography, BTW) that one
is forced to ask how is it even possible to have this kind of "experts"? Among many outlandish ideas Dr. Blank proposed in his
academic career dedicated to fighting evil Russians was to send US Navy to the Azov Sea to demonstrate the US Naval might.
This was one of the most profound facepalm moments of my life--I mean it. Not only Dr. Blank has no clue about Russia, he also
has no clue about US Navy. Yet, he is an expert, alright.
You left the best part out of that State Department policy statement. He announced a new position, the Senior Advisor for Russian
Malign Activities and Trends or SARMAT for short. That's straight out of the axis of evil mindset. How can we have a sober and
productive policy towards Russia with crap like this?
I thought that was from Duffleblog but you're right:
https://www.state.gov/p/eur...
Third para from the bottom. Part of that $380 million must be Bellingcat's budget.
I can't wait to see what awful person is selected for this role. Also, Sarmat is also the name for Russia's newest ICBM, which
makes one wonder what was on the back of their minds when they came up with this one.
washingtons foreign policy visa vie russia and china is as yet unable to reach the psychological stage of sublimation. frustrated,
angry and demoralised that they can not militarily atttack russia once and for all putting paid ....to who is the biggest dog
in the yard...... american elites lash out ineffectually using various media, economic and financial games to assuage their inability
to get their way.
each iteration of this plan becomes weaker and less effective than the previous one leading to more rage at being thwarted.
where the current crop of american ruling elites are concerned we are talking about 2 factors.... a profound lack of a really
good cosmopolitan education and a near total lack of appreciation for how weak the american industrial base has become the past
30 years (you can not intimidate powerful nations if your military technology is 1 or more generations BEHIND)
an apt understanding of washingtons dilemma is best grasped reading the kubler-ross stages of grieving over a dying loved one.
in this case the dying loved one is american exceptionalism and the l godlike power that goes with it for the 1/100 or 1%.
its russia and chinas job to assist america to reach the acceptance stage as peacefully as possible while allowing as much
face saving as possible for washington and their ruling class. at the end of the day everyone wants to go on living. the next
15 years ought to be quite exciting.
The OPCW, like the Council of Europe, the OSCE, WADA and others have become deeply partizan
and anti-Russian organizations since the 1990s. A handful of members put out a 'report' on
whatever and claim that they have 'evidence' which they should be trusted on rather than
provide. The rest of them go along with it. The only reason that makes sense for the
attempted 'hack' on the OPCW is that Russia is being denied access to information. The
argument, like everything else bullshit from the West is ' You don't show the evidence to
the arsonist ' , sic MH17 because it has already been judged and found guilty.
So far WADA had to row back because of the Schimdt Report (which the media of course did
not report) and all the reinstated athletes, Russia has suspended payments and may well pull
out of the CoE because is it sick and tired of being bombarded with bs at every meeting as if
medieval Bear baiting has returned in a modern form (it has).
All these organizations are destroying themselves. If anything all this shows how weak the
West's soft power has become that they need to throw everything including the kitchen
sink at Russia. They don't like resistance, let alone pushback. They're more careful about
China of course and as we saw recently in the South Pacific the Chinese simply won't be cowed
or intimidated.
As for the allegations about China, we'll most of us have followed the Snowden revelations
about the USA and its Five Eyes global surveillance and infiltration, so its no surprise that
China has been running its own operations. It's what countries do, though apparently they're
not supposed to. Remember that back in 2002 it was discovered that the US bugged the 767
of then Chinese Premier Jian Xiao-Ping. * I think that all this reporting is a sign of
desperation by the powers that be because all else has failed so far and they need to keep
the narrative going.
By wrapping it all up together with a pretty pink bow it is to make it ' undeniable
' in the eyes of people who should know better.
The temptation by Russia will be to publicly burn western spies in Russia, but it is just
another in a long line of provocations to get Russia to respond angrily and make a big
mistake. I can imagine RT being banned and other measures if things start to spiral.
This whole G(R)U story was ready to go at an appropriate moment, and I suspect one of the
factors was Putin's recent comments about Skripal that had captured the world media's ear. By
piling their report on shortly afterwards, they hope to hijack and amplify their
narrative.
But, it's words, not meaningful actions. Either they will try and use this to kick off a
whole new level of sanctions that they haven't before (high value, sensitive stuff like
aerospace, tech etc.). It is possible the timing of this is a last ditch effort to try and
get U-rope on board to stop NordSteam II or anything they think they can squeeze through.
It's weakness through desperation and also to divert from their failures elsewhere.
Or burn western spies in other countries that are far less friendly
It is interesting that one of the groups doxxing Russian 'spies' claim to be volunteers
and patriots. No-one believes that in the slightest apart from morons. Like BellEnd cat, the
number of cut-outs/plausible denial groups has mushroomed and ebb and flow with need. The
volunteer claim is no protection.
How can you ask such a question. Holland is a US vassal and the US uses its vassals to give
its actions legitimacy by claiming that there is an "international" reaction to "Russian
aggression". This is why the US always attacks countries around the world as part of some BS
coalition of its own vassals. It is claiming its aggression is actually justified
international action.
The Dutch recently signed a big order to have 28 of their AH-64D Apache's 'upgraded' to the
'E' model which is really a re-manufactue and upgrade (from sand and heavy use in helping the
US bomb tribesmen far away), & their Patriots to be modernized too.
Because the so called chemical weapons watchdog, which the British government has recently
made judge, jury and exucationer as regards all incidences of alleged uses of chemical agents
as a weapon, namely it can now accuse and condemn whom it thinks are perpetrators of such
chemical attacks, is based in The Hague, where the wicked Russians have allegedly been
hacking etc. and, in general, up to their vile and nefarious deeds, as is, of course, in
their nature of doing things, because they are vile barbarians, subhuman even
I forget where I picked the following up ( from some Russian blog, because it is a
translation). I saved it but forget to put in the source:
September 14, 2018
THE DUBIOUS ROLE OF THE OPCW
(OPCW NEVER uses the word "Novichok")
Even those people who are skeptical about what the British government says (and rightly so)
tend to accept the „Novichok"-Psyop after they read that "OPCW confirms Novichok nerve
agent in Amesbury". But if you actually read what the (summary) of the OPCW says, you will
find the following:
"The team requested and received vials of biomedical samples COLLECTED BY THE BRITISH
AUTHORITIES for delivery to the OPCW laboratory and subsequent analysis by OPCW designated
laboratories for purposes of comparison and in order to verify the analysis conducted by the
United Kingdom. (S 1671, Paragraph 6.)
This VIOLATES THEIR OWN RULES about ensuring a forensic "chain of custody" because they
did not take bio-samples THEMSELVES but accepted the (2nd-hand) material that the
'authorities" had given them.
Regarding the "Premier Jour" perfume-story the OPCW has this to say:
"During the second deployment [6 weeks after Sturgess fell ill] the team collected a
sample of the contents of a small bottle that the police had seized as a suspect item from
the house of Charles Rowley in Amesbury" (P. 9)
In paragraph 10 they confirm that the results of the subsequent analysis "show that the
sample consists of a toxic chemical at a concentration of 97-98% therefore considered to be
"of high purity". (If Charly had got this on his skin he would not have survived )
Again, the chain of custody is non-existent: The OPCW did NOT collect the glass-vial in
Rowley's flat, and could not verify its condition at the end of June, but they accepted what
"the authorities" had told them about it and examined a sample of its content. There was
plenty of time to tamper with the bottle before the OPCW arrived in Salisbury (so malfeasance
cannot be ruled out).
(BTW, Sometimes you don't see the wood for the trees: WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would
transport a deadly nerve-agent in a GLASS-BOTTLE??????)
Again they accepted material from the British authorities (as if they were incapable of
any deception )
What former (Iraq) weapons-inspector Scott Ritter wrote about the OPCW „fact-finding"
mission in Syria is also to a certain extent relevant in the Skripal-Saga:
"The problem, however, is that the OPCW is in no position to make the claim it did. One of
the essential aspects of the kind of forensic investigation carried out by organizations such
as the OPCW -- namely the application of scientific methods and techniques to the
investigation of a crime -- is the concept of "chain of custody" of any samples that are
being evaluated. This requires a seamless transition from the collection of the samples in
question, the process of which must be recorded and witnessed, the sealing of the samples,
the documentation of the samples, the escorted transportation of the samples to the
laboratory, the confirmation and breaking of the seals under supervision, and the subsequent
processing of the samples, all under supervision of the OPCW. Anything less than this means
the integrity of the sample has been compromised -- in short, there is no sample."
(Article: Ex-weapons-inspector: Trump's Sarin Claims built on „Lie" by Scott
Ritter)
Here, Ritter was referring the fact that the OPCW was not able to actually visit the
(terrorist-controlled) "crime-scene" in Khan Sheikhoun but instead went to Turkey (!) where
they accepted testimonies and material given to them by the White Helmets and other
artificial "NGOs" ("highly likely" paid and organized by MI6, DGSE and the CIA). There they
were able to observe autopsies of the 3 alleged victims of the poison-gas attack.
"An NGO had delivered the bodies to the hospitals, though OPCW will not publicly comment
on the identity of the NGO. Samples from the bodies were provided to two separate
laboratories, which independently confirmed indications of sarin or sarin-like
substances.
In criminal proceedings, though, which are similar to the process followed by the UN in
determining a war crime, it is a fundamental principle that ALL EVIDENCE be under the control
of investigators AT ALL TIMES. That didn't happen in this case."
By the way, the OPCW-FFM in Syria (regarding the Douma-incident) was led by two BRITISH
"experts":
The work of the fact finding mission [FFM] was criticized by the Russian Permanent
Representative to the OPCW who complained on 14 April 2017 that:
"Under the mandate defined for [the FFM], its membership should be approved by the Syrian
government, and it should be balanced. For some time, these provisions were observed
somewhat, but then the mission was split into two groups. One [Team Bravo], led by Steven
Wallis from Britain, works in contact with the Syrian government, while the other one [Team
Alpha], headed by his fellow countryman Leonard Phillips, deals with the claims filed by the
Syrian armed opposition. THIS LATTER GROUP IS WORKING COMPLETELY NON-TRANSPARENTLY. ITS
MEMBERSHIP IS CLASSIFIED, AND NO ONE KNOWS WHERE IT GOES OR HOW IT OPERATES. They are
allegedly using the same methodology as Steven Wallis' group, but they are clearly working
mostly remotely, relying on the internet and the fabrications provided by Syrian opposition
NGOs, and never go to Syria. At least, we are not aware of a single such trip".
But the unspeakable "journalists" of the MSM (and RT is not much better the interview with
the suspects is a joke ) do not bother with such complicated details. They just write "OPCW
confirms use of Sarin" in Khan Sheikhoun (and "Novichok" in Salisbury) and ignore all
contradicting evidence and the MOTIVE the UK gov has for demonizing Russia (spoiling their
dirty game in Syria and "Sykes-Picot №2") so one can only agree with this comment:
"Professional journalism is now a wasteland. There is no public exposure of what we all
know has happened and the threat it represents to us all . They have been disloyal to us, so
we owe them no respect in return".
And finally – on the implied higher "morality" of UK politics:
The ECJ has just recently found that the UK's mass surveillance programmes, revealed by
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, did "not meet the 'quality of law' requirement" and were
"incapable of limiting 'interference' to what is 'necessary in a democratic society'"'.(P.387
of the judgement: Case of Big Brother Watch & others vs .UK)
The British evidently thought also about the lunacy of transporting a nerve agent in
sufficient quantity to kill dozens if not hundreds in a glass bottle; that's why Hamish de
Beegee chimed in with his article about how the FSB and the Kremlin had invested months of
work and thousands of pounds developing a ceramic bottle which looked just like the real
thing, but which you could stand a Volkswagen on top of. That's why I pointed out that they
had already used the excuse that it broke to establish how Rowley was exposed.
I suspect The Netherlands are being targeted because among other things the International
Court of Crimes and the International Court of Justice are based in The Hague. There may be
other reasons as well: the Dutch must have a fair few skeletons in their collective closet
and the US could very well target one of these and bring the entire wardrobe crashing down
and exposing all its sordid secrets. One of these bone-shakers is that The Netherlands is a
major corporate tax haven and as such competes with Britain and the US. http://www.nomoretax.eu/netherlands-tax-haven/
I forget where I picked the following up ( from some Russian blog, because it is a
translation). I saved it but forget to put in the source:
September 14, 2018
THE DUBIOUS ROLE OF THE OPCW
(OPCW NEVER uses the word "Novichok")
Even those people who are skeptical about what the British government says (and rightly so)
tend to accept the „Novichok"-Psyop after they read that "OPCW confirms Novichok nerve
agent in Amesbury". But if you actually read what the (summary) of the OPCW says, you will
find the following:
"The team requested and received vials of biomedical samples COLLECTED BY THE BRITISH
AUTHORITIES for delivery to the OPCW laboratory and subsequent analysis by OPCW designated
laboratories for purposes of comparison and in order to verify the analysis conducted by the
United Kingdom. (S 1671, Paragraph 6.)
This VIOLATES THEIR OWN RULES about ensuring a forensic "chain of custody" because they
did not take bio-samples THEMSELVES but accepted the (2nd-hand) material that the
'authorities" had given them.
Regarding the "Premier Jour" perfume-story the OPCW has this to say:
"During the second deployment [6 weeks after Sturgess fell ill] the team collected a
sample of the contents of a small bottle that the police had seized as a suspect item from
the house of Charles Rowley in Amesbury" (P. 9)
In paragraph 10 they confirm that the results of the subsequent analysis "show that the
sample consists of a toxic chemical at a concentration of 97-98% therefore considered to be
"of high purity". (If Charly had got this on his skin he would not have survived )
Again, the chain of custody is non-existent: The OPCW did NOT collect the glass-vial in
Rowley's flat, and could not verify its condition at the end of June, but they accepted what
"the authorities" had told them about it and examined a sample of its content. There was
plenty of time to tamper with the bottle before the OPCW arrived in Salisbury (so malfeasance
cannot be ruled out).
(BTW, Sometimes you don't see the wood for the trees: WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would
transport a deadly nerve-agent in a GLASS-BOTTLE??????)
Again they accepted material from the British authorities (as if they were incapable of
any deception )
What former (Iraq) weapons-inspector Scott Ritter wrote about the OPCW „fact-finding"
mission in Syria is also to a certain extent relevant in the Skripal-Saga:
"The problem, however, is that the OPCW is in no position to make the claim it did. One of
the essential aspects of the kind of forensic investigation carried out by organizations such
as the OPCW -- namely the application of scientific methods and techniques to the
investigation of a crime -- is the concept of "chain of custody" of any samples that are
being evaluated. This requires a seamless transition from the collection of the samples in
question, the process of which must be recorded and witnessed, the sealing of the samples,
the documentation of the samples, the escorted transportation of the samples to the
laboratory, the confirmation and breaking of the seals under supervision, and the subsequent
processing of the samples, all under supervision of the OPCW. Anything less than this means
the integrity of the sample has been compromised -- in short, there is no sample."
(Article: Ex-weapons-inspector: Trump's Sarin Claims built on „Lie" by Scott
Ritter)
Here, Ritter was referring the fact that the OPCW was not able to actually visit the
(terrorist-controlled) "crime-scene" in Khan Sheikhoun but instead went to Turkey (!) where
they accepted testimonies and material given to them by the White Helmets and other
artificial "NGOs" ("highly likely" paid and organized by MI6, DGSE and the CIA). There they
were able to observe autopsies of the 3 alleged victims of the poison-gas attack.
"An NGO had delivered the bodies to the hospitals, though OPCW will not publicly comment
on the identity of the NGO. Samples from the bodies were provided to two separate
laboratories, which independently confirmed indications of sarin or sarin-like
substances.
In criminal proceedings, though, which are similar to the process followed by the UN in
determining a war crime, it is a fundamental principle that ALL EVIDENCE be under the control
of investigators AT ALL TIMES. That didn't happen in this case."
By the way, the OPCW-FFM in Syria (regarding the Douma-incident) was led by two BRITISH
"experts":
The work of the fact finding mission [FFM] was criticized by the Russian Permanent
Representative to the OPCW who complained on 14 April 2017 that:
"Under the mandate defined for [the FFM], its membership should be approved by the Syrian
government, and it should be balanced. For some time, these provisions were observed
somewhat, but then the mission was split into two groups. One [Team Bravo], led by Steven
Wallis from Britain, works in contact with the Syrian government, while the other one [Team
Alpha], headed by his fellow countryman Leonard Phillips, deals with the claims filed by the
Syrian armed opposition. THIS LATTER GROUP IS WORKING COMPLETELY NON-TRANSPARENTLY. ITS
MEMBERSHIP IS CLASSIFIED, AND NO ONE KNOWS WHERE IT GOES OR HOW IT OPERATES. They are
allegedly using the same methodology as Steven Wallis' group, but they are clearly working
mostly remotely, relying on the internet and the fabrications provided by Syrian opposition
NGOs, and never go to Syria. At least, we are not aware of a single such trip".
But the unspeakable "journalists" of the MSM (and RT is not much better the interview with
the suspects is a joke ) do not bother with such complicated details. They just write "OPCW
confirms use of Sarin" in Khan Sheikhoun (and "Novichok" in Salisbury) and ignore all
contradicting evidence and the MOTIVE the UK gov has for demonizing Russia (spoiling their
dirty game in Syria and "Sykes-Picot №2") so one can only agree with this comment:
"Professional journalism is now a wasteland. There is no public exposure of what we all
know has happened and the threat it represents to us all . They have been disloyal to us, so
we owe them no respect in return".
And finally – on the implied higher "morality" of UK politics:
The ECJ has just recently found that the UK's mass surveillance programmes, revealed by
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, did "not meet the 'quality of law' requirement" and were
"incapable of limiting 'interference' to what is 'necessary in a democratic society'"'.(P.387
of the judgement: Case of Big Brother Watch & others vs .UK)
The British evidently thought also about the lunacy of transporting a nerve agent in
sufficient quantity to kill dozens if not hundreds in a glass bottle; that's why Hamish de
Beegee chimed in with his article about how the FSB and the Kremlin had invested months of
work and thousands of pounds developing a ceramic bottle which looked just like the real
thing, but which you could stand a Volkswagen on top of. That's why I pointed out that they
had already used the excuse that it broke to establish how Rowley was exposed.
Explosive. Nobody but Americans can be trusted to run international institutions, especially
when they are bought and paid for by the USA. Hey, that'd be a good job for Travis Tygart. He
has been chafing lately about the limits of his power to get at Russia from USADA.
The pace of events seems to be taking on momentum, as if it is leading up to something,
and there's that kind of stillness in the air, while sounds seem far away and tinny, like
just before a big storm breaks.
Alexander Mishkin, the second man accused of involvement in the Skripal assassination plot, was likely to have been sent
on the mission because he was a trained doctor capable of providing an antidote in case the novichok attack went wrong, according
to security sources.
Dr Mishkin, like the GRU colleague who travelled with him to Salisbury, was made a 'Hero of the Russian Federation' with
Vladimir Putin personally presenting him with the award, according to the investigative website Bellingcat.
The 'antidote' to nerve-agent exposure is atropine, which is broadly marketed to world defense forces in an auto-injector. Your
medical expertise in dispensing it is to remove the protective cap, and strike it against your thigh in the muscle, point-first
the internal spring does the rest, right through your clothing. We used to practice it regularly in NBCD training, except the
fluid in training injectors is just water. Some crybaby pointed out the needle might pick up a fragment of cloth on its way in,
and cause an infection, so we stopped doing it with real needles, and now you just get a thump against your leg from the spring.
Military forces are also trained to administer atropine to stricken comrades who were overcome before they could react. Just
be sure to give him his own atropine and not yours, and push the needle through his pocket-flap afterward and then bend it over,
so that anyone happening on the scene after you have left will know he has already been given atropine and not administer another
dose. Atropine overdose causes its own set of problems.
I think it's pretty clear that it does not 'make eminent sense' to have a 'qualified military doctor along in case something
went wrong with the Novichok', since anyone can administer Atropine and there is an enormous worldwide base of soldiers and ex-soldiers
who could do it as well as anyone else. Horseshit piled on top of horseshit.
For some bizarre reason this UK fairy tale requires many Russians. One isn't enough to smear some alleged top secret nerve agent
on a door knob (at least in one of the dozens of contradictory theories spewed by Scotland Yard). Wearing gloves (e.g. store bought
nitrile ones which would stop this poison, unlike latex ones) is clearly considered too much intellectual effort for Russian untermenschen
and they need a doctor to tag along. This fictional doctor claim is patently absurd. A doctor without hospital facilities is nothing
but a paramedic and as you rightly describe no such person is needed to administer atropine.
The average media sap in the UK and NATzO apparently can't be bothered to do any thinking. The best assassination plot would
involve only a single agent and not a handful. Even freaking video games have the lone assassin meme repeated. One agent could
also have a well established cover story. A gang of assassins would essentially be evidence against itself. A whole specially
designed bottle of nerve agent is ridiculous and unnecessary. And having it disposed of in a way that it can be found by some
homeless junkies is simply not credible. Don't they have sewer grates in the UK?
Where would we be without solid, honest citizen journalism like this? Bellingcat has passed
the CIA, MI5, Scotland Yard and the FBI and never looked back. In fact, we have not heard
Peep One from any of them since Bellingcat burst on the scene, and the British press goes
straight to print from its reports, to hell with waiting for informed comment from the
intelligence services or law enforcement.
Come to think about it, what are their countries paying them for?
I'm looking forward to the first Bellingcat spin-offs.
Eliot Higgins – Special Invesigator featuring Tom Cruise and introducing Sparky his
lovable mongrel dog which miraculously survived the Salisbury Novichok Massacre and can sniff
out GRU agents a mile away.
And following temporary employment reviewing orders at a Leicester UK women's underwear
manufacturer, the unemployed Higgins then "dispensed with looking for another job so that he
could devote himself to blogging full-time" and has now pogressed to being a senior fellow in
the "Digital Forensic Research Laboratory" and the "Future Europe Initiative", projects run
by the Washington, D.C based "think tank" the "Atlantic Council".
Higgins hard at work researching
A "kept man"? His wife must bring home the bacon then.
Well, she would if she were not a Turk.
The then 32-year-old Higgins started blogging about the civil war in Syria from his home
as Brown Moses: "He had no formal intelligence training or security clearance that gave him
access to classified documents. He could not speak or read Arabic. He had never set foot in
the Middle East, unless you count the time he changed planes in Dubai en route to Manila, or
his trip to visit his in-laws in Turkey".
As far as I am aware, he still has no credentials for his chosen field, albeit he is now a
"fellow" of this and that. He has also since bursting into the bloggosphere considerably put
on weight:
Higgins belongs to an obsessive coterie of self-appointed military intelligence experts
who use social media to piece together critical details of faraway conflicts, often well
ahead of seasoned professionals. Frequently self-taught and operating far outside the
military-industrial complex, these amateur analysts have honed a novel set of sleuthing
skills that fuse old-fashioned detective work with new sources of intelligence generated by
cell phone cameras and spread by social networks. Syria's war, widely considered the most
documented conflict in history, has turned social media into a weapon of mass detection --
critical both for fighters on the ground and for faraway observers trying to make sense of
the conflict.
The mind boggles: he and his fellow "amateur analysts" are often well ahead of seasoned
professionals. Frequently self-taught and operating far outside the military-industrial
complex !!!
Once upon a time, nobody would dare to do what they are doing because of the danger of a
ruinous lawsuit. But so long as he continues accusing the right people, the west will
safeguard him from that as best it can. Maybe that's the way to go. They've left themselves
without a retreat, saying this and that are 'confirmed'. Sue the outfit.
Note how Bellingtwat states that it has "conclusively" established the real identity of
Petrov on evidence gleaned from "multiple open sources" and "testimony from people familiar
with the person" in question.
How do they do this?
First to the post again and well ahead of all the Western intelligence agencies, which are
obviously understaffed with incompetents and not in possession of state-of-the-art means of
gathering intelligence such as . errrr, Facebook?
A few days ago, that lying old slag May appeared on stage at the Conservative Party annual
conference with Abba's "Dancing Queen" playing in the bacground. May appeared to be trying to
dance to the Abba hit. What a cupid old stunt!
And yesterday at an EUSSR Brussels conference, EU chief-executive and piss-artist Juncker
appears to have been possibly trying to take the piss out of that old, lying bag May's
gyrations:
Yes, their resources really do beat all, don't they? Able to trawl through Russians' private
records at will, even those ominously marked, "Not for public release". But then, they have
lots of willing helpers inside Russia, which the western intelligence agencies officially
have not. Makes you wonder how Russia can miss catching them, innit, considering the
intertubes are strictly controlled in Russia and all their intelligence transactions are in
the public domain? I mean, with their troll farms and all their snoopy organizations?
Bellingcrap could have just mentioned its sources during the course of its article instead of
proclaiming that it's going to detail in another post to be supposedly published today (9
October 2018) the methodology it and The Insider Russia used and the information trail
established. Perhaps a sign that Bellingcrap is starting to feel some pressure to lift its
game to a level acceptable to its masters at The Atlantic Council?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. BellEndCat can only manage the former.
Still, it's good enough for the BBC who this morning spoke to a (former?) Georgian minister
who was saying that if the West was united and stopped Russia from invading Georgia in 2008,
then Ukraine, Crimea, Skripals etc. wouldn't have happened, followed by BBC correspondent
Norton who said that 'was about right'.
A research arm of the U.S. military is exploring the possibility of deploying insects
to make plants more resilient by altering their genes. Some experts say the work may be seen
as a potential biological weapon.
In an opinion paper published Thursday in the journal Science, the authors say the U.S.
needs to provide greater justification for the peace-time purpose of its Insect Allies
project to avoid being perceived as hostile to other countries. Other experts expressed
ethical and security concerns with the research, which seeks to transmit protective traits to
crops already growing in the field .
####
The rest at the link.
Using the US's own definitions that it has used to place sanctions on other countries,
this is clearly a dual-use technology, i.e. civilian with military applications (which
is just about the same as any fancy satellited up in space etc.). Conclusion? The US must
sanction itself!
The US has been using insects as bioweapons for decades (including attacking Cuba and the
USSR). The current development program is using this insect research as a cover. Its real
function is to develop targeted genetic weapons designed to exterminate ethic groups. These
weapons are beyond any "mass destruction" and are pure genocide devices. Anyone who thinks
that this sort of research is unlikely is a retard without a clue. There is a reason why
certain US companies were buying up Russian human bio-waste (e.g. amputated limbs, cadavers).
If anyone thinks that the US will care about collateral damage to neighbouring Slavic
countries, then they are full on retarded as well. In 1990 Americans could not tell the
difference between Ukrainians and Russians (and even Chechens). Now for purely political
reasons they pretend to see every microscopic difference. The US has no love for Poland,
Ukraine, or any other new Europe country. They are merely cannon fodder for its imperial
ambitions. The hate that Poles and other Slavic states have for Russia is pathological.
Poland is basically a German branch plant economy. Tell me why Poland should have more love
for Germany than for Russia? And don't invoke communism since Russians were not privileged
compared to Poles before 1991. It was, in fact, the other way around.
The US is always asking to be trusted with some fearsome new capability, on the grounds that
its values are a fail-safe – it is so innately good that it could never use such
capabilities for evil. And it seems obsessed with modifications to achieve super-plants so
that one potato will feed a family of eight, and suchlike – what's wrong with food the
way nature intended it to be?
If you would decide whether a technology or process should be viewed as a threat, just
imagine it was announced by Russia. The USA would scream its head off.
I can't help noticing as well that some of its changes seem geared toward not having to do
anything about global warming, continuing to rely on a petroleum-dominated energy policy and
so forth, by engineering a food supply that will flourish through as changing environment. If
it is successful in that aim it is assured global domination, as the food supply of other
countries could vanish if the country did not sign on to the US technology agenda. America
would not have to threaten anyone's crops with secret-agent bugs. It could just go on as it
is doing, and continue to contribute to global warming.
A suspected third member of the Kremlin hit squad behind the Salisbury nerve agent attack
has been named, according to a respected Russian news website.
Sergey Fedotov, 45, travelled to the UK on the same day as the two assassins already
charged by British authorities – and boarded the same flight home.
The Telegraph had previously reported the existence of a third member of the Russian
intelligence hit squad and a trawl of flight records by the Fontanka news agency matched it
to Fedotov.
According to Fontanka, Fedotov flew to the UK on a passport whose number differs by
only a few digits from those used by the two GRU military intelligence agents officially
wanted for the nerve agent attack.
It is almost certain Fedotov is not the passenger's real name but an alias. No traces
of Sergei Fedotov have been found in documentary databases or on social media. He has no
property, vehicles or telephone numbers registered to his name in Russia, according to
Fontanka.
No "alleged"in "Kremlin hit squad behind the Salisbury nerve agent attack but It is
almost certain Fedotov is not the passenger's real name but an alias.
"... The leading financial publications have misled their political and investor subscribers of emerging crises and military defeats which have precipitated catastrophic political and economic losses. ..."
"... Financial Times (FT) ..."
"... In this essay we will proceed by outlining the larger political context that sets the framework for the transformation of the FT ..."
"... The language of the FT ..."
"... The unanimity of the liberal and rightwing publications in support of western imperialism precluded any understanding of the enormous political and economic costs which ensued. ..."
"... When it became evident that US-NATO wars did not lead to happy endings but turned into prolonged insurgencies, or when western clients turned into corrupt tyrants, the FT ..."
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Introduction
The leading financial publications have misled their political and investor subscribers
of emerging crises and military defeats which have precipitated catastrophic political and
economic losses.
The most egregious example is the Financial Times (FT) a publication which is
widely read by the business and financial elite.
In this essay we will proceed by outlining the larger political context that sets the
framework for the transformation of the FT from a relatively objective purveyor of
world news into a propagator of wars and failed economic policies.
In part two we will discuss several case studies which illustrate the dramatic shifts from a
prudent business publication to a rabid military advocate, from a well-researched analyst of
economic policies to an ideologue of the worst speculative investors.
The decay of the quality of its reportage is accompanied by the bastardization of language.
Concepts are distorted; meanings are emptied of their cognitive sense; and vitriol covers
crimes and misdemeanors.
We will conclude by discussing how and why the 'respectable' media have affected real world
political and market outcomes for citizens and investors.
Political and Economic Context
The decay of the FT cannot be separated from the global political and economic
transformations in which it publishes and circulates. The demise of the Soviet Union, the
pillage of Russia's economy throughout the 1990's and the US declaration of a unipolar world
were celebrated by the FT as great success stories for 'western values'. The US and EU
annexation of Eastern Europe, the Balkan and Baltic states led to the deep corruption and decay
of journalistic narratives.
The FT willing embraced every violation of the Gorbachev-Reagan agreements and
NATO's march to the borders of Russia. The militarization of US foreign policy was accompanied
by the FT conversion to a military interpreter of what it dubbed the 'transition to
democratization'.
The language of the FT reportage combined democratic rhetoric with an embrace
of military practices. This became the hallmark for all future coverage and editorializing. The
FT military policies extended from Europe to the Middle East, the Caucasus, North
Africa and the Gulf States.
The FT joined the yellow press in describing military power grabs, including
the overthrow of political adversaries, as 'transitions to democracy' and the creation of 'open
societies'.
The unanimity of the liberal and rightwing publications in support of western
imperialism precluded any understanding of the enormous political and economic costs which
ensued.
To protect itself from its most egregious ideological foibles, the FT included
'insurance clauses', to cover for catastrophic authoritarian outcomes. For example they advised
western political leaders to promote military interventions and, by the way ,with 'democratic
transitions'.
When it became evident that US-NATO wars did not lead to happy endings but turned into
prolonged insurgencies, or when western clients turned into corrupt tyrants, the FT
claimed that this was not what they meant by a 'democratic transition' – this was not
their version of "free markets and free votes".
The Financial and Military Times (?)
The militarization of the FT led it to embrace a military definition of
political reality. The human and especially the economic costs, the lost markets, investments
and resources were subordinated to the military outcomes of 'wars against terrorism' and
'Russian authoritarianism'.
Each and every Financial Times report and editorial promoting western military
interventions over the past two decades resulted in large scale, long-term economic losses.
The FT supported the US war against Iraq which led to the ending of important
billion-dollar oil deals (oil for food) signed off with President Saddam Hussein. The
subsequent US occupation precluded a subsequent revival of the oil industry. The US appointed
client regime pillaged the multi-billion dollar reconstruction programs – costing US and
EU taxpayers and depriving Iraqis of basic necessities.
Insurgent militias, including ISIS, gained control over half the country and precluded the
entry of any new investment.
The US and FT backed western client regimes organized rigged election outcomes and
looted the treasury of oil revenues, arousing the wrath of the population lacking electricity,
potable water and other necessities.
The FT backed war, occupation and control of Iraq was an unmitigated disaster.
Similar outcomes resulted from the FT support for the invasions of Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria and Yemen.
For example the FT propagated the story that the Taliban was providing sanctuary
for bin Laden's planning the terror assault in the US (9/11).
In fact, the Afghan leaders offered to turn over the US suspect, if they were offered
evidence. Washington rejected the offer, invaded Kabul and the FT joined the chorus
backing the so-called 'war on terrorism which led to an unending, one trillion-dollar war.
Libya signed off to a disarmament and multi-billion-dollar oil agreement with the US in
2003. In 2011 the US and its western allies bombed Libya, murdered Gadhafi, totally destroyed
civil society and undermined the US/EU oil agreements. The FT backed the war but
decried the outcome. The FT followed a familiar ploy; promoting military invasions and
then, after the fact, criticizing the economic disasters.
The FT led the media charge in favor of the western proxy war against Syria:
savaging the legitimate government and praising the mercenary terrorists, which it dubbed
'rebels' and 'militants' – dubious terms for US and EU financed operatives.
Millions of refugees, resulting from western wars in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq fled
to Europe seeking refuge. FT described the imperial holocaust – the 'dilemmas of
Europe'. The FT bemoaned the rise of the anti-immigrant parties but never assumed
responsibility for the wars which forced the millions to flee to the west.
The FT columnists prattle about 'western values' and criticize the 'far right' but
abjured any sustained attack of Israel's daily massacre of Palestinians. Instead readers get a
dose of weekly puff pieces concerning Israeli politics with nary a mention of Zionist power
over US foreign policy.
FT: Sanctions, Plots and Crises: Russia, China and Iran
The FT like all the prestigious media propaganda sheets have taken a leading role
in US conflicts with Russia, China and Iran.
For years the scribes in the FT stable have discovered (or invented) "crises" in
China's economy- always claiming it was on the verge of an economic doomsday. Contrary to the
FT, China has been growing at four times the rate of the US; ignoring the critics it built a
global infrastructure system instead of the multi-wars backed by the journalist war
mongers.
When China innovates, the FT harps on techno theft – ignoring US economic
decline.
The FT boasts it writes "without fear and without favor" which translates into
serving imperial powers voluntarily.
When the US sanctions China we are told by the FT that Washington is correcting
China's abusive statist policies. Because China does not impose military outposts to match the
eight hundred US military bases on five continents, the FT invents what it calls 'debt
colonialism" apparently describing Beijing's financing large-scale productive infrastructure
projects.
The perverse logic of the FT extends to Russia. To cover up for the US financed
coup in the Ukraine it converted a separatist movement in Donbass into a Russian land grab. In
the same way a free election in Crimea is described as Kremlin annexation.
The FT provides the language of the declining western imperial empires.
Independent, democratic Russia, free of western pillage and electoral meddling is labelled
"authoritarian"; social welfare which serves to decrease inequality is denigrated as 'populism'
-- linked to the far right. Without evidence or independent verification, the FT
fabricates Putinesque poison plots in England and Bashar Assad poison gas conspiracies in
Syria.
Conclusion
The FT has chosen to adopt a military line which has led to a long series of
financially disastrous wars. The FT support of sanctions has cost oil companies
billions of dollars, euros and pounds. The sanctions, it backed, have broken global
networks.
The FT has adopted ideological postures that threaten supply chains between the
West, China, Iran and Russia. The FT writes in many tongues but it has failed to
inform its financial readers that it bears some responsibility for markets which are under
siege.
There is unquestionably a need to overhaul the name and purpose of the FT. One journalist
who was close to the editors suggests it should be called the "Military Times" – the
voice of a declining empire.
I read the weekly British "Economist" for years, which is a well known international news
magazine. It has good stories and insight, but they are always pro-war and pro-empire, and in
recent years push open borders. I tired of supporting this propaganda and canceled by
subscription four years ago.
We used to take the FT on a Saturday. We gave it up not on the grounds of its politics
– we hardly glanced at that sort of pish anyway – but because of the decline in
the standard of its Arts coverage. That was so sudden that I imagine that it corresponded to
a change in the editor of the section.
Otherwise – well what do you expect? I no longer watch the TV news or listen to the
radio. We haven't taken the local rag for years. We take a national morning paper during the
week only on my wife's insistence. We've given up the magazines we've taken in the past,
including the Economist. The last magazine we took – second-hand, as it happens –
was Quadrant, an Aussie publication. It was rather good. We stopped it only because our
supply dried up.
I know this is going to sound crazy, but that sounds just like the track record for the
New York Times . Come to think of it, the Washington Post as well. Wow, what
are the odds? Sounds like collusion.
@tiny Tim
FT is now owned by Japanese media group Nikkei Inc. , which bought Financial Times
from Pearson for £844m ($1.32 billion). Take a look of current Editor Lionel Barber cv:
Lionel Barber, 52, is the editor of the Financial Times. He has lived in Washington,
Brussels, London and New York during his 20-year career at the publication, covering the
end of the Cold War, the first Gulf War and several US presidential campaigns. He also
briefed George W Bush ahead of his first visit to Europe as president.
Peason PLC held a 50% shareholding via The Financial Times Limited until August 2015; at
that time Pearson sold their share in the Economist. The Agnelli family's Exor paid
£287m to raise their stake from 4.7% to 43.4% , while the Economist paid
£182m for the balance of 5.04m shares which will be distributed to current
shareholders. Aside from the Agnelli family, smaller shareholders in the company include
Cadbury, Rothschild, Schroder, Layton and other family interests as well as a number
of staff and former staff shareholders.
"... As many, including Murray have pointed out, the story the UK is telling displays none of the tradecraft that one would expect from a sophisticated intelligence service. ..."
So little about the mutating, public narrative makes sense, including motive, whether Russian
or British. Some suggest that the British find it useful to paint an ongoing story for the
public of Russian depravity and duplicity. If that were the case, why paint Russia as the
gang that couldn't shoot straight - too inept to constitute a serious threat?
As many, including Murray have pointed out, the story the UK is telling displays none
of the tradecraft that one would expect from a sophisticated intelligence service.
Very convincing. This Israeli expert blows up the UK's narrative in a few well-chosen
one-liners.
"If the GRU acted, both the killers and the other participants in the operation would come
to the UK on the passports of other countries that have visa-free relations with it. Here, two
alleged GRU officers go to the embassy, leave their fingerprints there, get a
visa, stop at the hotel, pass under all the cells. This you will not find even in ladies'
detective novels."
An Israeli expert on international terrorism, writer Alexander Brass, shared his view on the
case of the Skripals poisoning in Salisbury. Brass draws parallels between the work of the
special services of Israel and Russia – he believes that if to compare the British
version with the practice of the special agents, then the absurdity becomes obvious.
"Alexander, so what, in your opinion, happened in Salisbury?"
-There was a rough provocation by the British special services. In my opinion, this is
obvious.
"There's a lot of stupidity on stupidity." The story with Petrov and Boshirov does not hold
up any professional peer review. According to the Brits, the Skripals were poisoned by GRU
agents (this is what the department is called, although this is now the Main Directorate of the
RF General Staff).
I want to explain how the special services work. If you need someone to eliminate, then this
is a very serious operation, which is being prepared for a long time. A very significant
material and human resource is allocated. We are talking about dozens of employees. On the
territory of this state, an "advanced command post" is being created.
In the operation, a technical support group, a logistic group, a cover group, an external
surveillance group and a group of performers are involved.
The performers themselves appear at the very last moment. They do not go anywhere, lighting
up on cameras, do not use public transport, but move on rented cars, which they do not rent
themselves. And the more they will not stop in hotels, but will live on safe houses provided by
the logistics group.
Such groups do not come under the passport of their country, do not go to the embassy for
obtaining a visa, leaving fingerprints. This is complete nonsense. Professionals do not work
that way.
If the GRU acted, both the killers and the other participants in the operation would come to
the UK on the passports of other countries that have visa-free relations with it. Here, two
alleged GRU officers go to the embassy, leave their fingerprints there, get a
visa, stop at the hotel, pass under all the cells. This you will not find even in ladies'
detective novels.
"... And what about the possibility of MI5's involvement in, dare we use the term, false flag operations? ..."
"... As someone who abhors the premise of conspiracy theory on principle, the fact that more and more are turning to its warm embrace as an intellectual reflex against what is politely described as the 'official narrative' of events, well this is no surprise when we learn of the egregious machinations of Western intelligence agencies such as Britain's MI5. ..."
"... If any such investigation is to be taken seriously, however, it must include in its remit the power to investigate all possible links between Britain's intelligence community and organisations such as, let's see, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group ? ..."
"... The deafening UK mainstream media and political class silence over the trail connecting 2017 Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi and MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence agency, leaves a lingering stench of intrigue that will not out. The work of investigative journalist Mark Curtis on this sordid relationship is unsurpassed. ..."
"... "The evidence suggests that the barbaric Manchester bombing, which killed 22 innocent people on May 22nd, is a case of blowback on British citizens arising at least partly from the overt and covert actions of British governments." ..."
"... "The evidence points to the LIFG being seen by the UK as a proxy militia to promote its foreign policy objectives. Whitehall also saw Qatar as a proxy to provide boots on the ground in Libya in 2011, even as it empowered hardline Islamist groups." ..."
"... "Both David Cameron, then Prime Minister, and Theresa May – who was Home Secretary in 2011 when Libyan radicals were encouraged to fight Qadafi [Muammar Gaddafi] – clearly have serious questions to answer. We believe an independent public enquiry is urgently needed." ..."
"... In words that echo down to us from ancient Rome, the poet Juvenal taunts our complacency with a question most simple and pertinent: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who will guard the guards themselves? ..."
An intelligence service given free rein to commit 'serious crimes' in its own country is an
intelligence service that is the enemy of its people. The quite astounding
revelation that Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, has enjoyed this very freedom
for decades has only just been made public at a special tribunal in London, set up to investigate the country's
intelligence services at the behest of a coalition of human rights groups, alleging a pattern
of illegality up to and including collusion in murder.
The hitherto MI5 covert policy sanctioning its agents to commit and/or solicit serious
crimes, as and when adjudged provident, is known as the Third Direction. This codename has been
crafted, it would appear, by someone with a penchant for all things James Bond within an agency
whose average operative is more likely to be 5'6" and balding with a paunch and bad teeth than
any kind of lantern-jawed 007.
The Pat Finucane Centre ,
one of the aforementioned human rights groups involved in bringing about this tribunal
investigation (Investigatory Powers Tribunal, to give it its Sunday name) into the nefarious
activities of Britain's domestic intelligence agency, issued a damning
statement in response to the further revelation that former Prime Minister David Cameron
introduced oversight guidelines with regard to the MI5 covert third direction policy back in
2012.
Cameron's decision to do so, the group claims, was far from nobly taken:
"It can be no coincidence that Prime Minister David Cameron issued new guidelines,
however flawed, on oversight of MI5 just two weeks before publication of the De Silva report
into the murder of Pat Finucane. The PM was clearly alive to the alarming evidence which was
about to emerge of the involvement of the Security Service in the murder. To date no-one within
a state agency has been held accountable. The latest revelations make the case for an
independent inquiry all the more compelling."
Pat Finucane, a Belfast Catholic, plied his trade as a human rights lawyer at a time when
the right to be fully human was denied the minority Catholic community of the small and
enduring outpost of British colonialism in the north east corner of Ireland, otherwise known as
Northern Ireland. He was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989, back when the
decades-long conflict euphemistically referred to as the Troubles still raged, claiming victims both
innocent and not on all sides.
Unlike the vast majority of those killed and murdered in the course of this brutal conflict,
Finucane's murder sparked a long and hard fought struggle for justice by surviving family
members, friends and campaigners. They allege – rather convincingly, it should be said
– that it was carried out with the active collusion of MI5.
Stepping back and casting a wider view over this terrain, the criminal activities of
Britain's intelligence services constitute more than enough material for a book of considerable
heft. How fortunate then that just such a book has already been
written.
In his 'Dead Men Talking: Collusion, Cover Up and Murder in Northern Ireland's Dirty War',
author Nicholas Davies "provides information on a number of the killings [during the
Troubles], which were authorized at the highest level of MI5 and the British
government."
But over and above the crimes of MI5 in Ireland, what else have those doughty defenders of
the realm been up to over the years? After all, what is the use of having a license to engage
in serious criminal activity, including murder and, presumably, torture, if you're not prepared
to use (abuse) it? It begs the question of how many high profile deaths attributed to suicide,
natural causes, and accident down through the years have been the fruits of MI5 at work?
And what about the possibility of MI5's involvement in, dare we use the term, false flag
operations?
As someone who abhors the premise of conspiracy theory on principle, the fact that more and
more are turning to its warm embrace as an intellectual reflex against what is politely
described as the 'official narrative' of events, well this is no surprise when we learn of the
egregious machinations of Western intelligence agencies such as Britain's MI5.
What we are bound to state, doing so without fear of contradiction, is this particular
revelation opens up a veritable Pandora's Box of grim possibilities when it comes to the
potential crimes committed by Britain's domestic intelligence agency, ensuring that a full and
vigorous investigation and public inquiry is now both necessary and urgent.
If any such investigation is to be taken seriously, however, it must include in its remit
the power to investigate all possible links between Britain's intelligence community and
organisations such as, let's see, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group ?
The deafening UK mainstream media and political class silence over the trail connecting 2017
Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi and MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence agency,
leaves a lingering stench of intrigue that will not out. The work
of investigative journalist Mark Curtis on this sordid relationship is unsurpassed.
As Curtis writes,
"The evidence suggests that the barbaric Manchester bombing, which killed 22 innocent
people on May 22nd, is a case of blowback on British citizens arising at least partly from
the overt and covert actions of British governments."
In the same report he arrives at a conclusion both damning and chilling:
"The evidence points to the LIFG being seen by the UK as a proxy militia to promote its
foreign policy objectives. Whitehall also saw Qatar as a proxy to provide boots on the ground
in Libya in 2011, even as it empowered hardline Islamist groups."
Finally: "Both David Cameron, then Prime Minister, and Theresa May – who was Home
Secretary in 2011 when Libyan radicals were encouraged to fight Qadafi [Muammar Gaddafi]
– clearly have serious questions to answer. We believe an independent public enquiry is
urgently needed."
In words that echo down to us from ancient Rome, the poet Juvenal taunts our complacency
with a question most simple and pertinent: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who will
guard the guards themselves?
Edward R Murrow
puts it rather more bluntly: "A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."
Sooner or later, people in Britain are going to have to wake up to who the real enemy
is.
John Wight has written for a variety of newspapers and websites, including the
Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and
Foreign Policy Journal.
British intelligence services have a lot of things to explain now. But who will ask them ?
Notable quotes:
"... The nub of the British government's approach has been the shocking willingness of the corporate and state media to parrot repeatedly the lie that the nerve agent was Russian made, even after Porton Down said they could not tell where it was made and the OPCW confirmed that finding. ..."
"... What is certainly untrue is that only Russia has a motive. The obvious motive is to attempt to blame and discredit Russia. Those who might wish to do this include Ukraine and Georgia, with both of which Russia is in territorial dispute, and those states and jihadist groups with which Russia is in conflict in Syria. The NATO military industrial complex also obviously has a plain motive for fueling tension with Russia. ..."
"... There is of course the possibility that Skripal was attacked by a private gangster interest with which he was in conflict, or that the attack was linked to Skripal's MI6 handler Pablo Miller's work on the Orbis/Steele Russiagate dossier on Donald Trump. ..."
"... Plainly, the British governments statements that only Russia had the means and only Russia had the motive, are massive lies on both counts. ..."
"... Yet no motive has been adduced for an attack on Yulia or why they would attack while Yulia was visiting – they could have painted his doorknob with less fear of discovery anytime he was alone ..."
"... The incompetence of the assassination beggars belief when compared to British claims of a long term production and training programme. The Russians built the heart of the International Space Station. ..."
"... With Skripal being resettled by MI6, and a former intelligence officer himself, it beggars belief that MI6 did not fit, as standard, some basic security including a security camera on his house. ..."
"... Why did they both touch the outside doorknob in exiting and closing the door? Why did the novichok act so very slowly, with evidently no feeling of ill health for at least five hours, and then how did it strike both down absolutely simultaneously, so that neither can call for help, despite their being different sexes, weights, ages, metabolisms and receiving random completely uncontrolled doses. The odds of that happening are virtually nil. And why was the nerve agent ultimately ineffective? ..."
"... Why was the Detective Sergeant affected and nobody else who attended the house, or the scene where the Skripals were found? Why was Bailey only lightly affected by this extremely deadly substance, of which a tiny amount can kill? ..."
"... I am, with a few simple questions, demolishing what is the most ludicrous conspiracy theory I have ever heard – the Salisbury conspiracy theory being put forward by the British government and its corporate lackies. ..."
"... During a visit to Salisbury and Amesbury, the UK home secretary said: "We don't want to jump to conclusions." but they sure were with the first poisoning. Time will tell. ..."
Craig Murray: "The Holes in the Official Skripal Story"
... ... ...
" The nub of the British government's approach has been the shocking willingness of the
corporate and state media to parrot repeatedly the lie that the nerve agent was Russian made,
even after Porton Down said they could not tell where it was made and the OPCW confirmed that
finding. In fact, while the Soviet Union did develop the "novichok" class of nerve agents,
the programme involved scientists from all over the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine, Armenia
and Georgia, as I myself learnt when I visited the newly decommissioned Nukus testing facility
in Uzbekistan in 2002.
Furthermore, it was the USA who decommissioned the facility and removed equipment back to
the United States. At least two key scientists from the programme moved to the United States.
Formulae for several novichok have been published for over a decade. The USA, UK and Iran have
definitely synthesised a number of novichok formulae and almost certainly others have done so
too. Dozens of states have the ability to produce novichok, as do many sophisticated non-state
actors.
As for motive, the Russian motive might be revenge, but whether that really outweighs the
international opprobrium incurred just ahead of the World Cup, in which so much prestige has
been invested, is unclear." Craig Murray
What is certainly untrue is that only Russia has a
motive. The obvious motive is to attempt to blame and discredit Russia. Those who might wish to
do this include Ukraine and Georgia, with both of which Russia is in territorial dispute, and
those states and jihadist groups with which Russia is in conflict in Syria. The NATO military
industrial complex also obviously has a plain motive for fueling tension with Russia.
There is of course the possibility that Skripal was attacked by a private gangster interest
with which he was in conflict, or that the attack was linked to Skripal's MI6 handler Pablo
Miller's work on the Orbis/Steele Russiagate dossier on Donald Trump.
Plainly, the British governments statements that only Russia had the means and only Russia
had the motive, are massive lies on both counts.
The Russians had been tapping the phone of Yulia Skripal. They decided to attack Sergei
Skripal while his daughter was visiting from Moscow.
In an effort to shore up the government narrative, at the time of the Amesbury attack the
security services put out through Pablo Miller's long term friend, the BBC's Mark Urban, that
the Russians "may have been" tapping Yulia Skripal's phone, and the claim that this was strong
evidence that the Russians had indeed been behind the attack.
But think this through. If that were true, then the Russians deliberately attacked at a time
when Yulia was in the UK rather than when Sergei was alone. Yet no motive has been adduced for
an attack on Yulia or why they would attack while Yulia was visiting – they could have
painted his doorknob with less fear of discovery anytime he was alone. Furthermore, it is
pretty natural that Russian intelligence would tap the phone of Yulia, and of Sergei if they
could. The family of double agents are normal targets. I have no doubt in the least, from
decades of experience as a British diplomat, that GCHQ have been tapping Yulia's phone. Indeed,
if tapping of phones is seriously put forward as evidence of intent to murder, the British
government must be very murderous indeed.
Their trained assassin(s) painted a novichok on the doorknob of the Skripal house in the
suburbs of Salisbury. Either before or after the attack, they entered a public place in the
centre of Salisbury and left a sealed container of the novichok there.
The incompetence of the assassination beggars belief when compared to British claims of a
long term production and training programme. The Russians built the heart of the International
Space Station. They can kill an old bloke in Salisbury. Why did the Russians not know that the
dose from the door handle was not fatal? Why would trained assassins leave crucial evidence
lying around in a public place in Salisbury? Why would they be conducting any part of the
operation with the novichok in a public area in central Salisbury?
Why did nobody see them painting the doorknob? This must have involved wearing protective
gear, which would look out of place in a Salisbury suburb. With Skripal being resettled by MI6,
and a former intelligence officer himself, it beggars belief that MI6 did not fit, as standard,
some basic security including a security camera on his house.
The Skripals both touched the doorknob and both functioned perfectly normally for at least
five hours, even able to eat and drink heartily. Then they were simultaneously and
instantaneously struck down by the nerve agent, at a spot in the city centre coincidentally
close to where the assassins left a sealed container of the novichok lying around. Even
though the nerve agent was eight times more deadly than Sarin or VX, it did not kill the
Skripals because it had been on the doorknob and affected by rain.
Why did they both touch the outside doorknob in exiting and closing the door? Why did the novichok act so very slowly, with evidently no feeling of ill health for at least five hours,
and then how did it strike both down absolutely simultaneously, so that neither can call for
help, despite their being different sexes, weights, ages, metabolisms and receiving random
completely uncontrolled doses. The odds of that happening are virtually nil. And why was the
nerve agent ultimately ineffective?
Detective Sergeant Bailey attended the Skripal house and was also poisoned by the
doorknob, but more lightly. None of the other police who attended the house were
affected.
Why was the Detective Sergeant affected and nobody else who attended the house, or the scene
where the Skripals were found? Why was Bailey only lightly affected by this extremely deadly
substance, of which a tiny amount can kill?
Four months later, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were rooting about in public parks,
possibly looking for cigarette butts, and accidentally came into contact with the sealed
container of a novichok. They were poisoned and Dawn Sturgess subsequently died.
If the nerve agent had survived four months because it was in a sealed container, why has
this sealed container now mysteriously disappeared again? If Rowley and Sturgess had direct
contact straight from the container, why did they not both die quickly? Why had four months
searching of Salisbury and a massive police, security service and military operation not found
this container, if Rowley and Sturgess could?
I am, with a few simple questions, demolishing what is the most ludicrous conspiracy theory
I have ever heard – the Salisbury conspiracy theory being put forward by the British
government and its corporate lackies.
My next post will consider some more plausible explanations of this affair.
Has anyone considered if Rowley and Sturgess might in fact be the actual ones that put the
novichok on the Skripal's doorknob four months ago? Perhaps paid to do so by Israel or
Ukraine?
"Searches began on 6 July of Rowley's home and it was not until Wednesday (11th) that the
bottle was discovered by officers, who were battling searing sunshine and protective suits to
stop them being exposed to the lethal toxin." "...As a precaution Public Health England
continues to advise the public not to pick up any strange items such as syringes, needles,
cosmetics or similar objects made of materials such as metal, plastic or glass."
Obviously, the bottle was not simply lying around in plain sight. Would appear to be drug
related? Strange. Would be nice if the British were more forthcoming. Another interesting bit
is why are the British now, not jumping to conclusions?
"Sajid Javid has said there are no plans to impose fresh sanctions on Russia following the
latest nerve agent poisoning in Wiltshire.
During a visit to Salisbury and Amesbury, the UK home secretary said: "We don't want to
jump to conclusions." but they sure were with the first poisoning. Time will tell.
They are now saying it looked like a bottle of perfume. The story just gets weirder.
Novichok nerve agent that killed a mother-of-three in Salisbury was in a PERFUME bottle
she may have sprayed herself with, her poisoned lover's brother reveals
Charlie Rowley, 45, was left fighting for his life after he was exposed to Novichok
His partner Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after she was poisoned by the nerve agent
Matthew Rowley said the poison was in a perfume bottle his brother picked up ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...
So how did the homeless woman's partner come into contact with, but, nobody else? How long
does Novochok last, once made up? Hours or months?
Bases on VX (the most similar nerve agent to Novochok) it would last days, except if kept
sealed.
It's beginning to look like someone from Porton Down is the source, unless the perfume
bottle was used to transport the Novochok into the country and then tossed.
The fundamental flaw in the reasoning of this article is that it assumes the poisoning was
meant to be kept secret. If you are going to poison someone with Polonium or Novichuk you are
sending a distinct message about where the poison came from.
You could kill someone with alflatoxin and no one would know. There a loads of ways a
state player can kill people in an untraceable way,
So the purpose of the poisoning was to send a message - not to eliminate a threat,
Once you see that as the purpose of the poisoning, the question becomes is who wants to
tell the world that they can kill at long range and little detection with sophisticated
neurochemical weapons. . . .
"... But Britain recruited Skripal in 1996 when not only was the Soviet Union dead but Russia was ruled by the West's performing bear Boris Yeltsin. And during his presidency, Russia was passed-out on the floor with everyone picking its pockets. ..."
That the USSR was an existential threat to Western capitalism and colonialism and war
– of one kind or another – between these two camps was logical and inevitable. But
the Soviet Union is 30 years dead.
Indeed, Gordievsky through Macintyre can – if he's telling the truth – claim
that he helped bring about the (brief) end of history and the "final" victory. His claimed role
in the rise and rise of Gorbachev's relationship with Mrs Thatcher and, by extension, President
Reagan certainly hastened the downfall of the USSR.
But Britain recruited Skripal in 1996 when not only was the Soviet Union dead but Russia
was ruled by the West's performing bear Boris Yeltsin. And during his presidency, Russia was
passed-out on the floor with everyone picking its pockets.
Why was Britain still fighting the Cold War against Russia in 1996, and why is it still
fighting the Cold War against Russia now?
Just this week, the rather effete British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson – a
former fireplace salesman –
said he was sending 800 shivering British soldiers to the Arctic to be ready to fight
Russia there. Amidst the snow. And the ice.
As both Napoleon and Hitler must have said: " What could possibly go wrong? "
George Galloway was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He
presents TV and radio shows (including on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a renowned
orator.
"... There has been an ongoing campaign on the part of the US, to get out the idea that China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have massive armies of hackers that are constantly looking to steal American secrets. The absurdity of the US' claims is pretty obvious. As I pointed out in my book The Myth of Homeland Security ..."
"... "The Great US/China Cyberwar of 2010" is one cyberwar that didn't happen, but was presaged with a run-up of lots of claims that the Chinese were hacking all over the place. I'm perfectly willing to accept the possibility that there was Chinese hacking activity, but in the industry there was no indication of an additional level of attack or significance. ..."
"... One thing that did ..."
"... US ideology is that "we don't start wars" -- it's always looking for an excuse to go to war under the rubric of self-defense, so I see these sorts of claims as justification in advance for unilateral action. I also see it as a sign of weakness; if the US were truly the superpower it claims it is, it would simply accept its imperial mantle and stop bothering to try to justify anything. I'm afraid we may be getting close to that point. ..."
"... My assumption has always been that the US is projecting its own actions on other nations. At the time when the US was talking the loudest about Chinese cyberwar, the US and Israel had launched STUXNET against the Iranian enrichment plant at Natanz, and the breeder reactor at Bushehr (which happens to be just outside of a large city; the attack took some of its control systems and backup generators offline). Attacks on nuclear power facilities are a war crime under international humanitarian law, which framework the US is signatory to but has not committed to actually follow. This sort of activity happens at the same time that the US distributes talking-points to the media about the danger of Russian hackers crashing the US power grid. I don't think we can psychoanalyze an entire government and I think psychoanalysis is mostly nonsense -- but it's tempting to accuse the US of "projection." ..."
"... All of this stuff happens against the backdrop of Klein, Binney, Snowden, and the Vault 7 revelations, as well as solid attribution identifying the NSA as "equation group" and linking the code-tree of NSA-developed malware to STUXNET, FLAME, and DUQU. ..."
"... the US has even admitted to deploying STUXNET -- Obama bragged about it. When Snowden's revelations outlined how the NSA had eavesdropped on Angela Merkel's cellphone, the Germans expressed shock and Barack Obama remarkably truthfully said "that's how these things are done" and blew the whole thing off by saying that the NSA wasn't eavesdropping on Merkel any more. [ bbc ] ..."
"... It's hard to keep score because everything is pretty vague, but it sounds like the US has been dramatically out-spending and out-acting the other nations that it accuses of being prepared for cyberwar. ..."
"... it's hard not to see the US is prepared for cyberwar, when both the NSA and the CIA leak massive collections of advanced tools. ..."
"... My observation is that the NSA and CIA have been horribly sloppy and have clearly spent a gigantic amount of money preparing to compromise both foreign and domestic systems -- that's bad enough. With friends like the NSA and CIA, who needs Russians and Chinese? ..."
"... The Russian and Chinese efforts are relatively tiny compared to the massive efforts the US expends tens of billions of dollars on. The US spends about $50bn on its intelligence agencies, while the entire Russian Department of Defense budget is about $90bn (China is around $139bn) -- maybe the Russians and Chinese have such a small footprint because they are much smaller operations? ..."
"... That brings us to the recent kerfuffle about taps on the Supermicro motherboards. That's not unbelievable at all -- not in a world where we discover that Intel has built a parallel management CPU into every CPU since 2008, and that there is solid indications that other processors have similar backdoors. ..."
"... There are probably so many backdoors in our systems that it's a miracle it works at all. ..."
"... So, with respect to "propaganda" I would say that the US intelligence community has been consistently pushing a propaganda agenda against the US government, and the citizens in order to justify its actions and defend its budget. ..."
"... What little I've been able to find out the new Trump™ cybersecurity plan is that it doesn't involve any defense, just massive retribution against (perceived) foes. ..."
"... Funny how those obsessed with "false flag" operations work so hard to invite more of same. ..."
Bob Moore asks me to comment on an article about propaganda and security/intelligence. [
article ] This is going to be a mixture of opinion and references to facts; I'll try to be
clear which is which.
Yesterday several NATO countries ran a concerted propaganda campaign against Russia. The
context for it was a NATO summit in which the U.S. presses for an intensified cyberwar
against NATO's preferred enemy.
On the same day another coordinated campaign targeted China. It is aimed against China's
development of computer chip manufacturing further up the value chain. Related to this is
U.S. pressure on Taiwan, a leading chip manufacturer, to cut its ties with its big
motherland.
It is true that the US periodically makes a big push regarding "messaging" about hacking.
Whether or not it constitutes a "propaganda campaign" depends on how we choose to interpret
things and the labels we attach to them -- "propaganda campaign" has a lot of negative
connotations and one person's "outreach effort" is an other's "propaganda." An
ultra-nationalist or an authoritarian submissive who takes the government's word for anything
would call it "outreach."
There has been an ongoing campaign on the part of the US, to get out the idea that
China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have massive armies of hackers that are constantly looking
to steal American secrets. The absurdity of the US' claims is pretty obvious. As I pointed out
in my book The Myth of Homeland Security (2004) [
wc ] claims such as that the Chinese had "40,000 highly trained hackers" are flat-out
absurd and ignore the reality of hacking; that's four army corps. Hackers don't engage in
"human wave" attacks.
"The Great US/China Cyberwar of 2010" is one cyberwar that didn't happen, but was
presaged with a run-up of lots of claims that the Chinese were hacking all over the place. I'm
perfectly willing to accept the possibility that there was Chinese hacking activity, but in the
industry there was no indication of an additional level of attack or significance.
One thing that did happen in 2010 around the same time as the nonexistent
cyberwar was China and Russia proposed trilateral talks with the US to attempt to define
appropriate limits on state-sponsored hacking. The US flatly rejected the proposal, but there
was virtually no coverage of that in the US media at the time. The UN also called for a
cyberwar treaty framework, and the effort was killed by the US. [ wired ] What's
fascinating and incomprehensible to me is that, whenever the US feels that its ability to claim
pre-emptive cyberwar is challenged, it responds with a wave of claims about Chinese (or Russian
or North Korean) cyberwar aggression.
John Negroponte, former director of US intelligence, said intelligence agencies in the
major powers would be the first to "express reservations" about such an accord.
US ideology is that "we don't start wars" -- it's always looking for an excuse to go to
war under the rubric of self-defense, so I see these sorts of claims as justification in
advance for unilateral action. I also see it as a sign of weakness; if the US were truly the
superpower it claims it is, it would simply accept its imperial mantle and stop bothering to
try to justify anything. I'm afraid we may be getting close to that point.
My assumption has always been that the US is projecting its own actions on other
nations. At the time when the US was talking the loudest about Chinese cyberwar, the US and
Israel had launched STUXNET against the Iranian enrichment plant at Natanz, and the breeder
reactor at Bushehr (which happens to be just outside of a large city; the attack took some of
its control systems and backup generators offline). Attacks on nuclear power facilities are a
war crime under international humanitarian law, which framework the US is signatory to but has
not committed to actually follow. This sort of activity happens at the same time that the US
distributes talking-points to the media about the danger of Russian hackers crashing the US
power grid. I don't think we can psychoanalyze an entire government and I think psychoanalysis
is mostly nonsense -- but it's tempting to accuse the US of "projection."
The anti-Russian campaign is about alleged Russian spying, hacking and influence
operations. Britain and the Netherland took the lead. Britain accused Russia's military
intelligence service (GRU) of spying attempts against the Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague and Switzerland, of spying attempts against the British
Foreign Office, of influence campaigns related to European and the U.S. elections, and of
hacking the international doping agency WADA. British media willingly
helped to exaggerate the claims: [ ]
The Netherland [sic] for its part released
a flurry
of information about the alleged spying attempts against the OPCW in The Hague. It claims
that four GRU agents traveled to The Hague on official Russian diplomatic passports to sniff
out the WiFi network of the OPCW. (WiFi networks are notoriously easy to hack. If the OPCW is
indeed using such it should not be trusted with any security relevant issues.) The Russian
officials were allegedly very secretive, even cleaning out their own hotel trash, while they,
at the same, time carried laptops with private data and even taxi receipts showing their
travel from a GRU headquarter in Moscow to the airport. Like in the Skripal/Novichok saga the
Russian spies are, at the same time, portrayed as supervillains and hapless amateurs. Real
spies are neither.
There's a lot there, and I think the interpretation is a bit over-wrought, but it's mostly
accurate. The US and the UK (and other NATO allies, as necessary) clearly coordinate when it
comes to talking points. Claims of Chinese cyberwar in the US press will be followed by claims
in the UK and Australian press, as well. My suspicion is that this is not the US Government and
UK Government coordinating a story -- it's the intelligence agencies doing it. My
opinion is that the intelligence services are fairly close to a "deep state" -- the
CIA and NSA are completely out of control and the CIA has gone far toward building its own
military, while the NSA has implemented completely unrestricted surveillance worldwide.
All of this stuff happens against the backdrop of Klein, Binney, Snowden, and the Vault
7 revelations, as well as solid attribution identifying the NSA as "equation group" and linking
the code-tree of NSA-developed malware to STUXNET, FLAME, and DUQU. While the attribution
that "Fancy Bear is the GRU" has been made and is probably fairly solid, the attribution of NSA
malware and CIA malware is rock solid; the US has even admitted to deploying STUXNET --
Obama bragged about it. When Snowden's revelations outlined how the NSA had eavesdropped on
Angela Merkel's cellphone, the Germans expressed shock and Barack Obama remarkably truthfully
said "that's how these things are done" and blew the whole thing off by saying that the NSA
wasn't eavesdropping on Merkel any more. [ bbc ]
It's hard to keep score because everything is pretty vague, but it sounds like the US
has been dramatically out-spending and out-acting the other nations that it accuses of being
prepared for cyberwar. I tend to be extremely skeptical of US claims because: bomber gap,
missile gap, gulf of Tonkin, Iraq WMD, Afghanistan, Libya and every other aggressive attack by
the US which was blamed on its target. The reason I assume the US is the most aggressive actor
in cyberspace is because the US has done a terrible job of protecting its tool-sets and
operational security: it's hard not to see the US is prepared for cyberwar, when both the
NSA and the CIA leak massive collections of advanced tools.
Meanwhile, where are the leaks of Russian and Chinese tools? They have been few and far
between, if there have been any at all. Does this mean that the Russians and Chinese have
amazingly superior tradecraft, if not tools? I don't know. My observation is that the NSA
and CIA have been horribly sloppy and have clearly spent a gigantic amount of money preparing
to compromise both foreign and domestic systems -- that's bad enough. With friends like the NSA
and CIA, who needs Russians and Chinese?
The article does not have great depth to its understanding of the situation, I'm afraid. So
it comes off as a bit heavy on the recent news while ignoring the long-term trends. For
example:
The allegations of Chinese supply chain attacks are of course just as hypocritical as the
allegations against Russia. The very first know case of computer related supply chain
manipulation goes
back to 1982 :
A CIA operation to sabotage Soviet industry by duping Moscow into stealing booby-trapped
software was spectacularly successful when it triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian gas
pipeline, it emerged yesterday.
I wrote a piece about the "Farewell Dossier" in 2004. [ mjr
] Re-reading it, it comes off as skeptical but waffly. I think that it's self-promotion by the
CIA and exaggerates considerably ("look how clever we are!") at a time when the CIA was
suffering an attention and credibility deficit after its shitshow performance under George
Tenet. But the first known cases of computer related supply chain manipulation go back to the
70s and 80s -- the NSA even compromised Crypto AG's Hagelin M-209 system (a mechanical
ciphering machine) in order to read global communications encrypted with that product. You can
imagine Crypto AG's surprise when the Iranian secret police arrested one of their sales reps
for selling backdoor'd crypto -- the NSA had never told them about the backdoor, naturally. The
CIA was also on record for producing Xerox machines destined for the USSR, which had recorders
built into them So, while the article is portraying the historical sweep of NSA dirty tricks,
they're only looking at the recent ones. Remember: the NSA also weakened the elliptic curve
crypto library in RSA's Bsafe implementation, paying RSADSI $13 million to accept their tweaked
code.
Why haven't we been hearing about the Chinese and Russians doing that sort of thing? There
are four options:
The Russians and Chinese are doing it, they're just so darned good nobody has
caught them until just recently.
The Russians and Chinese simply resort to using existing tools developed by the
hacking/cybercrime community and rely on great operational security rather than fancy
tools.
The Russian and Chinese efforts are relatively tiny compared to the massive efforts
the US expends tens of billions of dollars on. The US spends about $50bn on its intelligence
agencies, while the entire Russian Department of Defense budget is about $90bn (China is
around $139bn) -- maybe the Russians and Chinese have such a small footprint because they are
much smaller operations?
Something else.
That brings us to the recent kerfuffle about taps on the Supermicro motherboards. That's
not unbelievable at all -- not in a world where we discover that Intel has built a parallel
management CPU into every CPU since 2008, and that there is solid indications that other
processors have similar backdoors.
Was the Intel IME a "backdoor" or just "a bad idea"? Well, that's tricky. Let me put my
tinfoil hat on: making a backdoor look like a sloppily developed product feature would be the
competent way to write a backdoor. Making it as sneaky as the backdoor in the Via is
unnecessary -- incompetence is eminently believable.
&
(kaspersky)
I believe all of these stories (including the Supermicro) are the tip of a great big, ugly
iceberg. The intelligence community has long known that software-only solutions are too
mutable, and are easy to decompile and figure out. They have wanted to be in the BIOS of
systems -- on the motherboard -- for a long time. If you go back to 2014, we have disclosures
about the NSA malware that hides in hard drive BIOS: [
vice ] [
vice ] That appears to have been in progress around 2000/2001.
Of note, the group recovered two modules belonging to EquationDrug and GrayFish that were
used to reprogram hard drives to give the attackers persistent control over a target machine.
These modules can target practically every hard drive manufacturer and brand on the market,
including Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba, Corsair, Hitachi and more. Such attacks
have traditionally been difficult to pull off, given the risk in modifying hard drive
software, which may explain why Kaspersky could only identify a handful of very specific
targets against which the attack was used, where the risk was worth the reward.
But
Equation Group's malware platforms have other tricks, too. GrayFish, for example, also has
the ability to install itself into computer's boot record -- software that loads even
before the operating system itself -- and stores all of its data inside a portion of
the operating system called the registry, where configuration data is normally stored.
EquationDrug was designed for use on older Windows operating systems, and "some of the
plugins were designed originally for use on Windows 95/98/ME" -- versions of Windows so old
that they offer a good indication of the Equation Group's age.
This is not a very good example of how to establish a "malware gap" since it just makes the
NSA look like they are incapable of keeping a secret. If you want an idea how bad it is,
Kaspersky labs' analysis of the NSA's toolchain is a good example of how to do attribution
correctly. Unfortunately for the US agenda, that solid attribution points toward Fort Meade in
Maryland. [kaspersky]
Let me be clear: I think we are fucked every which way from the start. With backdoors in the
BIOS, backdoors on the CPU, and wireless cellular-spectrum backdoors, there are probably
backdoors in the GPUs and the physical network controllers, as well. Maybe the backdoors in the
GPU come from the GRU and maybe the backdoors in the hard drives come from NSA, but who cares?
The upshot is that all of our systems are so heinously compromised that they can only be
considered marginally reliable. It is, literally, not your computer: it's theirs. They'll let
you use it so long as your information is interesting to them.
Do I believe the Chinese are capable of doing such a thing? Of course. Is the GRU? Probably.
Mossad? Sure. NSA? Well-documented attribution points toward NSA. Your computer is a free-fire
zone. It has been since the mid 1990s, when the NSA was told "no" on the Clipper chip and
decided to come up with its own Plan B, C, D, and E. Then, the CIA came up with theirs. Etc.
There are probably so many backdoors in our systems that it's a miracle it works at
all.
From my 2012 RSA conference lecture "Cyberwar, you're doing it wrong."
The problem is that playing in this space is the purview of governments. Nobody in the
cybercrime or hacking world need tools like these. The intelligence operatives have huge
budgets, compared to a typical company's security budget, and it's unreasonable to expect any
business to invest such a level of effort on defending itself. So what should companies do?
They should do exactly what they are doing: expect the government to deal with it; that's what
governments are for. The problem with that strategy is that their government isn't on their
side, either! It's Hobbes' playground.
In case you think I am engaging in hyperbole, I assure you I am not. If you want another
example of the lengths (and willingness to bypass the law) "they" are willing to go, consider
'stingrays' that are in operation in every major US city and outside of every interesting hotel
and high tech park. Those devices are not passive -- they actively inject themselves into the
call set-up between your phone and your carrier -- your data goes through the stingray, or it
doesn't go at all. If there are multiple stingrays, then your latency goes through the roof.
"They" don't care. Are the stingrays NSA, FBI, CIA, Mossad, GRU, or PLA? Probably a bit of all
of the above depending on where and when.
Whenever the US gets caught with its pants down around its ankles, it blames the Chinese or
the Russians because they have done a good job of building the idea that the most serious
hackers on the planet at the Chinese. I don't believe that we're seeing complex propaganda
campaigns that are tied to specific incidents -- I think we see ongoing organic
propaganda campaigns that all serve the same end: protect the agencies, protect their budgets,
justify their existence, and downplay their incompetence.
So, with respect to "propaganda" I would say that the US intelligence community has been
consistently pushing a propaganda agenda against the US government, and the citizens in order
to justify its actions and defend its budget.
The government also engages in propaganda, and is influenced by the intelligence
community's propaganda as well. And the propaganda campaigns work because everyone
involved assumes, "well, given what the NSA has been able to do, I should assume the Chinese
can do likewise." That's a perfectly reasonable assumption and I think it's probably true that
the Chinese have capabilities. The situation is what Chuck Spinney calls "A self-licking ice
cream cone" -- it's a justifying structure that makes participation in endless aggression seem
like a sensible thing to do. And, when there's inevitably a disaster, it's going to be like a
cyber-9/11 and will serve as a justification for even more unrestrained aggression.
Want to see what it looks like? A thousand thanks to Commentariat member [redacted] for this
link. If you don't like video, there's an article here. [ toms ]
Is this an NSA backdoor, or normal incompetence? Is Intel Management Engine an NSA-inspired
backdoor, or did some system engineers at Intel think that was a good idea? There are other
scary indications of embedded compromise: the CIA's Vault7 archive included code that appeared
to be intended to embed in the firmware of "smart" flatscreen TVs. That would make every LG
flat panel in every hotel room, a listening device just waiting to be turned on.
We know the Chinese didn't do that particular bug but why wouldn't they do
something similar, in something else? China is the world's oldest mature culture -- they
literally wrote the book on strategy -- Americans acting as though it's a great
surprise to learn that the Chinese are not stupid, it's just the parochialism of a 250 year-old
culture looking at a 3,000 year-old culture and saying "wow, you guys haven't been asleep at
the switch after all!"
What little I've been able to find out the new
Trump™ cybersecurity plan is that it doesn't involve any defense, just massive
retribution against (perceived) foes.
Funny how those obsessed with "false flag" operations work so hard to invite more of
same.
Pierce R. Butler@#1: What little I've been able to find out the new Trump™ cybersecurity plan is that
it doesn't involve any defense, just massive retribution against (perceived) foes.
Yes. Since 2001, as far as most of us can tell, federal cybersecurity spend has been 80%
offense, 20% defense. And a lot of the offensive spend has been aimed at We, The
People.
Your mention of Operation Sundevil and Kevin Mitnick in a previous post made me think
that maybe the reason we haven't seen the kind of leaks from the Russian and Chinese
hacking operations that we've seem from the NSA is that they're running a "Kevin Mitnick
style" operation; that is, relying less on technical solutions and using instead
old-fashioned "social engineering" and other low-tech forms of espionage (like running
troll farms on social media). I mean, I've seen interviews with retired US intelligence
people since the 90s complain that since the late 1980s, the intelligence agencies have
been crippled by management in love with hi-tech "SIGINT" solutions to problems that never
deliver and neglecting old-fashioned "HUMINT" intelligence-gathering.
The thing is, Kevin Mitnick got away with a lot of what he did because people didn't
take security seriously then, and still don't. On a similar nostalgia vibe, I remember
reading an article by Keith Bostic (one of the researchers who helped in the analysis of
the Morris worm
that took down a significant chunk of the Internet back in 1988) where he did a follow-up a
year or so afterwards and some depressing number of organisations that had been hit by it
still hadn't patched the holes that had let the worm infect them in the first
place.
Cat Mara@#3: Your mention of Operation Sundevil and Kevin Mitnick in a previous post made me think
that maybe the reason we haven't seen the kind of leaks from the Russian and Chinese
hacking operations that we've seem from the NSA is that they're running a "Kevin Mitnick
style" operation; that is, relying less on technical solutions and using instead
old-fashioned "social engineering" and other low-tech forms of espionage (like running
troll farms on social media).
I think that's right, to a high degree. What if Edward Snowden was an agent provocateur
instead of a well-meaning naive kid? A tremendous amount of damage could be done, as well
as stealing the US' expensive toys. The Russians have been very good at doing exactly that
sort of operation, since WWII. The Chinese are, if anything, more subtle than the
Russians.
The Chinese attitude, as expressed to me by someone who might be a credible source is,
"why are you picking a fight with us? We don't care, you're too far away for us to threaten
you, we both have loads of our own fish to fry. To them, the US is young, hyperactive, and
stupid.
The FBI is not competent, at all, against old-school humint intelligence-gathering.
Compared to the US' cyber-toys, the old ways are probably more efficient and cost
effective. China's intelligence community is also much more team-oriented than the CIA/NSA;
they're actually a disciplined operation under the strategic control of policy-makers.
That, by the way, is why Russians and Chinese stare in amazement when Americans ask things
like "Do you think Putin knew about this?" What a stupid question! It's an autocracy; they
don't have intelligence operatives just going an deciding "it's a nice day to go to England
with some Novichok." The entire American attitude toward espionage lacks maturity.
On a similar nostalgia vibe, I remember reading an article by Keith Bostic (one of
the researchers who helped in the analysis of the Morris worm that took down a significant
chunk of the Internet back in 1988) where he did a follow-up a year or so afterwards and
some depressing number of organisations that had been hit by it still hadn't patched the
holes that had let the worm infect them in the first place.
That as an exciting time. We were downstream from University of Maryland, which got hit
pretty badly. Pete Cottrel and Chris Torek from UMD were also in on Bostic's dissection. We
were doing uucp over TCP for our email (that changed pretty soon after the worm) and our
uucp queue blew up. I cured the worm with a reboot into single-user mode and a quick 'rm
-f' in the uucp queue.
Thanks. I appreciate your measured analysis and the making explicit of the bottom line:
" agencies, protect their budgets, justify their existence, and downplay their
incompetence."
The official story, says the expert, is "stupidity on stupidity."
I agree with him.
The question is: Why did the British government think that they could get away with such an
obvious hoax? The answer is that the people in Western countries don't know anything about
anything. They live in a world in which their reality is a product of the propaganda fed to
them by "news organizations" and Hollywood movies. They only receive controlled explanations.
Therefore, they know nothing about how anything really functions. Read the account by the
Israeli expert to understand the vast difference between the British government's hoax and the
reality of how an assassination is conducted.
The Israeli expert got me to wondering why the British government thought anyone would fall
for such a transparently false story. Having just read David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth
Woodworth's new book, 9/11 Unmasked , and David Ray Griffin's 2017 book, Bush and
Cheney: How They Runed America and the World , the answer became obvious. The British
government had watched the idiot Western populations fall for the official 9/11 conspiracy
story in which a few Saudi Arabians, who could not fly airplanes and without the support of any
intelligence agency, caused the entire security apparatus ot the United States to fail utterly,
and no one was held responsible for the total failure. The British government concluded that
anyone who could possibly believe such an obviously false story would believe anything.
I remember coming to that conclusion years ago before the official conspiracy theory in the
9/11 Commission Report was blown to pieces by thousands of scientists, structural engineers,
high-rise architects, military and civilian pilots, first responders on the scene, and a large
number of former high government officials both in the US and abroad.
At first I did not connect the zionist neoconservatives' plot, outlined in their public
writings (for example, Norman Podhorttz in Commentary ) to destroy 7 Middle Eastern
countries in five years (also described by General Wesley Clark) and their statement that they
needed a "new Pearl Harbor" to implement their plan, with the attack on the World Trade Center.
But as I watched the twin towers blow up floor by floor it was completely obvious that these
were not builldings falling down due to asymetrical structural damage and limited, low
temperature office fires that probably did not even warm the massive steel structure to the
point of being warm to the touch. When you watch the videos you see buildings blowing up. It is
as clear as day. You see each floor blow. You see steel beams and other debris fly out the
sides as projectiles. It is amazing that any human is so completely stupid as to think what he
is seeing with his own eyes are buildings falling down from structural damage. But it required
many years before half of the American people realized that the official account was pure
bullshit.
Today polls indicate that a majority of people do not believe the official 9/11 propaganda
any more than they believe the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy, the alleged Gulf of Tonkin attack, or the report from Admiral McCain (father of
John) erasing Israel's responsibility for the destruction of the USS Liberty and its crew
during LBJ's administration, or that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, or Iran
had nukes, or the many lies about about Syria, Libya's Gaddafi, or Somalia, or Yemen, or the
"Russian invasion of Georgia," the "Russian invasion of Ukraine." But at each time the idiot
population, no matter how many times they had learned that the governments lied to them
initially believed the next lie, thereby permitting the lie to become fact. Thus, the idiot
Western populations created their own world of controlled explanations.
Only a deranged person could believe anything any Western government says. But the Western
world has a huge number of deranged people. There are plenty of them to validate the next
official lie. The ignorant fools make it possible for Western governments to continue their
policy of lies that are driving the world to extinction in a war with Russia and China.
Perhaps I am being too hard on the insouciant Western populations. Ron Unz is no moron. Yet
he accepted the transparently false 9/11 story until he started to pay attention. Once he paid
attention, he realized it was false. http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-911-conspiracy-theories/
Like myself, Ron Unz has noticed that the 9/11 Truth movement has succeeded in totally
discrediting the official 9/11 story. But the unanswered question remains: Who did it?
Unz says it was Israel, not Bush & Cheney. This is also the position of Christopher
Bollyn. It seems certain that Israel was involved. We have the fact of the Mossad agents caught
celebrating as they filmed the collalpse of the WTC towers. Obviously, they knew in advance and
were set up ready to film. Later they were shown on Israeli TV where they stated that they had
been sent to film the destruction of the buildings.
We also have the fact of the large profits made by someone that the US government continues
to protect on shorting the stock of the airlines, the planes of which were allegely
hijacked.
In other words, the 9/11 attack was known in advance, as was the destruction of WTC building
7 as evidenced by the BBC reporter standing in front of the still standing building accouncing
its destruction about a half hour before it occurred.
Unz and Bollyn's case against Israel is powerful. I agree with Unz that George W. Bush was
not part of the plot. If he had been, he would have been on the scene directing America's
heroic response to the first, and only, terrorist attack on America. lnstead, Bush was moved
out of the way, and kept out of the way, while Cheney handled the situation.
I understand what Unz is doing by focusing attention on the main beneficiary of the hoax
9/11 story. However Cheney and his corporation, Halliburton, also benefitted. Halliburton
received large municifient US government contracts for services in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Cheney, as David Ray Griffen proves, achieved his aim of elevating the executive branch above
the US Constitution and statutory US law.
Moreover, it was impossible for Mossad to pull off such an attack without high level support
in the US government. Only a US official could have ordered the numerous simulations of the
attack underway in order to confuse the air traffic controllers and the US Air Force.
I understand what Unz is doing by focusing attention on the main beneficiary of the hoax
9/11 story. However Cheney and his corporation, Halliburton, also benefitted. Halliburton
received large municifient US government contracts for services in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Cheney, as David Ray Griffen proves, achieved his aim of elevating the executive branch above
the US Constitution and statutory US law.
Moreover, it was impossible for Mossad to pull off such an attack without high level support
in the US government. Only a US official could have ordered the numerous simulations of the
attack underway in order to confuse the air traffic controllers and the US Air Force.
The Israeli government could not have ordered the destruction of the crime scene, opposed by
the New York fire marshall as a felony. This required US government authority. The steel beams,
which showed all sorts of distortions that could only have been caused by nano-thermite were
quickly sent to Asia for reprocessing. The intense fires and molten rubble in the buildings'
remains six weeks after their collapse never received an official explanation. To this day, no
one has explained how low-temperature, smothered office fires that burned for one hour or less
melted or weakened massive steel beams and produced molten steel six weeks afterward.
Unz is correct that Israel made out like a bandit. Israel as a result of 9/11 got rid of
half of the constraints on its expansion. Only Syria and Iran remain, and the Trump regime is
pushing hard for Israel, even against Russia, a government that at its will can completely
destroy the United States and Israel, something that much of the world wishes would happen.
Unz is correct that right now the totally evil and corrupt US and Israeli governments have
the entire world on the path to extinction. However, he omits American responsibility, that of
the evil Dick Cheney, the Zionist neconservatives who are Israel's Fifth Column in America, and
the utter insouciance of the American people who do not show enough intelligence or awareness
to warrant their survival.
"... Last week the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Russian Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. of illegal biological weapon research in the Tbilisi laboratory : ..."
"... The documents record the deaths of 73 people over a short period of time, indicating a test of "a highly toxic chemical or biological agents with high lethality rate," said Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military branch responsible for defending troops from radiological, chemical and biological weapons. ..."
"... The U.S. rejects the claims but it does not explain the documents , what kind of research is done near Tbilisi, and the unusual secrecy and security around the laboratory. ..."
"... It is not only the Russians and Georgians who are concerned about secret U.S. biological warfare research. German and French scientists recently raised alarm over another dubious Pentagon research project. ..."
Recent evidence about deadly tests of biological substances in Tbilisi, Georgia raised
alarm about U.S. biological weapon research in foreign countries. European scientist are
extremely concerned about a dubious research program, financed by the Pentagon, that seems
designed to spread diseases to crops, animals and people abroad. The creation of such weapons
and of special ways to distribute them is prohibited under national and international
law.
The U.S. is running biological weapon research across the globe :
Bio warfare scientists using diplomatic cover test man-made viruses at Pentagon bio
laboratories in 25 countries across the world. These US bio-laboratories are funded by the
Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under a $ 2.1 billion military program–
Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), and are located in former Soviet Union
countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa.
Until the mid nineteen-seventies the U.S. military
tested biological warfare weapons on U.S. people , sometimes over large areas and on
specific races. After a Congress investigation revealed the wide ranging program such testing
was moved abroad.
Private companies use U.S. government controlled laboratories in foreign countries for
secret biological research under contract of the U.S. military, the CIA and the Department of
Homeland Security. Last month the Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva
reported of one of these U.S. controlled bio-laboratories:
The US Embassy to Tbilisi transports frozen human blood and pathogens as diplomatic cargo
for a secret US military program. Internal documents, implicating US diplomats in the
transportation of and experimenting on pathogens under diplomatic cover were leaked to me
by Georgian insiders. According to these documents, Pentagon scientists have been deployed
to the Republic of Georgia and have been given diplomatic immunity to research deadly
diseases and biting insects at the Lugar Center – the Pentagon biolaboratory in
Georgia's capital Tbilisi.
Al Mayadeen TV broadcasted a video reportage about the laboratory and
its deadly effects on Georgian 'patients'.
The question of what really might have taken place at the secretive US-sponsored research
facility hosted by Russia's southern neighbor was raised by the Russian military on
Thursday after they studied files published online by a former Georgian minister.
The documents record the deaths of 73 people over a short period of time, indicating
a test of "a highly toxic chemical or biological agents with high lethality rate," said
Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military branch responsible for defending troops
from radiological, chemical and biological weapons.
The U.S.
rejects the claims but it does not explain the documents , what kind of research is done near Tbilisi, and
the unusual secrecy and security around the laboratory.
It is not only the Russians and Georgians who are concerned about secret U.S.
biological warfare research. German and French scientists recently
raised alarm over another dubious Pentagon research project.
In October 2016 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced a new
project called Insect
Allies :
A new DARPA program is poised to provide an alternative to traditional agricultural threat
response, using targeted gene therapy to protect mature plants within a single growing
season. DARPA proposes to leverage a natural and very efficient two-step delivery system to
transfer modified genes to plants: insect vectors and the plant viruses they transmit. In
the process, DARPA aims to transform certain insect pests into "Insect Allies," the name of
the new effort.
The scenario DARPA describes is quite complicate. If a crop, for example maize, were
widely infected with some illness, a virus would be manipulated and applied to the crop. The
itself genetically modified virus would genetically modify the crop to 'cure' the illness.
Infected insects would be used to distribute the viruses across the fields.
The program is run
by the Biological Technologies Office (BTO) of DARPA. It does not come cheap. At least
$27 million have been committed to it. If the discussed program were for purely agricultural
purposes why would the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is part of
the Pentagon, propose and finance such research?
Scientist from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany,
and the Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier, France, along with legal
scholars from the University of Freiburg point out that the method DARPA wants to
apply makes little sense for the stated agricultural purposes.
[A]n ongoing research program funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) aims to disperse infectious genetically modified viruses that have been engineered
to edit crop chromosomes directly in fields.
...
In the context of the stated aims of the DARPA program, it is our opinion that the
knowledge to be gained from this program appears very limited in its capacity to enhance
U.S. agriculture or respond to national emergencies (in either the short or long term).
Furthermore, there has been an absence of adequate discussion regarding the major practical
and regulatory impediments toward realizing the projected agricultural benefits. As a
result, the program may be widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for
hostile purposes and their means of delivery , which -- if true -- would constitute a
breach of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).
It its response to the Science paper DARPA again insists that the program is for
purely agricultural purpose. But the response does not answer the questions the scientists
put up.
The mechanism of spreading infectious genetically modified viruses to genetically modify
and 'heal' plants in the fields is itself full of problems and dangers. To use insects for
distributing such viruses borders on insane.
If one has access to the targeted crop fields and if one has a genetically modified virus
to influence the plants why would one use insects to distribute it? Why not use the well
known targeted process of spraying the affected fields, just like it is widely done today?
Only when one does not have access to the fields, when these are situated in a foreign
country the U.S. has no access to, does it make sense to use insects for such purposes.
The idea that the real (and illegal) purpose of such U.S. research is biological warfare
is not far fetched at all.
During the Korea War the U.S.
dropped infected insects and rodents over north Korea and China to
infect people with deadly diseases. Various pathogens, including anthrax, were used
against the civilian population. During the Vietnam war the U.S. sprayed thousand of square
miles with poisonous defoliants. It tested biological weapons on
the people of Hawaii, Alaska, Maryland, Florida, Canada and Britain. In 2002 weaponized
anthrax spores from the U.S. biological warfare laboratory in Fort Derrick were used
to scare U.S. politicians into agreeing to the Patriot Act. At least five people were
killed. And why is the U.S. Air Force
looking for synovial tissue and RNA samples collected specifically from Caucasian people
in Russia?
Biological warfare programs are extremely dangerous. Not only to 'the enemy' but to ones
own population. Infectious diseases and pathogens can spread around the globe within a few
days. Genetic modifications can have unpredictable secondary effects. Viruses can jump over
the species barrier. These are the sound reasons why such weapons, and research into using
them, are prohibited.
The U.S. government should follow the law and stop all such programs. Even if only in the
self interest of protecting its very own people.
Posted by b on October 6, 2018 at 10:02 AM |
Permalink
Comments A picture speaks a thoudsand words. There are 49 bio-weapons research labs in 6
countries in close proximity to Russia.
The UK Porton Down labs are also involved in this process. They have conducted experiments
on the general public travelling on the London Underground. More recently, they have received
a nice £47 million funding boost for all their good work on the Skripal case.
"Biological warfare programs are extremely dangerous. Not only to 'the enemy' but to ones
own population."
This may explain the US BW research program interest in genetic material of RUssians. They
may hope to produce some kind of narrowly targetted (in theory) pathogen. Given the ethnic
diversity of the Russian Federation, Russian-ness is largely cultural rather than genetic.
Genetic effects would only likely to succeed in populations with a narrow genetic spread.
@ b who ended with:
"
The U.S. government should follow the law and stop all such programs. Even if only in the
self interest of protecting its very own people.
"
Your assumption is that the US government has the best interests of its citizens in mind. We
know the US government is under the control of the global elite and yes, they do not have the
best interests of global humanity at heart.
Western humans are being controlled by a parasite class that has historically operated in
this manner. It is only with the advent of the intertubes that information is shared widely
enough for these patterns of control to become clear. The mindset behind this control seems
to be monotheism with the center held by private finance. Monotheism was perverted enough in
in 1054 to insure that nowhere in Europe is the Crab Nebula supernova that was visible for 23
days and nights in the sky documented. This is a perverted mindset that denies reality so
thoroughly, eh?
The spawn of the monotheistic elite continue to act as though they really are better than
the rest of humanity and deserve to rule over everyone. They are having their position
challenged and seem to have no moral center other than to themselves.
My only positive point to this situation is that it clearly brings out the entitled from
under their rocks to push their bias. IF Western society cannot stand up and say that we
don't want to live like this, then I suspect our extinction is closer than many think
B: ... To use insects for distributing such viruses borders on insane .
If one has access to the targeted crop fields and if one has a genetically modified
virus to influence the plants why would one use insects to distribute it? Why not use the
well known targeted process of spraying the affected fields, just like it is widely done
today? Only when one does not have access to the fields, when these are situated in a foreign
country the U.S. has no access to, does it make sense to use insects for such
purposes.
It does NOT border on insanity, B, there is nothing remotely borderline about it. It is
insane, full stop. (Borderline insanity means it is on the border, could be on either
side).
Why not spray the fields? The compellingly obvious - and necessarily intended - feature of
the insects is their ability to spread out of control.
Maybe this is one of the clues to the complex and so multifaceted Skripal saga - the British
know the Russians had leads and would bring out this news, and were desperately trying to
destroy their credibility in advance.
"The U.S. government should follow the law and stop all such programs. Even if only in
the self interest of protecting its very own people."
Your assumption is that the US government has the best interests of its citizens in
mind. We know the US government is under the control of the global elite and yes, they do not
have the best interests of global humanity at heart.
Further than that - the elite expressly desire to reduce the global population -
including the US population - to a tiny fraction of what it is at present.
As for the "law", well we see what is happening these days: Russiagate-FBI-DoJ
criminality, US using terrorism as foreign policy, rapidly multiplying false flags, using
sanctions to ban legtimate trade of competitors, Bolton's threats to ICC, threats to blockade
Russia, ficticious sovereignty claims such as right to inspect Russian/Chinese ports and
right to build bases in Syria ...
"LAW" is rapidly evaporating away - very soon it will not exist at all, in the
West.
That appears to be a specific intention, and ties in with the mindless skripal fantasy/Syria
chemical weapons fantasy/virtual reality/"we create our own reality" bullshit.
[B: My appologies for the string of short posts, it was not intentional as such!]
The latest rash of hacking accusations against Russia appears timed to distract the public
from this highly disturbing information.
One way or another, the old white men who are the self appointed ruling elite week appear
determined to turn the planet into a monstrous, king sized Jonestown.
Psycho,
Which gets to the logical flaw in monotheism. A spiritual absolute would be the essence of
sentience from which life rises, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement from which humanity
fell. More the new born babe, than the wise old man. It is just that for social control, it
makes more sense to idolize wisdom over passion.
The deeper issue is that Western culture is ideals based, rather balance based, like Eastern
culture. The basis of civilization is story telling and the most memorable and repeated
stories are those with a focus, moral lesson and compelling narrative. So it becomes assumed
there must be some goal, destination, or ideal state to which we strive, even if it's just
the bottom line. Rather than to be in balance with nature and the community, absorbing and
radiating the energy of the present.
Which also goes to the nature of time. As we have this narrative thought process, being
mobile organisms, processing our motion, we think of time as a vector from past to future,
but the reality is change turning future to past. Potential>actual>residual. There is
only this state of dynamic energy and thermodynamics is a more elemental aspect of it than
time. Expansion/consolidation.
Thank you 'b' this subject is guaranteed to give us all nightmares on its own, but added in
to the rest of the bigger equation ! We run out of strong enough words to do it justice !
It's to much for one to bare. We need to share this burden or we will go under.
This kind of depravity has always been there in mankind -- - napalm,agent orange, white
phosphorus the human imagination is vast ! But now they have the power, technology, resources
opatunity and motivation, that is new !
We here at present can spread this story as much as we possibly can ! Far and wide.
That the USSR was an existential threat to Western capitalism and colonialism and war
– of one kind or another – between these two camps was logical and inevitable. But
the Soviet Union is 30 years dead.
Indeed, Gordievsky through Macintyre can – if he's telling the truth – claim
that he helped bring about the (brief) end of history and the "final" victory. His claimed role
in the rise and rise of Gorbachev's relationship with Mrs Thatcher and, by extension, President
Reagan certainly hastened the downfall of the USSR.
But Britain recruited Skripal in 1996 when not only was the Soviet Union dead but Russia was
ruled by the West's performing bear Boris Yeltsin. And during his presidency, Russia was
passed-out on the floor with everyone picking its pockets.
Why was Britain still fighting the Cold War against Russia in 1996, and why is it still
fighting the Cold War against Russia now?
Just this week, the rather effete British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson – a
former fireplace salesman –
said he was sending 800 shivering British soldiers to the Arctic to be ready to fight
Russia there. Amidst the snow. And the ice.
As both Napoleon and Hitler must have said: " What could possibly go wrong? "
Ryan Chilcote: Since you brought up the subject of sanctions, as you know after the
Skripal poisoning, Russia is facing even more of them, perhaps as soon as November. What is
Russia prepared to do to change the trajectory of relations with the United States and the
West?
Vladimir Putin : We are not the ones introducing these sanctions against the United
States or the West. We are just responding to their actions, and we do this in very restrained,
careful steps so as not to cause harm, primarily to ourselves. And we will continue to do
so.
As regards the Skripals and all that, this latest spy scandal is being artificially
inflated. I have seen some media outlets and your colleagues push the idea that Skripal is
almost a human rights activist. But he is just a spy, a traitor to the motherland. There is
such a term, a 'traitor to the motherland,' and that's what he is.
Imagine you are a citizen of a country, and suddenly somebody comes along who betrays your
country. How would you, or anybody present here, a representative of any country, feel about
such a person? He is scum, that's all. But a whole information campaign has been deployed
around it.
I think it will come to an end, I hope it will, and the sooner the better. We have
repeatedly told our colleagues to show us the documents. We will see what can be done and
conduct an investigation.
We probably have an agreement with the UK on assistance in criminal cases that outlines the
procedure. Well, submit the documents to the Prosecutor General's Office as required. We will
see what actually happened there.
The fuss between security services did not start yesterday. As you know, espionage, just
like prostitution, is one of the most 'important' jobs in the world. So what? Nobody shut it
down and nobody can shut it down yet.
Ryan Chilcote : Espionage aside, I think there are two other issues. One is the use
of chemical weapons, and let's not forget that in addition to the Skripal family being affected
in that attack, there was also a homeless person who was killed when they came in contact with
the nerve agent Novichok.
Vladimir Putin: Listen, since we are talking about
poisoning Skripal, are you saying that we also poisoned a homeless person there? Sometimes I
look at what is happening around this case and it amazes me. Some guys came to England and
started poisoning homeless people. Such nonsense. What is this all about? Are they working for
cleaning services? Nobody wanted to poison This Skripal is a traitor, as I said. He was caught
and punished. He spent a total of five years in prison. We released him. That's it. He left. He
continued to cooperate with and consult some security services. So what? What are we talking
about right now? Oil, gas or espionage? What is your question?
Let's move on to the other oldest profession and discuss the latest developments in that
business. (Laughter.)
Funny how lowkey this topic is handled. It appeard in The Times. As the Times article is
behind a paywall. I am linking to the Irish Times:
MI5 can authorise agents to commit crimes, tribunal told . Maybe the UK should be
sanctioned.
Makes my fantasy go a little wild and wonder if there might be any connection to
Skripal.
thanks b.. excellent information and insights as usual..
of course the USA and coalition of imbeciles are busy projecting onto Russia and China
what they themselves are guilty of.. the use of propaganda has gone into overdrive and is now
an accepted policy of the west.. screw facts.. who needs facts when you have a war to
pursue... and that is just what it looks like to me, as there is no end in sight to any of
this western madness...
the financial sanctions have not worked.. that much is clear.. another approach via
propaganda is to be the new regular feature.. claim all sorts of lies and supposition on
russia, china, iran, north korea, venezuela or any country that dares to get out of line with
the official ''coalition'' and you will be targeted with propaganda and or worse..
Companies in China, including foreign firms, are required by law to establish a party
organization within their organization and party members head the mandatory unions in every
company. Indeed some of the designers are no doubt party members. Significant pressure can be
exerted on companies in China by the party, even foreign companies , especially with but not
limited to Joint ventures.
In any other country your skepticism is warranted. Not China.
That said, given how little attention the Bloomberg story received yesterday by MSM web
sites (havent checked today) beyond a denial story by msnbc I think its far more likely
that a friendly foreign intelligence agency or the US had something to do with it. Blame
China not Israel or CIA/NSA
I flicked on the beeb news channel as I dragged meself outta the pit this am and caught
the 'news' of the bellingcat claim that Ruslan Boshirov = Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga.
Now I'm fully cognisant of the fact that neither Russia nor Chepiga should feel obliged to
prove this claim is untrue, but since whichever way you slice it Chepiga is now 'blown', They
(Russia/Chepiga) may as well prove the claim is nonsense. The thing being that the boof heads
at MI6/CIA would also have worked that out, unless it was a particularly boofed, boofhead who
put this latest snippet together.
IMO in all likelihood Ruslan Boshirov = Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga is correct. Towards the
end of one of the supporting articles that sets out the 'proof' Bellingcat mutters something
rather odd which seems like it actually detracts from the story - if the ultimate target of
this revelation is Colonel Chepiga.
But who really cares about some obscure military intelligence mid-level bloke? (Colonel is
nowhere near the giddy heights of any military, something I discovered when working in the Oz
public service & I was seconded to the department of defence to do a job. Since I was
working with a bunch of uniformed saluters, it was claimed they would not "feel comfortable
working with someone of unknown status in the hierarchy". So I was told that my position in
the Public Service equated with the rank of colonel in the army. I can tell you, if it
weren't totally apparent, that I was just an average sh1tkicker)
No one cares about Chepiga, this entire saga is about getting the masses to accept without
any deep consideration, that "Putin" the figurehead who (according to western media)
micromanages everything evil about russia, only cares about destroying the life of Jo/Joe
Sh1tkicker where ever in the world Jo/Joe may be.
So the
last two paras of the burble runs thusly:
Bellingcat has contacted confidentially a former Russian military officer of similar rank
as Colonel Chepiga, in order to receive a reaction to what we found. The source, speaking
on condition of anonymity, expressed surprise that at least one of the operatives engaged
in the operation in Salisbury had the rank of colonel. Even more surprising was the
suspects' prior award of the highest military recognition.
In our source's words, an operation of this sort would have typically required a
lower-ranked, "field operative" with a military rank of "no higher than captain." The
source further surmised that to send a highly decorated colonel back to a field job would
be highly extraordinary, and would imply that "the job was ordered at the highest
level."
The logical flaw is obvious of course. If 'the job' had been ordered at the highest level
surely sending some bloke who had been riding a desk for the last six years is not how it
would handled, the most recently capable operative would be sent - either a relatively junior
officer or a young but experienced NCO.
However assuming Boshirov = Colonel Chepiga is correct, while he would never be sent to
supervise a hit on the ground much less carry it out; it doesn't take a great stretch to
ruminate on the possible tasks a military intelligence colonel would be sent to england
for.
There is one obvious task which would explain most credibly what he was in Salisbury for - to
give Sergey Skripal confidence that his repatriation was a genuine offer, not some half arsed
wish fulfillment plan dreamed up by Yulia and a low level intelligence operator eager to
climb into Yulia's pants.
Two colonels of the GRU, one a highly decorated hero and the other a dodgy turncoat who had
come to realise after the nonsense his immediate MI6 superior Pablo Miller, plus his big boss
"Mr Steele" had put out about Moscow golden showers, whilst insinuating he, Skirpal was party
to the fiction, that rapprochment between Russia and angland/amerika was never gonna happen.
He was never going to be able to know any of his grandchildren or see his motherland again
because usuk needed 'evil Russia' to distract their citizens away from the real evildoing 'at
home'.
Someone used a chess mataphor elsewhere in a thread, well I would say that if the Bellingcat
revelation that Ruslan Boshirov = Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga. if true sails close to a
checkmate.
If Russia confesses that Ruslan Boshirov does = Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, citizens in the
west would be denied any explanation as the fishwraps and talking heads would be too busy
celebrating Russia's alleged 'defeat' to include any other portion of what Russia had said,
especially not an exposition which dealt with everything from the fact that Chepiga & co
arrived too late on Sunday for their poisoned doorknob to have tainted the Skirpals who had
left the house for the last time hours before and that of all the english towns some idjit
chose to squirt this muck around Salisbury was the one where assassination by chemical weapon
was the town the least likely to give success since the proximity of Porton Downs guaranteed
that some not all staff at Salisbury Hospital would have been trained in chem weapon
detection and antidote.
On the other side of the coin - panic stations at MI6, on a quiet Sunday it has just been
uncovered that an asset was 'going over'. So some duty officer sent the thug on call for the
day over to Porton Downs to grab 'a little something' guaranteed to prevent any such
nonsense.
"... My take on Rosenstein is he went to the WH to force Trump to accept his resignation or fire him or keep him and thus shut him up either way because even as large a fool as Trump can't be so stupid as to fire RR before the midterms. A trap laid by the Deputy AG not the media imho to also take heat off Mueller. ..."
Last Friday the New York Times published
a story that reflected negatively on the loyalty of Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein towards President Trump. Rosenstein, the NYT claimed, suggested to
wiretap Trump and to remove him by using the 25th amendment. Other news reports contradicted
the claim and Rosenstein himself denied it.
The report was a trap to push Trump towards an impulsive firing of the number two in the
Justice Department, a repeat of Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre . The
Democrats would have profited from such an ' October surprise ' in the November 6
midterm elections. A campaign to exploit such a scandal to get-out-the-votes was already
well prepared .
The trap did not work. The only one who panicked was Rosenstein. He feared for his
reputation should he get fired. To prevent such damage he offered to resign amicably. He
tried this at least three times:
By Friday evening, concerned about testifying to Congress over the revelations that he
discussed wearing a wire to the Oval Office and invoking the constitutional trigger to
remove Mr. Trump from office, Mr. Rosenstein had become convinced that he should resign,
according to people close to him. He offered during a late-day visit to the White House to
quit, according to one person familiar with the encounter, but John F. Kelly, the White
House chief of staff, demurred.
...
Also over the weekend, Mr. Rosenstein again told Mr. Kelly that he was considering
resigning. On Sunday, Mr. Rosenstein repeated the assertion in a call with Donald F. McGahn
II, the White House counsel. Mr. McGahn -- [...] -- asked Mr. Rosenstein to postpone their
discussion until Monday.
...
By about 9 a.m. Monday, Mr. Rosenstein was in his office on the fourth floor of the Justice
Department when reporters started calling. Was it true that Mr. Rosenstein was planning to
resign, they asked.
...
At the White House the deputy attorney general slipped into a side entrance to the West
Wing and headed to the White House counsel's office to meet with Mr. McGahn, who had by
then been told by Mr. Kelly that Mr. Rosenstein was on his way and wanted to resign.
McGhan punted the issue back to Kelly and finally Rosenstein spoke with Trump. Trump did
not fire him nor did he resign. It is now
expected that he will stay until the end of the year or even
longer :
President Trump told advisers he is open to keeping Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
on the job, and allies of the No. 2 Justice Department official said Tuesday he has given
them the impression he doesn't plan to quit.
The trap did not work. Neither did Trump panic nor did the White House allow the panicking
Rod Rosenstein to pull the trigger. The people who set this up, by leaking some dubious FBI
memo to the NYT , did not achieve their aims.
There are only six weeks left until the midterm elections. What other October surprises
might be planned by either side?
Posted by b on September 26, 2018 at 11:20 AM |
Permalink
This account gives an interesting twist, that Trump wants to keep Rosenstein
as leverage.
I think it is not in the interest of Trump to do anything that could look like hampering the
Mueller investigation. It might be in his interest to try to force Mueller to show what he
has bevore the midterm elections, but that could also be seen as a form of hampering.
I think there are already lots of indications that the whole Russiagate collusion story
was fabricated. The messages between Peter Strzok und Lisa Page point towards this direction,
and it seems that different stories that were used for Russiagate were connected.
It seems that the Steele dossier played a crucial role for getting warrants for spying on
the Trump campaign and for starting the media campaign about Trump-Russia "collusion".
Obviously, the Steele dossier is a rather implausible conspiracy theory (allegedly, Russia
made preparations for Trump's candidacy years earlier when hardly anyone thought Trump would
have the slightest chance of being nominated by a major party), contains no evidence for the
allegations, and the elements that can be verified are either banal and don't show collusion
or they are false (e.g. Trump's lawyer going to Prague, it seems he has an alibi, and there
are leaks that there was another person named Michael Cohen, without a connection to Trump,
who flew to Prague, so Steele probably had access to flight data, but did not do further
verifications).
A further strand of "Russiagate" is the story around Papadopoulos. First, it should be
noted that it hardly shows foreknowledge of the DNC leaks when someone may have speculated
that Russia may have e-mails from Hillary Clinton - at that time, the deleted mails from
Clinton's private server were talked about a lot, and one of the concerns that was often
mentioned was that Clinton's private server may have been hacked by Russia or China. None of
the versions of what Papadopoulos was allegedly told by Mifsud and told Downer specifically
mention DNC or Podesta e-mails. Second, the people involved had close connections to Western
intelligence services. Mifsud had close ties with important EU institutions and was connected
with educational institutions used by Western intelligence agencies (mainly Italian, British,
FBI). If he really was a Russian spy, there would have been larger consequences, and the FBI
would hardly have let him go after questioning him. According to a book by Roh and Pastor who
have known Mifsud for a long time, he denies having told Papadopoulos anything about damaging
material about Hillary Clinton (Mifsud also said that in an interview), and Mifsud suspects
Papadopoulos of being a provocateur of Western intelligence services - Papadopoulos
forcefully tried to create connections between the Trump campaign and Russians, but both
sides were not willing to go along (a representative of a Russian think tank which
Papadopoulos asked to invite Trump answered that the Trump campaign should send an official
request, which never followed). Papadopoulos was in (probably frequent) contact with FBI
informer Stefan Halper, and it may be that Papadopoulos was an unwitting provocateur because
of events Stefan Halper arranged. The Australian diplomat Downer has connections to the
Clinton foundation (he helped arranging large payments by Australia) and Western secret
services. Third, what has exactly been said by whom is disputed. As mentioned, Mifsud denies
mentioning anything about damaging material on Hillary Clinton to Papadopoulos (the only one
who claims this is Papadopoulos), and Papadopoulos denies mentioning e-mails to Downer. It
seems, Papadopoulos were only half-willing participants in the setup arranged by Stefan
Halper whose goal was to have some background for the message that could be received from
Downer. Papadopoulos' wife has shared a picture of Stefan Halper and Downer together, which
also fits the idea that this story was set up by FBI informant Halper with Downer.
The visit of the Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya was arranged by Fusion GPS, and she met with
him before and after the meeting she met with Glen Simpson.
Of course, we are just in the beginning, there is certainly enough concrete material for
starting an investigation (unlike with the alleged Trump-Russia collusion), but many details
are still open. Those who presumably set up the collusion story went from offensive to
defensive, even if that might not be clear if someone reads particularly biased media. Now,
the time until the midterms certainly is not enough for conducting and concluding such an
investigation. But it should be enough for unclassifying and publishing some documents that
shed further light on these events.
The time for more decisive action against those who set up Russiagate may be after the
midterm elections, and how easy that will be probably partly depends on the election result.
Therefore, I suppose that Trump and other Republicans will strongly press for important
documents being unclassified and published before the elections.
Trump admin and GOP Congress are doing almost everything possible to alienate the majority of
the public on a wide spectrum of issues that's also helped threaten the positions of
Republicans masquerading as Democrats. The fallout from the 2016 Primary and subsequent
disclosures about Clinton and DNC corruption and law breaking--meddling in elections and
caucuses--has emboldened numerous people--particularly women--who were previously politically
apathetic, not just to run for office, but also to work to get like-minded candidates
elected. Sanders called for an insurrection--and yes, he's still sheep dogging--and it's
emerged and isn't totally controlled by the DemParty despite its efforts: The cat's out of
the bag.
Now I expect the usual attacks using the trite adage that voting doesn't matter. Well,
guess what, Trump's election proves that adage to be 100% false. There's only one path to
making America Great and that's by getting the neoliberals and neocons out of government; and
the only way to do that is to run candidates with opposing positions and elect
them--then--once in office, they need to oust the vermin from the bureaucracy--Drain the
Swamp, as Trump put it. I know it can be done as it's been done before during two different
epochs of US History. And the System was just as rigged against popular success than as it is
now.
Karlof1 I agree w you 100%. Voters can make a difference and change is still possible however
unlikely and rare. The problem is voter complacency which is fed by cynicism. Ironically
younger liberal voters tend to be the most complacent especially at the midterm elections.
This year complacency doesn't appear to be an issue so we will probably see a Dem House in
January if not also a Dem Senate.
My take on Rosenstein is he went to the WH to force Trump to accept his resignation or
fire him or keep him and thus shut him up either way because even as large a fool as Trump
can't be so stupid as to fire RR before the midterms. A trap laid by the Deputy AG not the
media imho to also take heat off Mueller.
Trump could shock the world by being on his best behavior for a few weeks. (j/k don't hold
your breath).
Just a little review:
In November, Dems are expected to take the House of Representatives by a modest margin.
The House, not the Senate determines impeachment. Impeachment is like an indictment -- the
Senate would then have a "trial" of sorts, and then to convict, you need 2/3 majority of
Senators. Nobody expects that.
Nixon actually resigned out of shame after being impeached. Clinton didn't. Trump gives
zero f**ks so this outcome isn't even worth discussing.
The Senate is more important. It is just barely within reach for Democrats if everything
goes in their favor. If they win every single seat that is competitive, Democrats get 51/100
seats, plus 2 independents who side with them, but minus a couple of Democrats-in-name-only
who regularly vote with Republicans (West Virginia's Manchin for example). Recall that the
Vice President (Pence) is the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
More realistically, in a still optimistic scenario, Democrats will lose one or more of the
competitive races, and end up with 49-50 votes in the Senate. (they are expected to win big
in 2 years in 2020, due to many more Republicans facing re-election then).
Only someone morbidly partisan within the Corporate One-Party would bother seeking the
impeachment of a fungible geek like a US president. Indeed, those fixated on impeachment
evidently have no rationale beyond Trump Derangement Syndrome. To replace Trump with Pence
would be no improvement and most likely would make things worse. Trump and Pence share the
corporate globalization ideology and goals, but Trump's more chaotic execution is more likely
to lead to chaotic, perhaps system-destructive effects more quickly than a more disciplined
execution. The same is true of any Democrat we could envision replacing Trump in 2020.
That's why it was a good thing that Trump won in 2016: He's more likely to bring about a
faster collapse of the US empire and of the globalization system in general. Not because
these are his goals, but because his indiscipline adds a much-needed wild card to the
deck.
Needless to say, humanity and the Earth have nothing to lose, as we're slowly but surely
being exterminated once and for all regardless.
Now that UK's "resettling" White Helmet Terrorists within its borders, I wonder if they'll
become the next victims of MI6 attempts to frame Russia for its assassinations using poison
gas?
Semi OT--Now that UK's
"resettling" White Helmet Terrorists within its borders, I wonder if they'll become the
next victims of MI6 attempts to frame Russia for its assassinations using poison gas? What do
UK-located MoA barflies think of May bringing her terrorists "home"? Plus, I thought there
was a housing crisis of sorts within UK, and such scarce housing's to be allocated to
terrorists?! What sort of light opera would Gilbert & Sullivan compose as a ripost?
Unfortunately, it appears Corbyn's remained quiet on this issue, although there's plenty of
other items of importance to UK citizens for him to use as issues to defeat Tories.
"... Steele also had extensive contacts with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie, who - along with Steele - was paid by opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the anti-Trump campaign. Trump called for the declassification of FBI notes of interviews with Ohr, which would ostensibly reveal more about his relationship with Steele. Ohr was demoted twice within the Department of Justice for lying about his contacts with Fusion GPS. ..."
"... Perhaps the Brits are also concerned since much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016 . Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to meet with). ..."
"... Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium. He claims that during a meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking of Democrats' emails. ..."
"... Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a government-sanctioned surveillance operation. - Daily Caller ..."
"... In total, Halper received over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over $400,000 of which was granted before and during the 2016 election season. ..."
"... In short, it's understandable that the UK would prefer to hide their involvement in the "witch hunt" of Donald Trump since much of the counterintelligence investigation was conducted on UK soil. And if the Brits had knowledge of the operation, it will bolster claims that they meddled in the 2016 US election by assisting what appears to have been a set-up from the start . ..."
"... Steele's ham-handed dossier is a mere embarrassment, as virtually none of the claims asserted by the former MI6 agent have been proven true. ..."
"... Steele, a former MI6 agent, is the author of the infamous and unverified anti-Trump dossier. He worked as a confidential human source for the FBI for years before the relationship was severed just before the election because of Steele's unauthorized contacts with the press. ..."
"... That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious. ..."
"... I find it interesting that the Theresa May Govt in UK has the temerity to interfere with US politics (until they got caught out!), yet can't find the spine to stand up to the EU. ..."
"... THE UNITED KINGDOM along with ISRAEL & SAUDI ARABIA have always been the ones behind US Politics making, pulling the strings behind the curtains since the Petrodollar Inception, The Greater Israel project & the NWO initiative - only this time around Trump was not the UK's pick... ..."
"... England dominates the offshore money laundering havens where the super rich hide their money and evade taxes. They need to be brought down. No more African dictators looting their nation's resources and hiding the money first in offshore banks and then in JP Morgan and Brit banks. ..."
"... It is a test. If Trump doesn't go ahead with declassification, we know for sure he is no better than the globalists and neocons whose goal has always been to destroy and depopulate America. ..."
"... 'focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious' ..."
"... Not at all. It's obvious - the problem ISN'T Steele. They're living in fear, as are many in DC and elsewhere, that Trump is going to pry the lid open and reveal at least some of their activities. If killing him would fix the problem, they would. It's too late, considering what Trump is threatening to do. I wonder if he'll back down, at least some? ..."
"... U.K. does not want the jurisdiction. U.S. spies lure you overseas then...compromise you. ..."
"... Duh. This Started In London! Britain is the "foreign country" involved in our elections. Wake up everyone. It's LONDONGATE ..."
"... May gonna owe Vlad an apology when Skripal is revealed to be Steele's source. Steele himself hadn't been to Russian in 15 years. Will he get life in prison for attempted murder? ..."
"... "t's hard to tell who's telling the truth and who isn't in this whole Russia narrative. Fact is, NOBODY is telling the truth. That is what I've determined after doing my own research.": https://youtu.be/2AA5BIfGj3g ..."
"... Trump made promises before being elected, then lied and sold America out, just like every other corrupted assklown politician. he is no different than clinton bush obama, just as arrogant, just as corrupt, and just as much a traitor. ..."
UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited "Grave Concerns" Over Steele
Involvement
by Tyler Durden
Sun, 09/23/2018 - 11:15 4.6K SHARES
The British government "expressed grave concerns" to the US government over the
declassification and release of material related to the Trump-Russia investigation, according
to the New
York Times . President Trump ordered a wide swath of materials "immediately" declassified
"without redaction" on Monday, only to
change his mind later in the week by allowing the DOJ Inspector General to review the
materials first.
The Times reports that the UK's concern was over material which "includes direct references
to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher Steele," the former
MI6 agent who compiled the infamous "Steele Dossier." The UK's objection, according to former
US and British officials, was over revealing Steele's identity in an official document,
"regardless of whether he had been named in press reports."
We would note, however, that Steele's name was contained within the Nunes Memo
- the House Intelligence Committee's majority opinion in the Trump-Russia case.
Steele also had
extensive contacts with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie, who - along with Steele
- was paid by opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the anti-Trump campaign. Trump called for
the declassification of FBI notes of interviews with Ohr, which would ostensibly reveal more
about his relationship with Steele. Ohr was demoted twice within the Department of Justice for
lying about his contacts with Fusion GPS.
Perhaps the Brits are also concerned since much of the espionage performed on the Trump
campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016 . Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos
was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor
that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would
drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to
meet with).
Also recall that CIA/FBI "informant" (spy) Stefan Halper met with both Carter Page
and Papadopoulos in
London.
Halper, a veteran of four Republican administrations, reached out to Trump aide George
Papadopoulos in September 2016 with an offer to fly to London to write an academic paper on
energy exploration in the Mediterranean Sea.
Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium. He claims that during a
meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking of
Democrats' emails.
Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a
government-sanctioned surveillance operation. - Daily Caller
In total, Halper received over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over
$400,000 of which was granted before and during the 2016 election season.
In short, it's understandable that the UK would prefer to hide their involvement in the
"witch hunt" of Donald Trump since much of the counterintelligence investigation was conducted
on UK soil. And if the Brits had knowledge of the operation, it will bolster claims that they
meddled in the 2016 US election by assisting what appears to have been a
set-up from the start .
Steele's ham-handed dossier is a mere embarrassment, as virtually none of the claims
asserted by the former MI6 agent have been proven true.
Steele, a former MI6 agent, is the author of the infamous and unverified anti-Trump
dossier. He worked as a confidential human source for the FBI for years before the
relationship was severed just before the election because of Steele's unauthorized contacts
with the press.
He shared results of his investigation into Trump's links to Russia with the FBI beginning
in early July 2016.
The FBI relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier to fill out applications for four
FISA warrants against Page. Page has denied the dossier's claims, which include that he was
the Trump campaign's back channel to the Kremlin. - Daily Caller
That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse
focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK
soil, is curious.
StychoKiller , 54 minutes ago
I find it interesting that the Theresa May Govt in UK has the temerity to interfere with
US politics (until they got caught out!), yet can't find the spine to stand up to the EU. If
I were Trump, not only would the shoe be dropping re: UK Govt involvement in US politics, but
said shoe would be making an imprint across her face! (stoopid twat!)
texantim , 1 hour ago
I say release the docs and put sanctions on UK.
BitchesBetterRecognize , 1 hour ago
So the Motherland ******* up with the ex-colony yet again, huh?
THE UNITED KINGDOM along with ISRAEL & SAUDI ARABIA have always been the ones behind
US Politics making, pulling the strings behind the curtains since the Petrodollar Inception,
The Greater Israel project & the NWO initiative - only this time around Trump was not the
UK's pick...
Oh, but those "civilized" Allies backstabbing each other for more power grip on the
USA....
Baron von Bud , 2 hours ago
England dominates the offshore money laundering havens where the super rich hide their
money and evade taxes. They need to be brought down. No more African dictators looting their
nation's resources and hiding the money first in offshore banks and then in JP Morgan and
Brit banks.
Many hedge funds are deep into this game. I'd wager on Carlyle Group and the Bush
clan. Billions of people can't get ahead because the super rich are ******* crooks running
the banks and governments. They don't pay taxes but force a small dry cleaner to pay 45% in
fed/state taxes. These criminals include Hillary Clinton and many members of congress.
Feinstein, Pelosi, Maxine and many more of both parties need to be investigated. How do they
get so rich on a congressman's salary. Deep into tax evasion and payoffs? Release the
documents and let MI6 hang.
Malvern Joe , 3 hours ago
It is a test. If Trump doesn't go ahead with declassification, we know for sure he is no
better than the globalists and neocons whose goal has always been to destroy and depopulate
America. It would represent the biggest sellout of this country since the creation of the Fed
in 1913, He will go down as the biggest fraud ever and his base will deport his *** to the
sums of India where he can defecate in public.
Bricker , 3 hours ago
You dont get to supply a rogue agent, that was probably told to do it in the first place,
and then tell Trump not to do it out of harm, harm is all you BRIT DEEP STATES deserve
Moving and Grooving , 3 hours ago
'focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on
UK soil, is curious'
Not at all. It's obvious - the problem ISN'T Steele. They're living in fear, as are many
in DC and elsewhere, that Trump is going to pry the lid open and reveal at least some of
their activities. If killing him would fix the problem, they would. It's too late,
considering what Trump is threatening to do. I wonder if he'll back down, at least some?
The sheer corruption of the Global Government is on display here, revealing itself, if you
watch for it. Whether planned or not, the last 6 months or so have been astonishing to watch.
The entire media has been shown to be liars, academia is shown to be an expensive provider of
unprepared students, the corporate world is furiously rent-seeking and finding new ways to
destroy humanity, and government is too busy selling Americans out to write a budget. In all
countries around the world, adjusting for national status. Lawsuits in the west, machetes in
the third world.
Ban KKiller , 4 hours ago
U.K. does not want the jurisdiction. U.S. spies lure you overseas then...compromise you.
John C Durham , 4 hours ago
Duh. This Started In London! Britain is the "foreign country" involved in our elections.
Wake up everyone. It's LONDONGATE .
Anunnaki , 4 hours ago
May gonna owe Vlad an apology when Skripal is revealed to be Steele's source. Steele himself hadn't been to Russian in 15 years. Will he get life in prison for attempted murder?
PeaceForWorld , 4 hours ago
"t's hard to tell who's telling the truth and who isn't in this whole Russia narrative.
Fact is, NOBODY is telling the truth. That is what I've determined after doing my own
research.": https://youtu.be/2AA5BIfGj3g
I really like this woman "Shut the **** up!". She is a former Bernie supporter just like
me. She has turned against Democrats just like me. She doesn't trust any of the Establishment
parties.
Buddha71 , 4 hours ago
Trump made promises before being elected, then lied and sold America out, just like every other
corrupted assklown politician. he is no different than clinton bush obama, just as arrogant,
just as corrupt, and just as much a traitor. he has broken the promises upon which he was
elected, just like all the other fkn liars before him. no different. just a pos. he has not
made america great again, just more of the same, unemployment is a lie, it is closer to
17%.
"... There was no sign of nerve agents being used, but The Sun claimed to have 'security sources' which told them rat poison may have been used against the couple, while claiming King was fighting for his life. Soon after the hospital confirmed that actually both had been discharged. ..."
"... Then the BBC reported that King, who was reportedly found foaming at the mouth in the restaurant's toilet, is a "convicted criminal who once hoaxed Prince Charles" and had previously been convicted of "distributing indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children." ..."
"... Then the Daily Mirror reported that King is an alleged drug dealer, and Shapiro is a high-class escort who told friends she was a " honeytrap spy ..."
"... Like any newspaper, we were keen to talk to those at the centre of the incident and give them the opportunity to share with the public their version of events ..."
"... Like this story? Share it with a friend! ..."
Russian-born Anna Shapiro and her British husband Alex King were at the center of another
poisoning scare in Salisbury last Sunday in an incident that appeared at first to echo the
attack on ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the very same city.
The details were compelling, a reported poisoning in another Italian eatery chain in
Salisbury (this time Prezzo), a Russian was involved, and the police closed off streets and
deployed specialists in hazmat suits.
The story also carried a hint of too-good-to-be-true, but The Sun was so seduced by
Shapiro's claim that Putin was after her, it ran a front page splash. The fact she was willing
to claim " Putin wants me dead " while at the same time doing a sexy photo shoot
probably helped.
There was no sign of nerve agents being used, but The Sun claimed to have 'security
sources' which told them rat poison may have been used against the couple, while claiming King
was fighting for his life. Soon after the hospital confirmed that actually both had been
discharged.
However, other details began to emerge after the Sun splashed. The police, who have not
suggested any crime actually took place, admitted one of their lines of inquiry into what
happened in Salisbury's Prezzo is now whether it may have been a hoax.
Then the BBC
reported that King, who was reportedly found foaming at the mouth in the restaurant's
toilet, is a "convicted criminal who once hoaxed Prince Charles" and had previously been
convicted of "distributing indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children."
Then the
Daily Mirror reported that King is an alleged drug dealer, and Shapiro is a high-class
escort who told friends she was a " honeytrap spy " used by Israel's Mossad to seduce
men.
Essentially what appeared to be an extremely questionable story from the very start seems to
be disintegrating, so why would a national newspaper decide to run this story at all without
doing a basic background checks?
The obvious conclusion is simply that it's too easy to make any accusation you like about
Russia because readers are willing to believe anything in the current political climate.
The Sun said in a statement: " Like any newspaper, we were keen to talk to those at the
centre of the incident and give them the opportunity to share with the public their version of
events ."
But were they keen to check whether any of it was accurate?
@Mr. Hack I understand perfectly what I read, and even make a direct quotation:
Those in power in Kiev had several times already attempted to draw Moscow into the civil
war, directly and through a NATO intervention
I then ridicule such mularkey for what it is, unsubstantiated ' gibberish
'.
You want to defend this BS then go to it, otherwise put up or shut up! :-)
The same goes for Skeptikal. Here is a British 'method' of slandering the non-obedient
Russians. In terms of dishonesty, it is about the same as the US/EU/Ukrainian version of the
MH17 tragedy:
"The Holes in the Official Skripal Story," by Craig MURRAY:
"The nub of the British government's approach has been the shocking willingness of the
corporate and state media to parrot repeatedly the lie that the nerve agent was Russian made,
even after Porton Down said they could not tell where it was made and the OPCW confirmed that
finding. In fact, while the Soviet Union did develop the "novichok" class of nerve agents,
the programme involved scientists from all over the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine, Armenia
and Georgia, as I myself learnt when I visited the newly decommissioned Nukus testing
facility in Uzbekistan in 2002."
"... The fake story that May has been pushing is that it is "highly likely" that the Kremlin ordered a hit on the former British spy Sergei Skripal (and his daughter) using a "Russian-made" chemical weapon called "Novichok." In turn, from what we already knew, it is highly likely that this story is a complete and utter fake. ..."
The Brits have just provided my previous article, The Truthers and The Fakers, with a tidy
little case study: the very next day after I published it Theresa May's government stepped into
its role as one of the world's premier Fakers and unleashed the next installment of fake news
on the Skripal poisoning. We can use this as training material in learning how to spot and
discard fakes.
The fake story that May has been pushing is that it is "highly likely" that the Kremlin
ordered a hit on the former British spy Sergei Skripal (and his daughter) using a
"Russian-made" chemical weapon called "Novichok." In turn, from what we already knew, it is
highly likely that this story is a complete and utter fake. As I explained in the previous
article, it is not our job to establish what really happened. We would be unable to do so with
any degree of certainty without gaining access to state secrets. But we don't need to; all we
need to do is establish with a reasonable degree of certainty that the British government's
story is a foolishly, incompetently concocted fabrication. Doing so will then allow us to
properly classify the British press, which repeats this nonsense as fact, and the British
public, which accepts it unquestioningly at face value. Then we can drop the erroneous
appellation "great" -- because great nations don't act so stupidly
"... shortly after FBI Director James Comey was fired by Trump, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove the President from office, and himself wearing a wire to record the President at the White House. Rosenstein is supervising the Mueller Special Counsel investigation of the President. Rosenstein has heatedly denied the Times story. ..."
"... Also this week, Mueller's first victim, former Trump Campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos began press appearances detailing how he was set up by the British and the CIA in the evidence fabrication phase of the Russiagate investigation, during the Spring of 2016. ..."
Friday afternoon, the New York Times once again took up the coup against Donald
Trump, not as a news matter, but as a witting psychological warfare instrument for those bent
on trying to illegally remove this President from office. They
report, with great fervor, that shortly after FBI Director James Comey was fired by
Trump, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove the
President from office, and himself wearing a wire to record the President at the White House.
Rosenstein is supervising the Mueller Special Counsel investigation of the President.
Rosenstein has heatedly denied the Times story.
This leak occurs in a context where the coup itself is unraveling. The President ordered the
declassification of foundational documents in the coup itself on Monday, September 17,
including tweets from Robert Mueller's central witness, Jim Comey. According to press accounts,
"our allies" called to complain, most certainly the British and the Australians who instigated
this coup together with Barack Obama and John Brennan. In addition, the so-called gang of eight
Senators and Congressmen who get briefed by the intelligence community had their knickers in a
full knot. On Friday, shortly before the Times story broke, the President delayed release of
the documents, placing their release in the hands of Justice Department Inspector General
Michael Horowitz, while insisting that the documents be reviewed and released in an expedited
fashion. He also reserved the right to move forward himself if the matter was not handled with
expedition. This was a sound move by Trump and the documents will be released.
Also this week, Mueller's first victim, former Trump Campaign volunteer George
Papadopoulos began press appearances detailing how he was set up by the British and the CIA in
the evidence fabrication phase of the Russiagate investigation, during the Spring of 2016.
There is a sitting grand jury in Washington D.C. hearing evidence concerning fired FBI Deputy
Director Andrew McCabe. According to various sources, that grand jury is also hearing evidence
about criminal abuses of the FISA court process and media leaks.
The press reporting to date on the story points to Andrew McCabe or Robert Mueller as the
source of the leak to the New York Times .
McCabe's memos are reportedly the source of the story and he has provided those to
Mueller.
There is no doubt that Rosenstein has been a corrupt force throughout the ongoing coup
against the President.
The question, which allies of the President should be asking, however, is why is this
occurring now? In this strategic context? From the grey lady ragsheet that is the chief
propaganda arm of the coup?
The President should demand that the Inspector General Horowitz immediately obtain and
review the McCabe memos and interview everyone involved in the referenced in the Times
and any follow-on meetings under oath, as well as investigating the source of the leak to the
New York Times , providing him an immediate report for his consideration by early next
week.
"... If the so-called "Resistance" to Trump was ever actually interested in opposing this administration in any meaningful way, this would be the top trending news story in America for days, like how "bombshell" revelations pertaining to the made-up Russiagate narrative trend for days. Spoiler alert: it isn't, and it won't be. ..."
"... The US Senate has just passed Trump's mammoth military spending increase by a landslide 92–8 vote . The eight senators who voted "nay"? Seven Republicans, and Independent Bernie Sanders. Every single Democrat supported the most bloated war budget since the height of the Iraq war . Rather than doing everything they can to weaken the potential damage that can be done by a president they've been assuring us is a dangerous hybrid of equal parts Benedict Arnold and Adolf Hitler, they've been actively increasing his power as Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen. ..."
"... They're on the same team, wearing different uniforms. ..."
"... US politics is pretty much the same; two mainstream parties owned by the same political class, engaged in a staged bidding war for votes to give the illusion of competition. ..."
"... In reality, the US political system is like the unplugged video game remote that kids give their baby brother so he stops whining that he wants a turn to play. No matter who they vote for they get an Orwellian warmongering government which exists solely to advance the agendas of a plutocratic class which has no loyalties to any nation; the only difference is sometimes that government is pretending to care about women and minorities and sometimes it's pretending to care about white men. In reality, all the jewelers work for the same plutocrat, and that video game remote won't impact the outcome of the game no matter how many buttons you push. ..."
"... The only way to effect real change is to stop playing along with the rigged system and start waking people up to the lies. As long as Americans believe that the mass media are telling them the truth about their country and their partisan votes are going somewhere useful, the populace whose numbers should give it immense influence is nullified and sedated into a passive ride toward war, ecocide and oppression. ..."
"... Reprinted with author's permission from Medium.com . ..."
"... Support Ms. Johnstone's work on Patreon or Paypal ..."
A new article from the Wall Street
Journal reports that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
lied to congress about the measures Saudi Arabia is taking to minimize the civilian
casualties in its catastrophic war on Yemen, and that he did so in order to secure two billion
dollars for war profiteers.
This is about as depraved as anything you could possibly imagine. US-made bombs have
been conclusively tied to civilian deaths in a war which has caused the single worst
humanitarian crisis on earth, a crisis which sees
scores of Yemeni children dying every single day and has
placed five million children at risk of death by starvation in a nation where families are
now eating
leaves to survive . CIA veteran Bruce Riedel
once said that "if the United States of America and the United Kingdom tonight told King
Salman that this war has to end, it would end tomorrow, because the Royal Saudi Airforce cannot
operate without American and British support." Nobody other than war plutocrats benefits from
the US assisting Saudi Arabia in its monstrous crimes against humanity, and yet Pompeo chose to
override his own expert advisors on the matter for fear of hurting the income of those very war
plutocrats.
If the so-called "Resistance" to Trump was ever actually interested in opposing this
administration in any meaningful way, this would be the top trending news story in America for
days, like how "bombshell" revelations pertaining to the made-up Russiagate narrative trend for
days. Spoiler alert: it isn't, and it won't be.
It would be so very, very easy for Democratic party leaders and Democrat-aligned media to
hurt this administration at the highest level and cause irreparable political damage based on
this story. All they'd have to do is give it the same blanket coverage they've given the
stories about Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort which
end up leading nowhere remotely near impeachment or proof of collusion with the Russian
government. The footage of the starving children is right there, ready to be aired to pluck at
the heart strings of rank-and-file Americans day after day until Republicans have lost all hope
of victory in the midterms and in 2020; all they'd have to do is use it. But they don't. And
they won't.
The US Senate has just passed Trump's mammoth military spending increase by
a landslide 92–8 vote . The eight senators who voted "nay"? Seven Republicans, and
Independent Bernie Sanders. Every single Democrat supported the most bloated war budget
since the
height of the Iraq war . Rather than doing everything they can to weaken the potential
damage that can be done by a president they've been assuring us is a dangerous hybrid of equal
parts Benedict Arnold and Adolf Hitler, they've been actively increasing his power as
Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.
The reason for this is very simple: President Trump's ostensible political opposition does
not oppose President Trump. They're on the same team, wearing different uniforms. This is the
reason they attack him on Russian collusion accusations which the brighter bulbs among them
know full well will never be proven and have no basis in reality. They don't stand up to Trump
because, as Julian Assange once said , they are
Trump.
In John Steinbeck's The Pearl, there are jewelry buyers set up around a fishing community
which are all owned by the same plutocrat, but they all pretend to be in competition with one
another. When the story's protagonist discovers an enormous and valuable pearl and goes to sell
it, they all gather round and individually bid far less than it is worth in order to trick him
into giving it away for almost nothing. US politics is pretty much the same; two mainstream
parties owned by the same political class, engaged in a staged bidding war for votes to give
the illusion of competition.
In reality, the US political system is like the unplugged video game remote that kids give
their baby brother so he stops whining that he wants a turn to play. No matter who they vote
for they get an Orwellian warmongering government which exists solely to advance the agendas of
a plutocratic class which has no loyalties to any nation; the only difference is sometimes that
government is pretending to care about women and minorities and sometimes it's pretending to
care about white men. In reality, all the jewelers work for the same plutocrat, and that video
game remote won't impact the outcome of the game no matter how many buttons you push.
The only way to effect real change is to stop playing along with the rigged system and start
waking people up to the lies. As long as Americans believe that the mass media are telling them
the truth about their country and their partisan votes are going somewhere useful, the populace
whose numbers should give it immense influence is nullified and sedated into a passive ride
toward war, ecocide and oppression.
If enough of us keep throwing sand in the gears of the lie
factory, we can wake
the masses up from the oligarchic lullaby they're being sung. And then maybe we'll be big
enough to have a shot at grabbing one of the real video game controllers.
Reprinted with author's permission from
Medium.com .
So much of mainstream journalism has descended to the level of a cult-like formula of bias,
hearsay and omission. Subjectivism is all; slogans and outrage are proof enough. What matters
is 'perception'...
The death of Robert Parry earlier this year felt like a farewell to the age of the reporter.
Parry was "a trailblazer for independent journalism", wrote Seymour Hersh, with whom he shared
much in common.
Hersh revealed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the secret bombing of Cambodia, Parry
exposed Iran-Contra, a drugs and gun-running conspiracy that led to the White House. In 2016,
they separately produced compelling evidence that the Assad government in Syria had not used
chemical weapons. They were not forgiven.
Driven from the "mainstream", Hersh must publish his work outside the United States. Parry
set up his own independent news website Consortium News, where, in a final piece following a
stroke, he referred to journalism's veneration of "approved opinions" while "unapproved
evidence is brushed aside or disparaged regardless of its quality."
Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has
changed in recent years. Dissent tolerated when I joined a national newspaper in Britain in the
1960s has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism moves towards a form of
corporate dictatorship.
This is a seismic shift, with journalists policing the new "groupthink", as Parry called it,
dispensing its myths and distractions, pursuing its enemies.
Witness the witch-hunts against refugees and immigrants, the willful abandonment by the
"MeToo" zealots of our oldest freedom, presumption of innocence, the anti-Russia racism and
anti-Brexit hysteria, the growing anti-China campaign and the suppression of a warning of world
war.
With many if not most independent journalists barred or ejected from the "mainstream", a
corner of the Internet has become a vital source of disclosure and evidence-based analysis:
true journalism sites such as wikileaks.org, consortiumnews.com, wsws.org, truthdig.com,
globalresearch.org, counterpunch.org and informationclearinghouse.com are required reading for
those trying to make sense of a world in which science and technology advance wondrously while
political and economic life in the fearful "democracies" regress behind a media facade of
narcissistic spectacle.
Propaganda Blitz
In Britain, just one website offers consistently independent media criticism. This is the
remarkable Media Lens -- remarkable partly because its founders and editors as well as its only
writers, David Edwards and David Cromwell, since 2001 have concentrated their gaze not on the
usual suspects, the Tory press, but the paragons of reputable liberal journalism: the BBC, The
Guardian , Channel 4 News.
Cromwell and Edwards (The Ghandi Foundation)
Their method is simple. Meticulous in their research, they are respectful and polite when
they ask why a journalist why he or she produced such a one-sided report, or failed to disclose
essential facts or promoted discredited myths.
The replies they receive are often defensive, at times abusive; some are hysterical, as if
they have pushed back a screen on a protected species.
I would say Media Lens has shattered a silence about corporate journalism. Like Noam Chomsky
and Edward Herman in Manufacturing Consent, they represent a Fifth Estate that deconstructs and
demystifies the media's power.
What is especially interesting about them is that neither is a journalist. David Edwards is
a former teacher, David Cromwell is an oceanographer. Yet, their understanding of the morality
of journalism -- a term rarely used; let's call it true objectivity -- is a bracing quality of
their online Media Lens dispatches.
I think their work is heroic and I would place a copy of their just published book,
Propaganda Blitz , in every journalism school that services the corporate system, as they all
do.
Take the chapter, Dismantling the National Health Service, in which Edwards and Cromwell
describe the critical part played by journalists in the crisis facing Britain's pioneering
health service.
The NHS crisis is the product of a political and media construct known as "austerity", with
its deceitful, weasel language of "efficiency savings" (the BBC term for slashing public
expenditure) and "hard choices" (the willful destruction of the premises of civilized life in
modern Britain).
"Austerity" is an invention. Britain is a rich country with a debt owed by its crooked
banks, not its people. The resources that would comfortably fund the National Health Service
have been stolen in broad daylight by the few allowed to avoid and evade billions in taxes.
Using a vocabulary of corporate euphemisms, the publicly-funded Health Service is being
deliberately run down by free market fanatics, to justify its selling-off. The Labour Party of
Jeremy Corbyn may appear to oppose this, but is it? The answer is very likely no. Little of any
of this is alluded to in the media, let alone explained.
Edwards and Cromwell have dissected the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, whose innocuous
title belies its dire consequences. Unknown to most of the population, the Act ends the legal
obligation of British governments to provide universal free health care: the bedrock on which
the NHS was set up following the Second World War. Private companies can now insinuate
themselves into the NHS, piece by piece.
Where, asks Edwards and Cromwell, was the BBC while this momentous Bill was making its way
through Parliament? With a statutory commitment to "providing a breadth of view" and to
properly inform the public of "matters of public policy," the BBC never spelt out the threat
posed to one of the nation's most cherished institutions. A BBC headline said: "Bill which
gives power to GPs passes." This was pure state propaganda.
Media and Iraq Invasion
Blair: Lawless (Office of Tony Blair)
There is a striking similarity with the BBC's coverage of Prime Minister Tony Blair's
lawless invasion of Iraq in 2003, which left a million dead and many more dispossessed. A study
by the University of Wales, Cardiff, found that the BBC reflected the government line
"overwhelmingly" while relegating reports of civilian suffering. A Media Tenor study placed the
BBC at the bottom of a league of western broadcasters in the time they gave to opponents of the
invasion. The corporation's much-vaunted "principle" of impartiality was never a
consideration.
One of the most telling chapters in Propaganda Blitz describes the smear campaigns mounted
by journalists against dissenters, political mavericks and whistleblowers.
The Guardian' s campaign against the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the most
disturbing. Assange, whose epic WikiLeaks disclosures brought fame, journalism prizes and
largesse to The Guardian , was abandoned when he was no longer useful. He was then subjected to
a vituperative – and cowardly -- onslaught of a kind I have rarely known.
With not a penny going to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood
movie deal. The book's authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as
a "damaged personality" and "callous." They also disclosed the secret password he had given the
paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the U.S. embassy
cables.
With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police
outside, gloated on his blog that "Scotland Yard may get the last laugh."
The Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore wrote, "I bet Assange is stuffing himself full of
flattened guinea pigs. He really is the most massive turd."
Moore, who describes herself as a feminist, later complained that, after attacking Assange,
she had suffered "vile abuse." Edwards and Cromwell wrote to her: "That's a real shame, sorry
to hear that. But how would you describe calling someone 'the most massive turd'? Vile
abuse?"
Moore replied that no, she would not, adding, "I would advise you to stop being so bloody
patronizing." Her former Guardian colleague James Ball wrote, "It's difficult to imagine what
Ecuador's London embassy smells like more than five and a half years after Julian Assange moved
in."
Such slow-witted viciousness appeared in a newspaper described by its editor, Katharine
Viner, as "thoughtful and progressive." What is the root of this vindictiveness? Is it
jealousy, a perverse recognition that Assange has achieved more journalistic firsts than his
snipers can claim in a lifetime? Is it that he refuses to be "one of us" and shames those who
have long sold out the independence of journalism?
Journalism students should study this to understand that the source of "fake news" is not
only trollism, or the likes of Fox News, or Donald Trump, but a journalism self-anointed with a
false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in
reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it. The amorality of the years of Tony
Blair, whom The Guardian has failed to rehabilitate, is its echo.
"[It is] an age in which people yearn for new ideas and fresh alternatives," wrote Katharine
Viner. Her political writer Jonathan Freedland dismissed the yearning of young people who
supported the modest policies of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as "a form of narcissism."
"How did this man .," brayed the Guardian 's Zoe Williams, "get on the ballot in the first
place?" A choir of the paper's precocious windbags joined in, thereafter queuing to fall on
their blunt swords when Corbyn came close to winning the 2017 general election in spite of the
media.
Complex stories are reported to a cult-like formula of bias, hearsay and omission: Brexit,
Venezuela, Russia, Syria. On Syria, only the investigations of a group of independent
journalists have countered this, revealing the network of Anglo-American backing of jihadists
in Syria, including those related to ISIS.
Leni Riefenstahl (r.) (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
Supported by a "psyops" campaign
funded by the British Foreign Office and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the
aim is to hoodwink the Western public and speed the overthrow of the government in Damascus,
regardless of the medieval alternative and the risk of war with Russia.
The Syria Campaign, set up by a New York PR agency called Purpose, funds a group known as
the White Helmets, who claim falsely to be "Syria Civil Defense" and are seen uncritically on
TV news and social media, apparently rescuing the victims of bombing, which they film and edit
themselves, though viewers are unlikely to be told this. George Clooney is a fan.
The White Helmets are appendages to the jihadists with whom they share addresses. Their
media-smart uniforms and equipment are supplied by their Western paymasters. That their
exploits are not questioned by major news organizations is an indication of how deep the
influence of state-backed PR now runs in the media. As Robert Fisk noted recently, no
"mainstream" reporter reports Syria.
In what is known as a hatchet job, a Guardian reporter based in San Francisco, Olivia Solon,
who has never visited Syria, was allowed to smear the substantiated investigative work of
journalists Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett on the White Helmets as "propagated online by a
network of anti-imperialist activists, conspiracy theorists and trolls with the support of the
Russian government."
This abuse was published without permitting a single correction, let alone a right-of-reply.
The Guardian Comment page was blocked, as Edwards and Cromwell document. I saw the list of
questions Solon sent to Beeley, which reads like a McCarthyite charge sheet -- "Have you ever
been invited to North Korea?"
So much of the mainstream has descended to this level. Subjectivism is all; slogans and
outrage are proof enough. What matters is the "perception."
When he was U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus declared what he called "a
war of perception conducted continuously using the news media." What really mattered was not
the facts but the way the story played in the United States. The undeclared enemy was, as
always, an informed and critical public at home.
Nothing has changed. In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's film-maker, whose
propaganda mesmerized the German public.
She told me the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on
the "submissive void" of an uninformed public.
"Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?" I asked.
"Everyone," she said. "Propaganda always wins, if you allow it."
Propaganda Blitz by David
Edwards and David Cromwell is published by Pluto Press.
The British Foreign Office almost immediately reacted to the RT scoop with its usual bluster:
"Lies and obfuscation!"
Interesting accusation off HM government is that!
Since March 4 of this year, the British side has stated that:
Yulia Skripal
brought "Novichok" in her suitcase.
The Skripals were poisoned with buckwheat.
The Skripals were poisoned with bouquet of flowers at the cemetery. T
he Skripals were
poisoned with an UAV drone.
The Skripals were poisoned through air conditioning in the car.
The Skripals were poisoned with an aerosol.
The Skripals were poisoned by Mikhail Savitskis
(aka "Gordon") group, consisting of 6 killers.
The killer/s poured "Novichok"onto a door
handle.
The Skripals were poisoned with "Novichok" in a form of a gel.
The Skripals were
poisoned with a perfume bottle (so it seems "Novichok" is still liquid).
The killer/s poured
"Novichok" in a public toilet.
The killer/s poured "Novichok" in a hotel room.
The Skripals
were poisoned by 2 GRU* agents.
"Novichok" is a "5–8 times more lethal than VX nerve agent" and "the most
deadly ever made", though it can't kill even 2 people.
*There has, in fact, been no such organization known as the GRU in Russia since 2010, when
the official name of the unit was changed from ″GRU″ [
Главное
разведывательное
управление -- Glavnoye
razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye ], namely "The Main intelligence Agency", to "The Main
Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation", or
″GU″ [Главное
управление
Генерального
штаба
Вооружённых
Сил Российской
Федерации -- Glavnoye upravleniye
General'nogo shtaba Vooruzhyonnykh Sil Rossiiskoi Federatsii ].
The Russian Embassy in London has been keeping a record of all the scenarios presented in
the UK by the Govt/MSM and at the last count it was stated that there were 40 different,
often contradictory, unproven scenarios.
Last week, the UK Ambassador to the UN, she who resembles a drag-queen well past his
sell-by date, namely the inimitable Karen Pierce, attempted to take the piss out of Russia by
stating at the UNSC that Russia had put forward 40 different accounts of what had happened,
which ludicrous proposals simply proved how lacking in credibility the Russian government
allegations are.
The reality was, however, that in presenting such accounts, Russia was taking the piss out
of Her Majesty's Government and the sensationalist, Russophobic, warmongering British press
and their more than 40 accounts of what happened in Salisbury last March.
The delectable Karen seemed unaware of this fact.
Recall, that Pierce is the woman, a high ranking British diplomat, no less, who believes
that Russia (i.e. the Russian Federation that came into existence in 1991) was founded on
many of Karl Marx's precepts.
Exactly! For Simonjan this unexpected interview was the scoop of the century.
The Russian press is going wild with this story.
One blogger wrote that some of the utterances of the 2 gopniki are rapidly becoming "winged
phrases" compared only to snippets from Griboedov's "Woe from Wit".
Best example: "We returned to Salisbury to complete this business."
Simonjan (suspiciously): "What business?"
Gopnik: "To see the cathedral
"... The Gvmt. *slowly* latched onto the meme 'the Russians did it' thru pol. opportunism (Syria etc.) and/or as a cover up for some ugly and dismaying stuff. At every step of the way, they tardily re-calibrated, 'fixed' the narrative to jell with that script. A good ex. is DS Bailey: he was at first affected as a first responder to the Bench Scene, but much later, that was denied, and he was poisoned because he stole comatose Sergei's keys and went to his home where he "most likely" touched a Novichoked doornob. (Note the doornob tale leaves the door open (sic) to some mundane passers-by doing nefarious deeds.) ..."
"... After examining endless planeloads of Russian travellers to the UK, and thousands of hours of CCTV, they turned up these two (and kept their jobs and kiddies safe! Yay! ) ..."
"... The only link between the pair and the Skripal 'event' is the stated fact that 'minuscule traces of Novichok' were found in the Hotel in London they stayed in. This is complete BS, see for ex. even the Daily Mail! ..."
Petrov - Boshirov. To me they were utterly convincing. Mostly because they were absolutely
terrified and utterly naive about doing a TV interview and answering questions.
RT, the interviewer and setting - an office - and the number of cameras were their
conditions, I have read, and I believe it. They wanted to appear in public, rather than hide
(no doubt following some excellent advice, and Putin's public assurance, saying he hoped they
would come forward..) but had little idea beyond that except that they wanted to avoid being
Center in a media circus - storm. (They need a PR expert and top-class lawyer.)
Why their gayness / not or what business they run legally or not-so-much and lots of other
topics are invoked and puzzled over is because ppl simply cannot believe what happened here.
(Imho!)
(Some weird event, possibly fabricated, organised by X, or strange happenstance, or
whatever) .. sent Sergei and Yulia 'queer -- ill', as well as DS Bailey, and later, Dawn and
Charlie (All connected to some 'event' that remains cloudy.)
The Gvmt. *slowly* latched onto the meme 'the Russians did it' thru pol. opportunism
(Syria etc.) and/or as a cover up for some ugly and dismaying stuff. At every step of the
way, they tardily re-calibrated, 'fixed' the narrative to jell with that script. A good ex.
is DS Bailey: he was at first affected as a first responder to the Bench Scene, but much
later, that was denied, and he was poisoned because he stole comatose Sergei's keys and went
to his home where he "most likely" touched a Novichoked doornob. (Note the doornob tale
leaves the door open (sic) to some mundane passers-by doing nefarious deeds.)
The investigators behind the computers acted under orders and under the imposed
assumption
"Some Russian undercover(s) flew in on or around March 1,2,3, and poisoned a door in
Salisbury, find a match."
After examining endless planeloads of Russian travellers to the UK, and thousands of hours
of CCTV, they turned up these two (and kept their jobs and kiddies safe! Yay! )
The only link between the pair and the Skripal 'event' is the stated fact that 'minuscule
traces of Novichok' were found in the Hotel in London they stayed in. This is complete BS,
see for ex. even the Daily Mail!
"... The myth of BBC being some standard for news reporting died with the advent of the availability of international and independent news in Western countries ..."
"... Ironic when the BBC has been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya; what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S.) ..."
"... I find it impossible to watch BBC News, primarily because most of the editorial staff and senior correspondents seem to be working for MI5/6 and are more interested in disseminating Geo-political propaganda than upholding their journalistic responsibilities as defined in the BBC charter. ..."
"... The book is obviously part of a propaganda campaign. It seems hugely fortuitous that Mark Urban should have had "hours" of interviews with Skripal before the poisoning incident. ..."
"... Isn't it much more likely that the Urban "interviews" would have happened after the event? But Urban can't say that because that would lead to demands from other journalists or news bodies to have access to Skripal. ..."
"... I'm open to alternative hypotheses but right now I think the most likely explanation for Urban's pre-poisoning contact with Sergei Skripal is that, at the time, it was assumed the Orbis dossier would be a key component of the successful takedown of Trump and Urban was putting together a mutually flattering account by interviewing the main players. ..."
"... With regard to your tongue-in-cheek point. Urban could have interviewed Skripal anytime after Trump was gone, unless he believed Skripal might be unavailable (for some reason). The fact he interviewed Skripal before does indicate foresight. If Urban really did interview Skripal before the event then he would be wiser to pull the book and burn every copy in existence (as well as all his notes). ..."
"... Urban pretends to research a book exposing Russia and part of his research is to interview Skripal. His objective is to find dirt on Putin in order to swing the war in Syria in favour of USUKIS bombing Assad to smithereens, bayonets bums etc. ..."
"... Interestingly Mark Urbans' book on Sergei Skripal was available to purchase on Amazon in July. I added it to my Amazon wishlist on 28/7/18. I've just looked at my wishlist and was rather surprised to find it is no longer available. It has been pulled. ..."
"... Can't help thinking that the answer to all this lies in Estonia. Sergei went to Estonia in June 2016, Pablo was in Estonia, the Estonians passed on sigint about Trump-Russian collusion in the summer of 2016. A Guardian article of 13 April 2017 said: ..."
"... No doubt in my mind that the Skripal affair is a planned operation carried out by US/UK intelligence. What has actually taken place is still to be determined, but the propaganda operation itself is clear. ..."
"... I know about Ireland, and I agree, it was NOT a nerve agent. That said, I don't believe anyone was 'attacked', including the Skripals. ..."
"... All foreign correspondents of major newspapers too work with MI6. Nobody who is close to them has any kind of doubt about this. ..."
"... I despise everyone who says that free markets are the solution for the problems of the third world. What they mean is mass starvation and an enormous population cull. There are international "foundations" that pay academics and politicians large amounts of money to spout this obscene line. One of them is called the John Templeton Foundation. They have had their fangs in to British universities for a long time. ..."
"... When the Tories talk about 'free markets', they are talking about markets free from democracy. ..."
BBC is skanky state propaganda. The myth of BBC being some standard for news reporting died with the advent of the availability
of international and independent news in Western countries. The main thing that BBC used to have which propped up the illusion
of it being a respectable news source is that there was no competition or alternative to compare its narratives against. Since
that time is over, so is BBC's masquerading as an impartial or accurate news source.
Agree, Dave. That's what's informing the push to rubbish dissenting sites as fake news and eventually have them removed.
Ironic when the BBC has been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya;
what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S.)
Well I was convinced of fake BBC news during 9/11 and not for the reasons of building 7 coming down too early but the fact
that the female journalist was facing a camera standing in front of a glass window and there was no reflection of her or the camera
person from the glass. Not even a faint shadow.
That's when I knew the BBC were employing vampires and have been ever since.
Green Screen technology I discovered later. All the On the spot reporters are at it apparently. Or repeating Reuters or PA.
I find it impossible to watch BBC News, primarily because most of the editorial staff and senior correspondents seem to
be working for MI5/6 and are more interested in disseminating Geo-political propaganda than upholding their journalistic responsibilities
as defined in the BBC charter. People should not only boycott the BBC but refuse to pay the license fee on the grounds that
it's a compulsory political subscription.
Dear Mark,
In a BBC article on 4 July 2018, you wrote: "I have not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do
now that the book is nearing completion."
Could you please explain that comment? I do not see why your acknowledgement of your meetings with Sergei Skripal should be
delayed until your book is nearing completion.
If you felt that it was right to reveal those meetings in July, then why was it not right to do so in March, soon after the
poisoning occurred? What difference would it have made if you had done so four months earlier?
I cannot think of any negative consequences of an earlier acknowledgement of the meetings. In fact, disclosures of any possible
conflict of interest are generally considered to be desirable in journalism, regardless of whether the conflict of interest is
real.
The book is obviously part of a propaganda campaign. It seems hugely fortuitous that Mark Urban should have had "hours"
of interviews with Skripal before the poisoning incident.
Isn't it much more likely that the Urban "interviews" would have happened after the event? But Urban can't say that because
that would lead to demands from other journalists or news bodies to have access to Skripal.
And that can't happen because either Skripal would be asked about what happened on the day of the poisoning, or can't be guaranteed
to stick to the script, or is no longer alive. And that leads to a suspicion that whatever Skripal is supposed to have said in
his interviews with Urban has really just been made up by the British security services.
I'm open to alternative hypotheses but right now I think the most likely explanation for Urban's pre-poisoning contact
with Sergei Skripal is that, at the time, it was assumed the Orbis dossier would be a key component of the successful takedown
of Trump and Urban was putting together a mutually flattering account by interviewing the main players.
Tongue in cheek, it'd be worth asking Urban if his decision to cover the Skripal poisoning in his new book was made before
or after the Skripals were actually poisoned.
The consensus seems to be that it was an anti-Russia book, but that doesn't conflict with what you say (there is overlap, your
view is just more specific). But, I just find it hard to believe that Urban and the conspirators would waste their time "counting
their chickens ". Not least because such a book would form a handy list of traitors (together with confessions) if Trump were
to prevail and it fell into the right hands. This is "101 How to Organise a Revolution" (secrecy / don't put anything in writing);
surely British security services know that?
With regard to your tongue-in-cheek point. Urban could have interviewed Skripal anytime after Trump was gone, unless he
believed Skripal might be unavailable (for some reason). The fact he interviewed Skripal before does indicate foresight. If Urban
really did interview Skripal before the event then he would be wiser to pull the book and burn every copy in existence (as well
as all his notes).
Regardless, it looks like the master of the universe are losing their ability to create reality.
Last month, Mark Urban was promoting the reports that the Russian assassins had been identified from CCTV footage:
"There are now subjects of interest in the police Salisbury investigation. ( ) analytic and cyber techniques are now being
exploited against the Salisbury suspects by people with a wealth of experience in complex investigations." https://twitter.com/MarkUrban01/status/1020366761848385536
The BBC relies on it's interpretation of the Act because it is held for the purposes of 'journalism, art or literature.' but
this relies on a usually unrelated precedent and the opinions of a number of Judges which contradict this view. I'm in the process
of challenging this with ICO but don't expect anything will change until another supreme court ruling:
I can see the value in asking writers, journalists and artists to pose exactly the same questions as Eccles' original letter
but I'm not convinced about Craig's email.
A quick google shows me that a man named Mark Urban has written a book on the Skripals. Isn't it likely that Urban was keeping
the interviews to himself in order to keep his book alive?
It wouldn't surprise me if Urban cares far more about his writing career than his job at the BBC. I'm sure most journalists
would rather be authors. He's written a number of books on war and military intelligence. If his sources have nothing to do with
the BBC then why should he answer to an on line mob?
" Isn't it likely that Urban was keeping the interviews to himself in order to keep his book alive?"
No, entirely unlikely. a chance to plug his forthcoming book and his Skripal contacts to a massive worldwide televion audience
was eschewed.
The book is now about the Skripal attack. Presumably that was not the original subject he was researching, as it hadn't happened
yet. The book will just be a rehash of the "noble defector Putin revenge" line and none of the questions I asked about the genesis
of his involvement will be answered in it.
"Presumably that was not the original subject he was researching, as it hadn't happened yet." Or it was prescience ie that
it was part of the planning for the incident?
@BBC, Summer 2017, in an executive office:
"Hey Mark, why don't you go down to have a chat with this guy in Salisbury. I have a hunch that a story might be going to happen
involving him, you know, as an ex-Soviet spy. Spend time with him, get to know him, be able to write in depth about him. Say it's
for a book ."
Urban is never one-sided in his BBC reports on the Middle East. I would rather have him as Foreign Secretary than a bumbling
idiot like Hubris Johnson or a Tory racketeer Hunt, because however clunky the formula of BBC balance Urban is at least pretending
to be governed by normal rules. After Thatcher went anyone with half a brain left the Conservative party, leaving dolts like Johnson
and nasties like May and Cameron to pick up the pieces after Blair and Brown.
There's money to be made from Russian billionaires and tory shit will follow the money like flies on d**t**d.
Urban pretends to research a book exposing Russia and part of his research is to interview Skripal. His objective is to
find dirt on Putin in order to swing the war in Syria in favour of USUKIS bombing Assad to smithereens, bayonets bums etc.
Tory shit Hubris Johnson finds this political research floating around the Foreign Office and decides to twist it into Russia
murders Skripal by Novichok. Unfortunately Johnson is already known to be a liar and gravy-trainer Tory and nobody believes him
at all. Mrs May , realising that Johnson, Fox, Rees-Mogg and Hunt are completely bonkers, does Chequers her own way.
Interestingly Mark Urbans' book on Sergei Skripal was available to purchase on Amazon in July. I added it to my Amazon
wishlist on 28/7/18. I've just looked at my wishlist and was rather surprised to find it is no longer available. It has been pulled.
From memory the books description said that Mark had interviewed Skripal 'extensively' during 2017 and also mentioned the 'new'
spying war now happening between Britain and Russia.
Salisbury poisoning: Skripals 'were under Russian surveillance'
Mark Urban Diplomatic and defence editor, Newsnight
4 July 2018
'My meetings with Sergei Skripal
I met Sergei on a few occasions last summer and found him to be a private character who did not, even under the circumstances
then prevailing, wish to draw attention to himself.
He agreed to see me as a writer of history books rather than as a news journalist, since I was researching one on the post-Cold
War espionage battle between Russia and the West.
Information gained in these interviews was fed into my Newsnight coverage during the early days after the poisoning. I have
not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do now that the book is nearing completion.
As a man, Sergei is proud of his achievements, both before and after joining his country's intelligence service.
He has a deadpan wit and is remarkably stoical given the reverses he's suffered in his life; from his imprisonment following
conviction in 2006 on charges of spying for Britain, to the loss of his wife Liudmila to cancer in 2012, and the untimely death
of his son Alexander (or Sasha) last summer.'
Laughable given that the whole world and virtually all heads of State were under US surveillance by the NSA at least until
Edward Snowden made all his revelations.
I have pasted and copied your Email regarding the above with a few slight alterations, it will be interesting to see the response
I receive if any being just a concerned citizen of the U.
Is this not a matter for the Police? (Even if you're not too sure if they'd do anything about it) These would be files that
are to do with an attempted murder case. And definitely not Journalism if the story is fabricated.
It feels as if you are moving in the right direction in linking Sergei to Steele. I'm intrigued by the very early media references
to Sergei wanting to return home to see his elderly mother for perhaps the last time. He had apparently written to Putin making
his request but again according to newspapers hadn't received a reply.
I would suggest Julia was bringing the answer via her own secret services contacts, her boyfriend and his mother, apparently
Senior in the Russian Intelligence Agency. Perhaps a sentimental man Sergei was aware his mother couldn't travel so the plea to
Putin was his best bet.
Such a request must have disturbed MI6 if Sergei had anything at all to do with the Steele dossier because inevitably if he
returned to Russia he'd be debriefed by his old colleagues. But how can you rely on a mercenary double agent? If he decided he
might want to stay in Russia with his family that might well have been attractive, away from the lonely existence in a Salisbury
cul de sac with only spies for company. But the Steele dossier has great potential to turn sour on the British.
It's author was a Senior spy and Head of the Russian Desk for some years. It is perhaps you'd agree? inconceivable that
he didn't require permission to prepare it, especially as much of it was based on his experience as a spy in Russia. Yet it's
equally inconceivable that the Agency bosses didn't know the identity of the commissioners or the use to which it would be put
in the US election to boost Clinton's bid. If she'd won everything would have been fine but as it is any discussion of foreign
interference in that election would have to include MI6 leading the list (they probably didn't tell any politician?) To have Sergei
supporting and highlighting that embarrassment would be problematic for US-UK relations. Of course Sergei may have had other nuggets
to expose as well as Steele.
Soon after Julia's arrival the pair fell ill. They both survived but are now locked away, presumably for life and never able
to explain their side of the story.
It was a bodged job with a poor cover story from the start and could only be carried because of D Notices and media complicity.
Is his mother still alive? Would he still like to see her before she dies? Would Russia allow it? Would MI6 allow it? I think
that's 3 yeses and a resounding No.
Following the deaths of 55 Palestinians on the Gaza 'border' and the wounding of thousands, in this video, Urban asks the questions
but the Israeli government spokesman, David Keyes, is allowed to spout all the usual propaganda against Hamas.
Gaza deaths: Who's to blame? BBC Newsnight
Published on 15 May 2018
Subscribe 256K
Fresh protests against Israel are expected in the Palestinian territories, a day after Israeli troops killed 58 people in the
Gaza Strip.
David Keyes is the spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mark Urban asked him whether it was appropriate
for the US to open their embassy on the 70th anniversary of Israel's creation, a day that is hugely controversial for the Palestinian
people.
Mr Keyes' pronounced American accent was heard. The Occupation was not mentioned. A Palestinian voice was not heard.
This is another of his videos. On the same subject and on the opening of the Israeli Embassy in Jerusalem. This time, Jonathan
Conricus spoke for the IDF.
"Urban asks the questions but the Israeli government spokesman, David Keyes, is allowed to spout all the usual propaganda against
Hamas."
Yes indeed : Urban asked the questions and allowed the interviewee to answer. Perhaps you would have preferred him to interrupt
the interviewee continually 'a la Today programme, or to have shouted at him similarly to the way I understand some people shout
at customers inside or outside supermarkets?
This may or may not be relevant regarding Russia, chemical weapons and BBC/MSM bovine effluent:
"US Poised to Hit Syria Harder: The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement on Aug. 25 stating that the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham
militants had brought eight containers of chlorine to Idlib in order to stage a false-flag attack with the help of UK intelligence
agencies. A group of Tahrir al-Sham fighters trained to handle chemical warfare agents by the UK private military company Olive
arrived in the suburbs of the city of Jisr ash-Shugur, Idlib, 20 km. from the Turkish border."
Can't help thinking that the answer to all this lies in Estonia. Sergei went to Estonia in June 2016, Pablo was in Estonia,
the Estonians passed on sigint about Trump-Russian collusion in the summer of 2016. A Guardian article of 13 April 2017 said:
"Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump's
inner circle and Russians, sources said. The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence known as sigint included
Germany, Estonia and Poland."
Perhaps not the Dossier, as such, but some material on collusion?
No doubt in my mind that the Skripal affair is a planned operation carried out by US/UK intelligence. What has actually
taken place is still to be determined, but the propaganda operation itself is clear.
Catch my last post Doodlebug, sadly MI6 diabolical elements can be traced back to Ireland in the 70's early 80's assassinations
theRealTerror (theRealElvis) understands.
Often it's been open. There was the BBC monitoring station at Caversham Park. The BBC's Foreign Broadcast Information Service
split the world into two parts with the CIA.
All foreign correspondents of major newspapers too work with MI6. Nobody who is close to them has any kind of doubt about
this.
Theresa May says a no deal Brexit "wouldn't be the end of the world".
This is not a negotiating strategy. This is not a pantomime where one giant on the stage can wink to his supporters (using
the British media) without his opponent (EU27) noticing.
The subconscious doesn't work well with negation. Whatever you do, please DON'T imagine an elephant at this time.
I would love to know what the preparations are at Trinity College, Cambridge, for food shortages. They own the port of
Felixstowe, which handles more than 40% of Britain's containerised trade. They also own a 50% stake in a portfolio of Tesco
stores. Soon food distribution will be what everyone is talking about. I am never going to stop making the point that the god
of the Tory party is Thomas Malthus.
" As a Prime Minister who believes both in free markets and in nations and businesses acting in line with well-established
rules and principles of conduct, I want to demonstrate to young Africans that their brightest future lies in a free and thriving
private sector. "
I despise everyone who says that free markets are the solution for the problems of the third world. What they mean is mass
starvation and an enormous population cull. There are international "foundations" that pay academics and politicians large amounts
of money to spout this obscene line. One of them is called the John Templeton Foundation. They have had their fangs in to British
universities for a long time.
They are keen on Prince Philip, the guy who said he wanted to come back as a virus so he could kill a large part of the population.
Never trust anyone who has received a Templeton scholarship or prize or who has anything to do with these people or with the message
that free markets and the private sector are the key to "development"
When the Tories talk about 'free markets', they are talking about markets free from democracy.
May's rhetoric is laughable .basically all her speeches read : 'the sky is green, the snow is black etc etc' -- totally detached
from reality and a spent political force, as their recent membership numbers showed, with more revenues from legacies left in
wills than from actual living members.
I agree with the Skripal relatives that Sergei is dead. He hasn't been seen or heard of and would have called his mother. Mind
boggling deception at all levels and I struggle to believe any of it.
Sergei Skripal could be in US custody, either in the US itself or in a US facility somewhere.
If he is dead, then the rehospitalisation of Charlie Rowley may be to assist with the narrative. "Once you've had a drop of
Novvy Chockk, you may recover but you can fall down ill at any time, and here's an Expert with a serious voice to confirm it."
I follow this blog closely, particularly in relation to the Skripal case, but this is my first comment. I just watched Sky
News piece on 'super recognisers' and couldn't help but wonder why, in an age of powerful facial recognition technology, the police
and security services seem to have drawn such a blank. The surveillance state in the UK is known to be one of the most advanced
in the world but when it comes to this highly important geopolitical crisis our technological infrastructure seems to be redundant
to the point where 'human eyes' are deemed to be more accurate than the most powerful supercomputers available. Psychologically,
all humans have an inherent facial recognition ability from a very young age, but the idea that some police officers have this
ability developed to such an extent that they supercede computer recognition is, i feel, laughable. To me this announcement through
the ever subservient Sky News reeks of desperation on the part of the ;official story'. Are we about to be shown suspects who,
although facial recognition technology fails to identify them, a 'super recogniser' can testify that it actually is person A or
person B and we are all supposed to accept that? Seems either a damning indictment of the judicial process, or a damning indictment
of the £££££'s of taxpayers money that is spent on places like GCHQ etc whose technology is now apparently no better than a highly
perceptive human brain. Give me a break !
People do die Trowbridge. I know you haven't, but you have the motivation of outliving your persecutors. With Muckin about
with Isis gone and covert operations isn't social work Kissinger looking as though he's on daily blood transfusions, you have
rejected Trump for some reason. But Trump has undone much of John McCain's worst mischief in one year. If McCain was an example
of a politician, we don't need politicians.
Give me an example, other than the Coopers. of a healthy couple one day that is found dying the next day like the Skripals.
And while i tried on another site to be generous about McCain. he got Navy Secretary John Lehman, Jr. to scare the Soviets
for prevailing in the Vietnam War so much about what NATO was up to in the fallout from shooting Swedish PM Olof Palme that Moscow
gave up the competition for fear that it would blow up the world, helping bring on the crappy one we have.
McCain was a continuing Cold Warrior who we don't need since we still have Trump who is just trying to do it another way.
Nice interview with Zakharova over the Skripal frame job. The good part is at around 14 minutes where the
loud yapping chihuahua, the UK, is put in its place.
It is not a global player by any measure and has nothing
useful to contribute aside from riding Uncle Scumbag's coat-tails to bomb civilians in Syria.
"... The obvious thing for the British side to do would be to request Moscow to detain the two men so they could be interviewed as persons of interest. If this doesn't happen, it smacks of problems holding the official narrative together and I really can't see how the MSM could spin it away. Plus the surviving alleged victims or their families could have a case against the police for failing to investigate properly. ..."
"... They're already spinning it away by saying publicly that the responses they are getting from Russia are 'lies and obfuscation'. ..."
"... It will not make the slightest bit of difference in Britain; the British government will quickly announce, following any presentation of evidence by Russia, that it is all cleverly faked up, and remind people that these are professional intelligence agents, that's what they do, of course it looks convincing. All the more proof that they are what Britain says they are. ..."
Moscow to London: Your move. This is an interesting development.
The obvious thing for the
British side to do would be to request Moscow to detain the two men so they could be
interviewed as persons of interest. If this doesn't happen, it smacks of problems holding the
official narrative together and I really can't see how the MSM could spin it away. Plus the
surviving alleged victims or their families could have a case against the police for failing
to investigate properly.
It will not make the slightest bit of difference in Britain; the British government will
quickly announce, following any presentation of evidence by Russia, that it is all cleverly
faked up, and remind people that these are professional intelligence agents, that's what they
do, of course it looks convincing. All the more proof that they are what Britain says they
are.
"... 'Clearly' is an English term which is subject to national interpretations. In Canada – mostly English-speaking – it traditionally means, "supported by verifiable and compelling evidence", although I hasten to add that Canada cheerfully booted out 'Russian spies' to support its ally, Britain. ..."
"... But in England, 'clearly' might mean 'as required to serve in the cause of political necessity'. In this instance, if the passports/visas/whatever travel documents of the men concerned do not read "GRU Assassin Traveling on Business", then clearly there was an attempt to circumvent British checks. ..."
Two alleged Russian spies who launched the Salisbury attack smuggled novichok into the
UK through Gatwick Airport, the security minister has confirmed.
I see! So now the disciplined and highly trained GRU assassins were spies as well.
Proper jack-of-all-trades!
Ben Wallace, who is currently Minister of State for Security and Economic Crime, " told
the House of Commons there was 'clearly some form of attempt to create a legend to make sure
that they circumvented our checks'.
'No doubt at the other end of that aeroplane journey [in Russia] there was some, I
should think, the baggage checks weren't probably as good as they might be,' he added "
-- because the Russians are all blithering incompetents stands ter reason, dunnit!
" Mr Wallace said requests for Russia to account for what happened in Salisbury had
been met with 'obfuscation and lies', saying their response merely 'reinforces their
guilt'. "
Of course it does! Why don't they just confess to what everyone knows they have done?
'Clearly' is an English term which is subject to national interpretations. In Canada –
mostly English-speaking – it traditionally means, "supported by verifiable and
compelling evidence", although I hasten to add that Canada cheerfully booted out 'Russian
spies' to support its ally, Britain.
But in England, 'clearly' might mean 'as required to
serve in the cause of political necessity'. In this instance, if the passports/visas/whatever
travel documents of the men concerned do not read "GRU Assassin Traveling on Business", then
clearly there was an attempt to circumvent British checks.
"... And the mockery from the Russophobes immediately kicks off in the British press! Travel all the way from Russia to visit Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge? What nonesense! Who are they trying to kid? That's because such a trip is barely imaginable for uncultured morons. ..."
And the mockery from the Russophobes immediately kicks off in the British press! Travel all the way from Russia to visit Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge? What nonesense! Who are they trying to kid? That's because such a trip is barely imaginable for uncultured morons.
When I last had the great misfortune to be in England with my family, and, to make matters
worse, in London, my elder children begged and begged that we take a trip to Stonehenge. You
see, they were fascinated by all that they had learnt about the place in their Russian
schools.
We went on an excursion there, calling first at Windsor, then Salisbury, Stonehenge, and,
finally, Bath for afternoon tea before heading off back to London.
Witness the moronity of some of my fellow countrymen in this comment published in today's
Independent:
Well you can say a lot about our Russian friends: semi-educated, semi-civilised,
pathological liars, undemocratic, authoritarian, crypto-fascist, mocked and despised the
world over, but one thing we must concede is that they have a wonderful sense of
humour.
So this delightful, oh-so intelligent looking couple flew all the way to Salisbury to
have a look at the Cathedral clock, but the nasty inclement British weather (unlike tropical
Moscow, of course) forced them to return with undue haste from whence they came.
May I suggest better acting classes and a credible script in future?
Doubtless the Indie's resident Putinite Mary Dejevsky, Comrade Corbyn and the brainless
Prigozhin trolls infesting this site will try and sell it – because they are paid to,
but anyone with an IQ higher than a daisy, ie. the rest of the sentient world, will shake
their heads in disbelief at the knuckle-headed absurdity of this story.
Well, as regards the weather, moron, – for Russians, English snow is "inclement"',
as it is wet shite. They were complaining of being wet to the knees. At the same time, in
Russia it was minus 15C and there was plenty of deep, dry snow, which really would make
Little Englanders like you whine.
Oh, and the person who owns that rag to which you wrote the above shite is owned by one of
those "semi-educated, semi-civilised, pathological liars, undemocratic, authoritarian,
crypto-fascist" Russians whom you so despise.
In the years that I worked in England, in an English coal mine, I worked with quite a few
fellow countrymen who were barely literate. I particularily remember one who often boasted
that he had never read a book since he left school.
Russia: The country with the highest literacy rate in Russia with almost 53% of the
population has tertiary education. It is estimated that 95% of adults in Russia have higher
secondary education and the country spends some 4.9% of GDP on education. 2.Jan 16,
2014
According to a study conducted in late April by the U.S. Department of Education and
the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the U.S. can't read. That's 14
percent of the population. 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level, and
19 percent of high school graduates can't read.Jul 7, 2017
Adult Litercy UK
: Around 15 per cent, or 5.1 million adults in England, can be described as 'functionally
illiterate.' They would not pass an English GCSE and have literacy levels at or below those
expected of an 11-year-old. They can understand short straightforward texts on familiar
topics accurately and independently, and obtain information from everyday sources, but
reading information from unfamiliar sources, or on unfamiliar topics, could cause
problems.
Many adults are reluctant to admit to their literacy difficulties and ask for help. One
of the most important aspects of supporting adults with low literacy levels is to increase
their self-esteem and persuade them of the benefits of improving their reading and
writing.
And the British Foreign Office has replied as follows:
"The government is clear these men are officers of the Russian military intelligence
service – the GRU – who used a devastatingly toxic, illegal chemical weapon on
the streets of our country."
"We have repeatedly asked Russia to account for what happened in Salisbury in March.
Today – just as we have seen throughout – they have responded with obfuscation
and lies."
No obfuscation and lies from the FO, though!
Anything but a confession of guilt is "obfuscation and lies", it seems.
"We have repeatedly asked Russia to account for what happened in Salisbury in
March
I tell you what happened: nothing that the Russian state had anything to do with!
I suggest you ask your Yukie nazi pals for an account of what happened there, and your
pals in Tel-Aviv as well.
Russia, cleverly, has thrown down the gauntlet. If the FCO claims that the story of Petrov
and Boshirov is simply 'obfuscation and lies', then why not ask Russia to help make these
guys available for interview and send a couple of detectives plus interpreter on the next
flight to Moscow?
No matter how the FCO and British government huffs, puffs and tries to blow houses down,
ultimately they will be unable to explain why they haven't sought to question these guys.
Agreed, Fern. This was a very clever move on the chess board. Odd as these 2 characters are,
the latest gambit serves to take this whole matter out of the Harry Potter world of
geo-political magick, and put down to the mundane world of a detective story and criminal
procedures. It pushes the politicians aside to make room for the gumshoes. From this point
onward, the story is a police procedural.
"... In a nutshell: Krutikov's theory is that these 2 "gopniki" earn their daily bread by illegal (or semi-legal) trade in European vitamins and supplement. This is what brings them to Europe and what brought them to Salisbury, most likely (i.e., the purchase of supplements, for resale in Russia). ..."
Krutikov has an
interesting take on these guys. I think I will probably do this story tomorrow, in my
blog, as a "breaking news".
In a nutshell: Krutikov's theory is that these 2 "gopniki" earn their daily bread by
illegal (or semi-legal) trade in European vitamins and supplement. This is what brings them
to Europe and what brought them to Salisbury, most likely (i.e., the purchase of supplements,
for resale in Russia).
While in Salisbury they decided to have a look at the sights; that part rings true; might
as well see some sights.
The semi-legal nature of their "business" accounts for their nervousness; while their
status in the Russian criminal underworld accounts for their horror at Simonyan's assuming
them to be gay. An allegation which they rejected more vehemently than the accusations of
being poisoners!
Krutikov also points attention to another instance of Vladimir Putin's subtle humor.
Recall that when Putin announced the existence of these guys to the world, a couple of days
ago, he used a strange phrase: "There is nothing particularly criminal there."
As usual, Putin is one step ahead of everybody in this ludicrous chess game.
P.S. "никакого
особого
криминала" was the phrase used by
Putin. At the time nobody paid much attention and it was translated as "There is nothing
criminal there," but the actual phrase is "There is nothing particularly criminal there."
Okay, I have to make a factual correction, Krutikov wass wrong about Putin's quote, and one
of his commenters who questioned it, turned out to be correct. (Which is sort of sad for
Krutikov, because he built his blogpost around the humor of Putin's supposedly implication
that the duo are petty thieves.)
So, I found the actual vid of Putin making this utterance, it can be seen on this
link:
Update: The currently reigning theory in the Russian blogosphere is that Petrov and Boshirov
earn their living buying and selling anabolic steroids on the grey market. Simonjan herself
noted that Petrov has the build of a body-builder.
The theory that they are a "gay pair" is also highly plausible. When Simonjan asked them
about their relationship, they spazzed out and refused to answer. Blog commenters point out
that this would be the moment when a man would indignantly mention that he had a wife and
kids, or a girlfriend; but nothing like that ensued.
Other commenters have noted that Salisbury is well-known in the gay subculture for having
a large number of rather excellent gay bars. Something that might have also drawn this couple
there, in addition to seeing the cathedral spire!
In general, Russian press and blogosphere are having a field day with this story.
Agree with James on that one point, namely that the Russian press is becoming too tabloid-y
and going after the sensationalism.
I feel sorry for this duo in that, if they are indeed gay and have now been outed due to what
they call a "horrendous coincidence", then their lives in Russia will be miserable from this
point onward.
Russian society is simply not accepting of two grown men living together in a
relationship.
To add insult to injury, the gutter-commenters on the Russian blogs continue to call them
"pedophiles". Even though (duh!) they are both grown men.
Not sure if they live in Moscow or not. If in Moscow, they might still be able to survive,
as the city is so Western now. But if they live out there in the sticks -- forget it.
Meanwhile, I just thought of something else. If these guys were sophisticated enough to
play the Westie system, then they could adopt a tone of utter outrage, that the British
government is harassing them for being gay. The Brits would have to cave on that one and
issue a humble apology.
I've been thinking along similar lines – that their apparent shiftiness and caginess
about the nature of their work suggests they could be involved in something that's semi-legal
or which walks a fine line between the legal and the not.
We've seen lots of CCTV footage of Petrov and Boshirov in Salisbury but nothing has been
said of their movements in London; what they did there is probably the reason why they flew
to the UK. Either that or the GRU is deficient in training its would-be assassins on the
reliability (non-existent) of British rail services in bad weather.
Once again, Britain is stiff with CCTV. We know from previous discussions that there is CCTV
coverage of the Skripals' street and even their house. Where is the CCTV video of the two GRU
assassins on Skripal's street, or near his house? The British say they have this evidence and
are happily building timelines around it, but where is the proof? If they have it, why don't
they show it? It would shut Russian defenses right down. All we've seen is evidence of the
two being in Salisbury. Apparently being Russian In Salisbury is now like Driving While
Black. Both automatically presuppose you are a criminal.
If they are gay, then the UK is going to have really bad optics with its setup. Gay GRU
agents? According the UK MSM Russian gays are all being arrested and thrown in jail.
"... The Russian Embassy in London has been keeping a record of all the scenarios presented in the UK by the Govt/MSM and at the last count it was stated that there were 40 different, often contradictory, unproven scenarios. ..."
" Even more strange is the idea that it is wildly improbable for Russian visitors to wish
to visit Salisbury cathedral and Stonehenge. Salisbury Cathedral is one of the most
breathtaking achievements of Norman architecture, one of the great cathedrals of Europe. It
attracts a great many foreign visitors. Stonehenge is world famous and a world heritage site.
I went on holiday this year and visited Wurzburg to see the Bishop's Palace, and then the
winery cooperative at Sommerach. Because somebody does not choose to spend their leisure time
on a beach in Benidorm does not make them a killer. Lots of people go to Salisbury
Cathedral. "
I had exactly the same thoughts! Holidays for most British moronic Tweeters means Benidorm
and boooze in "British Pubs" that arte emblazoned with "Fish & Chips" signs.
I mentioned above that before setting off for London in June, 2016, my two eldest insisted
that we include Stonehenge in our itinerary.
We were only in London for 3 days, though, before we set off for England, heading north to
the English lakeland national park.
The British Foreign Office almost immediately reacted to the RT scoop with its usual bluster:
"Lies and obfuscation!"
Interesting accusation off HM government is that!
Since March 4 of this year, the British side has stated that:
Yulia Skripal brought "Novichok" in her suitcase.
The Skripals were poisoned with buckwheat.
The Skripals were poisoned with bouquet of flowers at the cemetery.
The Skripals were poisoned with an UAV drone.
The Skripals were poisoned through air conditioning in the car.
The Skripals were poisoned with an aerosol.
The Skripals were poisoned by Mikhail Savitskis (aka "Gordon") group, consisting of
6 killers.
The killer/s poured "Novichok"onto a door handle.
The Skripals were poisoned with "Novichok" in a form of a gel.
The Skripals were poisoned with a perfume bottle (so it seems "Novichok" is still
liquid).
The killer/s poured "Novichok" in a public toilet.
The killer/s poured "Novichok" in a hotel room.
The Skripals were poisoned by 2 GRU* agents.
"Novichok" is a "5–8 times more lethal than VX nerve agent" and "the most
deadly ever made", though it can't kill even 2 people.
*There has, in fact, been no such organization known as the GRU in Russia since 2010, when
the official name of the unit was changed from ″GRU″ [
Главное
разведывательное
управление -- Glavnoye
razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye ], namely "The Main intelligence Agency", to "The Main
Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation", or
″GU″ [Главное
управление
Генерального
штаба
Вооружённых
Сил Российской
Федерации -- Glavnoye upravleniye
General'nogo shtaba Vooruzhyonnykh Sil Rossiiskoi Federatsii ].
The Russian Embassy in London has been keeping a record of all the scenarios presented
in the UK by the Govt/MSM and at the last count it was stated that there were 40 different,
often contradictory, unproven scenarios.
Last week, the UK Ambassador to the UN, she who resembles a drag-queen well past his
sell-by date, namely the inimitable Karen Pierce, attempted to take the piss out of Russia by
stating at the UNSC that Russia had put forward 40 different accounts of what had happened,
which ludicrous proposals simply proved how lacking in credibility the Russian government
allegations are.
The reality was, however, that in presenting such accounts, Russia was taking the piss out
of Her Majesty's Government and the sensationalist, Russophobic, warmongering British press
and their more than 40 accounts of what happened in Salisbury last March.
The delectable Karen seemed unaware of this fact.
Recall, that Pierce is the woman, a high ranking British diplomat, no less, who believes
that Russia (i.e. the Russian Federation that came into existence in 1991) was founded on
many of Karl Marx's precepts.
Prime Minister Teresa May took
to the floor of the Parliament today to report that the Crown Prosecution Service and Police
had issued warrants for two Russian GRU officials who, they claim, had carried out the Skripal
attacks last March. "We were right," she said with a stiff upper lip, "to say in March that the
Russian State was responsible." Mugshots were released of two people whose names, she declared,
were aliases (how they know they are GRU officials if they don't know their names was not
explained). "This chemical weapon attack on our soil was part of a wider pattern of Russian
behavior that persistently seeks to undermine our security and that of our allies around the
world," she intoned.
At the same time, dire warnings have been issued to Syria and Russia that there will be a
major military response if Syria uses chemical weapons in Idlib. This is despite the fact that
Russia has presented the proof to the OPCW and to the UN that the British intelligence-linked
Olive security outfit and the British-sponsored White Helmet terrorists have prepared a false
flag chlorine attack in Idlib, to be blamed on the Syrian government, to trigger such a
military atrocity by the US and the UK.
Also at the same time, in the US, Washington Post fraudster Bob Woodward released a book
claiming that numerous Trump cabinet officials made wildly slanderous statements about Trump --
all third hand from anonymous sources, of course. Chief of Staff John Kelly called the claims
"total BS," while Secretary of State Jim Mattis called it typical Washington DC fiction, adding
that "the idea that I would show contempt for the elected Commander-in-Chief, President Trump,
or tolerate disrespect to the office of the President from within our Department of Defense, is
a product of someone's rich imagination."
Worse, the New York Times, apparently for the first time, printed an "anonymous" op-ed by
someone claiming to be a "senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known
to us," under the title: "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration -- I work
for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and
his worst inclinations." Whether this person is or is not who they claim to be, it is clearly
part of the British coup attempt, as proven in the op-ed itself. After calling Trump amoral,
unhinged, and more, and claiming there is discussion within the Administration of using the
25th Amendment to remove him for mental incompetence, it then states: "Take foreign policy: In
public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as
President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little
genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations [read: the United
Kingdom - ed.]. Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is
operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and
punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than
ridiculed as rivals. On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of
Mr. Putin's spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He
complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further
confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to
impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew
better such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable."
And, while news about the British drive for war with Russia and their attempted coup against
the government of the United States fills the airwaves and the press, not a single word --
repeat, not a single word -- has been reported in the US or British media about the truly
historic conference which took place on Monday and Tuesday in Beijing, the Forum on
China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAP). Helga Zepp-LaRouche declared this week that this event will
be recognized in history as the end of the era of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Every
African nation except one was represented at the conference in Beijing (the "one" was
Swaziland, the last holdout on the African continent which still maintains diplomatic relations
with Taiwan rather than Beijing).
All but six were represented their head of state. They reviewed the transformation taking
place across Africa due to the Belt and Road Initiative since the last FOCAP meeting in 2015,
and laid out plans for the even more rapid development over the next three years, and on to
2063 -- the target year for full modernization over 50 years, adopted by the African Union in
2013. One after another the leaders of the African nations described the actual liberation
taking place, finally seeing in China the example that real development and the escape from
poverty is possible. The program launched at the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung,
Indonesia, where the formerly colonized nations met for the first time without their colonial
masters, has finally been realized.
But no one reading the western press would even know that this transformative event had
taken place.
Rather, there is only the new McCarthyism, trying to demonize Russia and China, to revive
the "enemy image" which should have been eliminated with the fall of the Soviet Union and the
recognition of the People's Republic of China.
Trump threatens this new McCarthyism, insisting that America should be friends with Russia
and China. No longer will the U.S. accept Lord Palmerston's imperial dictate for the Empire,
that "nations have no permanent friends or allies, only permanent interests." The "special
relationship" is to be no more.
This is the cause of Theresa May's hysterical rant today in the Parliament. Better war, led
by the "dumb giant" America, than to see the Empire destroyed in a world united through a
shared vision of universal development.
Britain's drive for war must be exposed and stopped, along with their Russiagate coup
attempt in the US. A victory for the common aims of mankind is within our grasp, but the danger
is great, and the time is short.
Some interesting insights. Looks like high stake political poker
Notable quotes:
"... While Britain crumbled in compliments of the OPCW experts it had bought for the act, Russia dealt the most powerful bomb attack in Idlib, clearing the way for the Syrian army to destroy the last enclave of American suckers. And thus it struck a blow to the British political elite. After all, all the dances around the Skripals and the subsequent sanctions are designed to prevent what Russia is doing now in Idlib. Not prevented. And this is a demonstration of the weakness of the British ruling class, capable only of biting stealthily behind its heels. ..."
machine translated from the original Russian; excerpted:
The fact is that Russia pursues its policy without regard to their provocations. She defeated the Wahhabis trained by the
West in the Caucasus, snatched Crimea from under the nose. The US scenario in Ukraine broke. Restores the EAEC. In Syria, Russia
completely threw the Anglo-Saxon West off the pedestal, which he held there all the post-war 50 years. That is, with its bombing
of head choppers, Russia has broken the rigid "Full Spectrum Dominance" situation created and maintained by the Americans
since the dissolution of the USSR.
This is a disaster, which the Anglo-Saxon world has nothing to answer nuclear to Russia.
While Britain crumbled in compliments of the OPCW experts it had bought for the act, Russia dealt the most powerful
bomb attack in Idlib, clearing the way for the Syrian army to destroy the last enclave of American suckers. And thus it struck
a blow to the British political elite. After all, all the dances around the Skripals and the subsequent sanctions are designed
to prevent what Russia is doing now in Idlib. Not prevented. And this is a demonstration of the weakness of the British ruling
class, capable only of biting stealthily behind its heels.
But worst of all, the actions in Idlib demonstrate the US weakness. Trump is completely beaten down - by his neocon rivals,
not
Russia. Russia has revealed the preparations for the provocation of the Khimatki in Idlib, which the US rep in the United Nations
has announced to the whole world. With all the details, such number of barrels of chorine delivered to headchoppers
and their color,
as well the path of those barrels to Idlib and places of their secret storage. Now with those revelation it make much less
sense to launch this operation.
But the operation will be. The match will take place in any weather. The United States has already outlined the places on
which they will strike rocket-bomb strikes. The assault will be more decisive than the previous time. Preparation is as if
the US is confident - the chlorine attack will take place. Then, when they decide in the US. Not in Damascus, but in Washington.
That is, in general, all masks are dropped and the States openly prepare for aggression with provocation in a sovereign country
where they are open in the status of an occupier. And even if there is no chemotherapy at all, the American blow will take
place. Too much Russian was battered by bombs of American protιgιs. They are too close to defeat, for which the reason for
finding Americans in Syria will disappear. How can this be allowed? The impact of prestige is necessary and it will be, even
if the Sun falls to the ground and the Mississippi will flow backwards. Only prestige is not visible.
The USA are increasingly falling down replacing the strategy with tactics. The attack on Syria is necessary for Americans not because
they will decide the outcome of the campaign. But because the US needs to introduce its
ground forces to change the course of the war, with all possible negative consequences such as possible the death of the military
personnel and the open clash
with Iran, Syria and Russia. And even with Turkey. With China silently standing behind them the
global consequences of this action are unpredictable. One possible consequence can well be the collapse of NATO. This "Second Vietnam"
might crush not only the American president, but the US itself. The other scenario is that the USA just want to "score a goal of prestige" and leave
the lost match. They will strike at Syria, where again Russian intelligence will reveal in advance the alleged targets of the
strike, withdraw the critical assets from there, and then we have a firework of exploding Tomahawks intercepted by
defenders.
Russia in Idlib is now in a very difficult position due to Turkey, not so much the USA. The repelling of the USA
attach is one thing, but the main danger that it can't achieve too much on the ground de to Turkish interests in the area.
Trump attack would be mainly for domestic consumption, the show created on the4 eve of the congressional elections. And
even repelling the attack can be counterproductive -- Russia risks drowning Trump, instead of somehow supporting
his formidable image and helping to win. Simply because Trump is beneficial to Russia - it's too cool he breaks everything
on what the American power of the past decades was based. Helping his impeachment is not in the national interests of Russia.
That means that Trump must come out of those stupid and counterproductive Tomahawks salvos without losing his face.
The US remains the world hegemon and want to remain as such for a long time. That's why it beats Russia with sanctions.
But Russia does not need to oppose the USA. It just need to help to build a countervailing power. And Berlin, supported by Moscow's cheap gas,
can be countervailing force for London in Europe.
The threat of losing global hegemony is very painful for both the British and Americans. It is so painful that
they organized the collapse of the ruble and this false flag operation
in Salisbury. And then OPSW were intimidated by British special services.
Russia should responds asymmetrically -- by continuing to build up its economy and prosperity of its citizens and ignore such insane and ineffective
actions by London and Washington.
Russia already had shown Erdogan how easily caravans with oil are bombed,
Russia does not want to allow its exports from Syria. And the US will have to withdraw from Syria there sooner or later.
Still, Russia should give Trump the opportunity to finish his term without outright humiliation in Syria. The United States
might not have the second such president, as Russia will not have a second Gorbachev.
"... "Renowned French security expert Paul Barril has let loose a bombshell: the existence of Operation Beluga, a covert Western intelligence scheme intended to undermine Russia and its leaders." ..."
"... Renowned French security expert Paul Barril, in an interview, alleges that Berezovsky was working closely with MI6 and the CIA to discredit Russia and Putin, and that large sums from these agencies were passing through Berezovsky's hands to be paid to individuals to cooperate in these efforts. Barril says Litvinenko was one of Berezovsky's bag men, who passed funds on to others. ..."
"... "Russia has nothing to do with the murder of Litvinenko. The case was fabricated from the beginning. Polonium was chosen as the poison due to its production in Russia, it would implicate Russia. The objective of the whole operation was to discredit president Putin and the FSB. It was done because Russia is blocking US interests around the world, especially in Syria. It was an attempt to weaken Putin's hold on power, to destabilize Russia." ..."
"Polonium was chosen as the poison due to its production in Russia, it would implicate Russia". Exactly. Just as 'Novichok' was
allegedly used in Salisbury, due to it allegedly being developed in Russia (Mirzyanov) even though it wasn't actually used against
the Skripals at all. Maybe this element of the hoax was inspired by Beluga's use of polonium in the Litvinenko affair.
Miheila, the polonium story always seems crazy to me. It relies on Litvinenko being too mean not to buy his own cup of tea. Hardly
a foolproof assassination method.
PAGE 4 OF 4
This follows a similar pattern to Alexander Litvinenko. Walter Litvinenko, his father, believes Alex received a second dose of
agent whilst in hospital. It was a Worlds Apart interview but is now the subject of an Ofcom complaint. Walter said his suspicions
were raised by the secrecy of the British government and the fact that they wouldn't let him see any reports. So he made his own
investigations, and from initially thinking it was Russia, he now believes it was the British government. He returned to Russia
in fear of his life.
"Renowned French security expert Paul Barril has let loose a bombshell: the existence of Operation Beluga, a covert Western
intelligence scheme intended to undermine Russia and its leaders."
Renowned French security expert Paul Barril, in an interview, alleges that Berezovsky was working closely with MI6 and
the CIA to discredit Russia and Putin, and that large sums from these agencies were passing through Berezovsky's hands to be paid
to individuals to cooperate in these efforts. Barril says Litvinenko was one of Berezovsky's bag men, who passed funds on to others.
"Russia has nothing to do with the murder of Litvinenko. The case was fabricated from the beginning. Polonium was chosen
as the poison due to its production in Russia, it would implicate Russia. The objective of the whole operation was to discredit
president Putin and the FSB. It was done because Russia is blocking US interests around the world, especially in Syria. It was
an attempt to weaken Putin's hold on power, to destabilize Russia."
Barril mentions the outspoken Putin foe, financier William Browder, as being in close cooperation with Berezovsky in the discreditation
efforts. He also says he is sure Berezovsky was murdered by his secret service handlers after they realized he was behaving erratically
and had to be silenced so that he wouldn't give them away.
"... So they went through the same corridor just like I demonstrated in https://postimg.cc/image/pw7t667ch/ . This means the UK police manipulated the images, i.e. fabricated the evidence. Very interesting to have this confirmed directly.... ..."
I added bold in the quote below:
--- The RT editor-in-chief also touched upon the most puzzling picture of the two, the photo
from the Gatwick airport.
"Here is the picture that puzzled the whole world, Gatwick airport, you are leaving
through a gate literally in the same times, almost the same second. How did it happen?" she
asked.
" We always go together through the same corridor and the same custom service
officer or a policeman. One goes, the other waits. We went through the corridor together, we
always [do it] together .
How did it happen? It's better to ask them [UK police]," Boshirov replied.
---
So they went through the same corridor just like I demonstrated in https://postimg.cc/image/pw7t667ch/ . This
means the UK police manipulated the images, i.e. fabricated the evidence. Very interesting to
have this confirmed directly....
... hilariously, UK security minister Wallace asserted the Novichok was assuredly in a perfume bottle, got into the country
because of poor baggage checks, had the capability "to kill or injure hundreds and hundreds of people", but was not a health risk
to persons on the plane or public transit used by the suspects. ????
Article over at the Stalker Zone on the forged letter that brought down the first UK Labour government of Ramsey McDonald in 1924.
"The frank forgery that is the "Zinoviev's letter" came to London from the Riga department of the Secret Intelligence Service
of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office of Britain (or SIS, nowadays better known as MI-6) with an assurance that the authenticity
of the document "does not raise doubts" (the most ancient form of "highly likely") The Labour government was doomed. Rectifying
the situation in such a short period of time before elections didn't seem to be possible."
Mark Twain's truism still holds today, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
And the media is little different except for sites like this. Thanks B and keep up the good fight. Don't let the bastards get
you down.
Vladimir Kornilov: The Prequel to the Skripal Affair Britain Investigates the "Great Forgery"
To add to Norwegian@3, George Galloway made a couple of very interesting points,
especially about the time stamp on the photo. He said the Skripals left the house in the
morning, never to return. The "Russian agents" could not have arrived in Salisbury until noon
or thereabouts...hmmmm...and they would have had to paint the doorknob with this deadliest of
poisons in full view of everyone. Perhaps the Russians have learned to time travel or warp
time. I wouldn't put it past them http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50231.htm
Prime Minister Theresa May made a
statement to accuse Russia of being behind the Skripal poisoning
case . She went to address the parliament right after prosecutors accused two Russian men,
allegedly military intelligence officers, to perpetrate the assassination attempt. These are
the first criminal charges in the case that
has spoiled the West-Russian relations so much. The British government has issued EU arrest
warrants and Interpol red notices to have the two individuals arrested by police in any country
should they leave Russia's territory.
According to the PM, Great Britain and its friends must step up collective efforts against
Russia. Its military intelligence service (the GRU) is to be specifically targeted employing
"the full range of tools from across our national security apparatus." Before making
the speech that
sounded hostile toward Moscow, the PM had talked the matter over with US President Trump
and other friendly world leaders. Ms May is expected to raise the issue at the UN General
Assembly later this month. No doubt, London will ask the Organization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to investigate the case. The UK will probably impose sanctions of its
own and call on others to join. As usual, media "leaks" will pour more fuel on the fire.
Anti-Russia forces in the West will get the second wind.
Ben Wallace, Minister of State for Security at the Home Office,
attributed direct blame on Russian President Vladimir, something Ms. May avoided to do. He
said the Russian leader bears responsibility for the nerve agent attack.
The photos of two men that have visited the UK are not evidence to support the PM' claims.
"We have heard or seen two names, these names mean nothing to me personally," Kremlin
aide Yuri Ushakov
told reporters in Moscow. "I don't understand why this was done and what sort of signal
the British side is sending." But one thing is curtain – the British government
wants as much noise and publicity as possible. It raises hue and cry in an evident attempt
to further deteriorate the West-Russia relations and it does it on purpose. Why now? Because
this is the right time to pursue the hidden agenda.
US Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson said on Twitter: "The US and UK stand firmly
together in holding Russia accountable for its act of aggression on UK soil." He was quick
to react. Evidently, Mr Johnson wasted no time on waiting for instructions. It had all been
known, discussed and decided before.
By spearheading the anti-Russia campaign in the West, London increases its political weight
before Brexit takes place. With its unity in peril, the West needs something to keep it
together and the Russia's bogey comes in handy.
The second round of US sanctions imposed to punish Russia for the alleged, but never proven,
use of nerve agents, is much tougher than the first one in force since August. It is to take
effect in November – the same month US midterm elections take place.
The "Skripal sanctions" are not introduced by Congress but the State Department. It's up to
the president to impose them or not. If President Trump's party keeps the majority in both
houses, the pressure to prove he is tough on Russia will ease. The president may soften the
sanctions or not impose them at all. The reinvigoration of "Skripal poisoning" campaign will
make it much harder to do. Donald Trump as well as EU leaders will be under constant pressure
to do more to counter Russia.
True, the EU is not interested in whipping up tensions in its relationship with Russia amid
the sanctions war and other things to deteriorate its relationship with the United States. But
on the other hand, Eurosceptics, who are friendly to Moscow, are predicted to win big in the
European parliament election in May. They may get every third vote and have enough seats to
stymie the functioning of the "unreformed" EU as we know it today. It will put into jeopardy
the very survival of the bloc. Many of Eurosceptics want the relations with Russia normalized
and the sanctions lifted. Be it Skripal or something else, an anti-Russia campaign is needed to
attack them. They'll be painted as "useful idiots" or "traitors" promoting Russia's evil plans
to destroy the West. Here again, the imaginary "Russia threat" serves the purpose
perfectly.
The events in Syria are distorted to denigrate Russia but that's happening far away.
Spreading around the stories about Moscow using chemical weapons in Europe may have the desired
effect to keep voters away from throwing their support behind those who can change the European
political landscape.
There is actually nothing new in what the British PM stated. It's not so important what
exactly she said. It's timing that matters. The moment is right for anti-Russia hysteria to be
given a fresh impetus. Will this tactics work? The November elections in the US and the
European elections in May will show. The closer is the vote, the more concocted stories about
the nefarious Russia's activities will come into the spotlight.
"... "I want to address them [the suspects]... [I hope] they contact the media. I hope they appear and tell everything about themselves," ..."
"... "Neither Russia's top leadership nor those with lower ranks, and [Russian] officials, have had anything to do with the events in Salisbury," ..."
"... "It seems very strange that these people have absolutely left what seems to be a very reckless and clear trail of evidence, which almost seems to be designed, or at least would almost inevitably lead to, the conclusions that the police and the authorities have come to today, in other words that Russia were to blame," ..."
"... "bits of evidence that may look pretty compelling but will never be tested in a real court of law." ..."
"... "perfect cover for smuggling the weapon into the country and a perfect delivery method for the attack against the Skripal's front door." ..."
HomeWorld NewsWe know who people named as suspects in Skripal
case are, they are civilians – Putin Published time: 12 Sep, 2018 06:56 Edited time:
12 Sep, 2018 12:57 Get short URL 'Alexander
Petrov' and 'Ruslan Boshirov' are seen in an image handed out by the Metropolitan Police in
London, Britain / Reuters Moscow is aware of who the people named as suspects in the Skripal
case are, President Vladimir Putin said, adding that these people are civilians. Saying that
there is "nothing criminal" about the two, Putin also hopes that the people in
question will eventually come forward and talk to the media.
"I want to address them [the suspects]... [I hope] they contact the media. I hope they
appear and tell everything about themselves," he said, addressing the audience during the
Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in the Russian city of Vladivostok.
Earlier in September, UK prosecutors named two Russians they suspect of poisoning Sergei
Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury this March. According to London, their names are
Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Russia denies any involvement and accuses Britain of
spinning the case to stir anti-Russian sentiment.
Beyond identifying them as Russian nationals, the prosecutors gave no indication as to who
the men are.
After London again blamed Russia, implying that officials at the highest levels of power
could be responsible for the poisoning, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rebuffed the
allegations.
"Neither Russia's top leadership nor those with lower ranks, and [Russian] officials,
have had anything to do with the events in Salisbury," he said at that time.
The Kremlin spokesman added that Putin didn't personally speak to the two individuals
identified by the British authorities as suspects in the case. Russian law enforcement has not
made any moves to prosecute them, Peskov said.
According to the investigators, the suspects who arrived in Britain from Moscow left traces
of the poison used in the attack in the hotel room they stayed in. They were also caught on
CCTV cameras in Salisbury twice, including on the day of the attack, and traveled back directly
to the Russian capital.
This trail of evidence from the supposedly highly-trained perpetrators casts doubt over
Moscow's involvement, according to a number of security experts. "It seems very strange
that these people have absolutely left what seems to be a very reckless and clear trail of
evidence, which almost seems to be designed, or at least would almost inevitably lead to, the
conclusions that the police and the authorities have come to today, in other words that Russia
were to blame," Charles Shoebridge, a security expert and former British military officer,
told
RT. Annie Machon, a former MI5 intelligence officer, said the inquiry into the case has
effectively turned into a trial by media, based on "bits of evidence that may look pretty
compelling but will never be tested in a real court of law."
London also insists that a counterfeit Nina Ricci perfume box was used as container and
delivery device for the chemical used in the poisoning. It was later found by Charlie Rowley in
the town of Amesbury, not far from Salisbury. They also claim that the noxious agent was in a
bottle that had been altered to make it "perfect cover for smuggling the weapon into the
country and a perfect delivery method for the attack against the Skripal's front
door."
Reacting to the prosecutors' statement, Russian envoy to the UN Vasily Nebenzya joked that
the nerve agent attack has so far had only one benefactor – Nina Ricci.
Today's latest offering is that the 'Russians' in the 'mugshots' released last week are
'already dead' having been 'executed by Putin' to stop them talking, forever. Which neatly
avoids the British state asking Russia for help in identifying them. London's failure to do
so was already arousing suspicion amongst a cynical public. There is now no point, the
would-be assassins are now six-feet below the permafrost of Anglo-Russian relations.
The media here have completely ignored the statement of the head of the anti-terrorist
squad of Scotland Yard that he had "No" evidence of Russian state involvement in the crime
in Salisbury, preferring instead the cheap barroom brawling of the British prime minister
on the floor of the House of Commons cheered on by the vulgar popular press and their more
refined elder sisters in the upmarket papers and on the BBC.
FSB arrests ISIS member 'who planned murder of a Donbass leader on behalf of
Ukraine'
The Russian security service, the FSB, says it has arrested an Islamic State operative
who was planning to murder one of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's
Republic (DNR) on behalf of the Ukrainian authorities.
The suspected terrorist was identified as Mejid Magomedov, who was born in 1988 in Russia's
southern Dagestan republic. He was arrested on Sunday in Russia's Smolensk region in the
west of the country.
https://www.rt.com/news/438028-fsb-isis-member-ukraine/
Explosive Skripal allegations may blow up in Syria - George Galloway
Today's latest offering is that the 'Russians' in the 'mugshots' released last week are
'already dead' having been 'executed by Putin' to stop them talking, forever. Which neatly
avoids the British state asking Russia for help in identifying them. London's failure to do
so was already arousing suspicion amongst a cynical public. There is now no point, the
would-be assassins are now six-feet below the permafrost of Anglo-Russian relations.
The media here have completely ignored the statement of the head of the anti-terrorist
squad of Scotland Yard that he had "No" evidence of Russian state involvement in the crime
in Salisbury, preferring instead the cheap barroom brawling of the British prime minister
on the floor of the House of Commons cheered on by the vulgar popular press and their more
refined elder sisters in the upmarket papers and on the BBC.
"the statement of the head of the anti-terrorist squad of Scotland Yard that he
had "No" evidence of Russian state involvement in the crime in Salisbury "
Yes. The UK government has lost its marbles in the pursuit of power & money. They
suffer the same disease as their Israeli and US counterparts -- the loss of the life-saving
integrity and intelligence and the triumph of the life-threatening stupidity.
The western governments have become incompetent due to the lack of the populace' supervision.
For any living organism, no feedback means no protective actions ensuring the survival of the
organism.
The Cheneys and Bibis and Blairs of the world are not intelligent enough even to envision the
future for their immediate progeny, nevermind grandkids. These stupid elders are covered in
the blood of the innocent.
Two Russian GRU hit men who apparently spent a considerable amount of their small amount of
time whilst on a mission of death in Merry England mugging in front of CCTV cameras.
And they only killed one person, and not their intended target at that: a junky, drug
pushing bum's alcoholic womanfriend, who unfortunatly was accidently contaminated with the
deadliest nerve poison known to man.
As a Scotland counter-terrorist chief plod said, these were trained professionals in the
killing trade, and as Prime Minister May said, they belong to a tightly disciplined
organization whose orders come directly from the top, meaning the Dark Lord no less.
Simply sickening and despicable!
Good job Russians are a bunch of dickheads, otherwise the whole population of Salisbury
might have been poisoned – or the South of England, even.
It's amazing that so much crisp, instantly-recognizable footage exists of the hit men, almost
as if they were laying out an easily-reconstructable route for observers; at least, as
contrasted with the blurry and ambiguous photo evidence of the Skripals, which seems to rely
on happy snaps by friends as much as government resources. Until they get Yulia on camera to
make her post-Novichok debut, of course – then, it's theatre-quality. In fact, the
quality of British evidence seems to go up markedly as soon as the preceding exhibits are the
object of public derision.
The poison was polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope, tiny, invisible, undetectable.
Ingested, it was fatal. The polonium had originated at a nuclear reactor in the Urals and a
production line in the Russian town of Sarov. A secret FSB laboratory, the agency's "research
institute", then converted it into a dinkily portable weapon.
Lugovoi and Kovtun, however, were rubbish assassins. The quality of Moscow's hired
killers had slipped since the glory days of the KGB.
It's because they're idiots, see!
Although Russians are a direct to Western civilization and against whom we must be ever on
guard, they are also all congenital dickheads, doomed to failure -- always.
metadata for the uk police photos show the airport pix used micro$oft photo editing app
back on may 3rd. check the direct download buttons at the police site pages and ignore the
html embed.
"... "There were plenty of baseless allegations against Moscow and concrete sanctions based on them. Apparently, the only winner in this continued theatre of absurdity is Nina Ricci, the product of which got some free ad as a container for the toxic chemical," ..."
The nerve agent attack in Salisbury has so far had only one benefactor – Nina Ricci,
which got free advertising due to a disguise apparently used by the perpetrators to hide the
poison, the Russian envoy to the UN joked. The British investigators said a counterfeit Nina
Ricci bottle was used as a container and delivery device for the chemical used in the poisoning
of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in March. The same container was found by a struggling
couple from Amesbury, who got poisoned themselves. Read more
Speaking at a UN Security Council session on Thursday, Russian envoy Vasily Nebenzya,
denounced Britain for accusing Russia of the crimes, saying that the allegations are not base
on any hard evidence.
"There were plenty of baseless allegations against Moscow and concrete sanctions based
on them. Apparently, the only winner in this continued theatre of absurdity is Nina Ricci, the
product of which got some free ad as a container for the toxic chemical," he said.
Britain says two Russian military intelligence agents tried to kill Skripal with a
weapons-grade chemical weapon, claiming the identification was made by the British
intelligence. Russia denies any involvement and accuses Britain of spinning the case to stir
anti-Russian sentiment.
"... The UK has stirred up the Skripal saga for the sake of waging a broader campaign to kowtow to the anti-Russian rhetoric inside the British government, ex-London mayor Ken Livingstone has told RT. ..."
"... "military intelligence agents" ..."
"... "What struck me over last couple of years seem to me ratcheting up of anti-Russian sentiment almost trying to recreate a Cold War," ..."
"... "a hidden political agenda here as part of broader anti-Russian campaign" ..."
The UK has stirred up the Skripal saga for the sake of waging a broader campaign to
kowtow to the anti-Russian rhetoric inside the British government, ex-London mayor Ken
Livingstone has told RT. The latest smoking gun of allegations against Russia fired by
London, with the British Prime Minister Theresa May claiming that Russian "military
intelligence agents" attempted to murder former spy Sergei Skripal, leaves too many
questions and doubts, Livingstone believes.
"What struck me over last couple of years seem to me ratcheting up of anti-Russian
sentiment almost trying to recreate a Cold War," the former mayor told RT. He stressed
that London's turning its back to Moscow's constant readiness to cooperate and failure to
present to the public a shred of evidence – if there is any – might be a sign of
"a hidden political agenda here as part of broader anti-Russian campaign" inside the
British government.
Livingstone is not the only one who doubts the narrative. Independent political analyst Dan
Glazebrook, who also shared his views with RT, pointed how clumsy the alleged agents should
have been – from taking a train to reach their target to allowing themselves to be caught
on CCTV.
Talking of 5th column, lest forget the solid one in the UK.
Deep State's mouthpiece "The Telegraph" had dedicated several articles to the
identification of alleged Skripal Novichok poisoners, named as two Russian nationals who
briefly entered the UK under the aliases Petrov and Beshorov.
Sycophantic PM Theresa May has gone as far as stating that the suspects are GRU agents,
and pointing the finger at President Putin.
Jeremy Corbyn is being hounded because he is very reserved about the Novichok story.
The UK government is fully embedded with Zionist Israel. This cock-and-bull story, which
details have been nonetheless very well presented, is a very alarming hint that something is
in preparation against Russia, either directly in Syrian, or less directly in the
Ukraine.
@Iris Talking of
5th column, lest forget the solid one in the UK.
Deep State's mouthpiece "The Telegraph" had dedicated several articles to the
identification of alleged Skripal Novichok poisoners, named as two Russian nationals who
briefly entered the UK under the aliases Petrov and Beshorov.
Sycophantic PM Theresa May has gone as far as stating that the suspects are GRU agents,
and pointing the finger at President Putin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1VqSJCa7RA
Jeremy Corbyn is being hounded because he is very reserved about the Novichok story.
The UK government is fully embedded with Zionist Israel. This cock-and-bull story, which
details have been nonetheless very well presented, is a very alarming hint that something is
in preparation against Russia, either directly in Syrian, or less directly in the Ukraine.
Novichock poisoning false flag (Continued).
A possible explanation of the Novichok story being spun at the moment in the UK is that a
Western/Israeli military attack on Syria is in preparation to stop the Arab Syrian Army from
entering Idlib, the last terrorist stronghold.
Such Western intervention requires the pretext of a chemical attack, that will be staged
in the field by the proxy White Helmets, while UK public opinion will be subdued with
terrorising stories of weapons of mass destruction.
This same pretext was used for the April 2018 Western bombing of Syria. This bombing was
aimed at hitting key Syrian targets, but its scale was finally limited by the intervention of
General Mattis, who dreaded reciprocated actions against the 3000 US servicemen present in
Syria.
"The White Helmets (and an alleged chemical attack) are the last hope for regime change
in Syria"
Very interesting interview of former UK Ambassador Ford by SyrianGirl:
One day after Theresa May's Novichok show at the British Parliament , France's Chief of
Military Staff Francois Lecointre has declared that France is ready to strike Syria should
she dare a "chemical attack" on Idlib.
Both poodles each side of the Channel are barking in synchronism; Israel is pulling on the
leashes and something bad is in preparation.
Here is Francois Lecointre in his brown uniform. Unknown to us stupid plebeians, France
must be surrounded by steppes and deserts for brown to have been chosen as camouflage
colour.
John Wight has written for a variety of newspapers and websites, including the
Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and
Foreign Policy Journal. The recent development in the Skripals poisoning case is
guaranteed to plunge already dire relations between Moscow and London through the floor. At a
set-piece press conference in London, Neil Basu, head of the London Met's counter-terrorism
police force, positively identified two Russian suspects in the case. He produced CCTV images
of the two individuals along with their names and details of their movements from Russia to the
UK and back again. He also alleged that according to a " working hypothesis " the
suspects smuggled the Novichok substance used in the attempt on the lives of former Russia
intelligence office and British spy Sergei Skripal, and daughter Yulia, into the country with
them from Russia. Read more Names of
'Russian suspects' in Skripal case published by UK don't mean anything to us –
Moscow
The rocket fuel this very significant and very serious development adds to the already
seething anti-Russia sentiment and feeling that dominates the minds of the British political
and media establishment is self-evident. At a time of multiple crises involving Moscow and
London – crises yet to be resolved around the conflict in Syria, tensions over Ukraine,
the presence of NATO troops and military assets close to Russia's western border, sanctions,
etc. – it is extraordinarily worrying that relations between both countries have now
plunged to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.
That the Russian state is capable of carrying out an attack of this nature is not in doubt.
All states are capable of carrying out such attacks, and all states, including Britain, have
carried them out at various points in their history. But the timing of this particular attack
is key, given that it took place just a few months prior to the start of the World Cup in
Russia, and at a time when the Russian government was extending itself in attempting to repair
relations with the West with a view to achieving normalization.
Then, too, the motive remains impossible to discern. Sergei Skripal had been living openly
under his own name in Salisbury, England, where the attack took place, for some time, so
clearly did not believe that he was in any danger.
The international damage to Russia's reputation as a consequence of being behind such an
attack is likewise not in any doubt.
These points are not, of course, made as infallible proof that the Russian government or
intelligence was not responsible. But they are pertinent in of themselves, given the
context.
Another point worth raising is the sheer crudity of two supposed Russian agents taking a
direct flight to and from the UK to carry out the attack and travelling together both ways.
Such amateurish planning is the stuff of your average Hollywood spy spoof movie rather anything
you would associate with a serious intelligence agency.
Significantly, during his press conference and presentation, Mr Basu did not go as far as
alleging Russian state involvement. Such restraint, however, has long been a foreign land where
the prime minister is concerned.
In her statement to the Commons on this latest development, Theresa May wasted no time in
unleashing a rhetorical artillery barrage against the Kremlin, buoyed by a feral chorus of MPs
who almost to a man and woman had already embraced Russia as the officially designated enemy of
all that is holy and good in the world.
Either the prime minister knows something that the head of the Met's counter-terrorism
police force does not, or we have entered an age when blaming Russia for everything is an
unofficial requirement of the duties of high political office in Westminster.
To be fair to the prime minister though, she's been blaming the Kremlin for this crime
almost since the very day it took place, gleefully riding the wave of anti-Russia hysteria that
had already been whipped up by a mainstream media whose denizens one James Connolly was once
minded to describe as " The inkslingers of the jingo press ."
With her leadership mired in crisis over Brexit, and with her errant former foreign
secretary and putative prime minister, Boris Johnson, currently breathing down her neck with a
looming challenge to her leadership, for the prime minister the timing of this development
could not, politically, be more convenient. For at such moments she is able to give free rein
to the appearance of the kind of strong and robust leadership qualities that are, in truth,
grievously absent.
Going forward, this will only add more grist to the mill of a neocon firmament whose very
existence is predicated on maintaining Russia in the role of existential threat to Western
civilization. A frog's chorus of calls and demands for ever more stringent trade, financial and
economic sanctions against Moscow will reach a crescendo, buttressed by an uptick in the
deployment of troops and military assets to eastern Europe in a futile effort to intimidate and
cow the Kremlin into accepting its prescribed status as a vassal of Washington and its
allies.
Worryingly, in 2018 we have reached the stage that George Orwell described in his classic
novel, 1984: " The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed
that no past or future agreement with him was possible. "
Western ideologues should take a moment to consider that Orwell wrote his classic work as a
warning not a blueprint.
"... Over the past decade or so, a disturbing number of Russian nationals living in Britain have met untimely deaths. The victims – at least 14 – have been high-profile individuals, such as oligarch businessman Boris Berezovsky or former Kremlin security agent Alexander Litvinenko. All were living in Britain as exiles, and all were viewed as opponents of President Vladimir Putin's government. ..."
"... Invariably, British politicians and news media refer to the deaths of Russian émigrés as "proof" of Russian state "malign activity". Putin in particular is accused of ordering "the hits" as some kind of vendetta against critics and traitors. ..."
"... The claims of Russian state skulduggery have been reported over and over without question in the British media as well as US media. It has become an article-of-faith espoused by British and American politicians alike. "Putin is a killer," they say with seeming certainty. There is simply no question about it in their assertions. ..."
Over the past decade or so, a disturbing number of Russian nationals living in Britain have
met untimely deaths. The victims – at least 14 – have been high-profile
individuals, such as oligarch businessman Boris Berezovsky or former Kremlin security agent
Alexander Litvinenko. All were living in Britain as exiles, and all were viewed as opponents of
President Vladimir Putin's government.
Invariably, British politicians and news media
refer to the deaths of Russian émigrés as "proof" of Russian state "malign
activity". Putin in particular is accused of ordering "the hits" as some kind of vendetta
against critics and traitors.
The claims of Russian state skulduggery have been reported over and over without question in
the British media as well as US media. It has become an article-of-faith espoused by British
and American politicians alike. "Putin is a killer," they say with seeming certainty. There is
simply no question about it in their assertions.
The claims have also been given a quasi-legal veracity, with a British government-appointed
inquiry in the case of Alexander Litvinenko making a conclusion
that his death in 2006 was "highly likely" the result of a Kremlin plot to assassinate. Putin
was personally implicated in the death of Litvinenko by the official British inquiry. The
victim was said to have been poisoned with radioactive polonium. Deathbed images of a
bald-headed Litvinenko conjure up a haunting image of alleged Kremlin evil-doing.
Once the notion of Russian evil-doing is inculcated the public mind, then subsequent events
can be easily invoked as "more proof" of what has already been "established". Namely, so it
goes, that the Russian state is carrying out assassinations on British territory.
Thus, we see this "corroborating" effect with the alleged poisoning of a former Russian
double-agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in Salisbury back in March this year.
uke Harding likes writing books
about things that he wasn't really involved in and doesn't really understand. Unfortunately for
the rest of the world, that covers pretty much everything. His book about Snowden, for example,
was beautifully
taken down by Julian Assange – a person who was actually there.
He's priming the traumatised public for another of his works, this time about Sergei
Skripal. This one will probably be out by Christmas, unless he can find someone else's work to plagiarise , in which case he might
get it done sooner.
It will have a snide and not especially clever title, perhaps a sort of pun –
something like "A Poison by Any Other Name: How Russian assassins contaminated the heart of
rural England" . It will relate, in jarring sub-sub-le Carre prose, a story of Russian
malfeasance and evil beyond imagining, whilst depicting the whole cast as bumbling caricatures,
always held up for ridicule by the author and his smug readership.
There's an extract in The Guardian today. It's not listed as one, but trust me, it
will be in the book. It's title, as predicted above, is sort of a pun (and will probably
be a chapter heading):
Planes, trains and fake names: the trail left by Skripal suspects
You see? Like that film? I don't really get it either but until someone else comes up with
something clever he can copy, Luke is left to his own rather meagre devices.
It starts off surprisingly strong, waiting three whole sentences before lurching violently
into totally unsupported conjecture:
The two men were dressed inconspicuously in jeans, fleece jackets and trainers as they
boarded the flight from Moscow to Gatwick. Their names, according to their Russian passports,
were Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Both were around 40 years old. Neither looked
suspicious.
This is, as far as we know so far, true.
The plane trundled down the icy runway. In Moscow the temperatures had fallen below -10C,
not unusual for early March. In Britain it had been snowing.
and so is this. In fact, in googling "Moscow weather March 2018" Harding has displayed an
uncharacteristically thorough approach to research that was rarely (if ever) evidenced in his
previous works.
They had also packed a bottle of what appeared to be the Nina Ricci perfume Premier Jour.
The box it came in was prettily decorated with flowers, it listed ingredients including
alcohol and it bore the words "Made in France".
This is where truth ends and guesses take over: there is no evidence, at all, that these two
men had anything to do with the "perfume bottle" allegedly found by Charlie Rowley on June 27th
and allegedly containing a powerful nerve agent. There is (as far as we know) no fingerprint or
DNA evidence on the bottle, nobody saw them with the bottle, and there's no released CCTV
footage of them holding or carrying the bottle. Saying "it's in their backpack" is meaningless
without any evidence to back it up.
According to the Metropolitan police, the bottle in fact contained novichok, a lethal
nerve agent developed in the late Soviet Union. The bottle had been specially made to be
leakproof and had a customised applicator.
Note he doesn't feel the need to examine, question or even verify the words of the
Metropolitan Police. This is a recurring theme in Harding's works – there are people who
tell the truth (US) and people who lie (RUSSIANS). Evidence is a complication you can live
without.
Moscow's notorious poisons factory run by the KGB made similar devices throughout the cold
war.
Did they? Because he doesn't show any evidence this is true. One thing you can be sure of,
if there had ever been even a whisper about a "modified perfume bottle" in any Soviet archive
or from any "whistleblower currently living in the United States", it would be on the front
page in big black letters.
Petrov and Boshirov were aliases, detectives believe. Both men are suspected to be career
officers with the GRU, Russia's powerful and highly secretive military intelligence
service.
Note use of the word "believe", it makes regular appearances alongside it's buddies:
"suspect" and "probably".
And yes, they "believe" they are aliases because IF they were assassins then obviously they
used aliases. There's no evidence taken from their (currently totally theoretical) visa
applications that point to forgery, nobody at the time questioned their passports. As of today,
we have been given no reason to think they were aliases, except reasoning backwards from
assumed guilt which isn't how deduction works.
In fact, there's more than enough reason to assume they aren't aliases –
Firstly, they passed the visa check, secondly their passports were never questioned, thirdly
they've used them before (see below), and finally just WHY would a Russian spy-come-assassin
use a fake Russian name and a fake Russian passport? That's ridiculous.
The officers' assignment was covert. They were coming to Britain not as tourists but as
assassins.
[citation needed]
Their target was Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who spied for British intelligence,
got caught and was freed in a spy exchange in 2010. They were heading for his home in
provincial Salisbury.
Luke doesn't feel the need to dig down into the nitty gritty here – motive is a
trifle, to be added in the footnotes or made up on the spur of the moment when asked at a book
signing. I'm a bit more fussy than that – I feel the need to ask "Why did they release
him in 2010 and then try to kill him in 2018?" If they had wanted to kill him, why not just do
it when he was in prison in Russia between 2006 and 2010? If they wanted to kill him why do it
just weeks before the World Cup? What could they possibly have to gain?
Luke doesn't know, and neither do I.
Their Aeroflot flight SU2588 touched down at 3pm on Friday 2 March. They were recorded on
CCTV going through passport control, Boshirov with dark hair and a goatee beard, Petrov
unshaven and wearing a blue gingham shirt. Both were carrying satchels slung casually over
the shoulder.
This is all true, and completely unnecessary. It's what we in the industry call "filler" or
"padding". Totally meaningless and useless words that do nothing but take up space. Without it,
a lot of Luke's books would only be about 700 words long.
According to police, the pair had visited the UK before.
Way to bury the lead there, Luke.
This is actually quite important isn't it? I mean, when did they visit the UK before? Did
they visit Salisbury then too? Did they have any contact with Sergei Skripal? Were they
travelling under the same names? Were these visits linked with other intelligence work? Were
they just holidays? What kind of assassins would use the SAME FAKE IDS ON TWO DIFFERENT
OCCASIONS?
These are all very important questions, but Luke doesn't ask them. Because Luke is a modern
journalist, and they don't interrogate the claims of the state, just report them. To
Guardian reporters a question mark is just that funny squiggle next to the shift
key.
From Gatwick they caught the train to London Victoria station and then the tube to east
London, where they checked in to the City Stay hotel in Bow. It was a low-profile choice of
accommodation. The red-brick Victorian building is next to a branch of Barclays bank, a busy
train line and a wall daubed with graffiti. Across the road is a car pound and a Texaco
garage.
This just more filler. Totally meaningless packaging material. The prose equivalent of
All-Bran.
On hostile territory, Boshirov and Petrov operated in the manner of classic intelligence
operatives.
In this instance "the manner of classic intelligence operatives" means, flying direct to
London from Moscow, using Russian names and Russian passports (which you've used before),
checking into a hotel with a CCTV camera on the front door, going straight to the hometown of
an ex-double agent, leaving a Russian poison his front door even though he's already gone out,
dumping your unused poison in a charity bin on the high street, going back to your hotel,
smearing poison around that too even though you already dumped it, and then flying directly
back to Moscow without even waiting to see if the plan worked and the target is dead.
This, in Luke's head, is ace intelligence work.
On the day of the hit, according to detectives, the pair made a similar journey, taking
the 8.05am train from Waterloo to Salisbury and arriving at 11.48am.
Yes, they arrived at 11.48, making it absolutely pointless to put poison on the Skripal's
door, as they had already gone out.
The perfume bottle was probably concealed in a light grey backpack carried by Petrov.
It was "probably concealed" in that backpack because, as I said above, there's no evidence
either of those men ever knew the perfume bottle existed. You never see it in their
possession.
Oh, and the backpack would have to contain TWO bottles of perfume – because the police
aren't sure the bottle Rowley found 3 months later was the same bottle, and Rowley reported it
was unopened and wrapped in cellophane. Perhaps Luke should have read the details of the case
instead of trolling IMDB looking for movie titles with "plane" in them or googling "insouciant"
to see if he was using it right.
From Salisbury station the two men set off on foot. It was a short walk of about a mile to
Skripal's semi-detached home in Christie Miller Road.
which doesn't matter, because the Skripals weren't there. They left at 9.15 and there is no
evidence they ever returned.
At Skripal's house the Russians smeared or sprayed novichok on to the front door handle,
police say.
which doesn't matter, because the Skripals weren't there. They left at 9.15 and there is no
evidence they ever returned.
It doesn't matter if Borishov and Petrov re-tiled the bathroom with novichok grouting or hid
novichok in the battery compartment of Sergei's TV remote or replaced all his lightbulbs with
novichok bombs that explode when you use the clapper .according to everything we've been told
so far Sergei and Julia were literally never in that house again.
Luke seems to write a lot about this case, considering he is barely acquainted with the most
basic facts of it.
The moment went unobserved
True. There is not a single piece of footage, photograph or eyewitness placing these men
within a hundred feet of the Skripals, or their house. The "moment went unobserved" is an
incredibly dishonest way of phrasing this, "the moment is entirely theoretical" is rather
fairer. Or, if you want to be honest "it's possible none of this happened".
At some point on their walk back they must have tossed away the bottle, which at this
point was too dangerous to try to smuggle back through customs.
It's all falling into place perfectly isn't it?
At some point the two men, who we never see holding or carrying the bottle, must have
thrown it away because three months later someone else found it.
They took it through customs once but couldn't a second time, because reasons.
Also one of them was smiling a sort of "I just poisoned somebody" smile:
At 1.05pm the men were recorded in Fisherton Street on their way back to the station. They
appeared more relaxed, Petrov grinning even.
Those evil bastards.
By the time Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found collapsed on a park bench
in the centre of Salisbury later that afternoon, the poisoners were gone.
No Luke: By the time Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found collapsed on a
park bench in the centre of Salisbury later that afternoon, the ALLEGED poisoners were
gone.
Alleged is an important word for example, there is a marked difference between being an
ALLEGED plagiarist, and being a
plagiarist .
The visitors were captured on CCTV one more time, at Heathrow airport. It was 7.28pm and
both men were going through security, Petrov first, wheeling a small black case. In his right
hand was a shiny red object, his Russian passport. Police believe the passport was genuine,
his name not. In other words, that it was a sophisticated espionage operation carried out by
a state or state entities.
You see? Nobody thought the passport was fake, which means it was a really good fake
. So the Russian state must have been in on it. This is known as an unfalsifiable hypothesis.
If the passport did look fake, that would be evidence that the men were spies and
therefore the Russian state was in on it.
Harding has created a narrative where there is literally no development that could ever
challenge his conclusions.
Seemingly, the GRU plan – executed two weeks before Russia's presidential election
– had worked perfectly.
This is an example of the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy – two things
happen at the same time, therefore they happen for the same reason. It's a maneuver we at OffG
refer to as "the Harding", where you state two separate assertions or facts one after the other
in such a way as to imply a relationship, without ever making a solid statement. I'll give you
an example:
Luke Harding was born in 1968, mere weeks before the brutal assassination of Robert
Kennedy.
Harding is suggesting some sort of connection between the election and the poisoning. He
can't STATE it, because then he has to explain his reasoning – and there isn't any.
Putin, and Russia as a whole, had nothing to gain from poisoning an ex-spy they had released
nearly a decade earlier, especially on the eve of a Presidential election and mere weeks before
the World Cup. There's no argument to be made, so he doesn't attempt to make one, he just makes
a snide and baseless insinuation.
Vladimir Putin, the man whom a public inquiry found in 2016 had "probably" signed off on
the operation to kill Litvinenko. The UK security services say a "body of evidence" points to
the GRU.
"Probably" is also a big word. For example, there's a marked difference between "probably
being a plagiarist" and "being a
plagiarist" .
It seems clear that Moscow continues to view Britain as a playground for undercover
operations and is relatively insouciant about the consequences, diplomatic and political. The
Skripal attack may have misfired. But the message, mingling contempt and arrogance, is there
for all to see: we can smite our enemies whenever and wherever we want, and there is nothing
you can do about it.
This is the second time Luke has used the word "insouciant" in two days, which means that
word of the day
calendar was a probably sound investment, but he forgot to flip it over this morning.
Other than that, this final paragraph is nothing but paranoia.
The Russians were TRYING to make it obvious, to send a message. But were also lazy and
arrogant. And yet also left no solid evidence because they are experts at espionage. They had
no motive except being mean, and couldn't even be bothered to make sure they did it right. They
want us all to know they did it, but will never admit it.
The actual truth of the situation can be summed up in a few bullet points.
Currently:
There is no evidence these men were using forged documents. There is no evidence
these men were travelling under aliases or assumed names. There is no evidence these men ever
had any contact with Sergei Skripal's house. There is no evidence these men ever had any
contact with Sergei Skripal or his daughter. There is no evidence these men were Russian
intelligence assets or had any military training. There is no evidence these men ever possessed
or had any contact with the perfume bottle found by Charlie Rowley on June 27th. They have
visited the UK before, not on intelligence business (as far as we know). Their movements don't
align with the timeline of Skripal's illness.
The entire narrative is created around half a dozen screen caps of two (allegedly) Russian
men, not behaving in any way illegally or even suspiciously. All the rest is fiction, created
by a hack to service an agenda. This isn't one of those "You couldn't make it up" stories, it's
not that incredible. It's just insulting and stupid.
Theresa May demonstrated traits of a psychopath who cling to power using all available to her
means, including criminal. Looks like British version of Hillary.
Notable quotes:
"... despite hysterical news broadcasts and front-page headlines regarding "Russian assassins," the public know nothing more substantively about the events of Sunday, March 4, than they did more than six months ago. ..."
"... May did not detail the intelligence she was supposedly acting on. Instead she singled out Russia as the main enemy of the West that had to confronted, declaring, "This chemical weapons attack on our soil was part of a wider pattern of Russian behaviour that persistently seeks to undermine our security and that of our allies around the world." ..."
"... "Back in March, Russia sought to sow doubt and uncertainty about the evidence we presented to this House -- and some were minded to believe them," May told parliament. "Today's announcement shows that we were right." Except that it doesn't. The new narrative is that "Petrov" and "Boshirov" flew into Gatwick airport on Friday, March 2. CCTV footage purportedly verifies this. They checked into a budget hotel in Bow, east London, and the next day, according to police, travelled to Salisbury, staying in the area for several hours, before returning to London. ..."
"... The pair then returned to Salisbury on Sunday, March 4. Police claim they are shown on CCTV at 11:58 a.m., on Wilton Road, "moments before the attack" on Sergei Skripal. ..."
"... Former UK ambassador Craig Murray asked: "1. Why did two alleged GRU agents travel under false names and fake passports, but still use Russian ..."
"... Murray retweeted a statement from a freelance journalist, Neil Clark, pointing out: "If the two men were identified coming through Gatwick, it is impossible that the police do not know what kind of visa they were travelling on. Something is very wrong here -- ties in with the fact that the photos released [showing grainy images of the men's faces on dark backgrounds] are not UK visa standard photos." ..."
"... at precisely the same second ..."
"... Murray points out that the Skripals left their home at 9:15 a.m. on March 4 and were assumed not to have returned home, before they were found collapsed. "But the Metropolitan Police state that Boshirov and Petrov did not arrive in Salisbury until 11.48 on the day of the poisoning. That means that they could not have applied a nerve agent to the Skripals' doorknob before noon at the earliest." ..."
"... An article on the Off Guardian website noted that the police said the Bow Hotel was "contaminated" with novichok, but no one has been reported ill in six months at the hotel. ..."
"... The government's narrative cannot be taken at face value, especially as it is supplied by the same security services that faked "evidence" of Iraq having "weapons of mass destruction" to justify pre-emptive war against Iraq. ..."
"... Moreover, the timing of the government's latest disclosure is highly suspect. Yesterday, the UK raised its new allegations against Moscow at the United Nations Security Council, after which the US, France, Germany and Canada issued a joint statement that the Russian government "almost certainly" approved the poisoning of the Skripals. ..."
"... The same day the European Union announced it was extending, for a further six months, the sanctions it had imposed on around 150 Russian individuals and 50 companies following the right-wing Western-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014. Complaints of Russian aggression in Crimea have been used to carry through a massive NATO build-up on Russia's borders. ..."
"... These measures unfold as the US renews threats over the operation by forces loyal to the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad against Al Qaeda affiliates that control the northwestern province of Idlib. Denouncing the "threat of an imminent Assad regime attack, backed by Russia and Iran," the White House stated that, in the event of a chemical weapons attack, "the United States and its Allies will respond swiftly and appropriately." ..."
The UK government and media have doubled down on their anti-Russian campaign following
Wednesday's announcement by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that two men have been named as
suspects in the poisoning of former Russian/British double agent Sergei Skripal and his
daughter, Yulia.
The police released passport photos and CCTV images of two men in various locations,
including Gatwick Airport and Salisbury. But despite hysterical news broadcasts and
front-page headlines regarding "Russian assassins," the public know nothing more substantively
about the events of Sunday, March 4, than they did more than six months ago.
CPS Director of Legal Services Sue Hemming said that evidence from counter-terrorism police
meant "it is clearly in the public interest to charge Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who
are Russian nationals," with the attempted murder of Sergei, Yulia and police officer Nick
Bailey.
Prime Minister Theresa May then told parliament that, in addition to the police
investigation, the security and intelligence agencies had conducted their own investigation
and, "based on a body of intelligence, the Government has concluded that the two individuals
named by the police and CPS are officers from the Russian military intelligence service, also
known as the GRU."
She added: "So this was not a rogue operation. It was almost certainly also approved outside
the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state."
The Russian Foreign Ministry has categorically rejected the UK's claims, stating the names
of the two men "do not mean anything to us."
May did not detail the intelligence she was supposedly acting on. Instead she singled
out Russia as the main enemy of the West that had to confronted, declaring, "This chemical
weapons attack on our soil was part of a wider pattern of Russian behaviour that persistently
seeks to undermine our security and that of our allies around the world."
"Back in March, Russia sought to sow doubt and uncertainty about the evidence we
presented to this House -- and some were minded to believe them," May told parliament. "Today's
announcement shows that we were right." Except that it doesn't. The new narrative is that
"Petrov" and "Boshirov" flew into Gatwick airport on Friday, March 2. CCTV footage purportedly
verifies this. They checked into a budget hotel in Bow, east London, and the next day,
according to police, travelled to Salisbury, staying in the area for several hours, before
returning to London.
The pair then returned to Salisbury on Sunday, March 4. Police claim they are shown on
CCTV at 11:58 a.m., on Wilton Road, "moments before the attack" on Sergei Skripal.
The police say two more images show the "suspects at Salisbury train station at 13.50 on
Sunday, 4 March, as they embark on their journey back to London." Another image shows the
"suspects passing through passport control at London Heathrow at 19.28 on Sunday evening (4
March) -- in the image, 'Petrov' is at the front and 'Boshirov' at the back."
May's definitive assertion of Russian authorship was contradicted by Assistant Commissioner
Neil Basu, National Lead for Counter-Terrorism Policing. Asked by the press if he had any
evidence that the two men were Russian State operatives, he said, "No." Basu said in his
statement that "it is likely that they were travelling under aliases and that these are not
their real names."
BBC Security Correspondent Gordon Corera reported that he understood the authorities
identified the pair "a while back" and "may also know their real names." But if so, why are
they not being made public?
Former UK ambassador Craig Murray asked: "1. Why did two alleged GRU agents travel under
false names and fake passports, but still use Russian names and Russian
passports? If they had used EU passports -- say from Lithuania or Estonia for example -- they
wouldn't have needed a visa, thanks to EU freedom of movement agreements, and could still have
spoken Russian without raising suspicion."
Murray retweeted a statement from a freelance journalist, Neil Clark, pointing out: "If
the two men were identified coming through Gatwick, it is impossible that the police do not
know what kind of visa they were travelling on. Something is very wrong here -- ties in with
the fact that the photos released [showing grainy images of the men's faces on dark
backgrounds] are not UK visa standard photos."
Among the glaring oddities in the new account is that the two photos released of "Petrov"
and "Boshirov" shows them both in what appears to be the same space at Gatwick airport at
precisely the same second (16:22:43 on March 2, 2018.) Raising the physically
impossibility, Murray suggests the CCTV images may have been
doctored . The police are now claiming that the two are in different but similar places
passing CCTV cameras at exactly the same time.
The government's latest narrative fails to correspond with claims it has maintained for
months that the Skripals were poisoned by "novichok" being applied to the front door knob of
Sergei's house.
Murray points out that the Skripals left their home at 9:15 a.m. on March 4 and were
assumed not to have returned home, before they were found collapsed. "But the Metropolitan
Police state that Boshirov and Petrov did not arrive in Salisbury until 11.48 on the day of the
poisoning. That means that they could not have applied a nerve agent to the Skripals' doorknob
before noon at the earliest."
An article on the Off Guardian website noted that the police said the Bow Hotel was
"contaminated" with novichok, but no one has been reported ill in six months at the hotel.
Moreover, to contaminate the room "the suspects would have to physically apply the poison to
it, and since they allegedly left [sic] country on March 4th -- the same day as the alleged
attack -- the contamination must have happened BEFORE Sergei Skripal was poisoned."
Also, previously the Metropolitan Police said that it was connecting the poisoning of the
Skripals with that of Dawn Sturgess and her partner Charley Rowley. Dawn died in hospital after
being exposed to what was described as a novichok on July 8. Rowley is now seriously ill with
reported meningitis.
Yet Basu commented, "We don't yet know where the suspects disposed of the Novichok they used
to attack the door, where Dawn and Charlie got the bottle that poisoned them, or if it is the
same bottle used in both poisonings."
The government's narrative cannot be taken at face value, especially as it is supplied
by the same security services that faked "evidence" of Iraq having "weapons of mass
destruction" to justify pre-emptive war against Iraq.
Moreover, the timing of the government's latest disclosure is highly suspect. Yesterday,
the UK raised its new allegations against Moscow at the United Nations Security Council, after
which the US, France, Germany and Canada issued a joint statement that the Russian government
"almost certainly" approved the poisoning of the Skripals.
The same day the European Union announced it was extending, for a further six months,
the sanctions it had imposed on around 150 Russian individuals and 50 companies following the
right-wing Western-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014. Complaints of Russian aggression in Crimea
have been used to carry through a massive NATO build-up on Russia's borders.
May wants the EU to go further and follow the US, which imposed additional sanctions from
August 27 on the basis that Russia had used "chemical weapons in violation of international law
or lethal chemical weapons against its own nationals." This include terminating aid, except on
urgent humanitarian grounds, restricting access to US credit, ending aspects of financing and
prohibiting exports to Russia of "restricted goods or technology." Russia has 90 days to allow
inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to verify it
does not have chemical weapons, or Washington will impose a far more severe set of
sanctions.
These measures unfold as the US renews threats over the operation by forces loyal to the
Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad against Al Qaeda affiliates that control the
northwestern province of Idlib. Denouncing the "threat of an imminent Assad regime attack,
backed by Russia and Iran," the White House stated that, in the event of a chemical weapons
attack, "the United States and its Allies will respond swiftly and appropriately."
Washington and London are not responding out of humanitarian concerns. They have backed the
Al Qaeda-affiliated terror groups in Syria as part of their regime-change operations in the
Middle East, and broader geostrategic objectives against Russia and Iran. As in previous
instances -- Douma in April for example -- Washington's threats amount to an invitation to the
Al Qaeda forces to stage an incident to justify military intervention by the US and its
allies.
On the one hand, the ruling class want us to believe that Russian operations are highly
sophisticated, that we should all live in suspense of when the next incident will occur, that
we should hunger for vengeance, and yet when the media and government provide their
"evidence" it shows that the so-called Russian operatives are incredibly inept. Of course,
what else could be expected from manufactured narratives.
The British ruling class and it's security forces are cold blooded killers for hundreds of
years. There is nothing too savage below them. Nothing they say can be taken at face value.
This whole affair has been a set up from the beginning. As we see know, it is used once
again when needed. Russia is about to make a final push in Syria. This means, if they are
victorious, America and Britain will have been stopped in the Middle East.
England has nothing left to lose. Nothing is off the table for their survival.
Jsut to assume tat two secret agents sent on an assassination plot from the Russian
government would leave such obvious traces is absurd. Using Russian passports, needing a visa
to enter, flying from Russia direct to London and then back... The British want us to think
that the Russian secret service does not know about all the CCTV cameras in London, or
England in general. Or the advanced level of security at Gatwick.
Anti-NATO Russians joke about this "new proof", I have read a funny short poem about it, and
my favorite joke was - looks like there is not even Lestrade in Scotland Yard anymore.
talked about his apprehension of the social media . From the story: He saves his
greatest condemnation for the scourge of fake news and societal manipulation on large social
media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Despite the founders of the social giants
pledging to do more to ensure public debate is not artificially skewed, Plattner believes the
solution will have to come from law enforcement and criminal penalties. He says humans are
genetically wired to thrive on rumours, dating back to ancient times when rumours about what
was going on in the next village would be on everyone's mind. He fears social platforms have
simply become rumour distribution machines of unbelievable power.
"I was very optimistic that social networks would improve access to information and
democracy in general, but I am very disappointed that the opposite is happening," he says.
"Professional information producers undermine the social networks, undermine states and
elections. It is unbelievable what is happening and we have a huge problem." Plattner draws a
parallel with insider trading, which he says is as easy to commit as social media manipulation,
but is not so common because people know they will be slugged with criminal convictions. "This
is all before we look at the exploitation of personal data, where we are naked in front of the
social networks, because we undress ourselves, and not only literally," he says. "I think this
will continue until we have the legal systems properly looking at it, and have strong laws that
people have to obey."
The plot now turned into smuggling operation run by older Skripal, possibly with some participation of this daughter.
There were similar hypothesis about Litvinenko death -- that he was involved n polonium smuggling operation.
The behaviour of two people involved is unprofessional -- they took public transport so they were strictly bounded by train
schedule. But that's logical if they were mules -- used for smuggling some substance to GB.
Notable quotes:
"... As with the fraudulent "Mueller investigation" in the US, despite the united efforts of government officials and a colluding, servile mass-media insisting that there's a (sinister Russian) "there" there, I foolishly thought that the overall absence of actual evidence, or even a plausible rationale connecting the dubious dots, was an overreach that would rapidly reach a fatal point of diminishing returns. ..."
"... But I underestimated the staying power of Big Lies, and the Big Liars who tell them ..."
"... Another oddity, the hotel the men stayed at, which was supposedly contaminated by Novichok as discovered on May the 4th - I did a news search for this hotel for the period March - September 4th and couldn't find a single reference to it being cordoned off or investigated by the police. Did they let people continue to use the hotel without telling them it could be contaminated? ..."
"... EVERYONE knows it's all BS. BUT, everyone talking about it gives it traction. I find this no different than the USA scoundrels worried about Syrian citizens in Idlib. ..."
"... The most worrying angle, as far as I am concerned, is the utter unbelievability of these stories. Exactly in line with 9/11 (three buildings knocked down by two planes), the Boston Marathon bombing, countless supposed multiple murders in the USA that do not seem to have taken place as officially described, MH17, and the Syrian "chemical weapons" attacks. ..."
"... So we had Bolton clearly stating in the media time and time again --- if chemical weapons are found in Idlib it would be a game changer to US policy in Syria, thus prompting those desperate cornered brutal rebels, offering a last way out of there situation. Now we have the prime minister. UK giving a statement about new evidence re Salisbury, chemical Russia. I would put a weeks wage on there being a chemical attack in Syria Idlib enytime now ! This is the UK prime minster aiding a massive brutal crime. ..."
"... It is obvious this whole novichok thing is a false flag op. The only question is why did the UK government did this. ..."
"... UK agencies have a long track record back to before WW2 running operations to get the US into a war. Their recent false flag operations inside the UK are to soften up the US/UK public in advance of the UK managed chemical weapon false flag attack in Syria they are clearly threatening in advance. ..."
"... There are times of the day when 2 passengers could arrive at an empty passport control, enter two different tunnels at the same time and arrive at exactly the same second at equivalent gates. Not many times, because it means that there is no queue at either tunnel. And 16:22 is not one of these times. ..."
"... You think that two members of a highly trained hit squad are going to walk through Heathrow together? You've got to be dreaming. Have you no concept of Operational Security? Dear oh dear... ..."
"... Historian and political analyst Vladimir Kornilov wrote an article for RIA Novosti comparing the famous 1924 SIS forgery, "Zinoviev letter", to the ongoing Skripal affair: https://ria.ru/analytics/20180905/1527822792.html ( machine translation ; the translation is good, except that "the Violins" should read as "the Skripals"). ..."
"... And with all due respect to b I don't think the airport pictures prove much. Who were these two? Why did they go to Salisbury? It looks too sloppy to be GRU. Russian Mafia contract killers is my guess. Unless the whole story is an elaborate MI6 concoction and all the CCTV photos are fake. ..."
"... A beautiful story, this Skripal affair...designed and timed to draw the public into emotional judgments, against reason and logic, immediately prior to the Russian pummeling of jihadi scum. One wonders what sort of blowback arises from such psychological conditioning. Hmmm... ..."
"... As I wrote before, the case reeks of planted evidence. A normal logic of investigation would be to inspect "probable leads" ASAP, and to perform tests ASAP. Instead, the famous door knob was tested with one month delay, and the hotel room, with two month delay. But planting evidence in an improvised mode requires planning and debates how to do it. The logistics of planting evidence are the most plausible explanation why it was done at the place where Skripals lived rather than close to the place where they together lost consciousness. Planting evidence in the hotel is simplicity itself, because it is very easy to do it in a secret lab. ..."
"... Two men (traveling together on Russian passports) are seen leaving a flight from Moscow and (in the most heavily CCTV monitored country in the world), immediately take public transport directly to and from the scene of the crime. ..."
"... Its very hard to imagine that any intelligence agency would be so sloppy as to use their own nationals, own passports, travel together, take direct flights from their own capital, use public transport, make no effort to avoid CCTV, casually dispose of vital evidence where it was certain to be found (a deadly poison left in a brandname perfume box at a charity donation bin? someone was going to open it eventually), etc. There are many more flaws but there are also more significant questions. ..."
"... Is there any strong reason to believe that US or UK intelligence were less likely to poison Skripal than Russia? Did he perhaps have evidence regarding the Steele Dossier they wanted to silence? If so, is there any reason we should not suspect the men in the picture of working for non-Russian intelligence who are deliberately trying to point the finger of blame at Russia? ..."
"... Personally, I think relity is much more mundane: the UK, given its objective reality post-Brexit, simply decided to (re)synchronize (update) its geopolitical position with the USA's. When the USA decided to jump into the madness of Russophobia after Trump's victory, the UK simply had to jump after because it is so dependent on the Americans they kinda didn't have a choice. ..."
"... They need something to try to put pressure on Russia. What tools do they have? "Skripal case", "Russian meddling in elections" (aka "Russian hackers"), "Russian doping", situation in Donbass, illegal detentions/abductions of Russian citizens (Ukraine did it with Kirill Vyshinsky in May, the US did it with Maria Butina recently etc.), cheap provocations with chemical weapons in Syria to accuse Assad/Russia. ..."
"... I would pick three directions - the "Skripal case", fake "chemical attacks" in Syria and deliberate aggravation of the situation in Donbass (terrorist act against DPR head Alexander Zakharchenko is just the beginning) are, apparently (in their opinion), the most effective measures to influence Russia to change its policy in Syria. These tools will be used. Simultaneously, or in a particular order. ..."
"... The key proposition that the police are asserting is that the Skripals were poisoned by 'delayed reaction'. The alleged suspects were out of Salisbury 3 hours before the Skripals exhibited signs of poisoning, nerve agents, however, act immediately. If the 'door handle theory' is not physically possible, which it is not, then that leaves out the assassin hypothesis. Most likely, as I have always said, is that this is about Sergei's skulduggery, he took delivery of the agent from these guys for eventual passing over to the White Helmets via their MI6 handlers. All went pear shaped because of a leaky bottle. Sergei realised something was wrong so hurried his meal so he could check it out, reached the park bench with Julia and the saw that the bottle was leaking and began to feel ill, Julia through the thing away and went down herself. ..."
Some commenters there who claim to be familiar with the airport have already noted that
the men were surely exiting from parallel walkways ("channels"), and/or that the CCTV clock
was simply malfunctioning.
Even if both claims are true, it doesn't explain away the remarkable congruence between
the men's supposedly separate and independent progress through the walkways. Again, some
commenters who purport to be personally familiar with the location assert that there are
visible differences in the "two" walkways shown in the photos-- but to me they look
identical.
This is still another dodgy, ambiguous piece of "evidence" to prop up the ongoing Big Lie.
In the weeks following the Skripal event, the UK officials began making such ludicrous and
incredible assertions that I naïvely expected that their colossal deceit would blow up
in their faces sooner than later.
As with the fraudulent "Mueller investigation" in the US, despite the united efforts of
government officials and a colluding, servile mass-media insisting that there's a (sinister
Russian) "there" there, I foolishly thought that the overall absence of actual evidence, or
even a plausible rationale connecting the dubious dots, was an overreach that would rapidly
reach a fatal point of diminishing returns.
But I underestimated the staying power of Big Lies, and the Big Liars who tell them.
Another oddity, the hotel the men stayed at, which was supposedly contaminated by Novichok as
discovered on May the 4th - I did a news search for this hotel for the period March -
September 4th and couldn't find a single reference to it being cordoned off or investigated
by the police. Did they let people continue to use the hotel without telling them it could be
contaminated? Did nobody notice police and men in hazmat suits there? Or was the name of the
hotel d noticed?
Everyone,,, EVERYONE knows it's all BS. BUT, everyone talking about it gives it traction. I find this no different than the USA scoundrels worried about Syrian citizens in
Idlib. Anything the West says or does is USDA Grade AAA horse hockey.
As to the UK government being able to fake the involvement of GRU agents - remember that
Sergei Skripal himself was a British spy while working for the GRU. Why not others?
The most worrying angle, as far as I am concerned, is the utter unbelievability of these
stories. Exactly in line with 9/11 (three buildings knocked down by two planes), the Boston
Marathon bombing, countless supposed multiple murders in the USA that do not seem to have
taken place as officially described, MH17, and the Syrian "chemical weapons" attacks.
The official explanations of all those stories are so weak and inconsistent that they
would be rejected as plot lines for Dr Who or CSI. So what is their little game? I can think
of two unpleasant possibilities.
They are trying to calibrate exactly how grotesque a set of lies they can pass off
without any public protest or outcry.
They are compiling a list of the few people who are both intelligent and bold enough to
point out the obvious discrepancies in public.
So we had Bolton clearly stating in the media time and time again --- if chemical weapons are
found in Idlib it would be a game changer to US policy in Syria, thus prompting those
desperate cornered brutal rebels, offering a last way out of there situation. Now we have the prime minister. UK giving a statement about new evidence re
Salisbury, chemical Russia. I would put a weeks wage on there being a chemical attack in Syria
Idlib enytime now ! This is the UK prime minster aiding a massive brutal crime.
This prime minister got in to power by a slim margine on the back of 3 false flag terror
attacks 2 in London one in Manchester persuading the public to go for the get tough vote .
Are we gulable or what ?
UK agencies have a long track record back to before WW2 running operations to get the US into
a war. Their recent false flag operations inside the UK are to soften up the US/UK public in
advance of the UK managed chemical weapon false flag attack in Syria they are clearly
threatening in advance.
This is beyond ridiculous that the dried out husk of the UK is beating its chest for war
with Russia. I almost wish that they would get their war and be beaten flat.
Just yesterday the Russian embassy in the UK released this statement: Today marks exactly six months since the Russian citizens Sergei and Yulia Skripal were
taken to Salisbury District Hospital under obscure circumstances...
There are times of the day when 2 passengers could arrive at an empty passport control, enter
two different tunnels at the same time and arrive at exactly the same second at equivalent
gates.
Not many times, because it means that there is no queue at either tunnel.
And 16:22 is not one of these times.
My experience through those boarding bridges is that when boarding people walk normal pace
and when exiting they do so at a faster pace down the bridge. I guess they want get to their
luggage quickly.
Køn @ 14 "In fact anyone insisting that this timestamp is some gotcha loses a lot of
credibility in my eyes."
Don't be a gallah, Køn! You think that two members of a highly trained hit
squad are going to walk through Heathrow together? You've got to be dreaming. Have you no
concept of Operational Security? Dear oh dear...
The two strong-looking men take it in turns to carry what looks like a light backpack which
is kind of odd in itself. If nerve gas had either been sprayed or smeared, one or both would
have to have used a full protective suit, which consists of a bulky gas mask, jacket,
trousers and substantial boots, which would have called for a much bigger backpack.
These photos show the same time but different locations. These are the security barriers
between passport control and the baggage reclaim hall, there are a number of parallel gates
that open automatically and are monitored by CCTV. The high resolution photos on the Met
website show a different camera angles: The Petrov photo shows a white flat surface with a
thin red stripe in the lower right corner and the top of the wall panels on the upper left.
The Boshirov picture show a much wider red stripe (and no white surface) and the top of the
panels is not visible. So you have two different gates entered at the same time.
I'm no expert but allow me to play devil's advocate. What if they have two cameras on
different angles with separate receivers in case one goes offline and their clock is not in
sync so the second camera stamps same time when it's one second later on first. It just seems
that if there was Photoshop involved they would think of changing the timestamp and inserting
person in precisely same angle. Of course it doesn't explain why they would take pictures
from two different cameras, but maybe face appeared clearer?
Which airports have parallel disimabarkation tunnels then? I've been through 4 airports in 3
different countries in the past two months and each time it was a single tunnel. The only
time I've seen two tunnels was when I was on a flight witha first class and even then it sort
of branched off, near the door of the plane.
Could it be the same corridor at two different locations at the same moment? This would
explain the different angles of the cameras, which maybe were placed at a similar location to
the railings etc.
Historian and political analyst Vladimir Kornilov wrote an article for RIA Novosti
comparing the famous 1924 SIS forgery, "Zinoviev letter", to the ongoing Skripal affair:
https://ria.ru/analytics/20180905/1527822792.html
(
machine translation ; the translation is good, except that "the Violins" should read as
"the Skripals").
Deltaeus... kindly please desist from insulting me in anitpodean. I make no assertions about trained or untrained hit squads or how they might behave. I am merely saying that anyone who thinks these timestamps represent anything suspicious
or out of the ordinary is chasing their own tails.
The UK authorities present pictures of two men that travelled together on a flight from
Moscow to London Gatwick. They went through parallel security sluices at the same time as
they were walking together. At which point they were automatically photographed. It could
just as easily have been that the time stamp was 1 second apart or even 2 seconds, or as is
in fact the case, less than 1 second apart. NOTE: They may have triggered the automatic
camera 999ms apart and still had the same timestamp so it is not strictly accurate to say
that they were pictured at exactly the same time. The sluice appears to be about 4 metres
long up to the point where the camera is triggered. I can walk 4 metres in less than 2
seconds. Which does not give a large time frame in which the walking pace of these two men
can diverge.
There is so much more suspicious and contentious in todays UK announcement that it is
ridiculous and counter productive to waste time on an easily explained time stamp.
This is an obvious fabrication of evidence. What they did was to take 2 photos from the same
tunnel using the same camera at different times, but with the camera rotated about 20 degrees
between them (notice the slightly different fish-eye lens distortions). Afterwards they
flipped one of the images horizontally and added time-stamps to the images, but forgot to
change the times between them.
Gatwick not Heathrow. I highly suggest reading the
comments to Craig Murray's blog post. Yes, as here there're some repetitive comments, but
many good points are also raised. Perhaps the best is the lack of a "tag" identifying the
camera location as at the security station you have many CCTV images that are very similar:
Something like Jetway2 Customs4, or some such. IMO, the photos and story are contrived just
as the rest of the hoax is--except for the fact that at least one person has died and likely
the Skripals most certainly--she wanted to return to Russia and take Sergei with her.
Well done UK comrades! So now you will release all the cctv from the original Salisbury
incident so we can see every detail of the cunning ruskies eh! including the entire street
videos, Mill pub and park videos too; and in high resolution this time please. Plus as the
case is solved would you be so kind as to release the complete OPCW reports and the Porton
Down reports too.
Can't have enough open government in the worlds foremost democracy now, can we?
Sy Hersch blames the poisoning of Skripals on the Russian mafia who found out he was working
with MI6 to reveal their European operations.
Could these two guys be of the Russian mafia? Them being not of the Russian IC might
explain how the poison was less than lethal for all who came in contact.
@49 Sorry Sy but your theory doesn't hold up. Teresa May has said they were from the GRU.
Here are her exact words...
"Based on this work, I can today tell the House that, based on a body of intelligence,
the Government has concluded that the two individuals named by the police and CPS are
officers from the Russian military intelligence service, also known as the GRU.
The GRU is a highly disciplined organisation with a well-established chain of command.
So this was not a rogue operation. It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at
a senior level of the Russian state."
Here is an interesting side note, relating to the statement made by "Sue Hemming, the CPS
director of legal services" (e.g. as in
this Guardian piece .
We will not be applying to Russia for the extradition of these men as the Russian
constitution does not permit extradition of its own nationals. Russia has made this clear
following requests for extradition in other cases. Should this position change then an
extradition request would be made.
This is a blatant lie. Russia's Constitution (available here in Russian states the following in Article 63,
Section 2:
В Российской
Федерации не
допускается
выдача другим
государствам
лиц,
преследуемых
за
политические
убеждения, а
также за
действия (или
бездействие),
не
признаваемые
в Российской
Федерации
преступлением.
Выдача лиц,
обвиняемых в
совершении
преступления,
а также
передача
осужденных
для отбывания
наказания в
других
государствах
осуществляются
на основе
федерального
закона или
международного
договора
Российской
Федерации.
Which means (my own translation, but Google Translate is your friend if you do not believe
me):
In the Russian Federation it is not permitted to extradite to other states individuals
who are persecuted for their political beliefs, as well as for actions (or inaction) that are
not deemed criminal in the Russian Federation. Extradition of individuals accused of
committing a crime, as well as transfer of convicts to serve their sentences in other states,
is performed on the basis of federal law or international agreements of the Russian
Federation.
I must confess that I am not up on the most current version of Russian criminal law, but I
believe "attempted murder utilizing a banned chemical weapon" does still qualify as a crime
over there, and, moreover, is not considered "political beliefs". But, of course, an official
extradition requests would entail also handing over the Crown's evidence against the accused,
which...well, clearly there is so much of it that the Crown just doesn't wish to share
any.
Perhaps the best is the lack of a "tag" identifying the camera location as at the security
station you have many CCTV images that are very similar: Something like Jetway2 Customs4,
or some such.
Se my post @45 (animation link). The camera location is the same in both images,
they just rotated the camera, and flipped one image horizontally. If you download the MET
"originals" and repeat what I did you find the match to be 100%. With identical time stamps,
you know this is fabricated evidence. There is really no other plausible or (even possible)
explanation.
It isn't the GRU (Glavnoye Razdevyvatel'noye Upravleniye, Main Intelligence Directorate) any
more. In 2010, the name was changed to GU (Glavnoye Upravleniye, Main Directorate).
"Norwegian" is correct. These pics have been tampered with bigly. "Kon" points out that one
has a "red line" while one has a more solid looking red area. That is explained by the
picture flipping and tilting. The red line is a framelike border of something. In one pic we
see that part that's further from the camera and it looks like a slim red line. In the other
pic we see the part of it which is closer to the camera, and is ALSO the corner of the line,
so it appears to be something completely different when it's actually just 2 parts of the
same puzzle.
My bet is that they were taken at different times of day, those tunnels always let natural
light in. Unless a filter was intentionally applied(to further suggest two tunnels). There
has been some photoshop fussing with the other identifying blobs - like the dirt on the
camera lense and on the floors have been erased or blurred in the flipped pic! It's mad
obvious.
Thanks Norwegian, I am posting that gif all over the place.
Thanks for your reply! Another comment mentioned the ability of such digital cameras to
self-crop as both pics are cropped as someone provided the pixel dimensions. IMO, this is
just more BigLie piled atop the preceding BigLies--doubling-down is the Neocon way after all.
All timed with Idlib, no doubt. My question along with many others: Where are the other
passengers having to travel through the same portals?
My explanation: Human images were added to an image(s) of an empty portal(s).
"It is virtually a confession from the police". Yes, one doesn't know whether to be hopeful
of a whistleblower, or just devastated at the incompetence of the so-called intelligence
agencies behind these fabrications. It's hardly ever the former unfortunately.
Nice work with the gif, it appears exactly how you describe it... just amazing fuckery. Re:
the timestamp, its so sloppy it pretty much a taunt: 'none of you sheep give a toss cos
there's not a critical thought amongst ya'
@65 Good question. And with all due respect to b I don't think the airport pictures prove
much. Who were these two? Why did they go to Salisbury? It looks too sloppy to be GRU. Russian Mafia contract killers is my guess. Unless the whole story is an elaborate MI6 concoction and all the CCTV photos are
fake.
It may be the release of this material was scheduled to coincide with the US sanctions
announced a few weeks ago, as those were said to be motivated by the Skripal case, but then
held back for domestic political reasons, as May's position has weakened just the past two
weeks. The bonus gratuitous finger-pointing at Corbyn would serve its purpose today or back
in August.
It all relies ultimately on" a body of evidence gathered by intelligence" and we know from
recent past experiences of anglo/ ameriocan Intelligence that that cannot be trusted to be
either valid or reliable .
Please people these photos were taken in exactly the same place. Nothing has been
rotated.
Notice on the right hand side there is a a small piece of a red security notice in the two
photos. You will need to see the original police photos to see this. In only one of the four
lanes is that possible. The one on the right as viewed from the exit. notice that this is the
only lane where the steel handrail on the right extends so far on the white panel. Two
different photos of the same lane with the same timestamp. ???? I'd say in both images are
fake.
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1570429,-0.1626642,2a,89.7y,192.36h,83.5t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s5aRAGxER5MlF-9kpw8ZyRQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Ort 17
Yes, it appears, like me, you are enjoying our latest visit to Wonderland where a great many
things are possible... all you need to do is believe. Christopher Steele has done a smackdown
job of reinvigorating the Non Fiction shelves at my library. Who knew high treason and golden
showers could ever work together.
A beautiful story, this Skripal affair...designed and timed to draw the public into
emotional judgments, against reason and logic, immediately prior to the Russian pummeling
of jihadi scum. One wonders what sort of blowback arises from such psychological conditioning. Hmmm...
I wouldn't say these images prove anything either way.
Perhaps they are doctored, but what if they were from customs entry points side-by-side?
The two men have been walking together so presumably they'd go through the customs walkways
at exactly the same time. These are not photos from the walkway off the plane - that much is clear.
On the spectrum of what is going on you have to go from one end (all this evidence is
completely fabricated - these might be images of 'dead men' so no one can step forward to
personally refute them) all the way over to the Brits are telling the truth.
Most likely, it's somewhere in the middle, but impossible to say exactly where.
Even without the time stamp discrepancy I am at loss to understand what the photos prove. Absolutely nothing. I suppose they just want to keep the story in the publics mind in
preparation for the next "Russia did it " false flag. Coming soon to a theater near you.
Ever notice September-November makes for the most exciting times? No wonder many season
premiers start in winter/spring now
Why now, when the CCTV 'evidence' must have been available for months? Just like the Douma
pantomime and subsequent bombing of Syria, this is clearly setting the scene for a western
assault on Idlib, possibly this weekend.
@71 Nice theory, except that the security notice in those police photos appear to be mounted
far too low to correspond with their location in that google maps image, even on the one lane
that you nominate. You can see that best in the "Boshirov" photo where the top-left of the
notice can be seen.
In the google maps image the signs are at head-height, so a line drawn from the ccd to a
"pretend eyeline" in Google Maps would suggest that the security camera would be recording
the bottom-left of that sign, not the top-left corner.
That walk-though was recorded in September 2017.
The security footage was filmed in March 2018.
It isn't a stretch to believe that between these two dates the signs were moved lower and
closer to the guardrail.
Anyone in Ol' Blighty want to walk up to those gates at Gatwick and tell us?
Presumably they were on the same flight? If they have identified the flights - presumably
the Russians would be able to ID these guys at the other end - in some way at least.
Russia needs to do more to get back their national Yulia Skripal . She's been brazenly
abducted by UK regime. If Brit Sh disappear na Russian imagine the fate of Julian Assange if
he steps out of that embassy
@71 Just to be clear about what I am saying, because my previous post may be confusing: if
you look at the two security shots and note the top-left corner ("Boshirov") and left-flank
("Petrov") of those signs then both suggest that the bottom-left corner of that security
notice will be just above (as in almost but not quite level-with) the top of the guardrail.
Unless there is massive foreshortening and distortion in those security camera feeds then
I would suggest that those signs have been moved between September 2017 and March 2018.
In which case, of course, your observation is not going to be valid.
Two Russian nationals . Brits decide they are Russian assassins . Were they seem committing
an assassination ? Imagine any Russian tourist now could be labelled an assassin and abducted
like Yulia Skripal and held incommunicado . Russia should take Britain to court over this
behaviour
As I wrote before, the case reeks of planted evidence. A normal logic of investigation would
be to inspect "probable leads" ASAP, and to perform tests ASAP. Instead, the famous door knob
was tested with one month delay, and the hotel room, with two month delay. But planting
evidence in an improvised mode requires planning and debates how to do it. The logistics of
planting evidence are the most plausible explanation why it was done at the place where
Skripals lived rather than close to the place where they together lost consciousness.
Planting evidence in the hotel is simplicity itself, because it is very easy to do it in a
secret lab.
OTH, pictures have semi-plausible explanation and Ruslan Boshirov is not a frequent name,
probably Muslim (Boshir/Bashir is an Arabic name, ev/ov is a Russian ending).
Two men (traveling together on Russian passports) are seen leaving a flight from Moscow
and (in the most heavily CCTV monitored country in the world), immediately take public
transport directly to and from the scene of the crime.
Its very hard to imagine that any intelligence agency would be so sloppy as to use
their own nationals, own passports, travel together, take direct flights from their own
capital, use public transport, make no effort to avoid CCTV, casually dispose of vital
evidence where it was certain to be found (a deadly poison left in a brandname perfume box at
a charity donation bin? someone was going to open it eventually), etc. There are many more
flaws but there are also more significant questions.
Is there any strong reason to believe that US or UK intelligence were less likely to
poison Skripal than Russia? Did he perhaps have evidence regarding the Steele Dossier they
wanted to silence? If so, is there any reason we should not suspect the men in the picture of
working for non-Russian intelligence who are deliberately trying to point the finger of blame
at Russia?
Leaving that aside, is there any reason not to think the men n the picture may have been
members of organized crime for some reason upset with Skripal? This might explain the lack of
professional tradecraft.
In short, even if we accept that the people in the photographs were responsible for the
poisonings, there has been no evidence presented to link them to the Russian government other
than the fact that they travelled directly from Moscow on Russian passports, a fact that
should actually be seen as making it less likely they were Russian agents.
Fyi, there are 2 terminals at Gatwick, north and south. Though, as Pft, Julian and others
have said, what do these pictures really say at this stage...? Only guilty by the logic of
highly likely.
"Ruslan Boshirov" is supposed to be Tajik. I noticed the last name "Boshirov" too
("Boshir" = Tajik rendering of "Bashir" or "Bashar").
Bashar / Bashir is a common boys' name and surname in some Muslim countries (but maybe not
Iran). Also a common surname among Christian communities in Lebanon. A former governor of New
South Wales had that surname. Both her parents were of Lebanese background.
Ruslan is a common boys' name in Russia and countries that used to be part of the Soviet
Union. It is derived from the Turkic name Arslan. As Tajiks are an Iranian-speaking people, I
am not sure if the name is popular with them. From what I have been able to find out online,
Tajiks seem to prefer Persian names.
Hmm, someone in Britain didn't do their homework terribly well.
Dr. Wellington Yueh , Sep 5, 2018 9:36:16 PM |
link
Heh...it seems to be working. We're now talking about this instead of the Idlib campaign.
Well, if Hersh has the evidence for this, I won't be doubting him. I'm sincerely open to
any good theory -- the only thing I'm certain is that it wasn't the Kremlin: there's simply
no gain for Russia in this.
Personally, I think relity is much more mundane: the UK, given its objective reality
post-Brexit, simply decided to (re)synchronize (update) its geopolitical position with the
USA's. When the USA decided to jump into the madness of Russophobia after Trump's victory,
the UK simply had to jump after because it is so dependent on the Americans they kinda didn't
have a choice.
Maybe, in a parallel universe, if Corbyn had won the 2017 snap election, we could
visualize a different position from the British. But that door is definitely close now -- and
even if he had won, we have to face the fact the UK is simply the natural ally of the USA in
the European Peninsula (the most stable one -- of course there are valuable American
satrapies in Poland, the ex-Yugoslavian republics not-named Serbia, the Baltic States and the
new, desintegrated, nazi-Ukraine; but they are of the military outpost-type, nearer the
"danger").
This is nothing more but an endless conglomeration of lies. Not just mistakes or fallacies,
but a deliberate lies. It is clear for all adequate people who have brains.
Why it is now the British authorities decided to shake off the dust from the forgotten
"Skripal case" and to revive it? Well, Syria is the answer, of course. In particular,
upcoming (in fact, already started) Idlib liberation.
They need something to try to put pressure on Russia. What tools do they have?
"Skripal case", "Russian meddling in elections" (aka "Russian hackers"), "Russian doping",
situation in Donbass, illegal detentions/abductions of Russian citizens (Ukraine did it with
Kirill Vyshinsky in May, the US did it with Maria Butina recently etc.), cheap provocations
with chemical weapons in Syria to accuse Assad/Russia.
I would pick three directions - the "Skripal case", fake "chemical attacks" in Syria
and deliberate aggravation of the situation in Donbass (terrorist act against DPR head
Alexander Zakharchenko is just the beginning) are, apparently (in their opinion), the most
effective measures to influence Russia to change its policy in Syria. These tools will be
used. Simultaneously, or in a particular order.
By the way, one must not exclude possible chemical provocations in Ukraine. Ukrainian
terrorist regime has not used it yet, but all is possible. Especially now, after "Skripal
case" is revived and some fake "chemical attacks" are definitely will happen in Idlib (giving
FUKUS a "legitimate reason" to launch aggression on Syria again). The CyberBerkut hacker team (a kind of Fancy Bears) recently
reported that chemical provocations in Ukraine (in Donbass) are in preparation stage, and
that American instructors participate in organizing of this provocation. Not a fact that this
will happen, of course, but still this possibility must not be ruled out.
As for these two men, "discovered" a half of a year after the incident... For any sane
person, the proposal to believe that these two are GRU agents is an insult to his
intellectual abilities. "GRU agents", who flew direct(!) Flight from Moscow, and flew back
the same direct(!) Flight. "GRU agents", who in general did not even tried to disguise
themselves, and, as if specifically, tried to be caught by all surveillance cameras in the
UK. "GRU agents", who used their passports(!) instead of coming to the UK secretly (for
example, through Ireland). "GRU agents", who left the "Novichok" traces wherever possible,
and then carelessly threw the bottle on the street. "GRU agents", who for some reason decided
to use such a strange, dangerous and uncomfortable method as "poisoning the victim with a
chemical warfare agent(!)" instead of easily and unnoticeably shoot a victim from a gun with
a silencer (or strangle the victim at home). "GRU agents", who did not notice anything for
eight(!) years, and then suddenly woke up and realized that they released Skripal from Russia
"without punishment"...
I can continue this endlessly. The longer the list of lies becomes, the longer the list of
disproof.
@65 virgile.. that is what some of us have concluded from the start.. phony passports or
phony characters - hard to know what one is looking at here, isn't it?
@83 brian.. it is the court of public opinion, brought to us via the western msm... guess
who is winning? msm with ignoramus's in tow, or not? - i agree with your comments @85.. no
evidence whatsoever, but that doesn't stop the russian smearing, which may be the main motive
here on the part of the uk..
@84 piotr.. i agree - planted and long after the fact..
@87 jen.. that is what i got from someone sharing a russian story via translation - which
i shared @42..
from my link at 42 which is a translation from a russian news outlet.. see the link @42 for
more..
"According to official data, Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov flew on March 2, 2018
from Sheremetyevo to London Gatwick Airport. According to Fontanka, 150 passengers were
registered for the flight of Aeroflot SU2588.
The suspects bought tickets on foreign passports of the "65" series, the document numbers
differ by the last digit: ... 1297 and ... 1294.
Apparently, in the hands of Boshirov and Petrov already had return tickets, and for two
consecutive flights from Heathrow to Sheremetyevo - evening on March 4 and night 5-th. The
British authorities believe that the suspects used the first.
There are almost no open sources of information about Boshirov. According to the
"Fontanka", he was born on April 12, 1978 in Dushanbe, was registered in Moscow in a
25-storey house on Bolshaya Naberezhnaya street.
In 2015, he was brought into two executive proceedings for automobile fines received with
a difference of three days, on July 20 and 23. The oddity is that the production numbers are
not in order. The first assigned 433048, the second - 432322, although they were issued by
one unit - the interdistrict department of bailiffs to collect administrative fines number 1
in Moscow. On the portal of the magistrates of the capital there are no cases of
administrative violations against Ruslan Boshirov. Also it is not in the database of
executive production.
"Fontanka" phoned long-term residents of the "Boshiro" house on the Great Embankment. They
live on the same stairwell. "In the apartment you named, only an elderly woman lives," the
correspondent replied. "We carry her money, she collects for cleaning the cleaner." A man was
never seen in the apartment and was not seen at the entrance. We can only assume that this is
the son of the hostess, who is registered at the address, but who has never lived here. "
Boshirov's network activity is no different either. The pages created under this name and
last name in 2014 are empty. On Facebook, Boshirova has one friend registered, a girl from
Ukraine. The profile "VKontakte" contains information that Boshirov graduated in 2004 from
the geography department of Moscow State University in the direction "Hydrology of the
land".
The shoulder bags held by the two "suspects", as seen in the CCTV stills from the two
airports, are not seen in the Salisbury CCTV footage from the Sunday. Instead, in Salisbury,
the suspect in the black jacket wears a light-coloured backpack on arrival at the train
station, and the suspect in the blue jacket wears what appears to be that same backpack in
the stills from an hour later as they return to the Salisbury train station. Presumably the
backpack carried the applicator and then was later ditched.... but looking at the applicator
itself it is hard to fathom how it would not leak, either in flight or in the backpack, even
inside its alleged box. The Met police report claims that the bottle allegedly discovered
later "contained a significant amount of Novichok."
On the Sunday morning in question, the suspects allegedly walked directly to the Skripal
household from the train station (approximately 25 minutes), poisoned the Skripal door within
minutes of arrival, then immediately returned to the train station. This operation was
allegedly facilitated by a 90 minute "reconnaissance" mission the previous day, although
there are no CCTV images from this mission. Why and how the men knew they would not be seen
at the doorway on Sunday is not explained.
According to the Met Police report, swabs at the suspect's hotel room were done on May 4.
Porton Down alone confirmed the presence of Novichok from these swabs. The Met report adds:
"Two swabs showed contamination of Novichok at levels below that which would cause concern
for public health." ???? As far as I am aware, that Russian suspects may have flown in and
out of Britain on that weekend has been discussed since March, but a positive ID of
"Novichok" in a suspect's London hotel room is new information - strangely never referred to
before. The otherwise entirely circumstantial case depends on the presence of the chemical in
the hotel room, as there is otherwise no direct connection of these men to "Novichuk",
perfume bottles, or the Skripal house (the CCTV footage can only place them in the
"vicinity").
This case retains its improvised nature. Something seems to have been botched somewhere in
the original March events, and the proclamation of Russian guilt was announced too soon and
too unequivocally to back down from. The Novichok in the perfume bottle and now the two
alleged suspects with the alleged trace Novichok in the hotel room appear to be semi-clumsy
additions to the evidence designed to buttress the faulty story after the fact.
This is simply another fine example of the Theory of Tells. The Dark Agents NEVER allow the
strange evidence that they release to the public to be totally coherent or rational. They
always insert impossible artifacts. If the narratives they create were reasonably coherent,
they would never have the proper effect of causing profound cognitive dissonance in the mind
of the public, they could therefor never achieve the necessary degree of fear, uncertainty
and doubt.
That would invite people to ask pertinent questions. There must always be a few strategic
red herrings. So they always leave strategic tells.
They are different photographs a few seconds apart as can be seen by the figures at
the very back of the jetway who move a tiny bit closer to the camera after the first suspect
passes.
However, the timestamps are then fake and represent a mistake on the part of the person
*creating* the evidence. He fucked up and put the same stamp on both pictures.
These pictures were taken a short time apart, but not at the time stamped... i.e. boarding
a different flight. A different flight. The timeline is hokum . They did not fly in
and out at the times stated or on the flights stated.
It is even conceivable that the person cooking the books wanted to include something that
would show it was hokum, that he or she wasn't completely on board. I wonder who it was?
The doors that have those "Do not enter" symbols facing us or the greeting area are open
in b's pictures because the individuals have just passed thru them. Therefore you only
faintly see the grey back of the symbols.
Also, note how in one Google photo the steel guardrails are on paneling right beside the
security signs while in the other Google photos it shows the guardrail separated from the
security signs with an empty panel except for the corridor furthest to the right. So the
correct photo is the former one and the individuals went through two exactly similar
side-by-side corridors simultaneously, which means the photos might be legit. Also, there are
at least two or more cameras on the ceiling facing corridors which explains the different
angles. It looks like photos are authentic.
@86 Well that explains why in one photo there's an extra glass panel and in the other the
panel with the guardrail is beside the panel with the security signs! There are two sets of
corridors in the airport.
The photos in the article are Therefore most likely authentic.
The key proposition that the police are asserting is that the Skripals were poisoned by
'delayed reaction'. The alleged suspects were out of Salisbury 3 hours before the Skripals
exhibited signs of poisoning, nerve agents, however, act immediately. If the 'door handle
theory' is not physically possible, which it is not, then that leaves out the assassin
hypothesis. Most likely, as I have always said, is that this is about Sergei's skulduggery,
he took delivery of the agent from these guys for eventual passing over to the White Helmets
via their MI6 handlers. All went pear shaped because of a leaky bottle. Sergei realised
something was wrong so hurried his meal so he could check it out, reached the park bench with
Julia and the saw that the bottle was leaking and began to feel ill, Julia through the thing
away and went down herself.
Interesting that Theresa May brought up and then dismissed the possibility of a rogue
operation. This tells me she is determined to pin the blame on Putin no matter what. I am
sure that the smarter elements of British security have a pretty good idea of what has
occurred. They will say nothing and they would be quite happy to keep Theresa Mays narrative
out in the public domain. Cooperation from Sergei is guaranteed, he has been caught once
again in a betrayal, as he always does because he is one of lifes losers.
Predictions 1 these guys have a connection to Julia's boyfriend.
Prediction 2 the 'Novichok' is decades old material obtained from the black
market and related to the black market material used in a previous Russian assassination.
The agent would be largely degraded to a less toxic degradation product, that doesn't
matter as its purpose, I believe, is for propaganda not killing. Amateur hour handling with
these ridiculously inappropriate and unsafe containers says a lot.
British Assassination Campaign Targeting Russian Exiles?
Over the past decade or so, a disturbing number of Russian nationals living in Britain have
met untimely deaths. The victims – at least 14 – have been high-profile
individuals, such as oligarch businessman Boris Berezovsky or former Kremlin security agent
Alexander Litvinenko. All were living in Britain as exiles, and all were viewed as opponents of
President Vladimir Putin's government.
Invariably, British politicians and news media
refer to the deaths of Russian émigrés as "proof" of Russian state "malign
activity". Putin in particular is accused of ordering "the hits" as some kind of vendetta
against critics and traitors.
The claims of Russian state skulduggery have been reported over and over without question in
the British media as well as US media. It has become an article-of-faith espoused by British
and American politicians alike. "Putin is a killer," they say with seeming certainty. There is
simply no question about it in their assertions.
The claims have also been given a quasi-legal veracity, with a British government-appointed
inquiry in the case of Alexander Litvinenko making a conclusion
that his death in 2006 was "highly likely" the result of a Kremlin plot to assassinate. Putin
was personally implicated in the death of Litvinenko by the official British inquiry. The
victim was said to have been poisoned with radioactive polonium. Deathbed images of a
bald-headed Litvinenko conjure up a haunting image of alleged Kremlin evil-doing.
Once the notion of Russian evil-doing is inculcated the public mind, then subsequent events
can be easily invoked as "more proof" of what has already been "established". Namely, so it
goes, that the Russian state is carrying out assassinations on British territory.
Thus, we see this "corroborating" effect with the alleged poisoning of a former Russian
double-agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in Salisbury back in March this year.
What actually happened to the Skripals is not known – who are said to have since
recovered their health, but their whereabouts have not been disclosed by the British
authorities. Nevertheless, as soon as the incident of their apparent poisoning occurred, it was
easy for the British authorities and media to whip up accusations against Russia as being
behind "another assassination attempt" owing to the past "established template" of other
Russian émigrés seeming to have been killed by Kremlin agents.
For its part, the Russian government has always categorically denied any involvement in the
ill-fate of nationals living in exile in Britain. On the Skripal case, Moscow has pointed out
that the British authorities have not produced any independently verifiable evidence against
the Kremlin. Russian requests for access to the investigation file have been rejected by the
British.
On the Litvinenko case, Russia has said that the official British inquiry was conducted
without due process of transparency, or Russia being allowed to defend itself. It was more
trial by media.
A common denominator is that the British have operated on a presumption of guilt. The
"proof" is largely at the level of allegation or innuendo of Russian malfeasance.
But let's turn the premise of the argument around. What if the British state were the ones
conducting a campaign of assassination against Russian émigrés, with the
cold-blooded objective of using those deaths as a propaganda campaign to blacken and
criminalize Russia?
In a recent British media interview Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov was typically harangued over alleged Russian malign activity in Britain. Lavrov rightly
turned the question around, and said that the Russian authorities are the ones who are entitled
to demand an explanation from the British state on why so many of its nationals have met
untimely deaths.
The presumption of guilt against Russia is based on a premise of Russophobia, which prevents
an open-minded inquiry. If an open mind is permitted, then surely a more pertinent position is
to ask the British authorities to explain the high number of deaths in their jurisdiction.
As ever, the litmus-test question is: who gains from the deaths? In the case of the alleged
attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, would Russia risk such a bizarre
plot against an exile who had been living in Britain undisturbed for 10 years? Or would Britain
gain much more from smearing Moscow at the time of President Putin's re-election in March, and
in the run-up to the World Cup?
The more recent alleged nerve-agent poisoning of two British citizens – Charlie Rowley
and Dawn Sturgess – in the southern English town of Amesbury revived official anti-Russia
accusations and public fears over the earlier Skripal incident in nearby Salisbury.
The Amesbury incident in early July occurred just as a successful World Cup tournament in
Russia was underway. It also came ahead of US President Donald Trump's landmark summit with
Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
Again, who stands to gain most from these provocative events? Russia or Britain?
Another revealing twist in the presumed narrative of "Kremlin criminality" came from a
recent interview given to Russian
news media by the daughter of the deceased oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Of course, her side of
the story received no coverage in the British media.
Liza Berezovsky believes that her father's death in 2013, while living in exile in Britain,
was the dirty work of British state assassins. The case has added importance because it links
directly to the previous death of Alexander Litvinenko, who was also living as an exile in
Britain.
Berezovsky's daughter believes that her father wanted to return from Britain to Russia so
that he could live out his old age in his native country. She claims that the oligarch had
vital information on how the death of Litvinenko in 2006, reportedly from radioactive polonium
poisoning, had actually been staged as a smear against Putin and the Kremlin.
Boris Berezovsky, his daughter claims, played a key role along with the British state in
orchestrating the demise of Litvinenko to look like an assassination plot carried out by the
Kremlin. It was Berezovsky who apparently suggested that Litvinenko, with whom he was an
associate, shave off his hair in order to drum up the suspicion of Kremlin poisoning.
Liza Berezovsky contends that, seven years after Litvinenko died, her father was preparing
to divulge the dirty tricks involving the British state and their anti-Russian campaign. She
said the oligarch wanted to atone for his past misdeeds and to make his peace with Mother
Russia. She believes that British state agents got wind of his plans to come clean, which would
have caused them an acute international scandal.
In March 2013, just days before he was due to depart from Britain, the oligarch was found
dead in his mansion near Ascot, in the English countryside, apparently from suicide caused by a
ligature around his neck.
In the end, however, a British civil coroner did not conclude suicide, and left an "open
verdict" on the death. An eminent German pathologist hired by Liza Berezovsky provided
post-mortem evidence that her father's body showed signs of his death having not been
self-inflicted. He was, in their view, murdered.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility that British secret services are running an
assassination program on Russian exiles. These exiles are often used for a time by the British
state as media assets, presented as high-profile critics of the Kremlin and lending testimonies
to much-publicized allegations of "authoritarianism" and "human rights abuses" under Putin.
At some opportune later time, these Russian dissidents can be liquidated by British agents.
Their deaths are then presented as "more proof" of Russian malign activity and in particular
for the purpose of criminalizing President Putin and his government.
Considering how London has become an international haven for Russian oligarchs whose wealth
is often tainted as being proceeds from criminal activity against Russian laws and who
therefore are easily framed as Putin opponents – the British state has ample
opportunities for setting up "assassinations" and anti-Putin provocations.
Such a nefarious British program is by no means unprecedented. During the 30-year armed
conflict in Northern Ireland ending in the late 1990s, it is
documented that the British state ran clandestine assassination campaigns against Irish
republican figures, as well as ordinary citizens, as a coldly calculated political instrument
of state-sponsored terrorism. It was an instrument honed by the British from other colonial-era
conflicts, such as in Kenya, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Malaysia (formerly Malaya), and in
several Arab countries like Bahrain and Yemen, as detailed by British historian Mark
Curtis in his book Web of Deceit.
Adapting such heinous techniques for a contemporary propaganda war against Russia wouldn't
cost any qualms to British state grandees and their agents. Indeed, for them, it would be
simply Machiavellian business-as-usual.
"... The time that "Boshirov and Petrov" were allegedly in Salisbury carrying out the attack is all entirely within the period the Skripals were universally reported to have left their home with their mobile phones switched off. ..."
"... But the Metropolitan Police state that Boshirov and Petrov did not arrive in Salisbury until 11.48 on the day of the poisoning. That means that they could not have applied a nerve agent to the Skripals' doorknob before noon at the earliest. ..."
"... But there has never been any indication that the Skripals returned to their home after noon on Sunday 4 March. If they did so, they and/or their car somehow avoided all CCTV cameras. Remember they were caught by three CCTV cameras on leaving, and Borishov and Petrov were caught frequently on CCTV on arriving. ..."
"... The Skripals were next seen on CCTV at 13.30, driving down Devizes road. After that their movements were clearly witnessed or recorded until their admission to hospital. ..."
"... In general it is worth observing that the Skripals, and poor Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, all managed to achieve almost complete CCTV invisibility in their widespread movements around Salisbury at the key times, while in contrast "Petrov and Boshirov" managed to be frequently caught in high quality all the time during their brief visit. ..."
"... This is especially remarkable in the case of the Skripals' location around noon on 4 March. The government can only maintain that they returned home at this time, as they insist they got the nerve agent from the doorknob. But why was their car so frequently caught on CCTV leaving, but not at all returning? It appears very much more probable that they came into contact with the nerve agent somewhere else, while they were out. ..."
"... they may have been meeting them, outside the home. The evidence points to that, rather than doorknobs. Such a meeting might explain why the Skripals had turned off their mobile phones to attempt to avoid surveillance. ..."
"... If "Boshirov and Petrov" are secret agents, their incompetence is astounding. They used public transport rather than a vehicle and left the clearest possible CCTV footprint. They failed in their assassination attempt. They left traces of novichok everywhere and could well have poisoned themselves, and left the "murder weapon" lying around to be found. Their timings in Salisbury were extremely tight – and British Sunday rail service dependent. ..."
The time that "Boshirov and Petrov" were allegedly in Salisbury carrying out the attack
is all entirely within the period the Skripals were
universally reported to have left their home with their mobile phones switched
off.
A key hole in the British government's account of the Salisbury poisonings has been plugged
– the lack of any actual suspects. And it has been plugged in a way that appears broadly
convincing – these two men do appear to have traveled to Salisbury at the right time to
have been involved.
But what has not been established is the men's identity and that they are agents of the
Russian state, or just what they did in Salisbury. If they are Russian agents, they are
remarkably amateur assassins. Meanwhile the new evidence throws the previously reported
timelines into confusion – and demolishes the theories put out by "experts" as to why the
Novichok dose was not fatal.
At 09.15 on Sunday 4 March the Skripals' car was seen on CCTV driving through three
different locations in Salisbury. Both Skripals had switched off their mobile phones and they
remained off for over four hours, which has baffled geo-location.
There is no CCTV footage that indicates the Skripals returning to their home. It has
therefore always been assumed that they last touched the door handle around 9am.
But the Metropolitan Police state that Boshirov and Petrov
did not arrive in Salisbury until 11.48 on the day of the poisoning. That means that they
could not have applied a nerve agent to the Skripals' doorknob before noon at the
earliest.
But there has never been any indication that the Skripals returned to their home after
noon on Sunday 4 March. If they did so, they and/or their car somehow avoided all CCTV cameras.
Remember they were caught by three CCTV cameras on leaving, and Borishov and Petrov were caught
frequently on CCTV on arriving.
The Skripals were next seen on CCTV at 13.30, driving down Devizes road. After that
their movements were clearly witnessed or recorded until their admission to hospital.
So even if the Skripals made an "invisible" trip home before being seen on Devizes Road,
that means the very latest they could have touched the doorknob is 13.15. The longest possible
gap between the novichok being placed on the doorknob and the Skripals touching it would have
been one hour and 15 minutes. Do you recall all those "experts" leaping in to tell us that the
"ten times deadlier than VX" nerve agent was not fatal because it had degraded overnight on the
doorknob? Well that cannot be true. The time between application and contact was between a
minute and (at most) just over an hour on this new timeline.
In general it is worth observing that the Skripals, and poor Dawn Sturgess and Charlie
Rowley, all managed to achieve almost complete CCTV invisibility in their widespread movements
around Salisbury at the key times, while in contrast "Petrov and Boshirov" managed to be
frequently caught in high quality all the time during their brief visit.
This is especially remarkable in the case of the Skripals' location around noon on 4
March. The government can only maintain that they returned home at this time, as they insist
they got the nerve agent from the doorknob. But why was their car so frequently caught on CCTV
leaving, but not at all returning? It appears very much more probable that they came into
contact with the nerve agent somewhere else, while they were out.
"Boshirov and Petrov" plainly are of interest in this case. But only Theresa May stated they
were Russian agents: the police did not, and stated that they expected those were not their
real identities. We do not know who Boshirov and Petrov were. It appears very likely their
appearance was to do with the Skripals on that day. But they may have been meeting them,
outside the home. The evidence points to that, rather than doorknobs. Such a meeting might
explain why the Skripals had turned off their mobile phones to attempt to avoid
surveillance.
It is also telling the police have pressed no charges against them in the case of Dawn
Sturgess, which would be manslaughter at least if the government version is true.
If "Boshirov and Petrov" are secret agents, their incompetence is astounding. They used
public transport rather than a vehicle and left the clearest possible CCTV footprint. They
failed in their assassination attempt. They left traces of novichok everywhere and could well
have poisoned themselves, and left the "murder weapon" lying around to be found. Their timings
in Salisbury were extremely tight – and British Sunday rail service dependent.
There are other possibilities of who "Boshirov and Petrov" really are, of which Ukrainian is
the obvious one. One thing I discovered when British Ambassador to Uzbekistan was that there
had been a large Ukrainian ethnic group of scientists working at the Soviet chemical weapon
testing facility there at Nukus. There are many other possibilities.
Yesterday's revelations certainly add to the amount we know about the Skripal event. But
they raise as many new questions as they give answers.
By now anyone with an opinion on the Skripal poisoning has already decided if they believe
the official narrative or not. Still, the event and the ongoing media coverage around it
presents an opportunity to understand more than we might think.
The British government claim is that a "military-grade nerve agent", one of a group of nerve
agents supposedly called 'novichok' (which simply means 'newcomer'), was used by Russia on
Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. They reach the conclusion that Russia is to blame
because, they claim, the nerve agent used is "of a type developed by Russia."
Russian daily newspaper Kommersant recently released a 6-page
document they claim constitutes the British government's official case against Russia. They
summed up the 'evidence' as follows:
Military-grade Novichok nerve agent positively identified at the UK's Defence Science and
Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, an OPCW-accredited and designated laboratory Novichok
is a group of agents developed only by Russia and not declared under the CWC A violation of
the fundamental prohibition on the use of chemical weapons (Art. 1 CWC) First offensive use
of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War We are without doubt that Russia is
responsible. No country bar Russia has combined capability, intent and motive. There is no
plausible alternative explanation As of Sunday 18 March, we count over thirty parallel lines
of Russian disinformation
Note the 2nd point, that " Novichok is a group of agents developed only by
Russia and not declared under the CWC ."
In an interview with AFP, the former Russian scientist who participated in the development
of "Novichok" in Russia in the 70s and 80s, Vil Mirzayanov, stated that if Russia was not
responsible for the poisoning:
"The only other possibility would be that someone used the formulas in my book to make such a
weapon.
Mirzayanov's book, published
in 2008 , contains the formulas he alleges can be used to create "Novichoks". In 1995, he
explained that
"the chemical components or precursors" of Novichok are "ordinary organophosphates that can be
made at commercial chemical companies that manufacture such products as fertilizers and
pesticides."
So the British government claim that this type of nerve agent can only be Russian, and was
only developed by Russia, is demonstrably false. In fact, in her statement to
the House of Commons on 12th March 2018 , British Prime Minister Theresa May contradicted
that claim when she said:
"It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve
agent of a type developed by Russia. This is part of a group of nerve agents known as
'Novichok' . Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by
world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down. "
In the world of nerve agents, in order to positively identify a sample, you must
have your own sample for comparison and positive identification.
In a judgement at the British High Court on 22nd March on whether to allow blood samples to
be taken from Sergei and Yulia Skripal for examination by the Organisation for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), evidence submitted by the Porton Down laboratory to the court
(Section 17 i) stated:
"Blood samples from Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were analysed and the findings indicated
exposure to a nerve agent or related compound . The samples tested positive for the
presence of a Novichok class nerve agent or closely related agent. "
Again, Porton Down must have had a sample of the alleged nerve agent used to
poison Skripal and his daughter. That can mean only one of two things: that Porton Down
obtained the nerve agent from some other party, or manufactured it on site . Porton Down is,
after all, in the business
of producing chemical weapons (ostensibly to test them on anti-chemical weapon equipment).
Note also that the wording used in the quote above includes the possibility that the agent
used on Skripal was not even 'Novichok' but rather a "related compound" or something "closely
related." So even Theresa May's statement that the British MoD had "positively identified"
'Novichok' seems false.
In
an interview with German Deutsch Welle , bumbling UK Foreign Secretary Boris
Johnson was directly asked if scientists at Porton Down had samples of 'Novichok', to which he
replied:
" They do . And they were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said,
'Are you sure?' And he said there's no doubt."
So the only thing we can presume to be 100% certain of in the poisoning of Skripal
and his daughter is that the nerve agent used was in stock at Porton Down, 8 miles from the
site of the poisoning.
In the 5th point in the British government 6-page 'dossier', the British establishment
claims:
"We are without doubt that Russia is responsible. No country bar Russia has combined
capability, intent and motive. There is no plausible alternative."
We know that other countries have the capability. Claiming to have no doubt about
someone's intent is nonsense. So we're left with motive. Did Russia have a motive to poison
Skripal and his daughter? Motives for a course of action are intrinsically linked to the result
of the action. The obvious and predictable result of using a nerve agent that was originally
developed in Russia in the 1970s to poison a former Russian spy living in the UK and working
for British intelligence is that Russia would be blamed and universally condemned for it. So if
Russia was motivated to further downgrade its reputation on the international stage, then sure,
Russia had motivation to poison Skripal and his daughter.
The problem is that there is no evidence that Russia desires to damage its own reputation in
this way. Is there evidence that anyone else has such motivation? For those that have been
paying attention to world affairs over the past 6 or 7 years, I'll presume that you don't need
me to answer that one.
So when we remove the unfounded and contradictory claims around the Skripal poisoning, the
actual facts of the case are rather limited:
Skripal lived in Salisbury, England, and had
been working for MI5 for 8 years. It is reasonable to assume that he may, therefore, have had
access to sensitive material, possibly useful to foreign governments, including Russia. As
such, he may have posed an 'intelligence threat' if he returned to Russia. According to a close friend , Skripal had
recently decided that he wanted to go back to live in Russia and petitioned the Russian
government to that end. Not long thereafter, Skripal was poisoned with a substance that was in
stock at a British Ministry of Defense facility, 8 miles from where he was living. The British
government blamed Russia for his poisoning. This accusation must be seen in the context of a
years-long anglo-American black propaganda campaign designed to marginalize Russia and thereby
limit its ability to effectively assert itself as a globally influential player. I've heard
people make the argument that any investigations of what really happened in Salisbury can only
ever be guesswork, that we can never be 100% sure. Of course, that's true to a degree,
especially when dealing with evidence which may be held back from public disclosure because of
reasons of "national security". But such people tend to use this line of thinking simply to
avoid taking a position, because taking a position scares some people, especially if it is not
the official position. It's also not very realistic or practical. If we were to hold all
statements and claims to the same level of proof, our court systems would become obsolete.
Rarely is there enough evidence to find a criminal guilty with a 100% degree of certainty.
That's why courts hold the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" and allow for
circumstantial evidence.
Insistence on absolute proof fails to recognize that, as humans, we don't navigate our lives
and make decisions on the basis of 100% proof. Instead, we use something akin to 'past form'.
For example, if I intend to take the train at 9.15am from platform 1 in the morning, I cannot
be 100% certain that the train will be there at 9.15am, or that it will be there at all that
day. Instead, I actively assume that it will be there based on the circumstantial evidence I
have accrued through repeated observations that when I go there at that time the train is
there. You could even say that the train is very likely to be there because it has the means,
motive and opportunity.
That's how we go about our daily lives, at least. But in cases of guilt and innocence we
probably need a higher standard. Many suspects may have means, motive and opportunity at the
same time. That doesn't mean they're all guilty. And a history of similar crimes does not
necessarily mean that a suspect is guilty of one particular crime. So what to do in a
case like the Skripal poisoning? The only thing we can do is compare competing hypotheses and
the degrees to which they are consistent with all the facts available. In other words, which
scenario is more likely given the known facts?
In answering the question of who poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter, we lack 100%
proof that the British government (or some element thereof) was responsible for the attack,
just as we lack 100% proof that the Russian government was responsible. In fact, the evidence
and reasoning provided by the British government does not actually support the Russian
hypothesis over competing hypotheses, because we would see the same evidence if the attack were
carried out in order to frame Russia. If evidence applies equally to two or more competing
hypotheses, naturally that evidence cannot be used to support one hypothesis over the other,
which is precisely what the British government is doing.
In contrast, the British government's apparent access to the precise nerve agents in
question, close to where Skripal lives, their full access to Skripal himself, their past form
in fabricating evidence of chemical weapons usage by other states, and their clear intent to
wage a vicious and underhanded demonization campaign against Russia, all combine to allow us to
actively assume that the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter was the work of the British
government itself. Is it beyond a reasonable doubt? Perhaps not, but it is currently
the only hypothesis that makes sense given the evidence available. And until more evidence is
made available, it is the only reasonable conclusion to make.
An established web-based essayist and print author, Quinn has been writing incisive
editorials for Sott.net for over 10 years. His
articles have appeared on many alternative news sites and he has been interviewed on several
internet radio shows and has also appeared on IranianPress TV. His articles
can also be found on his personal blog JoeQuinn.net .
It's hard to even decipher the official narrative, it's an incoherent mess, lacking any
motive, lacking any factual content.
Where we have facts, e.g. 3 actual admissions to hospital and compare with the narrative,
130 lives threatened, it's makes May's announcements appear total nonsense
It's all very well western MSM and governments asking us to believe their narratives but
their story lines never make sense ... they just lack logical consistency and tend to have
glaring plot holes .... it's all hypocritical BS
Lol. Is there anyone on SOTT who believes the official narrative?
I've been knitting a sweater waiting for some really good 'official' evidence;
I'm about to start in on a new one and perhaps a blanket after that.
The thing about official narratives is that they try to appeal to the 'plausible lie'
(repeated often enough on the news - and nothing new here to SOTT readers), and in a court of
law (or world opinion) this type of lie, as we know, can do the trick in peoples heads.
Double-down on it all with rolled out authoritarians and the MSN public can be like putty -
moldable.
Thanks for writing such a good article - nice work!
This whole episode disgusts me, and that is what is, an episode, in the pathological drama
that is enfolding in the world today.
It has no bearing or relevance to what is occurring in the real world, it's a staged
political act.
These so called politicians in the west are so inept, they are no longer able to judge or
respond to the will of the people, for which they have been elected I might add, they resort
to extraordinary measures to keep the electorate on side.
Unfortunately, it seems to be missing the mark, evidence all the mass unrest in the US, UK
and Europe.
The so called Austerity measures have done nothing more than to create more chaos on an
already chaotic situation, fueled by emotional fervor.
And of course, we have the MSM fueling the fire. At one time it was described as the 5 th
Estate, No longer, it is a collaborator and cooperator in the message that the political
elite want to send to the masses.
Well it's a free choice one can believe the evidence that is presented from whatever news
source one wants to watch, read or listen to. Personally I think there should be a warning
message, like on food labels, that if one listens, watches or reads the MSM, it is a case of
buyer beware, in the case of MSM, it is a case of your mind beware, and that is the most
important thing as far as I am concerned, ones own personal integrity is not compromised, the
ability to discern truth from lies.
Joan ''...These so called
politicians in the west are so inept,...''
The politicians are not the ones running the show. Big money is. Really big
money. Consortiums of major banks and oil companies for example. The Rockerfeller family is
another one. I forgot the number but I do remember their fortune is unbelievably colossal.
They are in everything. Just a handful of people are running the show from behind the scene.
Surely you know that.
demore Yes I do know that. And what we are witnessing is a show for public consumption
It has no relation to what is happening in th real world. Business with Russia continues,
although they may have to jump more hurdles, the space station continues, banking and finance
continues. trade continues, cultural exchanges continues.
So this is a purely a staged political event to sway the peoples to back a pathological
ideology.
They live in a bubble of there own reality and unfortunately they are trying to get people
to pierce the bubble and enter that reality.
Consider for example this picture which shows Mr. Skripal and his daughter Yulia presumably
in the pub or the restaurant they visited before they collapsed. Who is the third person,
visible in the mirror between them, who took the picture?
Is this third person the MI6 agent Pablo Miller who in 1995 recruited Skripal as British
double agent. Miller who was also involved in handling the MI6 assets Boris Berezovski and
Alexander Litvinenko. Pablo Miller who lives close to Sergej Skripal in Salisbury and is
considered to be his friend? The same Pablo Miller who worked with former MI6 agent
Christopher Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence which created the 'dirty dossier' about
Donald Trump? How deep were the Skripals involved in making up the fake stories in the
anti-Trump dossier for which the Clinton campaign paid more than $168,000 dollars. Did the
Skripals threaten to talk about the issue? Is that why the incident happened?
Without going too far into the gymnastics of the Skripals' poisoning, it is quite probable
Theresa May may have known there was going to be a poisoning of the Skripals, before the
actual poisoning took place. Check the timings of the released 'certainty' data.
Her unprotected visit to the sites should also be a clear indication of 'something'.
What is the name of the 'containing' hospitals, and where is it located?
Isn't this scenario following a distinct parallel path to Iraq's WMD, starting with the
very similar vial, and posture?
I appreciate the good analysis that Joe here and others elsewhere have done to lay bare the
dishonesty and fraud of this staged incident. However, after so many such faked affairs I
think another response is necessary.
1. The First Response by Russia and others should be to flatly and bluntly say it is a
bunch of lying shit. By this I mean that Russia et al should stop being so damned reasonable.
That this sort of stuff should be flung back at the accusers with defiance.
2. Russia et al should inflict immediate and painful measure on the perpetrators. Hit them
hard where it counts. Seize assets, arrest nationals, attack economically, impose sanctions.
Make it clear that whatever they do to Russia can be taken in stride. But the west is fragile
and weak and greedy and so not able to receive return blows. Do this with an air of 'we can
take it, we will dish it out, you can't hadle it'.
3. Split the Europeans. Pitch soft to some countries like Italy but pound others like the
UK. They are weak, they will fold.
4. Announce bold new military undertakings. Up the building of weapon systems. Increase
the reserves, deployment. Make it very clear there will be a price and Russia is prepared to
inflict serious pain.
5. Continue to buddy up to China. Dramatically increase economic protection measure.
Prepare to attack and undermine western currencies and markets.
The bragging and posturing of the west is a gambler's last throw. They cannot maintain by
force or any other means cohesion. Faced with painful resistance parts of the regime will
grow fearful and capitulate. Make for civil war. Let them destroy themselves. This is the
cheapest and safest way to put the lot out of business.
But, China, Russia and honest people in the west need to show some teeth to set this in
motion.
Yeah Ned, but I think that's exactly what they want Russia to do, and they ain't playing that
game. it must be maddening to them to poke and prod them and they are, like you say, so damn
reasonable,
So where is the 'Novichok' talk coming from? Well, someone in the British government
propaganda staff watched the current seasons of the British-American spy drama Strike Back.
(reverse causality IMO - it was planned, possibly predictive programming and
conditioning)
Nina Byzantina points to the summaries of recent episodes:Episode 50 ran in the U.K on
November 21 2017 and in the U.S. on February 23 2018:
Meanwhile, General Lázsló shuts down Section 20, forcing Donovan to work in
secret. She discovers that Zaryn is in fact Karim Markov, a Russian scientist who allegedly
killed his colleagues with Novichok, a nerve agent they invented.
Episodes 51 ran in the U.K on November 28 2017 and in the U.S. on March 2 2018:
Section 20 track Berisovich's meth lab in Turov where Markov is making more Novichok and
destroy it, though Berisovich escapes with Markov.
Episodes 52 ran in the U.K on January 31 2018 and in the U.S. on March 9 2018:
Section 20 track down Maya, a local Muslim woman Lowry radicalised, to a local airport.
When she attempts to release the Novichok, Reynolds shoots her. The Novichok is fake however,
as Berisovich does not want an attack committed in his country. ... By the time Section 20
arrives, Berisovich had already called in the FSB to extract Markov and confiscate the
Novichok. Yuri resurfaces to kill McAllister and Wyatt. However they turn the tables and
strangle him to death. They then manage to engage the FSB and contain the gas. But in the
process Reynolds is exposed. Markov works on an antidote but is killed by the Russians before
he can complete. McAllister improvises and saves Reynolds, before Novin blows up the lab.
Lowry uses the remainder of the gas to kill Berisovich for trying to betray her.
Here is a clip from the series: [ Link ]
See article here: [
Link ]
Sadly, however, facts and logic are not being used by the masses here as the proles have
been sufficiently programmed, that they will 'knee jerk' without analysis, without open
minds, and will do what the PTB's MSM tells them to do.
When absolute proof beyond reasonable doubt that the official story of 9/11 came out; to
wit: the proof of explosive Alumino Sulfate? Nano sized unexploded particles in the dust of
WTC, a friend, newly introduced to the 'bigger truths', asked, 'Well how are they going to
explain this away?"
I told him, just like they did in not talking about WTC7. You never knew about it until
2003 when I told you. Same approach here."
Well, assuming your point is true, the more valid it is, the more it will be ignored.
Given that Russia had ample chance to kill Skripal when he was imprisoned there for
several years, there's obviously a complete lack of a motive on Russia's part. And further
given the abundant means, motive and opportunity of, by, and available to, the British
government, it looks beyond reasonable doubt to me.
The logic behind the official narrative that Russia did it because Skripal was Russian and
'novichok' was originally developed by Russians is not far off believing that standing in a
garage makes you a car. But clearly this is how the UK gov & Co see it.
Well, they're not much of 'intellectual Ferraris', are they. More like three-wheel
bicycles ridden by a child with special educational needs.
By now anyone with an opinion on the Skripal poisoning has already decided if they believe
the official narrative or not. Still, the event and the ongoing media coverage around it
presents an opportunity to understand more than we might think.
I don't even get eye-rolls these days when I talk with True Believers.
I've been noticing that the tactic now employed most often, (other than simply avoiding
eye contact and scurrying away), is to interrupt, be louder, to spin anxious, meandering and
waaaaay-off point diatribes which go on for many minutes at a time without letup, repeatedly
referencing totems and touchstones like, "Scientific peer review is the only thing
separating us from chaos!" -and canned talking points which may or may not have any
bearing on the subject.
The 10 Main Holes in the Official Narrative on the Salisbury Poisonings: #1 – The
Motive
When I began writing about the Skripal case, I was moved to do so by three main
considerations.
Firstly, I really am passionate for the truth, and whatever the truth happens to be in
this case, I strongly desire it to be made manifest. It was clear to me fairly early on that
this was not happening.
Secondly, I am also very passionate about concepts such as the rule of law, innocent until
proven guilty, and the apparently quaint notion that investigations should precede verdicts,
rather than the other way around. And so when I saw accusations being made before the
investigation had hardly begun, verdicts being reached before the facts were established, I
was appalled -- appalled that this was happening in what we British pride ourselves is the
Mother of Parliaments, and equally appalled that this meant the investigation was inevitably
prejudiced and – pardon the expression – poisoned from the off.
Thirdly, the incident happened to have taken place pretty much on my doorstep, which made
it of even more interest to me.
Nothing I have seen in the intervening time has persuaded me that my initial impressions
were wrong. In fact, the whiff of rodent I first detected has only become stronger as time
has gone on and the case has become -- frankly -- farcical.
"... the United States expelled 60 diplomats back in March, and more recently they have effectively declared economic war on the Russian Federation all in response to unproven and inconsistent assertions of a botched assassination attempt against an old spy in a quiet Wiltshire City. Such a response ought to raise the suspicions of any sentient being that all is not what it appears. ..."
"... The first question to be asked is this: What exactly does she mean by "the motive"? By including that definite article before the word "motive", she implies that there is only one "motive" the ..."
"... it is known -- although woefully unreported because of a media ban -- that Mr Skripal was connected to the man behind the so-called Trump Dossier, Christopher Steele. Personally, I am reasonably convinced that Mr Skripal had a hand in putting this dossier together, given his connections to Steele, and since it was almost certainly authored by a Russian "trained in the KGB tradition" . ..."
"... Might this give a motive to some very powerful groups who are nervous about the origins and details of this dossier coming to light? Yes, of course. Then why is it not a line of possible enquiry? Answers on a postcard to the Department of the Blindingly Obvious. ..."
"... Mrs May had no right to state that the Russian Federation had "the motive". The best she could have said at that stage, without taking other possibilities into account, was that they had "a motive". The motive she does present is particularly feeble and does not explain why the Russian Federation would have wanted Mr Skripal in particular dead, and at that particular time. Mr Skripal's recent activities indicate that there were others with possible motives to assassinate or incapacitate him. dmonished 2 February 2016 by his FBI handler. This was in vault dump. ..."
"... If Sergei was Steele's only "source" obviously his disappearance was essential. ..."
"... My first question is : who is protecting Chris Steele right now ? I think it΄s MI6. But I don΄t think that they are happy to be forced to do that. Maybe there was an order of UK government to hide Steele. Because he meddled in some other things not related to the Dossier, but to Cambridge Analytica and Brexit and Fifa and . ..."
"... Don't understand why standard clean-up operations for fentanyl poisoning are ignored here. it includes protective clothing and hosing down public areas where the fentanyl may be present. Sunday evening clean-up at Maltings was SOP for fentanyl. This is not mysterious. ..."
"... Moving from a fentanyl od diagnosis to an unknown agent occurred Sunday evening. SDH stated that in the announcements on Monday. ..."
"... I am beginning to wonder if Bailey was even poisoned at all. Was it all just a PR exercise? Was he told to get himself to hospital on Tuesday morning so that the nerve agent story would have at least one other person involved. If he was feeling ill, why did he drive himself to hospital he could have collapsed at any second! ..."
"... Two SDH physicians had a completed training in a highly specialized program at Porton Down shortly before 4 Mar. It's been hinted that one or both were on duty 4 Mar. ..."
"... Having followed your excellent blog for some weeks now, I've become convinced that there are four distinct elements to this affair: two opposing clandestine ops, an almost unbelievably idiotic false flag charade, and a random death:- ..."
"... 1. Operation 'Let's Keep Tabs on Sergei'. Run by MI5/6/SB to make sure their double agent doesn't come to any harm or become a triple agent. Electronic tagging, email monitoring, phone tapping, and friendly chats ever now and then. Worked well for years, then the wheels fell off on 4th March. ..."
"... 2. Operation 'Let's Extract Skripal'. Run by an unknown security agency but possibly contracted out to another. Deniable soft extraction so he could be wheeled out later to give evidence concerning the Trump Dossier, with or without his co-operation. The plan included his daughter, because she was needed to ensure Sergei said what he was supposed to say when the time came. Phase One carried out successfully on 4th March. Phase Two delayed by HMG playing silly games, but eventually mission was accomplished. ..."
"... 3. The 'Let's Blame Putin' Charade. When MI6 reported to its ultimate boss that an ex-Russian spy had been poisoned, Boris would have rightly assumed the culprits were probably Russian. But then, remembering how Lavrov humiliated him at that press conference in Moscow last December, he decided to make sure Russia did get the blame and take the rap for it. With the help of the new inexperienced Defence Secretary and others, he came up with a hastily and ill-conceived plan to show that the poison could have only come from Russia, ensuring Russia's guilt. The Home Secretary at the time, Amber Rudd, did not buy into it so had to be replaced, but others including the overworked Theresa May were taken in. The narrative quickly fell apart, but having persuaded the world and his wife of Putin's guilt, there was no going back. The hole Boris dug just got deeper. And all the evidence or the lack of it had to be destroyed. No wonder Boris resigned. ..."
When I began writing about the Skripal case, I was moved to do so by three main
considerations.
Firstly, I really am passionate for the truth, and whatever the truth happens
to be in this case, I strongly desire it to be made manifest. It was clear to
me fairly early on that this was not happening.
Secondly, I am also very passionate about concepts such as the rule of law,
innocent until proven guilty, and the apparently quaint notion that investigations
should precede verdicts, rather than the other way around. And so when I saw
accusations being made before the investigation had hardly begun, verdicts
being reached before the facts were established, I was appalled --
appalled that this was happening in what we British pride ourselves is the Mother
of Parliaments, and equally appalled that this meant the investigation was inevitably
prejudiced and pardon the expression poisoned from the off.
Thirdly, the incident happened to have taken place pretty much on my doorstep,
which made it of even more interest to me.
Nothing I have seen in the intervening time has persuaded me that my initial
impressions were wrong. In fact, the whiff of rodent I first detected has only
become stronger as time has gone on and the case has become -- frankly -- farcical.
Not only that, but the reaction to the case has been simply incredible. For
instance, the United States expelled 60 diplomats back in March, and more recently
they have effectively declared economic war on the Russian Federation all
in response to unproven and inconsistent assertions of a botched assassination
attempt against an old spy in a quiet Wiltshire City. Such a response ought
to raise the suspicions of any sentient being that all is not what it appears.
I still do not have any clear idea of what happened on that day, but what
I am certain of is that the official narrative is not only untrue, but it is
manifestly inconceivable that it could be true. There are simply too many inconsistencies,
too many holes and far too many unexplained events for it to be true. And whilst
part of me would dearly love to leave this wretched case behind for a while,
whilst it is still ongoing, and especially as it is now being used to push us
even closer to the brink of war (economic warfare is often a prelude to military
warfare), I find that hard to do.
What I would therefore like to do in a series of 10 short pieces over the
next couple of weeks or so, is attempt to expose some of the very many holes
in the official narrative. At the end of it, I may well put it all together
into one PDF, so that it can be sent somewhere, where it can be completely ignored
by those that matter. Enjoy!
"In conclusion, as I have set out, no other country has a combination
of the capability, the intent and the motive to carry out such an act."
For the purposes of this piece, I am not interested in her comments on capability
or intent, but simply what she describes as "the motive".
The first question to be asked is this: What exactly does she mean by "the
motive"? By including that definite article before the word "motive", she implies
that there is only one "motive" the motive and that only one party
the Russian Federation possessed this. Which is of course manifest nonsense.
She might at that stage have said that they possessed "a motive", but without
looking into what Mr Skripal was up to, and the contacts he had, she was in
no position to state that they had " the motive".
Imagine the following scenario: A farmer called Boggis is found shot dead
in his barn. It is known that a week earlier, he had a very public quarrel with
another landowner, Bunce, about the boundaries between their lands, and that
the two of them had to be separated before they came to blows. Could it be said
of Bunce that he had "the motive"? Well, it would be reasonable to suggest that
he had "a motive", but without looking into other circumstances and other characters
connected with Boggis, it would be disingenuous to claim that he had "the motive"
as if only he might have had one.
As it happens, Boggis had been committing adultery with the wife of another
neighbouring farmer called Bean, and Bean had found out about this two days
before Boggis was found dead. What now? Does Bean have a motive? Very possibly.
So too might Boggis' wife. Perhaps even Bunce's wife. Who knows without examining
the facts more closely?
And so herein lies the first whiff of rodent. Mrs May asserted that the Russian
Federation possessed "the motive", implying that there was only one possibility,
which is something that could only be ascertained by proper investigation of
Mr Skripal, his circumstances and what he was up to. She therefore committed
what is a most basic fallacy in the investigative process.
The second question to ask is this: she says she set out "the motive" in
her speech, but what actually was that? Here is what she presented as the motive
in her speech:
"We know that Russia has a record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations
and that it views some former intelligence officers as legitimate targets
for these assassinations."
This won't do. Firstly, many countries have records of conducting state-sponsored
assassinations, and not always against their own nationals. But secondly, the
claim that the Russian Federation "views some former intelligence officers as
legitimate targets for these assassinations" is not a motive. At best it is
a claim, but it is not a motive. A motive for an attempted murder, such as this,
would need to give a reason for carrying it out on that particular person at
that particular time. Simply saying that they view some former intelligence
officers as legitimate targets for these assassinations does not explain why
they are supposed to have decided to assassinate this particular man, at this
particular time, especially since they released and pardoned him in 2010. It
also does not explain why they apparently decided to wreck all possible future
spy swaps, since Mr Skripal had been part of such a deal, and assassinating
him would put an end to such deals.
But the most important question to ask is this: are there any other parties
with a possible motive for this crime? Even without a particularly careful investigation
of the details of Mr Skripal's life, contacts and circumstances, I can say assuredly
that there were. For instance, it is known -- although woefully unreported because
of a media ban -- that Mr Skripal was connected to the man behind the so-called
Trump Dossier, Christopher Steele. Personally, I am reasonably convinced that
Mr Skripal had a hand in putting this dossier together, given his connections
to Steele, and since it was almost certainly
authored by a Russian "trained in the KGB tradition" .
Might this give a
motive to some very powerful groups who are nervous about the origins and details
of this dossier coming to light? Yes, of course. Then why is it not a line of
possible enquiry? Answers on a postcard to the Department of the Blindingly
Obvious.
In summary:
Mrs May had no right to state that the Russian Federation had "the motive".
The best she could have said at that stage, without taking other possibilities
into account, was that they had "a motive". The motive she does present is particularly
feeble and does not explain why the Russian Federation would have wanted Mr
Skripal in particular dead, and at that particular time. Mr Skripal's recent
activities indicate that there were others with possible motives to assassinate
or incapacitate him. dmonished 2 February 2016 by his FBI handler. This was
in vault dump.
Fusion GPS only got contract from Hillary April 2016, who then subcontracted
to Steele.
But Steele was FBI asset prior to dossier being started. Was he an asset or
a feeder of MI6 disinformation into US politics/intelligence?
That McCain ended up giving the dossier to Comey, when that dossier was written
by a supposed FBI "asset" would indicate the latter. If Sergei was Steele's only "source" obviously his disappearance was essential.
"CC Pritchard said officers at the scene underwent a "decontamination process"
at Salisbury District Hospital overnight on Sunday and into Monday morning,
after details of the attack became clearer."
But didn't Bailey drive himself in only because he said he didn't feel
well sometime on Monday evening?
@Jo. Yes, one version of the story says Bailey and two colleagues were checked
out at the hospital and then discharged, but that Bailey drove himself back
after feeling unwell and was readmitted.
I want to present my own thoughts on party A and B, that some posters here
have developed.
My first question is : who is protecting Chris Steele right now ?
I think it΄s MI6. But I don΄t think that they are happy to be forced to
do that.
Maybe there was an order of UK government to hide Steele. Because he meddled
in some other things not related to the Dossier, but to Cambridge Analytica
and Brexit and Fifa and .
MI6 has to hide the Skripals, too. The reason is simply to prevent that
Steele, Miller and the Skripals will ever be interrogated by the Trump fraction.
The dodgy dossier became a heavy burden on the UK Government since Steele
became known as the author.
It is an open secret that the UK Government has secretly done everything
possible to prevent Trump's presidency. Who knows what else will come to
light ?
In another post I had mentioned the role of Alexandra Chalupa and her
Ukraine connection. She's an ambassador to the Ukraine for the DNC.
Chalupa collected dirt on Paul Manaford for a long time.She emailed DNC that she'll share sensitive info about Paul Manafort "offline"
including "a big Trump component that will hit in next few weeks" (which
never happened, at least by Alexandra Chalupa).
Then her private Yahoo email account was hacked and a few days later DNC
fired Chalupa. WHY ? Maybe because DNC needed to keep her activities off-site,
where a FOIA can't touch them ?
But what happened on the very day Chalupa is fired ? Oh, Christopher Steele
is hired. What a coincidence.
And what happens FIVE DAYS after Christopher Steele was hired ? Oh, he publishes
his first report on his dossier, a report that discusses FIVE YEARS of investigation.
I mention Chalupa, because I strongly suspect that much of the Trump
dossier goes back to Chalupa's research. These, in turn, are based largely
on information provided by the Ukrainian intelligence service SBU.
The DNC wanted to use this information against Trump, but they couldn΄t
use Chalupa as the source. So the idea was born to hire Steele for the job.
Outsourcing.
The FBI has probably contacted its loyal vassal MI6 and discreetly referred
to "common interests".
Steele then changed the dossier to obfuscate Chalupa's authorship. But he
made decisive mistakes.
One mistake may have been to involve Sergei to some extent.
So I'm assuming that FBI and MI6 have a common interest in preventing
Steele, Miller and the Skripals from speaking.
Maybe MI6 contacted Sergei some time before and offered him to change his
identity. But Sergei refused. However, he was now alarmed and made plans
to return to Russia.
A dilemma for FBI and MI6. They now had to find another way to prevent Sergei
from speaking.
The idea of a Russian nerve agent was born. That killed two birds with one
stone.
Who executed the plan ?
FBI alone
MI6 alone
FBI and MI6 together
A third party that was willing to support the plan. This third party could well be from Ukraine. They hate Russia, they feared
that their share of the Trump dossier could come to light.
Moreover, in the West, they can not distinguish well between Ukrainians
and Russians if the perpetrators were unmasked.
Moreover, various sources, including the German BND, have pointed out that
Ukraine may still have Novichok stocks.
Bailey's job was to shadow the Skripals and report it. But he knew nothing
of the plan.
I think, the attack itself happened in or around the Mill Pub and Bailey
witnessed it.
However, I have no idea if the attack was done open or hidden.
I guess hidden. Something contaminated was being smuggled into the red bag,
perhaps already in the Zizzi, which the Skripals then discovered, wondering
how it came in the bag, and what both were touching.
Bailey was contaminated later, when he touched the same item (maybe a perfume
in gift wrapping) inside the red bag ?
In the run up to and including the war of the Iraq II WMD Debacle, Mi6
were fractured, even the bosses Dearlove and Scarlett that were running
their own pro Blair operations in conflict with the rest of the service.
Dearlove and Scarlett had their own objectives which were not comparable
with each other (personal and professional but mainly personal) or the rest
of their service.
Mi6, Mi5, DiS (or whatever they are all called now) with GCHQ have their
own infighting and conflicts of interest; within themselves, their sister
services, commercial / pension interests and those of the government ..
And of course what is in the best interest of the nation. (the police forces
are inconvenient uneducated, unfocussed rabbles that get in the way if they
involve themselves in anything more than issuing speeding fines)
Add to that Ministers fighting each other, Labour MP's trying harder
to bring down Corbyn than May, the Israeli and US interests ever present
wherever you look.
And top that with the US shambolic lessons to all other developed governments
in the world and the examples they display of their own decorum. Clinton
v Trump. FBI v CIA. (How many intelligence services are there? How many
agendas have they got?) And the Sickly twisted occultist hand the CIA has
in global drug production / distribution, unmetered oil windfalls, blackmail
scams (honey traps, murder, vice, paedophilia). An organisation with limitless
wealth and income streams, zero conscience, morality or single objective
other than to control the surf / goyim / proletariat. No objectives other
than to invoke misery, pain, suffering and death with crime, wickedness,
fear and perpetual global wars so the elite can remain that way and enjoy
their rewards.
And we wonder why Salisbury happened, what it is about, who is doing
something about it, why are they lying and covering up, who is to blame?
Sputnik makes an unfortunate choice of words in trying to paraphrase the
Guardian article:
"The spokesman for Salisbury district hospital, where Charlie Rowley was
taken, told The Guardian that *none* of the hospital's patients was receiving
any nerve agent-related treatment at the moment."
The Guardian article actually says,
"The hospital said it could not speak about individual cases but stressed
it was not treating anyone for the effects of novichok poisoning at the
moment."
So, nine, not nether.
More interesting is that the truth of the strained relationship between
Charlie and his brother is becoming more apparent. A mutual friend told
me a few weeks back that Charlie was estranged from his family by choice.
Hearing that put a very different perspective on his brother's effusively
confusing statements to the press.
Regarding the family relationship, when Charlie was in court for drug dealing
last year (?) he was additionally charged with stealing £2,000 (I think
that was the amount) from Mr Matthew Rowley. So I too remain to be convinced
of the 'brotherly love'.
" he was additionally charged with stealing £2,000 (I think that was the
amount) from Mr Matthew Rowley". That, to me, is a very odd fact. We are
told that Charlie is a drug addict on his uppers (i.e. skint), yet he had
£2000 that his brother (perhaps with an underlying motive to put Chalie
on cold turkey oh, wait, oink, , flap, , oink, , flap, ) sought to relieve
him of responsibility for it.
As to the mangling of the message mentioned by lissnup, both the Guardian
and Sputnik would probably have got the original story from PA, following
which they would then have put their own brand of spin on it.
The identity of the Skripals in contained in the witness statements those
who were present at the time and clearly saw them:
FEMALE DOCTOR: "A doctor who was one of the first people at the scene
has described how she found Ms Skripal slumped unconscious on a bench, vomiting
and fitting. She had also lost control of her bodily functions. The woman,
who asked not to be named, told the BBC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery
position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father. She said
she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical
agent on Ms Skripal's face or body. The doctor said she had been worried
she would be affected by the nerve agent but added that she "feels fine."
She clearly states that she found Ms Skripal slumped unconscious on a
bench, vomiting and fitting and that she had lot control of her bodily functions.
I don't know of anyone who has the ability to spontaneously evacuate their
bladder and bowl at will, more especially a female in front of a crowd on
onlookers. The doctor put her in the recovery position, that means on her
side, so there would have been visible evidence of Yulia having lost control
of her bodily functions.
FREYA CHURCH: "Sixteen minutes later [that is, after being seen on CCTV],
personal trainer Freya Church, 27, came across the victims slumped on a
bench. She said they seemed 'out of it' and assumed they were on drugs.
"It was a young, blonde and pretty girl and it was definitely the man that's
been pictured in the news the guy that's a spy. She was passed out and
he was looking up to the sky and I tried to get eye contact to see if they
were okay. They didn't seem with it. To be honest I thought they were just
drugged out as they were in a weird state. There are lots of homeless people
here so I just thought they were homeless."
Freya Church clearly identifies them, "It was a young, blonde and pretty
girl and it was definitely the man that's been pictured in the news the
guy that's a spy." She also says "I tried to get eye contact to see if they
were okay", so she had a clear view of their faces.
Destiny Reynolds, 20, who works in Ganesha Handicrafts in the centre,
said: "I saw quite a lot of commotion there were two people sat on the
bench and there was a security guard there. They put her on the ground in
the recovery position, and she was shaking like she was having a seizure.
It was a bit manic. There were a lot of people crowded round them. It was
raining, people had umbrellas and were putting them over them."
She says "It was raining, people had umbrellas and were putting them
over them." so these too would have had a clear view of the Skripal's faces.
Not one of these people, or the other witnesses, has come forward to
say it wasn't the Skripals, unlike DS Bailey, they are not subject to a
gagging order by way of the The Official Secrets Act.
All these witnesses would have assumed they were the Skripals because the
media claimed that they were. So did the Wiltshire police at least, at that
time. This is not of evidential value.
Freya Church has been proven to be an unrelaible witness. Destiny Reynolds
may not have had a clear view of their faces at all, especially as she said
that there was quite a lot of commotion, and "There were a lot of people
crowded round them. It was raining, people had umbrellas and were putting
them over them." How far away was she?
I'm also suspicious of that anonymous 'female nurse'. I had read that
this first responder was a 'male nurse' too. Apparently, s/he was a military
nurse, and had had experience with the African Ebola outbreak. S/he apparently
spent 30 minutes with the Skripals! Was it her who made the original emergency
call?
Besides, descriptions differ. CCTV evidence has been suppressed, and
that alone suggests that they were not the Skripals, and so does the police
interest in the Market walk footage. So, no, I'm not at all convinced.
I've not read any posts here since last night, so this post must be read
bearing that in mind.
I briefly replied to John Bull's four points, but I'd like to say more
on this. His first point related to the surveillance op being conducted
on Sergei. I said more or less that this would have been standard procedure
in this type of case, and the work would have been carried out by MI5 watchers.
In 2006 Special Branch was merged with the Met's Anti Terrorism Branch to
become the Counter Terrorism Command, and I'm pretty sure that DS Bailey
would have been seconded to that organisation, and that he was Sergei's
'front-line' case officer. His roles would be to protect Sergei (an SIS
asset) and to pass on intelligence to MI5's regional liaison officer at
Bristol.
Now John Bull was assuming that those involved in this operation were
one of two competing parties. The second party being covered in his second
point. This is where I disagree. I don't count MI5's role here as being
one of the two parties, for it is at least theoretically neutral.
The other party is not neutral, and that is MI6. It is MI6 who were (and
still probably are) acting in competition with the unknown group. Both groups
were involved in planning a their own Skripal operations prior to 4th March.
Let's call this unknown group, Group X This shadowy group represents certain
US political interests.
This is what I said in my original post (19th at 3.50pm) that first brought
the dual-party theory into the light:
"Let's suppose [the film] was their source of poisoning inspiration.
Let's also suppose that two competing groups became involved at different
stages. Let's say there was a pre-planned, well-organised operation prepared
by group A, but when group B somehow learnt of it, a hurried attempt was
made by group B to scupper group A's plan which might have failed. Just
speculation, but it would account for many anomalies. These two groups could
be two different intelligence agences, or one of them possibly being a rogue
faction within an intelligence agency".
This remains the bare bones of my theory, and I was deliberately being
rather coy about it at the time. Of course, another party that quickly became
involved in all this is the British parliament itself, and I suspect that
MI6 sought urgent advice from government ministers when they realised Group
X's intentions. (They would have only given them information on a need-to-know
basis). MI6, wanting to protect their assets as well as Britain's interests,
attempted to neutralise Group X's plan at short notice. It was the hurried
nature of all this, along with extreme political pressure, that caused mistakes
to be made. Secret heated discussions between the US, UK and *French* governments
have no doubt been going on about this situation ever since 4th March.
I could say much more, but for now, I'll try and catch up with a long
backlog of posts !
Competing groups might explain the 15:47 CCTV image if it was indeed Sturgess
and Rowley, not the Skripals. If the Skripals were to be whisked away alive,
a couple who could be mistaken for them, walking in a direction away from
the point of disappearance and after it could be used, should the need arise,
to deflect from the real circumstances by Group A. However, Group B, hastily
interfering with Group A's plan, causes a public scene, making the red herring
couple a liability instead of an asset which might explain the release
of the footage (part of Group A's original plan) but the lack of an appeal
for help by local authorities (because the plan was FUBAR, making the pre-planned
release of the CCTV footage a mistake).
Miheila, I am not surprised to hear MI5 are in Bristol.
Two other odd occurrences doing to mind. The cricketer Ben Stokes' charging
decision being inexplicably sent to London.
Thanks Noone very interesting. I signed this too, about ending the 'special
relationship', (which in my opinion was toxic and one-sided ever since it
began):
https://action.larouchepac.com/declassifyukdocs
Brexiteers go on so much about 'British sovereignty', yet they ignore
the fact that Britain has effectively been a vassal of the USA for decades.
I'm not saying Kier Prichard did it on his own, and the Met have their burden
to carry, but what this man has achieved in such a short time is truly breathtaking.
Wilts police are now a laughing stock, not just in Salisbury or Wilts
but the UK and internationally. The public trust level must be as low as
it can possibly get. The rank and file must be suffering humiliation, worthlessness,
shame and depression. Motivation must be zero.
What a jerk, why do that to yourself, your reputation, your family, your
colleagues, your force of 20 20 years ? Is he really that thick, so stupid
that he couldn't see this coming and when he did he had a chance to say
enough is enough or is that side of his character so flawed that he is either
too cowardly or just unaware of what people think of him?
"ACC Pritchard said: "I have a huge sense of pride taking over the reigns
as Temporary Chief Constable for a force I have served for more than 20
years.
At least Basu has had the good grace to keep his mouth shut and go into
hiding.
I can't see how he (and others ) can avoid criminal prosecutions but
it won't be long until the civil prosecutions begin which will cost the
tax payers dear. But those who are involved can expect (if they do manage
to stay out of jail) to now spend much of the rest of their lives fighting
litigation
They brought it on themselves and unfortunately us but none more so than
Dawn.
Justice for Dawn!
"Mike has been a fantastic leader and he leaves us in great shape both
in terms of engagement amongst officers and staff and, externally, as evidenced
in our strong Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue
Services (HMICFRS) gradings.
"We are blessed with outstanding officers, staff and volunteers across
our organisation who achieve great things every day and who strive to provide
an excellent service to all of our communities.
"Now is the time to look forward and to continue, as we've always done,
with our values and communities at the heart of everything we do.""
Peter, They are all useless. It seems to be the only qualification needed
these days. Now Jeremy Hunt is calling for more sanctions on Russia this
simply proves that he is ignorant as well as useless.
For years Russia has been dedollarising; Russia will manage just fine
with more British sanctions (and American sanctions for that matter) and
the most damage will be done to British companies that will be shut out
of Russia not because of anything Russia has done but because of what
their own idiotic government has done.
TPTB are cretins!
With immediate effect, I am starting a personal 'buy Russian' campaign.
If I find anything in the shops that is 'made in Russa', I will buy it in
preference to anything made in the EU. Every little helps!
Ditto. There is another country that I and my relatives never buy fresh
produce from, always going for South African or South American alternatives,
or if they're unavailable going without. I can't say publicly which
country as I might get a visit from the boys in blue!
CF
Alexander Goldfarb is/was a friend of Sergei Skripal, Alexander Litvinenko,
Boris Berezovsky and Nikolai Glushkov.
Associated with George Soros :
Goldfarb was among the first group of Russian exiles in New York whom Soros
invited to brainstorm his potential Foundation in Russia. In 1991 Goldfarb
persuaded Soros to donate $100 million to help former Soviet scientists
survive the hardships of the economic shock therapy adopted by the Yeltsin
government.
From 1992 to 1995, Goldfarb was Director of Operations at Soros' International
Science Foundation, with many more Soros projects to follow.
Here is a chronology of Goldfarb's press statements.
One gets the impression that he has prompted TM how to argue.
March 6
Quote : Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, Mr Goldfarb said:
"The Russian secret services and the regime of Mr Putin had the motive and
the opportunity to do this. And they did it before. I mean, it's only natural
for any reasonable person to suspect them."
Mr Goldfarb, a close friend of killed dissident Alexander Litvinenko, said
he has a theory as to why Russia could be behind the latest alleged poisoning.
The microbiologist and activist said it is not a spy theory but instead
a political move.
He said: "It is a political motivation and it has to do with the elections
of the President, which will happen in Russia in about ten days from now
and the major problem for Putin is the turnout because his main opponent
has been barred from participating and he has called for a boycott of the
elections.
"So Mr Putin is worried there are few people who come people who are apathetic
in Russia so this will be used regardless of whether Putin did it or not.
"He has a way to invigorate his nationalistic and extremely anti-western
rhetoric."
Mr Goldfarb said the "majority" of Russians would perceive the "poisoning"
as the right thing to do as they view Putin as a leader that can "get his
enemies wherever they are across the globe."
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/927751/Russian-spy-poisoned-Salisbury-London-Alexander-Litvinenko-Sergei-Skripal-Putin-spy-swap
March 8
Quote : Former-spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter and a policeman have been
poisoned in Salisbury in what is suspected to be a state-sponsored hit.
But it is not the first time this has happened as Alexander Litvinenko,
who was former Russian secret service officer who defected to the west,
died in November 2006 after he drank tea laced with radioactive polonium-210
at the Millenium Hotel in Mayfair.
His friend Alex Goldfarb appeared on Newsnight to warn that it was the inaction
from the UK on the Litvinenko murder which led to the recent suspected attempted
assassination.
Mr Goldfarb said: "For 10 years the British Government refused to admit
that the Litvinenko murder was a state-sponsored crime and up to the very
public inquiry which happened in 2016 they maintained this is just a regular
criminal matter.
"The moment an English judge ruled that it was a state-sponsored murder
and in all probability ordered by Putin David Cameron went on TV and said,
'we knew it from day one'.
"So they were trying to keep it quiet to not to annoy Putin and they invited
other attacks like this.
"If the response now will be the same, only words without any actions, there
will be a third and a fourth attempt."
He added: "I would pick the Putin theory because he is the only one who
had a motive and an opportunity too and he has been shown beyond any reasonable
doubt to be involved in the previous assassination I mean Litvinenko who
was my friend.
"He has a motive. His motive is the elections which are coming in about
10 days and there is a very low turnout expected and he needs to energise
his nationalistic, anti-western electorate."
"So, he wants to portray himself as a tough guy who can get his enemies
anywhere in the world and who has been presenting himself as the only thing
that is protecting Russia and the Russians from the plotting and the scheming
of the west."
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/928729/bbc-newsnight-russia-spy-war-bbc-news-Sergei-Skripal-assassination-latest-Putin
March 17 DailyNewsUSA
Quote : Alex Goldfarb, a friend of both men as well as a prominent critic
of Russia, insisted Vladimir Putin must have ordered both hits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwpV7n-rLTU
March 18
Quote : Police insist they have discovered no connection between the strangling
of former businessman Nikolai Glushkov, 68, at his London home last Monday
and the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury
a fortnight ago.
But Alex Goldfarb, a friend of both men as well as a prominent critic of
Russia, insisted Vladimir Putin must have ordered both hits.
Mr Goldfarb told BBC Radio 4: 'There is no connection in a forensic sense
probably, but if you look at the larger picture of politics, I am convinced
that no murder of this sort could have happened without the personal approval
of Putin or some of his immediate deputies.'
Mr Goldfarb was also close to former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who
was murdered with radioactive polonium-210 in London, and exiled tycoon
Boris Berezovsky, who was found dead at his Surrey home in suspicious circumstances.
'All of these in my view have the common denominator of Mr Putin flexing
his muscle,' said Mr Goldfarb, a scientist who lives in New York.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5514213/Murder-Putin-critic-linked-Skripal-nerve-agent-attack.html
Could you elaborate on those similarities please? I've had a look but didn't
see any. The CCTV footage is terrible quality but what "image" I get does
not coincide with available photos of Glushkov.
Goldfarb is certainly a person to be avoided with friends like that
who needs enemies? Litvinenko's dad suspects Goldfarb was his son's assassin.
The claim is made in that youtube video that Goldfarb was Skripal's friend
as well. It would not be a surprise but it would be good to obtain confirmation.
I agree, Liane, and have commented here about it. Glushkov has a young,
pretty, blonde daughter. I am not sure if it was the same daughter who reportedly
discovered his body.
"I would like to reassure you all that Nick is receiving medical intervention
and care from highly specialist medical practitioners experienced in these
matters."
Why did Pritchard say "highly specialist medical practitioners experienced
in these matters" instead of something less specific? Who are these "highly
specialist" and "experienced" practitioners? The medics at SDH were quite
humble in the Newsnight programme I am sure none of them would regard
themselves as 'highly specialist and experienced' in treating a nerve agent.
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NEWS5th JuneKier Pritchard says DS Nick Bailey poisoned at Skripal house
Exclusive by Rebecca Hudson @JournalRebecca
EXCLUSIVE
Dt Sgt Nick Bailey.
DETECTIVE Sergeant Nick Bailey was poisoned with a nerve agent when he
and other officers attended Sergei Skripal's home looking for evidence including
signs of drug use or suicide notes.
9
Chief Constable Kier Pritchard told the Journal he had watched evidence
from body-worn cameras used by officers who first attended the scene on
March 4, and that their response to the incident was "first class".
"We would not have known from those first hours what we were dealing
with. At that time we didn't know, and why would they, if there was anything
other than a medical incident, or something that was drug-related or something
more sinister," he said.
CC Pritchard said DS Bailey was one of a team of officers who attended Mr Skripal's home in Christie Miller Road, after the Russian former-spy
and his daughter were found slumped on a bench in the city three months
ago.
He said officers were looking for information to establish a timeline
of events and explain why the Skripals had fallen "gravely ill", as well
as making sure there was nobody else affected.
"That [information] could be a suicide note, it could be evidence of
drugs, it could be evidence of some form of substance," CC Pritchard added.
And he said DS Bailey (pictured) and his family are still receiving support
from Wiltshire Police.
CC Pritchard said: "Nick has been to Wiltshire Police headquarters, he
came in last week and that was a very positive step forward.
"This has been a long three months for many of us can you just imagine
the impact on your children and your wife and your family life when all
you're trying to do is your job? My heart absolutely goes out to Nick and
his family over all that they've suffered."
CC Pritchard said officers at the scene underwent a "decontamination
process" at Salisbury District Hospital overnight on Sunday and into Monday
morning, after details of the attack became clearer.
And, following that, Wiltshire Police set up a "welfare cell" to help
affected officers understand and work through the psychological effects
of the attack.
"We have supported over 90 members of our staff in either one to one
sessions or group meetings," CC Pritchard revealed. "Of course one of those
90 will be Nick Bailey".
CC Pritchard shared his pride in Wiltshire Police, and the citizens of
Salisbury, for their response to the "colossal events".
"We [Wiltshire Police] have the ability and the confidence to be able
to deal with international and global issues. I hope that provides real
confidence to the public of how proud they can be.
"And I want to put on record how proud I am of the community of Salisbury.
They have demonstrated the true brilliance of a community.
"Despite a global issue, and despite the massive impact, the way the
Salisbury general public has responded has been exemplary."
'Spacemen' in The Maltings on Sunday evening officers at the scene underwent
a "decontamination process" at Salisbury District Hospital overnight on
Sunday and into Monday morning
Why would that be? SDH suspected a nerve agent by 6am Monday morning,
not Sunday evening.
The only way anyone could have suspected more than a drug overdose on
Sunday would have been prior knowledge but if someone had prior knowledge
and did not ensure that ALL emergency responders were protected, that would
not just be negligent
The only way anyone could have suspected more than a drug overdose on
Sunday would have been prior knowledge
Yes and no. Don't understand why standard clean-up operations for fentanyl
poisoning are ignored here. it includes protective clothing and hosing down
public areas where the fentanyl may be present. Sunday evening clean-up
at Maltings was SOP for fentanyl. This is not mysterious.
Moving from a fentanyl od diagnosis to an unknown agent occurred Sunday
evening. SDH stated that in the announcements on Monday.
Liane, it wasn't just protective clothing it was the full 'moonsuit' but
not everyone wore one. When I mentioned prior knowledge, I was thinking
of Rob's idea that British intelligence might have got wind of an FBI/CIA
plot to use an agent from Porton Down. If there been any prior knowledge,
then allowing any first responders to be at the scene not wearing full hazmat
gear, would have been a crime in itself.
Remember that Kier Pritchard had his first day on duty on March 5. Maybe
he was not well informed about Bailey΄s part in the case.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu has taken over from Mark Rowley
as the new Assistant Commissioner responsible for leading counter terrorism
nationally on March 5.
March 1 a new temporary assistant chief constable has been selected at Wiltshire
Police. ACC Craig Holden joined Kier Pritchard.
So who was Bailey΄s supervisor on March 4 ? Deputy Chief Constable Paul
Mills ?
I am beginning to wonder if Bailey was even poisoned at all. Was it all
just a PR exercise? Was he told to get himself to hospital on Tuesday morning
so that the nerve agent story would have at least one other person involved. If he was feeling ill, why did he drive himself to hospital he could
have collapsed at any second!
If it was a bit of LARPing, that would at least explain why he didn't
need a tracheostomy.
I am beginning to wonder if Bailey was even poisoned at all.
My guess is that he wasn't. He felt ill and as instructed went to the
hospital on Tuesday to get checked out. Game was on at that point; so, he
was put in a bed for observation and not allowed to leave. Drugged. That
would be surreal, wouldn't it?
As I followed this segment in real time, there was a sense of elation
in the media that they had a third victim. A first responder. Then they
scrambled trying to explain what a DS would have been doing at Maltings;
so, they switched it to he was at the house. Then there were questions as
to why it took so long for the alleged poison to effect him. Somehow that
got dropped as they continued to make different claims about where he'd
been; finally settling on both Maltings and the house.
Paul and Marie, if Bailey was not poisoned the OPCW has to lie !
They took blood samples of all three on March 22. After that Bailey was
released.
I΄m convinced that Bailey was poisoned with the same nerve agent, whatever
agent that might be.
The OPCW did not lie but they were deceived. The OPCW says they checked the identities of the individuals they tested
against IDs. How hard would it be for the government to issue a passport
on the 'name' of Nicholas Bailey?
This raises the question again of how the OPCW acquired the samples they
took away with them. As I understand it the OPCW scientists who came to
the UK are not clinically trained they are effectively lab technicians
so they do not have the training to "take" samples from patients. They
are reported as "collecting samples" but to my knowledge from reading other
reports and articles it was UK medical staff who "took" the samples and
then handed them over to the OPCW. Even if they took the samples in front
of the OPCW, I bet at some point they said something along the lines of
"Oh hang on a minute, I just need to go and put labels on these phials back
in a minute".
Two SDH physicians had a completed training in a highly specialized program
at Porton Down shortly before 4 Mar. It's been hinted that one or both were
on duty 4 Mar.
But Bailey did not check in until 6 March. Were PD specialists there throughout?
Why didn't they just take the patients to PD instead of risking contaminating
a public hospital?
I recall reading at some point that Bailey drove himself to SDH on Monday
morning. Try as I might, however, I couldn't find it again. I know there
is a comment on MoonOfAlabama mentioning the same thing but it does not
have a link.
Then Mark Urban said in the Newsnight programme that Bailey drove himself
there on Tuesday morning .
Those were not PD specialists but SDH physicians that had received PD
training. That might be in addition to PD scientists that SDH spokespersons
have said were there as well. So, plenty of professionals focused on nerve
agent poisoning could have been there during the first 36 hours.
SDH had a whole new unoccupied wing they could have commandeered to isolate
the patients. Also to keep regular SDH staff and their eyes away from the
patients as well. Wouldn't that be preferable to transporting them to PD
with so many eyes watching?
But that was my original point. A training course does not make anyone:
"highly specialist medical practitioners experienced in these matters" Where does the 'experience in the matters' come from?
I'm posting this reply to Max_B here because this is the second time that
there's been no 'reply' option to his posts. No idea why, but the blue word
inthe corner is missing.
If you really "don't care", Max_B, then why on earth are you making such
a fuss over it ? I do care. And after accusing me of getting my facts wrong
(over Lavrov) you apologise to newcomer (Новичoк) Cherrycoke only when s/he
corrected you. Maybe you forgot.
Anyway, you say: "Fentanyl's and Carfentanil *are* nerve agents, I understand
you want to rely on a much narrower definition of nerve agent that only
includes Organophosphates, but that definition is just not accurate".
In your opinion only; not professional opinion which has for decades
treated organophosphate agents as nerve agents, and fentanyls as (narcotic-analgesic
type) incapacitants.
You said, "The substance responsible for the Salisbury and Amesbury incidents
isn't an Organophsophate, that's why they are scrabbling around for a redefinition".
I agree with this, although we are only surmising that the Salisbury/Amesbury
substance is not an organophosphate (due to symptoms), for no-one has actually
specified its nature. And yes, I can see that they are scrabbling around,
and so are you ! Fair enough. But how can this explain why nobody has officially
specified what this chemical is ? As far as I can tell, it doesn't. Why
can't they simply be open about its nature and honest about their scrabbling
?
Yes, of course opioids depress the CNS, but so do lots of substances
such as alcohol, and, yes Peter, even axes ! This does not make them nerve
agents for they do not inhibit acetylcholinestaerase crucial to the definition.
Wikipedia: "Nerve agents, sometimes also called nerve gases, are a class
of organic chemicals that disrupt the mechanisms by which nerves transfer
messages to organs. The disruption is caused by the blocking of acetylcholinesterase".
I perfectly understand the argument over BZ versus Carfentanyl, but surely,
rather than redefine the latter as a nerve agent, why not simply redefine
it as an opioid chemical weapon ? Organophosphate and carbamate pesticides
are officially (and biochemically) nerve agents, but they're not chemical
weapons. In the same way, most opioids are not chemical weapons but some,
such as the fentanyls should be. Salisbury has highlighted this failing,
hence the scrabbling about.
To include certain opioids as nerve agents (rather than opioid CW's),
then the official, long-established and generally-accepted scientific definition
must be changed which would only invite more confusion.
Agreed.
Opioid receptor agonists are not nerve agents.
However, if carfentanil was suspected then unprotected contact with the
victims would not be the protocol.
The true first responders were the heroes.
Unless they knew enough ahead of time to not be afraid.
"The true first responders were the heroes."
And they were who ? By the testimony of some who were aware of them (i.e. the unfeeling Freya
Church) just walked on like The Good Samaritans they most certainly are
not!
Perhaps there was an assumption that in an, allegedly, druggie infested
town like Salisbury, most people would ignore the histrionics of the pair
on the bench and walk on, leaving it to 'the first responders' to deal with
it. Convenient, if it worked.
If, and it is an if, the lady doctor and the nurse rushed to give the two
prone figures first aid without considering their own safety then these
two are the only heroic ones in this shambles.
As of 4 Mar, there has been no known fentanyl overdose in Salisbury. First
responders would have been trained in what to look for and how to proceed
in a fentanyl od situation, but practice makes perfect. There's not that
much difference in the emergency response protocols for fentanyl and carfentanil.
The difference is in the medical treatment in the hours and days after the
first couple of hours, and symptoms, treatments, and responses rather than
tests for the presence of carfentanil is the guide for physicians.
Rob, you are a great one for making lists of questions. You may have this
one on a list already:-
If HMG knew that Russia had declared death to all traitors, what measures
did they take to protect Sergei Skripal, a confirm traitor but also a member
of our security services. And why were those measures so lamentably unsuccessful?
Listen to Javid. The UK has never said what happened, (that's why we
have the Blogmire) and I don't recall ANY Russian account, other than denial
and show us evidence.
Glen needs to improve on his nodding skills. He is about three seconds too
slow.
Time and practice will no doubt improve this.
Having followed your excellent blog for some weeks now, I've become convinced
that there are four distinct elements to this affair: two opposing clandestine
ops, an almost unbelievably idiotic false flag charade, and a random death:-
1. Operation 'Let's Keep Tabs on Sergei'. Run by MI5/6/SB to make sure
their double agent doesn't come to any harm or become a triple agent. Electronic
tagging, email monitoring, phone tapping, and friendly chats ever now and
then. Worked well for years, then the wheels fell off on 4th March.
2. Operation 'Let's Extract Skripal'. Run by an unknown security agency
but possibly contracted out to another. Deniable soft extraction so he could
be wheeled out later to give evidence concerning the Trump Dossier, with
or without his co-operation. The plan included his daughter, because she
was needed to ensure Sergei said what he was supposed to say when the time
came. Phase One carried out successfully on 4th March. Phase Two delayed
by HMG playing silly games, but eventually mission was accomplished.
3. The 'Let's Blame Putin' Charade. When MI6 reported to its ultimate
boss that an ex-Russian spy had been poisoned, Boris would have rightly
assumed the culprits were probably Russian. But then, remembering how Lavrov
humiliated him at that press conference in Moscow last December, he decided
to make sure Russia did get the blame and take the rap for it. With the
help of the new inexperienced Defence Secretary and others, he came up with
a hastily and ill-conceived plan to show that the poison could have only
come from Russia, ensuring Russia's guilt. The Home Secretary at the time,
Amber Rudd, did not buy into it so had to be replaced, but others including
the overworked Theresa May were taken in. The narrative quickly fell apart,
but having persuaded the world and his wife of Putin's guilt, there was
no going back. The hole Boris dug just got deeper. And all the evidence
or the lack of it had to be destroyed. No wonder Boris resigned.
4. A Tragic Death. Four months after Skripal, a couple in Amesbury were
hospitalised for drug misuse; just two of the many cases SDH would have
dealt with during the year. But having been persuaded by HMG that the Skripals
had been poisoned with Novichok-that-only-comes-from-Russia, the local authorities
took no chances and assumed the two from Amesbury had been likewise affected.
HMG, desperate to keep their narrative alive, leapt on the incident to re-ignite
the anti-Russian rhetoric and claim Dawn's death was 'murder', 'a terrorist
act', 'a war crime' etc. etc. The narrative was even more idiotic than the
first one (a scent bottle in a litter bin for four months!) and ironically,
it blew the gaff. They said Dawn was poisoned by the very same Novichok-that-only-comes-from-Russia
and died because she received 10-times the dose Skripal got. But we know
she took eight days to die. It could not have been Novichok.
Perhaps the police should stop trying to hunt down non-existent assassins
and investigate Boris Johnson. The crime? Misconduct in public office, which
carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
When I was writing my scenario below, I started to realise that rather
than satirical it could be factual.
Little Gavin might be working under that man who would be king's tutelage.
Gavin having told the Russians to shut up, does not do well under questioning.
'A tragic death'
If Salisbury and the aftermath was not already crazy, Amesbury hit new heights
of idiocy.
A woman was taken from a house with poisoning in the morning but others
in the house were not taken to hospital for observation.
Later the same day, the other occupant of the same house fell ill. Decontamination
tents were sent to the location but were not used. Instead police put the
second victim in an ambulance with no protection whatsoever.
Just watch this short video and ask yourself what were the police thinking!!**??
Two days after Dawn and Charlie had been admitted to hospital, and as a
direct result of the Amesbury incident, Detective Sergent Erin Martin of
Salisbury CID took the " unusual step " of issuing an official warning
via Wiltshire Constabulary to " drug users " in south Wiltshire
"to be extra cautious" , . "We are asking anyone who may have
information about this batch of drugs to contact the Police", " where the
drugs may have been bought from, or who they may have been sold to."
John, you're poaching my theory ! The one I hinted at in an earlier post
(yesterday I think).
Like you, I'm convinced that two opposing covert ops are involved.
Your point 1. would be standard practice. Sergei would have been subjected
to discreet surveillance by MI5 watchers and GCHQ throughout his British
exile. Most likely heroic DS Bailey was his local case officer. But let's
not forget that Sergei was still working for MI6 and that Pablo Miller was
probably still his controller (line manager). There's a saying, 'once an
intelligence officer; always an intelligence officer' a saying which certainly
holds true for many ex-SIS folk. It was his covert activities that lead
to your next point.
Your point 2. is more or less exactly what I had worked out myself, and
I'll be working on the finer details for some time yet.
Your point 3. is spot on too. This is the opportunistic 'political capital'
angle I mentioned in an earlier post.
Your point 4. I see this as a crude continuation of the above. A further
opportunity. Nothing more.
Eventually, we'll be joining more and more dots together. Good work,
John !
"Party A is British Intelligence, whereas Party B is perhaps some sort
of Trump supporting element of US Intelligence/military. The Skripals are
therefore currently under their protection. Have I got that right?"
Broadly yes; that is the bare bones of what I currently think.
You counter with:
"Party A would be FBI/CIA Intel with nerve agent from US part of Porton
Down, and Party B would be British Intelligence believe what Party A is
about to do is potentially disastrous, and so try to stop it."
I have two particular issues with that idea. I mention them, to see whether
they can be answered in a way that allows us to build a scenario around
your idea.
Firstly, when you say FBI/CIA, what you really mean is Cabal. The FBI/CIA
would be acting on behalf of HRC/DNC/Obama/etc. to remove an individual
who could expose them and throw light on their illegal activities specifically
spying on Trump. Why would May/M_5/M_6 want to stop that? They are in exactly
the same boat and do not want their role to be disclosed either. Also Sergei
was nothing but an expense for HMG; they already had all the information
he was ever going to give them.
Ah, you say, British intelligence didn't like the idea of a nerve agent
being set loose in Salisbury. OK, well why not just have a word with the
FBI/CIA and agree to do it in a way that keeps everyone (except Sergei)
happy. I am sure that between FBI/CIA/M_5/M_6/HMG, there was something that
they could all agree would do the job and not threaten the whole of Salisbury.
Why not just get him at home?
But that isn't my biggest problem.
Secondly, Sergei was on British soil. If HMG/M_5/M_6 got wind of a plan
to kill him, why would they not just take him off the streets immediately?
Get him into protective custody. He had already been to the police to say
he was in fear of his life, so get him somewhere safe. Then there is no
need for any 'nerve agent' attack at all. The FBI/CIA might be a bit miffed
but Trump would not complain; he would say British intelligence did a great
job!
In this case, Bailey visits Sergei on Saturday morning and says: "Right
Sergei, go and get Yulia and then we will take you in. You will be safe
for the rest of your life. All you have to do is give me the SD card and
we will take care of the rest." Job done and it would have saved an awful
lot of ferreting around in rubbish bins ever since.
So if party A was indeed some black op of the FBI/CIA, why did party
B let it proceed right up to 4 March and then try to thwart it at the last
moment, instead of just killing it stone dead? If party B didn't stop the
FBI/CIA earlier and Bailey was sent in to save the Skripals, it rather looks
like they didn't get the SD card anyway
Good points Paul. For now, the only thing I'll say is with regard to the
second problem, which is this. It would all depend on when this plot was
discovered. If it was days or weeks in advance, then yes, you're absolutely
correct. But if it was some time on the morning or even early afternoon
of 4th March, then that would change things. And to be frank, even if there
was a "cover up" of a "cover up" it doesn't look like it was very well thought
through.
If party B discovered the plot on Sunday morning, they would have had
the whole day to find Sergei and take him in. Sergei wasn't trying to hide;
they would have found him easily on council CCTV. There would also have
been police cars all day outside Sergei's house, waiting for him and police
would have been crawling all over the city.
If party B discovered the plot at, say, 2pm and Sergei was not at home,
they still had options. Surely the police would have launched their procedures
for something like a bomb threat. The city would be closed off immediately
and police would have been everywhere. People would have been told to evacuate
the city and get to safety. Given 2 or 3 hours, procedures would exist to
minimise the risk to the general public.
Even if they only had one hour's notice, I can't see the police doing
nothing and allowing a nerve agent to be deployed.
I should add that I still believe that on the Sunday and Monday, the Wiltshire
police were honest and did a proper job. Some very funny details emerged
very quickly by Monday evening they knew that this was a scam and on Tuesday
the Met was brought in to cover it all up.
I should add that I still believe that on the Sunday and Monday, the
Wiltshire police were honest and did a proper job.
Agree.
on Tuesday the Met was brought in to cover it all up.
Disagree. The Met or Met CT was in the lead as early as 7:00 PM on Sunday
and no later than 9:00 PM. Publicly for the next day and a half SFD and
SDH referred to the Met as a 'partner,' but one of the local police seniors
did say on Monday or Tuesday that they were relieved of command on Sunday.
Okay so what do you do with the subsequent statements from SDH/NHS that
have clearly stated that on Sunday evening, SDH contacted NHS "Radiation,
poison, etc." and NHS "Radiation, poison, etc" promptly contacted Met CT?
Did Met CT respond with, "We're busy with our tea and crumpets and it's
not our patch anyway?"
The Monday announcements were issued by SDH and hours later the SPD,
but we now also know that by 06:00 on Monday buzz about unknown agent and
Skripal had spread throughout several UK agencies. Do you seriously think
that SDH and SPD were in the lead that day? That referring to 'partners'
was a simple nicety?
Is there not even a semi-automatic communication link from SPD to Wiltshire
PD and the Met? Shortly after the incident, if we accept a Skripal neighbor
eyewitness, a SPD patrol car stopped at Skripal's house. That indicates
that Skripal has been preliminarily identified as one of the bench people.
Even if that eyewitness is wrong, nobody disputes that a team of police
arrived at Skripal's house sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 PM and by all
accounts gained access to the house and searched it. If the Met or Met CT
had any boots on the ground by then, they wouldn't have had enough to handle
the search on its own. So, of course, local police assets were involved
in this.
Do you think Craig Holden and Cara Charles-Barkwrote the statements they
read on camera on Monday evening? Statements that only covered the barest
of information,
You honestly believe that SPD operated exclusively on this matter from
Sunday evening until Tuesday?
Seemed to me that there was a bit of chaos at the law enforcement end on
Monday as they didn't get much done by that evening statement and when national
reporters were beginning to show up. SPD couldn't ascertain that a crime
had been committed. Was Met CT pushing for a crime? Somebody behind the
scenes with power sure was.
Boris had his script ready to go as soon as Rowley (Met CT) announced
that Skripal was one of the victims.
Marie, I don't know why you are ranting at me, all I did was post a link
that is the official story! Anyway, just to correct a couple of things for you:
" police arrived at Skripal's house sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 PM"
No Bailey was there by 5pm.
" by 06:00 on Monday buzz about unknown agent"
No the buzz by 6am on Monday was about a former Russian spy. The news of
an unknown agent came later on Monday morning.
I find it helpful to be as precise as possible when so much possible evidence
is mushy or conflicts.
SPD has stated that the team of officers including Bailey went to Skripals
house Sunday evening. I don't recall that SPD has given the time of they
arrived. Skripals neighbors reported seeing several police cars and officers
at Skripals house at 7:00. As eyewitnesses aren't generally all that reliable
as to the precise time they observed something, I merely accepted 7:00 as
the earliest and allowed that it could have been as late as 8:00. Either
of which are good enough for a reconstructed timeline.
As to the report from one neighbor that a police car arrived at Skripal's
house at 5:00, there's no other evidence to support that. I'm sort of accepting
a 5:00-5:30 visit by a lone police car because checking on a home of a patient
whose identity would not have been firmly established at that point is sort
of what police do. I could have been Bailey, but I doubt it because it's
too routine. That person wouldn't have entered the house. Likely knocked
on the door and reported back that nobody was home. It's relevance for me
is that it gives a time as to when Skripal had first been identified as
one of the two possible patients.
Key Elements of the Hoax
(I say key because a big part of the Hoax has been to throw in distractions,
red herrings and a ton of irrelevant stuff to confuse and overload the story
It is Not meant to be understood)
The Conflicting advice of Novichoks that Public Health England (PHE)
promulgated compared with that of the Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Nerve Agents (the OPCW hadn't put anything out
on Novichok specifically for the simple reason they didn't know anything)
The Director of Public Health England (PHE) Paul Cosford saying that
Novichok actually does take a minimum of 3 hours to take effect after contact
with a large dose
"If you become ill with this stuff (Novichok) from actually coming into
contact with a significant amount of it then its within 6-12 hours, maximum
(that symptoms would occur) 3 hours is the minimum but you have to be
in touch with a large dose.""
PHE Risk to public remains low (Despite being dead). "This Stuff" (Novichok)
take effect in not less than 3 hours IF you get a very large dose through
the skin
OPCW Nerve Agents are deadly, the more toxic they are the deadlier
they are. They are designed to kill. Through Skin contact will present symptoms
in 20 30 mins, (inhalation much quicker)
No CCTV released by police.
Which would establish the actual Time Line rather than that of the Fake
Official Narrative.
It would establish what the Skripals looked like that day and what actually
occurred at the bench (the police don't want us to know either)
It could have saved the lives of the 3 children that Sergei gave bread
to in the park when he first arrived in Salisbury that day if the boys had
been poisoned by Novichok.
Bailey's Body Cam would establish what he did at the bench and Skripal
home.
The Government Lie that it was the Russians that did it and could only
have been them.
I have a tome which addresses means and opportunity, and when I can paste
it to the Blog you will hopefully see it.
I will still bang on about Skripals and only Skripals being the park bench
victims.
We know that they were in Zizzi's after the duck feed with the boys, then
onto the Mill Pub.
As many of the recent posts had pointed out the Mill Pub has lots of CCTV
footage and the police spent quite a long time interviewing the staff. (As
one does in a terror investigation.
The Telegraph was still reporting that the Mill Pub was the last port
of call before the park bench. I think that is true. However, TPTB want
us to "ignore" that location and focus on the Novichok that dripped from
Zizzi's table.
Why?
The US media has send journalists to Salisbury very early.
For example Ellen Barry, NYT. These journalists have influenced the official
narrative to a decisive extent.
He used the Snap Fitness CCTV to establish the fact" that the Skripals
went from Zizzis through Market Walk to the bench.
Rob, just another false translation of what Putin said about traitors.
Listen to Moran΄s interpretation at 2:00 in the video.
Quote : Vladimir Putin's held a town hall session and he was asked about
this five's that had been traded and he said, and this is almost a direct
quote : They will kick the bucket. Trust me. They betrayed their colleagues,
their brothers in arms. And they took thirty pieces of silver and are gonna
choke on all that." [End quote]
At 3:00 Terry Moran shows the CCTV of Snap Fitness.
It΄s outside at the right side of the entrance.
Noone & Liane:
Excellent articles, thanks.
I recommend everyone to watch the video on Liane's link: https://youtu.be/sGqi-k213eE
15 minutes well worth watching.
"Flat Earth New" by Nick Davies. It provides a plausible reason for the
phenomena where all the new media carry the same headline and column with
minor changes it all comes from one source via a single feed that they
all subscribe to (the Press Association, or sometimes Reuters).
We keep talking about the "official narrative". But actually, what is
the official narrative and where does one find it?
I do try to keep up with events around the Skripal case. The media regularly
and frequently cite "sources", official or otherwise. But have there been
any actual authorized statements from the government containing anything
like an "official" version of the events? There was Theresa May's statement
to Parliament in March, but has there been anything since? If so, I must
have missed it (which is quite possible).
For sure there's a media narrative. The media keeps floating new stories
or bits of new information. But the media stories are often either self-contradictory
or just plain nonsensical. Does this amount to an "official narrative"? Is the "perfume bottle" official for example? Or the novichok in the
public toilets? Or are these only media stories?
I read in earlier posts that the police have issued an "official" timeline
(contradicting earlier eye-witness accounts). Is this the case? Is there
really a police timeline that one can look up in any official source, or
is it just another media story?
Most recently the fact (?) was reported apparently as a Guardian exclusive
that the government is "poised" (whatever that means) to submit an extradition
request to Moscow. If true, it would be a very serious act. Has it been
officially documented, or is even this simply another media story?
I apologise if I'm talking rubbish here, but I have the impression that
there no such thing as an "official narrative" beyond what May told Parliament
in March. Everything since then has been media smoke and mirrors. Or an
I missing something?
I totally agree with you.
And it seems none of the media is inclined to pin down and demand the official
story.
It is to the government's advantage to allow the media to run with unnamed
sources to reinforce the Russia dunnit scenario, without themselves committing
to it
When I use the term "official narrative", which I do a lot, I am basically
referring to three simple claims:
That Sergei and Yulia Skripal, along with D.S. Nick Bailey, were poisoned
by a "military grade nerve agent" known as a Novichok.
That responsibility for this act lies with the Russian state.
That the poisoning took place at the home of Mr Skripal, specifically
by the application of the nerve agent to the handle of his front door.
The first two claims have been expressly made by Her Majesty's Government,
whilst the third one has expressly been made by those in charge of the investigation.
There are of course other sub-claims that form a part of this (such as
the day that Yulia and then Sergei were discharged from hospital) but these
three claims are substantially it.
The main problem with the first claim is that the Skripals are alive
and well. The main problem with the second is Russia is absolutely not the
only country or entity that could have produced the alleged substance. And
the main problem with the third claim is that it is a physical impossibility
that 2 people could have come into contact with the alleged substance, and
then collapsed at exactly the same time 4 hours later.
Everything else follows from those three basic, but demonstrably false
claims.
I agree with you completely, Rob, except for you saying that the Skripals
are 'alive and well'. In truth, we can't be sure of this. All we know for
certain is that Yulya was alive at the time the Reuters video was recorded.
I definitely agree with you. Almost nothing is "official" except that
Putin did it (whatever it was).
On your Point 3, what do we make of this post by CharlieFreak ?
I was discussing the 'door handle' theory with a relative about five or
six weeks ago and he was telling me that he had been listening to a BBC
Radio 4 'Today' interview with a Govt Security Minister the previous week
(Ben Wallace?) in which he was asked if Novichok residue had actually been
found by investigators on the door handle. According to my relative who
has been following the case and assumed from all the publicity that nerve
agent residue had been found on the door handle the Minister said it hadn't
but it was a plausible the theory they were working with. As I understand
it the interviewer then rhetorically remarked (without any obvious hint
of irony or incredulity) that presumably it was quite possible that the
'assassins' came back after seeing the Skripals leave the house and wiped
the door handle clean to remove the evidence!!
https://www.theblogmire.com/bbc-crimewatch-reconstruction-of-salisbury-poisonings-shelved/#comment-8643
Can this be? Not even the door handle is "official" ???
john_a,
"Is the "perfume bottle" official for example?"
Officially the Novichok was found in a "small glass bottle" in Charlie
Rowley's flat. No further details were officially given about the container.
It was Charlie who said that he had found a perfume bottle with a known
brand name, which Dawn sprayed on her wrists, and that the contents somehow
got onto Charlie's hands.
Nothing official as far as I know, except that the Hazmat guys searched
the public toilets in QEM park. Some tabloid published a ludicrous story
about Russia using that public toilet as a CW lab.
This has been said many times before, but it's worth repeating that the
police did not say when the Skripals visited the Mill pub, only that it
was "at some time after" they arrived at Sainsbury's car park in Salisbury
city centre. The police must have known more about the exact timing, since
they had plenty of timestamped CCTV footage available to them. 'Unofficially'
according to media reports, they went to Mill before they went to Zizzis,
but there does not appear to be anything to support that version of events.
"Most recently the fact (?) was reported apparently as a Guardian exclusive
that the government is "poised" (whatever that means) to submit an extradition
request to Moscow. If true, it would be a very serious act. Has it been
officially documented, or is even this simply another media story?"
I guess that this is the story that originated from the Press Association
that the Russian assassins were identified from CCTV images. Nothing official
about that, in fact the Security Minister called it "ill informed and wild
speculation". However, the BBC has treated the report very seriously.
https://twitter.com/MarkUrban01/status/1020366761848385536 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43643025
If the BBC continues to say that, it must have been leaked from some
senior official source that wants the public to believe it, even if that
source does not commit to it publicly.
You ask in another post "Not even the door handle is "official" ???"
The British authorities have not explicitly stated that the Novichok
was found on the door knob, only on the front door: "Specialists have identified
the highest concentration of the nerve agent, to-date, as being on the front
door of the address.".
However, there have been various media reports that the nerve agent was
found on the door handle. Furthermore, Sir Mark Sedwill, the UK's national
security adviser stated in a publicly released letter that Russia had previously
tested the use of door handles as a way of delivering nerve agents.
Sedwill says "DSTL established that the highest concentrations were found
on the handle of Mr Skripal's front door. These are matters of fact." So
I suppose you could call that official.
My thesis: The Skripals did not walk through the Market Walk to the bench.
I want to substantiate this thesis:
We have two CCTVs of people that are NOT the Skripals :
15:47:43 Snap Fitness shows the couple with the red bag. First published
on March 6.
Cain Prince, 28, runs Snap Fitness.
16:08:00 Jenny's restaurant shows three people. First published on March
9.
Mustafa Dalangal, 57, runs Jenny's restaurant .
How did these two CCTVs find their way into the public ?
We know that the police didn΄t publish a single CCTV. Why should they release
this two ?
No, it were some journalists who found the CCTV earlier than the police.
Look at this timeline of March 5 and 6 (Reporter Liam Trim) :
Monday March 5
6pm The BBC reports the man is Sergei Skripal, 66, an ex-military intelligence
colonel who was convicted in Russia of passing state secrets to Britain
7pm At a press conference Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Craig Holden
tells reporters it is not being treated as a counter-terror incident.
Tuesday March 6
09:07 The BBC named Skripal as the man who was found along with a woman
in her 30s, believed to be known to him, on a bench near a shopping centre
shortly after 4pm on Sunday.
09:37 Both supermarkets are open but there are national media providing
coverage close to the police tape.
10:34 Sergei Skripal, 66, was found slumped on a bench in Salisbury alongside
a 33-year-old woman, who the BBC understands is his daughter, Yulia Skripal.
10:53 The latest from the Press Association: As CCTV believed to show the
pair in the moments before they were found slumped on a bench emerged, the
UK's top counter-terrorism officer, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner
Mark Rowley, said: "We have to be alive to the fact of state threats."
10:56 Freya Church, 27, the gym worker, from Salisbury, told the Press Association:
(..)
15:37 BBC home affairs correspondent sums up press conference
He's quite brutally frank here but it's true we did not learn much from
that press conference.
https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/salisbury-russian-spy-police-substance-1302045
I guess that Craig Holden in the evening of March 5 told reporters about
a man in his 60th and a woman in her 30th were the couple found slumped
on the bench. And I suspect he also mentioned the red bag.
This gave the Press Association the idea to look for the couple on private
CCTVs.
PA was looking for a couple with a red bag and they found it at Snap Fitness.
We know for a fact that PA found the wrong pair.
Had there been another couple on the CCTV with a red bag, then they would
certainly have copied it, too ! So there was no second pair with a red bag
in Market Walk at that time !
Later on March 6 the police arrived at Snap Fitness :
Quote : Snap Fitness manager Cain Prince, aged 28, said: "Police had a good
look at the footage and were interested in these two people. It was the
only image they took away."
Mr Prince added that police said Skripal was "wearing a green coat". [End
quote]
"Police had a good look at the footage" so, the police too didn΄t see
the Skripals in market Walk !
But they found it suspicious that there was a couple who also had a red
bag. So they took it away.
The Sun knew about the Snap Fitness CCTV and the red bag. Why did they
focus on another couple ? Was the red bag couple not on Jenny's restaurant
CCTV ? But they can not have fallen from the sky. I have no logical explanation
other than this : Certain media wanted to create the illusion that the Skripals
walked the Market Walk, although they didn΄t.
Conclusion : Two different reporters have spotted CCTV. But no one has
discovered the Skripals. In short, the Skripals didn΄t walk through the
Market Walk.
Liane, I think you are right. And why did the police take away that image
from Snap Fitness? Because it was the couple on the bench! When the police
searched the CCTV they knew what the bench couple looked like and that was
who they were looking for.
If it had been the real Skripals on the bench, why on earth would the
police have taken away CCTV of a random couple with a red bag, yet not bothered
to take any images of the Skripals?
"Yes Mr Cain, Mr Skripal was wearing a green coat but never mind about
that; I think I will have this picture of these two other people if that's
alright with you."
Another thought, this may explain the switch in the Mill/Zizzi or Zizzi/Mill
timeline. The CCTV couple were clearly not coming from the direction of
the Mill, they were coming from Zizzi.
As the police had made a mistake in releasing the CCTV image, they may
have switched the story round and said it was the Mill first to cover up
the fact that they had (ridiculously) issued a CCTV image of 2 otherwise
random people coming from the wrong direction. By switching it round perhaps
they thought it provided some cover for having issued images of people that
were not the Skripals and left the idea in everyone's mind that the Skripals
had come from the same direction.
Paul, both CCTVs were NOT released by the police but by the press !
This fact forced them to change the story.
Why on earth was the time when the Skripals were in Mill Pub never given,
neither by police nor journalists ?
Something very significant happened in the Mill. It had 12 CCTV cameras operating that day the recordings were all seized
by the police. The Manager was was treated as a terror suspect and interviewed by police
8 times in the first week of the investigation. The Skripals went to the Mill before Zizzis
"As further details of Col Skripal's movements emerged, a source close
to Greg Townsend, manager of The Mill, revealed that he served the Russians
last Sunday afternoon and had since been treated like a "terror suspect",
interviewed by police up to eight times last week.
He said The Mill had 12 CCTV cameras, covering the large open-plan bar
area as well as the upstairs balcony and lavatories overlooking it.
"The pub has obviously remained closed for more than a week and the cordon
widened, but Greg feels like he has been kept completely in the dark, they're
not telling him anything.
"He actually served them. He's had a bit of a time of it all and is a
pending terror suspect.
"He certainly said he's being treated like one. He's had around eight
police interviews.""
Sorry the Telegraph has the opposite to the "Official Narrative" (as it
was then)
"From the car park, it was just a short walk through The Maltings shopping
precinct to Zizzi, where they ate lunch before heading to The Mill pub for
a drink."
The "Official Narrative" was never changed on Dr Davies, the Duck Boys
park location, the cctv pair being one and the same as the bench people
And the Helicopter taking Yuia and / or Sergie changed 3 weeks l was
corrected later in the leading MSM news provider the Spire FM website.
The Official Narrative is a tool of the Hoaxer and because of its unreliability
it means Pants.
Independent Tested Evidence is what is forming the Facts, if they are
false they can easily be refuted abd corrected by New Evidence eg Mill and
Council CCTV
Peter, this prompted me to look at Mr Townend's Facebook page and there
was a link to a piece about his rabbits, which were locked up behind the
police cordon, with no food or water. But thanks to his raising of awareness
on social media, the police stepped in:
"Luckily, the Luckily, Wiltshire Police stepped into the rescue the rabbits
after pub manager's plea was shared more than 100 times across Facebook.
The force today tweeted: 'We have an update on the rabbits stuck at an address
in one of [the] cordons. They have now been given food and water and are
OK. Thanks for everyone's concern.'"
Sadly the cat and the guinea pigs at 47 Christie Miller Road were not
treated with the same care. "All animals are equal, but some animals are
more equal than others" it seems.
Or, possibly, 'all police are dumb, but some are dumber than others'.
Or, one could change 'dumb' to 'unfeeling', or 'callous', or some other
derogatory term.
The cat and the guinea pigs in the Skripal's house would have been raising
hell and the cat would have been trying everything in its repertoire to
get out. Then there's the defecation and urination, the smell must have
been quite ripe. So please tell me how the officers posted outside the Skripals
and Townsend's ignored all this without comment to their superiors?
No idea. The two things that baffle me about the whole incident are:
a) If you look at the photos of police officers standing near the house,
there are three windows that are open. I would have thought the cat could
have got through one of those, and there's probably a catflap on the back
door. The cat, if not the guinea pigs, could surely have gotten away.
b) Why on earth the authorities let on about the condition of the animals.
They're not above being economical with the actualite. Why then did they
not just say, "The cat and the guinea pigs are now safely residing at a
secure location. They do not wish to avail themselves of the services of
the RSPA, or Russian Embassy, and they ask that their privacy be respected."
The affair of the pets was only made public when the Russian embassy began
enquiring about them. Until then it was the Skripals' vet who'd contacted
the police about the pets, and this happened within hours of the poisoning.
Once it became public, the government had to come up with a plausible
cover story claiming that DSB had found them on 4th March. I don't believe
this. The DEFRA vet allegedly involved was, as far as I know, never named,
and the best they could come up with was that the Persian cat, Nash van
Drake (brought over from Russia), had been found in a 'distressed' state,
taken to PD, humanely put to sleep and incinerated. No vet should euthanise
an animal simply because it is distressed. The guinea pigs (also from Russia)
had been found dead due to lack of food and water were also taken off to
PD. I don't believe this story. Rumours of a second cat, Masyanya, bought
in England, began to circulate and it was assumed that this cat had escaped.
Neighbours will know more.
I would like to think that all the pets survived and are now safe. This
may even be true if the Skripals had been 'disappeared' according to a pre-planned
operation. If so, the pets would have been moved elsewhere shortly before
the fateful day, or on that very morning.
HMG hadn't taken into account a second cat, because they weren't aware
of one, but there certainly were two cats and I have videos of them both.
The embassy were only aware of one cat and two guinea pigs, information
that I believe came from Viktoria. As for the rabbits and fish, another
later rumour, perhaps they had been taken away earlier too. The whole pet
story strikes me as very odd. Maybe Howard Taylor, the vet, knows more than
we do. He said, "We phoned the police on day one to offer to help if they
needed it. I thought it unlikely the police would have gone to the house
and not done anything."
On 17th March it was only reported that the animals had been taken away.
It was only on 6/7th April that HMG admitted that the guinea pigs were dead
and the had been suffering.
According to The Sun: Taylor said of Mr Skripal: "He was a nice chap
and we got on well. He never said he was in fear for his life. He used the
vets for some years and I had seen his cat and his guinea pigs." Note: only
one cat mentioned.
"We contacted the police straightaway upon hearing the news that Mr Skripal
had been admitted to hospital, and a number of times afterwards, to make
them aware of Mr Skripal's pets and their needs.
We contacted Porton Down in case the animals may have been taken into
isolation. We also offered to take care of Mr Skripal's pets in his absence.
We were never contacted by the police or Porton Down in return regarding
Mr Skripal's pets".
If we believe this official story, then why haven't the RSPCA prosecuted
the police fotr animal neglect? I'm disgusted by the RSPCA's apparent lack
of interest in this affair. Their press officer, Nicola Walker said:
"It is very sad to hear that these animals have died in such tragic circumstances.
However, we appreciate the emergency services were working in extreme and
dangerous conditions in an incredibly fast-moving operation in an attempt
to keep the public safe. We don't currently know the details of what happened
but, as part of our ongoing working relationship with police, we would like
to see if there is any learning for future operations."
Suzanne Norbury, their South-West Press Officer came up with the same
wording, and:
"Emergency services working in extreme and dangerous conditions incredibly
fast-moving operation an attempt to keep the public safe'
I go along with this assessment: "It's a string of shallow excuses. It's
nonsense. And it comes, not from the police themselves, but from the royal
body supposed to prevent cruelty to animals".
This report may have been inaccurate, but nobody can claim that the existence
of the pets was not known as early as mid March. The family vet also raised
questions at an early stage. The report also shows that somebody thought
the animals were worth "testing".
To me, this is one of the most bizarre inconsistencies in the whole case.
Were the animals removed in mid March (alive) or early April (dead)? Why
are there two different and mutually contradictory stories? What possible
interest could be served by leaving the pets inside the house? And does
it really mean that the police or counter-terror guys never entered the
house before early April? After (supposedly) finding novichok on the door
handle?
What's going on here? Did somebody calculate that a heartbreak story
about starving pets would make us all hate Russia even more? If so, I suspect
it backfired badly. British people love pets, and the story really just
makes the British authorities look inhuman. Especially because it was the
Russians who raised the issue.
Or is the whole sorry saga of the pets just a symptom of the British
authorities losing interest in the whole affair and just trying to walk
away from it in embarrassment?
Also, do the Skripals know the fate of their pets? What have they been
told, and how did they take it?
As I wrote before, it looks like a punishment of Sergei. He really loved
his pets.
Or does anybody here has the impression, that the Skripals were treated
like innocent victims ?
Sterling work as always Paul, thank you.
The note was sent from Frank Beswick (no relation) to Dr David Kelly
the week before he died. Beswick was a colleague of Kelly's at Porton Down
The writer of the letter was Frank Beswick (no relation) to Dr david Kelly,
I don't know whether it was his own letter header (the crest and coat of
arms) or that of the CDE Porton Down but this seems to indicate it was his
own personal crest & Arms
"Frank's scientific work did not interfere with his enthusiasm for voluntary
work with the St John Ambulance, in which he was a senior figure. The promotion
to the rank of commander brother within the Order of St John in 1995 delighted
him and allowed him to design his own coat of arms. This included the badge
of the Chemical Defence Establishment and a heart, a nod back to his early
work in cardiac physiology."
I Hadn't realised before but Beswick and Kelly had worked on detoxing
the island of Gruinard together
"In 1979, following the closure of the Microbiological Research Establishment,
the small microbiology programme fell into his bailiwick and this stimulated
the work to rehabilitate the Island of Gruinard, which had been contaminated
with anthrax in the early 1940s."
Well, there's no heart in the arms on that letterhead so I can't see how
they can be the arms that Beswick chose for himself. Nor do I understand
why the crest is placed separately on the left. It's only the colour and
charges in the escutcheon (shield) that makes a coat-of-arms unique to a
particular family, individual or corporate body. In a sense, the rest is
mere traditional ornament the supporters, crest, helm, motto
Yes, I saw that Hasbrouck one when I did a quick search, but the chevron
is not engrailed and the difference is crucial. It MUST be engrailed (the
internet is still not the best way to search for these things). By the way
the Hasbouck arms would is described as "Purpure, a chevron between three
flambeaus or, flamed proper", so our friend's arms would then be:
"????, a chevron engrailed between three flambeaus (not torches) or (probably),
flamed proper (probably)". I can't guess the field colour (????), and I'm
guessing the likely colours of the torches.
I had forgotten about Ross Cassidy and was checking him out again after
Miheila mentioned him for the list of people who know more that they are
saying and found this from Sky News March 28 2018
Mr Cassidy, 61, has spent many hours with counter-terror detectives investigating
the poisoning, but would not discuss the police operation.
Mr Cassidy got to know Sergei, his wife Lyudmila, his son Alexandr (who
was known as Sasha) and Yulia.
Sergei spent a lot of time out of the country and there were times when
I didn't see him, but he used to call me his English friend. He was very
generous and never forgot my birthday, usually buying me an expensive bottle
of whisky.
On Saturday 3 March, Mr Cassidy drove Mr Skripal to Heathrow to collect
Yulia, who had moved back to Moscow and was visiting her father. It had
been snowing and Sergei asked his pal if they could use his four-wheel-drive
pick-up truck.
Last week, in a court ruling about the Skripals' medical needs, a judge
quoted the consultant treating them in Salisbury district hospital: "The
hospital has not been approached by anyone known to the patients to enquire
of their welfare."
Mr Cassidy was upset by the suggestion there wasn't anyone who cared
enough to want to go and see the Skripals.
He said: "That is misinformation, because we care. I asked the police
several times if we could go and see them, quietly and away from the media,
but I was told quite categorically that we were not allowed. We asked the
question and the answer was 'no'.
"We were also upset that if his family and friends in Russia got to hear
about this lack of concern it would cause them extra anguish."
My questions:
Why wouldn't Ross Cassidy discuss the police operation?
Why wouldn't the police let Sergei's best friend in England, visit him
in hospital?
Did the SDH consultant know that the police were preventing Sergei and
Yulia from having visitors?
If the SDH consultant did know that, then why didn't he tell the judge
that?
I'm glad you picked up on his name.
I included him, because outside the spook community, he's the only person
in England who appears to have known the Skripal family well all four.
No wonder he was questioned for so long. I'll try to answer your questions as I see the situation. Just my opinion.
1.Why wouldn't Ross Cassidy discuss the police operation? Because he'd been threatened with dire consequences if he did. Whatever
they were, they were most likely fabricated. 'National interest' springs
to mind as the justification.
2. Why wouldn't the police let Sergei's best friend in England, visit
him in hospital? Either because he wasn't there or because later- they were afraid that
Sergei would speak. I suspect he was never there at all.
3. Did the SDH consultant know that the police were preventing Sergei
and Yulia from having visitors? Probably none of the SDH staff did.
4. If the SDH consultant did know that, then why didn't he tell the judge
that? SDH declined to be represented in court due to feeling 'uncomfortable'.
As I said in an earlier post, whoever that unnamed doctor was, he/she was
'highly unlikely' to be from SDH, but was rather an MoD 'specialist' brought
in from elsewhere PD or a military hospital.
Ross Cassidy may not have been willing to talk to the media, but I'm
sure he said more to family and friends. Perhaps he'd be willing to talk
to an impartial investigator, but then he might be too afraid of the consequences
which could have been direct threats to him or his family.
He needs to be asked about police activity and visitors at the Skripals,
Sergei's pets (including the alleged rabbits and fish, not to mention Manyϊnya,
the cat who allegedly escaped), any concerns he may have had leading up
to the fateful day, and so much more.
2. Why wouldn't the police let Sergei's best friend in England, visit
him in hospital?
In the US and absent a signed directive by a patient that's either unconscious
or incompetent, only next of kin are allowed to visit the patient. So, it
would be the hospital that denies a friend access to a patient. No need
for police involvement on this matter in this case.
The police, naturally, were looking for information on the patients and
at any conceivable culprits. A double whammy for Cassidy.
According to Ross Casssidy, it was the police who told him that he wasn't
allowed to visit Sergei. Have they any right to do this? If conscious and
talking, Sergei could ask to see any visitor he liked, but this didn't happen
either because he wasn't there, didn't ask, had no friends or because
friends had been prohibited from visiting. We know RC had tried to, but
without success.
In normal circumstances a hospital wouldn't be prohibiting visitors.
Presumably RC had no means of contacting Sergei by phone either, and vice
versa. As far as we know, Sergei has been kept incommunicado ever since
4th March, if indeed he is still alive. A very worrying situation.
According to Ross Casssidy, it was the police who told him that he wasn't
allowed to visit Sergei. Have they any right to do this?
Cassidy's Sky News interview was published on 3/28; so, his interview
took place on or before 3/28. As of that date, both Yulia and Sergei were
officially unconscious or not able to communicate meaningfully. At the direction
of a hospital or for other reasons determined by law enforcement, police
do have that right.
Also, we don't have any idea if at any time Yulia and/or Sergei requested
to see Cassidy.
I see now. As you say the Skripals (or 'bench people') were still officially
unconscious at that time, so it would make sense that no visitors were allowed.
If the Skripals were there and after they had regained consciousness,
it's surely likely that they would have wanted visitors, especially a visit
from Ross Cassidy, Sergei's best friend. But I'm pretty certain that the
authorities would have prevented this at all costs, hence the lack of phone
access and Cassidy's remarks.
These exchanges about whether friends were allowed to visit the Skripals
in hospital inspired me to refresh my memories of the gross deception of
HMG regarding whether the Skripals had any relatives in Russia. At the High
Court ruling by Mr Justice Williams on 22 March, granting permission to
provide the OPCW with samples, he stated "Given the absence of any contact
having been made with the NHS Trust by any family member and the limited
evidence as to the possible existence of family members in Russia, I accept
that it is neither practicable nor appropriate in the special context of
this case to consult with any relatives [of the Skripals] who might fall
into the category identified in s.4(7)(b) of the Act". ('The Act' being
the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and s.4(7)(b) states that before delivering
what is in an incapacitated person's best interests the person ruling (in
this case Mr Justice Williams) must: take into account, in order to consult
them, the views of anyone engaged in caring for the person or INTERESTED
IN HIS WELFARE"). (my emphasis).
This statement was delivered in spite of the fact that the Sun had carried
an interview with Viktoria Skripal on 14 March about her concerns and desire
to visit/make contact with the Skripals. And in spite of the fact that the
Russian Embassy have records that on 6 March "the Embassy informed the FCO
of the request it had received from Viktoria Skripal to provide information
on the condition of her relatives.
https://rusemb.org.uk/fnapr/6481
Apologies for the misplacement of a couple of quotation marks in the above
post. I usually intend to proof read what I have written before sending
but didn't on this occasion as I am conscious that if I exceed a certain
period of time composing my message (I haven't worked out what the time
limit is) the system refuses to post it and I have to start again. That
aside, I think my meaning is clear.
Friends do not enjoy the same privileges to visit patients in hospital
as family does. (This has been a huge factor in why same-sex marriage was so necessary.)
Quote : The colonel's close friend Ross Cassidy, who lives just a few doors
from the property the Russian rented when he first arrived in Salisbury,
said he "was not at liberty to talk."
He declined to say whether his friend had spoken of fears for his life,
adding: "It's a very sensitive investigation of some gravitas. I really
am unable to divulge any information at the moment."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/06/did-treacherous-past-russian-colonel-finally-catch-salisbury/
I agree with you that Cassidy knows more, but is forbidden to talk about.
I will reply to this, but simply as a test as I can't seem to post this
afternoon,
Maybe Rob is doing some site maintenance.
I do not think SDH were involved in bad practices. The Terror Team and
PD took over.
In fact going to the courts for the second blood sample might have been
required due to SDH "resistance".
Anyone else with posting issues?
If I see that you are posting then it must be my PC or possibly the big
van with a dish on the roof at the end of my street.
A some point people stopped trying to prove the Earth was an irregular ball
shape thing and was spinning around, doing laps of our nearest star at close
on 66k mph.
They didn't stop because it wasn't true, it had just been proven beyond
doubt and there was other stuff to get on with.
Flat Earthers did come along, many having their own reasons, some just
didn't want to believe we were on a ball floating in space and prefer to
live with the idea that we live on a gurt plate.
The Hoax has been proven, the motive is not the most important feature,
murderers go to jail whether their motives are known or not.
The most important thing is to identify who was responsible for Dawn
Sturgess' death and bring them to Justice along with those that have attempted
to cover up the wicked and depraved crime.
The motives may or may not flow from that process but it is rather academic
at the moment to say the least.
Those responsible for Dawn's death are also responsible for the cover
up of the Salisbury Incident. That is what led to Dawn's death.
People responsible include
Mrs May and some of her Ministers
Salisbury and Met Police Chiefs.
These are not wild "Conspiracy Theories". They are cold, hard facts.
And we have the proof that will convict. Beyond reasonable doubt proof that
those people I have mentioned above are involved in the death of Dawn Surgess
and the cover up of the Salisbury and Amesbury Incidents.
Whenever governments bury facts, they are never up to any good. History
is full of examples of facts been hidden and whenever the lid is finally
raised, it is was never for a good reason:
Vietnam war
JFK
Iraq WMD
etc
etc
The problem for TPTB this time is that they are in a different class
to prior events they are completely incompetent, utterly useless, self-important
fools and obvious liars. This is what 'equal opportunity' hiring does! The
good liars are gone.
Just look at all the 'officials' involved and wonder how they ever came
to get the job
I continue to believe that this saga was the reason for Johnson's resignation.
He could have survived May's Chequers debacle but he knows this story will
ruin the rest of his career, so he has done a runner. He will get as much
distance between himself and these events as he possibly can.
Paul,
Once again, I agree with everything you say.
Digressing to a different topic, it is the sheer "incompetence etc etc"
that also explains the shambles that is 'Brexit'. And these incompetents
as I have alluded to elsewhere are these days supported by many incompetent
civil servants. I could see the way things were heading many years ago and
that was one of my reasons for leaving the civil service 15 years ago after
more than 20 years service in the company of many intelligent and honourable
civil servants who were gradually retiring and were also expressing concerns
about the deterioration in standards at all levels. I saw the rot begin
when, about 20 years ago, the civil service opened up vacancies at all levels
of responsibility to people with administrative or managerial experience
but not civil service experience, so they hadn't acquired the ability to
work alongside and in conjunction with legal advisers or technical experts
(e.g. in my case, veterinarians and structural engineers at different times)
which is an ability that develops and improves over an extended period of
time and is integral to the successful functioning of the CS. When I joined
the CS you would attend meetings and observe how such relationships developed
and were used to achieve the intended aim many years before you yourself
might find yourself having to do it. That no longer happens people are
just thrown in at the deep end, managed by incompetent staff and told to
get on with it, with nobody providing knowledge-based 'quality control'.
Whether or not you are a 'Remainer' or a 'Brexiteer' in principle, there
was no hope for negotiations from the outset with the useless shower that
we have in power (scope for a limerick there!). The Brexit considerations
and negotiations have been in the hands of pathetic amateurs who are at
sixes and sevens and who, after so many decades of relying on the EU to
tell them what to do, have completely foregone any ability to think for
themselves. That is the key problem, not the principle of Brexit, which
could have resulted in far more encouraging prospects had it been in the
right hands.
CF
Peter,
Exactly one quality I found to be completely absent in 'newcomers' was
initiative. I inherited someone at middle management level who had been
in that particular policy job for about a year. I routinely asked him to
draft a straightforward (but not 'standard') letter for one of our Ministers
to send to an MP answering questions raised by a constituent about aspects
of our Department's legislation. After all, that was part of his job description.
As a middle manager responsible for that policy area he and even his subordinate
officer should be able to quote chapter and verse and why it had been formulated
in the way it had (e.g. 'based on Article X of EU Council Directive ABC');
at the very least he should have been able to work out the answers from
information to hand or by consulting expert colleagues. We had been given
the standard week or so to produce the draft reply which I could have knocked
up in a couple of hours at most. So when I hadn't been given the draft for
clearance by the morning of the required day and asked him about it he told
me I had been unreasonable to ask him to do it without telling him what
he needed to say! Needless to say, I knocked up the reply in a couple of
hours but had to forego other tasks I was supposed to do that afternoon.
When I joined the CS a Clerical Officer (2 grades below this chap) would
have been asked to provide a first draft. I could bore you with other examples
but, you'll be pleased to hear,I won't. Unfortunately that level of intellect
is all too common nowadays.
Charlie, you've described an operational organizational change that isn't
limited to public institutions. It exists in corporations as well and began
to take hold about thirty years ago. Instead of promoting from within line
staff those who had spent years doing and moved up slowly in managerial
positions as they demonstrated management skills into the managerial ranks,
the concept of 'universal manager' gained a foothold. As if managerial skills
are a special talent and nothing more is required to manage any operation.
In the US, business and government had to absorb all those newly minted
MBAs and those people weren't about to start at the bottom of the operational
ladder.
The two best managers I ever had the pleasure to work for didn't complete
an undergrad college degree. Yes, they did have people skills but they were
also solid in their line technical skills as well. Highly respected by employees,
colleagues, and in the industry. They had a firm grasp of the skill-sets
of their employees, how trustworthy each of their employees were, and were
immune to the sycophants.
Marie
Another change in infrastructure policy that had dire consequences and contributed
to the problems you refer to was the principle that 'no one could be deemed
a failure or to not have the aptitude to succeed with the appropriate training'.
When I began my CS employment the annual report procedure was quite emphatic
and honest about abilities. As a manager there was a range of five graded
boxes you could tick against all aspects of performance, the lowest of which
was 'not good enough', and, if repeated, this could warrant a warning from
personnel (sorry, 'human resources' now) and potentially demotion. There
was also a box where the manager had to enter what grade they thought the
member of staff would have the inherent capability of achieving by the end
of their career! For many people of all ages this was often the grade they
were in at the time but they were realistic and honest enough to accept
that it was probably right. It's arguable whether this last box served a
positive purpose for the majority of staff but, rightly or wrongly, the
intention was to motivate the best staff to continue in the CS rather than
become despondent and quit. It was decided by forward thinking, liberal
minded individuals many years ago now that annual reports should never say
anything negative, and if anything negative needed to be said then the line
management must be at fault for not overcoming their staff member's deficiencies.
George,
Yep. Another problem we are creating for the future although the Govt
will welcome this 'problem' is that in 'the good old days' and up until
the 1990s EVERY single official communication whether written or verbal
had to be recorded on a single officially registered uniquely numbered registry
file. Each file, where documents and 'minutes' were sequentially numbered
in date order, expanded to about 2.5″ thick and some subjects would have
multiple A,B, C etc files. If someone in Office A sent a note to someone
in Office B about a Govt issue it was obligatory to send a paper photocopy
(or carbon copy) to HQ for them to place on the file. Nothing went unrecorded.
Even internal discussions between staff would be summarised on a minute
sheet afterwards, signed by the staff involved and placed on file. The system
had to be run really strictly but it worked and we can look back and identify
why certain decisions were made and by whom. But now, with the advent of
computers and email the significance of keeping central records has gone
and I can guarantee nobody in HQ has a complete historical record of all
deliberations and communications. In years to come, conveniently for the
Govt, key information about what has been going on in this case and other
important matters will be missing.
The motive creating a rift between the Russian and Western states is
obvious. The perpetrators including Yulia in the attack for publicity
too.
It is possible that Skripal was following money laundering via real estate
for Christopher Steele and the mafia did not like it.
But the whole thing was planned for publicity.
Anybody interested in tax havens and investment .
"Perhaps the greatest challenge, with respect to Russia and more generally,
concerns the anonymity of global offshore finance. On this front, the US
administration would find some cooperation from Moscow. Economically, the
Russian treasury has been losing vast sums to offshores. Politically, the
Kremlin is keen to strengthen its control over bureaucrats and oligarchs,
two groups for whom offshore nest eggs provide an alternative to Putin's
Russia. Since 2013, the Kremlin has pursued a "deoffshorization" campaign
encouraging businesses to repatriate capital and stop registering companies
offshore; additional legislation has restricted the Russian state employees'
foreign asset
ownership. A joint US-Russian effort, however limited, at ending the anonymity
of corrupt cash flows in Western jurisdictions would serve the interests
of both countries."
In the interests of accuracy, Simpson has never claimed to have expertise
on Russia. His major calling card is the series of investigative articles
he wrote on Ukraine, circa 2005-2008, when he was a WSJ reporter. In 2014
or 2015 he was hired by Prevezon, the plaintiff in a UK lawsuit against
Browder, and later a defendant in a DOJ lawsuit. When Fusion GPS was hired
by the Washington Beacon to do oppo research on Trump, he knew nothing about
Trump. It was after the Beacon contract ended and approximately two months
after the DNC/HRC campaign hired Fusion and they outsourced the Trump-Russia
oppo research to Steele. (Personally, I suspect that Steele had been engaged
on this long before then but not by Fusion.)
Dylan Martinez who operated the camera at Yulia's post-Novihoax debut, and
who is described as the chief Reuters photographer for UK and Ireland, has
an amusing quote heading his profile page: "When editing photos I look for the truth told in the most beautiful
way."
Yulya Skripal, the embodiment of truth and beauty!
I forgot to mention that Mr Martinez covers "news, sport and the odd feature". Regardless of a possible fake tracheotomy scar, I suppose his Skripal
assignment was highly likely to be the oddest feature of his career.
https://widerimage.reuters.com/photographer/dylan-martinez
'In another curious detail in the filing, the special counsel team said
Papadopoulos had been given $10,000 in cash "from a foreign national whom
he believed was likely an intelligence officer of a foreign country." The
filing noted that the country was "other than Russia." ' CNN
Mueller strangely coy about who gave Papa 10k in cash. Was he an Orbis
collector too?
UK Government and intelligence all over the place :
Quote : Since Trump was surging ahead in the polls and scaring the pants
off the foreign-policy establishment by calling for a rapprochement with
Moscow, the agencies figured that Russia was somehow behind it. The pace
accelerated in March 2016 when a 30-year-old policy consultant named George
Papadopoulos joined the Trump campaign as a foreign-policy adviser. Traveling
in Italy a week later, he ran into Mifsud, the London-based Maltese academic,
who reportedly set about cultivating him after learning of his position
with Trump. Mifsud claimed to have "substantial connections with Russian
government officials," according to prosecutors. Over breakfast at a London
hotel, he told Papadopoulos that he had just returned from Moscow where
he had learned that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form
of "thousands of emails."
This was the remark that supposedly triggered an FBI investigation. The
New York Times describes Mifsud as "an enthusiastic promoter of President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia" and "a regular at meetings of the Valdai Discussion
Club, an annual conference held in Sochi, Russia, that Mr. Putin attends,"
which tried to suggest that he is a Kremlin agent of some sort. But WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange later tweeted photos of Mifsud with British Foreign
Secretary Boris Johnson and a high-ranking British intelligence official
named Claire Smith at a training session for Italian security agents in
Rome. Since it's unlikely that British intelligence would rely on a Russian
agent in such circumstances, Mifsud's intelligence ties are more likely
with the UK.
After Papadopoulos caused a minor political ruckus by telling a reporter
that Prime Minister David Cameron should apologize for criticizing Trump's
anti-Muslim pronouncements, a friend in the Israeli embassy put him in touch
with a friend in the Australian embassy, who introduced him to Downer, her
boss. Over drinks, Downer advised him to be more diplomatic. After Papadopoulos
then passed along Misfud's tip about Clinton's emails, Downer informed his
government, which, in late July, informed the FBI. (..)
In early September, Halper sent Papadopoulos an email offering $3,000 and
a paid trip to London to write a research paper on a disputed gas field
in the eastern Mediterranean, his specialty. "George, you know about hacking
the emails from Russia, right?" Halper asked when he got there, but Papadopoulos
said he knew nothing.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/31/spooks-spooking-themselves/
PAGE 3 OF 4
Within 30 minutes (15.47 to 16.15) they are in critical condition. Charlie
Rowley describes a similar time-frame for Dawn Sturgess.
7th March Scotland Yard Chief Medical Officer statement
"As your Chief Medical Officer, my message to the public is that this event
poses a low risk to us, the public, on the evidence we have."
METHOD OF DELIVERY
Spray: too risky, the assailants run the risk of contaminating themselves.
Also the doctor said "There was no sign of any chemical agent on Ms Skripal's
face or body".
High pressure syringe: the pressure is so great the vaccine (or nerve
agent) is pumped through the skin and immediately enters the blood stream.
The beauty of this method of delivery is there's no evidence. I think the
assailants grabbed them from behind and delivered the nerve agent directly
into the jugular vein, the site of the attack being at the corner of G&T'S.
The Skripals wouldn't have known what had just happened to them.
DS BAILEY
DS Bailey will have attended a First-Aid course, so his first action would
be to loosen any clothing round Sergei's neck and clear his airway. If you
look at photos of Sergei, he's got quite a thick neck, so DS Bailey probably
had to fiddle a bit with his clothing and this is probably how he was contaminated.
He'd unknowingly come into direct contact with a small amount of residue
nerve agent at the delivery site.
ANTON UTKIN former UN Chemical Weapons Expert in Iraq
Worlds Apart Interview 29th April 2018 Breaking with Conventions?
"Why was Novichok agent determined undecomposed only in the blood of
Yulia Skripal? It was undecomposed. It's supposed to be decomposed under
the metabolism of the body, but they found undecomposed agent in her blood,
but not in the blood of Sergei Skripal, who got heavier exposure to the chemical
agent. That was very strange because it is not clear how it happened that
a fresh agent was in Yulia's blood."
Sounds like he suspects Yulia received a second dose while in hospital.
She was making an unexpected recovery, partly because she's healthy and
partly because of the medical treatment, so somebody gave her another dose.
Sergei wasn't expected to survive because as Anton Utkin said, he "got
heavier exposure to the chemical agent", that combined with any existing
health issues, he was simply expected to die.
PAGE 2 OF 4
"Georgia Pridham, 25, also saw the couple slumped on the bench. She said:
"He was quite smartly dressed. He had his palms up to the sky as if he was
shrugging and was staring at the building in front of him. He had a woman
sat next to him on the bench who was slumped on his shoulder. He was staring
dead straight. He was conscious, but it was like he was frozen and slightly
rocking back and forward."
"Graham Mulcock said: "The paramedics seemed to be struggling to keep
the two people conscious. The man was sitting staring into space in a catatonic
state".
"Destiny Reynolds, 20, who works in Ganesha Handicrafts in the centre,
said: "I saw quite a lot of commotion there were two people sat on the
bench and there was a security guard there. They put her on the ground in
the recovery position, and she was shaking like she was having a seizure.
It was a bit manic. There were a lot of people crowded round them. It was
raining, people had umbrellas and were putting them over them."
Other reports: "Two police officers helped the pair before emergency
services were called at 4.15pm."
Emergency services: "There were several emergency calls."
Channel 4 "Russian Spy Assassination", 26th March 2018
Male witness: "There was a man being sick on the floor, leant over, and
a woman laying on the floor. I didn't see the woman, she was surrounded
by paramedics, but they both looked fairly ill."
EFFECTS OF NERVE AGENT POISONING
Craig Murray's article Knobs and Knockers quote from a scientist "Unlike
traditional poisons, nerve agents don't need to be added to food and drink
to be effective. They are quite volatile, colourless liquids (except VX,
said to resemble engine oil). The concentration in the vapour at room temperature
is lethal. The symptoms of poisoning come on quickly, and include chest
tightening, difficulty in breathing, and very likely asphyxiation. Associated
symptoms include vomiting and massive incontinence. Eventually, you die
either through asphyxiation or cardiac arrest".
EVENTS FROM 15.47 ONWARDS
15.47 CCTV footage, if you analyse the shape of Sergei's head and hairline
with clearer pictures it matches. Two witnesses describe Yulia as having
blonde hair. At this point, neither is showing any signs of nerve agent
poisoning.
16.03 (16 minutes later) Freya Church sees them slumped on the bench.
Minutes later, both are becoming critically ill. From witness statements,
Yulia is worse affected so the doctor attends to her and DS Bailey attends
to Sergei. The reports say two police officers, but I think it was the security
guard.
PAGE 1 OF 4
I think I've worked out how it was done and why DS Bailey was the only other
person affected. It's all down to METHOD OF DELIVERY. The attack took place
between 15.47 and 16.03 near to where they were found. The door handle is
a diversionary technique to draw attention away from this. There's someone
else calling themselves Anonymous, I'll call myself Anonymous-1 see what
happens.
TIMINGS
13.40 Arrive at car park
Feed ducks and walk to pub
Mill Pub (30 minutes)
Walk to Zizzi's
(40 mins have elapsed from arriving at the car park to arriving at Zizzi's)
14.20-15.35 Zizzi's (1 hour 15 minutes, there's specific timings)
(12 minutes after leaving Zizz's they are picked up on CCTV)
15.47 CCTV footage (older man with blonde haired younger woman with red
bag)
(16 minutes later they fall ill from nerve agent poisoning)
16.03 Freya Church see them slumped on bench
(5 other witnesses all see them on bench, with two 'police' officers and
a doctor in attendance)
16.15 Emergency service call(s)
WITNESS STATEMENTS FROM NEWS REPORTS
FREYA CHURCH: "Sixteen minutes later [that is, after being seen on CCTV],
personal trainer Freya Church, 27, came across the victims slumped on a
bench. She said they seemed 'out of it' and assumed they were on drugs.
"It was a young, blonde and pretty girl and it was definitely the man that's
been pictured in the news the guy that's a spy. She was passed out and
he was looking up to the sky and I tried to get eye contact to see if they
were okay. They didn't seem with it. To be honest I thought they were just
drugged out as they were in a weird state. There are lots of homeless people
here so I just thought they were homeless."
FEMALE DOCTOR: "A doctor who was one of the first people at the scene
has described how she found Ms Skripal slumped unconscious on a bench, vomiting
and fitting. She had also lost control of her bodily functions. The woman,
who asked not to be named, told the BBC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery
position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father. She said
she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical
agent on Ms Skripal's face or body. The doctor said she had been worried
she would be affected by the nerve agent but added that she "feels fine."
"Witness Jamie Paine told the BBC yesterday: "Her eyes were just completely
white, they were wide open, but just white and she was frothing at the mouth.
And then the man went stiff, his arms stopped moving and still looking dead
straight."
Now here is someone who knows where Yulia is. The photographer in the Reuters
video is of Yulia making her statement is Dylan Martinez.
Reuters written reporters may know where she is as well. Reporting is
by Guy Faulconbridge. Additional reporting by Alistair Smout. Editing by
Simon Robinson and Nick Tattersall. There will be a video cameraman who
knows as well and a video editor.
Do you think you might write to them Rob and ask where she is?
And if they wont tell you, what is their reason for not telling you?
As you know any information we can get is useful Miheila. We could learn
a lot about who has Yulia, by were she was for the Reuters video and yes
you are correct to suggest that she probably isn't there anymore. Thank
you. I think they will slip up soon, its getting to be a way too tangled
web now with far to many people to keep silent.
So tangled, Denise, that I feel it's tangling the neurones in my brain!
Does anyone know when exactly that video was recorded (rather than released),
after all, the statement was mysteriously undated? Could there have been
some kind of embargo on its release until a later date?
Yulia was allegedly released on 10th April, 43 days before the video
was broadcast. According to The Sun, a 'source' claimed that she'd been
released from SDH into another hospital: ''She is in hospital on a military
base for her own protection and to monitor her health." Was the video recorded
at that military base?
Was it USAF Fairford?
Could the CIA have pre-empted MI6's hasty plans for the disappearance
of the Skripals? Perhaps MI6 had nothing planned. Maybe it was a CIA operation
from the beginning. I'll need to think about these scenarios a lot more.
Miheila, if you listen to the Daily Mail version of the video there are
a lot of police sirens at the end including bull horns. That and the aircraft
noise would point to London. It could be US Ambassadors residence in Regents
Park.
In my opinion, it was a rogue FBI op to stop "our guy" going back to Russia.
I think UK authorities knew it was happening and organised medical cavalry
to save Skripals.
HMG are caught out, to admit it would be proof MI6 surrogates were interfering
in US presidential election.
So the Feds made it look like Russia and HMG have to follow the pretence.
In my scenario some of them could be genuine. If the emergency services
were told extra medical/police/fire resources were available for that Sunday
due to the " CBW exercise" that was going on they wouldn't publicly question
it.
Maybe when the Skripals were on the bench they thought it was not "real
world" and that is why they dashed in.
But I think HMG knew Yulia had come to extricate Sergei and knew rogue elements
in UK and US "intelligence community" were trying to assassinate him.
Any contributors on here offering an alternative theory to the Hoax should
be aware (although they may be blissfully unaware) that the Hoax has been
proven.
It is a fact.
So before putting out new theories please recognise that fact and possibly
try the refute / debunk / disemble the fact before you put forward your
take.
Don't get me wrong (although a few will) I think that brainstorming and
testing theories is fine, more than fine it is essential to test ideas and
testament to the progress that this blog has contributed, advanced and assisted
public understanding in the unravelling of the case.
If you have an alternative theory please let it coincide with at least
a few facts.
@Peter
The scientific method (a la Popper): observe, deduce, theorize, predict
(i.e. show how the theory matches/predicts the things observed). And, if
necessary, adduce (i.e. defend the hypothesis).
What is never done is to insist dogmatically that one's pet theory is
the only explanation. This is because it is the duty of every scientifist
to, having produced a theory, seek to demolish it. You aren't doing that,
Peter, instead you are challenging others to demolish it.
I think fact that Sergei Skripal an ex spy may have confused issues? He
may or may not still have been actively doing intelligence but all evidence
points to accidental poisoning by drug addicts sleeping rough.
1. Reported that 40/50 rough sleepers including drug addicts, living in
area at time of Skripal poisoning.
2. Contaminated public lavatories and a "drug den" in park.
3. Council blocked off rough sleepers area and rehomed drug addicts after
Skripal poisoning.
4. Charlie Rowley rehoused at about that time?
5. OPCW not permitted to analyse all ingredients associated with poisoning
which they say makes it very difficult identifying substance
6. Two men (Kim Ferguson and Jamie Knight) forced their way through police
barricade to get to bench where Skripals had been sitting
6. Dawn Sturgess's poisoning looks like classic One Pot Shake and Bake methamphetamine
accident. Fact that fire brigade called and she was in bath suggests explosion
and burns.
7. One Pot Shake and bake produces large amounts of toxins which are dumped.
Public loos in park reported contaminated and report of a drug den there.
8. Skripals, Sturgess and Rowley did not respond to naloxone so not opioid
poisoning, this fits with it being poison from waste left from one pot shake
and bake meth.
9. Salisbury Hospital Doctor said no-one was suffering from nerve agent
poisoning.
"... "Steele notes that he is concerned about the stories in the media about the bureau delivering information to Congress 'about my work and relationship with them. Very concerned about this. *People's lives may be endangered*.'" ..."
"... If Rosenstein knew of Steele's relationship with the Ohrs prior to signing FISA, he already knew that he was signing a BS FISA application – which would be perjury. But if Rosenstein was a 'firewall', it becomes an attempted coup and sedition awkward. ..."
Key quote from Sara Carter's revelations about text messages from Christopher Steele to Bruce
Ohr in October 2017:
"Steele notes that he is concerned about the stories in the media about the bureau
delivering information to Congress 'about my work and relationship with them. Very concerned
about this. *People's lives may be endangered*.'"
Now, this might seem a bit of an aside, but does anyone reading this blog have any idea
when Yulia last came to England prior to 3rd March this year? I'm trying to get an idea of
whether she is likely to have had any idea prior to this visit of what her father was
involved in, or whether she is likely to have learnt about this on this particular visit.
Thanks Rob and we are all grateful for your capacity to harness all the contributors into a
sane dialogue.
Motive indeed:
There are the pleadings by Steele to Ohr for reassurance that the "firewall" is solid! Not
sure what that intends but surely there are a few firewalls in this saga going all the way
back on the US side to the favorite candidate, the candidates party, the party legal team
that employed Fusion GPS, Fusion GPS itself, Orbis, Steele, Sergei, and perhaps Yulia. What
might have been her potential role other than innocent visitor. We now have a clearer view of
her employment trajectory. I would bet the firewalls on the UK side are fully aluminium clad
too, and I anticipate this site and a few other emerging lines of inquiry will penetrate
those.
The furious mother in law angle is a good one and potentially worth a serious look.
Sometimes murders deliver conveniences to unforeseen parties.
The overreach of British interference in the USA election and May's complicity in that
exercise needed a very good redeeming cover and here is a dandy.
The mafiosi angle cannot be ruled out and nor can the Ukrainian possibility given their
intense penetration of the EU playing ground. Perhaps Sergei was investigating things there
too and annoyed the new mafiosi now free to roam.
But I am sure that closer to home there are others that employed Orbis to do interesting
work. How's Bill Browder these days?
Page was the fourth firewall (not Comey), but she is already gone too.
If Rosenstein knew of Steele's relationship with the Ohrs prior to signing FISA, he
already knew that he was signing a BS FISA application – which would be perjury. But if
Rosenstein was a 'firewall', it becomes an attempted coup and sedition awkward.
Nick Bailey
Charlie Rowley
Helicopter pilot
Helicopter paramedics
Land ambulance paramedics
Doctors at Salisbury Hospital
Nurses at Salisbury Hospital
Head of Porton Down
Porton Down scientists
Porton Down workers
These may know more than they are saying:
The Mill staff
Zizzi's staff
Main stream media journalists (D noticed)
Salisbury Journal journalists (D noticed)
It only takes one to talk for the whole house of cards to come crashing down.
All the named witnesses
The ebola nurse
Whoever orgainsed the rapid response from the emergency vehicles
All the police 'searching' for something
Everyone who has seen the CCTV
The guys in hazmat suits on 4 March
People 'highly likely' to know the most, and are saying nothing:
Chris Steele
Pablo Miller (aka Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo)
MI6 people
GCHQ people
Probably CIA, NSA, US State Dept, SBU, Mossad, etc. (take your pick!)
MI5 people, including any watchers who may have been deployed
FCO people
People who know more than they are saying:
certain people in the Russian Foreign Ministry
GRU, FSB, FAPSI people
People who may know more, and may be willing to speak:
Various Salisbury witnesses, named and unnamed
Ross Cassidy
The Filmers of Distillery Farm??
Regarding "the/a motive", wouldn't Putin's alleged statement of vengeance towards the
defector, Skripal, be enough to convince the UK government of there being at least "a motive"
if not also "the motive"?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/06/traitors-will-kick-bucket-vladimir-putin-swore-revenge-poisoned/
Also, I guess I need it spelled out for me. Why would Skripal's assassination put an end to
all future spy swaps?
I don't think Putin did it -- he's not so foolish as to have such poor timing politically --
but I'm not so sure the UK government can't legitimately show a possible Russian motive, for
the purpose of helping the UK's own political timing.
Lastly, the commentators' list of complicit conspirators is just too long to make this a
real conspiracy.
But the UK Government must know that Putin's alleged promise to "choke" traitors was
nothing of the sort. It was in fact one of the most blatant propaganda pieces I have ever
seen.
The video in which he allegedly said this appeared on BBC's Newsnight and can be seen at
this link:
But the original can be found at his 2010 Q&A session when he was PM. The relevant
section begins at just after 3 hours 12 minutes, and lasts for about 3 minutes.
As you will see, his answer is basically the diametric opposite to the one the BBC piece
leads you to believe. They basically took what he said, hacked it about to extract the bits
they didn't want their audience to hear, and then put it back together (with some scary
music) to make it sound like he said something he didn't actually say.
Rob, thanks for the satisfactory explanation of Newsnight's deceitfulness. It appears that
Putin didn't give his potential future defector-spies a pass while at the same time shaming
those caught at it as being like a Judas. I wonder, though, how those thinking about possibly
selling out would read Putin's deflecting the former practice of assassination decisions as
resting on a head of state. He said it had evolved to being the decision of a special group
in the security services. Of course he (probably rightly) dissociates his government from now
operating that way. How are we to know apart from there being sufficient evidence to the
contrary? But if Putin and his security services are in truth completely innocent I don't see
how his response could have been any better.
I still don't see why an assassination would put the damper on future spy swaps. Help my
reasoning abilities.
Regarding the claim of there being a growing multitude of unwilling conspirators, I wonder
if this isn't a case, at times, of commentators taking every thought captive to the obedience
of "The Conspiracy Theory".
It might be beneficial for some agency to create a very public internet place where those
caught up as witnesses to the case can come to make their clear statements or confessions
without fear of reprisal. Possible attempts at reprisal could also be broadcast.
I still don't see why an assassination would put the damper on future spy swaps. Help my
reasoning abilities.
Tradition, it's (p)art of the deal. Country A holds a country B spy and country B holds a
country A spy. Both want its own spy back home for any one or more reasons. Why would country
A release the spy it holds in exchange for the one that country B holds if country B reserved
the option to at a later date take out Country A's spy? Spy (or alleged spy) swaps only work
with an implicit agreement that there will be no retaliation by either country against the
individuals included in the swap.
All the ins and outs involved in a spy swap are carefully considered. The swap must appear
as of equal value to the two countries. The inclusion of Skripal in the US-Russia spy swap
appeared odd to those that follow such matters as he had been a UK asset and by 2010 not of
any particularly high-value to the UK. Nothing further has been said about this by the US,
UK, or Russia; so, we're free to concoct a devious plot where none existed.
Marie, Reading what you wrote just triggered a thought usually a spy swap is where, say, US
spies caught and imprisoned in Russia, are exchanged for Russian spies caught and imprisoned
in the US. Each country gets their own nationals back. The individuals were guilty of
espionage in another country and get to go home.
That is not what Sergei was. He was a Russian national, caught and imprisoned in Russia
for treason. How did he ever get to become part of a spy swap?
Why would the UK want to take him? He had no more value to them, he had already been paid
for the information he had handed over so why would the UK agree to take him and pay for his
upkeep? What did the UK get out of the deal?
On the other side of Sergei's deal in 2010, Russia got Anna Chapman back – a Russian
national caught and imprisoned in the US
Have we been fed a pile of BS about what or who Sergei was?
Wondered if anyone would catch that oddity in the Skripal case. Likely contributed to the
head-scratching back in 2010. However, Skripal wasn't the only Russian national released to
the west in that swap. (And I'm not sure all those held by the US were Russian nationals
– nor interested enough to research that.) We're weren't fed BS about Skripal because
he was hardly ever mentioned at all. Remember, Skripal was a walk-in and for the money. Not
important enough to recruit and while he had access to confidential personnel lists he was
useful. (Not as useful as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen were to the USSR but those two were
also walk-ins and the money is important to both.)
My two guesses on this – probably not worth anything –
1) Russia held too few spies to make the deal work. So, he threw in some that were of no
value to Russia and would be of some interest to the west to sweeten the offer. As Obama was
already under criticism for giving up more than he got in his deals, he needed numbers
(spies) to make this one look okay. The UK was told and not asked to accept Skripal. He,
after all, was their guy even if he'd screwed up and exposed the fake rock and blew up the UK
Moscow spy ring (I may be exaggerating on this point). IOW didn't need, didn't want, and had
no use for Skripal. (Also meant they had devote assets to insure he hadn't been turned into a
triple-agent.)
2) The UK asked the US to get Skripal out because they still needed to know exactly what
Skripal had told the Russian investigators. That would mean that they weren't competent
enough to figure that out and/or Skripal was given a far larger role in the UK spy operation
than Russia was able to determine.
I don't have a high opinion of MI6, the CIA, etc., but it's still tough for me to buy
scenario #2. So, I've been going with #1.
So the UK was fulfilling its role as a vassal state
You comment just gave me another thought. Cameron became PM in May 2010 and the spy swap
was in July 2010, so Cameron was then PM. It is a tradition (not a rule) that the next Tory
PM hands out a knighthood to the previous Tory PM – and May hasn't done that yet I
wonder why?
The last time it happened (and that was the first time to the best of my knowledge) was
Margaret Thatcher who refused to give one to Ted Heath – he had to wait until 1992 for
John Major to give him one (if you will pardon the expression!)
At that time, apart from the fact that Thatcher despised Heath politically, it was a very
poorly kept secret that Thatcher's refusal was driven by her knowledge that Heath was a
paedophile.
Nothing to do with the Skripals but it will be interesting to see how long Cameron has to
wait.
So the UK was fulfilling its role as a vassal state
Only if there's truth in my fiction.
May was Home Secretary as of May 2010; so, also probably on board with the spy swap -- or
it was too far along to being a done deal for she and Cameron to nix it when they came into
office.
It was the British government who insisted on Skripal being included in the spy-swap made
between 10 'illegals' (placed as sleepers in the USA at the time, and led by Anna Chapman)
and four national traitors.
These four were of more use to the West than the 10 illegals. Alexander Zaporozhsky and
Igor Sutyagin had spied spying for the USA. Gennady Vasilenko was involved in illegal weapons
possession, and the reasoning for him being included in the swap has never been
disclosed.
"Skripal is considered the more important of the two as far as Britain's security and
intelligence agencies are concerned. He is likely to be debriefed for weeks, if not months.
He will be given a home and pension if he decides to stay in Britain. The future of Sutyagin
[in Britain] is less certain He could yet return to Russia".
Pardon, but where does it say that the UK requested Skripal in the US-Russia spy swap?
Two Russians exchanged in a high-profile "spy swap" were today being debriefed by MI5
and MI6 officers at a secret location close to London.
SOP – wouldn't want to let a triple-agent into the country.
Skripal is considered the more important of the two as far as Britain's security and
intelligence agencies are concerned. He is likely to be debriefed for weeks, if not months.
He will be given a home and pension if he decides to stay in Britain.
Well, Skripal did help to blow up the UK's fake rock spy communication set-up in Moscow.
And the UK wouldn't pass on an opportunity to have Skripal tell them exactly what he'd
spilled to Russian authorities (likely everything). But that "home and pension" not only
fills in a gap about what is publicly known about Skripal but also that the UK accepted that
they were stuck with him as part of the spy swap.
Britain and the US say they have got more out of the spy swap than Russia because the
four men released by Moscow were far more serious individuals than the 10 agents handed over
by the US.
Do you think the UK and US would say they got the short end of the stick in the deal?
Superficially (the ordinary person's level of geo-political understanding), getting for
Russian four nationals (three convicted of espionage, spying for the west and serving
sentences of 15 to 18 years) for eleven low value Russians held by the west doesn't look like
the better part of the bargain. And in the US this could easily have become another
anti-Obama rallying cry for the GOP and their right-wing crazies. That seemed not to have
happened. Probably a too esoteric for that audience.
This is interesting:
One of those released to the US, Alexander Zaporozhsky, was a KGB colonel whose spying
for the US is understood to have led to the unmasking of Robery Hanssen, an FBI officer, and
Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer, two of Russia's most important spies in the US.
If true, the CIA and FBI were in debt to Zaporozhsky and the official FBI and CIA stories
of the unmasking of these two moles if fiction. I suspect that the above claim is the
fiction. Designed to add weight to why Zaporozhsky was accepted in the swap and preserved the
secrecy of whatever info he had actually passed to the US.
For now, I'll stick with my guess that the UK wasn't keen on being stuck with Skripal.
Thanks for your reply, Marie. Just so you know, I don't think the evidence supports the
poisoning having been ordered by Putin. I would only contend that if he had ordered it Putin
would have been anticipating a positive effect. It would have limited the number of UK spy
candidates willing to risk spying against Russia. (Putin probably wouldn't have foreseen the
success of the sanctions campaign.) But, in my opinion, both parties –in the future --
would continue their interest in spy swaps. In spite of the negative consequences of exposing
them to murder, why not get ones spy back and better protect them?
It might be that an imprisoned spy will prefer to complete his prison term than to get
swapped and thus to become a potential target for assassination.
I wonder what Sergei is thinking now. His daughter's life is ruined and may be in
danger.
I often wonder about how they and their family in Russia feel about this awful affair. We
tend to forget the human side of the story, but we shouldn't. Sergei, from all I hear about
him, seemed a decent kind of man. He may have been foolish for being talked into betraying
his country by Pablo Miller, but I don't see him as a bad man at heart. Maybe he was
desperate for money at the time or goinf throufgh a bad patch which would have made him more
susceptible to manipulation. Who knows?
But now his acts have somehow caused lives to fall apart and much I'm sure suffering. It's
my view that all governments are essentially evil (greedy, ruthless and self-serving), and
don't work in the interests of ordinary people – often working against them. The
evidence of history bears this out.
Craig Murray has been adamant that PM didn't recruit Skripal and that Skripal was known as a
walk-in. (It is generally accepted that at some point and for some undefined period of time
that PM was Skripal's handler.)
A "nice" man doesn't endanger the lives of his colleagues for money.
All those on the list aren't conspirators as you think of them. More like further victims
of the conspiracy. They dont know the whole story. They each only know a tiny bit of it. A
bad bit, but have been frightened so badly that they are scared to tell that little bit,
which will lead to the conspiracy unfolding. And make no mistake this is a conspiracy, a
swamp conspiracy of the tallest order.
Bob, it is not a list of "list of complicit conspirators" – it is a list of 'people who
know more than they have said'.
They are not all involved in a conspiracy, they are witnesses to the conspiracy. They each
have a story to tell that would open the lid on a part of what happened – not the whole
story.
Are they silent? I don't know, the MSM has not tried to ask them what they know, maybe
they will be happy to talk, if anyone asks.
Mrs Cooper told Rob that Sergei was wearing leather jacket and jeans – she was happy
to tell what she knew, all Rob had to do was ask. The Sun newspaper which broke the 'duck'
story and went to interview Mrs Cooper did not even bother to ask that question – or if
they did they did not reveal what she said.
The conspiracy continues through indifference of the MSM – sooner of later that will
change.
"... "A Ukrainian political consultant has revealed to Sputnik that former MI6 agent Christopher Steele sought and paid for researchers in Ukraine to concoct fake stories about Donald Trump prior his election as US president to use in the now-infamous dossier that supposedly contained damning evidence of Russia-Trump collusion. ..."
"... Radio Sputnik's Lee Stranahan spoke previously with Ukrainian political consultant and former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko about his connections to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative named Alexandra Chalupa who also worked for clients in Ukrainian politics. Chalupa told Politico in January 2017 that beginning in 2015, she pulled on a network of sources she'd established in Kiev and Washington to try and turn up dirt on Trump ..."
"... The BBC is a propaganda organisation. It has even admitted it. http://viewsandstories.blogspot.com/2018/04/bbc-asserts-it-is-propaganda.html ..."
"... The door handle application is a crock. If, as is claimed the alleged Novichok was pure then who made it should be known because of its purity. ..."
"... Browder just wants us to go to war with Russia so he can keep his stolen money, that's not too much to ask! ..."
On 8 July 2018 a lady named Kirsty Eccles asked what, in its enormous ramifications,
historians may one day see as the most important Freedom of Information request ever made. The
rest of this post requires extremely close and careful reading, and some thought, for you to
understand that claim.
Dear British Broadcasting Corporation,
1: Why did BBC Newsnight correspondent Mark Urban keep secret from the licence payers that
he had been having meetings with Sergei Skripal only last summer.
2: When did the BBC know this?
3: Please provide me with copies of all correspondence between yourselves and Mark Urban
on the subject of Sergei Skripal.
Yours faithfully,
Kirsty Eccles
The ramifications of this little request are enormous as they cut right to the heart of the
ramping up of the new Cold War, of the BBC's propaganda collusion with the security services to
that end, and of the concoction of fraudulent evidence in the Steele "dirty dossier". This also
of course casts a strong light on more plausible motives for an attack on the Skripals.
Which is why the BBC
point blank refused to answer Kirsty's request, stating that it was subject to the Freedom
of Information exemption for "Journalism".
10th July 2018
Dear Ms Eccles
Freedom of Information request – RFI20181319
Thank you for your request to the BBC of 8th July 2018, seeking the following information
under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000:
1: Why did BBC Newsnight correspondent Mark Urban keep secret from the licence payers that
he
had been having meetings with Sergei Skripal only last summer.
2: When did the BBC know this?
3: Please provide me with copies of all correspondence between yourselves and Mark Urban on
the
subject of Sergei Skripal.
The information you have requested is excluded from the Act because it is held for the
purposes of
'journalism, art or literature.' The BBC is therefore not obliged to provide this information
to you. Part VI
of Schedule 1 to FOIA provides that information held by the BBC and the other public service
broadcasters
is only covered by the Act if it is held for 'purposes other than those of journalism, art or
literature".
The
BBC is not required to supply information held for the purposes of creating the BBC's output
or
information that supports and is closely associated with these creative activities.
The BBC is of course being entirely tendentious here – "journalism" does not include
the deliberate suppression of vital information from the public, particularly in order to
facilitate the propagation of fake news on behalf of the security services. That black
propaganda is precisely what the BBC is knowingly engaged in, and here trying hard to hide.
I have today attempted to contact Mark Urban at Newsnight by phone, with no success, and
sent him this email:
As you may know, I am a journalist working in alternative media, a member of the NUJ, as
well as a former British Ambassador. I am researching the Skripal case.
I wish to ask you the following questions.
1) When the Skripals were first poisoned, it was the largest news story in the entire
World and you were uniquely positioned having held several meetings with Sergei Skripal the
previous year. Yet faced with what should have been a massive career break, you withheld that
unique information on a major story from the public for four months. Why?
2) You were an officer in the Royal Tank Regiment together with Skripal's MI6 handler, Pablo
Miller, who also lived in Salisbury. Have you maintained friendship with Miller over the
years and how often do you communicate?
3) When you met Skripal in Salisbury, was Miller present all or part of the time, or did you
meet Miller separately?
4) Was the BBC aware of your meetings with Miller and/or Skripal at the time?
5) When, four months later, you told the world about your meetings with Skripal after the
Rowley/Sturgess incident, you said you had met him to research a book. Yet the only
forthcoming book by you advertised is on the Skripal attack. What was the subject of your
discussions with Skripal?
6) Pablo Miller worked for Orbis Intelligence. Do you know if Miller contributed to the
Christopher Steele dossier on Trump/Russia?
7) Did you discuss the Trump dossier with Skripal and/or Miller?
8) Do you know whether Skripal contributed to the Trump dossier?
9) In your Newsnight piece following the Rowley/Sturgess incident, you stated that security
service sources had told you that Yulia Skripal's telephone may have been bugged. Since
January 2017, how many security service briefings or discussions have you had on any of the
matter above.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Craig Murray
I should very much welcome others also sending emails to Mark Urban to emphasise the public
demand for an answer from the BBC to these vital questions. If you have time, write your own
email, or if not copy and paste from mine.
To quote that great Scot John Paul Jones, "We have not yet begun to fight".
Not going in to the details of the Skripals etc but what this goes to show is the
limitations of the FOI Act. The FOI Act was brought in by the Blair Govt but of course was
very much weakened in its final version. Even this was very much regretted by Blair in his
autobiography who said what an 'idiot' he had been to bring it in. Tony, you need have no
fear – powerful institutions like the BBC can block any meaningful probing because of
the limitations of the law.
Spotted this yesterday .5103 "A Ukrainian political consultant has revealed to Sputnik that former MI6 agent
Christopher Steele sought and paid for researchers in Ukraine to concoct fake stories about
Donald Trump prior his election as US president to use in the now-infamous dossier that
supposedly contained damning evidence of Russia-Trump collusion.
Radio Sputnik's Lee Stranahan spoke previously with Ukrainian political consultant and
former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko about his connections to a Democratic National Committee
(DNC) operative named Alexandra Chalupa who also worked for clients in Ukrainian politics.
Chalupa told Politico in January 2017 that beginning in 2015, she pulled on a network of
sources she'd established in Kiev and Washington to try and turn up dirt on Trump , once
his star began to rise in the Republican primary campaign." Etc etc
I can't add any cogency to the (so-far) fruitless quest for information from the BBC, but
last weeks R4 programme (still available on iPlayer) The Reunion, in which the Skripal, and
more recent 'nerve agent' attacks, were discussed and, I thought, neatly tied in with the
'Murder of Georgi Markov in the 1950s, apparently by Bulgarian secret agents, perhaps
deserves examination by listeners and researchers more interested in BBC propaganda.
A panel of 'experts', diplomats, security people, some of whom you may very well knowand who
laid claim to being 'there or thereabouts', concluded that The Skripal's incident bore all
the markings of 'state sponsored' action, though, of course, they would never know until "the
Russian archives are opened".
It all sounded thoroughly convincing (radio does when you're driving on a long-haul, I find)
but it did occur to me that the programme, though ostensibly about the 'murder of Markov' was
intended to draw the listener to inevitable conclusions about the perpetrators of Salisbury
and Amesbury 'poisonings'.
The BBC is very good at obfuscation and I felt this was a good example.
Sorry I cannot be more 'relevant' to your blog of 27/08/18.
Good luck, and please. as they say, keep up the good work.
I remember the excellent 'Media Lens' team have complained about Mark Urban in the past
with his blatant Western bias. For example, like the other overpaid political analysts and
presenters on the BBC, he doesn't question the stated but transparently dishonest premise of
the West – that they are intervening in other nations on a humanitarian basis. Like the
other wastes of space in the mainstream media, he is also quick to mention civilian deaths by
the Russians but not so quick to mention those killed by the West.
As I recall, Urban completely failed to reply to or to address the concerns of Media Lens
in a reasonable way.
"I remember the excellent 'Media Lens' team have complained about Mark Urban in the past
with his blatant Western bias."
Mark Urban is from a Western country and the broadcaster he works for is in a Western
country. Why are you so surprised that both he and the organisation he works for have a
"Western bias"? Is that so abnormal? Would you expect him to have a pro-Chinese or a
pro-Russian or, for that matter, a pro-Brazilian bias and would you be happy if he had? Would
you expect a journalist who works for RT to have an anti-Russian, pro-Western
bias?
Ramifications.
'Recently Aeroflot has been affected by US sanctions and its flights to America face possible
suspension by Washington, as the US government seeks to punish the Kremlin for its alleged
involvement in the poisoning of former double agent and Russian national Sergei Skripal and
his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March.' https://www.rt.com/trends/aeroflot-russia-airlines-international/
Russian skies could become too expensive for US airlines if Washington targets
Aeroflot
American carriers would face huge financial losses if Russia increases tariffs for the use of
its airspace in response to possible US sanctions targeting the country's largest airline
Aeroflot, an expert has told RT. https://www.rt.com/business/435599-russia-aeroflot-us-sanctions/
Klutzes all! and now the entire story is unravelling thanks to that idiot Alexander Downer
and his mate Halper. I guess their little maltese buddy Joe Mifsud is deeply underground for
a decade or two.
I hadn't really followed the implications until' your list. So there will be a chemical
attack and the OPCW will assign blame to Syria (but also possibly Syria/Russia).
The US have been making it clear that they would hold Russia accountable for any "further"
chemical weapons attacks carried out by Syria. This could used then to remove Russia form the
UN Security Council. Even for the UN to no longer recognise the Russian Government as
legitimate and instead recognise an alternative Russian Government (under Mikhail
Khardovsky). Will China fall in line?
This looks awfully close to the start of a full scale war.
The UN has been turning a blind eye to neo-con murder since 9/11. They are a busted flush.
There is no residual value or purpose for the UN in an age that backs Saudi Arabi to train
terrorists in Myanmar.
As to Senator John McCain the world will be a safer place when this terrorist is finally
removed. The UN is wholly owned by the US. The US neo-cons have sucked every particle of
respectability out of it.
" Those who antagonise the believing Muslim men and women and do not repent will be consigned
to the Fire, to dwell forever therein. " Qur'an. I am immensely proud of Donald trump for
refusing to honour him.
Frightening, and probably part of the plan. I have been reading for the last 2 days a
series of warnings by the Russians that a chemical "attack" is imminent. Not many
translations of this in the MSM. One would think that they wouldn't dare after such warnings,
but I am not optimistic. After all, how many people have read the warnings?
I've seen posts on Twitter about this warning by the Russians and you know what the
counter-argument is that they are putting forward? They contend that it's a double bluff by
the Syrians/Russians. Well, if you're intending to use chemical weapons why wouldn't you make
out that the other side are planning it as a false flag? Trouble is, Western governments will
be more than happy to go along with that in the public eye – let's face it, they know
the real truth of the situation. I note however that the Russian warning mentions the active
role in the planned false flag played by British security firm Olive. I haven't seen any
denial from them so that would suggest to a neutral observer that the Russian allegations do
have some foundation and hopefully will be enough to 'put the wind up' those planning the
event.
Further to my post at 18.08 I see a short and sweet statement on the Sputnik website that
"Olive Group has no involvement" Suzanne Piner, the company's marketing director said. So
there we have it, who are we to disbelieve them??
A great blog, Craig, and lots of good comments. I have two contributions.
1. A recent Spectator blog talked of a 'Stockade of D-notices'. Surely that means more
than the two we know about. So I guess that anyone working in the MSM must have to tread
carefully.
2. We are swimming in a sea of fake news, disinformation, misinformation, deliberate lies
and speculation. I have found only one rock worth clinging onto and it's this. The Porton
Down analyst (CC) who gave evidence to the high court which heard the blood sample
application said the analysis of the Skripals blood indicated exposure to a nerve agent or
related compound (para 17 of the judge's report). It is reasonable to assume they used the
term 'nerve agent' correctly, i.e. belonging to the group of organo-phosphorus compounds
(from the OPCW website). On the assumption CC told the truth, there are only three
possibilities:-
a. The Skripals were exposed to a nerve agent, or
b. They were exposed to a related compound that was not a nerve agent, or
c. The analysis was unable to say whether it was a nerve agent or a related compound.
If it was 'a', why did CC muddy the waters by saying 'or a related compound? Very
unlikely, bearing in mind the sensitivety of the issue.
If it was 'c', is it credible that Porton Down, world leaders in chemical weaponry, were not
able to tell if a substance was a nerve agent or not? I think not.
Which leaves 'b'. That the Skripals were not poisoned by a nerve agent.
I think we should all write to our MPs pointing this out and request a Parliamentary
Question be put to the Secretary of State for Defence (who oversees PD) asking for full
details of those blood tests and for Theresa to be briefed accordingly. She would then be
required under the Ministerial Code to correct her misleading statements to the House which
claimed the Skripals were poisoned by a nerve agent.
Hi Robert – if CC knew for sure they Skripals were exposed to a nerve agent, CC
would not have added 'or a related compound' as it only serves to confuse. CC might have said
it because he/she couldn't tell from the findings – most unlikely – so the only
reason he/she said the words 'or a related compound' was to avoid lying under oath to the
high court.
It all comes down to contaminated crack or whatever they used, especially the
Amesbury folk. They're well known imbibers a friend living there has told me.
I pass this on merely as a possible explanation from 'people who know'.
Hi Paul – yes. At the court hearing, CC was referring to the initial blood analyses
carried out by Porton Down a day or so after the poisoning. But clearly the doubt sown by the
words 'or a related compound' remained at least until 20th March when CC gave that
evidence.
I remember reading that Court of Protection judgement wording at the time and made some
notes about it, plus how this wording compared with that of Gary Aitkenhead's and the
OPCW's:
When comparing the wording from three sources – interview with head of Porton Down,
court hearing and OPCW documents – I think that there is room for the absence of
Novichok in blood samples taken from the Skripals before 22/03.
The Court of Protection judgement before Mr Justice Williams (22/03), (regarding an
application to take blood samples for the OPCW to confirm Porton Down's earlier analysis),
states that earlier blood tests carried out by Porton Down "indicated exposure to a nerve
agent or related compound. The samples tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class
nerve agent or closely related agent." (Please note the "or".) The statement comes at point
17 i):
Then, Gary Aitkenhead, CEO of Porton Down, told Sky News (04/04) that the substance they
found was "..Novichok or from that family.." (Again, please note the "or".) The statement
comes 1:27mins in on this YouTube video, which has a less edited version than on the Sky News
site, plus some interesting notes:
And the OPCW's executive summary, which has been made public, does not mention Novichok by
name, but it says that the results of their tests confirm the findings of the UK relating to
the chemical's identity, and show that the toxic chemical is of high purity. It says that the
name and structure of the toxic chemical are contained in the full classified report of the
Secretariat, available to the state parties of the OPCW.
Taken from points 10, 11 and 12 at:
I have been thinking about this as well. Please note that "nerve agent or related
compound" leaves open the possibility that the compound is not even a nerve agent.
It would be interesting to know the expert definitions of "closely related" and "family"
with regard to "nerve agent" and "novichok".
The general understanding is that it was A-234. This has never been confirmed in a public
statement, however.
Expressions like "nerve agent" subconsciously conjure up dark and sinister evildoing in
the world of James Bond and his "licence to kill", at least in the minds of most British
English speakers. The same psychology is at work when you see "Polite Notice" and
subconsciously read it as "Police Notice". Such notices are invariably unofficial, and often
impolite!
For the mischief makers, however, mere "nerve agent", with its ambiguity and murky
undertones, was not enough; "novichok" will soon be a novichok entry for 2018 in the OED.
("Новичо́к" means "newcomer", "new
guy"–as in freshman, rookie, novice.)
Modern nerve agents were first discovered in the 1930s by German industrial chemists
experimenting with organophosphorus compounds (which are defined by containing a particular
grouping of carbon, phosphorus and oxygen atoms). They were trying to make new insecticides
which would be powerful but safe(ish), but stumbled across tabun, which was powerful but very
unsafe. Given the political situation, and realising the military potential, these chemists
then pursued their research with emphasis on the extremely unsafe, and with huge success.
After 1945, having had no such success themselves, the victorious allies' chemists
"inherited" this German research; the Soviets did particularly well here, as there was much
German manufacturing infrastructure in Poland. Exactly what happened next is obviously kept
very secret, but some refinements were certainly achieved such as VX,
and–allegedly–the Novichoks. Per Chalmers Johnson: "we knew Saddam had WMD; we
had the receipts".
All very interesting (not really), and probably well-understood by a few reading this. A
problem in getting a real understanding of all this novichok/Skripal malarkey lies in some
misunderstandings of the details about the foregoing, of which few will be properly aware,
Craig included. He read history.
Firstly organophosphorus compounds are certainly not inherently toxic; DNA is an
organophosphate, as is RNA, ATP, etc. Boat loads of other basic biochemistry involves this
chemical grouping. To equate "nerve agent" (or "insecticide") with "organophosphate" is a
good start, but nothing more.
Secondly, the idea that nerve agents are new is misleading. Curare (poison) tipped arrows
have been used in South America for millenia, secretions by bufotenine toads similarly used
elsewhere, with many many other examples throughout recorded history (and beyond). These
chemicals could all semantically correctly be termed nerve agents.
Interestingly, although tabun's potency was discovered in the 30s by Schrader er al, it had
been unwittingly synthesised 40-odd years earlier. There's nothing new under the sun.
Thirdly, poisoning by ACE nerve agents (which, allegedly, includes
Новичо́к) is quick and easy(ish) to detect and
interpret in an unambiguous way. Less so more exotic and novel toxins (so obviously not eg
curare or bufotoxins, but along those lines). However, given time, a good analysis is doable
using mass spectrometry, SEM, X-ray crystallography (and other) methods.
In reply to John Bull, I wouldn't say we're "swimming in a sea of fake news, et seq", more
bobbing around like corks. Love the moniker, by the way! It works on so many levels.
I suspect the reason for the wording is that what was identified was an
acetylcholineesterase (ACE) inhibitor, which covers the major nerve agents and other
compounds as well.
Here is one of the really stupid things about the official british story line on the
Skripals. Sergei and Yulia are supposed to have left their home at around 1:30 and both
swiped their hands on the door lever and were then novihoaxed. They drove to town and parked
their car ten minutes later. They then walked through the park and stopped to hand feed the
ducks in the stream and handed bread to the young boys to also feed the ducks. They then went
on to act 2 scene 1 at zizzis or the pub and then act 2 scene two collapsed on the bench.
No young boy or duck was harmed making this play. The military grade novihoax is incapable
of killing a duck, let alone a child as this pair smeared military grade nerve poison on
everything! They have incinerated the zizzi table and heaven knows what has been incinerated
at the pub. They incinerated the Skripals front door, who knows what fate was delivered to
the BMW.
But they cant kill a duck! Mind you they can starve Skripal pets.
I wasn't trying to divert. I know quite a bit about the habits of ducks. You'll very
rarely see a dead duck anywhere in the natural world. Same with swans. They like to die in
private.
I can tell you that it's very unlikely that you'd have any reports of dead ducks in
Salisbury parks.
Before anyone puts this down to more high level trolling, I used to be a wildlife
photographer. And I mean a proper one, i.e one that crawled around in mud for days at a time
filming and photographing ducks.
The ducks were an obvious joke (of derision). The joke has a second level (not hidden);
the young boys didn't die because everyone knows the novichok poisoning story is not
true?
"No ducks or young boys were harmed in the making of this movie!"
All of the above just paraphrases/repeats what uncle tungsten said
You jobs sounds like it was really great, I envy you. But your contribution (here) sucks
big time!
There appears to be a distinct lack of cross contamination.
The Skripal car should be riven with this poison – on the steering wheel- gear stick
etc etc. If so, then reports of it being burned should follow like the table – as the
guinea pigs and the cat were.
It should be all over the bread and all over the assistant duck feeders and the ducks
should have been legion with their webbed feet up in the air.
The door handle application is a crock. If, as is claimed the alleged Novichok was pure
then who made it should be known because of its purity.
If it's Russian that should be provable. So far the proof that it is Russian made has not been shown.
"So far the proof that it is Russian made has not been shown."
Nonsense, the very name novichok is a giveaway, nobody would use a novichok except
Russians.
"They have incinerated the Zizzi table " The significance of the table in this saga
intrigues me. I recall when the 'details' (!!) of events were revealed by the MSM at the
outset we were informed that the table had been covered in nerve agent in the form of a fine
white powder and had to be incinerated. [ In fact it was so badly contaminated even Porton
Down didn't have the capability of storing it safely – that's my facetious 'take' on it
before anyone asks where I read that!]
On the assumption that it was indeed incinerated as a 'risk' item it begs a couple of obvious
questions which the official narrative hasn't explained. First, the time lapse between the
Skripals leaving Zizzis, being identified and their movements traced back to the restaurant
and 'lockdown' being applied to everything in the restaurant: we don't know but I would
hazard a guess an hour minimum. Are we really supposed to believe that the plates, dishes and
cutlery left by the Skripals weren't cleared away in all that time, and the table wasn't
wiped down? Irrespective of whether the nerve agent residue that we are supposed to believe
was being spread all over Salisbury was visible or not, surely whoever cleared the table and
washed up the dishes would definitely have been contaminated if we are to believe what we
have been told about the door handle theory.
Adding to my comment at 12.19, we mustn't also forget that glasses and dishes would also
have been removed from the table during the course of the Skripals' meal as well, not to
mention money or credit cards or card reading machines etc exchanging hands. And the drinking
glasses used at the pub. The more you think about it, the more ridiculous the official line
becomes.
Pink Floyd Legend Roger Waters Slams Skripal Case as 'Nonsense'
The former leader of Pink Floyd has also blasted the White Helmets, a dubious Syrian
volunteer organization which has been accused of staging videos of chemical attacks, as part
of the "propaganda war," echoing the dismissive comments he made earlier this year.
The UK's Momentary Lapse of Reason
In an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestiya, former Pink Floyd member Roger
Waters dismissed the infamous Skripal case as "nonsense." "That the attack on the Skripals
was nonsense is clear to a person with half a brain. But some don't even have one half,
that's why they believe in this absurd," he was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
Rather like Janet Jackson's nipples,
It's been a while since we've seen the Skripals.
Not so long ago they were all over the news
As official drones droned their official views.
They said that in Salisbury wherever you look
Lurked sinister types splashing novichuk.
Door handle specialists had been imported,
Or so the BBC unquestioningly reported.
A laundry list of despicable acts
Only vaguely coincident with the salient facts.
Boris Johnson wasn't sitting on the fence,
He don't need no stinkin' evidence.
'It was them Russkies wot dunnit, no doubt about that',
Said the country's pre-eminent diplomat.
KGB thugs sent to put the boot in,
By Mr. Evil, Vladimir Stalin Putin.
Novichuk's lethality was re-emphasised again,
More deadly than others by a factor of ten.
Yet somehow miraculously the Skripals survived,
In Salisbury General they inconveniently revived.
And that was all we heard for a while
Bar a weird statement in machine-prose style.
Then a curious video right out of the blue
That looked like an advert for flyaway shampoo.
A chilled out Yulia said she was contented,
And consular access had not been prevented,
But no, she didn't want to meet up with her kin
(Not that the government would let them in).
The whole production was charmingly informal,
As though poisoning and exile were perfectly normal.
This remarkable young woman's taken it all in her stride,
Seemingly happy to go along with the ride.
Her boyfriend, her job, her dog and her flat
All peremptorily dumped at the drop of a hat.
The un-fake corporate media performed as tasked
Ensuring awkward questions remained unasked.
And all this ludicrous b-movie rigmarole
Was discreetly d-noticed down the memory hole.
The legal and diplomatic situation's now clear:
'Move along sir, nothing to see here.'
Look at the Skripal affair. The British government's account of what
happened is hilariously unconvincing, and the Foreign Minister himself was
caught red-handed in
a lie of such monstrous proportions
that he was hopelessly compromised
and his remaining audience of five true believers could no longer take anything
he said as factual.
Far from the only example
of his instinctive lying, I might add. But
the British government demands you take them at their word: they can't show
anyone any evidence 'coz it's National Security, innit? but any alternate
narrative other than the official account of what happened is fake news.
Horrific misinformation. Any western authority granted the mandate to rule
on what is misinformation is going to abuse that power to ensure only its
side of a story (which always has at least two) is the one that is heard.
Period. You would like to believe they're above that, but they're not.
Well, that was a longer diversion than I planned; let's get back to Caitlin
Johnstone. Here's what she said, in one of those dozy tweets I dislike so
much.
"Friendly public service reminder that John McCain has devoted
his entire political career to slaughtering as many human beings as possible
at every opportunity, and the world will be improved when he finally dies".
I'm sure it was that last bit that sent the 'fake news' crowd over the
precipice, because we are conditioned as western citizens to never speak
ill of the dead, and the prohibition plainly extends to the almost-dead.
The Undead, if you prefer. That's not the first time Ms. Johnstone, who
is nothing if not plain-spoken, has expressed the conviction that the expiration
of John McCain is an event which is long overdue. It may well be regarded
as insensitive, although I honestly cannot disagree with it, as his continued
persistence on this mortal coil means a continued manifestation of his malign
influence, and he continues to exercise his privilege to speak on behalf
of his constituents to vote for the most destructive course every time it
is offered as an option.
If I may be allowed one more tiny diversion, one I have certainly advanced
before on the unaccountable American fascination with free speech, I believe
it bears directly on Ms. Johnstone's legal right to say insensitive things,
according to established legal precedent. On October 18th, 1998, the Westboro
Baptist Church aka Lunatic Space-Cadets Anonymous
picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard
, a gay man who was beaten unconscious,
tied to a fence and left for dead by a couple of homophobic assailants,
and who died of his injuries. The congregation carried signs which bore
such inflammatory slogans as "No Tears for Queers", "Fag Matt Burns in Hell",
and the more perennial but generalized "God Hates Fags". No action was taken
against the church. The family of a decorated US Marine who died in Iraq
later took Westboro Baptist Church to court for their provocative baiting
at solemn occasions like their son's funeral, and lost. The Supreme Court
of the United States ruled Westboro's right to free speech did not infringe
on the family's right to conduct a funeral without interference.
So any prohibition on publicly wishing John McCain would cease his irritating
evasion of the Grim Reaper is imaginary, faith-based and entirely without
legal merit.
Getting back to the issue, Ms. Johnstone's initial antagonist Patrick
tweeted in response;
"What a miserable, despicable person. You are
the definition of deplorable. I may frequently disagree with Senator John
McCain and Meghan McCain with all due criticism, but they should sue you
for libel. This is disgusting."
What is
libel
? Libel is
"to
publish
in
print
(including
pictures),
writing
or
broadcast
through
radio,television
or
film,
an
untruth
about
another
which
will
do
harm
to
that
person
or
his/her
reputation,
by
tending
to
bring
the
target
into
ridicule,
hatred,
scorn
or
contempt
of
others.
Libel
is
the
written
or
broadcast
form
of
defamation,
distinguished
from
slander
which
is
oral
defamation.
It is
a
tort
(civilwrong)
making
the
person
or
entity
(like
a
newspaper,
magazine
or
political
organization)
open
to
a
lawsuit
for
damages
by
the
person
who
can
prove
the
statement
about
him/her
was
a
lie.
"
Hey, I know let's play lawyer, wanna? No costly law degree required;
I already said we were playing. But since we've already demonstrated that
Ms. Johnstone can't be (successfully) sued for libel for expressing the
opinion that the world will be a better place once John McCain has popped
his pricey tasseled clogs, then the point of libelous contention must be
the allegation that John McCain has availed himself of every opportunity
to vote for policies or undertakings which contributed to the slaughter
of human beings. A customary and absolute defense against the charge of
libel is establishment that the allegedly libelous statement is, in fact,
true. Can we do that? I'll bet we can.
Although he was very much a part of the Vietnam War, John McCain was
not a politician at that time, and Ms. Johnstone specified that he had used
his
political
career to press for military action which resulted
in many casualties. I don't think the modification of 'as many as possible'
would be enforceable under libel laws, as it would be too difficult to prove.
Could there have been even more casualties, on both sides, in any military
action in which Senator McCain had a vote? Probably, but there is no realistic
way to determine if they were either limited or aggravated by his direct
participation in the vote. By the same token, the contribution of his vote
to any casualties which
did
take place is, I think, inarguable.
So let's start with America's next big war the Gulf War against Iraq,
Take One. John McCain
voted for war
. Were there casualties? You could say that; 294 Americans
died in the Gulf War. The UK lost 47. It's worth noting, as an aside, that
Syria was a US ally in the Gulf War, and had 2 of its soldiers killed. How
about Iraqis? Well, nobody seems to have kept a very accurate count they
were, after all, the enemy, and killing them was encouraged and the
official American count
is established from Iraqi prisoner-of-war records,
and was featured in a report commissioned by the US Air Force. It estimates
20,000-22,000 combat deaths overall, in both the air and ground campaigns.
Was that a slaughter? You tell me. And before we move on from the Gulf War,
John McCain
voted
(after the war was over) against providing automatic annual cost-of-living
adjustments for certain veterans' benefits. Four years later, McCain supported
an appropriations bill that underfunded the Departments of Veterans Affairs
and other federal agencies by $8.9 billion. The following year, McCain voted
against an amendment to increase spending on veterans programs by $13 billion.
As of the year 2000, 183,000 U.S. veterans of the Gulf War, more than a
quarter of the U.S. troops who participated, had been declared permanently
disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs. You may only be 'slaughtered'
if you are dead, but the irrevocable changes for the worse in the quality
of life for thousands of Americans who were only doing what their country
ordered them to do should count for something, what do you say?
Gee; I'm starting to get a little mad at McCain. Well, let's move on.
In 2003, the US government of the day decided that Saddam Hussein had
not learned his lesson the first time, and so this time he had to go. Accordingly,
the USA polled its allies for military forces who were not otherwise occupied,
and had another go at it. John McCain said hell yes, let's get it on.
American military casualties
, 4,287 killed, 30,187 wounded. A bit more
of a slaughter than the first attempt. The advent of ceramic-plate body
armor protected the soldier's body core, so that many more survived injuries
that would have been so horrific they would surely have killed them. The
downside is that many lived who lost limbs too badly damaged to save, and
were crippled for whatever life remained to them. The
Iraqi casualty figures
were again an estimate, although better documented; by the most reliable
count, somewhere between 182,000 and 204,000 Iraqis were killed. Needlessly
and pointlessly slaughtered, many of them; American troops grew so fearful
as a result of the steady drip of casualties among their own that they frequently
opened fire on families in cars with children simply because they did not
obey instructions in a language they did not speak or understand. At Mahmudiya,
in March 2006, Private Steven Green and his co-conspirators
raped and killed
14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza, killed her family and
set her body afire to blur the details of the crime. When Iraqi soldiers
arrived on the scene, Green and his fellow murderers blamed it on Sunni
insurgents.
The following year, President Bush approved a 'surge' of 20,000 additional
troops, which John McCain so energetically agitated for that it became known
informally as 'the McCain doctrine'. That's after he claimed in 2004 that
if an elected government in Iraq asked that US forces leave, they would
have to go even if they were not happy with the security situation. He also
recognized, the following year, that Iraqis resented the American military
presence, and the sooner and more dramatically it could be reduced, the
better it would be for everyone. I guess if you lay claim to both sides
of the argument, you're bound to convince someone that you know what you're
doing.
That same year, 2007, John McCain
voted against a requirement for specifying minimum time periods between
deployments
for soldiers deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation
Enduring Freedom. When they need you back in the meat-grinder, you go, never
mind how many times you've already been there. Let's just keep in mind,
before we leave Iraq, that the entire case for war the second time around
was fabricated with wild tales of awful weapons Saddam supposedly had which
could kill Americans
while they were still in America
, and so he
had to be dealt with. When it was suggested to the Defense Secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld, that America should concentrate on Afghanistan, since that is
where the backers of the 9-11 strike against America had fled, he
mused that there were 'no good targets in Afghanistan'
, although there
were 'lots of good targets in Iraq'. Some researchers suggest he was after
a 'teachable moment' for America's enemies which would convince them of
America's irresistible power. While John McCain assessed that Donald Rumsfeld
was the worst Secretary of Defense ever, his complaint was not that Rumsfeld
was not killing enough people, but that he showed insufficient commitment
to winning the war.
Libya. Hoo, boy. In 2009, John McCain together with fellow die-faster-please
senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham
visited Tripoli
, to discuss Libya's acquisition of American military
equipment. John McCain assured Gadaffi (his son, actually) that America
was eager to provide Libya with the equipment it needed. Hardly more than
a year later, he espoused the position that Gadaffi must be removed from
power because he had American blood on his hands from the Lockerbie bombing.
In 2011, he visited the Libyan 'rebels', and
publicly urged Washington to consider a ground attack
to forcibly remove
Gaddafi from power. Just a friendly public service reminder; the Lockerbie
bombing was most likely carried out by Syria, was according to pretty
reliable testimony
rigged by the American intelligence services to finger Libya
, and probably
the stupidest thing Gaddafi ever did was to admit to it anyway and pay compensation,
in an effort to move on.
Anyway, more war. What the fuck is it with this guy?
Well, even something so grim as war has its comic moments. What else
would you call it when NATO claims, with a straight face, that the enemy
is
hiding his tanks and artillery from its watchful eye
inside the water
pipes of the Great Man-Made River? What they actually wanted was an excuse
to bomb it which they did,
as well as the pumping stations
which brought abundant fresh water to
the coastal region, in the certain knowledge that it would create a crisis
for the civilian population. Which, by the bye, is against just about every
convention on the subject ever written.
Here are some of the pipe sections, when they were being trucked to the
assembly point. As the article suggests, these sections are 4 meters across;
but remember, that's at their widest point. They are only 4 meters for about
a foot, because a water pipe is a circle.
Libya mostly used the T-72 Main Battle Tank, and those would be the ones
NATO wanted to eliminate, since the others were considerably older. A T-72,
width-wise, would just fit in a 4-meter water pipe, as it is
3.6
meters wide
. However, it's also over 45 tons in weight. The concrete
rings were designed to carry free-flowing water, not a 45-ton tank. Would
they take that kind of weight, distributed only over a 7-meter length? Where
is there an entry point to the water-pipe that is the same width as the
widest diameter of the pipe? As discussed, the water pipe is 4 meters wide
at its widest point. But the T-72 is 2.3 meters high. The tank would only
fit if it was as high as a lunchbox, because the 4-meter width narrows dramatically
from the widest point; it's a circle. Even where it did fit, it would be
supported only on the outer edges of its tracks, and you have to cut the
4-meter measurement approximately in half, because the upper portion of
the tank would have to be above the point where the tracks touched on each
side. The idea was preposterous from the outset, and it speaks to what fucking
simpletons western government believes make up its populations that they
would dare to put such nutjobbery in print. A T-72 could not fit in a 4-meter
water pipe. The notion was demonstrably foolish. But NATO wanted to destroy
the water system, so it made up a reason that would allow it to be a well-meaning
potential victim of deadly violence.
According to
The Guardian
the same source that told you Gadaffi
was hiding his tanks in the plumbing the death toll in the Libyan civil
war prior to the NATO intervention was about 1000-2000. According to the
National Transitional Council, the outfit the west engineered to rule post-Gaddafi
Libya,
the final butcher's bill was about 30,000 dead
. The very day after NATO
folded its tents figuratively speaking, as the western role was entirely
air support for the flip-flop-wearing rebels and went home, al Qaeda
raised its black flag over the Benghazi courthouse
.
Caitlin Johnstone claimed John McCain used his political career to advocate
for military interventions which resulted in the slaughter of large numbers
of human beings. Is that accurate? What say you, members of the jury? In
each of the cases above, John McCain used his political influence, over
and above his vote, to argue, advocate, hector and plead for military intervention
by the armed forces of the United States of America and such coalition partners
as could be rounded up. In each of the cases above, the necessity
of toppling the evildoing dictator was exaggerated out of all proportion,
portrayed as an instant and refreshing liberation for his people, and as
only the first phase of a progressive plan which would turn the subject
country into a prosperous, western-oriented market democracy. In each of
the cases above the country is now a divided and ruined failed state whose
pre-war situation was significantly better than its miserable present. And
in each of the cases above, a lot of people were killed who could otherwise
have reasonably expected to be alive today.
Also, each of the cases above is chronologically separated from the others
by a sufficient span for it to be quite evident what a cluster-fuck the
previous operation was, so that anyone disposed to learn from his mistakes
might have approached the situation differently as it gained momentum, argued
for caution based on previously-recorded clusterfuckery, pleaded for reason
to prevail and for improved dialogue to be a priority. Not John McCain.
He learned precisely the square root of nothing from previous catastrophes,
and plunged into the next catastrophe with the enthusiasm most remarked
among those who are not all there, as the vernacular describes it. He not
only voted for war every time, he expended considerable effort in cajoling
and persuading the reluctant to go along.
Perhaps the introduction here of the
definition for 'warmonger'
would be helpful to the jury. To wit; "O
ne
who
advocates
or
attempts
to
stir
up
war. A person who fosters warlike ideas or advocates war."
Synonyms: hawk, aggressor, belligerent, militarist, jingoist, sabre-rattler.
There, John; I just saved you the trouble of writing an epitaph.
Will the world be a better place once John McCain is gone? Difficult
to say, really, and the present state of affairs in the world argues strongly
that it will not. But it will certainly be no poorer for his passing, and
if he were to be replaced politically by an individual who took the trouble
to do a little research, muse on previous experience, and review all the
available options before voting to send in the Marines why, that would be
a victory for everyone in a world where victory is increasingly not even
a possibility.
Was Caitlin Johnstone right? Broadly speaking, and going on the information
available at the time her statement was made, yes; she was.
151 THOUGHTS ON "
IN THE MATTER OF THE PEOPLE
VS. CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, THE DEFENSE RESTS.
"
Reply
Good article. The same 2000 dead hysteria (a number that included
800 dead Serbs) was used in 1999 to justify the bombing of Serbia.
After the UCK terrorists took over Kosovo together with NATzO, many
more Serbs were butchered than the mostly 1200 terrorists that NATzO
was so worried about. I suspect that McShitStain was a big time
proponent of the gang rape of Serbia as well.
McShitStain is merely a dumb US attack dog. He does his masters'
bidding well and thankfully there is some justice in this world
that he gets cancer. I really do hope he pops off this mortal coil.
I have seen very good people die from brain cancer and it would
be very unfair if this sick nutjob recovered.
We are living through a rather nasty time. The so-called PC left
in the US is totally unhinged and engaged in witch hunts togther
with the lie factory US MSM. I refuse to believe that "antifa" and
all these so-called social justice warriors are real leftists. They
are engaged in fascism and their backers are the corporate oligarchy
of the USA. At this stage it looks like Germany during the 1930s
(no, Trump is not the Hitler equivalent) in that a state of hysteria
has taken over the US political scene. All the Hillary worshippers
(the Democrats are fake "leftists") actually believe the Russia
conspiracy theory crap and want revenge. They also believe CNN and
the rest of the MSM that they can roll over Russia with little effort.
CNN has been a critical booster for all of the US wars since its
formation. It incites Americans to support whatever war criminal
enterprise that the US elites want to engage in. McShitStain is
a cog in this war machine.
The world definitely will be a better place after Jurassic John
goes the way of the dinosaurs if only because whoever replaces him
as Senator for Arizona won't have anything like the grubby contacts
he has all over the world (let alone the scale of such a network)
and will have to build up his/her own set.
Thanks Mark for another fiery post. Be careful you don't combust.
Her sequential-talking-points delivery certainly suggests
she is being groomed, or at a minimum has been prepared for
the question as it is sure to come up. But for someone who claims
that nobody has any idea what the future might bring, she certainly
got a lot of mileage out of her answer.
Amazing how she looks more and more like her mother with
each passing day. By the time she decides that, yes, she
will run for the Presidency, not only will she be a virtual
physical clone but her brain will also have remodelled itself
into Klintonator Killer Kranium Version 2.0.
It would be most ironic if Bubba-hotep had been cuckolded
himself, given his skirt-chasing habit.
Hearsay suggests that she is already so broadly disliked
among those who have had to work for or with her that
it seems probable she would have a really hard time
building a base. Before she could get seriously into
running for public office she would have to convince
the kingmakers that she has real star potential, and
I just don't see it.
Incredible: one Clinton Foundation employee nearly
committed suicide due to the stress caused by Bubba-Hotep
and his li'l princess through their constant meddling
and raising issues that staff were expected to chase.
The Kennedy clan had formerly attempted the
same gambit by pushing Caroline into running
for office; but she failed miserably and retreated
back into private life.
"
Despite furious Western attempts to isolate the Kremlin,
countries still want to collaborate with Russia. By arms sales and
cooperation, Russia is using its military strength to increase its
geopolitical presence in the world".
You don't say!
Interestingly, the commenters to the article (so far) seem just
to say "So what?":
Silly article WE have exercises all the time, including "Live"
firing in the North of Scotland
not to mention the live exercises in which my nephew regularly
participates with his and other British army armoured regiments
on the Canadian prairie.
Of course, there are not a few head-banger readers of the Independent:
I would even doubt
[Europe's]
capacity to remove
Russia from Poland never mind the Baltics if Russia decided to take
them and the only reason they have not decided to do so is the big
stick that is the US military which is especially potent under Trump.
Same with China and Taiwan, Iran and Saudi etc etc.
Only Uncle Sam can hold the Red Beast at bay!
Pentagonbot?
Why not?
If anyone dare argue the "Kremlin" case in the British press,
he is promptly accused of being a "Kremlinbot" and asked such inane
questions as "What's the weather like in St. Petersburg today, Vladimir?"
Galeotti uses the expression "collaborate with Russia" and
not "do business with Russia".
Collaborate?
With the "Evil Empire" against the "Exceptional Nation",
whose "manifest destiny" is to bring freedom and democracy to
the rest of the world -- and billions of dollars to the USA?
Even "collaborate" is a spineless term when referring
to Russia.
The proper word is "appease". As in "appeasing" Hitler,
while also tossing in a Munich reference!
More dirt on McCain, whose source I now forget, but, if I rightly
recall, it was a comment made by a US citizen on some blog way back.
I have posted it before:
Allow me to disparage Mr. McCain (again), with facts. By several
accounts ("Why Does the Nightingale Sing", for example), he only
got into the Naval Academy for a free college degree because Dad
and GrandDad were Admirals, and he should have been kicked out several
times if not for that too. He was a lousy pilot who got into trouble
often and crashed two aircraft because of neglect. He was shot down
on his third mission over Vietnam, and getting captured is not heroic.
What happened over there is difficult to pin down, but upon returning
from POW status, he passed a physical and regained flight status
as a pilot. Yet after he finished 20 years of service that allowed
generous retirement pay, he obtained a 100% VA disability rating
allowing him to collect some $40,000 a year tax free too! The LA
Times mentioned this when McCain was insisting he was fit to serve
as commander in Chief. He now hauls in over $240,000 a year from
the Feds for military retirement, 100% VA disability, social security
retirement, while all the while working full-time in the US Senate.
So is he retired, or disabled, or gainfully employed? He is all
three! This is textbook case of abuse and why or system needs reform
to protect workers against rich welfare kings like McCain.
McCain's loyal wife was disabled in a serious auto accident while
he was a POW. Soon after he returned, McCain dumped her for a wealthy
woman 20 years younger. The Reagans were so angry they never spoke
to him again. He then married his new babe before he officially
got divorced, so there's that bigamy thing.
I don't know why any Arizonian votes for this crazed man, especially
since he's a big advocate for open borders. At a union meeting,
he told workers illegals are needed because Americans are too lazy
to work farm fields, even for $50 an hour.
McCain has never labored his entire life, always on the government
dole now earning ten times minimum wage worker pay, whose increase
he opposes.
McCain grew up wealthy and enjoyed free government health
care his entire life, yet thinks it's nothing commoners deserve.
While running for president and attacking the poor a rare good reporter
asked how many houses he owned. He was unsure, but thought maybe
seven.
Thanks, Mark, for another analysis of the opinion-management
being rolled out across the media.
The stand-out memory I have of the great Ken Kesey novel "One
Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" is the description of a "pecking party"
inside a battery hen building in which one bird is injured, a speck
of blood appears and the crazed neighbours peck it to death. Unfortunately
they get spattered and their neighbours take up the pecking a bloodbath
ensues. That seems like a decent analogy to the current attempts
to close down any alternative to official narrative promotion.
Thanks, Cortes, and to all my well-wishers. I loved 'One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', it was at least as memorable as
'Flowers for Algernon' for me, and I read them both at around
the same point in my life, when I was in my early 20's.
If it's really true that the centre cannot hold, The Empire
is going to have an increasingly hard time cloaking its lies.
Of course, the west could simply return to the values of brotherhood
and the common struggle it continues to espouse but never really
seriously practiced. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for
that to happen.
"Flowers For Algernon" is such a stunning work it's a
real shame that it's not better known (at least in the UK).
On the news management front, I get the sense that the narrative
is slipping away from control. Over a couple of months I've
noticed that the free "Metro" papers have been left unread
in largish amounts on some buses (busy routes) when they
were being snaffled up until recently. People can sense
that they are being herded, I think, and resent it.
This was stated by President Petro Poroshenko, speaking at an
international volunteer and the veterans' forum: "Where we are --
there is the Ukraine."
"Almost 160 thousand combatants remain as operational first reservists",
said Poroshenko.
According to him, all who are in the reserve are ready to take
up arms again and "to do this professionally and with a high degree
of training".
He added that the day after tomorrow, the Ukraine will celebrate
27 years of Independence, but added that the clockr could have stopped
at year 23 if defenders of the Ukraine had not acted against the
aggressor and not defended the Ukrainian land: "The guarantor of
the independence of the Ukraine are the armed forces of the Ukraine!
The guarantor of our freedom, of our statehood, our independence
are 344 thousand combatants in the east of our state."
In Mistecka Arsenal in Kiev has started an international volunteer
and the veteran's forum "Where we are -- there is the Ukraine". The
event will run for two days, on August 22 and 23. The purpose of
the forum is to highlight the need for the formation of a correct
and effective state policy as regards the reintegrating veterans
into society in general and to bring the authorities into this process.
Among the participants are representatives of more than 120 veterans
and volunteer organizations from different regions of the Ukraine
and from abroad.
Got to help all those volunteer batallion fighters to get back
to leading a normal, civilian life after killing civilians at the
front!
"Just a friendly public service reminder; the Lockerbie bombing
was most likely carried out by Syria, was according to pretty
reliable testimony rigged by the American intelligence services
to finger Libya, and probably the stupidest thing Gaddafi ever did
was to admit to it anyway and pay compensation, in an effort to
move on."
Most likely carried out by Syria?
Why is it most likely that Syria was behind the bombing?
I don't know that it was; that was the judgment arrived upon
in the article, and that it was retaliation for something or
other which I also forget. So they probably just put two and
two together and assessed that it was a Syrian payback (or perhaps
had other evidence of which I am unaware), but it suited the
events of the day for it to be Libya. So Libya got framed up
for it.
"We and the Americans bombed Pan Am Flight 103 to persuade
South African foreign minister Pik Botha to sign the Tripartite
Accord; thus with the Americans protecting our vested interests
both political and financial. The destruction of Pan Am
Flight 103 with the Americans demonstrated our intent and
was also a threat, and removing Bernt Carlsson was a convenient
and powerful signal, i.e. nobody is untouchable"
Five passengers on the Pan Am 103 flight were a Defense
Intelligence Agency team carrying a suitcase that contained
a large amount of heroin, documents, cash and travellers'
cheques. The DIA team had been in Lebanon searching for
US hostages held by Hezbollah and had stumbled across a
heroin-trafficking ring led by a Syrian drug baron, Monzer
al Khassar, who was linked to Colonel Oliver North's activities
in ferrying weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua. Al Khassar
himself was close to Rifat al Assad, a brother of the then
Syrian President Hafez al Assad and apparently a CIA asset.
At the same time there were people in the Iranian government
looking for revenge against the US for the USS Vincennes'
shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus passenger jet. A bomb expert
(Ahmed Jibril) from a Syrian-based Palestinian rebel group
was hired. Jibril knew of al Khassar's dope scheme and persuaded
him to fit a bomb inside the heroin suitcase that the DIA
took onto the plane. Another possibility is that al Khassar
and his CIA connections knew that the Iranians were planning
revenge and saw an opportunity to kill two birds (appeasing
the Iranians, wiping out the DIA whistle-blowers who would
have revealed the CIA connection with dope-smuggling) with
one stone.
So if Lockerbie was payback, then it was CIA payback
against the DIA and if it was retaliation, then it was Iranian
retaliation against the USS Vincennes' attack on the Iranian
Airbus.
A question for all the impeach Trump for colluding with Russia
weenies:
How would Cohen know anything about Trump's collusion with Russia?
Why would Trump need a lawyer for this illegal activity? If you
are going to claim that Trump just happened to share this information
with Cohen, then why not anyone else? Is Cohen some sort of consigliere
or confession booth priest for Trump?
This whole farce with Cohen is pathetic BS. Cohen will be told
to say this and that my Mueller and this will be deemed "evidence".
Americans are really a few cards short of a full deck to swallow
this drivel.
BTW, the new consensus emerging amongst the "deplorables" who
do not share the official CNN fake news narrative, is that the dirty
dossier produced by Steele was a Russian machination. This is truly
overwhelming in its retardation. Why the f*ck would Russia undermine
Trump by colluding with Hillary when Hillary was basically foaming
at the mouth to start a war over Russia's intervention in Syria.
Hillary's Democratic Party has ignited the current anti-Russian
hysteria in America, so there is no way that Russia was colluding
with her or her party. Americans are apparently too brainwashed
or dumb to distinguish between the involvement of Russian nationals
and the Russian state. You can find dozens of nationals from any
country to do anything with the right motivation.
"Perhaps the greatest political damage came not from the
felony charges, all of them related to various forms of financial
chicanery, including five counts each for Cohen and Manafort
of income tax evasion, but from Cohen's public statement in
the courtroom of Judge Kimba Wood. In confessing his guilt to
the eight counts, Cohen declared that in two instances, violating
federal laws by using personal funds to suppress politically
inconvenient statements by Playboy model Karen McDougal and
adult film actress Stormy Daniels, he was acting "in coordination
and at the direction of a candidate for federal office."
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/22/trum-a22.html
My point is that Cohen's admissions implicating Trump in
carrying out either himself or in concert with others willful
ongoing acts violative of Federal Campaign Finance laws are
CLEARLY sufficient-if substantiated-to oust him from office.
Don't think so??
If the following transgressions were sufficient to 'nail'
their intended targets -which is what happened-
then Trump's acts in attempting to hush up Stormy (supra) COULD
achieve the same result.
Whether or not some faction of TPTB has the WILL to impeach
him is another matter.
"Mueller's strategy of focusing on Cohen and Manafort's
white-collar crimes is perfectly reasonable, even in a probe
directed at Russian interference in the 2016 election. "It's
not unusual for prosecutors to use charges -- Al Capone is
the primary example -- to bring down a criminal conspiracy
in any way they can," Waxman pointed out."
Yup!!!
"Cohen's guilty plea effectively makes Trump an unindicted
co-conspirator. Current Justice Department guidelines say
a sitting president cannot be indicted -- but building a
legitimate criminal case against Trump would make it harder
for Republicans to stand united in opposition to impeaching
the president.
When President Richard Nixon was named an unindicted
co-conspirator by a grand jury, he opted to resign instead
of face impeachment proceedings. Trump seems unlikely to
step down, however. Any further efforts on his part to block
the investigation into his campaign would put the Justice
Department in uncharted territory"
Cohen would be a prosecutor's "dream cooperator: one
who had special insider access to the leader of a powerful,
closed, corrupt organization," former prosecutors Mimi Rocah
and Elie Honig wrote last month. "We used to prosecute mafia
cases. We both know that in the mob -- and perhaps in this
White House -- the right cooperator can bring down the entire
hierarchy."
From links I've already posted , getting a USC Title
18 conviction of Trump is not necessarily
that required to charge him with "High Crimes and Misdemeanors".
Although there is some dispute in legal circles as to what
exactly constitutes a sufficent basis of facts upon which
impeachment can be
based.
There is simply no evidence of Russia collusion.
Anything that Cohen says is pure fabrication. It is
tiresome for this "witness" BS to be "sufficient". Last
year CNN et al. were all hot and bothered by the supposed
bank trail proving Trump's financial links to Putin.
That would have been a story. Cohen can sing anything
that Mueller wants him to as his testicles are twisted
harder.
But it will establish an unsavory precedent that
any sitting president can be taken out merely by selecting
one of his/her aides and then threatening them with
crushing penalties for some silly transgression or other or
they can turn state's evidence. Anyone who ever dreamed
of ascending to the nation's highest office would have
to know that, by facilitating this process, they were
handing the lawmakers the means to remove any future
president.
But, as I said, I don't care. Hillary can't win it
now, Pence is a dink, The Donald would dig in his heels
and fight all the way out, probably causing great damage,
but if he went, so what? He's a dreadful president.
And the USA would be in political chaos.
Trump should have fired Sessions for recusing
himself from this Congress instituted witch-hunt.
The job of Sessions is to be over-seer of the Special
Counsel investigation. Mueller cannot have special
rights, he must follow the rules. Shaking down people
around Trump for tax evasion or assorted other unrelated
crimes is not following the rules. It is pure Inquisition
tactics.
I would not be so quick to write Trump off as
dreadful. He basically sabotaged the two hyped up
cruise missile attacks on Syria. Even though his
hands are tied and his mouth is gagged by US corporate-run
"freedom", he managed to make both those attacks
totally ineffective. If he was a loyal servant of
the US elites, he would have kept sending more and
more missiles and actually ordered NATzO or "coalition"
jets to bomb Syrian targets seriously. The sporadic
Israeli and coalition attacks have been basically
irrelevant.
He is rocking the boat as much as he can. This
creates are sorts of noise. This noise is not a
metric of his efforts and success.
"But it will establish an unsavory precedent
that any sitting president can be taken out merely
by selecting one of his/her aides and then threatening
them with crushing penalties for some silly transgression
or other or they can turn state's evidence."
Precedent set by Bill Clinton's personal Jauvert
Ken Starr, in his multiple indictments of Webster
Hubble.
"Indict my dog. Indict my cat."
A lot of it is Dems paying rethuglicans back
in their own coin.
Clinton's "personal Jauvert" did you mean
Inspector Javert of Les Misιrables?
Much as I appreciate any literary reference,
especially involving Victor Hugo, this allusion
would only hold if Bubba had managed to turn
his life around, become a virtual saint like
Valjean, and devoted his remaining years to
the cause of the oppressed masses.
hahahahahha
We'll see. If the Democrats are successful at having
him impeached, they will probably create a special holiday
recognizing Stormy Daniels, or give her the Presidential
Medal of Freedom or something. I frankly don't care he
beat Hillary, and that's something she can never erase or
cover up.
I imagine they sweated him with the possibility of spending
the rest of his life in prison; all the newspaper accounts of
his testimony spoke of his shaky voice, and it's typically pretty
hard to scare a lawyer. They likely told him that he could just
disappear into the prison system and that there would be nothing
at all he could do about it.
ZURICH (Reuters) One of Switzerland's largest banks, Credit
Suisse, has frozen roughly 5 billion Swiss francs ($5 billion) of
money linked to Russia to avoid falling foul of U.S. sanctions,
according to its accounts, further increasing pressure on Moscow .
Credit Suisse is being cautious in part because of earlier bad
experiences. In 2009, it reached a $500 million settlement with
U.S. authorities over dealings with sanctions-hit Iran.
There have been other instances where European banks have been
punished. In 2014, France's BNP Paribas (
BNPP.PA
)
agreed to pay a record $8.9 billion for violating U.S. sanctions
against Sudan, Cuba and Iran.
Switzerland's banking watchdog FINMA does not require Swiss
banks to enforce foreign sanctions, but has said they have a responsibility
to minimize legal and reputational risks.
I hope the present Russian administration and those yet to come
remember this.
Sounds like the rich Russians who refused to believe their
wealth wouldn't be confiscated in the West just learned a hard
lesson. The "rule of law" is for suckers.
I doubt very many ordinary Russians lost anything, but
they got a pretty useful lesson for free. The west wants
Putin gone so badly that there is no law they will not break,
no amount of hard-earned soft power they will not throw
away, no western business they will not throw under the
bus if they think they will realize that goal.
I wonder whose money this was. Russian offshoring is rather
sneaky and uses all sorts of places like Cyprus and the Cayman
Islands through various instruments. As of 2014, simply keeping
money in a western bank was no longer an option.
So this is either illegal money or Credit Suisse is simply
lying.
That's a good point; some time ago (you're probably correct
that it was 2014, or around there) the Russian government
did somewhat formalize its advice to not keep money in western
banks. As I best remember, it was only mandatory for members
of government. But it seems unlikely the government would
order all its ministers and senators to move all monies
held in western banks out of those banks, and then leave
government funds there itself. So perhaps some oligarch/s
got burned.
Possibly, but I doubt it. Saint Mikhail's money,
what there is left of it, is transparent to western
investigations, and if they could think of a good
reason they would give him a lot more, especially
if he were even remotely popular in Russia and they
thought he might be a candidate for insertion into
Putin's role.
Now Credite Suisse says that Russian accounts have not been
frozen, that the Bank had reclassified certain assets placed
under sanctions. By these actions no Russian customers have
been affected, reports
TASS
.
Meanwhile, in the world's greatest dirty money laundry, it
has been revealed that the London branch of Deutsche Bank has
issued threats to the Russian government.
Deutsche Bank AG threatened to end business with Russia's
government earlier this year in a letter sent to the state demanding
that it provide more information related to know-your-customer
records.
The lender's London branch sent the correspondence in
June saying the business relationship could be terminated if
Russia failed to submit the documents within 30 days. While
that deadline has long since elapsed, Russia never answered
the letter and the German bank hasn't followed up on the initial
request, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Arschlφcher!
I was working only yesterday and last week as well in the
main office of Deutsche Bank here in Moscow.
Never saw no Fritzes there, only Ivans. Seemed to be business
as usual to me..
Hmmm ..When the limited hangout truth expose' is found to be
MSM vetted lies:
"Wikileaks formulated its mandate on its website as follows:
"[Wikileaks will be] an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for
untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests
are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan
Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance
to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their
own governments and corporations," CBC News Website wants to take
whistleblowing online, January 11, 2007, emphasis added).
This mandate was confirmed by Julian Assange in a June 2010 interview
in The New Yorker:
******"Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes
in China, Russia and Central Eurasia, but we also expect to be of
assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal illegal or immoral
behavior in their own governments and corporations. (quoted in WikiLeaks
and Julian Paul Assange : The New Yorker, June 7, 2010, emphasis
added)*****
Assange also intimated that "exposing secrets" "could potentially
bring down many administrations that rely on concealing reality -- including
the US administration." (Ibid)
From the outset, Wikileaks' geopolitical focus on "oppressive
regimes" in Eurasia and the Middle East was "appealing" to America's
elites, i.e. it seemingly matched stated US foreign policy objectives.
Moreover, the composition of the Wikileaks team (which included
Chinese dissidents), not to mention the methodology of "exposing
secrets" of foreign governments, were in tune with the practices
of US covert operations geared towards triggering "regime change"
and fostering "color revolutions" in different parts of the World."
"The Role of the Corporate Media: The Central Role of the New
York Times
Wikileaks is not a typical alternative media initiative. The
New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel are directly involved
in the editing and selection of leaked documents. The London Economist
has also played an important role.
While the project and its editor Julian Assange reveal a commitment
and concern for truth in media, the recent Wikileaks releases of
embassy cables have been carefully "redacted" by the mainstream
media in liaison with the US government. (See Interview with David
E. Sanger, Fresh Air, PBS, December 8, 2010)
This collaboration between Wikileaks and selected mainstream
media is not fortuitous; it was part of an agreement between several
major US and European newspapers and Wikileaks' editor Julian Assange"
"In the coming month, following Eid al-Adha (August 21st), Iraq
will be on the horns of a dilemma. The Federal Court has confirmed
the results of the manual recount of the May parliamentary elections
with insignificant changes to the previously announced results.
After the holiday the Iraqi coalition that can assemble more than
165 parliamentary seats will have to choose the new ruler of the
country. Whoever is selected as Prime Minister, whether he is pro-US,
pro-Iran or even a neutral personality, will not save Iraq from
serious consequences and difficult years ahead. If the new government
implements the sanctions on Iran announced by interim PM Abadi,
internal unrest and insecurity can be expected in the country. Many
Iraqis, including some armed groups, will refuse what is perceived
as US interference, and US forces themselves will likely come under
fire. If the sanctions are not implemented, Iraq will face serious
US sanctions in turn, international companies will pull out, and
the return of the terrorist group ISIS (ISIL, Daesh) cannot be excluded.
Any decision will certainly have a major effect on the economy of
Mesopotamia, and perhaps even on its security."
"In Iraq, there is no political consensus over strategic decisions:
the unilateral decision on Iran sanctions taken by interim Prime
Minister Haidar Abadi needs parliamentary approval so that the representative
of the Iraqi people can assume responsibility for taking the country
into an unknown future. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry has rejected
Abadi's unilateral decision, and so did most Iraqi political groups
with Ministers in the government. The Iraqi Vice President Nouri
al-Maliki, Abadi's Da'wa party, and many others, rejected the Prime
Minister's action against Iran and in favour of the US. Many said
overtly that "Iraq will certainly not be part of the US plan to
hit Iran."
Before the infallible, exceptional chauvinists get too smug,
they should consider that this missile has essentially no chance
against a maneuvering (i.e. non ballistic) missile with a speed
of Mach 20 such as the "Kinzhal".
The amazing new capability owes much to an active seeker
in the missile rather than the traditional semi-active homing.
What's the drawback to an active seeker? That's right; it is
vulnerable to jamming and decoys.
Active seeking a randomly varying trajectory target is
not a guarantee of success. In addition, Russia is not some
rinky dink banana republic which cannot give the Kinzhal
active trajectory modification capability. It would be a
rather tractable upgrade. The key here is response lag.
A Mach 4+ missile engaging a Mach 10 missile does not have
the time to overcome its response lag.
Also, think of the ESSM as standing still as the Kinzhal
moves at Mach 5+. So there is a narrow cone of interception
that limits the ESSM; it has to attack the Mach 10 missile
from the front. So it must detect it early enough. The standard
design feature of Soviet and Russian anti-ship missiles
is near surface flight below radar detection altitude. The
Kinzhal could be undetected until 14 km from the target.
At Mach 10 this gives it 14000/3320 = 4.2 seconds to impact.
During this small window the ESSM has to launch and reach
top speed. That would take at least 2 seconds. In the remaining
2.2 seconds the Kinzhal can deflect its trajectory much
more easily than the ESSM can respond and thus can effectively
delay it from interception. This requires a trajectory animation
to make vivid. But the US Navy is clearly compensating for
the shock of the Kinzhal characteristics.
That's true, and it's true of all SAMs that their
weakest intercept profile is that against a crossing
target; the textbook approach is head-on. Which presupposes
the unit firing the ESSM is itself the target. If it's
anyone else, the chances of a successful intercept are
reduced, and the higher the crossing rate, the less
the probability, although frankly it would be zero from
the get-go against something so fast. So ESSM cannot
protect another unit unless it is right alongside the
firing unit, and bunching up like that would be inadvisable
for any number of reasons.
However, soft-kill measures enjoy a considerable
advantage over hard-kill, although most of the money
goes to hard-kill because it's so much more glamorous.
In most navies. Not in Russia, though, where ESM, ECM
and decoys are among the most effective and best-tested
in the world. Such systems are made specifically for
active homers, although jammers are effective against
surveillance and acquisition radars as well.
Indeed, a wall of shrapnel from some sort of
"curtain" defense system would go a long way to
shredding the incoming missile. The speed on the
incoming missile makes the shredding easier.
In that the US likely does not have a missile that
is in the same league as the Kinzhal, I wonder what
they used as a target for their testing? Or, its just
a sop to make us Americans feel exceptional?
The US does not have any hypersonic missiles.
It would not have any dummy target that would have
the characteristics of the Kinzhal. Much like all
of its vaunted ABM system tests were against purely
ballistic targets.
They probably ran the numbers in a simulator,
and said sure, we could stop it. They fly missiles
as targets all the time, missiles they have either
captured or bought through third parties. They just
fasten it to the rails on the bottom of a fighter,
turn on the seeker head, and use the plane to simulate
a missile. The plane doesn't fly as fast, of course,
but that is an artificiality that is built into
the test. They simply assume it was flying at the
correct speed, and assess whether you got your chaff
into the air in time to stop the real thing, or
whether your jammer successfully decoyed the seeker.
They can play that one out regardless how fast the
'missile' is going if the head loses lock, it
probably would miss. In that scenario, the 'missile'
flying slower than real time actually works to its
advantage; the real thing would have less time to
reacquire you, if it has that capability, because
its run to the target is a lot shorter.
"A total of 830 gang leaders, more than 86,000 militants, including
4,500 immigrants from the Russian Federation and the CIS countries,
were eliminated,"
Excellent job! Especially in the case of the vermin from the
ex-USSR.
That seems a little arbitrary, considering that British rug-dealer
or whatever he is from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
keeps saying a little over 10,000 civilians were killed. Is
it possible Russian strikes were so accurate that more than
8 times as many militants were killed as civilians, even with
Uncle Sam helping?
Mind you, I don't think anyone really knows with very much
certainty, because some outfit calling itself the Syrian Center
for Policy Research claims there were over 470,000 killed in
Syria.
I think that there was sufficient sampling by the SAA
and Russian special forces of the various attack locations
to make these numbers credible. Russia was using precision
guided bombing so it had to identify viable targets. Satellites
are not enough. Drones can get a good sense of the militant
count if they are given enough time.
I guess the could put error bars on these numbers. But
the average citizen wouldn't know what to make of them.
Expect more White Helmet jihadi theater. Idlib is basically the
last terrorist enclave of note left in Syria. Assad apparently is
a masochist since he will stage some small and totally pointless
chemical weapons attack to give the US and its minions all sorts
of pretexts to do more harm than this chemical weapons "win" could
ever produce. The SAA now does not have to be spread thin to deal
with a thousands of kilometers long frontline so the Idlib operation
should be a mop up and not some epic battle.
It appears that HRW and other western war enabling organizations
have been running around claiming that Syria uses cluster bombs.
Yeah, if that was the case there would be vast amounts of evidence.
Like there was in Serbia in 1999 after NATzO used cluster munitions.
"The al-Majalah camp attack also referred to as the
al-Majalah massacre[1] occurred on December 17, 2009
when the United States military launched Tomahawk cruise
missiles from a ship off the Yemeni coast on a Bedouin
camp in the southern village of al-Majalah in Yemen,
killing 14 alleged Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
fighters and 41 civilians,[2][3][4][5][6] including
14 women and 21 children."
Who cares about 41 faceless innocent civilians
when crooks like Litvinenko and Skripal are made
into some sort of heavenly martyrs. Apparently,
it is OK for Mossad to off opponents of Israel,
but if Russia HYPOTHETICALLY does it, then it is
the crime of the millennium. The west is a sick
joke.
I think that train has sailed. No more embarrassingly feeble
cruise missile attacks and no-fly zones are a distant memory.
The main efforts may be focused on sabotaging reconstruction
and unleashing saturation propaganda attacks as cover during
the retreat from Syria.
Maybe, but the American hawks have not just gone to sleep,
and are always trying out a new 'red line' to see if it
will win public support. You're right that they're mostly
just going through the motions, but I get the feeling that
if they ever came up with the right message another Iraqis-ripping-babies-out-of-incubators
story that would resonate with the public, they'd be pretty
glad to get back in there, and it wouldn't take them long
because they haven't actually left yet. They're just marking
time and hoping for a break.
They can and will likely try an over-the-top propaganda
hit piece but a majority of Americans have drama-fatigue.
We are saturated with BS news and no longer care.
The first batch of 100 Armata T-14 tanks have been ordered. Extensive
testing of these tanks will be initiated in 2019. Given all the
testing that has been done already, this is nothing like the case
with ships. This is some sort of formality likely focusing on the
unit failure rate out in the field.
That is a significant number. So much for the theory that
the tank was to be put on ice. I suppose that perhaps 1,000
would be needed to have a strategic impact but 100 is a pretty
good start. The other related systems (the self-propelled artillery,
armored personnel carrier, etc.) may be of equal significance.
I wonder how many of those will be ordered. The self-propelled
artillery sytem in particular seemed to be a breakthrough in
capability.
The Ukrainian army will be the strongest in Europe, said the
President of the Ukraine Petro Poroshenko at a veterans' forum in
Kiev.
According to him, nobody can prevent the Ukraine from joining
NATO, and the army will be so strong, because the Ukrainians are
"fighting for peace".
"We have been completely re-engineering the entire security sector,
including the armed forces, fully to NATO standards. And the main
message that I have brought back from the NATO summit : the doors
of NATO are open for the Ukraine, no matter what Russia says. And
the key message for Russia is: you cannot stop the Euro-Atlantic
integration of our country", Poroshenko is quoted as having said
on the August 22 edition of "NewsOne".
The Ukrainian President noted that the country has to do a
lot of work to do in order to achieve such objectives .
Porky, you fat twat! Russia need say nothing whenever you open
your filthy snout!
When will these retarded fucks ever shut up. Even his vaunted
160,000 strong "reservist" army is certain to be a joke. It
will be a generation before Ukraine can get its army shit together.
That is assuming its economy does not implode. The chances of
economic failure are increasing by the hour.
You beat me to the punch, P.O.! Most of the troops look
like the same, and the Porky figure is clearly a photoshopped
cut-out. The real Porky would not be so stupid as to stand
in front of all those guns.
In that picture you can see about 160 people. How do we know
that's not all of them, just pulled in tight for the shot?
Porky has to keep broadcasting that we're-gonna-be-in-NATO
signal to reassure the Ukrainian public that he's not getting
paid for doing nothing. I am pretty sure the encouragement he
hears for Ukraine to be in NATO is all in his imagination, or
he's just making it up. Ukraine would be an enormous liability,
and I am sure Europe is only too conscious that the United States
would be the most likely to provoke an Article-5 situation using
Ukraine, but it would be Europe who would have to fight the
war.
McCain is walking talking proof that sociopaths are fast-tracked
for success. There never was a man, in my opinion, in US politics
that was more exploitative, coldly calculating and utterly ruthless
than that bag of shit.
But, Mark said it much better with style, slashing wit and evidence.
The Russian Ministry of Defence has published previously classified
documents about the Battle of Kursk on the eve of the 75th anniversary
of that huge Soviet victory over the invading Nazi forces in August
1943.
Of course, the Germans suffered a defeat at Kursk because of
the horrendous cold that is common in Western Russia during the
summer months, not to mention the imported from the USA cans of
Spam that the Red Army infantry chucked between the German armour
track idler wheels so that the tracks would jam.
Maybe the Welsh are visiting Crimea to show their support
for Ukraine! And to blow their symphonic brass instruments of
hope to encourage the prisoners there to pluck up their courage,
against the day they will at last be free.
I would just tell them that, anyway. What could be the answer
to that? Should I show my support for Kiev by staying away from
it?
Verkhovna Rada Deputy Oleg Barna of the "Blok Petro Poroshenko"
has said live on air on the Ukrainian TV channel NewsOne that the
Ukraine armed forces parade in honour of Independence Day "could
give rise to an earthquake in the Kremlin".
We have something to boast about. The parade is a measure
of the patriotism of all citizens who want to see the fighting efficiency
of our army I think that our military march and the rumble of
our armoured vehicles should cause an earthquake in the Kremlin.
Украинские спецслужбы, украинцы должны уделить внимание, возможно
через наших союзников на Кавказе, уничтожению Крымского моста.
-- Игорь Мосийчук
Perhaps with the help of our allies in the Caucusus, the
Ukraine intelligence services and Ukrainians should focus their
attention on the destruction of the Crimea Bridge
-- Ihor Mosiychuk [Ukrainian Supreme Rada Deputy]
I thought they wanted Russia to present it to them as a gift?
As an expression of good will?
If Ukraine wants a massive war so badly, then perhaps that
is what is in the cards. But if there is a third World War,
Ukraine will be utterly destroyed, razed to its foundations.
Its self-satisfied fat-cat leaders do not appear to grasp this,
because life is actually pretty good for them the way it is.
If there is no war, and things go on as they are, eventually
there will be another revolution in Ukraine and the fat oligarch
who runs it will flee for his life. If past performance is any
standard of measure, then the Ukrainians will elect another
rich oligarch, and settle down to hope that things will get
better.
The Yukies decided instead to follow Tom Rogan's recommendation
to destroy the bridge. After all, if the opinion comes from
an American, then it must be the right opinion and the best
option.
The best that Banderastan can do is engage in terrorism.
They can send car bombs or plant IEDs on the road and create
havoc. If they try a military solution, their military will
be heavily degraded.
If 'heavily degraded' means 'run through a meat grinder
and then rolled flat', then yes. The Ukrainian Army
is no match for the Russian Army, and could not even
slow it down, never mind stop it.
Jesus would not stay very long on Twitter. People would
take his tweets all too literally and he would get tired
of having to explain for the umpteenth time that he didn't
believe that a camel really could walk through the eye of
a needle.
Diaspora
, an open alternative to Facebook, has already
been around for quite a few years but as you can imagine is not
so slick. How long until other alternatives start vying for attention
(advertizing)?
FireEye is the same outfit that claimed to have busted a
ring of Russian hackers trying to gain access to American military
secrets. They could tell because the 'cyberweapon' was built
on Russian-language machines, and during working hours in Moscow.
As if Russians smart enough to build an electronic weapon that
evades detection and spreads itself to firewalled machines kept
off the internet would be stupid enough to code in Russian and
leave clues like that which pointed back straight at them. These
days nothing says 'CIA' like use of the Russian language in
contested online communication.
It's curious that we have two emerging narratives, one factual
and one offered as fact. The factual one; the USA has been involved
for decades in dominating the internet, and for generations
in spreading American influence around the world by all available
means, frequently disguised and often under the control if its
intelligence agencies. No country in the world places as high
a priority as the United States on maintaining American control
over the internet and everything that happens on it; the biggest
browsers and the giants of social media are all American. Now
the second narrative suddenly every country which is declared
an enemy of 'American values' is attacking America with sophisticated
social-media and hacking attacks online. Every time an American
security firm 'busts' a new effort, the evidence is always stupidly
obvious, like "Americans should not vote for the Jezebel Hillary
Clinton; if you know what is good for you, you will vote for
Trump, insh' Allah".
Suddenly Iran is launching sophisticated cyber-attacks against
the USA, although they have never done it before and Iran has
only a tiny presence on the internet. Just at the moment when
Washington is looking for a reason to impose crippling sanctions
upon them and institute regime change. A little convenient,
isn't it?
Someone once said or wrote: "The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there".
I remember how where the Chuckle Brothers came from was
just like my old neck of the woods, but now, in both these
places, heavy industry has come and gone.
It was L.P. Hartley whom I quoted above: just looked
it up.
Scores of asylum seekers who entered Russia with World Cup
fan identity documents are seeking legal help in Moscow, in an attempt
to escape war, political repression and homophobia, a refugee assistance
group has said.
Russia introduced visa-free travel for holders of Fan IDs
during the football tournament this summer, later extending the
measure until the end of 2018 on President Vladimir Putin's orders.
During the tournament, dozens of Fan ID holders reportedly tried
to enter Europe illegally using Fan IDs.
It's always tempting to think that pieces which resonate mean
that one's suspicions have some merit, but, hey, give it up for
Gilbert Doctorow's conclusions
"The family of David Dungay Jr, a 26-year-old Aboriginal killed
at Sydney's Long Bay jail in 2015, have stepped-up their campaign
for justice after footage was played at the New South Wales Coroner's
Court last month revealing the violent assault that led to his tragic
death.
The video was played in the course of an ongoing coronial inquest
into Dungay's killing. It showed that in the moments before he died
five immediate action team (IAT) prison officers stormed Dungay's
cell, restraining him and smothering him face-down on a bed. Dungay
could be heard crying out 12 times that he "couldn't breathe." (SOUND
FAMILIAR??)
The guards attacked Dungay because he allegedly refused to stop
eating biscuits. After being smothered Dungay was hauled into another
cell. Multiple officers once again forced him face-down on the bed
to prevent him from struggling.
Dungay was administered an injection of midazolam, a powerful
sedative that also produces anterograde amnesia. A few minutes later
he had stopped breathing. The officers were still holding him down."
Human6 11 hours ago
Much as I despise him, Orwell did make a valuable observation about
euphemisms and the English language:
****"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the
defence of the indefensible. ***
Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian
purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan,
can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal
for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed
aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist
largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness."
Spot on!!!!
Oh .and Stooges
"You better watch out, you better not cry
Better not pout, I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is comin' to town
He's making a list and checking it twice
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice
Santa Claus is comin' to town
He sees you when you're sleepin'
He knows when you're a wake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake"
"Le principal rιsultat de la prιsente vague d'accusations de
harcθlement sexuel est l'ιrosion des droits dιmocratiques ιlιmentaires
aux Ιtats-Unis, incluant la prιsomption d'innocence et l'ιquitι
procιdurale, l'obligation lιgale de la poursuite de faire la preuve
de la culpabilitι de l'accusι hors de tout doute raisonnable. Ces
"gauchistes" qui cιlθbrent cet assaut jouent un jeu trθs dangereux
et rιactionnaire. Comme Lιon Trotsky l'a dιjΰ dit: "La thιorie,
aussi bien que l'expιrience historique, tιmoigne du fait que toute
restriction dιmocratique dans la sociιtι bourgeoise est ιventuellement
dirigιe contre le prolιtariat, de la mκme maniθre que les taxes
tombent ιventuellement sur les ιpaules du prolιtariat." "
Yup!!!
However when contemplating the growth of the ME Too movement,
it's interesting to note the commensurate near deification of vapid
sluts and whores by the MSM whereby manufactured 'celebrity' women-aka
Divas-market the wholesale debasement and sexualization of women
as cnts for sale ..
Here is my take on the priorities of the deep state and its public
face the MSM:
stopping the deplorable rebellion
cutting off the head of the rebellion perceived as Trump
reinstating the Cold War in an effort to derail Rusisa's recovery
and international leadership role
bitch slapping China
The rest involves turning unsustainable debt into establishment
of a feudal world comprised of elites living on Mount Olympus, legions
of vassals and a vast sea of cerebrally castrated peasants to serve
as a reservoir for any imaginable exploitation.
My impression is that around the year 2000 there was supposed
to a new world order. Communism was sabotaged and brought down.
That left the imperialist capitalists in charge, like they were
before 1917. Globalism is a dirty word, since it means global
domination by the USA and its NATzO minions and the countries
that depend on the US empire. This would include, or should
include China and the vanquished Russia (ex-USSR). We saw NATzO
supplant the UN as the world police.
Instead we have Russia in a truly phoenix resurgence into
superpower status. Don't let the clowns try to argue that Russia's
economy is small. It is bigger than Germany's regardless of
the PPP correction, which fails to properly weight the whole
economy since it is fixated on consumer goods and makes a load
of implicit assumptions about which sectors are the biggest.
Militarily, Russia is a match for the USA. Difference in the
number of aircraft carriers mean bupkis. The Syria campaign
shows that the US cannot do anything to stop Russia from severely
undermining its agenda. We saw this 2013 when Russia stopped
the US planned Libya and Serbia style attack on Syria. This
was achieved through deployment of a serious number of Russian
missile cruisers and other navy assets to the Mediterranean.
The US went foaming mad and pulled its Ukraine card. (I am not
sure about the planned timeline for the coup, but I suspect
that a more "democratic" approach to regime change was probably
more desired, this would have frustrated the return of Crimea).
Since 2013, the US and its minions have lost the initiative.
All their big regime change plans are unraveling and they keep
losing the ball. Crimea was a serious loss for these clowns.
The Khuyiv regime is no prize and its day are numbered since
it is watching over an economic collapse. Now they have lost
Syria and Russia will establish a moderate Islamic belt from
Lebanon to Iran to keep the Wahabbi nutjobs at bay. There were
big plans in Washington for Central Asia to be taken over by
Saudi managed jihadis. Russia would be stuck in a religious
war quagmire on its doorstep. But that evil Putin is f*cking
up those plans on a epic scale.
The US deep excrement state is feeling the loss of its promised
dominion of the planet. There was never supposed to be any opposition
after 1991. The 21st century was supposed to be the American
century. But instead we have an economic pole shift to Asia.
The shrinkage of NATzO in the global GDP is not stopping but
accelerating. By 2050, the precious west will be less than 20%
of the world economy. It will cease being an economic Mecca
and all the developing country elites will orient themselves
to the new economic power locus. This is a nightmare for western
capitalist imperialists.
Yes, that seems the case. The strategy to promote moderate
Islam is a brilliant and humane countermove to the Western
games of manipulation of the unfortunate deranged.
For me, I would say that the '
few days of bombing
Serbia
' in 1999 ripped any last vestiges of belief
that the West was
here to help
mega violently
(deliberate bombing of the Chinese embassy) away from
everyone. Of course plenty happened in the years running
up to that event The other is when China joined the
WTO on 11/12/2001 and hit the ground running they
were expected to behave meekly and ask the great white
men for their advice and follow it.
Upon further reflection, Trump is being promoted by the MSM
as the leader of the deplorables an orange straw man. I support
him to the degree that he is confounding the deep state elites
and social engineering.
Anyone find any reference to "Russian trolls" in it, apart from
this: "
It found many tweets that were posted by the same bots
thought to have been used to influence the 2016 election, as well
as marketing and malware bots
"?
I see: "thought to have been used", writes the "journalist".
And on that supposition the Independent "journalist" rests his
case.
It turns out that many anti-vaccine tweets come from accounts
whose provenance is unclear
," said David Broniatowski,
an assistant professor in GW's School of Engineering and Applied
Science.
"These
might be
bots, human users or
'cyborgs' hacked accounts that are
sometimes
taken over by bots. Although it's
impossible to know
exactly
how many tweets were generated by bots and
trolls, our findings
suggest
that
a
significant portion
of the online discourse about vaccines
may be
generated by malicious actors with a
range of hidden agendas."
Equivocation central it's amazing what can pass as a 'study'
these days. What is even more incredible is that we have arrived
at a point in our history when the appearance of debate on a
point is suspicious, and inspires 'researchers' to 'study' the
problem to see who is behind it rather than focusing on why
the point generated debate in the first place. We have arrived
at a point where it is actually unpatriotic to disagree with
the official narrative.
Many more Americans believe vaccines are safe than the astroturfed
'debate' suggests, found the study. Google says bullshit. A
recent Zogby poll of a claimed representative sample group found
only 32% of respondents said they were 'very confident' vaccines
were safe. The same or a similar question was posed 10 years
ago, and the proportion who said they were 'not too confident
has risen 3% since then, while those who said they were 'not
at all confident' in the safety of vaccines went up by 2%. People
are not getting more confident, they're getting less confident.
There; that's my study where's my research grant?
Once again, as soon as the mainstream media finds an argument,
it is quick to blame it on unidentified 'Russian trolls', rather
than addressing the problem. The state narrative is the law.
And the pace is quickening.
No. Just no. The time for this thing to take off, reach altitude
and then fire off its small missile variants is much longer
than any ground based LEO interceptor. The only value of this
system is that it uses cheaper rockets. But cruising at well
under 22 km (U-2 and M-55 top altitude) this flying launch point
is still within the deep of the Earth's geopotential well. Its
speed is also nothing of interest so that the initial velocity
of the rockets it carries are not big enough to matter. May
as well just launch from the ground.
This thing can only loft small sized satellites into orbit.
An example of such a satellite is Scisat-I which is still in
orbit gathering science data.
I smell ulterior motives for this platform. Aside from the
pork barrel aspect, it is a dual use weapons system. It is probably
designed to fly near the border of the "enemy" and carry long
range supersonic missiles and cruise missiles.
As a launcher of satellite interceptor, it might have
some value given its ability to launch closer to the satellite's
ground track (if that is a factor). On the other hand it
or its facilities can be taken out with a single cruise
missile. Russia's mobile anti-satellite interceptors would
seem to be much more survivable.
I suppose the idea is that a number of rockets can be
prepped and then launched at perhaps at a rate of 3-4 per
day perhaps to replenish destroyed satellites as suggested
by the article. But such activities would suggest a general
war and we are back to its vulnerability to a modest attack.
The idea of the plane serving as a cruise missile platform
is interesting but the plane has a fairly short range and
probably is a maintenance nightmare. Wait, that makes it
perfect fit for most defense programs.
The people yelling loudest about myths can be the biggest myth
spreaders out there.
In order to make vaccines useful, they are mixed with adjuvants
which are primarily aluminum based. This creates inflammation at
the location the vaccine is administered with a needle. The macrophages
then consume the pieces of no-active virus or bacteria and the immune
system learns to make antibodies that for that strain. During future
infections the response time is vastly shorter and any mutation
is more likely to not take too long to respond to before effective
antibodies are produced.
The problem with the above is that inducing inflammation involving
aluminum and other molecules in the vaccine concoction can trigger
an auto-immune syndrome in some fraction of a percentage of the
population. Their immune systems are too hyperactive and not particularly
precise in identifying actual foreign molecules instead of similar
ones in the body. A variation on this theme is that Type I diabetics
lose their beta cells due to an auto-immune response triggered by
milk product intake.
The kooks would have everyone not use vaccines. That is not the
solution. But it is a fact that no procedure exists to tag people
with a predisposition to auto-immune reactions and have them dealt
with in a safer way. The real myth is that vaccines are universally
safe. And I have not even gotten into the whole issue of the use
of ethyl-mercury as a vaccine preservative. Both ethyl- and methyl-mercury
are potent neurotoxins.
Released in early 2018, the study's findings found methamphetamine
usage highest in Cyprus, eastern Germany, Finland and Norway. Cocaine,
on the other hand, was both on the rise and most concentrated in
cities in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.
Surprising almost no one, wastewater epidemiologists confirmed
"cocaine and psychedelic MDMA (ecstasy) levels rose sharply at weekends
in most cities, while amphetamine use appeared to be more evenly
distributed throughout the week."
The above data is lacking quantification so not as interesting
as it could have been.
Gazprom leads the world in capital expenditure (capex) on global
energy projects, by a wide, wide margin $160 Billion to be spent
on 84 projects worldwide, including Nord Stream II and Turkish Stream.
That's nearly double the spending of its next-closest competitor,
Sinopec, at $87 Billion. Royal Dutch Shell is third, and Exxon a
distant fourth.
If you add Rosneft, that's another $50 Billion in capex for Russia.
Odd behaviour for an isolated country whose economy is in tatters.
One whose government debt is 12.6 % of GDP and declining.
Speaking of government debt, how's that parameter looking for
The Exceptional Nation? Whoa: that's exceptional. Not even much
point in expressing it as a percentage of GDP, I guess.
Just to drive the point home for any who might not have gotten
it, Russia friendless, alone against the world, and reeling from
the bite of American sanctions is outspending the USA nearly three
to one on global energy investments, although its debt is a tiny
fraction of America's out-of-control spending on other important
things, like its bloated defense budget.
Oh, that's right Vladimir Putin is a tyrant and a dictator,
squeezing the country dry in neverending pursuit of self-enrichment.
I almost forgot.
Very well written Mark! It would seem I enjoy your writing most
when you are on a sass and sarcasm roll, of which this particular
piece is a great example. Bravo!
Incidentally this particular issue is something that I had completely
missed. Though it does seem to be part of the recent purge of opposition
voices in social media. A development that I fear may be just starting.
Thanks, Murdock! And I sort of missed it as well, although
I think we cannot be blamed as it seems to have gone into overnight
overdrive based on a silent admission to itself by the west
that it is not winning the propaganda war by simply shouting
"Russians!!!" every time something goes wrong for it. Like many
a fool before, it has gone to the well too many times, and the
audience for that sort of guff is dwindling. So the new game
is restrict what the people read and hear.
For anyone still interested in the Skripal poisoning incident, Rob Slane at The Blogmire has
a new article where he draws attention to this paragraph lifted from The Daily Telegraph:
"Dr Stephen Jukes, intensive care consultant at Salisbury District Hospital, where the
Skripals were treated (and where Rowley and Sturgess were taken), has described trying 'all
our therapies' to keep Sergei and Yulia alive. Due to an astonishing coincidence, two doctors
on duty had just returned from a course at Porton Down, Britain's world-leading equivalent to
Shikhany, when the pair were brought in. Recognising what looked like symptoms of nerve-agent
poisoning, they made sure to include diazepam and atropine in their battery of treatments --
the drugs compensate for some of the effects of acetylcholinesterase blockage -- and plunged
the Skripals into an artificial coma to prevent brain damage."
https://www.theblogmire.com/are-any-mps-prepared-to-ask-the-prime-minister-why-she-appears-to-have-made-a-deeply-misleading-statement-on-26th-march/
Astonishing coincidence, that the two doctors were fresh from a training course at Porton
Down? Maybe not.
Elsewhere Slane states that the Skripals, and Julia especially, made rapid recoveries
after coming out of their induced comas, and that by the time Theresa May made her statement
in Parliament, she may have been aware (or was deliberately left uninformed) that Julia at
least was improving and nowhere remotely near pushing up daisies.
This story is BS like the rest of this hoax. Neurotoxins are not 100% treatable. There is
nerve damage and any military grade toxin such as VX would leave vast amounts of it,
regardless of intervention. So the recovery of the Julia proves she was never exposed to a
neurotoxin.
The average media consumer has never done any research on the subject of various subjects
that are relevant. They think of treatments in cartoon fashion. Take this magic pill and you
are fully cured. No long lasting effects, no lack of cures, etc. A common trope in TV and
movies is the magical antibody. You have a horde of zombies (yet more deep insight into
disease) and some vaccine is going to cure their disorder. Complete and utter rubbish.
An example to show what a failure the common perceptions are about disease is Necrotizing
Fasciitis. It is not the bacteria (strep B type) that consume the "flesh". It is a runaway
cytokine inflammation induced necrosis of cells on a massive scale. Basically it is a genetic
disorder even if bacteria trigger the disease. So how the metabolism responds to a neurotoxin
should be considered. In the case of military nerve agents, the design of the toxin is to
result in rapid death. This prevents various secondary, metabolism-associated pathologies
from manifesting themselves. But in the case of the Skripals, which are pure fiction, we
would have all of these secondary pathologies manifesting themselves.
"Moreover, the effects of nerve agents are very long lasting and cumulative (increased by
successive exposures), and survivors of nerve agent poisoning usually suffer chronic
neurological damage that can lead to continuing psychiatric effects [109]."
USA say that Russia did poison the Skripals in Salisbury.
"The US blamed the attack on Vladimir Putin and said they would be issuing fresh sanctions
in response to the deadly attack.
The state department says Wednesday the sanctions will be imposed on Russia because it
used a chemical weapon in violation of international law.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said: "The United States determined under the
Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (CBW Act) that
the government of the Russian Federation has used chemical or biological weapons in violation
of international law, or has used lethal chemical or biological weapons against its own
nationals."
Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by Novichok, a
military-grade nerve agent, in the British town of Salisbury in March."
What can I say – perhaps now Russia will batten down the hatches and stop all
this pandering to western partners.
No need to batten down the hatches. Just ignore the yapping NATzO chihuahuas. We have not
even had a proper trial to determine guilt. The US leadership is not some ultimate judicial
body. They can make as many political judgements as they want, but that will do Jack to
Russia.
At this point all the hysterical US-driven sanctions against Russia are totally self
defeating. The monkeys in Washington clearly think that Russia is a banana republic and that
it needs to have access to foreign money and technology to function. They are cleared fucked
in the head.
It would reportedly include more drastic measures, such as downgrading diplomatic
relations, banning the Russian airline Aeroflot from flying to the US and cutting off nearly
all exports and imports.
So, are we talking about RD-180 rocket engines and Americans traveling to the ISS on
Russian rockets? Are we talking about titanium fabrications that Boeing needs for its
aircraft manufacturing?
This Russian hysteria is masking something, something big. My one-track mind suggests
fixated on the idea of an approaching economic collapse and subsequent imposition of martial
law and/or massive levels of censorship; all to be blamed on Russia. The increasingly
frenetic pace of Russian hysteria suggests a near-term sh!t-storm is on the way.
The Russian hysteria is scary as so many citizens over there believe in the Russiagate
nonsense and have been manipulated to feel they have been attacked.
It means therefore that conditions have been created whereby the USA has the support to
attack back.
Putin should never have gone to Helsinki as that escalated the madness.
Trump is emasculated just as obama was and has no power to do anything to block this
pathway to outright confrontation
The Europeans will sit by and watch – Russia has no allies there.,
Europe will stay on the porch and let the big boys duke it out. In the red corner, we have
Vlad – the Terminator. In the other corner, we have Donald – the Orange Haystack.
In another corner we have Bruce – the Red Dragon.
Haystack lumbers out of his corner before the bell rings, makes some nasty gestures and
starts his victory dance. The Terminator stands in his corner, muscular arms folded across
his chest with a wry smile across his face. The Red Dragon is closely studying Haystack with
an inscrutable stare. Haystack exhausts himself and collapses mid-ring. The Terminator and
Red Dragon leave the arena as the Haystack fans seek their autographs. Something like
that.
Perhaps a boxed piano will fall from a ninth-floor balcony and crush Nauert to a rectangular
pizza. I'd pay to see that.
Define 'pandering'. Can you name some concessions the United States has wrung from Russia
in the last two years? I seem to recall the British investigators said there was no proof
that anyone in the Russian government was involved – they simply speculated that
because Novichok could only be made in a state facility, there must be state involvement.
Does the USA have some evidence that the British have not seen yet? Perhaps they found it in
the same place they filed their satellite photography of the Buk missile taking out MH17.
You mean the same Russia that is one of only 7 nation states to have verifiably dismantled
and destroyed their chemical weapon stockpiles as ratified by the OPCW and in compliance to
the CWC? That Russia?
I can't wait for this determination to be made public along with the coinciding evidence
as released by an official judiciary body wielding the requisite jurisdiction and authority
under official auspices of the UN. That's what is meant by determined right? Pretty
unambiguous terminology there.
This entire charade has gone so far beyond farce it's not even comical anymore, just
depressing.
That's an interesting point, because a likely consequence of the continued hysterical
hostility from the west will be opacity where there once was transparency; ie: if the United
States wants to know something about Russian unconventional weapons programs, it will have to
go to extensive and complicated labour to insert a deep-cover spy or persuade an asset that
it can trust to find out the information, never knowing if it is being fed disinformation
deliberately by a double agent, where once it could simply have asked and been invited to
verify the truth itself. International organizations controlled by Washington will be less
and less likely to have a free pass to come in and poke about as they see fit.
In a rare interview, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh talks about his
illustrious career and how he believes the official versions of some the biggest news stories
of our time just don't add up
Here's quite a good collection of references and commentary on the Skripal 'poisoning'. Every
time I read over one of these summaries – and I by no means read this one over in
detail, just skimmed it – some new incongruity jumps out that sailed right past me on
the initial run-through. In this instance, Nick Bailey. The Skripals were supposedly poisoned
by Novichok daubed on the doorknob of their front door, and Bailey was supposedly affected by
the same vector. Yet the Skripals lived it up for about four hours before they showed any
symptoms, while Bailey was affected almost immediately.
Curious thing also is that police officers were initially posted outside the front door
– there were quite a few photos of the two women police officers (one chubby, the other
not so chubby) standing near the driveway – for some time without being affected by any
fumes, until the doorknob story became prominent.
One of the more sinister aspects of the "poisoning" is that all major evidence – the
Zizzi restaurant table, the park bench, the pet animals that starved – has been or is
being destroyed by the British authorities. Even Dawn Sturgess was cremated without anything
in the press about whether her body had been autopsied. If someone blames somebody else for a
murder or some other serious crime, and then covers up or gets rid of important evidence,
what does such behaviour suggest?
Too true, blue. Although the police officers might have stood there until the clap of doom
and not been affected if the agent was present as a gel, and slathered on the doorknob. But
that story always sounded like a crock, because both of them likely would not have touched
the doorknob on the way out, probably only one of them, and the supposed Russian assassins
would not have known if it might have been Yulia. Good assassination plots, as we have been
told the Russians have practiced for decades, ensure that the target is taken out. They're
not particularly squeamish about collateral damage, but in this instance only Yulia might
have succumbed. But assuming it was a gel and it was on the doorknob, much of it might be
assumed to have been removed by the target on the way out, and still Bailey was overcome in
less than half the time of the Skripals, both of whom appear to have been simultaneously
afflicted around four hours after leaving the house.
It's kind of comical, the stubborn and progressive destruction of evidence by the British
authorities, the buying of Skripal's and Bailey's houses at taxpayers' expense, and so on
– it's as if after a brief blink of bewilderment that the official narrative is not
being accepted at face value, the British government is trying to get a do-over.
My God, what has Salisbury done to the Dark Lord? When will his fearful shadow be lifted from
this unhappy city? There has been an explosion in a 'military factory' (not sure what that
means) in Salisbury which has killed at least one person. The MSM has not yet announced the
Russian connection but Luke Harding/The Guardian/The Independent/the Foreign Office/the
entire US State Department/ are, no doubt, manufacturing one as we speak.
Maybe the Russian agents who poisoned the Skripals by smearing a non-lethal fatal nerve
agent on a door handle after pumping it through a car ventilation system after sneaking it
into Yulia's luggage and who then high-tailed it back to Moscow but not before decanting some
of it into a gift-wrapped bottle which they left in a local park where it could be recovered
in a pristine state after four months and used to poison a couple of dumpster-foragers, made
a hitherto unknown deviation from the Kremlin's master plan and hid the remaining nerve agent
in a factory along with a time-controlled detonator so all evidence of their evil doing was
destroyed.
Now the authorities will be telling people that Novichok is highly inflammable and children
should not be allowed to play with Novichok and matches or cigarette lighters.
The Russians engineered it to be that way – a fatal nerve agent that seldom kills,
persistent for months if wrapped in cellophane, explosive and flammable, eats dreams and
makes you lose your job.
Has anybody in comments noted how far we have swung from absence of actual PROOF Russia did
the Skripal "poisonings" (or even Litvenenko for that matter?!) to what seems like complete
acceptance of "guilt," even as major international bodies (OPCW, etc., even Porton Down) have
not been able to tie Russia/Putin to these alleged acts of terror or isolate the "novichoks"
genre of nerve agent ? The Red Queen triumphs.
Does mere accusation now stand for "truth" in this inmates-running-the-asylum charade USA
is putting on? If the "big lie" (Lenin, BTW not Goebbels, originally) works this easily, we
are indeed down the chute & over the brink. Orwell is spinning in his grave (gnashing his
teeth).
"... Therefore, we have to deal with facts in the matter. Among the facts, I'd like to point out to the behavior of the investigating party, i.e. the British authorities. "We have proof but won't show them to you, because they are secret" attitude; bypassing normal investigative and judicial channels; unreasonable demands towards Russia they knew full well won't be met and total refusal to cooperate on realistic terms – we saw it for the first time in the Litvinenko affaire. ..."
All I was pointing out was that there were many reasons why Litvinenko was a target
for unfriendly Russian actions
I am pretty sure Litvinenko wasn't particularly loved in Russia: he was a traitor, after
all, and, judging by his actions, a pretty miserable human being. However, building a case on
motive alone is not possible, if for no other reason than because a motive is by definition
subjective. You could analyze until your face turns blue how Putin felt about Litvinenko's
accusations but you'd never come to any firm conclusion, for only Putin can possibly know
that.
Therefore, we have to deal with facts in the matter. Among the facts, I'd like to
point out to the behavior of the investigating party, i.e. the British authorities. "We have
proof but won't show them to you, because they are secret" attitude; bypassing normal
investigative and judicial channels; unreasonable demands towards Russia they knew full well
won't be met and total refusal to cooperate on realistic terms – we saw it for the
first time in the Litvinenko affaire.
The same patters was repeated exactly in the Skripal case. This tells you who is the
"highly likely" culprit, doesn't it? These two scenarios are so much alike, the have the same
author – not necessarily the same person, but definitely the same office.
Viktoria Skripal spoke to her cousin Julia by phone twice in July: the first time on the
4th, when the two argued and Julia blamed Viktoria for the publicity over the poisoning; the
second time towards the end of the month, when Julia apologised to Viktoria after getting
Internet access and reading what had been reported in the media. In one of these phone calls,
Julia revealed her father was still using a breathing tube.
"... The area of contest is now the rest of the world. America will try to convince the rest of the world to join its sanctions against Russia. Russia will try to convince them not to. ..."
Hello,
All of this revolves around the imminent fact that the "honest" British spooks are about to
get exposed when Trump declassifies the hoax documents about Russian interference (lol) in
elections.
I don't understand why Russian economists believe they have to belong to the corrupt,
bankrupt us monopoly dollar system? stop all exports of gas, oil to the europe cowards, and
any other country that continues to steal the wealth of the Russian resources from its
people. A very sick bunch in DC and London.
Turn all of these resources inward to allow the Russian people to prosper, with energy
infrastructure, farming techniques with heated greenhouses, etc... hey you have a lot of real
farmers in Africa that could spawn new agricultural developments in the east Russian
territory, about 15,000 farmers, unbelievable opportunity and resources for Russia to help
people from a racially, evil to the core, government in Africa. Boycott all of Africa. There
are real people getting killed there, no fake news .
This is exactly how the West operates ,especially the US and UK. There you have it , right
out in open for everyone to see.They have been doing this for a long time , especially since
the CIA , part of the shadow government , took control of the Western world. Now it is no
longer covert ,it is right in our face. And why they had JFK assassinated ,because he saw
what he was up against . Kennedy wanted to smash these covert and corrupted organizations
into pieces.
Colluding with West for so many years to put down smaller countries is certainly not a
quality of an angelic government and the country as Russia has been sometimes painted. Why do
we forget tens of millions of Russians abused just across Russian borders, never mentioned by
the government that seems only to care about wellbeing of the criminal oligarchs? Why do we
forget the collusion against Serbian people that lasted for approximately 20 years and led to
the destruction of that small nation? Why do we forget Russian support to numerous UN (
Western) sanctions against many nations around the world? Why do we forget betrayal of Cuba
in such devious way by Mr. Putin? Why such contempt towards own nation and its heroes by
honouring a Nazi-like figure like Netanyahu on the Victory Parade? Why strangulation of N.
Korea? Why ,why.. I actually tend to believe that God is finally acting upon many curses cast
on Russian government and is using the US as his chosen tool. Quite a justice.
I was excoriated and accused of being a liar on RI over the weekend because I quoted this
article, originally published in Pravda. The point was made by the one who did this that no
Russian or Russian sympathizer (such as the author of this article would want additional
sanctions on Russia.
The comparison was that a small amounts of certain types of medicine can be beneficial,
but in large doses can be fatal. The gist of the comment was that a small amount of sanctions
can be good to bring more independence to the Russian economy, but additional sanctions would
be harmful.
Well, now RI itself publishes the article from the idiot Hinchey in asking for more and
more sanctions because of how wonderful they will be for Russia.
The area of contest is now the rest of the world. America will try to convince the
rest of the world to join its sanctions against Russia. Russia will try to convince them not
to.
This is an interesting analysis shedding some light on how the US intelligence services have gone rogue...
Notable quotes:
"... Most recently, British "special services," which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr. Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no evidence. ..."
"... the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is nowhere near good enough. ..."
"... That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn't have hacked into the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done bombing that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged hacking by Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment. ..."
"... He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign. If the Russian hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself. So, where's the gratitude? Where's the love? Oh, and why are the DNC perps not in jail? ..."
"... The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage -- "intelligence" in US parlance -- which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best ways of defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US "intelligence" is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply "make shit up." ..."
"... The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and so on. ..."
"... "What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped lying, and that they haven't lied since. And that, based on the information that is available, is an impossible task." ..."
"... "The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as conspiracy theory, not as fact." ..."
"... But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and ultimately futile conflicts. ..."
"... Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS -- an organization that came together thanks to American efforts in Iraq and Syria. ..."
"... Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts -- the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than "a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. ..."
In today's United States, the term "espionage" doesn't get too much
use outside of some specific contexts. There is still sporadic talk of industrial espionage,
but with regard to Americans' own efforts to understand the world beyond their borders, they
prefer the term "intelligence." This may be an intelligent choice, or not, depending on how you
look at things.
First of all, US "intelligence" is only vaguely related to the game of espionage as it has
been traditionally played, and as it is still being played by countries such as Russia and
China. Espionage involves collecting and validating strategically vital information and
conveying it to just the pertinent decision-makers on your side while keeping the fact that you
are collecting and validating it hidden from everyone else.
In eras past, a spy, if discovered, would try to bite down on a cyanide capsule; these days
torture is considered ungentlemanly, and spies that get caught patiently wait to be exchanged
in a spy swap. An unwritten, commonsense rule about spy swaps is that they are done quietly and
that those released are never interfered with again because doing so would complicate
negotiating future spy swaps.
In recent years, the US intelligence agencies have decided that torturing prisoners is a
good idea, but they have mostly been torturing innocent bystanders, not professional spies,
sometimes forcing them to invent things, such as "Al Qaeda." There was no such thing before US
intelligence popularized it as a brand among Islamic terrorists.
Most recently, British "special services," which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr.
Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own
spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They
poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no
evidence.
There are unlikely to be any more British spy swaps with Russia, and British spies working
in Russia should probably be issued good old-fashioned cyanide capsules (since that supposedly
super-powerful Novichok stuff the British keep at their "secret" lab in Porton Down doesn't
work right and is only fatal 20% of the time).
There is another unwritten, commonsense rule about spying in general: whatever happens, it
needs to be kept out of the courts, because the discovery process of any trial would force the
prosecution to divulge sources and methods, making them part of the public record. An
alternative is to hold secret tribunals, but since these cannot be independently verified to be
following due process and rules of evidence, they don't add much value.
A different standard applies to traitors; here, sending them through the courts is
acceptable and serves a high moral purpose, since here the source is the person on trial and
the method -- treason -- can be divulged without harm. But this logic does not apply to proper,
professional spies who are simply doing their jobs, even if they turn out to be double agents.
In fact, when counterintelligence discovers a spy, the professional thing to do is to try to
recruit him as a double agent or, failing that, to try to use the spy as a channel for
injecting disinformation.
Americans have been doing their best to break this rule. Recently, special counsel Robert
Mueller indicted a dozen Russian operatives working in Russia for hacking into the DNC mail
server and sending the emails to Wikileaks. Meanwhile, said server is nowhere to be found (it's
been misplaced) while the time stamps on the files that were published on Wikileaks show that
they were obtained by copying to a thumb drive rather than sending them over the internet.
Thus, this was a leak, not a hack, and couldn't have been done by anyone working remotely from
Russia.
Furthermore, it is an exercise in futility for a US official to indict Russian citizens in
Russia. They will never stand trial in a US court because of the following clause in the
Russian Constitution: "61.1 A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported out of
Russia or extradited to another state."
Mueller may summon a panel of constitutional scholars to interpret this sentence, or he can
just read it and weep. Yes, the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule
against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is nowhere near good enough.
That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn't have hacked
into the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system
has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done
bombing that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged
hacking by Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping
a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment.
He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC
officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie
Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign. If the Russian
hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself. So,
where's the gratitude? Where's the love? Oh, and why are the DNC perps not in jail?
Since there exists an agreement between the US and Russia to cooperate on criminal
investigations, Putin offered to question the spies indicted by Mueller. He even offered to
have Mueller sit in on the proceedings. But in return he wanted to question US officials who
may have aided and abetted a convicted felon by the name of William Browder, who is due to
begin serving a nine-year sentence in Russia any time now and who, by the way, donated copious
amounts of his ill-gotten money to the Hillary Clinton election campaign.
In response, the US Senate passed a resolution to forbid Russians from questioning US
officials. And instead of issuing a valid request to have the twelve Russian spies interviewed,
at least one US official made the startlingly inane request to have them come to the US
instead. Again, which part of 61.1 don't they understand?
The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the
traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage -- "intelligence" in US parlance --
which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best
ways of defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such
quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US
"intelligence" is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply "make shit
up."
The "intelligence" the US intelligence agencies provide can be anything but; in fact, the
stupider it is the better, because its purpose is allow unintelligent people to make
unintelligent decisions. In fact, they consider facts harmful -- be they about Syrian chemical
weapons, or conspiring to steal the primary from Bernie Sanders, or Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, or the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden -- because facts require accuracy and rigor
while they prefer to dwell in the realm of pure fantasy and whimsy. In this, their actual
objective is easily discernible.
The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its
allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom
aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and
overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they
are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and
so on.
One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag
operations, à la 9/11, to fake false flag operations, à la fake East Gouta
chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story is
perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were
harmed in the process of concocting this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly
forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips. It is now a pure
confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a
conspiracy theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.
Trump was recently questioned as to whether he trusted US intelligence. He waffled. A
light-hearted answer would have been:
"What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They
were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to
claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped
lying, and that they haven't lied since. And that, based on the information that is available,
is an impossible task."
A more serious, matter-of-fact answer would have been:
"The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig
the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to
prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately
be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as
conspiracy theory, not as fact."
And a hardcore, deadpan answer would have been:
"The US intelligence services swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution, according to
which I am their Commander in Chief. They report to me, not I to them. They must be loyal to
me, not I to them. If they are disloyal to me, then that is sufficient reason for their
dismissal."
But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake
answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake
intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and
ultimately futile conflicts.
Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of
religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the
Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS -- an organization that came together thanks to American
efforts in Iraq and Syria.
The total cost of wars so far this century for the US is reported to be $4,575,610,429,593.
Divided by the 138,313,155 Americans who file tax returns (whether they actually pay any tax is
too subtle a question), it works out to just over $33,000 per taxpayer. If you pay taxes in the
US, that's your bill so far for the various US intelligence "oopsies."
The 16 US intelligence agencies have a combined budget of $66.8 billion, and that seems like
a lot until you realize how supremely efficient they are: their "mistakes" have cost the
country close to 70 times their budget. At a staffing level of over 200,000 employees, each of
them has cost the US taxpayer close to $23 million, on average. That number is totally out of
the ballpark! The energy sector has the highest earnings per employee, at around $1.8 million
per. Valero Energy stands out at $7.6 million per. At $23 million per, the US intelligence
community has been doing three times better than Valero. Hats off! This makes the US
intelligence community by far the best, most efficient collapse driver imaginable.
There are two possible hypotheses for why this is so.
First, we might venture to guess that these 200,000 people are grossly incompetent and that
the fiascos they precipitate are accidental. But it is hard to imagine a situation where
grossly incompetent people nevertheless manage to funnel $23 million apiece, on average, toward
an assortment of futile undertakings of their choosing. It is even harder to imagine that such
incompetents would be allowed to blunder along decade after decade without being called out for
their mistakes.
Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has
been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic
and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile
conflicts -- the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How
that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable
definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at
it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better
than "a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be
perpetual liars."
It could be the Trump was already deposed as a President by Pompeo.
I never understood appointment of Haley and appointment of Bolton if we assume that Trump is not a neocon and does not want to
continue previous administration policies. Haley is kind of Sikh variant of
Samantha
Power. Bolton is probably as bad as Wolfowitz. Pompeo also can be viewed as Hillary 2.0.
Notable quotes:
"... In addition, the US has delivered an ultimatum, saying that if Russia does not give assurances within 90 days that it will no longer use chemical weapons and allow international inspectors to inspect its production facilities, further sanctions will be implemented. But Russia denies it used chemical weapons. Unlike the US, it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile in accordance with international treaties. ..."
"... The legislation gave a 60-day window to begin implementation of sanctions after the Trump administration determined that the now-British citizen Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by a strain of the Novichok nerve-agent. The US came to that conclusion following an initial determination by the British government. ..."
"... However, the US administration missed the deadline by more than a month. That prompted Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, to write a letter to Trump some two weeks ago slamming the president for ignoring the deadline. ..."
"... Strangely, a government research facility at Porton Down in Amesbury, not far from Salisbury where the alleged March poisoning took place, examined the strain of Novichok. Porton Down lab does work for British Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, run by the Ministry of Defense, and the Public Health England. ..."
"... All of this makes makes the issue as to why Britain, and even the US, never wanted to share samples taken from the poisoning of the Skripals with Moscow more concerning. Yet, they all went ahead in lock-step to condemn Moscow for the poisoning, without any evidence, suggesting a more sinister reason for lobbying increased sanctions against Russia with the goal of further isolating the country. ..."
"... It reflects the need especially by the US to have a demon in an effort to justify its defense spending to bolster NATO up to the border of the Russian Federation in the form of a new containment policy that launched the Cold War in the first place. ..."
"... With even further sanctions against Russia in the recently passed Defense Department Authorization Bill about to go into effect, it is becoming apparent that the allegations against Russia are politically-motivated, false flag allegations to be used as an excuse for a greater geostrategic reason -- to contain Russia just as the Trump administration is increasingly finding its US-led unilateral world order being challenged more than ever. ..."
"... Trump talks about better relations with Russia, but the actions of his own administration in demonizing Moscow dictate otherwise. ..."
Forget about running the Empire or the American state. Trump isn't even in control of his team US President Donald Trump is not in
control of his own administration, as evidenced by the latest round of sanctions imposed against Russia for the alleged involvement
in the poisoning of the Skripals in the UK in March.
The sanctions came the same day that US Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.,
announced
on a trip to Moscow that he had handed over a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin from Trump calling for better relations
between the two countries. For that reason, the timing appears to be suspect, suggesting strongly that Trump has his own foreign
policy while the Trump administration, comprised mainly of bureaucrats referred to as the Deep State, have their own. Right now,
they appear to be in control, not President Trump, over his own administration, and it is having the adverse effect of further alienating
Washington and Moscow.
The neocons, led by National Security Advisor John Bolton, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his United Nations ambassador
Nikki Haley, comprise the Trump " war cabinet " ostensibly aimed at directing a harder line toward Syria, North Korea, Iran
but also Russia. Bolton, in particular, has been outspoken in calling for regime change in some of these countries. Trump not so
much so. In fact, he has said just the opposite. Nevertheless, their anti-Russian flair in Washington has breathed new life into
the neocons who, along with the Democrats, Deep State and much of the mainstream media, have pushed the false narrative of collusion
between Russia and Trump.
This persistent anti-Russian rant and repeated sanctions which have been imposed have had the effect of leading to further threats
of sanctions for questionable reasons, raising the potential prospect of suspension of diplomatic ties.
Even at the height of the Cold War, relations between the US and Russia never reached such low depths as they have now. The latest
sanctions affect primarily dual-use technologies which are civilian products with potential military applications. They include gas
turbine engines, electronics and integrated circuits which will now be denied. Previous sanctions going back to the Obama administration,
however, already imposed bans on many of these dual-use technologies.
In addition, the US has delivered an ultimatum, saying that if Russia does not give assurances within 90 days that it will
no longer use chemical weapons and allow international inspectors to inspect its production facilities, further sanctions will be
implemented. But Russia denies it used chemical weapons. Unlike the US, it
destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile in accordance with international treaties.
Implementation of the sanctions stem from provisions of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination
Act of 1991.
The legislation gave a 60-day window to begin implementation of sanctions after the Trump administration determined that the
now-British citizen Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by a strain of the Novichok nerve-agent. The US came to that
conclusion following an initial determination by the British government.
However, the US administration missed the deadline by more than a month. That prompted Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of
the House Foreign Relations Committee, to write a
letter to Trump some two weeks ago slamming the president for ignoring the deadline.
Curiously, the British government hasn't implemented similar sanctions, although the US has. It may reflect the continued uncertainty
among some British politicians and experts over the origin of the Novichok and concern with Britain's trade dependency on Russia.
But since the Americans opted to implement sanctions due to existing legislation, there was apparently no objection from London even
though it initially implemented sanctions by kicking out Russian diplomats from the country.
Moscow, however, vehemently denied that it was involved in the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter. Novichok was created by
Russian scientists during the Cold War but never used on the battlefield. Russian officials asked Britain for evidence of Russian
involvement and called for a joint investigation to be conducted by the Kremlin and British governments.
The British government repeatedly turned down the offer, as did other Western members of the United Nations Security Council,
the US and France, when Moscow sought such a joint investigation.
The US claimed that the information linking the poison to Russia was " classified ."
Strangely, a government research
facility at Porton Down in Amesbury, not far from Salisbury where the alleged March poisoning took place, examined the strain
of Novichok. Porton Down lab does work for British Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, run by the Ministry of Defense, and
the Public Health England.
Results from the examination confirmed the poison was a form of Novichok but importantly could not determine where the poison
had been created or who had used it. This development created further confusion and prompted disputes among politicians.
It is known that samples of Novichok have been in the hands of many
NATO countries for years after
the German foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, had reportedly obtained a sample from a Russian defector
in the 1990s.
The formula was later shared with Britain, the US, France, Canada and the Netherlands, where small quantities of Novichok reportedly
were produced in an effort to develop countermeasures. Porton Down labs similarly had received samples to study. Czech President
Milos Zeman recently admitted that his country synthesized and tested a form of Novichok. Sweden and Slovakia also have the technical
capability to produce the nerve agent, according to Russian officials.
All of this makes makes the issue as to why Britain, and even the US, never wanted to share samples taken from the poisoning
of the Skripals with Moscow more concerning. Yet, they all went ahead in lock-step to condemn Moscow for the poisoning, without any
evidence, suggesting a more sinister reason for lobbying increased sanctions against Russia with the goal of further isolating the
country.
It reflects the need especially by the US to have a demon in an effort to justify its defense spending to bolster NATO up
to the border of the Russian Federation in the form of a new containment policy that launched the Cold War in the first place.
With even further sanctions against Russia in the recently passed Defense Department Authorization Bill about to go into effect,
it is becoming apparent that the allegations against Russia are politically-motivated, false flag allegations to be used as an excuse
for a greater geostrategic reason -- to contain Russia just as the Trump administration is increasingly finding its US-led unilateral
world order being challenged more than ever.
The reason, however, isn't due to anything that Moscow initiated but by Trump himself who isn't in control of his own administration,
and maybe never has been. Many of his campaign promises such as dropping out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Iranian
nuclear agreement, the threat of sanctions against any company that trades with Iran, his tariff war with US allies are in conflict
with each other, leading to increased world instability. At the same time, Trump talks about better relations with Russia, but
the actions of his own administration in demonizing Moscow dictate otherwise.
F. Michael Maloof is a former Pentagon security analyst.
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @
nytimes , @ NBCNews , @ ABC , @ CBS , @ CNN
) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! ~ Donald Trump
On Thursday, Mr. Trump expressed his distaste for journalists in more populist terms, saying,
"much of the media in Washington, D.C., along with New York, Los Angeles in particular, speaks
not for the people, but for the special interests."
"The public doesn't believe you people anymore," Mr. Trump added. "Now, maybe I had something
to do with that. I don't know. But they don't believe you."
President Trump has denounced and exposed the repeated deceits and ongoing fabrications of
the mass media. Never before has a President so forcefully identified the lies of the leading
print and TV outlets. The NY Times , Washington Post , the Financial
Times, NBC, CNN, ABC and CBS have been thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the
larger public. They have lost legitimacy and trust. Where progressives have failed, a war
monger billionaire has accomplished, speaking a truth to serve many injustices.
The announcement of sanctions on Wednesday came despite the fact that the US is entirely
aware that Russia was not responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, UK in
March, he said.
"This is a political demand... this is designed to undercut the overtures from the Trump
administration for President Trump directly and also Senator Rand Paul - now in Moscow - to
warm relations with Russia." Former Pentagon official Michael Maloof echoed that sentiment,
telling RT that "you have Donald Trump's foreign policy and you now have the Trump
administration's foreign policy."
He added that the sanctions are being orchestrated by the deep state to "make the president
look bad and basically to corner him."
[ Exactly. Poisoning was likely executed by MI6 or CIA, to sabotage the US relationship with
Russia at the behest of the Deep State .]
This is attack on ruble. Kind of Magnitsky II set of moves. Strange if view of Trump supposed
attempt to split Russia and China in Helsinki. You should chose a single target in such
cases.
Sanctions weaken the effect of Iranian sanctions. While the goal is to undermine the Russian
economy -- the effect of negative expectations is always stronger than a onetime action -- 90
days allow to avoid big financial losses for major banks. The requirement of inspection of Russia
objects is from Iraq war textbook.
Notable quotes:
"... Russian Ruble has fallen to a new 2018 low against the American dollar. Trading went over 66 rubles to the dollar. ..."
"... This marks almost a 20% devaluation in the currency since April of this year, and the worst valuation since mid-November, 2016. ..."
"... For our part, we reiterated our principle [sic] stands on the events in the UK, which the Embassy had been outlining in corresponding letters to the State Department. We confirmed that we continue to strongly stand for an open and transparent investigation of the crime committed in Salisbury and for bringing the culprits to justice , ..."
"... This pattern of throwing out destructive slander while refusing to provide opportunity for a real answer has permeated American policy towards the Russian Federation with increasing intensity since 2013. ..."
sanctions was
apparently enough to create jitters on the Russian stock exchanges, and the Russian
Ruble has fallen to a new 2018 low against the American dollar. Trading went over 66 rubles to
the dollar.
This marks almost a 20% devaluation in the currency since April of this year, and the
worst valuation since mid-November, 2016.
This incident has not gone unanswered in Moscow. The Russian Embassy in the United States
called for documentation about the source and reasoning behind these new sanctions, as reported by TASS:
The Russian embassy in the United States has called on the US Department of State to
publish correspondence on the introduction of new sanctions on Moscow over the Skripal
incident, the embassy said in a statement.
" For our part, we reiterated our principle [sic] stands on the events in the UK,
which the Embassy had been outlining in corresponding letters to the State Department. We
confirmed that we continue to strongly stand for an open and transparent investigation of
the crime committed in Salisbury and for bringing the culprits to justice , " the
statement reads.
"We suggested publishing our correspondence on this issue. No answer has followed so
far," the Russian embassy added.
This pattern of throwing out destructive slander while refusing to provide opportunity
for a real answer has permeated American policy towards the Russian Federation with increasing
intensity since 2013. It reveals the machinations of a very divided American government,
with the "deep State" or establishment politicians and foreign policy makers completely
unwilling to even give Russia a fair shake at representing itself. This policy is shared by the
United Kingdom, as this
piece by The Duran's Editor in Chief, Alexander Mercouris shows, with this summary of
violations of due process the British authorities are committing with regard to Russia:
(1) The British government is interfering in the conduct of a criminal investigation, with
Prime Minister Theresa May and especially Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson pointing fingers at
who they say is guilty (Russia) whilst the criminal investigation is still underway;
(2) The British government has said that unless Russia proves itself innocent within a
specific time the British government will conclude that it is guilty. As I have explained
previously this
reverses the burden of proof : in a criminal case it is the prosecution which is supposed
to prove the defendant's guilt, not the defendant who must prove his innocence;
(3) The British government refuses to share with Russia -- the party it says is guilty --
the 'evidence' upon which it says it has concluded that Russia is guilty, the evidence in
this case being a sample of the chemical with which it says Sergey and Yulia Skripal was
poisoned.
This violates the fundamental principle that the defendant must be provided with all the
evidence against him so that he can properly prepare his defence;
(4) The British government is not following the procedure set out in Article IX (2) of the
Chemical Weapons
Convention to which both Britain and Russia are parties. This reads as follows
States Parties should, whenever possible, first make every effort to clarify and
resolve, through exchange of information and consultations among themselves, any matter
which may cause doubt about compliance with this Convention, or which gives rise to
concerns about a related matter which may be considered ambiguous. A State Party which
receives a request from another State Party for clarification of any matter which the
requesting State Party believes causes such a doubt or concern shall provide the requesting
State Party as soon as possible, but in any case not later than ten days after the request,
with information sufficient to answer the doubt or concern raised along with an explanation
of how the information provided resolves the matter.
(5) The British authorities are denying the Russians consular access to Yulia Skripal,
though she is a Russian citizen who the British authorities say was subjected to a criminal
assault on their territory.
This is a potentially serious matter since by preventing consular access to Yulia Skripal
the British authorities are not only violating the interstate consular arrangements which
exist between Britain and Russia, but they are preventing the Russian authorities from
learning more about the condition of one of their citizens who has been hospitalised
following a violent criminal assault, and are preventing the Russian authorities from
carrying out their own investigation into the assault on one of their citizens which the
British authorities say has taken place.
I would add that this obstruction of Russian consular access to Yulia Skripal has gone
almost entirely unreported in the British and Western media.
The Americans are playing the same game here, and, regrettably, President Trump's overtures
towards repairing this relationship are almost sure to be torn out from under him by the
actions of this virulent group of people. It is quite possible that this is the very reason for
these new sanctions.
The perspective of the American government as one divided, with a rabid force in favor of
continuing to isolate and vilify a great power in the world for no good reason, is sure to have
repercussions. However, given the gradual realignment of Russia and China to be in closer and
closer partnership, and Russia's increasing prominence in Asian and Eastern Hemisphere affairs,
the end result of this behavior is likely to damage the United States and its standing in the
world over the long run.
6. Focused on violence through brownshirt stormtroopers who beat up any who disagreed
7. Had an intelligence service which focused on crushing dissent and spying on its own
people
8. Placed more power in the central government and state then any Nation before it.
All of the above are things proposed or carried out by leftists. It is almost as if the true
parties espoused by people are those who support individualism and those who support
collectivism. Spoiler alert for the Leftist retards: Power corrupts and Absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Your Statist Sanders Utopia will never come to fruition. The "Kind Socialist
Politicians" will sell you out to the elite in a heartbeat.
All you are doing is focusing the
power of your society into one single glass for the Elite to sip as they assfuck you into
oblivion, Death toll of all of these Statist Nations, IE Imperial Japan, Soviet Union,
Communist China, the People's "Republic" of Korea, etc is over 200,000,000 and counting.
How is it that the acronym NAZI Literally has the word SOCIALIST in it and people still
think they were right wing??? Why is this such a hard concept to grasp for the average
individual?
"Door handle" theory is dead on arrival. the main theory now is that UK government gave Skripals different agent BX
(similar to LSD and which caused hallucinations) and they voluntarily took it in order to start preplanned Skripal false flag
provocation. That's why military nurse accidentally appeared near Skripals soon after poisoning.
Notable quotes:
"... Following the attack on the Skripals, European and US allies took Britain's side on the attack, ordering the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War, reports Reuters . In response, Russia retaliated by expelling Western diplomats, while the Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks - while accusing the UK intelligence agencies of staging the attack in order to inflame anti-Russia tensions. ..."
"... Prior to the investigation's focus on the door handle, for a period of almost three weeks there were at least nine other theories proposed by the authorities as to where the Skripals came into contact with the poison. These included the restaurant, the pub, the bench, the cemetery, the car, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge and even a drone. During that time, police officers and investigators were entering and leaving the house, by the door, since it was not known to be the place where the poison was located. ..."
"... Once the door handle theory was established, those who had been in and out of the property during the previous three weeks would naturally have been concerned about the possibility that they had been contaminated. ..."
"... Every officer who entered the house after 4th March, and before the door handle became an object of interest, should have been given a medical examination to check for signs of poisoning. ..."
"... Initial reports about Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey stated that he was poisoned at the bench, after coming to the aid of Mr Skripal and Yulia. However, on 9th March, Lord Ian Blair stated that D.S. Bailey had actually become poisoned after visiting Mr Skripal's house. Since he was thought to have been poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, and since it was thought that this had occurred at Mr Skripal's house, the immediate next step should have been to seal off the house and set up a mobile decontamination unit outside. However, numerous photographs show officers in normal uniforms standing close to the door long after Lord Blair's claim ..."
"... Can the authorities explain how these decisions did not put the health and even the lives of those officers in jeopardy? ..."
"... Before the door handle theory was settled on, the majority of competing theories put out by the authorities tended to assume that Mr Skripal was poisoned long before he went to Zizzis. For example, the flowers, the cemetery, the luggage, the porridge and the car explanations all assume this to be the case. What this means is that according to the assumptions of police at that time, when Mr Skripal fed the ducks near the Avon Playground with a few local boys, at around 1:45pm, he was already contaminated. Yet although this event was caught on CCTV camera, it was more than two weeks before the police contacted the parents of these boys. ..."
"... Can the authorities comment on why they did not air the CCTV footage on national television, in an effort to appeal to the boys or their parents to come forward, and whether the delay in tracking them down might have put them in danger? ..."
"... If the door handle was the place of poisoning, it is extremely likely that the bread handed by Mr Skripal to the boys would have been contaminated. Certainly, areas that he visited after this incident were deemed to be so much at risk that they were either closed down (for example, The Mill and Zizzis, which are both still closed), or destroyed (for instance, the restaurant table, the bench and – almost certainly – the red bag near the bench have all been destroyed). ..."
"... It has been said that one of the reasons the Government is/was so sure that the ultimate culprit behind the poisoning was the Russian state, is the apparent existence of an "FSB handbook" which, amongst other things, allegedly features descriptions of how to apply nerve agent to a door handle. Given that the Prime Minister first made a formal accusation of culpability on 12th March in her speech to the House of Commons, the Government must therefore have been in possession of this manual prior to that day. However, claims about the door handle being the location of the poison did not appear until late March (the first media reports of it were on 28th March). What this means is there was a delay of several weeks between the Government making its accusation, based partly on the apparent existence of the "door handle manual", and the door handle of Mr Skripal's house being a subject of interest to investigators. ..."
"... "We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia's movements but we need to be clearer around their exact movements on the morning of the incident. We believe that at around 9.15am on Sunday, 4 March, Sergei's car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre. We need to establish Sergei and Yulia's movements during the morning, before they headed to the town centre. Did you see this car, or what you believe was this car, on the day of the incident? We are particularly keen to hear from you if you saw the car before 1.30pm. If you have information, please call the police on 101." ..."
"... Now that Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and able to communicate for around four months, these details are presumably now all known to investigators. In the normal course of such a high profile investigation, details such as these would be relayed to the public in the hope of jogging memories to prompt more information. And in fact, many such details have been released to the public in this case. Yet, confirmation of Mr Skripal's and Yulia's movements that day remain conspicuous by their absence. ..."
"... These questions have nothing to do with any conspiracy theory. On the contrary, they are all based on the assumption that the two central claims made by the authorities regarding the mode and the method used in this incident are correct. They are, however, very serious and perfectly legitimate questions about the way the authorities have dealt with this incident, on their own terms and on the basis of their own claims . ..."
"... "Reports that the United Kingdom is planning to ask Russia to extradite suspects in a Salisbury poisoning incident are nothing more than a "speculation," a spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office told Sputnik on Monday. ..."
The British government has prepared an extradition request to Moscow for two
Russians they claim carried out the Salisbury nerve agent attack, according to The Guardian ,
citing Whitehall and security sources.
Former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on
a public bench in Salisbury in early March - which UK authorities believe was due to a nerve
agent called Novichok.
Months later on June 30, nearby residents Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old
mother of three, were subsequently treated for exposure to the nerve agent. Rowley recovered
while Sturgess died.
Authorities are operating on the assumption that the Skripals were poisoned using a
novichok-laced perfume bottle or a door handle smeared with the nerve agent, while Rowley may
have picked up said bottle and given to Sturgess, who applied it to her wrists.
Sturgess received a much higher dose than the other three after apparently smearing the
substance on her wrists, having sprayed it from the bottle. Rowley's recovery was helped,
according to a source, by one of the first responders being familiar with the nerve agent,
having been involved in helping the Skripals.
The Porton Down military defence laboratory near Salisbury has examined the novichok found
on the Skripals' doorknob and the perfume bottle, but police have not yet said whether they
are from the same batch. -
The Guardian
UK authorities believe they have pieced together the movements of the two Russians, from
their entry into the UK to their departure after the alleged assassination attempt.
Following the attack on the Skripals, European and US allies took Britain's side on the
attack, ordering the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War,
reports
Reuters . In response, Russia retaliated by expelling Western diplomats, while the Kremlin
has repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks - while accusing the UK intelligence agencies
of staging the attack in order to inflame anti-Russia tensions.
Oddly, Sergei Skripal was linked by
The Telegraph to a consultant with former UK spy Christopher Steele's Orbis Business
Intelligence, who he reportedly had repeated contacts with.
The motive for trying to assassinate the 66-year-old skripal is unknown. Skripal moved to
the UK in a Kremlin-approved "spy swap" in 2010, causing many to question why they would
suddenly try to take him out a decade later.
In July, journalist Rob Slane compiled
10 questions for the UK authorities on the ever-confusing Skripal case:
***
The two most basic claims made by the Government and investigators regarding the method and
the mode in the Salisbury poisoning are these:
That military grade nerve agent was used to poison Mr Skripal
That it was applied to the door handle of his house
These claims raise a number of very obvious questions. For example, how did the assassin(s)
apply such a powerful chemical without wearing protective clothing? How did the people who are
said to have come into contact with the substance not die immediately, or at the very least
suffer irreparable damage to their Central Nervous Systems? How did this military grade nerve
agent manage not only to have a delayed onset, but also managed to affect a large 66-year-old
man and his slim 33-year-old daughter, both of whom would have vastly different metabolic
rates, at exactly the same time?
These are perfectly reasonable questions that deserve reasonable answers. I am aware,
however, that no matter how obvious and rational such questions might be, doing so places one
– at least in the eyes of the authorities – in the camp of the conspiracy theorist.
This is disingenuous. One of the marks of a true conspiracy theorist is that he is someone who
refuses to accept an explanation for an event, even after being presented with facts which fit
and explain it coherently . But when the "facts" presented in a case do not fit the event they
are supposed to explain, and are neither rational nor coherent -- as in the Salisbury case --
then calling the person who raises legitimate questions a "conspiracy theorist" is a bit rich,
is it not?
Nevertheless, for the purposes of this piece, what I'd like to do is work on the assumption
that the "Military Grade Nerve Agent on the Door Handle" claim is correct. And working from
this assumption, I want to ask some questions about how the authorities have handled the case.
The point is this: These questions are not really intended to challenge the official claims;
rather the intention is to ask whether the authorities have handled the case correctly on their
own terms .
1. Prior to the investigation's focus on the door handle, for a period of almost three weeks
there were at least nine other theories proposed by the authorities as to where the Skripals
came into contact with the poison. These included the restaurant, the pub, the bench, the
cemetery, the car, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge and even a drone. During that time,
police officers and investigators were entering and leaving the house, by the door, since it
was not known to be the place where the poison was located.
Can the authorities explain how these officers and investigators were not poisoned?
2. Once the door handle theory was established, those who had been in and out of the
property during the previous three weeks would naturally have been concerned about the
possibility that they had been contaminated.
Can the authorities tell us what steps were taken to reassure these officers?
3. Every officer who entered the house after 4th March, and before the door handle became an
object of interest, should have been given a medical examination to check for signs of
poisoning.
Can the authorities confirm that this took place for every officer?
4. Initial reports about Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey stated that he was poisoned at the
bench, after coming to the aid of Mr Skripal and Yulia. However, on 9th March, Lord Ian Blair
stated that D.S. Bailey had actually become poisoned after visiting Mr Skripal's house. Since
he was thought to have been poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, and since it was
thought that this had occurred at Mr Skripal's house, the immediate next step should have been
to seal off the house and set up a mobile decontamination unit outside. However, numerous
photographs show officers in normal uniforms standing close to the door long after Lord Blair's
claim.
Can the authorities confirm why the house was not sealed off and a decontamination unit set
up immediately after it became known that D.S. Bailey had been there, and why officers with no
protective clothing on were allowed to continue standing guard outside the house for the next
few weeks?
5. Can the authorities explain how these decisions did not put the health and even the lives
of those officers in jeopardy?
6. Before the door handle theory was settled on, the majority of competing theories put out
by the authorities tended to assume that Mr Skripal was poisoned long before he went to Zizzis.
For example, the flowers, the cemetery, the luggage, the porridge and the car explanations all
assume this to be the case. What this means is that according to the assumptions of police at
that time, when Mr Skripal fed the ducks near the Avon Playground with a few local boys, at
around 1:45pm, he was already contaminated. Yet although this event was caught on CCTV camera,
it was more than two weeks before the police contacted the parents of these boys.
Can the authorities explain why it took more than two weeks to track down the boys, who
– as the CCTV apparently shows – were given bread by Mr Skripal?
7. Can the authorities comment on why they did not air the CCTV footage on national
television, in an effort to appeal to the boys or their parents to come forward, and whether
the delay in tracking them down might have put them in danger?
8. If the door handle was the place of poisoning, it is extremely likely that the bread
handed by Mr Skripal to the boys would have been contaminated. Certainly, areas that he visited
after this incident were deemed to be so much at risk that they were either closed down (for
example, The Mill and Zizzis, which are both still closed), or destroyed (for instance, the
restaurant table, the bench and – almost certainly – the red bag near the bench
have all been destroyed).
Can the authorities comment on how the boys, who were handed bread by Mr Skripal, managed to
avoid contamination?
9. It has been said that one of the reasons the Government is/was so sure that the ultimate
culprit behind the poisoning was the Russian state, is the apparent existence of an "FSB
handbook" which, amongst other things, allegedly features descriptions of how to apply nerve
agent to a door handle. Given that the Prime Minister first made a formal accusation of
culpability on 12th March in her speech to the House of Commons, the Government must therefore
have been in possession of this manual prior to that day. However, claims about the door handle
being the location of the poison did not appear until late March (the first media reports of it
were on 28th March). What this means is there was a delay of several weeks between the
Government making its accusation, based partly on the apparent existence of the "door handle
manual", and the door handle of Mr Skripal's house being a subject of interest to
investigators.
Can the authorities therefore tell us whether the Government's failure to pass on details of
the "door handle manual" put the lives of the officers going in and out of Mr Skripal's house
from 5th March to 27th March in jeopardy?
10. On 17th March, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said:
"We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia's movements but we need to be clearer around
their exact movements on the morning of the incident. We believe that at around 9.15am on
Sunday, 4 March, Sergei's car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North
and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards
the town centre. We need to establish Sergei and Yulia's movements during the morning, before
they headed to the town centre. Did you see this car, or what you believe was this car, on
the day of the incident? We are particularly keen to hear from you if you saw the car before
1.30pm. If you have information, please call the police on 101."
Now that Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and able to communicate for around four
months, these details are presumably now all known to investigators. In the normal course of
such a high profile investigation, details such as these would be relayed to the public in the
hope of jogging memories to prompt more information. And in fact, many such details have been
released to the public in this case. Yet, confirmation of Mr Skripal's and Yulia's movements
that day remain conspicuous by their absence.
Can the authorities confirm that the movements of the Skripals that day are now understood,
and that they will be made known shortly, in order that more information from the public might
then be forthcoming?
These questions have nothing to do with any conspiracy theory. On the contrary, they are all
based on the assumption that the two central claims made by the authorities regarding the mode
and the method used in this incident are correct. They are, however, very serious and perfectly
legitimate questions about the way the authorities have dealt with this incident, on their own
terms and on the basis of their own claims .
"Reports that the United Kingdom is planning to ask Russia to extradite suspects in a
Salisbury poisoning incident are nothing more than a "speculation," a spokesperson for the UK
Foreign Office told Sputnik on Monday.
"This is just more speculation. The police investigation is ongoing and anything on the
record will need to come from the Police," the spokesperson said."
Here are ten bombshell revelations and fascinating new details to lately come out of both Sy
Hersh's new book, Reporter , as well as
interviews he's given since publication...
1) On a leaked Bush-era intelligence memo outlining the neocon plan to remake the Middle
East
(Note: though previously alluded to only anecdotally by General Wesley Clark in his memoir and in a 2007
speech , the below passage from Seymour Hersh is to our knowledge the first time this
highly classified memo has been quoted . Hersh's account appears to corroborate now retired
Gen. Clark's assertion that days after 9/11 a classified memo outlining plans to foster regime
change in "7 countries in
5 years" was being circulated among intelligence officials.)
From Reporter: A Memoir
pg. 306 -- A few months after the invasion of Iraq, during an interview overseas with a general
who was director of a foreign intelligence service, I was provided with a copy of a Republican
neocon plan for American dominance in the Middle East. The general was an American ally, but
one who was very rattled by the Bush/Cheney aggression. I was told that the document leaked to
me initially had been obtained by someone in the local CIA station. There was reason to be
rattled: The document declared that the war to reshape the Middle East had to begin "with the
assault on Iraq. The fundamental reason for this... is that the war will start making the U.S.
the hegemon of the Middle East. The correlative reason is to make the region feel in its bones,
as it were, the seriousness of American intent and determination." Victory in Iraq would lead
to an ultimatum to Damascus, the "defanging" of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Arafat's Palestine
Liberation Organization, and other anti-Israeli groups. America's enemies must understand that
"they are fighting for their life: Pax Americana is on its way, which implies their
annihilation." I and the foreign general agreed that America's neocons were a menace to
civilization.
From Reporter: A Memoir
pages 306-307 -- Donald Rumsfeld was also infected with neocon fantasy. Turkey had refused to
permit America's Fourth Division to join the attack of Iraq from its territory, and the
division, with its twenty-five thousand men and women, did not arrive in force inside Iraq
until mid-April, when the initial fighting was essentially over. I learned then that Rumsfeld
had asked the American military command in Stuttgart, Germany, which had responsibility for
monitoring Europe, including Syria and Lebanon, to begin drawing up an operational plan for an
invasion of Syria. A young general assigned to the task refused to do so, thereby winning
applause from my friends on the inside and risking his career. The plan was seen by those I
knew as especially bizarre because Bashar Assad, the ruler of secular Syria, had responded to
9/11 by sharing with the CIA hundreds of his country's most sensitive intelligence files on the
Muslim Brotherhood in Hamburg, where much of the planning for 9/11 was carried out... Rumsfeld
eventually came to his senses and back down, I was told...
3) On the Neocon deep state which seized power after 9/11
From Reporter: A Memoir
pages 305-306 -- I began to comprehend that eight or nine neoconservatives who were political
outsiders in the Clinton years had essentially overthrown the government of the United States
-- with ease . It was stunning to realize how fragile our Constitution was. The intellectual
leaders of that group -- Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle -- had not hidden their
ideology and their belief in the power of the executive but depicted themselves in public with
a great calmness and a self-assurance that masked their radicalism . I had spent many hours
after 9/11 in conversations with Perle that, luckily for me, helped me understand what was
coming. (Perle and I had been chatting about policy since the early 1980s, but he broke off
relations in 1993 over an article I did for The New Yorker linking him, a fervent supporter of
Israel, to a series of meetings with Saudi businessmen in an attempt to land a
multibillion-dollar contract from Saudi Arabia . Perle responded by publicly threatening to sue
me and characterizing me as a newspaper terrorist. He did not sue.
Meanwhile, Cheney had emerged as a leader of the neocon pack. From 9/11 on he did all he
could to undermine congressional oversight. I learned a great deal from the inside about his
primacy in the White House , but once again I was limited in what I would write for fear of
betraying my sources...
I came to understand that Cheney's goal was to run his most important military and
intelligence operations with as little congressional knowledge, and interference, as possible.
I was fascinating and important to learn what I did about Cheney's constant accumulation of
power and authority as vice president , but it was impossible to even begin to verify the
information without running the risk that Cheney would learn of my questioning and have a good
idea from whom I was getting the information.
4) On Russian meddling in the US election
From the recent
Independent interview based on his autobiography -- Hersh has vociferously strong opinions
on the subject and smells a rat. He states that there is "a great deal of animosity towards
Russia. All of that stuff about Russia hacking the election appears to be preposterous." He has
been researching the subject but is not ready to go public yet.
Hersh quips that the last time he heard the US defense establishment have high confidence,
it was regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He points out that the NSA only has moderate confidence in Russian
hacking. It is a point that has been made before; there has been no national intelligence
estimate in which all 17 US intelligence agencies would have to sign off. "When the intel
community wants to say something they say it High confidence effectively means that they don't
know."
5) On the Novichok poisoning
From the recent
Independent interview -- Hersh is also on the record as stating that the official version
of the
Skripal poisoning does not stand up to scrutiny. He tells me: "The story of novichok
poisoning has not held up very well. He [Skripal] was most likely talking to British
intelligence services about Russian organised crime." The unfortunate turn of events with the
contamination of other victims is suggestive, according to Hersh, of organised crime elements
rather than state-sponsored actions –though this files in the face of the UK government's
position.
Hersh modestly points out that these are just his opinions. Opinions or not, he is scathing
on Obama –
"a trimmer articulate [but] far from a radical a middleman". During his Goldsmiths talk, he
remarks that liberal critics underestimate Trump at their peril.
He ends the Goldsmiths talk with an anecdote about having lunch with his sources in the
wake of 9/11 . He vents his anger at the agencies for not sharing information. One of his
CIA sources fires back: "Sy you still don't get it after all these years – the FBI
catches bank robbers, the CIA robs banks." It is a delicious, if cryptic aphorism.
* * *
6) On the Bush-era 'Redirection' policy of arming Sunni radicals to counter Shia Iran, which
in a 2007 New Yorker article
Hersh accurately predicted
would set off war in Syria
From the
Independent interview : [Hersh] tells me it is "amazing how many times that story has been
reprinted" . I ask about his argument that US policy was designed to neutralize the Shia sphere
extending from Iran to Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon and hence redraw the Sykes-Picot
boundaries for the 21st century.
He goes on to say that Bush and Cheney "had it in for Iran", although he denies the idea
that Iran was heavily involved in Iraq: "They were providing intel, collecting intel The US did
many cross-border hunts to kill ops [with] much more aggression than Iran"...
He believes that the Trump administration has no memory of this approach. I'm sure though
that the military-industrial complex has a longer memory...
I press him on the RAND and Stratfor reports including one authored by Cheney and Paul
Wolfowitz in which they envisage deliberate ethno-sectarian partitioning of Iraq . Hersh
ruefully states that: "The day after 9/11 we should have gone to Russia. We did the one thing
that George Kennan warned us never to do – to expand NATO too far."
* * *
7) On the official 9/11 narrative
From the
Independent interview : We end up ruminating about 9/11, perhaps because it is another
narrative ripe for deconstruction by sceptics. Polling shows that a significant proportion of
the American public believes there is more to the truth. These doubts have been reinforced by
the declassification of the suppressed 28 pages of the 9/11 commission report last year
undermining the version that a group of terrorists acting independently managed to pull off the
attacks. The implication is that they may well have been state-sponsored with the Saudis
potentially involved.
Hersh tells me: "I don't necessarily buy the story that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.
We really don't have an ending to the story. I've known people in the [intelligence] community.
We don't know anything empirical about who did what" . He continues: "The guy was living in a
cave. He really didn't know much English. He was pretty bright and he had a lot of hatred for
the US. We respond by attacking the Taliban. Eighteen years later How's it going guys?"
8) On the media and the morality of the powerful
From a recent
The Intercept interview and book review -- If
Hersh were a superhero, this would be his origin story. Two hundred and seventy-four pages
after the Chicago anecdote, he describes his coverage of a massive
slaughter of Iraqi troops and civilians by the U.S. in 1991 after a ceasefire had ended the
Persian Gulf War. America's indifference to this massacre was, Hersh writes, "a reminder of the
Vietnam War's MGR, for Mere Gook Rule: If it's a murdered or raped gook, there is no crime." It
was also, he adds, a reminder of something else: "I had learned a domestic version of that rule
decades earlier" in Chicago. "Reporter" demonstrates that Hersh has derived three simple lessons from that rule:
The powerful prey mercilessly upon the powerless, up to and including mass murder.
The powerful lie constantly about their predations.
The natural instinct of the media is to let the powerful get away with it.
The Skripals' misadventure (contretemps, dust up, theater, bit of bother) is absurd but
did the U.K. government embrace it with alacrity and a vengeance or what?
The only thing
missing was narration by Edgar R. Murrow. Not to mention the Skripals.
The very absurdity of it calls into question anything that preceded it with the same story
line, viz., "Russians are animals."
What anyone needs to be wary of is the people who push this and other "narratives":
"Animal Assad," "religion of peace," "multiculturalism," "propositional nation,"
"comprehensive immigration law reform," "living Constitution," "equality," "hate speech,"
"Iranchiefsponsorofterror," "regime change," "treason," "collusion," "McCarthyism,"
"humanitarian intervention," "global/climate freeze/warming/change/disruption,"
"anti-Semitism," "Judeo-Christian," "target civilians/hospitals," and such like.
I'm not a great fan of Marxist philosophy, but one thing it has got right is the
need to be sceptical when faced by what academics like to call 'normative' claims, and to be
aware that such claims often hide a bid for power. When faced by such a claim, one should
always ask ' Cui bono ?' – who benefits?
At present, politicians and political commentators are making much of the alleged threat to
democracy posed by social media, 'fake news', and 'disinformation'. This is leading to demands
for social media to be more tightly regulated and for action to be taken against those
supposedly guilty of spreading fake news, notably the Russian government. Yesterday's big
news was an
announcement by Facebook that it had removed 32 accounts 'believed to have been set up to
influence the mid-term US elections in November.' According to Facebook, these accounts were
responsible for 9,500 posts and had spent $11,000 on advertising. Personally, I don't regard
this as a big deal. In a country in which political campaigns cost billions of dollars, I
seriously doubt that $11,000 on Facebook is going to make any difference. For sure, there's a
lot of garbage to be found on social media, which also make it easier for people to hide their
true identity. But I remain utterly unconvinced that 'fake news' on Facebook, Twitter, or
Instagram is that important, if only because nobody has yet to produce any hard evidence that
such 'news' has actually swayed any significant number of voters.
Why then are so many people getting so worked up about it and demanding action? An interim
report
published last week by the British House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
provides some clues. Entitled, 'Disinformation and Fake News', the interim report says
that,
There are many potential threats to our democracy and our values. One such threat arises
from what has been coined 'fake news', created for profit or other gain, disseminated through
state-sponsored programmes, or spread through the deliberate distortion of facts, by groups
with a particular agenda, including the desire to affect political elections. We are faced
with a crisis concerning the use of data, the manipulation of our data, and the targeting of
pernicious views. In particular, we heard evidence of Russian state-sponsored attempts to
influence elections in the US and the UK through social media. In this rapidly changing
digital world, our existing legal framework is no longer fit for purpose. Our democracy is at
risk, and now is the time to act, to protect our shared values and the integrity of our
democratic institutions.
You will note how this is couched in terms of normative claims concerning 'democracy and our
values'. But if you dig a little deeper, you will see that there is something else going on
here. In its first two paragraphs, the report says:
In this inquiry, we have studied the spread of false, misleading, and persuasive
content, and the ways in which malign players, whether automated or human, or both
together, distort what is true in order to create influence, to intimidate, to make
money, or to influence political elections.
People are increasingly finding out about what is happening in this country, in their
local communities, and across the wider world, through social media, rather than through
more traditional forms of communication, such as television, print media, or the
radio.
Call me a cynic, but in my eyes, paragraph 1 simply describes democratic politics, a process
in which people 'distort what is true in order to create influence or to influence political
elections'. In an attempt to define 'fake news', the committee likewise describes a number of
things which to my mind sound just like normal political or journalistic practice, e.g.
'Manipulated content: distortion of genuine information or imagery, for example a
headline that is made more sensationalist.'
'False context of connection: factually accurate content that is shared with false
contextual information, for example when a headline of an article does not reflect the
content.' [As I can personally testify from having had my articles appear under utterly
misleading headlines put in by newspaper editors, this and the previous bullet point are
absolutely standard journalistic practice.]
'Misleading content: misleading use of information, for example by presenting comment as
fact.' [As I've pointed out before , this is also
completely standard.]
If the Committee were really investigating 'fake news', it would have to investigate itself
and all its members' colleagues, and indeed their entire profession. It would then have to
consider all the profound questions which such an investigation would raise. But that, of
course, is not going to happen. Likewise, the committee would have to investigate 'traditional'
forms of journalism, which are guilty of many of the dubious practices identified. But that
isn't going to happen either. Instead, the report focuses entirely on the new phenomenon of
social media, as if 'fake news' and 'disinformation' were primarily their fault, rather than,
say, the fault of politicians who mislead in order to win votes.
Paragraph 2 reveals what's really at stake here. People are now finding out about the world
in ways which the politicians aren't able to manipulate as successfully as the previous sources
of information. Power is shifting. They don't like it. And they want to stop it.
The question then is how to do that. The answer is to find some 'malign persons' or
institutions who can be associated with the shift of power and used to discredit it. This is
where Russia comes in handy. And sure enough, the interim report devotes several pages to
discussing the evil impact of Russia on British democracy, and in particular alleged Russian
interference in the Brexit referendum. The evidence provided for this interference is pretty
weak, much of it consisting of a discussion of businessman Arron Banks, who provided millions
of pounds to the Leave campaign, and who also held some meetings with Russian officials to
discuss business deals. Somehow, this connection is meant to show 'Russian interference', but
quite how is never explained.
What's clear is that the result of the Brexit referendum really irks the committee. It keeps
coming back to it, mentioning, for instance, connections between the Vote Leave campaign and
the companies AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica, which used data mining techniques to gather
information from Facebook for political purposes. This made me think that maybe there's a
hidden agenda here. In the USA, it's obvious that the paranoia over 'Russian interference' and
the malign influence of social media is driven by power struggles within the political elite,
prompted by the angst caused by Donald Trump's election. Is it the same in the UK?
To answer this question, I did a bit of investigating and looked up the members of the House
of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and whether they had supported Remain
or Leave during the Brexit referendum. The interim report lists 12 members of the committee.
Here are the results:
Damian Collins MP (Conservative, Folkestone and Hythe) (Chair) – Remain.
"... Some things are now clearer though. The settled narrative has been for months that the initial 'Novichok' attack on the Skripals had been via a "gel" ..."
"... The government claims that the #Novichok poison was a "gel" smeared onto Sergei Skripal's "front door handle". If the #Novichok was in the form of a gel, how could it be in a perfume bottle which are only designed to hold liquids? pic.twitter.com/BV0pUY5uAM ..."
"... More importantly, if this narrative were to be accepted, it doesn't explain how long (several hours) the substance took to work, nor the fact that it became effective on both Skripals at precisely the same moment – despite the huge divergence in their size, weight, age, and state of health. ..."
"... Mr Rowley of course was a criminal – he had been imprisoned for possession of 11 wraps of heroin in Salisbury only a couple of years before – and is still a daily drug-user. In those circumstances, in any normal police investigation, Mr Rowley would himself be a suspect rather than only a victim in this crime. So far as we know this is not the case, though no-one can ask him in his safe house, even through his non-existent television or undelivered newspapers. ..."
"... American filmmaker and radio host Lee Stranahan, who works out of Washington DC, was a house guest of mine last week. During his brief visit to England, he took his camera to Salisbury. Without wishing to spoil the documentary he's working on, I know he won't mind me saying that of the dozens of people he spoke to at the heart of the crime scene, not a single one of them believed the state version of events. ..."
"... "Russian criminals," ..."
"... "Not the Russian state then?" ..."
"... "They are the least likely suspects," ..."
"... "It was Ukraine." ..."
"... "military-grade deadly nerve agent." ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
'Novichok' survivor Charlie Rowley is in a "safe house" but has been denied
access to television and newspapers, according to his brother. The ever-stranger case of the
Salisbury-Amesbury poisonings gets curiouser and curiouser. Whoever said 'Novichok' was a
"military-grade lethal nerve agent" doesn't know their tables.
For a program which Boris Johnson told us had been 10 years in the making, had cost
(presumably) millions of dollars to develop (and "train" agents to put poison on a
doorknob), a 20-percent success rate must have been a bitter disappointment.
Four out of five of those affected by 'Novichok' – Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Detective
Sergeant Bailey, and Charlie Rowley – have survived the contact, with only poor Dawn
Sturgess, a homeless alcoholic, succumbing to its "deadly" effects.
A polythene bag would have been a rather more effective method of assassination.
Moreover, so little of their "training" had the assassins absorbed that they
apparently "discarded" this valuable deadly nerve agent in a perfume bottle in a park,
coincidentally close to the bench on which the Skripals had been found slumped four months
previous. The bottle miraculously evaded the dragnet of "hundreds of anti-terror police"
working on the case. Thus discarded, the perfume bottle carelessly provided evidence which
could well lead to the indictment of the criminals involved. Doubtless
such carelessness was not in the Russian "training manual" that Mr Johnson said was in
the possession of British intelligence.
No information has emerged as to when or where Mr Rowley and/or the late Ms Sturgess
happened upon this perfume bottle, or why in the middle of the swirl of the Salisbury events
they picked it up, took it home, but either waited until the fateful day to spray it or
alternatively the bottle had lain unattended for weeks – even months – despite the
fine-tooth-comb search of the park by the authorities.
Some things are now clearer though. The settled narrative has been for months that the
initial 'Novichok' attack on the Skripals had been via a "gel" on their front doorknob
(in accordance with the manual and the 10-year training program). Not many believe this any
longer, although unfortunately the taxpayer is committed to a way-above-market-price compulsory
purchase of the house.
Apart from anything else, it is difficult to envisage a gel being dispensed via a spray from
a perfume bottle.
The government claims that the #Novichok poison
was a "gel" smeared onto Sergei Skripal's "front door handle".
If the #Novichok was in
the form of a gel, how could it be in a perfume bottle which are only designed to hold
liquids? pic.twitter.com/BV0pUY5uAM
More importantly, if this narrative were to be accepted, it doesn't explain how long
(several hours) the substance took to work, nor the fact that it became effective on both
Skripals at precisely the same moment – despite the huge divergence in their size,
weight, age, and state of health.
It has always seemed much more plausible to me that the Skripals were attacked either in the
restaurant where they had a leisurely full lunch, and where Mr Skripal was initially reported
as behaving oddly towards the end of the restaurant experience, or on the short walk from the
restaurant to the park bench, or on the bench itself. This would be far more consistent with
their simultaneous collapse and, of course, would explain the perfume bottle discarded
nearby.
The perfume bottle being thrown away at all casts significant doubt that this attack was by
a state (any state) actor at all, unless that state actor wanted the substance to be found and
wanted false inferences of its provenance to be drawn. It makes it much more likely to me at
least that the assailants sprayed something at the Skripals for criminal rather than political
purposes and for reasons we can only, for now, speculate upon.
Mr Rowley of course was a criminal – he had been imprisoned
for possession of 11 wraps of heroin in Salisbury only a couple of years before – and is
still a daily drug-user. In those circumstances, in any normal police investigation, Mr Rowley
would himself be a suspect rather than only a victim in this crime. So far as we know this is
not the case, though no-one can ask him in his safe house, even through his non-existent
television or undelivered newspapers.
It will be evident that I think little of the official state narrative in the
Salisbury-Amesbury affair, but you'd be surprised at the kind of people who agree with me.
American filmmaker and radio host Lee Stranahan, who works out of Washington DC, was a house
guest of mine last week. During his brief visit to England, he took his camera to Salisbury.
Without wishing to spoil the documentary he's working on, I know he won't mind me saying that
of the dozens of people he spoke to at the heart of the crime scene, not a single one of them
believed the state version of events.
I myself spoke to a senior British Army officer at a black-tie event in London last week.
There were hundreds of them there, so I'm not giving his identity away. He asked me, who did I
really think was responsible for the 'Novichok' affair?
"Russian criminals," I answered. "Not the Russian state then?" he pressed. "They are the least likely suspects," I said. At which point this heavily decorated soldier leant over and whispered in my ear, "It
was Ukraine."
He offered no evidence, I should say, and – but for his rank and position – I
wouldn't even bother relaying it. But that is what he said.
Finally, I wish to place on record another of my dissident views on this matter. I do not
believe that the substance used to attack the Skripals, and which we are told killed Ms
Sturgess, was 'Novichok' at all – or any other kind of "military-grade deadly nerve
agent." I am on the trail of this matter and you will be the first to know when I've found
it.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
George Galloway was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He presents TV and radio shows (including
on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a renowned orator.
"... As it happens, the same writer – Marco Giannangeli – had disseminated a parallel piece of palpable fiction on 1 September 2013, in the 'Sunday Express', in relation to the Ghouta 'false flag.' ..."
More evidence for the at least passive complicity of GCHQ – for which Matt Tait used
to work, and which Robert Hannigan used to run – in corrupt 'information operations'
comes in a report yesterday on CNN.
'Police have identified two suspects in the poisoning of former Russian double agent
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN
on Thursday.
'The pair left the UK in the wake of the attack on what is believed to have been a
commercial flight, the source added.
'Their departure was revealed in a coded Russian message to Moscow sent after the attack,
which was intercepted by a British base in Cyprus, the source said. The British government
blames the Skripals' poisoning on Russia.'
The base in question is high up in the Troodos mountains, and is formally run by the RAF
but actually a key resource for both GCHQ and NSA in monitoring communications over a wide
area. According to an internal document from the former organisation, it has 'long been
regarded as a 'Jewel in the Crown' by NSA as it offers unique access to the Levant, North
Africa, and Turkey'.
That the quote comes a report in 'The Intercept' in January 2016 revealing that one of the
uses of the Troodos facility is to intercept live video feeds from Israeli drones and fighter
jets brings out how paradoxical the world is. For it also appears to have emerged as an
important resource in 'information operations' in support of 'Borgist' agendas.
The claim about intercepts incriminating the Russians over the Salisbury incident was
first made in a piece by Marco Giannangeli in the Daily Express on 9 April, which followed up
the claims which Colonel de Bretton-Gordon had been instrumental in disseminating, and was
then widely picked up by the MSM.
It was headlined: 'REVEALED: The bombshell Russian message intercepted on DAY of Skripal
poisonings,' and opened: 'AN ELECTRONIC message to Moscow sent on the day former Russian spy
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury included
the phrase "the package has been delivered".'
Supposedly, this 'prompted a young Flight Lieutenant to recall a separate message that had
been intercepted and discounted on the previous day.' The messages were 'understood to have
formed "just one part" of the intelligence packet which later allowed Prime Minister Theresa
May to state it was "highly likely" that Russia was behind the attacks.'
As it happens, the same writer – Marco Giannangeli – had disseminated a
parallel piece of palpable fiction on 1 September 2013, in the 'Sunday Express', in relation
to the Ghouta 'false flag.'
This one was headlined, even more melodramatically, 'Senior Syrian military chiefs tell
captain: fire chemicals or be shot; BRITISH intelligence chiefs have intercepted radio
messages in which senior Syrian military chiefs are heard ordering the use of chemical
weapons.'
Part of the story of how bogus claims about 'smoking gun' evidence from 'SIGINT' were used
to support the attempt to use the Ghouta 'false flag' to inveigle the British and Americans
into destroying the Syrian government was told in my SST post on the incident. However, to
mix metaphors, I only scratched the surface of a can of worms.
In a report on the 'Daily Caller' site on 29 August 2013, Kenneth Timmerman claimed that
the sequence had started with an actual intercept by Unit 8200 – the Israeli equivalent
of GCHQ and NSA.
Claiming to base his account on Western intelligence sources, he suggested that:
'According to these officers, who served in top positions in the United States, Britain,
France, Israel, and Jordan, a Syrian military communication intercepted by Israel's famed
Unit 8200 electronic intelligence outfit has been doctored so that it leads a reader to just
the opposite conclusion reached by the original report.'
While I am not in a position to establish whether his claim is or is not accurate, an AP
report on the same day quoted 'U.S. intelligence officials' explaining that 'an intercept of
Syrian military officials discussing the strike was among low-level staff, with no direct
evidence tying the attack back to an Assad insider or even a senior Syrian commander'.
Meanwhile, Timmerman's claim that 'The doctored report was picked up on Israel's Channel 2
TV on Aug. 24, then by Focus magazine in Germany, the Times of Israel, and eventually by The
Cable in Washington, DC' is supported by links to the relevant stories, which say what he
claims they say.
Moreover, it seems clear that the 1 September 2013 report was an attempt to counter a
– somewhat devastating – critique made in a 31 August post entitled 'The Troodos
Conundrum' by the former British Ambassador Craig Murray, who had been closely involved with
the facility during his time at the Foreign Office (and has written invaluable material on
the Salisbury incident.)
Precisely because of the closeness of the GCHQ/NSA collaboration, Murray brought out,
there was indeed a major problem explaining why claims about 'SIGINT' had been central to the
case made in the 'Government Assessment' released by the White House on 30 August 2013, but
not even mentioned in the Joint Intelligence Community 'Assessment' produced two days
before.
The answer, Murray suggested, was that the 'intelligence' came from Mossad, and so would
not have been automatically shared with the British. But, given the superior capabilities of
Troodos, if Mossad had it, the British should have also. So his claims 'meshed' with those by
Timmerman and the AP, and the 'Express' report looks like a lame attempt at a cover-up.
Again however, one finds the world is a paradoxical place. As I noted in my SST post,
detailed demolitions of the claims about 'SIGINT' in relation to Ghouta were provided both
Seymour Hersh, in the 'Whose sarin?' article, and also on the 'Who Attacked Ghouta?' site
masterminded by one 'sasa wawa.'
Later, it became clear that this was likely to be the Israeli technology entrepreneur Saar
Wilf, a former employee of Unit 8200. So this may – or may not – be an indication
of deep divisions within Israeli intelligence.
Between 18 March and 31 April, a fascinating series of posts on the Salisbury incident
appeared on the 'Vineyard of the Saker' blog. The author, who used the name 'sushi', was a
self-professed IT professsional, who had however obviously acquired an extensive familiarity
with 'chemical forensics' and appeared to have some experience of 'SIGINT.'
In a 14 April post, 'sushi' produced a dismissal of the claims about 'SIGINT' implicating
the Russians over the Salisbury incident quite as contemptuous as that which 'sasa wawa' had
produced in relation to the claims about it incriminating the Syrian government over
Ghouta.
Pointing to the implausibility of the story disseminated by the 'Express', he remarked
that:
'It is doubted that any message traffic is processed on Cyprus. It is more likely that the
entire take is transmitted back to GCHQ in Cheltenham via a fibre optic link. There exabytes
of take are processed, not by a bored flight lieutenant, but by banks of high speed
computers.
'Clearly someone in Cheltenham has committed a programming error. Anyone with any
knowledge of secret communications knows that the code phrase used to confirm a murder in
Salisbury is "small pizza, no anchovies." '
Interestingly, another paper in the 'Express' group made a parallel claim in relation to
the Khan Sheikhoun incident to that about the Ghouta incident, but the story was not picked
up and may indeed have been suppressed.
On 9 April, the paper published a report headlined 'Brit spies' lead role in Syrian air
strikes; RAF BASE IS 'WEAPON.' This claimed that 'within an hour of the airstrike', Troodos
had intercepted communications revealing that nerve gas had been used, and had been delivered
by jets from the Syrian Arab Air Force's Shayrat Air Base.
I was drafting a response to the comment by 'Barbara Ann' – thanks for the link to
the recent posts by Adam Carter – before going out. Returning and reading some very
interesting comments, I think what I wanted to say has more general relevance.
One reason I am reading so much into 'this Dzerzhinsky thing' is the body of accumulating
evidence that people like Tait are part of a system of networks which combine
sanctimoniousness, corruption and stupidity in about equal measures. So some more examples
may be to the point.
Different cases in which I have taken an interest come together in a post by Tait on the
'Lawfare' site on 13 March, entitled 'U.K. Prime Minister's Speech on the Russian Poisoning
of Sergei Skripal: Decoding the Signals.'
In support of the claim that in accusing Russia of a pioneering act of chemical terrorism
Theresa May was relying upon accurate analysis from the 'U.K. intelligence community', Tait
wrote that:
'May then explained that Skripal was poisoned by a "military-grade nerve agent of a type
developed by Russia one of a group of nerve agents known as 'Novichok.'" She is laying out
the basic groundwork for the government's attribution to a nation state and, more
specifically, Russia. At Porton Down, the U.K. has one of the world's best forensic labs for
analyzing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. With the poisoning of Alexander
Litvinenko in 2006, this lab not only established that Polonium-210 was used but also which
reactor in Russia it came from.'
In the event, as is by now well know, Boris Johnson's claim that Porton Down scientists
had told him that the agent which poisoned the Skripals came from Russia was specifically
repudiated by the head of that organisation, Gary Aitkenhead, on 3 April. Our Foreign
Secretary told a flagrant lie, and was exposed.
As I have shown in previous posts on this site, the 'Inquiry' conducted by Sir Robert Owen
into the death of Litvinenko was patently corrupt. Moreover, it seems highly likely that, in
fabricating 'evidence' to cover up what actually happened, Christopher Steele was doing a
'dry-run' for the fabrication of material in the dossier published by 'BuzzFeed.'
In fact, however, Owen's report made quite clear that the role of Porton Down was
marginal. Furthermore, 'Scientist A1' from the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston
quite specifically rejected the claim that 'impurity profiling' made it possible to establish
that the source of the polonium was the Avangard facility at Sarov, her arguments being
accepted by Owen. Either Tait has not bothered to read the report or very much of the
coverage, or he is lying.
What Porton Down did do was to use 'impurity profiling', which can produce 'spectra'
identifying even the tiniest traces of substances, to frustrate the attempt to use the 'false
flag' attack at Ghouta on 21 August 2013 to inveigle the American and British governments
into destroying the Assad 'régime' and handing the country over to jihadists.
It may well be that this display of competence and integrity led to a 'clampdown' at the
organisation, which encouraged Boris Johnson to believe he could get away with lying about
what its scientists told him.
A general pattern which emerges is that the same small group of 'disinformation peddlers'
resurfaces in different contexts – and the pattern whereby 'private security companies'
are used to create a spurious impression of independence also recurs.
As I bring out in my piece on Ghouta, two figures who were critical in shaping the
'narrative' acccording to which Syrian government responsibility for the atrocity had been
conclusively proved, were Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, formerly the former commanding
officer of the UK Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, and also NATO's
Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion, and Dan Kaszeta.
Immediately after the story of the poisoning of the Skripals on 4 March broke, the same
duo reappeared, and have been as critical to shaping the 'narrative' about the later incident
as they were to that about the former.
(For the piece by Kaszeta on 'Bellingcat' which introduced the 'Novichok' theme four days
later, see
https://www.bellingcat.com/... .)
This makes it particular interesting to look at the website of Kaszeta's consultancy,
'Strongpoint Security Limited', in conjunction with the 'Companies House' documentation on
the company.
One would have thought from the website that his company was a small, but hardly
insignificant, player, in the field of 'physical and operational security.' As it happens,
having filed 'Total exemption small company accounts' since its incorporation in May 2011,
last December it filed 'Micro company accounts' for the year to 31 May 2017.
With a turnover of £20,000, staff costs of a bit more than half of that, and a
profit of £394, we can see that although unlike Matt Tait's, Kaszeta's company did
trade, if indeed it was his sole source of income, this pivotal figure in Anglo-American
'disinformation operations' was living on something less than $15,000 a year, at current
exchange rates. (Pull the other one, as we say in Britain.)
This is all the more ironic, as the website brings out quite how critical a figure Kaszeta
has been in obscuring the truth. From the bio he gives, we learn that having started as a
Chemical Officer in the U.S. Army, he worked for 12 years in the White House, dealing with
CBRN matters, before moving to Britain in 2008.
Among the articles to which he links on the site, we see his response in 'NOW Lebanon' in
December 2013 to Hersh's original 'Whose sarin?' piece on Ghouta, -- in which Kaszeta first
introduced the famous 'hexamine hypothesis.'
This – patently preposterous – suggestion that the presence of a single
'impurity' is a 'smoking gun' incriminating the Syrian government has echoed on into the
clearly corrupt OPCW documents purporting to demonstrate that it was responsible for the 4
April 2017 Khan Sheikhoun attack.
Of some interest in understanding where Kaszeta he is coming from is what he describes as
his 'oldest (and most footnoted on Wikipedia)' piece, which is an article published in 1988
on a site called 'Lituanus', on 'Lithuanian Resistance to Foreign Occupation 1940-52.'
As to Colonel de Bretton-Gordon, it is of interest to look at the attempt to 'finger' the
GRU over the Skripal poisoning published under the title 'UK Poisoning Inquiry turns to
Russian Agency in Mueller Indictments' in the 'New York Times' last Sunday, and the response
by the Russian Embassy in London to a question about it.
The response objects that 'while the British authorities keep concealing all information
concerning the investigation into the Salisbury incident, the newspaper has quoted "one
former US official familiar with the inquiry".'
It also asserts that that crucial evidence which has not been made available to the
Russians – and here, as with Ghouta and Khan Sheikhoun, the results of 'impurity
profiling' are critical – appears to have been shared not just with inappropriate
Americans, but with all kinds of others.
And indeed, the Embassy is quite right in suggesting that the claim made by the supposed
creator of 'Novichok', Vladimir Uglev, to the BBC in April about 'all the spectrum data I was
sent recently' has neither been confirmed nor denied. This seems a general pattern –
the 'spectra' which may actually be able to provide definitive answers to questions of
responsibility are only provided to people who can be relied upon to give the 'right'
answers.
The Embassy response also quite fairly refers to a report in the 'Times' also in April,
about the 'intelligence' which had been 'used to persuade world leaders that Moscow was
behind the poisoning' and that the 'Novichok' had been manufactured at the Shikhany facility
at in southwest Russia, which stated that de Bretton-Gordon, 'who had seen the intelligence,
called it very compelling.' He has a long history of lying about CW in Syria – so is
obviously the right person to lie about them in the UK.
It thus becomes interesting to probe into what lies behind the opening of de
Bretton-Gordon's entry on the 'Military Speakers' website ('Real Heroes; Real Stories.')
According to this, he is 'Chief Operating Office of SecureBio Ltd a commercial company
offering CBRN Resilience, consultancy and deployable capabilities.'
From 'Companies House', we learn that the liquidation of 'Secure Bio', which started in in
June 2015, was concluded in August last year. The really interesting thing about the records,
however, is that at the time of the liquidation the company had very large debts, which were
written off, of a kind and in a manner which suggested that de Bretton-Gordon's activities
may have been largely funded by loans from untraceable sources which were not meant to be
repaid.
Actually, with the 'NYT' report we come full circle. Among those quoted is Mark Galeotti
– apparently his admission that he had totally misrepresented the thinking of the
Russian General Staff has not him made more cautious about making extravagant claims about
its Main Intelligence Directorate (misreported as Main Directorate by the 'NYT.')
Also quoted are two figures who play key roles in Owen's Report – the Soviet era-GRU
defector 'Viktor Suvorov' (real name 'Vladimir Rezun') and the former KGB operative Yuri
Shvets. Both of these feature prominently in the posts on the Litvinenko affair to which I
have linked, and both were key members of the 'information operations' network centred around
the late Boris Berezovsky. This now seems to have taken control of American policy, as of
British.
The role of 'Suvorov'/Rezun in attempting to defend the interpretations of Stalin's policy
put forward by MI6 in the run-up to the Second World War, and those asserted later by General
Keitel, and the way he was demolished by the leading American historian of the War in the
East, Colonel David Glantz, and the Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, is too large a
subject to go into here.
However, it provides further reason to wonder whether the misreadings of Stalin's policy
which caused MI6 to give advice to Chamberlain which helped destroy the last chances of
preventing the Nazi-Soviet Pact, may still be the 'house view' of that organisation. It was,
obviously, the Pact which spelled 'curtains' both for Poland and the Baltics.
There is a pattern of abuse of formerly well regarded institutions to achieve the
propaganda aims of the Deep State establishment. The depths that were plumbed to push the
Iraq WMD falsehoods are well known. Yet no one was held to account nor was there any honest
accounting of the abuse. There have been pretenses like the Owen inquiry that you note.
We see the same situation of sweeping under the rug malfeasance and even outright
criminality through obfuscation and obstruction in the case of the meddling in the 2016
election by top officials in intelligence and law enforcement. Clearly less and less people
are buying what the Deep State sells despite their overwhelming control of the media
channels.
It seems that we are marching towards a credibility crisis similar to what was experienced
in the Soviet Union when no one trusted the contents in Pravda.
What is to be gained by the leadership in Britain in promoting these biological weapons
cases since Litvinenko? In the US it is quite apparent that the Deep State have become
extremely powerful and the likelihood that Trump recognizes that resistance is futile is very
high. Schumer may be proven right that they have six ways from Sunday to make you kowtow to
their dictats.
"... Look at the case, frequently discussed here, of British intelligence services and the fake rock , which had the guts of a Blackberry cellular telephone inside it, in Moscow. This 'rock' was strategically situated so that intelligence assets (you only call them 'traitors' if they are western citizens; Russians who betray their country are dissident heroes) could stroll past and flip messages to the rock, and every so often, British intelligence services could remotely extract it; the 'rock' only had to be touched to charge the batteries. ..."
"... But that was six years after the fact. For six years the British stonewalled and denied, and acted hurt that anyone would believe such an obvious Russian-bullshit story ..."
"... Tony Blair, for example, has never to the best of my knowledge admitted to having lied to influence public opinion in the UK in favour of committing with its partner, the United States, to the Iraq War, which was such a smorgasbord of lies that the weapons-of-mass-destruction whopper was only the biggest. Iraq was wrecked, hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and the liars were never punished, nor ever in fact admitted their guilt. In cases where the guilty must begrudgingly admit they lied, nobody does anything about it, the firebolts of celestial retribution never appear, and the liars go on to lie some more with increased confidence. An eager and gullible audience is always ready to swallow some more horseshit. ..."
"... Like now, with the Skripal case. We are supposed to believe mysterious Russian assassins daubed Novichok nerve agent on the Skripals' front doorknob, which transferred to their hands, and then they drove downtown, enjoyed a good meal in a restaurant, and then started feeling poorly, and collapsed on a public bench, victims of a nerve agent much more toxic than VX. Five to eight times, says FOX News . ..."
"... But the Skripals did not die. They were carefully shielded and monitored by the British security services so that they could not be questioned by the public, but they did not die. ..."
"... Perhaps of greatest concern, if chemical-weapons professionals were aware that Novichok could persist in deadly concentrations for months that it was specially engineered to be not only virtually undetectable by NATO sensors, but to remain deadly through the deleterious effects of the elements why did they say nothing when the dozy police assured the public that it was in absolutely no danger? ..."
"... This article is a timely reminder that the UK never stopped fighting the Cold War. I had forgotten about the embarrassing spy rock incident. The (labour) government lies were accepted without question by the media. ..."
"... The Novichok issue fits into this pattern of behaviour. ..."
Uncle Volodya says, "Stupidity is the same as evil, if you judge by the results."
I've been waiting for something to happen for a day, or a week, or a year; with the blood in the ink of the headlines
and the roar of the crowd in my ears. You might ask what it takes to remember but you know that you've seen it before;
when a government lies to a people and a country is drifting to war
Jackson Browne, from "Lives in the Balance"
"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election."
Otto von Bismarck
During an hour or so of poring over quotes about lying (of course I don't make these up myself), before the snatch of lyric from
"Lives in the Balance" floated into my memory unbidden, I was struck as never before by the prevalence of belief in the
truth always coming out. Lyric after quote after stanza has it that you can lie and lie and lie, but eventually the truth will always
surface, and the liar will be caught.
Is that true? Was it ever true? Perhaps among the congenitally stupid, who labour simultaneously under their guilt and
a suspicion that smarter people (which is everybody else) can read minds; I'm reminded of a story which was set in the American southern
states, in which the probable perpetrator of some petty crime or other was brought into the rural sheriff's office for questioning.
He was told that he must take a lie-detector test. Accordingly, a metal colander, such as is used for washing salad ingredients,
was placed on his head, with wires from it leading to the photocopier. The deputies had put a piece of paper in the copier which
read, "He's Lying!!", and whenever they asked the suspect a question, they would press the 'print' button following the answer, and
out would come a paper which averred that the answer was a lie, which they would show to him. Eventually, confronted with his tapestry
of falsehoods and under the apprehension that he was being measured by other-worldly technology, he confessed. But the local law
enforcement was already well aware that he was guilty they just wanted a confession.
So, perhaps in circumstances like that, in which the liar is a desperate fool, perhaps then the truth always comes out. But in
reality, not only does truth almost never come out, it only does when all possibility of further elaboration on existing lies has
been exhausted. But here's the real kicker when the truth does come out, we are led by philosophers to believe that evangelical
vengeance will be swift to follow. Does that really happen? Perhaps after the liar is dead, he or she goes someplace featuring a
dancing-flames motif, where he or she is prodded the livelong day by imps with little pitchforks. But that sort of forestalls the
satisfaction of justice done in the here and now punishment delayed is punishment denied, am I right?
Look at the case, frequently discussed here, of
British intelligence services and
the fake rock , which had the guts of a Blackberry cellular telephone inside it, in Moscow. This 'rock' was strategically situated
so that intelligence assets (you only call them 'traitors' if they are western citizens; Russians who betray their country are dissident
heroes) could stroll past and flip messages to the rock, and every so often, British intelligence services could remotely extract
it; the 'rock' only had to be touched to charge the batteries.
But that was six years after the fact. For six years the British stonewalled and denied, and acted hurt that anyone would believe
such an obvious Russian-bullshit story; the Foreign Office
scornfully retorted , "We are concerned and surprised
at these allegations. We reject any allegation of improper conduct in our dealing with Russian NGO's ." So receiving surreptitious
messages through a styrofoam rock is just the above-board, in-plain-sight honest dialogue in which foreign embassies everywhere engage;
why the outrage? And when Britain finally admitted what had been going on, minus all the holier-than-thou gilding of trying to build
a better world with Russia through an active and engaged civil society absolutely nothing was done. Not only does the truth not necessarily
ever come out Tony Blair, for example, has never to the best of my knowledge admitted to having lied to influence public opinion
in the UK in favour of committing with its partner, the United States, to the Iraq War, which was such a smorgasbord of lies that
the weapons-of-mass-destruction whopper was only the biggest. Iraq was wrecked, hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and
the liars were never punished, nor ever in fact admitted their guilt. In cases where the guilty must begrudgingly admit they lied,
nobody does anything about it, the firebolts of celestial retribution never appear, and the liars go on to lie some more with increased
confidence. An eager and gullible audience is always ready to swallow some more horseshit.
Like now, with the Skripal case. We are supposed to believe mysterious Russian assassins daubed Novichok nerve agent on the Skripals'
front doorknob, which transferred to their hands, and then they drove downtown, enjoyed a good meal in a restaurant, and then started
feeling poorly, and collapsed on a public bench, victims of a nerve agent much more toxic than VX. Five to eight times,
says FOX News . Ten times more deadly than its better-known predecessors, says Anne Applebaum. But the Skripals did not die.
They were carefully shielded and monitored by the British security services so that they could not be questioned by the public, but
they did not die.
And that's possible in the case of a mild dose of, say, VX (much less deadly than Novichok, remember), as a liquid through a
skin-contact vector, it might take up to two hours for symptoms (local sweating and muscular twitching) to appear, according to the
US Army's Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command Chemical Research, Development and Engineering Center's
Reigle Report . The trouble with that scenario
as applied to the Skripals is that the duration of those effects would be about 3 days for a mild exposure, and 5 days for a severe
exposure. The Skripals showed no such effects; they ate dinner in what must have been to all appearances a normal fashion, and then
collapsed unconscious on a bench outside. Some accounts suggested they had a quantity of foam around their mouths, which might result
from salivation. At least one report says Yulia Skripal had vomited. No reports mentioned excessive sweating and muscular twitching,
both of which are hallmarks of nerve-agent poisoning via liquid (as opposed to gas) exposure through the skin.
There are a couple of other problems with the British approach. We've all seen the pictures of the chemical-warfare types in their
green dung-beetle suits, meticulously taking samples, while unprotected firemen in simple turnout gear with no masks or breathing
apparatus stood just a couple of feet away. VX as a liquid could become a gas, but it'd have to be pretty hot. If that happened,
it would not be persistent beyond a couple of hours. VX as a liquid, under very cold conditions, can actually persist for a couple
of months. Quite a bit colder than it typically is in even England, though, in spring and summer.
Daily averages for Salisbury, UK in March are
above freezing, an average of about 45F, and it customarily gets much warmer going into summer. So you can't have it both ways
if it's a liquid, it's more persistent in its toxicity over time, but that effect is greatly attenuated by temperature. If it's a
gas, breathing apparatus for anyone who might be exposed is an absolute rule.
Another discrepancy came up, in
a timeline of the Skripals'
movements . They left the father's home at some time close to but prior to 1:30 PM, and drove into town. This, it is estimated,
would take about 10 to 15 minutes. They are observed by CCTV entering a multi-story car park in Salisbury at around 1:32 PM. Here
one of the Skripals both of whom apparently touched the front doorknob on the way out, the second one perhaps just for luck then
touched the ticket machine with their bare hand. This machine remained unchecked for 8 days after the event. How many other people
touched it between that time and the time anyone checked it for toxicity? Yet nobody else showed any symptoms.
It was an extremely oddball event, which continues to inspire skeptical questions and scornful refutations. But I don't want to
get too bogged-down in the Skripal affair instead, I want to focus a bit on the more recent incident, the 'poisoning' of Dawn Sturgess
and Charles Rowley, in nearby Amesbury. This incident, also, has featured a wildly-improbable British-government narrative and skeptical
questioning, and one of the foremost skeptical questions has been "How the hell could a nerve agent that did not kill the people
who were its targets accidentally kill a chance victim four months later?"
Enter, stage left, the American Chemical Weapons Expert, who announces that
Novichok was specially engineered to remain persistent over a long time . So that it could, you know, kill incidental victims
months later and further incriminate the country where it is supposed to have originated. That's why it is the go-to poison for Russian
assassins. It might not kill the people you wanted to kill, but it could kill someone totally unrelated, months later. True story.
There are a few things you should know about the expert quoted, Dan Kaszeta. One, he's the Managing Director of
Strongpoint Security (it seems like all the UK's
go-to commentators are executives in the security industry, like FireEye or Crowdstrike). Sounding off in the media, taking a position
which unreservedly supports the government narrative no matter how nutty it is is a good way to get noticed in the security business,
and Strongpoint is a fairly new operation. Two, he's the
resident CBRN expert at Bellingcat . Three, he is not a Trump fan,
broadcasting for his anti-Trump audience
how the President of the United States' motorcade and security detail might be confused, frustrated and sidetracked so that he would
get the message he was not welcome. I can hardly fault Kaszeta for that, since Trump is over-the-top unpopular just about everywhere
he goes, but it's a little unusual to see a former White-House consultant handing out advice on how to screw up a White House visit.
Four, he is a much bigger noise on the CBRN front than you might have imagined if you've never heard of him before, confidently
chatting up the wide-eyed press corps on all things chemical-warfare. And always supporting the UK government's contention that Novichok
was always Russian, only Russian, and that it could not have been anyone else. Here he is,
letting the WBUR
Boston audience know in no uncertain terms, "I don't know anybody who knows how to make it except these guys in Russia. They've
been a deep, dark secret." But their purported engineer, Vil Marzayanov,
claimed their precursors were
ordinary organophosphates which are commercially available; "One should be mindful that the chemical components or precursors
of A-232 and its binary version novichok-5 are ordinary organophosphates that can be made at commercial chemical companies that manufacture
fertilizers and pesticides [nerve agents, after all, arose from research into pesticides and are really advanced versions of
pesticides]. In my opinion, this research program was premised on the ability to hide the production of precursor chemicals under
the guise of legitimate commercial chemical production of agricultural chemicals . And if America was concerned that its manufacture
was devious and covert, it is kind of difficult to imagine why an American publisher
published a book which featured the
formula for making it, courtesy of Marzayanov, and which anyone can obtain for around $30.00. Is that how you keep something
a deep, dark secret? And obviously the Defense Research establishment at Porton Down, only a couple of miles from the site of the
Salisbury poisoning, had samples of Novichok, since they were able to identify it in a couple of hours. It's beginning to shape up
like the worst-kept deep dark secret in the world.
According to Dan, the Soviets wanted to engineer chemical agents that NATO equipment could not detect. Gosh! Those tricky sons
of bitches. So then they engineered it to be extra-persistent, so it would stay around for months, just to make it fair, so NATO
could have lots of time to take more samples. The thing is, the whole raison d'etre of a nerve agent is that it be non
-persistent; you want it to rapidly and efficiently kill off the enemy, but you want to move your own troops into that same
area in a matter of days, to consolidate your gains and establish your own military presence. Months just doesn't cut it.
Asked why an assassin would use such a distinctive agent, pointing straight back at his own country, Dan suggests that given the
historic secrecy of the project, someone might have reasoned that it would go undetected. Uh huh; sure the Stimson Report came
out in 1995. And the agent used is 'specially engineered to remain a toxic menace for months'.
Here's Dan again , backstopping the White House's assertion that only Assad could have been behind an alleged sarin gas attack
at Khan Sheikhoun; the Russian version, he says, is "highly implausible". "Nerve agents are the result of a very expensive, exotic,
industrial chemical process -- these are not something you just whip up." Oh, dear put John Gilbert, senior science fellow
at the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, in the "Disagree" column: he says
all you would need to make sarin
is about a 200 square-foot room and a competent chemist.
Two other attributes compound sarin's insidiousness. First, it's not especially hard to produce, in terms of both resources
and expertise. "A competent chemist could make it, and possibly very quickly, in a matter of days," says John Gilbert, a senior science
fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, who spent much of his Air Force career assessing countries' WMD capabilities.
Producing sarin doesn't require any kind of massive facility; a roughly 200 square foot room would do.
According to Dan
yet again, this time in the Los Angeles Times one form of Novichok is as a solid at normal temperatures, and it
might have been deployed as a dust or powder. Uh huh, might have been. But (a) that would have been the least-persistent method except
for as a gas, it would never have lasted four months outside, through rain, and (b) not even a rummy like Charles Rowley would have
tried to pawn off a bottle of dust to his girlfriend as perfume.
Because here we are again, at another 'Novichok' poisoning, and Dan helpfully dispels the myth that Novichok would not still be
around and deadly after four months, by announcing the Soviets specially engineered it to do just that. And not only that they
made it especially for contaminating large areas of land, such as ports, and equipment, like tanks, so that they would be dangerous
for months. That was supposedly 'the idea' when they were developed.
Horseshit. Nerve agents are most effective against unprotected troops in the open, and if you want to contaminate an area the
size of a port, the only possible way you could do it would be with a spray the least persistent form of all. All organophospate-based
nerve agents can be effectively dealt with before unprotected personnel are exposed by spraying and washing contaminated areas
with water; moisture makes them break down quickly. Nobody has engineered a miracle waterproof organophosphate nerve agent. Once
nerve agents are known to have been used, troops in the field are in TOPP (Threat-Oriented Protective Posture) Medium at least, in
full chem suits with breathing apparatus available for rapid donning. Nerve agents were not developed as a weapon of covert assassination,
although they have definitely been used in that role; they were developed as a weapon of mass destruction to be used against a military
adversary who presumably is trained in CBRN countermeasures. They were not developed to spray tanks, in the hope that some mook would
put his bare hand on it two months later, and fall over jerking and drooling. How the fuck would you disperse enough nerve agent
to contaminate an airfield? Fly over with a water-bomber and drench it from end to end? You don't think that might offer a bit of
a clue? If you want to disperse a large amount of nerve agent, it will have to be vaporized, and it will have to be carried in the
dispersal vehicle as a liquid. Liquids are heavy the more you want to disperse, the bigger your dispersal vehicle will have to
be. The Soviet Union developed gas warheads, to be used on a ballistic missile, but if you can land a gas warhead next to an airfield
you might as well go the whole nine yards and blow it up, because a warhead that lies there hissing and dispersing a cloud of vapour
is kind of a giveaway. Unless, of course, you only want to kill the military personnel in the area, and not damage the airfield,
so you can quickly take it over and deploy your own aircraft from it. In which instance you would have been pretty stupid to envelope
it in a toxic nerve agent that is still going to be active next spring. And the whole idea of a nerve agent is to deploy a small
amount of it, using an unobtrusive dispersal vehicle, so as not to call attention to it until personnel in the target area are affected.
It's nice of Dan to try and fill in the blanks the way he did, but there are just too many blanks. The latest story from HM government
is that a perfume bottle was found in Charles Rowley's home, and tests revealed surprise! that it contained Novichok. The story
is that Rowley found it in Queen Elizabeth Park. Somehow, Dawn Sturgess is supposed to have sprayed the contents of the bottle on
her wrists and face, like perfume. Oops! now it's an aerosol, the fastest-acting form of nerve agent, and she probably would have
been affected in minutes at most, not hours. But she was not at Rowley's home, where the bottle was supposedly discovered. So he
either took the bottle with him to meet her, and after noticing her exhibiting symptoms of nerve-agent poisoning, took the bottle
home with him and put it in his house, or they were both affected at roughly the same time, and somebody thoughtfully posted the
bottle to his home address. If she was poisoned at his house, she would not likely have made it out.; remember, it was dispersed
as a vapor. So there is a question as to how the bottle got there, and another as to how it laid there in the park for nearly four
months, until Rowley discovered it.
And how it remained powerful enough to kill after all that time, when the fresh-off-the-shelf
Novichok, four months previously, failed to kill the Skripals. Not to mention how it got there in the first place are we supposed
to believe that highly-trained assassins straight from the Kremlin did the Skripal job, and then tossed away their backup supply
in a local park?
Perhaps of greatest concern, if chemical-weapons professionals were aware that Novichok could persist in deadly concentrations
for months that it was specially engineered to be not only virtually undetectable by NATO sensors, but to remain deadly through
the deleterious effects of the elements why did they say nothing when the dozy police assured the public that it was in absolutely
no danger?
Thanks, Al! Yes, Britain like the USA has a reliable stable of current and ex-military officers
to call upon whenever the broader public starts getting inquisitive or uncomfortable with the official storyline, to get us
back on the path with the uncompromising guarantee of military experience and exotic knowledge the average yokel can never
hope to possess.
General (Ret'd) Wesley Clark, for example, the affable and polished talking head for CNN during the Iraq War
and onetime presidential candidate.
Yes, the term CBRN replaced the old NBCD, Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense.
This article is a timely reminder that the UK never stopped fighting the Cold War.
I had forgotten about the embarrassing spy rock incident. The (labour) government lies were accepted without question by the
media.
The Novichok issue fits into this pattern of behaviour.
"... "Our intelligence community" is one of those phrases that make my back teeth itch, because I hate to see "our" doing that much work (especially when I know how much work our's parent, "we," has to do.) ..."
"... On Friday, Michael McFaul, a former United States ambassador to Russia, wrote on Twitter: "I'm very impressed that Mueller was able to name the 12 GRU officers in the new indictment. Demonstrates the incredible capabilities of our intelligence community ." ..."
"... Almost one year ago, on January 28th, 2003, the President devoted one-third of his State of the Union address to what he described as "a serious and mounting threat to our country" posed by Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. He spoke, in those famous 16 words, about efforts by Iraq to secure enriched uranium from Africa. He talked about aluminum tubes "suitable for nuclear weapons production." He described stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and said, "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs." ..."
"... That "we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agent to various locations " That "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." Pictures of what he called "active chemical munitions bunkers" with "sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions." ..."
"... The WMDs episode led to the (bipartisan) Iraq War, the greatest strategic debacle in American history. The WMDs episode was marked by fake evidence (yellowcake; aluminum tubes), planted stories, gaslighting, and a consensus of elite opinion along the Acela Corridor, exactly as today. The intelligence community was wrong. The national security establishment was wrong. The press was wrong. The Congressional leadership was wrong. The President was wrong. Everybody was wrong (except for a few outliers who couldn't get jobs afterwards anyhow, exactly because they were right). And now, today, we are faced with the same demand that we believe what the intelligence community says, without question, and without evidence that the public can see and examine. The only difference is that this time, the stakes are greater: Rather than blowing a few trillion and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of faraway brown people, we're rushing toward a change in the Constitutional Order that in essence makes the intelligence community a fourth branch of the government. ..."
"Our intelligence community" is one of those phrases that make my back teeth itch, because I hate to see "our" doing that much
work (especially when I know how much work our's parent, "we," has to do.) So I thought I'd throw together some usage examples of
the term to see if I could find more significant readings than my own reaction, and then draw out some implications from that reading.
But first, let's look at how often that term is used, and where. We turn to
Google Trends
:
Some caveats: Google doesn't have enough data to track "our intelligence community," or so it says, so the search is for "intelligence
community" only.
Further, the search is for 2008 to the present, again because Google, or so it says, doesn't have enough data for
shorter time frames.[1] However, I think the chart shows that interest in the intelligence community is not general in time or space:
It spikes when there's gaslighting with reader interest in particular stories, and spikes along the Acela Corridor, in
Washington and New York. (We might also speculate,
based on HuffPost/YouGov
voter data , that interest in the today's stories about the intelligence is limited not only in space, and time, but in scope:
Primarily among liberal Democrats.[2]) With that, let's turn to our usage examples.
I used Google to find them, and of course Google
search is crapified and all but useless -- for example, it insists on returning examples of "intelligence community" along with "our
intelligence community" in normal search, even with when the search string is quoted -- but it is what it is; readers are invited
to supply their own examples.
On Friday, Michael McFaul, a former United States ambassador to Russia, wrote on Twitter: "I'm very impressed that Mueller
was able to name the 12 GRU officers in the new indictment. Demonstrates the incredible capabilities of our intelligence
community ."
No. Mueller provided no evidence and the case is unlikely to go to trial; the capability consists in the naming, not in the proof.
Verdict: Credulity .
The
intelligence community
determined
that the Kremlin intended to "denigrate" and "harm" Clinton, and "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic
process" while helping Trump.
And the same claim, July 10, 2018, Washington Post:
The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to boost Trump's candidacy
No. If you click through, you'll find that this is the "17 agencies"/"high confidence" report, whose agencies and analysts were
hand-picked by Clapper; that's just not the "intelligence community" as a whole[3]; the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was not
involved in the analysis, for example. (I don't see how it's normal that such an important topic not to be the subject of a Presidental
Finding, but perhaps people were in a rush.) Verdict; Misinformation .
FLAKE: We know the intelligence is right. We stand behind our intelligence community . We need to say
that in the Senate. Yes, it's symbolic, and symbolism is important.
And a similar formulation, July 22, 2018, Senator Marco Rubio (R),
CBS News
:
We need to move forward from that with good public policy and part of that is, I think, standing with our intelligence
community .
Posturing aside, to my sensibilities, it's pretty disturbing when "support the troops" bleeds over into "support the spies," and
when supporting the conclusions of an institution bleeds over into supporting the institution itself, as such. (The whole of the
Federalist Papers argues against the latter view:
"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.") Verdict: Authoritarian followership .
WE UNIFY OUR INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY TOWARD A STRONGER, SAFER NATION
No. The DNI mistakes the hope for the fact; were the intelligence community in fact
unified
, Clapper would not have hand-picked agencies for his report, and a Presidential Finding would have been made. (And given the
source, "our" is doing even more work there than it usual does; it reminds of liberal Democrats talking about "our Democracy." Whose,
exactly?) Verdict: Wishful thinking .
Example 5, July 16, 2018, John Sipher (interview),
PBS
:
I do think the intelligence community is quite resilient. They put their head down and they do their work, but they
take this very seriously. And they see the president as their primary customer and they will do almost anything to get the president
the information that he needs to do his job.
No. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
-- "Who will guard the guards themselves?" -- was formulated by the Roman poet
Juvenal (d. 138AD) in the late first or early second century,
[checks calculator], about 1880 years ago. It's absurd to assume that "the intelligence" community has always served its "primary
customer" -- see the Bay of Pigs invastion at "
groupthink " -- or that they will
in the future, especially considering the enormous stakes involved today. Verdict: Historical ignorance .
Today I voted for H.R. 6237, the Matthew Young Pollard Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2018 and 2019. This
important legislation funds our Intelligence community and provides them the resources they need to effectively defend
our nation "This legislation makes sure that the dedicated men and women who serve our nation in the Intelligence Community [caps
in the original] are fully equipped to fulfill their mission."
No. While Sipher urges (
as does Clapper
) that the intelligence community is in the business of serving customers, Comstock, through her language ("dedicated
men and women who serve our nation") identifies it with the military. That's pretty disturbing when you realize that the intelligence
community has a domestic component (and when you think back to Obama's 17-city crackdown on Occupy, or Obama's militarized response
to #BlackLivesMatter). Verdict: Militarization
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, head of the U.S. intelligence community , reaffirmed his conclusion
that Russia had indeed tried to sway the election in a statement published after Trump's remarks.
No. The U.S. has 17 intelligence agencies; the DNI is in no sense their head.
From the DNI site :
The core mission of the ODNI is to lead the IC in intelligence integration, forging a community that delivers the most insightful
intelligence possible. That means effectively operating as one team: synchronizing collection, analysis and counterintelligence
so that they are fused. This integration is the key to ensuring national policymakers receive timely and accurate analysis from
the IC to make educated decisions.
If you boil that bureucratic porridge down -- the Russian word for porridge is
kasha , in case kompromat has
worn thin for you -- you'll see that the 17 intelligence agencies do not have a reporting relationship to the DNI. Hence, the DNI
is not their head. QED. Verdict: Authoritarian followership
[BRENNAN:] What Mr. Trump did (Monday) was to betray the women and men of the FBI, the CIA and NSA and others and betray the
American public. That's why I use the term, this was nothing short of treason, because it is a betrayal of the nation. He's giving
aid and comfort to the enemy.
(Leaving aside Brennan's broad definition of enemy -- apparently a sovereign state with interests different from our own, as opposed
to a nation against whom Congress has declared war -- note that Brennan treats the agencies as individual entities, not as "unified,"
presumably betraying DNI Coats). More:
BRENNAN:] I still shake my head trying to understand what was discussed during the two-hour one-on-one, what was discussed
between the two sides in their bilateral meeting. We only saw what Mr. Trump said during the press conference. I can't even imagine
what he said behind closed doors. I can't imagine what he said to Mr. Putin directly. I am very concerned about what type of impact
it might have on our intelligence community and on this country."
No. Note well: What (
torture
advocate ) Brennan says contradicts the other two models expressed in this aggregation. If the President is the customer, it's
not Brennan's concern what that customer does (any more than it's Best Buy's concern what I buy in Starbucks after I pick up my flat-screen
TV). And if the intelligence community is a branch of the military, it's not their concern what their Commander-in-Chief does; he'll
tell them what they need to know.) Seriously, why does the Praetorian Guard need to know what the emperor is doing. Now, one could
argue that Brennan's ambition is counteracting Trump's ambition; well and good, but then one needs to think through the consequences.
And if Brennan, et al., really believe that Trump committed treason, then they -- as the good patriots they presumably are -- need
to indicate a path to removing him. If that path does not include full disclosure of the evidence for whatever charges are to be
made, then the country will have to deal with the consequences -- which I'd speculate won't be pretty -- of
a change in the Constitutional order where the "intelligence community" can remove a President from office based on its own internal
consensus . Praetorian
Almost one year ago, on January 28th, 2003, the President devoted one-third of his State of the Union address to what he
described as "a serious and mounting threat to our country" posed by Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. He spoke,
in those famous 16 words, about efforts by Iraq to secure enriched uranium from Africa. He talked about aluminum tubes "suitable
for nuclear weapons production." He described stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and said, "we know that Iraq, in the
late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs."
One week later, on February 5th, Secretary of State Colin Powell, with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet sitting
behind his right shoulder, used charts and photographs to elaborate on the Administration's WMD case. "These are not assertions,"
Powell said, "these are facts corroborated by many sources." Among Powell's claims were:
That "we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads
containing biological warfare agent to various locations " That "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons
and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." Pictures of what he called "active chemical munitions bunkers" with "sure
signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions."
Powell has subsequently said that he spent days personally assessing the intelligence. He included only information he felt
was fully supported by the analysis. Hence, no mention of enriched uranium from Africa, no claim that al Qaeda was involved in
9-11.
The effect was powerful. Veteran columnist for the Washington Post, Mary McGrory, known for liberal views and Kennedy connections,
wrote an op-ed the following day entitled "I Am Persuaded". Members of Congress, like me, believed the intelligence case. We voted
for the resolution on Iraq to urge U.N. action and to authorize military force only if diplomacy failed. We felt confident we
had made the wise choice.
But as the evidence pours in the Intelligence Committee's review of the pre-war intelligence; David Kay's interim report on
the failure to find WMD in Iraq; an impressive study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board's critique; thoughtful commentaries like that of Ken Pollack in this month's Atlantic Monthly; and
investigative reporting including a lengthy front page story by Barton Gellman of the Washington Post on January 7,
we are finding out that Powell and other policymakers were wrong, British intelligence was wrong, and those of us who
believed the intelligence were wrong . Indeed, I doubt there would be discussions of David Kay's possible departure if the
Iraq Survey Group were on the verge of uncovering large stockpiles of weapons or an advanced nuclear weapons program.
But if 9/11 was a failure to connect the dots, it appears that the Intelligence Community, in the case of Iraq's WMD,
connected the dots to the wrong conclusions . If our intelligence products had been better, I believe many policymakers,
including me, would have had a far clearer picture of the sketchiness of our sources on Iraq's WMD programs, and our lack of certainty
about Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities.
Let me add that policymakers -- including members of Congress -- have a duty to ask tough questions, to probe the information
being presented to them. We also have a duty to portray that information publicly as accurately as we can.
The WMDs episode led to the (bipartisan) Iraq War, the greatest strategic debacle in American history. The WMDs episode was marked
by fake evidence (yellowcake; aluminum tubes), planted stories, gaslighting, and a consensus of elite opinion along the Acela Corridor,
exactly as today. The intelligence community was wrong. The national security establishment was wrong. The press was wrong. The Congressional
leadership was wrong. The President was wrong. Everybody was wrong (except for a few outliers who couldn't get jobs afterwards anyhow,
exactly because they were right). And now, today, we are faced with the same demand that we believe what the intelligence community
says, without question, and without evidence that the public can see and examine. The only difference is that this time, the stakes
are greater: Rather than blowing a few trillion and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of faraway brown people, we're rushing toward
a change in the Constitutional Order that in essence makes the intelligence community a fourth branch of the government.
Why are we doing that? Well, if you look at the verdicts after each of the quotes I've found, taking the quotes as a proxy for
elite opinion, one reason might be that the portion of our elites involved in the Russia narrative -- who, let us remember, are limited
in space and scope -- are:
Credulous Misinformed Prone to authoritarian followership Historically ignorant Militarized Praetorian
If power is lying in the street, beware of who picks it up. Matters might not improve.
NOTES .
[1] The hit count (100 for the spike in January 2017) is oddly low; sadly, although 100 looks like a blue link, we cannot click
through to check the data. However, even if the aggregates are low, I think we can assume that both the shape of the trend line and
its geographic distribution are directionally correct, because the spikes occur at reasonable places for them to occur. Sidebar:
Note the horrid user interface design, which uses inordinate amounts of screen space to no purpose, disrespecting the time-pressed
professional user.
[2] We might even go so far as to speculate that -- given these limitations in space -- that while "our" asserts Democrat leadership
as a National party, Democrats are in fact a State party. Removing the hyphen from "nation-state" is a neat way
of encapsulating our current legitimacy crisis.
[3] "Intelligence community," like "deep state," connotes unity among institutions that are in fact riven by faction.
ADDENDUM: Scott Horton
I didn't add this material to the post proper, because I only had screen shots, and I wasn't able to find the post in time using
Google, or Facebook's lousy search. So after ten minutes of plowing through Facebook's infinite scroll, here is the embed* from Scott
Horton that I sought:
And a screen shot personally taken by me:
Note the lead: "European intelligence analysts ," so reminiscent of Bush's "British intelligence has learned " (the
sixteen words ). What they "learned," of course,
was the faked evidence on Niger yellowcake. Go through my list of "verdicts," starting with "credulous," and see what does
not
apply to Horton.
Horton is a Contributing Editor to Harper's Magazine,
has a law practice in New York, and is affiliate with Columbia Law School and the Open Society Institute.
The key point, for me, is this: "Liberal Democrats do not view anyone outside of places like Orange and Lexington County (whom
they go all-out to court) as people fit to make their own choices." It's important to watch for outright denial of agency,
to others, not merely lack of agency. That's true for Horton, it was true for Clinton's "deplorables" comment, and it was true for
Obama's "bitter"/"cling to" Kinseley gaffe.
It would be nice if Senator Sanders didn't signal boost this stuff. Here's another usage example of "intelligence community":
Or, to put this another way, Sanders needs to get his supporters' backs, and fast, with messaging that doesn't take a "duck and
cover" approach by repeating the catchphrases of the current onslaught, but contextualizes and decontaminates it. I didn't say that
would be easy
NOTE * I like the picture the Time chose very much; apparently, the evul left is young, female, swarthy, and/or black.
No suburban Republicans here! The "AbolishICE" t-shirt -- and not, say, #MedicareForAll -- is also a nice touch.
I was drafting a response to the comment by 'Barbara Ann' – thanks for the link to
the recent posts by Adam Carter – before going out. Returning and reading some very
interesting comments, I think what I wanted to say has more general relevance.
One reason I am reading so much into 'this Dzerzhinsky thing' is the body of accumulating
evidence that people like Tait are part of a system of networks which combine
sanctimoniousness, corruption and stupidity in about equal measures. So some more examples
may be to the point.
Different cases in which I have taken an interest come together in a post by Tait on the
'Lawfare' site on 13 March, entitled 'U.K. Prime Minister's Speech on the Russian Poisoning
of Sergei Skripal: Decoding the Signals.'
In support of the claim that in accusing Russia of a pioneering act of chemical terrorism
Theresa May was relying upon accurate analysis from the 'U.K. intelligence community', Tait
wrote that:
'May then explained that Skripal was poisoned by a "military-grade nerve agent of a type
developed by Russia one of a group of nerve agents known as 'Novichok.'" She is laying out
the basic groundwork for the government's attribution to a nation state and, more
specifically, Russia. At Porton Down, the U.K. has one of the world's best forensic labs for
analyzing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. With the poisoning of Alexander
Litvinenko in 2006, this lab not only established that Polonium-210 was used but also which
reactor in Russia it came from.'
In the event, as is by now well know, Boris Johnson's claim that Porton Down scientists
had told him that the agent which poisoned the Skripals came from Russia was specifically
repudiated by the head of that organisation, Gary Aitkenhead, on 3 April. Our Foreign
Secretary told a flagrant lie, and was exposed.
As I have shown in previous posts on this site, the 'Inquiry' conducted by Sir Robert Owen
into the death of Litvinenko was patently corrupt. Moreover, it seems highly likely that, in
fabricating 'evidence' to cover up what actually happened, Christopher Steele was doing a
'dry-run' for the fabrication of material in the dossier published by 'BuzzFeed.'
In fact, however, Owen's report made quite clear that the role of Porton Down was
marginal. Furthermore, 'Scientist A1' from the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston
quite specifically rejected the claim that 'impurity profiling' made it possible to establish
that the source of the polonium was the Avangard facility at Sarov, her arguments being
accepted by Owen. Either Tait has not bothered to read the report or very much of the
coverage, or he is lying.
What Porton Down did do was to use 'impurity profiling', which can produce 'spectra'
identifying even the tiniest traces of substances, to frustrate the attempt to use the 'false
flag' attack at Ghouta on 21 August 2013 to inveigle the American and British governments
into destroying the Assad 'régime' and handing the country over to jihadists.
It may well be that this display of competence and integrity led to a 'clampdown' at the
organisation, which encouraged Boris Johnson to believe he could get away with lying about
what its scientists told him.
A general pattern which emerges is that the same small group of 'disinformation peddlers'
resurfaces in different contexts – and the pattern whereby 'private security companies'
are used to create a spurious impression of independence also recurs.
As I bring out in my piece on Ghouta, two figures who were critical in shaping the
'narrative' acccording to which Syrian government responsibility for the atrocity had been
conclusively proved, were Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, formerly the former commanding
officer of the UK Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, and also NATO's
Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion, and Dan Kaszeta.
Immediately after the story of the poisoning of the Skripals on 4 March broke, the same
duo reappeared, and have been as critical to shaping the 'narrative' about the later incident
as they were to that about the former.
(For the piece by Kaszeta on 'Bellingcat' which introduced the 'Novichok' theme four days
later, see
https://www.bellingcat.com/... .)
This makes it particular interesting to look at the website of Kaszeta's consultancy,
'Strongpoint Security Limited', in conjunction with the 'Companies House' documentation on
the company.
One would have thought from the website that his company was a small, but hardly
insignificant, player, in the field of 'physical and operational security.' As it happens,
having filed 'Total exemption small company accounts' since its incorporation in May 2011,
last December it filed 'Micro company accounts' for the year to 31 May 2017.
With a turnover of £20,000, staff costs of a bit more than half of that, and a
profit of £394, we can see that although unlike Matt Tait's, Kaszeta's company did
trade, if indeed it was his sole source of income, this pivotal figure in Anglo-American
'disinformation operations' was living on something less than $15,000 a year, at current
exchange rates. (Pull the other one, as we say in Britain.)
This is all the more ironic, as the website brings out quite how critical a figure Kaszeta
has been in obscuring the truth. From the bio he gives, we learn that having started as a
Chemical Officer in the U.S. Army, he worked for 12 years in the White House, dealing with
CBRN matters, before moving to Britain in 2008.
Among the articles to which he links on the site, we see his response in 'NOW Lebanon' in
December 2013 to Hersh's original 'Whose sarin?' piece on Ghouta, -- in which Kaszeta first
introduced the famous 'hexamine hypothesis.'
This – patently preposterous – suggestion that the presence of a single
'impurity' is a 'smoking gun' incriminating the Syrian government has echoed on into the
clearly corrupt OPCW documents purporting to demonstrate that it was responsible for the 4
April 2017 Khan Sheikhoun attack.
Of some interest in understanding where Kaszeta he is coming from is what he describes as
his 'oldest (and most footnoted on Wikipedia)' piece, which is an article published in 1988
on a site called 'Lituanus', on 'Lithuanian Resistance to Foreign Occupation 1940-52.'
As to Colonel de Bretton-Gordon, it is of interest to look at the attempt to 'finger' the
GRU over the Skripal poisoning published under the title 'UK Poisoning Inquiry turns to
Russian Agency in Mueller Indictments' in the 'New York Times' last Sunday, and the response
by the Russian Embassy in London to a question about it.
The response objects that 'while the British authorities keep concealing all information
concerning the investigation into the Salisbury incident, the newspaper has quoted "one
former US official familiar with the inquiry".'
It also asserts that that crucial evidence which has not been made available to the
Russians – and here, as with Ghouta and Khan Sheikhoun, the results of 'impurity
profiling' are critical – appears to have been shared not just with inappropriate
Americans, but with all kinds of others.
And indeed, the Embassy is quite right in suggesting that the claim made by the supposed
creator of 'Novichok', Vladimir Uglev, to the BBC in April about 'all the spectrum data I was
sent recently' has neither been confirmed nor denied. This seems a general pattern –
the 'spectra' which may actually be able to provide definitive answers to questions of
responsibility are only provided to people who can be relied upon to give the 'right'
answers.
The Embassy response also quite fairly refers to a report in the 'Times' also in April,
about the 'intelligence' which had been 'used to persuade world leaders that Moscow was
behind the poisoning' and that the 'Novichok' had been manufactured at the Shikhany facility
at in southwest Russia, which stated that de Bretton-Gordon, 'who had seen the intelligence,
called it very compelling.' He has a long history of lying about CW in Syria – so is
obviously the right person to lie about them in the UK.
It thus becomes interesting to probe into what lies behind the opening of de
Bretton-Gordon's entry on the 'Military Speakers' website ('Real Heroes; Real Stories.')
According to this, he is 'Chief Operating Office of SecureBio Ltd a commercial company
offering CBRN Resilience, consultancy and deployable capabilities.'
From 'Companies House', we learn that the liquidation of 'Secure Bio', which started in in
June 2015, was concluded in August last year. The really interesting thing about the records,
however, is that at the time of the liquidation the company had very large debts, which were
written off, of a kind and in a manner which suggested that de Bretton-Gordon's activities
may have been largely funded by loans from untraceable sources which were not meant to be
repaid.
Actually, with the 'NYT' report we come full circle. Among those quoted is Mark Galeotti
– apparently his admission that he had totally misrepresented the thinking of the
Russian General Staff has not him made more cautious about making extravagant claims about
its Main Intelligence Directorate (misreported as Main Directorate by the 'NYT.')
Also quoted are two figures who play key roles in Owen's Report – the Soviet era-GRU
defector 'Viktor Suvorov' (real name 'Vladimir Rezun') and the former KGB operative Yuri
Shvets. Both of these feature prominently in the posts on the Litvinenko affair to which I
have linked, and both were key members of the 'information operations' network centred around
the late Boris Berezovsky. This now seems to have taken control of American policy, as of
British.
The role of 'Suvorov'/Rezun in attempting to defend the interpretations of Stalin's policy
put forward by MI6 in the run-up to the Second World War, and those asserted later by General
Keitel, and the way he was demolished by the leading American historian of the War in the
East, Colonel David Glantz, and the Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, is too large a
subject to go into here.
However, it provides further reason to wonder whether the misreadings of Stalin's policy
which caused MI6 to give advice to Chamberlain which helped destroy the last chances of
preventing the Nazi-Soviet Pact, may still be the 'house view' of that organisation. It was,
obviously, the Pact which spelled 'curtains' both for Poland and the Baltics.
More evidence for the at least passive complicity of GCHQ – for which Matt Tait used
to work, and which Robert Hannigan used to run – in corrupt 'information operations'
comes in a report yesterday on CNN.
'Police have identified two suspects in the poisoning of former Russian double agent
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN
on Thursday.
'The pair left the UK in the wake of the attack on what is believed to have been a
commercial flight, the source added.
'Their departure was revealed in a coded Russian message to Moscow sent after the attack,
which was intercepted by a British base in Cyprus, the source said. The British government
blames the Skripals' poisoning on Russia.'
The base in question is high up in the Troodos mountains, and is formally run by the RAF
but actually a key resource for both GCHQ and NSA in monitoring communications over a wide
area. According to an internal document from the former organisation, it has 'long been
regarded as a 'Jewel in the Crown' by NSA as it offers unique access to the Levant, North
Africa, and Turkey'.
That the quote comes a report in 'The Intercept' in January 2016 revealing that one of the
uses of the Troodos facility is to intercept live video feeds from Israeli drones and fighter
jets brings out how paradoxical the world is. For it also appears to have emerged as an
important resource in 'information operations' in support of 'Borgist' agendas.
The claim about intercepts incriminating the Russians over the Salisbury incident was
first made in a piece by Marco Giannangeli in the Daily Express on 9 April, which followed up
the claims which Colonel de Bretton-Gordon had been instrumental in disseminating, and was
then widely picked up by the MSM.
It was headlined: 'REVEALED: The bombshell Russian message intercepted on DAY of Skripal
poisonings,' and opened: 'AN ELECTRONIC message to Moscow sent on the day former Russian spy
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury included
the phrase "the package has been delivered".'
Supposedly, this 'prompted a young Flight Lieutenant to recall a separate message that had
been intercepted and discounted on the previous day.' The messages were 'understood to have
formed "just one part" of the intelligence packet which later allowed Prime Minister Theresa
May to state it was "highly likely" that Russia was behind the attacks.'
As it happens, the same writer – Marco Giannangeli – had disseminated a
parallel piece of palpable fiction on 1 September 2013, in the 'Sunday Express', in relation
to the Ghouta 'false flag.'
This one was headlined, even more melodramatically, 'Senior Syrian military chiefs tell
captain: fire chemicals or be shot; BRITISH intelligence chiefs have intercepted radio
messages in which senior Syrian military chiefs are heard ordering the use of chemical
weapons.'
Part of the story of how bogus claims about 'smoking gun' evidence from 'SIGINT' were used
to support the attempt to use the Ghouta 'false flag' to inveigle the British and Americans
into destroying the Syrian government was told in my SST post on the incident. However, to
mix metaphors, I only scratched the surface of a can of worms.
In a report on the 'Daily Caller' site on 29 August 2013, Kenneth Timmerman claimed that
the sequence had started with an actual intercept by Unit 8200 – the Israeli equivalent
of GCHQ and NSA.
Claiming to base his account on Western intelligence sources, he suggested that:
'According to these officers, who served in top positions in the United States, Britain,
France, Israel, and Jordan, a Syrian military communication intercepted by Israel's famed
Unit 8200 electronic intelligence outfit has been doctored so that it leads a reader to just
the opposite conclusion reached by the original report.'
While I am not in a position to establish whether his claim is or is not accurate, an AP
report on the same day quoted 'U.S. intelligence officials' explaining that 'an intercept of
Syrian military officials discussing the strike was among low-level staff, with no direct
evidence tying the attack back to an Assad insider or even a senior Syrian commander'.
Meanwhile, Timmerman's claim that 'The doctored report was picked up on Israel's Channel 2
TV on Aug. 24, then by Focus magazine in Germany, the Times of Israel, and eventually by The
Cable in Washington, DC' is supported by links to the relevant stories, which say what he
claims they say.
Moreover, it seems clear that the 1 September 2013 report was an attempt to counter a
– somewhat devastating – critique made in a 31 August post entitled 'The Troodos
Conundrum' by the former British Ambassador Craig Murray, who had been closely involved with
the facility during his time at the Foreign Office (and has written invaluable material on
the Salisbury incident.)
Precisely because of the closeness of the GCHQ/NSA collaboration, Murray brought out,
there was indeed a major problem explaining why claims about 'SIGINT' had been central to the
case made in the 'Government Assessment' released by the White House on 30 August 2013, but
not even mentioned in the Joint Intelligence Community 'Assessment' produced two days
before.
The answer, Murray suggested, was that the 'intelligence' came from Mossad, and so would
not have been automatically shared with the British. But, given the superior capabilities of
Troodos, if Mossad had it, the British should have also. So his claims 'meshed' with those by
Timmerman and the AP, and the 'Express' report looks like a lame attempt at a cover-up.
Again however, one finds the world is a paradoxical place. As I noted in my SST post,
detailed demolitions of the claims about 'SIGINT' in relation to Ghouta were provided both
Seymour Hersh, in the 'Whose sarin?' article, and also on the 'Who Attacked Ghouta?' site
masterminded by one 'sasa wawa.'
Later, it became clear that this was likely to be the Israeli technology entrepreneur Saar
Wilf, a former employee of Unit 8200. So this may – or may not – be an indication
of deep divisions within Israeli intelligence.
Between 18 March and 31 April, a fascinating series of posts on the Salisbury incident
appeared on the 'Vineyard of the Saker' blog. The author, who used the name 'sushi', was a
self-professed IT professsional, who had however obviously acquired an extensive familiarity
with 'chemical forensics' and appeared to have some experience of 'SIGINT.'
In a 14 April post, 'sushi' produced a dismissal of the claims about 'SIGINT' implicating
the Russians over the Salisbury incident quite as contemptuous as that which 'sasa wawa' had
produced in relation to the claims about it incriminating the Syrian government over
Ghouta.
Pointing to the implausibility of the story disseminated by the 'Express', he remarked
that:
'It is doubted that any message traffic is processed on Cyprus. It is more likely that the
entire take is transmitted back to GCHQ in Cheltenham via a fibre optic link. There exabytes
of take are processed, not by a bored flight lieutenant, but by banks of high speed
computers.
'Clearly someone in Cheltenham has committed a programming error. Anyone with any
knowledge of secret communications knows that the code phrase used to confirm a murder in
Salisbury is "small pizza, no anchovies." '
Interestingly, another paper in the 'Express' group made a parallel claim in relation to
the Khan Sheikhoun incident to that about the Ghouta incident, but the story was not picked
up and may indeed have been suppressed.
On 9 April, the paper published a report headlined 'Brit spies' lead role in Syrian air
strikes; RAF BASE IS 'WEAPON.' This claimed that 'within an hour of the airstrike', Troodos
had intercepted communications revealing that nerve gas had been used, and had been delivered
by jets from the Syrian Arab Air Force's Shayrat Air Base.
"... By creating an extremely anti-communist state, the elite will never have to worry about losing control over society because their wealth and power remains safe and sound. ..."
It is an evolution of conspiracy theory, not requiring any kind of convoluted logic or
story telling that used to be required for conspiracy theory to stick. Fake News allows for
simple, truthful, and logical information to be dismissed out of hand, without
examination.
Here's an ad about COCs (PDF) from
1942. They're used for tanning leather, in soaps and perfumes, as insect repellents, for
dying cloth, as antiseptics, and for many, many other commercial and industrial
purposes.
Damn those Syrian butchers for dropping perfume on civilians!
Fake News is the 21st century version of Conspiracy Theory.
It is an evolution of conspiracy theory, not requiring any kind of convoluted logic or
story telling that used to be required for conspiracy theory to stick. Fake News allows
for simple, truthful, and logical information to be dismissed out of hand, without
examination.
@The Voice In the
Wilderness In the dim reaches of pre-history, when Walter Cronkite was reporting, a
real journalist wouldn't report that someone launched a chemical weapons attack unless the
journalist had at least two credible, independent sources providing solid evidence that the
story was true. Newspaper editors and television producers knew their reputations were on the
line and that their competitors would make sure the egg on their face stuck if they reported
something blatantly wrong.
Nowadays, there are no competitors, because journalists and news outlets are mostly
hanging out together in one big cheery cartel, every member of which will defend every other
member to protect the reputation of the whole. The goal is not to outdo competitors and gain
more eyeballs or a greater distribution or greater authority over public opinion. The goal is
to defend the status quo by any means necessary, while somehow maintaining the credibility of
the press.
But no, they shouldn't have published a story that Assad had launched a chemical weapons
attack unless they had a significant amount of solid evidence that it was true.
I have a hard time understanding how people can even begin to credit this crap, given how
close it is to what they told us about Saddam Hussein. But it's actually even worse, because
at least Hussein did, at one time, use chemical weapons on the Kurds. I mean, at least he did
it once, even if he didn't have weapons of mass destruction ready to aim at Israel, or the
Saudis, or the U.S.
#7
It was big news. But failure to report it as false with just as much (or more) attention
and timing was journalistic malpractice. They should have been outraged to have been
conned into spreading false propaganda. IF they were legitimate journalists.
@Cant Stop the
Macedonian Signal
I don't know that anyone waits for confirmation anymore. And the two sources could
be the CIA and VOA or one of their tame journalists.
Credibility is in the eye of the beholder. After they all jumped on Saddam's WMD one can
hardly compare them with Cronkite.
I do remember web blogs asking to please wait for the UN inspectors report. When that
report did come out, anyone with integrity, even if not a professional journalist, would have
highlighted that report and retracted the original and not figuratively bury it on page
56.
But we are substantially together on this. They reported is as fact not as an
unsubstantiated claim.
Chomsky's Five News Filters: A little dated but a good starting point.
The first filter is Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation of the Mass Media. Mainstream
media is essentially owned by corporations and the government, because those are the very
agents who fund them. Any favourable studies, studies or information that the government or
corporations want the public to know (or don't want them to know) either ends up being aired
or buried as a result.
The second filter is Advertising License to do Business. Mass media isn't interested in
attracting viewers to educate them, but rather to sell them on something. They're more
interested in engaging an audience with higher buying power than actually making a difference
through education and information. Chomsky provides an excellent example, explaining: "CBS proudly tells its shareholders that while it "continuously seeks to maximize audience
delivery," it has developed a new "sales tool" with which it approaches advertisers: "Client
Audience Profile, or CAP, will help advertisers optimize the effectiveness of their network
television schedules by evaluating audience segments in proportion to usage levels of
advertisers' products and services." In short, the mass media are interested in attracting
audiences with buying power, not audiences per se."
The third filter is Sourcing Mass-Media News. Whatever is aired on mass media needs to be
100% credible, meaning it's viewers need to completely trust what's being aired, without the
need of them using their critical thinking skills. Since the majority of the public trusts
the government and mass corporations, AKA the propaganda machines, most of the "news worthy"
content comes from them. Plus, whatever's aired needs to be approved by corporations or the
government and/or mass media must avoid airing anything that would offend their contributors
and funders.
The fourth filter is Flak and the Enforcers. "Flak" refers to negative responses to a
media statement or program aired on the network. Perhaps the most influential producers of
flak are corporations and the government. Corporations have created large scale organizations
whose sole purpose is to produce flak. The government is also a large producer of flak, as it
constantly corrects or threatens the media based on their interests.
The final filter is Anticommunism as a Control Mechanism. Everything at home seems to be a
lesser evil if there's something on the news that seems much worse (fake terrorist attacks,
false enemies, and/or "radical" states). Anything that sounds too left can also be dismissed
if it sounds too much like "communism." By creating an extremely anti-communist state, the
elite will never have to worry about losing control over society because their wealth and
power remains safe and sound.
@fakenews
namely big, opinion-policing non-profits and their lobbyists and followers, ranging from
religious denominations, to AIPAC and the NRA, to the ADL and SPLC.
@Blueslide@Blueslide
The investigation ain't over till it's over, and I'm still willing to hear new data, but
this:
No organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the
environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties.
Doesn't look good for your (and the U.S. media's, and the U.S. military's) version of
history. I'm also noticing that the evidence of chlorine is limited to two sites. I want to
know what's up at those two sites, and what's up with those canisters. But that sounds like
only limited parts of the attacked area demonstrate evidence of chlorine. If it were a
chlorine gas attack, wouldn't we expect to find evidence of chlorine in most of the attack
zone? I'm not a chemist, but if you spray poison gas on people in an open area, wouldn't
residue of that poison spread throughout the area? If it is confined to two sites, doesn't it
bear asking whether the chlorine found was, in fact, weaponized? As edg mentioned above,
people use chlorine, unlike sarin, for many things other than killing people.
Then there's the question of credibility. We're living in a time where this happens:
Millions of YouTube viewers have been captivated by the 'Syrian hero boy' who manages
to rescue a little girl while under gunfire. Now a group of Norwegian filmmakers have told
BBC Trending they are behind it. They say it was filmed on location in Malta this summer with
the intention of being presented as real .
Lars Klevberg, a 34-year-old film director based in Oslo, wrote a script after
watching news coverage of the conflict in Syria. He says he deliberately presented the film
as reality in order to generate a discussion about children in conflict zones.
"If I could make a film and pretend it was real, people would share it and react with
hope," he said. "We shot it in Malta in May this year on a set that was used for other famous
movies like Troy and Gladiator," Klevberg said. "The little boy and girl are professional
actors from Malta. The voices in the background are Syrian refugees living in
Malta."
Were they comfortable making a film that potentially deceived millions of people? "I was not
uncomfortable," Klevberg said. "By publishing a clip that could appear to be authentic we
hoped to take advantage of a tool that's often used in war; make a video that claims to be
real. We wanted to see if the film would get attention and spur debate, first and foremost
about children and war. We also wanted to see how the media would respond to such a
video."
A tool that's often used in war; make a video that claims to be real. Well, that sounds
like warmongering propaganda to me, but hey, if Norwegian filmmakers want to wrap it up in a
candy coating of concern for children, well, that, too is a tool that's often used in war.
When all else fails, the proponents of war always pull out "save the little children." It
used to be "keep that brute from molesting your women," but now that women are emancipated,
sort of, it's usually "save the little children."
So once the film was made, how did it go viral? "It was posted to our YouTube account
a few weeks ago but the algorithm told us it was not going to trend," Klevberg said. "So we
deleted that and re-posted it." The filmmakers say they added the word "hero" to the new
headline and tried to send it out to people on Twitter to start a conversation. It was then
picked up by Shaam Network, a channel that features material from the Middle East, which
posted it on YouTube. Then it began to attract international attention.
It didn't get enough hits? Add the word "hero" to it. That should do it. Regular Mother
Teresas these folks.
Since being uploaded to YouTube on Monday the video has been watched more than five
million times and inspired thousands of comments. There has been a big debate about whether
it is genuine. How those viewers will react to learning that it's a work of fiction remains
to be seen. "We are really happy with the reaction," Klevberg said. "It created a
debate."
If you were concerned with the fate of children in war, would you want a debate over
whether or not your film was real? Why would that make you "really happy?" Won't at least
some of the viewers "react to learning that it's a work of fiction" result in people becoming
cynical and jaundiced about similar images, rather than passionately inspired to stop war, or
at least to get more children out of war zones?
Why couldn't you just use one of the many pictures of actual children in war zones? Like
this:
Oh, I'm sorry. That was a Palestinian kid. They don't count.
Actually, images from Gaza are very useful in promoting the war in Syria:
A
Cleveland-based user who goes by the name of Sami Sharbek has posted two photos on his
Twitter account – one showing Middle Eastern-looking residential blocks being bombed
from the air; the other depicting a man carrying a crying child. "This is not a movie. This
is Syria," he wrote in the caption.
The post was widely retweeted and liked. As of Wednesday morning, it had racked up
over 125,000 shares and 154,000 likes. However, what many people failed to notice is that the
photos portraying the perils of war were shot outside Syria.
Some users have shared the links to news stories featuring the original photos.
"Wrong," John Mangun, BusinessMirror Columnist, tweeted, sharing a link to a 2014 Independent
story covering Israeli air raids on Palestine.
This photo shows the same airstrike featured in the photo tweeted by Sharbek. It
comes from Reuters' coverage of an Israeli strike on eastern Gaza city.
So that's the world we live in. People make movies and music videos with images of war,
and those images are circulated as real, sometimes with the consent of the filmmakers,
sometimes not. People take footage from other times and other places and hold them up as
documentary evidence of something happening in Syria. Interestingly, those other places seem
often to be Gaza, Iraq, or Yemen.
Under these circumstances, it's hard to blame people for being skeptical and not simply
leaping to the conclusions they are offered. It's not surprising that some are unwilling to
say "Oh, a witness said it was the Syrian government? OK by me. It must have been the Syrian
government." How the hell do I know who that witness was, or whether or not he was actually
in the pay of someone? How much goddamned corruption and how many lies are we supposed to
swallow before we become suspicious? Aren't the people who are spreading these stories in
many cases the same people who spread stories of WMDs in Iraq?
#9.1 I did...then I
went on to read the analyses about Saraqib (not mentioned here).
The FFM determined that chlorine, released from cylinders through mechanical
impact, was likely used as a chemical weapon on 4 February 2018 in the Al Talil
neighbourhood of Saraqib.
So I get that the witness testimony claiming a helicopter dropped gas is not "proof"
that Assad did it, but it's good enough for me. And the fact that the identical m.o.
appears to be at play in Douma is speculative on my part.
Speculating that this is all a made up conspiracy to justify attacks against Assad
tends to fly in the face of evidence provided by OPCW. But that's just my opinion.
"... Repeated requests by Russia to obtain a sample of the alleged nerve agent for testing were rejected by the British government in spite of the fact that a military grade nerve agent would have surely killed both the Skripals as well as anyone else within 100 yards. As the latest British account of the location of the alleged poison places it on the door handle of the Scripals' residence, the timetable element was also unconvincing. That meant that the two would have spent three hours, including a stop at a pub and lunch, before succumbing on a park bench. Military grade nerve agents kill instantly. ..."
"... Nevertheless, the politically weak May government, desperately seeking a formidable foreign enemy to rally around against, insisted that Russia, almost certainly acting under orders from Vladimir Putin himself, carried out the killing of a former British double agent who had been released from a Kremlin prison in a spy swap and who was no longer capable of doing any damage to Russia. Putin apparently did all that in spite of the fact that he had an election coming up and would be the host of the World Cup in the summer, an event that would be an absolute top priority to have go smoothly. ..."
Poisoning enemies has a long history with Augustus Caesar's wife Livia allegedly a master of the art, as were the Borgias in Renaissance
Italy. Lately there has been a resurgence in allegations regarding the use of poisons of various types by several governments. The
claims are particularly damaging both morally and legally as international conventions regard the use of poisonous chemical compounds
as particularly heinous, condemning their use because they, when employed in quantity, become "weapons of mass destruction," killing
indiscriminately and horribly, making no distinction between combatants and civilians. Their use is considered to be a "war crime"
and the government officials who ordered their deployment are "war criminals," subject to prosecution by the International Criminal
Court in The Hague.
There are two important poisoning stories that have made the news recently. Both are follow-ups to reporting that has appeared
in the news over the past few months and both are particularly interesting because they tend to repudiate earlier coverage that had
been largely accepted by several governments as well as the media and the chattering class of paid experts that appears on television.
The first story relates to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March.
There was quite a bit that was odd about the Skripal case, which
relied from the start " on circumstantial evidence and secret intelligence." And there was inevitably a rush to judgment. British
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson blamed Russia less than forty-eight hours after the Skripals were found unconscious on a bench in
Salisbury England, too soon for any chemical analysis of the alleged poisoning to have taken place.
British Prime Minister Theresa May threw gasoline on the fire when she addressed Parliament shortly thereafter to blame the Kremlin
and demand a Russian official response to the event in 36 hours, declaring that the apparent poisoning was "very likely" caused by
a made-in-Russia nerve agent referred to by its generic name novichok. The British media was soon on board with a vengeance, spreading
the government line that such a highly sensitive operation would require the approval of President Vladimir Putin himself. The expulsion
of Russian diplomats soon followed with the United States and other countries following suit.
Repeated requests by Russia to obtain a sample of the alleged nerve agent for testing were rejected by the British government
in spite of the fact that a military grade nerve agent would have surely killed both the Skripals as well as anyone else within 100
yards. As the latest British account of the location of the alleged poison places it on the door handle of the Scripals' residence,
the timetable element was also unconvincing. That meant that the two would have spent three hours, including a stop at a pub and
lunch, before succumbing on a park bench. Military grade nerve agents kill instantly.
The head of Britain's own chemical weapons facility Porton Down
even contradicted claims made by May, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, and British Ambassador in Moscow Laurie Bristow. The lab's
Chief Executive Gary Aitkenhead testified that he did not know if the nerve agent was actually produced in Russia, a not surprising
observation as the chemical formula was revealed to the public in a scientific paper in 1992 and there are an estimated twenty countries
capable of producing it. There are also presumed stocks of novichok remaining in independent countries that once were part of the
Soviet Union, to include Russia's enemy du jour Ukraine, while a false flag operation by the British themselves, the CIA
or Mossad, is not unthinkable.
Nevertheless, the politically weak May government, desperately seeking a formidable foreign enemy to rally around against,
insisted that Russia, almost certainly acting under orders from Vladimir Putin himself, carried out the killing of a former British
double agent who had been released from a Kremlin prison in a spy swap and who was no longer capable of doing any damage to Russia.
Putin apparently did all that in spite of the fact that he had an election coming up and would be the host of the World Cup in the
summer, an event that would be an absolute top priority to have go smoothly.
Now there has been an actual death in Amesbury near Salisbury that has been attributed to novichok. On June 30 th ,
Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were admitted to hospital after being found unconscious. Sturgess died eight days later. The May
government has not yet blamed it on Putin or even on a clumsy Russian operative that might have
inadvertently left behind a vial of poison or a used syringe,
though Home Secretary Sajid Javid came close to that when he suggested
that Russia was using Britain as a "dumping ground for poisons." Police suggestions that the poisoned couple appear to have handled
novichok infused material of some kind before succumbing appears to be contradicted by inability to find the actual source of the
alleged exposure.
British government dancing around the issue notwithstanding, there have been suggestions that the closest source of more novichok
might well be the U.K. government labs at nearby Porton Down, only seven miles from Salisbury and Amesbury, which increases suspicion
about the original story promulgated by Downing Street. Would the British government actually poison an expendable ex-Russian spy
and his daughter to divert attention from a domestic political problem at home? It's worth considering as the "blame it all on Putin
narrative" becomes even less credible.
The second story comes from Syria, where there is also a Russian hand as Moscow is aiding the government of Bashar al-Assad. The
by now notorious April 7, 2018 alleged chemical attack on the rebel-held Syrian city of Douma was widely blamed by Western countries
and the mainstream media on Assad's forces. This resulted in a decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to order massive U.S.-led
retaliatory airstrikes against targets reportedly involved in chemical production in and around Damascus.
Trump blamed
"animal Assad" for
"using nerve agents" and both the media and most European governments followed that line, concluding that Damascus had ordered
the chemical attacks a mere moments after videos purporting to show scores of chemical attack victims first surfaced from rebel sources,
long before U.S. intelligence could have made its own assessment. A 5-page
White House assessment released on April 13th, just days after the alleged attack
asserted that sarin was used at Douma , claiming that "A significant body of information points to the regime using chlorine
in its bombardment of Duma, while some additional information points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin."
Independent sources warned at the time that
not a single neutral observer was on the ground to confirm that chemical agents launched by the Syrian government had, in fact,
been used, but were ignored. All of the sources reporting the attack were either affiliated with the rebels who occupied the area
or were not physically present in Douma.
Now, finally, three months later, there has been a credible independent report on what was determined about the attack through
chemical analysis of traces recovered in Douma. A preliminary report published last Friday by the Organization for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found no traces of any nerve agent like sarin at the site. The OPCW report
states this clearly : "No organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples
or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties."
This means that the Trump Administration claimed to have details relating to an event in a foreign country that it did not know
and could not actually confirm to be true. And it used that as a justification for ordering an airstrike that killed people and destroyed
targets in Syria. Will the White House respond to the OPCW report and apologize, possibly to include reparations for an unjustified
attack on another sovereign nation? Don't hold your breath.
The Salisbury and Douma attacks are illustrative of just what happens when a government is prepared to dissimulate or even lie
to go the extra mile to make a case to justify preemptive action that otherwise might be challenged. Theresa May is, unfortunately,
still in power and so is Donald Trump. In a better world an outraged public would demand that they be thrown out of office and even
possibly subjected to the tender ministrations of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. With power comes accountability,
or at least that should be the rule, but it is a dictum that has for some time been ignored. Even given that, one might hope that
the blunders will not be repeated, but there is not even any assurance that either May or Trump is much given to "lessons learned"
or that a Mike Pence or Boris Johnson would be any better. That is our tragedy.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational
foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is
www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134
and its email is [email protected].
Putin apparently did all that in spite of the fact that he had an election coming up and would be the host of the World
Cup in the summer, an event that would be an absolute top priority to have go smoothly.
[...]
Would the British government actually poison an expendable ex-Russian spy and his daughter to divert attention from a domestic
political problem at home? It's worth considering as the "blame it all on Putin narrative" becomes even less credible.
Mr. Giraldi,
these were my thoughts at first too, but I looked into the case quite extensively over the last several weeks and came to the
conclusion that Putin actually had more of a motive than the British government, et al.
This is my evolution on the Skripals' case:
On Skripal I'm not entirely certain, since I haven't really looked into the case. Also the timing of the incident seems
to be not what Putin would have chosen, in my opinion, since it was too close to the soccer World Cup events/celebrations in
Russia, and Putin usually tries to be conciliatory with the West before big sporting events like that in Russia, e.g. when
he released Khodorkovsky early before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, for example.
As I said before, I was agnostic about the Skripal case and tried to keep an open mind about it and not reflexively blame
it on (the) Russians (government), but you providing me with this additional information makes me actually more of a believer
in the official Western narrative now.
Repeated requests by Russia to obtain a sample of the alleged nerve agent for testing were rejected by the British government
in spite of the fact that a military grade nerve agent would have surely killed both the Skripals as well as anyone else within
100 yards.
It was hilarious to watch yesterday evening, as the presidential plane had been underway for two and a half hours, the consternation
on CNN.
As I expected, the vague accusations about Russian meddling in the elections continued this morning, on CNN.
I remember an interview on CNN before the elections, someoen said 'if Trump wins', the two of CNN burst into laughter.
I do hope Trump survives, politically and fysically.
Luckily is it not very ease to murder a president these days.
On top of that, Sept 11 made many all over the world quite suspicious.
I for one never believed that Russia would be so stupid as to try to murder two former spies in such a stupid way, and without
any motive.
MH17 is a similar case.
Assad also is not stupid, he had no interest whatsoever to use poison gas in Syria.
How Arafat died we still do not know, that was done professionally, or maybe not, if I had to kill him I would try to make his
death look natural, a clear cause.
Who had a motive is quite clear.
Until the unhinged May lets Yulia go freeif she's still aliveand go back to Russia and tell her side of the story, nothing will
change.
The so-called Deep State and its willing toady, the corrupt, lying MSM are accomplices in this False Flag and they are the
ones that should be in the dock at the ICC. But since the ICC is part of the Deep State, don't expect this to happen.
This Russian bashing has gotten completely out of hand. And now that Putin has stated that the sleazy Russian thief oligarch
Browder helped launder 400 million to the DNC-Clinton Mob, it's going to get very interesting, if not dangerous for humanity.
They need a BIG distraction to get the sheeple's thought off the truth that there is NOTHING to the Putin-Trump election meddling,
anything might happen, even a repeat of the Israeli masterminded 9/11 False Flag.
Does 'Lucky Larry' own anymore asbestos-laden skyscrapers?
i would love to make a formal complaint about conspiracies because there are people who will and do make trouble for others. it
has taken me a long time to come to that place but it is no joke as dr. geraldi no doubt knows.
however, one needs the evidence and what has been lacking in all these accusations whether its russia and us elections, chemical
weapons in syria, or supposed poisoning of three people formerly associated with russia, there is suspicion, and there is narrative,
but little in the way of facts. and if any of these accusations were concerning single individual battling mere gossip and innuendo
or other nefarious behaviors, i have learned to discount nothing. look if you can't bring a coupon into a store, wait for coffee
without people launching into fits of fear of life . . . then who knows what triggers people's self defense. it apparently dos
not take much for the supposed superior people to make their inferiors look off kilt. i just take it granted that when i leave
my house, on occasion, i have visitors as "nutty" as that sounds.
but these cases have multiple researchers and resources to bar on the matter and yet, the evidence is either mere narrative,
contradicted or has a variety of explanations just as reasonable or more reasonable. but what we have is an entire population
engaged in manufacturing not one but several cases in which the president of the us actually engaged in treason based on sketchy
financial dealings with russian banks and financial elites.
and i think this article makes the case that people with power who engage in wielding accusations should be held to the standard
of providing evidence. and while i am a little uncomfortable with our president engaging in open debate with our intel community
from overseas, his objection is well put. the process of evidence collection and by independent objective observers is unreasonable.
yet he found it quite convenient to buy the argument by the same intel agencies for said use in syria. the election is over, but
the war about the election, the level of dislike of the elected , i think it is fair to say has never been so widespread and deep
such that members of the government or government agencies would sign up to press the matter.
and quip reflctions about the damage being done and "it's all in one's head" just are insufficient to address the issues.
frankly, i think the country's not outraged because they are "drama fatigued" last week in attempting to capture a stray kitten
who disappearance has me overly stretched i never used to like cats bells rang and doors closed indicating that she had in
fact been enclosed on the patio around two am or so only to discover a cute little skunk was the detainee. whose release required
navigating around the house twice because the door locked actually worked. sometimes the evidence doesn't doesn't reveal what
was expected.
as for the kitten, evidence suggests she managed to punch her way through a steel mesh garage vent. now i suspect that someone
recently punched a hole in those mesh barriers, but that is speculation on my part, even likely speculation. however, minus the
proof that is all it is. a mysterious frustrating event.
With the sad demise of the woman of the couple, the continuing make-up story in MSM makes the twist that the nerve agent was found
in a perfume bottle. While of these two non-Russian people (who allegedly were former drug-addicts) one may suspect that they
pick up any strange bottle from the ground and have a sniff at it, this is completely surrealistic in the case of the Skripals.
The difference couldn't be bigger between these two couples. Anyhow, the clue that brings them four together is the vicinity of
Porton Down, where chemical weapons are stored & tested.
If I had to guess at what's been going on in Salisbury I'd wonder if a lunatic/evil employee at Porton Down has smuggled out something
nasty and is amusing himself with it.
The author laments that May and Trump are still in office.
She will last longer than he will. Trump will be out in three months either by impeachment and conviction or by other means. None
of this clandestine stuff like poisoning but by a military coup. I remember the era of 7 Days in May but that was not serious
just a storey teller weaving a good yarn. Today, we have members of Congress and large numbers of the media(probably over 50 percent)
calling for a Armed Forces take over.
The probable stumbling block is how to skip Pense and go directly to Speaker Paul Ryan. Or how to dispense with the chain of succession
entirely and enshrine Hilary or recall Obama until the emergency is over.
Is Mad Dog the man or will McMaster lead the coup? Remember, anyone wearing more than one star made the elite grade during the
Obama regime and some of the one stars had formative years as O-6 and O-5 while Obama ruled supreme.
Quickly, not instantly. If you had an atropine pen handy, you might survive, though it would leave you immobilised and dazed.
If the Skripals were dosed, it would likely have been at or near the bench where they were found. Residue on their clothing might
be weak enough to not kill the constable.
The only thing the Salisbury incidents provide evidence for is that our culture is prone to hysterical outrage over anything
relating to Russia or Putin.
And that's true even if it were rogue elements in the Russian security services.
What I really loved about the coverage of the Skripal "poisoning" were the pictures of the cops wearing hazmat suits to clean
up the park bench. In the same shot birds were hopping around apparently unaffected by the deadly nerve gas. So we're to believe
that this stuff could kill a big cop but not a 2 pound pigeon .
British secret service and its 3 main children CIA, Mossad, Saudi General Intelligence Agency are morally capable of committing
any horror imaginable against civilians, even their own.
The Anglo-Zionist Empire is desperate to find the One Ring That Rules Them All.
That's so naοve. When you commit a crime and have witnesses in your custody, you make sure they never talk. "Elementary, Watson",
as Holmes used to say.
That's why we have "journalists" and "historians," mass media and skoolink (yooniversities included), and I find it amazing
that the stories change as fast as the agendas.
Oh "These Kids today" that old refrain again, and it's getting old too, all the emphasis on kids anyway, from concerns about
posterity, to the unending posturing about faux parent related concerns sublimated in one way or another to the other mantra:
" oh the Children" thing that phony liberal types do.
But to the point:
What a pity Western "Intelligence" seems to have never heard the story of The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf'.
When do these little monsters ever get a chance to hear childhood stories nowadays glued to their carry style devices, wearable
devices, soon inserted devices , to hear any of the old wisdom? It now isn't all that likely. It is more the kids teaching
the kids in a modern high tech reality version of Lord of the Flies scenario.
When they are inevitably inducted into the professions as they will, replacing remnants of earlier generations that maybe still
had been somewhat exposed to folk tales and stories, or better TV of earlier times, well, don't be surprised that the rank and
file of the intelligence industry, like elsewhere is unable personally to easily navigate anything, much less possessing inborn
sensibility gained from age old culture and all that. Could it be in the whole Fake News genre too, it seems to indicate
some dialectic flaw in thinking, (a priori as it were.) I feel like it's coming from youngsters lacking any frame of reference/experience
blundering, not being held to account!
The Brat Pack was given free reign and away they go arrogant to a fault
What was folk knowledge is a cumbersome, anachronistic, vestigial relic of another era, sought to be replaced soon, by robots.
None of this clandestine stuff like poisoning but by a military coup. I remember the era of 7 Days in May but that was not
serious just a storey teller weaving a good yarn. Today, we have members of Congress and large numbers of the media(probably
over 50 percent) calling for a Armed Forces take over.
Watching too many old movies now , haven't we? LOL!!
The probable stumbling block is how to skip Pense and go directly to Speaker Paul Ryan. Or how to dispense with the chain
of succession entirely and enshrine Hilary or recall Obama until the emergency is over.
Ok, now you need to be put down or at least committed. LOL
I'm glad Litvinenko Sr. is taken care of in his old age by the Russian state:
BAD CHEMISTRY? Ft. Walter Litvinenko, Father of Alexander Litvinenko
Although he chose to leave Russian of his own will, the authorities were unlikely to welcome him back and his dramatic u-turn
looks like a calculated attempt to smooth the way for his return to the country of his birth.
Clearly relishing Mr Litvinenko senior's propaganda gift in the run-up to a presidential election expected to be won by
Vladimir Putin next month, Russian state TV said the unhappy exile had run out of money and that electricity and gas had been
cut off to his tiny Italian flat for non-payment of bills.
[...]
Alexander Goldfarb, the co-author of a book about the murder and a friend of the late Litvinenko, accused Russian TV of acting
in an irresponsible and inhumane manner, saying the Kremlin's propaganda chiefs had exploited his grief and troubled psychological
condition.
"They used the troubled psychological state of an elderly man for propaganda purposes in order to whitewash Alexander's
killers," he said.
"Walter is going through a really tough time in connection with his wife's death a few months ago and feels lonely. It happens
with old people."
Skripals 'were under Russian surveillance' BBC Newsnight
Newsnight's Diplomatic and Defence Editor, Mark Urban, reveals that the Skripals 'were under Russian surveillance' and that
he personally had several meetings with Sergei Skripal last year.
I am very embarrassed for the GRU , they are even more incompetent than the French Secret Service combat swimmers who blew
up the that Greenpeace ship. Russia should have sent a Spetsnaz veteran with his trusty entrenching tool to deal with Skripal.
Or maybe one of their Kamikazi exploding dogs.
Maybe Putin did have them killed or poisoned because Russian intelligence had uncovered their plot to explode a dirty
bomb in London which had been set up so as to implicate the Russians. The plotters were foiled and hoist by their own petard.
I tell you a secret. GRU agents, on direct orders from Putin, killed JFK, burnt Giordano Bruno, crucified Christ, and poisoned
Socrates. What's more, they are also responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Didn't you suspect that?
I did not even know those you named had ever been in the GRU, let alone they were British moles.
If you wake up and there is snow all over the ground, that is circumstantial evidence that it snowed in the night. When a Russian
poisons Russians there is not all this Technical Tom sophistry, and motive is important especially when it supports the circumstantial
evidence.
' Theresa May is, unfortunately, still in power and so is Donald Trump. In a better world an outraged public would demand that
they be thrown out of office '
At least in the case of Trump, the problem with rejecting him is, as it always has been, the alternative.
It's literally oppressive that to date, no superior alternative to Trump has emerged. However, like it or not, one hasn't.
Is there a superior alternative to May? If there is, why didn't Brits get rid of that embarrassment? Next to her even John
Major looks like an outstanding statesman.
Every time I think about it, I do find it truly astonishing that we (the USA) launched a missile salvo into Syria based on an
obvious and now proven false flag, and very few people seem to care. This is one of those glaring, "hidden in plain sight"
contradictions to the narrative which tells me that, while the Deep State is finally losing some ground, its liquidation is far,
far from over and all kinds of things are going to fall apart as this thrashing monster slowly sinks beneath the waves.
Yes, interesting that PG has only now brought to a UR article that rather obvious possible connection between Porton Down and
the nearby poisonings.
I don't think it is one of his major areas of attention. Why else would he include with Trump the unfortunate May as someone
he would like to see people rise up against and throw out of office for offences unstated?
Her performance on Skripal right or wrong is hardly worth mentioning when deciding whether and when she has to go. Compared
to Brexit give it a 2 per cent weighting.
My guess is that we haven't heard the last of Ms. Hyphen-Cortez.
"Ocasio-Cortez hedges criticisms of Israel 'I may not use the right words'
US Politics Philip Weiss on July 15, 2018
Rising Democratic star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex, soon to go to Congress from NY, all but apologized for using words "massacre"
and "occupation" about Israel, saying she spoke as an "activist," and she is no expert on the Middle East and is willing to "learn
and evolve." '
Her performance has included telling bald-faced lies, lies that are easily exposed as lies too. This is rarely if ever going
to add weight to any personal brand, let alone that of a political leader. She's toast!
"... And those who are crying "fake news" the most often and the most loudly and using that phrase to discredit anything they do not want to rebut with actual information -- those people are the most suspect. Just like those who cry "conspiracy theory" whenever they see a hypothesis that they do not want to have investigated and want to derail. ..."
"... It would not surprise me at all to learn that both of these phrases were cooked up in some corner of Langley to use to get control of the media. ..."
"... Instead of "dissidents" being labeled schizophrenic and sent to psychiatric wards, as in the USSR, they are labeled as conspiracy theorists and purveyors of "fake news" and the effect is about the same, minus the cost of upkeep in a ward. ..."
"Rather than yell at the top of one's lungs "Fake News" when they read a mainstream or
alternative media story, and immediately discount everything, people ought look CRITICALLY at
the facts, consider any bias, read other sources on the issue, and then draw their own
conclusions."
Absolutely. And those who are crying "fake news" the most often and the most loudly and
using that phrase to discredit anything they do not want to rebut with actual information --
those people are the most suspect. Just like those who cry "conspiracy theory" whenever they
see a hypothesis that they do not want to have investigated and want to derail.
It would not
surprise me at all to learn that both of these phrases were cooked up in some corner of
Langley to use to get control of the media.
Instead of "dissidents" being labeled
schizophrenic and sent to psychiatric wards, as in the USSR, they are labeled as conspiracy
theorists and purveyors of "fake news" and the effect is about the same, minus the cost of
upkeep in a ward.
"... In my last post I set out the official Government account of the events in the Skripal Case. Here I examine the credibility of this story. Next week I shall look at alternative explanations. ..."
In my last post I set out the official Government account of the events in the Skripal
Case. Here I examine the credibility of this story. Next week I shall look at alternative
explanations.
Russia has a decade long secret programme of producing and stockpiling novichok nerve
agents. It also has been training agents in secret assassination techniques, and British
intelligence has a copy of the Russian training manual, which includes instruction on painting
nerve agent on doorknobs.
The only backing for this statement by Boris Johnson is alleged "intelligence", and
unfortunately the "intelligence" about Russia's secret novichok programme comes from exactly
the same people who brought you the intelligence about Saddam Hussein's WMD programme, proven
liars. Furthermore, the question arises why Britain has been sitting on this intelligence for a
decade and doing nothing about it, including not telling the OPCW inspectors who certified
Russia's chemical weapons stocks as dismantled.
If Russia really has a professional novichok assassin training programme, why was the
assassination so badly botched? Surely in a decade of development they would have discovered
that the alleged method of gel on doorknob did not work? And where is the training manual which
Boris Johnson claimed to possess? Having told the world – including Russia -the UK has
it, what is stopping the UK from producing it, with marks that could identify the specific copy
erased?
The Russians chose to use this assassination programme to target Sergei Skripal, a double
agent who had been released from jail in Russia some eight years previously.
It seems remarkable that the chosen target of an attempt that would blow the existence of a
secret weapon and end the cover of a decade long programme, should be nobody more prominent
than a middle ranking double agent who the Russians let out of jail years ago. If they wanted
him dead they could have killed him then. Furthermore the attack on him would undermine all
future possible spy swaps. Putin therefore, on this reading, was willing to sacrifice both the
secrecy of the novichok programme and the spy swap card just to attack Sergei Skripal . That
seems highly improbable.
Only the Russians can make novichok and only the Russians had a motive to attack the
Skripals.
The nub of the British government's approach has been the shocking willingness of the
corporate and state media to parrot repeatedly the lie that the nerve agent was Russian made,
even after Porton Down said they could not tell where it was made and the OPCW confirmed that
finding. In fact, while the Soviet Union did develop the "novichok" class of nerve agents, the
programme involved scientists from all over the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine, Armenia and
Georgia, as I myself learnt when I visited the newly decommissioned Nukus testing facility in
Uzbekistan in 2002.
Furthermore, it was the USA who decommissioned the facility and removed equipment back to
the United States. At least two key scientists from the programme moved to the United States.
Formulae for several novichok have been published for over a decade. The USA, UK and Iran have
definitely synthesised a number of novichok formulae and almost certainly others have done so
too. Dozens of states have the ability to produce novichok, as do many sophisticated non-state
actors.
As for motive, the Russian motive might be revenge, but whether that really outweighs the
international opprobrium incurred just ahead of the World Cup, in which so much prestige has
been invested, is unclear.
What is certainly untrue is that only Russia has a motive. The obvious motive is to attempt
to blame and discredit Russia. Those who might wish to do this include Ukraine and Georgia,
with both of which Russia is in territorial dispute, and those states and jihadist groups with
which Russia is in conflict in Syria. The NATO military industrial complex also obviously has a
plain motive for fueling tension with Russia.
There is of course the possibility that Skripal was attacked by a private gangster interest
with which he was in conflict, or that the attack was linked to Skripal's MI6 handler Pablo
Miller' s work on the Orbis/Steele Russiagate dossier on Donald Trump.
Plainly, the British governments statements that only Russia had the means and only Russia
had the motive, are massive lies on both counts.
The Russians had been tapping the phone of Yulia Skripal. They decided to attack Sergei
Skripal while his daughter was visiting from Moscow.
In an effort to shore up the government narrative, at the time of the Amesbury attack the
security services put out through Pablo Miller's long term friend, the BBC's Mark Urban , that
the Russians "may have been" tapping Yulia Skripal's phone, and the claim that this was strong
evidence that the Russians had indeed been behind the attack.
But think this through. If that were true, then the Russians deliberately attacked at a time
when Yulia was in the UK rather than when Sergei was alone. Yet no motive has been adduced for
an attack on Yulia or why they would attack while Yulia was visiting – they could have
painted his doorknob with less fear of discovery anytime he was alone. Furthermore, it is
pretty natural that Russian intelligence would tap the phone of Yulia, and of Sergei if they
could. The family of double agents are normal targets. I have no doubt in the least, from
decades of experience as a British diplomat, that GCHQ have been tapping Yulia's phone. Indeed,
if tapping of phones is seriously put forward as evidence of intent to murder, the British
government must be very murderous indeed.
Their trained assassin(s) painted a novichok on the doorknob of the Skripal house in the
suburbs of Salisbury. Either before or after the attack, they entered a public place in the
centre of Salisbury and left a sealed container of the novichok there.
The incompetence of the assassination beggars belief when compared to British claims of a
long term production and training programme. The Russians built the heart of the International
Space Station. They can kill an old bloke in Salisbury. Why did the Russians not know that the
dose from the door handle was not fatal? Why would trained assassins leave crucial evidence
lying around in a public place in Salisbury? Why would they be conducting any part of the
operation with the novichok in a public area in central Salisbury?
Why did nobody see them painting the doorknob? This must have involved wearing protective
gear, which would look out of place in a Salisbury suburb. With Skripal being resettled by MI6,
and a former intelligence officer himself, it beggars belief that MI6 did not fit, as standard,
some basic security including a security camera on his house.
The Skripals both touched the doorknob and both functioned perfectly normally for at least
five hours, even able to eat and drink heartily. Then they were simultaneously and
instantaneously struck down by the nerve agent, at a spot in the city centre coincidentally
close to where the assassins left a sealed container of the novichok lying around. Even though
the nerve agent was eight times more deadly than Sarin or VX, it did not kill the Skripals
because it had been on the doorknob and affected by rain.
Why did they both touch the outside doorknob in exiting and closing the door? Why did the
novichok act so very slowly, with evidently no feeling of ill health for at least five hours,
and then how did it strike both down absolutely simultaneously, so that neither can call for
help, despite their being different sexes, weights, ages, metabolisms and receiving random
completely uncontrolled doses. The odds of that happening are virtually nil. And why was the
nerve agent ultimately ineffective?
Detective Sergeant Bailey attended the Skripal house and was also poisoned by the doorknob,
but more lightly. None of the other police who attended the house were affected.
Why was the Detective Sergeant affected and nobody else who attended the house, or the scene
where the Skripals were found? Why was Bailey only lightly affected by this extremely deadly
substance, of which a tiny amount can kill?
Four months later, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were rooting about in public parks,
possibly looking for cigarette butts, and accidentally came into contact with the sealed
container of a novichok. They were poisoned and Dawn Sturgess subsequently died.
If the nerve agent had survived four months because it was in a sealed container, why has
this sealed container now mysteriously disappeared again? If Rowley and Sturgess had direct
contact straight from the container, why did they not both die quickly? Why had four months
searching of Salisbury and a massive police, security service and military operation not found
this container, if Rowley and Sturgess could?
I am, with a few simple questions, demolishing what is the most ludicrous conspiracy theory
I have ever heard – the Salisbury conspiracy theory being put forward by the British
government and its corporate lackies.
My next post will consider some more plausible explanations of this affair.
In the July 07, 2018 edition of Moon of Alabama, I asked everyone for links and alt-media
websites to go to. The way I did it seemed to be disruptive, given the reactions that I got.
I wanted to apologize for that. I simply wanted to learn more about alt-media websites, not
to troll, but I could have done it in a better way.
Anyway, let's share some alt-media websites that we know of.
Got a host of leftwing websites and rightwing websites and alt-media websites that I don't
think are either leftwing or rightwing, so if you want anymore, just ask me.
Anyway, please, if you've got any alt-media websites you'd like to share, I think that the
Open Thread is the best place to do it. I'm always on the look-out for any alt-media
websites, so if you've got any, please tell me. The reason why I ask is because it's going to
get harder and harder to find these websites, I think. So with that in mind, I'd like to
learn more about what's out there in terms of the alt-media.
You got any alt-media websites to share, please do.
And thanks to anyone that have already shared what they knew in yesterday's thread.
Glad to be here by the way. I've known about Moon of Alabama for some time and I've
decided to drop into the comments. I didn't really keep track of all the links that you guys
posted, but I will now. Thank you.
It used to be that the only things one could depend on were "death & taxes." Now of
course we must add to that list the very dependable presence of CIA / State Dept lies
parroted by MSM all over the West. Lies which are endlessly repeated in defiance of all
physical reality and often in direct opposition to actual events in the actual world we live
in.
From the Ukraine coup, to Russia-gate, to the "Assad's gassing his own people" regime
change propaganda, to the totally surreal Alice in Wonderland Skripnal poisoning nonsense in
the U.K, the Western MSM have been as dependable as the rising sun.
They can and do provide
fact-free, evidence-free reporting directly from the bowels of the deep state in support of
the neocolonial West, including unending support for the never ending resort to mass violence
the West relies upon to keep the rest of the planet subjugated -- just as it has for the last
500+ years.
In this article, we have attempted to identify the most censored stories of modern times in
Britain. We have asked the opinions of one of the most famous and celebrated journalists and
documentary film-makers of our time, a high-profile former Mi5 intelligence officer, an
investigative journalist with one of the most well-known climate-change organisations, a
veteran journalist of the Iraq war, an ex-army officer, along with the head of one of the
worlds largest charities working against injustice.
One comment from our eclectic group of experts said; "the UK has the most legally protected
and least accountable intelligence agencies in the western world so even in just that field
competition is fierce, let alone all the other cover-ups."
So true have we found this statement to be that we've had to split this article into two
categories – military and non-military, with a view that we may well categorise
surveillance and privacy on its own another time.
Without further ado – here are the most non-military censored stories in Britain since
the 1980s, in no particular order. Do bear in mind that for those with inquisitive minds, some
of these stories you will have read something about somewhere – but to the majority of
citizens, these stories will read like conspiracy theories.
Consequences of American corporate influence over British welfare reforms
The demolition of the welfare state was first suggested in 1982 by the Conservative Prime
Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Using neoliberal politics, every UK government since 1982 has
covertly worked towards that goal. It is also the political thinking used as justification for
the welfare reforms of the New Labour government, which introduced the use of the Work
Capability Assessment (WCA) for all out-of-work disability benefit claimants. Neoliberal
politics also justified additional austerity measures introduced by the Coalition government
since 2010, and the Conservative government(s) since 2015, which were destined to cause
preventable harm when disregarding the human consequences. Much of this is known and in the
public domain.
However, what is less known is a story the government have tried
very hard to gag . The American healthcare insurance system of disability denial was
adopted, as was the involvement of a US healthcare company to distance the government from the
preventable harm created by its use. The private sector was introduced on a wide scale in many
areas of welfare and social policy as New Labour adopted American social and labour market
policies – and the gravity of its effects cannot be understated.
The result? In one 11 month study 10,600 deaths were attributed to the government disability
denial system of screening, with 2,200 people dying before the ESA assessment was even
completed. Between May 2010 and February 2014, an astonishing total of
40,680 people died within 12 months of going through a government Work Capability
Assessment. The government department responsible has since refused to publish updated
mortality totals.
This political and social scandal has been censored, with the author of
THIS truly damning report in trouble with the government for publishing it.
Climate Change, what a British oil giant knew all along
For decades, tobacco companies buried evidence that smoking was deadly, the same goes for
the fossil fuel industry. As early as 1981, big oil company Shell was aware of the causes and
catastrophic dangers of climate change. In the 1980s it was acknowledging with its own research
that anthropogenic global warming was a fact. Then, as the scientific consensus became more and
more clear, it started introducing doubt and giving weight to a "significant minority" of
"alternative viewpoints" as the full implications for the company's business model became
clear.
By the mid-90s, the company started talking about "distinguished scientists" that cast
aspersions of the seriousness of climate change.
THIS REPORT provides proof of Shell's documentation including emails of what they knew and
what they were hiding from the public domain. One document in 1988 confirms that: "By the time
the global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to
reduce the effects or even stabilise the situation."
It was not until 2007 that scientific research eventually took a grip of the problem and
proved what was known all along. However, as Shell did say – it's probably too late to
take effective countermeasures now anyway. There is still persistent quoting of climate science
deniers by the fossil fuel industries.
Government Surveillance
In 2016, the UK was identified as the most
extreme surveillance state in the Western world. However, legislation really only came
about to legalise its use because of the Edward Snowden revelations in 2013. Prior to that, the
British government had created a secret 360-degree mass surveillance architecture that no-one,
including most members of parliament, knew anything about. And much of it has since been deemed
illegal by the highest courts in both Britain and the European Union.
From operation Optic Nerve which took millions of sexually explicit images of an unknowing
public through their devices to a hacking operation called Gemalto – where GCHQ stole the
keys to a global encryption system with 700 million subscribers. The unaccountable spymasters
of the UK have undertaken breathtaking operations of illegality with absolute impunity.
Some other programmes included; Three Smurfs
– an operation to turn on any mobile device so it could listen to or activate the camera
covertly on mobile phones. XKeyScore was basically a Google search engine for spies to find any
data about anyone. Upstream and Tempora hacked into the worlds main cable highway, intercepting
everything and anything globally with a leaked presentation slide from GCHQ on this programme
expressly stating they were intent on "Mastering the Internet". Royal Concierge identified diplomatic
hotel reservations so GCHQ could organise a surveillance operation against dignitaries either
domestic or foreign, in advance.
In truth, Britain is classed as an endemic surveillance state and right now, we only know
what has been uncovered by whistleblowers. This is why people like Julian Assange, Edward
Snowden and others are nothing less than political prisoners of Western governments. They don't
want you to know what they know about you. They also don't want you to know about them, which
is why the architecture is there in the first place. It is not for catching terrorists because
if it was the courts would not deem these surveillance systems as illegal.
Evidence-Based Medical Studies
Over the last few years, medical professionals have come forward to share a truth that, for
many people, proves difficult to swallow. One such authority is Dr. Richard Horton, the current
editor-in-chief of the Lancet – considered to be one of the most well respected
peer-reviewed medical journals in the world.
"The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps
half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid
exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for
pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards
darkness."
Across the pond, Dr
Marcia Angell , a physician and longtime Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal
(NEMJ), which is also considered another one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical
journals in the world, makes her view of the subject quite plain:
"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published
or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no
pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an
editor of the New England Journal of Medicine".
Many newspapers in Britain take the opportunity to indulge in some shameless click baiting
and report completely false stories simply to gain visitor numbers onto their website –
as in this example by the Mail Online HERE
or
HERE.
The Skripal poisoning and Pablo Millar
D-notice's (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) are used by the British state to
censor the publication of potentially damaging news stories. They are issued to the mainstream
media to withhold publication of damaging information. One such case was the widespread use of
D-notices regarding the British ex-spy deeply involved in the Skripal/Novichok poisoning case
in Salisbury.
Mainstream journalists, the press and broadcast media were issued with D-notices in respect
of a former British intelligence officer called Pablo Miller. Miller was an associate of
Christopher Steele, first in espionage operations in Russia and more recently in the activities
of Steele's private intelligence firm,
Orbis Business Intelligence .
Steele was responsible for compiling the Trump–Russia dossier, comprising 17 memos
written in 2016 alleging misconduct and conspiracy between Donald Trump's presidential campaign
and the Putin administration. The dossier paid for by the Democratic Party, claimed that Trump
was compromised by evidence of his sexual proclivities (golden shower anyone?) in Russia's
possession. Steele was the subject of an earlier D-notice, which unsuccessfully attempted to
keep his identity as the author of the dossier a secret.
Millar is reported to be Skripal's handler in Salisbury and if Miller and by extension,
Skripal himself were involved in Orbis' work on the highly-suspect Steele-Trump dossier, which
is thought to be the case (for all sorts of reasons – including these D-notices)
alongside representatives of British and possibly US intelligence, then the motivations for the
attempted assassination on the ex-Russian double agent was very wide at best. As it turned out,
blame could not be pinned on Russia's intelligence service, the FSB, no matter how hard the
government tried. This particular part of the Skripal poisoning story remains buried by the
mainstream media.
The City of London – A global crime scene
For over a hundred years the Labour party tried in vain to abolish the City of London and
its accompanying financial corruption. In 1917, Labour's new rising star Herbert Morrison, the
grandfather of Peter Mandelson made a stand and failed, calling it the "devilry of modern
finance." And although attempt after attempt was made throughout the following decades, it was
Margaret Thatcher who succeeded by abolishing its opponent, the Greater London Council in
1986.
Tony Blair went about it another way and offered to reform the City of London in what turned
out to be a gift from God. He effectively gave the vote to corporations which swayed the
balance of democratic power away from residents and workers. It was received by its opponents
as the greatest retrograde step since the peace treaty of 1215, Magna Carta. The City won its
rights through debt financing in 1067, when William the Conqueror acceded to it and ever since
governments have allowed the continuation of its ancient rights above all others.
The consequence? It now stands as money
launderer of the world , the capital of global crime scene with Britain referred to by the
global criminal fraternity to be the most corrupt country in the world.
A 'watchman' sits at the high table of parliament and is its official
lobbyist sitting in the seat of power right next to the Speaker of the House who is
"charged with ensuring that its established rights are safeguarded." The job is to seek out
political dissent that might arise against the City.
The City of London has its own private funding and will 'buy-off' any attempt to erode its
powers – any scrutiny of its financial affairs are put beyond external inspection or
audit. It has it's own police force – and laws. Its dark and shadowy client list
includes; terrorists, drug barons, arms dealers, despots, dictators, shady politicians,
corporations, millionaires and billionaires – most with something to hide. The shocking
Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Lux Leaks barely scratching the surface
even with their almost unbelievable revelations of criminality.
Keith Bristow Director-General of the UK's National Crime Agency
said in June 2015 that the sheer scale of crime and its subsequent money laundering
operations was "a serious strategic threat to Britain." And whilst much of this activity is
indeed published – the scale of it is not. It is now believed by many investigative
journalists that the City of London is managing "trillions in ill-gotten gains" – not
billions as we have all been told.
State propaganda – manipulating minds, controlling the internet
Reading this you would think this was the stuff of a conspiracy theory – sadly, it's
not. The government, through its spying agent GCHQ developed its own set of software tools to
infiltrate the internet to shape what people see, hear and read, with the ability to rig online
polls and psychologically manipulate people on social media. This was what Glenn Greenwald of
The Intercept confirmed through the Snowden files in 2014. It was not about surveillance
but about manipulating public opinion in ever more Orwellian ways.
These 'tools' now constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda delivery
systems and internet deception programmes known to mankind. What the Snowden files show are
that the government can change the outcome of online polls (codenamed Underpass), send mass
delivery of emails or SMS messages (Warpath) at will, disrupt video-based websites (Silverlord)
and have tools to permanently disable PC accounts. They can amplify a given message to push a
chosen narrative (GESTATOR), increase traffic to any given website" (GATEWAY) and have the
ability to inflate page views on websites (SLIPSTREAM). They can crash any website (PREDATORS
FACE), reduce page views and distort public responses, spoof any email account and telephone
calls they like. Visitors to WikiLeaks are tracked and monitored as if an inquiring mind is now
against the law.
Don't forget, the government has asked no-one for permission to do any of this and none of
this has been debated in parliament where representative democracy is supposed to be taking
place. There is no protective legislation for the general public and no-one is talking about or
debating these illegal programmes that taxpayers have been given no choice to fund –
costing billions. This is government sponsored fake news and public manipulation programmes on
a monumental scale.
Chris Huhne, a former cabinet minister and member of the national security council until
2012 said – "when it comes to the secret world of GCHQ, the depth of my 'privileged
information' has been dwarfed by the information provided by Edward Snowden to The
Guardian."
The Guardian's offices were then visited by MI5 and the Snowden files were ordered to be
destroyed under threats that if they didn't, it would be closed down – a sign of
British heavy-handedness reminiscent of the East-German Stasi.
Censorship – Spycatcher
'Spycatcher' was a truly candid autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer published in
1987. Written by Peter Wright, a former MI5 officer, it was published first in Australia after
being banned by the British government in 1985. Its allegations proved too much for the
authorities to allow it to be in the public domain.
In an interesting twist of irony, the UK government attempted to halt the book's Australian
publication. Malcolm Turnbull, current Prime Minister of Australia, was a lawyer at the time
and represented the publisher that defeated the British government's suppression orders against
Spycatcher in Australia in September 1987, and again on appeal in June 1988. This is the same
man that refuses to assist Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, from his hellhole existence
in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The book details plans of the MI6 plot to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser during the
Suez Crisis; of joint MI5-CIA plotting against British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and of
MI5's eavesdropping on high-level Commonwealth conferences. Wright also highlights the methods
and ethics of the spying business.
Newspapers printed in England, attempting proper reportage of Spycatcher's principal
allegations were served gag orders. If they continued, they were tried for contempt of court.
However, the book proved so popular many copies were smuggled into England. In 1987, the Law
Lords again barred reportage of Wright's allegations or sale of books.
The ruling was then overturned, but Wright was barred from receiving royalties from the sale
of the book in the United Kingdom. In November 1991, the European Court of Human Rights ruled
that the British government had breached the European Convention of Human Rights in gagging its
own newspapers. The book has sold more than two million copies. In 1995, Wright died a
millionaire from proceeds of his book.
Censorship – The Internet
To the inquisitive and knowledgeable, censorship of the internet by the British government
is not news. In addition, there have been many reports, especially from independent outlets
complaining about search engines and social media platforms censoring oppositional and
dissenting voices.
Already described earlier in this article is the involvement of the authorities in
strategies to manipulate public opinion and disseminate false narratives in their aims for
control of the internet itself.
A few months ago, the government changed the law to block online content deemed as either
pornographic or of an extremist nature to protect those under 16 years of age. It was
anticipated that approximately 50 websites would be banned altogether. What subsequently
happened was that thousands of websites
disappeared from the internet with no court orders, injunctions, notices or justification.
Even finding out which websites are on that list is a secret.
Over time, like many pieces of legislation that has been abused by the state, websites and
online content that the government of the day does not like will have the perfect tool to
simply press the 'delete' button, pretty much as they have already started doing.
Soon after the Second World War, some of America's richest people began setting up
a
network of thinktanks to promote their interests. These purport to offer dispassionate
opinions on public affairs. But they are more like corporate lobbyists, working on behalf of
those who founded and fund them. These are the organisations now running much of the
Trump administration . These same groups are now running much of Britain. Liam Fox and what
was the Atlantic Bridge and the
Adam Smith Institute are good examples.
They have control of the Conservative party and are largely responsible for years of work
that steered Britain through the EU referendum that ended with Brexit. Tens of £millions
have been spent, mostly undisclosed on making this dream to exploit Britain and its people a
reality. In fact, almost everything in this article is about such organisations. Those hugely
powerful individuals that own search engines and social media platforms along with the banking
industry, the pharmaceutical and medical business, the fossil fuel and arms industries –
they have reached a pinnacle of unprecedented corporate power.
Some of those fully censored stories pushed below the radar by these corporations include;
how over 100,000
EU citizens die every year because of lobbying against workplace carcinogens, how
corporate profits and taxes are hidden, the Tory-Trump plan to
kill food safety with Brexit – to name but a few. And don't forget the corporate
media who are complicit. There are a handful of offshore billionaires that have the ability to
decide what millions should read or see.
The Adam Smith Institute referred to earlier is a good example. It is a mouthpiece for
right-wing extreme neoliberal capitalists. With a turnover of over £130 million and an
operating profit of nearly £17 million, it has received millions of pounds in UK
government funding. That is taxpayers money being used against taxpayers because the ASI does
not believe in the likes of the NHS or civil society in general.
Talking of Dark Money – Brexit and the climate deniers
We recently reported about a
transatlantic network of lobbyists pushing against action on climate change and (latterly)
for Brexit? This group are all based out of one building around the corner from the Palace of
Westminster.
What is much less known is that more recently, these
groups have
lobbied for a Hard Brexit , hoping the UK's withdrawal from the EU will lead to a weakening
of those environmental regulations that hinder future profits. These same groups are also
behind the Tory-DUP pact , currently keeping Theresa May in her job while allowing
hard-line Northern Irish social conservatives to dictate significant parts of the UK's
political agenda, themselves climate change deniers. These are just some of Britain's most
censored stories. There are so many of them that we have had to categorise them, which says
something about how democracy, free speech, civil liberty and human rights are performing in
Britain right now. truepublica.org.uk
"... she's following the lead of the UK's evil intelligence agencies which are waging a psychological and economic war on Russia and Putin just because the oligarchs in the West don't like Putin doing good things for Russia. ..."
On behalf of this side of the pond, I would like to formally apoligize for calling Mr.
Blair, Mr. Bush's poodle. I am also certain that Ms. Skripal, sorry Ms. May, with her fiery
independence, is nobody's poodle either.
Tom , July 5, 2018 at 5:42 am
R U kidding me? Ms. May is a poodle for the UK's intelligence agencies i.e. MI5 and MI6.
The swift movement of her to get on board with the totally discredited blaming of Novichok
and Putin/Russia for the nerve agent attack on the Skripals means she is very evil -- she's
following the lead of the UK's evil intelligence agencies which are waging a psychological
and economic war on Russia and Putin just because the oligarchs in the West don't like Putin
doing good things for Russia.
"... Novichok , the magic Russian military nerve agent jumped on another couple after it stayed low-key for weeks, in order to recover from the humiliation of being unable to kill the Skripals, in spite of being "the most powerful and deadly military agent". ..."
"... I May be wrong regarding this theory, but it is highly unlikely. ..."
The former empire known as Great Britain, was struck again by bad luck:
Novichok , the magic Russian military nerve agent jumped on another couple after it
stayed low-key for weeks, in order to recover from the humiliation of being unable to kill
the Skripals, in spite of being "the most powerful and deadly military agent".
Britain lost the Empire's colonies, its greatness (even if this was built on murder and
theft) , its economic power, and now has lost its mind and its shame .
Britain is currently a pedophile island, full of third world immigrants and given refuge
to all the dictators, criminals, crooks and terrorists in the world. It is laundering money
through its City of London, and this is the only thing keeping that island afloat. It's a
huge latrine with a Crown on top, as I like to describe it.
Now the Russians are randomly "poisoning" ordinary British subjects, because this is what
Brits are. The British government and media immediately knew it was Novichok and the Russians
were behind it. Maybe even Mr. Putin found time to do this.
The Russian team just qualified in the FIFA World Cup quarters ; like Britain did after
beating Columbia. Mr. Putin is practicing on poor Brits. If the Russian team will meet the
Brits in the finals, he may pull a Novichok on them and brazenly win this way, the
finals.
I May be wrong regarding this theory, but it is highly unlikely.
"... Craig Murray pointed out that when actions are discussed or carried out, strategies laid out, Trident is never even mentioned. ..."
"... Britain is a failing Western Democracy just as the US is -- they are getting desperate and trying all kinds of stuff under the general heading of evil Russia. Britain is pathetic when you think about it hollow empty country with no vision or concern for anything but the elites. The entire Western democratic ideal has failed utterly, we live in a multi-polar world now the SCO is far more important than the G7 but May probably doesn't even know what it stands for. Without its association with the US and out of the EU the UK will be about as important as Uruguay or Nauru. ..."
"... I can only conclude the the Ruling Class in GB looks at its own public as completely dimwitted morons, as they apparently believe them willing to swallow this crap. ..."
"... It is just over a week since OPCW was given more powers. Put forward by Britain and backed by the usual coalition of the killing. Pulling another Skripal so soon after that is more than a bit sus. ..."
"... And the unknown substance is now Novichuk. But that 4 day lag, not to worry, 1 day ago the suspects were already identified tying in with the Skripals. The 2 Hitmen with close ties to Russia. ..."
"... Take it from me 90 percent of the British public are dim witted morons that's official from me! No exaggeration! Half just regurgitate what the tv / papers say with out question or thought. The other half have just switched off entirely. Tell them 8,000000 could die in Yemen. There eyes glaze over. ..."
"... Britain was never a democracy. It was masquerading as one in order to placate the unwashed masses. They're definitely in panic mode and whatever they do makes them look insane. ..."
"... I love Guerrero's concept that these stories are prepared more like Novellas... especially the implication that the script for the next episode is written after gauging reaction to the former episode. ..."
"... "I think the take home point is to not live near a chemical weapons lab." Methinks it may be worse than that: just don't live in Britain, these days. Says this sympathetic anglophile. ..."
"... The British can't seem to put the lid back on the vial btw was this the same one used by US Secr of State Colin Powell in 2003 at the UN Security Council before the invasion and occupation of Iraq? The Ayatollahs of Persia be forewarned! ..."
"... After researching everything I could find on Novichok, the only rational and logical conclusion one can draw is the Skripals and this latest couple should be dead. The sad part of this incident and the Skripal affair is how many people actually believe the government's claims. ..."
"... Imagine being Yulia Skripal at this moment. She had a job, a boyfriend, a dog and a home in Russia she may never be able to see again, because the UK government cannot allow her to return home and spill the beans on this sordid affair. If their is any justice in this world, every rational individual should be demanding "FREE Yulia"! ..."
"... I don't think this latest version of the novichok case helps the British case at all as it strongly suggests that there is something else out there killing people than a military grade nerve agent. ..."
"... As for the report in the Daily Telegraph "Salisbury couple are fresh victims of the Novichok attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal", I suspect that is pure bullshit. ..."
"... I've been wondering how The Swamp's inner circle are feeling about the likelihood that Trump and Putin will get along like a house (of cards) on fire. It looks as though the reptiles are more than just a little bit worried... ..."
"... The capacity of some people to believe these lies is seemingly limitless, otherwise they would not bother. Must be hundreds of people fall ill and require emergency treatment each day. Are the Russians to be suspects in each illness requiring workers to go into home wear Hazmat gear and shut down the neighborhood pending tests? ..."
British Government Peddles Warmed Over Novichok Muck
It seems that Theresa May felt a need to stoke some more
Russia hate :
Just as the World Cup had forced the British media to grudgingly acknowledge the obvious
truth that Russia is an extremely interesting country inhabited, like everywhere else, by
mostly pleasant and attractive people, we have a screaming reprise of the "Salisbury
incident" dominating the British media.
All British media outlets report of a middle-aged British couple, Dawn Sturgess and Charlie
Rowley, who fell seriously ill in Amesbury, a town near Salisbury and near the British chemical
weapon site Proton Down. The couple were transported to the Salisbury hospital. They were first
suspected to have taken drugs but the police now
speaks (vid) of a "potential exposure to an unknown substance" and that they "remain in a
critical condition".
The parallels to the poisoning of the British-Russian spy Sergej Skripal and his daughter
four month ago are obvious. The government alleged they were poisoned by a nerve agent of the
Novichok series. Like back in March the British government will soon name the evildoer of this
new drama.
The most curious issue of the current case is that it happened Saturday morning and that
since a lot of local police action took place. But news of the incident emerged only early
today. None of the pieces I read explains the four day long lack of reporting. The British
government obviously prohibited all news of the case until early today and now prohibits to
explain the censoring.
Why?
A "friend of the couple", who has been together with them, was
interviewed by several outlets:
Here's a link to Newsnow's aggregator for the "major incident". FYI: Newsnow and Wikipedia
are fighting the Copyright Directive of the European Parliament tomorrow (July 5th) - so get
the news while you can...
Sam Hobson said: "His eyes were wide open and red, his pupils were like pinpricks."
Yes, exposition to some toxic agents can make the pupils like pinpricks (and newspapers said
that novichok has this effect), but this contraction is not so easy to note, because the
pupil is not the whole iris and the iris doesn't contract.
"A police spokesman said: "At the moment it is not a police incident it is being led by
the fire and the ambulance. It appears that there are three people who have taken drugs
and had a medical incident. They have all been taken to hospital."
A cordon was put in place as a precaution but police say there is "no danger" to anyone
else in the area.
A spokesman for South Western Ambulance Service later told the Journal that only one
patient had been taken to Salisbury District Hospital.
Might it be useful to think in terms of the structuring of TV-novelas? Are such media content events designed for a similiar/identical purpose? Unlike a literary novel, a soap opera series can be produced without having
an idea as to how artistic unity will be achieved with some universal meaning.
Are serial tear-jerker episodes the product of private storyboard conferences? Their requirements would be much simpler and less demanding than those of art. Each episode ends with the equivalent of a lewd embrace of an illicit couple viewed
by an interested, emotionally involved third-party who happens to come in the door.
(this point-of-view would be that of peeping-tom reflex of a mass-media consumer)
The camera is focusing mostly on skin, and a tear in the eye of the intruder, or
else it is a glare of rage... An advantage to the commercial TV content producers
is that they would be able to gauge reaction before publishing succeeding episodes.
Is it the story of some homeless recreational drug users who were accidently poisoned
by a dose of novichalk that Putin intended for a spy sheltering in the British isles
accidently deposited as spare-change into guitar-case of strung-out subway musician...
Maybe it is the case that cops are trained to look at pupils and can easily determine their
size. I could never do that and I doubt anyone who says so without being trained to do so,
and eve then eyesight and lighting needs to be close to to ideal.
Britain must be desperate or they really believe they are pulling this off. They must be
getting backing from factions in Washington, they must have unspoken permission for this.
Britain doing its humble part in the Russia demonizing to support Trident spending.
Craig Murray pointed out that when actions are discussed or carried out, strategies laid
out, Trident is never even mentioned.
Britain is a failing Western Democracy just as the US is -- they are getting desperate and
trying all kinds of stuff under the general heading of evil Russia. Britain is pathetic when
you think about it hollow empty country with no vision or concern for anything but the
elites. The entire Western democratic ideal has failed utterly, we live in a multi-polar
world now the SCO is far more important than the G7 but May probably doesn't even know what
it stands for. Without its association with the US and out of the EU the UK will be about as
important as Uruguay or Nauru.
So, uhm. How does a door handle on Skripal's front door end up contaminating the area near
the bar. Legit curious to see how they'll spin this to tie it all together now
Now that me being an ex-Junkie is out in the open here, i will provide some possible
explanations:
-Contaiminated Class A drugs: Heroin sold on the street is maximum 10% heroin, and 90%
various more or less toxic filler stuff. That may be strychnin (Which is used as rat poison,
and fits the symptoms well expect for hallucinating, valium or related opiates, paracetamol,
aspirin, or 1000 other chemicals the dealer has lying around.
-"Legal highs": in UK and in EU, those new synthetic drugs that are marketed as legal
substitute for cannabis, XTC, cocaine etc. are quite popular, and they are highly dangerous
because of their synthetic nature, and are known to cause severe health problems up to death.
In prisons also in UK those are popular, because inmates can pass drug tests easily. This
couple seems to have prison and hard drugs experience, and is therefore likely, to have known
or used those substances.
Additionally, being homeless, drug users/addicts, they are likely to have trouble with
police, and are an easy target for manipulation by intelligence operatives.
And why should evil Putin try to kill some UK Junkies?
Even BBC will have a pretty hard time to spin this..
Oh, goody!
Now we can have another round of UK authorities spewing ominous ambiguities, full of
Russia-blaming sound and fury, in the Gorgon PM and her rotten Tory government's ongoing
desperate struggle to keep its depraved nose above water.
I can't wait for UK Village Idiot Laureate Boris Johnson to provide another definitive
briefing.
Meanwhile, hmm... I suspect one of those lost, stolen, strayed, or liquidated Skripal pets
might be the perpetrator here.
I certainly agree that this story is worth reporting as farce . At this stage,
though, I hope people will resist that catnip-like intoxication of sifting through the
allegations and factoids to speculate on what it's "really" all about.
I wish this latest afflicted pair well, though. And just to flout my own suggestion and
engage in hypotheticals-- who knows, maybe next thing we know the UK government will pay top
dollar pound to purchase the crime-scene house!
no one really believes the uk anymore... if this doesn't make them a laughing stock,
nothing will..apparently people like bad re-runs and are happy to watch them.. this is the new 2018
version of coronation street i guess..
Today I was totally surprised. Headline in The Guardian: There is a cloud hanging over this World Cup and Fifa must not ignore it
An otherwise brilliant World Cup has been cheapened by the kind of histrionics witnessed in
England's game with Colombia and they have become a cancer in the game
Imagine: nothing in the article refers to Russia! Additionally "otherwise brilliant World
Cup".
I still stick with the food poisoning hypothesis (that doctor's letter sealed the deal for
me).
Both were near the restaurant the Skripals went right before they showed their symptoms.
They were homeless people. The simplest explanation is that they ate the same poisoned batch
in the garbage of the restaurant; or that the restaurant has an unreliable supplier, which
gave them more than one poisoned batch, or the restaurant simply pushes its luck with spoiled
food which, in seafood case, can result in some kind of toxins liberation (the practice of
recycling expired and sometimes even rotten expensive ingredients is common in sofisticated
restaurants).
In the case of the Skripals, the British government got lucky they were Russians, and
seized the opportunity. I don't see how they're going to use this now, since both victims are
British. Unless they want to declare war.
He described taking Mr Rowley to collect a prescription from Boots in Amesbury and on
to eat lunch at Amesbury Baptist Church fair, before returning to his friend's home in
Muggleton Road.
Boots, the church and the green outside it are among several sides in the town and nearby
Salisbury that have been cordoned off by police.
Mr Hobson said Mr Rowley started falling ill around four hours after Ms Sturgess was taken
to hospital, while they were preparing clothes to take to her. "He felt ill and went for a shower. Then his eyes went bloodshot and like two pin pricks,
he began garbling incoherently and I could tell he was hallucinating.
"He was making weird noises and acting like a zombie. It was a zombie-like state. He
slumped against the wall."
Mr Hobson said he called an ambulance and that when paramedics arrived they initially
believed the illness was drugs-related because of his friend's struggle with
addiction.
There are a plethora of substances that have those effects. Novichock is not one. That
just kills you, straight away. No passing out, no hallucinating, and definitely no park
benches. Done. Finished. Dead.
Even cyanide kills very quickly. Although Jim Jones might not agree. If anybody wanted to
kill anybody else through poisoning, they could do it very easily. Ratex (strychnine), takes
days, weeks to kill. Whoever adds that to their product would be killing their market anyway.
Capitalism hasn't gone full circle yet...
Yhis "poisoning" meme is not funny anymore, nor comical, that has worn off. It is in fact
tragic. It is tragic that the lies are so stupid, thick and unbelievable, that the whole
narrative is so crudely pieced together, that it make Pravda' 1970 articles look like
Voltaire's writings.
I can only conclude the the Ruling Class in GB looks at its own public as completely
dimwitted morons, as they apparently believe them willing to swallow this crap.
It is just over a week since OPCW was given more powers. Put forward by Britain and backed by
the usual coalition of the killing. Pulling another Skripal so soon after that is more than a
bit sus.
First post here - the only blog worth the time and effort to contribute to in my
opinion. Seems to me that as the UK and friends bought the OPCW last week, this incident has been
strategically timed so that the OPCW can investigate the 'poisoning' and apportion blame to
Russia just in time for the WC final, or am I being too cynical?
Thanks b for catching the 4 days lag in timeline.
Early morning, July 4th, British time, it was on the Daily Express as "Breaking News" as
in just happening. And the unknown substance is now Novichuk. But that 4 day lag, not to worry, 1 day ago the suspects were already identified tying in
with the Skripals. The 2 Hitmen with close ties to Russia.
UK Police Allege Two Hitmen 'With Close Ties to Russia' Involved in SkripalsLINK
Britain and its allies continue to blame Moscow for being behind the March 2018 attack on
former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter with what UK experts
claim was the A234 nerve agent, although the accusations have not been substantiated.
Russian authorities vehemently reject the allegations as groundless.
The Sun has cited sources in Scotland Yard as saying that "a two-man hit team with close
ties to Russia" orchestrated the alleged poisoning of ex-Russian security agent Sergei
Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK earlier this year.
Take it from me 90 percent of the British public are dim witted morons that's official from
me! No exaggeration! Half just regurgitate what the tv / papers say with out question or
thought. The other half have just switched off entirely. Tell them 8,000000 could die in
Yemen. There eyes glaze over.
Britain was never a democracy. It was masquerading as one in order to placate the unwashed
masses. They're definitely in panic mode and whatever they do makes them look insane.
I find it amusing there is no mention on why China is not part of the G7/8. If you believe
the official narrative that China's economy is the second largest in the World, then one
would think China would have a seat at the table. I was half expecting Russia's seat to be
given to China to create a wedge between China and Russia. But we all know why.
James. How I wish nobody believed these fairy tales anymore.
I love Guerrero's concept that these stories are prepared more like Novellas... especially
the implication that the script for the next episode is written after gauging reaction to the
former episode.
One of the witnesses in the BBC article I read reported believing the gas leak story
because electricity to the neighborhood had been cut off. Wonder what that's about?
Did y'all catch "
False Flag Fail: How Syrian Civilians Derailed White Helmet 'Chemical' Stunt in Eastern
Ghouta?"
ah, well...the verdict is in: 'Wiltshire pair poisoned by nerve agent novichok, say police;
Substance deemed responsible for severe illness of Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley'
"Basu added: "I would add that the complex investigation into the attempted murders of Yulia
and Sergei remains ongoing and detectives continue to sift through and assess all the
available evidence and are following every possible lead to identify those responsible, for
what remains a reckless and barbaric criminal act."
"I think the take home point is to not live near a chemical weapons lab." Methinks it may be worse than that: just don't live in Britain, these days. Says this sympathetic anglophile.
UK Nerve Center Porton Down: 'Putin Strikes Again!'
The British can't seem to put the lid back on the vial btw was this the same one used by
US Secr of State
Colin Powell in 2003 at the UN Security Council before the
invasion and occupation of Iraq? The Ayatollahs of Persia be forewarned!
Must have forgotten to scrub the home front door knop of the Skripals or was Yulia's
luggage returned via FedEx? Sloppy work by British Intelligence
Lightning never strikes twice, except near Porton Down. In fact, this second case will
prove the first case was bogus. Were the two KGB agents from the Cold War still around?
After researching everything I could find on Novichok, the only rational and logical
conclusion one can draw is the Skripals and this latest couple should be dead. The sad part
of this incident and the Skripal affair is how many people actually believe the government's
claims.
Imagine being Yulia Skripal at this moment. She had a job, a boyfriend, a dog and a home
in Russia she may never be able to see again, because the UK government cannot allow her to
return home and spill the beans on this sordid affair. If their is any justice in this world,
every rational individual should be demanding "FREE Yulia"!
Oh, but a communist dictatorship can't be in a club with the superior Western Democracies.
Just because they lifted over 700 million people out of poverty who tonight have something to
eat while Western Democracy is starving millions of people deliberately in Yemen, clearly
communists don't understand the free market.
Western Liberal Democracy is an utter and contemptible failure.
That was me - I was being facetious as Putin is not into gangsterism unlike Obama,
Cameron, May, Macron etc.
I don't think this latest version of the novichok case helps the British case at all as it
strongly suggests that there is something else out there killing people than a military grade
nerve agent.
Amesbury is about eight miles from Salisbury and I just can't see how a limited
release of a chemical would create a hot spot several miles away and almost four months
later. A few days later perhaps but not almost four months although I doubt that'd stop some wanker a bellingcat coming up with some dumb theory that's picked up by the MSM.
As for the report in the Daily Telegraph "Salisbury couple are fresh victims of the
Novichok attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal", I suspect that is pure bullshit.
I've been wondering how The Swamp's inner circle are feeling about the likelihood that Trump
and Putin will get along like a house (of cards) on fire. It looks as though the reptiles are
more than just a little bit worried...
The capacity of some people to believe these lies is seemingly limitless, otherwise they
would not bother.
Must be hundreds of people fall ill and require emergency treatment each day. Are the
Russians to be suspects in each illness requiring workers to go into home wear Hazmat gear
and shut down the neighborhood pending tests?
Ghost ship @ 39
Thanks for owning up to that joke ! Hell in these times a bit of humour is good therapy. So
can I stop digging my bunker now !
On a serious note- whether this latest incident proves to be drug over dose or nerve agent is
pretty secondary to how it's being used to beat the Russians with. What this actually is,is
dog whistle politics. A deliberate attempt again to ferment Hate for Russia in the eyes of
the British public. The only trick they know is hate.
The former empire known as Great Britain, was struck again by bad luck:
Novichok , the magic Russian military nerve agent jumped on another couple after it stayed
low-key for weeks, in order to recover from the humiliation of being unable to kill the
Skripals, in spite of being "the most powerful and deadly military agent".
Britain lost the Empire's colonies, its greatness (even if this was built on murder and
theft) , its economic power, and now has lost its mind and its shame .
Britain is currently a pedophile island, full of third world immigrants and given refuge to
all the dictators, criminals, crooks and terrorists in the world.
It is laundering money through its City of London, and this is the only thing keeping that
island afloat.
It's a huge latrine with a Crown on top, as I like to describe it.
Now the Russians are randomly "poisoning" ordinary British subjects, because this is what
Brits are.
The British government and media immediately knew it was Novichok and the Russians were
behind it.
Maybe even Mr. Putin found time to do this.
The Russian team just qualified in the FIFA World Cup quarters ; like Britain did after
beating Columbia.
Mr. Putin is practicing on poor Brits.
If the Russian team will meet the Brits in the finals, he may pull a Novichok on them and
brazenly win this way, the finals.
I May be wrong regarding this theory, but it is highly unlikely.
The woman has the same hairline (off her forehead) and the shape of the man's face looks a
reasonable match.
The CCTV is from a local gym and it was reported, back in March, that the police were only
interested in that part of the CCTV. They must have known who these people were for a long
time, which makes the 4 day delay even more ridiculous.
Can you imagine if they follow this up with another one in Syria? That would be too stupid
but at this point not unfathomable. Seems like they would have tried to make us forget about
Novichok and the lies that were told by May and the MSM about it being something only Russia
could possibly produce. I guess when nobody is held accountable for spreading dangerous
criminal misinformation like that than they just try it again. Even now that there is still
zero evidence and no suspects in the Skirpal incident, none of the countries who expelled
diplomats have apologized and the news hasn't stopped referring to Russia as the only
culprit, so why not give it another go I suppose? Anything to put some smear on the World Cup
maybe, though the details of this story don't seem to make sense yet. As far as Syria, the
NeoCons like Bolton maybe panicking if the rumors that the Syrian government has made some
preliminary deals in regards to lite-reunification and a peace plan with the YPG/SDF. They
may do a "back to back" again and do something drastic in Syria while blaming both on Russia
indirectly..
I've been expecting another Steele dossier. If England make the finals it wouldn't surprise
me if the team get propositioned by some attractive ladies. Of course they will gallantly
resist.
@30 /31 daniel... one can dream, lol... thanks for the videos.. teh vanessa beeley one is
very good.. which brings me to the comment peter mentioned on a previous thread, or maybe
there were a few mentioning it.. the changes to the opcw - to quote the keyphrase from the
usa daily propaganda briefing yesterday "The decision calls on the technical secretariat to
establish arrangements for identifying the perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks in Syria
by using all potentially relevant information..." which essentially means this... all the
money the usa/uk have spent on propaganda to fund the white helmets, syrian civil defense,
'save our syria', chatham house and etc etc - will be accepted as fact, unless proven
otherwise... this will be the grounds for making war on syria with macron, may and trump
being the good poodles for saudi arabia and israel, that they continue to be.. well - that is
what i get from that..
@34 flamingo - thanks for that! just when you think britian can't get any more crazy and
whacked out then it already is - this comes along... a better view on britian at this point
is the whole country has been subject to some form of mind altering drug.. we are witnessing
the byproduct in their msm and political leadership vacuum...
In this episode, we are joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sy Hersh who exposed
NATO nation war crimes of the military-industrial complex. From Abu Ghraib prison in the
Anglo-American war on Iraq to the Mee Lai Massacre, Sy Hersh has exerted a damning scepticism
of the official line. His new book "Reporter - A Memoir" is out now.
What does Seymour say about 9/11? Anyone, including seymour Hersh and Noam Chomski, isn't
worth a damn if they gloss over 9/11. If he's written a book about Dick Cheney and omitted
his major role in making sure 9/11 was the success it was for the neocons, he's a limited
hangout.
RT should bring Hersh on the show as much as possible. The guy is a legend and he is not
allowed to publish his articles anywhere in the US except in a German newspaper.
Is he sure about tht chemical weapons in Syria? What happened then when it was taken out
of Syria by the Authorities - whose name I have forgotten - and verified by the UN? He should
have a chat with Vanessa Bealey.
Good to see Sy on the rounds again - it's been a while. I guess he was finishing his book.
That point about the Russian sample being what proved to Obama that Nusra probably did the
WMD attack - "Red Line" - and called it off - I bet that had a lot to do with the move to
make Russia "beyond the pale" regarding official OPCW reports. Since then, all the tests have
been done remotely, by Turkey, by the UK, by anyone but Russia. I believe that the balance of
the evidence in the entire Syria aggression suggests that the Syrian government never
conducted any chemical attacks, and that any real attacks that took place were done by the
terrorists.
It should be just common sense - groups which are happy to massacre men, women
and children, keep women as slaves, eat livers, etc would have no moral qualms about using
chemical weapons whatsoever. The Syrian government, on the other hand, has always been in
control of the majority of the population in Syria - even in their worst moments before the
Russians came to help - and so any use of such barbaric methods would risk revolt from the
masses.
No president under such a long conflict could remain in power if he were capable of
such brutal and callous methods - in fact, the evidence shows that they have made every
effort to either arrange the surrender or evacuate the belligerents, while allowing for
civilian escape wherever possible.
The whole "brutal dictator" libel never made any sense
about Assad - he remains popular, mingles with the people, has full support from the
military. He is also a rarity for so-called dictatorships in the Middle East - not a military
man, but a civilian doctor. If there were the slightest doubts about him, the military would
have removed him by now - instead, his government and military appear to have both high
morale and widespread support from the people.
Of course, the facts are never a big concern
for the "regime change" crew - but thankfully, their ability to "create facts on the ground"
has weakened immensely over the 20 years of terror the US rulers began in 2001.
Other patterns on behaviour of British government suggest their nefarious role in Skripal
poisoning scandal
Notable quotes:
"... What else to expect from "Christian colonialists" but hypocrisy and double speak! "Many commit the same crime with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime; another a crown." ― Juvenal, The Satires ..."
"... Most Christian Colonial wars are fake wars against weak, or weakened, countries for 2 streams of Private Profit using Public Funds. ..."
"... Western looting of Libya netted "someone"(s) more than $1 Trillion in gold and currency reserves alone. Iraq lost historical artifacts of inestimable value. The Friends & Relatives crowd will be perpetually pissed with Putin for ruining Christian Colonialism's plan to loot Damascus. ..."
"... I hate to add another layer of shit on a very deep pile, when it comes to my u k but ! Could the academics here take a look at the time lines concerning the last general election and referendum compared to the 3 terrorist attacks about the same time. That is what kept may in power! Compare to for instances the fake Salisbury incident and east Douma Chem incident. All same patten ! I dug deep but don't let me influence enyone. To add, look at the timing of the grenfail tower fire, re election. I'l just leave this here. ..."
"... Talking about fake wars, bombing functioning ME countries back to the Stone Age and looting them, and "Israel" being a vociferous promoter of the Iraq & Syria Fake Wars, does anyone know how 'lootable' Iran is? ..."
"... Another astonishing thing about all this is the "liberal" media MSM or however you choose to call the corporate establishment press has always gone along with all the coverups. But things have changed and things are changing. ..."
Read Murray's blog entry prior to b's, and it's extremely damning. The May government must be
thrown out and the notables from all post-911 UK governments must be charged with over the
crimes they've committed--including the obstruction of those crimes investigations. This
report also shows we ought to consider Skripal Affair as 100% falsehood as the May government
has less than zero credibility on anything, which is one of the reasons it must be tossed. I
wonder if there're enough Corbynites capable of unseating the "Blue Tories" to bring a new
revitalized People's Labour Party back into power so that justice can be served.
craig murray and b are to be commended for addressing this ongoing issue..
we're back to the issue of accountability and again - nothing has changed..as karlof1 and
worldblee note - this must be addressed and someone must be held accountable for this, or it
will continue.
so - is the uk trying to be like the uae/ksa of the north? maybe they could take up
headchopping as well? i am not sure what country is more backward - uk or usa... in this race
to the bottom, both countries are fully supportive of these regressive regimes in uae/ksa and
fully onside with the war on yemen which they must profit from in order for them to justify
it... for me - justifying murder and mayhem based on profit is a sign of a really sick
culture, but it is fully embraced by many of the so called democratic western countries,
including the one i live in - canada... as far as leadership is concerned - there is a huge
gap and no one is speaking out on any of it in the political spectrum as i know of...
meanwhile we have to thank b and craig murray for shining a light on this as a constant
reminder of just how backward the so called civilized countries are here in 2018..
What else to expect from "Christian colonialists" but hypocrisy and double speak!
"Many commit the same crime with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime;
another a crown." ― Juvenal, The Satires
There are two aspects of this Christian Colonial (Western) clusterfuck which are particularly
galling for The People in whose name these crimes are committed:
1. Torture was used to extract false confessions.
2. Most Christian Colonial wars are fake wars against weak, or weakened, countries for 2
streams of Private Profit using Public Funds.
----(a) The M-IC makes vast profits from Weapons (win or lose).
----(b) Their wealthy Friends & Relatives get first pick of the spoils of Looting, at a
big discount.
Western looting of Libya netted "someone"(s) more than $1 Trillion in gold and currency
reserves alone. Iraq lost historical artifacts of inestimable value. The Friends &
Relatives crowd will be perpetually pissed with Putin for ruining Christian Colonialism's
plan to loot Damascus.
I hate to add another layer of shit on a very deep pile, when it comes to my u k but !
Could the academics here take a look at the time lines concerning the last general election
and referendum compared to the 3 terrorist attacks about the same time. That is what kept may
in power! Compare to for instances the fake Salisbury incident and east Douma Chem incident.
All same patten ! I dug deep but don't let me influence enyone. To add, look at the timing of
the grenfail tower fire, re election. I'l just leave this here.
Talking about fake wars, bombing functioning ME countries back to the Stone Age and looting
them, and "Israel" being a vociferous promoter of the Iraq & Syria Fake Wars, does anyone
know how 'lootable' Iran is?
Rumors says that Iran has very ancient roots and one imagines it may have artifacts going
back 5000+ years, although I've never heard them talked about.
Another astonishing thing about all this is the "liberal" media MSM or however you choose to
call the corporate establishment press has always gone along with all the coverups. But
things have changed and things are changing.
There is a not quite parallel story to this. The child separations - did you ever hear
from the corp. media about the 5,100+ children separated from their families in 2011 by
Obama. Nor much about how Obama had deported more than Trump at this point in his term.
I try to follow press from several countries and what I notice now is that EVEN MODI is
moving away from the US. The general views is - hay, we want to trade and get along we want
development but we have to deal with this big pain in the ass we have to spend a lot if time
and energy dealing with the US that we could use for development.
Trump is doing the world a favor by bringing all the criminal behavior of the US into the
open, its been there all along.
The liberal press which is hounding Trump over the issue now were silent for a decade when
"liberals" were in power have a Pyrrhic victory, it will come back on them.
If this trade crazy stuff drives Modi to join the B&R the US commercial/corporate
global empire is well and truly over.
Let us appeal to the gods.
SERIOUSLY?!!! - Did Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey have time to visit his home after he was
exposed to the poison but before he exhibited symptoms? Or did someone deliberately pour
bucketfuls of
Novichok into his home?
Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who also fell ill after being exposed to Novichok,
receiving £430,000 in compensation for his family home.
Actually I suspect there is nothing wrong with the house. It is Detective Sergeant Nick
Bailey that is too poisonous to be allowed to roam free. He will be given a new identity,
transferred to the USA and released into the custody of some FBI witness protection program. He
must never be allowed to speak to public.
The secret that Nick Bailey must never reveal is that he was poisoned two days after the
Skripals, most likely in the evidence room at the police station by the
£100,000 of cash in the red bag .
The problem the MSMs have is that the World Cup so far has been a success.
Notable quotes:
"... Also just like the Trump bizzo, when his employers dipped out, Steele's unsubstantiated gossip & slander having done nothing useful, Steele leaked his report to the feds. ..."
"... The claims he makes are utterly fantastic ( WARNING the link is to a graun 'long read' and is brimming with tedious & tendentious bulldust) the most laughable being that 'Putin' - always Putin never any of the many thousands of astute bureaucrats who work in the Russian government, stole a bunch of valuable old paintings from the Hermitage and gave them to the blokes on the World Cup venue committee as a bribe. The feds who went through these poor old buggers' lives with a fine tooth comb found nothing to substantiate that libel. ..."
"... The worst thing about these slanders and the harassment of a few old geezers who prefer sport as a mechanism for nations to interact than war, is that these old fellas were all (well just about all) socialists who yeah probably did allow a coupla mill to fall into their wallets, but who were dedicated to their sport remaining egalitarian. They invested billions into developing their sport all over the world especially in Africa, Latin America and the Mid-East where a shortage of venues, kit and professional coaches used to really hold those nations back. ..."
"... The 'clean sweep' of FIFA has opened the door to neolibs who are talking about corporatising the World Cup like the Olympics, then the billions will all go to corporations and their shareholders ..."
"... It is stuff like this about Skirpal's boss Steele, which really opens up the field of suspects on the 'poisoning'. I have no doubt Skirpal would have been the alleged 'proof' for this farrago of tosh. Russia and Qatar got their world cup final, but england and amerika (who were the finalists against Qatar for hosting in 2022) didn't, surely it is the latter two who are more likely to have a grudge against old Sergei. ..."
"... The Western corporate media is a sorry spectacle to behold. The Baltic and the Scandinavian branches are the most pathetic. Combining native stupidity with pig-headed tenacity to hold on to the past. ..."
And another thing - the other day I came a cross an interesting tidbit, I would include a
link if I can remember where I saw it, it may in fact have even been the graun. It goes like
this:
A few years back the FBI raided the FIFA HQ in Switzerland eventually arresting and charging
many FIFA commissioners alleging they were taking backhanders and at the time I, along with
many other sort of assumed that the amerikans shoving their stickbeaks into an organisation
which was none of their damn business was down to an announcement from FIFA president Blatter
that if the Israeli army and police didn't cease harassing the Palestinian team preventing
players from getting to international games by holding the players up at checkpoints, sometimes
for days, FIFA would have no choice but to penalise the Israeli football team who had already
been granted special dispensation by FIFA to play in the Euro conference rather than the ME one
that their geography should have demanded.
Nuttytahoo did his usual 'antisemite' victim whine so it was a reasonable assumption to think
the fed raid the next week was connected.
It may have been the issue which caused the amerikan sheet sniffers to move, but the actual
investigation was caused by something completely different. Two nations competed for the 2018 world cup hosting rights. One was Russia and the second one
was . . .drumroll. . . England! Yep the perfidious poms had put in their bid and one of the tools in their 'kit' was none other
than the old fibber Christopher Steele, who just as with the Trump investigation, did his
'inquiry' by remote control as he is persona non grata in Russia.
Also just like the Trump bizzo, when his employers dipped out, Steele's unsubstantiated gossip
& slander having done nothing useful, Steele leaked his report to the feds.
The claims he makes
are utterly fantastic ( WARNING the link is to a graun 'long read' and is brimming with
tedious & tendentious bulldust) the most laughable being that 'Putin' - always Putin never
any of the many thousands of astute bureaucrats who work in the Russian government, stole a
bunch of valuable old paintings from the Hermitage and gave them to the blokes on the World Cup
venue committee as a bribe. The feds who went through these poor old buggers' lives with a fine
tooth comb found nothing to substantiate that libel.
The other big lie was that while the Russian president was in Qatar finalising the joint gas
pipeline deal he cut another deal of the 'you vote for us we'll vote for you' as world cup host
in 2018 and 2022 respectively. Yeah that sounds just like President Putin tossing Russia's
economic future to the side while he organised a few soccer games - not.
The worst thing about these slanders and the harassment of a few old geezers who prefer
sport as a mechanism for nations to interact than war, is that these old fellas were all (well
just about all) socialists who yeah probably did allow a coupla mill to fall into their
wallets, but who were dedicated to their sport remaining egalitarian. They invested billions
into developing their sport all over the world especially in Africa, Latin America and the
Mid-East where a shortage of venues, kit and professional coaches used to really hold those
nations back.
The 'clean sweep' of FIFA has opened the door to neolibs who are talking about corporatising
the World Cup like the Olympics, then the billions will all go to corporations and their
shareholders.
No one should begrudge these guys the few quid they grabbed, I know puritans hate it but in
a truly tolerant society we should expect that a few otherwise dedicated types will always
'tickle the peter'. I used to get pissed about it in the union movement but the amounts are
usually small compared to turn-over and I'd rather have a dodgy member of the proletariat who
grabs a little in a position of power than a slimy neolib forever manouvering to flog the
entire kit & kaboodle off to a bunch of anonymous 'financiers'.
It is stuff like this about Skirpal's boss Steele, which really opens up the field of
suspects on the 'poisoning'. I have no doubt Skirpal would have been the alleged 'proof' for
this farrago of tosh. Russia and Qatar got their world cup final, but england and amerika (who
were the finalists against Qatar for hosting in 2022) didn't, surely it is the latter two who
are more likely to have a grudge against old Sergei.
The UK hates the idea that the EU that they left would turn to Russia for friendship. Their
propaganda goes along with the USA that shares this apprehension. Now that Trump has
humiliated the EU, the EU is turning toward Russia despite the UK...
The Western corporate media is a sorry spectacle to behold. The Baltic and the Scandinavian
branches are the most pathetic. Combining native stupidity with pig-headed tenacity to hold
on to the past.
Harding is definitely a joke. He is pretty pathetic easily jumping in and trying to milk any
Russian scandal be in Litvinenko, Russiagate, Steele dossier, of Skripals. Any version of events
that he approved can be instantly discarded a lie probably created with MI6 help. So he can serve
as a kind of reliable negative indicator, if you wish.
Applebaum is more dangerous, but still she a typical rabid neocon without any "in depth"
understanding of Russia. the net result of Skripal affair was poisoning Russian-British relation
for decade or so. If this is the price Theresa May wanted to pay to stay in power she should be
prosecuted for abuse of her office.
Notable quotes:
"... The Skripal case: A new Cold War? ..."
"... Applebaum now works at the London School of Economics where she heads, appropriately enough, a program on disinformation and 21st century propaganda. She is a virulent anti-communist and a ferocious warmonger, married to the former foreign minister of Poland. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... editing, contextualising, explanation and redaction ..."
"... Answering a question about the government's use of D-Notices (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice), Morris tried desperately to excuse press censorship. Contradicting reports that the government had issued two D-notices to prevent the media from identifying British intelligence service personnel Skripal was working with, he said there were "very few that we know about, only one." D notices had "changed" and are now "advisory." ..."
"... One audience member pointed out that since the poisoning had been unsuccessful, Russia might not have been responsible and that the government and media had taken the easy way out by blaming Russia. ..."
"... This was dismissed without a serious answer. The newspaper of what passes for the "liberal left" instead proceeded to solidify its alliance with the most right-wing layers of the US and British political and intelligence establishment by churning out anti-Russian propaganda of a distinctly McCarthyite character. ..."
The Guardian's June 4 event, The Skripal case: A new Cold War? was a
blatant attempt to propagandise against Russia in the interests of British imperialism.
The newspaper gave the platform to Anne Applebaum and Luke Harding along with two of its
journalists, Caroline Bannock and Steve Morris, who had covered the Skripal story.
All have uncritically regurgitated the British government's unsubstantiated, contradictory
and constantly shifting claims that the Russian-British double agent Sergei Skripal and his
daughter Julia were poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent by the Putin regime.
Applebaum now works at the London School of Economics where she heads, appropriately
enough, a program on disinformation and 21st century propaganda. She is a virulent
anti-communist and a ferocious warmonger, married to the former foreign minister of
Poland.
After the Russian annexation of Crimea, she called for "total war" against nuclear-armed
Russia in a column in the Washington Post . Closely connected to the highest echelons
of the US state, she is a member of key foreign policy think tanks and sits on the board of
directors of the CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy.
Harding, long time foreign correspondent for the Guardian , appears to have very
close links to Britain's security services. He has authored books that can only be described as
hatchet jobs on Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, aimed at discrediting them and facilitating
their persecution by the US authorities, as well as innumerable propaganda pieces against
Russia.
The Guardian itself has a long record of dutifully promoting the anti-Russian
warmongering of both the US and British political establishments. It supported the
Western-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, using allegations of Russian aggression to press for
punitive sanctions against Moscow, British participation in the US intervention in Syria
against the Russian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad, most recently following fake news of a
chemical weapons attack on Douma. This is in addition to accepting uncritically the allegations
of Russian interference in the US presidential election in 2016.
To underscore the Guardian's political loyalties, another invitee, although not on
the platform, was Sir David Omand, from whom the Guardian has commissioned several
articles over the years.
Omand is a former senior civil servant and head of the Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ), the intelligence and security organisation responsible for spying on
people at home and abroad. He is currently a visiting professor at King's College London and
vice-president of the Royal United Services Institute, the leading military think-tank.
It was GCHQ that in 2013 oversaw the operation to destroy the Guardian's hard
drives and memory cards on two computers containing encrypted files from whistle-blower Edward
Snowden, after the British government threatened to jail editor Alan Rusbridger and close the
newspaper over its reporting of the Snowden revelations. The Guardian accepted this
blatant censorship with only token protest.
The newspaper also has form on news control. It stated in 2010 in an infamous editorial
about WikiLeaks, which had provided secret US diplomatic cables to the Guardian and
four other news outlets, that it had only agreed to publish "a small number of cables" to
control the political fall-out from the details of murder, torture, espionage and
corruption they revealed. It added that the newspaper had exercised extreme discretion in the "
editing, contextualising, explanation and redaction " of the documents. [emphasis
added]
The Guardian is acutely aware of the widespread and entirely healthy scepticism
towards anything the government says on Skripal, in the aftermath of lies such as the existence
of Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" in furtherance of Britain's warmongering. Indeed, the
week before the June 4 event confirmed the need for the Guardian's services in
propping up the government's campaign of lies.
The newspaper led on the report of the supposed murder of Russian journalist Arkady
Babchenko at his apartment in Kiev as the assassination of yet another Putin critic, only for
Babchenko to show up alive and well the very next day at a press conference about his "murder."
Harding wrote lamenting that the stunt "would allow Russia and other unscrupulous governments
to dismiss real events as fake."
At the event itself, focus was placed for the most part on calls to end Russian money
laundering in London and avoiding wherever possible any direct examination of the Skripal case
in favour of sweeping generalisations.
Applebaum rejected any possibility that the Kremlin was not involved in the Skripals'
attempted assassination. She insisted that, having done a lot of research on how Russian
propaganda works, "this was like watching a replay of MH17," the Malaysian passenger jet shot
down over Eastern Ukraine. In that case, "Russia immediately put out dozens of stories, not
just deny it, but using multiple sources, gave out dozens of stories to pollute media with so
much nutty stuff in order to make people draw back and say believe it is all unknowable. That
is their modus operandi, designed for a Russian audience."
Applebaum never indicated that the same might be said about the British government's line on
the Skripal case!
Harding said that assassination was a traditional Russian method of dealing with opponents
going back to Lenin and Stalin and was resurrected in the 1990s when Putin and ex-KGB people
came to power. Unable to cite any example of Lenin assassinating anyone, he roamed willy-nilly
through history citing various assassinations by Stalin, including that of Trotsky, and various
more contemporary alleged assassinations as "proof" of his argument.
There were, he said, two theories about why Russia had tried to kill Skripal.
The first, which Harding rejected, was that after Skripal was released in a spy exchange, he
broke the rules, remained active and embarked on the old spies' lecture trail. The second,
which he "preferred," is that Skripal was "almost irrelevant": not so much the target but an
instrument to frighten and intimidate anyone thinking of cooperating with the West, especially
talking to the Mueller Inquiry in the US into the alleged Russian attempt to subvert the US
2016 election.
After these baseless ruminations, chairperson Mark Rice Oxley asked former GCHQ chief Omand,
sitting in the audience, for his thoughts. Omand was enthused. "It's a great conversation. I
agree with Luke's idea of implausible deniability. Hence the baroque method assassination. The
point is to intimidate.
"I know the team that did the assessment of the nerve agent, attributing it to a Novichok
agent and the Russian state. It was meticulous, like Sherlock Holmes, eliminating
everything.
"No scientific theory is 100 percent reliable, but this was as close as it gets," he
asserted.
He then admitted that it was entirely unclear how applying Novichok to a door handle would
work!
Omand agreed with Harding that the British government "should go after the money," urging
investigative journalists "to dig," saying it "would hurt the people in power around
Putin."
Omand, responding to a question from the chair as to whether British public opinion would be
in favour of increasing hostility to Russia, revealed the extent of the collaboration between
the Guardian and Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative government.
He said, "You are doing a good job in that regard. My fear is that if things worsen, it
would be necessary to explain The Kremlin could miscalculate, for example with a cyber-attack.
We could be moving into a dangerous period."
Applebaum interrupted, saying, "We know they could do that."
Some questions from the floor revealed public scepticism towards the government and media's
coverage of the Skripal case.
Answering a question about the government's use of D-Notices (Defence and Security Media
Advisory Notice), Morris tried desperately to excuse press censorship. Contradicting reports
that the government had issued two D-notices to prevent the media from identifying British
intelligence service personnel Skripal was working with, he said there were "very few that we
know about, only one." D notices had "changed" and are now "advisory."
Other members of the audience asked where the Skripals were now, reports about them being
given US passports and relocated to the US under fake names, the government's news management,
whether it was coincidence that Porton Down, the government's chemical and biological military
research institute, was so close to the incident, and that it had recently received additional
funding of £48 million.
One audience member pointed out that since the poisoning had been unsuccessful, Russia
might not have been responsible and that the government and media had taken the easy way out by
blaming Russia.
This was dismissed without a serious answer. The newspaper of what passes for the
"liberal left" instead proceeded to solidify its alliance with the most right-wing layers of
the US and British political and intelligence establishment by churning out anti-Russian
propaganda of a distinctly McCarthyite character.
When the media is controlled by people responsible for false flag operation chances to use investigation to
discredit this false flag operation, no matter how many evidence they have is close to zero
In other word false flag operation is perfect weapon for the "sole superpower" and due to this status entail very little
risks.
Notable quotes:
"... Today's false flag operations are generally carried out by intelligence agencies and non-government actors including terrorist groups, but they are only considered successful if the true attribution of an action remains secret. ..."
"... False flags can be involved in other sorts of activity as well. The past year's two major alleged chemical attacks carried out against Syrian civilians that resulted in President Donald Trump and associates launching 160 cruise missiles are pretty clearly false flag operations carried out by the rebels and terrorist groups that controlled the affected areas at the time. ..."
"... Because the rebels succeeded in convincing much of the world that the Syrian government had carried out the attacks, one might consider their false flag efforts to have been extremely successful. ..."
"... The remedy against false flag operations such as the recent one in Syria is, of course, to avoid taking the bait and instead waiting until a thorough and objective inspection of the evidence has taken place. The United States, Britain and France did not do that, preferring instead to respond to hysterical press reports by "doing something." If the U.N. investigation of the alleged attack turns up nothing, a distinct possibility, it is unlikely that they will apologize for having committed a war crime. ..."
"... The other major false flag that has recently surfaced is the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury England on March 4 th . Russia had no credible motive to carry out the attack and had, in fact, good reasons not to do so. ..."
"... Unfortunately, May proved wrong and the debate ignited over her actions, which included the expulsion of twenty-three Russian diplomats, has done her severe damage. Few now believe that Russia actually carried out the poisoning and there is a growing body of opinion suggesting that it was actually a false flag executed by the British government or even by the CIA. ..."
"... The lesson that should be learned from Syria and Skripal is that if "an incident" looks like it has no obvious motive behind it, there is a high probability that it is a false flag. ..."
False Flag is a concept that goes back centuries. It was considered to be a legitimate ploy
by the Greeks and Romans, where a military force would pretend to be friendly to get close to
an enemy before dropping the pretense and raising its banners to reveal its own affiliation
just before launching an attack. In the sea battles of the eighteenth century among Spain,
France and Britain hoisting an enemy flag instead of one's own to confuse the opponent was
considered to be a legitimate ruse de guerre , but it was only "honorable" if one
reverted to one's own flag before engaging in combat.
Today's false flag operations are generally carried out by intelligence agencies and
non-government actors including terrorist groups, but they are only considered successful if
the true attribution of an action remains secret. There is nothing honorable about them as
their intention is to blame an innocent party for something that it did not do. There has been
a lot of such activity lately and it was interesting to learn by way of a leak that the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) has developed a capability to mimic the internet fingerprints of
other foreign intelligence services. That means that when the media is trumpeting news reports
that the Russians or Chinese hacked into U.S. government websites or the sites of major
corporations, it could actually have been the CIA carrying out the intrusion and making it look
like it originated in Moscow or Beijing. Given that capability, there has been considerable
speculation in the alternative media that it was actually the CIA that interfered in the 2016
national elections in the United States.
False flags can be involved in other sorts of activity as well. The past year's two major
alleged chemical attacks carried out against Syrian civilians that resulted in President Donald
Trump and associates launching 160 cruise missiles are pretty clearly false flag operations
carried out by the rebels and terrorist groups that controlled the affected areas at the time.
The most recent reported attack on April 7th might not have occurred at all
according to doctors and other witnesses who were actually in Douma. Because the rebels
succeeded in convincing much of the world that the Syrian government had carried out the
attacks, one might consider their false flag efforts to have been extremely successful.
The remedy against false flag operations such as the recent one in Syria is, of course, to
avoid taking the bait and instead waiting until a thorough and objective inspection of the
evidence has taken place. The United States, Britain and France did not do that, preferring
instead to respond to hysterical press reports by "doing something." If the U.N. investigation
of the alleged attack turns up nothing, a distinct possibility, it is unlikely that they will
apologize for having committed a war crime.
The other major false flag that has recently surfaced is the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and
his daughter Yulia in Salisbury England on March 4th. Russia had no credible
motive to carry out the attack and had, in fact, good reasons not to do so. The allegations
made by British Prime Minister Theresa May about the claimed nerve agent being "very likely"
Russian in origin have been debunked, in part through examination by the U.K.'s own chemical
weapons lab. May, under attack even within her own party, needed a good story and a powerful
enemy to solidify her own hold on power so false flagging something to Russia probably appeared
to be just the ticket as Moscow would hardly be able to deny the "facts" being invented in
London. Unfortunately, May proved wrong and the debate ignited over her actions, which included
the expulsion of twenty-three Russian diplomats, has done her severe damage. Few now believe
that Russia actually carried out the poisoning and there is a growing body of opinion
suggesting that it was actually a false flag executed by the British government or even by the
CIA.
The lesson that should be learned from Syria and Skripal is that if "an incident" looks like
it has no obvious motive behind it, there is a high probability that it is a false flag. A bit
of caution in assigning blame is appropriate given that the alternative would be a precipitate
and likely disproportionate response that could easily escalate into a shooting war.
The real reason for which 'information apocalypse' terrifies the mainstream mediaIn short: because they are rapidly losing the propaganda monopoly by system failure
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find a source to inform me about the exact origin
(who and when) of the term 'fake news'. Generally, the term became mainstream during the last
years, and especially after some shocking events for the Western neoliberal establishment, like
Trump's presidency and Brexit.
Very briefly, it appears that the term was suspiciously invented by the neoliberal apparatus
to discredit people who supported such events, through social media and other Internet
platforms completely independent from the mainstream media control. Of course, one can easily
discredit this perception as 'conspiracy theory' or even 'fake news', as well.
While it's true that there has been a lot of hyperbole, misinformation and hard propaganda
circulated inside the cyberspace, it seems that the 'fake news' term was expanded somehow to
include even opinions and positions outside the dominant neoliberal orthodoxy expressed by the
political center in the West.
What's perhaps most interesting in the whole story, is that the term 'fake news' eventually
backfired against the establishment, as it was immediately adopted by the political 'extremes'
outside the neoliberal center, to include the misinformation and the smearing campaigns by the
mainstream media against those who didn't comply with the neoliberal narratives. Mainstream
media propaganda is what brought us numerous wars and plenty of disaster in previous decades,
after all.
numerous wars and plenty of disaster in previous decades, after all.
Now, a
relatively new technology with its origins in the beginning of the previous decade,
seems that it spreads a sort of panic among the mainstream media, often described as
'information apocalypse'.
What is new is the democratisation of
advanced IT, the fact that anyone with a computer can now engage in the weaponisation of
information. 2016 was the year we woke up to the power of fake news, with internet
conspiracy theories and lies used to bolster the case for both Brexit and Donald Trump. We
may, however, look back on it as a kind of phoney war, when photoshopping and video
manipulation were still easily detectable. That window is closing fast. A program developed
at Stanford University allows users to convincingly put words into politicians' mouths.
Celebrities can be inserted into porn videos. Quite soon it will be all but impossible for
ordinary people to tell what's real and what's not. What will the effects of this be? When a public figure claims the racist or sexist audio of
them is simply fake, will we believe them? How will political campaigns work when millions
of voters have the power to engage in dirty tricks? What about health messages on the
dangers of diesel or the safety of vaccines? Will vested interests or conspiracy theorists
attempt to manipulate them? Unable to trust what they see or hear, will people retreat into
lives of non-engagement, ceding the public sphere to the already powerful or the
unscrupulous? The potential for an "information apocalypse" is beginning to be taken seriously. The
problem is we have no idea what a world in which all words and images are suspect will look
like, so it's hard to come up with solutions. Perhaps not very much will change –
perhaps we will develop a sixth sense for bullshit and propaganda, in the same way that it
has become easy to distinguish sales calls from genuine inquiries, and scam emails with
fake bank logos from the real thing. But there's no guarantee we'll be able to defend
ourselves from the onslaught, and society could start to change in unpredictable ways as a
result.
The perspective described here is indeed frightening. Yet, what's really impressive in this
article and in other similar articles by the big media on the Internet, is that there is a type
of information elitism, implying that there is a media priesthood, which has the copyright of
Truth. You can tell that by the fact that the article completely ignores the possibility that
this technology could be used by the mainstream media too, to manipulate the public.
Inside this increasingly artificial reality, is there really anyone today who holds the keys of
the 'ultimate' truth? I don't think so.
So, this bizarre panic around the mainstream media about this new, and indeed frightening
technology, is not coming from their concern that you will be heavily misinformed. It's coming
from the fact that they want the monopoly to misinform you. Because they know that after
decades of lies and propaganda being upgraded to a literally scientific level, their
credibility today has reached a record low.
Celebrities can be inserted into porn videos by anyone. I don't like it. I don't think is
right.
Personalities should be protected and perhaps we need a new legislation code to achieve
that.
But what about the mainstream media pundits who will use this frightening technology to grab
the consent of the masses for another devastating war with millions of dead?
"... The following is the third part of a three-part interview with Professor Piers Robinson, an academic at the University of Sheffield and a member of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media. Parts one and two appeared on May 24 and May 25. ..."
"... We initially issued two briefing notes on Skripal. That was partly because some of the people in the Working Group who had been looking at chemical/biological events in Syria had relevant knowledge and were aware that what the British government was saying straight off was inaccurate, i.e., the idea that the nerve agent used was Russian and only the Russians could have produced it, etc. ..."
"... I did feel, because at the time the Syrian government was retaking large portions of territory, that the representation of Skripal might be being exploited as part of a broader propaganda drive against Russia (which was providing military support to Syria). ..."
"... If there was going to be an escalation in Syria, beyond the bombing that occurred, that would take us up against the Russians. There was a good possibility that the Skripal event was going to be exploited as part of a broader anti-Russian propaganda drive. ..."
"... when [Foreign Secretary] Boris Johnson pretty much said it was the Russians who must have poisoned the Skripals, that appeared to be a statement of certainty that was not warranted. And, of course, the recent history of Iraq and UK government claims regarding alleged WMD stockpiles was an important reminder that governments can be strongly motivated to distort and manipulate their claims, especially when intelligence is involved. ..."
"... I think the Skripal poisoning might be connected to events in the US. We do know, because Alex Thomson from Channel 4 tweeted on March 12 that the government had put a D-notice restriction on the reporting of [MI6 agent] Pablo Miller. Professor Paul McKeigue (University of Edinburgh) has issued a new briefing talking about this matter. ..."
"... Pablo Miller was Skripal's handler. He was connected to [former MI6 officer] Christopher Steele. He was responsible for the dossier alleging Trump's collusion with Russia. That, as I understand it, was a key part of initiating proceedings and investigations against Trump. It appears that the dossier was linked to the Democratic National Committee in that they apparently commissioned it. ..."
"... If it is the case that Skripal was in any way connected with that, it forms a possibility that there was a motive for someone other than Russia to have carried out the poisoning. ..."
"... More broadly, there is the possibility that the whole Russia-gate narrative is being used for bigger political purposes -- to influence Trump, to try and shore up action in the Middle East, perhaps on some level to distract Western publics from increasing awareness of how we have been involved in wars in the Middle East. ..."
The following is the third part of a three-part interview with Professor Piers Robinson,
an academic at the University of Sheffield and a member of the Working Group on Syria,
Propaganda and Media. Parts one and two appeared on May 24 and
May 25.
Julie Hyland: What is your estimation of the alleged poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal
by Russia, and how do they relate to the war in Syria?
PR: We initially issued two briefing notes on Skripal. That was partly because some of
the people in the Working Group who had been looking at chemical/biological events in Syria had
relevant knowledge and were aware that what the British government was saying straight off was
inaccurate, i.e., the idea that the nerve agent used was Russian and only the Russians could
have produced it, etc.
I did feel, because at the time the Syrian government was retaking large portions of
territory, that the representation of Skripal might be being exploited as part of a broader
propaganda drive against Russia (which was providing military support to Syria).
If there was going to be an escalation in Syria, beyond the bombing that occurred, that
would take us up against the Russians. There was a good possibility that the Skripal event was
going to be exploited as part of a broader anti-Russian propaganda drive.
It's not something you can pinpoint for sure at this stage because you don't have access to
the information. I don't think we will know the full truth of exactly what is happening for
some time. But you can make an informed judgement call.
What we do know is that the claims being made at the time were not tenable. So when
[Foreign Secretary] Boris Johnson pretty much said it was the Russians who must have poisoned
the Skripals, that appeared to be a statement of certainty that was not warranted. And, of
course, the recent history of Iraq and UK government claims regarding alleged WMD stockpiles
was an important reminder that governments can be strongly motivated to distort and manipulate
their claims, especially when intelligence is involved.
I think the Skripal poisoning might be connected to events in the US. We do know, because
Alex Thomson from Channel 4 tweeted on March 12 that the government had put a D-notice
restriction on the reporting of [MI6 agent] Pablo Miller. Professor Paul McKeigue (University
of Edinburgh) has issued
a new briefing talking about this matter.
Pablo Miller was Skripal's handler. He was connected to [former MI6 officer] Christopher
Steele. He was responsible for the dossier alleging Trump's collusion with Russia. That, as I
understand it, was a key part of initiating proceedings and investigations against Trump. It
appears that the dossier was linked to the Democratic National Committee in that they
apparently commissioned it.
If it is the case that Skripal was in any way connected with that, it forms a possibility
that there was a motive for someone other than Russia to have carried out the poisoning.
More broadly, there is the possibility that the whole Russia-gate narrative is being used
for bigger political purposes -- to influence Trump, to try and shore up action in the Middle
East, perhaps on some level to distract Western publics from increasing awareness of how we
have been involved in wars in the Middle East.
In a related area that people don't usually connect, the same psychological warfare methods
being used in the Middle East are being used in the attack on public education to privatize
education globally.
I've had a degree of dialogue with Piers on Facebook .
Despite the fact that he has done some important work here regards state propaganda and
Syria I have found his political positions very much the typical University sociology
professor , where bourgeois ideology and Post modernism runs rampant .
Not immune to running off a line of expletives and ad hominems as if they constitute an
argument, Piers came to the defence of Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Bealey when I had the
audacity to make a distinction between the defence of Syria against US Imperialism and a
defence of Assad per se and Putin
Both engaged in a somewhat lumpen diatribe on the question, despite the fact that I
clearly never once promoted an Imperialist line . The situation was in fact reminiscent of
what in more recent times the WSWS faced in regards Iran , when it seemingly ''had the
audacity'' to support the Iranian working class against its own bourgeois rulers.
The claims the British government made about the Skripal case are nonsensical. It is
entirely possible that the Skipal's were victims of simple
food poisoning or suffered from an
overdose of Fenatnyl . The British government used the case to increase hostility towards
Russia while diverting the public from its failures in the Brexit negotiations. There is
historic
precedence for such false accusations against the Russian state.
The Skripal case is
also related
to the "Dirty Dossier" the "former" British spy Christopher Steele created to defame U.S.
President Donald Trump. Sergej Skripal
may well have written parts of it . A fact which the British government is
trying to hide .
The Skripal's were probably hurt. The British accusations against Russia caused huge damage
in international relations. But the biggest casualty of the case might be the trustworthiness
of the British media.
Where are the deep investigations, the intriguing questions, the door stepping of witnesses
in this case? Why are no serious questions asked about the dubious claims made about the case?
How did the Skripals survive a nerve agent "ten times as deadly as VX"? Why is there no further
digging into the Steele dossier relation?
More
questions need to be asked. Who is the media servicing with its obsequious behavior?
Why?
---
Previous Moon of Alabama posts on the Skripal case:
On March 7, the British issued a D-notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) to
the British press formally requesting that they refrain from mentioning the name of Sergei
Skripal's former MI6 handler Pablo Miller or making any reference to him in their coverage of
the poisoning case and the police investigation. A week later, a second D-notice was issued
that reiterated the warning of the first D-notice and putting the press on notice not to
publish any information that could lead directly or indirectly to the identification of Pablo
Miller as Sergei Skripal's handler. http://powerbase.info/index.php/DSMA_notice_7_March_2018 http://powerbase.info/index.php/DSMA_notice_14_March_2018
This explains why the British press, usually notorious for harrying people in the
spotlight for interviews and gossipy information, have been noticeably reticent in
approaching the Skripals - assuming of course, that they have access to them.
This would also explain why Julia Skripal was reading a prepared statement in the video
and why her Reuters interview did not seem like a normal interview. She may have had a minder
close by prepared to intervene in case the interviewer posed a question she was not allowed
to answer.
Is anyone able to find out when the Reuters interview took place? If it took place some
time ago, would the time between Julia Skripal's release and the interview have been long
enough for Julia to recover to the extent where she looks well and appears not to be
suffering traumatic after-effects? And why was it only released on May 23?
The most plausible perpetrators of the original poisoning of the Skripals are some element of
the dysfunctional and evil British deep state, which connects to the American deep state,
which too is diabolical and dysfunctional.
The enormous resources, political and media and choreography and stream of lies,
surrounding the Skripal affair make it obvious as a dysfunctional deep state project.
The alternative explanations: 1) that it was Russia, make no sense whatsoever; 2) that it
was food poisoning is far fetched but possible, and might have been taken advantage of, and
the policeman victim then added, to create the 'right' attempted murder mystery ambience.
That is, those who have been 'protecting' and controlling and hiding away and issuing
statements for and 'restoring health to' the Skripals are very likely those who attacked
them.
Father Skripal is a practised devious sort, who would know the ropes. Thet he is not just
expendable, but an endangered loose end for various reasons now, including the Trump-Russia
false flag.
Has Julia Skripal had unimpeded access to her father since their recovery? If so, a wink
wink nod nod private whispered exchange between the two could have transformed the two into a
potential team effort to stay alive by playing their parts.
If she has not been allowed or had available a moment of private exchange with father
Skripal, then she might still know enough to understand that they are both in extreme
danger.
Father Skripal can likely be bought off. That's what he does for as living. But can
Julia?
Starting to believe that the Skripals were going to transport Novichok somehow into Syria so
that it could be used there In a staged event. The problem was that things may have gone
sideways. Makes sense why the Russians issued a warning of a staged attack and how the Brits
are keeping the couple incommunicado. The Russians could have known about the plot
beforehand.
As I commented here before there are many plausible explanations much more probable than any
of variants U.K. gov or media peddled. And this clear statement under duress sounding to
similar British hostages taken by Saddam Hussein in 2003 declaring that they were healthy ate
good food and were personal guests of Saddam and that they were free to leave anytime but
since they enjoyed themselves immensely they would stay for a while and hence do not worry.
Sounds like Julia Skripal. To support this there is not emphasized fact that they both
seem be to held in separate locations so they could not freely communicate much.
What is looks like that in this multiple bottom story something went wrong and some
desperate solutions have been implemented. Because it is clear now that by keeping them alive
that effectively cut off the family access while if dead family would have claimed bodies and
all those lies would have been exposed, or it was all a false flag to redirect Skripal role
in Trump dossier into made up Putin revenge on those who contributed to it.
Here is my take on all that, which may have not entirely happened as planed along the
scenarios I and others including b proposes.
As far as theory how this happened. I see that Skripal was in it, in fact he prepared and
tested appropriate dose for him as his daughter used as pawn to lend credibility and provide
required Putin evil killing innocent narrative which would be absent if he just killed or
hurt rogue agent.
Skipral himself calibrated that false flag dose of BZ or Fenantyl to make sure no
permanent damage would be done to his daughter and then administered it himself to her and
himself in controlled manner in public place so help would be coming immediately while in his
car they could have possibly lie there for hours before being discovered.
In fact place where he lived Salisbury near Porton Downs was perfect for this since there
was no way that doctors would misdiagnose them as military nerve agent victims which wrong
treatment would possibly caused irreversible damage to victims as doctors would be more
aggressive fearing immediate death of patients and also were immune to propaganda of Novichok
crap since they were experts in this medical field as real and present danger, threat of
exposure of Porton Downs employees was always there.
After recovery is was Skripal, trusted by her as her father, himself as part of psych op
presented the narrative as Putin wanted to kill me and did not care that you happened to be
with me at time of attack. I am so sorry, shit lies.
She was brainwashed or threatened some ways offered lucrative financial arrangement in the
west decided to stay and followed MI6 instructions, fearing she could be killed upon meeting
with Russian diplomats or even recruited family members or upon returning to Russia.
I do not think it would be far fetched to concoct such a thing or similar by MI6 as such
stunts were done before like fake deaths or staged attacks but in this case the point was to
fool British unwitting participants that nerve agent attack happenced as later they did later
in Douma in amateurish way but still it worked as pretext to pre planed aggression on Syria
as in case of Skripals pre planed diplomatic retaliation against Russia before any
investigation was really commenced , such a thing only perpetrators of false flag themselves
would do.
If Skripal was not on it why keep them alive witnesses of conspiracy since I could imagine
as a father myself Skripal would,have been furious of MI6 discovering what amounted to attemp
to kill his daughter and blame Putin one he learned that there was no Novichok crap or any
military nerve agent used.
In fact Fenantyl is deadly if inappropriately handled what just few days after Skripal
affair husband and wife overdosed on Fentanty in California and putting in critical condition
their mother in law trying to revive them in the bedroom, children that never enter the room
by looked through the Door who called 911 were also mildly exposed while a police officer who
entered the room end up in hospital himself.
Whole house was immediately quarantined and covered by tent until, special unit arrived
days later and only then police investigator entered premises. WImilar scenario unfolded in
Salisbury.
What interesting that no emergency or medical personnel in hospital in UK as in California
was hurt since they knew well how to deal with Fenantyl epidemic.
We must remember that despite crazy rhetoric we are dealing with risky but rational people
who were not smart enough to concoct something that would go down the throuta of gullible
public much more smoothly.
Starting to believe that the Skripals were going to transport Novichok somehow into Syria
so that it could be used there In a staged event.
Posted by: P Walker | May 24, 2018 9:39:46 AM | 18
At one point I saw a reference (on Sputnik I think, certainly a Russian source) that both
Skripals Sergei and Yulia were under investigation by Russian intelligence for smuggling arms
(I can't remember if there was a reference to chemical weapons but very possibly) into Syria.
It was slightly mind-jarring at the time since it conflicted with the official position that
Russia had (prior to the incident) no interest in Sergei Skripal. Otherwise I've seen nothing
on that, perhaps because of a criminal investigation in progress in Russia.
Regarding the throat scar - I can imagine that was the result of surgery for long-term
artificial respiration during the hospital-induced coma. If so, the alleged statement that
"the clinical treatment was invasive, painful and depressing" was unequivacally originating
from a technical and third-party source and definately not the patient. The doctor could well
have used that phrase in discussions with government officials, who got so used to it they
repeated it in composing an alleged statement for Yulia, but I am quite certain the patient
herself would not describe it in such a way whether in English or Russian, and whether native
English speaking or native foreign speaking. A patient's description would be much more
focussed on the patient's experience (pain, discomfort, probable dryness of the mucosal
membranes and side-effects resulting from that, etc) rather than "invasiveness" which was the
first word in the statement and thereby the most emphasised.
It was always suspicious that Yulia was "discharged" from the hospital - and therefore away
from her father - when her father was allegedly still under treatment. Yulia was alone in a
foreign country, utterly isolated from friends, family and aquaintances, while her father was
still in hospital undergoing "invasive, painful and depressing" treatment after an alleged
state-sponsored assassination attempt - NO WAY! She would not leave her father
voluntarily.
The statement that she does not want to be contacted by her cousin, grandmother, the Russian
government or anyone else is the real killer of the fairy tale, and is the exact opposite of
the compelling reality of such a traumatic episode. Is she supposed to believe her
grandmother and cousin actively conspired in the assassination plot? There is absolutely know
scenario that could explain such a wish.
i more like the "и принятия
всего
происшедшего." part.
('We need time for full revoery and for accepting all that happenned')
i bet it is as unrussian as unrussian can be.
it also is a bit confusing how she sternly repeats "no one should speak for us but
ourselves" then she herself speak for her father.
Another giveaway is "grateful to Russian embassy" -
"признательна
Российскому
посольству".
It is plain wrong. You do not write "russian" with capital letter in Russian.
And if you mean "Russian Embassy" as some kind of name - then bot hwords would be
capital.
It is yet another case of "thinking English" when authoring this Russian letter from Russian
woman to her Russian relatives...
Craig
Murray again shoots massive holes into the hostage video and PR, further using semantics
and discourse analysis to show the UK government at fault in this affair. A jointly written
article by b and Craig would be a great read since their own investigations are very
advanced, seemingly beyond all others. I for one find Craig's "lion cage" metaphor very
convincing.
A conjecture: Teresa had it done to protect Hillary.
1. Why, out of all places in the UK, Skripal would settle down in Salisbury, the location of
UK's CW labs? We're told that is because his handler, Pablo Miller, lived there. Fine, then
the question becomes: why, out of all places in the UK, Pablo Miller was living close to UK's
CW labs?
2. Why was it necessary to drag Yulia into this mess? A claim could be made that the
alleged Russian assassins needed her to track the location where Sergei lived. But this was
not her first visit to him, so alleged Russian assassins could have tracked his whereabouts
long time ago, then waited for the best moment to kill him. Obviously, it would be better to
kill him when he was alone, not with his daughter. Unless alleged Russian assassins, while
she was still in Moscow, secretly poisoned some object that she then brought to her father.
That is the only explanation why alleged Russian assassins would need Yulia. But British
government is not claiming that; instead, they claim that a toxic substance was applied to
the doorknob. Therefore, Yulia's presence was of no use to alleged Russian assassins. Then we
must conclude that her presence was somehow needed by the British or third-party
false-flaggers, or possibly by Sergei in case he was in on the plot. Otherwise, why not wait
till she leaves?
3. The choice of CW to assassinate Skripal, the fact that he lived next to the main CW lab
in UK (and one of the top CW labs in the world), and the fact that he and Yulia were poisoned
at the end of a three-week CW military exercise in Salisbury Plains, taken together, form a
combination that cannot be explained by mere coincidence. There must be a connection here.
Could British intelligence plan all this 8 years ago when they were selecting the location
where Skripal would live? Hell no. Therefore, it must have been the reverse: a decision was
made to kill or "kill" Skripal and pin it on the Russians, then someone decided to use the
fact that he was living close to the CW lab. However, if that's indeed what has happened,
then it was a very flawed plan from the start, since all these coincidences would be readily
apparent to outside observers. The poisoning false flag would work much better if Skripal was
living in some other region of UK, and there was no CW exercise at the time of his poisoning.
Therefore, either the plan was unintentionally dumb (because of incompetence), or it was
intentionally dumb (people did not want to do it but could not reject the order, so they
decided to sabotage it), or the original plan was entirely different, but it didn't work out,
so they quickly improvised something else and failed to make it convincing due to lack of
time.
Looking at the obvious tracheostomy scar left on her throat, Yulia must have lost all ability
to breathe on her on without ventilatory assistance for some time. A tracheostomy is only
performed after all effort to wean a patient off an endotracheal tube placed orally into the
trachea at the time of respiratory failure is attempted. It seems to me this was much more
than "food poisoning", and Yulia was in a deep coma for a prolonged duration.
This whole thing is very bizarre!
The Russian embassy seems curiously unwilling to file a habeus corpus application to produce
the Skripals and enforce their consular rights. I wonder why?
It can be interesting/useful. Translated today's article in Russian newspaper "Komsomolskaya
Pravda":
"KP"* exclusive: Victoria Skripal told that what her sister pronounced not her text in
the videoclip.
Both specialists and average people right away noticed that [Yulia] Skripal was
constrained, and a text which she has been pronounced was obviously written not by herself.
Yulia's sister Viktoria [Skripal] appeared with the same suspicions. Here's what the woman
told in exclusive interview during the "Komsomolskaya Pravda" radio air.
- Have you seen a written appeal?
- I saw only the appeal where she speaks. I'm glad she's alive and healthy. And i'm very
happy she'd like to come back home.
- Maybe you've noticed some strangenesses in this appeal?
- You mean, strangenesses that she's reading a text?
- What makes you think she's reading a text?
- You don't have to be a great specialist [to notice this]. When a person drop his eyes,
then lift up, then drop his eyes again. Do you know what is invasive therapy?
- No.
- Me too don't know. She too doesn't have a medical education. She is a geographer. I am
an accountant. But i don't know what is invasive therapy. And it can't be a persons speaks so
well, without mistakes. She has her favourite word. We all have our own parasite-word, right?
She used it when she called me by telephone: "ну да, ну
да" (Approximate English translation may be "yeah, yeah", or "well, yeah" - ed.).
But here [in this appeal] she suddenly did not use her words. I.e. it's smoothly, in one
breath. And a little bit slowly for her. Because [usually] she's chatter faster, when she's
talking and nervous.
@John Gilberts: A Russian article I've read today says the 1963 Vienna Convention does not
apply since the Skripals are not under investigation by UK authorities. However, their
relatives may go to a UK court to establish the status of the Skripals and request a meeting
with them.
hoped a thread for Yulia's staged appearance would be forthcoming; because of the
vicissitudes of timing, both B.'s observations and the comments have echoed my own reaction:
in brief, this was at best another UK government/spook "tease".
Aside from joining the chorus, however, I find that I am even more skeptical than
previously of the ostensible cumulative "facts" of the case. Yes, there are some established
"knowns", but too much sketchy and dodgy filler material surrounding them.
Yulia's brief presentation was obviously meticulously staged. But nothing that occurred
during the period of the Skripals' disappearance from public view should be presumed real,
actual, and authentic-- including that tracheotomy scar.
Am I saying that "they" would fake the scar? No; hypotheses non fingo. I'm saying that the
appearance of that scar should not prompt the otherwise "reasonable" surmise or assumption
that it "proves" that Yulia actually received a tracheotomy, that her medical condition
warrants it, etc.
I haven't seen any explanation for the circumstances behind Reuters hosting this tidy
little performance. It manifestly is not a case of some intrepid reporter or news
organization penetrating UK security and getting a "scoop".
As with the previous episodes, this "interview" raises more questions than it answers.
Perhaps its perpetrators hope that it will convince complacent, submissive, incurious
dullards that Yulia seems to have recovered nicely, and that there is no real mystery or
scandal about the Skripals having been poisoned by some Russian operative.
From the resistance , May 24, 2018 4:35:41 PM |
52
@Posted by: BM | May 24, 2018 10:55:51 AM | 29
Agree, "invasive" is, most definitively, a very technical term used only in medical field
by insiders to describe an agressive procedure, mostly consisting in introducing big tubes
with/or cameras inside the body to explore or implant drainages or respirator tubes, which
could imply secondary harm as a possibility but cnosidered less harmful than the necessity of
the exploration or procedure fro the helath of the patient, and which due to that are
performed under anesthesics.
No citizen strange to medical profession could anytime use such term, since it is not of
public domain.
I agree also in that it is difficult believe that a young girl having passed through such
"painful and depressing" experience would not have asked for her close relatives to come in
her support, something that, btw, would have been recommended for any doctor or nurse loyal
to their professional obligation with respect of the well being and full recovering of
patients.
She is obviously quite depressed and most probably psychologically incapable of taking right
decissions, or even counterproductive ones for her, as it usually happens under severe
depression.....
IMO, she is held hostage and under menace of something..her statements sounded like
recited by heart without any hint of personal emotion...She could be under psychiatric drugs,
quite possible...
Here is yet another comparison of the two letters.
In Russian, by Russian :)
Arioch , May 24, 2018 5:12:00 PM |
56karlof1 , May 24, 2018 5:12:50 PM |
57
"Wants
to return home" is the big point not being raised according to Russian political
scientist Igor Shatrov:
"It is unlikely that anyone would want to return to a country accused of poisoning her.
Therefore for me, this phrase is the most significant statement that Julia made."
I must concur. But was that part of the script or said independently?
Seems like B is on a roll lately. That's excellent!
However, I can't agree with the hostage claim proposed here and in many other intelligent
places any longer. For me, the Skripals being merely victims of greater powers involved in
foul play, them being somehow held and silenced against their will - that's completely off
the table.
It's hard to come to terms with it, but the Skripals have been in on the whole charade.
Sergey has been from the beginning, probably in an instrumental way even, but to some degree
Yulia must be complicit in the plot, too.
It's the way she behaves in the Reuters video. Her behavior is actually very
straightforward and lighthearted - and coherently so. No gaps there. She sure shows signs of
being a little nervous, but what media amateur wouldn't be in an interview situation. It's
really only minor nervousness given the fact that the Skripals are at the center of so much
international attention and that the Skripal case is a possible casus belli. She is
unmistakably flirting with the camera and clearly enjoying the attention brought to her. You
can't fake that.
The Russians (and the remaining Skripal family) will have to accomodate the fact that the
Skripals are lost to them. They won't be coming back – because they wouldn't want to.
That talk of returning to Russia "one day" is just that – talk, strategically placed
into the statement and aimed at undermining the Russian ambassador's admirable persistence.
Everything else that she says, or most of it, doesn't matter much. You all are perfectly
right in your analysis of who actually wrote Yulia's script I think, but sadly it's way
beside the point.
The Russian side has likely done so already, but if I were a Russian investigator, I'd
have a look at how well in advance of the flight date Yulia's tickets were booked. The date
as such might be of great importance, too. The Skripal ploy would have been given the green
light by the time Yulia got on that plane. It would have been conceived much earlier and I'd
check that against the airing (or finishing of the movie script) of that weird TV series B
mentioned in one of his earlier articles. In all likelihood, Yulia booked a return ticket,
but just for the sake of completeness, I'd check that, too. Also, what kind of health
insurance did she take out for her trip abroad? Was it really the usual, the bare minimum, so
as not to waste any money on it, or something more extensive? And how much luggage did she
take with her, and what items (not just practical stuff, but some cherished things too,
maybe)? Etc. etc.
HERE WE GO AGAIN!
BBC reporting a hoax phone call to Boris Johnson lasting 20 mins from Russian. Brit
government blaming! Russia Kremlin
So in last 2 days they'v dug up the Scripals again,accused Russia of downing a plain with
a missile,reports of new agression against Syria and as a diversion put N.koria back in the
news.
The same old same old!
We will know see,, within hours maybe days a massive attack on Syria/Iran !
They just did the ground work- anti Russia properganda,public distraction.
It's great to see much skepticism here. I see no reason to accept that the alleged event
happened in the first place. Great Britain, the US and Russia are all perfectly well able to
assassinate a couple of civilians if that is their desire.
If these two are alive, I expect they were meant to be alive. If they were meant to be
alive, I see no reason to risk their deaths by deliberately poisoning them (regardless of the
agent used) and then letting them fall into the hands of an emergency room staff - who could
themselves be poisoned or who might accidentally harm (even lethally) the "victims" by
treating them for the wrong agent.
All of the conjecture about Skirpal's ties to the "dodgy dossier" and even that the Clintons
could be the culprits in the dirty deed is based on the belief that the US has two "major"
political parties in serious opposition to one another. I see no evidence of that.
In this particular instance, we have the Clinton Crime family and The Donald - who have
all been good friends for decades. Their daughters both stated during the campaign that
they've been "best friends" since childhood. That could not have been possible with one of
them living under Secret Service watch, even living in the White House - without close ties
between their parents. Further, both Ivanka and Chelsea stated they expect to remain close
friends even after the election.
This is just plain impossible to imagine if the "fire and fury" of the campaign and all
the nasty stuff said during and since were even just exaggerations of real ideological
differences.
I often describe US politics as akin to US football. The Eagles and the Bears both want to
win any given game or championship. The teams get some bonuses for winning. But they are both
playing the same game, and share the proceeds regardless. It used to be that the two "teams"
had different owners (though of the same elite group), but at least since the rise of the
Clinton/DLC, they even share owners, let alone ideologies and "long game" goals.
So I see no reason to believe any of the partisan kabuki theater that oozes out of our
MSM.
The most interesting aspect of the whole Skripal incident was the imposition of D notices on
the media by the UK government. The reasoning was said to be to protect agent Miller but this
was a lie as Miller's association with Skripal was previously well known and bound to come to
the surface. No, the reasons for the D notices were to protect the government's bizarre
narrative of lies and also the likely poisoner which would be our mysterious policeman caught
up in the incident.
I strongly suspect the charade was intimately linked to british special forces captured
unexpectedly in Gouta, Syria whilst assisting the local jihadis in preparing their next false
flag chemical attack which would have brought in a massive western response to try and change
the direction of the conflict. In other words an act of desperation which led to the comical
situation of the authorities having to make the narrative up as they were going along.
It's a fact that allowing the media to swarm all over the place - even if controlled -
would have invariably thrown up scenarios or situations which would have taken control of the
narrative out of the government's hands.
There are a number of reasons to suspect that Sergei Skripal was, and is, being silenced
because of fears of what he might reveal about the Steele dossier. Although he is a minor
character in this affair, there are many facts -- too many for me to go into here -- that
connect him and his alleged MI6 handler Pablo Miller to Christopher Steele and the
dossier.
The entire official story of what happened to Skripal in Salisbury on 4 March is
unbelievable anyway, but the way that he and his daughter Yulia are now being kept
incommunicado looks even more suspicious. The two of them are apparently not even speaking to
their friends and family after being discharged from hospital, even though Yulia phoned her
cousin Viktoria from the hospital in early April.
Add to this the fact that the British authorities are not doing anything to dispel doubts
that the Skripals are acting of their own free will. They have made no effort to allow either
the Russian embassy, or even an independent third party, to speak to either Sergei or
Yulia.
This all suggests that the Skripals are being detained against their will in order to keep
them quiet about something.
J. Decker , May 19, 2018 at 7:25 am
"British authorities have made no effort to allow either the Russian embassy, or even an
independent third party, to speak to either Sergei or Yulia"
Isn't this disallowed in international relations? And why is Russia rolling over rather
than taking the case to the Hague?
Russia may have decided that taking it seriously would be a mistake by giving it too much
attention with all the distortions that would arrive from the MSM. Putin is a Machiavellian
and doesn't rush into things. I predicted weeks ago that we would hear about the miraculous
efforts of British medicine to "rescue" the Skripals. That's what happened. The Skripals are
being silenced rather than allowed to tell their story. Obvious beyond any doubt.
J. Decker , May 19, 2018 at 7:31 am
Brilliant piece Daniel Lazare. Many thanks! And as well to Consortium News for
broadcasting. I am getting more than I give to you each month in support. You are a a light
to us moths, most others have been put out.
Sam F , May 19, 2018 at 8:42 am
Yes, the isolation of the Skripals strongly suggests UK complicity in the whole
incident.
The lack of transparency requires the presumption of wrongful intent.
Yulia and Sergei Skripal: The father and son whose whereabouts and physical condition are
currently unknown, and whose important story is little-known, massively and scandalously
suppressed and being kept from the awareness of the people of Earth.
Neither U.S. President Donald Trump, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May nor France President
Emmanuel Macron have offered anything approaching a public statement, by way of explanation
-- over the now "vanished" Yulia and Sergei Skripal.
It is equally important to note and remember that none of these "leaders" have issued
public statements with regard to the Douma, Syria confirmed false flag operation. In
particular, they have not apologized for dangerously and illegally launching over 100
missiles on Syria based on an obvious lie.
***
Question:
Will Donald Trump, Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron rightfully provide their citizens in
America, Britain and France with logical explanations for the massive unresolved
controversies surrounding the Skripal and Douma events?
Answer:
Only if men and women around the Earth join, accumulate sufficient power, and demand
legitimate, honest answers -- making it impossible for them to further obfuscate, deflect
and/or otherwise ignore.
Thanks Rowan @1. Considering all the digital ink spilt at MoA over the Skirpal Affair, I
expected this news to be highlighted.
This Yulia quote struck me:
"I don't want to describe the details, but the clinical treatment was invasive, painful
and depressing... Our recovery has been slow and extremely painful."
Goodness! Considering the US Senate just confirmed a known torturer to run CIA, I must ask
what kind of "treatment" Yulia received. I presume the neck scar is the result of
endotracheal intubation?
And since visual imprints are so important in perception management, I found it
interesting that this young woman, who was last reported in good health sitting on a park
bench, is filmed in her "coming out" video sitting on a bench in a park-like setting. And
she's writing what we must assume is the handwritten note released to the media - on a pad of
paper sitting on the bench next to her! That's a very awkward way to write, especially since
that note is is such legible, neat script.
The BBC article goes on to state:
"Meanwhile, work to decontaminate the Wiltshire city is still under way with the highest
concentration of the Novichok found at the Skripals' front door."
Still decontaminating the town all this time later?
Rowan @ 1, Daniel @ 51: Julia Skripal appeared to be reading or following a prepared script.
For someone who's been in a coma for 20 days, she looked very well indeed and does not appear
to be suffering PTSD.
How would a person in a coma know if the treatment she was receiving was invasive, painful
and depressing?
Novichok is supposed to be an unstable substance that degrades quickly in humid climatic
conditions or in conditions where it comes into contact with water. Is Salisbury being
decontaminated one brick tile, one shrub, one pigeon at a time?
Hmm .. this is what endotracheal intubation looks like but I can't see that a shunt has
been made beneath the throat and between the collar bones. I too was curious about that neck
wound. http://drkashi.science/endotracheal-intubation/
nofollow"
href="https://www.rt.com/uk/427080-skripal-salisbury-nhs-poison/">"Sergei Skripal discharged
from hospital after being poisoned by 'deadly' agent"
The link is to RT, in case anyone missed this report.
It's been a busy "news" week, between significant geopolitical events, the usual US
school massacres, and the bread-and-circuses distraction of a UK Royal Wedding. Perhaps this
is why the above-cited "news" didn't seem to get much attention.
I'll stop enclosing "news" in ironic quotation marks-- the " key on my laptop is
buckling under the strain of overuse. But I used them because every fresh installment of
alleged news about the Skripals simply extends, or exacerbates, the riddle, wrapped in a
mystery, inside an enigma that is l'affaire Skripal.
One reason for the lack of reaction to this latest "development" (those quotes needed
again) is that it is shown through a glass darkly-- the glass being the government controlled
and managed information bubble. Like the earlier "developments", it's eerily
self-contained.
Like many barflies, I have my idiosyncratic axes to grind, soapboxes to climb, bees in
my bonnet, etc. After the mysterious events of 9/11/2001, I coined the term "pernicious
factoids" to describe the bits of manufactured falsehoods and disinformation used to
construct and perpetuate bogus Official Narratives.
For example, not long ago a minor New York Times article about Lee Harvey Oswald's
gravesite began with something like, "When Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy in Dealey
Plaza...". This is a pernicious factoid; they remain embedded like toxic prions in the
collective consciousness, and are regarded as reasonably true, correct, and
meaningful.
Likewise, the other day the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, gave a
routine press conference. As usual, some wretched would-be UK journalist took issue with
Yakovenko's reiterating that the Russians are required by law to interview the Skripals
personally and directly to confirm their status and wishes.
The questioner hectored the ambassador with the point that Yulia Skripal had released
statements through the police indicating that she, at least, did not wish to
meet personally with Russian officials because she was afraid to do so.
Ambassador Yakovenko, also as usual, patiently-- and a bit too diffidently-- explained
that a third-party statement is not the same as first-hand communication. I get it-- he's a
"real" diplomat, not like the whacked-out modern Western berserker-diplomats. So he's not
about to tear this bumptious idiot's head off.
But I wanted to scream. This is the way pernicious factoids work. Everybody in that
room was at least willing to pretend that yeah, OK, Yulia actually did give the
police that statement. Or a statement. Probably. But hmmm, if one really stops and
thinks about it, everything the public has been told about the circumstances of
the, er, events comes from official sources and/or highly-compromised and untrustworthy
mass-media organizations.
So, the ostensibly remarkable development of Sergei Skripal's recovery from a
"military-grade nerve agent" just circles around the disinformation/memory hole. And, since
these virtual "developments" are largely fact-free, the stories usually pad out the minimal
"news" by revisiting and reiterating the same festering gutpile of pernicious factoids we've
been sorting through for months: the supposed doorknob-smearing, the peculiar aspects of the
"poisoning", etc.
End of rant, but only because my " key is overheating and seizing up. ;)
_____________________________________
Bonus Fun Fact: I was curious about the context of Churchill's "riddle" quote, so I
looked it up. According to the "Phrase Finder" website, it was uttered during an October,
1939 radio broadcast: "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle,
wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian
national interest."
13 - On the Skripals, no reporter I have read on the release of either Skripal has bothered
to wonder why there are no photos of them at all, especially of the normal press availability
on the hospital steps thanking their doctors, no information on their whereabouts, health or
future plans.
"... Now, it is hard to know what to make of all this, other than to point out that he was speaking to fellow security chiefs. Maybe, among themselves, they find it more morale-boosting to demonise an old enemy than to take on adversaries that have emerged more recently, are more complicated and against which they have so far perhaps had less success. ..."
"... the conclusion has to be that Russia is considered a "safe", useful, and almost eternal enemy by the UK's powers-that-be. Some of us may hope for something better, but it seems a long way away. ..."
The UK's obsession with the Russian bogeyman doesn't stack up Mary Dejevsky The head of MI5 has joined the security
establishment's anti-Putin onslaught. But his organization agrees that Moscow is not the greatest threat
Today's
speech by the head of MI5 , Andrew Parker, has been presented as a first the first time the head of the UK's domestic intelligence
service has delivered a speech abroad, specifically at a conference of security heads in Berlin. But this is the only respect in
which it is a first. It might as accurately be described as the latest in a series of public utterances by UK intelligence chiefs
and top brass, which began last autumn and continued with the
head of GCHQ
addressing a cybersecurity conference in Manchester last month.
"MI5 chief: Kremlin is 'chief protagonist' in campaign to undermine west" Read more
In part, this reflects a deliberate decision by the intelligence services and the government that they should be more open about
what they do, with a view to gaining greater public understanding and expanding recruitment at a time when they face competition
for tech-savvy graduates from richer and less restrictive employers. But this season of intelligence and military speeches has also
facilitated the communication of an apparently co-ordinated message. As a country, the UK now sees
Russia as its prime adversary.
The poisoning of
Sergei Skripal , the former Russian spy, and his daughter in Salisbury took the UK's official anti-Russia stance to new heights.
And its diplomatic success in persuading so many other countries to
expel Russian diplomats in protest the biggest ever "collective expulsion of security agents", we were told seems to have
emboldened London to view itself as the potential leader of an international anti-Russia front, as the Guardian
recently
reported .
The invective produced by Parker today and heavily sold to the media was, in its way, extraordinary. In tone, it was quite
different from the cold war register, which was formal and, well, cold. This attack was populist, direct, and far outside the diplomatic
register. Here is just a sample.
The Kremlin was engaging in "deliberate, targeted, malign activity intended to undermine our free, open and democratic societies".
The west had to "shine a light through the fog of lies, half-truths and obfuscation that pours out of their propaganda machine".
Russia, he said caustically, had as one of its "central and entirely admirable aims to build Russian greatness on the world stage".
But it had repeatedly chosen "to pursue that aim through aggressive and pernicious actions by its military and intelligence services".
In so doing, it risked becoming "a more isolated pariah".
So long as the UK refuses consular access to Yulia Skripal, Russia can with some justification ask just who has a monopoly
on a fog of lies.'
Now, it is hard to know what to make of all this, other than to point out that he was speaking to fellow security chiefs. Maybe,
among themselves, they find it more morale-boosting to demonise an old enemy than to take on adversaries that have emerged more recently,
are more complicated and against which they have so far perhaps had less success. There is a sense too, for the UK at least, that
relations with Russia have been so bad for so long that magnifying the supposed Russia threat is a cost-free enterprise in diplomatic
terms.
It might also be worth considering whether there are budgetary and Brexit angles. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
US and the UK, in particular, scaled back their government-backed research on Russia and lost a great deal of expertise, which they
are now trying to rebuild. That means they have to make a case for more taxpayers' money, and scare tactics are one way to do that.
For the UK, there may also be the fear that it will find the European Union less inclined to keep London in the intelligence loop,
and at a time when the US is looking a far less reliable ally it might make sense to play up the Russian bogeyman, not least
as Vladimir Putin begins his fourth term in office. Nothing like starting as you intend to go on.
Yet it is still difficult to see the sense in this. Russia has become inured to UK scolding of this kind, and treats it with contempt
as its social media response to Parker's speech shows. What is more, so long as the UK maintains its silence on the Skripals' fate
and refuses consular access to Yulia Skripal, Russia can with some justification, I would argue ask just who has a monopoly on
a "fog of lies".
Nor will the tone necessarily chime well with official views of Russia in Germany and France, which are not necessarily less tough
in practice, but certainly more nuanced, and better informed. The UK seems intent despite recent legislation about dubious money
in London in keeping its diplomatic and business relations with Russia in separate boxes. Germany, for one, does not have that
luxury.
The conclusion has to be that Russia is considered a 'safe', useful, and almost eternal enemy by the UK's powers-that-be
The UK's rhetorical onslaught on Russia is even more puzzling when you examine the security services' own priorities. "Is terrorism
the biggest threat facing the UK?" visitors to the MI5 website are asked in
a pop-up called "fact or fiction". Click no, and this is the response: "The biggest threat we currently face comes from international
terrorist groups and individuals inspired by them. Terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland also continue to pose a serious threat."
Now it is true that the threat from terrorism and Islamic State was also broached by Parker in his speech, but this was not the
section spun in advance to the media; it was not the aspect MI5
wanted above all to be noticed. So the conclusion has to be that Russia is considered a "safe", useful, and almost eternal enemy
by the UK's powers-that-be. Some of us may hope for something better, but it seems a long way away.
Mary Dejevsky is a former foreign correspondent in Moscow
Fake news, trying to create false connections between police psychological issues and a rather dubious UK poisoning false flag.
Via The Guardian
Almost 100 Wiltshire police officers and staff have sought psychological support after the nerve agent attack in Salisbury,
the Guardian can reveal.
Among those who have asked for help were officers who initially responded to the collapse of the former Russian spy Sergei
Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, and those who were at or close to the various investigation sites in subsequent days and weeks.
Some reported feeling disorientated and anxious while others were concerned about the possible long-term health effects on
the public.
While the Skripal poisoning story has faded from much of the mainstream media news cycle, as it was increasingly exposed as a
complete hoax and embarrassment for the May government, the Guardian appears to be trying to resurrect "the Russians did"
Novichok narrative.
It is about time your stupid leader and her clown were put on the stage to explain to all the world why they chose to defame
the integrity of Russia in such an unbelievable set of circumstances that only children under the age of ten would not understand
!! How can any Nation since this demonic happening , ever trust this self - centred Bozo from ever making a sensible judgement
for the future of mankind !
UK has lost it completely and the Guardian has fallen prey to the CIA Mockingbird Operation (infiltration and manipulation
of media). Used to be a good paper under Alan Rushbridger and protection of Snowden, Assange etc. Now it has lost it altogether
with useless editorial board. The woman in charge must have something in common with Nikki Haley: incapable of nuance and irrationally
convinced of her being right (without research lots of claims about Assad, Putin etc.).
"They are liars. And they know that they are liars," the late Egyptian writer and Nobel
laureate Naguib Mahfouz once wrote: "And we know that they are liars. Even so, they keep
lying...."
Notable quotes:
"... of a type developed by Russia ..."
"... The western modus operandi is the same in the Skripal case. The Tories rushed to conclusions and issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the Russian government to prove its innocence, or rather to admit its guilt. How was the so-called novichok delivered to London, did President Vladimir Putin authorise the attack, did Russia lose control of its stockpile? The prime minister and her foreign secretary had in effect declared Russia guilty as charged. No objective police investigation, no due process, no presumption of innocence, no evidence was necessary: it was "sentence first, verdict later", as the Red Queen declared in Alice in Wonderland . ..."
"... The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, stated for the record that "as soon as the rumors, fed by the British leadership, about the poisoning of Skripal appeared, we immediately requested access to this [toxic] substance so that our experts could analyze it in accordance with the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons." After the British ambassador visited the Russian foreign ministry on 13 March to receive the formal Russian reply to the British ultimatum, the foreign ministry in Moscow issued a communiqué: " The [Salisbury] incident appears to be yet another crooked attempt by the UK authorities to discredit Russia. Any threat to take 'punitive' measures against Russia will meet with a response. The British side should be aware of that." The Russian government in fact proposed that the alleged poisoning of the Skripals should be examined by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, according to procedures to which Britain itself had agreed when the OPCW was established in 1997. ..."
"... In the meantime, President Putin weighed in. "I guess any reasonable person [has] realised," he said, "that this is complete absurd[ity] and nonsense. [How could] anybody in Russia allow themselves such actions on the eve of the [Russian] presidential election and the football World Cup? This is unthinkable." In any police inquiry, investigators look for means, motive and opportunity. On these grounds did the trail of guilt lead to Moscow? ..."
"... The British PowerPoint presentation did not stop with its two main canards. It goes on to refer to "Russian malign activity" including, inter alia ..."
"... bourrage de crâne ..."
"... On 14 April, Minister Lavrov at a meeting in Moscow provided the answer. The substance used to attack the Skripals was laced with a substance know as BZ which incapacitates rather than kills and takes longer to work than an instant acting nerve agent which kills immediately. The United States, Britain and other NATO countries have developed this toxin and put it into service; the Soviet Union never did so. ..."
"... how did the perpetrators obtain the BZ toxin and bring it to Salisbury, did MI5 or MI6 authorise a false flag attack against the Skripals, or was it authorised by the British cabinet or by the prime minister alone? Or did British authorities lose control of their stockpiles? The trail of evidence does not lead to Moscow; it leads to London. ..."
"... A prima facie case can be made that the British government is lying about the Skripal affaire . Suspicion always falls upon those who act deviously, who hide behind clever turns of phrase and procedural and rhetorical smokescreens. British authorities are now saying that they have other top secret evidence, which explains everything, but unfortunately it can't be publicised. Nevertheless, the British government appears to have leaked it to the press. The Times published a story about a covert Russian lab producing nerve agents and it spread like wild fire across the Mainstream Media. The Daily Mirror put out a story about a Russian secret assassins' training manual. These stories are laughable. Is the Tory government that desperate? Is the British "everyman" that gullible? ..."
"... The secret assassin's manual reminds me of the 1924 "Zinoviev Letter", a counterfeit document produced by White Russians in Germany, purporting to demonstrate Soviet interference in British elections and planning for a socialist revolution. It was early days of "fake news". Parliamentary elections were underway in October 1924 and the Tories used the letter to attack the credibility of the Labour party. It was whipping up the red scare, and it worked like a charm. The Tories won a majority government. Soviet authorities claimed that the letter was bogus and they demanded a third party, independent investigation to ascertain the truth, just as the Russian government has done now. In 1924, the Tories refused, and understandably so, since they had a lot to hide. It took seventy-five years to determine that "the letter" was in fact counterfeit. ..."
"... déjà vu. ..."
"... "They are liars. And they know that they are liars," the late Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz once wrote: "And we know that they are liars. Even so, they keep lying...." ..."
"... The Tories are trying doggedly to maintain control of the narrative. Stakes are high for if it eventuates that the Tories have lied deliberately for political gain, at the risk of destabilising European, indeed world peace and security, the Tory government should be forced to resign and new elections, called. Then, the British electorate can decide whether it wants to be governed by reckless, mendacious Tory politicians who risk to provoke war against the Russian Federation. ..."
On 4 March 2018 it was a foggy day in southern England, and the MI6 Russian spy Sergei
Viktorovich Skripal and his daughter Yulia stepped out for a stroll, stopped at the local pub
in Salisbury, went to lunch at a nearby restaurant, and then took a walk in the park where they
collapsed on a park bench. What had happened to them? Did they suffer from food poisoning? Or
was Sergei Skripal involved in some dark affaire and the object of a hit by persons
unknown, his daughter being an accidental victim?
The police received a call that day at 4:15pm reporting two people in distress. Emergency
services were despatched immediately. The Skripals were rushed to hospital, while the local
police launched an investigation. It began to look like attempted murder, but the police urged
patience, saying it could take months before they might know what had happened and who, if
anyone, was responsible.
The Conservative government decided that it did not need to wait for a police investigation.
"The Russians" had tried to assassinate a former intelligence officer turned informant for MI6.
Skripal went to jail for that, but was released four years later in an exchange of agents with
the United States. Now, "the Russians," so the Tory hypothesis goes, wanted to settle old
scores. Less than 24 hours after the incident in Salisbury, the British foreign secretary,
Boris Johnson, suggested that the Russian government was the prime suspect in what looked like
an attempt gone wrong to assassinate Sergei Skripal.
On 12 March the foreign
secretary summoned the Russian ambassador to inform him that a nerve agent, A-234, had been
used against the Skripals. How did you do it, Johnson wanted to know, or did the Russian
government lose control of its stocks of chemical weapons? He gave the Russian ambassador 24
hours to respond. In point of fact, the Russian government does not possess any stockpiles of
chemical weapons or nerve agents, having destroyed them all as of September 2017.
Later that day, the British prime minister, Theresa May, declared in the House of Commons
that the Skripals, then said to be in a coma, were poisoned with "a military-grade nerve agent
of a type developed by Russia " (italics added) called a 'novichok', a Russian word
having various possible translations into English (beginner, novice, newcomer, etc.). May
claimed that since the Soviet Union was known to have produced this chemical weapon, or nerve
agent (also known as A-234), that it was " highly likely " that the Russian government
was guilty of the attack on the Skripals.
Here is what the prime minister said in the House of Commons: "Either this was a direct act
by the Russian State against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this
potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of
others." The hurried British accusations were redolent of those in 2014 alleging Russian
government complicity or direct involvement in the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines MH 17
over the Ukraine. Within hours of the destruction of MH 17, the United States and its
vassals, including Britain, accused Russia of being responsible.
The western modus operandi is the same in the Skripal case. The Tories rushed to
conclusions and issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the Russian government to prove its innocence, or
rather to admit its guilt. How was the so-called novichok delivered to London, did President
Vladimir Putin authorise the attack, did Russia lose control of its stockpile? The prime
minister and her foreign secretary had in effect declared Russia guilty as charged. No
objective police investigation, no due process, no presumption of innocence, no evidence was
necessary: it was "sentence first, verdict later", as the Red Queen declared in Alice in
Wonderland .
On 13 March the Russian embassy informed the Foreign Office that the Russian Federation was
not involved in any way with the Salisbury incident. We will not respond to an ultimatum, came
the reply from Moscow. The eloquent Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Mariia Zakharova,
characterised the British démarche as a "circus show". Actually, Foreign Office clerks
must have told Boris Johnson that Russia would not respond to such an ultimatum so that it was
a deliberate British attempt to provoke a negative Russian reply.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, stated for the record that "as soon as the
rumors, fed by the British leadership, about the poisoning of Skripal appeared, we immediately
requested access to this [toxic] substance so that our experts could analyze it in accordance
with the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons." After the British ambassador
visited the Russian foreign ministry on 13 March to receive the formal Russian reply to the
British ultimatum, the foreign ministry in Moscow issued a communiqué: " The [Salisbury]
incident appears to be yet another crooked attempt by the UK authorities to discredit Russia.
Any threat to take 'punitive' measures against Russia will meet with a response. The British
side should be aware of that." The Russian government in fact proposed that the alleged
poisoning of the Skripals should be examined by the Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, according to procedures to which Britain itself had
agreed when the OPCW was established in 1997.
On 14 March the British government expelled 23 Russian diplomats, and a few days later the
Russian side expelled 23 British diplomats and shuttered the offices of the British Council in
Russia. At the same time, the British appealed to their allies and to the European Union to
show solidarity by expelling Russian diplomats.
Twenty-eight countries did so, though for most it was one or two expulsions, tokenism to
appease the British. Other countries -- for example, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal --
refused to join the stampede. Going over the top, the United States expelled sixty
diplomats and closed the Russian consulate in Seattle. The Russians responded in kind with
sixty expulsions and the closure of the US consulate in St. Petersburg. Momentum seemed to be
building toward a major confrontation. The British prime minister even alluded to the
possibility of
military action .
In the meantime, President Putin weighed in. "I guess any reasonable person [has] realised,"
he said, "that this is complete absurd[ity] and nonsense. [How could] anybody in Russia allow
themselves such actions on the eve of the [Russian] presidential election and the football
World Cup? This is unthinkable." In any police inquiry, investigators look for means, motive
and opportunity. On these grounds did the trail of guilt lead to Moscow?
Momentum is sometimes like a balloon, it blows up and then it suddenly bursts. The British
case against Russia began to fall apart almost from the time it was made. In late March the
Russian newspaper Kommersant leaked a
British PowerPoint presentation sent to eighty embassies in Moscow. It asserted, inter
alia , that the British chemical weapons facility at Porton Down had positively identified
the substance, which allegedly poisoned the Skripals, as a Novichok, "developed only by
Russia". Both these statements are false. On 3 April Porton Down stated publicly that it could
not determine the origin of the substance that poisoned the Skripals. It also came out
that the formula for making a so-called novichok was published in a book by a Russian dissident
and chemist, Vil Mirzayanov, who now lives in the United States. You can buy his book
(published in 2008), which includes the formula, on
Amazon.com . In fact, any number of governments or smart chemists or even bright
undergraduate chemistry students with the proper facilities could make this nerve agent.
Amongst those governments having access to the original formula are Britain and the United
States. The Russian embassy in London noted in a published
report that "neither Russia nor the Soviet Union has ever developed an agent named
'Novichok'." The report further stated that "While Soviet scientists did work on new types of
chemical poisons, the word 'Novichok' was introduced in the West in mid-1990s to designate a
series of new chemical agents developed there on the basis of information made available by
Russian expat researchers. The British insistence to use the Russian word 'Novichok' is an
attempt to artificially link the substance to Russia."
The British PowerPoint presentation did not stop with its two main canards. It goes on to
refer to "Russian malign activity" including, inter alia , the "invasion" of Georgia
in 2008, the "destabilisation" of the Ukraine and the shooting down of MH17 in 2014, and
interference in the US elections in 2016. All of these claims are audacious lies ,
easily deconstructed and unpacked. The referenced events are also unrelated to the Salisbury
incident and were raised in an attempt to smear the Russian Federation. In fact, the British
PowerPoint slides represent vulgar propaganda, bourrage de crâne , as
preposterous as any seen during the Cold War.
As Minister Lavrov pointed out, the Skripal case should have gone for resolution to the OPCW
in The Hague. Russia would then be directly involved in the investigation and would have access
to the alleged toxin, and other evidence to try to determine what had happened and who were the
perpetrators. The British government at first refused to go to the OPCW, and then when it did,
refused to authorise the Russian government to have access to the alleged substance, which had
sickened the Skripals. That idea is "perverse", said British authorities. Actually, not at all,
it is the procedure laid out in OPCW statutes, to which Britain itself agreed but has refused
to respect. When the Russian representative at the OPCW proposed a resolution to the executive
council, that it should respect its own statutes, he could not obtain the required vote of
approval. The British were attempting to hijack the OPCW as a
potential tool against the Russian Federation. Thus far, that stratagem has not worked. On 12
April the OPCW released a report stating
that it had "confirm[ed] the findings of the United Kingdom relating to the identity of the
toxic chemical that was used in Salisbury ." The
report said nothing about the origin of the so-called "toxic chemical". The
British accusation against Russia thus remained unsubstantiated.
What I could not understand when I read the OPCW communiqué, is why the Skripals were
still alive. The OPCW says that the toxic chemical used against the Skripals was "of high
purity". Was it a nerve agent? Oddly, the OPCW published report avoids a straight answer. If it
was a nerve agent, being of "high purity," it should have been instant acting and killed the
Skripals almost immediately. Yet both have survived at the time of this writing. Something does
not make sense. Of course, there could be a simple explanation for this puzzling mystery.
On 14 April, Minister Lavrov at a meeting in
Moscow provided the answer. The substance used to attack the Skripals was laced with a
substance know as BZ which incapacitates rather than kills and takes longer to work than an
instant acting nerve agent which kills immediately. The United States, Britain and other NATO
countries have developed this toxin and put it into service; the Soviet Union never did so.
Traces of A-234 were also identified, but according to experts, such a concentration of the
A-234 agent would cause death to anyone affected by it. "Moreover," according to
the Russian embassy in London , "considering its high volatility, the detection of this
substance in its initial state (pure form and high concentration) is extremely suspicious as
the samples have been taken several weeks since the poisoning," Could Britsh authorities have
tampered with the samples? The public OPCW report gives no details, and refers only to a "toxic
chemical". Nor did the report say that the OPCW had submitted specimens of the substance to a
well-known Swiss lab , which
promptly reported back its surprising results. The OPCW authorities thus lied when they said
that the tests "confirmed" the British identify of the "toxic chemical". Unless Porton
Down knew that the substance used against the Skripals was a BZ type toxin, and so informed the
OPCW, or, unless the Tory government lied in claiming publicly that it was a novichok nerve
agent. The British attempted hijacking of the OPCW has compromised its independence, for the
public report issued on 12 April is misleading. Moreover, since the BZ toxin is made by the US,
Britain and other NATO countries, it begs the same questions, which the Tories put to Moscow:
how did the perpetrators obtain the BZ toxin and bring it to Salisbury, did MI5 or MI6
authorise a false
flag attack against the Skripals, or was it authorised by the British cabinet or by the
prime minister alone? Or did British authorities lose control of their stockpiles? The trail of
evidence does not lead to Moscow; it leads to London.
A prima facie case can be made that the British government is lying about the
Skripal affaire . Suspicion always falls upon those who act deviously, who hide behind
clever turns of phrase and procedural and rhetorical smokescreens. British authorities are now
saying that they have other top secret evidence, which explains everything, but unfortunately
it can't be publicised. Nevertheless, the British government appears to have leaked it to the
press. The
Times published a story about a covert Russian lab producing nerve agents and it
spread like wild fire across the Mainstream Media. The
Daily Mirror put out a story about a Russian secret assassins' training manual. These
stories are laughable. Is the Tory government that desperate? Is the British "everyman" that
gullible?
The secret assassin's manual reminds me of the 1924 "Zinoviev Letter", a counterfeit
document produced by White Russians in Germany, purporting to demonstrate Soviet interference
in British elections and planning for a socialist revolution. It was early days of "fake news".
Parliamentary elections were underway in October 1924 and the Tories used the letter to attack
the credibility of the Labour party. It was whipping up the red scare, and it worked like a
charm. The Tories won a majority government. Soviet authorities claimed that the letter was
bogus and they demanded a third party, independent investigation to ascertain the truth, just
as the Russian government has done now. In 1924, the Tories refused, and understandably so,
since they had a lot to hide. It took seventy-five years to determine that "the letter" was in
fact counterfeit.
The Tories are again acting as if they have something to hide. It is déjà
vu. Will it take seventy-five years to get at the truth? Are there any honest British
cops, judges, civil servants ready to reveal the truth?
There is other evidence to suggest that the British narrative on the Salisbury incident is
bogus. The London Metropolitan Police have sought to prevent any outside contact with the
Skripals. They have taken away a recovered Yulia Skripal to an unknown location. They have
until now denied Russian consular authorities access to a Russian citizen in violation of
British approved consular agreements. Is there any chapter of international law, which the
British government now respects? British authorities have denied access to Yulia Skripal's
family in Russia; they have denied a visa to Yulia's cousin, Viktoria, to visit with her. Are
British spooks grooming Yulia, briefing her to stay on the Tory narrative? Is she being
manipulated like some kind of Manchurian Candidate? Have they induced her to betray her country
in exchange for emoluments, a new identity in the United States, a house, a BMW and money? Are
they playing upon her loyalty to her father? Based on a
statement attributed to Yulia by the London Metropolitan Police, it begins
to look that way . Or, is the message, sounding very British and official, quite simply a
fake? The Russian embassy in London suspects that it is. What is certain is that British
authorities are acting as though they have something to hide. Even German politicians,
amongst others, have criticised the British rush to indict Russia. Damage control is underway.
Given all the evidence, can any person with reasonable abilities to think critically believe
anything the Tories are saying about the Salisbury affair?
"They are liars. And they know that they are liars," the late Egyptian writer and Nobel
laureate Naguib Mahfouz once wrote: "And we know that they are liars. Even so, they keep
lying...." Mahfouz was not writing about the British, but all the same, he could have been. Are
not his well-known lines apposite to the present government in London?
The Tories are trying doggedly to maintain control of the narrative. Stakes are high for if
it eventuates that the Tories have lied deliberately for political gain, at the risk of
destabilising European, indeed world peace and security, the Tory government should be forced
to resign and new elections, called. Then, the British electorate can decide whether it wants
to be governed by reckless, mendacious Tory politicians who risk to provoke war against the
Russian Federation.
Where are the Scripals? How are they feeling these days? (68 days and counting), Are they alive ?
Notable quotes:
"... To clarify: Sergei Skripal has been suspected of playing a role in concocting the fake "Steele dossier" that helped launch the Russiagate NARRATIVE. ..."
"... The "dossier" was also used by Comey's FBI to obtain FISA warrants to monitor Trump campaign communications. (The NSA had intercepts all along but Comey's FBI needed a "provenance.") ..."
"... Like the Hound of the Baskervilles, the absence of questions in the British media speaks volumes. "The truth is the first casualty in a war." ..."
In the meantime, I want to refocus on the Skripal case. There is one outright bizarre thing
which I initially dismissed, but which really is becoming disturbing: the fact that the Brits
are apparently holding Sergei and Iulia Skripal incommunicado. In other words, they have been
kidnapped.
There was this one single telephone call between Iulia Skripal and her sister, Victoria, in
which Iulia said that she was okay (she was clearly trying to reassure Victoria) but it was
clear that she could not speak freely. Furthermore, when Victoria mentioned that she would want
to visit Iulia, the latter reply 'nobody will give you a visa'. After that – full
silence. The Russian consulate has been making countless requests to
have a visit, but all that the Brits have done since is have Scotland
Yard post a letter which was evidently not written by Iulia and which said " I have
access to friends and family, and I have been made aware of my specific contacts at the Russian
Embassy who have kindly offered me their assistance in any way they can. At the moment I do not
wish to avail myself of their services, but, if I change my mind I know how to contact them
". What friends?! What family?! Nonsense!
Her sister tried to contact her many times through various channels, including official
ones, and then in total despair, she posted the following message on Facebook:
" My darling sister, Yulia! You are not communicating with us, and we don't know
anything about you and Sergey Victorivich. I know that I have no right to interfere in your
affairs without asking your permission, but I worry too much. I worry about you and your dad.
I also worry about Nuar. [Nuar is Yulia Skrial's dog, whom she left to stay at a kennel
center, while she was traveling to the UK.] He is now at the dog hotel, and they want to get
paid. We have to decide something what to do with him. I am ready to take him and to take
care of him until you come back home. Besides Nuar, I am concerned about your apartment and
your car. Nothing has been decided about their safety and maintenance. We can help with all
that, but I need your power of attorney in my or my sister Lena's name. If you think that all
of these is important, draw up a power of attorney form in a Russian consulate in any
country. If you won't do that, we will understand and won't interfere in your
affairs.
Vika "
No reply ever came.
I just entered the following query into Google: "
Skripal ". April 10 th has an entry saying that she was released from the
hospital. That is the most recent one I have found. I looked on Wikipedia , the
same thing, there is nothing at all.
I have to admit that when I first heard the Russian complaints I figured that this was no
big deal. I thought " the Brits told the Skripals that Putin tried to poison them, they are
probably afraid, and possibly still sick from whatever it is which made them sick, but the
Brits would never outright kidnap two foreign citizens, and most definitely not in such a
public way ".
I am not so sure anymore.
First, let's get the obvious one out of the way: the fear for the security of the Skripals.
That is utter nonsense. The Brits can organize a meeting between а Russian diplomat in
the UK at a highly protected UK facility, with tanks, SAS Teams on the standby, helicopters in
the air, bombers, etc. That Russian diplomat could speak to them through bullet-proof glass and
a phone. And, since the Russians are all so dangerous, he can be searched for weapons. All
which the Skripals need to do is to tell him/her "thank you, your services are not needed".
Conversation over. But the Brits refuse even that.
But let's say that the Skripals are so totally terrified of the evil Russians, that they
categorically refuse. Even by video-conference. It would be traumatic for them, right?
Okay.
What about a press conference then?
Even more disturbing is that, at least to my knowledge, nobody in the western corporate
media is asking for an interview with them. Snowden can safely speak from Russia and address
even large conferences, but the Skripals can't speak to anybody at all?
But here is the worst part of this: it has been two months already since the Skripals are
held in total secrecy by the UK authorities. Two months, that is 60 days. Ask any specialist on
interrogation or any psychologist what kind of effect 60 days of "specialized treatment" can do
to a person.
I am not dismissing the Russian statements about "kidnapping" anymore. What I see is this:
on substance, the Skripal false flag has crashed and burned, just like MH17 or the Douma
chemical attack, but unlike MH17 or Douma, the Skripals are two witnesses whose testimony has
the potential to result in a gigantic scandal, not just for the May government, but for all
those spineless Europeans who showed "solidarity" with Britain. In other words, the Skripals
will probably never be allowed to speak freely: they must either be killed or totally
brainwashed or disappeared. Any other option would result in a scandal of planetary
magnitude.
I can't pretend like my heart goes out to Sergei Skripal: the man was an officer who gave an
oath and who then betrayed his country to the British (he was a British agent, not a Russian
one as the press writes). Those holding him today are his former bosses. But Iulia? She is
completely innocent and as of April 5 th (when she called her sister Victoria), she
was clearly in good health and with a clear mind. Now she has been disappeared and I don't know
which is worse, the fact that she might never reappear or that she might one day reappear
following months of British "counseling". As for her father, he paid for his betrayal and he
too deserves a better fate than being poisoned, used and then disappeared.
In the big scheme of things (the Zionists war against our entire planet), two individuals
like Sergei and Iulia Skripal might not matter. But I think that the least we can do is to
remember them and their plight.
This also begs the question of what kind of society we live in. I am not shocked by the fact
that the British state would resort to such methods (they have always used them). I am shocked
that in a so-called western "democracy" with freedom, pluralism and "European values" (whatever
that means) the Brits could get away with this.
How about some "solidarity" with the Skripals – you, Europeans?!
As noted on this site some three weeks ago, former British ambassador Craig Murray suggested
some time ago that Sergei and Yulia Skripal were most likely murdered by Western secret
services in order to keep the "Russiagate" fiction (somewhat) alive.
Sergei cannot win – even if he was NOT involved in Russiagate, murdering him creates
flexibility to hang the story on him without contradiction. Yulia is icing on the cake
– "Surely Her Majesty's Government wouldn't murder a pretty girl like Yulia!"
Rather bizarrely, it appears appears that all premises connected with the Skripals are to
be demolished, purely to protect the public, you understand.
To clarify: Sergei Skripal has been suspected of playing a role in concocting the fake
"Steele dossier" that helped launch the Russiagate NARRATIVE.
The "dossier" was also used by Comey's FBI to obtain FISA warrants to monitor Trump
campaign communications. (The NSA had intercepts all along but Comey's FBI needed a
"provenance.")
Whether Skripal was actually involved in inventing the dossier or not, his absence will be
used to milk the narrative afloat a little longer.
Like the Hound of the Baskervilles, the absence of questions in the British media speaks
volumes. "The truth is the first casualty in a war."
Russia should request a third party for instance a well known British public figure as an
intermediary to contact Skripals on behalf of Russia. The UK wil not be able to claim that
such figure will put undue pressure on the Skripals and would be forced to either facilitate
contact or be exposed as actually kidnapping the Skripals.
Potential intermediaries Corbyn, Galloway, UN representative, Tulsi Gabbard. There are
numerous candidates.
In other words, the Skripals will probably never be allowed to speak freely: they must
either be killed or totally brainwashed or disappeared. Any other option would result in a
scandal of planetary magnitude.
That certainly explains why Britain did not kill them with Novichok.
The British are working hard on new super-secret identities for the Scripals. They are so
secret that even the Scripals would not be allowed to know them. Technically, the British
could tell the Scripals their new identities, but then they would have to kill them, in order
to keep them secret.
It is clear that every person including The Saker who write about the Skripals and Russian
affairs do not have the in-depth knowledge of John Helmer the longest serving independent
western journalist in Moscow. In this post by John Helmer dated 23/03/2018
he writes about the British Court of Protection's findings.
Below are two excerpts (in parenthesis his comments) but I implore you to read the whole
article as well as other postings on the potential appointments in Putins new government.
"British High Court Justice David Williams has issued the first court adjudication of
evidence presented by the British Government of what happened to Sergei Skripal and Yulia
Skripal when they succumbed to poisoning in Salisbury on March 4. Following three days of
closed-door hearings this week in London, the judge issued a ruling for publication
yesterday."
"Representing the Skripals, Vikram Sachdeva QC told the judge "that in this case at present
it did not appear practicable or appropriate to seek the views of others who might be
interested in the welfare of Mr Skripal (his mother perhaps) or Ms Skripal (perhaps a
fiancé).
" the Skripals are two witnesses whose testimony has the potential to result in a gigantic
scandal, not just for the May government, but for all those spineless Europeans who showed
"solidarity" with Britain . "
Based on recent history, one can safely bet that there will be no scandal.
The bombing of the Lockerbie plane was an evil crime that took 270 innocent lives, and was
attributed by the official UK/US intelligence centres to the former Libyan government under
late President Gaddafi.
When this government came under NATO attack in 2011, its foreign minister Moussa Koussa
defected and sought refuge in London. He had previously been head of Libyan secret services
for 15 years (!!!), and as such, would have organised and supervised the Lockerbie "terror"
attack.
What did the UK/US governments do with him? Send him to trial at the Hague? Of course not.
He was sent to a safe heaven somewhere in the NATO proxy EAU.
Nobody cares about the victims of false flag attacks, quite the contrary: the less
investigations, the more efficient the false flag.
"... A McClatchy journalist investigated further and came to the same conclusion as I did. The 'leak' to the New York Times was disinformation. ..."
"... Russia has not pinned the Novichok to Sweden or the Czech Republic. It said, correctly, that several countries produced Novichok. Russia did not blame the UK for the 'nerve gas attack' in Syria. Russia says that there was no gas attack in Douma. ..."
"... The claims of Russian disinformation these authors make to not hold up to scrutiny. Meanwhile there pieces themselves are full of lies, distortions and, yes, disinformation. ..."
"... Wait for an outbreak of hostilities on the Ukraine-Donbass front shortly before the beginning of the World Cup competition which is as internationally important as the Olympic Games -- as they did in 2014 with Maidan and 2016 with the Sochi Winter Olympics drug uproar, the CIA will create chaos that will take the emphasis off any Russian success, since as to them, anything negative regarding Russia is a positive for them. ..."
"... No traces of chemical weapons have been found in Douma. This means that not only the US/UK/French airstrikes were illegal under international law but even their political justification was inherently flawed. Similarly, in the Salisbury affair, no evidence of Russian involvement has been presented, while the two myths on which the British case was built (the Russian origin of the chemical substance used and the existence of proof of Russian responsibility) have been shattered. ..."
"... Given the lack of facts, the Tory leadership seems to be adopting a truly Orwellian logic: that the main proof of Russian responsibility are the Russian denials! It is hard to see how they will be able to sell this to their international partners. Self-respecting countries of G20 would not be willing to risk their reputation. ..."
"... The detail of b's analysis that stands out to me as especially significant and brilliant is his demolition of the Guardian's reuse of the Merkel "quote." ..."
"... Related to the above, consider the nature of the recently christened thought-crime, "whataboutism." The crime may be defined as follows: "Whataboutism" is the attempt to understand a truth asserted by propaganda by way of relation to other truths it has asserted contemporaneous with or prior to this one. It is to ask, "What about this *other* truth? Does this *other* truth affect our understanding of *this* truth? And if so, how does it?" ..."
"... Whataboutism seems to deny that each asserted truth stands on its own, and has no essential relation to any other past, present, or future asserted truth. ..."
"... 1984, anyone? ..."
"... The absurd story that the OPCW says there was a 100gm/100mg who knows which on the door and other sites is just so stupid its painful. ..."
"... Presumably the Skripals touch the cutlery, plates and wine glasses in the restaurant, so why weren't the staff there infected as they must have had to pick up the plates etc after the meal. Even the door to the entrance of the restaurant should be affected as they would have to push it open, thus leaving the chemical for other people to touch. Nope, nothing in this stupid story adds up and the OPCW can't even get the amounts of the chemical right. ..."
"... Biggest problem with the world today is lazy insouciant citizens. ..."
"... One very important point Lavrov made was the anti-Russian group consists of a very small number of nations representing a small fraction of humanity; ..."
"... while they have some economic and military clout, it's possible for the rest of the world's nations to sideline them and get on with the important business of forming a genuine Multipolar World Order, which is what the UN and its Charter envisioned. ..."
"... Anything that may not confirm to the 'truth' as prescribed from above must be overwhelmed with an onslaught of more lies or, if that does not work, be discredited as 'enemy' disinformation. ..."
"... Yes, exactly. The Western hegemony, i.e. the true "Axis of Evil" led by the US, and including the EU and non-Western allies, have invented the Perpetual Big Lie™. ..."
"... Witnesses? They're either confederates, dupes, or terrified by coercion. Evidence and/or technical analysis? All faked! A nominally reliable party, e.g. the president of the Czech Republic, makes statements that undermine the Big Lie Nexus? Again-- he's either been bought off or frightened into making such inconvenient claims. Or he's just a mischievous liar. ..."
"... And, as I seemingly never get tired of pointing out, the Perpetual Big Lie™ strategy arose, and succeeds, because the "natural enemies" of authoritarian government overreach have been coerced or co-opted to a fare-thee-well. So mass-media venues, and even supposedly independent technical and scientific organizations, are part of the Perpetual Big Lie™ apparatus. ..."
"... Putting Kudrin -- an opponent of de-dollarization and an upholder of the Washington Consensus -- in charge of Russia's international outreach would be equal to putting Bill Clinton in charge of a girls' school. ..."
"... In the Guardian I only read the comments, never the article. Here, I read both. That is the difference between propaganda and good reporting. ..."
The Grauniad is slipping deeper into the disinformation business:
Revealed: UK's push to strengthen anti-Russia alliance is the headline of a page one piece
which reveals exactly nothing. There is no secret lifted and no one was discomforted by a
questioning journalist.
Like other such pieces it uses disinformation to accuse Russia of spreading such.
The main 'revelation' is stenographed from a British government official. Some quotes from
the usual anti-Russian propagandists were added. Dubious or false 'western' government claims
are held up as truth. That Russia does not endorse them is proof for Russian mischievousness
and its 'disinformation'.
The opener:
The UK will use a series of international summits this year to call for a comprehensive
strategy to combat Russian disinformation and urge a rethink over traditional diplomatic
dialogue with Moscow, following the Kremlin's aggressive campaign of denials over the use of
chemical weapons in the UK and Syria.
...
"The foreign secretary regards Russia's response to Douma and Salisbury as a turning point
and thinks there is international support to do more," a Whitehall official said. "The areas
the UK are most likely to pursue are countering Russian disinformation and finding a
mechanism to enforce accountability for the use of chemical weapons."
There is a mechanism to enforce accountability for the use of chemical weapons. It is the
Chemical Weapon Convention and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
It was the British government which at first
rejected the use of these instruments during the Skripal incident:
Early involvement of the OPCW, as demanded by Russia, was resisted by the British
government. Only on March 14, ten days after the incident happened and two days after Prime
Minister Theresa may had made accusations against Russia, did the British government invite
the OPCW. Only on March 19, 15 days after the incident happen did the OPCW technical team
arrive and took blood samples.
Now back to the Guardian disinformation:
In making its case to foreign ministries, the UK is arguing that Russian denials over
Salisbury and Douma reveal a state uninterested in cooperating to reach a common
understanding of the truth , but instead using both episodes to try systematically to divide
western electorates and sow doubt.
A 'common understanding of the truth' is an interesting term. What is the truth? Whatever
the British government claims? It accused Russia of the Skripal incident a mere eight days
after it happened. Now, two month later, it admits that it
does not know who poisoned the Skripals:
Police and intelligence agencies have failed so far to identify the individual or
individuals who carried out the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, the UK's national security
adviser has disclosed.
Do the Brits know where the alleged Novichok poison came from? Unless they produced it
themselves they likely have no idea. The Czech Republic just admitted that it
made small doses of a Novichok nerve agent for testing purposes. Others did too.
Back to the Guardian :
British politicians are not alone in claiming Russia's record of mendacity is not a personal
trait of Putin's, but a government-wide strategy that makes traditional diplomacy
ineffective.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, famously came off one lengthy phone call with Putin
– she had more than 40 in a year – to say he lived in a different world.
No, Merkel never said that. An Obama administration flunky planted that
in the New York Times :
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that after speaking
with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call
said. "In another world," she said.
When that claim was made in March 2014 we were immediately suspicious
of it:
This does not sound like typically Merkel but rather strange for her. I doubt that she said
that the way the "people briefed on the call" told it to the Times stenographer. It is rather
an attempt to discredit Merkel and to make it more difficult for her to find a solution with
Russia outside of U.S. control.
A day later the German government
denied (ger) that Merkel ever said such (my translation):
The chancellery is unhappy about the report in the New York Times. Merkel by no means meant
to express that Putin behaved irrational. In fact she told Obama that Putin has a different
perspective about the Crimea [than Obama has].
A McClatchy journalist investigated
further and came to the same conclusion as I did. The 'leak' to the New York Times was
disinformation.
That disinformation, spread by the Obama administration but immediately exposed as false, is
now held up as proof by Patrick Wintour, the Diplomatic editor of the Guardian , that
Russia uses disinformation and that Putin is a naughty man.
The British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson
wants journalists to enter the UK reserve forces to help with the creation of
propaganda:
He said army recruitment should be about "looking to different people who maybe think, as a
journalist: 'What are my skills in terms of how are they relevant to the armed forces?'
Patrick Wintour seems to be a qualified candidate.
Or maybe he should join the NATO for Information Warfare the Atlantic Council wants to
create to further disinform about those damned Russkies:
What we need now is a cross-border defense alliance against disinformation -- call it
Communications NATO. Such an alliance is, in fact, nearly as important as its military
counterpart.
Like the Guardian piece above writer of the NATO propaganda lobby Atlantic Council
makes claims of Russian disinformation that do not hold up to the slightest test:
By pinning the Novichok nerve agent on Sweden or the Czech Republic, or blaming the UK for
the nerve gas attack in Syria, the Kremlin sows confusion among our populations and makes us
lose trust in our institutions.
Russia has not pinned the Novichok to Sweden or the Czech Republic. It said, correctly, that
several countries produced Novichok. Russia did not blame the UK for the 'nerve gas attack' in
Syria. Russia says that there was no gas attack in Douma.
The claims of Russian disinformation these authors make to not hold up to scrutiny.
Meanwhile there pieces themselves are full of lies, distortions and, yes, disinformation.
The bigger aim behind all these activities, demanding a myriad of new organizations to
propagandize against Russia, is to introduce a strict control over information within 'western'
societies.
Anything that may not confirm to the 'truth' as prescribed from above must be overwhelmed
with an onslaught of more lies or, if that does not work, be discredited as 'enemy'
disinformation.
That scheme will be used against anyone who deviates from the ordered norm. You dislike that
pipeline in your backyard? You must be falling for
Russian trolls or maybe you yourself are an agent of a foreign power. Social Security? The
Russians like that. It is a disinformation thing. You better forget about it.
Excellent article, in an ongoing run of great journalism.
I am curious - have you read this? https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/
It purports to be a book by an American military man intimately familiar with the covert ops
portion of the US government. The internal Kafka-esque dynamics described certainly feel
true.
One of the reasons newspapers are getting worse is the economics. They aren't really viable
anymore. Their future is as some form of government sanctioned oligopoly. Two national papers
-- a "left" and a "right" -- and then a handful of regional papers. All spouting the same
neoliberal, neoconservative chicanery.
Genuine journalist Matt Taibbi warned of this sort of branding of disparate views as enemy a
month ago. He was also correct. Evil and insidious. The enemy of a free society.
Wait for an outbreak of hostilities on the Ukraine-Donbass front shortly before the beginning
of the World Cup competition which is as internationally important as the Olympic Games -- as
they did in 2014 with Maidan and 2016 with the Sochi Winter Olympics drug uproar, the CIA
will create chaos that will take the emphasis off any Russian success, since as to them,
anything negative regarding Russia is a positive for them.
I agree that it's difficult to see how the drive to renew the Cold War is going to be
stopped. I presume that, with the exception of certain NeoCon circles, there isn't a desire
for Hot War. Certainly not in the British sources you quote. Britain wouldn't want Hot War
with Russia. It's all a question of going to the limit for internal consumption. Do a 1984,
in order to keep the population in-line.
thanks b... i can't understand how any intelligent thinking person would read the guardian,
let alone something like the huff post, and etc. etc... why? the propaganda money that pays
for the white helmets, certainly goes to these outlets as well..
the uk have gone completely nuts! i guess it comes with reading the guardian, although, in
fairness, all british media seems very skewed - sky news, bbc, and etc. etc.
it does appear as though Patrick Wintour is on Gavin Williamson's propaganda
bandwagon/payroll already... in reading the comments and articles at craig murrays site, i
have become more familiar with just how crazy things are in the uk.. his latest article
freedom no
more sums it up well... throw the uk msm in the trash can... it is for all intensive
purposes, done..
Meanwhile, OPCW chief Uzumcu seems to have been pranked again, this time by his own staff
(this is how I interpret it):
He claimed that the amount of Novichok found was about 100 g and therefore more than
research laboratories would produce, i.e. this was weaponized Novichok.
Q: What is our reaction to the Guardian article on a "comprehensive strategy" to "deepen
the alliance against Russia" to be pursued by the UK Government at international forums?
A: Judging by the publication, the main current challenge for Whitehall is to preserve
the anti-Russian coalition that the Conservatives tried to build after the Salisbury
incident. This task is challenging indeed. The "fusion doctrine" promoted by the national
security apparatus has led to the Western bloc taking hasty decisions that, as life has
shown, were not based on any facts.
No traces of chemical weapons have been found in Douma. This means that not only the
US/UK/French airstrikes were illegal under international law but even their political
justification was inherently flawed. Similarly, in the Salisbury affair, no evidence of
Russian involvement has been presented, while the two myths on which the British case was
built (the Russian origin of the chemical substance used and the existence of proof of
Russian responsibility) have been shattered.
Given the lack of facts, the Tory leadership seems to be adopting a truly Orwellian
logic: that the main proof of Russian responsibility are the Russian denials! It is hard to
see how they will be able to sell this to their international partners. Self-respecting
countries of G20 would not be willing to risk their reputation.
Hmmm... My reply to c1ue went sideways it seems. Yes, The late Mr. Prouty's book's the real
deal and the website hosting his very rare book is a rare gem itself. Click the JFK at page
top left to be transported to that sites archive of writings about his murder. The very important essay by
Prouty's there too.
The detail of b's analysis that stands out to me as especially significant and brilliant is
his demolition of the Guardian's reuse of the Merkel "quote."
This one detail tells us so much about how propaganda works, and about how it can be
defeated. Successful propaganda both depends upon and seeks to accelerate the erasure of
historical memory. This is because its truths are always changing to suit the immediate needs
of the state. None of its truths can be understood historically. b makes the connection
between the documented but forgotten past "truth" of Merkel's quote and its present
reincarnation in the Guardian, and this is really all he *needs* to do. What b points out is
something quite simple; yet the ability to do this very simple thing is becoming increasingly
rare and its exercise increasingly difficult to achieve. It is for me the virtue that makes
b's analysis uniquely indispensable.
Related to the above, consider the nature of the recently christened thought-crime,
"whataboutism." The crime may be defined as follows: "Whataboutism" is the attempt to
understand a truth asserted by propaganda by way of relation to other truths it has asserted
contemporaneous with or prior to this one. It is to ask, "What about this *other* truth? Does
this *other* truth affect our understanding of *this* truth? And if so, how does it?"
Whataboutism seems to deny that each asserted truth stands on its own, and has no
essential relation to any other past, present, or future asserted truth.
The absurd story that the OPCW says there was a 100gm/100mg who knows which on the door and
other sites is just so stupid its painful. This implies that the Skripals both closed the
door together and then went off on their day spreading the stuff everywhere, yet no one else
was contaminated (apart from the fantasy policeman).
Presumably the Skripals touch the
cutlery, plates and wine glasses in the restaurant, so why weren't the staff there infected
as they must have had to pick up the plates etc after the meal. Even the door to the entrance
of the restaurant should be affected as they would have to push it open, thus leaving the
chemical for other people to touch. Nope, nothing in this stupid story adds up and the OPCW
can't even get the amounts of the chemical right.
The problem is,,, most know it's all BS but find it 'easier' to believe or at most ignore, as
then there is no responsibility to 'do something'. Biggest problem with the world today is
lazy insouciant citizens. (Yes,,, I'm a PCR reader) :))
Did you catch the Lavrov interview I linked to on previous Yemen thread? As you might
imagine, the verbiage used is quite similar. One very important point Lavrov made was the
anti-Russian group consists of a very small number of nations representing a small fraction
of humanity; and that while they have some economic and military clout, it's possible for the
rest of the world's nations to sideline them and get on with the important business of
forming a genuine Multipolar World Order, which is what the UN and its Charter
envisioned.
"I cannot sufficiently express my outrage that Leeds City Council feels it is right to ban
a meeting with very distinguished speakers, because it is questioning the government and
establishment line on Syria. Freedom of speech really is dead."
Anything that may not confirm to the 'truth' as prescribed from above must be overwhelmed
with an onslaught of more lies or, if that does not work, be discredited as 'enemy'
disinformation. _______________________________________
Yes, exactly. The Western hegemony, i.e. the true "Axis of Evil" led by the US, and
including the EU and non-Western allies, have invented the Perpetual Big Lie™.
This isn't a new insight, but it's worth repeating. It struck me anew while I was
listening to a couple of UK "journalists" hectoring OPCW Representative Shulgin, and
directing scurrilous and provocative innuendo disguised as "questions" to Mr. Shulgin and the
Syrian witnesses testifying during his presentation.
It flashed upon me that there is no longer a reasonable expectation that the Perpetual Big
Liars must eventually abandon, much less confess, their heinous mendacity. Just as B points
out, there are no countervailing facts, evidence, rebuttals, theories, or explanations
that can't be countered with further iterations of Big Lies, however offensively incredible
and absurd.
Witnesses? They're either confederates, dupes, or terrified by coercion. Evidence and/or
technical analysis? All faked! A nominally reliable party, e.g. the president of the Czech
Republic, makes statements that undermine the Big Lie Nexus? Again-- he's either been bought
off or frightened into making such inconvenient claims. Or he's just a mischievous liar.
And, as I seemingly never get tired of pointing out, the Perpetual Big Lie™ strategy
arose, and succeeds, because the "natural enemies" of authoritarian government overreach have
been coerced or co-opted to a fare-thee-well. So mass-media venues, and even supposedly
independent technical and scientific organizations, are part of the Perpetual Big Lie™
apparatus.
Even as the Big Liars reach a point of diminishing returns, they respond with more of the
same. I wish I were more confident that this reprehensible practice will eventually fail due
to the excess of malignant hubris; I'm not holding my breath.
Is Putin capitulating? Pro US Alexei Kudrin could join new government to negotiate "end of
sanctions" with the West.
Former finance minister Alexei Kudrin will be brought back to "mend fences with the West"
in order to revive Russia's economy. Kudrin has repeatedly said that unless Russia makes her
political system more democratic and ends its confrontation with Europe and the United
States, she will not be able to achieve economic growth. Russia's fifth-columnists were
exalted: "If Kudrin joined the administration or government, it would indicate that they have
agreed on a certain agenda of change, including in foreign policy, because without change in
foreign policy, reforms are simply impossible in Russia," said Yevgeny Gontmakher . . . who
works with a civil society organization set up by Mr. Kudrin. "It would be a powerful
message, because Kudrin is the only one in the top echelons with whom they will talk in the
west and towards whom there is a certain trust."
Putting Kudrin -- an opponent of de-dollarization and an upholder of the Washington
Consensus -- in charge of Russia's international outreach would be equal to putting Bill
Clinton in charge of a girls' school.
It would mark Putin's de facto collapse as a leader. We
shall know very soon. Either way, if anyone wondered what the approach to Russia would be
from Bolton and Pompeo, we now know: they will play very hard ball with Putin, regardless of
what he does (or doesn't do), and with carefree readiness to risk an eventual snap.
Certainly looks like @ 18 is a fine example of what b is presenting.
A good way to extract one's self from the propaganda is to refuse using whatever meme the
disinformation uses, e.g. that Sergei Skripal was a double agent -- that is not a known, only
a convenient suggestion.
Military intelligence is far better described as military
information needed for some project or mission. Not surreptitious cloak and dagger spying.
This is not to say Sergei Scripal was a British spy for which he was convicted, stripped of
rank and career and exiled through a spy swap. To continue using Sergei Scripal was a double
agent only repeats and verifies the disinformation meme and all the framing that goes with
it. Find some alternative to what MSM produces that does not embed truthiness to their
efforts.
I realize it's from one of the biggest propaganda organs in the world... take this New
York Times report of the OPCW's retraction with a 100 grams -- 100mg? -- of salt:
Kudrin is a neoliberal and as such is an
enemy of humanity and will never again be allowed to hold a position of power within Russia's
government. Let him emigrate to the West like his fellow parasites and teach junk economics
at some likeminded university.
"... I am reading Taleb's recent book "Skin in the game" which has interesting material about the disconnection between risky behaviors and their consequences in modern USA. He also has a chapter about the mechanics involved in why minority viewpoints in our culture become dominant. It's an interesting read. ..."
"... Finally, the Police partially acknowledged their mistake and accused the Russians of not having been completely fair play. Indeed, these thuriferous bastards of Vlad the Impaler had put poison on the OUTDOOR handle of the front door of the house. It's infinitely subtle of these savages. The Brit Police did not suspect what strong part it had to make, the unexpected thwarting its learned calculations. Presumption, again and again. Nevertheless, the detectives are formal: the Russians did the trick well. The evidence is obvious. In this dramatic case, we are not going to make a comparison between insular and continental logic. The hour is too serious for these trifles. Lots of laughter. ..."
"... It's very difficult in any case to believe that such a notice could have been issued. Can't see why it would be needed. The scripting of the official story on such matters as this seems to be a joint enterprise between the media and the press officers. That's a time-honoured consensus so why would the media need bullying to stay in line? ..."
"... My personal view on all this is that the No. 10 press officers aren't that good at this new-fangled information stuff. They don't seem to have their hearts in it somehow. Time for them to go back to counting paperclips and for information campaigns to be handled by the experts. The BBC have a proven track record in this field and it's time that was officially recognised. ..."
Sir Mark, bless him, has told an MP during a committee meeting, that the armed forces, MI-5, MI-6 and GCHQ do not know who or
indeed what sickened the Skripals, pere et fille , in Salisbury. He doesn't seem to have mentioned the police. So, basically,
pilgrims, Teresa May, the queen's first minister has insistently and incessantly accused the Russians of a crime of which our British
cousins know precious little. In a closely related development, it is now revealed that the Britishers sealed up Skripal's house
after the poisoning event leaving the black Persian shown above and two guinea pigs to die of thirst and hunger within. It would
seem likely that they knew they were doing this since they would have searched the house first. No? Perhaps they thought that the
cat might be a threat as a being of possible Iranian descent. This is impressive stuff. pl
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-05-01/uk-has-not-yet-identified-skripal-poisoning-suspects
These false flag ops are all so shabby in their execution. The lack of thoroughness and imagination on the part of the governments
running them is really disappointing. For example, if I was running an investigation into the Skripal incident, I would have captured
the cat and rodents and run pathology tests on them to see what bio/chem agents might be in their systems. Also, because they
might escape and become a vector of further infection. That seems like it would be SOP. So I'd do it even if I knew the story
was BS to create the appearance of reality. Then, I could always state that the pets should signs of Russian engineered bio/chem
agents. Could even create a video of the pets dying some horrible death due to the agents. That's more better BS.
And yet, this appears to be a lie as well. An earlier piece in the British news claims the pets were taken to Porton Down for
examination and testing soon after the incident. Seems more likely they eliminated evidence and then came up with the cover story
about how the animals were "forgotten about" and locked in the house for a month, implying totally unimportant for the investigation.
http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/...
I hope she and Johnson pay the price for this folly. May it be steep! Very. very steep.
How these two suckered so many nations foolishly into sending diplomats home reflected respect for UK policy toward Russia.
These nations will need to think long and hard about following any such UK lead in future.
This week, the US took down the Russian flag flying over Russian real estate in Seattle. Shameful!
I don't know much about the dynamics of British politics but as a light observer of British news I wonder why Theresa May remains
prime minister? She became prime minister after the historic Brexit vote. Promptly takes the country to an election and botches
it for the Tories. Then bungles the Brexit negotiations. Runs a floundering government. Now comes up with accusations against
the Russians in the Skripal affair with no evidence presented but looking more foolish as her story comes under scrutiny.
I am reading Taleb's recent book "Skin in the game" which has interesting material about the disconnection between risky behaviors
and their consequences in modern USA. He also has a chapter about the mechanics involved in why minority viewpoints in our culture
become dominant. It's an interesting read.
2 cats and 2 guinea pigs were locked up for 9 days in Skipal's house, in the hope of proving that the Russians are guilty.
When the police reopened the house, they found four bodies. the veterinary faculty is positive, both cats died of starvation.
Guinea pigs, some say, began to be worked by hungry cats, accelerating their deaths. Unspeakable bloodshed. In this whole case,
it's THE revolting detail, among many others. Poor beasts.
Finally, the Police partially acknowledged their mistake and accused the Russians of not having been completely fair play.
Indeed, these thuriferous bastards of Vlad the Impaler had put poison on the OUTDOOR handle of the front door of the house. It's
infinitely subtle of these savages. The Brit Police did not suspect what strong part it had to make, the unexpected thwarting
its learned calculations. Presumption, again and again. Nevertheless, the detectives are formal: the Russians did the trick well.
The evidence is obvious. In this dramatic case, we are not going to make a comparison between insular and continental logic. The
hour is too serious for these trifles.
Lots of laughter.
Presumably there are bigger guns in the background if information that would really threaten national security or the lives
of serving officers is in danger of being released. The D-Notice system itself seems to be a more or less voluntary affair -
It's very difficult in any case to believe that such a notice could have been issued. Can't see why it would be needed.
The scripting of the official story on such matters as this seems to be a joint enterprise between the media and the press officers.
That's a time-honoured consensus so why would the media need bullying to stay in line?
My personal view on all this is that the No. 10 press officers aren't that good at this new-fangled information stuff.
They don't seem to have their hearts in it somehow. Time for them to go back to counting paperclips and for information campaigns
to be handled by the experts. The BBC have a proven track record in this field and it's time that was officially recognised.
It would seem that the so-called British prime minister Theresa May, leader of the
Conservative Party [who heads up a minority Tory Government only kept in power through a
confidence and
supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party] has forgotten that there is such a
matter as reality backed up by
solid strong evidence and grounded in
rational fact . It has been a consistent theme of my writings over the last near two years
now that Theresa May is not only a light weight with little leadership talents, but also
unhinged and dangerous. Indeed, Mrs. May has become something of a loose cannon on deck
deluding herself to the truth of the matter that she badly messed up the General Election of
2017 and just about everything else she inherited as prime Minister and her time is long
overdue to Leave 10 Downing Street.
One of the more alarming aspects of the near two-year-old nightmarish May Ministry has been
the near total casual evisceration of consistent truth telling and consistency of position
regarding fundamental political and philosophical questions of judgement and values which goes
to the heart of Leadership. It has not just been the near complete collapse of the UK
Government's negotiating position vis-à-vis Brussels and Michel Barnier. It has not been
the incompetent and disastrous fashion Mrs. May has governed losing one Cabinet minister after
another in rapid succession. It has not just been the lies that Theresa May has poured forth
internally.
It has been the growth under Theresa May and her
Home Office of almost Nazi style black op false flag operations and exercises
- conducted by Mrs. May's personal Gestapo MI5 - as an instrument of government policy in order
to control and manipulate the uneducated masses of the UK and turn the mass of the UK
population into an even more disgusting Peter Bazgallete Endemol style Big Brother
feeding frenzy dump. The distortion of mass public opinion in the UK and the dumbing down
across all sections of society has been deeply disturbing and frustrating to watch, but not the
least bit surprising. In Theresa May's extreme and increasingly desperate quest to hold on to
the title and position of prime Minister, May has become even far more dangerous than I ever
could have imagined. Theresa May is such a shallow empty third rate politician she will say
anything and do anything to hold on to power just for the sake of it to spite her internal Tory
Party enemies such as George Osborne. After less than two years in the job Theresa May has
managed to achieve the unthinkable. She has made Gordon Brown's Premiership look like a model
for stable Government.
May, after botching badly her gift of an early General Election from the powers that be in
Washington DC, has basically conducted the most embarrassing and weak negotiation in modern
political history with the European Union 27. Unable to deliver the massive majority that
elements in DC and Berlin/Brussels were banking on, May has had to resort to increasingly wild,
desperate and highly dangerous tactics to remain in Downing Street, attempting desperately to
shore up and re-invigorate her obviously dying leadership and crumbling administration. Which
brings us to the subject of Russia, a country and people I have tremendous respect and
admiration for and has been treated terribly by the West where I grew up. I am appalled at how
the Russian people have been treated and spoken of and harassed and targeted by the right wing
English Tory Government of Theresa May. Where to begin with? Hillary Clinton's pathetic
whinging and moaning blaming her loss on the Russians? Theresa May's bigoted, xenophobic,
dangerous anti-Russian rhetoric? The EU's expansion and NATO encroachments right up to the
borders of Russia itself in violation of understandings and promises made at the end of the
last Cold War? The 'shock' doctrine capitalism of the West injected without proper thought and
planning post-Gorbachev? Theresa May, let us be blunt, is in the pocket of certain deeply
anti-Russian forces in Washington DC and Brussels. This group of 'foreign policy' and 'national
security' experts and their allies who [seem to be everywhere] hate Russia. For what reason I
think I know and it has all the hallmarks of Nazism.... all over it. It stinks to hell of
Nazism.
Let us be very clear, Russia is not a threat to the UK and has not interfered or attacked UK
vital national interests. Russia is not interested in attacking the UK or UK interests. Russia
is not an enemy of all civilised freedom loving peoples. It is in fact a great guardian of
them. And it has been treated terribly by the West, misunderstood and disrespected beyond
belief. The so-called poisoning of Sergei Skripal was just that, so-called. It never happened.
Sergei Skripal was not poisoned with Novichok. The nerve agent, if one was even used which I
highly doubt, did not come from Russia. The chemical nerve agent is not Russian and did not
come from Russian Labs. The Russian State and Russian Government had nothing to do with it. No
Russian agents, assets, personnel were involved in this most disgusting, appalling, freak show
pathetic English MI5/6 spectacle of Salisbury. One wonders since the English always boast
non-stop about how great their country is and how their intelligence and security services are
the best in the world. In fact they are rubbish. How could Britain's so-called domestic
security service, the all seeing [supposedly], all hearing [supposedly], all knowing
[supposedly] all mighty [supposedly] MI5 allow a chemical nerve agent like Novichok into the UK
and then allow it to be transported to Salisbury and then administered first in Yulia Skripal's
car, then it became the Mill Pub, then it became Zissi Reastaurant, then MI5/6 finally, finally
settled on....the door handle. If this had really occurred like the English State and
Establishment want us to believe and would have us believe then all of Salisbury would be dead
by now if it had really been Novichok. It never happened. The whole Skripal affair was made up
by the wildly anti-Russian CIA/BND controlled Theresa May and her English Nazi style lackeys
whether they be in the English Government, media, local authorities, police or population at
large - and their pay masters in DC and Brussels.
The whole Salisbury/Skripal affair was made up, plotted, stage managed and produced by
British, American and German intelligence services. Everything the UK Government under Theresa
May said about the Salisbury affair was pure lies, scripted and made up as talking points sent
from Washington DC and Brussels. Everything May said, and Boris Johnson, and Amber Rudd and
Philip Hammond with regards to Russia and the Salisbury affair was pure lies. The entire story
the English put forward regarding the Salisbury affair kept changing and there were terrible
inconsistencies. The whole episode from start to finish was a classic English Monty Python
circus act. The Salisbury-Skripal affair was pure English Tory lies. Besides Theresa May who
ran the Home Office when all these terrible things [apparently] were going on, knew all about
it, did not lift a finger to stop it, did not put up a fight or even resign and lead a
rebellion from the backbenches. Theresa May authorised everything she now claims is a terrible
threat to UK National Security. The woman must go. .
The world was told by the British prime Minister the nerve agent used was a military grade
Novichok chemical only from Russia. The creator of Novichok said if exposed to it you either
die a painful slow death or if you do miraculously survive you will be a vegetable the rest of
your life. So how come Yulia Skripal is up and singing and dancing and checking herself out of
the hospital? And what about Sergei Skripal? I've lost track? Is he still in intensive care in
the hospital? Or has he been able to miraculously recover and check himself out? And the police
officer also made a very speedy recovery. The police have still not been able to find any
suspects even though there is a huge and expensive massive police operation under way. The
majority of the English police like MI5 are utterly useless. The Chief Executive of Porton Down
stated that Porton Down was unable to verify that the Novichok chemical agent came from Russia.
The OPCW review was completely flawed and biased against the Russian Government.
Yet Mrs. May seemed to be rather enjoying her pseudo-role as the new found Amazonian
suffragette Wonder Woman FemiNazi, the instrument of the Americans and Germans to take down the
'Evil Empire' of the brilliant and visionary President Vladimir Putin who unlike Theresa May
has got his country back strongly and proudly on its strong feet. I suppose Mrs. May was
desperate for a 'Falklands' style moment to rescue her dying leadership, and for a brief time
it seemed to be working. Mrs. May had successfully wiped off the media agenda any mention of
the crucial and critical final stages of the UK-EU divorce negotiations. There had been a
flurry of right wing press briefing against Jeremy Corbyn in the lead up to the Salisbury
affair just like before the Manchester bombing during the General Election of 2017 which May
called. May and her backers had calculated - that in order to bolster her position, take the
fight to the Russians [which Mrs. Clinton was supposed to have done], weaken Jeremy Corbyn
[which she failed to do fatally last year], change the UK narrative on Brexit and impress May's
supporters - a black op false flag trashing Russia and the Russian people and the great Russian
President on the eve of President Putin's historic fourth election victory and the glorious
World Cup in Moscow - would do the trick nicely for Mrs. May's position. As I have been writing
consistently, if Mrs. May is so desperate and crazy and power mad to hold on to her position
that she is willing to start a war with a vastly superior and vastly stronger country like
Russia, she has completely lost the plot and must go.
After May's appalling power grab at the EU27 Council Summit in March she could not believe
her luck. The EU27 were all lined up behind her as the anti-Russian warrior princess egging her
on to do their bidding in their unofficial war against Russia. This would be the new security
role for Britain in Europe once out of the EU, the anti-Russian Trojan horse leading a robust
and united anti-Russian global coalition in Europe and beyond to effect regime in the Kremlin
on behalf of the EU and their American allies. Unfortunately for Mrs. May the wheels started to
come off this unbelievable, wacky, crazy, ridiculous and extremely dangerous Anti-Russian
foreign policy with another false flag black op in Syria this time. From Salisbury and all the
lies the English told there we jumped to the sands of the Middle East and all the lies that the
Americans have told there along with the British. I could not believe what was going on before
my very eyes.
For a split second it looked like the world was on the brink of an all out war between
American and Russia in the Middle East. Do Mrs. May and her supporters really want to start a
Third World War in the Middle East just so she can pretend to be prime minister for a year or
two more? Douma was carried out by German secret service intelligence, the BND, in conjunction
with the CIA and MI6. Again, this was not the fault of the Russians or Assad Syrian forces, but
rather US backed rebels. However, the consequences of Douma are even more profound
geopolitically than what happens in some provincial English town. Theresa May has succeeded in
driving a wedge between Trump and President Putin and has successfully destroyed any hope of a
rapprochement and detente between Washington DC and Moscow. That is bad for the peace and
security of the international order. Thanks Theresa! The world came very close to a possible
nuclear confrontation between America and Russia, completely unthinkable during the last Cold
War, in the sands of the Middle East only a couple of weeks ago. In this New Cold War, which is
merely a preparation and build up phase to a much bigger confrontation, all the rules of the
old Cold War have changed. I have never felt more ashamed and more embarrassed about being a
British citizen in my life.
The anti-Russian bigotry and racism and xenophobia displayed by the English and their
Government against the Russian people and Russian interests is not something I will ever forget
and has been deeply disturbing, troubling and deeply concerning. I wonder where all this
anti-Russian war mongering is leading? Meanwhile back on the domestic home front after the near
clash between the USA and Russia was avoided, May's Government has been crumbling. May lost a
senior Remain supporter, the Home Secretary Amber Rudd, and has boxed herself into a corner
with her 'good friends' in the DUP who now realise May was just using them for her own ends and
was prepared to drop them quickly once she had achieved what she was ordered to achieve by DC
and Brussels. It will be fascinating to observe who survives this Theresa May Tory English MI5
car crash of Her Majesty's Government. But what I have seen of heard and experienced in England
of the anti-Russian bigotry is something that will remain with me for a lifetime.
"... Testimony by Sir Mark Sedwill, British Prime Minister Theresa May's National Security Adviser, to the House of Commons Defence Committee on 1st May 2018 has now revealed that all the claims about a breakthrough in the Skripal case not to mention the claims about "Gordon" aka "Mihails Savickis" were (as I suspected) nonsense. ..."
"... In other words the investigation is going nowhere and has drawn a complete blank. ..."
"... All this comes hot on the heels of suggestions which are very likely true that the wall of silence which has recently descended on the British media's reporting of the Skripal case is the product of a British government D-Notice , ie. of a formal request by the British government to the media to limit their coverage of the Skripal story on grounds of national security. ..."
"... It has also been suggested that despite formal denials the most likely reason for the D-Notice is the desire of the British authorities to conceal a possible connection between Sergey Skripal, his former MI6 controller Pablo Miller, and Christopher Steele, the compiler of the Trump Dossier. ..."
Amidst speculation that British government has imposed reporting restrictions, British authorities admit they have no suspect
in Skripal case
A week ago the British media were full of reports from the usual anonymous sources of a breakthrough in the Skripal case.
Allegedly the British authorities by comparing CCTV pictures from Salisbury and details of travellers to and from Britain had
been to identify the persons who were supposedly responsible for the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal. These stories came with
further stories of a Russian James Bond style assassin "Gordon" aka "Mihails Savickis" who together with his team had supposedly
carried out the attack. The stories about "Gordon" aka "Mihails Savickis" came with a bizarre identikit picture supposedly of him,
which was too ridiculous to take seriously.
In an
article
I wrote for The Duran on 24th April 2018 I expressed skepticism about these claims
.it looks to me as if despite all the claims to the contrary the police investigation of the Skripal case has made little actual
progress. The British seem to have little more knowledge of who carried out the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal and why than
they did when the investigation began. Could it possibly be because they are looking in the wrong place?
Testimony by Sir Mark Sedwill, British Prime Minister Theresa May's National Security Adviser, to the House of Commons Defence
Committee on 1st May 2018 has now revealed that all the claims about a breakthrough in the Skripal case not to mention the claims
about "Gordon" aka "Mihails Savickis" were (as I suspected) nonsense.
Here is how Sir Mark Sedwill's testimony is reported by
The Guardian
Police and intelligence agencies have failed so far to
identify the individual or individuals who carried out the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, the UK's national security adviser
has disclosed.
The comments by Sir Mark Sedwill punctured hopes that the police and other security agencies had pinpointed suspects but were
withholding the name or names from the public.
Asked by an MP at a Commons defence committee hearing if he knew the individuals responsible, he replied curtly: "Not yet."
Sedwill, who coordinates the work of the MI6, MI5, the surveillance agency
GCHQ and others, did not elaborate but among problems that have
hampered the agencies is a lack of CCTV coverage in Salisbury compared with London. Known Russian spies based in Britain have
also been investigated and ruled out.
In other words the investigation is going nowhere and has drawn a complete blank.
All this comes hot on the heels of suggestions which are very likely true that the wall of silence which has recently
descended on the British media's reporting of the Skripal case is the
product of a British government D-Notice , ie. of a formal
request by the British government to the media to limit their coverage of the Skripal story on grounds of national security.
It has also been suggested that despite formal denials the most likely reason for the D-Notice is the desire of the British
authorities to conceal a possible connection between Sergey Skripal, his former MI6 controller Pablo Miller, and Christopher Steele,
the compiler of the Trump Dossier.
There are even suggestions that Sergey Skripal may have had a hand in producing the Trump Dossier, and that this was the reason
for the attack on him.
Whilst all this may be true, I have to say that Sergey Skripal identified as a British spy by the Russians in 2004 and isolated
from Russia in the leafy British town of Salisbury since 2010 seems an unlikely source for the Trump Dossier, largely fictitious
though that strange concoction is.
"... The media may be banned from reporting, but if my casual interactions with the UK populace are representative, the majority are highly sceptical of .gov - May / BJ 'Putin did it' accusations. ..."
"... One has to wonder why Russia is not calling Britain out on this obvious kidnapping. ..."
"... i had read craig murrays post earlier today...why are they covering up the fentanoyl angle? it's obvious! ..."
"... I think the policeman in this farce is key to everything. If the cause of the Skripal poisoning was fentenyal then why did the policeman become ill? ..."
"... Anyway, if it was a weapons grade chemical agent that the policeman was affected by, why was it he was able to leave hospital a few days later in full uniform looking a picture of health? ..."
"... Originally the story was he was somehow contaminated by the Skripals themselves, but as no one else in the contact chain was affected, and this notwithstanding the fact ambulance and medical had serious hand on contact was affected, it became clear that the policeman had to have another source of contamination. ..."
"... Thus; they invented the magic door knob story. Even this silly story is absurd. The police and the goons didn't investigate the door knob (actually, a door handle lever type) theory until 25 days later when rain and numerous people coming and going at the Skripals's would have worn off any contaminate from the door handle. ..."
"... By the way, they are now telling us the stuff on the door handle was a liquid. How do you get a liquid to stick of a shiny door handle? Apart from the silence of the press, the silence from the medical people is a factor also. They have not signed any official secrets act and they can't be issued with a D notice. ..."
"... the policemen appears like an inside prop for this false flag op... that is what it looks like to me.. forget about it, or him having any relevance or validity, if he is as i am suggesting.. ..."
"... It all seems amazing to me, what a strange world of collapsing empire we live in. Really, why don't the Russians demand at the UNSC the right to visit with Russian citizens? Call for a resolution demanding a visit and force them to veto. ..."
"... The US Drug Enforcement Agency claims that different kinds of Fentanyl, including something known as Carfentanil, can be absorbed through the skin or accidentally inhaled and cause death. ..."
"... Although the Skripal "op" was a success, the planned false flag didn't happen due to SAA's quick advance (with Russian help). Instead, a sloppy false flag was done at the very last minute in Douma just before the Jihadis gave up. This wouldn't save Ghouta so it was possibly motivated by the the desire to solidify anti-Russian sentiment created by the Skripal op. ..."
"... If we assume that the Skripals had been poisoned with fentanyl, we then have to explain how a doctor was able to give the Skripals first aid at the scene where they collapsed without being poisoned by fentanyl herself. ..."
"... @Jen16. Is it not possible the 'potency' of fentanyl is overstated in order to 'sell' the anti-dote? Much like the anthrax 'dote' after 911. I mean most dealers I have met aren't exactly stupid, that being said most aren't lab smart either, it would seem to me there would be a whole lot of dead dealers if 'traces' in the wind can kill. Then there is the anomaly of the Dr. and other's as you brought up in 16. Just a thought. FWIW. ..."
"... This charade has not gone well for May. It has raised serious doubts that the UK can ever be an ally of Trump. The Steele dirt dossier was an attack on Trump's family, presidential campaign and cripples his first term with purile Russia hatred. May and the espionage establishment are the enemy of the USA. After 250 years the British finally won the US war of independence and have enslaved the majority of its media outlets. ..."
"... The state exists to enforce the dominance of elites, all the rest is propaganda, misdirection, Obfuscation or terrorism up to and including total war. ..."
"... The young man Jamie Paine who first found the Skripals on the park bench got some liquid on his skin and apparently didn't suffer from it. ..."
"... The Devon Live report is still in its original form. It links to the first Wiltshire Police statement on the case and quotes from it. Curiously the link is dead. The first official police statement on the Skripal case is "currently unavailable". ..."
"... D-Notices are one of those evils that, once initiated, are never undone. It reminds me a bit of the fraudulent, gauzy "AUMF" used by the United States government as if it were a blank check written by God to wage imperialistic wars kinetic actions of aggression against anyone or anything it deems ripe for pillage or destruction-- at its sole pleasure and discretion, and for eternity. ..."
"... As it is, the D-Notices' ostensible "national security" rationale has proven to be mere camouflage for its true purpose: ensuring that malfeasant officials and operatives are "secure" in their depraved work, and are protected from all inquiries that might expose their heinous wrongdoing. Whoops! ..."
"... I do not know if fentanyl was found in OPCW sample, only British made BZ paralyzingly agent. The question is why? I think doctors in Salisbury who are trained with chemical nerve agents due to proximity to Porton Downs lab instantly knew there was no military nerve agent used there, would they also instantly know that it was Fentanyl since they faced epidemic of opioid overdoses. ..."
"... After recovery is was Skripal, trusted by her as her father, himself as part of psych op presented the narrative as Putin wanted to kill me and did not care that you happened to be with me at time of attack. I am so sorry, shit lies. She was brainwashed offered lucrative financial arrangement in the west decided to stay, thinking she could be killed upon returning to Russia. ..."
"... The fentanyl/BZ/Novichok angle seems eerily like the US/ZATO/MSM fallback position on the BUK missile scam for MH17. By insisting MH17 was brought down by SOME BUK, the story line never gets to the Ukie SU25s seen near MH17 on Russian commercial air-traffic tracking radar. ..."
"... The potential existence of Skripal's dead-man's-switch documentation may have extended well beyond the Steele scam, which would explain the urgency of the deed and why the Skripals are being held incommunicado. The search of the Skripal residence was to find that documentation, easy once the UK cordoned it off due to potential "chemical contamination". ..."
"... Why does this operation seem to have the malodorous stench of Berezovsky's spectre lingering in the background. While Berezovsky himself may be dead, it is safe to assume that remnants of his network are still around. If indeed the Skripals were poisoned, it could very well have been orchestrated by a rogue, non-state actor with embarrassing ties to MI6. In some ways it is reminiscent of the bungled Litvinenko operation (which the British gov't also covered up). ..."
"... Both Pablo Miller and Christopher Steele were known to be associated with Berezovsky. Steele, as his Mi6 handler, would probably have intimate knowledge of Berezovsky's connections and may well have used them as 'Russian sourced' material for his infamous Steele dossier. So Skripal, who consulted on the Steele dossier, is tied to both Miller and Steele who in turn are connected to remnants of Berezovsky's network. The 'suiciding' of Berezovsky (unless sanctioned by Mi6) suggests at least one group of players within this network who have their own agenda. ..."
"... It is possible that the Skripal case and the White Helmets Damascus chemical weapons likely false flag was an attempt of parts of the British (French) and US deep state to force Trump to remain in Syria. ..."
"... Skripal's "dead man switch" is pure fantasy. It assumes that a man who had betrayed his country and was merely an "asset" would be trusted with sensitive info. ..."
Thretha May proved to be a very dangerous woman -- a real political mafiosy.
There has been no recent reporting on the Skripal case in which a British-Russian double
agent and his daughter were poisoned in Salisbury, England. There even seem to be attempts to
change the public record of the case.
The British government alleged that the Skripals were poisoned by Novichok, a deadly nerve
agent, and blamed Russia for it. There are stiill many open questions to ask but the British
media, otherwise not afraid of 'door stepping', are curiously uninterested. We already noted
in early April that the British press was throwing
Novi-Fog™ onto the public. It was repeating outrageous and illogical claims from
"security services" but did no genuine reporting on the Skripal case.
Some photo editor made sense of what the "security services" said and introduced an April
5 London Times piece with a picture of a likely source of the alleged Novichok
poison:
Now the former British ambassador Craig Murray quotes Clive Ponting, another former senior
civil servant, who
suspects that the British government issued a D-Notice. Such a notice forbids British
media to report on an issue. Murray also points to a tweet by Channel 4 correspondent Alex
Thomson from
March 12 in which Thomsen mentions a D-Notice specifically related to Mr. Skripal's MI6
handler:
The D-Notice attempt Thomsen mentioned was too late as some media had already reported the
name of the Skripal's MI6 handler. We spelled
it out on March 8.
One Pablo Miller, a British MI6 agent, had
recruited Sergej Skripal. The former MI6 agent in Moscow, Christopher Steele, was also
involved in the case. Skripal was caught by the Russian security services and went to jail.
Pablo Miller, the MI6 recruiter, was also the handler of Sergej Skripal after he was released
by Russia in a spy swap. He reportedly also lives in Salisbury. Both Christopher Steele and
Pablo Miller work for Orbis Business Intelligence which created the "Dirty Dossier" about
Donald Trump.
We early on suspected
a relation between the "Dirty Dossier" and the Skripal affair:
Here are some question:
Did Skripal help Steele to make up the "dossier" about Trump?
Were Skripal's old connections used to contact other people in Russia to ask about
Trump dirt?
Did Skripal threaten to talk about this?
If there is a connection between the dossier and Skripal, which seems very likely to me,
then there are a number of people and organizations with potential motives to kill him.
Lots of shady folks and officials on both sides of the Atlantic were involved in creating
and running the anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign. There are several investigations and some
very dirty laundry might one day come to light. Removing Skripal while putting the blame on
Russia looks like a convenient way to get rid of a potential witness.
Whistleblower Clive Ponting,
quoted by Murray , now also suspects that the Skripal case was an 'inside' job that
followed from the 'dirty dossier' fakery:
If [Sergej Skripal] was also involved in the 'golden showers' dossier then elements in the
US would have a reason to act as well. The whole incident was an inside job not to kill
him, hence the use of BZ, but to give him a warning and a punishment. The whole thing is
being treated as though the authorities know exactly what went on but have to cover it
up.
...
I meant to add that the policeman who 'just happened' to be around was almost certainly the
special branch 'minder' who was keeping Yulia under surveillance. The media are not allowed
to mention the existence of a D notice.
There is not only a very curious silence in British media about the Skripal case, but
there seem to be active attempts to remove certain material about the case from the
public.
In 2017 investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhiev reported about
massive air transports of weapons to Syrian 'rebels' under diplomatic cover and got fired
over it. On April 26 she made another interesting find :
The Clinical Services Journal piece Gaytandzhiev had found is from March 5 2018,
the day after the Skripal incident in Salisbury. In its original version it read:
Salisbury District Hospital declared a "major incident" on Monday 5 March, after two
patients were exposed to an opioid .
...
It followed an incident hours earlier in which a man and a woman were exposed to the drug
Fentanyl in the city centre. The opioid is 10,000 times stronger than heroin.
One wonders why such a tiny magazine would bother to change an old story after some
journalist tweeted about it.
The CSJ was
not the only outlet which
mentioned Fentanyl. The local Salisbury Journal
reported it on March 5 and the piece is still up:
Police declared a major incident after a man in his 60s and a woman in her 30s were found
unconscious on a bench in the shopping centre on Sunday.
Emergency services at the scene suspected the substance may have been a powerful drug
called fentanyl , but nothing has yet been confirmed.
They were taken to Salisbury District Hospital where they are in a critical condition in
intensive care.
In November 2017 the Salisbury Journal had reported about an
unrelated fenatanyl overdose case . In 2016 Salisbury had
a spike in Fentanyl OD cases. The local emergency services were surely aware of the
symptoms and effects of such a substance.
It is understood that police suspect fentanyl, a synthetic opiate many times stronger than
heroin, may have been involved . A man and a woman are in a critical condition and up to 10
other people are involved.
Officers and paramedics were called to The Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury after the
man and a woman fell ill. The woman, who was unconscious, was airlifted to Salisbury
district hospital at about 4.15pm, while the man was taken by ambulance.
...
It was recently reported that fentanyl has claimed the lives of at least 60 people in the
UK over the last eight months.
The Devon Live report is still in its original form. It links to the first
Wiltshire Police statement on the case and quotes from it. Curiously the link is dead. The
first official police
statement on the Skripal case is "currently unavailable".
The British press is now totally silent on the Skripal case. Craig Murray and another
former senior civil servant suspect that the government gave order to not report on the
issue. They also suspect, as we did early on, that the case is related to the fake "Dirty
Dossier" which the Clinton campaign ordered up to use it against Donald Trump.
It is not understandable why the British government would give a silencing order if, as
the government alleges, Russia caused the incident.
Why is no public investigation by the media allowed? Where is Yulia Skripal and what is
the health status of Sergej Skripal? Why have they been silenced?
---
Previous Moon of Alabama posts on the Skripal case:
The media may be banned from reporting, but if my casual interactions with the UK
populace are representative, the majority are highly sceptical of .gov - May / BJ 'Putin
did it' accusations.
Heard yesterday in the dispatch warehouse of a rural agri suply business I was
collecting suplies from.
One warehousman to another- "Terry, where the hell is Jeff this morning?" reply from
warehousman 2 "Off sick, poisoned by russians his Mrs says, proof is clasified, but he will
be in next week"
thanks b... the additional info is fascinating.. i had read craig murrays post earlier
today...why are they covering up the fentanoyl angle? it's obvious!
b,
on another and important note - something is wrong with your site, with regard to making
posts on the most recent open thread and even on the previous thread to this... some weird
html script is showing up on both, but i was able to post earlier today on the previous
thread...
I think the policeman in this farce is key to everything. If the cause of the Skripal
poisoning was fentenyal then why did the policeman become ill? Surely he wasn't taking this
drug?
Anyway, if it was a weapons grade chemical agent that the policeman was affected by,
why was it he was able to leave hospital a few days later in full uniform looking a picture
of health?
Originally the story was he was somehow contaminated by the Skripals themselves,
but as no one else in the contact chain was affected, and this notwithstanding the fact
ambulance and medical had serious hand on contact was affected, it became clear that the
policeman had to have another source of contamination.
Thus; they invented the magic door
knob story. Even this silly story is absurd. The police and the goons didn't investigate
the door knob (actually, a door handle lever type) theory until 25 days later when rain and
numerous people coming and going at the Skripals's would have worn off any contaminate from
the door handle.
By the way, they are now telling us the stuff on the door handle was a
liquid. How do you get a liquid to stick of a shiny door handle? Apart from the silence of
the press, the silence from the medical people is a factor also. They have not signed any
official secrets act and they can't be issued with a D notice.
@4 john.. the policemen appears like an inside prop for this false flag op... that is what
it looks like to me.. forget about it, or him having any relevance or validity, if he is as i am suggesting..
Regarding my post above, it has to be said that this assumed 'assassin' must be the most
incompetent one in the world. Surely the obvious way to get this fantasy weapons grade
chemical to Skripal would be via a letter posted through the door, say, in the early
evening. This way Skripal would have most likely died in his bed. By the way, it was a cold
day so how did the 'assassin not know that the Skripals wouldn't be wearing gloves? Even
the 'assassin' in this affair just doesn't add up. Questions, question, easily answered by
lies, lies, and more lies
It all seems amazing to me, what a strange world of collapsing empire we live in. Really, why don't the Russians demand at the UNSC the right to visit with Russian
citizens? Call for a resolution demanding a visit and force them to veto.
Thanks for doing your part to keep this false flag story alive.
It is interesting that Russia has not taken a stronger position in public about their
treatment.
The UK folks sure seem to be getting away with killing this story and expect them to be
successful if they can create another bigger wag the dog event.....not a good sign except
as a good sign that the end is closer.
DS Nick Bailey said, via an intermediary, that life will "probably never be the same." What
an odd thing for a police sergeant to say (perhaps his last words).
from the Telegraph:
Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey was discharged from hospital two weeks ago and hasn't been
heard from since, probably a result of the private session Bailey had with the Prime
Minister prior to his release. Bailey wasn't even allowed to make a statement upon his
discharge from hospital. In a statement read by Wiltshire Police Chief Constable Kier
Pritchard on March 22, DS Nick Bailey said he recognises his life will "probably never be
the same" and thanks the public for their "overwhelming" support. . .
here .
The US Drug Enforcement Agency claims that different kinds of Fentanyl, including something
known as Carfentanil, can be absorbed through the skin or accidentally inhaled and cause
death.
(The DEA also reminds its officers to protect their canine companions! My respect for
the DEA has increased 1000 fold.)
Do ex-spies ever get involved in the drug trade? Would accidental exposure to some kind
of Fentanyl explain what happened to the law enforcement officer who was also affected?
Perhaps seafood poisoning is the second most parsimonious explanation.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to initially suspect fentanyl given that fentanyl has killed
many people in UK and elsewhere. Food poisoning was also mooted early on due to Zizzi's
poor health record. But these possibilities smell like distraction from the BZ finding.
AFAIK The best way to "set the scene" for a public spectacle would be an attack with a
fast-acting agent at an opportune time and place. All other "theories" seem to me to be
mis-direction/distraction.
A police officer (DS Bailey) makes a logical choice to deliver the incapacitating agent
as he/she does not arouse suspicion when loitering and accosting the victims. If the
victims fight back, the policeman might be exposed to some of the substance.
Since the British haven't had Yulia appear before even the most loyal media poodles, I
suspect that the Skripals are dead.
I'm not convinced that the MI6 had anything to fear from the Steele dossier. To think
that any US investigator would be allowed to freely interview Skripal, Steele, or other
British "asset" seems a big stretch. And, if tying up loose ends of the Steele dossier was
the motive, it would've been much easier and more effective to have Skripal die quietly (in
bed of a heat attack) than publicly.
So I'm inclined to think that the "operation" was designed to discredit Russia prior to
a planned false flag in Ghouta which was meant to forestall SAA defeat of the takfiri
salafist Jihadis that controlled Ghouta. The confusion and apparent hurried nature of the
"op" (as noted by Jen early on - one of my favorite commentators here) fits with this
theory.
Although the Skripal "op" was a success, the planned false flag didn't happen due to
SAA's quick advance (with Russian help). Instead, a sloppy false flag was done at the very
last minute in Douma just before the Jihadis gave up. This wouldn't save Ghouta so it was
possibly motivated by the the desire to solidify anti-Russian sentiment created by the
Skripal op.
Anyway, that's my best guess as to what really happened. Another clusterfuck in a long
line of clusterfucks.
On April 26th she made an interesting discovery? Really? What about this Russian guy who
nobody bothers to read ? He is a pharmacologist and a knock-out coder and wrote about
Fentanyl on April the 21st.
If we assume that the Skripals had been poisoned with fentanyl, we then have to explain how
a doctor was able to give the Skripals first aid at the scene where they collapsed without
being poisoned by fentanyl herself.
There have been reports from the US about police
officers and emergency first response workers coming into contact with even very minute
amounts of fentanyl and falling unconscious and needing first aid themselves. In one
unusual incident, a police officer had been dealing with several cases, one of which
involved coming in contact with someone who overdosed on fentanyl, and after several hours
he brushed off what looked like dust particles from his uniform with his bare hand. He
collapsed almost straight away and needed hospitalisation. The dust particles turned out to
be fentanyl particles.
The doctor who gave first aid to the Skripals reported no ill effects; she turned
herself in to Salisbury District Hospital after hearing that the couple had been poisoned
by Novichok but she was found to be clear of any poisoning agent.
@Jen16. Is it not possible the 'potency' of fentanyl is overstated in order to 'sell' the
anti-dote? Much like the anthrax 'dote' after 911. I mean most dealers I have met aren't
exactly stupid, that being said most aren't lab smart either, it would seem to me there
would be a whole lot of dead dealers if 'traces' in the wind can kill. Then there is the
anomaly of the Dr. and other's as you brought up in 16. Just a thought. FWIW.
This charade has not gone well for May. It has raised serious doubts that the UK can ever
be an ally of Trump. The Steele dirt dossier was an attack on Trump's family, presidential
campaign and cripples his first term with purile Russia hatred. May and the espionage
establishment are the enemy of the USA. After 250 years the British finally won the US war
of independence and have enslaved the majority of its media outlets.
I would say narrative . Keep it simple. Repeat. Anything that throws doubt or poses
questions is submerged .
Curious that they went to the effort of shutting down the British press and the
scrubbing from search results on skripal and pablo miller. The results for "pablo miller"
in google news UK, US and others throw up almost identical results, even though I recall
seeing his name via google news mentioned early on...
I bet it has nothing to do with the Brussels 'Right to be forgotten!' Directive being
enforced...
But, when I look for him in Quant (under 'All') ...it throws up some interesting links,
but nothing under the 'news'!:
Remember I wrote earlier that I was sure that I had seen Miller's name mentioned on
google news earlier on? Well Quant threw this paywalled Daily Telegraph article from 7th
March (loose the spaces):
Poisoned Russian spy Sergei Skripal was close to consultant https://www. telegraph .co.uk/news/ 2018/03/07/
poisoned-russian-spy-sergei-skripal-close-consultant-linked/
By Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter Hayley Dixon Patrick Sawer, Senior Reporter and Luke
Heighton
A security consultant who has worked for the company that compiled the controversial
dossier on Donald Trump was close to the Russian double agent poisoned last weekend, it has
been claimed.
The consultant, who The Telegraph is declining to identify, lived close to Col
Skripal and is understood to have known him for some time.
Col Skripal, who is in intensive care and fighting for his life after an
assassination attempt on Sunday, was recruited by MI6 when he worked for the British
embassy in Estonia, according to the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency....
#####
It must have somehow slipped through, though probably because the you can't see 'pablo
miller's name in the visible section.
There are some other juicy links from Qwant, including one from the Guardian in 2000
which names Miller:
...which is full of unverifiable claims, including that Putin was almost recruited to
the UK! It always makes me laugh when they bring up the 'apartment bombings were an FSB
false flag to attack Chechnya', but those same people don't even mention Basayev's invasion
of Dagestan on the 7th August 1999 in support of his fellow jihadis who dreamed of a
Caucasian Islamic Emirate in Russia's south, i.e. what was attempted in Syria these last
few years. Keeping Russia weak, something entirely in keeping with US & UK
interests...
I'm pleased to see Antwar.com's stalwart Justin Raimondo's piece come up too.
Its unclear if that happened in all (100%) cases though. Its possible that only in
certain percentage of such cases the rescuers were affected, and in some cases they were
not.
Thus, a full statistic with such cases will have to be provided in order to be able to
make conclusions about this.
The young man Jamie Paine who first found the Skripals on the park bench got some liquid on
his skin and apparently didn't suffer from it. From a March 8 BBC video --
". . .man was frothing from the mouth, I got a little bit on my skin, it wasn't too much, I
just brushed it off." That has never been mentioned in any recent news accounts that I've
seen. We do have other articles mentioning Paine.
Wow! Thanks for picking up and expanding on Murray's blog, b! The planet's populated with
far too many evil English speaking people that must be culled from the herd--and soon!
I did an online search and I don't see frothing at the mouth or jerking motions as a
symptom of fentanyl poisoning. Opiate OD results in dizziness, confusion, sleepiness and
loss of consciousness, low blood pressure, slowed heartbeat and slow breathing, etc.
Also, there is a well-known antidote for fentanyl poisoning: naloxone (aka narcan),
which could've been applied quickly. And, while I'm not an expert, I am not aware of people
being in a coma for weeks due from a fentanyl OD. AFAIK, within days they are dead or
recovered.
Several people have asked why Russia has not raised the issue at the UNSC. I have heard
them raise the issue at the UNSC, (I listened on Ruptly), and so did Lavrov and so did the
Russian ambassador to Britain and so did Maria Zakarova.
The reason no one knows this is because the Mighty Wurlitzer of propaganda is controlled by
the West, not Russia. If they don't report it, people think it didn't happen. But it did.
The Devon Live report is still in its original form. It links to the first Wiltshire
Police statement on the case and quotes from it. Curiously the link is dead. The first
official police statement on the Skripal case is "currently unavailable".
FYI: A copy of the web page has been preserved at the Wayback Machine
@DB. Froth is a good visual indicator, kinda like having a roach clip on your keychain when
u cross a border.
It tells a story......... I doubt the Skirpals got a dose of Gillette.
I am not sure I have seen this angle in the article or comments, fentanyl use would present
the same triage symptoms as BZ. Seems chasing a fentanyl trail gets further from existing
evidence.
D-Notices are one of those evils that, once initiated, are never undone.
It reminds me a bit of the fraudulent, gauzy "AUMF" used by the United States government
as if it were a blank check written by God to wage imperialistic wars kinetic
actions of aggression against anyone or anything it deems ripe for pillage or destruction--
at its sole pleasure and discretion, and for eternity.
But I digress. Just as a matter of logic, it would seem as if the authorities who
created and approved the "D-Notice" procedure presumed that the government would never
become so tyrannical, despotic, and unethical that it would issue such mega-censorship
diktats in bad faith-- i.e., to provide cover for illicit and illegal government
conduct.
As it is, the D-Notices' ostensible "national security" rationale has proven to be mere
camouflage for its true purpose: ensuring that malfeasant officials and operatives are
"secure" in their depraved work, and are protected from all inquiries that might expose
their heinous wrongdoing. Whoops!
______________________________________
That said, I also wonder about Russia's relative official deference, at least publicly,
to the UK authorities' sequestering of the Skripals.
Given the absence of any domestic countervailing force to the British government's
high-handedness-- the UK media consent-manufactories are complicit enough as it is, even
without being gagged by D-Notices-- it would seem that the Russians are the only party able
and willing to "raise a stink" beyond polite formal communications.
Perhaps the comparison is inapt, but compare OPCW representative Aleksandr Shulgin's
recent presentation at the OPCW, and his comments about the faked chemical attack in Syria.
They are directly, forcefully, and appropriately accusatory, and signal that the Russian
government is weary of politely submitting to the UK's abusive and bellicose policies and
conduct.
But there seems to be no corresponding inclination to press the UK authorities over the
reprehensible and unconscionable kidnapping, or worse, of Russian citizens. 'Tis a
puzzlement.
I do not know if fentanyl was found in OPCW sample, only British made BZ paralyzingly
agent.
The question is why? I think doctors in Salisbury who are trained with chemical nerve
agents due to proximity to Porton Downs lab instantly knew there was no military nerve
agent used there, would they also instantly know that it was Fentanyl since they faced
epidemic of opioid overdoses.
As far as theory how this happened. I see that Skripal was in it, in fact he prepared
and tested appropriate dose for him as his daughter used as pawn to lend credibility and
provide required Putin evil killing innocent narrative which would be absent if he just
killed or hurt rogue agent.
Skipral himself calibrated that false flag dose of BZ or Fenantyl to make sure no
permanent damage would be done to his daughter and then administered it himself to her and
himself in controlled manner in public place so help would be coming immediately while in
his car they could have possibly lie there for hours before being discovered.
In fact place where he lived Salisbury near Porton Downs was perfect for this since
there was no way that doctors would misdiagnose them as military nerve agent victims which
wrong treatment would possibly caused irreversible damage to victims as doctors would be
more aggressive fearing immediate death of patients and also were immune to propaganda of
Novichok crap since they were experts in this medical field as real and present danger,
threat of exposure of Porton Downs employees was always there.
After recovery is was Skripal, trusted by her as her father, himself as part of psych op
presented the narrative as Putin wanted to kill me and did not care that you happened to be
with me at time of attack. I am so sorry, shit lies. She was brainwashed offered lucrative financial arrangement in the west decided to stay,
thinking she could be killed upon returning to Russia.
I do not think it would be far fetched to concoct such a thing or similar by MI6 as such
stunts were done before like fake deaths or staged attacks but in this case the point was
to fool British unwitting participants that nerve agent attack happenced as later they did
later in Douma in amateurish way but still it worked as pretext to pre planed aggression on
Syria as in case of Skripals pre planed diplomatic retaliation against Russia before any
investigation was really commenced , such thing only perpetrators of false flag themselves
would do.
If Skripal was not on it why keep them alive as prime witnesses of conspiracy since I
could imagine as a father myself Skripal being furious of MI6 amounted to attemp to kill
his daughter and blame Putin one he learned that there was no Novichok crap or any military
nerve agent used.
In fact Fenantyl is deadly if inappropriately handled what just few days after Skripal
affair husband and wife overdosed on Fentanty in California and putting in critical
condition their mother in law trying to revive them in the bedroom, children that never
enter the room by looked through the Door who called 911 were also mildly exposed while a
police officer who entered the room end up in hospital himself.
Whole house was immediately quarantined and covered by tent until, special unit arrived
days later and only then police investigator entered premises.
What interesting that no emergency or medical personnel in hospital was hurt since they
knew well how to deal with Fenantyl epidemic.
We must remember that despite crazy rhetoric we are dealing with risky but rational
people.
Unless I am mistaken D Notices are issued by the Minister of Defence who, in this instance
is the exceedingly high flying Tory Gavin Williamson. Williamson's previous job was as Tory
Whip -- making sure that there were no rebellions among the MPs at a time when the May
government hangs by a thread and is taking the most extraordinary measures to ensure that
it does not lose a Paliamentary vote.
Williamson's claim to fame, and May's affection, was that he ran the Whip's office as a
blackmail operation-spying on MPs and building dossiers featuring their errors, crimes and
indiscretions. He was very good at this, May, though very unpopular, is spared the fate
that Thatcher suffered-a vote of non confidence by the Tory MPs (the 1922 Committee)-
because Williamson, a thug, has a blackmailer's 'hold' over most of his colleagues.
Using a D Notice in this matter is very unusual- quite how national security would suffer
if the truth were to become widely known is difficult to imagine.
But thanks to the Israeli Embassy's million pound campaign against Corbyn, and a hundred
Fifth Columnists on the Labour benches who prefer May to their party leader, and
Williamson's mafia Parliament isn't working as it ought to.
The fentanyl/BZ/Novichok angle seems eerily like the US/ZATO/MSM fallback position on the
BUK missile scam for MH17. By insisting MH17 was brought down by SOME BUK, the story line
never gets to the Ukie SU25s seen near MH17 on Russian commercial air-traffic tracking
radar.
The pub seafood dish spiked with shellfish toxin is more likely, as it would need to be
ingested with a time-lag after ingestion so mere contact on the bench would not be an
issue. Mossad is too clever to leave anything easily traceable, and will keep injecting
alternative story lines into the British "intel" system and the MSM.
It is obvious this was NOT a UK or even US/CIA/5-Eyes operation. The UK politicians and
intel community had no idea, were caught totally flatfooted, so went to "trusted sources
(Mossad) to find out what to say.
The ONLY way for the UK to manage this massive back-stab by the Rothschild-backed
Israeli Zionists is to just shut down all access to any real info, so some BS stories will
be thrown around to confuse the public and defuse any attempts by real investigators to
piece together the real events.
The fact Skripal was probably involved in the Steele dossier scam may indicate the true
source of the anti-Trump agenda. Why else would Mossad be moved to desperately silence
Skripal, and his daughter on the potential scenario she knew and had come to pick up
Skripal's dead-man's-switch documentation and take it back to Russia for safe-keeping.
Imagine how upset Trumpty Dumbdy would be if he found out the Steele scam was ultimately
set in motion by Nuttyyahoo, or rogue elements in the Israeli gov't/Mossad.
"The first official police statement on the Skripal case is "currently unavailable"."
FYI:
the first report is still available on the Way Back machine Web Archive here, and there are
5 "captures" but only 3 of those show the actual report (through March 2018), starting in
April the text is not available any more....
link
">https://www.wiltshire.police.uk/article/1736/Major-incident-after-two-people-suspected-of-being-exposed-to-unknown-substance-in-Salisbury">link
@33DB. Yes and no depending on where your personal belief fence may be. For myself not
proves...... just seems conspicuously coincidental. Mind you, MSM never played it up to my
knowledge... in either case so..... either way froth no froth all we really know is two
family members from Russia spent time in a London hospital and the UK skreamed Russia did
it way before any reasonable person could be exected to believe it, given the track record,
after that who knows really.
I was curious about the relationship between Trump and the Rothschilds, and why they might
go to such lengths to get Mossad to go 100% rogue and pull off the Skripal attack.
A simple Dog Pile meta-search (Google will probably not give the same results for
obvious reasons) found a story in wide blog circulation from Oct 2016 which said Trump had
recently paid off his debt to the Rothschilds (probably through Goldman Sachs or the like).
The interesting part is the article claims Trump had ALL Rothschilds banned from his Mar a
Lago resort, the reputed quote from the Tweeter in Chief was "I grabbed Jacob (Rothschild)
by the scruff of the neck and kicked him out the back door of Palm Beach of Florida
society". Way to make enemies and influence friends there Donny-boy. The same article
quotes a Trump tweet, "They do not own the world, and they do not have carte blanch to do
whatever they want. If we do not challenge them there will be other issues. We will not be
bullied by them!" http://harddawn.com/trump-banned-rothschilds/
Except for the Trump tweets, the rest of the election-run-up article is full of Trumpty
Dumbdy hopium which has not panned out.
In an Infowars article: "The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a company under the wing
of The Economist, owned by the Rothschild banking family of England, has declared Donald
Trump a "global risk"
Can't see the Economist getting too far off-narrative with the Rothschild cabal, so this
rings true.
So while Infowars and Hard Dawn are not anyone's first choice as sources, they are
quoting Trump himself and a Rothschild media/propaganda organ.
Circle closed, Mossad did it. The UK MI6/5 and politicians didn't know what was
happening until after Israeli/Mossad "trusted sources" gave May and Johnson the script to
feed the MSM .
The potential existence of Skripal's dead-man's-switch documentation may have extended well
beyond the Steele scam, which would explain the urgency of the deed and why the Skripals
are being held incommunicado. The search of the Skripal residence was to find that
documentation, easy once the UK cordoned it off due to potential "chemical contamination".
Just to complicate the matter even more, I have found UK tabloid news reports online dated
7 - 8 March 2018 of a female office worker (who worked in the building next to the Zizzi's
Restaurant franchise in Salisbury) who was taken to Salisbury District Hospital by
paramedics. Links to the reports below:
The reports may not amount to much. The woman could have had a fainting reaction to
something not related to the Skripal poisoning incident.
As of today (29 April 2018) the pizza restaurant remains closed. The uniforms of the
staff who worked there on the Sunday when the Skripals ate at the restaurant were seized
and burned by the authorities.
Apparently traces of a nerve gas agent were said to have been found at the restaurant,
in particular on and around the table where the Skripals ate their lunch (and which has
since been incinerated).
Any word from the owner of the restaurant or workers laid off? Who pays to shut all them
and their families up?
@ A P with the Trump/Rothschild conflict exposure......thanks
If a sane world made the tools of finance public utilities then these social retards
would not have the means to plays these games on the backs of the rest of us.
It is obvious that Yulia Skripal's and her brother's ability to travel freely between
both sides and keep their childhood friends in the secret service community would have cost
their father dearly. He is described as a family man, and could easily be blackmailed with his family.
Fentanyl OD would have very similar symptoms to BZ exposure. There is no doubt in my mind
that the Skripals were exposed to BZ (as confirmed by Swiss lab) and Fentanyl was the
obvious suspect for the medical staff who would not have had full toxicology report by the
time initial report was made.
Seems like UK just started a propaganda campaing against Corbyn sigh, UK Media Claims 'Russian Bots' Tried to Influence Election to Support Corbyn
https://sptnkne.ws/hwDC
51 OPCW says the BZ was in the control samples not the original. All you need to cheat would be one person to switch Novichok and original samples in the
Dutch lab where the samples were split.
A control sample that gives the same exact symptoms as the victims displayed. How
convenient! Of all the millions of organic chemicals they could have chosen for a control
sample........ I'll leave you with that thought.
I'm confused about dropping the Novichok hypothesis.
The explanation of BZ poisoning has been dropped, fine. But what about the presence of
A234? It's not because the initial report mentioned Fentanyl poisoning that this is
correct. Fentanyl is a problem the doctors are familiar with as a 'live' social problem and
it's easy to explain a new case with Fentanyl while in fact it's something else. So it is
possible that afterwards the doctors changed their minds and saw no reason not to comply
with pressure to correct the statement. I don't know if the symptoms the doctors were
presented with were clear enough to exclude confusion.
Gareth Porter has an article about a batch of A234 which has been around since the
nineties, probably in hands of Russian mafia, and which by now has been deteriorated and
would have much less predictable effects when used.
There is a mention of the purity of the traces of A234. There are two interpretations of
that: one is that it is fresh and contains little contaminations. Another is that it has in
fact deteriorated very much but from the proportions of the components it is clear that it
was once a pure product.
I would not exclude the possibility that a very old batch of A234 was used and that the
British were convinced it was from russian origin and intended to take full advantage of
this. It could be that they knew it had russian origin because they had been involved in
acquiring the sample , or it was just a good guess, but the opportunistic use of the
pretext is the same.
Here is some information from Pablo Miller: "Little was known about Miller's life outside
his public clashes with the FSB. He served in the British Army as a member of the Royal
Tank Regiment and the Royal Green Jackets before he joined the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office in 1990. A veterans site for the Royal Tank Regiment shows a 1984 photograph of a
Lt. Pablo Miller patrolling the Green Line in Cyprus, where Miller's LinkedIn profile
indicates he served.
Diplomatic lists show Miller's first foreign posts after joining the FCO were in
Nigeria, first in Abuja and later Lagos beginning in 1992 before he took a job as first
secretary at the British embassy in Estonia in September 1997. He also served as a
counsellor at the British embassy in Warsaw, Poland from 2010 through 2013." (....) In
2000, the FSB identified Miller as the "head of British intelligence in Tallinn," Estonia
and accused him of recruiting an FSB officer later identified as Valery Ojamae." (Source:
Daily Beast)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pablo-miller-the-mystery-man-who-recruited-putins-poisoned-spy?source=facebook&via=mobile
Why does this operation seem to have the malodorous stench of Berezovsky's spectre
lingering in the background. While Berezovsky himself may be dead, it is safe to assume
that remnants of his network are still around. If indeed the Skripals were poisoned, it
could very well have been orchestrated by a rogue, non-state actor with embarrassing ties
to MI6. In some ways it is reminiscent of the bungled Litvinenko operation (which the
British gov't also covered up).
Both Pablo Miller and Christopher Steele were known to be associated with Berezovsky.
Steele, as his Mi6 handler, would probably have intimate knowledge of Berezovsky's
connections and may well have used them as 'Russian sourced' material for his infamous
Steele dossier. So Skripal, who consulted on the Steele dossier, is tied to both Miller and
Steele who in turn are connected to remnants of Berezovsky's network. The 'suiciding' of
Berezovsky (unless sanctioned by Mi6) suggests at least one group of players within this
network who have their own agenda.
Perhaps you would be considerate enough not to degrade the quality of MOA by posting
'information' sourced from obvious nutjobs such as your sourcing for ' Trump and the
Rothschilds'. To quote a blog, which includes such gems as "FACT CHECK! 69 Million Illegal
Alien Extraterrestrials Voted for Hillary: Mostly True", seems to indicate you are probably
more suited to be commenting over there rather than on MOA.
That idea is probably more plausible than the food poisoning idea: the poison need not
actually have been a nerve gas agent as long as it mimics the symptoms of shellfish
poisoning. The only issue is, who would have put the poison into the food? If the staff had
done it, someone would have noticed because there were no walls or other barriers between
the kitchen and the dining area. One would also expect other diners to have had food
poisoning although it's possible the Skripals were the only diners that day to have eaten
seafood risotto. The second possibility is that someone was with the Skripals while they
were having lunch and managed to pop something into their lunch while they were not
looking.
Of course we would discount other alternatives: that the Skripals were poisoned at The
Mill pub or on the park bench.
V @ 45: Why would we be surprised if Treason'n'Mayhem doesn't flinch if she's been busted
for lying? She's had plenty of practice, another episode of lying is just part of the
regular routine!
Fwiw. DS Nick Bailey. I tend to believe that he was 'sickened,' was not a made-up
character / a real person playing a hoaxy part / and so on.
1 He existed at the Wiltshire Police, enough on the net about him. At one point (2017)
he was stationed very close to the 'park bench' spot. The photo seen everywhere is of an
award ceremony for him for work leading to the arrest of a serial rapist. (2016) Imho his
wife and children exist (no post about that.)
2 How, from where, etc. he arrived at the Skripal collapse park-bench on 4 March (if he
did) is not mentioned in any news article. Expressions used: rushed / speeded / to help --
after coming to the aid of -- first cop on the scene -- after responding to the attack --
as the first response to the attack -- No other info. offered.
Was he on duty? Where was he? How did he arrive? What did he do? How did he get to the
hospital? One article mentions TWO policemen as first responders, as one would expect. Who
was the other one (if 1 = N. B.)? Almost no info about N.B. was given out. At some later
point some articles suggested that he was not poisoned at the scene, or thru contact with
the Skripals, but because he was the first plod to enter the Skripal house. (Imho this last
story was pure speculation / made up, a sort of offshoot of the poisoned knob narrative.
Whatever, if any, poisoning took place, was not at the house, but at the very earliest at
the Zizzi restaurant.)
3 Couldn't find any 'witness' descriptions (e.g. doc who first dealt with Yulia) of the
arrival of the police. Exceedingly strange. Perhaps some exist but I missed them..? One
would expect: When DS Bailey and Plodue rushing to the scene of the deathly murderous
attack realised some nerve agent was suspected a high alert priority emergency order was
immediately called out for a helicopter .. Nothing like that. It is as if all the
'bystander witnesses' simply vanished at some point. I also looked for cell photos of the
park-bench scene and only found ONE possible. Scroll down to pic of Sergei:
4 I found NO news about N.B. beyond the read-out declaration by police, and the
annoucement that he left hosp. on 22 March. The few words available (visit of top plod to
N. B. in hosp and declaration) "very anxious" - "completely surreal" - "life never the same
again" - "find a new normal" seem to fit with..heh.. a lot of stuff incl. BZ, Fentanyl, and
LSD, but not a deadly nerve agent. Heh, not worth much, just a few words. (see Don Bacon as
well.)
All this, imho, signals a clumsy cover-up, gag orders, etc. Which points to unexpected
results, plots gone wrong, clumsy exploitation of events, etc. No way a planned false flag
type conspiracy. (I'm not keen on the links between Skripal and the Steele
dossier.)
@31. ı think the issue we are wondering most about is the abduction of Yulia Skripal.
We know they have addressed the poisoning issue at the UNSC, but wonder about Russia
pressing for the illegal prevention of a Russian citizen accessing her government. There is
zero evidence provided by the British government which suggests Yulia does not want
contact, except the British governments' assertion to that effect. The word of the
abductors is worthless.
your dealing with ............criminals........... who are in charge of top level large
organizations/departments called your government. criminals. the same for terrorists, which
pre-9/11 was just criminals. your dealing with criminals/terrorist who have a hand in their
media to be able to make you think in a hundred directions. which is not necessary.
First. How could UK and US not know about some mossad operation and was caught flat footed?
There responses were quick enough to insinuate that russia did it again in syria not long
after.
Second. How come skripal and his daughter haven't just come out for answers unless they
were in on it? (how they were in, is not really important now, it is obvious, unless i hear
a story about a russian immigrant jumping out of a window, I find her flying to UK was her
one way trip now unless she proves otherwise)
Last. the fact the sample did contain a bit of everything suggests, their intention was to
"hide". remember i said the cctv cameras would have been reviewed by now easily.
the hit on n.korea's brother? there was not really an intention to hide by their
governance.
russia is doing good to ignore such banter, because it is really below the level of even
petty criminals who do things out of necessity as compared to idiots who have power but
still fk it all up. not that putin is not capable of this and probably has so before, but
these actions or inactions speak about someone who is experienced.
On a side note. I viewed US campaign commercials and I saw the words two faced being used
instead of highlighting what they had done or will do....... it has been a nice ride. i
missed the old us but i won't regret her now. =(
"UPDATE: Stupidly I had forgotten this vital confirmation from Channel 4 News (serial
rebel Alex Thomson) of the D Notice in place on mention of Pablo Miller.
(Alex Thomson tweeted on March 12 that a D notice, to protect Skripal's handler,living
nearby, had been imposed in the previous week) https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
"Back then I did not realise what I now know, that the person being protected was Pablo
Miller, colleague in both MI6 then Orbis Intelligence of Christopher Steele, author of the
fabrications of the Trump/Russia golden shower dossier. That the government's very first
act on the poisoning was to ban all media mention of Pablo Miller makes it extremely
probable that this whole incident is related to the Trump dossier and that Skripal had
worked on it, as I immediately suspected. The most probable cause is that Skripal –
who you should remember had traded the names of Russian agents to Britain for cash –
had worked on the dossier with Miller but was threatening to expose its lies for cash."
A super strong opioid and therefore OD will involve loss, of consciousness, slowed
breathing, pin point pupils and death.
Fentanyl is usually administered via a transdermal patch i.e. across the skin but over an
extended time period, although the junkies I worked with in Sydney had worked out how to
extract the good stuff from the patch in an injectable form. Bang into your arm (or neck if
you're hardcore).
Overdose is EASILY reversed by Narcan /naloxone injected IM. Kicks every opioid molecule
off associated receptors.
I believe an aerosol form was used by Russian special forces in Moscow theatre siege. It
incapacitated terrorists and hostages and unfortunately coused death by positional
asphyxiation to a hundred or so hostages.
I think the idea about Yulia visiting to take Sergei's dead-man-switch back to Russia is
interesting. Reminded me of the report
that they both had turned off their cell phones for four hours between the visit to the
cemetery in the morning and showing up in city center in the early afternoon. Maybe they
went for the documents Sergei had stored in a secret location and had them with them when
they were taken out in the park.
61) actually they do. This here is the OPCW publication on "on-site and off-site
analysis"
They use "scheduled chemicals" for spiking controls which means chemicals that are on
their chemical weapons list.
Spiked samples at OPCW lab would show those control chemicals in a virgin state, and
that's exactly what happened. Problem is, the evidence was exactly the opposite of what
OPCW claimed. Swiss report showed Novichok was in a virgin state and pure form
(definitely lethal to victims, if it was in their blood), that's an evidence IT WAS THE
SPIKE, not BZ.
According to the OPCW lab report the Russians got hold of, it sounded as though remnant
traces of BZ where found plus a A-234 spike (in virgin state). But then medical journal has
Fentanyl.
The Skripals knocked out with Fentanyl, OPOCW blood samples first spiked by MI6 with
A-234 and then spiked by OPCW with a control substance?
Or Skripals knocked out with fast acting Fentanyl, then dosed with BZ, perhaps a day or two
later?
@50 "Family man" Scripal...hmmm...they said that his wife and son are dead (for how
long?)...Then they said that his daughter has been paid 200.000 in to her account as a
money he received from the house sold after his divorce (with second wife that noone even
mentioned or ...his dead wife? I assume one can not divorce his dead wife...) just before
poisoning...
It is possible that the Skripal case and the White Helmets Damascus chemical weapons
likely false flag was an attempt of parts of the British (French) and US deep state to
force Trump to remain in Syria.
It looks like there has been a rift between military and intelligence services.
I do not know about his daughter but it seems to me that he is definitely dead. Or they may
made a deal to play this game for authorities and poisoning never actually happened. Blood
samples were manipulated (and badly)... We may know more about this case after 50 years or
so...Witnesses wouldn't talk scared for their lives. Time and events are running fast and
public easily forgets what happened last week when new "event" plays next week. Hard to
follow all these crooked actors on a political scene...But more and more people are dead
and wars and "revolutions" are everywhere...I am afraid "chicken will come home" soon...
Such power as the UK has retained post-empire has rested on the special relationship with
the U.S. The core of that special relationship has been cooperation between the intel
agencies of the two countries. Before the election, the U.S. intel agencies very much
opposed Trump, and since then they have very much been a part of the so-called resistance
to him. It figures that the UK would want to assist them.
@ 79 What son? As I understand his son is dead and two of them visited cemetery where his
son and wife are...and then again why this money is in his daughter's account?
@ pantaraxia #60: Thanks for pointing that out. Seems the troll farms were/are working
overtime, as I have now found "articles" which use nearly EXACTLY the same two quotes (with
suitable substitutions), but attributed to Putin/Russia. Some days you get the bear, some
days the bear gets you...
The Economist part? The fact that corporatist rag lies as much as any MSM... but the
Economist also definitely toes the Rothschild propaganda line, so that article shows there
is no love lost between them and Trump.
Despite this, my premise stands, if Skripal had damning evidence that the Steele scam
and the larger "Russian collusion scam" was more than just theory, and linked the
Dems/lawyers/spooks back to the Rothschilds, then we have the Zionist connection. Mossad
does the Zionists' dirty work.
So what power-base comes out ahead on this episode? Not the UK for sure... they have
been shown to be incompetent and not in control of what happens on their turf. The Dems
don't gain, as this threw at least temporary focus back onto the
nearly-forgotten-by-the-MSM Steele scam. Trump surely doesn't gain much, not enough to have
the CIA do the deed. Even assuming the CIA would do as Trump asks. Russia/Putin had exactly
zero to gain from this. It may even be a significant loss, because if Yulia was bringing
back her father's dead-man-switch documents to Russia for safekeeping, there's a chance the
FSB might have been able to get them.
Who's left? Given that the Rothchilds have declared Trump "a danger" via the Economist
and elsewhere, one could easily imagine them trying to install, via Trump's impeachment, an
even more rabid Zionist puppet in the form of Pence.
So confusion and disarray all 'round.
"By deception shalt you do war." The Mossad motto.
The effects of BZ are felt about 1/2 hour after exposure and can last for weeks.
Fentanyl could have immediate effect but those effects last only days.
Skripal's "dead man switch" is pure fantasy. It assumes that a man who had betrayed his country and was merely an "asset" would be
trusted with sensitive info.
Whatever help Skripal may have provided to Steele is likely to have been tangential.
Steele almost certainly had other sources that he could call on. But Skripal might make for a good fall guy.
Those who decry Russia's seeming inaction fail to consider that that keeping the Skripal's
incommunicado is a provocation that is meant to illicit threats from Russia that could
further the anti-Russian agenda. By keeping a cool head the Russians have avoided this trap.
No evidence was provided to support this. How many substances are on the control list?
How many times has BZ been used as a control? Show us evidence of labs that have previously
found BZ in samples provided by OPCW. Let independent journalists interview the
technicians.
The lab found 'Novocho' in pure and I pure state. If we believe OPCW assertion that they
have chain of custody (no reason not to at this point) then it's logical to conclude that
the 'Novochok' Is likely to have been administered to Skripal shortly before the sample was
taken.
This leads to the interesting question whether samples were taken from BOTH Skripal's or
only Mr. Skripal. Prehaps Yulia was not given the 'Novochok' and that's why she "recovered"
much sooner?
I've gotten somewhat inured or indifferent to the endless, churning speculation about
what happened to the Skripals, most of which relies upon manifestly unverified and
untrustworthy reports from various complicit individuals and organizations with strong
motivations to deceive the public. But your scenario is indeed novel and quite plausible,
so thanks.
I was reminded of a UK journalist infogandist bumptiously questioning some
Russian embassy official recently; this would-be reporter parried the Russian's complaint
about Yulia's sequestration by sharply positing that Yulia may be averse to meeting with
Russian embassy staff because she "is afraid for her life".
At the time, it was obvious enough that this reporter was advancing the narrative that
demonizes the sinister Russians in every possible manner. But this tendentious query is
certainly consistent with your idea that Yulia is being "played" by both her UK captors and
a complicit father.
_____________________________
Regarding another line of speculation: I have no technical qualifications to assess the
merits of the speculation about the toxic substances. But on general principles of rational
skepticism, I strongly doubt the ambiguous suggestion that an old and/or significantly
deteriorated quantity of A-234 or other "nerve agent", possibly possessed by expatriate
Russian criminals and ne'er-do-wells, was used to poison the Skripals.
I concede that "anything" is possible . But it simply strikes me as implausibly
far-fetched-- and, even worse, it obliquely reinforces the official Big Lie. That is,
postulating the use of some deteriorated chemical weapon: 1) supports the preposterous
original claim that a powerful nerve agent was indeed deployed, and; 2) supports the
speculation that the UK government itself is really a victim, or target, of the "real"
perpetrators.
The UK's official response is not that of an innocent party-- a target or victim--
determined to forthrightly and transparently determine the truth of the matter. Introducing
the red herring of some malicious independent actor(s) using some mysterious supply of an
unpredictable chemical weapon seems inherently disinformational, and further muddies the
water.
Jackrabbit, the policeman recovered quickly, perhaps a dose of Fentanyl only, whereas
Skripals hit with Fetanyl, then later hit with BZ? Or all three hit with Fetanyl only
Skripals recovering about the same time as policeman but held incommunicado.
From the medical journal it seems Fetanyl was the diagnosis (for all three?) in the first
24 hrs. BZ and A-234 only show up in the OPCW report?
Fetanyl in an aerosol, Skripals hit with it at the park bench, whatever it was delivered
in left at the scene? Bailey first copper on the scene picks it up and gives himself a mild
dose?
IMHO, OPCW should release the primary data rather than edited conclusions.
Scientifically, edited conclusions have no value without raw data being available and open
to alternative analysis. For examples, the spectrum generated by a substance added to a
blood sample after it is collected should be different from a substance that the subject
had it his/her organism for several weeks before blood sample was collected. "Detecting" a
substance covers a variety of possibilities. The phenomenon of bending interpretations
according to a pet theory is actually frequent in science setting, but if findings are
important, raw data is re-analyzed, additional experiments may be performed (e.g. is this
stuff REALLY that toxic? can it have a delayed onset of symptoms? what is the chance of
synchronized delayed onset?) Pet theories may misleadingly fit prior experience of the
researchers, help getting funding, help financial stakes of a company etc., and in this
case, promote a certain type of international crisis. Whatever the mischief potential there
may be, releasing primary data became a standard for publications in biomedical research,
and it should apply in this case too.
Jackrabbit
or as you say a mix of Fetanyl and BZ, hospital blood tests picking up the Fetanyl but not
checking for BZ? The policeman receiving a much lighter dose due to handling whatever was
used to administer the stuff.
In 2016 Salisbury had a spike in Fentanyl OD cases. The local emergency services were
surely aware of the symptoms and effects of such a substance.
You might want to reconsider this argument. Your link from the local Newburyport Alefish
wrap refers to Salisbury, Massachusetts, not England. By the way, we locals consider
Fentanyl a perfectly acceptable response to Austerity.
Yaya April 22, 2018 at 9:22 am Good
on Anon for not letting Israel off the hook!
I'm also pleased to see Margolis emphasize the role of Britain, and its talent for brutal
name-calling. Theresa May is especially good at vitriolic descriptions of entitities she wants
the rest of us to hate and revile. This was so evident in the speech her delegate gave to the
OCPW (why that was even allowed is beyond me, since the OCPW is supposed to be impartial) that
it was almost laughable. Well, I actually did laugh at one point. https://www.yayacanada.ca/home/theresa-may-star-of-stage-screen-and-parliament
And kudos big-time to Consortium News for carrying on so beautifully the legacy of your lost
leader. I particularly appreciated the sane and cogent articles concerning the so-called
Russian Hack Myth, and keep them with others in sidebar of my blog.
I just posted a link to a Vesti clip at the end of the previous thread, because it seems so
relevant to b's message about the western crackdown on free speech in this information war.
This open thread is coming so close on the heels of that wonderful article, that I want to
double-post here as well as there.
Margarita Simonyan of RT says how she's trying to talk, not to power but to common people,
because there are those among the common people who do speak up and who really do shape public
opinion - not governments. She cited Roger Waters as an example, who was speaking at a concert
and telling the truth about the White Helmets.
She said, someone has to read in order to speak. And someone has to write so someone can
read:
See BBC
interview . One really good sarcasm from Lavrov. Sergey Lavrov comperating UK beahviour with
the famous Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland episode in order to describe the new western
'weird logic' of 'Sentence First, Verdict After' has to be watched repeatedly by all...what a
masterful HardTalk show...exposing the new bench mark in western international discourse.
Sergey Lavrov: No, I said "highly likely" as a new invention of the British diplomacy to
describe why they punish people – because these people are highly likely guilty, like in
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - when he described a trial. And when they discovered that
the jury could be engaged, then the King said "Let's ask the jury" and the Queen shouted "No
jury! Sentence first – verdict afterwards." That's the logic of "highly likely".
Question: Have you got one shred, shred of evidence to suggest British intelligence tried to
kill Sergei Skripal?
Sergey Lavrov: There is an old Roman criteria "who is to benefit". The UK is grossly
benefiting from the provocations both in Syria and in the United Kingdom itself.
Sergey Lavrov: That's a problem. First, the A-234 agent in highly pure form in high concentration is already raising
suspicions.
Question: It came from Russia. In the former Soviet Union, you invented that.
Sergey Lavrov: Stephen, you are not factual. You may be hard talking, but you are not listening. This chemical substance
indeed was invented in the Soviet Union, then one the inventors fled to the United States and made the formula public. And if you
want to check before raising the issue, please do so, the United States patented this formula; and it was formally taken by United
States special services or the army, I don't remember. But A-234 is a very light, I mean, it seriously damages a person, kills him
of her, but it evaporates very fast; and the sample taken two weeks after the event cannot, according to our scientists, contain
very high concentration.
Notable quotes:
"... 'No, no!' said the Queen. 'Sentence first -- verdict afterwards.' ..."
"... Elena Skripal has granted a power of attorney to Viktoria Skripal allowing her to represent Elena's interests in Russia and the UK (shown in the video at 4:43). That means that the UK government is not allowing a legal representative of Sergei's mother to visit him. ..."
The Investigative Committee of Russia has published a video covering the information it has
collected so far while investigating the Skripal case:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D6Z_yGEFSY
(in Russian). Three interesting tidbits stand out:
1:40–2:10 Yulia's movements have been traced from the moment she got into a
Moscow taxi to the moment she boarded the plane to London. Taxi driver's identity has been
established, as well as the identities of all passengers who traveled on the same flight as
Yulia; none of them have experienced any health issues. The video shows CCTV footage of Yulia
going through the airport.
4:20–5:10 The British claimed that Skripals had no relatives to represent their
interests. This claim allowed the authorities to obtain the court permission to take blood
samples from unconscious Skripals. However, it was found that Skripals had two relatives living
in Yaroslavl oblast: 89-year old mother of Sergei Skripal, Elena Skripal, and his niece,
Viktoria Skripal. We already know that. Here's what's new: on April 5, Elena Skripal has
granted a power of attorney to Viktoria Skripal allowing her to represent Elena's interests in
Russia and the UK (shown in the video at 4:43). That means that the UK government is not
allowing a legal representative of Sergei's mother to visit him.
7:29–8:21 According to Viktor Holstov, the head of the Center for Analytical
Research on Conventions for the Prohibition of Chemical and Biological Weapons at the Russian
Ministry of Industry and Trade, a 2009 US patent evaluating possible antidotes to
organophosphorous agents states that the antidotes to nerve agents such as sarin and VX are
ineffective against Novichok-class agents. To arrive at such a conclusion, obviously,
Novichok-class agents had to be synthesized in the U.S.
"... It is perfectly possible that the British government manufactured the whole Salisbury thing. We are capable of just as much despicable behavior and murder as the next. ..."
"... Tucker Carlson of Fox News has it nailed down.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M28aYkLRlm0 ..."
"... This "civil war" has been nothing but a war for Syrian resources waged by western proxies. ..."
"... So now, In desperation borne out of their impending defeat, the imperialists have staged a chemical attack in a last throw of the dice to gain popular support for an escalation in military intervention. Like military interventions of the past, it is being justified in the name of humanitarian intervention. ..."
Why is the prime minister of the United Kinkdom on the phone discussing whether or not to bomb a Sovereign country with the highly
unstable, Donald Trump?
Can she not make up her own mind? Either she thinks it's the right thing to do or it isn't. Hopefully,
the person on the other end of the phone was not Trump but someone with at least half a brain.
Proof, let's have some proof. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so. Russia is saying it's all a put up job, show us your
facts. We are saying, don't be silly, we're British and besides, you may have done this sort of thing before.
It is perfectly possible that the British government manufactured the whole Salisbury thing. We are capable of just as
much despicable behavior and murder as the next.
Part of the Great British act's of bravery and heroism in the second world war is the part played by women agents who were
parachuted into France and helped organize local resistance groups. Odette Hallowes, Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo are just
a few of the many names but they are the best known. What is not generally know is that many agents when undergoing their training
in the UK, were given information about the 'D' day landings, the approx time and place. They were then dropped into France into
the hands of the waiting German army who captured and tortured and often executed them.
The double agent, who Winston Churchill met and fully approved of the plan was Henri Dericourt, an officer in the German army
and our man on the ground in France. Dericourt organized the time and place for the drop off of the incoming agents, then told
the Germans. The information about the 'D' day invasion time and place was false. The British fed the agents (only a small number)
into German hands knowing they would be captured and the false information tortured out of them.
Source :- 'A Quiet Courage' Liane Jones.
It's a tough old world and we are certainly capable of a Salisbury set-up and god knows what else in Syria.
From The Guardian articles today that I have read on Syria, it makes absolutely clear that if you in any way question the narrative
forwarded here, that you are a stupid conspiracy theorist in line with Richard Spencer and other far-right, American nutcases.
A more traditional form of argument to incline people to their way of thinking would be facts. But social pressure to conform
and not be a conspiratorial idiot in line with the far-right obviously work better for most of their readers. My only surprise
it that position hasn't been linked with Brexit.
Did anyone see the massive canister that was shown on TV repeatedly that was supposed to have been air-dropped and smashed through
the window of a house, landed on a bed and failed to go off.
The bed was in remarkable condition with just a few ruffled bedclothes considering it had been hit with a metal object weighing
god knows what and dropped from a great height.
"More than 40 years after the US sprayed millions of litres of chemical agents to defoliate"
The Defoliant Agent Orange was used to kill jungles, resulting in light getting through to the dark jungle floors & a massive
amount of low bush regrowing, making the finding of Vietcong fighters even harder!
It was sprayed even on American troops, it is a horrible stuff. Still compared to Chlorine poison gas, let alone nerve gases,
it is much less terrible. Though the long term effects are pretty horrible.
Who needs facts when you've got opinions? Non more hypocritical than the British. Its what you get when you lie and distort though
a willing press, you get found out and then nobody believes anything you say.anymore. The white helmets are a western funded and
founded organisation, they are NOT independent they are NOT volunteers, The UK the US and the Dutch fund them to the tune of over
$40 million. They are a propaganda dispensing outlet. The press shouldn't report anything they release because it is utterly unable
to substantiate ANY of it, there hasn't been a western journalist in these areas for over 4 years so why do the press expect us
to believe anything they print? Combine this with the worst and most incompetent Govt this country has seen for decades and all
you have is a massive distraction from massive domestic troubles which the same govt has no answers too.
""I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes," [Winston Churchill] declared in one secret memorandum."
The current condemnation by the international community and international law is good and needs enforcement. But no virtue
signalling where there is none.
But we're still awaiting evidence that a chemical attack has been carried out in Douma, aren't we? And if an attack was carried
out, by whom. But before these essential points are verified, you feel that a targeted military response is justified. Are you
equally keen for some targeted military response for the use of chemical weapons, namely white phosphorus, in Palestine by the
Israaeli military? Unlike Douma, the use of these chemical weapons in the occupied territories by the IDF's personnel is well
documented. But we haven't attacked them yet. Funny that.
Instead of "chemicals" why not just firebomb them - you know like we did to entire cities full of women and children in WW2?
Hamburg 27 July 1943 - 46,000 civilians killed in a firestorm
Kassel 22 October 1943 - 9,000 civilians killed 24,000 houses destroyed in a firestorm
Darmstadt 11 September 1944 - 8,000 civilians killed in a firestorm
Dresden 13/14th February - 25,000 civilians killed in a firestorm
Obviously we were fighting Nazism and hadn't actually been invaded - and he is fighting Wahhabism and has had major cities
overrun...
Maybe if Assad burnt people to death rather than gassing them we would make a statue of him outside Westminster like the one
of Bomber Harris?
Remember the tearful Kuwaiti nurse with her heartrending story of Iraqi troops tipping premature babies out of their incubators
after the invasion in 1990? The story was published in pretty much every major Western newspaper, massively increased public support
for military intervention............................and turned out to be total bullshit.
Is it too much too ask that we try a bit of collective critical thinking and wait for hard evidence before blundering into
a military conflict with Assad; and potentially Putin?
Well, this is the sort of stuff that the Israelis would be gagging for. They want Assad neutralised and they are assisting ISIS
terrorists on the Golan Heights. They tend to their wounded and send them back across the border to fight Assad. What better than
to drag the Americans, Brits and French into the ring to finish him off. Job done eh?
Are you sure you are not promoting an Israeli agenda here Jonathan?
Incidentantally what did we in the west do when the Iraqis were gassing the Iranians with nerve agents in the marshes of southern
Iraq during the Iran Iraq War? Did we intervene then? No, we didn't we allowed it to happen.
Come on frip, you have to admit there was absolutely no motive for Assad's forces to carry out this attack. Why do you think the
Guardian and other main stream media outlets are not even considering the possibility the Jihadi rebels staged it to trigger western
intervention? I know, I know.. it's all evil Assad killing his own people for no other reason than he likes butchering people...
blah blah. The regime change agenda against Syria has been derailed, no amount of false flag attacks can change the facts on the
ground.
More than 40 years after the US sprayed millions of litres of chemical agents to defoliate vast swathes of Vietnam and in the
full knowledge it would be have a catastrophic effect on the health of the inhabitants of those area, Vietnam has by far the highest
incidence of liver cancer on the planet.
Then more recently we have the deadly depleted uranium from US shells that innocent Iraqis are inhaling as shrill voices denounce
Assad.
The Syrian people are heroically resisting and defeating western imperialism. This "civil war" has been nothing but a war
for Syrian resources waged by western proxies.
So now, In desperation borne out of their impending defeat, the imperialists have staged a chemical attack in a last throw
of the dice to gain popular support for an escalation in military intervention. Like military interventions of the past, it is
being justified in the name of humanitarian intervention.
But if we have a brief browse of history we can see that US & UK governments have brought only death, misery and destruction
on the populations it was supposedly helping. Hands off Syria.
Here we have a translated transcript of Shulgin's testimony at OPCW's Hague HQ where he
points out the 8 fundamental British lies over the Skripal attack. He prefaces his remarks
thusly:
"I would like to start my speech with the words that belong to the great thinker Martin
Luther, "A lie is like a snowball: the further you roll it, the bigger it becomes".
"This wise aphorism is fully applicable to politics. He who has chosen the path of
deception will have to lie again and again, making up explanations for discrepancies,
spreading disinformation and doing forgery, desperately using all means to cover the tracks
of the lies and to hide the truth.
"The United Kingdom has entered this slippery path. We can clearly see all of this on the
example of the "Skripal case" fabricated by the British authorities, this poorly disguised
anti-Russian provocation accompanied by an unprecedented propaganda campaign, taken up by a
group of countries, and the finalized unprecedented expulsion of diplomats under a
far-fetched pretext. Please, do not try to pass this group for the international community
– it is far from that."
It seems that BZ was detected not only by Spiez, but also by a lab in the Netherlands. The
explanation given is that BZ was added to the specimens in order to validate the competence
of the contracted labs. Furthermore, they attempted to explain away the existence of pristine
Novichok in the specimens in a dosage that would have been fatal, thus confirming that the
Spiez lab did indeed find such pristine Novichok. You can't make this sh*t up.
Oh, what a tangled web! The wonder is not so much that MI5/MI6 would perpetrate such a
false flag, but that they would be so utterly incompetent about it.
Clarification: The reference to "pristine" Novichok is that Spiez found the toxic agent in
a non-degraded form that could not have survived either within the human body or in a
collected specimen. They thought it was a contamination. My opinion is that it was added by
the British before delivering the specimens, just to be sure the contracted labs would detect
it. Also, the fact they claimed to have deliberately contaminated the specimens with BZ is a
clear indication it could just as easily be that the BZ was there from the beginning and the
actual contamination was with the agent from the Novichok family. Zakharova called it
"weird." I'll say!
PavewayIV @143,
Funny you should mention a "preemptive protective attack." The Bush preemption doctrine must
not have been found suitably effective for domestic propagandist purposes; as since then, if
I am not mistaken, the preferred move has been to engineer an actual "event" that the US is
forced to "respond" to. The WMD bombast fit the preemption doctrine. The relatively more
modest "chemical attack" has the advantage of being easily produced whenever necessary. I
think this development signals an advance in the rhetoric of propaganda between Bush II and
Obama. Perhaps the PR folks judged Americans to be finally more stupid than malicious as a
group. Optimistically put.
anti_republocrat @146
I believe there were four samples (2 bio, 2 enviro); I think it is likely that the 2 bio
samples are the ones with BZ in the control. Why? Pure coincidence, procedure, unrelated to
anything, etc. Or because the Skripals, and not their doorknob, were poisoned with BZ.
In another development (probably to run with the Syria script) the UK announces it has a
dossier that proves Russia was experimenting with delivering nerve agents from door handles.
Not as hilarious as breathlessly closing a children's playground near the Skripal's days
after the event for "contamination checks" even though it had been raining in the days in
between (the narrative was presumably the dastardly Russian agents planned to kill a few
innocent kids for good measure).
I've just stumbled on this absolute gem, from the New York Times, 17/1/2003:
"Analysis of thousands of captured Iraqi secret police documents and declassified U.S.
government documents, as well as interviews with scores of Kurdish survivors, senior Iraqi
defectors and retired U.S. intelligence officers, show
(1) that Iraq carried out the attack on Halabja [a 1988 chemical attack on Kurdish
villages that killed 5000 civilians], and
(2) that the United States, fully aware it was Iraq, accused Iran, Iraq's enemy in a
fierce war, of being partly responsible for the attack. The State Department instructed its
diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame."
I'm going to post a comment by another user posted yesterday as he said it far more
eloquently than I could
R Reddington InterestedReader2 1d ago
Your just another armchair warrior.
So you think going to war is a good idea well you first then and dont forget your flack
jacket and rifle.
The media onslaught has moved past the attack in Salisbury by a "weapon of mass
destruction" (quoting Theresa May) which could only be Russian, except that was untrue, and
was extremely deadly, except that was untrue too. It now focuses on an attack by chemical
weapons in Douma which "could only be" by the Russian-backed Assad regime, except there is
no evidence of that either, and indeed neutral verified evidence from Douma is
non-existent. The combination of the two events is supposed to have the British population
revved up by jingoism, and indeed does have Tony Blair and assorted Tories revved up, to
attack Syria and potentially to enter conflict with Russia in Syria.
The "Russian" attack in Salisbury is supposed to negate the "not our war" argument,
particularly as a British policeman was unwell for a while. Precisely what is meant to
negate the "why on earth are we entering armed confrontation with a nuclear power"
argument, I do not know.
Saudi Arabia has naturally offered facilities to support the UK, US and France in their
attempt to turn the military tide in Syria in favour of the Saudi sponsored jihadists whom
Assad had come close to defeating. That the Skripal and Douma incidents were preceded by
extremely intense diplomatic activity between Saudi Arabia, Washington, Paris and London
this year, with multiple top level visits between capitals, is presumably supposed to be
coincidence.
I am not a fan of Assad any more than I was a fan of Saddam Hussein. But the public now
understand that wars for regime change in Muslim lands have disastrous effects in dead and
maimed adults and children and in destroyed infrastructure; our attacks unleash huge
refugee waves and directly cause terrorist attacks here at home. There is no purpose in a
military attack on Syria other than to attempt to help the jihadists overthrow Assad. There
is a reckless disregard for evidence base on the pretexts for all this. Indeed, the more
the evidence is scrutinised, the dodgier it seems. Finally there is a massive difference
between mainstream media narrative around these events and a deeply sceptical public, as
shown in social media and in comments sections of corporate media websites.
The notion that Britain will take part in military action against Syria with neither
investigation of the evidence nor a parliamentary vote is worrying indeed. Without Security
Council authorisation, any such action is illegal in any event. It is worth noting that the
many commentators who attempt to portray Russia's veto of a Syria resolution as invalid,
fail to note that last week, in two separate 14 against 1 votes, the USA vetoed security
council resolutions condemning Israeli killings of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza.
The lesson the neo-cons learnt from the Iraq war is not that it was disastrous. It was
only disastrous for the dead and maimed Iraqis, our own dead and maimed servicemen, and
those whose country was returned to medievalism. It was a great success for the neo-cons,
they made loads of money on armaments and oil. The lesson the neo-cons learned was not to
give the public in the West any time to mount and organise opposition. Hence the
destruction of Libya was predicated on an entirely false "we have 48 hours to prevent the
massacre of the population of Benghazi" narrative. Similarly this latest orchestrated
"crisis" is being followed through into military action at a blistering pace, as the four
horsemen sweep by, scything down reason and justice on the way.
"Philip May, husband of the UK prime minister, works for a company that is the largest
shareholder in arms manufacturer, BAE Systems, whose share price has soared since the recent
airstrikes in Syria.
The company, Capital Group, is also the second-largest shareholder in Lockheed Martin -- a US
military arms firm that supplies weapons systems, aircraft and logistical support. Its shares
have also rocketed since the missile strikes last week. . . ."
We have got it: Philip Owen believes religiously in the words of Theresa May, Boris
Johnson, and Gavin Willaimson. And, of course, Blair is a paragon of honesty for Philip
Owen.
What are you doing here, on the Unz Review? -- This is not a ziocon stink-tank source of
(dis)information, and this is not the ziocons-controlled MSM's presstitutes' haven.
You make yourself ridiculous by parroting the MSM "wisdom." Your frustration over the
impending defeat of "moderate" terrorists in Syria affects your reason and amplifies your
rabid hatred of Russia. Don't expect any sympathy for your "victimhood" on this site.
"Porton Down is just one of the Pentagon-funded military laboratories in 25 countries
across the world, where the US Army produces and tests man-made viruses, bacteria and toxins
in direct violation of the UN convention . These US bio-laboratories are funded by the
Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under a $ 2.1 billion military program–
Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), and are located in former Soviet Union
countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa.
The Pentagon-funded military facilities are not under the direct control of the host state as
the US military and civilian personnel is working under diplomatic cover. The local
governments are prohibited from public disclosure of sensitive information about the foreign
military program running on their own territory."
– All statements in this article are sourced, unlike the pronouncement of the miserable
puppets Blair, May, Johnson, and Willaimson.
Looks like people were bombed and the shelter became full of dust and smoke. That led to some suffocations. Later this was
played as chemical attack.
The scenario is classic. Put artillery near residential houses and mercilessly shell residential building on government
side killing civilians. Wait for return fire which produce its own set of victims. Stage the false flag operation based on
return fire victims and the fact that civilians suffered.
Thanks
for this video. I have had a gut-full of the west and it's lies to take over countries in the Middle East. It's making me sick. What's
happening on a daily basis to the people of Palestine and Syria are war crimes, pure and simple.
The country I live in, Australia,
is not on the side of the good guys. We were not on the right side in Libya and Iraq either. I'm so sick of this shit. This is all
so the US and their creepy allies, including the head-choppin' Saudis, can put a pipeline through Syria to Europe to compete with
Russia and so they can use Syria as a jumping off point to invade Iran. Poor Iran.
The CIA threw out their Democratically elected
leader and installed a Dictator who they kept in place for 48 years, using the Shah's brutal secret police. The US hates the Iranians
for chucking the puppet out. Iran had every right to do so. God knows how they must feel being under constant threat. Israel have
been assassinating their citizens for years and launched the Stuxnet virus (with help from the US) to attack their infrastructure,
accidentally infecting the world, including Australia at the time. Thanks to them, every group in the world now has the code for
that virus. They modified the code and released it again behind Obama's back.
Israel's illegal nukes can't reach Iran but they will
definitely use them against Iran if they can get into Syria to use it as a base for attack. Then what happens to the world? Israel
have demonstrated clearly, their disinterest in Human Rights. The only people on the planet they care about are Israelis. Damn Israel
and damn the US. Macron is a wanna-be Napoleon and Theresa May is Thatcher- Lite. Both of them are sucking on the tail-pipe of that
clown, Trump and are keeping the world in a state of perpetual war. Hands off Syria, wankers!
Aside from this video, there is now overwhelming evidence confirming that this was yet another false flag chemical attack
designed to demonise Assad. This isn't the first time. Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, the Balkans - all suffered a similar fate
designed to hoodwink the public in supporting war and resource grab.
it was only a couple of years ago that Assad and Russia were subjected to the same scenario and proven to be utterly false.
How long must we swallow these crimes? History is replete with the same state-sponsored crimes against populations. Governments
are not acting in our best interests and never have.
Therefore, there is absolutely no excuse for people to believe the utter bullshit spread around the mainstream media which excels
in poor journalism and is determined to push this disgusting propaganda on behalf of their respective governments and intel agencies.
Until the public is prepared to comprehend that such false flag attacks are a long used formula by US-NATO for carving up the
Middle East then it will continue with impunity. I hope everyone shares this video on social media in order to counter lazy thinking
and the obvious lies that characterize what passes for news.
PavewayIV thanks, as always I appreciate your thorough analysis.
...and in quantities that would have absolutely killed the Skripals given what was still
there after two weeks...
Indeed, and if A-234 is as strong as reported, it's likely any traces around the Skripals
would have killed the first responders too.
No doubt related to Lavrov's disclosure: this morning (and yesterday in the Sunday Times)
nearly every national UK paper is running a front page version of this story: "Russia
launches cyber war on UK with 'dirty tricks' campaign as PM to face Commons over Syria
strikes" (taken from The Daily Telegraph). This meme is so widespread (BBC Radio 4 also)
that, in itself, it looks like a co-ordinated attempt at scaremongering and
misinformation.
It's designed to make people think that anything they read online that is contrary to the
official FUKUS narrative about Russia/Syria can be given the term 'dirty trick' and
dismissed. And by conflating the Skripal story with Syria (remember the messages about
'package delivered' picked up by '4-Eyes' in Cypress?) then anything Russia says about the
Skripal affair is suspect and "not worthy of your consideration, dear reader".
I see that
The Sun newspaper is now running with this news in it's online version:
RUSSIA and Syria have blocked chemical inspectors from investigating the site of a brutal
chemical attack in Douma, Syria, reports claim.
Russia may even have compromised the site of the April 7 gas attack, according to Ahmet
Uzumcu, Director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
"It's our concern they may have tampered with it to thwart the fact finding
investigation," Mr Uzumcu is quoted as saying by NBC's Bill Neely.
Also see yesterday's
important report by Elijah J Magnier. Ties stuff together.
"... Did Spiez also do a DNA identification to ensure the TRACE metabolized samples actually came from the Skirpals, with no other DNA/chemical indicators which might indicate purposeful contamination or reformulation? Where did the "virgin" samples come from? The doorknob the Skirpals had not touched for longer than it takes for BZ to show symptoms? The chain of custody for all these samples should be 100% airtight, or all analysis is fatally flawed. ..."
"... This still reeks of a Mossad attack/disinfo operation, there are simply too many "flaws" in this to be unintentional. ..."
"... It is not only the current a Director-General who is a NATO-man, the PR women of OPCW was also on NATO payroll. Almost all international bodies are revolving doors for the Western paid personnel. Nobody does a truly honest job if they want the next appointment and advancement. Does anybody still remember the Brazilian Sergio de Mello? He revolved till he got blown up in Iraq. ..."
"... Ok. Ahmed Üzümcü is a former nato representative. This is interesting. What about the rest of the OPCW people? What about the OPCW teams inspecting Douma? Have they any non poodle nationality members? Does anybody know that? ..."
"... I can confirm that the chain of custody was 100% watertight, no worries there. Custody was 100% under iFUKUS control from the moment of contamination of the victims/environment until the completion of all tests and the publication of final reports. That is why the samples were spiked with fresh A-234. ..."
"... During a brief moment when I was viewing CNN yesterday (Alex Witt was playing bad cop most of the time, making sure Russia was suitably demeaned and excoriated for its evil ways) --but, iirc and I may not have done*, someone asked why the FUKUS would endanger people by blowing up locations the US stated they absolutely KNEW held chemical weapons and precursors. The reply was that the Pentagon was certain that since the locations were not in heavily populated areas that the breezes would disperse the poisons safely. ..."
"... The UN has been fully weoponized by the US and it's sock puppet partners in the west. The western powers completely ignore the UN charter while demanding absolute power through the UNSC. It is time for both Russia and China to leave the UN which will lead to a cascade of other countries leaving. It will also end any lingering belief in the legitimacy of the UN. ..."
"... Re: why hospital workers and others have not said anything about the Skripals' situation in a long time, it's very likely everyone, including patients and witnesses from Salisbury have been made to sign nondisclosure agreements. At least that's what happens in Brit series shown on Masterpiece Theatre. ..."
"... Also, DS Nick Bailey may have been sent to the house to get him exposed to whatever the chem agent was, part of being a way to draw attention away from the main site of exposure? BZ may explain the rather interesting description Bailey's written statement included: this line, and only this one, which described any physical or mental reactions he felt from his ordeal: ..."
"... Indeed, and if A-234 is as strong as reported, it's likely any traces around the Skripals would have killed the first responders too. ..."
"... Also see yesterday's important report by Elijah J Magnier. Ties stuff together. Folks, in seeking out and highlighting the truth we going to have our work cut out for us here! [See "have your work cut out (for you)" ..."
"... This is one of the few if only 'miracle recovery' situations in which the victims did not sit down for interviews. I imagine once they have been groomed enough they will sit down for an interview with a trusted news organization. ..."
"... The Spiez lab is a NATO lab. Even though Switzerland is "neutral", it is an associate member of NATO under the NATO Peace Partnership. Spiez has been involved in serious falsifications of analysis results for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)'s work on the use of uranium and depleted uranium weapons. ..."
"... In my opinion, the release of the real report to the Russians was the work of a whistle-blower, for the Spiez lab has highly trained people who take great pride in the generally impeccable quality of the lab's work and its repuration for such. Many of them would have been appalled that their lab was party to some sort of deception. ..."
"... Lavrov was right then, and he's right now. The "Joint Investigation Team" is actually "The Fix Is In Team". The official title is just for show, to make infoganda that impresses the ignorant, complacent, and submissive. It's exactly like the Big Lie that "17 intelligence agencies separately concluded that Russians meddled in US elections". ..."
Were the Skripals 'Buzzed', 'Novi-shocked' Or Neither? - May Has Some 'Splaining' To
Do
The Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, threw a bombshell at the
British assertions that the collapse of the British secret agent Sergej Skripal and his
daughter Yulia on March 4 in Salisbury was caused by a 'Novichok' nerve agent 'of a type
developed by Russia'. (See our older pieces, linked below, for a detailed documentation of the
case.)
The Skripal poisoning happened on March 4.
Eye witnesses described the Skripals as disoriented and probably hallucinating. The
emergency personal suspected Fentanyl influence.
A few days later the British government claimed that the Skripals had been affected by a
chemical agent from the 'Novichok' series which they attributed to Russia. It insinuated that
the Skripals might die soon.
A doctor of the emergency center at the Salisbury District Hospital publicly asserted
that none of its patients was victim of a 'nerve agent'.
On March 14, after much pressure from Russia, Britain finally invited the Organisation
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to analyze the blood of the victims and to
take environmental samples.
The OPCW arrived on March 19 and took specimen on the following days. It also received a
share of the samples taken earlier by the British chemical weapon laboratory in Porton Down,
which is only some 10 miles away from Salisbury.
The OPCW split the various samples it had in a certified laboratory in the Netherlands
and then distributed them to several other certified laboratories for analysis.
One of those laboratories was the highly regarded Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland which
is part of the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection and fully certified.
On April 12 the OPCW
published a public version of the result of the analyses it had received from its
laboratories.
A more extensive confidential version was given to the state members that make up the
OPCW.
During a public speech
yesterday Lavrov stated of the OPCW report:
[A] detailed and fairly substantial confidential version was distributed to the OPCW members
only. In that report, in accordance with the OPCW way of conduct, the chemical composition of
the agent presented by the British was confirmed, and the analysis of samples, as the report
states, was taken by the OPCW experts themselves. It contains no names, Novichok or any
other. The report only gives the chemical formula, which, according to our experts, points to
an agent that had been developed in many countries and does not present any particular
secret.
After receiving that report Russia was tipped off by the Spiez Laboratory or someone else
that the OPCW report did not include the full results of its analysis.
According to Lavrov this is what the Spiez Laboratory originally sent to the OPCW:
"Following our analysis, the samples indicate traces of the toxic chemical BZ and its
precursor which are second category chemical weapons. BZ is a nerve toxic agent, which
temporarily disables a person. The psycho toxic effect is achieved within 30 to 60 minutes
after its use and lasts for up to four days. This composition was in operational service in
the armies of the US, the UK and other NATO countries. The Soviet Union and Russia neither
designed nor stored such chemical agents. Also, the samples indicate the presence of type
A-234 nerve agent in its virgin state and also products of its degradation. "
The "presence of type A-234 nerve agent", an agent of the so called 'Novichok' series, in
its "virgin state", or as the OPCW stated in "high purity", points to later addition to the
sample. The 'Novichok' agents are not stable. They tend to fall rapidly apart. Their presence
in "virgin state" in a sample which was taken 15 days after the Skripal incident happened is
inexplicable. A scientist of the former Russian chemical weapon program who worked with similar
agents, Leonid Rink, says that
if the Skripals had really been exposed to such high purity A-234 nerve agent, they would be
dead.
The whole case, the symptoms shown by the Skripals and their recuperation, makes way more
sense if they were 'buzzed', i.e. poisoned with the BZ hallucinogenic agent, than if they were
'novi-shocked' with a highly toxic nerve agent.
The Spiez Laboratory responded by not denying Lavrov's
claims:
Spiez Laboratory @SpiezLab - 19:49 UTC - 14 Apr 2018
Only OPCW can comment this assertion. But we can repeat what we stated 10 days ago: We
have no doubt that Porton Down has identified Novichock. PD - like Spiez - is a designated
lab of the OPCW. The standards in verification are so rigid that one can trust the findings.
#Skipal
Science Direct has
several excerpts of reports about BZ. The basics:
Agent 15 is also called compound 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, BZ, or "Buzz." It is a powerful
chemical warfare agent. As one of the most potent psychoactive chemical agents, only a small
amount of BZ is needed to produce complete incapacitation. When used as an aerosol, BZ is
absorbed through the respiratory system (it has no odor). It can also be absorbed through the
skin or the digestive system. It takes approximately 1 h for BZ to take effect, and the
symptoms of exposure include confusion, tremors, stupor, hallucinations, and coma that can
last for more than 2 days.
BZ is a psycho agent 25 times stronger than LSD. It was developed by the U.S. military as an
incapacitating agent. At least 50 tons were produced and filled
into weapon delivery systems. It was allegedly
tested on U.S. soldiers in Vietnam:
Working with the CIA the Department of Defense gave hallucinogenic drugs to thousands of
"volunteer" soldiers in the 1950's and 1960's. In addition to LSD, the Army also tested
quinuclidinyl benzilate, a hallucinogen code-named BZ. Many of these tests were conducted
under the so-called MKULTRA program, established to counter perceived Soviet and Chinese
advances in brainwashing techniques. Between 1953 and 1964, the program consisted of 149
projects involving drug testing and other studies on unwitting human subjects. Although many
human subjects were not informed or protected, Dr. Gottlieb defended those actions by stating
"...harsh as it may seem in retrospect, it was felt that in an issue where national survival
might be concerned, such a procedure and such a risk was a reasonable one to take."
This is what the military tried to achieve with BZ and other psycho agents.
BZ (and LSD) turned out to be impractical as battlefield weapons.
According to British parliament
records BZ was also produced and tested, allegedly on unknowing civilians , by the
British chemical weapon laboratory Porton Down.
The Russian Foreign Minister asserts
that the OPCW suppressed the details of the Spiez Laboratory report:
Nothing is said whatsoever about a BZ agent in the final report that the OPCW experts
presented to its Executive Council. In this connection we address the OPCW a question about
why the information, that I have just read out loud and which reflects the findings of the
specialists from the city of Spiez, was withheld altogether in the final document. If the
OPCW would reject and deny the very fact that the Spiez laboratory was engaged, it will be
very interesting to listen to their explanations.
The current Director-General of the OPCW is the Turkish carrier diplomat Ahmed
Üzümcü who earlier served as the Turkish Permanent Representative to
NATO.
I have no theory how the BZ or the A-234 made it into the OPCW samples or if the Skripals
were really influenced by either of these poisons or are victims of simple shellfish poisoning.
Your guess is a good as mine.
But the story the British government has so far told is full of holes and discrepancies and
makes absolutely no sense at all. The suppression of the Spiez Laboratory report by the OPCW is
a serious breach of its procedures.
The British Prime Minister Theresa May, and the OPCW, have some 'splainin' to do.
---
Previous Moon of Alabama posts on the Skripal case:
Is there any reason to call for investigation when you have corrupt organs like OPCW that
are as biased as any other western statehood on Russia? Russia working in 110% and get like
5% back if lucky.
Charles M
After years of hatred against Russia, WW3 seems pretty logical for the same brainwashed
people that type the propaganda and those who reads it. Daily. This racism sooner or later
leads to war, and extermination.
A possible explanation for the apparent divergences between the OPCW report and the Russian
claims of what the Swiss lab found:
1. The UK requests Porton Down to confirm the presence of A-234 (motivated no doubt by its
"secret intelligence" that the Russians for 10 years had been building up a "small stockpile"
for such purposes).
2. Porton Down confirms the presence of A-234. Whether or not it carried out additional
tests to determine the presence of other possible toxic agents is uncertain.
3. The UK refuses to provide sample(s) to Russia, arguing that the "exchange of
information and consultations" called for by Article IX of the Chemical Weapons Convention
does not mean that they need to provide evidence to the "guilty party".
4. After much prodding by the Russians, the UK belatedly agrees to request "technical
assistance" from the OPCW to confirm its findings. The precise form this request took is
confidential, but one might surmise that it would have been: Please confirm the presence of
the toxic substance A-234 which we have identified in the samples (with the understood
message "no need to waste time and resources looking for other toxic substances").
5. As per its standard protocol, the OPCW sent out the samples to various "partner"
laboratories, of which one was the Spiez laboratory in Switzerland, which is the government
"ABC" lab (atomic, biological, chemical). They are asked to confirm (only) the presence of
A-234.
6. For an unknown reason, the Spiez Laboratory exceeds its mandate and not only confirms
the presence of A-234 but also traces of 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate, better known by its NATO
code name BZ. The Spiez Laboratory sends its report to the OPCW.
7. The OPCW issues 2 reports (one private, the other confidential) on 12 April. In
response to the specific request made by the UK, the OPCW truthfully confirms that the "toxic
chemical identified by the United Kingdom" was indeed A-234. The formula for this "toxic
chemical" was (apparently) provided in the confidential report.
8.The OPCW also provides the additional information that "this toxic chemical [i.e. A-234]
was of high purity". And for those without the necessary scientific background to digest this
statement, it helpfully adds that this technical conclusion was based on " the almost
complete absence of impurities".
9. As the OPCW had not been asked to confirm the presence of any toxic chemical other than
A-234, it naturally did not take into account the superfluous discovery by the Spiez
Laboratory of traces of BZ.
10. The Russians obtain access to the Spiez Laboratory report -- from a "whistleblower" at
the lab or the OPCW, or by "hacking".
"The standards in verification are so rigid that one can trust the findings." !!! I think
they are saying "The standards in verification are so rigid that you can trust our findings"
(i.e. BZ as well as A-234 in virgin *and* (!) degradation* stage. See also my comments to
your previous post (towards the end of the list of comments).
I believe you got the "virgin" state wrong. What this refers to is the state of the substance
*before* drug metabolism, i.e. before the substance reacts to any great degree chemically
within the body and "degrades". Spiez found A-234 prior to metabolism (virgin) and after
metabolism (degradation) which might point to two separate points in time when these
substances started reacting with chemicals within the body (yes, lastly, it all comes down to
chemistry). Drug metabolism is why drug effects last only a limited time. When the substance
is metabolized (degraded) its specific effects disappear. Here is the Wikipedia entry which
is sufficient to give a general impression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_metabolism
US and UK media will unlikely report it now, they are too busy driving the war machine,
however the drip drip of evidence coupled with increasing memories of the Iraq dodgy dossier
will eventually break through.
Also, thank you for this vital information: "The current Director-General of the OPCW is the
Turkish carrier diplomat Ahmed Üzümcü who earlier served as the Turkish
Permanent Representative to NATO." This, to me, this goes a long way understanding recent
reports of the OPCW DG regarding the 2 labs that were bombed. My, the puzzle is coming
together!
I am sorry for the many comments but it is not possible to edit comments or reply to them...
"virgin state" is not the same as "high purity". The OPCW report does not echo the Spiez
results when talking about "high purity" but London, just in more sophisticated way (i.e. not
saying "military grade").
Did Spiez also do a DNA identification to ensure the TRACE metabolized samples actually came
from the Skirpals, with no other DNA/chemical indicators which might indicate purposeful
contamination or reformulation? Where did the "virgin" samples come from? The doorknob the Skirpals had not touched for
longer than it takes for BZ to show symptoms? The chain of custody for all these samples should be 100% airtight, or all analysis is
fatally flawed.
This still reeks of a Mossad attack/disinfo operation, there are simply too many "flaws"
in this to be unintentional.
We don't know if OPCW found A-234 in the samples they took, or only in the ones that they
were given by the British, which could easily have been tampered with.
(Note that there are numerous posts pertaining to this subject on the previous
thread.)
It is not only the current a Director-General who is a NATO-man, the PR women of OPCW was
also on NATO payroll. Almost all international bodies are revolving doors for the Western
paid personnel. Nobody does a truly honest job if they want the next appointment and
advancement. Does anybody still remember the Brazilian Sergio de Mello? He revolved till he
got blown up in Iraq.
Ultimately, it all comes down to unlimited printing of US$, used as confetti or in pallet
loads to pay for corruption of everything. Through US$ petro and reserve currency status the
nations are paying to be taken advantage off by global bankers of US, UK and Israel,
including Russia and China. But do not tell me that organisations in the West are corrupt.
Please show me just one which is not.
I wondered why the Skripals were said to be suffering from "hallucinations". I assumed that
really meant they were just saying things that Airstrip One didn't like during their
recovery, but apparently there was a pharmacological reason!
The 30-60 minute time frame for BZ also switches the focus back to the restaurant
(Zizzi's?), and whoever they may have met there. Weren't the original reports that Sergei was
acting erratically (hallucinations?) by the time he left the restaurant?
If the Swiss laboratory got the facts right as presented by Lavrov, many things come out
quite naturally, it seems to me. Here is my guess:
1. the Skripals were poisoned with this BZ stuff, not Novichok.
Q1: Who did it?
2. Novichok was added to the blood probes that were analysed by Porton Down and the OPCW
labs, after these probes were taken. The Skripals never came into contact with Novichok
themselves.
Q2: Who did the manipulation?
3. This means that in fact nobody wanted to kill the Skripals. It was a PR stunt from the
very start in order to demonize Russia. Whether the Skripals conspire or not, is an open and
quite irrelevant question.
Q3: Who planned it?
4. The answer to Q3 can only lie in Britain: It was the British intelligence services -
presumably under government supervision. Who else would have opportunity, motive and benefit
of all this?
5. This also answers the question about the policeman who also showed symptoms: he was the
guy who "poisoned" the Skripals with BX. He might just not have been careful enough, which is
understanable if he is told that the stuff is not so dangerous. This answers Q1.
6. With respect to Q2, I very much hope that this was done in Porton Down, using their own
samples of Novichok, because otherwise this dangerous stuff must have been transported from
somewhere, risking, for instance, killing plane passengers etc., if something went wrong. I
don't think that secret service people are willing to risk their own and the lifes of
innocent people just for such a PR stunt. They surely reduced risks to anybody to a
minimum.
From the resistance trench with love , Apr 15, 2018 10:38:12 AM |
16
@Posted by: Madeira | Apr 15, 2018 9:45:53 AM | 3
Entirely implausible?
Totally implausible, since, in sight of the development of events which have derived from
the unsubstantiated accusation against Russia, it sounds quite weird that the OPCW, a
supposedly independent international organism, would have ommited such a determinant
information for, not only discharge the Russians of responsability, but also to apply a
reasonable doubt about the responsability of many other states which right now have got
dividens from the Skripal hoax by using it as an alibi to strikes Syria with missiles and
remain illegaly in the country indefinitely.
I find totally weird as well that the OPCW did not disclose the totality of the analisis
result, in spite of what the UK could have requested concretely from them, since they are not
there to only hear the demands of the UK, but also from Russia, as part charged and also a
memeber and sucriptor of the OPCW charter, the more when this country has been blamed without
the opportune investigation of the facts.
As historical facts have already proven, the long hand of Bolton in the OPCW is obvious,
and we have that he just landed in the DoS....That every European official is blackmailed by
the US as a norm, so that favouring its geopolitial goals, even at the price of harming most
the countries of the Euroepan officials blackmailed, is already of public domain as
well....
And the answer to "who did it?" points squarely at Mossad. The UK spies/gov't were obviously
caught flat-footed, had no idea it was going to happen, no internal script on which lies they
had hard info about, relying on external "trusted sources".
Ok. Ahmed Üzümcü is a former nato representative. This is interesting. What
about the rest of the OPCW people? What about the OPCW teams inspecting Douma? Have they any
non poodle nationality members? Does anybody know that?
"And the answer to "who did it?" points squarely at Mossad."
If they were poisoned with Novichoks from the beginning then I could see Mossad. But if
this BZ toxin then it MI6 because they would want to ensure the Skripals, their agents, and
any civilians didn't die and only they would be able to uphold the PR narrative that it was
Novichoks by controlling the samples and where they are tested.
One group that could testify on Lavrov's claim is the personnel of Salisbury Hospital. Dr.
Blanshard said that they consulted with experts in the whole world to improve the recovery of
Julia Skripal. Certainly they can say if it was a BZ treatment or a Novichok treatment.
The Novichok narrative was on designed to hold up for a short time. The Ghouta CW attack
should have occurred at peak Novichok, drawing attention away, but was waylaid.
A-234 - there are many highly toxic chemical compounds but only few are developed as Chemical
weapons. Many of the compounds have properties that make them unsuitable for deployment as
CW's. A-234 compound and perhaps all of the compounds in the Russian scientists book may well
have properties that make it/them unsuited to either assassination or as a WMD so a
substitute was used.
Magnier has a new piece out which helps tie in the larger play that the Novichok narrative
was part of.
The larger play failed and now the Russians are hunting down the Brits and taking apart their
narrative.
The picture of the Skripals was taken in the restaurant on that same day? or not, with the
reflection in the mirror. With the new time frame for onset of drug reaction doesn't he
become a "person of interest"?, this strange guy in the mirror?
The official UK government's position was set out when it applied to the court in order to
allow the taking of blood samples for the OPCW:
"The samples tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent or closely
related agent."
If it had been a "Novichock class nerve agent" they would have left it at that, so we can
reasonably conclude that it was a "closely related agent".
But closely related in what sense, nobody is saying. This is a typical lawyer's
manipulation of language and the criteria of the comparison are deliberately omitted. People
naturally assume that it is closely related in a chemical sense but these are lawyers and the
the meaning of the words is whatever they want it to be.
So how could a so-called "Novichok" be "closely related" to BZ? Well, one plausible
explanation could be that the lawyers are actually saying they're both chemical agents
designed to incapcitate. The phrase "closely related to" doesn't have to be anything to do
with the chemical composition. Nobody lied but their "truth" is designed to give a completely
misleading impression. That's lawyers for you.
It also allows the OPCW to agree with the UK government's position without actually
lying.
It is said that 11 UK/US officers 'handlers' of the moderate terrorists have been captured in
a tunnel in East Ghouta (hmm, mayby). However, the US/UK bellicose rhetoric,two false flags
and a Cruise missile show seem to fit the picture. Russian FM Lavrov says the poison used in Salisbury on the Skripal's was not a Novachoc (VX
type - fatal) but the toxin BZ (narcotic, hallucinogenic) and it is definitely US/UK
(Hoffman-LaRosch developed in 1951).
A consultant (Davis) at the Salisbury hospital wrote a letter to the Times saying, "there
are no patients suffering from nerve agents and only 3 who are poisoned". (fact, I saw the
Times letter).
Wikipedia describes the effects of BZ and they exactly fit the delayed, narcotic
hallucinogenic effect of BX (30mins to 4 hours post exposure). The physiological effects of
BZ and VX differ markedly, which is how doctor Davis knew – he is 8 miles from the
Porton Down chemical warfare plant and was therefore 'clued up'. Patients have recovered and
VX etc. kills, stops muscle action, not a poison as such).
In the Independent (today, Comments under the Lavrov story, Sunday 15th) a bathroom fitter
(Ollie Field) says he saw the Skripal's on the bench and thought they were 'whacked out' on
heroin.
Douma False Flag.
The Russians have in their pocket (filmed I believe) a notable at the Douma (only) hospital
(can't remember who) that has described the White Helmets filming as; a bomb destroyed the
top floor of the hospital and the film crew moved bodies and kids to the basement and doused
them with hoses and sprayed them with Ventolin (asthma inhaler – blue). This provided
the film used to justify the Cruise missile attack Fri 13th. 2018.
The Russians have rumbled the Douma false flag and the OECD chemical weapons investigators
are on their way to the Douma hospital (basement) to find no chemicals, they report in a few
weeks.
Lavrov has said that the British ordered the Douma rebels to make a chemical warfare White
Helmets type movie fast, in desperation, since the Russians/SAA forces attack was moving fast
and they could obtain support bombing. The whole of East Ghouta has been taken by the
SAA.
A decent video exposure on TV, or even a simple web search, completely debunks the 'White
Helmets' that filmed the fake gas attack in the Douma hospital in East Ghouta. Re. my earlier
email.
May didn't wait (in panic) for parliament approval and went ahead with military action (8 of
our missiles wasted at £6.3M).
The 11 'handlers' (said to be officers) are not in the hands of the Russians (who have
swopped theirs for ours previously) but are held by the SAA and could well have have spilled
the beans. If they are paraded (filmed) and spill the beans things will get ugly for May et
al.
It is an old photo. I have seen photos of the inside of Salisbury Zizzi which has a very
different interior decoration style. Zizzi's also do not have tableclothes and set tables.
Empty table are always bare.
The chain of custody for all these samples should be 100% airtight, or all analysis is
fatally flawed. Posted by: A P | Apr 15, 2018 10:23:09 AM | 11
I can confirm that the chain of custody was 100% watertight, no worries there. Custody was
100% under iFUKUS control from the moment of contamination of the victims/environment until
the completion of all tests and the publication of final reports. That is why the samples
were spiked with fresh A-234.
Peter AU 1 33
The video of the two medics at the Douma hospital you can find at Voltaire Network, but they
are in French. Hope you can understand French?
The important part about the presence of unmetabolised A-234 in the samples is that it proves
incontrovertably that the analysis was faked implicate the UK's claims. (By 'analysis' here I
specifically mean the entire process from the taking of the samples up until the provision of
the final report; the existence of the leak from Spiez implies that one or more chemists were
doing their job honestly and therefore objected to the fabrications in the final published
reports - indeed there could have been many people involved who were acting entirely honestly
- but at some critical stage within the chain of custody the process was faked).
There are however two possibilities:
a) The samples taken by OPCW were deliberately spiked with a mixture of high purity virgin
A-234 with metabolic derivatives (and/or non-metabolic disintegration products from the
virgin A-234 since it is chemically not very stable??) AFTER the blood samples were taken
from the Skripals.
b) The Skripals were injected with A-234 shortly (probably very few minutes) before the OPCW
experts arrived to take the samples.
Lavrov's statement seems to imply that the blood samples contained both virgin i.e.
unreacted A-234, and metabolic by-products of A-234 (i.e. chemicals produced by A-234 as it
is broken down by the human body). The implications of that are very important - according to
one expert comment I read somewhere (I can't remember where), these metabolic by-products
would have to be in plausible proportions, which would be very difficult to mix in the
test-tube (that expert cited a sports doping case where the analyst spiked the sample with
pure un-metabilised doping drug from a laboratory sample, and was later convicted because he
got it wrong). Maybe these certified OPCW labs are capable of mixing virgin A-234 and
metabolic products in plausible proportions, but that sounds like "rocket science" to me,
i.e. it is a very serious endeavour in itself. That implies that possibility (b) has to be
taken seriously.
Even if the A-234 by-products were not metabolic by-products but simply the products of
disintegration of A-234 through intrisic chemical instability (i.e. without biological
activity) that would also have important implications - such faking would be vastly easier to
accomplish but (it seems to me) would imply gross negligence on the part of the analysts
unless the lack of METABOLIC by-products was spotted and explicitly drawn attention to as
evidence of faking. According to reports, A-234 is metabolised quite rapidly, so the
metabolic by-products should be produced very quickly and not much unreacted A-234 should
remain.
In a previous comment I have already asserted that the phone call to Viktoria Skripal was
faked from the British side by digitally altering the voice characteristics of another person
(i.e. not Yulia Skripal) - the British have this capability and I have personally experienced
it. To my mind the artificial police-managed statements allegedly made by Yulia Skripal, the
denial of visa to Viktoria etc imply that she was by that time already irreversably incabable
of making a statement by herself - i.e. either she was dead, or 'preserved' in a coma under
life support.
I also think that the BZ was more likely administered by aerosol in the park - quite
possibly by the mystery so-called "policeman" (actually from Porton Down or MI6?) - and the
restaurant may well have been a decoy, otherwise the response latency for Sergei and Yulia
would have been more divergent. That should be visible on cctv, but of course that will never
come out. If the BZ was weaponised as an aerosol it would be absorbed very quickly, and the
two victims would be affected at the same time.
* Disclaimer * - I am not an expert! Just an "armchair commenter". I hope "Old
Microbiologist" will respond, as he obviously has detailed experience in this field.
It's getting clear to me now. There are 1980's hold overs on both sides of the pond in the
CIA, MI6, and bureaucracies in both govts who believe that Trump / May are the new Reagan /
Thatcher, destined to destroy Russia a second time. Now all they need is another Pope.
BTW I liked Reagan and the Pope (he lived long enough to condemn the Iraq war). Reagan
knew how to keep the deep state in line but after we won the Cold War they took over the
amateurs starting with Clinton.
So the deep state is unleashing hell on earth because they want to finish off Russia to
achieve world domination.
During a brief moment when I was viewing CNN yesterday (Alex Witt was playing bad cop most of
the time, making sure Russia was suitably demeaned and excoriated for its evil ways) --but,
iirc and I may not have done*, someone asked why the FUKUS would endanger people by blowing
up locations the US stated they absolutely KNEW held chemical weapons and precursors. The
reply was that the Pentagon was certain that since the locations were not in heavily
populated areas that the breezes would disperse the poisons safely.
I somehow cannot believe anyone believes that, but, hey...true believers. Lies to get the
West unto yet another illegal war.
*Hhmmm, maybe I heard that in response to questioning at the Pentagon briefing.
On the little broadcast news I caught, mostly there was chest thumping that the West's
missiles so completely bested the Russian anti-missile equipment. Not a hair on their
chinny-chin-chins (OK, West's missiles don't have hairs, but they are telling fairy tales)
were even touched, according to the reporting based on Pentagon pronouncments.
The UN has been fully weoponized by the US and it's sock puppet partners in the west. The
western powers completely ignore the UN charter while demanding absolute power through the
UNSC. It is time for both Russia and China to leave the UN which will lead to a cascade of
other countries leaving. It will also end any lingering belief in the legitimacy of the UN.
Some thing like the UN is needed but like the League of Nations before it, the past due
date was long ago. It is time for a new organization to arise that takes into account the
fact that the vast majority of the world lives in Asia and acknowledges the complete
irrelevance of the General Assemble vs the power of the UNSC was a big mistake for the world
as it was intended to be by the US.
If Russia and China proposed an organization that would give India, Pakistan, Latin
America & Africa an actual stake in decisions as opposed to just being the victims as
they are now, and the rest of the world a say rather than just an arbitrary security council,
I think they would jump at it. With the vast majority of the world on board I think most of
the Western states would eventually join. The US would never deem to join any thing where
they don't have control. But they completely ignore the UN Charter & international law,
contribute fewer peace keepers than Canada and don't pay their bills any way.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201480/
says the latency can amount to several hours so I wonder if it can be made to match with the
'door handle' theory {or is that more than a claim}.
"it is currently used as a pharmacological tool (a muscarinic antagonist known as QNB)"
So BZ is over 50 years old, commercially available, and it can point to hm, anyone. Not even
some bigger player with access to advanced laboratory.
Point well made. Although Russia and China have gone part way -- SCO, etc -- it may be the
moment to go big -- an alternative to the UN, along the lines you've described. This might
include the possibility of imposing tariffs on rogue states, as concerns the resolutions of
such groups as the alt-UN climate convention, chemical weapons conventions, and an alt-WTO
that can impose a financial transfer tax on all foreign exchange transactions so that the
organization can be financing, and not have to go begging to Hegemon. Neutral or rotating
sites (not NYC). etc. etc.
I will now be quoting what they sent to the OPCW in their report. You understand that this
is a translation from a foreign language but I will read it in Russian, quote: "Following
our analysis, the samples indicate traces of the toxic chemical BZ and its precursor which
are second category chemical weapons. BZ is a nerve toxic agent, which temporarily disables
a person. The psycho toxic effect is achieved within 30 to 60 minutes after its use and
lasts for up to four days. This composition was in operational service in the armies of
the US, the UK and other NATO countries. The Soviet Union and Russia neither designed nor
stored such chemical agents. Also, the samples indicate the presence of type A-234
nerve agent in its virgin state and also products of its degradation." End of quote.
I was under the impression OPCW Labs (and OPCW itself) were only empowered to discover and
reveal "if a chemical substance(s) was used and if so, what?" Isn't that why Porton Down has
steadfastly refused to say "Russian/made in Russia" re the Salisbury A-234?
Lavrov states he is reading in Russian something translated from another language. However
it seems unlikely that the sentences emboldened would cause any problems in translation?
Perhaps it's a little Lavrov 'embroidery' to see who bites and how they bite?
Re: why hospital workers and others have not said anything about the Skripals' situation in a
long time, it's very likely everyone, including patients and witnesses from Salisbury have
been made to sign nondisclosure agreements. At least that's what happens in Brit series shown
on Masterpiece Theatre.
Also, DS Nick Bailey may have been sent to the house to get him exposed to whatever the
chem agent was, part of being a way to draw attention away from the main site of exposure? BZ
may explain the rather interesting description Bailey's written statement included:
this line, and only this one, which described any physical or mental reactions he felt from
his ordeal:
I "People ask me how I am feeling - but there are really no words to explain how I feel
right now. Surreal is the word that keeps cropping up - and it really has been completely
surreal."
Obviously Russia was correct in the BZ claim, the response by OPCW is disgraceful -
apparently they are now in panic mode trying to come up with a explanation for BZ findings,
apparently you cant trust organs like this today, totally biased.
Also the series was only 10 episodes and supposed to end last year, it was then split into
2 5 episode chucks so the series could end this year, much closer in time and memory to the
Salisbury incident.
I read this chapter at another place last night and my head just swelled up with a song I
learned as a child in Canada and I rearranged and typed it in their comments.
"And Theresa May rolled her wheel barrow, through streets wide and narrow, crying cockles
and mussels alive, alive O."
The tune is perfect for the feelings that swept over me and the situation of a street fish
monger peddling her wares truthfully or not seems to capture the huge pickle she has put
herself into.
"I have no theory how the BZ or the A-234 made it into the OPCW samples or if the Skripals
were really influenced by either of these poisons or are victims of simple shellfish
poisoning. Your guess is a good as mine."
A-234 (Novichok) is an acetylcholine esterase inhibitor, that causes uncontrolled muscle
contraction, and hence vomiting and convulsions. BZ is a paralytic agent, like botulinus
toxin, that causes paralysis and, hence, in severe cases death by asphyxiation. Thus, A-234
and BZ are antagonists, meaning that one would be a logical thereapeutic treatment for
poisoning by the other. There is no mystery therefore that both would be found in the Skripal
blood samples. The question that remains unanswered is which was the poison an which the
prescribed therapeutic agent.
Using BZ would also explain why they keep Skripals out of any media - a simple question from
some journalist like "what did you feel" may lead to them mentioning hallucinations which
immediately throws Novichok bull out of the window.
While technically A-234 and BZ would be expected to cancel out each others' toxic effects,
at least to some extent, A-234 would never be used therapeutically, and I'm pretty sure BZ
also has no recognized medicinal uses (although it's a good experimental tool). I expect that
any physician administering them to humans would lose his or her license, at a very minimum.
In both cases, safer antidotes exist.
Carrie@49 - When the OPCW sends teams to Syria on Fact Finding missions, the teams are given
rather bizarre and restrictive mandates. The one you cite was from previous fact-finding
mission.
The Porton Down analysis confirmation (collecting samples and distributing to OPCW labs)
was in response to a technical assistance request by the UK delegation to the OPCW -
something all OPCW members are allowed to do. We only know in general about what UK asked,
not the specifics. The details of that request are unrelated to the mandate of the Fact
Finding teams you cited.
The exact request made by the UK delegation is confidential. We can only guess what they
asked by what they said in public. Likewise, we can only guess the details of those analysis
by what the UK, the OPCW and Spiez lab said publicly. The lab can say whatever they want to
the OPCW as part of their analysis. The OPCW has been usurped and is no longer impartial (my
opinion, not legal fact). They insulate uncomfortable findings from the public with their
bureaucracy and rules of confidentiality.
The OPCW members themselves could change that, but that would require a majority of the
192 members to agree on something. It's like expecting the government to un-corrupt itself
after it has been usurped. There's simply too much at stake for the smaller nations (foreign
aid, military assistance, lives of children in New York, etc.) to fix the OPCW machine.
Lavrov is saying there was a whistleblower who wanted to make known what was in the Spies
Lab report. Their motivation was because they knew the OPCW was (or already did) cover up the
BZ findings. Of course the OPCW shouldn't have covered that up from it's member states and
those member states should object and demand the full report, but they never will. And for
the exact same reasons they can't and will never fix the usurped machine itself.
What's most interesting is that, if the whistleblower/Lavrov claim about the Spiez Lab
report is true,
1) It's solid proof of sample spiking. That would be the impossibly pure, un-degraded
something-like-A-234 from blood, urine or tissue taken two weeks after the fact, and in
quantities that would have absolutely killed the Skripals given what was still there after
two weeks. Any reasonable lab would interpret that finding as such.
2) The BZ findings explain the Skripals initial condition, and implicate the US/UK/NATO
who developed and weaponized it. The USSR never had BZ weapons or worked with BZ - that was
the west.
Spiez Lab, to it's credit, knows exactly what kind of deception is going on. They
apparently had no intention of weasel-wording their analysis or impugning their lab's
credibility. IF they put those words in their analysis for the OPCW, then it was a kind of
"In your face, LIARS" jab. The lab's lawyers would have approved - don't drag Spiez
into your world domination schemes. The OPCW filtered that out in their public report, and
have the same dilemma as any government agency confronted with whistleblower claims.
In the unusual and rare event that the Spiez analysis ever sees the light of day, the OPCW
will be made to be the fall guy with much fanfare. Not the US or UK, who will just have to
wait to see the results of an independent investigation into the matter. Five years at least
- these things take time. For now, just deny something nobody is allowed to prove.
But things start to make sense when you think of all the things that have occurred in the
last few weeks.
The Russians warned of impending chemical weapons event in Syria, then the Skripals are
found. This makes me wonder. Like father, like daughter? Were they blackmailed or willing
participants? Was Yulia a mule for MI6 with her visit to her father as the cover for the
operation? Was she tasked with transporting chemical weapons on behalf a looming Syria
operation, of weapons produced at Porton Down? Having a Russian national manage to transit
the material via certain points internationally, MI-6/FBI/CIA can then use her own itinerary
to show how it originated from Russia. The same way Mueller and the FBI set up fake terrorist
plots so they could get public convictions for the plotters the FBI created.
So what went wrong? Maybe the precursors were stored incorrectly. Maybe they mixed in a
way that ended up not killing them. That's how they were able to "save" the Skripals in
hospital, because they could tell the ER exactly what the agent was. If Novichok is so
deadly, and since they didn't die, to me, that seems as plausible as anything else. I'm no
expert in chemistry, so I'm not even sure it's possible for the two of them to become ill in
this way.
Then, we had the Saudi Clown Prince all over Europe, and finally in Paris. We know MBS is
the main benefactor for Jaesh al-Islam. SA could have been the coordinator to make the pieces
fall into line. Getting Jaesh and the White Helmets ready to receive a gif from Porton Down.
Dump the chemical weapon in a place, get some bodies to film, then wait for international
teams to arrive to "discover" samples of A-234. The Jihadis in Syria have done this before in
2013.
One has to admit, if there was a gas attack in Syria, and it turned out to be A-234
Novichok, think of how that would have been such a bonanza for Trump, May, Macron, and the
Saudi Clown Prince! But if the Skripals ended up incapacitated, it could explain why the
scrambling of the staged international sh*tshow at the UN and the earnestness of the FUKUS
reaction in all this. In desperation, they went back to the barrel bomb gambit, a substitute
for what they had hoped to do, so then they can go straight into the airstrike.
Why do I think this? Makes sense that Yulia doesn't want to go back to Russia and why the
British/Yanks are keeping her incommunicado. Maybe the Kremlin wants here back, for something
more than just being a Russian national and why the MI-6/CIA won't let her go.
Speaking of which, it's possible the Russians, behind closed doors suspect this and played
their cards well. This might help to explain why the reaction by the Russians was so muted
for the strikes in Syria.
All of this is speculation, right up there with the thermite people, of course, but that's
what everyone is trading in right now, including Paris, London and Washington.
If we assume - for arguments sake, if nothing else - that Lavrov's information is accurate
then the Russians have played their hand in a masterly fashion.
After all, the only way Lavrov can have this information is if the Russians have an
intelligence asset in place.
But where, exactly?
Because of the manner in which this information is released nobody knows if that asset is
inside the Spiez labs (i.e. where the report originated) or at the OPCW (i.e. where the
report was received and then censored).
So this puts everyone in a very difficult position because they don't know how much more
information Lavrov has up his sleeve.
After all, if the source is at Spiez Labs then Lavrov is out of ammo, so to speak. The
OPCW can claim that the BZ information was not confirmed by the other two labs and,
therefore, it is right and proper that it be left out. Lavrov would be in no position to
dispute that even if it were a flat-out lie.
But if the source is inside the OPCW then Lavrov may well have all three lab reports, in
which case the OPCW would be falling into a trap of its own making if it tries to lie its way
out of this. Lavrov would be able to cut them to ribbons by carefully releasing more
info.
That, at least in my opinion, is why the Spiez is being so circumspect, and why the OPCW
is doing a very good impersonation of a rabbit caught in headlights i.e. until they know
where the source of this leak is they can't even begin to rough-up a cover-up.
It is interesting how the "very pure" stuff everybody agrees on is spun in different
ways. "Very pure" was interpreted as meaning "can only have been produced by a state". But thinking about it - of course it is unlikely to have been found "pure" in a sample
taken from the environment. Russian scientists including Mirzayanov seem to unite on not
possible to have been found if Novichok on 19th with rain etc.
2 labs had the samples taken from environment, 2 labs had blood samples.
Hardly anything will have been found in the blood samples.
Althouth some may have had to sign Non Disclosures, it is difficult to understand why MI5 would
even bother since undoubtedly many staff would refuse at from MI5's point of view totally
un-necessary since post the consultant's letter to the Times the Home Office announced that
any further leaks by staff would result in prosecution under the englander official secrets act .
This a
particularly nasty piece of legislation that is an act of parliament dating back to part 1 of
the 20th century euro war. Some people are asked to sign it but that is more about
intimidation than legality since it applies to all public sector employees, contractors and
consultants regardless.
I remember being made to sign it by HR ('personnel' in those days) after getting a telco
techie job as a kid in the bad old days when Aoteraoa public servants were bound by the kiwi
version (they now have the privacy act which is meant to be about freedom of information but
is actually used by every govt agency spokesperson to hide their mistakes regardless giving
out details of medical treatment is one of the big no-nos rightly so too, a nurse in Aotearoa
only just missed out on getting slotted up for a good spell when she told a student's family
at home in India that their daughter had dropped in to the public hospital where she worked
for a termination. The girl copped big damages by kiwi standards).
Anyway england, as soon as the Home Secretary mumbled about the OS Act everybody including
the media who can also be tossed into the slammer for the rest of their naturals for printing
something that is covered by the Act, shut right up. Most especially the original doctor.
PavewayIV thanks, as always I appreciate your thorough analysis.
...and in quantities that would have absolutely killed the Skripals given what was still
there after two weeks...
Indeed, and if A-234 is as strong as reported, it's likely any traces around the Skripals
would have killed the first responders too.
No doubt related to Lavrov's disclosure: this morning (and yesterday in the Sunday Times)
nearly every national UK paper is running a front page version of this story: "Russia
launches cyber war on UK with 'dirty tricks' campaign as PM to face Commons over Syria
strikes" (taken from The Daily Telegraph). This meme is so widespread (BBC Radio 4 also)
that, in itself, it looks like a co-ordinated attempt at scaremongering and
misinformation.
It's designed to make people think that anything they read online that is contrary to the
official FUKUS narrative about Russia/Syria can be given the term 'dirty trick' and
dismissed. And by conflating the Skripal story with Syria (remember the messages about
'package delivered' picked up by '4-Eyes' in Cypress?) then anything Russia says about the
Skripal affair is suspect and "not worthy of your consideration, dear reader".
I see that
The Sun newspaper is now running with this news in it's online version:
RUSSIA and Syria have blocked chemical inspectors from investigating the site of a brutal
chemical attack in Douma, Syria, reports claim.
Russia may even have compromised the site of the April 7 gas attack, according to Ahmet
Uzumcu, Director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
"It's our concern they may have tampered with it to thwart the fact finding
investigation," Mr Uzumcu is quoted as saying by NBC's Bill Neely.
Also see yesterday's
important report by Elijah J Magnier. Ties stuff together. Folks, in seeking out and highlighting the truth we going to have our work cut out for us
here! [See "have
your work cut out (for you)"
This is one of the few if only 'miracle recovery' situations in which the victims did not sit
down for interviews. I imagine once they have been groomed enough they will sit down for an
interview with a trusted news organization.
BZ is not a hallucinogenic compound. It is a nerve agent with an unusual high ratio of lethal
dose to symptomatic dose (~400:1). That means the key symptoms of nerve agent poisoning can
be induced by exposure to low levels of agent way below the levels needed to kill someone.
That would protect the attacker as well as not immediately killing the victims.
There was no audited chain of custody for the first samples so traces on Novichok could
have been introduced between the taking of the samples (presumably by a phlebotomist at the
hospital) and its arrival at Porton Down.
The only publicly announced CCTV footage (from a private camera) showed the Skripals en
route from Zizzis to the park bench where they were found. The footage also showed a blonde
haired women leaving the shop(?) hosting the private CCTV camera some minutes after the
Skripals and following the same route. There are claims that she appeared to be carrying a
face mask. She was listed as a person of interest by the local police, but there was no
follow-up once the presence of nerve agent was made public.
This was all before Bailey came down with symptoms. This poisoning was presumably an
unexpected complicating event for those running the false flag. From local media sources, it
appears that he drove himself to Salisbury hospital early Monday morning (5 March probably
before 10:00 am some 18 hours after the attack). The hospital entrance and his car were
subsequently sealed off and decontaminated. It would be interesting to know the temporal
relationship between his arrival and the knowledge that a nerve agent was used.
The false flaggers were then presented with a problem of explaining Bailey's delayed
symptoms. The explanation would have to exclude the possibility of him being poisoned at the
same time as the Skripals to avoid anyone regarding him as an eyewitness. An unidentified
police officer turned up at the Skripal's house (mentioned in local media) around 5pm on
Sunday shortly after the attack. The seems to have provided the false flaggers with a
plausible (to them) source of poisoning, namely the door handle.
How did Bailey actually become contaminated? He was described as an early emergency
services responder (local media). If he was first on the scene, one plausible explanation is
that he was exposed to low amounts of BZ aerosal as one of the Skripals vomitted in his
presence. We know from the nature of BZ that even low levels are capable of inducing
symptoms, probably slowly progressive at those exposure levels. Local media photos of the
hazmat crews show them putting a pile of sawdust/fine sand onto the ground adjacent to the
bench, then scooping it up and putting it into an impermeable container which was then sealed
for disposal. This supports the vomitting hypothesis, which was also observed by later
passers by.
My hypothesis for events: The Skripals were exposed to an aerosol spray of low dose BZ
sprayed into their faces by an unknown person (possibly the blonde woman) whilst sitting at
the bench. Bailey was unintentionally contaminated by a similar lower level aerosol of BZ as
he attended the vomitting Skripal. The desired story of pure Novichok poisoning could not be
explained unless Bailey received a higher dose at a later time from a source that the
Skripals were plausibly in contact with - hence the door handle hypothesis. The door handle
hypothesis would also allow the false flaggers to direct attention away from the possiblity
that the Skripals were attacked at the bench. The trail of the attacker (clearly part of the
false flag team) could then be closed off and covered up.
A-234 according to Mirzayanov and A-234 according to Hoenig have different structures.
Mirzayanov claims that a number of weaker agents developed as part of the Foliant program
were published in the open literature as organophosphate pesticides, in order to disguise the
secret nerve agent program as legitimate pesticide research. So, it was made to be
pesticides. And it can be produced as a number of different pesticides everywhere in the
world.
and From the resistance trench with love | Apr 15, 2018 10:38:12 AM | 16
The Spiez lab is a NATO lab. Even though Switzerland is "neutral", it is an associate
member of NATO under the NATO Peace Partnership. Spiez has been involved in serious falsifications of analysis results for the United
Nations Environment Program (UNEP)'s work on the use of uranium and depleted uranium
weapons.
E.g. the water samples that the UNEP took from missile craters in south Lebanon after the
Israeli assault in August 2006 revealed low enriched uranium, which is what myself and two
other independent researchers, Dai Williams and Dr Chris Busby, had found there. (Our samples
were analyzed at Harwell in the United Kingdom.) However, what was announced in the
preliminary report by the UNEP was NO radiation found.
We confronted the UNEP (Henrik Slotte, head of the Post-Conflict Intervention Unit, and
Mario Buger, the technical officer), and they admitted that the water samples that they had
taken from the craters had been carefully filtered before being tested. Under pressure from
us, Burger returned, took more samples and had them tested properly, at Spiez. He also found
low enriched uranium.
In my opinion, the release of the real report to the Russians was the work of a
whistle-blower, for the Spiez lab has highly trained people who take great pride in the
generally impeccable quality of the lab's work and its repuration for such. Many of them
would have been appalled that their lab was party to some sort of deception.
This would also explain why they went ahead and analyzed the samples for things other than
just what might have been requested, although I am inclined to believe that they were
requested to analyze for everything. This would only heighten the indination of those who did
the work upon discovering that an incomplete -- distorted -- report on thorough
(gündlich) work had been sent to one of the states parties to the Convention that had a
right to know everything.
Lavrov expressed similar doubts about the independence of the international investigation
into the shooting down of Malaysian airliner MH17 in 2014, after floating many alternative
"theories".
"Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says there are a lot of questions regarding the
investigation into the downed MH17 Malaysia Airlines plane in eastern Ukraine, adding that it
is not independent, not comprehensive and not truly international." https://www.rt.com/news/311691-lavrov-mh17-malaysia-asean/
The Joint Investigation Team, consisting of the Netherlands, Malaysia, Ukraine, Belgium
and Australia, concluded that MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile under the control of
Donbas separatists. The Russian government continues to deny this.
My FB feed now has commercial media forwarding UK gov't claim that the Salisbury nerve agent
was "delivered in liquid form", FWIW. So -- what (if anything) is that worth?
Lavrov was right then, and he's right now. The "Joint Investigation Team" is actually "The Fix Is In Team". The official title is
just for show, to make infoganda that impresses the ignorant, complacent, and submissive. It's exactly like the Big Lie that "17 intelligence agencies separately concluded that
Russians meddled in US elections".
The technical ability of Porton Down to identify a chemical has never been in doubt, and
the only "finding of the United Kingdom " the OPCW has confirmed is the identity of the
chemical.
But what neither the British Government nor the OPCW have, to the present, acknowledged is
that blood samples from the Skripal's contained two nerve agents, A-234, aka Novichok, plus
3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate, aka BZ or Buzz.
Novichok is a convulsant (which acts by preventing the breakdown of the neurotransmitter
acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction, with the result that muscles go into full
contraction, hence the symptoms of convulsions, vomiting, etc.), whereas BZ is a paralytic
agent (which acts by binding to acetylcholine receptors at the neuromuscular junction without
activating them, thereby preventing muscle contraction, hence the symptoms of paralysis and
ultimately death by asphyxiation).
Thus, BZ will serve as an antidote to Novichok poisoning, wheras Novichok will serve as an
antidote to BZ poisoning. So the presence of Novichok in the Skipal blood samples is not
conclusive evidence that Novichok was the poison, rather than the antidote, as I have
discussed here: 3-Quinuclidinyl
Benzilate: The Antidote to Novichok , and here: Novichok:
Russia's Antidote to Seafood Poisoning .
"... And in the later articles posted here, he writes: "That puts Saudi Arabia (and its client jihadists), Saudi Arabia's close ally Israel, the UK and the USA all in the frame in having a powerful motive in inculcating anti-Russian sentiment prior to planned conflict with Russia in Syria. Any of them could have attacked the Skripals." ..."
I have never ruled out the possibility that Russia is responsible for the attack in
Salisbury, amongst other possibilities. But I do rule out the possibility that Assad is
dropping chemical weapons in Ghouta. In this extraordinary war, where Saudi-funded jihadist
head choppers have Israeli air support and US and UK military "advisers", every time the Syrian
army is about to take complete control of a major jihadist enclave, at the last moment when
victory is in their grasp, the Syrian Army allegedly attacks children with chemical weapons,
for no military reason at all. We have been fed this narrative again and again and again.
We then face a propaganda onslaught from neo-con politicians, think tanks and "charities"
urging a great rain of Western bombs and missiles, and are accused of callousness towards
suffering children if we demur. This despite the certain knowledge that Western military
interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have had consequences which remain to this day
utterly disastrous.
I fear that the massive orchestration of Russophobia over the last two years is intended to
prepare public opinion for a wider military conflict centred on the Middle East, but likely to
spread, and that we are approaching that endgame. The dislocation of the political and media
class from the general population is such, that the levers for people of goodwill to prevent
this are, as with Iraq, extremely few as politicians quake in the face of media jingoism. These
feel like extremely dangerous times.
"I have never ruled out the possibility that Russia is responsible for the attack in
Salisbury"
Time for timid half-truths is over. If by now you haven't identified the Skripal affair as
the joint UK/US production it is, Act I of the AngloZionist war on Syria, Russia and
humanity, your analysis isn't worth the pixels it's written on. There is zero doubt. Case
closed. Especially after this:
I wish you realize that appeals to skepticism and lines like "I'm not fan of Putin/Assad"
get you nowhere. You are facing a brutal, fact-twisting, intellect-insulting, lying,
propaganda machine. Any concession you make to their "arguments" comes with the smell of
blood. They'll mock your "moderate" views and will try to make you look weak and foolish as
Sky-news did. You can't be only half-brave, half-informed and half-right. And why engage
those shameless liars if not to destroy completely their blatant lies?
When Hungary prepared democratically laws to stop Soros meddling in Hungary Soros phoned
Brussels, spoke to Juncker and Tusk, the next day Timmermans tried to intimidate the
Hungarian government.
Just now there have been Hungarian elections, anti migration and anti Soros Orban was
elected.
European parliament member Sargenti now wants to take Hungary's voting right in the EU
away.
Sargenti is on the 231 member list that seem to be followers of Soros.
As Jimmy Carter once said 'those that want war do not expect that they themselves are going
to be hurt'.
That in the next world war anyone will be more than hurt, killed, the war mongers do not
understand, cannot believe.
Please, why don't you mention the other possibilities, instead of "the Russian one"?
Bit harsh to criticise Craig Murray on that score. I see your point, and it would be a
valid point to raise with an establishment journo who has been generally an effective part of
the anti-Russia propaganda campaign, but Murray has discussed the other options on many
occasions (and been the brunt of some pretty harsh establishment bullying in response).
In this case, it can safely be regarded as just efficient writing.
Even if Assad did use gas, which he obviously didn't, who the heck are the Americans, the
British, and the French to lecture anyone on morality, given that they unlike Assad did
practice chemical warfare, and killed uncounted millions around the globe with "conventional"
means in order to loot them, and to "punish" Assad as the bankster with an Oedipus complex
Macron put it?
Mr Murray lost his job because he stood up for the right thing in 2004 and he has been
abused ever since. His sanity has been called into question ever since he suggested the
British government weren't telling the truth. His brief period in an instiuttion after Blair
sacked him has been brought up more than once.
I suspect Craig's position of apparent open-mindedness has arisen from a lengthy Sky News
TV interview with the appalling Kay Burley. He was careful in an eighteen minute segment not
to give cause for Burley to label him as a Putin bot. He was most careful not to take the
focus off the weakness in the British government's position and I think that was correct.
As soon as you see the tissue of lies emanating from London the innocence of Moscow
follows naturally. Mr Murray was correct not to allow himself to be provoked by Kay Burley
and she was visibly annoyed by her failure.
Sky News tried to bury the confrontation but somebody recorded it and you can find the
interview at craigmurray.org
The ever excellent Campaign Against the Arms Trade is back in the English High Court
again today in its continuing attempts to ban arms sales to Saudi Arabia. It is against
UK law to sell arms to a country which is likely to use them in breach of international
humanitarian law , and that Saudi Arabia consistently and regularly uses British
weapons to bomb schools, hospitals and civilians is indisputable.
Why didn't the High Court ban arm sales to UK army, which is using them in breach of
international humanitarian law, consistently & regularly since its colonial era, in
Vietnam & Korea wars, Blair's Iraq WMD illegal war, Cameron's illegal Libya bombing, and
now May's illegal attack to Syria.
Saudi arabia Yemen's war pale in comparison to UK long history of atrocities. What a
British hypocrite law enacted in a kangaroo judicial system? A country of government infested
with shameless warmonger liars & paedophiles, yet popularly elected by its people. What a
great Anglosaxon-West civilization & glorious demoncrapcy system to be spread around the
world for easy subversion & regime change.
Proven guilty Iraq war criminal Tony Blair is walking free, repeating his same lies again
to push for illegal Syria attack. Yet not a single war protest from UK people. Touch a LBGT
issue or Trumps visit, British will gone hysteria protest in London, oh what a great nation.
World Capital of paedophiles, war criminals & pathological liars.
How can God save the Queen that connive criminals, with stolen wealth soaking with
innocents blood.
I appreciated the frame you provided.
That's a very serious charge against Great Britain -- sadly, I found it a somewhat
compelling and disconcerting.
I suspect that in all of this there are fears that it's a response to enemies without as
opposed to enemies from within. I have no idea where this notion comes from -- that states
can act as authority for UN missions without the consent of the UN. Great Britain's press
here sounds very much like the legal gymnastic of the US to invade Iraq and has much weight
-- I agree.
The chaos in Libya, Syria, the Ukraine is the direct result of US and EU manipulation. I
just don't know how to support "wrongness" on so many levels and consider myself a person of
integrity. The humanitarian crisis in all of the regions is exacerbated by our own violations
of law and foreign policy best practices.
Not a bad article, but superficial. Does not address the why question and the huge
ideological difference between Russia and the 'West' which leads to war.
Agree. Resisting lying provocation to war should be done with what ZUSA terms "moral
clarity." Said another way, No Quarter, No Mercy. If the need is felt to characterize Assad, the only things that needs be said are that he
is the legitimate leader of a sovereign nation, and that attempts to topple him, by ZUSA
& Anglos, are in direct violation of United Nations charter.
I have never ruled out the possibility that Russia is responsible for the attack in
Salisbury, amongst other possibilities.
And I have never ruled out the word which can not be spoken, that ISRAEL was behind both
attacks, to justify getting their US/UK/French lackeys to do in Syria what they can not
without taking losses, attacking Syrian cities with cruise missiles.
Poisoned toothpaste and exploding phones: New book chronicles Israel's '2,700'
assassination operations
Poisoned toothpaste that takes a month to end its target's life. Armed drones. Exploding
mobile phones. Spare tyres with remote-control bombs. Assassinating enemy scientists and
discovering the secret lovers of Muslim clerics.
A new book chronicles these techniques and asserts that Israel has carried out at
least 2,700 assassination operations in its 70 years of existence. While many failed,
they add up to far more than any other western country, the book says.
The main beneficiary of the recent cruise missile attacks against Syria is Israel, so
let's be honest and see what happens.
From an April 2003 Haaretz article:
The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them
Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them,
journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible.
This is a war of an elite. [Tom] Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25
people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if
you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have
happened.
So, aside from selling weapons to Syria and Iran – and thus, giving up control over
those weapons – what exactly should Putin have done to continue receiving your
approval? Start WW3?
Another question: if this is just a staged play of good cop, bad cop – why does the
puppet master behind the scenes not advance the plot? Why the need for silly diversions into
the bucolic English countryside, and for embarrassing cameos by French boy princes?
Not sure where you are from, but some countries – particularly those that have
experienced it at home – consider war a serious business, not quite the same as a bar
brawl in Dodge City.
I keep hearing that the Qatar – Europe pipeline is the source of the Syria War, what I
cant understand if their so desperate for this why does it need to go through Syria, theres`s
other ways like across SA and up the red sea?
In Murray's first post on the Skripal story, he lists other possible suspects as Orbis
Intelligence (who produced the Steele dossier) and the state of Israel:
And in the later articles posted here, he writes: "That puts Saudi Arabia (and its client
jihadists), Saudi Arabia's close ally Israel, the UK and the USA all in the frame in having a
powerful motive in inculcating anti-Russian sentiment prior to planned conflict with Russia
in Syria. Any of them could have attacked the Skripals."
The West would simply like him to meet his obligations and stop gassing people as there
is an international agreement against killing people that way. Why can't he just stick
to the normal use of high explosives to blast them to pieces?
Why can't he just stick to the normal use of high explosives to blast them to
pieces?
Because that process is still under Israeli patent protection??
Didn't he and various generals plainly state that retaliation would be swift and
immediately delivered to any such platform?
Yes, if Russian military assets in Syria are targeted or hit. The US strike was the
warfare equivalent of a plate smashing fit thrown by a hysterical tranny. Just a loud
demonstration of impotence and fishing for attention. It's better handled unanswered. Now, if
the tranny decides to go in a full abuser mode, Putin may seriously mess up her makeup.
"... For decades, a little-known section of the British Foreign Office – the Information Research Department (IRD) – carried out propaganda campaigns using the international media as its platform on behalf of MI-6. Years before Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, and Sudan's Omar al-Bashir became targets for Western destabilization and "regime change." IRD and its associates at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and in the newsrooms and editorial offices of Fleet Street broadsheets, tabloids, wire services, and magazines, particularly "The Daily Telegraph," "The Times," "Financial Times," Reuters, "The Guardian," and "The Economist," ran media smear campaigns against a number of leaders considered to be leftists, communists, or FTs (fellow travelers). ..."
"... After the Cold War, this same propaganda operation took aim at Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Somalia's Mohamad Farrah Aidid, and Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today, it is Assad's, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's, and Catalonian independence leader Carles Puigdemont's turn to be in the Anglo-American state propaganda gunsights. Even Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, long a darling of the Western media and such propaganda moguls as George Soros, is now being targeted for Western visa bans and sanctions over the situation with Muslim Rohingya insurgents in Rakhine State. ..."
"... Through IRD-MI-6-Central Intelligence Agency joint propaganda operations, many British journalists received payments, knowingly or unknowingly, from the CIA via a front in London called Forum World Features (FWF), owned by John Hay Whitney, publisher of the "New York Herald Tribune" and a former US ambassador to London. ..."
When it comes to creating bogus news stories and advancing false narratives, the British
intelligence services have few peers. In fact, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) has led
the way for its American "cousins" and Britain's Commonwealth partners – from Canada and
Australia to India and Malaysia – in the dark art of spreading falsehoods as truths.
Recently, the world has witnessed such MI-6 subterfuge in news stories alleging that Russia
carried out a novichok nerve agent attack against a Russian émigré and his
daughter in Salisbury, England. This propaganda barrage was quickly followed by yet another
– the latest in a series of similar fabrications – alleging the Syrian government
attacked civilians in Douma, outside of Damascus, with chemical weapons.
It should come as no surprise that American news networks rely on British correspondents
stationed in northern Syria and Beirut as their primary sources. MI-6 has historically relied
on non-official cover (NOC) agents masquerading primarily as journalists, but also humanitarian
aid workers, Church of England clerics, international bankers, and hotel managers, to carry out
propaganda tasks. These NOCs are situated in positions where they can promulgate British
government disinformation to unsuspecting actual journalists and diplomats.
For decades, a little-known section of the British Foreign Office – the Information
Research Department (IRD) – carried out propaganda campaigns using the international
media as its platform on behalf of MI-6. Years before Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Iraq's Saddam
Hussein, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, and Sudan's Omar al-Bashir became targets for Western
destabilization and "regime change." IRD and its associates at the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) and in the newsrooms and editorial offices of Fleet Street broadsheets,
tabloids, wire services, and magazines, particularly "The Daily Telegraph," "The Times,"
"Financial Times," Reuters, "The Guardian," and "The Economist," ran media smear campaigns
against a number of leaders considered to be leftists, communists, or FTs (fellow
travelers).
These leaders included Indonesia's President Sukarno, North Korean leader (and grandfather
of Pyongyang's present leader) Kim Il-Sung, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Cyprus's Archbishop
Makarios, Cuba's Fidel Castro, Chile's Salvador Allende, British Guiana's Cheddi Jagan,
Grenada's Maurice Bishop, Jamaica's Michael Manley, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Guinea's Sekou
Toure, Burkina Faso's Thomas Sankara, Australia's Gough Whitlam, New Zealand's David Lange,
Cambodia's Norodom Sihanouk, Malta's Dom Mintoff, Vanuatu's Father Walter Lini, and Ghana's
Kwame Nkrumah.
After the Cold War, this same propaganda operation took aim at Serbian President Slobodan
Milosevic, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Somalia's Mohamad Farrah
Aidid, and Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today, it is Assad's, Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orban's, and Catalonian independence leader Carles Puigdemont's turn to be in the
Anglo-American state propaganda gunsights. Even Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, long a darling
of the Western media and such propaganda moguls as George Soros, is now being targeted for
Western visa bans and sanctions over the situation with Muslim Rohingya insurgents in Rakhine
State.
Through IRD-MI-6-Central Intelligence Agency joint propaganda operations, many British
journalists received payments, knowingly or unknowingly, from the CIA via a front in London
called Forum World Features (FWF), owned by John Hay Whitney, publisher of the "New York Herald
Tribune" and a former US ambassador to London.
It is not a stretch to believe that similar and
even more formal relationships exist today between US and British intelligence and so-called
British "journalists" reporting from such war zones as Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan,
and the Gaza Strip, as well as from much-ballyhooed nerve agent attack locations as Salisbury,
England.
No sooner had recent news reports started to emerge from Douma about a Syrian chlorine gas
and sarin agent attack that killed between 40 to 70 civilians, British reporters in the Middle
East and London began echoing verbatim statements from the Syrian "White Helmets" and the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
In actuality, the White Helmets – claimed by Western media to be civilian defense
first-responders but are Islamist activists connected to jihadist radical groups funded by
Saudi Arabia – are believed to have staged the chemical attack in Douma by entering the
municipality's hospital and dowsing patients with buckets of water, video cameras at the ready.
The White Helmets distributed their videos to the global news media, with the BBC and Rupert
Murdoch's Sky News providing a British imprimatur to the propaganda campaign asserting that
Assad carried out another "barrel bomb" chemical attack against "his own people." And, as
always, the MI-6 financed Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad news front claimed
to be operated by a Syrian expatriate and British national named Rami Abdel Rahman from his
clothing shop in Coventry, England, began providing second-sourcing for the White Helmet's
chemical attack claims.
With President Trump bringing more and more neo-conservatives, discredited from their
massive anti-Iraq propaganda operations during the Bush-Cheney era, into his own
administration, the world is witnessing the prolongation of the "Trump Doctrine."
The Trump Doctrine can best be explained as follows: A nation will be subject to a US
military attack depending on whether Trump is facing a severe political or sex scandal at
home.
Such was the case in April 2017, when Trump ordered a cruise missile attack on the joint
Syrian-Russian airbase at Shayrat, Syria. Trump was still reeling from the resignation of his
National Security Adviser, Lt. General Michael Flynn, in February over the mixing of his
private consulting business with his official White House duties. Trump needed a diversion and
the false accusation that Assad used sarin gas on the village of Khan Sheikoun on April 4,
2017, provided the necessary pabulum for the war-hungry media.
The most recent cruise missile attack was to divert the public's attention away from Trump's
personal attorney being raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a sex scandal involving
Trump and a porn actress, and a "tell-all" book by Trump's fired FBI director, James Comey.
Although these two scandals provided opportunities for the neo-cons to test Trump with false
flag operations in Syria, they were not the first time such actions had been carried out. In
2013, the Syrian government was blamed for a similar chemical attack on civilians in Ghouta.
That year, Syrian rebels, supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, admitted to the
Associated Press reporter on the ground in Syria that they had been given banned chemical
weapons by Saudi Arabia, but that the weapons canisters exploded after improper handling by the
rebels. Immediately, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian rebel organizations
operating out of Turkey claimed that Assad had used chemical-laden barrel bombs on "his own
people." However, Turkish, American, and Lebanese sources confirmed that it was the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) that had badly bungled a false flag sarin nerve agent
attack on Ghouta.
Few Western media outlets were concerned about a March 19, 2013, sarin nerve agent by the
Bashair al-Nasr Brigade rebel group linked to the US- and British-backed Free Syrian Army. The
rebels used a "Bashair-3" unguided projectile, containing the deadly sarin agent, on civilians
in Khan al-Assal, outside Aleppo. At least 27 civilians were killed, and scores of others
injured in the attack. The Syrian Kurds also reported the use of chemical weapons on them
during the same time frame by Syrian rebel groups backed by the United States, Turkey, and
Saudi Arabia. The usual propaganda operations – Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,
Doctors Without Borders, the BBC, CNN, and Sky News – were all silent about these
attacks.
In 2013, April 2017, and April 2018, the Western media echo chamber blared out all the same
talking points: "Assad killing his own people," "Syrian weapons of mass destruction," and the
"mass murder of women and children." Western news networks featured videos of dead women and
children, while paid propagandists, known as "contributors" to corporate news networks –
all having links to the military-intelligence complex – demanded action be taken against
Assad.
Trump, now being advised by the notorious neocon war hawk John Bolton, the new National
Security Adviser, began referring to Assad as an "animal" and a "monster." Bolton, along with
Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby, helped craft similar
language against Saddam Hussein prior to the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was
not coincidental that Trump – at the urging of Bolton and other neocons – gave a
full pardon to Libby on the very same day he ordered the cruise missile attack on Damascus and
other targets in Syria. Libby was convicted in 2005 of perjury and illegally disclosing
national security information.
The world is being asked to take, at face value, the word of patented liars like Trump,
Bolton, and other neocons who are now busy joining the Trump administration at breakneck speed.
The corporate media unabashedly acts as though it never lied about the reasons given by the
United States and Britain for going to war in Iraq and Libya. Why should anyone believe them
now?
Wayne
MADSEN Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society
of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club
Russian foreign claims Skripal and Yulia were poisoned by chemical made in UK
Sergey Lavrov says pair were not attacked with novichock but instead with BZ
'This formulation was in the inventory of the US and Britain,' Mr Lavrov said
The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, claims former spy Sergei Skripal and his
daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by a non-lethal chemical made in Britain and the US.
Mr Lavrov says the pair were not attacked with novichock but instead with BZ - a toxin never
developed in Russia - which a laboratory in Spiez,
Switzerland, found.
'This formulation was in the inventory of the United States, Britain and other Nato states,'
Mr Lavrov said.
"The Iraqi weapon. The existence of a BZ-related compound, called Agent-15, in
Iraq's arsenals was revealed in 1998 . Apparently, Iraq possessed large quantities of the
agent since the 1980s. A document found by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in
1995 contained a brief reference to this agent and subsequent assessment of relevant
scientific and other background material indicated the size of the stockpile. Soldiers of
3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart Georgia found facilities used for the production
of these weapons. The facilities had been closed for several years before the invasion as
dust almost a half inch thick was noted on everything. Records books of personnel who had
entered the buildings and other project related equipment looked as though everything had
been stopped suddenly and it did not appear that the research had ever progressed to a
state of actual production ".
And from this [2014 Wikipedia cached page]:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140618215854/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychochemical_weapon
">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychochemical_weapon">https://web.archive.org/web/20140618215854/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychochemical_weapon
" Britain was also investigating the possible weaponization of LSD (lysergic acid
diethylamide) and BZ (3-quinuclidinyl benzilate) as nonlethal battlefield drug-weapons
Hungarian researcher Lajos Rosza wrote that records of Hungary's State Defense Council
meetings from 1962 to 1978 suggest that the Warsaw Pact forum had considered a psychochemical
agent such as Methylamphetamine as a possible weapon
.. The United States eventually weaponized the chemical BZ for delivery in the M43 BZ cluster
bomb until stocks were destroyed in 1989 ."
2. Zanders JP: CW Agent Factsheet - Agent-15:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070613005906/http://www.sipri.org/contents/expcon/agent15.html
">http://www.sipri.org/contents/expcon/agent15.html">https://web.archive.org/web/20070613005906/http://www.sipri.org/contents/expcon/agent15.html
)
"Little information is publicly known about Agent-15, except that it is closely related to
BZ. The understanding of its physiological effects is based on studies with the latter agent.
The existence of Agent-15 in Iraq's arsenals was revealed by the British Secretary of
State George Robertson in a statement to the House of Commons on 9 February 1998.
According to the statement, Iraq may have possessed large quantities of the agent since the
1980s. A document found by the UN Special Commission on Iraq ( UNSCOM ) in August 1995
contained a brief reference to Agent-15 and subsequent assessment of relevant scientific and
other background material indicated the size of the stockpile."
"In February 1998, the British Ministry of Defence released an intelligence
report that accused Iraq of having stockpiled large amounts of a glycolate anticholinergic
incapacitating agent known as Agent 15.[citation needed] Agent 15 is an alleged Iraqi
incapacitating agent that is likely to be chemically either identical to BZ or closely
related to it. Agent 15 was reportedly stockpiled in large quantities prior to and during the
Persian Gulf War. The combination of anticholinergic PNS and CNS effects aids in the
diagnosis of patients exposed to these agents.
Also in 1998, there were allegations that elements of the Yugoslav People's Army used
incapacitating agents against fleeing Bosnian refugees during Srebrenica massacre in 1995
that caused hallucinations and irrational behavior. Physical evidence of BZ use in Bosnia is
unsupported, however."
And from the current 2018 Wikipedia page on '3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate':
"The U.S. Army tested BZ as well as other "psycho-chemical" agents on human
subjects at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland from 1955 to 1975 , according to declassified
documents."
the BZ was probably in the food at the restaurant (Zizzi) and they may have gotten a huge
dose, it very potent. This would account for the delay -- restaurant to park bench, needs to
be absorbed through the GI tract.
I don't believe the doorknob scenario-- I think you would have to have several milligrams
of nerve agent in a skin permeable solvent DMSO or DMF plus gelling agent to make it stick
and then it would have to be wet to transfer onto the skin and then get absorbed. First, the
target might notice the handle is sticky and wash his/her hands in which case you get no
effect if its done in a minute or so and the water is alkaline as it is in England. Then,
assuming the gel isn't noticed the transfer would be pretty inefficient as the agent has to
be absorbed from a small surface area through the keratin of the skin. If you got things just
right, applied the novichok in a nice anhydrous solvent and no rain got in it and someone
touched it before the solvent evaporated, then you might be able to give a lethal dose.
Having said that, if you absorbed say 0.1mg or so the effects would be pretty immediate
collapse in 15 mins or so. So in my opinion the doorknob scenario is rubbish-- if you could
get it to work the Skripal that touched the handle would have collapsed before getting near
the restaurant.
So I think that there are way too many variables that would need to be optimized to get a
nice transfer. But if you managed to achieve this feat the target would be very sick in about
10 mins or so.
The way to use a nerve agent is to aerosolize it, then its easy to get 1-2mg into the
lungs and onto the mucosa where it is absorbed very fast (Kim's brother), the transfer
through the skin is much more difficult. So my bet is BZ in the food--a huge dose, hence the
consulatant's letter saying its not an nerve agent. It's an anti-cholinergic (like atropin),
not an anti-cholinesterase (nerve gas).
@ Paveway IV -- comment 98
Paveway, I'm not sure whether you've seen Sushi's instalments in the "Curious Incident"
series at the Saker, but perhaps you'd consider looking at the most recent one, instalment 8,
and then examining the hypothetical narrative below.
Sushi,
A superb instalment on a stellar "Curious Incident" series.
I am trying to construct a narrative that accounts for what we have plausible reason to
infer, but which does not rely on any official interlocutors (except perhaps Boris Johnson,
who may not be able to help himself) clearly lying.
First question--and I imagine you might cover this in your next instalment:
Am I correct in thinking that BZ and any of the Novichok / Foliant series are simply not
similar enough to be covered by Porton Down's public description of the substance "in
question" as being:
a) a Novichok
b) or from that class of nerve agent
c) or a closely related compound
BZ isn't a), isn't b) a nerve agent at all and c) is not closely related to any of the
family of compounds that could be in any way considered a Novichok.
Inferences:
1) So, if the finding was actually BZ, when the OPCW confirms the UK's findings, the OPCW is
not confirming any of the statements made along lines a), b) or c).
The OPCW, then, is not
i) confirming that the substance is of a "type developed by Russia" and so it would seem are
either, instead
ii) confirming something the Salisbury medical personnel have been quoted as saying, or
iii) confirming the findings of some other entity that can be plausibly glossed as having
official ("UK") findings, or
iv) are confirming UK findings not made public.
Which is to say that all along there have been at least two substances in play, and a bit
of a bait and switch game, in which "it" is presumed to be specified but the descriptions are
referring to another substance.
For example, the bait is Novichoks, etc. But when we think they are referring to a
substance whose metabolites are found in the Skripals' biophysical samples, that substance
may actually be bench-grade or lab-grade BZ. Some other sample--taken from a park bench, door
knob, restaurant, cemetary headstone, or car ventilation system, may have been tested as
containing highly pure (Porton Down lab-grade) A-234, for example.
Each time we think they are talking about one, they are talking about another, and we
never really pause to re-examine which "it" they are referring to.
Not technically a lie, except perhaps what might initially seem like an "innocent"
exaggeration--"weapons-grade" but actually this, as you note, is a big giveaway. The
substance for which the OPCW is confirming the UK findings, is not weapons grade, but as they
say, virtually without impurities. You are the only source I am aware of who has emphasized
that weapons-grade is not, as the lay person might suppose, highly pure but is in fact marked
by certain impurities from a full-scale production run and perhaps additionally to introduce
changes of viscosity, etc.
Is any of this making sense, and does anything seem factually incorrect here?
Russia announced today that the S-300 long-range air defense system would be provided to the
Syrian air defenses. That would be a game-changer in terms of both detection and range.
Israel is sure to be displeased because it puts Israeli and Lebanese airspace within range.
S-300 radar could also be data-linked with the S-120 and S-200 systems. The increased risk to
Israeli missions over Syria would be immense. IMO that counts as a "very serious consequence"
of the raid. Russia had withheld that system as long as part of a bargaining strategy with
FUKUS. After their display of malice and treachery, the lid on defensive aid to SYAAF has
been removed.
Report from Southfront states that the cruise missiles had their targeting jammed by
Russian EW, i.e. they were mostly wounded ducks by the time they reached Damascus. Syrian air
defense was mostly preventing random ground strikes by off-target missiles, in addition to
getting valuable training. That would explain something I observed in videos of the
shootdowns, that a lot of the targets were on a high arc. That's not my understanding of how
cruise missiles are supposed to be flying in the target area.
What I learned in many years of travel is that politicians in most of they world are
profoundly aware of the long game. In NA (sorry Mexico) they seldom think past the next poll
and never past the next round of elections. Sadly, it seems many commentators here reflect
the same conclusion when they cannot see the long game that must be played to allow the
empire to collapse. There will be thrashing about as the beast gets hyped with its' own
version of weaponized LSD (MSM fear-mongering) and inevitably there will be casualties. No
amount of showdown force will help while the beast is thrashing - it is impossible to
constrain a person in the middle of a fit - and the patience to allow the episode to pass is
exemplary. and necessary if we are to have a future with hope.
Putin and Xi are playing the long game, with profound grief it is Syria that bears the
brunt of the thrashing. May it end quickly
a. non-lethal but incapacitating
b. hard to make a lethal overdose - safe for incapacitations, Skripals could get high dose to
be incapacitated for many days, but suffer no permanent damage that was described for victims
of "novichok" accidents -- like malfunction of the lab hood.
c. delayed action
d. very durable when spread on surfaces, water resistant -- English rain would not be a
problem, and it would be detectable weeks after.
It is manifestly not an assassination weapon, but it could be considered to incapacitate
terrorists or defenders in bunkers or tunnels, a ship crew etc., together with hostages,
civilians etc.
Paul@129 - Old Microbiologist and others are really the ones to ask but
AFIK, a BZ molecule and FOLIANT nerve agents are entirely unrelated
animals in a chemical sense. The only commonality comes when you
consider them under the CWC's "certain toxic chemicals and their
precursors" schedules. The OPCW considers certain incapacitating agents,
including BZ, as potential chemical weapons. BZ is listed as a Schedule
2
Toxic Chemical. 'Novichoks' would be the higher risk/no non-CW use Schedule
1 list.
As far as the UK and OPCW parties playing deception by substitution or
deception by omission in their public statements? I think that's exactly
what Lavrov is hinting at. The UK is implying that only one chemical
toxin - a nerve agent - was found and is being discussed. In hindsight,
the odd use of 'military grade' might just mean 'weaponized'. In the case
of BZ, the powder has to be micronized (ground up in a jet mill) to some
ridiculously tiny size - like a micron - to travel deep into the lungs, but
not so tiny that it is immediately exhaled. I imagine the purity can only
be figured out by having enough undegraded substance to analyze. That's
nearly impossible with a nerve agent with a half-life of hours. BZ has
a half-life of weeks.
No idea if the two can be/were used together or separately or why they
would even do that. The mere presence of both is what's interesting.
If they found both Novichok-whatever AND BZ, then the whole 'Made in Russia'
claim falls apart. It doesn't mean the UK or US absolutely made it either, but
sort of levels off the playing field. The fact that they are trying to keep
everything about BZ secret means they were clearly being deceptive in order
to blame Russia based on just the 'Novichok' part.
Now whether Lavrov's suggestion of BZ is accurate or whether the OPCW or
UK will ever reveal the secret details remains to be seen.
The Russians explicitly state that the Swiss specialists found an "A-234 type" nerve agent
in the samples, along with the BZ. The "A-234" is suspicious because it is a volatile
substance, but was found in its "initial state (pure form and high concentration)" as well as
with products of its decomposition. BZ better fits what happened to the Skripals. A-234 would
not have remained in a pure state for so long -- and would have quickly killed the
Skripals.
This makes the Spiez Labs statement sound even more extraordinarily coy than it did in the
first place. It doesn't say that Spiez found a "Novichok"; it says Spiez trusts that Portdon
Down did.
This seems to come down -- yet again -- to that word "Novichok." My reading: Spiez found,
along with the BZ, an A-234-like compound, but did not want to get into a public argument
about whether or not it was the precise compound developed long ago by the Soviet Union and
loosely identified by some as one of the "Novichoks" (newcomers).
The NYT's Best-Sellers lists undoubtedly includes one of my old favorites:
The US Army's Medical Management of Chemical Casualties Handbook. Just the
thing to curl up with before nodding off in your medically-induced coma.
Here's the
14 pages on BZ, but none of you are allowed to
read it - unless you voted for Trump.
There is no novichok. from the files....
In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve agents,
'Novichoks' (newcomer), was developed in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of the
'Foliant' programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive
countermeasures. Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly
originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent
confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published.
(Black, 2016)
"... But when such poison gas attacks are mere false flags, or by the new term, "false news", and are used to provoke war, perhaps an all annihilating war, then humanity has turned to what it never should have become – a lowly-lowly herd of brainless zombies. ..."
"... And the saga continues. The saga to drum up war. That's the purpose of it all. Nothing else – Russia, the evil nation, led by an evil leader, must be subdued and conquered. ..."
"... a totally and unprofessionally staged event. As Russian military quickly discovered and reported. ..."
"... The western aggressors, who seek a reason to mass bomb Syria into even more rubble, causing even more death and destitution ..."
"... the US economy is based on war, is based on weapon manufacturing and international banking which finances weapon manufacturing and the exploitation of mineral resources coveted by weapon manufacturing. ..."
"... But, please, do take all your fakeness, from money, to lies, to hypocrisy and more lies and coercion and sanctions and blackmail with you – never to surface again. And give peace a chance – for those who survive your (almost) terminal assault on humanity. ..."
Poison gas is not only deadly, it often provokes a slow suffocating death. That, perpetrated
on innocent children, is particularly cruel.
But when such poison gas attacks are mere false flags, or by the new term, "false news",
and are used to provoke war, perhaps an all annihilating war, then humanity has turned to what
it never should have become – a lowly-lowly herd of brainless zombies.
Is that what we have become – brainless, greedy, selfish beings, no sense of
solidarity, no respect for other beings; I am not even talking about humans, but any living
being.
Poison gas, the weapon of choice for fear.
Poisoning in Salisbury of the former Russian double-agent, Sergei Skripal and his daughter,
Yulia, visiting her dad from Moscow. Poisoning with a nerve gas, called Novichok that was
allegedly made in Russia. In the meantime, we know that nerve gas made in the former Soviet
Union, now non-existent in Russia, was military grade and deadly. The gas used for the alleged
attack was not deadly. We also know by now that the UK – all of their highest officials,
from PM May down the ladder, lied so miserably that they will have a hard time recovering. It
will backfire. Unlike the foreign secretary, Johnson boy pretended their secret bio-gas /
bio-weapon laboratory Porton Down, just 13 km down the road from Salisbury, where the pair was
allegedly found unconscious on a park bench, assured him the gas was made in Russia. Alas, the
laboratories chief chemists testified later to the media that they could not be sure that the
substance was made in Russia. No, of course not.
In fact, Porton Down, working in close collaboration with the CIA, is a highly sophisticated
chemical warfare facility that can easily make the gas themselves – at the grades they
please, deadly or not so deadly, if it should serve a "false news" purpose – which this
did.
Were father and daughter indeed poisoned? – This is a legitimate question. Who has
seen them since the alleged poisoning occurred on 28 March? – They disappeared from the
public eye. Apparently, they are both recovering, Yulia having been released from hospital a
few days ago, but has not been seen by anyone in public, nor been able to talk to the media,
lest she could say "something" the public is not allowed to know. Her father is also recovering
and may be released soon – released from where? – Is this all a farce?
An aunt talked to Yulia from Moscow, where she noticed that Yulia was not free to talk. The
aunt wanted to visit her niece in the UK but was obviously denied a visa.
Where are father and daughter? – Washington has "offered" them a new home and new
identity in the US, to avoid further poisoning attempts how ridiculous! A blind man or woman
must see that this is another farce, or more correctly, an outright abduction. The two won't
have a chance to resist. They are just taken away – not to talk anymore to anyone ever.
– That's the way the story goes. The lies are protected, and the "Russia did it" syndrome
will prevail – prevail in the dumb folded public, in the herd of pigs that we all have
become, as Goebbels would say.
And the saga continues. The saga to drum up war. That's the purpose of it all. Nothing
else – Russia, the evil nation, led by an evil leader, must be subdued and
conquered. But the empire needs the public for their support. And the empire is almost
there. It disposes of a vicious media corporate army – that lies flagrantly about
anything that money can buy. It's like spitting in the face of the world, and nobody seems to
care, or worse, even to notice.
* * *
On the other side of the Mediterranean is Syria. A vast and noble country, Syria,
with a leader who truly loves his people and country, a leader who has despite a foreign
induced war – not civil war – a proxy war, instigated and funded by
Washington and its vassal allies in Europe and the Middle East; Syria, a highly educated
socialist country that has shared the benefit of her resources, free education, free medical
services, free basic infrastructure, with her people. This Syria must fall. Such strength
cannot be tolerated by the all-dominating west. Like Iraq and Libya, also socialist countries
once-upon-a-time, and like Syria, secular Muslim nations, sharing their countries wealth with
the people, such countries must fall.
According to Pentagon planners and those Zion-neofascist thinktanks that designed the PNAC
(Plan for a New American Century), as the chief instrument of US foreign policy, we know since
Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied commander and Chief of NATO in Europe (1997-2000)
talked to Democracy Now in 2007, saying that within 5 years seven countries must fall, one of
them is Syria.
Since 2011, the Syrian people have been bombarded by US and NATO and Saudi funded
terrorists, causing tens of thousands of deaths, and millions of refugees. Now, even more
blatantly, US bases are vying to occupying the northern third of Syria, totally illegally, but
nobody says beep. Not even the UN.
The recent fake gas attack on Douma outside of Damascus, has allegedly killed 80 to 120
people, mostly women and children.
Of course, that sells best in the propaganda theatre – women and children. Strangely,
like last time the infamous White Helmets discovered the gas victims, including a gas
canister-like bomb laying on a bed, having been shot through the roof of a house a totally
and unprofessionally staged event. As Russian military quickly discovered and reported.
They called on an independent investigation, one that could not be bought and corrupted by
Washington. President Assad invited a team of investigators to inspect the scene.
Instead of heeding this invitation, Trump, the bully, calls Mr. Assad an "animal" and a
"monster", twittering his brainless aggressions throughout the world. Tell you what, Mr. Trump,
Bashar al-Assad is a far better human being than you are a monster. You and your dark handlers
don't even deserve being called human. Mr. Assad has regard and respect for his people,
attempts to protect them and has so far succeeded with the help of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah,
recovering the last bits of Syrian territory from the terrorist, except of course, the northern
part, where the chief terrorist and the world's only rogue state has itself installed, the US
of A. – Why in the world would Mr. Assad choose to gas his own people? Especially, when
he is winning the war? – People, ask yourself, cui bono (who benefits?) and the
answer is simple: The western aggressors, who seek a reason to mass bomb Syria into even
more rubble, causing even more death and destitution . That's who.
While you, Donald, and those monsters that direct you from behind the scenes, have no, but
absolutely no respect for your people, for any people on this globe, for that matter, not even
for your kind, for your greed-no-end kind of elite, as you bring the world to the brink of an
all-destructive, all killing annihilating war.
Since the other fake event, 9/11, we are, of course, already in a "soft version" of WWIII,
but that's not enough, the United States needs a hard war, so badly it doesn't shy away from
destroying itself. That's how blinded your own propaganda has made you Americans, you generals,
you corporate "leaders" (sic-sic) – and all you Congress puppets. That is the sheer
truth. You better read this and wake up. Otherwise your dead sentence is hastened by your own
greed and ignorance.
Both Russia and the US drafted a Security Council Resolution – which of course are
both not approved, with Nikki Haley lambasting Russia, accusing them of being responsible for
the countless deaths in Syria – pointing again to the children and women, making up the
majority. Again, it sells best in the world of psychological propaganda, while evil Nikki Haley
knows very well who has caused all these deaths by the millions, destitution and refugees by
the millions, tens of millions throughout the Middle East and the world – her own
country, directly or through NATO, the European puppets allies and proxy wars, paid and funded
by Washington and by elbow-twisting her vassals.
On 9 April – UNSC – while Nikki Haley, repeats and over-repeats her lies and
fake accusations, the Russian Ambassador to the UN, Mr. Vassily Nebenzia, listens. And then in
a twenty-minute statement of sheer intelligence, he dismantles all the lies, and lays bare the
truth, about all the fakeness being played out internationally. The depth with which he
addresses the assembly is concise and so brilliant, none of his UK, French and German
counterparts could have ever come close to a statement of this magnitude and excellence. Even
Ms. Haley can't help glancing over ever-so
often to Vassily Nebenzia, as he speaks . Her eyes reveal some kind of hidden admiration
for what he says. – After all, she can't be as dumb as she is paid for to look and
sound.
By now anybody who dares not just reading and listening to the mainstream presstitute "fake
news", but has the courage to dig into the truth news, RT, TeleSur, CGTN, PressTV – and a
few others, or websites like Global Research, The Saker Blog, ICH, NEO, Greanville Post
CounterCurrent, Dissident Voice and many other trustworthy sources – knows about the lies
and the only, but the very only purpose these false flags cum false news serve:
Provoking a war with Russia, subjugating and dividing Syria, and the Middle East and becoming
the hegemonic masters of the universe.
For the simple reason, and hardly anybody talks or writes about it – the US
economy is based on war, is based on weapon manufacturing and international banking which
finances weapon manufacturing and the exploitation of mineral resources coveted by weapon
manufacturing.
The entire war industry with all its associated civil services and industries, of banking,
electronics, aviation, mining . makes up more than half of the US GDP – but of course,
it's never broken down that way. The chosen people will control the world. Well, they do
already – financially at least the western part of our globe. But it's not enough. They
will not stop, before they burry themselves in their own-dug graves, or rather in one massive
mass-grave. But, please, do take all your fakeness, from money, to lies, to hypocrisy and
more lies and coercion and sanctions and blackmail with you – never to surface again. And
give peace a chance – for those who survive your (almost) terminal assault on
humanity.
Can't recall where I read this info, but elder Skripal was being surveilled by FSB cause
working with MI6 and Ukrainian regime. So, he was being watched, but just how closely?
Perhaps to the point where Russia knows UK's lying. In other words, Mr. Skripal remains in
employ of MI6.
Will Russia be able to prove its claim of British involvement? If so could it free Yulia
Scripal?
No way that Yulia Skripal is going to be released. Too dangerous. Absolutely
everyone who was directly involved has been taken off-line, and not allowed to speak. The
doctor who wrote the letter to the Times, the personnel of the hospital who treated the
victims, the cop, and the Skripals themselves. No public word from any. It's a big effort by
the authorities, which shows how sensitive they are.
That would make scene and tie in with a couple of things i read/saw in the early days,
sadly also can't recall where. That Mr Skripal was meeting regularly with MI6/5 handlers and
was giving lectures to the military, which of course may explain why he is living in British
military heartland.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has confirmed that the
Skirpals were
poisoned with a specific "toxic chemical," as alleged by the British government. Both
public statement and classified version, however, decline to offer any specific theories on the
origin of the poison.
That's a problem for Britain, which has been blaming the Russian government for the
poisoning since long before testing began. They identified the poison as Novichuk, and
concluded it was Russia's fault, despite there being other nations with access to the
chemical.
British officials were quick to claim the OPCW report as vindication, since the classified
version reportedly contained the chemical formula for the poison. Yet without any evidence on
where it came from, they're really no better off than before.
The Skirpal poisonings were used by the British government to take major diplomatic measures
against Russia. Russia has denied anything to do with the incident, and offered to help
investigate. Britain has spurned that offer and continued to blame them.
Regarding fukus shenanigans,
How could we omit the CIA/MI6 'greatest hit ', the 1965 genocide of 3M Indonesians
'leftists suspects' , The mother of all regime changes ???
The Skriptal caper looks like kindergarten stuff compared to that 1965
genocide.
fukus orchestrated that bloodbath to remove prez Sukarno cuZ he's pro Beijing. MI6 planted disinfo in HK media about an imminent China sponsored coup , supported by
ethnic Chinese fifth columns.
CIA planted 'evidence' of Chinese supplied arms , to be conveniently 'discovered' by Indon
police . [1]
That devious plot provoked a bloodbath by jihadists death squads against the PKI communists
members and ethnic Chinese indons.
CIA whistle blower, John Mcgehee,
The Indonesian covert action of 1965, reported by Ralph McGehee, who was in that area
division, and had documents on his desk, in his custody about that operation. He said that
one of the documents concluded that this was a model operation that should be copied
elsewhere in the world. Not only did it eliminate the effective communist party
(Indonesian communist party), it also eliminated the entire segment of the population
that tended to support the communist party – the ethnic Chinese, Indonesian Chinese.
And the CIA's report put the number of dead at 800,000 killed. And that was one covert
action. We're talking about 1 to 3 million people killed in these things.
[2]
[1]
U.S. officials were particularly interested in linking the September 30th plotters to
Beijing. They helped to spread stories about China's alleged involvement and reported on
caches of weapons purportedly "discovered" by the Indonesian army with the hammer and
sickle conveniently stamped on them. "
We have bonanza chance to nail chicoms on disastrous events in Indonesia ," Green
wrote the State Department. He urged a "continuation [of] covert propaganda" as one of the
"best means of spreading [the] idea of chicom complicity
'Company ' veterans are so proud of that CIA'S greatest hit,
they still reminiscent fondly over it around the water cooler, until this very day.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Your decrying confirms that the British has done something wrong and they did poison
Skripals in Salisbury England. This unscrupulous false flag op, crying foul and smearing the
innocent for the crime they committed relentlessly is a special signature of the
British/Anglo culture and trait. The following history provides the evidence the above is not
allegation but fact.
Nov 24, 1784, a British gunner on the ship "Lady Hughes" fired cannon against Chinese law
and killed two Chinese in Guangzhou. The British refused to hand over the gunner to the
Chinese authority for trail and called up few hundred armed sailors to stop the Chinese
authority from searching the perpetrator in the British warehouses and living compound.
Anyhow the British was outwitted and the perpetrator was tried by the Chinese, convicted
and executed in according to the Chinese law; during that time the British law also gave
death penalty for the same crime.
The British had been trampling other people's sovereignty and law like India with impunity
for a couple of hundreds of years already by then. Never a British was tried and punished for
the crimes, murder or not, they committed since they supplanted the Spanish. British viewed
themselves above all human beings and not bound by any other people's law. The execution of
the gunner made the British Council of Supercargos feel humiliated and devastated as well as
being impotent and incompetent in the eyes of their superiors in London and their peers
(other Europeans) in Guangzhou.
In order to cover their crimes and failures, the megalomaniac British decried Chinese
legal system was barbaric and sanguinary relentlessly like Anonymous[338] is doing here to
Russia. All the Europeans jumped on the British mudslinging bandwagon for the effort to gain
extraterritoriality in China, so they could steal, loot, plunder, etc. Chinese wealth with
impunity like Elizabeth I's Sea Dogs. Soon after the "Lady Hughes" incident the view that
entire Chinese legal system was barbaric and sanguinary or there is no law in China become
the dominant representation of China ever since.
The British then engineered Opium Wars for the vengeance of their "Lady Hughes"
humiliation, and set to destroy the last nation denying their piracy and other unscrupulous
deeds on the moral high ground. If history can be any guidance, the Anglo is not going to
stop at smearing Russia; more vicious plot is going to come.
Bernhard over at his blog, Moon of Alabama, is advocating for the poisoning being real,
but being traceable to shellfish poisoning. The Skripals had a shellfish dish at a local
restaurant about 40 minutes prior to their discovery on the park bench. While very serious,
and potentially fatal, if addressed with respiratory and cardiac support in a timely fashion,
this poisoning is survivable.
The toxin involved in classic shellfish poisoning is a naturally occurring
neurotoxin, Saxitoxin, which agent remains toxic even after boiling or steaming, exactly the
food preparation techniques likely to be employed in preparing shellfish for consumption.
This is, indeed, what makes it so pernicious.
That the Brits, primed for lies in aid of the Hate On The Rooskies campaign, lit on their
story is unsurprising. Of course, the denial of the authorities at the hospital that
anyone , the Skripals and the supposedly affected policeman, was suffering from
exposure to a chemical weapon, along with the refusal of Porton Down officials to lend
credence to the hoo haw that this was surely traceable to Novichok series chemical agents
identifiably produced by the Russians kind of shot some holes in the big lies.
Anyway, cast an eye at the post at Moon of Alabama. Bernhard is pretty damn good at
winnowing facts from the chaff of propaganda, and when he makes a mistake, he openly
confesses it instead of doubling down on a falsehood.
"... Repeated requests by Russia to obtain a sample of the alleged nerve agent for testing have been rejected by the British government in spite of the fact that a military grade nerve agent would have surely killed both the Skripals as well as anyone else within 100 yards. ..."
"... It does look rather like those Syrian chemical weapon attacks that happen whenever the rebels are about to be defeated. ..."
"... Actually, I think that in the end Russia has to thank the British for sending a great message to her traitors and gangsters. ..."
Moving along to the present, we have Prime Minister Theresa May. May has been in serious
trouble, politically speaking. After losses suffered in the recent parliamentary elections, she
is clinging to power and is increasingly unpopular even within her own Conservative Party. So
what do you do when you are in trouble at home? You create a foreign crisis that you have to
deal with. If you are someone as venal as former American President and bottom feeder Bill
Clinton you accomplish that end by firing off a few cruise missiles at a pharmaceutical plant
in Sudan and at some mud huts in Afghanistan. If you are Theresa May, you up the ante
considerably, coming up with a powerful enemy who is threatening you, enabling you to appear
both resolute and strong in confronting a formidable foe. That is precisely what we have been
seeing over the past month relating to the alleged poisoning of former Russian intelligence
agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
There is quite a bit that is odd about the Skripal case. Even the increasingly neoconnish
Guardian newspaper has conceded that "the British case [against Russia] has so far relied more
heavily in public on circumstantial evidence and secret intelligence." And secret intelligence,
so called, has all too often been the last refuge of a scoundrel whenever a government is
selling snake oil to the public. In this case, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson rushed to
judgement on Russia less than forty-eight hours after the Skripals were found unconscious on a
bench in Salisbury England, too soon for any chemical analysis of the alleged poisoning to have
taken place.
Theresa May addressed Parliament shortly thereafter to blame the Kremlin and demand a
Russian official response to the event in 36 hours, even though she had to prevaricate
significantly, saying that the apparent poisoning was "very likely" caused by a made-in-Russia
nerve agent referred to by its generic name Novichok. She nevertheless rallied the backbenchers
in Parliament, who responded with a lot of hearty "Hear! Hear!" endorsements. When Labour
Leader Jeremy Corbyn attempted to slow the express train down by suggesting that it might be
wise to wait in see what the police investigation uncovered, he was hooted down. The British
media was soon on board with a vengeance, spreading the government line that such a highly
sensitive operation would require the approval of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin himself. The
expulsion of Russian diplomats soon followed.
One of the strangest aspects of the Skripal case is what is going on now that daughter Yulia
will soon be out of the hospital and Sergei is no longer in critical condition. A cousin
Viktoria Skripal has offered to fly in from Moscow to provide support for her family, but it is
believed that she will not be able to receive a visa from the British. Russian television aired
a recording of a phone call between the two cousins in which Yulia said that she was
disoriented but improving and that neither she nor her father had suffered permanent damage
from the poisoning. The call ended abruptly and Viktoria Skripal believes that it was scripted
by the British government on a controlled phone line.
Repeated requests by Russia to obtain a sample of the alleged nerve agent for testing
have been rejected by the British government in spite of the fact that a military grade nerve
agent would have surely killed both the Skripals as well as anyone else within 100 yards.
As the latest British account of the location of the alleged poison places it on the door
handle of the Scripals' residence, the timetable element is also unconvincing. That means that
the two would have spent three hours, including a stop at a pub and lunch, before succumbing on
a park bench. Military grade nerve agents kill instantly.
A request to have the testing done by the politically neutral Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is in progress, but there is little enthusiasm from the British
side, which does not want a Russian observer to participate in the process. The May government
has already established its own narrative and certainly would have plenty to hide if the whole
affair turns out to be fabricated. And fabricated it might have been as the nerve agent, if it
actually exists, could have been manufactured almost anywhere.
The head of Britain's own chemical weapons facility Porton Down has contradicted claims made
by May, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, and British Ambassador in Moscow Laurie Bristow. The
lab's Chief Executive Gary Aitkenhead has testified that he does not know if the nerve agent
was actually produced in Russia, a not surprising observation as the chemical formula was
revealed to the public in a scientific paper in 1992 and there are an estimated twenty
countries capable of producing it. There are also possible stocks of Novichok remaining in
independent countries that once were part of the Soviet Union, to include Russia's enemy du
jour Ukraine, while a false flag operation by the British themselves, the CIA or Mossad, is not
unthinkable.
The resort to official Orwellian govspeak by the British is remarkable throughout the
process, but is particularly painful reading regarding the treatment of the Skripals' pets, two
guinea pigs and a cat. A spokesman for the Department of the Environment reported that "The
property in Wiltshire was sealed as part of the police investigation. When a vet was able to
access the property, two guinea pigs had sadly died. A cat was also found in a distressed state
and a decision was taken by a veterinary surgeon to euthanize the animal to alleviate its
suffering. This decision was taken in the best interests of the animal and its welfare."
So the presence of squadrons of technicians and cops in the residence did not permit anyone
to take a minute to feed the cat and guinea pigs. And the cat was killed as a purely
humanitarian gesture – it's "best interest" was apparently to die. Sounds familiar,
doesn't it?
Finally, the best argument against the British government's evasions about what took place
in Salisbury on March 4 th remains the question of motive. So the British would have
one believe that Vladimir Putin personally ordered the killing of a former British double agent
who had been released from a Kremlin prison in a spy swap and who was no longer capable of
doing any damage to Russia. He did that in spite of the fact that he had an election coming up
and would be the host of the World Cup in the summer, an event that he would want to go
smoothly. So he deliberately shot himself in the foot on both counts, allegedly because he
wanted to send a message to traitors and also because just can't help himself since he is a
vindictive KGB type whose impulses are pure evil. Does that make sense to the reader? It
doesn't to me. Mulegino1 ,
April 10,
2018 at 4:49 am GMT
A great man once wrote that the "big lie" had a force of credulity among the broad masses, as
the latter were wont to engage in lying about minor quotidian matters of little or no
significance while the big lies were engaged in by the mainstream press, dominated by the
usual tribal suspects...
But here's something else I don't quite understand:
To be sure, President Donald Trump has been exceptional in that he has followed through
on some of the promises he made in his campaign, insisting periodically that he has to do
what he said he would do. Unfortunately, those choices he has made to demonstrate his
accountability to his supporters have been terrible, including moving the U.S. Embassy in
Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, threatening to end the Iran nuclear agreement and
building a wall along the Mexican border.
Now, Trump is a sense-free random number generator, I will fully agree. But you list three
"choices he has made" that you describe as "terrible:" the US embassy move to Jerusalem, the
threats against Iran, and "building a wall along the Mexican border." The first two Trump has
done, and I agree that "terrible" is the right word to describe them. The third thing -- the
border wall -- he hasn't done. And had he done so, it wouldn't have been
"terrible" it would have been the obvious and sensible thing to do. I think he clearly isn't
serious about building the wall, as far as one can discern the intentions of so random an
individual. But your list presents three items in parallel, with one item being quite unlike
the others.
Logic escapes the rabid Neocons, anti Christian Russia crowd and their paid henchmen, or
henchgirls , the likes of Linda Graham. (Grin) Unfortunatley the now feckless Trump is
going to go along with this British yarn and the Neocon wish of destroying Syria.
BTW as of this post your site has still not recovered from the cyber attack it had
today.
"So the British would have one believe that Vladimir Putin personally ordered the killing of
a former British double agent who had been released from a Kremlin prison in a spy swap and
who was no longer capable of doing any damage to Russia. He did that in spite of the fact
that he had an election coming up and would be the host of the World Cup in the summer, an
event that he would want to go smoothly. So he deliberately shot himself in the foot on both
counts, allegedly because he wanted to send a message to traitors and also because just can't
help himself since he is a vindictive KGB type whose impulses are pure evil. Does that make
sense to the reader?"
Absolutely. Under the Putin regime, the body count of his enemies has grown. He put the
"de Thirty-four Russian journalists in the last decade just somehow "died". Occam's Razor
applies here.
Consider also that Putin played a major role in the Russian "Deep State".
It makes complete sense if one simply looks at the British Establishment's prior behavior of
intentionally starting world wars at the order of the Society of the Elect. It's all in the
CFR's archives. Their guilt in starting WW1 is emphatically admitted and documented in
roughly the first 200 pages of the following book. http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Tragedy_and_Hope.pdf
Who is in the Society of the Elect? Read the back pages of http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/The_Anglo-American_Establishment.pdf
We have moved way beyond the Skripals case now. Simply put, if US shoots in Syria, Russia
will shoot back this time, yes back at US. USS Donald Duck has been placed as a bait to be
sent to the bottom of Mediterrenain sea by the Russians, similar to Arizona et al at Pearl
Harbour.
Many dissenter websites are currently under attack by the cyber forces of the Western
regimes and Israel, one of them being this one. Another site under attack is my favorite
johnhelmer.com. In addition to saying that he is under attack, the current message from John
is:
WHEN THE RULE OF LAW WAS DESTROYED IN SALISBURY, LONDON AND THE HAGUE, AND THE RULE OF FRAUD
DECLARED IN WASHINGTON, THAT LEAVES ONLY THE RULE OF FORCE IN THE WORLD. THE STAVKA MET IN
MOSCOW ON GOOD FRIDAY AND IS READY. THE FOREIGN MINISTRY ANNOUNCED ON SUNDAY "THE GRAVEST
CONSEQUENCES". THIS MEANS ONE AMERICAN SHOT AT A RUSSIAN SOLDIER, THEN WE ARE AT WAR. NOT
INFOWAR, NOT CYBERWAR, NOT ECONOMIC WAR, NOT PROXY WAR. WORLD WAR.
The West is utterly bankrupt, morally as well as financially and we are experiencing the
Western remedial plan and actions – war!
"In 2016 an official British government inquiry determined that Bush and Blair had indeed
together rushed to war. The Global Establishment has nevertheless rewarded Tony Blair for his
loyalty with Clintonesque generosity. He has enjoyed a number of well-paid sinecures and is
now worth in excess of $100 million."
– The character of Blair and the Establishment is well established: Blair is a major
war criminal supported by the major war profiteers. His children and grandchildren are a
progeny of a horrible criminal.
What is truly amazing is the complacency of the Roman Catholic Church that still has not
excommunicated and anathematized the mass murderer. Blair should be haunted and hunted for
his crimes against humanity.
With age, Blair's face has become expressively evil. His wife Theresa Cara "Cherie" Blair
shows the same acute ugliness coming from her rotten soul of a war profiteer.
Keep in mind how long ago all this is: Skripal was recruited around 1990 and arrested in
2004. Guess that the Russian attitude towards Skripal took the chaos of the 90′s as
mitigating circumstances into account.
Skripal served his sentence of only 13 years till 2010 when he was pardoned and given the
option to leave. Russia did not revoke Skripal's citizenship. The UK issued Skripal a
passport too. On arrival in the UK Skripak was extensively debriefed by UK intelligence
services. Skripal has lived for 8 years in the UK now.
And now out of the blue this incident nicely dovetailing with May ratcheted up anti Russia
language only a few months before this false flag incident and the rapidly failing traction
of the Steele/Orbis/MI6 instigated Russia collusion story on the basis of that fake Trump
Dossier. By the way Orbis affiliated Steele and Miller have been among Skripal's
handlers.
Good article. The Skipnal affair has been an utter disgrace from day one. May & Boris are
a shame on the UK fully reminesent of that utter dog, Blair. The fact that the msm still
babbles on about Russia & Skipnal is indicative of their monumental contempt for the
public & factual balanced reporting .well what's new, I guess ?
Paul Craig Roberts is correct when quoting The Saker:
"The Russian view is simple: the West is ruled by a gang of thugs supported by an
infinitely lying and hypocritical media while the general public in the West has been
hopelessly zombified." -- The Saker
These ridiculous, suicidal gas attacks by Assad seem to coincide not only with battleground
victories against the head-choppers, but co-incidentally with Israel's murderous attacks on
unarmed Palestinians "throwing stones".
What nobody seems to have picked up is the emphasis – and red lines – on Gas;
gas, gas attacks. Why is gas so much worse than being dismembered, disembowelled, and
mutilated by high explosives? Certainly I would favour unconsciousness and death by gas
before being smashed to pieces by depleted uranium.
These relentlessly repeated claims are an exercise with the dual purpose of providing a
subliminal message about the greatest tragedy in human history, repeated ad nauseam. The
massive 'gassing' of European Jews some 65 years ago. Lest we forget.
Until some kind of sanity returns to this planet and war mongering gangsters like the Bush
and Clinton Mobs, Blair, Obama and a host of Pentagon generals, along with their boot-licking
MSM are indicted, tried for crimes against humanity and war crimes, found guilty and
sentences carried out, there will be no peace on Earth, just an endless series of False
Flags, hysterical reactions by the ones who were behind the False Flags and more wars.
Balfour already in 1907 announced war against Germany: Patrick J. Buchanan, 'Churchill,
Hitler and "The unnecessary war", How Britain lost its empire and the west lost the world',
New York, 2008, Balfour, to US ambassador Henry White, 1907, page 48/ 49
Because if it is a put up job by the CIA or MI6 part of the plot would have been that they
weren't actually killed. And if the perpetrators were other than those what motive would the
government have for pretending they were alive?
It does look rather like those Syrian chemical weapon attacks that happen whenever the
rebels are about to be defeated.
I am pretty sure that it was not ordered within the British government and that most of
the British government don't know where it came from, but are willing to believe it was
Russia.
While the CIA does have plenty of form on assassinations, the risk if they were found to
be assassinating in Britain seems quite high due to the close CIA links with the UK
intelligence sector. But CIA agents could have paid someone else to do it.
Mossad is the one group that can act freely in the UK, has a record of assassinating
scientists, engineers etc here, and unlike CIA, can take the risk of being caught. So it's a
possibility – OTOH Israel has shown a lot less anti-Russian hatred than the US Deep
State has.
Normally I'd assume it was indeed Russia – I thought there was plenty of evidence
the Polonium poisoning was Russia – and it still seems possible, but US or Mossad must
be at least equally likely in this case. It's just possible it could have been British
initiated but I doubt it.
I do think it's most likely the person who actually poisoned them was not an employee of
any agency.
Theresa May as more evil than Bill Clinton? That will sound odd to some, but I think it is
true. Hillary is the pure evil half of the Clinton marriage. Bill is simply charming and
filled with a desire to amass enough power to have a group adore him as he finds new panties
to explore.
May is English, and she has the very long line of Brit Empire secret service evil at her
disposal. And her move is a bold one. What it means is that she is signaling that at least if
she is PM, the UK could replace the US as Fearless Leader of the actual New World
Order...
THANK YOU, anyone who give Chump credit for anything, is either a useful idiot, or
controlled opposition.
Trump is, like Obama and H. Clinton (and Bush and B. Clinton Reagan though total control
of US government had not yet occurred then) a Zionist agent.
The media is very good at giving these traitors cover, Obama was the "peace
President/Constitutional scholar, as he made war and shredded the Constitution...
I challenge anyone to name a modern war prosecuted by the US government and its allies that
did not involve at its root the direct fabrication of blatant lies on enormous levels, both
as a casus belli and also to manipulate public opinion in favor of hostilities.
The clandestine activity represented by these *provocations* isn't even good spycraft. The
Skripal case and the latest use of chlorine gas in Syria are risible, clumsy, amateur
attempts to wangle the empire into war that the callowest rube could see through. And yet,
it's working its magic on the media. The politicians, suborned by the war machine, give
unanimous bipartisan assent.
Saddam's WMD, Gulf of Tonkin, etc., etc. And now a ridiculous false flag attack in Syria.
Did it take place at all? But the narrative is all. The press in the USA is more effectively
controlled and conformist than in Germany in the late 1930s and nobody goes around beating up
journalists or sending them to a KZ. The Syrian Gov't is winning the civil war, things are
going well but what Assad really needs is to have the crap bombed out of his military by
Uncle Sam. What transparent bullshit.
Churchill advocated both the use of gas as well as terror, so I find it interesting that
so many suddenly tender hearted "officials" and war criminals now affect squeamishness
regarding the use of it, yet fail to condemn Israel for its hideous, terroristic use of white
phosphorous among other crimes
Winston S. Churchill: departmental minute (Churchill papers: 16/16) 12 May 1919 War
Office I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas.
I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas gasses can be used which cause
great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror
from Companion Volume 4, Part 1 of the official biography, WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, by
Martin Gilbert (London: Heinemann, 1976)
The press in the USA is more effectively controlled and conformist than in Germany in
the late 1930s
Who controlled the press there and then?
What can be said about the control and conformity of the Soviet, British and American
press of the time?
and nobody goes around beating up journalists or sending them to a KZ.
That's probably because the usual thugs don't need to do that any longer since they
control virtually everything.
A couple of anecdotes to illustrate my point.:
2 of the reasons we don't hear much about mobsters these days are that the press and
judiciary are owned by them and if you do get something published, you run the risk of
getting snuffed. They probably don't stop at mere blinding anymore.
Victor Riesel was an American newspaper journalist and columnist who specialized in
news related to labor unions. In 1956 a mobster threw sulfuric acid in his face on a
public street in Chicago causing his permanent blindness.
"Treason is a strong word, but not too strong to characterize the situation in which the
Senate is the eager, resourceful, and indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to
the American people as any invading army could be." This indictment launched a
nine-part series of articles entitled "Treason of the Senate."
-David Graham Phillips, Cosmopolitan magazine, February 1906
In 1911 Phillips was shot multiple t imes by Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, a
Harvard-educated scion of a prominent Maryland family ,at Gramercy Park in New York
City.
Good article.
Still, you authors need to start digging deeper. Trump and his Allies are putting on an
amazing show / act to distract their ( and Humanities going back generations) hidden enemies.
The Bad Guys have for millennia weoponized information, convincing the public, reporters,
and journalists that the rabbit hole ends here, that they don't need to dig any deeper, to
just accept this slightly deeper layer of the onion. That warm and fuzzy feeling from
scratching just a little deeper into to information matrix, isn't enough anymore. You guys
have the intelligence, experience, and ability just do it please!
Actually, I think that in the end Russia has to thank the British for sending a great
message to her traitors and gangsters. Apart from the Skripal case, the UK seems up to
confiscate the wealth Russian expats in the UK looted back home. On the one hand, it's ~
$10bn worth that will be definitely lost for Russia, on the other if the UK's treatment of
Skripal and runaway oligarchs won't heal Russian traitors and gangsters from their blissful
enamourment with England's climate, I don't know what will.
I can't find the comment because the comment archive is down -- I think it was annamaria
who reported that the British were holding assets of Russian oligarchs and that Russia wanted
the funds back. The speculation was that Teresa May would take possession of the assets.
As these two articles state, most of the Russian billionaire oligarchs are Jewish
US Treasury Putin List Features Jewish Billionaires Times of Israel
So at least (conspiracy theory) part of the Skripal scheme is for Teresa May to be an
angel and return their assets to the Jewish billionaires who stole Russian wealth fair and
square.
I am very fond of the British. They have provided a good deal of what makes the US a healthy
and blessed place to live.
But I will admit that I was disappointed in PM Blair on the Iraq invasion and that of
Afghanistan. It seemed so blatantly obvious to me, that I thought there was no way the prime
minister would buy in. I was wrong. But then who would have believed that the Tory's would
abandon natural relations for same sex relations, muchless marriage.
It's unclear how to respond when the leadership is so afraid that they advance anything to
avoid grappling with hard reality. PM May has the hurdle of guiding Great Britain out of the
EU.
I too noticed that and agree with you. Do not understand why the National Guard can only
serve in a supportive, non-enforcement role on the border. Heck, every nation uses its
military to guard its borders. We need to send our military to guard our border. It's really
very simple–no one can enter the US unless they have been admitted legally.
Another thing I don't understand is how these "sanctuary" cities can so blatantly flout
federal law by sheltering illegals from ICE or any federal law enforcement agencies. If any
city does so, the federal government should put them on notice that ALL federal funds will be
cut off.
He makes great points, and I'm encouraged that he's allowed to do so on to a big and
important audience.
I remember when his predecessor, Bill O'Rielly, claimed to have seen the evidence of
Saddam's WMD, and told his audience, on the run up to war, and I was appalled. As indeed, it
turned out he too was lying.
When the ZUSA was entrenched in the highly profitable war on Vietnam, there seemed to be
no way to end it. Protests in the streets and at the universities, and anger at the war and
war pig$ seemed to no avail.
But then a phenomena began. Fragging.
one wonders .
at seven minutes in, Carlson interviews a senator. The senator does his best to lie and
deceive, as only a ZUS senator can. But Tucker eviscerates him on screen.
now if this senator, and others like him, were themselves put into peril by these
serial, treasonous wars for Israel, would they still be so keen to have Americans die,
slaughtering innocent people- to bolster and benefit the main enemy of America; Israel?
I imagine the parent of a young American, who's life was sacrificed to augment the career
of Lindsey Graham. Or other Americans who're fed up with the endless wars for Israel, and are
willing to do something about the treasonous scum who're demanding and foisting all of these
Satanic wars.
Just as Tucker says, any general who advocates for these wars, should be required to
actually visit a battlefield, so too I wonder about the politicians, and how they eventually
have to go home, and live among their constituents. What if some of the worst of them, like
Graham for instance, were to actually suffer some consequence for all the evil he's done, and
continues to do?
Of course I'm not advocating anything illegal. Just ruminating on potential solutions to
the Eternal Wars for Israel – which are nothing more or less than a continuation of the
first two World Wars (for Israel) duh
END the FED!
(or watch your nation bankrupted and looted and made to die for Israel)
Come on yankee , ( as you say USA is a country of unbridled greed. An insatiable appetite
for blood , land , alcohol ,and loot ) . Just return California , Arizona , New Mexico ,
Florida , Nevada , Utah , Colorado and Louisiana to Mexico , and Alaska to Russia ) , and
then, only then , you can talk .
PS , and do not forget to close the 8OO occupation bases the US has around the world , you
will save a lot of money
The intent of my post was to show that the MSM here is conformist and doesn't like to
stray far from what the USG is claiming and what other journalists are writing. Rather than
explore the topics you raise, as worthy of exploration as they might be, I thought I'd offer
what newspapers around the USA were saying about Saddam's WMD after Powell's UNSC speech;
seems a bit more germane.
The Powell evidence will be persuasive to anyone who is still persuadable.
The Wall Street Journal
Piling fact upon fact, photo upon photo Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
methodically demonstrated why Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein remains dangerous to his own
people, Iraq's neighbors
The Los Angeles Times
On Wednesday, America's most reluctant warrior, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell,
presented succinct and damning evidence of Saddam's enormous threat to world peace.
Arizona Republic
Saddam Hussein's illicit arsenal of biological and chemical weapons, as well as the
equally illicit means that he possesses to deliver them, poses a tangible and urgent danger
to U.S. and world security. Millions of innocent lives are at risk.
Dallas Morning News
At some point, the world chooses to believe President George W. Bush and Secretary Powell
or the international community chooses to side with Saddam Hussein and those who broadcast
his lies to the world. Powell has painstakingly presented a strong case against Iraq.
Greenville News/South Carolina
Iraq is busted. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out the case clearly. No one
hearing Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council could doubt Iraq's
actions and intentions.
Jacksonville Times-Union/Florida
The threat is real and at our door. Sept. 11, 2001, stripped away the belief that the
United States can peacefully coexist with evil. Prove it, they said. Powell has.
Charleston Daily Mail/West Virginia
We are a country always loath to fight unless provoked. The reluctance of Americans to
initiate a war needlessly does the nation credit. But this is not a needless war, nor is it
unprovoked. Powell laid out the need, and explained the provocation, in step-by-step fashion
that cannot be refuted without resorting to fantasy.
Chicago Sun-Times
The Dispatch repeatedly has called on the Bush administration to make a compelling case
that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction and hiding these
efforts from U.N. inspectors. Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell made that case
before the Security Council.
Columbus Dispatch
Powell has methodically proved Iraq's failure to comply with U.N. mandates. With each
passing day, Iraq's own choices move it closer to a war that full compliance would
prevent.
Indianapolis Star
Secretary of State Colin Powell's 90-minute presentation to the U.N. Security Council,
buttressed with surveillance photographs and recorded phone conversations, should remove all
doubt that Iraq's Saddam Hussein has developed and hides weapons of mass destruction, in
violation of U.N. resolutions.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Powell's speech to the U.N. Security Council presented not just one 'smoking gun' but a
battery of them, more than sufficient to dispel any lingering doubt about the threat the
Iraqi dictator poses.
Denver Post
The United States has made a compelling case that Iraq has failed to rid itself of weapons
of mass destruction. This failure violates the U.N. Security Council resolution of late last
year which ordered Iraq to disarm. As a consequence and it is a grave one, the Security
Council must act now to disarm Iraq by force.
Salt Lake City Tribune
Powell has connected enough dots to tie Iraq to al-Qaeda and show that this alliance is a
threat to all of Europe as well as the United States.
Manchester Union Leader
In fact, the speech provided proof that Saddam continues to refuse to obey U.N.
resolutions. Any amount of time he has now to comply fully and openly with U.N. demands
should be measured in days or a few weeks – and no longer.
The Skripal affair is better understood in the context of "sir" Savile' knighthood -- when
the influential pedophile had been raping and molesting kids for 40 years and none stood up
to the criminal. The BBC has dutifully refused to publish anything that would upset "sir"
Savile. The Scotland Yard looked the other way -- precisely as the Establishment ordered them
to do. Savile' specialty were orphans. He was the embodiment of British Establishment.
The British Establishment has done with the concepts of honor. The loudest lying voices
against Russia belong either to the whoring "aristocrats," who found that war profiteering
(by any means) pays well, or the opportunistic parvenu like Gavin Williamson representing the
vulgarity and intellectual inadequacy of the Establishment.
the Senate is the eager, resourceful, and indefatigable agent of interests as hostile
to the American people as any invading army could be."
-David Graham Phillips, Cosmopolitan magazine, February 1906
and to think that was over a hundred years ago
they've only gotten better at it with time
if you read The Protocols, one thing that I remember was the contemptuous way it referred
to the goyim as having the minds and souls of beasts. Lumbering, mindless cattle, chewing
their cud in a kind of catatonic stupor.
what else can we conclude about the kind of people who would vote for Lindsey Graham or
John McCain? These guys get reelected again and again.
The saddest and most tragic thing about The Protocols is that the goyim seem to be as
accommodating to the Elders as any farm animal can be. At least a pig might be apprehensive
of the trip to the slaughter house. I remember a video where a pig jumped out of a moving
truck, and walked off. But the goyim suit up their children and hand them over as cannon
fodder, to be slaughtered on behalf of their enemies.
In the last century, there may have been an excuse for not knowing the nature of the ZUS
government, being as ((they)) controlled virtually every source of information.
But today it's all out there. Today everybody knows that all of these wars are for Israel,
at the direct expense of America's blood and treasure and (I won't say good) name.
And yet, (especially from the Christian churches) the call to suit up the young people to
die in more wars- slaughtering innocents – for our enemies, will resound in the
nation.
If I were a British soldier, told to kill some Russian soldier, because Putin is Hitler..
as my daughter languishes in a mental hospital, having been gang raped into a shell of a
human being, and my son was brutalized by a British aristocrat, but now I'm called up to kill
Russians in a contrived World War, to benefit the pedophile Peerage and their ((patrons)), I
don't know how I'd resist pointing that weapon away from the Russian, and towards England's
true enemies.
Like a gullible person I at first accepted that there was indeed some event that involved the
Skripals. Now I wonder if the entire thing was a scripted hoax, that nothing had hit them,
that it's all fake. It wouldn't be surprising. We seem to be in an age of rule by sociopaths
whose only compass is that of power and riches. The populations of our countries are being
hustled along for the benefit of the few. This can't have a happy ending for the majority of
people. The much vaunted democracy of the west looks like just a fixed shell game.
The little lie is more difficult because the veracity thereof may be observed. A large lie
or untruth is more difficult to observe. Such as what is visible from outer space is not
something anyone can falsify.
' doesn't this prove I was wrong about Trump and his movement all along?
I was very wrong to discount the role of character, personality, and intelligence: Trump
is simply not fit to be President '
Raimondo's reaction to Dump's incredible imbecility re the Syria 'chemical attacks
'
' A child could see through the fake "chemical attack" supposedly launched by Bashar
al-Assad just as his troops defeated the jihadists and Trump said he wanted out of Syria
'
Yes anyone watching that white helmets footage is immediately cringing for those poor kids
being abused as props in a macabre stage play
"More occupation and killing in Crimea "
-- Evidence? It seems that you are very upset that the Kagans' cookies did not deliver.
"One Year Later, Crimeans Prefer Russia:" https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-02-06/one-year-later-crimeans-prefer-russia
"How Crimeans See Ukraine Crisis:" https://consortiumnews.com/2016/02/11/how-crimeans-see-ukraine-crisis/
"A Pew poll from April 2014 revealed that 91 percent of Crimean respondents believed
the referendum was free and fair, 93 percent had confidence in Putin, and 85
percent believed Kiev should recognize the results.
Another poll in June 2014, this one from Gallup , showed 94 percent of ethnic
Russians in Crimea thought the referendum reflected the views of the people and 68 percent
of ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea agreed . The poll found that 74 percent believed
that joining Russia would make life better.
A GfK poll from February 2015, sponsored by a pro-Ukrainian group in Canada, revealed
93 percent of Crimeans endorsed the referendum."
-- Still not enough for you?
"Ukraine [post-Maidan] under pressure from West over corruption:"
http://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2017/dec/07/ukraine-under-pressure-from-west-over-corruption-1721487.html
"Enough documents have been released -- citing coup-backed snipers killing dozens of
protesters, US embassy officials planning false flag attacks, extremists downing a passenger
airliner and NATO peddling falsified intelligence -- to make it very clear that the "coup" is
more of an invasion than anything else.
The term, roughly translated as Revolution of Dignity, was cooked up at the Jamestown
Foundation in Washington, well in advance of Victoria Nuland's assumption of the throne as de
facto "Queen of the Ukraine," lording over her subjects, playing the role of "donut
dollie."
The roots of the conflict in the Ukraine with thousands dead and the threat of, minimally, a
wider regional conflict, are attributable to extremist elements in the United States -- those
faces and voices seen and heard promoting the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the
supporters of ISIS/Al Qaeda in Syria -- and the cheerleaders of the continued genocide
against the Palestinian people."
"In 1950, the Nuremberg Tribunal defined Crimes against Peace, in Principle VI,
specifically Principle VI(a), submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, as:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation
of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts
mentioned under (i)."
Bravo, indeed, Annamaria. Beautiful, perfect, resounding, harsh, unforgiving words for a
pair of worthless human vermin masquerading as civilised, intelligent professionals with a
moral compass.
The pair of them – and the entire wide set and grouping of their self-loathing,
White-hating racist political henchmen, hangers-on, groupies, freeloaders and Labour party
pirates and race traitors who have brought my nation to the brink in every possible way
should be publicly hanged and left to rot.
Better still that none of the Moslem-loving filth had ever been born.
"... The details of Skripal case are very entertaining, but not necessary for our understanding. The case was used to install in minds the connection between chemical poisoning and Russia. It is unfair, for Russians destroyed all their chemical poisons under the eyes of Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors, but life is often unfair. ..."
"... The attack had never occurred at all, but it was duly reported by the pro-Western media. Thus the game came to a close. Skripal Affair established the connection of Russia and chemical weapons, Eastern Ghouta allowed to use this connection in order to attack Russia. ..."
"... We should not overestimate importance of these media events. The leading Western powers and their media refused to consider different explanations, refused an open inquiry, they went for jugular. Russia has been demonised in 2018, like Germany was demonised in 1940. It was a long and cautious labour. Have a look at this site theday.co.uk -- it is a site for school children and their teachers. You'll be amazed to discover its fervent hatred of Russia and Putin being pumped into hearts and heads of young generation. Such a long planning can't be dependent on an event like poisoning of an ex-spy or even on the fall of a Syrian underground fortress. ..."
"... we prefer a more simple explanation: Jews are well integrated into Western elites, and they promote and support the goals of these elites. ..."
The diplomats' expulsion flabbergasted the Russians. For days they went around scratching
their heads and looking for an answer: what do they want from us? What is the bottom line? Too
many events that make little sense separately. Why did the US administration expel 60 Russian
diplomats? Do they want to cut off diplomatic relations, or is it a first step to an attempt to
remove Russia from the Security Council, or to cancel its veto rights? Does it mean the US has
given up on diplomacy? (The answer "it's war" didn't come to their minds at that time).
The astonished Russians responded all right. They also expelled 60 diplomats, and they made
it painful: all US diplomats engaged in the political department of the Moscow Embassy were on
the non-grata list. The Political department consisted of three sections, dealing with foreign
policy, internal Russian politics and military analysis; the most important centre of data
collection, of liaison with Russian politicians, of military consequences, of Syria and
Ukraine, of North Korea and China, experienced first-class intelligence officers and field
hands -- all gone, including their Political Officer Christopher Robinson (POL). The Russians
expelled Maria Olson, the Embassy's well-known spokesperson, and the Ambassador's interpreter.
They closed down St Petersburg Consulate, an important centre for connecting, influencing and
interacting with the opposition in this 'second capital' of Russia. The US has lost many of its
Moscow hands, people who knew Russia and had developed personal relations with important
Russians. It will take a lot of time and effort for the US State Department and intelligence
agencies to get back to the positions they had lost. The Brits who initiated the deportations
also lost about fifty of their Moscow Embassy staff.
Surprisingly, the mass deportation of so many Russian diplomats had little effect on the
Russian people, as this strike had been neutralised by another painful event, by the Kemerovo
Mall blaze killing 64 cinema-goers including over 40 children. The blaze, even if it weren't
arson (it has not been proven yet) had triggered a massive onslaught of fake news and internet
trolls on the people of Russia. A million underfed Ukrainians were deployed by the Western
psywar on the web to tell the Russians that hundreds of their children had been incinerated,
and that their authorities lie to them. This operation revealed the level of influence and
integration the Western spy agencies have in Russia.
Kemerovo was a good choice for the operation: it is the only ethnic-Russian region ruled by
an old-style local hero who had outlived his wits, the only region that reported indecently
(and unrealistically) high support for Putin in the recent elections, a depressive region of
mines and miners with a big potential for trouble.
Putin managed it rather well by coming personally and dealing with the situation hands on.
He learned the ropes since 2000, when, at the dawn of his first presidential term, the
Kursk submarine went down with all hands. Putin stayed away from the sailors'
families, and acted callous, people said. "It had sunk", Putin replied to the question "What
happened to Kursk ?" (It is said USS Memphis had fired a torpedo at the
submarine, causing the disaster, while the new president had been reluctant to aggravate
relations with Clinton Administration). Now, in 2018, he was very good, full of empathy and
consideration, conveying strength and decisiveness.
Whatever American agency carried out the psyop around Kemerovo, it was very successful, but
its success undermined another operation, that of the Russian diplomats' expulsion. The
Russians did not pay it sufficient attention.
The alleged reason for the expulsion, the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter, made
very little sense. Even if the old spy were bumped off by his erstwhile employers, such a
reaction would be excessive by all means. He was not a Napoleon (poisoned by the Brits 200
years ago), not a prince of blood, not a great inventor nor a successful spy. He was a retired
ex-spy, a wash-out. Anyway he didn't die, he was just sick for a while. Perhaps he ate
something in the pub that didn't agree with him. This is the opinion of his niece, Victoria,
who is the only person alive who had been in contact with the Skripals since their alleged
hospitalisation.
This affair is so obscure that it beats Rashomon anytime. Russian reporters went around
Salisbury and noticed many incongruences. It is not certain whether Skripals were poisoned at
all, and where they are. Their pets survived the deadly poison, and they had to be destroyed.
This piece of black Russian humour had been forwarded a lot around the net:
Skripal had been poisoned by a most powerful poison, 2 grams will kill half a country
instantly! The Russians
- poisoned him in the restaurant
- no, on the bench
- no, in the car
- No, the door handle was smeared
- No, the suitcase was poisoned
- No, everything in the house was poisoned.
- Oh, and buckwheat was poisoned,
- but they did not die instantly, but walked around somewhere for four hours,
- but the policeman that discovered them almost died on the spot,
- but the poison was instantly identified,
- an antidote was instantly introduced, and Skripals and the policeman were saved;
- The policeman had been discharged next day!
- But they were in coma, and they will never recover!
- but no, the daughter had recovered fast!
- Oh, and dad is revived a miracle!
- and they both are quickly recovering, your strongest poison is useless.
- the restaurant had been surrounded by police in spacesuits
- the park had been surrounded by police in spacesuits
- the house had surrounded by police in spacesuits
- they are in spacesuits, since the poison is deadly dangerous, but next to them are
policemen without protection
- The bench was cut down and removed: it's such a terrible poison that the bench retained
its toxic quality for two weeks;
- but the cat had survived in the poisoned house the policeman had touched Skripal and
nearly died, and the cat survived and the guinea pigs would survive, but they were all
forgotten, and died of hunger in the house;
- and their remains were immediately burned, as they are poisoned by the strongest
poison;
- For two weeks they were poisoned by the strongest poison and survived, and now they had to
be urgently cremated;
- Only guinea pigs died, the cat survived all this poison. It was stressful and hungry, so
they killed it and cremated to make it certain nobody will find the secret etc etc.
The true hero of Skripal saga is the British ex-Ambassador Craig Murray , who followed the
developments and unveiled many of its inconsistencies and outright lies. You may read his
articles and twits to learn the details.
Julia Skripal took a daring step: she called her cousin Viktoria in Moscow. Their
conversation is an amazing document. Julia says that she and her father are in good health;
she doubts Viktoria will be allowed to visit her. Indeed, the British government refused to
grant her visa. The feeling is that Julia is imprisoned.
I spoke with a retired Russian counter-intelligence officer who is familiar with the
subject. He told me Russia never had a Novichok toxic substance: this name was given by
counter-intelligence to A-232 in order to trace the leaks. It worked: a man called Vil
Mirzayanov, an administrator in the chemical labs, leaked the Novichok story, and thus he was
apprehended and arrested. A-232 had been produced in small amounts in 1990s, and some of it
could be stolen and sold in these horrible years, when a full colonel of Russian intelligence
had to moonlight as a taxi driver to supplement his measly $46 monthly salary. In those years,
the poison could be indeed made available, and in one case it was used by criminals.
Theoretically it is not impossible that some of this poison could have been saved and stored by
some criminals; alternatively, it was available to the Americans who dismantled the labs in
1992. Anyway we have no independent proof that Skripals were poisoned by anything at all. If
they survive, if the British and the American intelligence services don't kill them, perhaps we
shall know more. We can definitely exclude the possibility that Russian state agents would go
to Britain to poison an old spy who had been pardoned by Russian president years ago. Even if
he was active in producing Christopher Steele's Trump ("Golden Rain") file, the Russians would
have no compelling reason to kill him at all, and in such an odd way in particular. "If we
would kill him, he would stay killed", concluded my interlocutor.
The details of Skripal case are very entertaining, but not necessary for our
understanding. The case was used to install in minds the connection between chemical poisoning
and Russia. It is unfair, for Russians destroyed all their chemical poisons under the eyes of
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors, but life is often
unfair.
The connection between chemical poisoning and Russia had been prepared for the forthcoming
event. Eastern Ghouta was an important and well entrenched location of the Syrian rebels. Being
within easy reach from Central Damascus, it provided the rebels with a chance to seize power in
the Syrian capital. As the Syrian army with Iranian and Russian support advanced into Eastern
Ghouta, they learned of the rebel plans to stage a false flag chemical weapon attack, as they
already had done a few times in past. President Putin warned of such a possibility at his joint
(with President Erdogan and President Rouhani) press conference in Ankara last week, a few days
before the alleged attack.
The attack had never occurred at all, but it was duly reported by the pro-Western media.
Thus the game came to a close. Skripal Affair established the connection of Russia and chemical
weapons, Eastern Ghouta allowed to use this connection in order to attack Russia.
We should not overestimate importance of these media events. The leading Western powers
and their media refused to consider different explanations, refused an open inquiry, they went
for jugular. Russia has been demonised in 2018, like Germany was demonised in 1940. It was a
long and cautious labour. Have a look at this site theday.co.uk
-- it is a site for school children and their teachers. You'll be amazed to discover its
fervent hatred of Russia and Putin being pumped into hearts and heads of young generation. Such
a long planning can't be dependent on an event like poisoning of an ex-spy or even on the fall
of a Syrian underground fortress.
The planners of a war on Russia have utilised fear of anti-Semitism for their purposes. I
called this method Anti-semitism Weaponised . Jeremy
Corbyn, the Labour leader, has been blocked and contained by accusations of anti-Semitism. He
was the only leader able to stop Britain's descent into war with Russia. Other Labour MPs and
activists have been attacked over alleged anti-Semitism issue, and -- what a coincidence! --
practically all of them were against demonising Russia; while Friends of Israel -- whether
Conservative or Labour -- were viciously anti-Russian.
This is a correlation that will be discussed at another time, but it is far from obvious
one. Russia has no anti-Semitism; the Russian president is friendly to Israel and to the
powerful Jewish Chabad movement. Russia
has no white nationalism, and little of the alt-right. However, this correlation exists. Shall
we explain it by Jewish hatred of the Orthodox Church, as this Church (active in Russia,
Greece, Palestine and Syria) hasn't been Jewified. Or should we prefer a more simple
explanation: Jews are well integrated into Western elites, and they promote and support the
goals of these elites.
However, people who can withstand accusations of anti-Semitism are the strongest enemies of
the ruling power; they stand against the war with Russia and against attack on Syria, as the
Haaretz newspaper explained in an article called
White Supremacists Defend Assad, Warn Trump: Don't Let Israel Force You Into War With Syria
. The article continues: "Alt-right calls Saturday's chemical attack in Damascus suburb a false
flag operation, claiming it's an effort by Israel and 'globalists' to keep U.S. troops in
Middle East" It quotes David Duke and other untouchables as the only people who reject Israeli
narrative.
Not being a white supremacist (probably I do not qualify) I still applaud these brave men
when they say and do the right thing. Sensitivity to anti-Semitism accusation is a strong
vulnerability of character. Though people like Corbyn have their heart in the right place, they
are weak on this point, and the enemy uses this weakness to neutralize them. There are people
in the left that are not afraid of any accusation, but there aren't many who are resistant to
metum Judaeorum .
Let us hope and pray we shall survive the forthcoming cataclysm.
Theresa May as more evil than Bill Clinton? That will sound odd to some, but I think it is
true. Hillary is the pure evil half of the Clinton marriage. Bill is simply charming and
filled with a desire to amass enough power to have a group adore him as he finds new panties
to explore.
May is English, and she has the very long line of Brit Empire secret service evil at her
disposal. And her move is a bold one. What it means is that she is signaling that at least if
she is PM, the UK could replace the US as Fearless Leader of the actual New World Order...
"... "The primary conclusion of this study, based on a pharmacological analysis of the video and photographic evidence, is that the Ghouta Massacre near Damascus on Aug 21.2013 was not a sarin rocket attack carried out by Assad or his supporters. It was a false-flag stunt carried out by the insurgents using carbon monoxide or cyanide to murder children and use their corpses as bait to lure the Americans into attacking Assad." ..."
"Murder in the Sun Morgue" by Dr. Denis O'Brien (neuropharmacology expert):
"The primary conclusion of this study, based on a pharmacological analysis of the
video and photographic evidence, is that the Ghouta Massacre near Damascus on Aug 21.2013 was
not a sarin rocket attack carried out by Assad or his supporters. It was a false-flag stunt
carried out by the insurgents using carbon monoxide or cyanide to murder children and use
their corpses as bait to lure the Americans into attacking Assad."
Like a Medieval inquisition bereft of any due legal process, Russia is being put on the rack
over the mysterious poisoning of a former Kremlin spy exiled to Britain.
No evidence is presented, just piles of innuendo and Russophobia heaped up into a bonfire.
The prosecution is based solely on pejorative accusations, and the accused – Russia
– is not permitted to fairly contest the incriminating information.
This is the same playbook as seen over alleged Russian "meddling" in the US and European
elections over the past two years. Western politicians, intelligence services, think-tanks and
media are chock-full of allegations and innuendo of "Russian influence campaigns". But no
evidence is ever presented. Not a scrap, not a scintilla. It's a case of presumed guilt, and a
conviction verdict without any facts.
It's the same inquisitorial echo stemming from the unsolved downing of the Malaysian
airliner in July 2014 over Eastern Ukraine, killing nearly 300 people. Recall how British media
were within days of that tragedy irresponsibly peddling disgraceful headlines claiming "Putin
shot down passenger airliner".
This week, British Prime Minister Theresa May's
addressed parliament accusing Moscow of responsibility for the alleged murderous attack on
former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the southern England town of Salisbury on
March 4.
Far from the Skripal father and daughter being the alleged victims of a Russian
assassination plot, it now seems increasingly apparent that they are being held against their
will by Britain's authorities. In short, hostages of the British state.
From the outset of the alleged poisoning incident in Salisbury on March 4, the official
British narrative has been pocked suspiciously with inconsistencies. The lightning-fast rush to
judgment by the British government – within days – to blame the Kremlin for "a
brazen murder attempt" was perhaps the main giveaway that the narrative was following a script
and foregone conclusion to incriminate Russia.
May be a more correct hypothesis that explains Trump behaviour in Skripal case and Douma supposed gas attack is that Trump was a false flag from the beginning. Being a
newcomer to politics he, like Obama before him, was a perfect bait and switch" candidate.
Hillary statement that he is "unfit for office" proved to be true, but in a different sense then
Hillary implied: in foright policy he proved to be copycat of Hillary, save sex change
operation.
Notable quotes:
"... One month after that attack, which Prime Minister Theresa May ascribed to Russia and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson laid at the feet of Putin himself, questions have arisen: If the nerve agent used, Novichok, was of a military variety so deadly it could kill any who came near, why is no one dead from it? Both the target, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia are recovering. ..."
"... If the deadly poison was, as reported, put on the doorknob of Skripal's home, how did he and Yulia manage to go to a restaurant after being contaminated, with neither undergoing a seizure until later on a park bench? ..."
"So Donald Trump turns out to be a pretty good liar, even if one has to take into account the fact that he frequently has no idea
what he is talking about. But the prize for lying at a high level has to go to the British as related to what has been going on both
in the Middle East, with Russia, and also in Britain itself. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was the first master at dissimulation
in 2002 when his intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove told him that the Bush White House had decided on war and "the intelligence
and facts were being around the policy" regarding Iraq, meaning that it was ignoring the information that did not support its desire
to create a pretext for invading the country and removing Saddam Hussein. Blair presumably could have derailed the ill-fated invasion
by refusing to go along with the venture, which was a war crime, but instead he fully supported George W. Bush in the attack and
thereby had a hand in America's worst foreign policy disaster ever. In 2016 an official British government inquiry determined that
Bush and Blair had indeed together rushed to war. The Global Establishment has nevertheless
rewarded Tony Blair for his loyalty with Clintonesque generosity.
He has enjoyed a number of well-paid sinecures and is now worth in excess of $100 million." Giraldi
I honestly don't understand why people refuse to acknowledge that we in the West are ruled either by sociopaths, or by people
who are functionally indistinguishable from sociopaths.
This is nothing unique to the United States. Every empire and its rulers were ever thus. What is different is that the American
Empire is larger and more universal in scope and has more tools of propaganda, control, surveillance and destruction at its fingertips
than a Stalin or a Genghis Khan ever dreamed of.
Hubris and sociopathy explain all of the actions that the American Empire has taken to date, and explain what the Empire will
do next.
Has the US brass succumbed to ziocons?
https://www.zerohedge.com/n...
The main questions on the social media: "Why the US is in Syria?" and "Is a war in Syria in America's interests?"
That is what they say. I will believe when I see a video footage with her in it. Even then I
will not believe 100%. We should never forget that we deal with evil pathological liars, crooks
and swindlers.
This part of the statement of Dr. Blanshard, medical director of Salisbury hospital, is
remarkable:
"While I won't go into great detail about the treatment we've been providing, I will say
that nerve agents work by attaching themselves to a particular enzyme in the body which then
stops the nerves from working properly. This results in symptoms such as sickness,
hallucinations and confusion. Our job in treating the patients has been to stabilise
them– ensuring that the patients could breathe and that blood could continue to
circulate. We then needed to use a variety of different drugs to support the patients until
they could create more enzymes to replace those affected by the poisoning. We also used
specialised decontamination techniques to remove any residual toxins."
There was no need for her to go in detail about Julia's recovery, but she did, and what
she says fits much more a food poisoning from fish or shellfish than a military nerve agent.
The bombshell is at the end. "Toxin" is a poison generated by a plant or animal, i.e. a
biological poison. Novichok is no toxin. Doctors are used to formulate careful and
precise.
In my eyes this statement is a slap in the face of the British government and its Novichok
story and a sign that it's going to collapse soon.
Hallucinations is it?
"Nerve agents work by attaching themselves to the particular enzymes in the body, which then
stop the nerves from functioning. This results in symptoms such as sickness and
hallucinations. Our job in treating the patients is to stabilise them, ensuring that they can
breathe and blood can continue to circulate."
I was very skeptical at first, but I've come to regard something food-related as most
likely, like people here at the MoA have proposed. 'b' plus I think 'Jen', is that her
name?
It struck me as conspicuous that Blanshard wouldn't just state what substance exactly they
were dealing with, if said substance was indeed some manufactured military nerve agent. But
since the British government have flung their reputation and credibility down Big Ben by
coming up with this Novichok nonsense, Blanshard can't say anything other than what she did
say.
Also there's no mention of 'poisoning', 'attack' or some such term, which would indicate a
perpetrator actively and intentionally bringing the Skripals into contact with the substance.
It's just 'incident'. Adding to that, the phrase "have been exposed to" suggests
'environmental' to me, and that's what food-borne is.
"... Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, who's skepticism convinced 165 countries to not fall for Boris Johnson's lies, says that Johnson has to answer "serious questions". The spin-masters of the May government throw Novi-Fog into Fleet Street to prevent that. ..."
"... Operation 'Save Boris' fills the Fleet Street papers with more lies. It claims that secret intelligence, which can not even be shown to the opposition leader, proves that Russia tested how to smear the nerve agent 'Novichok' on doorknobs ..."
"... Theresa May's government is in serious trouble. It tries to spin its way out of its lies. But the time is working against it. The fog will rise ..."
"... Moon of Alabama ..."
"... Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor--a mortal sin. ..."
"... The Telegraph today answered critics that are demanding proof , saying that no beyond-a-reasonable-doubt proof is required because governments are not held to that standard. So what standard should a government be held to a) by other governments? And b) by the people that they represent? They didn't bother to say but the impression I got is "trust us". They are tone deaf. Public trust is worn thin. Do they think we have forgotten being lied into Iraq? Their incessant spying and propaganda? Western support for ISIS criminality? Clinton-DNC collusion? And much more! ..."
"... I would guess the Skripals and the policeman would have a full time minder at their sides to ensure they say nothing that busts the narrative. ..."
"... It might have been pesticide poisoning . If doctors guessed correctly they would have been able to treat it. Pesticide poisoning happens a lot by accident in rural households. ..."
"... Novichok shares characteristics with pesticides so laboratory results may very well be something that can be a pesticide - or Novichok. ..."
"... Good reminder that we fight bees with a "military grade weapon". ..."
"... reminded me of the passport that survived the 9/11 twin towers attack in the USA. ..."
"... I think bevin's correct--Brexit, Corbyn and further vilification of Russia are the motives driving this SNAFU. ..."
"... Russia convened an OPCW Special Executive Council meeting in The Hague on April 4, for "addressing the situation around allegations of non-compliance with the Convention made by one State Party against the other State Party with regard to the incident in Salisbury" on March 4. . . here ..."
"... This is a post by a novelist (red flag, I know) with obv. no credibility that claims that Novichok was in fact the name of a KGB operation to locate leakers in their chemical research staff by feeding disinfo about a chemical super-weapon, and that Mirzayanov (an analytical chemist not directly involved in research or production) was ID'd as a leaker as a result, and turned into a disinfo dispenser. ..."
"... The Skripals apparently ordered seafood risotto at Zizzi's Restaurant in Salisbury. If you look up Zizzi's Restaurant menus on Google, you will see the menus mention risotto with mussels. ..."
"... Mussels can carry algae-related toxins that can cause (among other things) nausea, vomiting and (depending on the toxin involved) even brain damage, memory loss and death. Usually the symptoms set in about half an hour after eating so knowing when the Skripals had lunch and when they arrived at the park bench is critical. ..."
"... The grechka is problematic - how did the policeman get ill? ..."
"... The guinea pigs died from thirst? You'd think if there was nerve gas contamination in the house somewhere, thirst would be the last thing they'd die of. ..."
"... If police had visited the house on March 4, immediately or almost immediately after the Skripals were found, surely they would have found the animals in good condition? Sergei Skripal had apparently had the animals brought over from Russia at considerable expense to himself. One assumes he must have been quite attached to them. Yet when the animals are found, they are malnourished and starving or dead from thirst? ..."
"... So what was DS Nick Bailey doing if he didn't go to the house on March 4? When was he stricken with nerve gas poisoning? ..."
"... Its a common Western practice to point finger to enemies military or research facility. They win regardless of circumstances. ..."
"... Only two words: perfidious Albion... always was and always will be. And this is how the west spins off into the dustbin of history... the newbie way. ..."
"... Folks, the reason for all this anti-Putin nonsense is the one fact that the Syrian government now holds over 11 British officers who were liaised with the terrorists in the Ghouta. ..."
"... And they were caught out of uniform, such that they could be executed as spies under international law. Isn't that a howler?" ..."
"... What sort of libretto would Gilbert and Sullivan compose for this fiasco. Could The Onion do better? Reminds me of Cheech & Chong's skits. ..."
"... If all dogs of wars are now unleashed following some absurd false flag as murky and grotesque as the Skippy affair... we, as human species, are absolutely doomed to live in hell for quite sometimes. ..."
"... The only thing that has been officially confirmed is that blood tests showed breakdown products of organophosphates that were believed to come from a "Novichok class nerve agent or closely related agent." I still do not think they have found novichok anywhere in the environment or have collected a sample that could be independently verified to be novichok in some foreign laboratory. At least we have not seen any official confirmation that such a sample exists. Nor have we received information on exactly what compound this "novichok" is claimed to be. ..."
"... I suspect the traces of "novichok" found all over the place, from the Zizzi restaurant to the door handle, are just some ordinary organophosphate pesticide. ..."
"... The Skripals are suffering from "paralytic shellfish poisoning" they received from saxitoxin or tetrodotoxin in the seafood in the Risotto Pesce they ate at the Zizzi restaurant. The Skripals received traces of some organophosphate pesticide from the flowers they left at the graves in the morning. They then left trace on the door handles of the BMW. A video show the BMW driving away from Sergei Skripl's house at 14:55 in the afternoon. This would mean that they visited the house after leaving the pub and entering the Zizzi restaurant, leaving further organophosphate traces on the door knob of the house. ..."
"... Thanks 'B' for keeping the torch lit and shine thru the british lies .. it is so lame and amateurish and i agree for years these propagandist been doing their job the 'easy way' and now they been exposed by the still thinking crowd in the net.. ..."
"... This would suggest that if the breakfast cereal brought to the UK from Russia for Sergei Skripal is tested for "Novichok", it will also test positive for traces of "Novichok". (Unless of course Lord President Vlademort rids the entire Russian Federation of all its agricultural pests with a magnanimous wave of his hand and the utterance of a secret spell.) ..."
A pity endeavor. It were the lies of Theresa May and Boris Johnson that
convinced the other countries , not any factual evidence:
BERLIN (Reuters) - Britain needs to show proof that Russia was behind last month's poisoning of a former Russian double agent
and his daughter in England, the German government's coordinator for Russia said on Thursday.
Gernot Erler said pressure was rising on Prime Minister Theresa May's government after Britain's military research centre,
at Porton Down, said on Tuesday it could not say yet whether the nerve agent used in the attack had been produced in Russia.
" That contradicts what we had previously heard from British politicians and will certainly raise the pressure on Britain to
show further proof that the traces plausibly point to Moscow ," Erler told German broadcaster ARD.
Armin Laschert, head of Germany's most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia and near to Merkel, also
questioned the British
behavior.
The international loss of trust for the British claims is serious. Unless the UK government comes up with a very plausible story
with some real evidence behind it no serious European official will lend it any further support. And no, holding up a tube of white
powder will not be enough.
Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, who's skepticism convinced 165 countries to not fall for Boris Johnson's lies,
says that Johnson has to answer "serious questions".
The spin-masters of the May government throw Novi-Fog into Fleet Street to prevent that.
Operation 'Save Boris' fills the Fleet Street papers with more lies. It claims that secret intelligence, which
can not even be shown to the opposition
leader, proves that Russia
tested how to smear the nerve agent 'Novichok' on doorknobs:
Police said last week they believed Russian ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned at home in Salisbury
via their front door.
Now agents have confirmed that Putin's scientists carried out experiments looking at its effectiveness on door handles before
the March 3[sic!] attack.
A security source told the Daily Mail: "We have intelligence that goes beyond Russia made Novichok and stockpiled it.
" We have evidence that they also explored using it as an assassination weapon including on areas such as door handles and
everyday objects. "
"Putin's scientists" experimented and found that two persons leaving a home will both touch the exterior doorknob and reliably
infect themselves with a rain-resistant, "military grade" nerve agent which several hours later has a similar sudden effect on a
33 year old healthy women and a 66 year old man with serious diabetes. That indeed sounds quite plausible to me (not).
The Times was told that the spies found the source of the nerve agent. But the piece is extremely vague and makes little
sense:
There are two different sources: 1. "Security services" which say they know the source but neither name it, nor pin the location
to Russia and 2. a Whitehall spin-master who points to Russia.
Some photo editor made sense of what the "security services" said and introduced the Times piece with a picture of the
likely source:
Behind the wall of Novi-Fog all
the outrageous claims the government made about the case get pushed down the memory hole.
Meanwhile Victoria Skripal, a cousin of Yulia Skripal,
claims
to have been called by Yulia and told that everything is fine. In response(?) the Metropolitan Police
claims to have a statement from Yulia in which she also says that everything is fine. Neither claim is verifiable and both might
well be wrong.
Theresa May's government is in serious trouble. It tries to spin its way out of its lies. But the time is working against
it. The fog will rise:
The OPCW investigation, to which Russia was denied access, will not help May to make a case against Russia. In the best case
for May it will come up with a similar result as Porton Down. It might say that some nerve agent was used on the Skripals but
that it is impossible to pin it to a source. It might say that it can not identify the nerve agent at all. It may find nothing.
Yulia Skripal will have to be released from hospital and is likely to fly home to Russia. She will talk. She is unlikely to
know anything that could help May, but might well say something that lets the whole story fall apart. She will have to watch her
back.
Britain's allies are miffed. They have been lied to and damaged their relations with Russia for no good reason. The Brexit
negotiations will become more difficult as Brussels has lost trust in any British claim or commitment.
Russia will continue to attack May while she has lost the protection from her allies.
The upcoming local elections could well go against the Tories. In 2004 the Spanish Prime Minister Aznar blamed the Basque
ETA for the Madrid train bombing. That was exposed as a lie and
he lost his lead in the polls, the election and his job. When the Skripal case broke and was pinned to Russia the Tories rose
in the polls. But the fall after the exposure of the lies will probably be of equal size.
What will the British government to get out of this situation?
---
Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the Skripal case:
d notice
simple and effective. It has a chilling effect
the gladio diversion crew productions have moved on today it is the knife crime menace in london.all contained on the salisbury
front no dissent in the media places that count.
Thanks for continuing to hammer on this perfidy by the British puppets and their masters.
At the end of your posting you asked what the British government will do to get out of this situation and I can only expect
them to try and top the situation with something to shift focus and so it has to be Huuuuuuge....and not likely in a good way....sigh
When do the aliens come in and save us from our species stupidity?
The Telegraph today answered critics that are demanding proof , saying that no beyond-a-reasonable-doubt proof is required
because governments are not held to that standard. So what standard should a government be held to a) by other governments? And
b) by the people that they represent? They didn't bother to say but the impression I got is "trust us". They are tone deaf. Public
trust is worn thin. Do they think we have forgotten being lied into Iraq? Their incessant spying and propaganda? Western support
for ISIS criminality? Clinton-DNC collusion? And much more!
The link to Sputnik has a link to the video of the Russian
TV show but no English subtitles. Is the an English transcription anywhere? According to the transcription of the recorded conversation,
it is Yulia initiated the phone call and I would think it was the UK that recorded the call and sent it to Russian TV. I would
guess the Skripals and the policeman would have a full time minder at their sides to ensure they say nothing that busts the narrative.
The link to Sputnik has a link to the video of the Russian TV show but no English subtitles. Is the an English transcription
anywhere?
According to the transcription of the recorded conversation, it is Yulia initiated the phone call and I would think it was the
UK that recorded the call and sent it to Russian TV. I would guess the Skripals and the policeman would have a full time minder
at their sides to ensure they say nothing that busts the narrative.
As said before, no #Novichok was used. The Skripals could recover.Now the relative in Moskow asked, what was the order in the
restaurant Zizzi. I think it was severe illness after Meal mess. Toad in the Pond? Not on the list of Zizzi.
The British police have finally started a proper investigation. It has had immediate results, when absolute proof of Russia's
involvement was found under the bench where the Skirpals fell unconscious.
The cracks are starting to show. No evidence. No serious facts. We continue on regardless pumping out the big lies.....Do they
think we don't remember Tony Blair on Iraq, the rush into Afghanistan, the wilful destruction of Libya, which once had the highest
human development index in Africa, the near destruction of Syria triggering a huge migrant crisis. The HMG view on all of these
has been an inversion of the truth. I stopped beleiving anything any British government says to me after Iraq, and my default
setting on this affair was 'false flag'. The Russian ambassador was given over ninety minutes of airtime this afternoon on Sky
and acquitted himself very well, posing, to a Brit, very logical and sensible questions. When is he going to move Writ of Habeus
Corpus for the Skripals? The guy has quite a sense of humour and the irony would be sublime...
So there we were after 1 month waiting for a man with a name and a job title to actually say it was Novichok, and finally one
came along presented as the head of Porton Down.
He heads up dstl, not Porton Down, but the holding group that owns Porton Down
His background is Telecoms not chemistry, and commercial not scientific.
He left the private sector to joined dstl only in December 2017 - barely got his feet behind the desk
Shame Sky didn't bother to ask if he works in Porton Down - I doubt he does.
Even greater shame no one has asked for a chemist from Porton Down to speak up. Maybe Corbyn will ask that, but right now the
pro-Israel lobby is flat out to shut him up in case he mentions Palestine.
So, let me get this straight in my head for once. The Brits 'knew' even before this incident that Russia had been experimenting
with doorknobs as delivery agents of this novichok stuff, yet it took them weeks, and dozens of alternate theories, to yell 'eureka,
I finally have it. I'll go test the doorknobs now.'
It were the lies of Theresa May and Boris Johnson that convinced the other countries, not any factual evidence...
______________________________________________
True enough, but I think it's more correct to say that the lies coerced the other countries rather than "convinced"
them.
That is, they weren't "convinced" in the sense of "rationally persuaded". They were "convinced" the way fictional Mafia Don
"convinced" stubborn or reluctant parties by "making them an offer they can't refuse".
As I say, perhaps this is just a matter of semantics. I suppose that if one tells lies while twisting one's interlocutor's
arm sharply, the interlocutor may be "convinced" as much by the pain as the merits of the lies.
I think the feckless response is driven by seeing the handwriting on the wall, not necessarily believing what's being written.
btw - the un speech from the uk and usa were ridiculous... someone ought to get a manuscript of there words earlier today at the
un special meeting on this and tear them apart... ripe for the taking...
It might have been pesticide
poisoning . If doctors guessed correctly they would have been able to treat it. Pesticide poisoning happens a lot by accident
in rural households.
The binary versions of the agents reportedly uses acetonitrile and an organic phosphate "that can be disguised as a pesticide
precursor."
Mirzayanov gives somewhat different structures for Novichok agents in his autobiography to those which have been identified
by Western experts.[53] He makes clear that a large number of compounds were made, and many of the less potent derivatives
were reported in the open literature as new organophosphate insecticides,[54] so that the secret chemical weapons program could
be disguised as legitimate pesticide research.
Good reminder that we fight bees with a "military grade weapon".
Boris needs to grow a brain. "28 other countries have been so convinced..." is a pretty limp-wristed claim to brag about
when one considers that if the evidence was overwhelmingly Q.E.D. then 194 other countries would be convinced. And Boris could
just STFU and wouldn't need to say anything.
Thank you anonymous #9. I was expecting a mushroom and that reminded me of the passport that survived the 9/11 twin towers
attack in the USA.
These malign fools are klutzes and for that we should be either thankful or terrified. My first thought on reading b's headline
was a rough Brexit will follow.
So, a tad more than 10% of the countries in the world are going along with this provocation. But, as when Ms. Clinton recently
stated that she "won" in all the districts that matter (tripling down on driving that wedge between the "Party of the People"
and the actual people), the countries that are playing along are the only ones that matter.
Meanwhile: Syria, Ukraine, Israeli slaughtering of unarmed protesters and passing laws to "finish 1948," Turkey, Honduras,
Venezuela, Brazil (coup regime set to imprison second former leftist President), mass labor unrest in France, 3 US States school
systems shut down by wild cat strikes, etc. etc. etc.
The only Truth being ascertained in this SNAFU are the lies being unmasked. The diatribes by UK/US "ambassadors" at UNSC are utterly
inane compared to Russian rationality. Germany's essentially said UK's provided zero evidence to back its very serious accusations
and the vast majority of the world agrees. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, and both the UK and Outlaw
US Empire are guilty of casting Big Lies very often to further their Imperialistic Outlaw behavior since 1945--and that's precisely
what's being done now.
I think bevin's correct--Brexit, Corbyn and further vilification of Russia are the motives driving this SNAFU.
The OPCW Director has said that "The mandate of the FFM [Fact-Finding Mission] is confined to establishing only the fact of the
use of chemical weapons" and not to determine accountability. But the recent meeting on April 4 was to consider the UK charges
against Russia, which had EU and US backing.
from a document....
Russia convened an OPCW Special Executive Council meeting in The Hague on April 4, for "addressing the situation around
allegations of non-compliance with the Convention made by one State Party against the other State Party with regard to the incident
in Salisbury" on March 4. . . here
No doubt Mr. Johnson's remarks were considered and proof demanded. There has been no report on the meeting yet, which should
show up
here .
Hi MoA, I wanted to share a funny but tinfoil-y theory that came up on the Russian web very early in the Skripal affair. Briefly,
that Novichok was a bogus gas and a KGB psy op to begin with.
This is a post by a novelist (red flag, I know) with obv. no credibility that claims that Novichok was in fact the name
of a KGB operation to locate leakers in their chemical research staff by feeding disinfo about a chemical super-weapon, and that
Mirzayanov (an analytical chemist not directly involved in research or production) was ID'd as a leaker as a result, and turned
into a disinfo dispenser.
Literally a conspiracy theory (also might be unironic disinfo in itself), but just think how absolutely fucking hilarious it
would be if it turned out that (a) novichok really is bogus and (b) without knowing that, the Brits tried a false flag with what
they thought was a hype Russian superpoison but was actually rubbish unable of killing a 66 y.o. diabetic.
Also, it does kinda play into OPCW's continued refusal to add Novichok to their CW list, despite years of Mirzayanov's advocacy
and even having the formulas.
Posting translation below:
"The tail has wagged the god:
Don't ask for my source, won't give it away anyway. Everything written below is vastly different from what you can find online.
'1. As far back as the early 1980's the Soviet Army stopped considering [chemical weapons] as a worthwhile weapon in a real
war. Around 83-84 a decision was made to stop supplying the army with CWs, decreasing operational stocks of it and moving CW from
the armed forces to long-term storage and weapon disposal facilies. From that time to 1996 no new CW items were supplied to the
army, as well as no instruction materials on usage or defense against them.
2. Mirzoyanov's specialty is analytical chemistry, he was never involved in neither theoretical R&D nor production. He spent
the entire 80's in the First Department.
3. In the second half of the 80's KGB launched a wide-scale disinformation operation, which also had a side objective - expose
leaks. They developed two dozen bogus but very detailed projects for "new chemical superweapons, which cannot be detected by existing
NATO dectors and which is impossible to defend against" (NOVA with its variants, "Novichok" with variants, ASD and others). It
was "Novichok" that passed through Mirzoyanov's hands.
4. R&D and production facility in Kantyubek was reoriented from testing and producing CW and BO [military equipment?] to producing
herbicides and defoliants - mainly for the cotton industry's needs.
5. Mirzoyanov was immediately identified as a leaker, removed from any materials with a real basis behind them in 1990, and
fed a disinformation channel since. In '92 he voluntarily exposed himself by publishing his famous article. Form this moment on
"Novichok" reaches the realm of mass media. In '95 NYT writes about the "new Russian superweapon."
6. NATO had spent $10 bln. creating countermeasures for a fake CW.
7. What really happened in Salisbury is absolutely unclear; the victims' behavior, the actions of the police, medics, or special
services doesn't all fit into a comprehensible picture. Poisoning by a synthetic neurotoxin, analogous to that of the fugu fish,
seems more or less probable.
Summarizing briefly: "Novichok" is not the name of a chemical weapon, but a KGB operation cypher, developed to expose leaks
and feed disinformation.'"
The Skripals apparently ordered seafood risotto at Zizzi's Restaurant in Salisbury. If you look up Zizzi's Restaurant menus
on Google, you will see the menus mention risotto with mussels.
Mussels can carry algae-related toxins that can cause (among other things) nausea, vomiting and (depending on the toxin
involved) even brain damage, memory loss and death. Usually the symptoms set in about half an hour after eating so knowing when
the Skripals had lunch and when they arrived at the park bench is critical.
Unfortunately the table where the Skripals had lunch has now been destroyed. The park bench has been removed from the shopping
mall and who knows what state it's in now?
Also what appears to have been ignored in the official account is whether the Skripals had lunch on their own or if there was
someone else with them at the cemetery, at the restaurant, at the pub or later in the shopping mall. That someone need not have
accompanied them to all four spots where they went on March 4.
I agree with just about everyone here one way or another, but propaganda works and they have the media - they are scoring points.
I watched the Security Counsel meeting this afternoon and I must say the Russians did not do themselves any favors, he was
rambling, sputtering and all over the map. Did not even mention that this agent can be made in many places and other details.
The British argument was polished and thorough, it will convince a great many.
They have lost much but not all of their control of the narrative.
What's really funny and sad is how the story keeps changing.
Do a search for Skripal poisoning and read through the first 2 or 3 pages - you'll see that at various times, it is the Skripal's
car door handle, then it is their house door handle, then it is in their buckwheat (grechka).
The car door is problematic - it was raining.
The house door is problematic - since when do both people leaving both grasp the door handle? Unless maybe they're OCD.
The grechka is problematic - how did the policeman get ill?
Seems pretty weak all around, especially now that Porton Down has specifically stated that there is no evidence of manufacture
in Russia.
(Reuters) - A Russian military research base was identified as the source of the nerve agent used in Salisbury, England,
at a British intelligence briefing for the country's allies, the Times of London reported on Thursday.
The gathering was used to persuade world leaders that Moscow was behind the poisoning and said that the Novichok chemical
was produced at the Shikhany facility in southwest Russia, the Times said. The briefing included suggestions that Shikhany
had been used during the past decade to test whether the nerve agent could be utilized for assassinations abroad, the newspaper
said.
The Guardian made the
same
claim already on March 14th. I do not know if there is any real information or even guesswork here. Both Britain and Russia
may have only one chemical weapons research facility each.
So now the standard has been lowered to a "plausible" connection to Russia. That allows for wild conjecture that will leave the
public even more confused and, ultimately, disinterested. The term "Novi-fog" well describes the Tories' desperate effort to escape
blame for their massive screw-up.
James @ 20, 21: The guinea pigs died from thirst? You'd think if there was nerve gas contamination in the house somewhere,
thirst would be the last thing they'd die of.
Even the story about the animals' fate looks as if it had been cobbled together at the last minute.
If police had visited the house on March 4, immediately or almost immediately after the Skripals were found, surely they
would have found the animals in good condition? Sergei Skripal had apparently had the animals brought over from Russia at considerable
expense to himself. One assumes he must have been quite attached to them. Yet when the animals are found, they are malnourished
and starving or dead from thirst?
So what was DS Nick Bailey doing if he didn't go to the house on March 4? When was he stricken with nerve gas poisoning?
Its a common Western practice to point finger to enemies military or research facility. They win regardless of circumstances.
a) They have a specific location to point to, which "prove" they have intel.
b) If an enemy refuse access to secure facility, that means "they have something to hide."
c) If an enemy allows access and they find nothing, they simply say enemy "has hidden it somewhere else", plus they can spy on
all the other research in that facility.
US does it all the time as well, whether its Iraq, or Iran (Parchin saga is of an epic proportions), etc.
"Folks, the reason for all this anti-Putin nonsense is the one fact that the Syrian government now holds over 11 British
officers who were liaised with the terrorists in the Ghouta. They were captured 2 weeks ago by Syrian Army commandos and
are being held in separate jails around the Damascus area inside heavily guarded military bases. The Brits want them badly before
they are used to implicate England in the mess it helped to create in Syria. Damascus won't budge on this issue and, evidently,
the English are assuming Moscow is not putting pressure on Dr. Assad to release them to Old Blighty. Too bad. And they were
caught out of uniform, such that they could be executed as spies under international law. Isn't that a howler?"
I posted about this possible angle several days ago when word of captured ZioNATO operatives were more rumor-like; instead,
here Ziad makes a definite statement of fact. IMO, if the Syrians do have these spies--and I really hope they do--given the nature
of the war waged against Syria, they will not let them go for any bargain.
It seems English speakers are professional prevaricators -- I certainly had problems with truth-telling until about age 20.
Otherwise, why the myth that the young George Washington being unable to tell a lie? Yet another lie to cover for endless prevarication.
pretty sure the Russians listed the Shikhany facility for the OPCW when they did their verification and monitoring of Destruction
of Russian Chemical warfare stockpiles. Bullshit again , I'm picking, and not even very well researched
@29
Food poisoning? Would the police lie? (trick question). Mar 11, 2018 - Traces of the nerve agent used to poison former Russian
spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia has been discovered at the Zizzi restaurant where they last ate, police have said.
Zizzi food poisoning complaints from Trip Advisor (undercooking):
> Zizzi - The Strand
73-75 Strand, London WC2R 0DE, England (Covent Garden)
November 12, 2016 via mobile
Regrettably our visit last night will be the last! Clearly have food poisoning this morning from undercooked chicken in the Strozzapretti
Pesto, we didn't have lunch so this can be the only place it's originated from.
Safe to say I'll be stuck in bed today!
> Zizzi Union Square, Aberdeen AB11 5RG, Scotland
Having been to Zizzis in St Andrews on numerous occasions we decided to go here before the cinema . .pizza/calzone and chicken
pasta for me...Half an hour into the film my stomach started churning and I felt nauseous. Got home and have had extreme diahorrea
and abdo pain all night. Since all I had yesterday was cereal and toast and jam I think it's safe to conclude I picked this up
at zizzis. DON'T GO....
@34 jen... it is a really poorly written script and appears to be changing quite regularly.... none of it adds up and as many
of us here have said - we are calling bullshit on most all of it.. the story on the pets is further proof that none of this story
holds up with any scrutiny..
Mirzayanov claimed that the Soviet Union developed a binary nerve agent 8-10-times more potent that the American VX. A binary
agent is a compound produced in a chemical reaction from two benign precursors right before use. Such agents offer obvious advantages:
the production is much easier with no extraordinary safety precautions required, storage is also much simplified, no need to stockpile
the actual chemical weapons agent (CWA), there is no problem with stability of the CWA, et cetera. The US spent significant resources
on the binary CWA program of its own. Interestingly, in the original publications of 1992 the agent in question was simply referred
to as binary agent. The name Novichok first surfaced in the 1994 report by Lev Feodorov about the chemical weapons in Russia.
According to Vladimir Uglev, a chemist who worked at the same institute as Mirzayanov on the new series of CWA, the official name
of the program was Foliant. Mirzayanov later confirmed that.
The believable part of the story is that the Soviet Union and later Russia would have a successful chemical weapons program
similar to that in the US. Uglev specifically stated that the Foliant program was meant as the answer to the American VX agent.
The quantities of the agents produced ranged from several milligrams to kilograms, and several hundreds compound were supposedly
synthesized all this points to the development stage of the program. There is no indication that any of the agents were ever
weaponized, i.e. munitions for delivery of the CWA to the enemy were designed, except for the statements of Mirzayanov. However,
by his own admission, he wasn't involved in weaponization, and, thus, he is unlikely to have a firsthand know-ledge about it.
Remarkably, Uglev said that although his group developed several deadly substances, attempts to develop binary formulations failed,
and no binary agents were ever produced.
Uglev's statements regarding his work are much more specific than Mirzayanov's and, thus, more believable. Besides, Uglev,
unlike Mirzayanov, was involved in the actual development of the agents. Mirzayanov's job, as the Head of the Counterintelligence
Department, was to control the space around the institute, and he had no part in developing the technology.
The UK long ago voted in the highest chambers of power to manifest a Trexit, the exit from all forms of the truth. Every day they
prove this more and more.
@ Galvanise #28
Indeed the tail has wagged the God but first and foremost the tail has done the Devil's work. If all dogs of wars are now
unleashed following some absurd false flag as murky and grotesque as the Skippy affair...
we, as human species, are absolutely doomed to live in hell for quite sometimes.
When all it takes is a couple of goofs
strained by some remnants from Vicky's cookies virus pleagues, we are issuing a no-parole sentence on all human beings... further
to be condemned for centuries, our heads hidden in some 'Novi-fogs' of wars... or another.
Perhaps some sort of British standards of living, permanently under some kind of... 'foog'. We have recently learned from the
Pope there is no Hell to go to (cos' we already are in living hell). Then, Foggy Paradise must be empty, deprived from any kind
of wisdom.
The only thing that has been officially confirmed is that blood tests showed breakdown products of organophosphates that were
believed to come from a "Novichok class nerve agent or closely related agent." I still do not think they have found novichok anywhere
in the environment or have collected a sample that could be independently verified to be novichok in some foreign laboratory.
At least we have not seen any official confirmation that such a sample exists. Nor have we received information on exactly what
compound this "novichok" is claimed to be.
I suspect the traces of "novichok" found all over the place, from the Zizzi restaurant to the door handle, are just some
ordinary organophosphate pesticide.
A POSSIBLE SCENARIO
The Skripals are suffering from "paralytic shellfish poisoning" they received from saxitoxin or tetrodotoxin in the seafood
in the Risotto Pesce they ate at the Zizzi restaurant. The Skripals received traces of some organophosphate pesticide from
the flowers they left at the graves in the morning. They then left trace on the door handles of the BMW. A video show the BMW
driving away from Sergei Skripl's house at 14:55 in the afternoon. This would mean that they visited the house after leaving the
pub and entering the Zizzi restaurant, leaving further organophosphate traces on the door knob of the house.
Thanks 'B' for keeping the torch lit and shine thru the british lies .. it is so lame and amateurish and i agree for years
these propagandist been doing their job the 'easy way' and now they been exposed by the still thinking crowd in the net..
BTW anyone here know why Col Patrick Lang disable comments on SST ? is he afraid of people posting facts and truth in his site
?
Petri Krohn @ 47: I'd say your story is the most credible interpretation of all the "evidence".
This would suggest that if the breakfast cereal brought to the UK from Russia for Sergei Skripal is tested for "Novichok",
it will also test positive for traces of "Novichok". (Unless of course Lord President Vlademort rids the entire Russian Federation
of all its agricultural pests with a magnanimous wave of his hand and the utterance of a secret spell.)
The police officer DS Nick Bailey who was hospitalised may have had an allergic reaction to the pesticide or to something else
in the Skripal house.
By now, Russia should have learned that arguing with GB is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the
bird is just gonna knock all the pieces over, shit on the board, and strut around as if it won anyway.
The British denial of a visitor visa to a Skripal family relative from Russia is fueling
concern that the whole affair is far more sinister than what the British government and media
have been claiming.
Far from the Skripal father and daughter being the alleged victims of a Russian
assassination plot, it now seems increasingly apparent that they are being held against their
will by Britain's authorities. In short, hostages of the British state.
From the outset of the alleged poisoning incident in Salisbury on March 4, the official
British narrative has been pocked suspiciously with inconsistencies. The lightning-fast rush to
judgment by the British government – within days – to blame the Kremlin for "a
brazen murder attempt" was perhaps the main giveaway that the narrative was following a script
and foregone conclusion to incriminate Russia.
Last week, the saga took several significant twists raising more doubts about the official
British narrative. First, British scientists at the Porton Down warfare laboratory
admitted that they hadn't in fact confirmed the alleged nerve agent used against the
Skripals originated from Russia. That admission spectacularly exposed earlier British
government claims as false, if not barefaced lies.
Secondly, it emerged
that potentially key witness-material was destroyed by the British. Three pet animals in the
Salisbury home of Sergei Skripal were declared dead and their remains incinerated. Autopsies
could have shed light on the nature of the alleged nerve agent used against the Skripals. Why
were the animal remains incinerated? And why did the British authorities disclose the fate of
the animals only after the matter was raised by the Russian envoy to the UN Security Council on
Thursday?
Thirdly, there is the strangely callous way that the British authorities have refused a
visitor visa to a Skripal family relative from Russia who was intending to fly to England to be
with her relatives while they are reportedly recuperating from the alleged poison attack.
Russian national Victoria Skripal revealed on Friday to Russian news media that she was
refused a visa by British authorities to visit her relatives – cousin Yulia and uncle
Sergei – who are reportedly confined to a hospital in Salisbury.
The day before her visa application was rejected, Victoria had a brief
telephone conversation with Yulia. It appears that Victoria recorded the conversation and
made it available to Russian media to broadcast. The transcript shows that Yulia's words were
guarded. She was obviously not comfortable with speaking freely. Their phone call ended
abruptly. But she did manage to advise her cousin in Russia that the latter would probably not
be granted a visitor visa. Why would she say such a thing?
British media quickly tried to smear the Russian cousin, Victoria. A BBC journalist said
that the British authorities "suspected that Victoria was being used as a pawn by the Kremlin".
Russian's foreign ministry hit back at that suggestion, saying it was a despicable slur.
For her part, Victoria Skripal told Russian media that she thinks the British authorities
have "something to hide" by refusing to grant her a permit to Britain in order to visit her
cousin and uncle. Was her visa application rejected by the British authorities because she had
the "audacity" to record the phone call with her cousin and make it available to Russian
media?
Far more plausible is not that Victoria is a "Kremlin pawn" but that the British fear that
Victoria would not be a "London pawn". The worst thing for the British authorities would be for
an independent-minded Skripal relative coming to the Salisbury hospital and asking critical
questions about the nature of why her relatives are being held there.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if several other Skripal relatives in
Russia were to make similar applications for visitor visas to Britain. Surely, the British
authorities could not turn them all down?
For over a month now since the March 4 incident in Salisbury, the Russian consular
representatives in Britain have not been allowed access to the Skripal pair, allegedly being
treated in hospital.
Fair enough, Sergei Skripal is a disgraced former Russian spy who had been living in England
for nearly eight years. He was exiled there by Moscow as part of a spy-swap with Britain's
foreign intelligence MI6 whom Skripal had served as a double agent. It is believed he was given
British citizenship by the London authorities.
However, his daughter, 33-year-old Yulia, is a citizen of the Russian Federation. She was
visiting her father on holiday when the pair became ill – apparently from exposure to a
nerve agent – while sitting in a public park in Salisbury.
Yulia and the Russian authorities are therefore entitled under international law to have
consular contact. The Russian embassy in London has been repeatedly denied access by the
British authorities to one of its citizens. On the face of it, that is an outrageous breach of
international law by the British.
Significantly, Yulia did not express to her cousin during their phone conversation that she
did not want to see the Russian consular people. That phone call was obviously initiated by
Yulia. Her Russian-based cousin at one point asked her, "Is this your phone?".
How Yulia got use of the phone is a good question. Was it a hospital staff member who felt
obliged to allow her a quick call home? Evidently, the call was held in a rushed manner, and
Yulia felt constrained to talk in detail about her confinement. And why would she warn her
cousin in Russia that the latter would not be given a visa before the application result was
known?
It is speculated in British media – most probably at the behest of briefings by
shadowy state officials – that Yulia Skripal does not want to see her cousin, or the
Russian consular representatives. Even though Yulia did not express that in her phone call. If
Yulia didn't want to see her cousin, why would she bother calling her, apparently out of the
blue?
The speculation about Yulia's preferences are based on the official British premise that the
Russian state attempted to carry out an assassination with a toxic chemical on her father. It
is therefore insinuated by the official British narrative that Yulia would not want to see the
Russian authorities.
But that logic depends entirely on the plausibility of the British version of events. That
is, that a Russian state operation used a Russian nerve agent to try to kill Sergei Skripal,
and his daughter as collateral damage.
That British version has relied totally on assertion, innuendo and unverified claims made by
politicians briefed by secret services. Claims which we are now seeing to be unfounded, as the
Porton Down scientists disclosed last week.
At no point have the British produced any evidence to substantiate their high-flown
allegations against Russia. Indeed, Britain refuses to give Russia access to alleged samples in
order to carry out an independent chemical analysis.
The entire British case relies on a presumption of guilt and a despicable prejudice towards
Russia as a malicious actor. That's it entirely. British prejudice and contempt for due
process.
However, what if the Russian government were correct? What if the British state carried out
a macabre false flag operation by stealthily injuring the Skripals with some kind of chemical
in order to blame it on Russia? For the plausible purpose of adding one more smear campaign in
order to demonize and delegitimize Russia as an international power.
No doubt, the situation is disturbing and disorientating especially for Yulia Skripal who
apparently was simply visiting her father in England for a happy family reunion.
More sinister, however, is the apparent lack of free will being afforded to Yulia Skripal.
The British official position simply conflates their innuendo of a Russian plot, an innuendo
which is increasingly untenable.
The denial of a visitor visa to Yulia's family relatives from Russia points to the sinister
conclusion that the British authorities are engaging in a macabre propaganda stunt. Moreover, a
propaganda stunt involving the criminal assault on a Russian citizen and the ongoing illegal
detention of that citizen.
By the way, the Vice President of the Association of veterans of special services Berkut
Valery Malevanny spoke about the same, about the Ukrainian trace in an interview with "SP".
According to him, Skripal once worked for the Ukrainian mafia. Namely: on the oligarch
Alexander Perepelichny who was killed in 2012 in London under unclear circumstances.
Was published reports on the financial status Skripal. It turns out that he has a house in
Britain for 270 thousand pounds, a house in Spain for 210 thousand pounds, and a Bank account
is 450 thousand pounds. Where does a simple British intelligence officer get that kind of
money?
In addition, according to MI-5, Skripal regularly flew to Kiev and Odessa. Most likely, it
was about establishing smuggling channels.
So, the Finns have every reason to question the British version of the poisoning of an
ex-GRU officer.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has accused prominent British businessman Bill
Browder of being a "serial killer" – the latest extraordinary attempt by the Kremlin to
frame one of its most high-profile public enemies.
Court documents seen by the Observer reveal that Russian state investigators have named
Browder, a London-based hedge fund manager, as the suspect behind the mysterious murders of
three men.
All three deaths are linked to a £174m fraud believed to have involved Russian
officials -- a crime that was uncovered by Browder's Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in
2008. Magnitsky was subsequently imprisoned on charges widely considered to be false, and died
in jail amid claims he was tortured.
Browder, once the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia, has infuriated Putin by
lobbying western governments to punish those responsible for Magnitsky's death. A number of
countries have imposed sanctions on individuals believed to be involved.
"... Basically, Mirzayanov claims that it is relatively easy to make the Novichok nerve agents. So, some enterprising Arabs could buy a few chemists to make a few tons of it and then spray it all over the little Satan. Do you really think that the Jews who run the United States would allow the publication of information that could lead to thousands of deaths in Israel? ..."
"... Remember, Mirzayanov was given residence (and a University position) in the United States after he was kicked out of Russia. There are also a number of "people who should know" that have stated that there is zero solid evidence for the existence of the Novichok nerve agents. For example: Robin Black in Development, Historical Use and Properties of Chemical Warfare Agents (2016): ..."
"... "In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve agents, 'Novichoks' (newcomer), was developed in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of the 'Foliant' programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive countermeasures. Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published." ..."
"... "There has never been a 'Novichok' research project conducted in Russia,... But in the West, some countries carried out such research, which they called 'Novichok,' for some reason." ..."
Remember, the evil people, Theresa May, Stoltenberg, Trump and the rest, are damning
Russia with obvious lies.
The Novichok nerve agents don't even exist.
HERE IS THE PROOF:
The Novichok nerve agents are supposedly much more toxic than the nerve gases VX or Sarin
(and yet the Skripals are still alive!?).
Mirzayanov's book, published in 2008, contains the formulas he alleges can be used to
create Novichoks. In 1995, he explained that "the chemical components or precursors" of
Novichok are "ordinary organophosphates that can be made at commercial chemical companies
that manufacture such products as fertilizers and pesticides."
Basically, Mirzayanov claims that it is relatively easy to make the Novichok nerve
agents. So, some enterprising Arabs could buy a few chemists to make a few tons of it and then
spray it all over the little Satan. Do you really think that the Jews who run the United States would allow the publication of
information that could lead to thousands of deaths in Israel?
Do you really think they would protect the publisher of such information by giving him
residence in the United States?
Remember, Mirzayanov was given residence (and a University position) in the United States
after he was kicked out of Russia. There are also a number of "people who should know" that have stated that there is zero
solid evidence for the existence of the Novichok nerve agents. For example: Robin Black in
Development, Historical Use and Properties of Chemical Warfare Agents (2016):
"In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve
agents, 'Novichoks' (newcomer), was developed in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of
the 'Foliant' programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive
countermeasures. Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly
originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent
confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published."
And, Alexander Shulgin, Russia's representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (2018):
"There has never been a 'Novichok' research project conducted in Russia,... But in the
West, some countries carried out such research, which they called 'Novichok,' for some
reason."
CONCLUSION: The Novichok nerve agents don't even exist.
@ 17 -- There seem to be lots of weasely things being said about the fate of the Skripal
pets. The big, fluffy black cat with amber eyes should in no way whatsoever have suffered such
depletion of calories that he had to be put down. I fear he was sent to Porton Down to be
"studied," and then "put down."
If there was a water source --dripping faucet, water closet,
most houses have some place a pet can drink from other that his water bowl-- a cat can survive
weeks. My Maine Coon disappeared, but showed up about 3-4 weeks later, ragged coat, unkempt,
very thin, but, when given saline solution by the vet, immediately began to act more normal.
Took a while to get her muscle mass rebuilt, but she survived.
An article from The Sun, dated April 5th, has a photo of Nash Van Drake (what a pretty cat),
and states the specialist chemical weapons investigators did not gain access to the Skripal
residence UNTIL APRIL 4TH!!! We know from photographs that lots of folks wearing moons suits
were around for weeks -- why was nothing done to care for the pets?
I can't find it now through google, but I read a comment or tweet from a vet who had made
repeated offers to care for the pets. These pets should never have suffered to the extent they
did.
Someone in power did not want anyone outside those with enforced silence agreements to see
those pets.
The sickly mog was transported to the Ministry of Defence research laboratory at Porton
Down to be tested, where he was found to be severely malnourished.
The lab's top veterinary officer ruled the pet was in so much pain he should be put
down.
His body was then immediately incinerated to avoid contamination from the deadly nerve
agent Novichok.
Sergei's guinea pigs were also destroyed at the top secret military research facility.
(If there is a hell, may these animal abusers end up there with long and miserable
afterlives.)
"Comrade Putin, we have successfully stockpiled novichoks in secret for ten years, and kept
them hidden from the OPCW inspectors. We have also trained our agents in secret novichok
assassination techniques. The programme has cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but now we
are ready. Naturally, the first time we use it we will expose our secret and suffer massive
international blowback. So who should be our first target? The head of a foreign intelligence
agency? A leading jihadist rebel in Syria? A key nuclear scientist? Even a Head of State?"
"No, Tovarich. There is this old retired guy I know living in Salisbury. We released him
from jail years ago "
"With respect Comrade Putin, are you sure he is the most important target to reveal a
programme we have put so much resource into for ten years?"
"Yes. I sit here every day and I cannot concentrate on the affairs of Russia or the World as
all the time am thinking of Sergei Skripal. I should never have let him out of jail to spend
his life buying lottery tickets and eating in Zizzis. But you must make absolutely certain to
kill him."
"Don't worry Comrade Putin, we have been training in secret novichok assassination
techniques for ten years. We even have an detailed manual explaining our methods. We will
spread the novichok on his outside door handle (fiendish laugh)."
"Are you sure comrade? Is there not a danger it will wash off or get diluted?"
"No Comrade Putin, it never rains in England."
That is, genuinely, in every detail the official British government version of what happened
in Salisbury, including the ten year programme and the secret assassination manual.
Despite this story being one of the most improbably wild conspiracy theories in human
history, it is those who express any doubt at all as to its veracity who are smeared as
"conspiracy theorists" or even "traitors".
All copyright on this article is waived. Feel free to use, translate and republish as you
wish.
From comments: "I was quite surprised the rebels actually went ahead with the so-called gas attack. They didn't, US-France-UK-(Turkey)
did. The rebels are the ones with guns and ammo, the alliance are the ones with actors and cameras. "
Notable quotes:
"... If Trump possesses one talent it must surely be the ability to spot a Con Artist pulling a fast one. If he can't connect the same dots that b has just done then Trump has to be an idiot, and I don't for a second believe that he is an idiot. ..."
"... Just one thing that I should point out: the Syrian Observatory is NOT claiming that there has been a chemical weapons attack on Douma. ..."
"... But the claim that those suffocations were the result of chlorine attack is being made by the white helmets, not (at least so far) by the SOHR. ..."
"... The best time for Putin to respond to a Western provocation isn't now, it's when he effectively has hundreds of thousands of Western hostages in his country - June/July. ..."
"... For White Helmets read Britain. They are British created, funded and operated. May's Government has to be deep in this as well. ..."
"... Never forget that May, Cameron and other conservative MPs crossed the floor of parliament and voted for Blair and the illegal attack on Iraq when Labour MPs refused to support him. ..."
"... I hope that this "news" will just fade away. Sad fact is that whatever Russians say or do it doesn't really matter anymore. A narrative and a rhetoric coming from the US is now at the so low level that any diplomatic language or a talk is rendered obsolete. ..."
"... I also think that is is not up to Trump, but more off to a military and the dark powers around Trump, that he doesn't really understand, to decide what is happing next. If anything. ..."
"... The hostage here is the world cup itself, just as the 2014 Olympics were. And in retrospect it was probably a mistake for Russia to host them, but then who could have predicted all this back in 2007 or 8? ..."
"... At any rate, Russia should resist provocations games or not. Retaliation, if any, should be covert and deniable. Unless the west is dumb enough to openly attack Russian forces. Then a hammer blow to the face is appropriate. ..."
"... If there was such a FF 'gas attack' as we have just seen in Syria while the World Cup was on and the US/UK response (as we've heard previously from Russian/Syrian sources) was to initiate strikes against Syrian Government installations, and then Russia has promised to respond if any of their personnel were killed in these strikes the Russians reserve the right (as they have repeatedly started) to strike back against any US/UK targets responsible for the strikes - ie - shooting US/UK planes out of the sky or sinking US/UK warships, destroyers or carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean. ..."
"... If that level of escalation were to occur (and take note I'm not saying it will because I don't believe Putin will take this bait), but if it were, where could the escalation lead on the part of the US/UK?? ..."
"... These areas are intensely scrutinized by the Russians and the SAA, drones, satellite. It would be good to get some footage of the White Helmets staging this, but of course they are embedded with all the rest of the fighting men elsewhere and are never anywhere near where all the children tend to be targeted. ..."
"... I am confident that JAYSH was not going to negotiate, until after they had finished the "job" for their paymasters...once that was completed, they are ready to negotiate again... ..."
"... But The Donald is saying that there are women and children amongst those affected by the supposed attack, but other sites are reporting on the astonishing fact that there are only children in the broadcast footage.. what amount to a staged play like that of Goutha years ago... ..."
"... July 16, 2017. Newswire. CIA Director Admits Fooling Trump Over Syrian Chemical Weapons Story ( ) The false flag attack, which actually originated from CIA rebel groups in the region, resulted in Trump launching Tomahawk missiles into Syria, killing 15 civilians. Posted because of some interest despite misleading title and dubious source. http://yournewswire.com/cia-trump-syria-chemical-weapons/ ..."
"... I am afraid. Have not been this afraid since election night when Hillary was almost elected. The world lucked out and survived to live another day. Has our luck run out? ..."
"... Sigh, here we go again, just like Skripal case, west acts with propaganda and psyops without any evidence. The stupid TRUMP will of course bomb Syria again along with the disgusting Macron cheered by EU and western media. ..."
"... In the US when a murder occurs and a suspect apprehended there is a trial that can take weeks or months, and the prosecution and the defense present their expert Witnesses. Then at the end of all that a jury usually decides where the person is guilty or not. On the other hand, when a crime is alleged in another country far far away from the US, such as an alleged gas attack in Syria, within days we know exactly who is responsible and on that basis are willing to commit arms, troops and spend billions of dollars to kill people in large quantities and destroy a country. One would think that given the stakes involved a little bit more care might be taken. ..."
"... "Gas" scares the bejesus out of rubes. Makes Great Drama. Triggers, then reinforces historical themes. "The fiend! He gassed his own people!" "Gas Chambers" (Cant' go there!). If there's gas, well, by golly there's got to be a ham-handed, asymmetrical "response" (motherfocker of all bombs!) from the "International Community". ..."
"... BTW, kudos to those who pegged the Skripal incident as prelude to some sort of chemical incident in Syria. It couldn't have been scripted better for a TV program. Oh, wait... ..."
"... The point is that the Russians have been preparing for just such an event for months. Was it not two months ago that the Russians put troops into Damascus to prevent a decapitating strike? A US strike would be a sort of Kursk Offensive, attacking into a well-prepared defence. ..."
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States' diplomatic policy on Syria for now is no longer focused on making the war-torn country's
president, Bashar al-Assad, leave power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on Thursday, in a departure from the Obama
administration's initial and public stance on Assad's fate.
World leaders expressed shock and outrage Tuesday at reports of a suspected chemical attack in northwestern Syria that killed
scores of civilians, with one UK official suggesting the incident amounted to a war crime.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has told CNN that removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power is
a priority, cementing an extraordinary U-turn in the Trump administration's stance on the embattled leader.
The Khan Sheikhun incident had been faked. An international investigation
found that half of the alleged casualties arrived in hospitals before the incident was said to have happened. Nothing followed
after Haley's last announcement. The administration was apparently not willing to go beyond the one-off strike. The flip-flop was
attributed to confusion or infighting
within the Trump administration.
I have the feeling that Russia is loosing patience, and if the US try something it will be big trouble. The speed with which Ghouta
was taken caused problems for the West. I hope Russia will clean up Syria quickly; I think we are approaching a decisive moment.
All of these world leaders walk in lockstep together following the script handed to them. I would leave Damascus in a hurry if
I was living there. The Zionists want to fulfil Isaiah 17.
now we know why the skripals happened. the west is now, today, intent on russia's destruction. putin 'dies' or the west dies.
not since the 1950's era of hiding under desks in elementary school have i felt as though i am living in the 'end times.'
If Trump possesses one talent it must surely be the ability to spot a Con Artist pulling a fast one. If he can't connect the
same dots that b has just done then Trump has to be an idiot, and I don't for a second believe that he is an idiot.
Surely
this is a golden opportunity for Trump to go off-script and shaft those who are trying to con him.
All it would take is one twitter post from him stating that only an dimwit would fall for such an obvious trap, and he will
turn the tables on anyone who shouts that The USA Must Do Something About This!!!!!
Trump's retort would be devastating: there ya' go, Dimwit Number One.
World Cup starts on June 14. Do you really think Putin/Russia will do anything to jeopardize the hosting of that event this close
to the finish line?
I really doubt it.
Who in Russia would be held responsible if a conflict started and the World Cup in Russia was cancelled??
Which Russian politician would be blamed by the people???
Putin will do nothing and will not be provoked. Do you know the best time to respond? It is actually during the World Cup when
hundreds of thousands of EU and foreign nationals will be in Russia - effectively hostages that prevent the West taking over action
against Russia - yep, it's that simple.
The best time for Putin to respond to a Western provocation isn't now, it's when he effectively has hundreds of thousands
of Western hostages in his country - June/July.
Yeah/7: For White Helmets read Britain. They are British created, funded and operated. May's Government has to be deep in
this as well.
Never forget that May, Cameron and other conservative MPs crossed the floor of parliament and voted for
Blair and the illegal attack on Iraq when Labour MPs refused to support him.
Without Theresa May and David Cameron, Blair wouldn't have had the authority to attack.
The Iraqi blood is on her hands.
And Libyan blood.
And Syrian blood.
And now Salisbury and this.
I hope that this "news" will just fade away. Sad fact is that whatever Russians say or do it doesn't really matter anymore.
A narrative and a rhetoric coming from the US is now at the so low level that any diplomatic language or a talk is rendered obsolete.
UK will trumpet this as there is no tomorrow while Skripal case is, in their eyes, hopefully blurring away. Or so they might
think.
I also think that is is not up to Trump, but more off to a military and the dark powers around Trump, that he doesn't really
understand, to decide what is happing next. If anything.
@8, that is impossible. There is no way Russia will harm any of the soccer fans or stop them from leaving if they choose to leave.
The hostage here is the world cup itself, just as the 2014 Olympics were. And in retrospect it was probably a mistake for
Russia to host them, but then who could have predicted all this back in 2007 or 8?
At any rate, Russia should resist provocations games or not. Retaliation, if any, should be covert and deniable. Unless
the west is dumb enough to openly attack Russian forces. Then a hammer blow to the face is appropriate.
With due respect I think you misunderstand what I'm saying about 'hostages'.
If there was such a FF 'gas attack' as we have just seen in Syria while the World Cup was on and the US/UK response (as
we've heard previously from Russian/Syrian sources) was to initiate strikes against Syrian Government installations, and then
Russia has promised to respond if any of their personnel were killed in these strikes the Russians reserve the right (as they
have repeatedly started) to strike back against any US/UK targets responsible for the strikes - ie - shooting US/UK planes out
of the sky or sinking US/UK warships, destroyers or carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean.
If that level of escalation were to occur (and take note I'm not saying it will because I don't believe Putin will take
this bait), but if it were, where could the escalation lead on the part of the US/UK??
Could it lead to Western military strikes of some sort or another?
Could it do that next week? Maybe.
Could it do that while Russia is hosting the World Cup worth hundreds of thousands of Western nationals in Russia? Of course
not. The Western route of escalation is therefore blunted while the World Cup is being hosted while there is no such barrier on
Russian response to Western provocation while the World Cup is being hosted.
Ie - if Russia did respond to US/UK strikes against Syria whilst the World Cup was being hosted by sinking a couple of US destroyers,
what would happen then?
Given the level of Western insanity and the frequency of the outrages being perpetrated, I don't think we will have to wait several
months to see all hell break loose.
WaPo and NYT led the way on this story at news.google. WaPo said that Washington based non-profit Syrian-American Medical Society
(SAMS) issued a joint statement with "opposition-linked Civil Defense" (the usual suspects - The White Helmets). There are lots
of details on the attacks and damage at Douma but only a tiny mention that Jaish al-Islam launched rockets into densely populated
Damascus. Why are there no reports of death and damage in those areas? And where did SAMS come from?
Worth to check out - East Ghouta, Syria. Report of Chinese analysts examined by Russian leading Middle East expert (UK/US military
advisers in Syria, "Skripal case" hysteria etc.)
This is Trump's big chance to redeem himself with the U.S. military ( after "mindlessly" declaring his wish to leave Syria and
the entire area ) and get down on his knees and suck Pentagon cock. He will obligingly do this ( as his girlfriends and wife do
for him ) and "allow " ( as if he has a choice ) the U.S. war machine, to which he has conceded all civilian control, to respond
to the obviously faked and staged false flag chemical attack, in any way they see fit. Russia has already announced that if their
troops in Syria are attacked they will respond by Removing the source of that attack, i.e., sinking the ship that launched the
missiles. So the U.S. military has lit the fuse and as has worried all of us for a very long time : God only knows where this
is headed.
These areas are intensely scrutinized by the Russians and the SAA, drones, satellite. It would be good to get some footage
of the White Helmets staging this, but of course they are embedded with all the rest of the fighting men elsewhere and are never
anywhere near where all the children tend to be targeted.
It's anybody's guess with Trump, remember he said he liked the element of surprise, well, it's hard to spring a surprise when
the MSM, in Europe particularly, is literally screaming for a military response with top page headlines.
It was interesting last night watching various outlets over there and how from a seedling article, a little sidebar headline
no pics, then came a weed of propaganda, they began every 3-4 hours nudging it to the top and the accusations got wilder and and
wilder, ie calling it a 'nerve agent'...
Commenting is now turned back on at SST, look forward to b and others commenting there again. I think the whole idea there
was to be like the Louis Rukeyser show in the old days, genteel host and guests, just an opinion, didn't work out.
I am confident that JAYSH was not going to negotiate, until after they had finished the "job" for their paymasters...once
that was completed, they are ready to negotiate again...
I would recommend not negotiating with Jaysh until the hostages
have been released...I think their attitude will change quickly now that they are surrounded and no escape/rescue is possible...i
wonder how many state agents are stuck inside douma? going to be very embarassing...and it sounds like SAA has a few in custody
already...
"I think the fog is clearing on Trump's thoughts on the matter with his fierce tweet storm mentioning "Animal Assad.""
But The Donald is saying that there are women and children amongst those affected by the supposed attack, but other sites
are reporting on the astonishing fact that there are only children in the broadcast footage.. what amount to a staged play like
that of Goutha years ago...
I think I understand your post better now, thanks for the clarification. I'm not sure that it makes a difference where the
tourists are if I understand your 2nd comment correctly. If envision an escalation to full on war, then it really doesn't matter
if the soccer fans are at home getting disintegrated by Russian nukes or in Russia getting disintegrated by American nukes.
July 16, 2017. Newswire. CIA Director Admits Fooling Trump Over Syrian Chemical Weapons Story ( ) The false flag attack, which
actually originated from CIA rebel groups in the region, resulted in Trump launching Tomahawk missiles into Syria, killing 15
civilians. Posted because of some interest despite misleading title and dubious source.
http://yournewswire.com/cia-trump-syria-chemical-weapons/
SecDef Mattis is a key player in this drama. Mattis didn't buy the fake attack a year ago which no doubt contributed to the
flashy but ineffective US response. Putting the blame for this latest fake attack on Russia and Iran (a difference this time)
suggests an asymmetric non-military response, one designed to grab headlines and then be forgotten. Trump has sanctioned Russia
three times in the past month and bragged about it, so Putin is now his go-to enemy when fake news arises. That Trump strategy
(or lack of it) strengthens Russia domestically and internationally, especially with China, so it works for Putin.
Perhaps the British false flag poisoning may have a dampening effect on world reaction to this false flag. There are many governments
with egg on their face after rushing to throw out the russ diplomats.
Affluent Anglo Soccer guests in Russia would be need be detained for their own safety - a kind of twist on R2P. Very embarrassing
for elite US, UK, EU jet-setting soccer fans to be detained for an indeterminate period. But for their own safety! Here, enjoy
your borscht and caviar.
re: SST
"17 million page views for SST and gone -- I am leaving you. Guest authors, commenters and the various troll nations may continue
if you wish. I may start another blog under "Pat Lang's Blog" but there will not be comments. pl" -- Jun 8, 2017
The SAA launching a chemical attack on Douma makes no sense. The intention with chemical weapons was to deny areas of land to
opposing forces. Now that most modern armies are supplied with effective protection against chemical weapons for individuals and
vehicles, area denial no longer works except to the extent that wearing chemical protection suits hinders movement but this applies
to both sides so nobody benefits and nobody loses.
I am afraid. Have not been this afraid since election night when Hillary was almost elected. The world lucked out and survived
to live another day. Has our luck run out?
Sigh, here we go again, just like Skripal case, west acts with propaganda and psyops without any evidence. The stupid TRUMP
will of course bomb Syria again along with the disgusting Macron cheered by EU and western media.
That is the most plausible scenario. The "intensity" of the US "response" to the False Flag gas (always gas!) attack. remains
to be seen. Pummeling airstrips are generally good stagecraft/showmanship and little else. Airstrips are quickly repaired and
back up to speed in short order.
Beirut (AP) -- An alleged gas attack killed at least 40 people in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, as Syrian rebels agreed
to give up their last foothold in the area, medics and state media reported on Sunday.
...
Meanwhile, state news agency SANA said the Army of Islam group agreed to leave Douma on Sunday, after three days of intensive
government shelling and bombardment.
... The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 80 people were killed in Douma on Saturday, including around 40 who
died from suffocation. But it said the suffocations were the result of shelters collapsing on people inside them.
"Until this minute, no one has been able to find out the kind of agent that was used," said Mahmoud, the White Helmets'
spokesman, in a video statement from Syria.
"The 2017 Shayrat missile strike took place on the morning of 7 April 2017,[1][4] ..the strike was executed under responsibility
of U.S. President Donald Trump, as a direct response to the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack that occurred on 4 Apri"
miss match in timings damn it. The syria event production should have happened same day as bell pottinger salsbury thus creating
another libya quick all in nato depleted uranium party. with movie play and tv show timing and script and emotion are critical
for engagement.
emotion is the gelling agent for consent that is why so many tv and radio news pundit are actor not journalist
In the US when a murder occurs and a suspect apprehended there is a trial that can take weeks or months, and the prosecution
and the defense present their expert Witnesses. Then at the end of all that a jury usually decides where the person is guilty
or not. On the other hand, when a crime is alleged in another country far far away from the US, such as an alleged gas attack
in Syria, within days we know exactly who is responsible and on that basis are willing to commit arms, troops and spend billions
of dollars to kill people in large quantities and destroy a country. One would think that given the stakes involved a little bit
more care might be taken.
"Gas" scares the bejesus out of rubes. Makes Great Drama. Triggers, then reinforces historical themes. "The fiend! He gassed
his own people!" "Gas Chambers" (Cant' go there!). If there's gas, well, by golly there's got to be a ham-handed, asymmetrical
"response" (motherfocker of all bombs!) from the "International Community".
Happy Easter to all our Orthodox Christian friends around the globe. The message is 'never lose hope or live in fear'. Christ
leads in this eternal battle against evil and Satan's minions. This war has brought all civilizations of the land together. The
dying civilization of the ocean will wreck havoc until it expires. There are many paths to that ruin.
Confronting the Son of
God is assuredly one of them. Naturally, the devils have chosen Orthodox Easter to launch this latest perfidy against Russia.
@morongobill #19. There is often a stark difference between what Trump says or tweets and what he actually does. Often he is speaking
and acting for the benefit of various target audiences, sometimes on opposite sides, simultaneously. However, his bellicose response
to the alleged chemical attacks in Syria is cause for worry. Trump is a bully, and he would not wish to appear weak by backing
down from explicitly threatening rhetoric. Besides, he doesn't give a damn about killing Syrians or anyone else.
BTW, kudos to those who pegged the Skripal incident as prelude to some sort of chemical incident in Syria. It couldn't
have been scripted better for a TV program. Oh, wait...
And
2 days ago bbc arabic was running a headline all day about Russian mercenaries flow to Syria on regular commercial flights. There
s a whole world out there in the propaganda addressed to Arab viewers. No time to check if alarabiyya and Aljazeera are now broadcasting
the vids from duma 24/7 as they used to do
Trump is a like a wind-up doll in that he can be easily led astray due to his complete lack of knowledge of foreign and military
affairs. Just tell him children have been "gassed" and he gets angry and wants to strike back. The super hawks can thus wind up
him whenever they really need to him to do something stupid. (I mean, other than the normal stupid things he does all the time
on his own.)
I don't see it as an Israel issue but a "who controls the tools of human exchange" issue that may be about to evolve.....or
not
Certainly the entitlement of some folks will be affected by making finance a global public utility but I think that is a good
thing....
Think of the potential of our species if we can evolve beyond the "social contract" we operate under currently....I am excited
about the potential and measured about the chances of it all happening.
we need to come together as a world community forget about yesterdays semite children of palastine slaughter and deal with animal
assad and the more important children of ghouta
Israeli officials: U.S. must strike in Syria
"Assad is the angel of death, and the world would be better without him."
The United States must attack the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria in response to the regime chemical gas strike on the Syrian
town Douma that killed more than 70 people, Strategic Affairs and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said Sunday.
Speaking on Army Radio, Erdan, who is Netanyahu's number two in Likud, said he hoped US military action against the Assad regime
would be taken again, as it was when the regime used chemical weapons against its people in the past.
@24 Noirette - thanks for that link to the story of how Pompeo gamed Trump into the missile launch (not to call it a "strike")
against Syria last year. I must keep that one for reference.
Good that Trump got those tweets off his chest. We can rest easier now. I wonder if he ever will understand how he's being
played by the people around him? His sentimentality seems to be a weakness they can easily leverage.
Nothing will happen, of course. As lysander suggests, Russia probably will inflict some covert pain on US interests, while
as b reports the FM has already warned of consequences if the US should be stupid enough to do something overt. I really like
lysander's image of the hammer blow to the face as Russian retaliation.
Friends, we are seeing the last days of false flags and the last days of the world caring about western propaganda. How many
Russian diplomats are left for vassal nations to expel? How many times can the UK government disgrace itself, or Trump have a
meltdown on Twitter - and nothing serious ever happens? How many times do we need to see a fleet turn back from Korea - even assuming
it could find its way there in the first place - or US missiles fail to strike their targets, whether in Syria or Yemen?
The greater the bluster, the more crystalline the result of no-result appears to the cooler heads of the world. Which shows
that even when the dog doesn't bark in the night, still the caravan moves on.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tore into President Trump after he put blame on former President Obama following reports of a chemical
attack in Syria.
"Dear @realDonaldTrump: Remember when you launched cruise missiles at a largely empty field in Syria? That unconstitutional
act didn't do very much," Lieu tweeted.
"Remember when you said last week that US is leaving Syria in six months? So what
is your plan? You're the President now. Remember?"
Trump took to Twitter Sunday to condemn the attacks and rail against Obama. "If President Obama had crossed his stated Red
Line In The Sand, the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago! Animal Assad would have been history!" Trump tweeted, referring
to Syrian President Bashar Assad. . .
here
@49 "Just tell him children have been "gassed" and he gets angry and wants to strike back."
He does have a couple of options...neither very appealing. He can ignore the 'gas attack' and be called callous and uncaring.
He can hold off and ask for more evidence and get told he's soft on Putin/Assad.
Imho i find the us statement pretty "soft". "verification" is better than "russia/assad did it". i don't think the us is going
to "strike". the military paradigm has changed. they know, we hope.
Convenient timing to take the focus away for the IDF shooting Palestinian kids and journalist or the botched Skripal show. The
new memo is Assad, gas, Iran, Russia, Putin - repeat.
Look everybody, over there!!!
You gotta hand it to these guys. They've perfected the art of fooling the masses very well.
"Is Trump really willing to escalate towards that?"
More than likely willing and able to take it right up to the wire in the lead up to (and during)
the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia between 14 June to 15 July 2018.
Putin will be at his weakest. UK farce was just an appetizer.
State : "We continue to closely follow disturbing reports on April 7 " . . .which we write, and we decided this time to
pile on Russia. . ."Russia has breached its commitments to the United Nations as a framework guarantor. It has betrayed the Chemical
Weapons Convention . . . yadda yadda". . . here
Don Bacon, 55, Idk. link I posted seemed interesting enough.
There is no straight admission of course (re. > Pompeo fooling Trump) and the whole story may be made up,
but it has the the ring of truth in the sense that it fits with the US top echeleons are mired in dire,
multiple, crossed, struggles. The various factions of the US PTB are not unified, and fighting secretly under the radar,
there is no unified position from the US, so not from the UK either.
@psychohistorian (67) Thanks very much for that posting of actual events on the ground in Douma. They are further reason to believe
that the alleged chemical gas attack was not the work of the Syrian army. Clearly, the rebels were on the ropes and ready for
a knockout blow. We must ask: What might the Syrian government have gained by poisoning civilians and incurring the wrath and
condemnation of the "civilized" world? Absolutely nothing! From a military standpoint, it was completely unnecessary, and from
a public relations standpoint, a predictable disaster. Hence, being rational actors, they would never have chosen to use chemical
weapons under the circumstances. Why is this so hard for Western nations and their media to understand? The only reason that I
can give is that it is in their interest not to understand. It does not comport with their agenda, which is to topple Assad and
weaken Russia.
thanks b and thanks for the many insightful comments...
of course isis is being coddled by the west as a tool for the same agenda that has never been dropped... same deal the freaks
in douma that are unwilling to negotiate... ditto oldenyoungs comments @22... don't worry oy - russia can see thru that..
@27 dh - yes.. we will see how long that lasts.. i made a comment, but it didn't show yet.. the guy is a crank at this point..
@30 Breadonwaters.. good point, but i wouldn't count on it.. the endless propaganda and false flags are relentless and i see
no sign of it stopping.. maybe if the white helmets funding dried up, but that is highly unlikely as well..
@33 don bacon.. sst - 'as the stomach turns' a soap opera that periodically does or doesn't run..
@62 zico... i always ask the question 'what would israel want here?'...
Is Trump about to have an interview with Mueller soon? Is he also trying to set up the US military to get a bloody nose in Syria?
.. so that he can fire a few generals and to try and get back on his campaign promises about pulling back foreign wars?
@Noirette 68 Ok?
Weeelll, okay. . . I will continue to value your comments.
Probably the main point here is that the CIA can't be trusted, which in its history has resulted in several comeuppances, and
should again.
Pat Lang: "Animal" Assad? Our beloved president has once again been watching a bit too much TV news. Does it ever occur to him
to pick up the secure phone and call the watch officer at CIA, NSA or wherever and ask if they think the news reports are correct?
Sure, Pat. If we can't trust the Intelligence Community, then whom can we trust? Our own lyin' eyes?
Amazing. Absolutely amazing. There is a chance Assad did this -- but here's also a chance he would walk in front of a moving train,
or jump out of an airplane. The question is, why? There's no military advantage to this. None. On the other hand, there is stupendous
value to terrorists to conduct a false flag attack.
Americans. Being played by a fiddle, like complete idiots, for... ever.
As I recall, just a few weeks ago, the US was hitting the "Attack No.Ko." circuit hard. Not much came of it, as usual, and to
what end DJT thinks these venting moments will lead, I don't have a clue. But it does follow that not much will come of this other
than us plebs wondering why we have to live under this looming threat of annihilation. At the very least, maybe a few tomahawks
will be unleashed on a few targetted shit-shacks which are being used by sheep herders. Wrong time to take a crap! The MSM needs
a rating boost and exploding outhouses with a million-dollar tomahawk might be able to beat "American Idol" tonight. I'd tune
in.
Duh, here we go again. Syria with help of Russian aerospace forces are winning the war. Why use WMD that would invite US retaliation??????The
discredited NeoCons are not happy with the state of Syria instigated war.Again regime is winning.... And lo and behold Trumpster
called for withdrawal of US forces that are illegally occupying a sovereign country. What are the NeoCon /Likudniks e to do???.Well.....
stage a false flag opps of course. Syria was always the low hanging fruit on way to war with Iran folks.........
Indeed, something Ive also thought about, I would never put my foot in the US if I were the leader of Russia.
I dont see them meeting now when Trump blow it over and over, Trump never seems to learn or he doesnt care, maybe the generals,
and state dep. is in charge of the foreign policy. Hes just a puppet?
Regardless of who makes the decisions in the US, I seriously doubt that the Russians will back down from their thrice stated threat
of direct retaliation against US forces, should the US hit Russian military personnel. The Russian red line has clearly been drawn
and if the US crazies choose to cross it, look out.
I watched the Security Counsel meeting the other day and I thought Russia really blew it. The Russian ambassador was sputtering
and stammering and all over the map and did not provide or mention the ample evidence of the widespread ability to make these
chemicals or any other evidence. While the British simply had to stay on script. Russia looked bad in my view.
Now, with the new "chemical attack" in recent hours BoJo is already calling for a prompt investigation and warns - Russia should
not be allowed to stall it. Why was not Russia out first calling for an independent investigation and demanding proper procedures
and observers?
Russia can't continue to just stand there and get punched.
A question I've been mulling over for sometime that may appear unrelated to this thread but does have a general bearing.
In the lead up and during WW2, when did the German population begin to realize they were the bad guys?
I was quite surprised the rebels actually went ahead with the so-called gas attack. I suppose some sort of combination between
a hard-line faction in Douma, desperate about being about to lose their last foothold, and nutters in the US, like Bolton. Far
too late.
The point is that the Russians have been preparing for just such an event for months. Was it not two months ago that the
Russians put troops into Damascus to prevent a decapitating strike? A US strike would be a sort of Kursk Offensive, attacking
into a well-prepared defence.
I remain convinced that Trump is psychologically unwilling to go ahead with a major war, whatever the people around him.
Trump have recently added Bolton, Pompeo, I mean come on, its obvious that Trump have no "psychologically unwilling" traits
about bombing another nation. He have done it before and will do it again, but beside its not only about Trump but also the ugly
little guy in France, Macron that are as warmongering on Syria.
This gas attack is also, from the US point of view, a sort of "surge". An unwillingness on the part of the US to admit defeat.
Something has to be done to put the US, currently losing, back into the game. Just that facing up to Russia is a bit more complicated
than beating up poorly armed Arab tribes.
@ Laguerre 94 I was quite surprised the rebels actually went ahead with the so-called gas attack. They didn't, US-France-UK-(Turkey)
did. The rebels are the ones with guns and ammo, the alliance are the ones with actors and cameras.
I am a bit confused, did the rebels agree to return to the agreement they defaulted on before or after the supposed "gas" attack?
If before, it was a ruse (or the west set the up), if after, they may have been told by Russia to return to the agreement or be
slaughtered. We live in interesting times and I am most unhappy about it.
"... For White Helmets read Britain. They are British created, funded and operated. May's Government has to be deep in this as well. ..."
"... Never forget that May, Cameron and other conservative MPs crossed the floor of parliament and voted for Blair and the illegal attack on Iraq when Labour MPs refused to support him. ..."
Yeah/7: For White Helmets read Britain. They are British created, funded and operated.
May's Government has to be deep in this as well.
Never forget that May, Cameron and other conservative MPs crossed the floor of
parliament and voted for Blair and the illegal attack on Iraq when Labour MPs refused to
support him.
Without Theresa May and David Cameron, Blair wouldn't have had the authority to
attack.
So nice of him to toss off t hreats on Orthodox Easter Sunday. What a guy.
Who's influencing him? Bolton? FOX? Pompeo? Where does Mattis stand?
Wonder who is actually influencing him.
**** Interesting article at RT about Jaysh al-Islam coming to an agreement with the Syrian
government to leave Duma/Douma and go to Jarablus. Published time: 8 Apr, 2018 13:56 Edited time: 8 Apr, 2018 15:05
The Islamist group is to leave Douma for the city of Jarablus within 48 hours, SANA reported,
citing an official source. It said a deal to release all the prisoners has been reached.
Damascus agreed to negotiate with one of the last major militant groups holding out in Douma
in a bid to protect civilians and liberate abductees
The radical Islamist group, which has been accused of using civilians as human shields,
earlier agreed to leave the enclave of Eastern Ghouta near the Syrian capital. Jaysh al-Islam
will have to clear barricades and provide maps of minefields that they have laid in the area.
The militants were set to begin withdrawing from the city of Douma on Sunday, the head of the
Russian Defense Ministry's Syrian Reconciliation Center, Major General Yury Yevtushenko has
said.
So...were the negotiations going on while supposedly Syrian was attacking with some sort of
chem bombs?? Weird.
Also, the number of injured and dead has escalated very unbelievably. From about 15 to
thoursands!!
Yes, there is a "strategy" to pretend Russia is a criminal worse than other countries.
They even mentioned the word "weapons of mass destruction" again. It is a very real campaign
in a run up to war.
"It is regrettable to say that our Western partners had tried to disrupt today's session.
In the beginning they offered to observe a minute of silence in memory of people killed in
Khan Sheyhun, Idlib province, Syria. We proposed them to hold a moment of silence to
remember all victims of chemical weapons, primarily in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Iraq, and
our partners somehow felt uncomfortable. [They] don't want to remember all victims of
chemical weapons," said Shulgin."
There have been some pretty radical reports at VeteransToday. is there anyone that can verify
these claims? or even a good German speaker that can read the labels on chemical munitions
seized by the SAA...or any other supporting reports of captured US UK ISRAELI chemical
experts in East Ghoutta?
So nice of him to toss off t hreats on Orthodox Easter Sunday. What a guy. Who's influencing him? Bolton? FOX? Pompeo? Where does Mattis stand? Wonder who is actually influencing him.
****
Interesting article at RT about Jaysh al-Islam coming to an agreement with the Syrian
government to leave Duma/Douma and go to Jarablus.
Published time: 8 Apr, 2018 13:56
Edited time: 8 Apr, 2018 15:05
The Islamist group is to leave Douma for the city of Jarablus within 48 hours, SANA reported,
citing an official source. It said a deal to release all the prisoners has been reached.
Damascus agreed to negotiate with one of the last major militant groups holding out in Douma
in a bid to protect civilians and liberate abductees
The radical Islamist group, which has been accused of using civilians as human shields,
earlier agreed to leave the enclave of Eastern Ghouta near the Syrian capital. Jaysh al-Islam
will have to clear barricades and provide maps of minefields that they have laid in the area.
The militants were set to begin withdrawing from the city of Douma on Sunday, the head of the
Russian Defense Ministry's Syrian Reconciliation Center, Major General Yury Yevtushenko has
said.
So...were the negotiations going on while supposedly Syrian was attacking with some sort of
chem bombs?? Weird.
Also, the number of injured and dead has escalated very unbelievably. From about 15 to
thousands!!
"... I don't think this Skripal incident was staged. They went out for dinner. Caught very bad food poisoning. British intelligence and May's government jumped on this incident to blame it on Russia. May's poll number were down, and her handling of British exit from the EU was horrendous. This gave her all she needed to get back on her feet politically. ..."
"... White helmets and the Coventry MI6 asset not working in unison. I take it the Ghouta gas attack was supposed to have occurred at the peak of the Russia=novichok meme somewhere between 12th-20th March. ..."
"... Whereas it's clear that Bojo and the Tin Lady are playing a weak hand badly -- and have only been spared by the appalling complicity of virtually the entire panoply of Western media as information warfare adjuncts -- which is in itself a stunning and sickening display of power–it's not clear that Russia has played a stronger hand much more ably ..."
"... The UK and France are in deep economic trouble and need an external enemy such as Russia using an incident such as the Skripal affair to deflect the people from focusing on removing their government leaders. If all else fails, the UK Royals will have a couple of weddings and babies to take up the front pages for most of this year. Meanwhile, like the Skripals, several UK/EU agents involved in the HillaryGate Steele dossier trail of evidence such as Christophe Steele, Joseph Mifsid, and Gianni Pittella have disappeared: ..."
"... The EU is also experiencing internal dissent with the Visegrad four (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia) plus Italy and Austria and thus needs an external enemy to distract its members. I suspect that a Ukrainian invasion of DPR/LPR will once again be used as a flash point create "two minutes of hate" against Russia ..."
The farce continues. As the Skripals are apparently alive and well the British government
has a problem. When they talk and tell the world that it was actually food poisoning and not a
chemical weapon attack that hit them, the government of Theresa May is toast. The Skripals have
to be kept isolated and eventually
vanished . The CIA might give them a new identity or lock them into one of its black sites.
The Skripals house and the Zizzy restaurant are to be destroyed. (Who will kill the hospital
doctors?)
The "doorknob" theory the UK spread to explain the alleged injury of one policeman is so
outrageously stupid that many doubt it. To counter the mistrust, HMG comes up with an even
more implausible explanation :
Russian agents watched Sergei Skripal for a fortnight and chose to strike on a Sunday morning
so no postmen or delivery men would be exposed accidentally to the nerve agent. Any third
parties touching the door handle before the Skripals would have required the agents to
reapply the gel to the door handle, at the risk of being seen doing so.
Sure, that's why so many neighbors spoke of foreigners milling around in the street for two
weeks (not). And its why there was such a large manhunt right after the incident happened
(not).
Veterinarians in Salisbury post on Facebook that
they had contacted the police several times immediately after they learned that the Skripals
were admitted into hospital. They offered to take care of their cats and guinea pigs. The
police did not react at all. One cat escaped, the Guinea pigs died of thirst and the cat left
behind was so starved that it had to be put down.
i don't get it that britian is offering the skripals a new residence in the usa, or that
they are destroying their house... is destroying and getting rid of the evidence all that
have? i am sure they would like to get rid of the skripals too, not to mention the doctors
and whoever else that doesn't go along with the official script...
Has the penny dropped yet b that the Skripal episode was designed to condemn the Syrian
Government ahead of another staged chemical attack - this time to be hit hard. Those damn
Russians are launching chemical attacks in Britain, and now they are supplying chemicals to
the regime to poison Syrian children...
I don't think this Skripal incident was staged. They went out for dinner. Caught very bad
food poisoning. British intelligence and May's government jumped on this incident to blame it
on Russia. May's poll number were down, and her handling of British exit from the EU was
horrendous. This gave her all she needed to get back on her feet politically.
James Landale, BBC diplomatic correspondent writes
"For Russia, how far is it prepared to defend its allies' apparent use of chemical weapons
when its own apparent use of a nerve agent in the UK is subject to so much global
condemnation?"
Once the Skripals have been vanished, there would no longer be any reason to keep them
alive.
The Douma FF - too little too late? White helmets and the Coventry MI6 asset not working
in unison. I take it the Ghouta gas attack was supposed to have occurred at the peak of the
Russia=novichok meme somewhere between 12th-20th March.
Very nice writing, wit and "ohrwoerm" in general here.
I doubt that anything dramatic will happen in Syria on behalf of US retaliation or
anything sinister in that direction..
US and others have their people in Assad opposing forces and they know exactly what is going
on - on the ground.
What will be interesting is to observe how two Russian citizens will vanish and how the
truth will be pushed under the carpet while Russia will not let this just go.
I am still trying to find the plausable connection between the two. Could somebody
elaborate such option?
Whereas it's clear that Bojo and the Tin Lady are playing a weak hand badly -- and have
only been spared by the appalling complicity of virtually the entire panoply of Western media
as information warfare adjuncts -- which is in itself a stunning and sickening display of
power–it's not clear that Russia has played a stronger hand much more ably .
In sum, the questions, criticisms and suggested avenues of response suggested here, as
well as at the Off-Guardian, John Helmer's blog, the Saker, MoA, and strategic culture.org
(anyone who hasn't seen Rob Slane's 50 questions there really should), has been much richer
and potentially more efficacious than Russia's official demarches have so far been.
At the very least, can a writ of habeus corpus be filed? It will be clear to most of the
world by now that the UK does not want the Skripals to be heard from directly unless and
until their statements will not be those of "tools of the Kremlin." (But it may be that the
Russians are not so keen that they be heard from either, until what they will say can be
determined.)
I would have to think that this trial balloon to have the Skripals relocated with new
identities would be recognized by them as a threat (since at that point they will have been
disappeared). If the Russians are hesitating about what they might say, and about having a
writ of habeus corpus filed, the implied threat from the USUK might be enough to persuade the
Skripals that if they have information embarrassing for the USUK (or for Russia, for that
matter), they had better speak out now, before they are disappeared.
Is anybody getting the shivers like I am? Russian forces deployed in Syria, including S-400 and Pantsir-S1 air defense systems and
Sukhoi Su-30SM multirole fighters, have been put on a
combat alert , according to reports appearing from local sources in the country's
provinces of Tartus and Latakia where Russian military facilities are located.
The US is getting shivers. The knowledge that Russia is on combat alert - which I accept
as true - must be scaring the shit out of the US generals. Who wants to make the next call,
which ends in death? None of those chickenhawks, for sure.
If you watched Part 1 of the new "Putin" documentary by Andrei Kondrashev a couple of weeks
ago, you may not know that Part 2 is now out, at the Vesti YouTube channel:
If you're a fan, you'll find these two videos very inspiring. We've seen numerous snippets
from the past life of Putin, and anecdotes, but Kondrashev has pulled together more complete
narratives and interviews, including with Putin. Kondrashev is the guy who made "Crimea - the
Way Home" and was interviewing Putin in that one. They obviously have a good relationship.
The scale of Putin's achievement is almost impossible to grasp, and his sheer humanity is
amazing. He came from the honest, working poor, and has never lost this connection, never
stopped being one of them.
The Russians now officially want their money back (approx. 8.6b dollars) from Britain.
(One of the reasons why the Brits wrote the Skripal script? Preemptive strike?) The Coalition will hit SR sooner or later. Israel will move 40km into SR soil and call the
new area a buffer zone (between Golan Heights and the remaining Assad territory).
BTW, Somali authorities seize millions of dollars from UAE plane in Mogadishu.
The UK and France are in deep economic trouble and need an external enemy such as Russia
using an incident such as the Skripal affair to deflect the people from focusing on removing
their government leaders. If all else fails, the UK Royals will have a couple of weddings and
babies to take up the front pages for most of this year. Meanwhile, like the Skripals,
several UK/EU agents involved in the HillaryGate Steele dossier trail of evidence such as
Christophe Steele, Joseph Mifsid, and Gianni Pittella have disappeared:
In the UK case of May and BoJo, any alternative will result in a continuation of the
decline of the society. To be honest, much of the decline is baked in structural with the
loss of income from former "slave" colonies and the decline of North Sea oil and gas
reserves. Staying in the EU against the will of the people will continue to further drain
resources to Germany, which has structurally colonialized Western Europe.
France, like the UK, has extracted the wealth from their former colonies and facing a
reduction in tribute from these sources. Macron has attempted to maintain control of some
colonies such as Mali and really wants to conquer Syria. I suspect the meetings between
Macron and MbS will result in an agreement for Saudi Arabia to buy French weapons while
France getting financial aid to expand French troop bases in Syria.
Somehow, the current revolution in France is blacked out in the Western Media.
Videos of the current revolution are common on Youtube such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g21_myERteQ
Almost all sectors of the French society are protesting against the neo-feudal policies of
Macron, FIRE economy participants and his dwarves in the National Assembly. There are strikes
among:
transportation (rail, airlines, rotating bus and subway workers)
hospital workers
students
teachers (including kindergarden)
retirees
postal workers
television workers
Government workers (Fonctionnaires de France)
lawyers and judges
sanitation workers
EDF and GDF workers (Electricite de France and Gas de France)
Macron has already deployed the CRS assassins and the street war will begin when EU police
and military invade to crush to protestors. This will be far more violent than May 1968 and
may usher in the 6th Republic. Unfortunately, Macron would prefer the cities to burn rather
than resign and turnover the government to the President of the Senate.
The EU is also experiencing internal dissent with the Visegrad four (Hungary, Poland,
Czech Republic and Slovakia) plus Italy and Austria and thus needs an external enemy to
distract its members. I suspect that a Ukrainian invasion of DPR/LPR will once again be used
as a flash point create "two minutes of hate" against Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4zYlOU7Fpk
These EU conflicts will not end peacefully as the system will fight back rather than step
aside.
b: . . . The Skripal's are apparently alive and well
I don't think we should assume that that is true.
Wouldn't their pets have been treated better if the authorities expected them to live?
- if they participated in the farce, they would have given some thought to their pets;
- if they were attacked or simply used for propaganda purposes, the authorities would care
for their pets so as to not further offend them.
Yulia's phone call was weird. Why would she tell her cousin that she won't get a visa? Now
the British are arranging for the Skripal's to disappear into witness protection. Will the
Skripal's ever be allowed to make a public appearance and face questions from reporters? It
appears that that they won't be allowed to. Either they are already dead or the British fear
what they might say if they make a public appearance.
Some mentioned on one of MoA's Skripal threads that we have to be careful about what we
believe and what we assume given that the authorities and press have proven to be biased.
Sounds like good advice.
It seems clear that escalation in Syria direct public attention away from Skripal's
/Salisbury. I don't think it's too much of a stretch (given all that has happened) to think
that that was planned for.
The US, Australia, Canada and 16 EU states are among the countries which have
expelled Russian envoys. Of the sixteen Commonwealth realms, with Queen Elizabeth II as their
head of state, fourteen of them have Russian embassies. But only three of the fourteen (UK,
Canada, Australia) have joined the expulsion.
One of the remaining eleven rebel countries, New Zealand, provided a reason. PM Ardern-- "While
other countries have announced they are expelling undeclared Russian intelligence agents,
officials have advised there are no individuals here in New Zealand who fit this profile. If
there were, we would have already taken action."
The US, Australia, Canada and 16 EU states are among the countries which have expelled
Russian envoys. Of the sixteen Commonwealth realms, with Queen Elizabeth II as their head of
state, fourteen of them have Russian embassies. But only three of the fourteen (UK, Canada,
Australia) have joined the expulsion.
One of the remaining eleven rebel countries, New Zealand, provided a reason. PM Ardern--
"While other countries have announced they are expelling undeclared Russian intelligence
agents, officials have advised there are no individuals here in New Zealand who fit this
profile. If there were, we would have already taken action."
@ 17 -- There seem to be lots of weasely things being said about the fate of the Skripal
pets. The big, fluffy black cat with amber eyes should in no way whatsoever have suffered
such depletion of calories that he had to be put down. I fear he was sent to Porton Down to
be "studied," and then "put down." If there was a water source --dripping faucet, water
closet, most houses have some place a pet can drink from other that his water bowl-- a cat
can survive weeks. My Maine Coon disappeared, but showed up about 3-4 weeks later, ragged
coat, unkempt, very thin, but, when given saline solution by the vet, immediately began to
act more normal. Took a while to get her muscle mass rebuilt, but she survived.
An article from The Sun, dated April 5th, has a photo of Nash Van Drake (what a pretty
cat), and states the specialist chemical weapons investigators did not gain access to the
Skripal residence UNTIL APRIL 4TH!!! We know from photographs that lots of folks wearing
moons suits were around for weeks -- why was nothing done to care for the pets?
I can't find it now through google, but I read a comment or tweet from a vet who had made
repeated offers to care for the pets. These pets should never have suffered to the extent
they did.
Someone in power did not want anyone outside those with enforced silence agreements to see
those pets.
The sickly mog was transported to the Ministry of Defence research laboratory at
Porton Down to be tested, where he was found to be severely malnourished.
The lab's top veterinary officer ruled the pet was in so much pain he should be put
down.
His body was then immediately incinerated to avoid contamination from the deadly nerve
agent Novichok.
Sergei's guinea pigs were also destroyed at the top secret military research
facility.
(If there is a hell, may these animal abusers end up there with long and miserable
afterlives.)
@22
The VT site is really slow, but it works. It looks explosive if true.
It links to this video in arabic which shows chemical weapons made in Germany and England
(Salisbury!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=0&v=oEhUk73t8BA
Britain is, France isn't. Britain destroyed its industrial sector under
Thatcher, and has nothing to offer faced with Brexit. France has a vast agricultural sector
which they can fall back on. The French like revolutions, that's why the present troubles.
Here's a video declaring revolution, from my university, if you can cope with the French,
note the dog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHaV3Hm5g2A.
@22 text only...lots of good photos there...site is there for me. but it is very slow...
Last week, Russia and Syria announced the capture of British chemical weapon stockpiles in
East Ghouta along with the capture of a "coalition" command and chemical weapons facility
with all personnel. Taken from the combined statement censored from the western press, from
March 25, 2018
"The Syrian Arab Army and with the help of Russian captured a shipment of chemical weapons
destined for the Eastern Ghouta. These were British weapons produced at Porton Down in
Salisbury. Russian suspects that the Skripal incident is related as by their records,
Skiripal was working at Porton Down as a chemical weapons trafficker in partnership with a
Ukrainian firm. Russia denies attacking Skripal but admits he was under surveillance for his
activities involving support of terrorism in Syria and arms trafficking.
Russia also confirms that there are British, American, Israeli and Saudi intelligence
officers who were caught by the Syrian army in one of the heavily fortified operations rooms
during the invasion of the Syrian army and its allies of the East Ghouta."
VT asked the Syrian government for serial numbers and closeup photographs of chemical
weapons used. Syria sent them to us today.
Today, the Syrian Army captured the following German made poison gas shells, shipped into
Syria though Ukraine and Turkey and delivered to Jeish al Islam by a US CH53 helicopter,
according to statements "allegedly" gotten from POW interrogations.
American, British and Israeli military personnel captured in Syria have confirmed they
were ordered to stage chemical attacks in East Ghouta by their governments.
The Americans are still being held along with Israeli's while British prisoners are being
negotiated for. Sources in Damascus told us that representatives of Oman in Damascus
approached the Russian Office of Reconciliation on behalf of Britain for the return of
British chemical warfare personnel.
The shells in the above video are identified as VX gas from British stockpiles.
Russian officials in Syria informed Britain through Oman that they would have to directly
deal with Syria for the return of their personnel. We have received no further information
since, Damascus has remained silent on how or if negotiations were proceeding.
We do know that US Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a US Army combat veteran of
Iraq, met with both President Assad and Donald Trump, in order to arrange for covert
exchange, for substantial financial consideration, of captured Americans.
Initial introductions for this meeting were done by VT.
Israel bought back a Brigadier General (they claimed he was a colonel) in 2015 that we
know about.
The recent gas attack in Syria, timed as the last terrorists were surrendering for
relocation inside the Douma region of the Ghouta pocket, was planned personally by nominated
presidential advisor John Bolton and President Donald Trump personally, according to highly
placed sources.
Our sources in Russia, highest level, told us the attack was coming based on information
they received from US and Israeli prisoners taken in East Ghouta after an evacuation attempt
failed.
US casualty announcements in this effort have been released over the past few days as
happening in other areas to cover US complicity in terrorism. This dishonors families of the
dead, not just in the misuse of service members to support terrorism but in lying to families
about combat deaths. This shame goes directly to coward Trump!
"The Marine Corps identified four Marines killed on Tuesday in a CH-53E Super Stallion
helicopter crash near El Centro, Calif. The Marines were assigned to Marine Heavy Helicopter
Squadron (HMH) 465, Marine Aircraft Group 16, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air
Station Miramar.
"The loss of our Marines weighs heavy on our hearts," Maj. Gen. Mark Wise, commanding
general of 3rd MAW, said in a statement.
"Our priority is to provide support for our families and HMH-465 during this critical
time."
The four Marines killed in the crash were Capt. Samuel A. Schultz, First Lt. Samuel D.
Phillips, Gunnery Sgt. Derik R. Holley and Lance Cpl. Taylor J. Conrad."
Other US casualties were listed as a US Air Force F16 that allegedly crashed at Nellis Air
Force Base in Nevada and up to 6 Americans who the US claims were killed by "Kurdish forces"
in the north of Syria.
All died in a failed combined US/Israel rescue operation to remove not only communications
and command personnel but also chemical weapons operations teams as well.
Last week, VT Damascus received evidence that Americans, US Army Special Forces along with
Israeli chemical weapons officers had been captured in East Ghouta. We were told that not
only was a command facility captured with modern weapons but a stockpile of British made 81mm
poison gas mortar shells, numbering in the hundreds, was seized as well.
Video's were viewed by former MOD weapons specialists who identified the green stripe on
the shells seized in East Ghouta as VX gas from British stockpiles.
The Obama administration investigated alleged chemical attacks in 2012 and 2013 and
advised Syria to turn over chemical stockpiles as a way of discouraging terrorists from
continuing to stage chemical attacks to blame on Damascus.
Most efforts had their roots in Britain's MI6 and its affiliates, the Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights and the White Helmets.
The US is currently facing combined military operations against its occupied zone in Syria
by Iraq, Syrian and Russian forces. The US has been told to remove forces from Syria or face
a wider conflict.
The US and Russia have been at war against one another inside Syria for about a month
now.
Didn't want to clutter my post with links simply because a Copy&Paste from my post
into google search bar would provide anyone with the related sources.
Russia's Prosecutor General Yury Chaika demanded Britain to return more than 500 billion
rubles to the Russian Federation withdrawn by Russian citizens who are hiding from Russian
justice
"... "Russia is to blame" said Theresa May, without a shred of evidence. The UK government's baseless accusations have led the expulsion of Russian diplomats by 20 countries (18 countries of the EU, plus Canada and the US). and Moscow has responded by expelling Western diplomats. ..."
Skripal could not under any circumstances have been poisoned by a dangerous nerve agent at
his home.
Why?
Because the deadly nerve gas agent would have acted immediately and Skripal would not have
been able to go from his home (in his BMW or otherwise) to the shopping mall where he was
subsequently found (sitting on a bench) and taken to hospital together with his daughter
Yulia.
If Skripal and his daughter had been poisoned by a nerve agent (at his home), he would have
been found at his home rather than on a bench in the shopping mall. This in itself disqualifies
the official reports.
It also suggests that The Porton Down statement to the effect that "Russia was not the
source of the nerve agent" is a "red herring" (totally irrelevant). Why. Because the evidence
amply confirms that Skripal and his daughter were not poisoned by a nerve gas at Skripal's
home.
This obvious fact –which has not been the object of media coverage– is that
Scotland Yard's counterterrorism report on the "Russian hit squad" is not only fake , it
invalidates the UK government's "official" narrative, which is also fake. The lie discredits
the lie.
Lest we forget, this latest fake Scotland Yard counterterrorism report was preceded by a
string of "authoritative" (UK police, government) statements (analyzed and compiled by Stephen
Lendman):
First it was claimed father and daughter Skripal were poisoned by a military-grade nerve
agent while eating lunch at a Salisbury restaurant.
The narrative switched to Yulia unwittingly transporting the nerve agent planted in her
luggage on her flight from Moscow to London.
The story then shifted to Skripal's BMW, the deadly toxin smeared on its handle ,
Next came the claim about the nerve agent perhaps in aerosolized form affecting them
through the vehicle's ventilation system.
The latest official version claims the alleged nerve agent was smeared on the front door
of Skripal's home.
If any of the above accounts were valid, the Skripals, Bailey and at least 38 reported
others exposed to the same toxin would be dead – surely many others as well.
Yet a month later, no one died. Bailey recovered enough to be discharged from
hospitalization. Yulia's doctor said she improved markedly. Days earlier, Sergey was reported
in stable condition.
Russia was not the Source of the Nerve Agent: The Porton Down Statement. Boris Johnson and
the Foreign Office
Her Majesty's Foreign office is in crisis as a result of Porton Down's statement to the
effect that Russia was not the source of the nerve gas.
The justification for expelling Russian diplomats from a number of EU countries no longer
holds? There is no proof that the nerve gas was from Russia.
Will Boris Johnson be forced to resign?
"Russia is to blame" said Theresa May, without a shred of evidence. The UK government's
baseless accusations have led the expulsion of Russian diplomats by 20 countries (18 countries
of the EU, plus Canada and the US). and Moscow has responded by expelling Western
diplomats. Now that the hoax has been fully revealed. What next? Boris Johnson has been asked to explain. A political upheaval in several European countries? Will diplomatic relations be normalized
following these revelations? Unlikely unless there is a backlash from the EU governments which
were deliberately misled by the U.K.
At the moment both the UK government and the media are in denial. The latest statement from
Theresa May's office emphasizes that "[the UK government has] knowledge that within the last
decade, Russia has investigated ways of delivering nerve agents probably for assassination "
(quoted by the Washington Post, April 4, 2018)
The Media's Double Standards in the Coverage of Important Events. The Skripal Novichock
affair versus the Gaza Massacre
A sick Russian double agent and his daughter recovering in hospital, blamed on Vladimir
Putin
Versus
14 innocent Palestinians killed and more than 750 wounded
The "Gaza Massacre" is not front page news. It does not make the tabloids. "Israel is not to
Blame".
Yet these killings were ordered by the Netanyahu government.
Should these 20 Western countries not contemplate the timely expulsion of Israeli
diplomats?
The Porton Down lab at the center of the Skripal poisoning case has a dark history of secret
government-run human testing. The human trials were conducted as part of the UK's war
preparation against the Soviet Union. The military laboratory at Porton Down was the hub of
Britain's biological weapons trials between 1939 and 1989. Ministry of Defence scientists
conducted chemical
experiments on
at least 20,000 military personnel and more than 100 secret germ warfare tests on members
of the public in preparation for a feared chemical attack from the Soviet Union.
This year, the lab was thrust back into the headlines when it was given the responsibility
of determining the substance used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The lab's chief executive
has since confirmed the team are
unable to identify the " precise source " of the nerve agent, and the Foreign Office
has denied claiming it was
from Russia – despite Boris Johnson's assertions on just that
point.
The government-run experiments on military personal seriously breached ethical standards,
according to an official report released in 2006. It
followed years of complaints from veterans claiming to have suffered lasting damage to their
health as a result of the trials. During the experiments Porton
scientists dripped liquid nerve gas on the bare arms of 440 men and at one point tested nerve
gas on eight men without the trial participants knowing what it really was. Six men were
exposed to mustard gas for five consecutive days – three of whom suffered burns to their
scrotums. Around 450 men had their eyes exposed to sarin nerve gas.
A 60-page government report released in 2002
detailed tests which exposed millions of people to harmful substances. The tests consisted of
releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and microorganisms over vast areas of Britain –
unbeknownst to the population below.
It also revealed that military personnel were instructed to tell any " inquisitive
inquirer " that the trials were part of a research project into weather and air
pollution.
Designed to test Britain's vulnerability if deadly clouds were released over the country, in
most cases trials used alternatives to biological weapons such as serratia marcescens bacteria
or zinc cadmium sulphide, which was dropped on the public in huge
amounts to mimic germ warfare.
The government insisted the chemical involved was safe, however cadmium is recognised as a
cause of lung cancer and was considered a chemical weapon during World War II. Families living
in the tested areas who have children born with birth defects have demanded
a public inquiry.
In another trial a military ship sprayed bacteria including e.coli and bacillus globigii,
which mimics anthrax, over a five to 10-mile radius along the south coast of England between
1961 and 1968, exposing more than 1 million people to the micro-organisms. In trials designed
to test the vulnerability of government buildings and public transport, bacteria were released
on the London Underground, traveling about 10 miles.
The report also confirmed that during World War II Porton Down produced millions of cattle
cakes spiked with anthrax which could be dropped into Germany to kill livestock on a mass
scale.
Ulf Schmidt, Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent,
estimated in his 2015 book 'Secret Science,' that up to 30,000 secret chemical warfare
experiments were carried out during that time period at Porton Down. It has also been
claimed in most cases the military men were not given enough information to properly give
consent.
The 100-year-old lab has a reported annual budget of £500 million
and employs 3,000 scientists. In 2008 the Ministry of Defence awarded £3 million in
compensation to 360 tested veterans without admitting liability.
Prime Minister May is seen at around the 0:40 (depending upon clip version) mark beating the
cat against a wall.
Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g
is the "Burn the Witch" scene. With Putin as the witch it is a fair representation of the type
of justice and deep thought applied to the Skripal case.
Doctors at the Salisbury District Hospital announced today that Sergej Skripal's health is
rapidly improving. He and his daughter Yulia will likely be well again.
It is unlikely that any targeted poisoning with a real 'military grade' nerve agent would
have allowed for such an outcome. This brings us back to food poisoning as a possible cause of
the Skripals' ordeal.
A friend of this blog, Tore , sent us his considerations which we publish
below. He suggest that shellfish poisoning, which is caused by a neurotoxin known as Saxitoxin
or STX, is the real culprit of the Skripal incident. He explains how this would fit to the
observable behavior of the British government and other participants in the drama. In my view
his theory has significant merit.
On Wednesday the niece of Sergej Skripal, Viktoria Skripal, received a phone call from Yulia
Skripal. She was interviewed by a Russian TV station and
suggested that food poisoning might have been the real cause of the calamities her
relatives were in:
"Did they eat a dish that one cannot eat, or is it banned in England?
"The first signs when they were found were very similar to fish poisoning."
Victoria intended to visit the UK and to bring Yulia back home to Moscow. The United Kingdom
just
rejected Victoria Skripal's visa application because she "did not comply with the
immigration rules." No further explanation was given.
For those who have not read our previous posts on the issue we offer a short recap of the
case. Regular readers may want to scroll down to Tore 's part.
Sergej and Yulia Skripal were found on a public bench in Salisbury at about 4pm on March 4.
They had collapsed, were conscienceless and were brought into emergency care at the Salisbury
District Hospital. Local media wrote of a potential Fentanyl overdose.
Half an hour before the Skripal's collapsed they had eaten at Zizzi, a seafood and pizza
outlet.
Over the next days the British government started to make a fuzz about the case. Sergej
Skripal was a British spy who had been caught in Russia, put into jail and, in 2010, exchanged
for Russian spies. The British government hinted of Russian involvement in the Salisbury
incident.
But that story smelled fishy from its very beginning. To target an exchanged spy would
guarantee that no further exchanges would ever happen. Sergej Skripal had
links to the "dirty dossier" about Donald Trump that was created for the Hillary Clinton
campaign. Russia had no good motive, others potentially had one. If there was something
nefarious going on it seemed unlikely that Russia was involved.
I now believe that the British government jumped onto the case because it needed to divert
attention from the seriously bad results of the Brexit negotiations in Brussels. There are
local elections coming up in May and Theresa May's Tory party was lagging in the polls. (There
may have been additional reasons related to a planed 'chemical weapon' surprise in the
east-Ghouta campaign in Syria.)
Whatever it was - the spin-masters in Downing Street 10 saw a chance to convert the
poisoning of the Skripals into something big that would help their political aims. The general
push was to blame Russia. The idea to speak of the fearsome nerve-agent 'Novichok'
came from a spy drama that had just run on British TV.
On March 12 the British Prime Minister Theresa May spoke in Parliament and claimed that the
Skripals were 'attacked' with 'Novichok', a "military grade nerve agent of a type developed by
Russia". It was her "45 minutes"
moment . Russia was declared guilty without any evidence. Britain and other NATO countries
expelled Russian diplomats.
'Novichok' is a name for a group of chemicals that are indeed deadly. But Russia never had a
'Novichok' program. It had worked
on a different class of chemicals than the ones described
in Vil Mirzayanov's 'Novichok' book . Moreover, if 'Novichok' chemicals were involved than
Russia was only one of many suspect. The formulas for 'Novichoks' are known, various military
laboratories have made some and any decent organic chemistry laboratory
can create them too. The U.S., which had produced some of the 'Novichok' agents for itself,
had long
told its diplomats to avoid any discussions about them.
The first serious unraveling of the dubious case came on March 18 when a doctor at the
Salisbury District Hospital
publicly denied that any of its patients had been hurt by a nerve agent. We wrote at that
time:
Commentator Noirette had suggested here that the Skripal case was about food
poisoning or a food allergy, not nerve agents. The Skripals had visited a fish restaurant one
hour before they were found. The letter points into a similar direction. Food poisoning would
also explain why a doctor who gave emergency help to the unconscious Yulia Skripal for over
30 minutes was not effected at all.
To my best knowledge none of the main stream media picked up on the doctor's letter.
It seems that the 'Novichok' fairy-tale the British government plays to us provides for a
happy ending - the astonishing and mysterious resurrection of the victims of a "military
grade" "five to eight times more deadly than VX gas" "nerve agent" "of a type developed by"
Hollywood.
Happy Easter!
The alleged nerve agent should have killed anyone who came even into slight contact with it.
Survival did not fit to the earlier claims by the British government.
Now, just in time for the Orthodox Christian Easter, the condition of Sergej Skripal is
reported to be rapidly
improving. Another Resurrection! Hallelujah!
In my view all the stories we were told about 'Novichok', the 'doorknob' or a 'Russian
attack' are fairy tales. They simply do not make sense.
Commentators of this blog,
Noirette ,
TomGard and others, had discussed several theories of food poisoning. Food poisoning
makes sense but none of the ones discussed here fitted the picture of the case. Last week
Tore , a friend of this blog from Norway, sent me his theory which makes eminent sense
to me.
--- Tore writes :
Craig Murray's described
the pressure on Porton Down to establish that a nerve agent was used in the alleged Skripal
attack. I use 'alleged attack', because there is a fair chance that this was no attack, only a
serious food poisoning from the very start.
The Skripals had a seafood risotto pesce with king prawns, mussels and squid rings at Zizzi,
as reported
here in the Daily Mail on March 6.
This is a dish with a well known reputation as a source of shellfish poisoning.
Symptoms of PSP could begin within a few minutes and up to 10 hours after consumption.
Symptoms of PSP can include:
...
...
Respiratory difficulty, salivation, temporary blindness, nausea and vomiting may also
occur.
In extreme cases, paralysis of respiratory muscles may lead to respiratory arrest and
death within two to twelve hours after consumption. Seriously affected people must be
hospitalized and placed under respiratory care.
Unfortunately, there is no antidote for PSP toxins; however, supportive medical care can
be life saving . For example, persons whose breathing muscles become paralyzed can be put on
a mechanical respirator and given oxygen to help them breath, and people who develop a
cardiac arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm) can be given medications to stabilize their heart
rhythm.
The similarity with symptoms and effect derived from a nerve agent are striking, but no
surprise:
In fact the substance at work in a case of paralytic seafood poison is a neurotoxin called
Saxitoxin (STX) which is among the most potent poisons found in nature. It works the same way
as a nerve agent: It acts on the neurons, preventing normal cellular function and leading to
paralysis and in worst case death. In fact Saxitoxin is so potent that it was weaponized by the
U.S. and used as a chemical weapon - a nerve agent.
The U.S. developed Saxitoxin into a chemical weapon in the 1960s. The U.S. military
designation is TZ. It was also used by the CIA for covert operations and liquidations as
evidenced by the Church commission - see: E xcerpts of CIA inventory 1 , 2 .
Serotoxin is registered by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
as evidenced in the Wikipedia article Saxitoxin . The agent stays active even after
boiling or steaming.
Now back to Porton Down and the pressure to come up with the 'traces of a nerve agent'. The
Saxitoxin could obviously pass as a nerve agent, because it is a nerve agent - but without
mention of its origin - the food poisoning.
The nerve agent claim was released by police on March 7, three days after the incident.
According to the Daily Mail article mentioned above, the hospital alarmed the
police the day after, on March 5, when the staff became aware of Skripal's 'spy credentials',
probably through BBC which first brought the news. This means Porton Down at the most had two
days from first tests to the conclusion 'nerve agent' announced on the 7th.
This also implies that the hospital probably treated the Skripals for a food poisoning from
the start, until they became aware of Skripals credentials the day after. This fits with the
letter to the Times from Stephen Davies, the hospital doctor.
The media storm had been going on for a week when Theresa May on March 12 entered parliament
and announced the 'Novichok'. The blame had been on Russia from the first moment.
Speculation:
Now suppose the government in the meantime had become aware they had a weak case from the
start - because they had rushed Porton Down to a premature conclusion?
There would be no way back for May. The die had been cast. The government had walked out on
a limb from the start, now they had to continue the theater by naming the agent.
No nerve agent would suit their narrative better than 'Novichok'. Developed in USSR, a
substance with some foggy features and many variants - as opposed to other more well known
agents with distinct features. And most important an agent that is not listed in OPCW and which
was deliberately chosen to confuse. [b adds: 'Novichok' was also known to the British and U.S.
public as a 'fearsome Russian agent' through a current spy drama on TV. It increased the
propaganda value.]
The initial reluctance to involve the OPCW also fits into this picture: the decision to
involve OPCW came after May had landed the Novichok claim in parliament on March 12.
The day before, on March 11, police found traces of a nerve agent in the Zizzi
restaurant.
Note that the police inside is unprotected - bigger
Did they find the mussel in the risotto? Or 'Novichok'?
More than three weeks into the investigation this is, as far as I know, the only confirmed
police find of traces of the nerve agent. Zizzi fits in perfectly as the origin of the
poisoning considering the 40 minutes it took before the Skripals passed out on the bench.
Though I wonder how a "military grade nerve agent", destined to kill instantly on the
battlefield, took that long to incapacitate the Skripals.
I am no doctor, nor a specialist in chemistry - only a retired journalist working with open
sources. There are so many curiosities with this case, so many speculations, ...
Here in Norway we have an expression called blodtåke - best translated as blood fog -
when all the media are rushing blindly in one direction, without asking the most elementary
questions.
After I wrote this they found 'Novichok' on the door of the Skripals' home, which makes it
even more unlikely, considering the time frame.
Did they have to divert attention from the restaurant as origin of the poisoning?
There are of course some holes in the above - just regard this as an idea to go along the
line of food poisoning.
End of Tore's deliberations.
---
b here:
Tore's theory of food poisoning with Saxitoxin makes sense. It is a fitting
explanation for what happened in Salisbury and for the murky tale the British government tries
to sell.
(update)
Commenters noted that the theory does not immediately explain what happened to Detective
Sergeant Nick Bailey, who was also treated in the hospital but less severely effected than the
Skripals. Off-Guardian
noted on March 23:
It was announced today that Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey – allegedly the third victim
of the alleged "nerve agent" poisoning in Salisbury, UK – has been released from
hospital.
Bailey did not speak to the press, and no photographs or film of him leaving the premises
and going home have yet emerged.
...
Where Bailey was poisoned, and how he was poisoned is still not clear – which is
puzzling of itself. Was it while attending the Skripals as a first-responder, as
claimed by Theresa May (improbable on the face of it, since CID officers in Britain do
not act as first-responders). Or did he, on the contrary,"
have no direct contact with the Skripals ", as put out by the Daily Mail? Was he poisoned
while searching the Skripals home ? Or
was it somewhere else entirely?
And why did he become poisoned when no one else at the scene, and indeed no one else
anywhere in Salisbury fell ill, or even showed signs of contamination in their bloodwork?
If Bailey was on the scene on Sunday afternoon, it was likely not because he was on duty,
but because he happened to be in the area. Did he have a private lunch? At Zizzi's? With
mussels? We do not know and the government won't say.
(end update)
One of these days the Skripals, Nick Bailey, the doctors at the hospital, or some of the
people at Porton Down will talk and let us know the truth.
The Zizzi website says that the
restaurant in Salisbury is still - four and a half weeks after the incident - "temporarily
closed". If it served healthy food and the Skripals were really poisoned by touching a doorknob
at their home why would that still be the case?
But do not take off your tinfoil hat just yet.
If Saxitoxin was the cause of the Skirpals' illness, the story has still potential for a
decent spy drama. Was the poison in the mussels Zizzi's served of natural occurrence, or had
someone at the CIA rummaged through its old inventory? Who applied the dosage?
In another message Tore notes that there is a foreign member in the British
Joint
Intelligence Commission which advises Downing Street:
Ever since World War II, the chief of the London station of the United States Central
Intelligence Agency has attended the JIC's weekly meetings.
These connections might yet bring us back to Skripal's participation in the 'dirty dossier'
about Trump which MI6 agent Chris Steele prepared for the Hillary Clinton campaign. The U.S.
and the British intelligence services under Clapper and Brennan waged a war against then
candidate Donald Trump. They did not want him to win the election under any circumstance. Were
the Skripals late casualties of this fight?
But no. I would not trust that story any more than I trust the British government's current
tale.
Another possible explanation, more likely that the election manipulation mentioned above, is
a false flag incident solely created to incriminate Russia. It would be a reproduction of the
1994 Operation
Hades , a highly propagandized case made up by the German spy service BND to incriminated
Russia with a (faked) plutonium smuggling case.
Then again - if it looks like food poisoning, Occam's razor says, it might just be that -
food poisoning.
The Skripals' beloved animals though, were
admittedly killed by the British government. The Skripal's should sue the responsible
persons to hell for committing this murder and for
lying about its circumstances.
The United Kingdom is headed for a break-up.
Not
today or tomorrow, mind you but, sooner than anyone would like to handicap, especially in this age of
coalition government at any cost.
By responding to the alleged poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his
daughter Yulia with histrionics normally reserved for The View, Theresa May's government has set the
stage for its own collapse.
Government's fall when the people lose confidence in them. May has bungled everything she has
touched as Prime Minister, from Brexit talks and her relationship with Donald Trump to her response
(or lack thereof) to the escalating level of domestic terrorism and her pathetic campaign during last
year's snap election.
When I confront such obvious ineptitude it's not hard to believe that wasn't the plan to begin
with.
Since her initial meeting with Donald Trump after his election where it looked like the two would
get along, May has become more and more belligerent to both him and his base. While he continues to
affirm our special relationship "The Gypsum Lady" as I like to call her makes mistake after mistake.
The latest of which is pushing everyone east of the Dneiper River in Ukraine to denounce the
Russians and President Vladimir Putin personally for this alleged poisoning in Salisbury a month ago.
The result of which was the largest round of diplomatic expulsions in a century, if not ever.
And now that the whole "Russia did it" narrative has been skewered by May's own experts at Porton
Downs, she stands alone along with her equally inept and embarrassing Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson
and Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson.
The calls for their jobs will only intensify here.
Tinker, Tailor, Traitor, Spy
The whole thing felt from the beginning like a bad Ian Fleming novel. I said from the beginning
this this was a classic false flag to gin up anti-Russian fervor while May's negotiator betrayed
Brexit and pushed to remove Russian businesses from doing business in London.
I'm sorry but it's not a stretch to think this whole thing was cooked up by MI-6. In fact, that's
been my operating assumption for a month now.
The problem was, until a few days ago, I didn't have a good enough reason why.
Putting diplomatic pressure on Russia on behalf of the U.S.'s crazed neoconservative Deep State
just didn't seem like a big enough reward. Neither did cutting Russian businesses out of European
banks to stop contractor and creditor payments associated with the Nordstream 2 pipeline.
Those things felt like nice bonus objectives but not main goals.
And it wasn't until the lead scientists at Porton Downs left May, Johnson and Williamson out to
hang on Monday that the full operation became clear.
By stating that they could not confirm the
origin of the Novichok nerve agent used in the attack on the Skripals the Porton Downs officials
destroyed the credibility of The Gypsum Lady's government.
Therefore, this operation was always about undermining May's government to the point of a
no-confidence vote. This would then be the ultimate betrayal of Brexit in order to preserve the
U.K.'s position in the European Union, which is favored by the political and old-monied British elite.
In short, this was a coup attempt.
And don't think for a second that this is not plausible. Remember it was Margaret Thatcher's own
most trusted people who betrayed her to get the U.K. into the European Union in the first place. This
was why they brought down The Iron Lady.
So, here's the scene:
May and Johnson both get told by trusted advisors that there is incontrovertible proof of Russia's
hand in this. They go with this information with confidence to parliament, the U.N., high-level
meetings with foreign leaders and the press.
They convince their allies to stand strong against the evil Russians who is everyone's bid 'baddie'
at this point.
Trump has to go along with this nonsense even though he is obviously skeptical otherwise there will
be an uproar in the U.S. press about him betraying our most trusted ally for his puppet-master Putin.
To be honest, I don't think these bozos, May and Johnson, were in on the plan. I think they were
being played all along and now will be the patsies.
Just like May was played last year, calling for snap elections. The minute she called them there
were terror attacks all over London, marches against her over public safety. A media campaign which
puffed up Jeremy Corbyn, who they are now destroying for his rightful trepidation about this fairy
tale MI-6 is spinning.
The goal was to weaken May and get Labour back in charge. Corbyn would then be cast aside and a
Tony Blair clone installed as Prime Minister to scuttle Brexit and restore order to
the galaxy,
Europe.
Unfortunately, the DUP got enough of the vote to re-elect a very weakened May and things have limped
along for nearly a year.
Crisis on Infinite Empires
The problem with this however, is like all plans of those desperate to cling to vestiges of former
glory (and the U.K. is definitely the poster child for that), is the crisis of confidence it will
engender.
Make no mistake, Brexit was no mistake.
It's what the people of Britain wanted and they want it more now than in 2016. So, they don't dare
call for a new referendum. But, they are also looking at a third parliamentary vote in as many years.
And that doesn't scream confidence no matter how much markets would prefer the legal status quo.
Opposition to Brexit comes from the entrenched monied power, not from any adherence to globalist
ideology.
But, if Brexit is betrayed through this hackneyed farce of a spy thriller, it won't sit
well with the British people.
Scotland's call for a second referendum will continue to grow
and the Pound will fall alongside the competitiveness of British labor still trapped within a
euro-zone that has done nothing but choke the life out of the economy.
The Pound will begin to sink into irrelevancy as this unfolds. It won't happen overnight, but we
will look back on these events and see them as the trigger points for the path of history.
Between these things and the toxic levels of political correctness as it pertains to Muslim
immigration, the insanity of London liberals and the de facto police state the U.K. has become and you
have a recipe for political unrest that will not be pretty.
Brexit was meant to be the peaceful revolution that put the nail in the coffin of the march to one
world government. It is about to be nullified.
When it is the sun will finally set on what's left of the British Empire.
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The revelation that the
animals had died caused
considerable reaction on social
media with many wondering why it
had taken officials so long to
find the animals despite so much
police activity at the home.
The EUSSR will be
destroyed, there were
attempts by UKIP and
various others to
democratize it a decade or
two ago and they were
unsucessful, the protocols
says that all states must
be democratic before world
government can be
implemented, both the EUSSR
and PRC stand in their way.
"In another major
misjudgement by the US in
January, the supposedly
moderate Secretary of State
Rex Tillerson announced
that the US would be
keeping its forces in Syria
after the defeat of Isis,
and intended to get rid of
President Bashar al-Assad
and roll back Iranian
influence. This ambition
was largely
fantasy
, but
the Russian and Turkish
reaction was
real
. Four
days after Tillerson's
arrogant declaration, the
Turkish army poured into
northern Syria with Russian
permission and within two
months had eliminated the
enclave of Afrin, inhabited
by Kurds who are the only
US ally in Syria. "
As Skripal-Gate Collapses, Will May's
Government Be Next?
My response:
ENGLAND is CORRUPT and an UNGODLY place to
live. If you have been paying attention, it
was these S.O.B.s who were spying on TRUMP
under the direction of the "OBOZO"
administration.
This kind of thing really angers the SHIT
out of me. Since when does ENGLAND have any
input into AMERICA's POTUS election process.
BASTARDS!!!
I HOPE THE WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY CRASHES and
BURNS. JAMES BOND can go pound salt.
So in this case the chain of events looks like: food poisoning -> discovery that the
incident can be used as for the nasty PR campaign against Russia and save May government ->
Novichok claims -> Novichok contamination
The deafening silence of neoliberal MSM is an interesting sign that something went wrong with the PR attack on Russia.
Notable quotes:
"... I doubt that the police were responsible, though it is inevitable that they will be saddled with the blame. I have no doubt that there are police procedures that would see the police remove all pets before sealing a premises. But I doubt very much that the police were anything other that props by that stage i.e. they were not doing anything by the book but, rather, they were Doing As They Were Told. ..."
"... IMHO it could have been food poisoning and it fits the timing perfectly but doesn't explain all the other traces of whatever agent they are presenting as evidence. I still feel that these idiots used an old stock of Foliant agents recovered during the cleanup of the Uzbekistan lab. I believe that Porton Down made their own stock from the formulae they recovered. This doesn't explain the presence of the Novichok A234 which was never developed or a part of the Soviet research.It was developed at Edgewood Arsenal back in the late 90's and published back then. However, the weasel wording of the claims by DSTL are that is was highly likely (read that as we are guessing) that there was Novichok or from the novichok family (meaning it could also be anything). I am a scientists and we use very precise language when describing something. I also have a forensic background and you would never put something like this vague report out there. It is actually embarrassing to be this vague and it would be tossed as evidence. ..."
"... There is not one single mention of a poisoned spy Skripal story nowhere near headline or important news columns to be noticed or seen. Like the story never happened. I am saying the BBC, The Guardian and CNN just forgot that there was any news concerning Russia poisoning or even mention of it. Really? ..."
"... The simplest explanation why the British government should have taken food poisoning as an opportunity for a global PsyOp in a manner, that was definitely highly unprofessional and panic-like, is still the repeated Russian warnings of an imminent large-scale chemical False Flag attack in Syria, to which an attack on the government district was to follow, plus ..."
"... On the other hand, Russia would not waste the opportunities of the evidence on Public Relation. The Kremlin would refer it to reasonably selected confidential military and civil contacts within the EU to bolster the rifts within the imperial camp, especially transatlanticists and their opponents in the European Council. Brexit could have become even more detrimental for the UK. ..."
"... How does Yulia Skripal know that "nobody here" will give her cousin a visa? Is she familiar with the intricacies of the Visa process? The whole phone call sounds like the acoustic equivalent of the device ships in StarTrek have installed - a deflector shield. Calm down things, make her cousin not apply for a visa. This phone call came (just like that) after her cousin started to go public in Russia and probably was identified as a potential disruptor. Yulia Skripal tried to make her not apply for a visa - by assuring her everything and everyone is OK (including Sergey) and then, when Victoria insisted, tackling the Visa issue right away - don't apply the message is, no need to come to the UK and see me. It appears this had to be avoided at all costs. ..."
"... Skripal and a 33-year-old woman are believed to have come into contact with a poisonous substance at the city's Zizzi restaurant, which has since been closed by emergency teams. ..."
Thanks to MoA, the government/media Salisbury England Information Operation doesn't add up.
If exposed to military grade nerve agent 5-8 times more toxic than America's VX, the Skripals
and first responders would be dead. If food poisoning, there should be more victims at
Zizzi's but not the police detective. Clearly the story was made up fast without the facts.
Their pets were incinerated for god's sake. The observable goal of the British Hierarchy is
to stress Russia with more sanctions and to escalate the Syrian world war plus a cover up PM
May's catastrophic handling of Brexit.
As documented here, there are too many coincidences to be happenstance. I am leaning
towards an oligarch faction contracted out a mob hit to take out a "contributor" to Steele's
Dodgy Dossier to give it credence and scare the crap out of everyone else involved. The
Established as an afterthought tasked the incident to promote their greater
ambitions.
'Health Canada advises Canadians to limit their consumption of lobster tomalley to the
equivalent of one lobster tomalley daily for adults, due to the possible presence of PSP.
Health Canada has recommended that children not consume lobster tomalley.'
No notice on limiting shellfish - only lobster re PSP at that link. If bivalve shellfish
could be more toxic than lobster, would a limit also have been mentioned? By weight, if
shellfish acquire similar or less toxicity than lobster then the Skripals must have had a
good feed of mussels.
If Skripals werent in it from the start, they will HAVE to say whatever UK tells them to,
otherwise they might "relapse" and no Easter miracles this time. At least until they get out
of UK. If they will refuse to leave UK because they "fear evil ruskies", then we will know it
was all a sham.
@ Yeah, Right | 67
Same thing I was thinking, it doesnt make any sense. Bottom line: police sealed pets to
starve to death (due to neglect?), and poor cat which was still alive was killed too. Any
normal person by seeing hungry cat would give her food, but no, it was "more merciful" just
to kill it. Worse than animals.. And of course, to avoid any investigation later, burned
them.
I searched using Google for "saxitoxin deaths frequency," which turns up lots of papers on
the subject. From the abstract of one titled, "Marine algal toxins: origins, health effects,
and their increased occurrence" and published in 2000:
"Over the past three decades, the frequency and global distribution of toxic algal
incidents appear to have increased, and human intoxications from novel algal sources have
occurred. This increase is of particular concern, since it parallels recent evidence of
large-scale ecologic disturbances that coincide with trends in global warming."
The paper suggests such poisoning is rare, but obviously it is possible. Further browsing
for "shellfish poisoning" and so forth indicates that such poisoning is frequent enough for
health agencies and governments to warn people about it. Perhaps one could calculate the
frequency by which Russia poisons people, and compare the frequency with which people are
accidentally poisoned by saxitoxin to form a better judgment of the situation.
(First time leaving a comment on this blog. I found your blog somewhat recently because of
Naked Capitalism, and having been reading your posts ever since. )
...
They cannot hide from the truth. The whole world is watching. No one believes Highly
Likely.
...
Posted by: Red Ryder | Apr 6, 2018 6:16:45 PM | 11
Especially when one recalls that 'Highly Likely' is the tr-r-raditional excuse used by the
Judeo-Christian Barbarians, since 2001, for slaughtering 'suspects' (from a safe distance)
without properly identifying them.
All those Afghan Wedding parties, Chelsea Manning's infamous Collateral Murder gun-sight
video in Iraq. And the CIA's Drone campaign is ongoing.
Sorry, but the odds of these two getting food poisoning is one thing but they just happen to
be THE SKRIPALS! getting food poisoning? - no way! Even if there was bad mussels or even if
dozens came down with food poisoning, still THE SKRIPALS just happen to eat there - what are
the odds? IMPOSSIBLE!
UNLESS... the food poisoning was intentional (to silence him re Steele) and then blame
Russia. But if food poisoning was the method, then TPTB would have known better than to go
the nerve agent route. UNLESS... they planned it all along to plant nerve agent but not use
it on the Skripals due to the danger posed to others.
In that case the culprit was norovirus (bane of passenger cruise liners, I believe)
transmitted through raw oysters, improperly prepared razorback clams and staff practices
(such as staff working while they were still sick) that enabled the spread of the
norovirus.
WRW @ 78: Isn't it just possible that if the Skripals had had food poisoning, their condition
would have been treated the same as any other patient with food poisoning - but once hospital
staff noticed that Sergei Skripal had some connection with British security through checking
his medical records, they called police and from then on the Skripals were treated
differently from other patients, and were kept confined or sedated while the authorities
decided that they must have been targeted by Moscow or saw an opportunity to bash the
Russians?
Sometimes, sooner or later, incidents can happen in such a way that most observers would
believe there must be more to them than coincidence and that such incidents must have been
planned. They needn't be planned - all that's needed is someone or a group of people looking
for opportunities to exploit situations, use innocent victims and throw blame onto third
parties.
...
The truth is that (while China may eclipse the US by 2150) it is very likely that this will
be Russia's century. I believe the west know this very well and will do everything they can
to capture Russia's resources and that means continuing isolation of, and tension and
conflict with, Russia.
Btw: If you add Chinese industry, Russian resources and OBOR together it is obvious
that the end of western dominion of the world is coming to an end and that, unfortunately,
greatly increases the risk of a major war.
Posted by: Ace | Apr 6, 2018 9:07:04 PM | 48
That makes a certain amount of sense but overlooks a vital component of the current World
Order. If the current World Order wasn't dominated and controlled by Greedy Rich Pigs then
TRADE would be the friendly and logical way to address any global imbalances in local water,
food and resources availability (to which one could add Funds/Finance).
The underlying problem is, imo, the factoid that the Greedy Rich Pigs crowd got rich by
monopolising essential industries and resources centuries ago and don't want to surrender
their 'right' to OWN everything of value, including politicians, and to continue their
Command of the Gravy Train.
I doubt that the police were responsible, though it is inevitable that they will be
saddled with the blame. I have no doubt that there are police procedures that would see the
police remove all pets before sealing a premises. But I doubt very much that the police were
anything other that props by that stage i.e. they were not doing anything by the book but,
rather, they were Doing As They Were Told.
IMHO it could have been food poisoning and it fits the timing perfectly but doesn't
explain all the other traces of whatever agent they are presenting as evidence. I still feel
that these idiots used an old stock of Foliant agents recovered during the cleanup of the
Uzbekistan lab. I believe that Porton Down made their own stock from the formulae they
recovered. This doesn't explain the presence of the Novichok A234 which was never developed
or a part of the Soviet research.It was developed at Edgewood Arsenal back in the late 90's
and published back then. However, the weasel wording of the claims by DSTL are that is was
highly likely (read that as we are guessing) that there was Novichok or from the novichok
family (meaning it could also be anything). I am a scientists and we use very precise
language when describing something. I also have a forensic background and you would never put
something like this vague report out there. It is actually embarrassing to be this vague and
it would be tossed as evidence.
What I think happened was they used old stock (which would have the correct chemical
fingerprint from Russia having been made there in the first place) but after 38 years the
potency is way off. If the agent was in fact 10 times stronger than VX then perhaps there was
just enough potency left to cause what we saw in the Skripals. This, of course, assumes that
the UK attacked them in the first place which explains their certainty of what agent it was.
However, if it was in fact A234 then you could never attribute this to Russia as it is
actually an American product. If it was one of the original Foliant agents that is something
different but that is not what was claimed. The finding of agent on the doorknobs is
ridiculous and a very bad misstep by the UK. These agents are viscous (like honey) and smell
horrible similar to your household bug sprays. Putting it on a doorknob would be patently
obvious to anyone touching the door and you would examine the goo on your finger and smell
it. Obviously, this didn't happen. So, if agent is present on the doorknob then it was
deliberately put there well after the fact. These agents can be soluble in water (2 of the
Foliant agents are water soluble and 2 are not). If so, it was raining in Salisbury which
would have removed it by rainfall dilution. If it isn't water soluble it was there for 3
weeks.
The persistence of these agents in the environment is not long and it rapidly begins to
decompose, especially if in the presence of sunlight (UV), and disappears. When salting a
battlefield with nerve agent we expect it to remain lethal for 72 hours. These weapons are
designed specifically to keep the enemy forces from travelling through a contaminated area
and the purpose of chemical agents is denial of terrain. You use it when you have a front
line which is too large to defend with your forces at hand or to funnel the enemy attack into
an area where you have amassed your defenses. This is what this stuff is designed to do. You
can also use it to mess up rear area support operations but that is a secondary use. Think of
it as an aerial delivered (artillery or aircraft) temporary minefield. The key word being
temporary. After all, this is the territory you are fighting over and it is useless if it is
permanently poisoned. As the FEBA moves you may end up occupying that area in the days
following a defensive operation. It is possible; however, to attack through a contaminated
area and modern tanks now have air filtration and all combat troops have MOPP gear which will
protect a soldier in that environment. However, anyone who has practiced infantry assaults
wearing full MOPP gear knows how awful that is and how ineffective you are as a soldier. It
is hot, heavy, with poor visibility in a full mask, not to mention inadequate breathing which
is rough at best, plus you are also carrying your basic load so it is an awful experience.
Also by doctrine attacking forces need to have a 3 to 1 force superiority to be successful
and things like chemical agents on the battlefield are force multipliers whereas attacking
forces operating a full MOPP are suffering a force detractor. My point is it is an effective
way to mount a defense and no one would willingly attack through a contaminated area.
So, I see many problems trying to put this together and all of them add up to me to be a
false flag operation which was botched. All the subsequent actions by the UK government
including denial of consular privileges to see their citizens, failure to follow fixed
procedures as mandated by the CWC, long delay in reporting to the OPCW, failure to provide
any physical evidence (GC-MS printouts would be enough), taking the investigation away from
the police, not mounting a manhunt for the perpetrators, changing story over time and the
miraculous recovery of the victims all indicate to me a completely botched operation. I feel
sorry for the British citizens having a government as inept as this is. Of course, mine (the
USA) is far worse but I always respected the UK as being somewhat responsible. Now it looks
like it has fallen down to American levels of ineptitude.
Binary food-poisoning anyone ? With all this talk about creating these mysterious binary
nerve agents, did anyone consider a similar scenario involving two separate strains of
bacteria (or even two of the same/similar strain), from two separate foods.
The Russians and Eastern Europeans spend a lot of time preserving foods (for their long cold
winters) and they can become a source for the Clostridium botulinum bacteria to grow in. So
for breakfast the Skripals have some pickles that Yulia brought with her and a few hours
later the botulinum toxin begins to affect them, but only mildly. Their seafood risotto also
happens to contain traces of Clostridium botulinum and that combined with the original is
enough to knock them out 30 minutes or so later.
Botulism can be hard to track down, but when you have the world's leading experts on it just
down the road at Porton Down it should be easy to get a quick positive test and to have all
the information necessary to treat any victims.
But can you imagine what would happen if you tell the world that a Russian spy has been
poisoned with botulinum toxin, just a few miles away from the world's leading reasearch
centre for that toxin. A different explanation is needed and a quick flood of DSMA-Notices
needs to be issued to prevent any unwanted details emerging whilst the new explanation is
being created.
Bailey the other poisoning victim may have had just a mild dose from the seafood risotto.
claiming that Theresa May got European support by claiming they could prove that the
Skripal poison came from Russia (vetoed by Porton Down). The article asks for an independent
investigation. Deutsche Welle is the German equivalent of BBC.
The Skripals were on the 'kill list' for the known reasons regarding the Steele dossier.
Yulia was just collateral damage. Porton Down had the substance and it was applied to the
house door after the Skripals had left to go about what they had planned to do.
Unscripted, the Skripals come down with a food poisoning from eating at the restaurant.
They are unable to return home, where they would have been poisoned by whatever services
involved. But the cop goes there and comes into contact with whatever was applied there.
Noteworthy is of course, that any assassination will not be perpetrated based on a 10%
chance of succeeding. The people with the abilities to take somebody out do just that.
Although it must also be mentioned that assassinations by means of causing cancer in the
victim are very popular in the valuable West.
Posted by: Old Microbiologist | Apr 7, 2018 3:06:13 AM | 85
I think its military use has shifted since WWI. It is used on civilian populations for
ethnic cleansing, on underground makeshift facilities like tunnels and in PR.
There is not one single mention of a poisoned spy Skripal story nowhere near headline or
important news columns to be noticed or seen. Like the story never happened.
I am saying the BBC, The Guardian and CNN just forgot that there was any news concerning
Russia poisoning or even mention of it.
Really?
I'm not so sure. There are increasing demands to have another referendum over the Brexit
"package". Also, one thing the Conservative Brexiters have overlooked is what happens when
the Labour Party forms a government? Inside the EU there are strict limits and controls to
what it could do to return the UK from a neo-liberal economy to either a social democratic or
democratic socialist economy. Once the UK leaves the EU all those limits and controls
disappear, which is probably why Corbyn is ambivalent about Brexit - he knows we need to
remain part of Europe but not part of the neo-liberal EU ruled by a quasi-dictatorship in
Brussels.
BTW, the UK has been the United States' enforcer inside the EU since it joined.
When the UK voted for Brexit, I suspect that deep-state Washington thought that Poland could
take over as enforcer , but the nationalist politicians in Poland are just not up to
the job. So what could deep-state Washington do? Discredit Theresa May as she is probably the
only Conservative politician capable of getting terms for Brexit that the British electorate
will accept? Put in her place a thoroughly damaged Boris Johnson who would screw it up
completely?
b,
your "best explanation ... " label is a little deceptive, as you yourself concede in the last
paragraphs of your piece. Food poisoning explains the recovery of the Skripals, the
conflicting allegations about means and location of the poisoning and the lies and secrecy
about DS Baileys alledged affection by the poison, nothing more.
The simplest explanation why the British government should have taken food poisoning as an
opportunity for a global PsyOp in a manner, that was definitely highly unprofessional and
panic-like, is still the repeated Russian warnings of an imminent large-scale chemical False
Flag attack in Syria, to which an attack on the government district was to follow,
plus numerous reports of the capture of British Special Forces in Ghouta, which
were, with due reservations, relayed by Maxim A. Suchkov. Suchkov is not in a position to
indulge in levity in such a case.
On the other hand, Russia would not waste the opportunities of the evidence on Public
Relation. The Kremlin would refer it to reasonably selected confidential military and civil
contacts within the EU to bolster the rifts within the imperial camp, especially
transatlanticists and their opponents in the European Council. Brexit could have become even
more detrimental for the UK.
Clinical Presentation:
Ingestion of molluscs contaminated with PSP results in the following clinical picture
(Bower et al, 1981, Kao 1993). Five to 30 minutes from consumption, there is slight
perioral tingling progressing to numbness which spreads to face and neck to moderate cases.
In severe cases, these symptoms spread to the extremities with incoordination and
respiratory difficulty. There are medullary disturbances in severe cases evidenced by
difficulty swallowing, sense of throat constriction, speech incoherence or complete loss of
speech, as well as brain stem dysfunction. Within 2-12 hours, in very severe cases, there
is complete paralysis and death from respiratory failure in absence of ventilatory support.
After 12 hours, regardless of severity, victims start to recover gradually and are without
any residual symptoms within a few days (Bower et al, 1981, ILO 1984, Halstead 1988).
This fits the eyewitness reports of the Skripals on the bank. A women who had watched them
said they were behaving erratic before collapsing. She thought they were way out on drugs.
"I suspect that deep-state Washington thought that Poland could take over as enforcer, but
the nationalist politicians in Poland are just not up to the job."
It is debatable if the current Polish government is barking mad or batshit insane, but in
either case, they lack influence on other countries that an "enforcer" needs. In any case,
what would an "enforcer" enforce? On most matters, the French are eager to please and Germans
usually follow the suit, even if Merkel utters something feisty in a biergarten on
occasion.
We still do not know for a fact how the Skripals were poisoned (several avenues of
"investigation" - buckwheat, door handle, gift, something in a suitcase) and how Detective
Sergeant Bailey fits into this picture. If he was in the house (early stories suggested this)
how did he get in and was he there on his own? Was he in the house at all? Where was he?
The ER consultant and his letter. There is no follow-up by media. There is apparently no
official reaction to the letter. This letter is the only half-way external confirmation there
were 3 people with considerable poisoning. Maybe this letter is not a white hat letter?
I think it is best to just take a step back and look at this from some distance. You then
realize there is not a single thing here you can be sure about. There are no facts; whatever
there is is presented by British government agents (that includes Porton Down). The "defense"
cannot get hold of anything to build a meaningful defense on. Embassy is denied access. Close
relatives are denied access.
How does Yulia Skripal know that "nobody here" will give her cousin a visa? Is she
familiar with the intricacies of the Visa process? The whole phone call sounds like the
acoustic equivalent of the device ships in StarTrek have installed - a deflector shield. Calm
down things, make her cousin not apply for a visa. This phone call came (just like that)
after her cousin started to go public in Russia and probably was identified as a potential
disruptor. Yulia Skripal tried to make her not apply for a visa - by assuring her everything
and everyone is OK (including Sergey) and then, when Victoria insisted, tackling the Visa
issue right away - don't apply the message is, no need to come to the UK and see me. It
appears this had to be avoided at all costs.
Followed by an official confirmation Sergey is recovering, too.
Someone decided that they could not keep the Skripals in intensive care forever since
somehow the doubt is more widespread than expected? Now it is about calming things down? All
is well since the Skripals are fine? Damage control mission?
Someone had a look at Yulia's social media account after March 4.
What torpedoes the food-poisoning theory is that the UK response was so quick, coordinated
and word perfect - till Boris overstepped the mark (he is just an attention seeking buffoon).
So whatever transpired they knew it was coming.
What is odd is that the Skripals are still alive. Maybe its the special Russian DNA.
Thankfully, the medics in Salisbury declined to go with the official line, and stated so,
publicly, early on. The Skripals could, plausibly, have been taken to Porton Down for
sSpecialist treatment", like the Guinea Pigs (it seems the pets have been incinerated - ie
destruction of evidence).
Freya Church, from Salisbury, said: "On the bench there was a couple, an older guy and a
younger girl.
She was sort of leant in on him, it looked like she had passed out maybe.
"He was doing some strange hand movements, looking up to the sky. It looked like they
had been taking something quite strong."
Sergei Skripal was found unconscious on a shopping centre bench in Salisbury, Wiltshire,
along with a woman he is thought to know.
Skripal and a 33-year-old woman are believed to have come into contact with a
poisonous substance at the city's Zizzi restaurant, which has since been closed by
emergency teams.
An interesting hypothesis: May, Johnson and Williamson might be deceived by their own
advisors. In tyhis case this is an operation directed at undermining May's government to the
point of a no-confidence vote in order to stop Brexit and to preserve the UK's position in the
European Union, which is favored by the political and financial elites.
But I doubt the Corbin is the person the British neoliberal want in power.
Notable quotes:
"... And it wasn't until the lead scientists at Porton Downs left May, Johnson and Williamson out to hang on Monday that the full operation became clear. By stating that they could not confirm the origin of the Novichok nerve agent used in the attack on the Skripals the Porton Downs officials destroyed the credibility of The Gypsum Lady's government ..."
"... Therefore, this operation was always about undermining May's government to the point of a no-confidence vote. This would then be the ultimate betrayal of Brexit in order to preserve the U.K.'s position in the European Union, which is favored by the political and old-monied British elite. ..."
"... May and Johnson both get told by trusted advisors that there is incontrovertible proof of Russia's hand in this. They go with this information with confidence to parliament, the U.N., high-level meetings with foreign leaders and the press. They convince their allies to stand strong against the evil Russians who is everyone's bid 'baddie' at this point. ..."
"... Trump has to go along with this nonsense even though he is obviously skeptical otherwise there will be an uproar in the US press about him betraying our most trusted ally for his puppet-master Putin ..."
"... But, if Brexit is betrayed through this hackneyed farce of a spy thriller, it won't sit well with the British people. Scotland's call for a second referendum will continue to grow and the Pound will fall alongside the competitiveness of British labor still trapped within a euro-zone that has done nothing but choke the life out of the economy. ..."
"... Between these things and the toxic levels of political correctness as it pertains to Muslim immigration, the insanity of London liberals and the de facto police state the U.K. has become and you have a recipe for political unrest that will not be pretty. Brexit was meant to be the peaceful revolution that put the nail in the coffin of the march to one world government. It is about to be nullified. When it is the sun will finally set on what's left of the British Empire. ..."
"... That was my gut feeling from the beginning, that it was the MI6 for some internal stuff. I didn't think of Brexit but it makes sense. Either way, Britain has already since decades been geopolitically irrelevant other than as the empire's muscle's sidekick. ..."
"... More like we have privatised so much of our intelligence services, just like the US has got the private sector, working on around 80% of their intelligence. Leaving it to those with minimal knowledge, but, experts in the art of spin, as Elliot Higgins, with his Google Software Certificate, comes to mind. Just one of the experts of the day, with a similar set of skills. ..."
"... Why did British government killed Skirpal's pests? Police search of the Skripal's house was so thorough that in a month they couldn't find his cat and 2 guinea pigs. Now, the police issued the statement full of lies. ..."
"... More then 2/3 of ALL financial transactions are done through the City of London, and the EU has, although there are several contenders, not yet transferred all this to the European Mainland to any major financial center on the Mainland! ...Frankfurt am Main and Paris are the top two contenders. ..."
"... Johnson, as a supervisor for MI6, then is some they want to get rid of? ..."
"... One can look back a few month's before Salisbury and see May out of the blue ratcheting up her Russophobia during speeches on Youtube. Keep in mind that as Home minister from 2010-2016 May must have had direct relations with MI5. ..."
"... Also her carefully scripted language more implying than direct stating offers her a plausible deniability just like Blair exploited. So the fault can be shifted to faulty intelligence or experts. So presenting May as a victim is 'highly likely' too generous. My guess is that she was involved from its inception. ..."
"... May goes to see the EU leaders, next stage signed off, but, we are left in ignorance and low and behold, so many Russian Diplomats are expelled from US and EU nations, just a couple of days after May has been horsetrading? ..."
"... The EU will never be what you Spaniards and we Croats want. We would like something like the US of Europe. All people to be equal. Sweden, Denmark, Germany... want a lot of bantustans in Europe. The name bantustan was used in the RSA during apartheid when they had created a lot of independent states in order to exploit them. My question to you is - if you were a Dane would you like to share "all spoils" with third world countries like Bulgaria, Romania...and tomorrow Bosnia, Macedonia...etc? ..."
"... There is another cover-up taking place in May's government in the midst of the Skripal hysteria, and that is of the decades-old sex rings (organized by Asian Muslims, according to what I have read) that have raped between 1,000-1500 girls in three English towns. It is a sensitive issue, but should rightfully be reported. ..."
"... My only problem with this article is if May's government fails, then there is a serious risk for the globalists that a more ardent Brexiter may end up leading the party! ..."
Putting diplomatic pressure on Russia on behalf of the U.S.'s crazed neoconservative Deep
State just didn't seem like a big enough reward. Neither did cutting Russian businesses out of
European banks to stop contractor and creditor payments associated with the Nordstream 2
pipeline.
Those things felt like nice bonus objectives but not main goals.
And it wasn't until the lead scientists at Porton Downs left May, Johnson and Williamson
out to hang on Monday that the full operation became clear. By stating that they could not
confirm the origin of the Novichok nerve agent used in the attack on the Skripals the Porton
Downs officials destroyed the credibility of The Gypsum Lady's government .
Therefore, this operation was always about undermining May's government to the point of
a no-confidence vote. This would then be the ultimate betrayal of Brexit in order to preserve
the U.K.'s position in the European Union, which is favored by the political and old-monied
British elite.
In short, this was a coup attempt.
And don't think for a second that this is not plausible. Remember it was Margaret Thatcher's
own most trusted people who betrayed her to get the U.K. into the European Union in the first
place. This was why they brought down The Iron Lady.
So, here's the scene:
May and Johnson both get told by trusted advisors that there is incontrovertible proof
of Russia's hand in this. They go with this information with confidence to parliament, the
U.N., high-level meetings with foreign leaders and the press. They convince their allies to
stand strong against the evil Russians who is everyone's bid 'baddie' at this point.
Trump has to go along with this nonsense even though he is obviously skeptical otherwise
there will be an uproar in the US press about him betraying our most trusted ally for his
puppet-master Putin .
To be honest, I don't think these bozos, May and Johnson, were in on the plan. I think they
were being played all along and now will be the patsies.
Just like May was played last year, calling for snap elections. The minute she called them
there were terror attacks all over London, marches against her over public safety. A media
campaign which puffed up Jeremy Corbyn, who they are now destroying for his rightful
trepidation about this fairy tale MI-6 is spinning.
The goal was to weaken May and get Labour back in charge. Corbyn would then be cast aside
and a Tony Blair clone installed as Prime Minister to scuttle Brexit and restore order to the
galaxy, Europe. Unfortunately, the DUP got enough of the vote to re-elect a very weakened May
and things have limped along for nearly a year.
Crisis on Infinite Empires
The problem with this however, is like all plans of those desperate to cling to vestiges of
former glory (and the U.K. is definitely the poster child for that), is the crisis of
confidence it will engender. Make no mistake, Brexit was no mistake. It's what the people of
Britain wanted and they want it more now than in 2016. So, they don't dare call for a new
referendum. But, they are also looking at a third parliamentary vote in as many years.
And that doesn't scream confidence no matter how much markets would prefer the legal status
quo. Opposition to Brexit comes from the entrenched monied power, not from any adherence to
globalist ideology.
But, if Brexit is betrayed through this hackneyed farce of a spy thriller, it won't sit
well with the British people. Scotland's call for a second referendum will continue to grow and
the Pound will fall alongside the competitiveness of British labor still trapped within a
euro-zone that has done nothing but choke the life out of the economy.
The Pound will begin to sink into irrelevancy as this unfolds. It won't happen overnight,
but we will look back on these events and see them as the trigger points for the path of
history.
Between these things and the toxic levels of political correctness as it pertains to
Muslim immigration, the insanity of London liberals and the de facto police state the U.K. has
become and you have a recipe for political unrest that will not be pretty. Brexit was meant to
be the peaceful revolution that put the nail in the coffin of the march to one world
government. It is about to be nullified. When it is the sun will finally set on what's left of
the British Empire.
The problem with this "they made May do it" narrative is that she (and Bojo the
blowhard) were clearly no reluctant stooges. They were relishing their chest thumping,
Russia hating roles, and it is easier to believe they were in fact the architects not the
pawns.
I think Craig Murray understands it best when he said the government had put pressure
on Porton Down scientists to say the agent was made in Russia. Even the Aitkenhead
interview had the fingerprints of government handlers all over it, when, after
"finishing" the interview and taking down the camera, they had to set it up again - it
was in a different position - in order to coerce Aitkenhead to make the absurd claim that
it could only have been made by a state actor.
So it looks like a government orchestrated provocation for political reasons - to puff
up May's "tough" credentials, and get the UK punching above its weight in the
international arena. But all it has really done is strain the already fraying
relationship between the Nato states.
.....it could only have been made by a state actor.....About twenty state actors can
produce it, including Porton Down / the UK.
So it means nothing for people who can think, on the other hand it means a lot for MSM
propaganda and sheepishly population.
George Galloway said it best. Paraphrasing : "England wants you to believe that a
military grade nerve
agent that is classified 10 times more potent than VX, did not kill anyone? They want you
to believe that the nerve agent was on the door handle so when the Shripal's left the
house, the father closed the door and his daughter needed to doubled checked if it was
closed? Really? So, it was so deadly that they managed to get to the car, disappear for a
few hours, then went to a pub followed by a restaurant where, amazingly enough, they felt
well enough to eat a full meal and finally both of them fell at the same time on a park
bench over 4 hours later? Not one investigator or police that went to
the Shripal house, during the investigation got sick?
If you believe that story, you are not a sheep, you are an idiot!"
That was my gut feeling from the beginning, that it was the MI6 for some internal
stuff. I didn't think of Brexit but it makes sense. Either way, Britain has already since
decades been geopolitically irrelevant other than as the empire's muscle's sidekick.
It
never had a vision for Europe (other than to start wars in it since centuries) and never
really wanted to be part of it. What is Britain anyhow except for a very beautiful
country? Isn't that enough? Why do you always have to be important? Look at Portugal,
this often overlooked small country at the edge of Europe where the sun sets in the ocean
as otherwise only in California. We used to be the world's number one empire once, then
number two, and now? It is certainly going to be the place I want to spend my retirement
in. Great weather, rough sea, beautiful beaches, amazing food, and one of the most
friendly people in all of Europe. What's an empire good for?
The problem is that these rich people cannot appreciate anything. Here in Hamburg our
old Hanseatic money is modeled very much after the British way. Golfing, rowing, tennis,
hockey, private boarding schools, the whole shebang. I've been to school with a lot of
them and noticed that they all have this aura of lost sadness that can only be filled by
greed and artificial importance in artificial clubs and such.
A lot of my classmates
ended up managing hedge funds in London, prior to 2008 at least. They still eradiate this
cold, empty sadness, but they meet annually in Bangkok for guess what. I prefer to
appreciate the simple things and instead of clinging to a distant past the British elites
would do well to make room for their common people to do the same, for example by
providing for affordable housing in their cities, especially in London.
Sergei, neither did I and that was the part that was distressing me for the past
couple of weeks. Then it finally hit me while I was on YouTube livestreaming about
this... and I thought... "Yeah, that's the missing piece."
The only part I disagree with is that which the writer states May and Johnson were
actually in on this sell out of Britain. Boris is a buffoon, for working with May, so is
Gove and so are all (who claimed to be BREXITEERS) but as yo whether Johnson is actually
in on it, I will give him the benefit of the doubt. Let's face it though his reputation
is ruined and permanently so as a result of enigmatic blaming the Russians for this gross
miscarriage of justice (guilty until proven innocent).
As for #ShariaAppeaserMay she is
the 'woman' behind keeping the UK in and will be 'the women' who breaks the UK apart. She
is bungling, useless and a traitor to this country and all the foolhardy have stood by
and watche her complete and utter uselessness be the badge Britain wears in future. The
Russians are laughing as #theMaybot destroys her own and UK credibility, she was a liar,
remonaner and appeaser from the beginning.
It won't be long, the country can only be saved by Divine Intervention.
I didn't say they were in on this. Actually I made it a point not to say that. "To be honest, I don't think these bozos, May and Johnson, were in on the plan. I
think they were being played all along and now will be the patsies."
MOSCOW, April 6. /TASS/. The cat and two guinea pigs Sergei Skripal had kept in his
home might have proved an important piece of evidence in the case of the former GRU
colonel's poisoning, because the animals died under very strange circumstances, Russian
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on her Facebook page, adding that did
not happen because they were cremated.
"At first sight this may look a reason for another portion of
key-witnesses-have-been-eliminated jokes," she said. "In reality, though, they were
really 'crucial pieces of evidence,' if it is true a poisonous substance, according to
some versions, might have been used inside Skripal's house."
Strange search
Zakharova was surprised that the pets reportedly died because they had remained inside
the house all alone without being taken care of.
"How is that? The house was searched but the pets remained unnoticed. The pets of a
man who was suspected to have been poisoned with a nerve gas?!" she said.
Also, Zakharova raised doubts why the cat was euthanized at the Porton Down chemical
laboratory.
"Is this Britain's usual way of treating house pets? Is it quite common?" she
asked.
"That is not all," Zakharova went on to say. "According to media rumors, the guinea
pigs and the cat were cremated. In other words, destroyed, although the pets' bodies
might have served a crucial piece of evidence in the poisoning case."
Zakharova said that according to Russian sources, the British Broadcasting Corporation
(the BBC) did know that pets were remaining in Skripal's house, but kept quiet about
that. "We would like to hear explanations," she added.
Advice to May and Boris: When you're is such a hole, keep digging. LOL!
The moral victor is Corbyn and that may translate in dumping the Blairite backstabbers
within Labour and perhaps a real victory at elections. The upcoming local elections next
month may serve as an indication.
Just for the record - Brexit talks are easy - they went from the win-lose battle of a
cash payment a long while ago and have been on win-win negotiations ever since. The only
rule in these negotiations is that everyone must claim victory over everything so the
publicity is very different from the facts.
Sorry Tom, I do not agree. More like we have privatised so much of our intelligence
services, just like the US has got the private sector, working on around 80% of their
intelligence. Leaving it to those with minimal knowledge, but, experts in the art of
spin, as Elliot Higgins, with his Google Software Certificate, comes to mind. Just one of
the experts of the day, with a similar set of skills.
Now why does Elliot Higgins remind me Atlantic Council, NATO and those behind the
Great Israel Project, so come to mind? So where do Boris and May fit in and who are they
loyal to? If you look at the demonization of Corbyn, together with how they are using the
anti-Semitic card, to go with the Zionist led media, hysteria, behind Jeremy.
The Skripals and Salisbury Plain, were meant to complement another false flag that
was due to go down. Only Russia and Syria prevented it from happening, before those
running the other part of the script, received the message.
How would things have gone, if there was a chemical weapons incident, on the scale of
say 9/11, that happened in Syria, with a minor story, set up at the same time, to accuse
Russia of a CW incident in the UK?
Tim Bell
Bell Pottinger
PR Media Management Litvinenko and good friend Boris Berezovsky
Sans Frontieres
Doctors Without Borders
Journlists Without Borders
White Helmets
Atlantic Council
NATO
Trump Dossier
Christopher Steele
Sergei Skripal
Ukraine
Salisbury Plain and the list goes on
How does it all fit in, with other stories that are running?
All Russiagate Roads Lead To London: Evidence Emerges Of Mifsud's Links To UK
Intelligence...
https://www.zerohedge.com/n...
Jeish Al-Islam's Chemical Weapons Production Workshops Discovered in Eastern
Ghouta
The Syrian army found a number of workshops and facilities in Eastern Ghouta of Damascus
that had been used by Jeish al-Islam terrorist group to produce chemical weapons and
toxic gases...
https://www.veteranstoday.c...
Despots and
Rogues, Met Its
End in South Africa
The British firm Bell Pottinger, hired by
three brothers now caught up in a nationwide
corruption scandal, helped drive racial
tensions to levels not felt since apartheid...
https://www.nytimes.com/201...
"The Skripals and Salisbury Plain, were meant to complement another false flag that
was due to go down. Only Russia and Syria prevented it from happening, before those
running the other part of the script, received the message."
This part at least sounds like a very good explanation.
AM,
You may be right about the motivations behind this being a bit more murky than I put it
in the article. I'm willing to admit I may be wrong here. It's part of what I do, take
things and spin out plausible scenarios.
The net effect, however, will be as I laid out, the loss of confidence in the U.K.
government, it's further isolation and subservience to both the U.S. and the EU will
hasten its demise now that it's alienated both China and Russia over this idiotic
incident.
Why did British government killed Skirpal's pests?
Police search of the Skripal's house was so thorough that in a month they couldn't find
his cat and 2 guinea pigs.
Now, the police issued the statement full of lies.
I wouldn't worry much about the May government, ...it was doomed to fail much sooner,
then later from the day they assumed office, but what the world, and particularly Europe
should be VERY afraid of: the collapse of GREAT @#$%& BRITAIN!
Why? ...what's that piddy little island off the European Mainland got, that the rest
of Europe don't, ...right?
More then 2/3 of ALL financial transactions are done through the City of London, and
the EU has, although there are several contenders, not yet transferred all this to the
European Mainland to any major financial center on the Mainland! ...Frankfurt am Main and
Paris are the top two contenders.
If Great Britain goes to the dogs, all hell is going to break loose on the
Mainland!
We learn that this hoax is indeed a hoax: Russian TV Releases Phone Call Of 'Poisoned' Yulia Skripal Saying Her And Her Father
Are 'Fine'
"Everything's ok. He's resting now, having a sleep. Everyone's health is fine, there's
nothing that can't be put right. I'll be discharged soon. Everything is ok."
it is always Hard to bring the truth to the People when you have the Paedophile
Protection Network the BBC, protecting all the Criminal low lifes and sowing the seeds of
discontent, because people tend to believe what they hear First before the begin to
analyse it, But I beleive that we have a Criminal Government whom have lied and lied and
lied, first lie the Grenfell tower the death figures are a lie i would have said it was
between 300 and 500 and possibly Higher, she is Lying about Brexit and she does have the
Choice to leave it Without Paying a penny for a Union that was created and Controlled by
the USA, And now we have the poisoning of Skripal and His Daughter, because the poison
clearly came from Porton Down, because the have the Antidote and have always had it as
they have Always had the Poison and it was clearly implemented by MI6, as was the
Poison's that Porton Down were Spraying on their own people 40 and 50 Years Ago when the
had little van's Running About The Countryside spraying out toxic poisons that was the
Precurser to chemtrail's, think of all the worst things that Porton Down can do, and all
your Gueses could be Right, To Put It In Spades Porton Down Stinks to High Heaven And
Should Have Been Shut Down 50 years Ago, they have murdered hundreds of People in the
Name Of National Security, the list of lies goes On and On and On.
One can look back a few month's before Salisbury and see May out of the blue
ratcheting up her Russophobia during speeches on Youtube. Keep in mind that as Home
minister from 2010-2016 May must have had direct relations with MI5.
Also her carefully
scripted language more implying than direct stating offers her a plausible deniability
just like Blair exploited. So the fault can be shifted to faulty intelligence or experts.
So presenting May as a victim is 'highly likely' too generous. My guess is that she was
involved from its inception.
The rest of BREXIT does not matter, for those concerned. However, the BREXIT talks
were not going that well. Remember, the EU and all their demands, when we just had to sit
tight, keep the cheque book closed, retain our fishing rights, post exit, walk away from
the legal loopholes, concerned with the EU and the EU gets nought, as we toddle off, in
March 2019. In the meantime, May goes to see the EU leaders, next stage signed off, but,
we are left in ignorance and low and behold, so many Russian Diplomats are expelled from
US and EU nations, just a couple of days after May has been horsetrading?
We will see what comes next. I think that the €urozone will not only survive but
enlarge to Sweden and Denmark. It is true that the €urozone only can continue as a
European Federation, but a European Federation is inevitable if we want Europe to have a
say in global affairs, with a GDP similar to China in size and a much higher income per
head.
The EU will never be what you Spaniards and we Croats want.
We would like something like the US of Europe.
All people to be equal.
Sweden, Denmark, Germany... want a lot of bantustans in Europe.
The name bantustan was used in the RSA during apartheid when they had created a lot of
independent states in order to exploit them.
My question to you is - if you were a Dane would you like to share "all spoils" with
third world countries like Bulgaria, Romania...and tomorrow Bosnia, Macedonia...etc?
Even today, as it is, by law you as EU citizen are not allowed to stay more than three
months - let's say in Italy - if you don't comply some requirements, like a proof that
you work, that you seek a job, that you study... Try to open a bank account in Italy
without those requirements.
No chance.
EU - to my opinion is a big delusion.
Artisans cannot benefit because of language barriers, poor organization to find a
job...Highly skilled people are not needed...
Just imagine this scenario...
The US says to Spain or to Croatia - Whoever wants from now on can go to the US...but
will not get the American citizenship. The person is only eligible to seek work...once
you get the job you can stay/work forever.
How many people would go?
How many skills are marketable?
No single layer, social worker, teacher, administrator, policeman, government employee,
psycholog, politician...would go.
Etc....
There is another cover-up taking place in May's government in the midst of the Skripal
hysteria, and that is of the decades-old sex rings (organized by Asian Muslims, according
to what I have read) that have raped between 1,000-1500 girls in three English towns. It
is a sensitive issue, but should rightfully be reported. The U.K. press is not reporting
much on it, and the American MSM has been silent. Think about it: the uproar created
about the fates of two people (Skripal and his daughter), but the suffering of
potentially 1500 girls suppressed. This is a disgrace. But the British people know and
are demanding a fuller investigation into these crimes.
My only problem with this article is if May's government fails, then there is a
serious risk for the globalists that a more ardent Brexiter may end up leading the
party!
After the Skripal affair, is any more proof required that nothingin neoliberal MSM can be taken at face value? Looks like their
motto is "if at first you don't succeed, lie, lie again."
Notable quotes:
"... So politically devastating is the exposure of Britain's lies that yesterday the Foreign Office deleted a text it sent out on March 22 declaring that the "analysis by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down made clear that this was a military-grade novichok nerve agent produced in Russia." ..."
"... The emergency session of the OPCW called at Russia's request received no answers to the serious questions Moscow insisted Britain had to address. Instead, the UK's representative said Russia could not take part in a joint investigation with Britain into the Skripal affair, as it was "a likely perpetrator." This was given unqualified backing by an EU spokesperson, who demanded that Russia respond to the UK's "legitimate questions" about its alleged continued production of novichoks. ..."
"... No less implicated in this criminal affair is the corporate media, especially the New York Times, which has spent the past month disseminating the raw propaganda issued by London and Washington and baying for Moscow's punishment. At no point did the Times raise a single question about the reliability of the claims of the May government. And now its response to the refutation of the lies is to ignore and bury Aitkenhead's statement. The role of the corporate media in the Skripal provocation confirms the political purpose of the hysterical campaign it has been leading against "fake news," and its insistence that social media be regulated, restricted and monitored. ..."
On Tuesday, Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of the UK's chemical weapons facility, the Porton Down Defence Science and Technology
Laboratory, told Sky News that scientists had "not verified the precise source" of the material used in the attack in Salisbury on
March 4. Aitkenhead's statement came on the eve of the convening at Moscow's request of the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) at The Hague, which would have exposed the UK government's case. But this resort to damage control only underscores
the monstrous hoax perpetrated by the British and American governments and their European allies.
May told parliament on March 12 that Porton Down was "absolutely categorical" that the "nerve agent" used on the Skripals had
come from Russia. "Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world-leading experts at Porton Down," she said,
"the government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible" for an "attempted murder" on British soil.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle on March 20 that "the people from Porton Down"
were "absolutely categorical" that the source of the nerve agent used against the Skripals was Russia. "I asked the guy myself,"
he said, "and he said 'there's no doubt.'"
So politically devastating is the exposure of Britain's lies that yesterday the Foreign Office deleted a text it sent out
on March 22 declaring that the "analysis by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down
made clear that this was a military-grade novichok nerve agent produced in Russia."
... ... ...
The emergency session of the OPCW called at Russia's request received no answers to the serious questions Moscow insisted
Britain had to address. Instead, the UK's representative said Russia could not take part in a joint investigation with Britain into
the Skripal affair, as it was "a likely perpetrator." This was given unqualified backing by an EU spokesperson, who demanded that
Russia respond to the UK's "legitimate questions" about its alleged continued production of novichoks.
No less implicated in this criminal affair is the corporate media, especially the New York Times, which has spent the past
month disseminating the raw propaganda issued by London and Washington and baying for Moscow's punishment. At no point did the Times
raise a single question about the reliability of the claims of the May government. And now its response to the refutation of the
lies is to ignore and bury Aitkenhead's statement. The role of the corporate media in the Skripal provocation confirms the political
purpose of the hysterical campaign it has been leading against "fake news," and its insistence that social media be regulated, restricted
and monitored.
The British Imperial Lords are in a state of shock. Their frantic effort to save the Empire
came crashing down Tuesday when the scientists at Porton Down refused to lie for the Empire --
refused to say that the nerve agent in the Skripal case came from Russia. Recall that it was
David Kelly, the head of the Defence Microbiology Division at Porton Down and a member of the
inspection team in Iraq, who blew the whistle on Tony Blair's "sexed up" dossier claiming that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. As a scientist he refused to lie. Kelly was
"suicided" as a result, and the illegal and genocidal war went on.
This time, neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama are around to provide cover for the
Empire's lies. President Trump, to the dismay of the British and American oligarchs and press
whores, has refused to say (or tweet) a word about the Russian role in the Skripal case. He
spoke to Putin after the incident without mentioning it, and, just yesterday, told the press
yet again that "getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing."
The absurd speed at which the British Government reacted to the incident probably means that the event was coordinated with
the USA. the fact that The British Government's ignoring of legal frameworks and protocols points to existence of a plan how to fuel
this incident to the British equivalent of Russiagate, facts be damned.
That returns us to the classic question Cue bono? When British government supported by the USA demanded that the Western nations
join in blaming Russia, with no evidence whatsoever only half the EU nations went along, and, while Trump allowed his Administration
to expel Russian diplomats, he himself laid no blame on the Russians, and announced that Moscow could replace their diplomats.
The UK's chemical weapons experts issues a statement which shown that Prime Minister May clearly jumped the gun. The question
is Why? She probably understood the flimsiness of the evidence better then nobody. So why "end justifies the means" act
on her part?
That suggest that we are witnessing just initial steps of multi-step gambit and there can be more victims is this story.
Please remember that Dr. David Kelly was "suicided" after testifying against Blair's "sexed up dossier" that lead to the Iraq War.
Notable quotes:
"... Not only has the British Government acted with lightning speed, it has also ridden roughshod over a number of international legal agreements and protocols. ..."
"... according to the British Government's own timeline , it wasn't until March 14th the day that Mrs May formally announced the culpability of the Russian State to Parliament that she actually wrote to the OPCW to involve them in the case. This is, I understand, contrary to the obligations Britain has as a member of the OPCW, and signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). ..."
"... In addition, the British Government has refused to provide evidence to the Russian Government. Again, my understanding is that this is contrary to the protocols set out in the CWC ..."
"... Why, if it was so sure of its claims, did the British Government feel the need to ignore international agreements to which it is a signatory, and instead act in this opaque and frankly suspicious manner? ..."
"... As mentioned above, the Chief Executive of Porton Down, Gary Aitkenhead has confirmed that the laboratory was unable to identify the origin of the substance used to poison the Skripals. ..."
"... In other words, according to the door theory, the two of them were poisoned by a military grade nerve agent, which then took over three hours to have any effect. Odd, wouldn't you say? ..."
"... Therefore, if they were poisoned at the front door, this would mean that not only did the two of them feel little or no effects for the three hours or so that followed, but it would also mean that a large 66-year-old man and an averagely built 33-year-old woman, of different height, weight and metabolism, somehow succumbed to the effects of poisoning at exactly the same time, some three hours or so later. Again, is that not very odd? ..."
"... Perhaps it is possible to survive a miniscule dose of such a nerve agent. The problem with this is that according to many earlier claims, there were significant traces of the substance in various parts of the City of Salisbury, which indicates that it cannot have been a very miniscule amount that they came into contact with at the door. Which means that we are being asked to believe that they were poisoned by "more than a miniscule amount" of this deadly poison, but both somehow survived, despite neither receiving an antidote (a fact now confirmed by Gary Aitkenhead). Does that not seem improbable? ..."
"... Another possibility that the British Government or intelligence services were behind the incident has been given great credibility by the British Government itself, in its absurdly quick reaction to the incident and its blatant ignoring of legal protocols. ..."
"... If British intelligence had planned a hit job on Mr Skripal using a military-grade nerve agent "of a type developed by Russia", in order to then pin the blame on the Russian Government, I doubt very much that Mr Skripal and his daughter would still be alive, or that the explanation for where the poison was administered would be changing on a daily basis, or that the British Government's evidence to other countries would have been as risible as it was (unless of course our intelligence agencies are as incompetent as such a scenario would require them to be, that is). ..."
I have now asked a total of 50 questions around the Skripal case, which you can find
here
and
here . Having gone back through these questions, as far as I can see only three have been answered by the release of public information
or events that have transpired. These are:
Are they (Sergei and Yulia Skripal) still alive?
If so, what is their current condition and what symptoms are they displaying?
Can the government confirm that its scientists at Porton Down have established that the substance that poisoned the Skripals
and D.S. Bailey was actually produced or manufactured in Russia?
On the first two points we are now told that Yulia Skripal's condition has significantly improved to the point where she is said
to be recovering well and talking. However, although this provides something of an answer to these questions, it also raises a number
of others. Is she finally being allowed consular access? Is she being allowed to speak to her fiancι, her grandmother, or her cousin
by telephone? Most importantly, how does her recovery comport with the claim that she was poisoned with a "military-grade nerve agent"
with a toxicity around 5-8 times that of VX nerve agent?
It is important that reasonable questions continue to be raised, as they not only help clarify the actual issues, but the answers
-- or lack thereof -- are also a good barometer as to how the official narrative stacks up. As a keen observer of the case -- especially
since it took place just a few hundred yards from my home in Salisbury -- I have to say that the official narrative of the British
Government has not stood up to even the most cursory scrutiny from the outset. In fact, there are three crucial issues that serve
to raise suspicions about it, and to my mind these issues are the most important aspects of the case so far:
The absurd speed at which the British Government reacted to the incident
The British Government's ignoring of legal frameworks and protocols
The large number of discrepancies between events and the official narrative
Let's just look at these in turn.
1. The absurd speed at which the British Government reacted to the incident
I remain astonished at the manner and the speed with which the British Government reacted to this incident. There was the speed
with which the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, first pointed the finger of culpability, less than 48 hours after the incident,
and before any investigation or analysis of the substance had taken place. There was the speed with which Porton Down was apparently
able to analyse and identify the substance, even though it is set to take the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
(OPCW) at least three weeks to carry out a similar identification. There was the speed with which the British Government officially
accused the Russian Government of being behind the incident, and the 36-hour ultimatum given to it to prove its innocence without
being given any of the evidence that apparently showed its culpability. There was the speed with which the British Government, armed
with evidence that looked like it was put together by a
rather dull 14-year-old on work experience , managed
to convince a number of other countries to expel diplomats, including 60 from the United States.
Why, if it was so sure of its claims, did the British Government feel the need to act so hastily and recklessly, rather than await
the results of the investigation?
2. The British Government's ignoring of legal frameworks and protocols
Not only has the British Government acted with lightning speed, it has also ridden roughshod over a number of international
legal agreements and protocols.
Firstly, there is the involvement of the OPCW. What ought to have happened is the British Government should have invited the OPCW
in as part of the investigation immediately upon suspicion of the use of a nerve agent. However,
according to the British Government's own timeline
, it wasn't until March 14th the day that Mrs May formally announced the culpability of the Russian State to Parliament that
she actually wrote to the OPCW to involve them in the case. This is, I understand, contrary to the obligations Britain has as a member
of the OPCW, and signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
In addition, the British Government has refused to provide evidence to the Russian Government. Again, my understanding is
that this is contrary to the protocols set out in the CWC.
The British Government has also refused to grant the Russian Embassy in London consular access to two Russian nationals, Sergei
and Yulia Skripal, which it is legally obliged to do under Articles 36 and 37 of the 1963 Vienna Convention and Article 35 (1) of
the 1965 Consular Convention.
Why, if it was so sure of its claims, did the British Government feel the need to ignore international agreements to which
it is a signatory, and instead act in this opaque and frankly suspicious manner?
3. The number of oddities and discrepancies in the official narrative
The speed of apportioning blame and the ignoring of international legal agreements might not have looked nearly as suspicious
had the narrative presented by the British Government and the facts on the ground been in harmony with one another. But they have
not been. Instead, many of the actual events that have transpired over the weeks since the incident was first reported simply do
not fit the overarching explanation given. Below are five of the most important:
1. As mentioned above, the Chief Executive of Porton Down, Gary Aitkenhead has confirmed that the laboratory was unable to
identify the origin of the substance used to poison the Skripals. This is in direct contradiction to the claims made by the
Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, who said the following on the
Andrew Marr Show on 18th March :
Obviously to the best of our knowledge this is a Russian-made nerve agent that falls within the category Novichok made only by
Russia, and just to get back to the point about the international reaction which is so fascinating
If it's made only by Russia, as Mr Johnson claimed, then it must have originated in Russia. Right? Yet Mr Aitkenhead says they were
unable to identify where it was made.
Then in an interview with
Deutsche Welle two days after his above comments, Mr Johnson was categorical about the source of the nerve agent as being Russian.
Here's the exchange:
Interviewer: You argue that the source of this nerve agent, Novichok, is Russia. How did you manage to find it out so quickly?
Does Britain possess samples of it?
Johnson: "Let me be clear with you When I look at the evidence, I mean the people from Porton Down, the laboratory "
Interviewer: "So they have the samples
Johnson: "They do. And they were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said, 'Are you sure?' And he said there's
no doubt."
Who "the guy" is, perhaps we'll never know. The cleaner perhaps? I suppose a politician of Mr Johnson's calibre will happily try
to weasel his way out of the implications of what he said. But to us lesser mortals, it does rather look like he was deliberately
misleading, doesn't it
2. Much of the investigation initially concentrated on where the Skripals were poisoned. Amongst the suggestions made were the
bench on which they collapsed, the Zizzi restaurant where they had eaten, Ms Skripal's luggage or Mr Skripal's car. Then, some 24
days after the incident, it was announced that a high concentration of the "military-grade nerve agent" had been found on the front
door, and that this was the likely place of poisoning. Yet it is known that after leaving the house, Mr Skripal and his daughter
drove into the City Centre, went to the Mill pub, and then to the restaurant where they ate a meal together. In other words,
according to the door theory, the two of them were poisoned by a military grade nerve agent, which then took over three hours to
have any effect. Odd, wouldn't you say?
3. Furthermore, it has been stated that the two of them became ill at the same time on the bench in the Maltings. Therefore,
if they were poisoned at the front door, this would mean that not only did the two of them feel little or no effects for the three
hours or so that followed, but it would also mean that a large 66-year-old man and an averagely built 33-year-old woman, of different
height, weight and metabolism, somehow succumbed to the effects of poisoning at exactly the same time, some three hours or so later.
Again, is that not very odd?
4. The claim that they were poisoned by a military grade nerve agent, of a type said to be 5-8 times the toxicity of VX nerve
agent, is itself surely open to question. Both Mr Skripal and his daughter not only survived, but Yulia Skripal is now said to be
sitting up and talking just weeks later. Perhaps it is possible to survive a miniscule dose of such a nerve agent. The problem
with this is that according to many earlier claims, there were significant traces of the substance in various parts of the City of
Salisbury, which indicates that it cannot have been a very miniscule amount that they came into contact with at the door. Which means
that we are being asked to believe that they were poisoned by "more than a miniscule amount" of this deadly poison, but both somehow
survived, despite neither receiving an antidote (a fact now confirmed by Gary Aitkenhead). Does that not seem improbable?
5. The official explanation that this was planned and authorised at the highest level within the Russian Government would
lead one to believe that the action was carried out by top level agents of the FSB. Yet the mode of attack nerve agent apparently
smeared or sprayed on the door has to be one of the least effective methods that could be used to assassinate anyone. For a start,
it rains a lot in Salisbury, and it did indeed rain on the day of the poisoning. If the substance was left at the front door (assuming
it was the outside), the attacker(s) could have had no guarantee that it would not be washed off before Mr Skripal touched it. Nor
could they have had any guarantee that he, as opposed to his daughter or perhaps a delivery person etc, would come into contact with
it. And of course there is the fact that Mr Skripal is still alive. Does any of this seem consistent with the narrative of a professional,
Kremlin-authorised hit-job.
Conclusion
Where does this leave us? The official narrative would have us believe that the Russian Government authorised the killing of a
has-been (former?) MI6 spy, who it had freed in 2010 and who presumably posed no threat to it, just a week before the Russian election
and weeks before the World Cup, using a nerve agent with an exclusively Russian signature, in a way (on the door) that could not
guarantee the intended target would touch it. This would be difficult enough to swallow by itself, but the British Government's rush
to judgement, disregard for law, and the many discrepancies in the actual events themselves make this scenario absurdly implausible.
Another possibility that the British Government or intelligence services were behind the incident has been given great
credibility by the British Government itself, in its absurdly quick reaction to the incident and its blatant ignoring of legal protocols.
These actions were bound to fuel suspicions about the possibility of its own involvement, and I have to say that such suspicions
are absolutely legitimate precisely because of the way it has behaved. However, it must be said that the oddities and discrepancies
in the case don't lend themselves very well to the idea of a carefully planned false flag. If British intelligence had planned
a hit job on Mr Skripal using a military-grade nerve agent "of a type developed by Russia", in order to then pin the blame on the
Russian Government, I doubt very much that Mr Skripal and his daughter would still be alive, or that the explanation for where the
poison was administered would be changing on a daily basis, or that the British Government's evidence to other countries would have
been as risible as it was (unless of course our
intelligence agencies are as incompetent as such a scenario would require them to be, that is).
My hunch -- and it is just that -- is that Mr Skripal himself was perhaps still working for British intelligence, and may have
been in possession of a nerve agent. Somehow, this involvement went wrong, and he ended up accidently poisoning himself and his daughter
on the bench in The Maltings. The Government then scrambled to concoct a story in order to cover up the real story of a Russian working
for MI6 and handling nerve agents, and so quickly decided to point the finger at that most convenient scapegoat, the Russian Government.
The reason that I'm attracted to this possibility is that it explains all three aspects I have described above, and which I think
are the most important aspects of the case. The rush to judgement -- which looked like panic-mode to me -- could have been an attempt
to divert attention away from the investigation looking at the possibility of Mr Skripal having military grade nerve agent in his
possession. The ignoring of international legal protocols, at least for a time, could have been done to ensure that the case was
not probed by any outside body, which may well have exposed discrepancies. And it could also explain many of the oddities mentioned
above, such as traces of nerve agent apparently being found in various places in Salisbury, since these could have come about because
Mr Skripal was in possession of some sort of nerve agent when he left his house that day.
As I say, this is just a hunch and purely speculative. I am probably wrong. But unless the British Government is able to produce
far better evidence than it has so far produced, to back up the claims it has made, I shall consider it a more credible possibility
than the one they have sold to the British public.
Paul Saunders, associate publisher of the National Interest , interviewed
retired Russian general Evgeny Buzhinsky. Buzhinsky retired from the Russian Armed Forces in
2009 as a lieutenant general.
Paul Saunders: You said recently that the confrontation between the United Kingdom and
Russia over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury could lead to "the
last war in the history of mankind." What did you mean by that?
Evgeny Buzhinsky: I'm sorry, but the BBC correspondent understood me incorrectly. It is not
between Russia and the UK: it is between Russia and the so-called collective West, led by the
United States by the way. This incident was a crime. In investigating this sort of crime, any
investigator must ask some questions: who stands to benefit? What's the motive? For President
Putin, believe me, he is the last man on Earth to try to do such a terrible thing on the eve of
the Russian presidential elections and the eve of the soccer championship in Moscow. This is a
blatant provocation, but what is the aim of this provocation? I don't know if you've heard the
"breaking news" that the British military laboratory said that there are no clues that indicate
that this poison is of Russian production, which is not surprising to me. So no proof, no
evidence, yet the British government said that "we collected information" -- what information?
-- "and on the basis of that information we are sure this crime was committed by Russians."
The question always asked these days if this is a new Cold War or a second Cold War. I
always state that its worse! In the time of the Cold War, everything was clear: an ideological
confrontation, but there were definite truths, definite red lines, no threats, no sanctions. No
cases such as recently, with U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham has called to press Russia, to isolate
Russia, to economically corner Russia. In my view, it is a very dangerous game to try to corner
and isolate Russia.
Paul Saunders: In your statement though, you seem to suggest that you see a possibility of a
real military conflict between Russia and the West. How do you think something like that could
come about?
Evgeny Buzhinsky: The first place where such a conflict could come about is in Syria.
Recently, some days ago, when the Russians spoke to Dunford [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford] after the Americans threatened to strike the center of Damascus, and
Russia made a public statement that if the United States strikes the center of Damascus, where
Russian servicemen are located, where the headquarters where Russian police and advisors are,
then Russia will strike back against the cruise missiles and the carriers of the cruise
missiles. In my view, this is very dangerous since U.S. cruise missiles are launched from
warships.
Paul Saunders: So you view that statement by Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian
General Staff, as a very serious threat?
Evgeny Buzhinsky: Yes, it's serious. And I don't think he was joking or just making a
statement to surprise some Americans. No, I am absolutely sure he was serious.
While we're on Syria, there is the subject of chemical weapons. I do appreciate that our
gathered intelligence indicates and can warn the world that terrorists, not the Syrian
government, are the ones deploying chemical weapons in certain locations in provocative
attacks. This results in TV crews being in the right place at the right times, preventing such
provocations. But I think that with such confrontational circumstances that the United States
could decide to strike Damascus.
Paul Saunders: And in that situation, the Russian military would follow through on General
Gerasimov's statement? Many people in the United States would say to themselves that Russia has
a really powerful military force, but President Putin is ultimately a very pragmatic person who
knows that Russia's economy is less than 5 percent of the combined U.S. and European economies
and he would never risk a war like that.
Evgeny Buzhinsky: In the case of war, the economy doesn't matter. 5 percent, 2 percent, 3
percent, it doesn't matter. Because if it ends in war, it will be a very very short war. Do you
think that Russia will go to war with United States for months or years? Of course not.
Paul Saunders: Are you suggesting it would become a nuclear war or it would end very quickly
because of the nature of modern warfare and the conventional weapons at the disposal of the
United States and Russia?
Evgeny Buzhinsky: It is very difficult to predict, but I am sure that any military
confrontation will end up with the use of nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia.
I don't believe that a nuclear confrontation can be controlled; this is an illusion on the part
of the United States.
Paul Saunders: Do you see any dangers elsewhere apart from Syria?
Evgeny Buzhinsky: Possibly Ukraine, if the United States interferes. Ukraine started this,
Russia answered. But I don't think that's very likely.
Paul Saunders: Turning back to the dispute surrounding Mr. Skripal, the United Kingdom
called for solidarity among its allies. Most of the NATO countries also expelled Russian
diplomats. The United States certainly expelled a very considerable number and also closed the
consulate in Seattle. What impact do you think that had inside Russia? What message did the
Russian government and the Russian people take from that strong, coordinated response? Evgeny
Buzhinsky: First of all, I repeat: what happened with Mr. Skripal was a planned provocation. I
don't know if the UK was alone in planning this, but it is a clear-cut provocation attempting
to demonize and isolate Russia. To find a pretext for expelling Russian diplomats. This is why
I am unsure where this confrontational path can lead. What would be next? For example, now the
United States is thinking about their response; they will expel another round of Russian
diplomats. Russia would expel another fifty. Then the United States would expel another fifty.
After that, then what? A freezing of diplomatic relations?
Paul Saunders: Turning back, you mentioned the idea that this all started with a British
provocation, and it certainly seems to be a widespread view in Russia that this was some kind
of provocation, what do you think would be the motive of the British government to do something
like that?
Evgeny Buzhinsky: Well, no offense meant, but I believe that move by Theresa May was
coordinated with Washington. A lot of Russian experts and observers think so. What was the
motive? I don't know, maybe it was an attempt to divert attention from the internal problems
that Theresa May is facing. For example, what was the first item on the agenda during the last
EU summit? Brexit terms, including conditions that aren't favorable for Britain. And after this
provocation? Russia, with discussions about European solidarity against it instead of talking
about Brexit. Maybe that was the real motive.
Paul Saunders: As you can imagine, very few people in the United States or Britain find it
plausible that the British government would do something like that. Do you think there is any
evidence that would suggest something like that may have happened, beyond your view that there
was not really a motive for Russia to do something like that and there is a motive for the
UK?
Evgeny Buzhinsky: I must tell you frankly: I know some people from our intelligence
services, and they're very concerned. Because Mr. Skripal was exchanged via the illegal program
spy swap, there is a worry that this could endanger or ruin the entire mechanism of exchange.
What is the use of this mechanism if people will be killed afterwards? On the Russian side,
there is no motive whatsoever. On the British side, we can only guess.
SPORTING DANGERS. Ever notice the coincidences? Georgia's invasion timing ? Just when the
lies about Sochi are revealed it's time to move the narrative to Ukraine? Ban Russia from the
Olympics but clear it after. The soccer World Cup will be held in Russia in a
couple of months and it will be held in a dozen Russian cities; the world will see that they're
not miserable s -- holes full of wretched people suffering under Putin's boot. What to do? This
is too big a deal for the governments of soccer-mad countries to dare to boycott. Nerve agent
attack? When that story bursts, then what? It seems that sports are the greatest threat to
world peace.
WADA YA KNOW? Norwegian asthmaticswin ! What a good thing
only Russians dope, isn't it?
WESTERN VALUES ™ . Remember due process? Presumption of innocence? International
agreements? Vienna Convention? Rule of law? Beijing remembers: see below.
GERMANY. Expel 4 diplomats to show "solidarity", approve
Nord Stream . Does that make sense?
UKRAINE. An American survey shows that the mood in Ukraine is bad and expecting worse
. Well, that's one post-Maidan Ukraine expectation that will be fulfilled. Nadia Savchenko, a former Ukrainian
hero, has been arrested inUkraine on
terrorism charges. She dares to suggest that the massacre was a false flag . (Read Ivan
Katchanovski's paper : "This academic
investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally
planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It
found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations,
specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland.
Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or
areas". Here are
confessions by some of the snipers that your local news outlet has been too busy to tell
you about.)
When a scandal breaks, the discovery of an attempt to cover up is often regarded as even more
reprehensible than the original deeds.
The British government is trying to cover-up the lies it made with its false allegations
against Russia. The cover-up necessitates new lies some of which we expose below.
Yesterday the head of the British chemical weapon laboratory in Porton Down stated that the
laboratory can not establish that the poison used in the alleged 'Novichok' attack in Salisbury
was produced by Russia. This was a severe blow to the British government allegations of Russian
involvement in the poisoning of Sergej and Yulia Skripal.
Now the British government tries to hide that it said that the poison used in the Salisbury
was 'produced in Russia' and that Porton down had proved that to be the case. The government
aligned media
are helping to stuff the government lies down the memory hole.
We all need to make sure that the new lies get exposed and that the attempts to change the
record fail.
Yesterday the British Foreign Office deleted this from its Twitter account:
The March 22 tweet was part of a now interruptedthread which
summarized a briefing on the UK government's response to the Salisbury incident given by the
British Ambassador to Russia, Dr Laurie Bristow, to the international diplomatic community in
Moscow.
After the silent scrubbing of the record was publiclyquestioned the Foreign
Office
admitted that it deleted the tweet:
After it emerged on Wednesday that the tweet had been deleted, the Foreign Office said the
post was removed because it "did not accurately report" the words of Laurie Bristow, the UK's
ambassador to Russia, which the tweet was supposed to be quoting.
Hmm - fool me once ...
All
the tweets in the thread used quotation marks, but none was a literal reproduction of the
ambassador's briefing. Only one of the tweets was deleted. A look at the transcript and video
of the briefing shows that all the tweets , including the deleted one, "accurately reported"
the speech. The cover-up of the false statement the ambassador made thus includes at least one
new lie.
The original tweet said "Analysis by world-leading experts at the Defense Science and
Technology Laboratory at Porton Down made clear that this was a military-grade Novichok nerve
agent produced in Russia . .."
The transcript of the briefing in Moscow - "exactly as it was delivered" -
is (still) available at the Foreign Office website.
The ambassador, reading from a prepared script, recapitulates the event and, according to
the posted transcript, then says:
Four days later the analysts at Porton Down, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in
the UK, established and made clear that this was a military-grade chemical weapon. One of the
Novichok series; a nerve agent as I said produced in Russia . Porton Down is an Organisation
for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons accredited and designated laboratory.
..
First, there is no doubt that the weapon used in the attack was the military-grade nerve
agent from the Novichok series. This has been confirmed by specialists, our specialists. An
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons mission is in the UK now to
independently confirm this analysis.
There is also no doubt that Novichok was produced in Russia by the Russian state.
The last line in the -"exactly as it was delivered" - transcript is false. Here is my
transcription from a short Foreign Office video of the briefing (
saved
copy ) which includes the uncut passage of the last two paragraphs quoted above:
... there is no doubt that the weapon used in the attack was the military-grade nerve agent
from the Novichok series. This has been confirmed by specialists, our specialists. On
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons mission is in the UK now to
independently confirm this analysis.
There is also no doubt that the Novichok was produced in Russia by the Russian state.
The written "exactly as it was delivered" transcript of the briefing says "... that Novichok
was produced ...". At 0:20 in the video I clearly hear the ambassador saying "... that the
Novichok was produced ...". A tiny but very important difference.
The person who put the official captions on the official Foreign Office video agrees with
what I hear and transcribed.
The ambassador referred to " the Novichok", the Novichok he specifically mentioned earlier
in the speech. The Novichok that he said had been detected by Porton Down. The transcript on
the Foreign Office website leaves out the definite article "the". It makes it look as if the
ambassador referred to some unspecified batch of the substance.
The deleted tweet was a faithful rendition of what the ambassador said, it "accurately
reported" it. The transcript the Foreign office posted on its website is false. The ambassador
clearly accused Russia of having produced the very batch that Porton Down analyzed.
Three days earlier Bristow's boss, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, made the same false claim (vid at 5:32) in an
interview with DW .
Porton Down has now said that it made no such claim.
The ambassador's claim was false. The Foreign Office attempt to cover this up by deleting its
tweet and by posting a not-so-exact transcript only amplifies the falsehood of the original
claims.
The briefing continued to emphasize the "produced in Russia" meme. The phrase occurs four
times.
...
Russia's claims that Novichok could have been produced elsewhere have no credibility. We have
no information to indicate that this agent could have been produced anywhere else except in
Russia. So we have no doubt that the nerve agent was produced in Russia .
...
So the fact that the Novichok was produced in Russia , the fact that Russia has a history of
state-sponsored assassinations, and the fact that Russia has responded with the usual
playbook of disinformation and denial left us with no choice but to conclude that this
amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom.
The Foreign Office may want to claim that all the above uses of "produced in Russia" were
only references to decades old research and development in the Soviet Union, not to the
"Skripal" case. The highlighted details shows that this is not the case. Any listener to the
briefing surely got the impression that the UK ambassador was talking about the specific batch
analysed by Porton Down.
It highlighted paragraph of Ambassador Bristow's briefing includes several other lies.
'Novichok' agents can and have been produced in other countries than Russia.
In 2016 five nerve agents of the 'Novichok' series were synthesized by Iranian scientists in
cooperation with the OPCW. Details of their production process
were published . In 1998 the US Army's Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center produced
and catalogued 'Novichok' agents. It added the data for the substances to the National
Institute of Standards and Technology Mass Spectral Library. The data was later removed and
U.S. diplomats
were ordered to suppress all international discussion about 'Novichok' agents.
The U.S. military chemical weapon laboratories work in close cooperation with Porton Down.
Porton Down
continues to receive tens of millions of U.S. military research money for its chemical
weapon experiments including tests on animals. The UK government surely knew that 'Novichok'
agents can and have been produced by other actors than Russia.
British and U.S. media aligned with the ongoing anti-Russia campaign now downplay the
earlier claims of the British government.
BBC Radio 4 news at 6:31am today made this comical effort :
"... Russia requested the meeting to address the UK government's suggestion that it was
behind the poisoning ..."
The British government did not make a mere "suggestion". Its ambassador and other officials
stated outright that Russia was the culprit:
"... the fact that the Novichok was produced in Russia .. left us with no choice but to
conclude... "
The New York Times today also uses
the "suggestion" wording (one wonders who 'suggested' that):
The British authorities have blamed Russia for the March 4 poisoning, with Foreign Minister
Boris Johnson suggesting it was " overwhelmingly
likely " that President Vladimir V. Putin had ordered the attack.
On March 16, when the NYT first wrote about Johnson's claims against Russia, it
surely did
not convey that they were only 'suggestive':
Mr. Johnson's remarks were a significant escalation in the dispute between London and Moscow,
directly linking the Russian leader to the poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter,
Yulia, in the English city of Salisbury.
The British Prime Minster herself
went way further than just 'suggesting' that Russia was guilty:
[T]he Government have concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the
act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
Based on that 'conclusion' the British government threw out 23 Russian diplomats from their
embassy in London. There was nothing 'suggestive' with that.
Off-Guardian
points out that another tactic to divert from the earlier false claims is to now declare
Russia guilty of not cooperating with the investigation:
The UK's flagrant hysteria of the last weeks, the war cries and spittle-flecked abuse is all
being airbrushed away and being replaced with the idea the UK simply requested Russian
co-operation and Russia refused – preferring to make nasty insinuations instead.
To claim that Russia did not cooperate is another lie told to cover up for the now debunked
ones. The Chemical Weapons Convention, which Britain and Russia have signed, dictates the
procedures that must be taken when chemical weapon allegations are made. They foresee the
involvement of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
It was the British government that rejected the involvement of the OPCW in the
investigation. It only agreed to do so after Russia insisted on it
:
[Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov] added that a case of alleged use of chemical weapons should
be handled through the proper channel, being the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) – of which both Russia and Britain are members.
"As soon as the rumors came up that the poisoning of Skripal involved a Russia-produced
agent, which almost the entire English leadership has been fanning up, we sent an official
request for access to this compound so that our experts could test it in accordance with the
Chemical Weapons Convention [CWC]," Lavrov said. So far the request has been ignored by the
British side, he added.
The request from the British government to the OPCW
was sent on March 14 , ten days after the incident happened, two days after the Prime
Minister made her "highly likely" claims against Russia and one day after Lavrov publicly
insisted on OPCW involvement.
It is obviously the British government which at first rejected OPCW involvement and not the
Kremlin.
The OPCW is by
statute a technical agency, not a court. It will release a technical assessment of the involved
agent and not a judgment on responsibility or guilt.
The attempted cover-up by the Foreign Office of the lies the British government spread about
the case has already failed. To play down the original strong claims against Russia as mere
'suggestions' is comical. Allegations that Russia was or is holding up a serious international
investigation are also false. It was Britain which at first rejected the CWC and OPCW
involvement.
The fact that the British government even makes these attempts must be seen as
acknowledgement that it has no case and lied in it its official statements to the global
public. It now covers its trail with more lies.
What else is the British government lying about?
---
Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the Skripal case:
Posted by b on April 4, 2018 at 04:18 PM |
PermalinkDaniel , Apr 4, 2018 5:03:11 PM |
8
I posted the following on a earlier b blog, but since this "news" story continues, it seems
appropriate to repeat.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the
masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen
mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our
country.
~ Edward Bernays, "Propaganda," 1928
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new
realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."
~ Karl Rove
And yet, here we are, almost a century after Edward Bernays wrote a book on how the masses
are manipulated, and more than a decade after "Bush's Brain" mocked us, here we are
"judiciously studying" Empire's past action.
Meanwhile, Empire is acting, and "the masses" are acting and reacting across the globe.
And almost no one knows who pulls the strings, let alone are we organizing to overturn their
rule.
"Boris Johnson continues to convince everyone the British side supposedly sent Russia a list
of questions to which it still hasn't received any answers. Everything in fact is completely
the opposite. As I said, we never received any list of questions and I turn to the British
side, if you have such a list of questions, please tell us, please list those questions," he
said.
Regarding the UK's insistence that Moscow coordinated the attack, he asked, "Couldn't you
come up with a better fake story?"
The UK is engaged in a propaganda war against Russia, Nebenzya asserted, aiming to discredit
the country globally. But even propaganda wars are dangerous.
If he fails to keep his mouth shut I wouldn't be surprised to learn in the tabloids in the near future of his (sadly fatal)
penchant for auto-erotic asphyxiation.
""Johnson also said that "none of us have forgotten" about the "barbaric" chemical weapons attack in Syria a year ago.""
Translation: "none of us have forgotten" about the "barbaric" chemical weapons attack in Syria a year ago "which was done by
our Al Qaeda and ISIS proxies with the help of our special forces stationed in Syria."
that's all they learn in boarding schools - how to lie and lie and be good psychopaths: charming, fake, easy to bribe and natural
traitors, obsessed with money and status.
And above all how to develop that exhagarated catatonic accent so valued by Anglosheeple
I know many of these Public school boys - from Malborough, Harrow etc
Look no further than you local electric and gas suppliers who are likely publicly traded with a monopoly on the most traded
commodities in the world. Why does a human necessity have a monopoly - follow the money.
Lol....that's what I think, from my experience with dealing with retarded psychopaths. They just don't back down until you
directly address them and call them out on their bullshit, or just plain fucking slam them against the wall.
So err...is it going to be an "accidental" nuclear launch or dirty bomb, or I don't know.....a Russian ISIS attack? The possibilities
are endless with these slimey limey cunts. They're barely out of the European Union, yet are already faltering like a mule loaded
with lead.
Agreed, and some just go nuts when called out. It's worse than just the Brits. Trump is clearly somewhat on board, and Macron
seems to want a distraction, too.
Trump is in love with himself, Macron is in love with a granny, and Boris Johnson belongs to the fucking zoo with the gorillas.
What a world we live in, when the voices of reason are coming from Russia, China and Iran, and the irrational tantrum turd
throwing is coming from the West.
I might also politely remind you and others of Russia's ability to disable the US Aegis missile system, including the Raytheon
Tomahawk missile using a highly advanced electronic warfare suite known as Khibiny.
You do not need due process to hang him now neither :-) Ain't that cute when the process of law finally breaks down. Happens
when you support banksters operating a ponzi scheme to rob people...
Stupid cunt is a better description. He is supposed to be the number 1 diplomat but he is a classic attention seeking snowflake
who wants to be PM.
He blamed Russia immediately. Then tells everyone not to be Russiaphobic and then the stupid cunt compares attending the WC
the same as Hitler's 1936 Olympics.
Guy is out of his depth and making Britain look stupid.
Portland Down say they do not know where the nerve agent was manufactured (Portland down would have the records of OPCW to
check). Maybe Russia would have the data relating the nerve agent to a NATO stockpile. Note: If the nerve agent was so deadly
how come the person delivering it; is not ill?
Given this talk about "military-grade", it sounds more like something an American MIC manufacturer would make. Overpriced and
ineffective when used.
Three people affected. Hours after contact. Yet all three survived, in spite of the lack of antidote, as the BBC has reported.
Doesn't sound pretty "military-grade" to me. And if it is "military grade", should we even be shitting our pants at the constant
fearmongering over WMDs? If this is what military grade is capable of for terrorism, we're clearly spending way to much money
for this particular threat, now aren't we?
I don't buy the 'no antidote' business. Nerve agents work by blocking receptors in the nervous system. Atropine breaks this
block restoring normal nervous system action. The cop who was affected was talking within days yet the Skirpals were unconscious
for weeks, until Julia Skirpal made a 'miraculous' recovery. Did the cop get atropine?
Fifteen countries voted against Russia's bid, while six voted for it and 17 abstained.
"Unfortunately, we haven't been able to have two-thirds of the votes in support of that decision. A qualified majority was needed,"
Russian ambassador Alexander Shulgin told reporters, adding " Russia as well as other states that are members of the Executive Committee
have been pushed aside from this investigation ."
UK's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson brushed aside Russia's request, calling it a "ludicrous proposal" designed to "undermine"
the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation.
"Russia has had one goal in mind since the attempted murders on UK soil through the use of a military-grade chemical weapon -
to obscure the truth and confuse the public," Johnson said. " The international community has yet again seen through these tactics
and robustly defeated Russia's attempts today to derail the proper international process ." Johnson also said that "none of us have
forgotten" about the "barbaric" chemical weapons attack in Syria a year ago.
"After the OPCW-UN investigation found that the Syrian regime was responsible, Russia blocked that body from doing any more work,"
he said.
Russia wants to discuss a letter sent by UK Prime Minister Theresa May to the UN Security Council which says it's "highly likely"
that Moscow was behind last month's nerve agent attack.
Meanwhile ,
as we reported yesterday , the chief scientist from the UK's Porton Down military laboratory facility, Gary Aitkenhead, told
Sky News that they had been unable to prove that the novichok nerve agent used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal came from Russia.
"We were able to identify it as novichok, to identify that it was military-grade nerve agent," Aitkenhead said. " We have not
identified the precise source, but we have provided the scientific info to government who have then used a number of other sources
to piece together the conclusions you have come to. "
**PAGING COLIN POWELL. IS THERE A MR. POWELL IN THE BUILDING?**
The Porton Down chief scientist said that establishing the Novichok's origin required "other inputs," some of which are intelligence
based and which only the government has access to.
Aitkenhead added: " It is our job to provide the scientific evidence of what this particular nerve agent is, we identified that
it is from this particular family and that it is a military grade, but it is not our job to say where it was manufactured ."
So whose job is it to determine where the Novichok was manufactured?
That said, it was also noted that the nerve agent involved required "extremely sophisticated methods to create, something only
in the capabilities of a state actor," and that there is no known antidote to Novichok - nor was any administered to either of the
Skripals.
Aitkenhead would not say whether the Porton Down facility had manufactured or maintained stocks of Novichok - long rumored to
be the case.
" There is no way anything like that could have come from us or left the four walls of our facility ," said the chief.
Boris Johnson has come under fire since the Porton Down chief's statement, as Johnson lied, saying in an interview two weeks ago
that Porton Down officials told him there was "no doubt" that the nerge agent came from Russia .
The Foreign Office told Sky News that Johnson "misspoke," which is apparently UK officialspeak for "he totally lied, but nobody
will hold him accountable for it."
Perhaps Johnson "misspoke" in his rush to locate a hairbrush?
The evil people, Theresa May, Stoltenberg, Trump and the rest, are damming Russia with obvious lies.
The Novichok nerve agents probably don't even exist.
HERE IS THE PROOF:
The Novichok nerve agents are supposedly much more toxic than the nerve gases VX or Sarin.
Mirzayanov's book, published in 2008, contains the formulas he alleges can be used to create Novichoks. In 1995, he explained
that "the chemical components or precursors" of Novichok are "ordinary organophosphates that can be made at commercial chemical
companies that manufacture such products as fertilizers and pesticides."
Basically, Mirzayanov claims that it is relatively easy to make the Novichok nerve agents.
So, some enterprising Arabs could buy a few chemists to make a few tons of it and then spray it all over the little Satan.
Do you really think that the Jews who run the United States would allow the publication of information that could lead to thousands
of deaths in Israel?
Do you really think they would protect the publisher of such information by giving him residence in the United States?
Remember, Mirzayanov was given residence in the United States after he was kicked out of Russia.
There are also a number of "people who should know" that have stated that there is zero solid evidence for the existence of
the Novichok nerve agents. For example: Robin Black in Development, Historical Use and Properties of Chemical Warfare Agents (2016):
"In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve agents, 'Novichoks' (newcomer), was developed
in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of the 'Foliant' programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive
countermeasures. Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly originating from a dissident Russian
military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published."
And, Alexander Shulgin, Russia's representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (2018):
"There has never been a 'Novichok' research project conducted in Russia,... But in the West, some countries carried out such
research, which they called 'Novichok,' for some reason."
CONCLUSION: The Novichok nerve agents don't even exist.
The use of the "projection" technique (essentially accusing your opponents of doing the very things you yourself are doing)
in official circles has become widespread. It's biggest proponent is, of course, Shitlery who, as an example, recently accused
Trump of using his position to enrich himself and his family (Um....?). Now BoJo has the chutzpah to accuse Russia of obfuscation
and lies. Same technique. Specifically:
" Russia has had one goal in mind since the attempted murders on UK soil through the use of a military-grade chemical weapon
- to obscure the truth and confuse the public," Johnson said. " The international community has yet again seen through these tactics
and robustly defeated Russia's attempts today to derail the proper international process ."
And, of course, psychopaths actually believe their projections which allows them to speak with a straight face. And the MSM,
naturally, just blindly "reports" what they say. The internet is the only source of real information and the true investigative
journalism of any integrity. Which is, of course, why they are trying so hard to censor and close the sources of truth.
you can see here their modus operandi - one of the first NSA leaks by Snowden/Greenwald. There is a slide there called the
Gambits For Deception - all the tricks are there - how to never admit when caught lying, how to cover the small move by the big
one - basically all the BS this fat ugly clown is using are there:
projection is everything. America banned the Huwawie Chinese cell phone because they thought it was a threat. What are all
those Apples in China? Not even to speak about domestic use.
On March 30 the Washington Post , the blog site of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, published
a report about the expulsion of some 'western' diplomats from Russia. The move was an expected
and proportional retaliation for the expulsion of Russian diplomats from some 'western'
countries.
The piece was originally published under the headline:
One by one Russia tells European ambassadors of latest diplomatic expulsions
This is visible in the web-address (URL) of the piece which was formed from the original
headline when it was first published.
The editors apparently disliked the original headline. It was factually correct but did not
create enough reason to hate Russia. The original headline was therefore replaced with a
factually false one:
For the record: "They", i.e. the ambassadors, learned of no such thing. Russia has not
expelled any ambassador. The report below the false headline does not claim that Russia did
such.
The blatant falsehood of the headline was immediately
pointed out in the comments to the piece. The @WashingtonPost Twitter account was notified of the 'mistake'.
Three days later the Post has not taken any corrective action. The fake news
headline is still up on its website. Most visitors of the Washington Post site will
not read the piece. They skim the headlines of the site and get a daily dosage of Russia-hate
from it.
The slogan of the Post , prominently displayed under its name, is " Democracy
Dies in Darkness ". When it peddles such sable propaganda it becomes obvious that the
paper hates democracy and an informed public. To curry favor with thuggish tyrants, as Post
owner Bezos does, is obviously more profitable than factual reporting.
MusicalE:
Vice News is worse than just hipster pablum. With huge investments from Rupert Murdoch, Viacom
and Time/Warner, and produced by rabid Zionist Islamaphobe Bill Mahher, it's a very dangerous
sort of propaganda organ since it pretends to be "alternative news." It's one example of that
sort of propaganda designed for people who've come to realize the MSM is BS.
Journalists are always "soldiers of the party". You just need to understand what party.
Notable quotes:
"... 'Fair and balanced' was a mid-20th century marketing tool and really, a confabulation of the times. ..."
"... The great Joseph Pulitzer largely founded his namesake prize for the same motives as Alfred Nobel, when the latter tried to make up for the incalculable injuries and deaths caused by the explosives he invented by endowing a Peace Prize. Pulitzer was attempting to atone for the "yellow journalism" sins of his own papers -- and even more, those of his arch rival, William Randolph "Citizen Kane" Hearst -- when he launched the prize that bears his name. ..."
"... To put it bluntly, as Frances McDormand's professor-mother in Almost Famous might have said, "Objective Journalism" was as much a marketing tool as anything else. It took off not because news neutrality was always enshrined in American journalistic ethics, but because of how rare it actually was. ..."
"... the Ochs-Sulzbergers of New York, the Meyer-Grahams of Washington, and the Chandlers of Los Angeles -- made a conscious decision to brand their newspapers as being truly fair and balanced to differentiate them from the competition. ..."
"... And even then, "objectivity" only went as far as the eyes and ears of the beholder. ..."
"... National Review ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Whether it's MSNBC on the left or Fox News on the right, the editorial decisions of how to spin a piece, where and how often to broadcast it, what kind of panelists you invite to "debate" a story, which anchors should be promoted and which ones will forever remain mere worker bees -- all these decisions are anything but "objective" or "unbiased." ..."
'Fair and balanced' was a mid-20th century marketing tool and really, a confabulation of the times.
"The Yellow Press", by L. M. Glackens, portrays newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst as a jester distributing sensational stories
in 1910. (Library of Congress/Public Domain) What the Greatest, Silent, and Boomer generations always regarded as the ideal of "objective
journalism" was actually the exception, not the rule. That was true from the time of Gutenberg until that of Franklin Roosevelt.
The great Joseph Pulitzer largely founded his namesake prize for the same motives as Alfred Nobel, when the latter tried to
make up for the incalculable injuries and deaths caused by the explosives he invented by endowing a Peace Prize. Pulitzer was attempting
to atone for the "yellow journalism" sins of his own papers -- and even more, those of his arch rival, William Randolph "Citizen
Kane" Hearst -- when he launched the prize that bears his name.
And if Pulitzer repented of his past, Hearst never did -- he went full speed ahead well into the 1920s and beyond, normalizing
Nazi science,
openly endorsing eugenics and white superiority, and promoting "Birth of a Nation"-like racism against African Americans, Latinos,
and Native Americans. His dehumanizing attacks against so-called
sneaking and treacherous "Japs" and "Chinks" -- well before Pearl Harbor, the Korean War, and communist China -- were even uglier.
To put it bluntly, as Frances McDormand's professor-mother in Almost Famous might have said, "Objective Journalism"
was as much a marketing tool as anything else. It took off not because news neutrality was always enshrined in American journalistic
ethics, but because of how rare it actually was. High-minded notions of "fairness" and "objective journalism" came to
the print media largely because the visionary first families of the papers that finally succeeded the Hearsts and Pulitzers in clout
and cache -- the Ochs-Sulzbergers of New York, the Meyer-Grahams of Washington, and the Chandlers of Los Angeles -- made a conscious
decision to brand their newspapers as being truly fair and balanced to differentiate them from the competition.
Meanwhile, the broadcast media (which didn't exist until the rise of radio and "talking pictures" in the late 1920s, followed
by TV after World War II) labored under the New Deal's famed Fairness Doctrine.
And even then, "objectivity" only went as far as the eyes and ears of the beholder. The fairness flag was fraying when
Spiro Agnew and Pat Buchanan took "liberal media elites" to task a generation ago during the Vietnam and civil rights era, while
Tom Wolfe made good, unclean fun out of the "radical chic" conceits of Manhattan and Hollywood limousine liberals.
What today's controversies illustrate is that a so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and "objective" newspaper reporting could only have
existed in a conformist Mad Men world where societal norms of what was (and wasn't) acceptable in the postwar Great Society
operated by consensus. That is to say, an America where moderate, respectable, white male centrist Republicans like Thomas Dewey,
Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, and Gerald Ford "debated" moderate, respectable, white male centrist Democrats like Harry
Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, and Jimmy Carter.
Now contrast that with today. On November 25, the New York Times made a now-notorious attempt to
understand the Nazi next door,
running a profile of young suburban white supremacist, Tony Hovater. Transgender social media superstar Charlotte Clymer spoke for
her fellow liberals when she savagely satirized the Times with a
tweet-storm that included things like:
Bob is a vegan. He believes we should protect the environment. He likes "Big Bang Theory". He pays taxes. He served in the
military.
He's a serial killer who has tortured and murdered 14 people. He dissolved their bodies in acid at a remote site. He made
them beg for their lives as he tortured them.
He attends PTA meetings. He DVR's episodes of his wife's fave shows when she's late at work.
The moral of the fable being (as Miss Clymer put it): "Bob is a mass-murdering f***head. STOP GIVING BOB NUANCE!"
When the Times followed their neo-Nazi profile by turning an entire op-ed column over to Donald Trump supporters in mid-January,
the Resistance went to red alert. And after Ross Douthat penned a column in defense of (Jewish) anti-immigration hardliner Stephen
Miller on Holocaust Memorial Day in January,
they went full DEFCON.
"F*** you @nytimes for publishing this article on #HolocaustMemorialDay from me & from those in my family whose voices were silenced
during the Holocaust. Shame on you!" said Nadine Vander Velde on Twitter. London left-wing journalist Sarah Kendzior agreed that
"The NYT is now a white supremacist paper. The multiple Nazi puff pieces, constant pro-Trump PR, and praise for Miller on today of
all days is not exceptional it's [now] the guiding ideology of the paper."
And the current furor over The Atlantic
's hiring of National Review firebrand Kevin D. Williamson only underscores that it isn't just campus leftists or Tea Partiers
who are hitting the censor button.
But revealingly, it wasn't just the usual left-wing snowflakes who have needed a trigger warning of late. Just six weeks into
the new year, the Washington Post and CNN ran a series of tabloidy, Inside Edition -style stories glamorizing Kim Yo-jong,
the sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The Washington Post even went so far as to call Ms. Yo-jong North Korea's
answer to Ivanka Trump (just ignore the fact she is the DPRK's assistant head of the Ministry of Propaganda and Agitation). That
led Bethany Mandel of the New York Post to wonder
what
was up with all the "perverse fawning over brutal Kim Jong-un's sister at the Olympics?"
Additionally, some of the most provocative critiques of "journalistic objectivity" have come from liberal polemicists like Matt
Taibbi and Sam Adler-Bell, who argue that before we go on blathering about untrammeled First Amendment freedom and "objectivity,"
the first question that must be asked is who has the balance of power and whose hands are on deck in the editing room. (And they're
not wrong to ask that question -- it was the same one that Pat Buchanan asked 50 years ago and Ann Coulter asked 20 years ago from
the opposite side of the newsroom.)
Whether it's MSNBC on the left or Fox News on the right, the editorial decisions of how to spin a piece, where and how often
to broadcast it, what kind of panelists you invite to "debate" a story, which anchors should be promoted and which ones will forever
remain mere worker bees -- all these decisions are anything but "objective" or "unbiased."
Let's face it: the supposedly more civilized, serious ecosystem of the pre-social media past would come across to identity-conscious
Millennials today as nothing more than stale white bread dominated by stale white men. Even among the campus leftists who protest
and violently riot to shut down and silence "hate speech," most of them would probably rather live in a world where Steve Bannon
and Richard Spencer anchored the nightly news on one channel -- so long as there was a hijab-wearing Muslim or a transgendered man
on another, equally highly-rated one.
What would be totally unacceptable to today's young consumer is any kind of return to the mid-century world where "the
news" was whatever Ben Bradlee, Johnny Apple, Robert Novak, and The Chancellor/Brinkley Nightly News said it was -- in essence,
the world where Punch Sulzberger, Otis Chandler, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw white-mansplained "facts" through their
own elite establishment filters, de facto ignoring everyone else.
Meanwhile, the beat goes on. From the left, conservative Sinclair Media
is accused of "forcing" its local anchors to read "pro-Trump propaganda." The Nation stalwart Eric Alterman
says that "When one side is
fascist, there's no need to show Both Sides." As for the right -- just ask your Fox-watching or Limbaugh-listening friends and families
what they think of the "mainstream media," the "Communist News Network," or the "opinion cartel."
The great Joan Didion once said "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Maybe "objective journalism" was always just a little
social white lie we in the media told ourselves to make ourselves feel better -- fairer, kinder, gentler, more "professional." But
if there's one lesson that Barack Obama, the Tea Party, Bernie Sanders, Antifa, Donald Trump, and the Great Recession have taught
us over the past decade, it isn't just that the mythical "center" will no longer hold. It's that there may no longer be a center
for any of us to hold on to.
Telly Davidson is the author of a new book on the politics and pop culture of the '90s,Culture War : How the 90's Made Us Who We Are Today (Like it Or Not). He has written on culture for ATTN, FrumForum, All About Jazz, FilmStew, and Guitar Player ,andworked
on the Emmy-nominated PBS series "Pioneers of Television."
United front against Kremlin is a coup for Theresa May
Catherine
Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent
The largest mass expulsion of Russian spies from the West is a significant diplomatic achievement for Theresa May at a
time when she could badly use one.
Her failure to persuade Donald Trump to back the Paris climate agreement or make
him see the wisdom of the Iran nuclear deal has undermined Britain's claim to act as a bridge between Europe and the
United States.
Similarly, Brexit means Britain is loosening its bonds with Europe, relinquishing its role in steering the EU's
relations with the rest of the world.
The Russian government called the expulsions "a provocative gesture" and said it would
retaliate in kind, raising the prospect of further tit-for-tat expulsions, as the US and Europe
left the door open for additional measures. The Kremlin said Vladimir Putin would make the
final decision, and the Russian embassy in the US launched a poll on Twitter asking which US
consulate in Russia should be closed.
The US has ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian officials who Washington says are spies,
including a dozen based at the United Nations, and told Moscow to shut down its consulate in
Seattle, which would end Russian diplomatic representation on the west coast.
The EU members Germany, France and Poland are each to expel four Russian diplomats with
intelligence agency backgrounds. Lithuania and the Czech Republic said they would expel three,
and Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands two each. Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, Finland, Hungary,
Sweden and Romania each expelled one Russian. Iceland announced it would not be sending
officials to the World Cup in Russia .
Ukraine, which is not an EU member, is to expel 13 Russian diplomats, while Albania, an EU
candidate member, ordered the departure of two Russians from the embassy in Tirana. Macedonia,
another EU candidate, expelled one Russian official.
Canada announced it was expelling four diplomatic staff serving in Ottawa and Montreal who
the Canadian government said were spies. A pending application from Moscow for three more
diplomatic posts in Canada is being denied.
Raj Shah, a White House spokesperson, told reporters Monday that the US expulsions were part
of "a coordinated effort".
He added that Donald Trump "spoke with many foreign leaders, European allies and others and
encouraged them to join with the United States in this announcement".
President Donald Trump has ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats and the closure of
the Russian consulate in Seattle. It comes in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in
Salisbury, which the UK has blamed on Russia. The move follows major diplomatic pressure by the
UK on its allies to follow their lead in expelling Russian diplomats. The Russian embassy in
Washington had previously urged Trump not to heed the "fake news " on Skripal's
poisoning.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has accused Moscow of being behind the poisoning of the
former spy Skripal and his daughter in the town of Salisbury in early March.
Breaking: US to expel 48 Russian embassy workers in Washington, D.C. and 12 at the Russian
mission to the U.N. U.S. says they were intel officers using diplo status as cover.
pic.twitter.com/mRuwY8Tes6
Of the 60 diplomats expelled, 12 formed part of the Russian mission to the United Nations.
In a statement, US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said the 12 Russians in question had "
abused their privilege of residence" in the US and had "engaged in espionage
activities that are adverse to our national security."
"... The anti Russia propaganda industry I believe was geared up to mobilize on an expected East Ghouta gas attack. OK the "industry" would not be privy to the details of such a false flag. But could it be they have gone off prematurely by assuming this Salisbury "event" was the intended pretext. ..."
"... Certainly there appears a degree of pre planned organization in the response to this false provocation ..."
"... I'm a major fan of Prime Minister May. What arouses my suspicions here is the refusal to this point of Her Majesty's government to submit samples of the poison to independent 3rd-party analysis. ..."
"... I've NEVER been antiwar, but DO oppose no-exit, no-win wars. The British public has a great deal of historical experience with such conflicts. Could this affair be the prelude to yet another? ..."
This is what a false flag operation is about: you need to carefully plant impurities that
point to the desired target. Compare with Vault 7. Can it be a chemical Vault 7 available
somewhere?
The anti Russia propaganda industry I believe was geared up to mobilize on an expected
East Ghouta gas attack. OK the "industry" would not be privy to the details of such a false
flag. But could it be they have gone off prematurely by assuming this Salisbury "event" was
the intended pretext.
Certainly there appears a degree of pre planned organization in the response to this false
provocation
My chemistry background is laughable (B in high school, D in college) and the only "legal"
course I took was called Sociology of Law.
The Romans had the line "Cui bono?" The rough translation (10th grade Latin) is "Who
benefits?"
Russia's President Vladimir Putin is an honor graduate of the KGB's foreign branch. It
stands to reason he wouldn't hesitate to have an ex-spy assassinated if he thought it served
the Russian interest. But in this case, what is that interest?
I'm a major fan of Prime Minister May. What arouses my suspicions here is the refusal to
this point of Her Majesty's government to submit samples of the poison to independent
3rd-party analysis.
Due to nearsightedness, I never served in the U.S. Army; had I the common sense of a goat,
I would have served in the Navy Supply Corps. I've NEVER been antiwar, but DO oppose no-exit,
no-win wars. The British public has a great deal of historical experience with such
conflicts. Could this affair be the prelude to yet another? Thank you all.
"... You have obviously been at the crime scene, have witnessed the comatose bodies of the Skripals and after analyzing the Novitchok samples you meticulously collected, have reached the inescapable conclusion ..."
"... Nice sarcasm. Well deserved for those "Novichok hot heads", who claim that it is plausible that a military grade nerve gas was used. Actually initial reports were about a synthetic opioid, not any nerve gas ( https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ex-russian-agent-sergei-skripal-critical-condition-was-poisoned-by-fentanyl-1665286 ) ..."
"... I am amazed that people do not understand the level of absurdity of using nerve gas in such a case. It's really like ignorance has no boundaries. I understand that some people did not manage to graduate from a university or take a decent organic chemistry course, but still, this is simply amazing and very disturbing to read such posts. Especially here. ..."
You have obviously been at the crime scene, have witnessed the comatose bodies of the
Skripals and after analyzing the Novitchok samples you meticulously collected, have reached
the inescapable conclusion
I am amazed that people do not understand the level of absurdity of using nerve gas in
such a case. It's really like ignorance has no boundaries. I understand that some people did
not manage to graduate from a university or take a decent organic chemistry course, but
still, this is simply amazing and very disturbing to read such posts. Especially here.
If it was a nerve gas my question to "Novichok hot heads" here is who the assassin
was?
You need either to place a can or some punctured packet under the bench (probably
impossible) or spray the liquid on the victim from a short distance. The latter is a very
dangerous exercise if you are not wearing a respirator and protection gear.
Remember the place was under surveillance -- bad for any assassination. Also in lethal
concentrations, the gas kills the victims in several minutes. But Skripals survived
unattended for an hour or more and there was only one other seriously affected person -- a
policeman, while doctor who treated Skriplal's daughter on the bench was unaffected.
I do not see any reasonable way to administer the gas in this environment without
affecting many other people including any passerby, or the doctor who treated Skripal's
daughter
Yes, it certainly looks like a provocation, the "false flag" operation. The Brits and the Banks needed the US and the EU to join
the fight.
Notable quotes:
"... The most plausible goal of the whole "Operation Skripal" was poisoning UK-Russia relations and hopefully bringing the US and EU to impose new round of sanctions on Russia. In this sense it reminds Litvinenko case (which brought huge propaganda benefits to the UK and the hysteria lasted several months, if memory does not fail me). ..."
"... One thing I can't understand in "Operation Skripal" is how such an assassination (if we assume that this is an assassination) was accomplished. ..."
"... The gas (if it really exists, which is yet another question) supposedly is really deadly. If this was not gas but some substance infused with this agent (which would be extremely strange and risky method), you need to get it into the drinks, which means 100% chances of your detection. ..."
"... Moreover in case of the gas the difficulties look insurmountable -- to get it to the victim you need to mix components and shortly after spray it from a short distance, hoping the you mixed them correctly. The place where Skripals were found unconscious is a really bad place for such an exercise as there probably several cameras which record the events on the bench. ..."
"... So IMHO it looks like assassination without an assassin ..."
"... suggested traces of the opiate fentanyl -- a synthetic toxin many times stronger than heroin -- had been detected at the scene. ..."
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best
he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia,
nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine
the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictorship, or a
parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked (by a Russian sounding chemical weapon Novichok), and
denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism (https://www.craigmurray.org.uk - Craig Murray has been most viciously attacked
for not accepting the official story without any evidence) and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Hermann Gφring
That's a perfectly applicable variation of the famous quote.
The most plausible goal of the whole "Operation Skripal" was poisoning UK-Russia relations and hopefully bringing the US and
EU to impose new round of sanctions on Russia. In this sense it reminds Litvinenko case (which brought huge propaganda benefits
to the UK and the hysteria lasted several months, if memory does not fail me).
BTW exiled Russian oligarchs like Khodorkovski ( https://www.voltairenet.org/article168007.html
) also could easily stage such a false flag operation using their interconnections with both Russia and Israel.
One thing I can't understand in "Operation Skripal" is how such an assassination (if we assume that this is an assassination)
was accomplished.
The gas (if it really exists, which is yet another question) supposedly is really deadly. If this was not gas but some
substance infused with this agent (which would be extremely strange and risky method), you need to get it into the drinks, which
means 100% chances of your detection.
Moreover in case of the gas the difficulties look insurmountable -- to get it to the victim you need to mix components
and shortly after spray it from a short distance, hoping the you mixed them correctly. The place where Skripals were found unconscious
is a really bad place for such an exercise as there probably several cameras which record the events on the bench.
Unless it was the daughter who did this (in this case authorities have definitely all the necessary evidence of the crime committed)
chances of an attacker to survive such an attack are slim, and changes not being recorded on one or more camera are virtually
non existent.
If there was a human assassin, he/she risks to be immediately dead or severely injured as even in minimal concentrations such
a gas reliably kills a person within two minutes or so. Antidote might help to survive, but how effective it is depends on the
dose you can get.
If some robotic disperser was used, then it will be found as unlike in case of an explosive device the activation does no destroy
it.
Also unclear why target the daughter, unless we are dealing with some botched amateur false flag operation in best traditions
of ISIS Syria false flag operations.
Moreover, Skripals spent around an hour on a bench in a comatose state and were helped by a doctor who was not affected in
any way. See timeline at
So IMHO it looks like assassination without an assassin . There are some absurd statements that the poison was spiked
in their drinks either in the pub or at the restaurant:
Later their collapse was used to stage a false flag operation, when in fact there was no any gas involved, and at this point,
a grandiose propaganda show with the decontamination of the area started.
Before arguing what was used, how it was done, and whodunit is there any PROOF that these
two people have actually been poisoned or come to any harm? MSM headlines keep flip flopping
from 'murdered ex spy' to the 'attempted murder of'. If they have then it's on to the other
questions.
Presstitutes is another term for those in MSM who does not respect truth and just repeat supplied talking points.
Notable quotes:
"... As our print media is dying on it's arse, we get more and more reporters and less journalists. Stop calling them journalists as it only feeds their delusions. ..."
Craig. I don't know if it's possible for you to do this, but I'll ask anyway. To my mind
there are reporters and then there are journalists. I've seen it first hand with campaigns
that I'm involved with. Reporters just copy press releases, social media posts etc.
Journalism is much more comprehensive than that and involves digging around and discovering a
"truth". Most reporters think they are journalists. Real journalists know that they
aren't.
As our print media is dying on it's arse, we get more and more reporters and less
journalists.
Stop calling them journalists as it only feeds their delusions.
They are shilling for the government who pays their wage via BBC etc. Not belonging to the
government approved mainstream means hunger these days, as they would lose their job. The
obligation to shill for the government is the US insistence to control the narrative of what
people believe. And the UK so wants to be part of the US importance, it has not scruples to
oblige its journalists to join the US MSM views.
... I know about people who challenged the system and paid or are still paying the price.
Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, just to name a few of the most recognizable
names.
I know dozens of people who have left the US because of disagreements with its foreign
policy. They walk the walk and talk the talk.
Sure they are the minority because most people are conforming cowards or unthinking fools
who can be pulled on a boiled noodle. I have far more esteem for the members of that minority
though than for somebody who figures than spewing forth a couple of thousands words once a
week represents some form of serious resistance.
The French philosopher Alain Soral is quite right when he says that modern "journalists
are either unemployed or prostitutes"
An interesting observation. I will refrain from drawing any conclusions.
"... The UK will promptly expel 23 Russian diplomats without waiting for the end of the investigation. Which means that from now on the investigation is highly politicized and tainted in a sense that it will be conducted by people who proved the existence of Iraq WMD in the past: ..."
"... This is one step further from the "self-indictment as a formal proof" used in Show Trials. Now it looks like "suspicion is the formal proof." ..."
"... Both cyberspace and poisoning with exotic chemical agents proved to be a perfect media for false flag operations designed to poison relations between nations and fuel war-style demonization. ..."
The UK will promptly expel 23 Russian diplomats without waiting for the end of the investigation. Which means that from now
on the investigation is highly politicized and tainted in a sense that it will be conducted by people who proved the existence
of Iraq WMD in the past:
Moscow refused to meet Mrs May's midnight deadline to co-operate in the case, prompting Mrs May to announce
a series of measures intended to send a "clear message" to Russia.
These include:
Expelling 23 diplomats
Increasing checks on private flights, customs and freight
Freezing Russian state assets where there is evidence they may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals
or residents
Ministers and the Royal Family boycotting the Fifa World Cup in Russia later this year
Suspending all planned high-level bilateral contacts between the UK and Russia
Plans to consider new laws to increase defences against "hostile state activity"
Mrs May told MPs that Russia had provided "no explanation" as to how the nerve agent came to be used in the UK, describing
Moscow's response as one of "sarcasm, contempt and defiance".
The use of a Russian-made nerve agent on UK soil amounted to the "unlawful use of force", she said.
So it looks more and more like a well planned multi-step propaganda operation, not an impromptu action on the part of GB. Kind
of replica of Russian election influence witch hunt in the USA with the replacement of cyberspace and elections with chemical
agents and poisoning.
So inconsistencies that were pointed in this thread (such as the mere fact that three people exposed are still alive) do not
matter anymore.
The verdict now is in.
This is one step further from the "self-indictment as a formal proof" used in Show Trials. Now it looks like "suspicion
is the formal proof."
Both cyberspace and poisoning with exotic chemical agents proved to be a perfect media for false flag operations designed
to poison relations between nations and fuel war-style demonization.
"... As for murray's theory, i think you're both right. while i doubt the primary reason was to gin up more russophobia (they usually just make stuff up out of thin air and it usually works) it is a pleasant side effect for the brit officials who have recently been groveling for more war profiteering under the pretense of "russia on our doorstep". ..."
"... They seem to have the same mentality rahm emanuel had when he said (regarding the 2008 collapse that decimated giant swathes of the US economy) "never let a good crisis go to waste". ..."
"... The whole affair gets curiouser and curiouser. Now there's a report that the Skripals were poisoned at HOME. And then succumbed later, elsewhere? And what about the other 21 people reportedly affected and treated? Huh?? ..."
"... I believe Craig Murray. Anyone who remembers the 9/11 Anthrax scare that threatened US decision makers? ..."
"... The BBC has reported that a "source familiar with the investigation" said the nerve agent was "likely to be rarer than sarin or VX". This suggests that the ground is being prepared for announcing a result that will implicate Russia. ..."
"... Kaszeta's comments are relevant because he works closely with Bellingcat and it appears from his output that since 2013 he has been used to channel information originating from western intelligence services about alleged chemical attacks, based on his status as an independent expert with his company Strongpoint Security. The accounts filed for this company show that its turnover was not enough to provide Kaszeta with a living, raising obvious questions about who or what was paying him. ..."
"... There we go Britain to raise Sergei Skripal poisoning case with Nato allies ..."
"... Similar case in California, Were they addicts? http://abc7.com/2-dead-in-possible-fentanyl-exposure-in-fontana-home/3197127/ ..."
as mentioned above, the UK is saturated with CCTV cameras. in all the MSM screeching i have yet to hear about any footage being
examined.
As for murray's theory, i think you're both right. while i doubt the primary reason was to gin up more russophobia (they
usually just make stuff up out of thin air and it usually works) it is a pleasant side effect for the brit officials who have
recently been groveling for more war profiteering under the pretense of "russia on our doorstep".
They seem to have the same mentality rahm emanuel had when he said (regarding the 2008 collapse that decimated giant swathes
of the US economy) "never let a good crisis go to waste". maybe an even better analogy would be churchill praying for a german
attack to justify his bloodlust as seen in dresden and other firebombing targets.
the fact that putin has elections and the media came out with the story that this move would ensure after the elections that other
spies won't have any doubts.....are prepared statements. if your spies were in syria from rus and from us. i think most people
know who would have the heavier conscience. and in fact it is reminding their own what they are worth to them .... genius. actually.
before cctv were widespread among civil infrastructure, the opponents against the idea realized that people can just erase
the time stamp and put on different ones and have actors act it out and placed onto television as proof. but we see they usually
go for the afp reported from cnn report from 50 agencies unnamed unsourced deparment heads, circular fun.
i am not so much interested in the videos from nearby stores and streets, as if one really were to investigate, looking through
weeks of tapes is not difficult. i am more interested in Britain next move.
i think it would be easier to britain to just mute this guy permanently if he were to wake up with ideas that it wasn't putin
its a big problem for all the milking they are doing on it.
a. he makes it out of the hospital and comes out and becomes anti putin fanatic and makes it believable.
b. he makes it out of the hospital and goes back to normal life.
c. he makes it out of the hospital and is immediately gunned/poisoned by "russians".
d. he doesn't make it out of the hospital and goes back to normal life anyways.
e. he doesn't make it out of the hospital......but his daughter does.
f. he doesn't make it out of the hospital and is in coma indefinitely.
g. he is dropped from the news altogether due to security censorship.
The whole affair gets curiouser and curiouser. Now there's a report that the Skripals were poisoned at HOME. And then succumbed
later, elsewhere? And what about the other 21 people reportedly affected and treated? Huh??
The police sgt. that became ill wasn't at the initial scene, he later searched the home of the two victims. So someone is making
the assumption that they may have been poisoned at their home since that is where the police officer who later became ill was
assigned.
There is a possible scenario that he was in possession of a nerve agent, and accidentally poisoned himself and his daughter
Porton Down is only 8 miles down the road
I believe Craig Murray.
...
Posted by: somebody | Mar 10, 2018 5:45:04 AM | 63
Craig Murray smelt a rat and made his suspicions clear, publicly. Whether Murray's speculation is better or worse than anyone
else's is unresolved and could remain that way, if History is any guide.
We seem no closer to discovering the ID of the instigators of the sordid and spectacularly public murder of Kim Jong-nam.
The BBC has reported that a "source familiar with the investigation" said the nerve agent was "likely to be rarer than sarin
or VX". This suggests that the ground is being prepared for announcing a result that will implicate Russia.
Kaszeta on bellingcat.com
brings up the story of "novichoks" a class of organophosphate compounds allegedly developed as military nerve agents in the USSR.
Russian chemists published papers in the open literature on these compounds from the 1960s to the 1980s. The story that they were
developed for military use and given the name "novichok" comes from a defector in the 1990s, Vil Mirzayanov. An
authoritative review
by Robin Black notes that there is no independent evidence supporting Mirzayanov's claims about the properties of these compounds.
Kaszeta's comments are relevant because he works closely with Bellingcat and it appears from his output that since 2013
he has been used to channel information originating from western intelligence services about alleged chemical attacks, based on
his status as an independent expert with his company Strongpoint Security. The accounts filed for this company show that its turnover
was not enough to provide Kaszeta with a living, raising obvious questions about who or what was paying him.
65, Hw... Murray has a lot more insider information than he lets on, often couching it as speculation, probably partly to protect
sources. He can be admirably or foolishly blunt at times ("z' is b'sh!")but with delicate issues, he often alludes at things insteda
of saying outright. He has retained deep connections with many (at least partially like-minded) people at the FCO, the diplomatic
corps and (indeed) MS5 and 6.
"Novichok" was just used in the plot of the latest Strike Back TV series, from the Wikipedia article-"She discovers that Zaryn
is in fact Karim Markov, a Russian scientist who allegedly killed his colleagues with Novichok, a nerve agent they invented"
65, Hw... Murray has a lot more insider information than he lets on.
...
Posted by: Petra | Mar 10, 2018 10:45:44 AM | 67
His Former British Ambassador status bolsters his street cred. OTOH one imagines that he is acutely aware of the line dividing
whistle-blowing from treason.
On the other, other hand, b is a quite diligent and competent sleuth too, and has more than a passing interest in military/defense
intrigue and intel.
There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time.
It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this
Notable quotes:
"... There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this. ..."
"... Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky. ..."
"... it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep.. ..."
"... I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the inherently intractable security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence". ..."
"... It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate. ..."
"... And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that. ..."
"... Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ..."
"... They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040 ..."
"... In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. ..."
"... State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union ..."
"... About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS ..."
"... No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming. ..."
"... Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons. ..."
"... Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing. ..."
"... Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program. ..."
"... IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war. ..."
"... The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. ..."
"... A particular interesting feature of those on the British side in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella. ..."
"... Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear. ..."
Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the 'Billion Dollar Don.'
In the light of the suggestion in the Nunes memo that Steele was 'a longtime FBI source' it seems worth sketching out some background,
which may also make it easier to see some possible reasons why he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate
about him not being president.'
There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion
GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this.
This agenda has involved hopes for 'rιgime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or
some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both
in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya.
And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'rιgime change' projects which it
was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the inherently intractable security problems of a Jewish settler state in the
area.
Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which
clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander
Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on
your side of the Atlantic notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky.
The question of what links these had, or did not have, with elements in U.S. intelligence agencies is thus a critical one.
In making some sense of it, the fact that one key figure we know to have been involved in this network was missing at the Inquiry
the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 is important.
Unfortunately, I only recently came across a book on Levinson published in 2016 by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier,
which is now hopefully winging its way across the Atlantic. From the accounts of the book I have seen, such as one by Jeff Stein
in 'Newsweek', it seems likely that its author did not look at any of the evidence presented at Owen's Inquiry.
Had he done so, Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling
attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko's death. A Radio
4 programme on 16 December 2006, presented by the veteran BBC presenter Tom Mangold, had been wholly devoted to an account by Shvets,
backed up by Levinson. Both of these were, like Litvinenko, supposed to be impartial 'due diligence' operatives.
The notion that any of them might have connections with Western intelligence agencies was not considered. The publicly available
evidence of the involvement of Shvets, whose surname means 'cobbler' or 'shoemaker' in Ukrainian, in the processing of the tapes
of conversations involving the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma supposedly recorded by Major Melnychenko, which had played
a crucial role in the 2004-5 'Orange Revolution' was not mentioned.
Still less was it mentioned that claims that the very dangerous late Soviet Kolchuga system, which made it possible the kind
of identification of incoming aircraft which radar had traditionally done, without sending out signals which made the destruction
of the facilities doing it possible, had been sold by Kuchma to Iraq had proven spurious.
What Shvets had done had been to take genuine audio in which Kuchma had discussed a possible sale, and edit it to suggest
a sale had been completed.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
As a former television current affairs producer, I can talk to you of the marvels which London audio editors can produce, very
happily. Unfortunately, the days when not all BBC and 'Guardian' journalists were corrupt stenographers for corrupt and incompetent
spooks, as Mangold and his like have been for Steele and Levinson, are long gone.
All this has become particularly relevant now, given that Simpson has placed the notorious Jewish Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich
and the 'Solntsevskaya Bratva' mafia group centre stage in his accounts not simply of Trump and Manafort, but also of William Browder.
For most of the 'Nineties, Levinson had been a, if not the, lead FBI investigator on Mogilevich.
(On this, see the 1999 BBC 'Panorama' programme 'The Billion Dollar Don', also presented by Tom Mangold, which has extensive interviews
both with Mogilevich and Levinson at
In the months leading up to Levinson's disappearance, a key priority for the advocates of the strategy I have described was to
prevent it being totally derailed by the patently catastrophic outcome of the Iraqi adventure.
Compounding the problem was the fact that this had created the 'Shia Crescent', which in turn exacerbated the potential 'existential
threat' to Israel posed by the steadily increasing range, accuracy and numbers of missiles available to Hizbullah in hardened positions
north of the Litani.
These, obviously, provided both a 'deterrent' for that organisation and Iran, and also a radical threat to the whole notion that
somehow Israel could ever be a 'safe haven' for Jews, against the supposedly ineradicable disposition of the 'goyim' sooner or later
to, as it were, revert to type. The dreadful thought that Israel might not be necessary had to be resisted at all costs.
What followed from the disaster unleashed by the Anglo-American 'own goal' in toppling Saddam was, ironically, a need on the
part of key players to 'double down.' Above all, it was necessary for many of those involved to counter suggestions from the Russian
side that going around smashing up 'rιgimes' that one might not like sometimes blew up in one's face.
Even more threatening were suggestions from the Russian side that it was foolish to think one could use jihadists without risking
'blowback', and that there might be an overwhelming common interest in combating Islamic extremism.
Another priority was to counter the pushback in the American 'intelligence community' and military, which was to produce the drastic
downgrading of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme in the November 2007 NIE and then the resignation of Admiral William
Fallon as head of 'Centcom' the following March.
So in 2005 Shvets came to London. He and his audio editors had another 'bite at the cherry' of the Melnychenko tapes, so that
material that did in fact establish that both the SBU and FSB had collaborated with Mogilevich could be employed to make it seem
that Putin had a close personal relationship with the mobster.
All kinds of supposedly respectable American and British academics, like Professors Karen Dawisha and Robert Service, have fallen
for this, hook, line and sinker. It gives a new meaning to the term 'useful idiot.'
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
In a letter sent in December that year by Litvinenko to the 'Mitrokhin Commission', for which his Italian associate Mario Scaramella
was a consultant, this was used in an attempt to demonstrate that Mogilevich, while acting as an agent for the FSB and under Putin's
personal 'krysha', had attempted to supply a 'mini atomic bomb' aka 'suitcase nuke' to Al Qaeda. Shortly after the letter was
sent Scaramella departed on a trip to Washington, where he appears to have got access to Aldrich Ames.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
At precisely this time, as Meier explains, Levinson was in the process of being recruited by a lady called Anne Jablonski who
then worked as a CIA analyst. It appears that she was furious at the failure of the operational side at the Agency to produce evidence
which would have established that Iran did indeed have an ongoing nuclear programme, and she may well have hoped would implicate
Russia in supplying materials.
There are grounds to suspect that one of the things that Berezovsky and Shvets were doing was fabricating such 'evidence.' Whether
Levinson was involved in such attempts, or genuinely looking for evidence he was convinced must be there, I cannot say. It appears
that he fell for a rather elementary entrapment operation which could well have been organised with the collaboration of Russian
intelligence. (People do get fed up with being framed, particular if 'rιgime change' is the goal.)
It also seems likely that, quite possibly in a different but related entrapment operation, related to propaganda wars in which
claims and counter claims about a polonium-beryllium 'initiator' as the crucial missing part which might make a 'suitcase nuke' functional,
Litvinenko accidentally ingested fatal quantities of polonium. A good deal of evidence suggests that this may have been at Berezovsky's
offices on the night before he was supposedly assassinated.
It was, obviously, important for Steele et al to ensure that nobody looked at the 'StratCom' wars about 'suitcase nukes.' Here,
a figure who has played a key role in such wars in relation to Syria plays an interesting minor one in the story.
Some time following the destruction of the case for an immediate war by the November 2007 NIE, a chemical weapons specialist called
Dan Kaszeta, who had worked in the White House for twelve years, moved to London.
In 2011, in addition to founding a consultancy called 'Strongpoint Security', he began a writing career with articles in 'CBRNe
World.' Later, he would become the conduit through which the notorious 'hexamine hypothesis', supposedly clinching proof that the
Syrian government was responsible for the sarin incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, Ghouta, Saraqeb, and Khan Al-Asal, was disseminated.
Having been forced by the threat of a case being opened against them under human rights law into resuming the inquest into Litvinenko's
death, in August 2012 the British authorities appointed Sir Robert Owen to conduct it. (There are many honest judges in Britain,
but obviously, if one sets out to find someone who will 'cover up' for the incompetence and corruption of people like Steele, as
Lord Hutton did before him, you can find them.)
That same month, a piece appeared in 'CBRNe World' with the the strapline: 'Dan Kaszeta looks into the ultimate press story: Suitcase
nukes', and the main title 'Carry on or checked bags?' Among the grounds he gives for playing down the scare:
'Some components rely on materials with shelf life. Tritium, for example, is used in many nuclear weapon designs and has a twelve
year half-life. Polonium, used in neutron initiators in some earlier types of weapon designs, has a very short halflife. US documents
state that every nuclear weapon has "limited life components" that require periodic replacement (do an internet search for nuclear
limited life components and you can read for weeks).'
What Kaszeta has actually described are the reasons why polonium is a perfect 'StratCom' instrument. In terms of scientific plausibility,
in fact there were no 'suitcase nukes', and in any case 'initiators' using polonium had been abandoned very early on, in favour of
ones which lasted longer.
For 'StratCom' scenarios, as experience with the 'hexamine hypothesis' has proved, scientific plausibility can be irrelevant.
What polonium provides is a means of suggesting that Al Qaeda have in fact got hold of a nuclear device which they could easily
smuggle into, say, Rome or New York, or indeed Moscow, but there is a crucial missing component which the FSB is trying to provide
to them. By the same token, of course, that missing component could be depicted as one that Berezovsky and Litvinenko are conspiring
to suppl to the Chechen insurgents.
In addition, the sole known source of global supply is the Avangard plant at Sarov in Russia, so the substance is naturally suited
for 'StratCom' directed against that country, which its intelligence services would rather naturally try to make 'boomerang.'
According to Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele is a 'boy scout.' This seems to me quite wrong but, even if it were true, would
you want to unleash a 'boy scout' into these kinds of intrigue?
As it is not clear why Kaszeta introduced his accurate but irrelevant point about polonium into an article which was concerned
with scientific plausibility, one is left with an interesting question as to whether he cut his teeth on 'StratCom' attempting to
ensure that nobody seriously interested in CBRN science followed an obvious lead.
In relation to the question of whether current FBI personnel had been involved in the kind of 'StratCom' exercises, I have been
describing, a critical issue is the involvement of Shvets and Levinson in the Alexander Khonanykhine affair back in the 'Nineties,
and the latter's use of claims about the Solntsevskaya to prevent the key figure's extradition. But that is a matter for another
day.
A corollary of all this is that we cannot yet at least be absolutely confident that the account in the Nunes memo, according
to which Steele was suspended and then dismissed as an FBI source for what the organisation is reported to define as 'the most serious
of violations' the unauthorised disclosure of a relationship with the organisation is necessarily wholly accurate.
Who did and did not authorise which disclosures to the media, up to and including the extraordinary decision to have the full
dossier, including claims about Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa oligarchs, in flagrant disregard of the obvious risks of defamation
suits, and who may be trying to pass the buck to others, remains I think less than totally clear.
thanks david... fascinating overview and conjecture..
it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy
and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep..
Thank you very. As ever you have illuminated a few more things for me. Kaszeta's involvement is interesting. He is someone
I am in the middle of researching in relation to Higgins and Bellingcat.
I think the English are using you, they are unsentimental empirical people that only do these that benefit the Number One.
The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
That Newsweek piece about Levinson is very superficial to me.
Re: Levinson
# Who suggested to who 'first' the Iran caper...Anne Jablonski to Levinson or Levinson to Jablonski? It was reported earlier
by Meier that in December 2005, when Levinson was pitching Jablonski on projects he might take on when his CIA contract was approved
he sent her a lengthy memo about Dawud's potential as an informant.
# Ira Silverman, the Iran hating NBC guy, pitched a Iraq caper to Levinson with Dawud Salahuddin, as his Iran contact and Levinson
went to Jablonski with it.
# And what was with Boris Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum
czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States jumping in to help find Levinson?
The FBI allowed Deripaska in for two visits in 2009 in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson but obviously nothing
came of it.
I think there were more little agents/agendas in this than Levinson and Jablonski and US CIA.
As usual a wonderful analysis. I admire your insight, integrity and courage. I wish you could write more on why the Borg
is so much against Trump, even though they have Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference for them.
I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive
solution to the inherently intractable security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that
the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields.
Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe" have
been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence".
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. "
David as usual fascinating work connecting the dots. One question that comes to my mind is about the above point you are making.
Is it your understanding or believe that these IC individuals on both side of Atlantic, are pursuing/forcing their (on behalf
of the Borg) foreign policy agenda outside of their respected seating governments? If not, why is it that incoming administration
cannot stop them? So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but
not fundamentally.
I am not David Habakkuk, obviously. But I will venture a little opinion anyway. It is not enough that the Borgists get their
policy preferences. If it were, then Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference would be enough for them.
It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing
themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace
to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of
defiance which they will not tolerate.
And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear.
That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to
defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that.
So that is why the Borg cares so much. They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a
counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.
Thanks for your analysis. I always enjoy and learn from your posts. I wish you would post more often.
In my non-expert opinion, the Borg and the media were all in for Hillary. They were convinced that she was gonna win. To curry
favor with the Empress who would be certainly crowned after the election they were eager and convinced that their lawlessness
would become a badge for promotion and plum positions in her administration. In their conceit, they believed they could kill two
birds with one stroke. They could vilify Putin and create the mass hysteria to checkmate him, while at the same time disparage
and frame Trump as The Manchurian Candidate to seal their certain electoral victory.
Unfortunately for them voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't buy their sales pitch despite the overwhelming
media barrage from all corners. Even news publications who have only endorsed Republican candidates for President for over a century
endorsed her.
Trump's election win caused panic among the political establishment, the media and the Deep State. They were already all-in.
Their only choice was to double down and get Trump impeached. Now their conspiracy is beginning to unravel. They are doing everything
possible to forestall their Armageddon. Of course they have many allies. This battle is gonna be interesting to watch. Trump is
clearly getting many Congressional Republicans on side as his base of Deplorables remains solidly behind him. That is what's befuddling
the Borg pundits.
So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.
Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called
consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda
in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp.
This swamp (Borg, deep state, etc.) still thinks that it can use Cold War 1.0 Playbook and address very real and dangerous
American economic issues. They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with.
They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.
You are right CWII is very much desired and on agenda, but i am not sure of setup, the setup/board has been changed tremendously
and IMO benefits the Asian side of Bosphorus, for one thing technology is no longer exclusive, and financial burden is heavier
on atlantic side.
''Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ''
The locust keep trying and trying, destruction is their life's work.
'1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union'
In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG)
dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded
as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that
with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a
former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski
favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241,
251 - 256]
'November 1978-February 1979: Some US Officials Want to Support Radical Muslims to Contain Soviet Union'
State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used
against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the
Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task
force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition
of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization
of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis"
and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time."
Yes, that is what appears to be just what is coming to light. I wonder just what position Trey Gowdy is going to have since
he won't be running for re-election. The rage from the left is palpable. I'm sure the next outraged guy on the left will know
how to shoot straighter than the ones who shot up Congressman Scalise or the concert goers at Mandalay Bay.
"They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with."
-- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
England preferred NAZI Germany to USSR, this is well known. As to what would have happened, the outcome of the war, in my opinion,
did not depend on US participation in the European Theatre. All of Europe would have become USSR satellite or joined USSR.
"unsentimental empirical people"? Absolutely disagree with you. Now the Iranians, they strike me as a singularity unsentimental
people. Just general impressions, mind you.
Yes, US was the first country to proudly deliver Manpads to be used by "rebels" (Mojahadin later Taleban) against USSR in Afghanistan
back in 80s. And, as per the architect of support for the rebels (Zbigniew Brzezinski) very proud of it with no regret. With that
in mind, I don't see how western politicians, the western governments and their related proxy war planers, will be regretting,
even sadden, once god forbid we see passenger planes with loved ones are shot down taking off or landing at various western airports
and other places around the word. Just like how superficialy with crocodile tears in their eyes they acted in aftermath of the
terrorist events in various western cities in this past 16 years. Gods knows what will happens to us if the opposite side start
to supply his own proxies with lethal anti air weapons. "Proudly", I don't think anybody in west cares or will regret of such
an escalation.
I think it likely that what Meier produces is only a 'limited hangout', and am hoping that when the book arrives it will contain
more pointers.
It is important to be clear that one is often dealing with people playing very complicated double games.
An interesting document is the 'Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus' made on behalf of Khodorkovsky's close associate Alexander
Konanykhin back in 1997,when the Immigration and Naturalization Service were apparently at least cooperating with Russian
attempts to get hold of him. An extract:
'During the immigration hearing FBI SA Robert Levinson, an INS witness, confirmed that in 1992 Petitioner was kidnapped and
afterwards pursued by assassins of the Solntsevskaya organized criminal group. This organized criminal group is reportedly the
largest and the most influential organized criminal group in Russia, and operates internationally.'
Note the similarities between the 'StratCom' that Khonanykin and his associates were producing in the 'Nineties, and that which
Simpson and his associates have been producing two decades later.
Another useful example is provided by a 2004 item in the 'New American Magazine', reproduced on Konanykhin's website:
'One of those who testified on behalf of Konanykhine was KGB defector Yuri Shvets, who declared: "I have a firsthand knowledge
on similar operations conducted by the KGB." Konanykhine had brought trouble on himself, Shvets continued, when he "started bringing
charges against people who were involved with him in setting up and running commercial enterprises. They were KGB people secretly
smuggling from Russia hundreds of millions of dollars . This is [a] serious case, and I know that KGB ... desperately wants to
win this case, and everybody who won't step to their side would face problems."'
So 'first hand knowledge', from a Ukrainian nationalist look at what the Chalupas have been doing, it seems not much has
changed.
For a rather different perspective on what Konanykhin had actually been up to, from someone in whose honesty if not always
judgement I have complete confidence, see the testimony of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson to the House Committee on Banking and Financial
Services hearings on Russian Money Laundering. In this, she described how she had been approached by him in 1993:
'"Konanykhine alleged that Menatep Bank controlled $1.7bn [£1bn] in assets and investment portfolios of Russia's most prominent
political and social elite," she recalled. She said he wanted to move the bank's assets off shore and asked her to help buy foreign
passports for its "very, very special clients".
'In her testimony to the committee Ms Von Gerhke-Thompson said she informed the CIA of the deal, and the agency told her that
it believed Mr Konanykhine and Mr Khodorkovsky "were engaged in an elaborate money laundering scheme to launder billions of dollars
stolen by members of the KGB and high-level government officials".
Coming back to Steele's 'StratCom', in July 2008, an item appeared on the 'Newnight' programme of the BBC which some of us
think should by then have been rechristened the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' in which the introduction by the presenter,
Jeremy Paxman, read as follows:
'Good evening. The New Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was all smiles and warm words when he met Gordon Brown today. He
said he was keen to resolve all outstanding difficulties between the two countries. Yada yada yada. Gordon Brown smiled, but he
must know what Newsnight can now reveal: that MI5 believes the Russian state was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko
by radioactive poisoning. They also believe that without their intervention another London-based Russian, Boris Berezovsky, would
have been murdered. Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, has this exclusive report.'
When Urban repeated the claims on his blog, there was a positive eruption from someone using the name 'timelythoughts', about
the activities of someone she referred to as 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist' when I came across this later, it was
immediately clear to me that she was Karon von Gerhke, and he was Shvets.
She then described a visit by Scaramella to Washington, details of which had already been unearthed by my Italian collaborator,
David Loepp. Her claim to have e-mails from Shvets, from the time immediately prior to Litvinenko's death, directly contradicting
the testimony he had given, fitted with other evidence I had already unearthed.
Later, we exchanged e-mails over a quite protracted period, and a large amount of material that came into my possession as
a result was submitted by me to the Inquest team, with some of it being used in posts on the 'European Tribune' site.
What I never used publicly, because I could only partially corroborate it from the material she provided, was an extraordinary
claim about Shvets:
'He was responsible for bringing in a Kremlin initiative that was walked Vice President Cheney's office on a US government
quid pro quo with the Kremlin FSB SVR involving the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky a cease and desist on allegations of a politically
motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, violations of rules of law and calls from Russia's expulsion from the G 8 in exchange for favorable
posturing of U.S. oil companies on Gazprom's Shtokman project and intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq,
Iran and Syria, all documented in reports I submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and MI6.
'Berezovsky's DS could not be on both sides on that isle. His Kremlin FSB SVR sources had been vetted by the CIA and by the
National Security Council. They proved to be as represented. As we would later learn, however, he was on Berezovsky's payroll
at same time. The FSB SVR general he was coordinating the Kremlin initiative through was S. R. Subbotin, the same FSB SVR general
who was investigating Berezovsky's money laundering operations in Switzerland during the same timeframe. His FSB SVR sources surrounding
Putin were higher than any Lugovoy could have ever hoped to affiliate with.
'R. James Woolsey (former CIA DCI), Marshall Miller (former law partner of the late CIA DCI William Colby), who I coordinated
the Kremlin initiative through that Berezovsky's DS had brought in were shocked to learn that he was affiliated with Berezovsky
and Litvinenko. He was in Berezovsky's inner circle and engaged in vetting Russian business with Litvinenko. He operated Berezovsky's
Ukraine website, editing and dubbing the now infamous Kuchma tapes throughout the lead up to the elections in the Ukraine. Berezovsky
contributed $41 million to Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, which he used in an attempt to force Yushchenko to reunite with Julia
Tymoschenko. It failed but would succeed later after Berezovsky orchestrated a public relations initiative through Alan Goldfarb
in the U.S. on behalf of Tymoschenko.'
Having got to know Karon von Gerhke quite well, and also been able to corroborate a great deal of what she told me about many
things, and discussed these matters with her, it is absolutely clear to me that she was neither fabricating nor fantasising. What
later became apparent, both to her and to me, was that in the 'double game' that Shvets was playing, he had succeeded in fooling
her as to the side for which he was working.
It seems likely however that the reason Shvets could do what he did was that quite precisely that many high-up people in the
Kremlin and elsewhere were playing a 'double game.' In this, Karon von Gerhke's propensity for indiscretion of which I, like
others, was both beneficiary and victim could be useful.
An exercise in 'positioning', which could be used to disguise the fact that Shvets was indeed 'Berezovsky's disinformation
specialist', could be used to make it appear that 'intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria'
was actually credible.
This could have been used to try to rescue Cheney, Bush and their associates from the mess they had got into as a result of
the failure of the invasion to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the case which had been made for it. It could also have
been used to provide the kind of materials justifying military action against Iran for which Levinson and Jablonski were looking,
and for similar action against Syria.
Among reasons for bringing this up now is that we need to make sense of the paradox that Simpson clearly in collusion with
Steele was using Mogilevich and the 'Solnsetskaya Bratva' both against Manafort and Trump and against Browder.
There are various possible explanations for this. I do not want to succumb to my instinctive prejudice that this may have been
another piece of 'positioning', similar to what I think was being done with Shvets, but the hypothesis needs to be considered.
A more general point is that people in Washington and London need to 'wise up' to the kind of world with which they are dealing.
This could be done quite enjoyably: reading some of Dashiell Hammett's fictions of the United States in the Prohibition era, or
indeed buying DVDs of some of the classics of 'film noir', like 'Out of the Past' (in its British release, 'Build My Gallows High')
might be a start.
Very much of the coverage of affairs in the post-Soviet space since 1991 has read rather as though a Dashiell Hammett story
had been rewritten by someone specialising in sentimental children's, or romantic, fiction (although, come to think of it, that
is really what Brigid O'Shaughnessy does in 'The Maltese Falcon.')
The testimony of Glenn Simpson seems a case in point. The sickly sentimentality of these people does, rather often, make one
feel as though one wanted to throw up.
"They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.}
No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the
fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian
Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy
of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were
spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming.
- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
My coming book is precisely about that. Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George
Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons.
Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it
is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat
it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing.
Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered
a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving
forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before
any Steele's Dossier. This was a program.
I think the failure of Deciders is nothing new - Fath Ali Shah attacking Russia, or the abject failure of the Deciders in 1914.
Europe is still not where she was in 1890.
I read the post and responses early on, so forgive me if this point has been addressed in the meantime. If the memo information
on non-disclosure of material evidence to the warrant issuing court is accurate, as soon as that information came to the attention
of the authorities (clearly some time ago) there was a duty on them (including the judge(s) who issued the warrants) to have the
matter brought back before the court toot sweet. If that had happened it would surely be in the public domain, so on the assumption
the prosecutors and maybe even the judge didn't see the need to review the matter, even purely on a contempt/ethics basis, the
memo information only seems convincing if the FISA system is a total sham. I really doubt that.
IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and
dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war.
The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem
for regular people, to worry about. As I remember that wasn't the case at the end of VN war when i first landed here. At
that time even though the war was on the other side of the planet and away from homeland, still people, especially young ones
in colleges were paying more attention to the cost of war.
Diana West has uncovered some interesting "Red Threads" (6 part article at dianawest-dot-net) on all the Fusion GPS folks. Seems
ole Russian speaking Nellie Ohr got herself a ham radio license recently. Wonder why she would suddenly need one of those? They
are all Marxists with potential connections back to Russia.
Been there. I am also a latecomer to SST. You have to read the back numbers. How? My IT expertise dates from the dawn of the internet
and was lamentable then but I find Wayback sometimes allows easier searches than the SST search engine. A straight search on google
also allows searches with more than one term. This link -
- gets you to a chronological list and for recent material is sometimes quicker than fiddling around with search engines. "Categories"
on the RH side is useful but then you don't get some very informative comments that cross-refer.
If those sadly elementary procedures fail resort to the nearest infant. There's a blur of fingers on the keyboard and what
you want then usually appears. Never ask them how they did it. They get so fed up when you ask them to explain it again.
"Who is David Habakkuk?" That's a quantum computer sited, from internal evidence you pick up from time to time, somewhere in
the Greater London area. Cross references like you wouldn't believe and over several fields, so maybe he's two quantum computers.
The "Borg"?. Try Wittgenstein. Likely a prog but you can't be choosy these days. Early on in "Philosophical Investigations"
(hope I get this right) he discusses the problem of how you can view as an entity something that has ill-defined or overlapping
boundaries. The "Borg" is that "you know it when you see it" sort of thing. A great merit of this site is that the owner and many
of the contributors know it from inside.
In general you may regard your new found site as a microcosm of the great battle that is raging in the West. It's a battle
between the (probably apocryphal but adequately stated) Roveian view of reality that regards truth as an adjunct to or as a by-product
of ideology and Realpolitik and the objective view of reality as something that is damned difficult to get at, and sometimes impossible,
but that has a truth in it somewhere that is independent of the views and convictions of the observer. It's a battle that's never
going to be won but unless it tilts back closer to common sense it can certainly be lost and the West with it.
Clearly the Labor Party in the UK preferred the USSR to Nazi Germany. (cepting that short interlude where the Soviets signed the
Agreement with Hitler, and the Left Organized Leadership all across Europe, for the most part, lined up with Hitler). But for
the most part, Labor was Left.
Elements (the ones that won out in the end) of the Conservative Party loathed both Hitler and Stalin. An element of the Conservative
Party was sympathetic, but only up to a certain point, with the Nazis. This ended in 1939, sept.
So I don't think it fair, or accurate, to say 'England prefered the Nazis....and even if it not those things, it certainly
not "well known", except to the people who have used the false premise to butter their wounds from supporting Stalin in his Pact
with Hitler. Or are inclined to bash the British in general.
All right, perhaps I should have said "The English Government". Google "Litvinov", you may discover how the English Government
pushed Stalin to make a deal with Hitler to buy USSR time.
Witness the infamous State Department protest memo calling for more war on Syria.
The State Department employees that signed that memo were sure that HRC would win and that their diligent work in pushing the
Deep State agenda would sure be rewarded.
Since entering office, Trump appears to have taken the line that if he gives the Deep State everything it demands, he will
be allowed to remain in office, even if he is not allowed to remain in power.
jonst That's broadly accurate, but specifically Attlee brought the motion of no confidence in Chamberlain, which the conservative
appeasers won but which led to Churchill's opportunity. Attlee was essential in cabinet to Churchill's resistance after the retreat
of the BEF.
FM
What are you doing here? You said you dislike the military. Are you really in the Spanish Basque country? Bilbao maybe? break
- David Habakkuk is a private scholar of the Litvinenko murder and Soviet/Russian politics and intelligence affairs. His surname
comes from Wales where in the 18th (?) Century the ancestral village were all "chapel" and changed their surnames to Old Testament
names. His father was master of one of the Cambridge colleges and David is himself a graduate of Cambridge. pl
The hard, blinding truth:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it,
and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting
their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
This troll showed up recently at b's place doing the same accusations. There is group that is running sacred and pulling out
all the stops in "info ops" side of the spectrum. The damn fools don't or, most probably, won't get thru their thick heads and
even thicker hearts that it is a failed strategy that turns bystanders into their opponents.
Here for your edification is the definitive analysis of the GOP memo by Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran.
And it is a masterpriece - and quite long, possibly his longest analysis of anything so far. He buries the counterarguments
being passed around by the Democratic opposition and the anti-Trump media.
Mercouris writes on legal affairs alongside his foreign policy stuff and he writes with a lawyer's precision. And in this article
he points out that the GOP memo is writter as a legal document - probably by Trey Gowdy - with additional political insertions
by Nunes. So it should properly be referred to as the "GOP memo" or the "Gowdy memo", not the Nunes memo."
Why this is important is that the GOP memo is basically written as a defense lawyer would in contesting a case -- this case
being the FISA warrant application. Which means its orientation is proving failure to disclose relevant and material information
to the FISA court and in some cases rising to the point of contempt of court.
"Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging," Grassley said in a statement after posting a heavily
redacted version of the criminal referral that he and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent to the Justice Department
last month. " The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn't secret. "
I suppose DOJ/FBI believe that by obstructing, stalling and obfuscating they can buy time and that the Republicans in Congress
will get tired of the games and go home. This seems like a pretty straightforward memo, highlighting the discrepancy between Steele's
court filings and the FBI's version of Steele's discussions with them. Grassley is pointing out that either Steele or the FBI
is lying.
What is interesting is the difference in process and ability between the House & Senate. The House can release their memos
on its own, even if not declassified by the Executive, whereas the Senate requires the Executive to declassify it's memos that
are based on classified documents.
We have not had a self declared communist on SST before although LeaNder in her youth may have come close to that exalted status.
You might want to read the wiki on me and the CV I have posted on the blog to avoid tedious accusations of this or that. I am
thought by some to have some knowledge of the ME so please do not try to lecture me about how much you love the Arabs. I speak
their language and have lived with them for a long time. There are people who write to SST who are pro-Trump and some who are
anti-Trump. I seek a mixture of views so long as personal insult and invective are eschewed. Personally, I do not belong to a
political party and would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.
Trump is the constitutionally and legally elected president of the United States. Your descriptors with regard to him are,
in my opinion, only plausible if seen from the point of view of various kinds of leftist including Marxist-Leninists like you.
You sound very smug and self-satisfied but we will see if you can have an open mind at all. pl
Found him, Ali Babacan XVPM, XFM and M of finance. Yes god forbid, if he is a decendent of Ardisher Babakan and another claimant
to Iranian throne, which CIA and Soros can jump on. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Babacan MBA from
Northeestern
I do not believe Trump is a misogynists - he stated publicly that he likes beautiful women. I also do not think he is a racist.
I think he is the first US leader in many decades who has been willing to publicly talk about US problems. For most other US politicians
- they largely live in "the best of all possible worlds".
Colonel - sincere apologies if my comment above disrupted the discussion on a fascinating article.
David Habakkuk - I should say that "Quantum Computer" referred solely to the ability to gather and collate great amounts of
material. It's an ability I admire. On Steele, you are among other things setting out something that is unfamiliar to me though
not to most others here, I imagine, and that is the milieu in which he is or was working as a UK Intelligence operative. That
you have also done in previous articles; it doesn't seem to be a particularly savoury milieu. As far as Steele's US activities
are concerned, from you I'm not getting the picture of a lone operative, all ties with MI6 neatly severed, working solo in the
States on some chance assignment in 2016. I'm getting the picture of someone still very much in the swim and selected because
of that.
The only problem with that second picture is the dossier, or the 30% or so of it - what Comey, I think it was, described as
"salacious and unverified". Surely that's got to be amateur night. Not something that a practised professional working with other
professionals would put his hand to. Does that not support the picture of an ex-operative who's gone off the rails and is fumbling
around unsupervised?
The Steele affair touched a nerve. One is always I suppose aware that IC professionals are getting up to all sorts and it doesn't
seem improbable that "all sorts" includes political stuff and smear campaigns. But it's not heaps of corpses in Syria or farm
boys being sent to certain death in the Ukraine. And even within the UK Intelligence Community and their contractors or whatever
they're called, compared with what our IC people have done in the ME or compared with what one fears Hamish de Bretton Gordon
might have got himself involved in, Christopher Steele's just a choirboy. Nevertheless there's something deeply repellent about
what he did. Whatever your view of Trump there he was, newly elected, obviously wanting to make a go of it, and already faced
with difficulties. Then some chancer throws "Golden Showers" in his face and makes his position, not maybe for the insiders but
for the general public, that bit more untenable.
So from a UK perspective the question of whether Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK becomes important. If he
was truly working solo then that from a UK point of view is regrettable but one of those things. In that case MI6 would just have
to tighten up its controls on what ex-operatives get up to, put out the appropriate disclaimers, and that's the end of it as far
as the UK is concerned. But if Golden Showers and the rest of it was a "Welcome Mr President" from UK IC professionals as a group
then those professionals should be hung drawn and quartered together with whoever set them on.
I've read your article several times now and apart from the fact that much of what you pull together isn't material I'm up
on, it doesn't seem to me that you're definitely coming to one conclusion or the other. There are many more facts to come out
so perhaps this question is premature, but do you think Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK or was he, at least
as far as the UK is concerned, working solo?
Most Iranian females Named Fatima/ Fatimah after prophet' daughter, call themselves Fati, and if they are of aristocrat type,
they are called Bibi Fati Khanam, which is honorable lady Fati and if they are westernized they become Fay or Fifi.
Much of your commentary seems directed to David Habakkuk and PT rather than I. I don't think the FBI would have started to
pay him until he left UK service. pl
Colonel - Further apologies - I should have submitted comment 79 as two items.
Yes, the question about Steele was in response to DH's article. The UK side of the affair is I suppose only a small part of
the question you and your Committee are examining but it's a dubious part however one looks at it. Although it's early days yet
I was hoping DH, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK intelligence scene, might feel able to cast more light on that UK
side.
Cortes - " ... where, exactly, do you expect the great public to look beyond the initial scabrously defamatory storytelling about
the "golden showers"? "
I don't think one can expect the public, at least in the UK, to look very far beyond the initial scandal. The investigations
and enquiries presently under way in the US are complex and are taking place in a different system. This member of the UK public
wouldn't be able to give you a coherent account of those enquiries and I doubt many of my fellows could.
So we have to take on trust, most of us, what we're told. As far as I can tell the underlying theme from the BBC and the media
is generally that Trump is subverting the American Justice system in order to ensure his own misdemeanours aren't investigated.
Some of us take that as gospel. Others of us assume that the politicians and the media are untrustworthy and ignore them. I
doubt many of us go into much more detail than that. Therefore the original story will stick in our minds.
But for some in the UK there are questions in there as well. How come the UK got mixed up in all this? How much did the UK
get mixed up in it?
When I belatedly started looking at the Litvinenko mystery, as a result of a strange email provoked by comments of mine on
SST which arrived in my inbox in March 2007 from someone who turned out to be a key protagonist, it was rather obvious that improvised
and chaotic 'StratCom' operations had been put into place on both the Russian and British sides to cover up what had happened.
A particular interesting feature of those on the British side in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played
a leading role were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact
that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario
Scaramella.
When I started delving, I came across some very interesting pieces on Scaramella and related matters posted on the 'European
Tribune' website by a Rome-based blogger using the name 'de Gondi' in the period after the story broke.
His actual name is David Loepp, by profession he is an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques,
and I already knew and respected his work from his contributions to the transnational internet investigation into the Niger uranium
forgeries an earlier MI6 clusterf**ck.
So in May 2008 I posted a longish piece on that site, setting out the problems with the evidence about the Litvinenko case
as I saw them, in the hope of reactivating his interest. This paid off in spades, when he linked to, and translated a key extract
from, the request from Italian prosecutors to use wiretaps of conversations with Senator Paolo Guzzanti in connection with their
prosecution of Scaramella for 'aggravated calumny.'
The request, which up to not so long ago was freely available on the website of the Italian Senate, was denied, but the extensive
summaries of the transcripts provided a lot of material.
The extract from the wiretap request which David Loepp posted, which like Litvinenko's letter containing the claims he and
Yuri Shvets had concocted about Putin using Mogilevich to attempt to supply Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb' is dated 1 December
2005, contains key pointers to the conspiracy. It concludes:
'A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War
to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic-
Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.'
Subsequent conversations make clear that Scaramella left on 6 December 2005 for Washington, on a trip where he was to meet
Shvets. The summary of a report on this to Guzzanti reads:
'12) conversation that took place on number [omissis] on December 18, 2005, at 9:41:51 n. 1426, containing explicit references
to the authenticity of the declarations of Alexander Litvinenko acquired by Scaramella, to the trustworthiness of the affirmations
made by Scaramella in his reports to the commission and to the meetings Scaramella had with Talik after having denounced them
[presumably Talik and his alleged accomplices]. (They can talk with HEIMS thanks to the help of MILLER. SHVEZ says that he had
been a companion of CARLOS at the academy; SHVEZ has already made declarations and is willing to continue collaboration. Guzzanti
warns that a document in Russian arrived in commission in which the name of SCARAMELLA appears several times, these [sic] say
that directives to the contrary had been given to Litvinenko. Scaramella says that he went to the meeting with TALIK in the company
of two treasury [police] and a cop, Talik spoke of a person from the Ukrainian GRU who would be willing to talk and a strange
Chechen ring in Naples. Assassination attempt against the pope, CASAROLI was a Soviet agent.)'
The summary of a later conversation also refers to 'MILLER':
'conversation that took place on number [omissis] on January 13, 2006, at 11:22:11 n. 2287, containing references to Scaramella's
sources in relation to facts referred in the Commission, the means by which they were obtained by Scaramella from declarations
made abroad, the role of Litvinenko, also on the occasion of declarations made by third parties and the credibility of the news
and theses given by Scaramella to the commission (Scaramella reads a text in English on the relation between the KGB and PRODI.
Guzzanti asks if its credibility can be confirmed and if the taped declarations can be backed up; Scaramella answers that there
were two testimonies, Lou Palumbo and Alexander (Litvinenko), and that the registration made in London at the beginning of the
assignment [Scaramella's?] had been authenticated by a certain BAKER of the FBI. As he translates the text from English, Scaramella
notes that the person testifying does not say he knows Prodi but only that he thinks that Prodi ...; all those who worked for
the person testifying in Scandinavia said that Prodi was "theirs." The affair in Rimini, Bielli is preparing the battle in Rimini.
Meetings with MILLER for the three things that are needed. Polemic about Pollari over the pressure exerted on Gordievski.)'
In the exchanges on my May 2008 post, I mentioned and linked to some extraordinary comments on a crucial article by Edward
Jay Epstein, in which Karon von Gerhke claimed that his sceptical account fitted with what her contacts in the British investigation
had told her. When that July I came across her equally extraordinary claims in response to the BBC's Mark Urban piece of stenography
which Steele may also have had a hand in organising I found she was referring to precisely that visit to Washington by Scaramella
which had been described in the wiretap request.
As you can perhaps imagine, the fact that 'Miller' had featured in the conversations with Guzzanti both as a key contact, who
could introduce Scaramella to Aldrich Ames (which is who 'Heims' clearly is), and with whom there had been meetings about 'the
three things that are needed' made me inclined to take seriously what Karon von Gerhke said about his role.
In December 2008, I put up another post on 'European Tribune', putting together the material from David Loepp and that from
Karon von Gerhke but not discussing the references to 'Miller.' As I had hoped, this led to her getting in touch.
Among the material with which she supplied me, which I in turn supplied to the Solicitor to the Inquest, were covers of faxes
to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel of the CIA. From a fax dated 23 October 2005.
'John: See attached email to Chuck Patrizia. Berezovsky alleges he is in possession of a copy of a classified file given to
the CIA by Russia's FSB, which he further alleges the CIA disseminated to British, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence agencies
implicating him in business associations with the Mafia and to ties with terrorist organizations. Yuri Shvets was authorised/directed
by Berezovsky to raise the issue with Bud McFarlane scheduled for Thursday. McFarlane is unaware the issue will be raised with
him.'
From a fax dated 7 November 2005:
'John: I am attaching an email exchange between Yuri Shvets and me re: 1) article he published on his Ukraine website on alleged
sale of nuclear choke to Iran, which I reproached him on as having been planted by Berezovsky and 2 the alleged FSB/CIA document
file that Berezovsky obtained from Scaramella, which Yuri acknowledges in his e-mail to me. Like extracting wisdom teeth to get
him to put anything on paper, especially in an e-mail! [NAME REDACTED BY ME DH] is the source McFarlane referred Yuri to re:
Berezovsky's visa issue. She proposed meeting Berezovsky in London. Alleged it would take a year to clear up USG issues and even
then could not guarantee him a visa. She too has access to USG intelligence on Berezovsky. Open book.'
From a fax dated 5 December 2005:
'John. From Mario Scaramella to Yuri Shvets to my ears, the DOJ has authorised Mario Scaramella to interview Aldrich Ames with
regard to members of the Italian Intelligence Service agent recruited by Ames for the KGB. Scaramella, as you may recall, is who
gave Boris Berezovsky's aide, a former FSB Colonel [LITVINENKO DH], that alleged document number to the FSB file that the CIA
disseminated on Berezovsky a file that Bud McFarlane's "Madam Visa" [NAME REDACTED BY ME DH] is alleged is totting off to
London for a meeting with Berezovsky, who has agreed to retain her re: his visa issue. Quid pro quo's with Berezovsky and Scaramella
on the CIA agent currently facing kidnapping charges for the rendition of the Muslim cleric? Scott Armstrong has a most telling
file on Scaramella. Not a single redeeming quality.'
In the course of very extensive exchanges with Karon von Gerhke subsequently, we had some rather acute disagreements. It was
unfortunate that her filing was a shambles a crucial hard disk failed without a backup, and the 'hard copies' appeared to be
in a chaotic state.
However, the only occasion when I can recall having reason to believe that was deliberately lying to me was when David Loepp
unearthed a cache of documentation including the full Italian text of the letter from Litvinenko containing the 'StratCom' designed
to suggest that Putin had attempted to supply a 'mini nuclear bomb' to Al Qaeda. Having been asked to keep this between ourselves
for the time being, Karon insisted on immediately sending it to her contacts in Counter Terrorism Command, and then produced bogus
justifications.
Time and again, moreover, I found that I could confirm statements that she made see for example the two posts I put up on
the legal battles following the death in February 2008 of Berezovsky's long-term partner Arkadi 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili in June
and July 2009, which were based on careful corroboration of what she told me.
(I should also say that I acquired the greatest respect for her courage.)
And while Owen and his team suppressed all the evidence from her, and almost all of that from David Loepp, which I had I provided
to them, the dossier about Berezovsky is described in a statement made by Litvinenko in Tel Aviv in April 2006, presented in evidence
in the Inquiry.
Other evidence, moreover, strongly inclines me to believe that there were overtures for a 'quid pro quo', purporting to come
from Putin, but that this was a ruse orchestrated by Berezovsky.
Part of the purpose of this would almost certainly have been to supply probably bogus 'evidence' about arms sales in the Yeltsin
years to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Moreover, I think there was an article on the second 'Fifth Element' site run by Shvets about the
supposed sale of a nuclear 'choke' whatever that is to Iran.
The likelihood of the involvement of elements in the FBI in these shenanigans seems to quite high, given what has already emerged
about the activities of Levinson. Also relevant may be the fact that the 'declaration' which was part of the attempt to frame
Romano Prodi was authenticated, in London, by 'a certain BAKER of the FBI.')
The critical issue here is the provenance of the samples and not the sophistication of the techniques used in the analysis
itself or its instrumentation.
The paragraph that you have quoted:
"To figure out signatures based on various synthetic routes and conditions, Chipuk says that the synthetic chemists on his
team will make the same chemical threat agent as many as 2,000 times in an ..." reeks of intellectual intimidation - trying to
brow-beat any skeptic by the size of one's instrument - as it were."
And then there is a little matter of confidence level in any of the analysis - such things are normally based on prior statistics
- which did not and could not exist in this situation.
David, it's no doubt interesting to watch how attention on Victor Ivanov in another deficient inquiry on the British Isles, was
managed in that inquiry. If I may, since he pops up again in the Steele dossier. You take what's available? Is that all there
is to know?
I know its hard to communicate basics if you are deeply into matters. Usually people prefer to opt out. It's getting way too
complicated for them to follow. You made me understand this experience. But isn't this (fake) intelligence continuity "via" Yuri
Svets what connects your, no harm meant I do understand your obsession with the case, with what we deal with now in the Steele
Dossier? Again, one of the most central figures is Ivanov.
Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality?
Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear.
By the way, babbling mode, I found your Tom Mangold transcription. It felt it wasn't there on the link you gave. I used the
date, and other search terms. Maybe I am wrong. Haven't looked at what the judge ruled out of the collection. Yes, cozy session/setting.
why California, Kooshy #18? California among other things left this verbal trace, since I once upon time thought a luggage storage
in SF might be free/available now: this is my home, lady.
Tourists from many -- but not all -- foreign nations wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to
obtain any visa prior to travel. For those travelers, upon-arrival travel permits are stamped valid for 14 days by Kish officials.
Who are the not all? Can we assume Britain is not one of those?
The German link is different. How about the Iranian?
another Ivanov. I struggled with names (...) in Russian crime novels, admittedly. But that's long ago from times Russian crime
and Russian money flows and rogues getting hold of its nuclear material surfaced more often in Europe. 90s
"... think tanks are essentially lobby groups for their donors. The policy analyses and reform schemes that they produce are tailored to support the material interests of donors. None of the studies are reliable as objective evidence. They are special pleading. ..."
"... Think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, and the Atlantic Council, speak for those who fund them. Increasingly, they speak for the military/security complex, American hegemony, corporate interests, and Israel ..."
"... Bryan MacDonald lists those who support the anti-Russian think tanks such as the Atlantic Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, German Marshall Fund of the US, and Institute for Study of War. The "experts" are mouthpieces funded by the US military security complex. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48755.htm US government agencies use taxpayer dollars to deceive taxpayers. ..."
A couple of decades or more ago when I was still in Washington, otherwise known as the snake
pit, I was contacted by a well-financed group that offered me, a Business Week and Scripps
Howard News Service columnist with access as a former editor also to the Wall Street Journal,
substantial payments to promote agendas that the lobbyists paying the bills wanted
promoted.
To the detriment of my net worth, but to the preservation of my reputation, I declined.
Shortly thereafter a conservative columnist, a black man if memory serves, was outed for
writing newspaper columns for pay for a lobby group.
I often wondered if he was set up in order to get rid of him and whether the enticement I
received was intended to shut me down, or whether journalists had become "have pen will
travel"? (Have Gun -- Will Travel was a highly successful TV Series 1957-1963).
Having read Bryan MacDonald's article on Information Clearing House, "Anti-Russia Think
Tanks in US: Who Funds them?," I see that think tanks are essentially lobby groups for their
donors. The policy analyses and reform schemes that they produce are tailored to support the
material interests of donors. None of the studies are reliable as objective evidence. They are
special pleading.
Think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, and the
Atlantic Council, speak for those who fund them. Increasingly, they speak for the
military/security complex, American hegemony, corporate interests, and Israel.
Bryan MacDonald lists those who support the anti-Russian think tanks such as the Atlantic
Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, German Marshall Fund of the US, and Institute
for Study of War. The "experts" are mouthpieces funded by the US military security complex.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48755.htm
US government agencies use taxpayer dollars to deceive taxpayers.
In other words insouciant Americans pay taxes in order to be brainwashed. And they tolerate
this.
The real story of online deception isn't about the Russians. Sure, the Russians certainly
have their own programs to disrupt and steer online discourse. But how quickly the public has
forgotten about the U.S. government's own internet troll program.
Edward Snowden leaked documents used by the "Five Eyes" alliance of governments. The United
States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia– basically Oceania from 1984 –get together to spy on
each other's citizens. That's how they cleverly get around laws against spying on their own
citizens.
The leaked
documents included a presentation about how government agents should disrupt online
discourse.
There is a lot of overlap between these tactics, and often more than one are used
simultaneously. For example, there has been a big push by the media to convince you that the
end of net neutrality is a bad thing. They are masking the true nature of net
neutrality–it really gives the government power to regulate aspects of the internet. And
then they repackage net neutrality as necessary for freedom and open access to the
internet.
When deploying government sponsored trolls online, the agents will mimic real commenters in
order to sound more believable. They gain credibility since people are more likely to trust
those they perceive as similar to them.
Sometimes government agents invent a crazy story and attribute it to a movement. This
discredits the movement. Think Flat Earth Theory. Those primed to believe conspiracy theories
get sucked in. Then all the true conspiracies are grouped in with the bogus one.
If a true conspiracy theory comes out, they invent 100 others to obscure the real one. In
order for the truth to be lost among the falsities, they invent various levels of "conspiracy
theories" from the slightly believable, to the absurd.
Hillary Clinton really is a corrupt psychopath. But she is not a shape-shifting reptilian
alien.
From the evidence, it seems the United States government was in some way involved in the
2001 attacks on the twin towers. But did they use holograms of the planes, and fire a laser
into the towers? Probably not.
The conspiracies become too unbelievable to some, and they throw the truth out with the
government manufactured lies. For those that do believe the false details of a true conspiracy,
they walk away with an inflated sense of how powerful and all knowing the government really
is.
This also works to the government's benefit. The over-the-top conspiracy theories become the
decoy. They can then exploit those beliefs to create cognitive stress, which is
If a true conspiracy theory comes out, they invent 100 others to obscure the real one.
In order for the truth to be lost among the falsities, they invent various levels of
"conspiracy theories" from the slightly believable, to the absurd.
Hillary Clinton really is a corrupt psychopath. But she is not a shape-shifting reptilian
alien.
From the evidence, it seems the United States government was in some way involved in the
2001 attacks on the twin towers. But did they use holograms of the planes, and fire a laser
into the towers? Probably not.
The conspiracies become too unbelievable to some, and they throw the truth out with the
government manufactured lies. For those that do believe the false details of a true conspiracy,
they walk away with an inflated sense of how powerful and all knowing the government really
is.
This also works to the government's benefit. The over-the-top conspiracy theories become the
decoy. They can then exploit those beliefs to create cognitive stress, which is another tactic
of control.
Trump is the
ultimate manifestation of their tactics to control attention. Trump
is a big move which does a lot of masking the small moves . The media pays attention to his
tweets, not his actions. When he does push for legislation, like a repeal of Obamacare, and it
fails, attention drops because that seems to be the end of that.
And every time this happens, vigilance wanes. Another tweet, another legislative
failure, another snub? We get it. But do we really get it?
Repetition. By now we are so used to misconduct by government officials, we just don't pay
attention anymore. Yet when the story about Pizzagate came to light, it was grouped in with
conspiracy theories. No need to investigate. We were primed to put that story into the
false category. But the new cue is
sexual assault, and we are primed to believe any accusation , regardless of the
evidence.
In efforts to demonize Bitcoin, many of these tactics are used. I'm not saying Bitcoin is
beyond criticism. But I've seen commenters claim it was created by the CIA. That is just
silly.
More likely, the government exploits the distrust libertarians tend to have in government in
order to cast doubt on the legitimacy of cryptocurrencies. That means fewer people will adopt
technology that has the potential to bring down the worldwide banking cartel and free people
from the shackles of government monetary policy.
White Nationalists and AntiFa are right out of this playbook. Each exploits the beliefs of
the "other side." The left is primed to assume anyone who disagrees with them is secretly a
racist white supremacist. And the right is primed to believe the left is full of violent
fanatics who want to implement a communist coup.
To be sure, some of these people exist in the real world. So government agents
seize on this and magnify it with their own agents. By doing this, they cause unsuspecting
citizens to join the fray. Behavior is influenced by our peers. So the perception that
something is widespread or normal makes people more likely to follow the crowd.
He describes how to trigger shortcuts people use in their mental processes. For instance, a
higher price usually means higher quality, so often people assume a higher priced item will be
better made. But this works in many areas. People might assume a southern accent makes someone
a racist, or USDA approval means healthy.
Cialdini also goes into how people are influenced by social proof, gift giving, making
commitments, and a sense of inclusion. It is no surprise that the government would use these
advertising and sales tactics to push their agenda online.
An Obama policy adviser, Cass Sunstein, wrote a paper in 2008 which
suggests using these tactics.
Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of
violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and
law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories
prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined Because
those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in
accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in
cognitive infiltration of extremist groups.
Sunstein later went on to serve on the NSA review panel.
But finally, here's the real head spinner.
The documents mention a Haversack Ruse. This ruse involves planting false information by
making the enemy think you accidentally lost it. The target thinks they got their hands on your
actual plans. But in reality, they acquired fake plans.
For instance, was Edward Snowden really a leaker, or was he told to drop all this "evidence"
in order to distract from what is really happening?
In such a case, the intelligence officers would be laughing their asses off. They had the
balls to put the Haversack reference into a fake document that was intentionally leaked as a
ruse. This fits with the elite's serial-killer-like tendency to leave hints of their true
agenda in plain sight.
That means one of two things.
Either these documents are not part of a ruse and everything in them is true.
Or, these documents are part of a Haversack Ruse. But why would the government leak
these damning documents which prove their lies and untrustworthiness?
Only if the truth is so much worse.
You don't have to play by the rules of the corrupt
politicians, manipulative media, and brainwashed peers.
When you subscribe to The Daily Bell, you also get a free guide:
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"... The big joke is that it wasn't the Russians interfering in our elections but the British M16. I guess Lyndon LaRoche was right: Obama is a British agent, brought into the fold by Valerie Jarret. ..."
"... I think the military and OIGs against the Deep State. Military doesn't like the special ops guys. CIA likes special ops, is a version of them. Military doesn't like their officer corps being corrupt, it guarantees they lose wars, so any straight shooting Marine is upset with the Navy, AF, etc. running ratlines. Fat Leonard and ship collisions are aspects of incompetence. ..."
"... We better hope so as this trail leads to Kerry, Obama, Biden and Lynch, as well as the core group of a few hundred globalist traitors in the civil service, journalism and the very very rich. ..."
Devin Nunes (R-CA) said that the investigation leading up to the four-page FISA memo released on
Friday was only "phase one," and that the House Intelligence Committee is
currently in the
middle of investigating the State Department
over their involvement in surveillance abuses.
"We are in the middle of what I call phase two of our investigation, which involves other departments,
specifically the State Department
and some of the involvement that they had in this,"
said Nunes.
"That investigation is ongoing and we continue work towards finding answers and asking the right
questions to try to get to the bottom of what exactly the State Department was up to in terms of this
Russia investigation."
While it is unclear what role the State Department may have in surveillance abuses, the
Washington
Examiner
's Byron York noted last month that former MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, was "
well-connected
with the Obama State Department
," according to the book
Collusion: Secret meetings, dirty
money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump win"
written by
The Guardian
correspondent
Luke Harding and published last November.
Harding notes that Steele's work during the World Cup soccer corruption investigation earned the
trust of both the FBI and the State Department:
The [soccer] episode burnished Steele's reputation inside the U.S. intelligence community and
the FBI. Here was a pro, a well-connected Brit, who understood Russian espionage and its
subterranean tricks. Steele was regarded as credible.
Between 2014 and 2016, Steele
authored more than a hundred reports on Russia and Ukraine.
These were written for
a private client but shared widely within the State Department and sent up to Secretary of State
John Kerry and to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland
, who was in charge of the
U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis. Many of Steele's secret sources were the same sources who
would supply information on Trump. One former State Department envoy during the Obama
administration said he read dozens of Steele's reports on Russia.
The envoy said that on
Russia, Steele was "as good as the CIA or anyone."
Steele's professional reputation inside
U.S. agencies would prove important the next time he discovered alarming material, and lit the fuse
again.
Aside from the infamous 35-page "Trump-Russia" dossier Steele assembled for opposition research
firm Fusion GPS (a report which was funded in part by Hillary Clinton and the DNC), Congressional
investigators have been looking into whether Steele compiled
other
reports about Trump - and
in particular, whether those other reports made their way to the State Department, according to
The
Examiner
.
...
they are looking into whether those reports made their way to the State Department
.
They're also seeking to learn what individual State Department officials did in relation to Steele,
and whether there were any contacts between the State Department and the FBI or Justice
Department concerning the anti-Trump material
.
It will be interesting to see how the State Department - and in particular Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson - responds to "phase two."
We'll see how big Nunes' balls are: it's one thing to release memos &
conduct investigations. It would be quite another to see some of the DOJ,
FBI & State colluders locked up.
It's already happening...and it doesn't really matter how big Nunes'
balls are...his case is being presented to him with a bow on top. The
Trump team has every one of these fuckers dead-to-rights, and is simply
guiding events along...allowing congress - and us all - to believe we
are discovering the truth right along with them. By doing it this way,
we
own it...
it's 'real'.
There are more 'memos' (guide posts) to come. Binney being on Team
Trump means 'Thin Thread' has been resurrected, and they hear and see
everything these dimwits do. There are NOOSES in their collective
future, but proper cultivation of the broader public's understanding of
the depth and breadth of the criminal cabal will require a little time
and tending.
The FISA Court has
declined just 11
of the
more than 33,900 surveillance requests made by the
government in 33 years, the Wall Street Journal reported
Sunday. (June 2013). That's a rate of .03 percent, which
raises questions about just how much judicial oversight is
actually being provided.
Don't forget Bush Sr, handed off to Clinton like,
Clinton's expanded and stuffed the DoJ with their
people, Clinton hands off to Bush Jr, leaving all
of Clinton's people in place (done purposely) Bush
Jr hands off to Obama, Obama has everything in
place for him to do whatever he is told to with
legal cover now in senior positions, Obama was
supposed to hand off to either Hillary or Jeb Bush
(controlled opposition). Enter Trump. Trump looks
like he will win the Republican primary and not
Jeb. Creation of Dossier, destroy Trump at all
cost. DNC and team Clinton aka team Pedophile get
the Dossier to McCain, McCain to FBI, FBI figures
we must get Hillary in office so that we have
cover, goes all in. Trump wins, FBI goes full
retard to have him mired in endless investigation
while praying they can find anything for
impeachment.
No he's competent. He did a great job
covering up the controlled demolition
of the WTC buildings on nine eleven.
That's his forte, covering up
government crimes.
The big joke is that it
wasn't the Russians
interfering in our
elections but the British
M16. I guess Lyndon LaRoche
was right: Obama is a
British agent, brought
into the fold by Valerie
Jarret.
Congress gets all prissy when a candidate
is surveiled, but it gives two shits about
the surveillance of the American people.
Did Nunes vote to extend the NSA civilian
spying program??
Still, maybe it is good they get riled
up about running/elect/sitting big
shots if it helps clean house to some
extent, and more importantly, allows
people to at least elect someone who
they want so that maybe they could try
and make changes. Trickle-down and
stuff.
I think the military and OIGs against the
Deep State. Military doesn't like the
special ops guys. CIA likes special ops, is a
version of them. Military doesn't like their officer corps
being corrupt, it guarantees they lose wars,
so any straight shooting Marine is upset with
the Navy, AF, etc. running ratlines. Fat
Leonard and ship collisions are aspects of
incompetence.
We better hope so as this trail leads to
Kerry, Obama, Biden and Lynch,
as well as the core group of a few hundred
globalist traitors in the civil service,
journalism and the very very rich.
Any
of whom would kill your babies or mine
without hesitation to preserve their
sociopathic power trip.
No doubt the trail leads to all the
Democrat hierarchy, and their corrupt
Obamunist ideology infected millions of
their minions who watched the crimes of
Obamunism for eight years and thought it
was the "new normal" way to operate. Lie
like there's no tomorrow to achieve your
DemoRat political goals. Weaponize
government to destroy your political
opposition. There are hundreds of
thousands of Dermocrats who think and
operate like this in our federal
government.
Fuckin Mueller...lol...he's been tripping & falling
all over "Russian collusion" for over a year now and
he still can't figure out how to make John Podesta,
Uranium One, Hillary, Christopher Steele, Lowrenta
Lynch and her "Russian government lawyer" visa waivers
be all about Trump.
Yes you are correct, but in the case of Flynn
there was no substance to the allegations so he
was tripped up on procedure. This was very much
like the capture of Martha Stewart. Fine
investigative work there, investigated for
insider trading, imprisoned over a misstatement
to the fed. Considering the current Fed
penchant for perjury, I wonder if Martha did lie
to them. Any of us can be tripped up and
trapped.
Of that amount how many involved the FISA judge recusing
themselves from a case?
No matter what the corporate
press, the globalists, no matter what the lies being told
to Americans on CNN, MSNBC, and other treason networks,
what has happened here is similar to 3rd world nations.
When a party ousted in a legitimate election uses the
nations intelligence services to try and overturn a
legitimate election, the Russians are the least of my
worries.
Flynn Judge Who Recused Himself Sat on FISA
Court During Illicit Wiretaps of Trump & Team. There is something deeply worrisome going on where we
now have effectively TREASON and acts undermining
elections in the United States.
Here are the FACTS!
REP. MATT GAETZ:
Here's what we know now as a
consequence of this memo: The Democratic National
Committee gave money to the Perkins Law Firm, the Perkins
Law Firm then paid the company Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS
then hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of Bruce Ohr, who is a
senior official at the Justice Dept, and they hired
Christopher Steele, who went and wrote this fake dossier.
Then Bruce Ohr, the spouse of Nellie Ohr, who has a
background in anti-narcotics and the anti-drug agenda at
the Dept. of Justice, he all of a sudden starts meeting
with Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele, and he valets
this fake dossier, paid for by the DNC, into the Dept. of
Justice.
The Dept. of Justice and the FBI then use the fake
dossier as a basis for a FISA warrant to spy on American
citizens. And the reason you know that is because of
Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, the
same Andrew McCabe whose wife got $700,000 from the
closest allies of the Clinton family. Andrew McCabe
testifies that there never would have been a FISA
warrant, but for the dossier.
The dossier is the cause of the FISA warrant, that
is from Andrew McCabe, no friend of Donald Trump.
Then the FISA warrant is in process, it is being
sought. To validate the fake dossier, the Dept. of
Justice and FBI use an article written by Mr. Isikoff of
Yahoo News to be the validating information for the
dossier. What's the problem with that? Christopher Steele
is the very person who planted the article at Yahoo News.
So you've got a fake dossier, paid for by the Democratic
Party, served into the process by the spouse of someone
hired, functionally, by the Democratic Party, and then
validated by a news article planted by the very author of
the dossier. It is outrageous, but it gets worse from
there.
The FBI the learns that Mr. Steele has been leaking
information to the media. so despite the fact that the
FBI has authorized payments to Mr. Steele, they then
don't render payment to Christopher Steele. now, do they
go on and alert the court that that has happened?
Absolutely not. The FISA warrant has to be reauthorized
every 90 days, and it is reauthorized multiple times with
the signatures on it of the senior officials of the Dept.
of Justice all based on a lie. All based on completely
false information that has to be validated by the authors
of the originally false information.
That's what is so outrageous about this. Not only the
original lies and the original application for the FISA
warrant, but the reauthorizations and the proof that this
entire narrative is built on a rotten foundation.
So in the coming days and weeks, we're going to be
seeking to excersize our oversight authority, and
Democrats will continue to do what they've always done,
attack Chairman Devin Nunes, attack me, attack those of
us who are trying to get information in front of the
American people about the basis of these claims.
We're going to keep telling the truth, because this is
rotten, and this can never happen again in the U.S.A.
You'll be hearing from me soon, thanks for tuning
in.
We should also keep adding that the 'dossier' is just
a repackaging of pure scurrilous bullshit originally
compiled by a
hired Clinton dirty tricks
specialist,
who is so foul that they needed to
move the pack of political opposition lies into the
'process' via Steele.
And that this
entire shit show has to have been coordinated via
Lynch, Kerry and Obama. Or their VERY CLOSE
ASSOCIATES.
Well in most cases those seeking surveillance actually
had proof that crimes were committed by those truly
acting as foreign agents of foreign governments. They
weren't anywhere near as corrupt as those involved in the
Page FISA. And as I said most werent - this is high
treason eere are talking about.
"... Sulome Anderson has been duped for years by some enterprising Lebanese stringers who sell her "access to Hizbullah officials" by introducing her to their barber or some local thugs. The alternative explanation is that she is knowingly selling fairy tales and propaganda. She certainly isn't the only journalist with such a problem. In 2012 Vice ..."
"... This case though is about factual errors, unreliable sourcing, planting pro-Israel propaganda or, at best, about getting duped by some local jokers. ..."
There is a special class of young, enterprising journalists and experts who claim to have
access to the inner thinking of the Lebanese resistance organization Hizbullah. Journalists
with decades of on the ground experience in Lebanon like to mock them:
"Hezbollah experts": "I was walking in "Hezbollah stronghold: & bumped into a man who
turned out to be a "High commander". As a sign of courtesy of our 1st encounter, revealed to
me Hezbollah will attack 7 countries. He delivers all plans to me & went off". U have to
believe me.
The story below touches on that phenomenon. But there is more to it. Such journalists and
experts are perfect tools for planting plant propaganda into the minds of cursory readers of
their stories. The curious tale below goes into that direction.
A few days ago the Columbia Journalism Review published a whiny piece about
dwindling foreign reporting in U.S. media:
The story is build around one U.S. freelance reporter in Lebanon, Sulome Anderson , who laments that her work is no longer
requested or published.
Like all other miserable issue in this world Anderson's lack of income is caused by one
Donald Trump:
Sulome blames a news cycle dominated by Donald Trump. Newspapers, magazines, and TV news
programs simply have less space for freelance international stories than before -- unless, of
course, they directly involve Trump.
The media obsession with Trump's oddities may be a reason for a lack of foreign reporting.
But is it really causing Anderson's problem?
Before the 2016 election cycle, Sulome would pitch a story once, maybe twice, before finding
a home for it. Now she pitches anywhere from three to 10 editors before a story gets the
green light, if it gets picked up at all.
But is this caused by Trump, or by the content and sourcing of the stories Anderson tries to
sell?
In October 2017, Sulome thought she had landed the story of her career. The US had just
announced a $7 million reward for a Hezbollah operative believed to be scouting locations for
terror attacks on American soil -- something it had never done before. Having interviewed
Hezbollah fighters for the last six years, Sulome had unique access to the upper echelons
of its militants , including that specific operative's family members . Over the course
of her reporting, Hezbollah members told her they had contingency plans to strike government
and military targets on US soil and that they had surface-to-air missiles , which had not
been reported before .
Did she offer that story to The Onion ?
Hizbullah is known for its extremely
tight media control . There is no such media access, zero, none, to the "upper echelons"
of Hizbullah - certainly not for some U.S. freelancer with a dubious background (see
below).
Hizbullah does not talk about its weapons to this or that journalist. If it wants to make
a specific capability known, it will make a public announcements about it. That is what
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah did when he said that Hizbullah could
attack Haifa's ammonia storage tanks. It was the announcement that Hizbullah had acquired a
new, precise, mid-range missile.
Will Hizbullah operatives talk to their family members about their secret business? Would
those family members relate those secrets to some American freelancer? No and no.
Hizbullah's surface-to-air missiles have never been reported on? What about
the 2006(!) IHS Janes report ? MoA, this very site, wrote about them in 2008!
Hizbullah leader Nasrallah
publicly talked about them and Israel's intelligence service confirmed the capability.
Hizbollah is known to have MANPADS (
see pic ), SA-22 Pantsyr-1 systems and at least access to S-200 surface to air missiles
including the necessary radar systems.
The piece continues:
Convinced she had struck gold, she was elated when the piece was commissioned by a dream
publication she'd never written for before. But days later, that publication rescinded its
decision, saying that Sulome had done too much of the reporting before she was commissioned.
Sulome was in shock. She went on to pitch the story to eight other publications, and no one
was interested.
Obsessive Trump coverage let the editors turn that story down?
Or could it be that no one was interested in Sulome Anderson's story because it was obvious
propaganda crap? Could it be that no one was interested because Anderson's claimed access to
Hizbullah has for years been laughed about ? Could it be that that no one
was interested because her
July 2017 story for Newsweek (scroll to its end) needed five(!) factual
corrections and
had additional serious problems ? Because the video she made for Newsweek of
alleged Hizbullah fighters she interviewed showed fighters with the insignia of Fatah
al-Intifada, a Syrian-Palestinian group? Could it be because the fighting scenes in that video
seemed staged? (In
her rebuttal of those accusations Anderson admits some errors, obfuscates others, but also
claims to have interviewed "a Hezbollah division leader". Hizbullah is not organized like a
conventional army. Its armed resistance does do not have "divisions" - nor does it have
"division leaders".)
No editor likes to publish pieces which will get flogged by experts and the public. Editors
hate to publish corrections. It is the disaster of Anderson's Newsweek story, not
Donald Trump coverage, that prevents other editors from commissioning her with a similar
piece.
Sulome Anderson has been duped for years by some enterprising Lebanese stringers who
sell her "access to Hizbullah officials" by introducing her to their barber or some local
thugs. The alternative explanation is that she is knowingly selling fairy tales and propaganda.
She certainly isn't the only journalist with such a problem. In 2012 Vice published a
widely shared - and ridiculed - story about Paintballing
with Hezbollah in which four western journalist competed with four local dudes who
falsely claimed
to be "Hizbullah fighters".
The CJR story about Sulome Anderson's sales problem was written by Yardena Schwartz , a freelancer in Tel
Aviv. Schwartz discloses that "Sulome was a classmate of mine at Columbia Journalism School
from 2010 to 2011." Having friends in Tel Aviv increases the chance that "upper echelons" of
Hizbullah will trust one with knowledge about their plans and air-defense capabilities?
Bragging
about ones orthodox Jewish and Zionist boyfriend , as Anderson does, helps to pass through
Hizbullah's strict media controls?
Thinking this over one comes to see a propaganda plan behind this whole affair.
Consider: The U.S. puts some
high reward on someone's head for allegedly being Hizbullah and planning something
nefarious within the United States. Next comes Sulome Anderson, who by chance has access to the
family of the dude. She also learns from "upper echelon" Hizbullah commanders that, yes, what
the U.S. alleges is exactly what Hizbullah wants to do. Moreover - Hizbullah confesses to
Anderson that it has all these scary MANPADS. Might it want to smuggle those into the States?
Does it want to down Air Force One or a commuter flight out of New York?
That surely would have been a perfect scare story, an "independent" confirmation of the U.S.
allegations and another reason to put more sanctions on Hizbullah.
But no one in the U.S. was willing to publish that crap. After the Newsweek
disaster Anderson's claims of Hizbullah access had been seriously burned. The story would not
stand.
Is there another way to plant the meme into American minds? How about a whiny story in the
CJR , written by her friend in Tel Aviv, that simply repeats these claims? Not as good
as "original" reporting published in the NYT but surely enough to put those claims on the
record.
It is disappointing that CFR published this sorry excuse for the unreliable
reporting of Sulome Anderson. Excessive Trump coverage in U.S. media may be a reason
for less foreign reporting. Costs are certainly another one.
This case though is about factual errors, unreliable sourcing, planting pro-Israel
propaganda or, at best, about getting duped by some local jokers.
Posted by b on February 3, 2018 at 10:02 AM |
Permalink
I can't understand why she's even trying to freelance - she has a bright future ahead of her
at the New York Times, the Washington Post or maybe one of the cable news networks. Maybe she
just lacks credentials? I understand those Non-resident Senior Fellow positions at The
Atlantic Council are going for thirty shekels or so on eBay.
Wow B! I am mightily impressed with the precision and scope of your research. The debunking
of that Jett fellow and now this S(a)lome character. She is evidently just as duplicitous as
he her historical namesake. You are doing much more than all those newly-appointed watchdogs
to expose fake news. Keep up the good work.
She must be former student of Judith Miller, even Iranian media don't have access to
Hezbollah fighters, never seen a single interview with Hezbollah fighter in any Iranian site,
Afghan Fatemion yes, but not Hezbollah fighters or commanders .
Amazing! The fake news machine cannot peel itself
away from Trump, taking away space from their
foreign policy hacktivists! There have been many a
sloopy ones before her, but some even got Pulitzer prize.
Yes, I do credit Trump phenomena. With all the
thunderbolts aimed at him, Hezbollah will have to wait.
I don't know the exact propaganda term but it seems to me this article is merely a vehicle to
deliver the meme that Hezbollah is planning to attack the US. I wonder whose interest it is
in to implant that notion into the minds of Americans?
As fate would have it, during the 2006 war, I happened to be on the roof of the home in which
I lived when they they first used the missile to bring down an Israeli helicopter (If memory
serves it was 11,000 feet up at the time, near their flight ceiling). I was looking south
towards Tyre when there was an explosion high in the sky just a bit north and east of the
city.
That single event effectively ended the 2006 war.
Up to that time the Israeli army had two or three times tried large scale armoured
invasions only to have them turned back by the resistance. Although never reported on it
appears that in their wisdom the Israeli leadership decided to leap-frog the main resistance
lines and set up large bases behind the lines they were about to attack. These bases were
situated on prominent high spots, usually ancient small towns, so as to monitor and attack
the resistance as they mobilized and directed forces behind the engagement line. These bases
were formed and supplied by air - specifically helicopters. Some bases were small, some were
really big with massive lights around them.
Suddenly the Israeli army found itself in a situation where they had these bases,
thousands of men, trapped in small pockets which they could no longer safely re-supply or
relieve.
In the Arab world one of the most lasting memories of that time were the humiliating
images of those Israeli soldiers, the war over, walking out of Lebanon along rapidly
negotiated 'safe corridors'.
That is something common at every of the "alt-media". They play the "resistant" position
for at the same time to list all the IPs of all those expressing resistance against the US
empire while broadcasting relevant information/sentences to advance the policy goals of the
US empire and its allies...
I'm totally with Ben Zanotto @6 on this.
Looks suspiciously like an indirect way to plant the "Hezbollah wants to target the US and
has manpads" (the whole thing being vague enough to let people fear Hezbollah having smuggled
manpads inside the US proper) fake news inside US media, rather than what it pretends to be.
Given her eagerness, she must be a real loser if she can't get a regular
propagandist gig.
thanks b... i agree with paveway @1... can't she get a gig with the nyt, wapo or some org
like that? having friends in tel aviv has got to help too, lol...but if she wants to go for
the gold - she could see if the white helmets need any independent media coverage... she
could be right in their with the leaders of the moderate headchopping cult...
@ "wants to target usa and has manpads" line.. yeah - that is the sales pitch... usually
works on the usa msm propaganda outlets, but they aren't even going with it.. shows you how
bad she framed it..
The media concentrate on superficialities, after all, we elected a media star. He makes statements that are often subjective and unverifiable, yet they are discussed as
if they had any real merit. He is busy dismantling the US government and that goes generally ignored.
That certainly was a game-changer. I would also add the anti-ship missile that nearly sunk
an Israeli warship, timed to coincide with a speech by Nasrallah.
Re: Hezbollah talking to the media
While working in journalism in Lebanon there was no group more difficult to get to say
anything, officially or off-the-record, than Hezbollah. They do talk with their own media
outlets and those of their immediate political allies, but much, much less to other Lebanese
outlets. If you're working for a foreign news organization it's like pulling teeth to get
anything at all from them.
That Anderson obtained access to Hezbollah's 'upper echelons' and they told her all about
these fancy new weapons to hit America with is truly a whopper. It does, however, sound
exactly like the type of yarn many Lebanese would love to spin for a gullible and dimwitted
American. It's damn near hilarious in my opinion.
As I see it, part of Sulome Anderson's problem is that she is the child of two AP reporters
based for a long time in the Middle East. At some point during her childhood, the father was
kidnapped and AP supported the family while he was held captive. She appears to have followed
her parents in taking up a career in journalism because she has had no contact or experience
in any other environment.
While Western publics had no access to any other news apart from what Western news
agencies based in the Middle East dished out to newspapers willing to pay for the
spoon-feeding, or from the foreign correspondents employed by these papers and sent to the
Middle East to find what their employers wanted them to find, a reporter like Sulome Anderson
could afford to stay within a closeted reporting environment without questioning the
assumptions and paradigms of that world.
Now (for the time being anyway) that we all have access to alternative (and sometimes more
direct) ways of seeing the Middle East, we are able to pick and choose what we believe is
more accurate news, we can see that most Western news media have not been accurate and we are
now demanding higher standards of Western reporting. At the same time, these standards have
fallen across mainstream Western news media outlets due to falling sales revenues which have
led to massive staff cuts, especially in back-office staff like editorial and research staff
on whom journalists would rely to clean up and help verify their work. In the process, a
culture upholding ethical standards of reporting, accuracy and transparency was
destroyed.
For Sulome Anderson to salvage any credibility, perhaps she should consider following the
examples of Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett in pursuing real freelance journalism in the
Middle East by going out and talking to ordinary people, and actually listening to what they
have to say?
I suppose if The New York Times, The Washington Post and other US-based media will not employ
Sulome Anderson, perhaps Guardian America can come to her rescue?
If The Guardian can employ a mediocrity like Luke Harding who has made a career out of his
paranoiac fantasies about being constantly spied on and harassed by the Russian government
while stationed in Moscow stealing articles out of an English-language newspaper for expats
in that city, surely The Guardian can find a space for Anderson?
This poor lady just does not know anything about Hezbollah , Hezbollah is not interested in
getting involved in the USA , their job always has been to fight Israel and defend Lebanon.
Not to mention they never ever talks about their plan or their defense except when the leader
Nasrallah talk and usually he means it.
Every thing else is lie, crab journalism, never believe it.
I just went out to get the mail and bumped into a Hezbollah high commander. He told me they
have a missile they're going to use to blow up the Hubble telescope.
A journalist who has lived in Lebanon for many years, and seems to be respected by the Syrian
army, is Robert Fisk. His stories always give you insight into the human situation, by
actually being there with the Syrian army.
If you haven't read any of his accounts, you should try it.
When he is on scene directly reporting what he
sees Fisk is fine informative & entertaining however the stories whose spine is basically
just Beirut restaurant gossip, usually from one side of the confessionalist Lebanese
political structure, is extremely suspect.
In some ways it could be considered that Fisk lit the touchpaper which kicked off the Syrian
conflict. He spent literally years claiming that it was Syria who blew up Rafic Hariri.
Although the story which was full of holes was eventually 'modified' with the claim that the
bombing was engineered by Hizbollah under contract to Syria, the evidence IMO points towards
a Saudi/Israeli plot to take out their neutered puppet and drive Syria from Lebanon, while
kicking off the daily 5 minutes of Syria hate in western media.
Yep. I'm with Ben Zanotto. This propaganda piece is intended to prepare USAmericans for a war
against Hezbollah. Last year, Israel ran civil defense drills along their border with
Lebanon, and both the US and Israel have been making threatening remarks for months.
Also, b observes, "In 2012 Vice published a widely shared - and ridiculed - story about
Paintballing with Hezbollah "
I hope everyone here has figured out that Vice News is worse than just hipster pablum. With
huge investments from Rupert Murdoch, Viacom and Time/Warner, and produced by rabid Zionist
Islamaphobe Bill Mahher, it's a very dangerous sort of propaganda organ since it pretends to
be "alternative news." It's one example of that sort of propaganda designed for people who've
come to realize the MSM is BS.
The MSM is more than happy to run propaganda that fits the agenda of the Deep State and/or
Israel. Trump's Presidency has sucked up a lot of the MSM's attention for voer two years --
not only does it sell more ads (as CBS's Moonves admitted), but they don't seem to be able to
help themselves from looking. So, yes, the competition for Middle East stringers to get their
articles picked up has gotten more fierce. Thanks to the commenters at Newsweek, Anderson's
errors were not only exposed, but Newsweek was forced to enter five retractions. The MSM is
more than willing to lie. They'll even promote pundits who tell whoppers, like the ones that
got us into the Iraq War. But they are not going to go to bat for an insignificant stringer
who embarrassed them (and don't count on a letter of recommendation to other news outlets).
It's a tough world out there, cupcake.
Every move Anderson has made has been focused on image ahead of substance. I'm sure most
people feel a pang of sympathy for the little girl whose daddy was abducted and help for
nearly a decade, but instead of it being just one part of her character Sulome has made it
her ladder to media fame. Too bad that journo as celebrity is passe and considered a far too
expensive way to gather information Just ask all the big earners in the Beeb newsroom who
diverted attention from their paycuts
by selling it as feminism , an effort to establish 'pay equality' in the beeb. (The
easiest way would be to put the entire bunch of paid liars on industry standard or award
pay). No one really cares what talking head is used to spout the nonsense and I doubt that
they ever really did, but these telephone number salaries had a big plus for media bosses,
since they were the bosses they needed to get big salaries too. How else would the talking
heads respect their masters? The bullshit went on and on to the point were competing news
sources caused the vehicle for the talent to lose money. Unfortunately instead of doing the
obvious - getting shot of the whole sorry lot of trough guzzlers, thus far corporate media
has taken the line of least resistance by shedding the lowly news gatherers.
Not that Sulome Anderson falls into that category. If she was really dedicated to being a
good reporter she would have followed the line that the offspring of a much bigger celebrity
took. Duncan
Jones aka Zowie Bowie really wanted to make movies, make them well but rather than living
off his father's cachet as an artist he mostly kept his antecedent out of the picture by
using a different surname and getting head down bum up to make better and better films.
It wasn't until after Bowie died that Duncan in the role of family spokesperson publicly
acknowledged his father. Yes he has made a couple of larger productions since daddy karked it
but given the lead time for somewhat bigger budget movies, it is likely that those deals were
made on the basis of his indie success (esp Moon a great flick), that the contracts were
signed before Bowie shuffled off.
Consider then Sulome Anderson who puts out a book before she's even done much actual
reporting; what does she call it?
The Hostage's Daughter - like living in
daddy's shadow eh Sulome. Instead of flaunting this she would have been wiser to consider why
it was of all the journos in Beirut feeding off the misery of that civil war, why was it
Anderson who got grabbed? Could it have bee he was perceived as Israel's goy liar in
chief?
This wannabe journo who is so down on media changes, yet she appears intent on using those
changes for self advancement. By trying to establish herself through dad and then using that
platform to push propaganda I would say she is the epitome of The New Journalism Mk57
.
I believe the cockburnt family and the fisks are fine honorable queens men. Nothing wrong with limited hangouts they provide a worm for hooking you in.
The greatest trillion dollar war machines could not find tim osman osama bin lardass and his
kidney machines in the tora bora
but lucky old mi6 vauxhall queer fisked did.
when robin cook talked of alcia da data base he fell off a mountain
and yet cockburn lives in a 5 story Georgian town house fisked and families have 3 homes
yes sir these upstanding cut outs have many paymasters
you can believe them the intel they gather is purely for scoop and upholding the
honorable career of journalist spy
Glad to see b crediting Angry Arab for this story. Asad AbuKhalil
has been ridiculing western reporters that claim to have some special access to Hezbollah
sources for years now. Not just Suleme but many others.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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expansion, except in the sense that "security" means operational freedom. You can find references to Russia's nuclear weapons, though, which are described as defensive, designed "to counter US forces and weapons systems." [vii] Try finding that on the BBC. I should mention that even "defensive" nukes can be launched accidentally.
© missannawebb / Instagram In one of the least surprising developments in an ongoing story, the Sun newspaper has been forced to remove a report from its website in which a Russian model claims Vladimir Putin is trying to kill her. The article has since been removed " for legal reasons, " and, some are speculating, probably for some 'truth' reasons as well.
'Putin wants me dead': Russian 'model' seduces UK tabloids with new Salisbury poisoning claims
'Alexander Petrov' and 'Ruslan Boshirov' are seen in an image handed out by the Metropolitan Police in London, Britain / Reuters Moscow is aware of who the people named as suspects in the Skripal case are, President Vladimir Putin said, adding that these people are civilians. Saying that there is "nothing criminal" about the two, Putin also hopes that the people in question will eventually come forward and talk to the media.
British prosecutors name the 2 Russians suspected of poisoning the Skripals
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MARK CHAPMAN August 22, 2018 at 3:55 pm
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A guard at one of
the lab entrances at Porton Down, October 1968. © C. Woods / Getty Images
